John Adams

John Adams (October 30, 1735 - July 4, 1826) was a Founding Father who served as the first Vice President of the United States under George Washington from 1789 to 1797 and as the second President from 1797 to 1801. Before independence he was a lawyer who defended British soldiers charged in the 1770 Boston Massacre on the principle of the right to counsel, then represented Massachusetts in the Continental Congress, where he helped draft and became the leading advocate for the Declaration of Independence in 1776; he later served as a diplomat in Europe, helping negotiate the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War and securing loans from the Dutch Republic, and became the first United States ambassador to Great Britain. As president his administration was dominated by the French Revolutionary Wars, during which he built up the United States Navy amid an undeclared naval conflict with France and signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts; he was the first president to reside in the White House. After losing reelection in 1800 to his former ally turned rival Thomas Jefferson, he retired to Massachusetts, eventually reconciled with Jefferson through an extensive correspondence, and died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; his son John Quincy Adams later became the sixth president.