***Adams'? Adams's?
We know that nearly all the founding fathers were slave owners. John Adams held a strong opposition to the practice and he never owned slaves even though it would have been easy to do so for a man of his means.
Was his anti-slavery position considered an extremely radical view at the time, among his contemporaries? Did other wealthy white men of his time consider his view to be far and away outside the normal? Or was it an opinion more widely held by other white men with healthy discourse and disagreement around it?
I totally understand if this gets removed but in answer to the question about name formatting (for anyone curious) - it's Adams's. This can look odd to some people but it's the generally accepted form that's appropriate.