John Adams, second president of the United States, born Oct. 19, 1735 (O. S.), in that part of the town of Braintree, Mass., on the S. shore of Boston harbor, and some ten miles distant from Boston, which has since been erected into the town of Quincy, where he died, July 4, 1826. He was great-grandson of Henry Adams, who emigrated from England about 1640, with a family of eight sons, becoming one of the early settlers in Braintree, where he had a grant of 40 acres of land. The father of John Adams, a deacon of the church and selectman, was a farmer of limited means, to which he added the business of shoemaking. He was enabled, however, to give a classical education to his eldest son John, who graduated at Harvard college in 1755, and at once took charge of the grammar school in Worcester, Mass. The war with France for the possession of the western country was then at its height; and in a remarkable letter to a young friend, which contains some curious prognostications as to what would be in a hundred years the relative population and commerce of England and her colonies, young Adams describes himself as having turned politician. His school he found but "a school of affliction," from which he endeavored to gain relief by devoting himself, in addition, to the study of the law.

For this purpose he placed himself under the tuition of the only lawyer of whom Worcester, though the shire town of the county, could then boast. He had thought seriously of the clerical profession, but, according to his own expressions in a contemporary letter, " the frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistic good nature," of the operation of which he had been a witness in some church controversies in his native town of Braintree, had "terrified him out of it." Already he had longings for distinction. Nothing but want of interest and patronage prevented him from enlisting in the army. Could he have obtained a troop of horse, or a company of foot, he Would, so one of his published letters declares, infallibly have been a soldier. After two years' study at Worcester he returned to his father's house in Braintree, and in 1758 commenced life in Suffolk county, of which Boston was the shire town. He gradually introduced himself into practice, and in 1764 married Abigail Smith, a daughter of the minister of the neighboring town of Weymouth, and whose connections occupied a social position superior to that of Mr. Adams's own family.

What was still more to the purpose, she was a lady of superior abilities and good sense, and admirably adapted to make him happy. Very shortly after his marriage, the attempt at parliamentary taxation diverted him from law to politics. He promoted the call of a town meeting in Braintree, to instruct the representatives of the town on the subject of the stamp act; and the resolutions which he presented at this meeting were not only voted by the town, but attracted great attention throughout the province, and were adopted word for word by more than forty different towns. Yet Adams as appears by his published diary, was somewhat alarmed at the violence of the mob in destroying the furniture of Oliver, the stamp distributor, and of Governor Hutchinson, and not a little vexed, as well as alarmed, at the interruption to his own business caused by the refusal of the judges to go on without stamps. He was somewhat consoled, however, by an unexpected appointment on the part of the town of Boston to be one of their counsel along with Jeremiah Grid-ley, the king's attorney and head of the bar, and James Otis, the celebrated orator, to support a memorial addressed to the governor and council that the courts might proceed with business, though no stamps were to be had.

It fell to Adams, as junior counsel, to open the case for the petitioners, and he boldly took the ground - in which his two seniors, the one from his position, the other from his committals in his recently published book on the "Rights of the Colonies," were prevented from following him - that the stamp act was absolutely void, parliament having no right to tax the colonies. Nothing, however, came of this application; the governor and council declined to act, on the ground that it belonged to the judges, not to them, to decide. The repeal of the stamp act soon put an end to the suspension of business, which indeed had only extended to the superior court, the inferior courts going on without stamps. It was on this same occasion that Mr. Adams first made his appearance as a writer in the " Boston Gazette." Among other papers of his was a series of four articles, which were republished in a London newspaper, and subsequently in a collection of documents relating to the taxation controversy, printed together in a volume.

The papers as originally published had no title; in the printed volume they were called an "Essay on the Canon and Feudal Law." They began indeed with some reference to these subjects, but might with much more propriety have been entitled an "Essay on the Government and Rights of New England." Mr. Adams's style was formed, as is evident from these pieces, from the moment he began to write. They may be found in his collected works, edited by his grandson. Mr. Adams's law business continued gradually to increase, and in 1768 he removed to Boston. In that and the next year he was one of the committee to draft instructions to the representatives of the town - a duty which the committee intrusted to him, though he refused to attend and speak at town meetings. In 1770 he was chosen a representative to the general court, notwithstanding he had just before accepted a retainer to defend Captain Preston and his soldiers for their share in what was known as the "Boston Massacre" - a defence conducted with success, in spite of the strong prejudices which it had to encounter. Adams's duties as representative interfered greatly with his business as a lawyer, on which he depended for support, and which by this time had grown to be greater than that of any other lawyer in the province.