John Adams the Attorney
Opposing the Stamp Act and Defending the Boston Massacre
John Adams, son of a farmer and shoemaker, attended Harvard, taught school, then became an attorney. He married Abigail Smith and became involved in defending America aga
John Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, present-day Quincy, Massachusetts on October 30, 1735. His birth home, a small frame house, was still standing in the 1960s. Adams, a fifth-generation American, was the son of a farmer and part-time shoemaker.
The elder Adams was a Harvard graduate and, not surprising, a proponent of higher education. Thus, young John Adams followed in his father's footsteps and attended Harvard at the age of sixteen. Of the twenty-four students in his class, Adams was ranked one of the best students. His social standing amongst his peers was, however, much lower. Socially, John Adams stood only fourteenth in his class.
After graduating from Harvard in 1755, Adams taught school for one year in Worcester, Massachusetts before deciding to become a lawyer. For two years he studied under the guidance of a Worchester attorney, James Putnam. He was admitted to the bar in October of 1758, then began his law practice in Braintree.
At the age of twenty-nine, Adams was struggling as a small-town lawyer. He also met and married Abigail Smith, the daughter of a clergyman.
Although Abigail was ten year younger than John, she is said to have matched this future second president in wit and in a love for books. Abby, as John called his wife, presented Adams with five children. Their eldest, John Quincy, would become the sixth President of the United States.
John Adams and his cousin Sam Adams, in 1765, took active parts in urging opposition to the British Parliament's Stamp Act. While his cousin assisted in organizing the famed Sons of Liberty to stir up mob rejection of British authority and enforcement, John was busy preparing resolutions against this stamp act. John was also the anonymous writer of Boston Gazette articles that urged people to defend America's liberties.
In 1766, it became time for John to improve his law practice and moved his family to Boston. His most famous case came when he defended a British captain and eight soldiers who had fired into a mob, a situation now called the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770. He defended, and won a near complete acquittal, feeling that the British authorities who had stationed the men in Boston were the ones actually guilty of murder.
Source:
Whitney, David C. The American Presidents. Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York, 1967.
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