99 Fun Facts About John Adams

In which Massachusetts town was John Adams born in 1735?

Braintree: the northern precinct where the family farm stood broke away in 1792 as the town of Quincy, which is why his birthplace now sits in a different city.

Which college did John Adams enter in 1751?

Harvard: as a boy he skipped school and said he would rather be a farmer, but his father insisted that he get a formal education.

Adams's father expected him to enter which profession?

The ministry held no appeal for him: after college he taught at a Worcester school while weighing his future, then began studying law in 1756.

Of whom did John Adams write that he had "a better hand at pulling down than building"?

Thomas Paine: Adams told Abigail in March 1776 that Common Sense made the case for independence well but planned government badly, and noted that people across the continent thought he had written it.

Before they married, Abigail Smith was already what to John Adams?

His third cousin: the young lawyer met her through his friend Richard Cranch, who was courting her older sister Mary and later married her.

John and Abigail Adams's eldest child went by which nickname?

Nabby, named Abigail like her mother, was born the year after the 1764 wedding, and in 1784 the two sailed to Europe, where they rejoined John after years apart.

Which first lady, like Abigail Adams, raised a president?

Barbara Bush matched her in 2001, when George W. Bush took office; Abigail never saw her own son sworn in, having died in 1818, six years before John Quincy's election.

Which president, like John Adams before him, died on a Fourth of July, in 1831?

James Monroe died on July 4, 1831, in New York City, where he had moved in with his daughter after his wife's death the year before.

The 1765 'Instructions' Adams wrote for his town's representative opposed which British measure?

The Stamp Act: Adams's text called it an unconstitutional tax laid without the colonists' consent, and objected that offenders would be tried in admiralty courts without a jury.

In 1768 Adams successfully defended which merchant against smuggling charges?

John Hancock's sloop Liberty had been seized by customs officers who said he landed cargo without paying duty; the seizure set off a riot in Boston, and the charges were eventually dropped.

Which phrase did Adams use in his closing argument defending the soldiers of the Boston Massacre?

"Facts are stubborn things," he told the jury, and no wish or passion could alter them; he said he took the hated brief because counsel was the last thing an accused person should lack in a free country.

After Adams's defence, how were two Boston Massacre soldiers punished for manslaughter?

Branded on the thumb: six of the eight soldiers were acquitted, and the two found guilty of manslaughter escaped worse by claiming benefit of clergy, an old English rule for first offenders.

John Adams thought July 2, 1776, would be celebrated forever because Congress did what?

Voted for independence: Congress passed Richard Henry Lee's resolution that day, and Adams told Abigail it would be kept with parades and bonfires; Americans instead mark July 4, the day the Declaration's wording was approved.

Which event did John Adams's diary hail the next morning as "the most magnificent movement of all"?

The Boston Tea Party: Adams admired its "dignity" and predicted it would have lasting consequences, and it did, because Parliament answered by closing the port of Boston.

In June 1776 Adams became head of which congressional body?

Board of War and Ordnance: the committee oversaw the running of the Continental Army, which made Adams in effect the Revolution's one-man war department, tracking its officers, troops and ammunition.

Which country formally recognised American independence in April 1782 and accepted Adams as ambassador?

The Dutch Republic recognised the United States when it accepted his credentials at The Hague, and Adams went on to sign the first of several loans from its bankers that rescued American credit.

Which treaty, ratified under Adams in 1797, said the US government was "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion"?

Treaty of Tripoli: the clause was there to assure a Muslim Barbary state that America bore no enmity toward its laws or religion, the two having never been at war.

John Adams insisted that the 1783 peace treaty protect which New England trade?

Fishing: the fisheries were among the hardest points of the talks, and the treaty's third article kept American boats on the Grand Banks and let crews dry their catch on unsettled shores nearby.

In 1785 Adams became the first American ambassador to which country?

Great Britain: on June 1, 1785, he presented his credentials to George III, the king he had helped to overthrow in America, and wrote up their respectful exchange in a letter the next day.

Which historian's 2001 biography of John Adams won a Pulitzer Prize and became an HBO miniseries?

David McCullough spent years retracing Adams's life, even reading the books Adams had read, and the result won him a second Pulitzer, after his life of Truman.

Adams's 1776 pamphlet Thoughts on Government argued for what kind of lawmaking body?

A bicameral legislature: Adams warned that "a single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies and frailties of an individual", so a second chamber had to check the first.

The 1780 constitution John Adams drafted gave Massachusetts which official title in place of 'State'?

Commonwealth: a first constitution, which voters rejected in 1778, had kept 'State of Massachusetts Bay', but the frame of government Adams drafted names the body politic the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Which phrase did John Adams write into the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780?

A government of laws and not of men is the stated aim of the article that keeps the three branches apart; Adams was echoing the English writer James Harrington's "empire of laws, and not of men".

What mocking nickname did senators give Adams during the 1789 debate over presidential titles?

His Rotundity was Senator Ralph Izard's jab at Adams's stout figure, after he lectured the chamber on the need for grand titles such as "His Highness" for the president.

By the 1796 rules, who became Adams's vice president?

The runner-up: Adams beat Jefferson by 71 electoral votes to 68, so his chief rival for the presidency spent the next four years as his deputy.

John Adams's last-minute appointments of judges led to which landmark Supreme Court case in 1803?

Marbury v. Madison: William Marbury sued when the incoming administration refused to deliver the commission Adams had issued him, and the Court used the case to claim the power to strike down laws.

In which city was Adams inaugurated on March 4, 1797?

Philadelphia: Adams took the oath in Congress Hall with Washington looking on, and told Abigail the general seemed to be thinking, "I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest."

On taking office, what did Adams do with the cabinet he inherited from Washington?

Kept every member: Adams hoped it would smooth the handover, but the secretaries proved loyal to his rivals inside his own party, and in 1800 he finally forced two of them out.

Which French foreign minister's agents demanded bribes from American envoys in the XYZ Affair?

Talleyrand's go-betweens asked for a loan to France and a bribe for the minister himself before talks could start; when Adams released the envoys' dispatches, he replaced the agents' names with letters.

What name is given to the naval war fought with France during Adams's presidency?

The Quasi-War: neither country ever declared it, yet American warships and privateers fought French raiders at sea for two years, and the scare led Congress to create the Navy Department.

"Adams and Liberty", a song cheering President Adams, used the tune that later carried which American song?

The Star-Spangled Banner: both borrowed a London club song, To Anacreon in Heaven, which was already a favourite in America when Francis Scott Key wrote his verses in 1814.

Whom did Washington insist should be second-in-command of the 1798 provisional army, to Adams's dismay?

Alexander Hamilton got the post because Washington made it a condition of taking command, and with Washington ageing at Mount Vernon, that left Adams's bitterest rival effectively running the army.

A 1798 law Adams signed raised what from five years to fourteen?

Citizenship residency: recent immigrants tended to vote for Jefferson's Republicans, so Adams's allies in Congress nearly tripled the wait; by 1802 the rule was back to five years.

Congressman Matthew Lyon was jailed under which 1798 law?

The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous and malicious" attacks on the government; Lyon, jailed four months for criticising Adams, was returned by his Vermont voters while still behind bars.

What did Adams do about John Fries after the tax rebel was sentenced to death for treason?

Pardoned him: Fries had led German-speaking Pennsylvania farmers against a federal house tax, nicknamed the window tax because it counted a home's windows; Adams spared him and two lieutenants from the gallows.

Adams's decision to send a peace mission to France in 1799 split which party, his own?

The Federalists: many in the party wanted the war scare kept alive, and the quarrel over peace, sharpened when Adams fired two cabinet secretaries, helped cost him re-election in 1800.

Which agreement ended Adams's undeclared naval war with France?

Convention of 1800, also called the Treaty of Mortefontaine: it stopped the fighting and released America from its 1778 alliance with France, but the news came too late to help Adams in that year's election.

John Adams was the first president to do what?

Live in the White House: he moved into the unfinished mansion in November 1800 and wrote to Abigail, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof."

After Adams, no president delivered the annual message to Congress in person until who revived the practice in 1913?

Woodrow Wilson: Jefferson had switched to written messages in 1801, a habit that lasted more than a century until Wilson went to Capitol Hill to push his tariff plans in person.

Which body settled the tied 1800 election that Adams lost?

The House, voting by state delegation, needed 36 ballots to break the deadlock; Adams had finished third with 65 electoral votes to the leaders' 73 apiece.

Whom did Adams name Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in January 1801?

John Marshall was the second choice: John Jay was confirmed for a return to the post and turned it down, so Adams picked his own secretary of state, who went on to lead the Court for 34 years.

What did Adams do on the morning of Jefferson's inauguration in 1801?

Left the capital before dawn: after signing his last commissions the evening before, Adams set off on the four o'clock stage and was on the road home to Quincy before his successor was sworn in.

What was the name of the Quincy farm where Adams spent his retirement?

Peacefield: Adams went back to farming there in 1801 and seldom left home again, and the house stayed in the family for four generations, until 1927.

Which mutual friend coaxed Adams and Jefferson into resuming their correspondence in 1812?

Benjamin Rush, a fellow signer of the Declaration who wrote to both men, urged each to reach out; Adams broke the ice with a New Year's note, and the letters flowed for the rest of their lives.

In a March 1776 letter, Abigail urged John to do what as Congress wrote new laws?

Remember the ladies, she wrote, warning that women "will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice"; John answered that he could not but laugh at her "extraordinary code of laws".

Abigail Adams died in 1818 of which disease?

Typhoid fever killed her at home in Quincy three days after the couple's 54th wedding anniversary; unlike John, she did not live to see their son John Quincy elected president.

John Adams died on a Fourth of July that marked which anniversary of American independence?

50th: he died at about six that evening, half a century to the day after Congress adopted the Declaration, though in 1776 he had predicted that Americans would celebrate July 2 instead.

What were among Adams's last words?

"Thomas Jefferson survives" is the usual report of his words, in slightly varying forms, and he was wrong: Jefferson had died at his own home a few hours earlier that same day.

Which president, in 2001, became the first to live longer than John Adams, who died at 90?

Ronald Reagan passed Adams's mark in 2001; those 90 years had let Adams see his son John Quincy take office as the sixth president, a year before his own death.

By what nickname is United First Parish in Quincy, where Adams is buried, known?

Church of the Presidents: John and John Quincy Adams lie with their wives in a crypt beneath it, and the 1828 building was paid for by land John gave the town and built largely of granite quarried there.

Among the first twelve presidents, Adams shared which distinction only with his son?

Never owned slaves: ten of the first twelve presidents did, while Adams said he paid for free labour all his life rather than buy a slave, though he kept the issue out of national politics.

Who played John Adams in HBO's 2008 miniseries about him?

Paul Giamatti won the Emmy for it, ageing from a lawyer in his thirties to a man of ninety under prosthetic makeup that took an Emmy of its own, two of the series' thirteen.

Under what pen name did Adams write newspaper essays mocking the Massachusetts elite in 1763?

Humphrey Ploughjogger was Adams's first known appearance in print: a country farmer writing in comically bad spelling, who grumbled that Boston's "grate men" did nothing but quarrel in the newspapers.

Which national institution did Adams sign into law in 1800?

The Library of Congress began as a $5,000 fund for books for lawmakers; after British troops burned it in 1814, Congress bought Jefferson's personal library of 6,487 volumes to start again.

After French agents demanded money from Adams's envoys, Americans toasted "Millions for defense, but not one cent for" what?

Tribute: the toast became a national rallying cry once Adams published the envoys' dispatches in 1798, and the outrage carried the country into an undeclared sea war with France.

In the 1800 election that unseated Adams, Jefferson tied with which man, his own running mate?

Aaron Burr: electors then cast two ballots without marking which was for president, so a ticket's two men could finish level; the Twelfth Amendment closed the loophole in 1804.

Which of Adams's sons, a long-time alcoholic, died in late 1800, just as his father lost the presidency?

Charles died of alcoholism at 30, and his widow Sally and her young daughters later moved in with John and Abigail in Quincy.

Raised in a Congregational church, John Adams came to hold the views of which denomination?

Unitarianism, which rejects the Trinity: Adams's home parish in Quincy had leaned that way since his boyhood, and he is buried beneath its church.

John Adams's four fellow presidents among the first five all came from which state?

Virginia: the other four of the first five presidents were all Virginians who each served two terms, while the lone New Englander among them was voted out after one.

Which fellow envoy shared a bed with John Adams in 1776 and lectured him to sleep about open windows?

Benjamin Franklin insisted the window stay open in their tiny shared room, then expounded his theory of colds until Adams fell asleep.

Which post did John Adams describe as the most insignificant office ever contrived by the invention of man?

The vice presidency left him little to do but preside over the Senate, a role he found too inactive and mechanical for his character.

Which nickname did the frigate USS Constitution, launched during John Adams's presidency, later earn in battle?

Old Ironsides got the name in the War of 1812, when a sailor reportedly saw enemy shot bounce off her hull and cried that her sides were made of iron.

Which French leader, fresh from seizing power in a 1799 coup, made peace with the envoys John Adams sent to Paris?

Napoleon Bonaparte saw no point in a sea fight with America and signalled he was ready for friendly relations, ending two years of clashes.

John Adams crossed party lines in retirement to support which landmark move by his old rival Jefferson?

The Louisiana Purchase won the backing of both Adams and his son John Quincy, then a new senator, though it meant breaking with their own party.

For fourteen years the retired John Adams addressed letters to Jefferson at which estate, his old rival's home?

Monticello received 109 letters from Adams, more than twice as many as Jefferson sent back to Massachusetts.

Which French hero of the Revolutionary War called on the aged John Adams at home during an 1824 tour of America?

Lafayette visited the 88-year-old Adams at Quincy while touring the country as the nation's guest, a reunion the former president greatly enjoyed.

Which actress won an Emmy for playing Abigail Adams in HBO's 2008 miniseries about John Adams?

Laura Linney's Emmy was one of thirteen the series collected, more than any miniseries before it.

Urging Jefferson to draft the Declaration, John Adams called himself obnoxious, suspected and which other word?

Unpopular was his blunt self-assessment, and he added that Jefferson could write ten times better than he could.

Which Oscar-winning actor served as an executive producer of HBO's 2008 miniseries John Adams?

Tom Hanks made it through Playtone, the production company behind his earlier HBO history epic Band of Brothers.

In June 1775, John Adams rose in Congress to nominate George Washington for which crucial post?

Commander-in-chief was a choice Adams pushed to promote union, tying the southern colonies to an army then camped around Boston.

News of which uprising of indebted Massachusetts farmers alarmed John Adams while he served abroad in the 1780s?

Shays' Rebellion saw armed protesters shut down county courts in his home state, and the reports reaching him abroad deepened his anxiety.

What nickname did opponents give the men John Adams named to new federal courts in his final days in office?

The Midnight Judges did not last: most lost their posts when the next Congress abolished the courts created for them.

Which armed service, disbanded after the Revolution, did Congress revive in 1798 under John Adams?

The Marine Corps was resurrected that July, as the country readied its newly built frigates for an undeclared fight at sea with France.

Which new branch of the cabinet was created under John Adams in 1798 as attacks on American shipping mounted?

The Navy Department was set up that spring, and his push for warships has sometimes earned Adams the title father of the American Navy.

Fresh out of college, the young John Adams earned his living in Worcester doing which job?

Teaching school was a stopgap while he pondered his vocation, and within a year he was reading law under a leading Worcester attorney.

John Adams wrote that he must study politics and war so his sons could study mathematics and what?

Philosophy was for his sons; their children, he went on, would then be free to study painting, poetry, music and architecture.

From high ground near the family farm in 1775, Abigail Adams and young John Quincy watched which battle?

Bunker Hill and the burning of Charlestown were visible from Penn Hill, where a cairn of rough stones now marks the spot.

An early number in the musical 1776 is titled after which blunt instruction the delegates give John Adams?

Sit down, they tell him, refusing even to debate his proposals; the song, named "Sit Down, John", set the tone for the whole show.

Which actor, later Mr. Feeny on Boy Meets World, played John Adams in the musical 1776 on stage and screen?

William Daniels starred in the 1969 Broadway original and the 1972 film; fittingly, Mr. Feeny later worked at a John Adams High.

While in office, John Adams risked charges of nepotism by naming his son John Quincy minister to which kingdom?

Prussia was the posting, and John Quincy, himself worried it would look nepotistic, took it up in Berlin after first being slated for Portugal.

Which fiery orator of the Revolution declined John Adams's 1799 nomination to join a peace mission to France?

Patrick Henry turned the post down and died within months, leaving Adams to find a replacement before the mission could sail.

Which Massachusetts envoy stayed on in Paris after his two colleagues quit the XYZ talks during John Adams's term?

Elbridge Gerry stayed behind, and it was his word from Paris that the French wanted peace that reached Adams; his name later gave us gerrymander.

An epidemic of which disease drove John Adams's government to temporary quarters in Trenton in 1799?

Yellow fever had emptied the usual seat of government, and it was at Trenton that Adams resolved, over his cabinet's objections, to send peace commissioners to France.

Presiding over the Senate, John Adams broke a tie to defeat a motion keeping the national capital in which city?

New York lost the capital in a 1790 bargain that sent it south towards the Potomac in return for votes to assume the states' debts.

A leaking ship forced John Adams ashore in 1779 in which country, leaving a six-week trek overland to Paris?

Spain was an unplanned stop: the party landed at Ferrol, and Adams made the long journey with two of his young sons in tow.

What did John Adams do when the frigate carrying him to France in 1778 clashed with enemy vessels?

Took up arms himself, in short: the diplomat joined the fight during a stormy crossing on which a cannon malfunction also killed a sailor.

For the Great Seal, John Adams proposed a scene of which mythical hero choosing between duty and pleasure?

Hercules at the crossroads was his pick, but Congress shelved the first committee's ideas and took six more years to settle on a design.

John Adams's father, a farmer and militia lieutenant, also worked through the winters at which trade?

Shoemaking brought the elder Adams hard money in the months when the fields lay idle.

Which artist painted John Adams with the drafting committee in the Declaration scene on the two-dollar bill?

Trumbull painted many of the figures from life, though the men he showed were never all in the same room at the same time.

Which officer, tried separately from his men, did John Adams get acquitted after the Boston Massacre?

Thomas Preston walked free because no one could prove he had ordered his soldiers to fire, after a trial delayed for months so passions could cool.

Which two-word insult did John Adams aim at delegate John Dickinson in a private letter that Loyalist papers printed?

Piddling genius cost him dearly: Dickinson refused to greet him afterwards, and for a time Adams was largely ostracized in Congress.

Which British admiral met John Adams on Staten Island in September 1776 for peace talks that went nowhere?

Richard Howe said he could treat the delegates only as British subjects, and Adams shot back that he might be seen in any light but that one.

Whose history of the Revolution accused John Adams of a partiality for monarchy, sparking a stormy exchange of letters?

Mercy Otis Warren was an old friend whom Adams himself had once urged to write that history; in time the friendship healed.

In 1781 John Adams's teenage son John Quincy left him in Europe to serve as interpreter on a mission to which country?

Russia was being courted for recognition, and the boy's French made him useful to envoy Francis Dana in Saint Petersburg.

Which Connecticut delegate served beside John Adams on the Committee of Five that produced the Declaration?

Roger Sherman is the only person to have signed all four great state papers of the founding, from the Continental Association to the Constitution.

Under which Latin pen name did John Adams answer the Loyalist essays of Massachusettensis in 1775?

Novanglus answered a writer Adams long took for his friend Jonathan Sewall; decades later the exiled Loyalist Daniel Leonard claimed the letters as his own.

Which 1790 essay series by John Adams, printed in a newspaper, warned of the dangers of unbridled democracy?

Discourses on Davila ran in the Gazette of the United States; Adams was often accused of being a monarchist, a charge he denied.

John Adams first crossed the Atlantic in 1778 to replace which recalled American commissioner in Paris?

Silas Deane had been recalled by a Congress unhappy with the foreign officers he recruited; Adams arrived to find the French alliance already signed.

A 1798 law John Adams signed to care for sick and disabled seamen grew into which modern federal agency?

The Public Health Service traces back to that act, the first federal health law, which docked sailors twenty cents a month to fund hospitals.