Adams served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War under Governor John Albion Andrew of Massachusetts.

[5] He graduated from Harvard University in 1853, studied law, and two years later was admitted to the Suffolk County bar,[6] and practiced in Boston.

He followed his profession for a short time, then, becoming interested in agriculture, he established an experimental model farm of five hundred acres near Quincy, Massachusetts.

[14] After losing an election for lieutenant governor in 1876, Adams refused most further involvement in politics, though he was considered by Grover Cleveland for a cabinet position in 1893.

[26] Through his daughter, Abigail, he was the grandfather of George Casper Homans (1910–1989), a sociologist and the founder of behavioral sociology and the Social Exchange Theory.