honours (summa cum lande). From 1876 almost until his death he was connected with the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, being in turn a fellow, an associate in history (1878–1883), an associate professor (1883–1891) and after 1891 professor of American and institutional history, In addition he was lecturer on history in Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1878–1881, and for many years took an active part in Chautauqua work. In 1884, also, he was one of the founders of the American Historical Association, of which he was secretary until 1900. In 1882 he founded the “Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science,” and at the time of his death some forty volumes had been issued under his editorship. After 1887 he also edited for the United States Bureau of Education the series of monographs entitled “Contributions to American Educational History,” he himself preparing the College of William and Mary (1887), and Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia (1888). It was as a teacher, however, that Adams rendered his most valuable services, and many American historical scholars owe their training and to a considerable extent their enthusiasm to him. He died at Amherst, Massachusetts, on the 30th of July 1901.
In addition to the monographs mentioned above, he published: Maryland’s Influence in Founding a National Commonwealth (1877); Methods of Historical Study (1884); Maryland’s Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States (1885); and the Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (2 vols., Boston, 1893), his most important work.
See Herbert B. Adams: Tributes of Friends (Baltimore, 1902), extra volume (xxiii.) of “Studies in Historical and Political Science.”
ADAMS, JOHN (1735–1826), second president of the United States of America, was born on the 30th of October 1735 in what is now the town of Quincy, Massachusetts. His father, a farmer, also named John, was of the fourth generation in descent from Henry Adams, who emigrated from Devonshire, England, to Massachusetts about 1636; his mother was Susanna Boylston Adams. Young Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1755, and for a time taught school at Worcester and studied law in the office of Rufus Putnam. In 1758 he was admitted to the bar. From an early age he developed the habit of writing descriptions of events and impressions of men. The earliest of these is his report of the argument of James Otis in the superior court of Massachusetts as to the constitutionality of writs of assistance. This was in 1761, and the argument inspired him with zeal for the cause of the American colonies. Years afterwards, when an old man, Adams undertook to write out at length his recollections of this scene; it is instructive to compare the two accounts. John Adams had none of the qualities of popular leadership which were so marked a characteristic of his second cousin, Samuel Adams; it was rather as a constitutional lawyer that he influenced the course of events. He was impetuous, intense and often vehement, unflinchingly courageous, devoted with his whole soul to the cause he had espoused; but his vanity, his pride of opinion and his inborn contentiousness were serious handicaps to him in his political career. These qualities were particularly manifested at a later period—as, for example, during his term as president. He first made his influence widely felt and became conspicuous as a leader of the Massachusetts Whigs during the discussions with regard to the Stamp Act of 1765. In that year he drafted the instructions which were sent by the town of Braintree to its representatives in the Massachusetts legislature, and which served as a model for other towns in drawing up instructions to their representatives; in August 1765 he contributed anonymously four notable articles to the Boston Gazette (republished separately in London in 1768 as A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law), in which he argued that the opposition of the colonies to the Stamp Act was a part of the never-ending struggle between individualism and corporate authority; and in December 1765 he delivered a speech before the governor and council in which he pronounced the Stamp Act invalid on the ground that Massachusetts being without representation in parliament, had not assented to it. In 1768 he removed to Boston. Two years later, with that degree of moral courage which was one of his distinguishing characteristics, as it has been of his descendants, he, aided by Josiah Quincy, Jr., defended the British soldiers who were arrested after the “Boston Massacre,” charged with causing the death of four persons, inhabitants of the colony. The trial resulted in an acquittal of the officer who commanded the detachment, and most of the soldiers; but two soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter. These claimed benefit of clergy and were branded in the hand and released. Adams’s upright and patriotic conduct in taking the unpopular side in this case met with its just reward in the following year, in the shape of his election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives by a vote of 418 to 118.
John Adams was a member of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1778. In June 1775, with a view to promoting the union of the colonies, he seconded the nomination of Washington as commander-in-chief of the army. His influence in congress was great, and almost from the beginning he was impatient for a separation of the colonies from Great Britain. On the 7th of June 1776 he seconded the famous resolution introduced by Richard Henry Lee (q.v.) that “these colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent states,” and no man championed these resolutions (adopted on the 2nd of July) so eloquently and effectively before the congress. On the 8th of June he was appointed on a committee with Jefferson, Franklin, Livingston and Sherman to draft a Declaration of Independence; and although that document was by the request of the committee written by Thomas Jefferson, it was John Adams who occupied the foremost place in the debate on its adoption. Before this question had been disposed of, Adams was placed at the head of the Board of War and Ordnance, and he also served on many other important committees.
In 1778 John Adams sailed for France to supersede Silas Deane in the American commission there. But just as he embarked that commission concluded the desired treaty of alliance, and soon after his arrival he advised that the number of commissioners be reduced to one. His advice was followed and he returned home in time to be elected a member of the convention which framed the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, still the organic law of that commonwealth. With James Bowdoin and Samuel Adams, he formed a sub-committee which drew up the first draft of that instrument, and most of it probably came from John Adams’s pen. Before this work had been completed he was again sent to Europe, having been chosen on the 27th of September 1779 as minister plenipotentiary for negotiating a treaty of peace and a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. Conditions were not then favourable for peace, however; the French government, moreover, did not approve of the choice, inasmuch as Adams was not sufficiently pliant and tractable and was from the first suspicious of Vergennes; and subsequently Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay and Henry Laurens were appointed to co-operate with Adams. Jefferson, however, did not cross the Atlantic, and Laurens took little part in the negotiations. This left the management of the business to the other three. Jay and Adams distrusted the good faith of the French government. Outvoting Franklin, they decided to break their instructions, which required them to “make the most candid confidential communications on all subjects to the ministers of our generous ally, the king of France; to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or truce without their knowledge or concurrence; and ultimately to govern yourself by their advice and opinion”; and, instead, they dealt directly with the British commissioners, without consulting the French ministers. Throughout the negotiations Adams was especially determined that the right of the United States to the fisheries along the British-American coast should be recognized. Political conditions in Great Britain, at the moment, made the conclusion of peace almost a necessity with the British ministry, and eventually the American negotiators were able to secure a peculiarly favourable treaty. This preliminary treaty was signed on the 30th of November 1782. Before these negotiations began, Adams had spent some time in the Netherlands. In July 1780 he had been authorized to execute the
