John Adams

• Vice President to:       General George Washington - Federalist, from Virginia.
  
  
  • George Washington served from 1789 - 1797. He died in 1799, at the age of 67.
    
    
• Dates Served: Adams served as Vice President from 1789 - 1797.
  
• Political Party: Adams was a Federalist, from Massachusetts.
  
• Born: 1735.
  
• Died: 1826, at the age of 90.
  
• The presidential opponents during the 1789 and 1792 campaigns were:
  
  
  • Nobody
    (Washington was unanimously appointed for both of his terms by all Electoral delegates from all states)
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1789 and 1792:
  
  
  • None, really. The only issue in both campaign years was that Washginton was the obvious choice to lead the new nation.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about John Adams:
  
  
  • America's first Vice President, John Adams described the office like this:
    
    
    "My country has, in its wisdom, contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."
    
    
  • Religious affiliation: Adams was a practicing Unitarian and Congregationalist. He wasn't exactly dogmatic, denying the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. Adams said he couldn't accept the idea of a god-man allowing his creatures to crucify him, and he couldn't understand the 3-in-1 paradox of the Trinity, so he rejected it. He was content with the proposal that people need simply to follow their conscience and basic morals of the Bible in order to be a good Christian.
    
    
  • Adams was a Mayflower descendant. His great-great grandparents were John and Priscilla Alden, two of the Pilgrims who arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
    
    
  • Adams married his third-cousin.
    
    
  • A lawyer, he made his name famous early by defending the 9 British soldiers implicated in the so-called Boston Massacre in 1770, in which a total of 3 Americans were killed by British soldiers (not the "hundreds" that rumor claimed). They were given relatively minor sentences (seven were found not guilty and two had their thumbs branded, then were released), which earned Adams his fellow-citizens' resentment for many years.
    
    
  • He served in the Massachusetts legislature from 1770 - 1774.
    
    
  • He was a member of the Constitutional Congress from 1774 - 1777, as a Massachusetts delegate. He signed the Declaration of Independence, one of only 2 future presidents to do so. (Thomas Jefferson was the other.)
    
    
  • From 1780 - 1781 he was US Minister to Holland, where he obtained Dutch recognition of America's independence.
    
    
  • He conducted the Treaty of Paris in 1783, in which the British ceded its claims to its former 13 colonies, with Britain also ceding the Florida territory to Spain. The treaty defined the western border of the United States at the Mississippi river.
    
    
  • In 1785 he was the first US Minister to Britain, but British resentment over loosing the war was still ripe, so he went back home early.
    
    
  • John Adams and Thomas Jefferson didn't play well together. Jefferson had this to say about Adams, in a letter written to James Madison in 1787, "He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men. This all is the ill which can possibly be said of him. He is as disinterested as the Being who made him". Ouch.
    
    
  • Not being one to turn down a fight, Adams started the first negative Presidential campaign, when he ran for a second term. His party, the Federalists, warned that if Jefferson was elected "There is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a Civil War. Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced". He lost anyway.
    
    
  • While he was Vice President, Adams spent a lot of time presiding over the Senate, and developed a reputation as a royalist, and bit of a dandy. He was obsessed with protocol and formalities, even proposing that the proper way to address the president should be "His Highness". Instead, Congressmen addressed Adams as "His Rotundity" and "His Superfluous Excellency".
    
    
  • As Vice President, Adams cast 29 tie-breaking votes while presiding over the Senate, easily a Vice Presidential record.
    
    
  • When Jefferson won the next election for President, Adams was so miffed that he stayed up all night making a large number of dastardly appointments of Federalists and Federalist-leaning judges to all sorts of key posts, just to get back at his arch-enemy, the evil Thomas Jefferson. On Inauguration Day Adams got up early and slipped out of town, not bothering to attend his arch-rival's swearing in. Jefferson later reversed many of these appointments.
    
    
  • During the next 25 years after his presidency, Adams embarked on a voluminous letter-writing career, rekindling friendships with old political enemies, most notably Thomas Jefferson, and the two became the best of pals. (These two would have loved Email).
    
    
  • In 1820 he served as a member of the Electoral College, casting one of Massachusetts' 15 Electoral votes for President Monroe during his re-election campaign, even though Adams was a Federalist and Monroe was a member of the opposing party.
    
    
  • When he was 89 years old, John Adams was present at the inauguration of his son, John Quincy Adams in 1824. He was only one of two ex-Presidents or Vice Presidents to see their son inaugurated President, with George Bush senior doing the same honors 177 years later.
    
    
  • In his old age, Adams once visited the Massachusetts State House in Boston and toured an exhibit of busts cast of famous political leaders. He stopped in front of 2 busts, one being of George Washington and the other being of himself. He pointed with his cane to the bust of Washington and is said to have commented, "There was a man who had sense enough to keep his mouth shut." Then he tapped the bust of himself with his cane and said, "But that damn' fool had not."
    
    
  • John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day, on the 4th of July, 50 years, to the day, after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Adams was unaware that Jefferson had died only a few hours before, and his last words on his death-bed were "Jefferson still lives!".
    

Notable events during his Vice Presidency:

• US Capitol moved from New York to Philadelphia, in 1790. (It finally moved to Washington DC in 1800)
  
  
• The U.S. Supreme Court meets for the first time, in February, 1790, one year after it was created under the Judiciary Act. There were originally 6 Justices. When the Constitution was written it was dictated that "there shall be a supreme court" but left it up to Congress to work out the details. Over the next 80 years the number of justices was periodically changed to 7, then to 9, then to 10, back to 7 and, finally settled at 9 justices in 1869. FDR's Vice President John Garner proposed increasing the number of Justices to 16 in the 1930's, but the idea didn't catch on.
  
  
• George Washington was the first President to grow marijuana. In 1794 he once said, "Make the most of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere". He also brewed his own beer, even publishing his own beer recipe. The White House has been a house of ill repute ever since.
  
  
• The Whiskey Rebellion, in 1794. The first challenge to the new federal authority, farmers in Pennsylvania refused to pay the excise tax on liquor. Washington responded by sending 15,000 soldiers to enforce the payment.
  
  
• Jay's Treaty, in 1795, where George Washington relinquished US rights to neutrality at sea, allowing the British to search and seize US ships, in exchange for the British evacuating outposts in the Northwest territories. Not one of Washington's more popular moves, since the British often "impressed" US citizens from ships into the Royal army. (since the British argued that "once an Englishman, always an Englishman"). This eventually led to the War of 1812.
  
  
• Pinckney's Treaty, in 1795, which fixed the border between the US and Spanish Florida at the 31st Parallel, in exchange for unhindered use of the Mississippi river and port of New Orleans for exports.
  
  
• The modern pencil is invented in 1795 by Nicholas Jacques Conte, a French chemist. Only 63 years later, the first pencil with an eraser is invented, in 1858.
  
  
• Vermont was the first new state admitted into the Union, in 1791.
  
  
• Kentucky was admitted into the Union in 1792, and Tennessee in 1796.
  
  
• The first 10 Constitutional Amendments (the Bill of Rights) were ratified in 1791.
  
  
• The 11th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1705, which stated that a citizen in one state cannot sue another state.