Abijah Adams was a journalist who frequently found himself involved in controversies. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

He was trained as a tailor, and married Lucy Ballard in 1790. In 1799, he took a job with the newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 the Independent Chronicle, a Jeffersonian

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

 newspaper controlled by his brother, Thomas Adams. That year he was convicted of libel against the Federalist-controlled state government for his role in the newspaper's vocal opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts

Alien and Sedition Acts

The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams...

. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail. The following year, he was promoted to the position of editor, which he shared with Ebenezer Rhodes. In 1811, he received a conviction for libel arising from his comments on the conduct in office of Theophilus Parsons

Theophilus Parsons

Theophilus Parsons was an American jurist.Born in Newbury, Massachusetts, and the son of a clergyman, Parsons was one of the early students at the Dummer Academy before matriculating to Harvard College from which he graduated in 1769, was a schoolmaster in Falmouth from 1770–1773; he studied law,...

, who was at the time the Chief Justice

Chief Justice

The Chief Justice in many countries is the name for the presiding member of a Supreme Court in Commonwealth or other countries with an Anglo-Saxon justice system based on English common law, such as the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the Court of Final Appeal of...

 of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The SJC has the distinction of being the oldest continuously functioning appellate court in the Western Hemisphere.-History:...

, but was later pardoned. He died in 1816.