Button Family in America

JOHN ADAMS was born in the North Precinct of Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, on 19 October 1735, the eldest son of John and Susanna (Boylston) Adams (after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, Adams considered his birthday to be 30 October). He graduated from Harvard College in 1755 and for the next two years taught school and studied law under the direction of James Putnam in Worcester, Massachusetts. He returned to Braintree to launch his law practice and married Abigail Smith of Weymouth on 25 October 1764. For several years the Adamses moved their household between Braintree and Boston as warranted by John's successful law practice and the demands of the circuit court system. Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., defended the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre Trials, successfully winning acquittals for seven of the defendants and reduced sentences of manslaughter for the remaining two.

From 1774 to 1777 Adams served in the Continental Congress. He passionately urged independence for the colonies, and in 1776 the "Atlas of Independence" was appointed to the committee to draft a declaration of independence. His copy of Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence is the earliest known draft in existence.

Appointed by Congress a joint commissioner (with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee) to France, John Adams sailed from Boston with his son John Quincy in February 1778. In the summer of 1779, father and son returned to Massachusetts where Adams was elected to represent Braintree at the convention to frame a state constitution. The Constitution of 1780, drafted by John Adams, is the oldest written constitution in the world still in effect.

The following year, Congress elected Adams to negotiate treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain; he consequently returned to Europe in November 1779, accompanied by his two eldest sons, John Quincy and Charles. Additional commissions soon followed: one to negotiate a Dutch loan and another to negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce with the Netherlands. Adams was also elected a joint commissioner (with Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and Thomas Jefferson) to treat for peace with Great Britain.

Seventeen eighty-two was a banner year for John Adams—he secured recognition of the United States in the Netherlands, contracted the first of four loans from Amsterdam bankers to provide crucial financial aid for the United States, and signed a treaty of amity and commerce with the Netherlands. In September 1783, after nearly a year of negotiation, Adams and his fellow commissioners signed the Definitive Peace Treaty with Great Britain. From 1785 to 1788 John Adams served as the first American minister to the Court of St. James's in London. After eight years abroad—in France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, where Abigail had joined him in 1784—Adams returned to the United States.

Soon after his return home, Adams began a new stint of service in elective office—vice-president under George Washington for eight years and, in 1796, president. The successful transfer of power from the nation's first president to its second took place on 4 March 1797. Nonetheless, Adams's presidency was fraught with difficulties: the Quasi War with France, the XYZ Affair, and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. American political parties were just taking shape, but Adams was not a party man. He maintained the same cabinet officers appointed by his predecessor, and they continued to look to Washington and Federalist party leader Alexander Hamilton for direction instead of to Adams, compounding his problems. Adams defied his cabinet, and much of the Federalist party, to conclude peace with France. Toward the end of Adams's presidency the seat of government was transferred from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., and he and Abigail became the first presidential couple to live in the Executive Mansion, later called the White House.

Adams was not reelected to a second term. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson succeeded him as president. Party politics and a strong difference of opinion over national interests divided Adams and Jefferson and temporarily alienated these two men, despite the close friendship they had formed in Europe in the 1780s. John Adams retired from public life to his farm in Quincy. He died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1826.