John Adams
Fast facts
- Order
- 2nd
John Adams (October 19, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, lawyer, and writer who served as the second president of the United States from 1796 to 1804. Before becoming president, he was the first vice president under President George Washington from 1789 to 1796. He was also the one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Adams was a leader of the American Revolutionry War, which caused the United States to gain independence from Great Britain. During the war, he served the U.S. government as a senior diplomat in Europe.
Early life
Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts. He was the son of Lieutenant Colonel John Adams, Sr. (1691-1761), and Susanna Boylston (1708-1797) and was the cousin of the philosopher and fellow Founding Father Samuel Adams.
John Adams went to Harvard College. He married Abigail Adams in 1764.
American Revolutionary War
Adams wanted the Thirteen Colonies to be free from Great Britain. However, he was fair and thought every person should be treated fairly. Even though he did not want British soldiers in Boston, he was the lawyer who defended the British soldiers who were involved in the Boston Massacre.
Adams was a representative from Massachusetts during the Second Continental Congress. He helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. During the American Revolutionary War, Adams helped make peace with Great Britain. He served in France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain as an ambassador in the 1780s.
Vice president
Adams was the first vice president under President George Washington. After Washington chose not to run again, Adams won the 1796 election.
Adams is thought to have been the first president to belong to a political party, the Federalist Party, which supported Washington, but like Washington, he thought himself above any particular party. Adams beat Jefferson, who was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party.
Candidates for president and vice president then did not run together like today. Since Jefferson got the second-highest number of votes, he became vice president.
President
During his term, Adams resolved a conflict against France peacefully. He also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal to say bad things about the government. Many people did not like those acts, which they felt took away their freedom of speech. Adams was lost re-election for president to Jefferson in 1800. The Federalist Party was less popular than when Adams was elected.
One of Adams’s last acts as president was to make John Marshall as Chief Justice of the United States. That kept the Federalist Party in an important role.
Of the first five U.S. presidents, Adams was the only one who never owned slaves. He was also the only one to be from New England.
Death
Adams died on July 4, 1826 of heart failure, as the same day that Jefferson died. It was was also exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. At 90, Adams was the longest lived president of the United States until Ronald Reagan surpassed him in October 2001.
Adams was also the longest-lived vice president until Levi P. Morton surpassed him in 1915 and later by John Nance Garner in 1959.
Written for younger readers
John Adams, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: American Founding Fathers
John Adams, 1st vice president, vice president of George Washington (1789 - 1797) and the 2nd president of the United States (1797 - 1801).
After the Boston Massacre, when British soldiers fired onto a mob of colonists, John Adams chose to be the lawyer of the British soldiers. He was able to convince the jury that 6 of the 8 soldiers were not guilty.
Massachusetts sent John Adams to the first and second Continental Congresses in 1774 and from 1775 to 1778. In June 1775, he nominated George Washington of Virginia as commander-in-chief of the army then assembled around Boston. His influence in Congress was great, and almost from the beginning, he wanted the United States to have a permanent separation from Britain.
John Adams was the second president of the United States. He was elected President after serving as America’s first Vice President from 1789–1797 for two terms. He opponents in his race for the presidential election were Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Pinckney.
John Adams was selected to be a part of a committee with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman to make a draft of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. As a representative of Congress in Europe, he was a major negotiator of the eventual peace treaty with Great Britain.
In 1777, Adams resigned his seat on the Massachusetts Superior Court to serve as the head of the Board of War and Ordnance, as well as many other important committees.
John Adams was born on October 30, 1735 in Massachusetts. Adams went to Harvard College at age sixteen.His father wanted him to become a minister, but Adams hadn’t figured out what he wanted to be yet. After graduating in 1755, he taught school for a few years in Worcester and then decided to become a lawyer and studied law in the office of James Putnam, a prominent lawyer in Worcester.
From an early age, he developed the habit of writing descriptions of events and impressions of men which are scattered through his diary. He put the skill to good use as a lawyer, often recording cases he observed so that he could study and reflect upon them.
In 1764, Adams married Abigail Smith and had six children with her, one of them being future president John Quincy Adams. Adams was not a popular leader like his second cousin, Samuel Adams. Instead, his got followeres through his work as a constitutional lawyer.
After Adams was defeated for reelection by Thomas Jefferson, he retired to Massachusetts. He and his wife Abigail Adams founded an accomplished family line of politicians, diplomats, and historians now referred to as the Adams political family. His achievements have received greater recognition in modern times, though his contributions were not initially as celebrated as other Founders'.
The John Adams television show, and George Washington (John was the one to nominate him as Commander in Chief).
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “John Adams” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.