Without attending school, she had mastered the literature of the day and developed a remarkably perceptive intellect and an unquenchable spirit. In 1764, Adams had married Abigail Smith of neighboring Weymouth, Massachusetts, who was to make a major contribution to his public career. His law practice ended in 1774 when the colony and the developing nation began to demand all of his talents and energy.

In retaliation for Adams' opposition to royal government, the governor twice vetoed his election to the Massachusetts Council. He held several local offices and served a term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He secured their acquittal while protecting the town's reputation against the charge that the soldiers had been unmercifully harassed. In 1770 he masterfully defended the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre. The Stamp Act of 1765 provoked him to argue in speech and in print against this parliamentary statute, which he termed an unconstitutional violation of colonial liberty. In defending such clients as John Hancock and other merchants accused of smuggling and sailors charged with rioting against press gangs of the Royal Navy, he was drawn into the local resistance movement. Within a dozen years he became the colony's preeminent and busiest lawyer. He taught school briefly, then read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1758. He took his degree in 1755, but by then theological uncertainty had turned him toward a secular vocation. His father, a respected farmer and artisan of Braintree, Massachusetts, had pointed him toward Harvard College and a career in the Congregational ministry. He had behind him thirty years of distinguished public service. The true test of the Constitution was at hand: Could the office be transferred by the first contested presidential election to another from whom there emanated no aura of superhuman greatness? Adams hoped that at least some of the tears had come from the 'pleasure of exchanging Presidents without tumult.' But he also knew that Washington's successor faced unresolved problems that could quickly tear the young republic apart.īorn on 19 October 1735, Adams was sixty-one when he took office. As he described this moving scene to his wife, there was 'scarcely a dry eye but Washington's' at 'the sight of the sun setting full orbed, and another rising, though less splendid.' The new president understood well that no one could fill the role of the godlike father of the nation whose eight years in the presidency had ensured respect for the newly created federal government. JOHN ADAMS became the second president of the United States when he took the oath of office in the packed House of Representatives on 4 March 1797.

The Nixons by Cass R. Sandak