own victim, beneath his passion for uncharita
ble criticism. Also like his son, though more
intermittently and in a less degree, he is pos
sessed of the devil of suspiciousness, constantly
conceiving himself to be the object of limitless
envy, malice, hostility, and of the most ignoble
undermining processes. As a young man he
often imagined that his neighbors and acquaint
ances were resolved that he should not get on



8 JOHN ADAMS

in the world, though it does not appear that he
encountered any peculiar or exceptional obsta
cles of this kind. But to his credit it may be
noted that in his early years he had a know
ledge of these weaknesses of his disposition. He
wishes that he could conquer his " natural pride
and self-conceit ; expect no more deference from
iny fellows than I deserve ; acquire meekness
and humility," etc. He acknowledges having
been too ready with " ill-natured remarks upon
the intellectuals, manners, practice, etc., of other
people." He wisely resolves, "for the future,
never to say an ill-natured thing concerning
ministers or the ministerial profession; never
to say an envious thing concerning governors,
judges, clerks, sheriffs, lawyers, or any other
honorable or lucrative offices or officers ; never
to show my own importance or superiority by
remarking the foibles, vices, or inferiority of
others. But I now resolve, as far as lies in me,
to take notice chiefly of the amiable qualities
of other people; to put the most favorable
construction upon the weaknesses, bigotry, and
errors of others, etc. ; and to labor more for an
inoffensive and amiable than for a shining and
invidious character," most wise communings,
showing an admirable introspection, yet resolves
which could not at present be consistently car
ried out by their maker. Adams s nature, both



YOUTH 9

in its good and in its ill traits, was far too
strong to be greatly re-shaped by any efforts
which he could make. The elements of his
powerful character were immutable, and under
went no substantial and permanent modifications
either through voluntary effort or by the pres
sure of circumstances ; in all important points
he was the same from the cradle to the grave,
with perhaps a brief exception during the ear
lier period of his service in the Revolutionary
Congress, when we shall see him rising superior
to all his foibles, and presenting a wonderfully
noble appearance. The overweening vanity,
which became a ridiculous disfigurement after
he had climbed high upon the ladder of distinc
tion, was not yet excessive while he still lingered
upon the first rounds. Indeed, he is shrewd
enough to say : " Vanity, I am sensible, is my
cardinal vice and cardinal folly ; " and he even
has occasional fits of genuine diffidence of his
own powers, and distrust as to his prospects
of moderate success. Only when that success
actually came did all chance of curing himself
of the fault disappear. As a young man he
cherished no lofty ambition, or at least he kept
it modestly in the background. He does not at
all resemble his rival of later years, Alexander
Hamilton; he is conscious of no extraordinary
ability, and longs for no remarkable career, nor



10 JOHN ADAMS

asserts any fitness for it. His anticipations, even
his hopes, seem limited to achieving that mea
sure of prosperity, good repute, and influence
which attend upon the more prominent men
of any neighborhood. A circuit of forty miles
around Boston is a large enough sphere, beyond
which his dreams of the future do not wander.

A youth who had received a collegiate educa
tion, at a cost of not inconsiderable sacrifice on
the part of his parents, lay in those days under
a sort of moral obligation to adopt a profession.
Between law, divinity, and medicine, therefore,
Adams had to make his choice. Further, while
contemplating the subject and preparing himself
for one of these pursuits he ought to support
himself. To this end he obtained the position
of master of the grammar school at Worcester,
whither he repaired in the summer of 1755.
His first tendency was to become a clergyman,
not so much, apparently, by reason of any strong
fancy for the clerical calling as because there
seems to have been a sort of understanding 011
the part of his family and friends that he should
make this selection, and he was willing enough
to gratify them. It was not altogether so sin
gular and foolish a notion as at first it strikes us.
The New England clergy still retained much
of the prestige and influence which they had
enjoyed in the earlier colonial days, when they



YOUTH 11

had exercised a civil authority often overshadow
ing that of the nominal officers of government.
Men of great ability and strong character still
found room for their aspirations in the ministry.
They were a set to be respected, obeyed, even
to some extent to be feared, but hardly to be
loved, and vastly unlike the Christian minister
of the present day. They were not required
to be sweet-tempered, nor addicted to loving-
kindness, nor to be charitably disposed towards
one another, or indeed towards anybody. On
the contrary, they were a dictatorial, militant,
polemical, not to say a quarrelsome and harsh-
tongued race. They were permitted, and even
encouraged, to display much vigor in speech
and action. Nevertheless the figure of impetu
ous, dogmatic, combative, opinionated, energetic,
practical, and withal liberal John Adams in a
pulpit is exceedingly droll. He was much too
big, too enterprising, too masterful, for such a
cage. He would have resembled the wolf of the
story, who could never keep himself wholly cov
ered by the old dame s cloak. His irrepressibly
secular nature would have been constantly pro
truding at one point or another from beneath
the clerical raiment. It would have been inevi
table that sooner or later he should escape alto
gether from the uncongenial thralldom, at the
cost of a more or less serious waste of time and



12 JOHN ADAMS

somewhat ridiculous process of change. Fortu
nately his good sense or sound instinct saved
him from a too costly blunder. Yet for many
months his diary is sprinkled with remarks con
cerning the flinty theology and the intense,
though very unchristian, Christianity of those
days. Nevertheless the truth constantly peeps
out ; disputatious enough, and severe upon back-
slidings, he appears not sufficiently narrow in
intellect and merciless in disposition ; he could
not squeeze himself within the rigid confines
which hemmed in the local divine. It is to no
purpose that he resolves " to rise with the sun
and to study the Scriptures on Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings," and
that occasionally he writes " Scripture poetry
industriously " of a morning. The effort is too
obvious. Yet he was religiously inclined. The
great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which filled
Europe with infidels, inspired him with a sense
of religious awe. " God Almighty," he says,
" has exerted the strength of his tremendous
arm, and shook one of the finest, richest, and
most populous cities in Europe into ruin and
destruction by an earthquake. The greatest part
of Europe and the greatest part of America
have been in violent convulsions, and admonished
the inhabitants of both that neither riches nor
honors nor the solid globe itself is a proper



YOUTH 13

basis on which to build our hopes of security."
The Byronic period of his youth even takes a
religious form. He gloomily reflects that :

" One third of our time is consumed in sleep, and
three sevenths of the remainder is spent in procuring
a mere animal sustenance ; and if we live to the age
of threescore and ten, and then sit down to make an
estimate in our minds of the happiness we have en
joyed and the misery we have suffered, we shall find,
I am apt to think, that the overbalance of happiness
is quite inconsiderable. We shall find that we have
been, through the greater part of our lives, pursuing
shadows, and empty but glittering phantoms, rather
than substances. We shall find that we have applied
our whole vigor, all our faculties, in the pursuit of
honor or wealth or learning, or some other such delu
sive trifle, instead of the real and everlasting excel
lences of piety and virtue. Habits of contemplating
the Deity and his transcendent excellences, and cor
respondent habits of complacency in and dependence
upon Him ; habits of reverence and gratitude to God,
and habits of love and compassion to our fellow-men,
and habits of temperance, recollection, and self-govern
ment, will afford us a real and substantial pleasure.
We may then exult in a consciousness of the favor of
God and the prospect of everlasting felicity."

A young man of twenty who, in our day,
should write in this strain would be thought fit
for nothing better than the church ; but Adams
was really at war with the prevalent church




14 JOHN ADAMS

spirit of New England. Thus one evening in
a conversation with Major Greene " about the
divinity and satisfaction of Jesus Christ," the
major advanced the argument that "a mere
creature or finite being could not make satisfac
tion to infinite justice for any crimes," and sug
gested that " these things are very mysterious."
Adams s crisp commentary was : " Thus mys
tery is made a convenient cover for absurdity."
Again he asks : " Where do we find a precept
in the gospel requiring ecclesiastical synods ?
convocations ? councils ? decrees ? creeds ? con
fessions ? oaths ? subscriptions ? and whole cart
loads of other trumpery that we find religion
incumbered with in these days?" Independ
ence in thought and expression soon caused him
to be charged with the heinous unsoundness of
Arminianism, an accusation which he endeavored
neither to palliate nor deny, but quite cheerfully
admitted. A few such comments, more com
merce even with the tiny colonial world around
him, a little thinking and discussion upon doc
trinal points, sufficed for his shrewd common
sense, and satisfied him that he was not fitted
to labor in the ministerial vineyard as he saw
it platted and walled in. Accordingly, upon
August 21, 1756, he definitely renounced the
scheme. On the following day he writes gravely
in his diary :



YOUTH 15

" Yesterday I completed a contract with Mr. Put
nam to study law under his inspection for two years.
. . . Necessity drove me to this determination, but
my inclination, I think, was to preach ; however, that
would not do. But I set out with firm resolutions, I
think, never to commit any meanness or injustice in
the practice of law. The study and practice of law,
I am sure, does not dissolve the obligations of mo
rality or of religion ; and, although the reason of my
quitting divinity was my opinion concerning some dis
puted points, I hope I shall not give reason of offense
to any in that profession by imprudent warmth."

Thus fortunately for himself and for the peo
ple of the colonies, Adams escaped the first
peril which threatened the abridgment of his
great usefulness. Yet the choice was not made
without opposition from " uncles and other rela
tions, full of the most illiberal prejudices against
the law." Adams says that he had " a proper
veneration and affection " for these relatives,
but that, being " under no obligation of grati
tude " to them, he " thought little of their
opinions." Young men nowadays are little apt
to be controlled by uncles or even aunts in such
matters, but John Adams s independence was
more characteristic of himself than of those
times.



CHAPTER II

AT THE BAR

ON August 23, 1756, Adams says that he
" came to Mr. Putnam s and began law, and
studied not very closely this week." But he
was no sluggard in any respect save that he
was fond of lying abed late of mornings. Jus
tinian s Institutes with Vinnius s Notes, the
works of Bracton, Britton, Fleta, Glanville,
and all the other ponderous Latin tomes be
hind which the law of that day lay intrenched,
yielded up their wisdom to his persistency. He
had his hours of relaxation, in which he smoked
his pipe, chatted with Dr. Savil s wife, and read
her Ovid s " Art of Love," a singular volume,
truly, for a young Puritan to read aloud with
a lady ! Yet in the main he was a hard stu
dent ; so that by October, 1758, he was ready to
begin business, and came to Boston to consult
with Jeremiah Gridley, the leader and " father "
of that bar, as to the necessary steps " for an
introduction to the practice of law in this coun
try." Gridley was very kind with the young
man, who seems to have shown upon this occa-



AT THE BAR 17

sion a real and becoming bashfulness. Among
other pieces of advice, the shrewd old lawyer
gave to the youngster these two : first, " to pur
sue the study of the law rather than the gain of
it ; pursue the gain of it enough to keep out of
the briars, but give your main attention to the
study of it ; " second, " not to marry early, for
an early marriage will obstruct your improve
ment, and in the next place it will involve you
in expense." On Monday, November 6, the
same distinguished friend, with a few words of
kindly presentation, recommended Adams to
the court for the oath. This formality being
satisfactorily concluded, says Adams, " I shook
hands with the bar, and received their congrat
ulations, and invited them over to Stone s to
drink some punch, where the most of us resorted
and had a very cheerful chat." Through this
alcoholic christening the neophyte was introduced
into the full communion of the brethren, and
thereafter it only remained for him to secure
clients. He had not to wait quite so long for
these trailing-footed gentry as is often the wea
risome lot of young lawyers ; for the colonists
were a singularly litigious race, suing out writs
upon provocations which in these good-natured
days would hardly be thought to justify hard
words, unconsciously training that contradictory
and law-loving temper which really went far to



18 JOHN ADAMS

bring about the quarrels with Parliament, so
soon to occur. Fees were small, mercifully
adapted not to discourage the poorest client,
so that the man who could not afford " to take
the law" might as well at once seek the tran
quil shelter of the " town farm." Accordingly,
though Adams was anxious and occasionally
dispirited, he seems to have done very well.

He had many admirable qualifications for
success, of which by no means the least was his
firm resolution to succeed ; for throughout his
life any resolution which he seriously made was
pretty sure to be carried through. He was, of
course, honest, trustworthy, and industrious ; he
exacted of himself the highest degree of care
and skill ; he cultivated as well as he could
the slender stock of tact with which nature had
scantily endowed him; more useful traits, not
needing cultivation, were a stubbornness and
combativeness which made him a hard man to
beat at the bar as afterwards in political life.
In a word, he was sure to get clients, and soon
did so. He followed the first part of Gridley s
advice to such good purpose that he afterwards
said : " I believe no lawyer in America ever did
so much business as I did afterwards, in the
seventeen years that I passed in the practice
at the bar, for so little profit." Yet this
"little profit" was enough to enable him to



AT THE BAR 19

treat more lightly Gridley s second item, for
on October 25, 1764, he took to himself a wife.
The lady was Abigail Smith, daughter of Wil
liam Smith, a clergyman in the neighboring
town of Weymouth, and of his wife, Elizabeth
(Quincy) Smith. But the matrimonial ven
ture was far from proving an "obstruction to
improvement ; " for " by this marriage John
Adams became allied with a numerous connec
tion of families, among the most respectable for
their weight and influence in the province, and
it was immediately perceptible in the consider
able increase of his professional practice." In
other respects, also, it was a singularly happy
union. Mrs. Adams was a woman of unusu
ally fine mind and noble character, and proved
herself a most able helpmate and congenial
comrade for her husband throughout the many
severe trials as well as in the brilliant triumphs
of his long career. Not often does fate allot to
a great man a domestic partner so fit to counsel
and sustain as was Abigail Adams, whose mem
ory deserves to be, as indeed it still is, held in
high esteem and admiration.

History depicts no race less fitted by charac
ter, habits, and traditions to endure oppression
than the colonists of New England. Numeri
cally the chief proportion of them, and in point



20 JOHN ADAMS

of influence nearly all who were worthy of con
sideration, were allied with the men who had
successfully defied and overthrown the British
monarchy. The surroundings and mode of life
of settlers in a new country had permitted
no deterioration in the physical courage and
hardihood of that class which, in Cromwell s
army, had constituted as fine a body of troops
as the world has seen to the present day. It
was simply impossible to affect New Englanders
through the sense of fear. Far removed from
the sight of monarchical power, and from con
tact with the offensive display of aristocracy,
they had ceased to hate this form of govern
ment, and even entertained feelings of loyalty
and attachment towards it. But these senti
ments throve only upon the condition of good
treatment ; and on the instant when harshness
destroyed the sense of reciprocity, the good
will of the dependent body disappeared. Even
while the rebellious temper slumbered, the inde
pendent spirit had been nourished by all the
conditions of social, intellectual, even of civil
life. The chief officers of government had
been sent over from England, and some legisla
tion had taken place in Parliament; but the
smaller laws and regulations, which, with the
ministers thereof, touched the daily lives and
affairs of the people, had been largely estab-



AT THE BAR 21

lished by the colonists themselves. They were
a thinking race, intelligent, disputatious, and
combative. The religion which absorbed much
of their mental activity had cherished these
qualities ; and though their creed was narrow,
rigid, and severe, yet they did not accept it,
like slaves of a hierarchy, without thought and
criticism. On the contrary, their theology was
notably polemical, and discussion and dispute
on matters of doctrine were the very essence of
their Christianity. Their faith constituted a
sort of gymnasium or arena for the constant
matching of strength and skill. They were
ready at every sort of intellectual combat. The
very sternness of their beliefs was the exponent
of their uncompromising spirit, the outgrowth
of a certain fierceness of disposition, and by no
means a weight or pall which had settled down
upon their faculties of free thought. Men with
such bodies, minds, and morals, not slow to take
offense, quick to find arguments upon their own
side, utterly fearless, and of most stubborn met
tle, furnished poor material for the construction
of a subservient class. Moreover, they were
shrewd, practical men of business, with the ap
titude of the Anglo-Saxon for affairs, and with
his taste for money-getting, his proneness for
enterprise, his passion for worldly success ; hence
they were very sensitive to any obstacle cast



22 JOHN ADAMS

in the way of their steady progress towards
material prosperity. The king and the ruling
classes of Great Britain had no comprehension
whatsoever of all these distinguishing traits of
the singular race with whom they undertook to
deal upon a system fundamentally wrong, and
of which every development and detail was a
blunder.

In nearly every respect John Adams was a
typical New Englander of the times ; at least it
may be said that in no one individual did the
colonial character find a more respectable or a
more comprehensible development than in him,
so that to understand and appreciate him is to
understand and appreciate the New England
of his day ; and to draw him is to draw the col
onists in their best form. It was inevitable
from the outset that he should be a patriot ;
if men of his mind and temper could hesitate,
there could be no material out of which to con
struct a " liberty party " in the province. At
first, of course, older and better known men
took the lead, and he, still a parvus lulus, was
fain to follow with unequal steps the vigorous
strides of the fiery Otis, and of that earliest of
genuine democrats, Samuel Adams. But the
career of Otis was like the electric flash which
so appropriately slew him, brief, brilliant, start
ling, sinking into melancholy darkness ; and



AT THE BAR 23

John Adams pressed steadily forward, first to
the side of his distinguished cousin, and erelong
in advance of him.

It was in 1761 that Otis delivered his dar
ing and famous argument against the writs of
assistance. This was the first log of the pile
which afterward made the great blaze of the
Revolution. John Adams had the good fortune
to hear that bold and stirring speech, and came
away from the impressive scene all aglow with
patriotic ardor. The influence of such free and
noble eloquence upon the young man was tre
mendous. As his son classically puts it : " It
was to Mr. Adams like the oath of Hamilcar
administered to Hannibal." He took some
slight notes of the argument at the time, and in
his old age he proved the indelible impression
which it had made upon him by writing out the
vivid story. His memoranda, though involving
some natural inaccuracies, constitute the best
among the meagre records of this important
event. He said afterward that at this scene he
had witnessed the birth of American Independ
ence. " American Independence was then and
there born. The seeds of patriots and heroes,
to defend the non sine diis animosus infans, to
defend the vigorous youth, were then and there
sown. Every man of an immense, crowded
audience appeared to me to go away, as I did,



24 JOHN ADAMS

ready to take arms against writs of assistance.
Then and there was the first scene of the first
act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of
Great Britain. Then and there the child In
dependence was born. In fifteen years, i. e. in
1776, he grew up to manhood and declared him
self free." Such impassioned language, written
in the tranquillity of extreme age, nearly three
score years after the occurrence, shows what
feelings were aroused at the time. The seed
which Otis flung into the mind of this youth
fell upon a sufficiently warm and fertile soil.

In this initial struggle of the writs of assist
ance the royal government obtained a nominal
victory in the affirmation of the technical legal
ity of the process ; but the colonists enjoyed the
substance of success, since the attempt to issue
the obnoxious writ was not repeated. The trou
bled waters, not being soon again disturbed,
recovered their usual placidity of surface, but
the strong under-current of popular thought and
temper had been stimulated not in the direction
of loyalty. From the day of Otis s argument
Adams, for his part, remained a patriot through
his very marrow. Yet he continued to give
close attention to his own professional business,
which he steadily increased. Gradually he
gained that repute and standing among his
fellow citizens which careful study, sound sense,



AT THE BAR 25

and a strong character are sure in time to secure.
He held from time to time some of the smaller
local offices which indicate that a young man is
well thought of by his neighbors. Such was his
position when in 1765 the Stamp Act set the
province in a flame and launched him, altogether
unexpectedly, upon that public career which was
to endure to the end of his active years. This
momentous piece of legislation was passed in
Parliament innocently and thoughtlessly enough
by a vote of 294 to 49, in March, 1765. It was
to take effect on November 1 of the same year.
But the simple-minded indifference of the Eng
lish legislators was abundantly offset by the
rage of the provincials. The tale of the revolt is
too familiar to be repeated ; every child knows
how the effigy of stamp-distributor Oliver was
first hanged and then burned ; how he himself
was compelled by the zealous " Sons of Liberty "
to resign his office ; how his place of business
was demolished ; how his house and the houses
of Hutchinson and of other officials were sacked
by the mob. These extravagant doings dis
gusted Adams, whose notions of resistance were
widely different. In his own town of Braintree
he took the lead of the malcontents; he drew