I am a history buff. It is mostly US history, and one of the things on my “Bucket List” is to visit the gravesites of each President.
Whether or not I agree with them or not is not important. We can learn something from each Chief Executive, you know things that didn’t work, or things that we might want to replicate.
We must not forget our history. It is part of each of us. How many of us can not name the presidents but can tell you the stats of their favorite teens for the last ten years. It is our duty as Americans to be passionate about our heritage: to know how the Country came into being. We must also be aware of our duty to future generations to preserve our country.
My favorite Presidents don’t belong to one party or another. I want to write about one of them today.
John Adams was the first Vice President and the second President of the United States. "By my constitution, I am but an ordinary man. The times alone have destined me to fame-and even these have not been able to give me much." So said John Adams of himself in his self-deprecating way. I disagree. I believe him to be a great American and the greatest of the founding fathers.
Before becoming President in 1797, John Adams built his reputation as a blunt-speaking man of independent mind. A fervent patriot and brilliant intellectual, Adams served as a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress between 1774 and 1777, as a diplomat in Europe from 1778 to 1788, and as vice president during the Washington administration.
Adams also was the father of the Navy, and during his time in the Continental Congress, he was the one who chose Washington to lead the Army and Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.
He was one of only a handful of the framers who never owned slaves, he knew it was instinctively wrong while Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Hamilton, and even Ben Franklin while they knew it was wrong still possessed them.
America would be a totally different country without John Adams.
Adams was a Federalist. He believed in a strong military and as the son of a church Deacon, he was extremely moral. However, his Presidency is almost forgotten and the few things it is remembered for is not good, such as the Alien and Sedition Act http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/sedition/. This was four laws that were submitted by the Federalist congress to oppress opposing viewpoints. Adams never liked the laws, but did sign it into law. It was a horrible law that basically reversed the First Amendment and made it a crime to speak out against the government. This was not only the low point of his Presidential term, but also of his entire political career.
Adams lived another twenty five years after his electoral loss to his Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, in 1801.
John Adams died on July 4th, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
A last bit of Presidential trivia: Jefferson died on the same day as Adams. They were the only two Presidents that signed the document.
