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JOHN ADAMS

John Adams was an American politician. He was born in 1735 at Braintree (now Quincy) Massachusetts and died in 1826. He was educated at Harvard University, and adopted the law as a profession. His attention was directed to politics by the question as to the right of the English parliament to tax the colonies, and in 1765 he published some essays strongly opposed to
the claims of the mother country. As a member of the new American congress in 1774, 1775, and 1776 he was strenuous in his opposition to the home government, and in organizing the various departments of the colonial government. On 13th May, 1776, he seconded the motion for a declaration of independence proposed by Lee of Virginia, and was appointed a member of committee to draw it up. The declaration was actually drawn up by Jefferson, but it was John Adams who fought it through congress.

In 1778 he went to France on a special mission, but soon came back and again returned, and for nine years resided abroad as representative of his country in France; Holland, and England. After taking part in the peace negotiations he was appointed, in 1785, the first ambassador of the United States to the court of St James. He was recalled in 1788, and the following-year elected vice-president of the republic under George Washington. In 1792 he was re-elected vice-president, and at the following election in 1797 he became president in succession to George Washington. The commonwealth was then divided into two parties, the federalists, who favoured aristocratic and were suspected of monarchic views, and the republicans. Adams adhered to the former party, with which his views of government had always been in accordance, but the real leader of the party was Alexander Hamilton, with whom John Adams did not agree, and who tried to prevent his election. John Adams was a leader in the movement for independence an his presidency was marked by rivalry with fellow-Federalist Alexander Hamilton, controversy over government measures taken to curb political opposition, and a crisis in American relations with France.

His term of office proved a stormy one, which broke up and dissolved the federalist party. His re-election in 1801 was again opposed by the efforts of Alexander Hamilton, which ended in effecting the return of the republican candidate Jefferson. Thus it happened that when John Adams retired from office his influence and popularity with both parties were at an end, and he sunk at once into the obscurity of private life. He had the consolation, however, of living to see his son president. He died on the 4th of July, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and on the same day as Jefferson. His works were ably edited by his grandson Charles Francis Adams.

John Couch Adams was a British astronomer. He was born in 1819 and died in 1892. He studied at Cambridge, and was senior wrangler in 1843. His investigations into the irregularities in the motion of the planet Uranus led him to the conclusion that they must be caused by another more distant planet, and the results of his labours were communicated in September and October, 1845, to Professor Challis and Airy the astronomer royal. The French astronomer Leverrier had by this time been engaged in the same line of research, and had come to substantially the same results, which, being published in 1846, led to the actual discovery of the planet Neptune by Galle of Berlin. In 1858 John Adams was appointed Lowndean professor of astronomy and geometry at Cambridge.

John Bodkin Adams was an English physician and alleged murderer. He was born in 1899 and died in 1983. In 1957 he was tried for the murder of an elderly patient who died in suspicious circumstances shortly after making Dr Adams a beneficiary in her will. Although he was acquitted, most students of the case believe the trial was a miscarriage of justice, and his guilt proven. Further investigations suggest that at least nine elderly ladies were poisoned by Dr Adams for financial gain.
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