Posted by
Logophile on Monday, October 30, 2006 7:30:52 AM
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”
--John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
John Adams was born 271 years ago today in Braintree, Massachusetts.
He was a champion of the republican form of government, which became the form adopted in the United States Constitution. He was an advocate of the separation of powers, which makes me wonder what he would think about the judicial activism going on in our day.
He had the honor of seconding the resolution on June 7, 1776 by Richard Henry Lee that the British colonies in America should be free and independent. Then he was appointed to the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence, although Thomas Jefferson did most of the writing.
Adams was the first Vice President (1789-1797) and second President of the United States (1797-1801).
He was the first president to live in the White House.
He died on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence--July 4, 1826--the exact day that Thomas Jefferson died.