John Adams

“ In his old age John Adams wrote, with reference to this scene, "Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born."
When the stamp act was passed, in 1765, Adams took a prominent part in a town-meeting at Braintree, where he presented resolutions which were adopted word for word by more than forty towns in Massachusetts. ”

“ John Adams was one of the earliest and most ardent patriots of the revolution. Bred to the bar, he had necessarily studied the constitution of his country, and was among the most determined asserters of its rights. Active in guiding that high spirit which animated all New England, he became a member of the congress of 1774, and was among the first who dared to avow sentiments in favour of independence. In that body he soon attained considerable eminence; and, at an early stage of the war, was chosen one of the commissioners to whom the interests of the United States in Europe were confided. ”

“ John Adams succeeded Washington as President, and did not change his politics to amount to much.
He made a good record as Congressman, but lost it as President largely because of his egotism. He seemed to think that if he neglected to oil the gearing of the solar system about so often, it would stop running. We should learn from this to be humble even when we are in authority. Adams and Jefferson were good friends during the Revolution, but afterwards political differences estranged them till they returned to private life. ”

“ They breathe in general the same spirit, hankering after pre-revolutionary institutions and systems, though less boldly expressed than was done by Hamilton and Adams, and the same distrust of the sufficiency of the Constitution and above all of the capacities and dispositions of the people, the latter exhibited in assaults upon democracy and the democratic spirit of the country.
John Adams was in every sense a remarkable man. Nature seems to have employed in his construction intellectual materials sufficient to have furnished many minds respectably. ”

“ John Adams replied, "I know Great Britain has determined on her system, and that very determination determines me on mine. You know I have been constant and uniform in opposition to her measures. The die is now cast. I have passed the Rubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country is my unalterable determination."
It was these energetic and resolute expressions which Daniel Webster wrought into so magnificent an imaginary speech, in his glowing Eulogy on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. ”

“ The subject of this narrative was a great-grandson of Henry Adams, who emigrated from England about 1640, with a family of eight sons, being one of the earliest settlers in the town of Braintree, Massachusetts, where he had a grant of a small tract of forty acres of land. The father of John Adams, a deacon of the church, was a farmer by occupation, to which was added the business of shoemaking. He was a man of limited means, however, was enabled by hard pinching to give his son a fairly good education. ”

“ Did he employ the magic of his pen to recreate the popularity of John Adams, it was more than possible that thousands would gladly permit the leader they had followed for years to persuade them they had judged too hastily the man of whom they had expected too much. But by this time there was one man Hamilton hated more implacably than Jefferson, and that was John Adams. Besides the thorough disapproval of the Administration of Adams, which, as a statesman, he shared with all the eminent Federals in the country, his personal counts with this enemy piled to heaven. ”

“ He was one of the first who opposed the usurpations of the crown officers and the patriot who wrote to John Adams just as the Congress of 1774 closed and used the truly prophetic language—"after all we must fight." He was a man of strong intellect, great penetration of mind, a close observer of men and things, an inflexible friend to the cause of equal rights. In public meetings, in the legislature, in his social intercourse—at all proper times and places—he sowed the seeds of Liberty broadcast. ”

“ Adams asked and obtained leave of Congress to visit his family, mounted his horse, and rode joyfully home to Braintree. We can well imagine the rejoicings that greeted his return; but they were short-lived. He had barely reached home when word came that he was appointed ambassador to France, and that the frigate Boston was being prepared to carry him thither as soon as possible.
Here was a thunderbolt indeed! Weary and worn after four years of incessant labor, John Adams had longed almost passionately for the joys and comforts of home life and family affection. ”

“ Adams, by birth, education, all the associations of his life, and the fixed principles of his moral and political character, was an opposer of slavery in every form. No man felt more keenly the wretched absurdity of professing to base our Government on the "self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—of proclaiming our Union the abode of liberty, the "home of the free," the asylum of the oppressed—while holding in our midst millions of fellow-beings manacled in hopeless bondage! ”

“ Many persons thought that it would be fitting that Samuel Adams, the father of the Revolution, should be chosen to serve with Washington, the father of his country; but too many remembered that he had been hostile to the Federalists until almost the end of the preliminary canvass and so they did not think that he ought to be chosen. The successful man was John Adams, who had been a robust Patriot from the beginning and had served honorably and devotedly in every position which he had held since 1775. ”

“ In 1796, as Washington refused to serve for a third term, John Adams seemed clearly marked out as federalist candidate for the succession. Hamilton and Jay were in a certain sense his rivals; but Jay was for the moment unpopular because of the famous treaty that he had lately negotiated with England, and Hamilton, although the ablest man in the federalist party, was still not so conspicuous in the eyes of the masses of voters as Adams, who besides was surer than any one else of the indispensable New England vote. ”

“ He became a typical American politician, not by force of public speaking, but by dexterity in the formation and management of a party. Both Patrick Henry and John Adams were immeasurably more eloquent than he, but neither touched the springs of the American heart like this quiet, modest, peace-loving, far-sighted politician, since he, more than any other man of the Revolutionary period, was jealous of aristocratic power. Hamilton, Jay, Gouverneur Morris, were aristocrats who admired the English Constitution, and would have established a more vigorous central government. ”

“ In his morals he was irreproachable, unlike Hamilton and Burr; he never made himself ridiculous, like John Adams, by egotism, vanity, and jealousy; he was the most domestic of men, worshipped by his family and admired by his guests; always ready to communicate knowledge, strong in his convictions, perpetually writing his sincere sentiments and beliefs in letters to his friends,--as upright and honest a man as ever filled a public station, and finally retiring to private life with the respect of the whole nation, over which he continued to exercise influence after he had parted with power. ”

“ Your fellow-citizens, in spite of political prudence, could not avoid honoring you on grounds altogether irrespective of personal merit. John Adams, who has gone to receive the reward of the just, was one of the most efficient and illustrious founders of this Empire, and afterwards its Chief Ruler. The son of such a father would, in any other age, and even in this age, in any other country than this, have been entitled, by birth alone, to a sceptre. We not merely deny hereditary claims to civil trust, but regard even hereditary distinction with jealousy. ”

“ John Adams represented one element of our national character, and represented it nobly, with a singular force and greatness. He was an eminent Puritan statesman, and the Puritan ingredient has colored all our national life. We have got strength and persistency and some part of our steady moral purpose from it. But in the quick growth and exuberant expansion of the nation it has been only one element among many. The Puritan blood has mixed with many another strain. ”

“ The judgment of posterity will be, that he was a brave man, deep-sighted, conscientious, patriotic, and possessed of Integrity which nothing ever shook, but which stood firm as the granite of his Quincy Hills. While American Institutions continue, the People will honor brave, honest old John Adams, who never failed his country in her hour of need, and who, in his life of more than ninety years, though both passionate and ambitious, wronged no man nor any woman. ”

“ He went to school in Braintree, and later graduated from Harvard University. After which he studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He married Abigail Smith of Weymouth, Massachusetts. They made their home in Boston.
It is not possible here to tell all that John Adams did for America. He was an ardent Patriot, a Son of Liberty, serving the country at the risk of his life. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress. ”

“ John Adams.
Mr. Eliot, of Fairfield, is this moment arrived, on his way to Boston. He read us a letter from the Dr., his father, dated yesterday sennight, being Sunday. The Dr.'s description of the melancholy of the town is enough to melt a stone. The trials of that unhappy and devoted people are likely to be severe indeed. God grant that the furnace of affliction may refine them. God grant that they may be relieved from their present distress. ”

“ When looking at Stuart's fine paintings, he fixed his eyes upon the portrait of Washington with compressed mouth—then upon his own, with open lips, and facetiously remarked—"Ah! that fellow never could keep his mouth shut." Such a man never can be a popular politician as the writer knows from experience.
The highest eulogy that can be pronounced upon John Adams is the history of his bright and useful career. For more than half a century he served our country ably and faithfully. ”

“ In childhood the career of John Adams was marked with a rapid developement of strong intellectual powers, which were skilfully cultivated by Mr. Marsh, at Braintree, a celebrated and successful teacher. At the age of sixteen years he entered Harvard College, at Cambridge, where he became a finished scholar and graduated at the age of twenty. He gained a high reputation for frankness, honesty and untiring industry, and was greatly esteemed by the professors and his classmates. ”

“ John Adams. Philadelphia, 20 September, 1774.
I am very well yet. Write to me as often as you can, and send your letters to the office in Boston, or to Mr. Cranch's, whence they will be sent by the first conveyance.
I am anxious to know how you can live without Government. But the experiment must be tried. The evils will not be found so dreadful as you apprehend them. Frugality, my dear, frugality, economy, parsimony, must be our refuge. I hope the ladies are every day diminishing their ornaments, and the gentlemen, too. Let us eat potatoes and drink water ”

“ All cavils are wasted, and worse than wasted, on such a man. His fame will shine forevermore, in undimmed lustre, to bless mankind. Small is that critic who sees the defects, but has no eye for the splendors, of a great career!
There is but little more to be said of Adams after the completion of his term of office. He retired to his farm in Quincy, a part of Braintree, for which he had the same love that Washington had for Mount Vernon, and Jefferson for Monticello. In the placid rest of agricultural life, and with a comfortable independence, his later days were spent. ”

“ Even if it were true, as has been urged by the political opponents of the Adams family, that no one of its members has ever shown more than respectable natural talent, it would add overwhelming weight to the argument in favor of the laborious habits of study which have characterized them to the third and fourth generations, and, from the time of John Adams until our own, have made them men of mark and far-reaching national influence. ”

“ Only two years after the birth of John Quincy Adams, there appeared on an island in the Mediterranean sea, a human spirit newly born, endowed with equal genius, without the regulating qualities of justice and benevolence which Adams possessed in an eminent degree. A like career opened to both—born like Adams, a subject of a king—the child of more genial skies, like him, became in early life a patriot and a citizen of a new and great Republic. ”

“ Adams recommends hereditary orders as the refuge from the vices of election. He is obliged to bend his eye towards England, to get the contour of a detestable picture of election, and places it before our eyes, to induce us to introduce the policy of England. He will not see, that one elective system is more perfect than the English, because it is less corrupted by the very policy, which has furnished the ideas for his invective; but the United States will ever be charmed to fly down the gaping throat of a dreadful monster, in order to escape its malignancy. ”

“ In 1787 John Adams, like Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and other constitution-makers, might, without losing the interest of readers, indulge in speculations more or less visionary in regard to the future character of a nation yet in its cradle; but in 1814 the character of people and government was formed; the lines of their activity were fixed. A people which had in 1787 been indifferent or hostile to roads, banks, funded debt, and nationality, had become in 1815 habituated to ideas and machinery of the sort on a great scale. ”