John Adams

Adams, John,

1735–1826, 2d President of the United States (1797–1801), b. Quincy (then in Braintree), Mass., grad. Harvard, 1755. John Adams and his wife, Abigail Adams, founded one of the most distinguished families of the United States; their son, John Quincy Adams, was also President.

Early Career

A plain-spoken, tough-minded lawyer, scrupulously honest and dauntingly erudite, but also sometimes quarrelsome and stubborn, Adams emerged into politics as an opponent of the Stamp Act and, after moving to Boston, was a central figure in the Revolutionary group opposing the British measures that were to lead to the American Revolution. Sent (1774) to the First Continental Congress, he distinguished himself, and in the Second Continental Congress he was a moderate but forceful revolutionary. He proposed George Washington as commander in chief of the Continental troops to bind Virginia more tightly to the cause for independence. He favored the Declaration of Independence, was a member of its drafting committee, and argued eloquently for the document.

Diplomatic Career

As a diplomat seeking foreign aid for the newly established nation, he had a thorny career. Appointed (1777) to succeed Silas Deane as a commissioner to France, he accomplished little before going home (1779) to become a major figure in the Massachusetts constitutional convention. He then returned (1779) to France, where he quarreled with Vergennes and was able to lend little assistance to Benjamin Franklin in his peace efforts. His attempts to negotiate a loan from the Netherlands were fruitless until 1782.

Adams was one of the negotiators who drew up the momentous Treaty of Paris (1783; see Paris, Treaty of) to end the American Revolution. After this service he obtained another Dutch loan and then was envoy (1785–88) to Great Britain, where he met with British coldness and unwillingness to discuss the problems growing out of the treaty. He asked for his own recall and ended a significant but generally discouraging diplomatic career.

Presidency

In the United States once more, he was chosen Vice President and served throughout George Washington's administration (1789–97). Although he inclined to conservative policies, he functioned somewhat as a balance wheel in the partisan contest between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. In the 1796 election Adams was chosen to succeed Washington as President despite the surreptitious opposition of Hamilton.

The Adams administration was one of crisis and conflict, in which the President showed an honest and stubborn integrity, and though allied with Hamilton and the conservative property-respecting Federalists, he was not dominated by them in their struggle against the vigorously rising, more broadly democratic forces led by Jefferson. Though the Federalists were pro-British and strongly opposed to post-Revolutionary France, Adams by conciliation prevented the near war of 1798 (see XYZ Affair) from developing into a real war between France and the United States. Nor did the President wholeheartedly endorse the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), aimed at the Anti-Federalists. He was, however, detested by his Jeffersonian enemies, and in the election of 1800 he and Hamilton were both overwhelmed by the tide of Jeffersonian democracy. By the end of his term, Adams had proved to be a generally unpopular president, deeply respected but not beloved.

Retirement

After 1801 Adams lived in retirement at Quincy, issuing sober and highly respected political statements and writing and receiving many letters, notably those to and from Jefferson. Their famous correspondence was edited by Lester J. Cappon in The Adams-Jefferson Letters (1959). By remarkable coincidence he and Jefferson died on the same day, Independence Day, July 4, 1826.

Bibliography

A definitive edition of the voluminous writings of the Adams family (The Adams Papers) was begun with four volumes (1961) containing the diary and autobiography of John Adams and includes his legal papers (3 vol., 1965), his papers (18 vol., 1977–), and family correspondence (12 vol., 1963–). Other compilations include Adams's Works (10 vol., ed. by J. Q. Adams and C. F. Adams, 1850–56, repr. 1969; Vol. I is a biography by C. F. Adams); The Selected Writings of John Adams and John Quincy Adams (ed. by A. Koch and W. Peden, 1946); abridged ed. of John and Abigail Adams' letters (ed. by M. A. Hogan and C. J. Taylor, 2007).

See also biographies by J. T. Morse (1884, repr. 1970), G. Chinard (1933, repr. 1964), P. Smith (2 vol., 1962), J. Ferling (1992), J. J. Ellis (1993), D. McCullough (2001), and J. Grant (2005); J. T. Adams, The Adams Family (1930); Z. Haraszti, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (1952); M. J. Dauer, The Adams Federalists (1953, repr. 1968); S. G. Kurtz, The Presidency of John Adams (1957, repr. 1961); J. R. Howe, Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (1966); R. A. Brown, The Presidency of John Adams (1975); R. Brookhiser, America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735–1918 (2002); G. Vidal, Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (2003); E. B. Gelles, Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage (2009); G. J. Barker-Benfield, Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility (2010); J. J. Ellis, First Family (2010); G. S. Wood, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (2017).

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Adams, John

(John Coolidge Adams), 1947–, American composer, b. Worcester, Mass. A clarinetist, he studied composition at Harvard (B.A. 1969, M.A. 1971). Often regarded as the most outstanding, technically adept, and influential composer of his generation, Adams has written in numerous genres, bringing to his compositions a keen sense of the theatrical and the vernacular. His distinctive sound is a mixture of post-minimalism with an intensely emotional expansiveness and a range of expressive tonal elements reminiscent of late romanticism and early modernism. Strong and vivid, his music can exhibit both a wittily life-affirming sense of fun and a decidedly contemporary aura of grief and horror.

Adams is best known for operas on topical themes, including Nixon in China (1987), about the president's 1972 visit; The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), based on a 1985 terrorist hijacking; and Doctor Atomic (libretto by Peter Sellars, 2005) about Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb. Among his many other works are Shaker Loops (1978, rev. 1983) for strings, Harmonielehre (1985), Fearful Symmetries (1988), the "song-play" I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (1995), El Dorado (1993), a violin concerto (1993), Lollapalooza (1995), Gnarly Buttons (1996) for clarinet and orchestra, and the symphonic Naive and Sentimental Music (1999). His 21st-century pieces include the nativity oratorio El Niño (2000); On the Transmigration of Souls (2002; Pulitzer Prize), a meditative soundscape in memory of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001; A Flowering Tree, a lyrical opera based on a South Indian folk tale; the dissonance-filled oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012, rev. 2017), an interpretation of the last days of Jesus; and Girls of the Golden West (libretto by Sellars, 2017), which punctures myths about the California gold rush.

Bibliography

See his memoir (2008); T. May, ed., The John Adams Reader (2006).

Adams, John

 

Born Oct. 19, 1735; died July 4, 1826. American political leader and statesman.

During the American Revolution (1775–83), Adams was a member of the First and Second Continental Congresses. He took part in the negotiations which ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783) between the USA and Great Britain; moreover, he became the first US minister to Great Britain (1785–88). Adams later became one of the leaders of the Federalist Party, which represented the interests of the conservative wing of the American bourgeoisie. During the years 1789–97 he served as vice-president and from 1797 to 1801 as president of the USA. Adams’ administration was marked by the adoption in 1798 of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were directed against revolutionary emigrants from Europe and which made it difficult to acquire American citizenship. The Sedition Act provided for imprisonment for criticizing the government.

REFERENCES

Efimov A. V. Ocherki istorii SShA, 2nd. ed. Moscow, 1958. Chapter 2.
Morse, J. T. John Adams. Boston-New York, 1912.

Adams, John

(1735–1826) second U.S. president; born in Braintree (now Quincy), Mass. He studied at Harvard and settled into law practice in Boston. Although he defended British soldiers after the Boston Massacre (1770), he had also shown "patriot" sympathies by pamphleteering against the Stamp Act in 1765. Having gained prominence as a political thinker and writer, he was sent as a Massachusetts delegate to the First (1774) and Second (1775–77) Continental Congresses; he helped edit Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and led the debate that ratified it (1776). During the American Revolution he chaired several committees and served on many more, was commissioner to France and Holland, and in 1779 drafted the influential Massachusetts constitution. After the war he was ambassador to England (1785–88), where he wrote the Defense of the Constitution of the United States. After eight frustrating years as vice-president under Washington (1789–97), he assumed the presidency (1797–1801). The prickly Adams proved less able as a practical politician than as a theorist; his regime was torn by partisan wrangles between Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Democrat-Republicans, all of whom he antagonized; his persistence in negotiating peace with France when his fellow Federalists were urging war cost him their support. Meanwhile his Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), which virtually forbade criticism of the government, outraged many citizens. Defeated for reelection by Jefferson in 1800, Adams retired from public life. In later years he pursued an extensive correspondence with many men, including his one-time opponent Thomas Jefferson, and both men died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

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Adams, John (Coolidge)

(1947–  ) composer; born in Worcester, Mass. Harvard-trained, he taught at San Francisco Conservatory during the 1970s. His music, notably the opera Nixon in China (1987), is of the "minimalist" school, stressing relentless repetition.