DOCUMENT: CLS-REBUILD · CLASSIFICATION: PUBLIC METHODOLOGY: SYMMETRIC · STATUS: ACTIVE
Who Sits at the Seat · Founder

John Adams

1735-1826 Founder Live

Massachusetts lawyer and diplomat, author of the Massachusetts Constitution, second president.

Ask John Adams a question

Answers come only from his own recorded words, with every quotation checked against its source.

Who he was

John Adams was a Massachusetts lawyer and diplomat. He wrote Thoughts on Government (1776), drafted the Massachusetts Constitution and its Declaration of Rights (1779-80), and served as the second president.

His earlier writings defend free inquiry and the press, from the Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765), which urged readers to "dare to read, think, speak and write," to his draft declaring that the liberty of the press "ought not to be restrained."

As president he signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In our corpus that signing is reported by his editor, Charles Francis Adams, not in his own words.

Why he is at the Seat

Adams is the clearest case on the Seat of a founder whose stated principles and later conduct are both on the record. Asking him about the press tests whether an answer can hold both.

What we hold

Editions
  • C.F. Adams, The Works of John Adams (10 vols., 1850-56)
  • Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife (1876)
  • Correspondence with Mercy Warren (1878), William Cunningham (1823) and Benjamin Waterhouse (1927); Old Family Letters (1892)
  • The Warren-Adams Letters (1917-25); Wilstach's selection of the Adams-Jefferson letters (1925)
  • Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 (Library of Congress, 1976-2000)
Size
About 2.6 million words classed as his own text. Word counts are whole files, so they include editors' headnotes and footnotes.
Coverage
24.5% of the 10,099 documents Founders Online catalogues as his (a lower bound).

Known limits

  • Thin on 1798 and the Sedition Act: 414 of the 483 catalogued documents from 1798 are missing, so answers on the Acts report his earlier and later words better than the year itself.
  • Most family letters and much of his correspondence after 1801 are missing. The full Adams-Jefferson letters (Cappon, 1959) are under copyright.

Questions he answers well

The questions his engine was tested on before it opened.

  • Should the government punish seditious or libelous writing, or does the liberty of the press forbid it?
  • Should the government punish knowingly false statements about candidates and elections?

Published answers

More in Prior Questions.