John Adams

John Adams was a Boston lawyer who pushed the colonies toward independence in the Continental Congress, helped edit the Declaration, spent the later war as a diplomat in Europe, and became the second president in 1797. His letters with his wife Abigail are among the best records of the whole era.

His bravest act came before the war. After the Boston Massacre in 1770 he defended the British soldiers in court, because he believed everyone deserved counsel, and most were acquitted. He was also the first president to live in the White House, moving in during November 1800, when the building was still unfinished. On the Freedom Trail, the Old State House balcony looks down on the massacre site marked in the street below.