John Adams - 2nd President of the United States Documentary

The man known to history as John Adams was born on the 30th of October 1735 in the town of Braintree in Massachusetts, just south of Boston and overlooking Boston Harbour. His father was John Adams Senior, a farmer and deacon, who also dabbled in shoemaking and was a tax collector in the local region. He was the great-grandson of Henry Adams, who had immigrated to Massachusetts from Braintree in Essex in England in 1638 and established the first colonial settlement at Braintree, Massachusetts, w

hich he named after his hometown back in England. John Adams Senior was an affluent enough figure in Braintree that he was able to purchase his own farmstead at Quincy to the north of the town itself, though the family could not be said to have been especially wealthy. John’s mother was Susanna Boylston, a member of a prominent Massachusetts family from Brookline who had married John Adams Senior in 1734. Their first child, John Junior, arrived the following year. They had two further sons toget

her, Peter born in 1738 and Elihu born in 1741. John’s early life was typical of the middle classes of colonial Massachusetts in the mid-eighteenth century. He was educated in a mixed gender school where the curriculum centred on The New England Primer, a textbook which had been first published by Benjamin Harris in the late 1680s and which comprised of readings which inculcated New England’s children into the Puritanical religious beliefs that had drawn their ancestors to New England to begin w

ith in the seventeenth century, a place where they could worship freely. While the catechisms and religious excerpts of The New England Primer prepared children like Adams for the spiritual world and helped them to learn to read and write, they did little for the wider intellect and so once he had finished his elementary schooling Adams was sent to Braintree Latin School. Here he undertook the first stages of a classical humanist education in which he learned Latin, rhetoric, logic, philosophy a

nd arithmetic, though the curriculum was fast changing in line with the scientific breakthroughs made in Europe since the sixteenth century and the advance of the Enlightenment. Adams was clearly an intelligent student, but already in his early teenage years his rebelliousness and his questioning of authority got him into considerable trouble while attending the Latin School in Braintree. His fractious spirit would later prove ideal for a revolutionary. Adams was born and grew up at a time when

America was a very different place to the one which he would live in during his later years. In the mid-eighteenth century the east coast of North America was dominated by British, French and Spanish colonies. The Spanish held Florida, while the French had colonised New France, a region approximate to what is now eastern Canada. The British had begun settling colonies between these French and Spanish positions in the early seventeenth century, first in Virginia and New England and then expanding

further north and south from those positions. By Adams’ time there were thirteen individual colonies stretching from New Hampshire in the north to Georgia in the south. These were generally divided into three categories. In the north were the New England colonies of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Adams’ native Massachusetts, which with the city of Boston was the most prosperous part of New England. To the south were the Middle Colonies, consisting of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylv

ania and Delaware. These were the most ethnically and religiously mixed of the Thirteen Colonies and were growing in economic importance owing to the growth of the cities of New York and Philadelphia. The Southern Colonies of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia were less urbanised and their economies centred on the production of cash crops such as cotton and tobacco, a development which had led to the emergence of a large slave population here. All Thirteen Colonies we

re controlled by the British government. The colonial community were subjects of the crown and paid taxes as such, though they had no political representation in England, all issues which would soon lead to political unrest. Revolution was not on John Adams’ mind in the 1750s. Instead he was growing into a substantial scholar. In 1751 he had begun attending Harvard University in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, the oldest college in North America. Here he became keenly interested in the works of

the great Greek and Roman authors, notably historians such as Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus and the rhetorical and political writings of Cicero and Quintilian. He was also influenced by the new political, philosophical and cultural writings and viewpoints of the European Enlightenment which were discussing the idea of political liberty and representation in reaction to the absolutist monarchies of countries like Russia and France during the pre-revolution Ancien Régime. A highly influential work

in this regard was The Spirit of Law, published by Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, in 1748. This was quickly translated into English in 1750 and with its arguments about political liberty and the rights of citizens before the law, was a seminal text in influencing some of the Founding Fathers such as Adams in the 1750s and 1760s. Indeed Adams interest in the law had become profound. Having completed his Artium Baccalaureus or A.B. at Harvard in 1754, he quickly began studying l

aw, earning an A.M., the equivalent of a Masters, from Harvard in 1758 and then gaining admittance to the bar to practice law in 1759 when he was just 24 years of age. Around the time that he was completing his A.M. and entering the bar, Adams had begun courting his third cousin, Abigail Smith. It was a slow courtship by the standards of the time and Adams did not propose for several years. Consequently they were not finally married until October 1764. It was a relationship based on mutual respe

ct and Abigail was a moderating voice on John, who while always viewed as honourable by his political colleagues in later years was often guilty of being unwilling to accommodate the views of others and also showed a certain level of arrogance. He and Abigail settled down on his 9½ acre farm at Quincy outside Braintree, which he had inherited after his father’s passing in 1761. Adams began building a successful legal practice, one which was based on his growing reputation for intellectual and le

gal rigour, in the city of Boston. He and Abigail also soon started a family when a daughter, named Abigail after her mother, was born in 1765. Five more children would follow, John Quincy in 1767, Susanna in 1768, Charles in 1770, Thomas in 1772 and Elizabeth in 1777. Unfortunately their two younger daughters did not survive. Susanna died in infancy in 1769, while Elizabeth was stillborn. While Adams was studying, building his law practice and courting Abigail, the Thirteen Colonies were embroi

led in conflict. Back in 1756 Britain and France went to war in a conflict which has become known as the Seven Years War and which has been viewed as the first global conflict of modern history, as it involved clashes between the two main belligerents plus their allies in Europe, the Americas and Asia. The causes of the war were Anglo-Franco rivalry in general, but border disputes and clashes between the British position in the Thirteen Colonies and the French in New France or Canada and Louisia

na was also a major contributory factor. Many British subjects in the Thirteen Colonies fought for the British during the conflict. Adams did not go to war, as he was studying at Harvard when it broke out in 1756, however he, like many other British subjects in the Thirteen Colonies, was enormously impacted on by the conflict. When it ended, the British were victorious and acquired Canada from France in the Peace of Paris which brought it to an end in 1763. The colonial community of the Thirteen

Colonies had made an enormous contribution to the war effort and many believed in the aftermath of the conflict that they should be given a greater degree of political representation by the British government. Instead they would be disillusioned to find that London’s only intention was to impose higher levels of taxation on the Colonies. This would begin to radicalise Adams and many others from the mid-1760s onwards. Adams’ political views were beginning to become clearer during these years and

he began to write and publish frequently on many political issues. He did this somewhat secretly, publishing articles under the pseudonym ‘Humphrey Ploughjogger’ in The Boston Evening Post. Here he assumed the persona of a simple-minded New Englander to criticise the political views of several prominent Bostonians who had been publishing in The Boston Gazette and other newspapers who were themselves overly critical of British rule in the Thirteen Colonies where he deemed it appropriate, but els

ewhere suggesting that one needed to appraise crown officers in North America on the basis of their actions rather than solely on their designation as representatives of the crown. There was a growing sense in these that he wished to defend the rights of the colonial community against overt British interference in the Thirteen Colonies, but Adams was not at this point committed to overturning British rule in North America. In 1765 the British government introduced the Stamp Act. This was a decre

e that all the subjects of the Thirteen Colonies would have to pay a tax on almost any form of paper or printed material which they purchased, be it a newspaper or a deck of playing cards. These were all to be embossed with a revenue stamp, hence its name. The Act was designed to increase the revenue generated for the British government from its subjects in the Thirteen Colonies on the basis that the crown had paid large amounts of money to protect them from invasion by the French during the Sev

en Years War, but it was markedly unpopular when it was introduced in 1765. Adams became a vocal opponent of it in Massachusetts, penning several articles under his pseudonym ‘Humphrey Ploughjogger’ and another document called the Braintree Instructions in which he laid out his opposition on the grounds that Americans were not being taxed in the same way in which subjects of the crown in England were. Such was the furore which it provoked that the British government quickly rowed back on its dec

ision and repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766. Nevertheless, it is viewed as a major episode in the growing disaffection of the colonial community in the Thirteen Colonies with crown rule. It also saw Adams publicly identify himself as an opponent of British policies in Massachusetts for the first time. By the late 1760s Adams had moved his young family to Boston and emerged as the pre-eminent lawyer in the city. He continued to voice his complaints against heavy-handed policies imposed by the

Westminster parliament in England, notably the Townshend Acts which were introduced in 1767 and 1768 and involved new taxes again on the Thirteen Colonies. Yet he was also capable of acting in accord with the government. This was seen most clearly following the Boston Massacre, an incident which occurred on the 5th of March 1770 on King Street in the city, when a group of British soldiers were surrounded by an angry mob, leading them to open fire and kill five people. Although the Boston Massacr

e was heavily criticised by leading New England political figures such as Adams’ own cousin, Samuel Adams, John agreed to provide legal defence for the British soldiers who had been involved in the incident. At the trials Adams expertly contrived to pack the juries with sympathetic citizens and succeeded in having Captain Thomas Preston, the British officer in charge, and his soldiers acquitted of all charges. Just a few months later, Adams was appointed to the Massachusetts legislature when a s

eat opened up. All of this indicates that, while he was critical of elements of British rule in North America by the early 1770s, he was not yet committed to the idea of revolting against the crown. If there was an incident which finally convinced Adams that the position of the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies could not be improved by peacefully negotiating with the crown and the British government and that violent opposition would be needed, it came in 1773 with the introduction of the Tea

Act. This was an action by the British government designed to crackdown on the illegal smuggling of tea into the Colonies by Dutch merchants and at the same time force the colonial community in North America to purchase the surplus tea stocks which were being held in warehouses in London by the British East India Company. Although the desire to crackdown on illegal tea smuggling was somewhat understandable on the British government’s part, the manner in which the Tea Act was introduced was so ba

dly handled that it aroused violent unrest in the Colonies. The most famous example was unquestionably the Boston Tea Party, when enraged Bostonians boarded the Dartmouth, a British ship in Boston Harbour, on the 16th of December 1773, destroying 342 crates of tea, much of which was thrown into the harbour. This action, which resulted in the destruction of tea which was worth nearly two million dollars in today’s money, was applauded by Adams as one of the ‘grandest events’ in the history of opp

osition to British rule in the Thirteen Colonies. It was not just the Tea Act which had aroused Adams’ indignation and radicalised him against the British government in the course of the early-to-mid-1770s. There were also growing signs of judicial and political overreach in the Colonies by Westminster. For instance, the British government had begun paying the wages of judges in Massachusetts and elsewhere directly from England, an action which Adams and others viewed as a move to end judicial i

ndependence and establish tyranny in the Thirteen Colonies. This was compounded when in response to the Boston Tea Party the British imposed a naval blockade on Boston Harbour. The fallout was the decision by opponents of British rule in North America, who would come to be known as the Patriots, to convene a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies, Georgia excepted, to decide how they could act in conjunction with each other against the government. The First Continental Congres

s, as it became known, met in Philadelphia in September 1774. Adams was selected as one of the four delegates from Massachusetts and headed for Pennsylvania. At the First Continental Congress Adams developed a reputation immediately as someone who could bring the different parties together to compromise on issues before them. Of the 56 delegates some, such as John’s cousin Samuel, were radical Patriots who were in favour of initiating a military conflict in order to establish a new nation, indep

endent of Britain, but others believed that there was still room for negotiation with London. On the far end of the spectrum there were those who believed that the First Continental Congress’s aim should be to gain concessions from King George III in England, but that there could be no talk of splitting from the crown and Britain permanently. John offered a middle ground and was one of the key figures in ensuring that the delegates arrived at a compromise within a few weeks. This came in the sha

pe of the Continental Association, an agreement whereby each of the twelve colonies represented at the Congress agreed to boycott British trade with the goal of pressurising the decision-makers in London into granting concessions and addressing the Patriots’ grievances. Petitions outlining their complaints and what exactly they wanted were also addressed to King George III and the English parliament. With this done the First Continental Congress disbanded and Adams returned to Massachusetts. The

response in Britain to the Continental Association and other developments in the Colonies was not conciliatory. Pointing to the fact that militias of irregular soldiers were being formed by the Patriots in Massachusetts and elsewhere, the parliament at Westminster sent a statement to the King in February 1775 in which they declared that the Colonies were in rebellion against the crown in all practical senses. Thus, in mid-April the commander-in-chief of the British armed forces in North America

, Thomas Gage, ordered that all militiamen begin relinquishing their arms. When they attempted to forcibly disarm units in New England on the 19th of April 1775 the first armed clashes of the American Revolutionary War occurred at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. The outbreak of hostilities and the refusal of the government in England to offer any concessions in response to the petitions of the First Continental Congress convinced Adams that British rule now needed to be overthrown altoge

ther in the Thirteen Colonies, though he would continue for some time to present himself as a moderate figure who sought reconciliation with the British. On the 22nd of April he visited a Patriot militia camp where he sounded his support for their actions, but was disturbed by how poorly equipped the men were. Just days later he was chosen to lead the Massachusetts delegation to a new meeting of representatives from the Thirteen Colonies at Philadelphia. He arrived to what is now known as the Se

cond Continental Congress in mid-May. The summer of 1775, following the convening of the Second Continental Congress on the 10th of May, was a very significant period in the American Revolution. One of its first major measures, which was promoted strongly by Adams in response to his concerns about the state of the militias, their poor equipment and lack of discipline, was to establish a professional army to fight the war against Britain. Thus, on the 14th of June 1775 the Continental Army was es

tablished by decree of the Second Continental Congress. Adams proposed that George Washington, a Virginia landholder who had extensive military experience from his time as a British commander during the French and Indian Wars and the Seven Years War, should be made its first commander-in-chief, the goal being to acquire greater support for the revolt in the Southern Colonies by appointing a Virginian as head of the Patriots’ army. As such Adams was critical in the ascendancy of George Washington

at this time. Conversely, he played a much more limited role in drafting the ‘Olive Branch Petition’, an appeal which was adopted by the Congress on the 5th of July and sent directly to King George III, professing the loyalty of the colonial community and imploring the King to intervene directly and open negotiations between the government and the Congress. Adams signed the petition, as did all members of the Congress, but he viewed this late effort at negotiating as pointless and now believed

war and independence was the only realistic path forward for the Patriots. The ‘Olive Branch Petition’ was rejected unequivocally in Britain and in August the Colonies were formally declared to be in rebellion. Thus, during the course of the autumn and winter of 1775 and into 1776, Adams and the other members of the Second Continental Congress began building a government from scratch, with all the manifest issues of raising revenue and appointing officials to carry out myriad duties. By the earl

y summer of 1776, as the war continued to intensify and the crown and government in England showed no sign of adopting a more conciliatory line, the time had come to declare to the world that a new nation was being created in North America. In order to do so, a committee of five members of the Congress was established to draft a document declaring their independence from British rule. Adams was one of the five and was joined by Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingstone and a Virginian

named Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence which created the United States of America, but he did amend the text he had written and introduced new points which were raised by his fellow committee members, particularly Adams and Franklin. It was the beginning of a close relationship between Adams and Jefferson, one which would see them ally with each other as friends and lock horns as enemies for decades to come. One of their first acts was to pre

sent the Declaration of Independence to the Congress, which was duly ratified on the 4th of July 1776 after Adams had defended it passionately before the other Congress members. The United States had been established. Now it would have to make a reality of its independence through armed conflict. In its first major phase between 1775 and 1778 the American Revolutionary War was largely fought in New England and the Middle Colonies. After a lengthy siege the Patriots succeeded in capturing Boston

from the British in the spring of 1776, following which the British commander-in-chief, Sir William Howe, decided on a new strategy of trying to cut New England off from the Patriots’ capital in Philadelphia by securing New York and New Jersey. He himself was relatively successful in this effort, seizing New York City in November 1776, before moving against Philadelphia itself and capturing the seat of the Second Continental Congress in the summer of 1777, though the leaders of the revolution ha

d fled from the city in advance of his arrival. But while Howe was successful, the British war effort was dealt an immense blow in October 1777 when a large army of over 7,000 troops, which had come south from Canada under the command of John Burgoyne, was utterly defeated at the Battle of Saratoga in the Hudson River Valley by a section of the Continental Army led by Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. Nearly a thousand of Burgoyne’s men were killed or wounded and the remaining 6,000 were taken

prisoner. With this the tide of the war changed and France, which had been providing financial and material aid to the Patriots for some time, officially joined the conflict on the Congress’s side. Henceforth British policy changed to trying to secure the Southern Colonies, and the Continental Army soon recaptured Philadelphia. Throughout these early years of the war, Adams was a senior member of the Second Continental Congress and a key figure in many of its activities. He sat on ninety differe

nt committees and chaired over two dozen of them, a workload which was unmatched by any other Congress member. Two of his positions stand out above others. In June 1776 he was appointed as head of the Board of War and Ordnance. This was effectively the administrative arm of the Continental Army. Before any soldier could fire a rifle or musket at Saratoga or in New England someone had to oversee acquiring weapons and gunpowder for the Continental Army. That someone was John Adams, who spent month

s in the second half of 1776 and into 1777 working eighteen hour days to ensure that the Patriot armed forces were provisioned properly. This was tied to his second major role during these years, his efforts to foster strong diplomatic ties with some of the other major European powers such as France, the Dutch Republic and Prussia in order to acquire weapons and other necessary equipment from them. Accordingly he was central to the drawing up of the Model Treaty, a template for commercial treati

es between the United States and these European nations. In time these diplomatic and economic ties would expand into direct military alliances with France and the Dutch Republic, measures which were hugely significant in shaping the course of the American Revolutionary War. The Model Treaty and Adams’ advocacy of closer ties to some of the European powers who were antagonistic to Britain soon saw him leaving North America. Of all Europe’s nations none had more to gain from British weakness than

France, and it was the most likely nation to ally with the new United States. From early in the war it began providing economic aid and war materiel, but with the victory at Saratoga in October 1777 the Second Continental Congress believed it could convince King Louis XVI’s government in Paris to agree to a more formal military alliance, where France would dispatch an armada and soldiers to North America to fight the British. To this end, Adams was appointed as a commissioner to France in Novem

ber 1777, just a few weeks after Saratoga. He departed in the early spring of 1778, bringing his eldest son, John Quincy, along with him and leaving Abigail, who by now was growing used to her husband’s extended absences, at home in Braintree with the other children. The mission to France was a mixed affair. By the time Adams arrived in Europe he learned that the French government had already agreed to a military alliance, but thereafter Adams was frustrated in achieving anything. The French pre

ferred the more relaxed and somewhat deferential approach of Benjamin Franklin, whereas Adams was increasingly ignored by Louis XVI’s ministers. By the end of 1778 a decision was taken in Philadelphia to appoint Franklin as Minister Plenipotentiary to France, effectively making him the official US ambassador to the country. Adams felt slighted by all of this and decided unilaterally to sail for home, arriving back in Massachusetts in March 1779. Upon his return to North America the Second Contin

ental Congress determined that the war had reached a point where negotiations might be entered into with the British. Adams was selected to oversee the possibility of this. He was consequently sent back across the Atlantic to Paris once again, just over six months after returning to New England, where it was hoped he would be able to send feelers out to London. There the old problems with the French arose and the war had reached something of a stalemate by early 1780 which made the British reluc

tant to enter into concerted peace talks. Frustrated, Adams took leave of Paris in mid-1780 and headed for Amsterdam in the hopes of convincing the Dutch Republic to provide greater support to the United States. Yet here too he was met with indifference, the government in the Hague refusing to acknowledge Adams’ credentials as the US ambassador to the country. Consequently Adams was growing increasingly pessimistic about the European powers, perceiving that each was interested in manipulating th

e war in North America to their own advantage, but none were true, unequivocal allies of the United States. Worn out by years of exhaustive work, he suffered a major bout of illness in Amsterdam in August 1781 which may have been a minor nervous breakdown of some kind. Adams’ despair in Europe in the late summer and early autumn of 1781 was relieved by news from North America concerning the war. Following the disaster at Saratoga in October 1777 the focus of the British was on securing the South

ern Colonies and using them as a base to continue the war against the Patriots further to the north. However, even this effort was thwarted by the shifting international situation. France’s entry to the war had brought naval support for the Patriots and in time Spain and the Dutch Republic went to war with Britain as well. In 1780 5,500 French troops landed on Rhode Island to help Washington’s Continental Army try to seize New York, the only major city in the Middle Colonies and New England stil

l in British hands. However, they soon changed course and headed south to besiege General Charles Cornwallis and his significant force at Yorktown in Virginia. A three week siege followed in the autumn of 1781 with a combined Franco-American army of approximately 16,000 men and nearly thirty warships pinning Cornwallis’s 9,000 men into Yorktown. Washington oversaw the siege which quickly resulted in British surrender. With the capture of over 7,500 British troops it became untenable for the Brit

ish to continue the war in any meaningful fashion and from late 1781 onwards peace negotiations commenced in Paris. When news of what had occurred at Yorktown reached Europe late in 1781 Adams found his position beginning to change as popular sentiment in the Dutch Republic quickly turned in favour of the Patriots. In April 1782 he convinced the Dutch government in the Hague to acknowledge the United States as an independent nation and negotiated a large loan for the Congress. Thereafter he head

ed for Paris again where concerted peace negotiations to end the war had been entered into, following the arrival of a British delegation headed by David Hartley. It was now inevitable that Britain would have to recognise the independence of the United States, but many issues still had to be resolved concerning for example the boundary between the new country and Britain’s colonies in what is now Canada, while fishing rights in the waters around Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were also major conce

rns, as were reparations to British loyalists who wished to leave the United States and return to Britain. These were all worked out by late 1782, but it took until the 3rd of September 1783 before the Treaty of Paris was signed by Hartley for the British and Adams, Franklin and John Jay for the United States, officially bringing the American War of Independence or Revolutionary War to an end. The end of the war and the signing of the treaty did not lead to Adams returning home. Instead he was a

ppointed to perhaps his most difficult ambassadorial position yet, when he was made the first ambassador of the United States to Britain. He arrived in London in 1785 where his brief involved nothing less than trying to establish cordial relations with the country the US had just been at war with, and which was the largest trading nation on earth, and also the country with which the United States had its longest border. He met King George III shortly after his arrival in England and they establi

shed a genial relationship based on a certain mutual respect, but Adams’ time in London was otherwise complicated by the failure of both the British and US governments to fulfil all of the elements of the Treaty of Paris. In Philadelphia, for instance, the government was in no rush to compensate British merchants and American loyalists, while in turn the British refused to relinquish control over a number of forts along the Ohio River as had been promised. Adams’ frustrations, though, were relie

ved by the fact that his children were now old enough that Abigail was able to join him in London, the first time they had spent a protracted period of time together in some years. By 1788 it was clear that Adams could accomplish little more in England than could be achieved by a less senior figure. Moreover, back home the political landscape was shifting as senior statesmen were drafting the constitution for the new country and plans were being put in place to hold the first presidential electi

on. Adams and Abigail consequently took their leave of Britain and headed home. There he witnessed a tussle between advocates of a popular democracy with a wide franchise and conservatives who wanted a limited form of democracy where landholders and the wealthy would hold much of the power. The end result was the US Constitution, primarily drafted by James Madison, a Virginia political theorist who had been a member of the Second Continental Congress, along with others such as Alexander Hamilton

. Madison was significantly influenced by the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, a document which Adams had contributed significantly towards in the late 1770s. The US Constitution, which was finally agreed on in 1789 provided for a bicameral Congress, one consisting of an upper house called the Senate after the Senate of Ancient Rome, and a lower house called the House of Representatives. As such the desire for a popular democracy would be met by the House of Representatives, while the Senate

would plausibly more serve the interests of the landed elite and wealthy business class. Additionally, the Constitution provided for a federal government, as each state, regardless of its size, population or wealth, would send two delegates to the Senate, thus ensuring that each state had the same power as any other to decide on legislation. Beyond Congress the judiciary would be overseen by a Supreme Court of judges, while the executive branch would be formed of a president elected for terms of

four years through the votes of the Electoral College, a system whereby each state would have a certain amount of votes in an election. Effectively this was a compromise constitution designed to offer something to conservatives and liberals and also to those who wanted a strong federal government and those who wanted individuals to retain a large amount of independence. It was intended that sufficient checks and balances would exist within it whereby one branch of government could block another

from exercising too much power. John Adams watched the proceedings in developing the US Constitution with interest from his home at Quincy near Braintree in Massachusetts, for Adams was eager to serve as the nation’s first president. However, it soon became apparent that George Washington was the overwhelming favourite across the thirteen states in the presidential election which was held over several weeks in late 1788 and 1789. Accordingly, Adams and several other candidates threw their hats

into the ring to become Vice-President, leaving Washington unchallenged for the more senior position. In America’s early days the Vice-President was elected through the Electoral College too, rather than being a running-mate chosen by the president as it is today. Adams won the race to become Vice-President. Consequently, in the spring of 1789 he set off for New York City, which had briefly become the temporary capital of the nation in the late 1780s, though it was soon removed back to Philadelp

hia while a new administrative capital was being built along the Potomac River, a place which would eventually be named Washington D.C. after the first president. While the office of Vice-President has become more powerful in modern times, for much of the history of the United States it has been a rather insignificant post, with the Vice-President holding little by way of constitutional power other than to preside over the Senate. From the beginning Adams aroused opposition from members of the S

enate, primarily over the issue of how the President should be addressed. Adams’ conservatism and suspected residual appreciation of monarchy was on display when he proposed that the term ‘Highness,’ which was usually reserved for kings and queens, should be used. Most of the senators dissented and ‘Mr President’ was eventually decided upon. These and other actions early in his Vice-Presidency earned him the animosity of many senators and though he cast more deciding votes in the Senate than any

other Vice-President other than John Calhoun in the 19th century, he soon became disillusioned with his role and became more withdrawn. This was compounded by George Washington’s decision to largely ignore him. The exception was concerning France where the Revolution broke out in the summer of 1789, followed by the Revolutionary Wars. Washington was interested in Adams’ view of developments there owing to the Vice-President’s former experience of the country. For his part Adams was hopeful conc

erning the Revolution when it began but soon perceived it to have descended into barbarism once the so-called ‘Terror’ began in the early 1790s. Washington’s consultation with him on French affairs aside, Adams was broadly speaking marginalised within the administration as Vice-President and in time he began to assert that the government had created for him, quote, “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” Adams’ years as Vice-President in the 1790s were significa

nt more broadly in US politics for the development of the First Party System. This was dominated by two parties, the Federalist Party, which was established by Alexander Hamilton and which, as its name implied, was strongly in favour of fostering a strong federal union in the new nation, as well as encouraging industrial growth in the cities. It had a stronger base of support in New England and more urbanised states such as New York and Pennsylvania. Their rivals were the Democratic-Republican P

arty, established by Jefferson and Madison. With a strong base of support in the southern plantation states, the Jeffersonian Republicans, as they became colloquially known, were promoters of republicanism, agrarianism and were more in favour of slavery than the Federalists. This forerunner of the Democratic Party also promoted US expansionism, believing the country should be looking to establish itself as the pre-eminent power in North America. Adams soon joined the Federalist Party, being in f

avour of Hamilton’s fiscal policies and the party’s view that it should look to establish closer relations with Britain in opposition to the Revolutionary government in France. He also was an advocate of a strong centralised Federal government. When Washington decided towards the end of his second term that he would not stand for re-election, believing the Presidency would take on the air of monarchy or a military dictatorship if one person occupied the office for too long, it opened the way for

the first contested Presidential Election in US History. Jefferson was the frontrunner for the Democratic-Republican Party, though both parties put forward multiple candidates. Though Hamilton and Adams distrusted each other, Hamilton could not deny that Adams had the best chance of defeating Jefferson and so he became the primary candidate for the Federalist Party. The various candidates did not campaign in person, as was the custom at the time, but the War of words in the newspapers was acrim

onious, highlighting the divisions between the once united Founding Fathers. In the end Adams emerged with a narrow victory, receiving 71 Electoral College votes compared to Jefferson’s 68, while the other Federalist candidate Thomas Pinckney came a close third with 59 votes. The Democratic-Republican Party had overwhelmingly carried the southern states for Jefferson, while the Federalists were dominant in New England, but Adams had picked up enough support in the middle states of Pennsylvania,

New York, New Jersey and Delaware, the original swing states, to win the election. As Jefferson had come second he became Vice-President, though he and Adams had grown apart throughout the 1790s and their friendship had descended increasingly into rancour and rivalry. Adams was sworn into office on the 4th of March 1797. His Presidency was dominated by the issue of whether or not to declare war on France, a nation that was now at war with most of the major European powers and whose own Revolutio

n had descended into radicalism and extreme antipathy towards organised religion, an issue which moved some in the US in favour of joining the anti-French alliance led by Britain. Adams’ Federalist Party was strongly in favour of war and toed a pro-British line, but many in the US still harboured strong anti-British feelings and viewed the French as their allies from the war of independence. Adams thus inclined towards peace and sent a diplomatic embassy to France, but it ended in disaster when

three French ministers, codenamed X, Y and Z in the dispatches, demanded hefty bribes before they would fully commit to negotiations. When word of this was eventually released into the public domain attitudes towards the French soured across the US. Adams could have used this development to bring the US into the war against France, but he resisted calls to do so. The US would largely remain neutral in the conflicts which raged until 1815, although the second half of 1798 and early 1799 saw naval

clashes with France which forced Adams to begin remilitarising the country. Yet this Quasi War never developed into a major conflict and France avoided involvement in the main wars across the Atlantic, establishing a precedent which would last in one form or another until the Second World War of the US trying to avoid becoming entangled in European conflicts. While the US avoided full scale war with France in the late 1790s, the XYZ Affair did see a series of measures introduced to combat the p

ossible development of a fifth column of foreign interests in the US. The Alien and Sedition Acts involved four pieces of legislation that specifically targeted French-born settlers living in the United States and agents of the French government. All four acts were passed in the space of two weeks in the summer of 1798. They were soon being employed against pro-Democratic-Republican Party newspapers. They were consequently criticised as being instruments designed to allow Adams to attack his pol

itical opponents, particularly Jefferson, but this ignored many issues surrounding the Alien and Sedition Acts, notably the fact that they were not proposed by Adams, but originated amongst members of Congress, while Adams only reluctantly agreed to sign them into law. Nevertheless Adams has regularly been accused of censorship of the press and executive overreach ever since. Adams’ presidency was also notable for his being the first president to reside in Washington D.C. The capital of the Unit

ed States in its first years was typically in Philadelphia, with a brief transfer to New York in the late 1780s, but a decision was taken early in Washington’s presidency to establish an entirely new city as the capital of the new nation. The site selected was the Potomac River on the border between the states of Maryland and Virginia, the goal being to foster greater ties to the southern states which were least in favour of a strong federal government in the 1780s and 1790s. The new city, which

was eventually christened Washington D.C. after the war hero and first president, took several years to construct, but at last in November 1800 things were advanced enough that Adams was able to move into the President’s Mansion, which would later be renamed the White House, and Congress met for the first time in what was called at the time the Congress House, later known as the Capitol Building. Yet not all was harmonious. Shortly before the move to D.C., Pennsylvania had been disturbed by civ

il unrest led by a German-American named John Fries. Fries’ Rebellion, as it became known, was bloodless in the end, but was the third tax revolt that had occurred since independence, an indication that whereas the British could be removed from the country, excessive taxation was still viewed with disapproval across much of the nation, as it has been ever since in the United States. For his part Adams was inclined to show leniency towards the leaders of the revolt and issued an executive pardon

to Fries and several others who had been sentenced to hang. The late 1790s were also notable for the further deterioration of the relationship between Adams and his Vice-President, Thomas Jefferson. What had once been a close friendship had deteriorated greatly even before Adams entered office in 1797. Things did not get any better during Adams’ time as president. At the heart of the issue was the simple fact that Adams and Jefferson held opposing views on most of the major policy issues of the

day. For instance, Jefferson was unequivocally pro-French and even after the XYZ Affair continued to press for an alliance with the revolutionary government in Paris. They also held different views on the nature of the government, while they occupied polar opposite positions when it came to the institution of slavery. Adams termed it an ‘abhorrence’ and was central to Massachusetts becoming one of the first states to gradually abolish slavery, beginning as early as the 1780s, while Jefferson was

a strong advocate and owned over 600 enslaved people during his lifetime. All of this increased the divisions between the pair and Adams rarely consulted with Jefferson as his Vice-President in much the same way that Washington had not consulted him. The discord between Adams and Jefferson would come to a head in 1800 as Adams’ first term neared an end. The Presidential Election of that year would see the two one-time friends and now rivals square off again, as they had in 1796. However, on thi

s occasion the rules of the election had been changed. This was the first election where the two main parties nominated a single candidate who then chose a running mate who would be Vice-President in the event of him winning. Adams was the Federalist candidate with Charles Pinckney as his running mate, while Jefferson was the Democratic-Republican Party candidate with Aaron Burr, a lawyer and veteran of the Continental Army, running with him. It was a rancorous campaign, with Jefferson’s party a

ttacking Adams for his handling of relations with France and Britain and excessive taxation, while also arguing that the government was trying to create an overly powerful centralised government in Washington at the expense of the independence of the individual states. In this sense it was a surprisingly modern campaign and elements of these arguments have persevered in American politics for over two centuries. In the end, disunity within the Federalist Party between Adams and Hamilton damaged t

heir ability to present a unified front and Jefferson won the election narrowly, receiving 73 Electoral College votes to Adams’ 65. When he left office Adams returned to his family farm at Quincy outside Braintree. Already in his mid-sixties he intended to retire largely from public life and instead concentrate on farm work and writing. He began an autobiography, though he never completed it. Adams was also beset by financial difficulties in retirement. Much of his money was held by and invested

in Bird, Savage & Bird, a London based trading company which specialised in exporting manufactured goods from England to North America and bringing back raw materials such as cotton from the United States to feed the textile factories which were springing up everywhere in cities like Manchester and Sheffield in Industrial Age Britain. The company collapsed spectacularly in the last months of 1802 and early 1803, losing Adams some $13,000, which would be more than $300,000 in today’s money. Luck

ily his eldest son, John Quincy, was by that time a successful lawyer and diplomat and was able to provide his parents with liquidity by buying some of their property. But while John Quincy was a success, Adams was troubled by his other sons. Charles had begun drinking heavily while still a teenager in the mid-1780s. After years of alcoholism and extra-marital affairs he died of pleurisy in 1800. A few years later, after John’s retirement, his youngest son, Thomas, who had trained as a lawyer, m

oved back to Quincy. There he also gradually descended into alcoholism, largely abandoning his legal practice and increasingly working as a caretaker around the farm, gripped by debt and mental health problems which caused his father no little amount of concern. Adams was determined upon his retirement to follow the precedent established by George Washington of staying out of politics and not interfering in the administration and policy decisions of his successors. However, Adams was less succes

sful in this endeavour than Washington. While he did largely remain silent for the first years of Jefferson’s presidency, eventually major events drew him into the public sphere. Such was the case in 1803 when Jefferson’s government proposed buying a huge swathe of land from the French government comprising much of what is termed the ‘Midwest’ today. The Louisiana Purchase was carried out for fifteen million dollars and brought over two million square kilometres of land stretching from New Orlea

ns in the south to Montana and North Dakota in the north and west to Wyoming and Colorado under United States ownership. Adams was broadly supportive of the move, though he was critical of the Embargo Act of 1807 which imposed an embargo on the trade of all foreign nations in an effort to try to prevent the British Royal Navy from coercing American sailors to join their fleet, an issue which had arisen as the war between Britain and Napoleonic France intensified in Europe. Elsewhere Adams suppor

ted the presidential bids of Jefferson’s eventual successor, James Madison, and was broadly favourable towards Madison’s handling of the War of 1812 when war broke out afresh with Britain. Adams’ retirement also saw a complete sundering of his relationship with Jefferson. When he left office early in 1801 he wrote to his successor wishing him good fortune in his time as president. Jefferson, rather discourteously, decided not to respond, though this may have been owing to Adams having not attend

ed Jefferson’s inauguration, leaving the White House at 4am on the morning of the day Jefferson was sworn into office. It was the last straw in a relationship which had become severely strained in the course of the 1790s and as a consequence of it Adams and Jefferson would not speak to each other or correspond with one another for the next eleven years, despite an attempt by Adams’ wife Abigail to begin corresponding with Jefferson in 1804 following the death of his daughter Polly from complicat

ions of childbirth when she was just 25 years old. In the end it was not until 1812 that a reconciliation between the two men who had written the Declaration of Independence and then convinced the Second Continental Congress to adopt it was affected, with Benjamin Rush a fellow member of the Congress in 1776 and a signer of the Declaration acting as a mediator in their rapprochement. What followed was an extensive correspondence over the next ten plus years. Early on, Adams attempted to turn the

ir discussions towards their political differences, stating that, quote, “you and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.” Jefferson demurred, though, and said they should let bygones be bygones. Adams eventually agreed and their letters took on the shape thereafter of two men in the twilight of their lives describing their habits in retirement and reflecting on their philosophical views of life. Adams’ last years were tinged with sadness and no doubt a certain pride

. Abigail died of typhoid fever in 1818 at 73 years of age. Her last words to her 82 year old husband were “John, it will not be long.” In actuality John would survive for another eight years. In that time he lived to see his eldest son, John Quincy, who had spent years serving in various ambassadorial roles to Europe which Adams himself had held decades earlier, also serve as US Secretary of State in the administration of President James Monroe between 1817 and 1825. When Monroe’s second term e

nded, John Quincy stood for election as the Democratic-Republican Party candidate, beating Andrew Jackson in one of the closest elections in US history. Thus, the second President of the United States lived long enough to see his son sworn in as the sixth President on the 4th of March 1825. Adams died just over a year later at 90 years of age on the 4th of July 1826 at his farm near Quincy. By a most remarkable set of coincidences this was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration o

f Independence and just hours before Adams died Jefferson had also passed away at his home at Monticello in Virginia. Adams was laid to rest at the United First Parish Church in Quincy in Massachusetts next to Abigail. John Adams was one of the most significant figures of the American Revolution. This was perhaps somewhat surprising, as he was a late convert to the Patriot cause, having believed for much of the 1760s and early 1770s that British rule could continue in the Thirteen Colonies if th

e crown made concessions and reformed its governing methods in North America. He even acted as legal counsel for the British following the Boston Massacre in 1770. However, the Tea Act and other developments between 1772 and 1774 convinced him that British rule was descending into tyranny and the establishment of a new independent nation was the only path forward. When the American Revolution began he was critical to it, proposing the creation of the Continental Army, acting as its administrativ

e head by running the Board of War and Ordnance and playing a significant role in both drafting the Declaration of Independence and ensuring it was ratified by the Second Continental Congress. His accomplishments did not stop there. In the 1780s he successively acted as ambassador to the Dutch Republic, helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris, then served as ambassador to Britain, a fraught role in the post-war period, and then returned to America to become the first Vice-President of the nation. F

inally, in 1797 he became the second president of the United States. Throughout he was surprisingly enlightened for his time in viewing slavery as ‘disgraceful’ and of the five Founding Fathers who eventually became President of the United States he was the only one not to be a slave-owner. Few of the Founding Fathers were as distinguished as he was. And yet there has always been a paradox to Adams as a political figure, one in which he constantly played second-fiddle to others. Adams was centra

l to the creation and management of the Continental Army, but he was overshadowed by George Washington who led it in the field of battle. He was an important contributor to the Declaration of Independence, but Thomas Jefferson gets nearly all of the acclaim for writing it. In the 1780s he was one of the main negotiators for the United States in Paris, but the Treaty of Paris is usually credited to Benjamin Franklin. And when he finally obtained the presidency it was only for his time in office t

o be mired in controversy and plagued by the issue of whether to go to war with the French, who had reviled Adams in Paris twenty years earlier and had now returned to plague his presidency. As a result, of the first five presidents of the United States, the only five who have a claim to having been involved in the American Revolution and were consequently Founding Fathers of the nation, only Adams was limited to one term, leaving office after four years where Washington, Jefferson, Madison and

Monroe each served for eight years. This is most likely the reason why Adams is less revered and regarded by the general public than some of his colleagues in the formation of the United States, but as has been made clear perhaps, Adams was every bit as consequential a figure as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin in the birth of the United States. What do you think of John Adams? Was he perhaps the greatest of the Founding Fathers, whose role in the American Revolution has

been unfairly eclipsed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? Please let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.