Who was John Adams?

John Adams was a Massachusetts lawyer, political philosopher, and diplomat who became one of the most influential Founders, a leading advocate for independence, a key peace negotiator, the first Vice President of the United States from 1789 to 1797, and the second President from March 4, 1797 to March 4, 1801. He was born on October 30, 1735 in Braintree, Massachusetts (the part of town now called Quincy), graduated from Harvard College in 1755, and built a successful legal practice in Boston by the late 1760s.

He defended the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770, securing acquittal for Captain Thomas Preston and most of his men in a courageous act that demonstrated colonial commitment to fair trial. He served in the Massachusetts legislature, the First Continental Congress in 1774, and the Second Continental Congress beginning in 1775, where he became the floor leader for independence. He nominated George Washington for command of the Continental Army on June 14, 1775 and seconded Richard Henry Lee's resolution for independence on June 7, 1776.

He served on the Committee of Five with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston that drafted the Declaration, and he led the floor debate that secured its adoption on July 2 and 4, 1776. Adams left Congress to serve as a diplomat to France in 1778, the Netherlands from 1780 to 1782 where he secured Dutch recognition and loans, and back to Paris where he joined Franklin and John Jay in negotiating the Treaty of Paris signed September 3, 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War on terms remarkably favorable to the new nation. He served as the first American minister to Britain from 1785 to 1788, an awkward post given the recent war.

As Vice President under Washington he found the office frustrating and described it as the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived. As President he kept the country out of full war with France during the Quasi-War of 1798 to 1800 by sending peace commissioners over the objections of his own Federalist Party, signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and lost the presidency to Jefferson in 1800. He retired to his Quincy farm Peacefield where he resumed his deep correspondence with Jefferson after 1812. Adams died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of independence, hours after Jefferson died at Monticello.