The populace cheered itself hoarse wherever the President appeared. fever,” increased in intensity by Adams’s exhortations.
The Nation broke out into what Jefferson called “the X. Adams reported the insult to Congress, and the Senate printed the correspondence, in which the Frenchmen were referred to only as “X, Y, and Z.” His administration focused on France, where the Directory, the ruling group, had refused to receive the American envoy and had suspended commercial relations.Īdams sent three commissioners to France, but in the spring of 1798 word arrived that the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand and the Directory had refused to negotiate with them unless they would first pay a substantial bribe. When Adams became President, the war between the French and British was causing great difficulties for the United States on the high seas and intense partisanship among contending factions within the Nation. He complained to his wife Abigail, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” James’s, returning to be elected Vice President under George Washington.Īdams’ two terms as Vice President were frustrating experiences for a man of his vigor, intellect, and vanity. From 1785 to 1788 he was minister to the Court of St. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he early became identified with the patriot cause a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, he led in the movement for independence.ĭuring the Revolutionary War he served in France and Holland in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace.
“People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity,” he said, doubtless thinking of his own as well as the American experience.Īdams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735.
Learned and thoughtful, John Adams was more remarkable as a political philosopher than as a politician. John Adams, a remarkable political philosopher, served as the second President of the United States (1797-1801), after serving as the first Vice President under President George Washington.
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