Happy birthday to John Adams!

[Terabith]

Happy birthday to John Adams (10/30)!

 

There was absolutely nothing more important to John Adams, who was almost certainly the smartest man who has ever been president, than his moral principles and doing what was right. He was cranky and contrary and almost enjoyed his principles more if he was fighting against the crowd and supporting the underdog.

 

You couldn’t have picked a better spokesman than John Adams for colonial independence, in other words.

 

John Adams’s intelligence and verbal skills were prodigious. He regularly used his mind to accomplish the impossible. He dedicated his mind and his writing to fighting and winning the most uphill battles he could find.

 

In 1770, members of the British army shot and killed five civilians in what was called the “Boston Massacre.” The soldiers had to be put on trial, but there was a problem. Nobody would take their case. Every lawyer in the colonies knew that whoever defended the evil, horrible British would certainly: 1) lose, and 2) be crucified by the Bostonians who really, really, really hated the British.

 

John Adams did not care about being vilified. Honestly, any stance that was likely to make him be vilified only increased its appeal in his eyes. John loved humanity, but he wasn’t crazy about people. He did not care about being popular, although he did care a great deal about his legacy. He had ideals and convictions and beliefs up the wazoo, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, more important to him than sticking up for his convictions. His motto was, “Being righteous is more important than having friends.”

 

No wonder he was a one term president.

 

But this is exactly why he was just the man to defend the British soldiers who committed the Boston Massacre. Boston was the seat of anti-British sentiment in the colonies. Honestly, the folks in New York and Pennsylvania and Virginia weren’t all that upset with the British, but anger with Great Britain had reached a fever pitch in Boston, which is why the “massacre” happened to begin with. The civilians provoked the attack. They confronted the British soldiers as a mob armed with clubs, hurling garbage and insults, and suggesting that the British fire upon them. That’s how much the Bostonians hated the British. They begged to be shot, just so they would have an excuse to demand independence. The townsfolk of Boston went to the trial to intimidate the witnesses into testifying against the British. These soldiers were facing a trial by a jury full of Bostonians who hated their guts, and the witnesses were being tampered with.

 

John Adams defended the British soldiers, and he won. That’s how good he is. That’s how smart he is. When Adams believes he is right, there is no force on the planet that can stop him. He convinced the entire courtroom that the soldiers who shot and killed five civilians were in the right.

 

John Adams took that energy into the Continental Congress, where he faced the uphill battle of convincing all the other representatives that a revolution was necessary. Almost everyone else there disagreed with him and wanted to negotiate with the British peacefully and avoid a war with the world’s first superpower. Only John Adams and George Washington knew that a violent revolution was necessary and had to happen immediately. Adams convinced everyone there. Richard Stockton, New Jersey’s representative to the Continental Congress, called Adams the “Atlas of American Independence” because of his dedication to carrying the cause for independence on his back. Adams’s speeches advocating independence were so heartfelt and convincing that he moved people to tears, and he convinced Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson, who was an ardent pacifist and wanted peace with Britain more than anything, into quitting the Continental Congress and joining the Pennsylvania militia.

 

John Adams and Ben Franklin were once traveling together for a conference, when they were forced by weather to stop at a roadside inn. The inn only had one bed available, so they snuggled down to share it, and promptly got into a big argument about whether the window should be open or closed. The argument ended when Franklin went into such a long winded and boring lecture on the health benefits of sleeping in cold air that John Adams fell asleep.

 

While touring Shakespeare’s home with Thomas Jefferson, the two of them broke away from the tour and chipped off a piece of Shakespeare’s chair to keep as a souvenir. Of course, maybe this act and not Jefferson wrestling the presidency away from Adams was what cursed their friendship. The two former best friends spent years as sworn enemies, messing with each other’s ambitions, before finally reconciling in their old age.

Shakespeare’s ghost couldn’t cause that, could it? Well, Adams wrote in his diary about a curse he found on Shakespeare’s grave. A curse that references people who “remove things from their rightful place.”

 

Alexander Hamilton might have been famous for writing like he was running out of time, but John Adams might have had him beat. He wrote about everything in his diary and in his long letters to his wife Abigail, a brilliant woman who was a mental match for John. He would write everything about everyone he met. How tall they were, what they were interested in, what their strengths and flaws were. He knew people well enough to know what they needed to hear to get them to see his own point of view, and if they still wouldn’t join his side, he would take their biggest insecurity and hold it up for everyone to see.

 

Unfortunately, being president is pretty much a political position, and part of being a good president is getting other people to like you or at least work with you. And, really, getting people to like him was not really Adams’s forte.

 

One of the things John Adams, a highly educated and brilliant man, was proudest of was his declaration that the American Academy for the Arts and Sciences should be established. It still exists as a forum of scholarship. Adams said its establishment was one of his proudest accomplishments.

During the famed election of 1800, when Jefferson was running against Adams, John Adams said this about his own vice president and former best friend: "Prostitutes ... will preside in the sanctuaries now devoted to the worship of the Most High."  Later, he expanded his claims to say that Jefferson would enforce the "teaching of murder robbery, rape, adultery, and incest."

 

Thomas Jefferson had been John Adams’s best friend, up until the time of the Constitutional Convention. They had worked together for independence, but their views on the specifics of how the country should be run broke down their friendship. John Adams believed the presidency should be a very strong position, almost monarchial, while Jefferson distrusted strong central authority. This soured their friendship so much that when Jefferson defeated Adams (and Aaron Burr) in the election of 1800, Adams did not stick around for the inauguration. He sneaked out of the White House and back to Massachusetts in the middle of the night.

 

As he got older, he began to think with fondness about his former friendship with Jefferson, and they reconciled through letters.

Both John Adams and his lifelong friendenemy Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Terabith

[Drama Llama]

You should publish a book, with a snarky biography of each president.  Snarky Stories by Ter A. Bith.  You just need a kickass snarky illustrator.

[Indigo Blue]

Oh, Ms. Bith, will you sign my copy of Snarky Stories? 😂

[EmilyGF]

DD16 enjoyed learning that she shares her birthday with John Adams, especially since she finished the movie about him last night!

[Beth S]

His wife's letters are a great read. 

I'm thinking SWB would help you publish this!  😉

Competitive until the end, JA's final words were "TJ still survives" . . . but in reality TJ had died 5 hours earlier.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Beth S

[gardenmom5]

It's also my grandfather's birthday.  😄

 

I love 1776, even my boys were singing and quoting it when they were in middle school.