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John Adams on HBO: Join or Die. John Adams: Join or Die The title of the show I
watched was Join or Die, a part of the John Adams series shown on HBO in 2008. ...
Top 10 Things To Know About John Adams. ... Jefferson believed staunchly in protecting
state's rights while John Adams was a devoted federalist. ...
Founding Father John Adams. John Adams remains the most misconstrued and
unappreciated "great man" in American History (Ellis). The ...
John and Abigail Adams. ... As for John Adams, he seems to express his feelings
toward Abigail more in the film than in the letters. ...
John Adams. David McCullough. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
656 pp. David McCullough was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ...
Submitted by CPPP on March 23, 2008
Category: Biographies
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earned and thoughtful, John Adams was more remarkable as a political philosopher than as a politician. "People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity," he said, doubtless thinking of his own as well as the American experience.
Adams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735. 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.
During the Revolutionary War he served in France and Holland in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace. From 1785 to 1788 he was minister to the Court of St. James's, returning to be elected Vice President under George Washington.
Adams' two terms as Vice President were frustrating experiences for a man of his vigor, intellect, and vanity. 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."
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.
His administration focused on France, where the Directory, the ruling group, had refused to receive the American envoy and had suspended commercial relations.
Adams 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. 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."
The Nation broke out into what Jefferson called "the X. Y. Z. fever," increased in intensity by Adams's exhortations. The...
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