The son of a successful merchant and manufacturer, Adams graduated from Amherst College, Massachusetts, in 1872 and attended lectures in Germany between 1874 and 1876 at Göttingen, Berlin, and Heidelberg, receiving his Ph.D. from the latter in July 1876. His stay in Germany had two results. It started him on the road, in his own historical work, toward a “germ theory of politics,” which traced American political institutions to their supposed origin in early Anglo-Saxon village institutions; and it convinced him of the superior quality of scholarship and instruction possible in the seminar method of teaching.

When Adams joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in 1876, he was influential in instituting a seminar in history that became an important model for American higher education. Named secretary of the newly formed American Historical Association in 1884, Adams extended his activities to the editing of publications by the U.S. Bureau of Education.

While Adams' own scholarship and criticism were relatively undistinguished, his enthusiasm and interest were highly influential on his students, among them the future U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and the eminent historian Frederick Jackson Turner.