John Adams (1735-1826) was an American lawyer, revolutionary, diplomat, constitutional thinker, vice president, and second president. He defended British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, argued for independence, helped secure foreign support, and wrote extensively on republican government. His letters, especially with Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson, reveal a restless political mind.
John Adams's Thoughts on Government and selected letters present a founder preoccupied with constitutional balance, civic virtue, law, ambition, and the fragility of republics. Thoughts on Government, written in 1776, argues that new American states should avoid simple unicameral democracy and instead build mixed, balanced institutions with separated powers and independent courts.
John Adams wrote A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America in London, where he was serving as the first American minister to Great Britain. The occasion was a letter of 1778 from the French statesman Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot to the English minister Richard Price, published by Price in 1784, which regretted that most American states had imitated England with a governor, a council and an assembly instead of collecting all authority into one centre, the nation.
