Adams, John (1735–1826)

2nd president of the USA 1797–1801, and vice‐president 1789–97. He was a member of the Continental Congress 1774–78 and signed the Declaration of Independence. In 1779 he went to France and negotiated the treaty of 1783 that ended the American Revolution. In 1785 he became the first US ambassador in London.

His son, John Quincy Adams, became president in 1825.

Adams was born in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, studied at Harvard, and became a barrister in 1758. He was ambassador to Holland 1782–85. The first vice‐president of the USA, he was re‐elected in 1792. Adams represented the aristocratic point of view, in contrast to Thomas Jefferson, the champion of democracy. He published A Defence of the Constitution of the United States of America (1787).