bservations, I sometimes retire and, by laying things together, form
some reflections pleasing to myself. The produce of one of these
reveries you have read above." Mr. Webster observes: "It is remarkable
that the author of this prognostication should live to see fulfilled to
the letter what could have seemed to others, at the time, but the
extravagance of youthful fancy. His earliest political feelings were
thus strongly American, and from this ardent attachment to his native
soil he never departed."

In 1764 he married Abigail Smith, daughter of Rev. William Smith, of
Weymouth, and grand-daughter of Colonel Quincy, a lady of uncommon
endowments and excellent education. He had previously imbibed a
prejudice against the prevailing religious opinions of New England, and
became attached to speculations hostile to those opinions. Nor were his
views afterward changed. In his religious sentiments he accorded with
Dr. Bancroft, a Unitarian minister of Worcester, of whose printed
sermons he expressed his high approbation. In 1765 Mr. Adams published
an essay on canon and feudal law, the object of which was to show the
conspiracy between Church and State for the purpose of oppressing the
people.

In 1770 he was chosen a representative from the town of Boston, in the
Legislature of Massachusetts. The same year he was one of the counsel
who defended Captain Preston and the British soldiers who fired at his
order upon the inhabitants of Boston. Captain Preston was acquitted, and
Mr. Adams lost no favor with his fellow-citizens by engaging in this
trial. As a member of the Legislature he opposed the royal governor,
Hutchinson, in his measures, and also wrote against the British
Government in the newspapers. In 1774 he was elected a member of the
Massachusetts Council, and negatived by Governor Gage. In this and the
next year he wrote on the Whig side, the pamphlets called "Nov Anglus,"
in reply to essays, signed "Massachusitensis," in favor of the British
Government, by Sewall, the attorney-general. The same year he was
appointed a member of the Continental Congress, from Massachusetts, and
in that body, which met at Philadelphia, he became one of the most
efficient and able advocates of liberty. In the Congress which met in
May, 1775, he again took his seat, having been reappointed as a
delegate. In 1775 he seconded the nomination of Washington as
commander-in-chief of the army, and in July, 1776, he was the adviser
and great su