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Politician. lawyer. Signature. John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain.
- Early Years
- John Adams and The American Revolution
- Diplomatic Missions to Europe
- John Adams: America's First Vice President
- John Adams, Second President of The United States
- John Adam's Writing
Born in Braintree (present-day Quincy), Massachusetts, on October 30, 1735, to the descendants of Mayflower Pilgrims, John Adams was the oldest of John and Susanna Boylston Adams’ three sons. The elder Adams was a farmer and shoemaker who also served as a Congregationalist deacon and an official in local government. A strong student, Adams graduate...
During the 1760s, Adams began challenging Great Britain’s authority in colonial America. He came to view the British imposition of high taxes and tariffs as a tool of oppression, and he no longer believed that the government in England had the colonists’ best interests in mind. He was a critic of the Stamp Act of 1765, in which the British levied a...
In 1778, Adams was sent to Paris, France, to secure aid for the colonists’ cause. The following year, he returned to America and worked as the principal framer of the Massachusetts Constitution (the world’s oldest surviving written constitution). By the early 1780s, Adams was in Europe again, serving in a diplomatic capacity. In 1783, he, along wit...
Although Washington and Adams shared many political views, the vice president’s role seemed primarily ceremonial, and Adams spent the next eight years, from 1789 to 1797, in frustration. Adams once remarked: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conce...
Adams took office in March 1797, and his presidency was quickly taken up with foreign affairs. Britain and France were at war, which directly affected American trade. During his tenure, Washington had managed to maintain neutrality, but tensions had escalated by the time Adams became president. In 1797, he sent a delegation to France to negotiate a...
After his presidency, Adams had a long and productive retirement. He and his wife lived in Quincy, Massachusetts, and the former president spent the next quarter-century writing columns, books and letters. In 1812, he was encouraged to begin exchanging letters with his old rival Thomas Jefferson, and their voluminous correspondence lasted the rest ...
John Adams was many things: lawyer, diplomat, member of the Continental Congress, and one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1735. He proposed to Abigail Smith in 1762 and they married two years later. The couple had six children. On November 6, 1758, Adams was sworn-in as ...
May 27, 2024 · John Adams served as the defense lawyer, and only two men were convicted; they were released after their thumbs were branded. (more) By then Adams’s legal career was on the rise, and he had become a visible member of the resistance movement that questioned Parliament’s right to tax the American colonies .
- John Adams was an advocate of American independence from Britain, a major figure in the Continental Congress (1774–77), the author of the Massachus...
- Having finished second to George Washington in the first U.S. presidential election in 1789 and serving as Washington’s vice president (1789–97), A...
- John Adams’s family could trace its lineage to the first generation of Puritan settlers in New England and made major contributions to U.S. politic...
- John Adams was born and raised in Braintree (now in Quincy), Massachusetts. The eldest of the three sons of farmer and shoemaker Deacon John Adams,...
Apr 2, 2020 · Although a devout patriot, John Adams agreed to risk his family’s livelihood and defend the British soldiers and their commander in a Boston courtroom. At stake was not just the fate of nine men ...
May 26, 2024 · After teaching school for a few years, Adams decided to become a lawyer, studying under prominent Massachusetts attorney James Putnam. He was admitted to the bar in 1758 and began practicing law in Braintree. In 1764, he married Abigail Smith, the daughter of a minister. The couple would have five children, including future president John ...
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Mar 31, 2012 · John Adams' law career rose from a small practice carried out from his Braintree farmhouse to a well established firm with clients as wealthy and prominent as John Hancock. Throughout this rise John traveled the court circuit and often was away from home for extended periods, a condition that forced John and Abigail to become skilled letter ...
