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U.S Presidents — John Adams

OVERVIEW Name: John Adams President: # 2 Term Number(s): 3 Term Length: 4 Took Office: March 4, 1797 Left Office: March 4, 1801 Age when Elected: 61 Party: Federalist Also Known As: "Atlas of Independence, Father of the American Navy" BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION Education: Harvard College Occupation: Lawyer Other Governmental Position: Delegate from Massachusetts to the Second Continental Congress, Delegate from the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the First Continental Congress. Military Service: None Religion: Unitarian Spouse(s): Abigail Smith Adams (October 25, 1764) Children: Abigail Adams Smith, John Quincy Adams, Susanna Boylston Adams, Charles Adams, Thomas Boylston Adams, Elizabeth Adams (stillborn) Birthdate: October 30, 1735 Birthplace: Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts Deathdate: July 4, 1826 Deathplace: Quincy, Massachusetts, USA Age at Death: 90 Cause of Death: debility (old age; most likely heart failure caused by arteriosclerosis) Place of Internment: United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts Signature FIRST ELECTION Election Year: 1796 Main Opponent: Thomas Jefferson Voter Participation: N/A   Electoral Popular States Click for larger image Winner 71 (25.00%) 35,726 (53.40%) 9 Main Opponent 68 (24.64%) 31,115 (46.60%) 7 total 276 66,841 16 CABINET AND COURT APPOINTMENTS Vice President: Thomas Jefferson Secretary of State: Timothy Pickering (1797–1800), John Marshall (1800–1801) Secretary of the Treasury: Oliver Wolcott Jr. (1797–1801), Samuel Dexter (1801) Secretary of War: James McHenry (1796–1800), Samuel Dexter (1800–1801) Attorney General: Charles Lee (1797–1801) Supreme Court Assignments: Bushrod Washington (1799), Alfred Moore (1800), John Marshall (1801) PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY Learned and thoughtful, John Adams was more remarkable as a political philosopher than as a politician. "People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity," he said, doubtless thinking of his own as well as the American experience. Adams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he early became identified with the patriot cause; a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, he led in the movement for independence. During the Revolutionary War he served in France and Holland in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace. From 1785 to 1788, Adams was minister to the Court of St. James's, returning to be elected Vice President under George Washington. Adams' two terms as Vice President were frustrating experiences for a man of his vigor, intellect, and vanity. He complained to his wife Abigail, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." When Adams became President, the war between the French and British was causing great difficulties for the United States on the high seas and intense partisanship among contending factions within the Nation. His administration focused on France, where the Directory, the ruling group, had refused to receive the American envoy and had suspended commercial relations. Adams sent three commissioners to France, but in the spring of 1798, word arrived that the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand and the Directory had refused to negotiate with them unless they would first pay a substantial bribe. Adams reported the insult to Congress, and the Senate printed the correspondence, in which the Frenchmen were referred to only as "X, Y, and Z." The Nation broke out into what Jefferson called "the X. Y. Z. fever," increased in intensity by Adams' exhortations. The populace cheered itself hoarse wherever the president appeared. Never had the Federalists been so popular. Congress appropriated money to complete three new frigates and to build additional ships, and authorized the raising of a provisional army. It also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, intended to frighten foreign agents out of the country and to stifle the attacks of Republican editors. President Adams did not call for a declaration of war, but hostilities began at sea. At first, American shipping was almost defenseless against French privateers, but by 1800, armed merchantmen and U.S. warships were clearing the sea lanes. Despite several brilliant naval victories, war fever subsided. Word came to Adams that France also had no stomach for war and would receive an envoy with respect. Long negotiations ended the quasi war. Sending a peace mission to France brought the full fury of the Hamiltonians against Adams. In the campaign of 1800, the Republicans were united and effective, the Federalists badly divided. Nevertheless, Adams polled only several fewer electoral votes than Jefferson, who became president. On November 1, 1800, just before the election, Adams arrived in the new Capital City to take up his residence in the White House. On his second evening in its damp, unfinished rooms, he wrote his wife, "Before I end my letter, I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof." Adams retired to his farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. There he penned his elaborate letters to Thomas Jefferson. He whispered his last words in Quincy on July 4, 1826: "Thomas Jefferson survives." But Jefferson had died at Monticello a few hours earlier. FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Abigail Smith Adams Inheriting New England's strongest traditions, Abigail Smith was born in 1744 at Weymouth, Massachusetts. On her mother's side she was descended from the Quincys, a family of great prestige in the colony; her father and other forebearers were Congregational ministers, leaders in a society that held its clergy in high esteem. Like other women of the time, Abigail lacked formal education; but her curiosity spurred her keen intelligence, and she read avidly the books at hand. Reading created a bond between her and young John Adams, a Harvard graduate launching a career in law, and they were married in 1764. It was a marriage of the mind and of the heart, enduring for more than half a century, enriched by time. The young couple lived on John's small farm at Braintree or in Boston as his practice expanded. In ten years the couple had three sons and two daughters; she looked after family and home when he went traveling as circuit judge. "Alas!" Mrs. Adams wrote in December 1773, "How many snow banks divide thee and me..." Long separations kept Abigail from her husband while he served the country they loved, as delegate to the Continental Congress, envoy abroad, elected officer under the Constitution. Her letters—pungent, witty, and vivid, spelled just as she spoke—detail her life in times of revolution. They tell the story of the woman who stayed at home to struggle with wartime shortages and inflation; to run the farm with a minimum of help; to teach four children when formal education was interrupted. Most of all, they tell of her loneliness without her "dearest Friend." The "one single expression," she said, "dwelt upon my mind and played about my Heart..." In 1784, Mrs. Adams joined her husband at his diplomatic post in Paris, and observed with interest the manners of the French. After 1785, she filled the difficult role of wife of the first United States Minister to Great Britain, and did so with dignity and tact. They returned happily in 1788 to Massachusetts and the handsome house they had just acquired in Braintree, later called Quincy, home for the rest of their lives. As wife of the first vice president, Mrs. Adams became a good friend to Mrs. Washington and a valued help in official entertaining, drawing on her experience of courts and society abroad. After 1791, however, poor health forced her to spend as much time as possible in Quincy. Illness or trouble found her resolute; as she once declared, she would "not forget the blessings which sweeten life." When John Adams was elected president, Abigail continued a formal pattern of entertaining—even in the primitive conditions she found at the new capital in November 1800. The city was wilderness, the president's house far from completion. Her private complaints to her family provide blunt accounts of both, but for her three months in Washington she duly held her dinners and receptions. The Adamses retired to Quincy in 1801, and for 17 years enjoyed the companionship that public life had long denied them. Abigail died in 1818, and is buried beside her husband in United First Parish Church. Mrs. Adams leaves her country a most remarkable record as patriot and first lady, wife of one president and mother of another. MAJOR EVENTS 1797: Adams is inaugurated as the second president of the United States. 1797: XYZ Affair breaks friendly relations between France and the United States leading to the Quasi War, an undeclared naval war. 1797: Adams builds up the U.S. Navy in response to the Quasi War with France between 1798 and 1800. 1798: Adams signs the unpopular Alien and Sedition Acts (later repealed). These bills were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to avert dissident attacks on the U.S. government. 1800: Library of Congress is established. TRIVIA 1. although the White House was not completely finished, John Adams was the first president to live there. 2. When Adams and his family moved from Philadelphia to Washington to live in the White House, they got lost in the woods north of the city for several hours. 3. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1826. Not knowing that Thomas Jefferson had already passed, Adams was quoted as saying "Jefferson survives," when he whispered his last words.