John   Adams,

                                                       1735 ‑‑ 1826

    John Adams the second US president, born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts,

    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‑‑7) 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‑‑8), 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.