| Bio |

Who they were

John Adams was born on 30 October 1735 in Braintree, Massachusetts Bay Colony, in the part of town that later became Quincy^{[2][3, p. 144]}. His father, also named John, was a farmer and a deacon of the local church, and one of Braintree's selectmen^[1]. His mother, Susanna Boylston, came from an established Massachusetts family^[4]. Adams grew up in a devout, hard-working farming household. His father pushed him toward education rather than the plough, and he graduated from Harvard College in 1755^{[3, p. 144]}, then briefly taught school before choosing law.

Adams trained as a lawyer and built a reputation for careful, principled argument. In 1770, after British troops clashed with a Boston crowd in the Boston Massacre, he defended the accused soldiers in court, insisting that even unpopular defendants deserved a fair trial^[5][1]. The case cost him some popularity but won him wider respect. He was elected to the Continental Congress, where he pushed hard for a formal break with Britain, helped draft Massachusetts's 1780 state constitution^[6], and later served as a diplomat in France and the Netherlands before helping negotiate the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War^[6].

Adams was one of five men Congress chose in 1776 to draft a declaration explaining why the colonies should separate from Britain, alongside Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston^[2]. He then argued so forcefully for independence on the floor of Congress that colleagues nicknamed him the "Atlas of Independence"^[7]. After serving as the nation's first Vice President under George Washington^[8], Adams became the second President in 1797. His term was dominated by the XYZ Affair, a diplomatic clash with France^{[9, p. 1]}, and the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, which restricted criticism of the government^{[10, p. 9]}. In November 1800 he became the first President to occupy the still-unfinished President's House in the new capital^[2].

Adams lost a bitterly contested re-election to his former friend turned rival, Thomas Jefferson, in 1800^[6][1]. He left the presidency and retired to his family home, Peacefield, in Quincy^[6]. He died there on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, only hours after Jefferson himself had died in Virginia^[11][12]. His last words are usually recorded as "Thomas Jefferson still survives" — he did not yet know his old friend had already died^[7].

Adams's 1780 Massachusetts Constitution is still in force today, making it the oldest written constitution still functioning anywhere in the world, and it influenced the framing of the federal Constitution^{[6][13, p. 14]}. His earlier pamphlet "Thoughts on Government" helped shape ideas about separating power between branches of government^{[14, p. 1]}. Though he and Jefferson became bitter political rivals as leaders of opposing parties, the two men spent their final years exchanging a long series of letters that repaired their friendship^[15][15]. His son, John Quincy Adams, later became the sixth President^[16].

Adams could be blunt to a fault. Explaining years later why he pushed Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence instead of doing it himself, Adams reportedly said: "I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular; you are very much otherwise"^[17][18]. His marriage to Abigail Adams, by contrast, was a genuine partnership built on hundreds of letters exchanged across their many years apart^{[19, p. 3]}.

| Legacy & Reputation |

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