John attended a dame school, a local school taught by a female teacher that was designed to teach the rudimentary skills of reading and writing, followed by a Latin school, a preparatory school for those who planned to attend college.
He eventually excelled at his studies and entered Harvard College at age fifteen. He graduated in Young John, who had no interest in a ministerial career, taught in a Latin school in Worcester, Massachusetts, to earn the tuition fees to study law, and from to , he studied law with a prominent local lawyer in Worcester. Adams launched his legal career in Boston in He faced several years of struggle in establishing his practice.
He had only one client his first year and did not win his initial case before a jury until almost three years after opening his office. Thereafter, his practice grew. Once his practice started to flourish, he began to court Abigail Smith, the daughter of a Congregational minister in nearby Weymouth.
They were married in Five children followed in the next eight years, although one, Susanna, died in infancy. By , Adams was a highly successful lawyer with perhaps the largest caseload of any attorney in Boston, and he was chosen to defend the British soldiers who were charged in the Boston Massacre in March Through his able defense, none of the accused soldiers were sent to jail. During these years, he lived alternately in Boston and Quincy, an outgrowth of Braintree, where he had been reared.
As success came, Adams wrote extensively, publishing numerous essays in Boston newspapers on social, legal, and political issues. When the colonial protest against parliamentary policies erupted against the Stamp Act in , Adams was initially reluctant to play a prominent role in the popular movement.
With a young and growing family, he feared for his legal practice. In addition, he distrusted many of the radical leaders, including his cousin Samuel Adams. He not only believed the imperial leaders in London had simply blundered but also suspected that the colonial radicals had a hidden agenda, including American independence. Nevertheless, under pressure to act, he did assist the popular movement, writing anonymous newspaper essays and helping to churn out propaganda pieces.
In time, as Britain continued its attempts to tax the colonies and to strip them of their autonomy, Adams gradually grew convinced that the radicals had been correct, and he became an open foe of ministerial policy.
In , Adams went to Philadelphia as one of the four delegates from Massachusetts to the First Continental Congress. He was reelected to the Second Continental Congress, which convened in May , just a few days after war with the mother country had erupted at Lexington and Concord.
Adams soon emerged as the leader of the faction in Congress that pushed to declare independence. Adams served on more committees than any other congressman—ninety in all, of which he chaired twenty. He was the head of the Board of War and Ordinance, the congressional committee that oversaw the operations of the Continental army. He was also an important member of the committee that prepared the Model Treaty, which guided the envoys that Congress sent to France to secure foreign trade and military assistance.
Then, on February 19, the Boston spotted three sails in the distance. It was a tense moment for any ship of that era. Were they British or French, enemy or friend? Did they boast better cannonry than the Boston? Most pressing: Could they catch up? The ships turned out to be British.
The Boston outran two of them, but the third one stayed close. The chase stretched on for days. At dawn, Adams would climb on the deck and scan the horizon—at first it would look like they had escaped, until he spotted a stubborn sail. The Boston escaped its pursuer on the 21st, but it soon ran into a new problem. The wind was picking up; dark clouds were filling the sky. That night, a terrible storm hit. The Boston , with its guns still rolled out, was not prepared, and everyone rushed to store the weaponry.
A dazzling bolt of lightning struck the main mast. Somehow it missed the casks of gunpowder still strewn across the ship. But it hit a sailor, leaving a scorched divot in his shoulder, a nasty wound that would eventually kill him. The storm dragged on for three days. Even below decks, even when they screamed, the passengers could not hear each other over the gales, the gushing water, and the chairs and trunks slamming around. The only way Adams and his son could keep still was to grip each side of their bed and brace their feet against the bottom.
The sailors started whispering about omens and luck. By the final day of February, the ship was making good progress again. Adams practiced his French, a language he would need as a diplomat.
This time the Americans gave chase. After Tucker asked Adams to go below, the Boston sped toward the ship, an armed British merchantman named the Martha.
The Martha fired several shots at the Boston , the cannonballs buzzing over the Americans gathered on the quarterdeck. The Boston curved around, revealing its superior cannonry, and the Martha immediately surrendered.
As Tucker checked on his crew, he saw John Adams with them, brandishing a musket. Tucker put a small group on the captured ship, to pilot it back to America, and the Boston resumed its voyage to France. During the next year, Adam's hostility toward his fellow diplomat grew. Franklin was idolized in France, and it was he who was asked to remain as France's sole minister.
In fact, when Adams was recalled to America, he wasn't even assigned a new post. Return to France Humiliated, Adams sailed for Massachusetts in , vowing to return to private life. But he rarely left a political post without renouncing public service altogether, and this too was a vow he would not keep.
Without consulting Abigail, Adams accepted Congress' offer to return to Europe as minister plenipotentiary to negotiate peace with Britain, whenever America's enemy was ready to come to the table.
Adams hadn't sought the post, but reveled in Congress' nearly unanimous decision to appoint him. A Disaster Adams' second stay in France was disastrous. Affronted, Vergennes promptly severed communication with him. Franklin took the French Minister's side in a damning letter to Congress: " However Adams didn't learn of Congress' decision for a year, during which time he traveled independently to the Netherlands to see, as he told Franklin, "whether something might be done to render us less dependent on France.
A Diplomatic Success Congress had long talked of seeking a loan from the Netherlands, which had already been secretly supplying arms to America. The Dutch were hesitant. The worst American defeat of the war had just occurred at Charleston, South Carolina, and they didn't want to stake themselves to the losing side.
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