John Adams Life's Journey

Learned and thoughtful, John Adams was more remarkable as a political philosopher than a politician. "People and nations in the fires of adversity are fake," he said, doubtless thinking of his own as the American experience.
Adams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735. A Harvard-trained lawyer, he was identified early on with the Patriot cause, a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, led his movement for independence.
During the Revolutionary War he was in diplomatic positions in France and the Netherlands, and helped negotiate the peace treaty. From 1785-1788 he was Minister of the Court of St. James, to be re-elected vice president under George Washington.
Adams served two terms as Vice President were frustrating experiences for a man of his strength, intellect and vanity. He complained to his wife Abigail, "My country has invented in his wisdom to me the most insignificant office that ever invented the invention of man or his imagination conceived."
When Adams became president, caused the war between the French and the British major difficulties for the United States on the high seas and intense partisanship among contending factions within the nation.
His government in France, where the Directory, the ruling group, refused the American ambassador had received and suspended commercial relations.
Adams sent three commissioners to France, but in the spring of 1798 word came that French Foreign Minister Talleyrand and the Directory had refused to negotiate with them if they would pay for the first time a substantial bribe. Adams reported the insult to Congress and the Senate printed the correspondence, the French only as "X, Y and Z." were known,
The Nation broke out into what Jefferson "the XYZ fever," increased intensity of Adam's admonitions. The people cheered themselves hoarse, where the President appeared. The Federalists had never been so popular.
Congress appropriated money to complete three new frigates and to build more ships, and authorized the raising of a provisional army. Also along the Alien and Sedition acts carried out by foreign agents, the fear of choking the country and the attacks of Republican editors.
President Adams did not ask for a declaration of war, but the hostilities at sea. Initially there was almost defenseless against French privateers American shipping, but by 1800 armed merchantmen and U.S. warships were clearing the sea lanes.
Despite several brilliant sea victories, war fever disappeared. Adams, word came that France had no desire for war and would receive an envoy with respect. Long negotiations ended the quasi war.
Sending a peace mission to France brought the full fury against the Hamilton Adams. United in the campaign of 1800 the Republicans were and are effective, the Federalists badly divided. Nevertheless, Adams only a few less electoral votes than Jefferson, the President was requested.
On 1 November 1800, shortly before the election came, Adams in the new capital, to his residence in the White House. On his second night in the damp, unfinished rooms, he wrote his wife: "Before I end my letter, I pray heaven the best of blessings on this house and all live down in May none but honest and wise men ever under this roof. . prevail "
Adams retired to his farm in Quincy. Here he wrote his detailed letters to Thomas Jefferson. Here on the 4th July 1826, he whispered his last words: "Thomas Jefferson survives." But Jefferson had died in Monticello a few hours earlier.

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