John Adams Study Guide

Two unremarkable men rode on horseback through a bleak New England night. The smaller and older was the talkative John Adams, lawyer, farmer, Harvard graduate, husband of Abigail Smith Adams, father of four children, portly but fit, plain dressed - and a revolutionary. He loved family, farm, books and writing. He angered and forgave quickly. He cared deeply for friends, and he was kind-hearted, brilliant, independent and frugal. He was honest about his ambition to succeed in life. A Christian and an independent thinker, he was a student of human foibles, well read in the classics and modern literature. For years, Adams had shone in the court circuit and in publishing. Patriotism burned in him. A year earlier, at the First Continental Congress, he had been a "sensible and forcible figure." Abigail and John had hated being separated, but she supported his "arduous task" wholeheartedly, bearing up under the shortages brought when the British fleet occupied Boston harbor. (read more)