JOHN ADAMS, 2nd, 1797-1801

John Adams was not a happy president. He has been labeled manic-depressive, slightly paranoid, and a man consumed by an irrepressible urge to master the world.

Adams started smoking and chewing tobacco at age eight and continued throughout his life.

Once, when asked to provide a physical description of himself, he wrote back: "I have one head, four limbs, and five senses, like any other man, and nothing peculiar in any of them." Standing 5 feet 7 inches, Adams was always stocky but grew notoriously plump and was called "His Rotundity" behind his back.

In Adams's time, political candidates were listed together on a ballot that did not differentiate between the offices. Each elector voted twice, and the highest and next-highest vote getters became president and vice president. Adams liked the system, claiming it would remind great men aspiring to political office the "virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey."

Throughout his life, he was haughty, condescending, self-righteous, and cantankerous; he was so aloof that even the people with whom he joined forces were not always sure he was on their side. To his wife, Abigail, he would address letters "My Diana," after the Roman goddess of the moon. He was her Lysander, Spartan hero, giant of great heart.

Adams knew his health deteriorated under stressful circumstances. His diary records: "Great Anxiety and distress," and "Pain in my Breast and a complaint in my Lungs." His life, he wrote, is "a continual Scaene of Fatigue, Vexation, Labour, and Anxiety." Sensitive to heat, he sweated profusely even on cool evenings. He also confessed to Mental Confusion, Fidgets, Pidlings, and Irritabilities. He said, "Ballast is what I want. I totter with every breeze."

The presidency wore out Adams. His eyes weakened so that he could barely read or write, he lost his hair and teeth and he lisped because he refused to wear false ones. He also developed a hand tremor he referred to as Quiveration.

One of two presidents to sign the Declaration of Independence, Adams died on its fiftieth anniversary. His friend and political rival, Jefferson, had died some hours earlier that same day. Although it is said that Adams's last words were "Thomas Jefferson survives," in fact, the last word was indistinct and imperfectly uttered.

d. July 4, 1826 (Quincy, Massachusetts), at 90, of old age.