controversy within the party. Upon Adams's accession to office, relations with France had been complicated by the Directory's refusal to receive Pinckney, and when finally the joint mission of Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry met with highly questionable treatment, the prospect seemed dubious. (See X Y Z Correspondence.)
War seemed imminent, and indeed there were hostile encounters on the water. Preparations for the struggle were coupled with the effort to repress the violent opposition to the policy of the administration through the harsh means of the Alien and Sedition Acts (q.v.). War having been averted, it was at once recognized that the federalists in these statutes had gone too far in restraining the rights of the individual and in encroaching upon the jurisdiction of the States. Certain it was that in his thoroughness Adams had given his opponents a very welcome and a very powerful means of attack, of which they promptly and vigorously took advantage, and at once began, by such steps as the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions (q.v.), the campaign which finally established the party of the opposite doctrine. This establishment was made easy also by the internal weakening of the Federalist party in the bitter fight for leadership between Adams and Hamilton. The retirement of Adams thus occurred amid the hostility of his enemies and the hatred of those who were his party associates. Nor was it possible to expect any relief from the painfulness of such a situation when the defeated one possessed a manner and a temperament such as were Adams's. Consequently, aside from intermittent criticism and counter criticism, and aside from service in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1820, this retirement continued unbroken. He died July 4, 1826, on the same day as Jefferson. President John Quincy Adams was his son.
Consult: His Works, with a biography, edited by C. F. Adams, 10 volumes (Boston, 1850-56); also his biography, J. T. Morse (Boston, 1884); The Letters of Abigail and John Adams (Boston, 1840-41), and Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife During the Revolution: With a Memoir of Mrs. Adams, edited by C. F. Adams (New York, 1876).
ADAMS, John (1760-1829). The assumed
name of Alexander Smith, one of the mutineers of the English ship Bounty. With eight sailors and some men and women from Tahiti he landed on Pitcairn Island and formed a government, of which he was the head. In 1800 he was the only surviving Englishman. He established worship
and such a school as was possible. In 1808, Captain Folger, an American, landed there and brought the world the first news of this strange settlement. Adams had not heard a word from civilized countries for twenty years. England never sought to punish him, and he died in peace,
leaving a prosperous and religious people. See
Pitcairn Island).
ADAMS, John (1772-1863). An American
teacher. He was born in Connecticut, graduated at Yale, 1795, and after teaching for fifteen years in secondary schools in New Jersey and his native State, became principal of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. That place he filled for twenty-three years, resigning in 1833. Beside having built up one of the historic schools of New England, Dr. Adams is remembered as the
schoolmaster of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the subject of the lines:
| “Uneasy lie the heads of all that rule — His most of all whose kingdom is a school.” |
Consult: M. E. B. and H. G. B., The Story of John Adams, a New England Schoolmaster (1900).
ADAMS, John Couch (1819-92). An English astronomer. He was born near Launceston, in Cornwall, and early manifested an aptitude for mathematics. After the usual amount of school training he was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he attained the honor of senior wrangler, and became a mathematical tutor. In 1843 he attempted to ascertain by mathematical calculation whether certain observed irregularities in the motion of Uranus could be explained on the hypothesis of perturbation (q.v.)
exercised by an exterior planet. The problem at issue was the inverse of the usual perturbation problem. Instead of computing the effect brought about by a planet of known mass pursuing a known orbit, it was required to determine the unknown cause of a known effect. By 1845 Adams had solved this new problem, and was able to assign to the hypothetical planet, the now well known Neptune, a position differing less than two degrees from its actual place in the sky. But a careful telescopic search was at the time postponed or neglected, so that the honor of the great discovery completing Adams's mathematical researches by an observational verification was lost to Great Britain. Leverrier, of Paris, had been making an independent investigation, and by August 31, 1846, he too had determined Neptune's place in the sky. He wrote to Galle at Berlin, and the latter found the planet on September 23 of the same year. This mathematical discovery of Neptune is justly counted among the greatest triumphs of science.
ADAMS, John Quincy (1767-1848). The sixth President of the United States and son of the second President, John Adams. He was born in Quincy, Mass., July 11, 1767. In 1778 he was taken abroad by his father when the latter visited Paris on a diplomatic mission, and only three years later, after studying for brief periods at Paris, Leyden, and Amsterdam, the youth was appointed private secretary to Francis Dana, the American minister to Russia. After some service at St. Petersburg, Adams again joined his father, then negotiating the final peace at Paris; but when, after the conclusion of that important work, the elder Adams was
rewarded with the English mission, the younger Adams adopted the significant and even remarkable course of returning home and entering Harvard College.
Upon his graduation there in 1787 he began the study of law with Theophilus Parsons (q.v.), and was admitted to the bar in 1790. He contributed to the political literature of the time, discussing the theories of Tom Paine, and especially the Genet incident (see Genet, E. C.), and our relations with France. His unusual opportunities and training were readily recognized, and in 1794 Washington sent him as minister to The Hague. Later he was appointed to the Portuguese mission, but before he had entered upon the duties of that office his father had become President, and the son, upon the recommendation of Washington himself, was transferred to the more responsible post of min-
