John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American politician and political philosopher and the cond President of the United States (1797–1801), after being the first Vice President of the United States (1789–1797) for two terms. He was one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States.
Adams came to prominence in the early stages of the American Revolution. As a delegate from Massachutts to the Continental Congress, he played a leading role in persuading Congress to declare independence, and assisted Thomas Jefferson in drafting the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. As a reprentative of Congress in Europe, he was a major negotiator of the eventual peace treaty with Great Britain, and chiefly responsible for obtaining important loans from Amsterdam bankers.
Adams' revolutionary credentials cured him two terms as George Washington's vice president and his own election as the cond president of the United States. During his one term as president, he was frustrated by battles inside his own Federalist Party (by a faction led by Alexander Hamilton) and the newly emergent bi-partisan disagreements with Jeffers
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After Adams was defeated for reelection by Thomas Jefferson (at the time, Adams' vice-president), he retired to Massachutts. He and his wife, Abigail Adams, founded an accomplished family line of politicians, diplomats, and historians now referred to as the Adams political family. Adams was the father of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States. His achievements have received greater recognition in modern times, though his contributions were not initially as celebrated as tho of other Founders.
Career before the Revolution
Opponent of Stamp Act 1765
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Adams first ro to prominence as an opponent of the Stamp Act of 1765, which was imp
od by the British Parliament without consulting the American legislatures. Americans protested vehemently that it violated their traditional rights as Englishmen. Popular resistance, he later obrved, was sparked by an oft-reprinted rmon of the Boston minister, Jonathan Mayhew, interpreting Romans 13 to elucidate the principle of just insurrection.arrowhead
In 1765, Adams drafted the instructions which were nt by the inhabitants of Braintree to its reprentatives in the Massachutts legislature, and which rved as a model for other towns to draw up instructions to their reprentatives. In August 1765, he anonymously contributed four notable articles to the Boston Gazette (republished in The London Chronicle in 1768 as True Sentiments of America, also known as A Disrtation on the Canon and Feudal Law). In the letter he suggested that there was a connection between the Protestant ideas that Adams's Puritan ancestors brought to New England and the ideas behind their resistance to the Stamp Act. In the former he explained that the opposition of the colonies to the Stamp Act was becau the Stamp Act deprived the American colonists of two basic rights guaranteed to all Englishmen, and which all free m
en derved: rights to be taxed only by connt and to be tried only by a jury of one's peers.
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我爱你一生一世英文The "Braintree Instructions" were a succinct and forthright defen of colonial rights and liberties, while the Disrtation was an essay in political education.
a是什么意思In December 1765, he delivered a speech before the governor and council in which he pronounced the Stamp Act invalid on the ground that Massachutts, being without reprentation in Parliament, had not asnted to it.
Boston Massacre
In 1770, a street confrontation resulted in British soldiers killing five civilians in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The soldiers involved, who were arrested on criminal charges, had trouble finding legal counl. Finally, they asked Adams to defend them. Although he feared it would hurt his reputation, he agreed. Six of the soldiers were acquitted. Two who had fired directly into the crowd were charged with murder but were convicted only of manslaughter.
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As for Adams's payment, Chinard alleges[14] that one of the soldiers, Captain Thomas Preston, gave Adams a symbolic "single guinea" as a retaining fee, the only fee he received in the ca. However, David McCullough states in his biography of Adams that he received nothing more than a retainer of eighteen guineas. Adams's own diary confirms that Preston paid an initial ten guineas and a subquent payment of eight was "all the pecuniary Reward I ever had for fourteen or fifteen days labour, in the most exhausting and fatiguing Caus I ever tried."
超负荷Despite his previous misgivings, Adams was elected to the Massachutts General Court (the colonial legislature) in June 1770, while still in preparation for the trial.
Dispute concerning Parliament's authority
走遍德国mp3In 1772, Massachutts Governor Thomas Hutchinson announced that he and his judges would no longer need their salaries paid by the Massachutts legislature, becau the Crown would henceforth assume payment drawn from customs revenues. Boston radicals protested and asked Adams to explain their objections. In "Two Replies of the Ma
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ssachutts Hou of Reprentatives to Governor Hutchinson" Adams argued that the colonists had never been under the sovereignty of Parliament. Their original charter was with the person of the king and their allegiance was only to him. If a workable line could not be drawn between parliamentary sovereignty and the total independence of the colonies, he continued, the colonies would have no other choice but to choo independence.
