John Adams and the Structures of Liberty 

This significant anniversary year for our nation invites consideration of the principles of the American Revolution. We should also, however, reflect on the structures that put these principles into practice. The year 1776, in addition to being the anniversary of the Declaration, was also an important year for American constitutionalism. While the Constitution would not be drafted until 1787, the individual states, having declared their independence from Great Britain, began the process of drafting and implementing their own state constitutions. Thus, in this anniversary year, while we celebrate “spirit” of 1776, we should also reflect on the “structure” of 1776.  

On the theme of constitutionalism, the year 2026 also marks the 250th anniversary of John Adams’s pamphlet, Thoughts on Government (“Thoughts”), a work that proved to be influential on American constitutionalism. The claim that John Adams was influential on American constitutionalism seems strange, given that Adams was not even present at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, Adams had a tremendous influence on the governmental structures of several state constitutions, many of which, in turn, influenced the federal Constitution. Adams’s influence can be traced to two documents: Thoughts, published in 1776, and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, of which he was the principal drafter. Political theorist Brad Thompson writes that Adams had a demonstrable influence on the state constitutions of North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. 

A Tale of Two Pamphlets 

Before examining the influence of Adams’s Thoughts, it is helpful to consider the context in which the pamphlet was written. Four months before the publication of Thoughts, in January 1776, another enormously influential pamphlet, Common Sense, was published. While originally published anonymously, the author would eventually be revealed to be Thomas Paine.  

Adams biographer David McCullough writes that Common Sense became a “clarion call” that “swe[pt] the colonies and rous[ed] spirits within Congress” toward the push for independence. In an unprecedented way, the pamphlet “attacked the very idea of hereditary monarchy as absurd and evil” while also providing provocative derisions of King George III and unapologetic arguments in favor of armed rebellion. 

John Adams had a complicated relationship with Common Sense. McCullough recounts that Adams was “flattered” when it was rumored that he was the pamphlet’s author. In a letter clarifying that he was not the author, Adams recognized Paine’s elegant and powerful writing style, but while describing Common Sense as a “meritorious production,” he criticized some of its substance, including Paine’s genealogy of monarchy and the nonchalant attitude that he took toward the practicalities of war with Great Britain.  

While Adams appeared grateful that the pamphlet was able to sway public opinion in favor of American independence, he had reservations about Paine’s recommendations of constitutional governance. In Common Sense, Paine claimed that the British constitution was too complex and its system of checks and balances “farcical.” Instead, Paine advocated replacing British constitutional structures with what was, at the time, called simple government. Rejecting the British system—which operated on a complex system of checks and balances between the king (as executive), the peerage (the upper house of the legislature), and the commons (the lower house of the legislature)—Paine argued that the government ought instead to be a single, unicameral body, democratically elected by the general population.  

John Adams disagreed, regarding Paine’s understanding of government as “feeble.” Indeed, in a letter to his wife Abigail, Adams wrote that Paine had “a better hand at pulling down than building.”  

Common Sense or Sober Reflections? 

It was against this perspective that Adams wrote Thoughts, though it should be noted that Adams did not write Thoughts as a direct, public response to Common Sense. Indeed, while Common Sense was written for a general audience, Thoughts appears to have been written for a more specialized audience. The origins of Adams’s pamphlet suggest that it was written primarily for the framers of the state constitutions.  

William Hooper was a North Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In 1776, he was preparing to return to North Carolina to assist with the framing of his state’s constitution. In anticipation of this task, Hooper reached out to Adams to request a “sketch” of his views and recommendations. Adams drafted a letter containing his recommendations. When John Penn, another North Carolinian, also asked for a copy, Adams obliged, and continued to draft handwritten copies of the letter for Jonathan Sergeant of New Jersey and George Wythe and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. Lee would later, with Adams’s consent, have the letter published as the pamphlet Thoughts on Government in April 1776.  

On Consistent Constitutionalism  

Despite his advocacy for American independence, Adams remained an admirer of British constitutionalism, and the structures he recommended appear to mirror features of the British model. John Adams’s relationship with the British constitution has led to several different assessments from various commentators, including from his own contemporaries.  

The recommendations that Adams made in Thoughts should be familiar to us. Adams recommended a bicameral legislature, with an executive who could exercise a veto power over the legislature as a check. He also recommended annual elections as a way to maintain popular participation. Adams contrasted this with his recommendations for an independent judiciary, consisting of learned jurists rather than laymen, who should receive lifetime appointments and have their salaries set by law. These basic structures remain influential and resemble the current model of government of the U.S. and many state constitutions.  

Additionally, though Thoughts was not written specifically to debunk or critique Common Sense, it is apparent that Adams was wary of Paine’s influence. In fact, Adams devotes an entire section to criticizing unicameralism, arguing that unicameral legislatures are prone to individual vices, avarice, ambition, and a lack of expertise to exercise executive or judicial powers. He was concerned that such a system would create self-serving laws. 

Later in his career, Adams would become a vocal defender of the state constitutional models that many individual states eventually implemented (many of which applied his recommendations). It was in this later book, Defence of the Constitutions of the United States, that Adams would provide the political science that undergirded his recommendations, an approach that was deeply concerned with human nature. Some of the arguments in that book aroused suspicion from some commentators that Adams had drifted away from the revolutionary spirit of his own time to embrace a sort of Anglophilic conservatism. However, in his work, Brad Thompson effectively shows how Adams’s constitutional thought remained generally consistent throughout his life, with the models of constitutional structure that Adams advocated being essentially the same as those that he recommended in in Thoughts.  

Mixed Motivations 

But what were the motives that led Adams to make the recommendations that he offered in Thoughts? It was not merely an admiration for the British constitution, but a recognition that the British constitution was designed in a way that was able to address the challenges of human nature. Adams was concerned with human nature, including human passions, which he thought could be benevolent or asocial. Due to this concern, Adams believed some institutional balance was necessary to maintain a check on this human passion. Thompson identifies the following three prerequisites in Adams’s constitutional thought: “a full representation of the people, a separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, and balance in the legislature among a House of Representatives, a Senate and a Governor.”  Nevertheless, despite Adams’s recognition of certain prerequisites, he also recognized that individual polities needed to introduce their own distinctions to meet their specific needs.  

Interestingly, the model that Adams recommends in Thoughts differs from the frame of government that he drafted in Massachusetts. Specifically, in Thoughts, Adams recommended that the lower house of the legislature be elected directly by the people while the upper house of the legislature be elected by the lower house. These houses would then elect the governor together. In the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, both houses of the legislature and the governor were directly elected by the people. These recommendations were likely to make his suggestions more tenable for an audience of the southern and middle colonies. Adams believed that New England was culturally more democratic than the southern and middle colonies, and he worried that the aristocracy of landholders in the south and the proprietary interests in the middle colonies would be averse to democratic governance.  

Social class, interestingly, played a significant role in Adams’s political and constitutional thought. Adams recognized the reality of class and believed governmental structures should accommodate the different classes in a society. This approach has led some to argue that Adams was a defender of class privilege. However, some contemporary scholars have acknowledged that Adams did not advocate creating an aristocracy, but recommended structures of government as an attempt to restrain aristocratic power.  

What makes Adams’s thought unique is his recognition that an aristocracy has something useful to offer society in general and that governmental structures can be arranged in a way that encourages the elite to exercise their talents for the benefit of the polity as a whole while also minimizing asocial passions. Thus, the seemingly undemocratic aspects of Adams’s recommendations offer a unique safeguard of liberty. For Adams, aristocracies were inevitable because they were not created by the structures of government. Rather, an aristocracy would always emerge because the desire to do great things and be seen doing great things was embedded in human nature. No matter the structure of government, an aristocracy would assert itself.  

The Structures of ‘76 

These reflections are important to consider in this anniversary year. It is not my contention that Adams’s observations were unqualifiedly correct, but that his approach looks beyond the optimistic fervor of the revolutionary spirit to soberly recognize the challenges of governing and the significance of structure. During the anniversary year of the Revolution, it is natural to be enamored of the principles of liberty. But in addition to the principles, it is equally important to remember the structures put in place and their role in the preservation of liberty.  

Adams recognized the importance of the people’s voice in the government. His recommendations related to representation and annual elections reveal as much. However, Adams also recognized that while removing the bridle of governmental structure may free the population, it would also put the population more fully at the mercy of the worst instincts of their nature. Liberty, in this way, is best defended when good structures exist, structures that are designed to avoid governmental tyranny, as well as the tyranny that festers in human nature. As we approach the semiquincentennial, it is important to reflect on the spirit of 1776 and the principles of the Revolution that have shaped the American ethos. But it is also a time to reflect on how our various governmental structures uphold and preserve liberty. 

Public domain image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. Image cropped.