- Successfully defended the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre from the charge of murder. Author of the pamphlet: “Thoughts on Government” which became the blueprint for most of the state Constitutions and through them the federal Constitution. Adams also wrote the Massachusetts Constitution. He was the second president of the United States of America.
If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Emily Dickinson, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1870)