educationalist, was born at Shutesbury (near Amherst),
Massachusetts, on the 16th of April 1850. He graduated at
Amherst, at the head of his class, in 1872; and between 1873
and 1876 he studied political science, history and economics
at Gottingen, Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany, receiving
the degree of Ph.D.at Heidelberg in 1876, with the highest
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 fee 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 thc 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 duties previously assigned to Henry
Laurens, and at the Hague was eminently successful, securing
there recognition of the United States as an independent
government (April 19, 1782), and negotiating both a loan
and, in October 1782, a treaty of amity and commerce,
the first of such treaties between the United States and
foreign powers after that of February 1778 with France.
In 1785 John Adams was appointed the first of a long line of
able and distinguished American ministers to the court of St
James's. When he was presented to his former sovereign,
George III. intimated that he was aware of Mr Adams's lack
of confidence in the French government. Replying, Mr Adams
admitted it, closing with the outspoken sentiment: ``I must
avow to your Majesty that I have no attachment but to my own
country''--a phrase which must have jarred upon the monarch's
sensibilities. While in London Adams published a work
entitled A Defence of the Constitution of Government of
the United States (1787). In this work he ably combated
the views of Turgot and other European writers as to the
viciousness of the frame-work of the state governments.
Unfortunately, in so doing, he used phrases savouring of
aristocracy which offended many of his countrymen,---as in the
sentence in which he suggested that ``the rich, the well-born
and the able'' should be set apart from other men in a
senate. Partly for this reason, while Washington had the vote
of every elector in the first presidential election of 1789,
Adams received only thirty-four out of sixty-nine. As this
was the second largest number he was declared vice-president,
but he began his eight years in that office (1789-- 1797) with
a sense of grievance and of suspicion of many of the leading
men. Differences of opinion with regard to the policies to be
pursued by the new government gradually led to the formation
of two well-defined political groups---the Federalists and the
Democratic-Republicans--and Adams became recognized as one of
the leaders, second only to Alexander Hamilton, of the former.
In 1796, on the refusal of Washington to accept another
election, Adams was chosen president, defeating Thomas Jefferson;
though Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists had asked that
an equal vote should be cast for Adams and Thomas Pinckney,
the other Federalist in the contest, partly in order that
Jefferson, who was elected vice-president, might be excluded
