Continental Congress

In the summer of 1774, Adams was elected to the Massachusetts delegation that joined the representatives from 12 of 13 colonies in Philadelphia at the First Continental Congress. He and his cousin, Samuel Adams, quickly became the leaders of the radical faction, which rejected the prospects for reconciliation with Britain. His “Novanglus” essays, published early in 1775, moved the constitutional argument forward another notch, insisting that Parliament lacked the authority not just to tax the colonies but also to legislate for them in any way. (Less than a year earlier, Thomas Jefferson had made a similar argument against parliamentary authority in A Summary View of the Rights of British America.)

By the time the Second Continental Congress convened in 1775, Adams had gained the reputation as “the Atlas of independence.” Over the course of the following year, he made several major contributions to the patriot cause destined to ensure his place in American history. First, he nominated George Washington to serve as commander of the fledging Continental Army. Second, he selected Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence. (Both decisions were designed to ensure Virginia’s support for the revolution.) Third, he dominated the debate in the Congress on July 2–4, 1776, defending Jefferson’s draft of the declaration and demanding unanimous support for a decisive break with Great Britain. Moreover, he had written Thoughts on Government, which circulated throughout the colonies as the major guidebook for the drafting of new state constitutions. In it, among other concerns, he contemplated the sort of representative assembly that would be most conducive to good government:

It should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or, in other words, equal interests among the people should have equal interests in it. Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections.

Adams remained the central figure of the Continental Congress for the following two years. He drafted the Plan of Treaties in July 1776, a document that provided the framework for a treaty with France and that almost inadvertently identified the strategic priorities that would shape American foreign policy over the next century. He was the unanimous choice to head the Board of War and Ordnance and was thereby made in effect a one-man war department responsible for raising and equipping the American army and creating from scratch an American navy. As the prospects for a crucial wartime alliance with France improved late in 1777, he was chosen to join Benjamin Franklin in Paris to conduct the negotiations. In February 1778 he sailed for Europe, accompanied by 10-year-old John Quincy.

Foreign service

By the time Adams arrived in Paris, the treaty creating an alliance with France had already been concluded. He quickly returned home in the summer of 1779, just in time to join the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention. The other delegates, acknowledging his constitutional expertise, simply handed him the job of drafting what became the Massachusetts constitution (1780), which immediately became the model for the other state constitutions and—in its insistence on a bicameral legislature and the separation of powers—a major influence on the Constitution of the United States.

The Congress then ordered Adams to rejoin Franklin in Paris to lead the American delegation responsible for negotiating an end to the war with Britain. This time he took along his youngest son, Charles, as well as John Quincy, leaving Abigail to tend the farm and the other two children in Braintree. Not until 1784, almost five years later, was the entire family reunited in Paris. By then Adams had shown himself an unnatural diplomat, exhibiting a level of candor and a confrontational style toward both English and French negotiators that alienated Franklin, who came to regard his colleague as slightly deranged. Adams, for his part, thought Franklin excessively impressed with his own stature as the Gallic version of the American genius and therefore inadequately attuned to the important differences between American and French interests in the peace negotiations. The favorable terms achieved in the Peace of Paris (1783) can be attributed to the effective blend of Franklin’s discretion and Adams’s bulldog temperament. Adams’s reputation for emotional explosions also dates from this period. Recent scholarly studies suggest that he might have suffered from a hyperthyroid condition subsequently known as Graves’ disease.

In 1784 Jefferson arrived in Paris to replace Franklin as the American minister at the French court. Over the next few months, Jefferson became an unofficial member of the Adams family, and the bond of friendship between Adams and Jefferson was sealed, a lifelong partnership and rivalry that made the combative New Englander and the elegant Virginian the odd couple of the American Revolution. Jefferson also visited the Adams family in England in 1785, after Adams had assumed his new post as American ambassador in London. The two men also joined forces, though Adams as the senior figure assumed the lead, in negotiating a $400,000 loan from Dutch bankers that allowed the American government to consolidate its European debts.