John Adams kept a diary, wrote thousands of letters, argued cases before colonial courts, drafted constitutions, and served as the second President of the United States. The primary record is extensive. This episode draws from four documents that show the range of what he argued and why.
On March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd on King Street in Boston, killing five colonists. The event was immediately called a massacre. Paul Revere's engraving — depicting an ordered British volley against an unarmed crowd — circulated across the colonies. Samuel Adams used it as propaganda. The soldiers were arrested and charged with murder.
John Adams agreed to defend them. He was already a leader of colonial resistance, a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and a public opponent of British policy. He took the case because he believed every person accused of a crime deserved a defense — and because he believed an unfair trial would damage the colonial cause more than an acquittal. He recorded his reasoning in his diary. In his closing argument at the December 1770 trial, he addressed the jury directly.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact; if an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear, they had a right to kill in their own defence; if it was not so severe as to endanger their lives, yet if they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows of any sort, by snow-balls, oyster-shells, clubs, or any other weapons which might and actually did endanger their lives, they had an excusable homicide.
Six of the eight soldiers were acquitted. Two were convicted of manslaughter, branded on the thumb, and released. Adams later wrote in his diary that the defense was "one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country." The diary entry is at the Massachusetts Historical Society digital archive.
In early 1776, before independence was declared, several colonies were drafting new state constitutions. Adams was asked repeatedly by colleagues what form of government he recommended. He wrote a pamphlet — "Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies" — outlining the principles he believed a republican government required. It was published in Philadelphia in April 1776. Its argument for separated powers, bicameral legislature, and an independent judiciary shaped multiple state constitutions. The pamphlet is at Founders Online and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
There is no good government but what is Republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; because the very definition of a Republic, is "an Empire of Laws, and not of Men." That, as a Republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words that form of government, which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of Republics.
On March 31, 1776, while Adams was in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress debating independence, his wife Abigail Adams wrote him a letter from Braintree, Massachusetts. The original is at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The full text is at Founders Online.
I long to hear that you have declared an independancy — and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
John Adams replied on April 14, 1776. His reply is also at Founders Online.
Both letters are at Founders Online. The original manuscripts are at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which holds the Adams Family Papers — one of the largest family correspondence archives in American history.
On July 2, 1776, Congress voted to adopt Richard Henry Lee's resolution for independence. The following day, July 3, Adams wrote Abigail Adams one of the most quoted letters in American history. He predicted — incorrectly, as it turned out — that July 2 would be the date celebrated. He did not know yet that the Declaration would be adopted July 4 and commemorated on that date instead. The letter is at Founders Online.
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — who had been friends, then political enemies, then friends again through a remarkable late-life correspondence — both died on July 4, 1826: the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams died at his home in Quincy, Massachusetts at approximately 6:20 in the evening. Jefferson had died earlier that day at Monticello in Virginia.
Adams's last words were reported as "Thomas Jefferson survives." He did not know Jefferson had already died that morning. The Adams-Jefferson correspondence from 1812 to 1826 — 158 letters between them in their final years — is at Founders Online. The collection is one of the most complete records of two founding-era minds reconsidering their lives and their era.