The subject of this narrative was a great-grandson of Henry Adams, who
emigrated from England about 1640, with a family of eight sons, being
one of the earliest settlers in the town of Braintree, Massachusetts,
where he had a grant of a small tract of forty acres of land. The father
of John Adams, a deacon of the church, was a farmer by occupation, to
which was added the business of shoemaking. He was a man of limited
means, however, was enabled by hard pinching to give his son a fairly
good education.
The old French and Indian war was then at its height; and in a
remarkable letter to a friend, which contains some curious
prognostications as to the relative population and commerce of England
and her colonies a hundred years hence, young Adams describes himself
as having turned politician. He succeeded in gaining charge of the
grammar school in Worcester, Massachusetts, but, instead of finding this
duty agreeable, he found it 'a school of affliction,' and turned his
attention to the study of law. Determined to become a first-class
lawyer, he placed himself under the especial tuition of the only lawyer
of whom Worcester, though the county seat, could boast.
He had thought seriously of the clerical profession, but, according to
his own expressions, "The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils,
of diabolical malice, and Calvinistic good nature," the operation of
which he had witnessed in some church controversies in his native town,
terrified him out of it. Adams was a very ambitious man; already he had
longings for distinction. Could he have obtained a troop of horse, or a
company of infantry, he would undoubtedly have entered the army. Nothing
but want of patronage prevented his becoming a soldier.
After a two years' course of study, he returned to his native town,
Braintree, and in 1758 commenced practice in Suffolk county, of which
Boston was the shire town. By hard study and hard work he gradually
introduced himself into practice, and in 1764 married a young lady far
above his station in life. In our perusal and study of eminent men who
have risen by their own exertions to a higher sphere in life, we are not
at all surprised to find that they have invariably married noble
women--ladies, who have always maintained a restraining influence when
the desire for honor and public attention would appeal to their baser
self, and whose guiding influence tended to strengthen their efforts
when their energies seemed to slacken. So it was with John Adams; his
wife was a lady of rare abilities and good sense, admirably adapted to
make him happy. Boys, be careful whom you marry!
Shortly after his entrance into the practice of the law, the attempt at
parliamentary taxation diverted his attention from his profession to
politics. He was a most active oppositionist. He promoted the call of
the town of Braintree to instruct the representatives of the town on the
subject of the Stamp Act. The resolutions which he presented at this
meeting were not only voted by the town, but attracted great attention
throughout the province, and were adopted verbatim by more than forty
different towns. Thus it is seen that Adams had not studied hard all
these years for nothing; the price of success is honest, faithful WORK.
Of course his towns-people would reward him. Men who have ability,
unless some bolt is loose, will invariably gain success. Soon after this
Mr. Adams was appointed on the part of the town of Boston to be one of
their counsel, along with the King's attorney, and head of the bar, and
James Otis, the celebrated orator, to support a memorial addressed to
the Governor and Council, that the courts might proceed with business
though no stamps were to be had. Although junior counsel, it fell to
Adams to open the case for the petitioners, as his seniors could not
join; the one owing to his position as King's attorney, the other could
not as he had recently published a book entitled the 'Rights of the
Colonies.' This was a grand opportunity for Adams and he made the most
of it,--boldly taking the ground that the stamp act was null and void,
Parliament having no right to tax the colonies. Nothing, however, came
of this application; the Governor and Council declining to act, on the
ground that it belonged to the Judges, not to them, to decide.
But Adams had put himself on record, and this record established his
reputation. "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the
flood, leads on to fortune." The time came to Adams to distinguish
himself, and he was not found wanting. It was at this same period that
Mr. Adams first appeared as a writer in the _Boston Gazette_. He never
allowed his opportunities to pass unheeded; in fact, he made his
opportunities. Among other papers which appeared at this time from his
pen, was a series of four articles which were republished in a London
newspaper, and subsequently published in a collection of documents
relating to the taxation controversy, printed in a large volume. At
first the papers had no title in the printed volume, being known as
"Essays on the Canon and Feudal Law." Well they might have been called
so, but, it seems to us, that it would have been much more consistent to
have entitled them "Essays on the Government and Rights of New England."
His style was formed from the first, as is evident from the articles.
His law business continued to increase and in 1768 he removed to Boston
where he would have a larger field in which to develop his intellect. He
served on various committees during the next two years, and in 1770 was
chosen a Representative to the general Court, notwithstanding he had
just before accepted a retainer to defend Captain Preston and his
soldiers for their share in what had passed into history as the Boston
massacre. His ability as a practitioner at the bar can be judged from
the successful result of their case, as managed by him, against great
public prejudice. Adams' duties as a Representative interfered much
with his business as a lawyer, on which he depended for support, and
which had grown to be larger than that of any other practitioner at the
provincial bar.
He entered upon the duties of his new office with his customary energy,
becoming the chief legal advisor of the Patriot party, and now for the
first time an active and conspicuous leader of the same. Mr. Adams' keen
foresight enabled him to wisely judge that it would be a good policy not
to push too vigorously to the front as a politician until his private
wealth would justify his necessarily great loss of time. Hence, he moved
back to Braintree, resigning his seat in the Legislature, but still
retaining his law office in Boston. A comparative lull in politics made
his presence in that body less needed, but still he was consulted as to
all the more difficult points in the controversy with Governor
Hutchinson, and freely gave his aid. Indeed, it was not long before he
moved back to Boston, but thoroughly resolved to avoid politics, and to
devote his undivided attention to his professional work. Soon after his
return to Boston he wrote a series of letters on the then mooted
question of the independence of the judiciary, and the payment by the
Crown of the salaries of the Judges. Soon after this he was elected by
the general Court to the Provincial Council, but was rejected by
Governor Hutchinson.
The destruction of tea, and the Boston port bill that followed, soon
brought matters to a crisis. These events produced the congress of 1774.
Mr. Adams was one of the five delegates sent from Massachusetts, and his
visit to Philadelphia at this time was the first occasion of his going
beyond the limits of New England. In the discussions in the committee on
the declaration of colonial rights, he took an active part in resting
those rights on the law of nature as well as the law of England; and
when the substance of those resolutions had been agreed upon he was
chosen to put the matter in shape. In his diary the most trustworthy and
graphic descriptions are to be found of the members and doings of that
famous but little known body. The session concluded, Mr. Adams left the
city of brotherly love with little expectation, at that time, of ever
again seeing it.
Immediately after his return home he was chosen by his native town a
member of the provincial congress then in session. That congress had
already appointed a committee of safety vested with general executive
powers; had seized the provincial revenues; had appointed general
officers, collected military stores, and had taken steps toward
organizing a volunteer army of minute-men. The governor--Gage--had
issued a proclamation denouncing these proceedings, but no attention was
ever paid to it. Gage had no support except in the five or six regiments
that guarded Boston, a few trembling officials and a small following
from the people.
Shortly after the adjournment of this congress Adams occupied himself in
answering through the press a champion of the mother-country's claim.
This party, under the head of 'Massachusettensis,' had commenced a
series of able and effective arguments in behalf of the mother-country,
which were being published in a Boston journal. To these Adams replied
over the signature of 'Novanglus.' These were papers displaying unusual
ability on either part. They were afterwards published as "A History of
the Dispute with America," and later yet in pamphlet form. Their value
consists in the strong, contemporaneous views which they present of the
origin of the struggle between the colonies and the mother-country, and
the policy of Bernard and Hutchinson as governors of Massachusetts,
which did so much to bring on the struggle. Like all the writings of Mr.
Adams, they are distinguished by a bold tone of investigation, a resort
to first principles, and a pointed style; but, like all his other
writings, being produced by piecemeal, and on the spur of the moment,
they lack order, system, polish and precision.
In the midst of the excitement produced by the battle of
Lexington--which at once brought up the spirit of even the most
hesitating patriots to the fighting pitch, and which was speedily
followed by the seizure of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and by other
similar seizures in other colonies throughout the fast uniting
provinces--John Adams once more set out for Philadelphia to attend the
Continental Congress of 1775, of which he had been appointed a member.
This congress, though made up for the most part of the same men who
constituted that of the previous year, was a wholly different body from
its predecessor. The congress of 1774 was merely a suggestive
convention. The present congress speedily assumed, or rather had thrust
upon it by unanimous consent of the patriots, the exercise of a
comprehensive authority in which supreme executive, legislative and, in
some cases, judicial functions, were united. In this busy scene the
active and untiring Adams, one of whose distinguishing characteristics
was his CAPACITY AND FONDNESS FOR BUSINESS, found ample employment;
while his bold and pugnacious spirit was not a little excited by the
hazards and dignity of the great game in which he had come to hold so
deep a stake. Unlike many of that body, Adams had made up his mind that
any attempt tending toward reconciliation was hopeless.
Under the lead of Dickinson, though against the strenuous opposition of
Adams and others, that body voted still another and final petition to
the king. However, Adams succeeded in joining with this vote one to put
the colonies into a state of defence, though with protestations that the
war on their part was for defence only, and without revolutionary
intent. Not long after this congress was brought up to the point of
assuming the responsibility and control of the military operations which
New England had commenced by laying siege to Boston, in which town
General Gage and his troops were caged, and before which lay an
impromptu New England army of 15,000 men which the battle of Lexington
had immediately brought together. Urged by the New England delegates,
congress agreed to assume the expense of maintaining this army. John
Adams was the first to propose the name of George Washington for the
chief commander; his desire being to secure the good-will and
co-operation of the southern colonies. The southern colonies also urged
General Lee for the second place, but Adams insisted on giving that to
Artemas Ward, he, however, supported Lee for the third place. Having
assumed the direction of this army, provided for its reorganization, and
issued letters of credit for its maintenance, this congress took a
recess. Adams returned home, but was not allowed any rest.
People who really have ability are never allowed to remain idle; the
fault is not in others, but in us. No sooner had Mr. Adams arrived home
than his Massachusetts friends sent him as a member to the State
council. This council had, under a clause of the provincial charter
intended to meet such cases, assumed the executive authority, declaring
the gubernatorial chair vacant. On returning to Philadelphia in
September, Adams found himself in hot water. Two confidential letters of
his, written during the previous session, had been intercepted by the
British in crossing the Hudson river, and had been published in the
Boston papers. Not only did those letters evince a zeal for decisive
measure which made the writer an object of suspicion to the more
conservative of his fellow-members of Congress, but his reference in one
of them to 'the whims, the caprice, the vanity, the superstition, and
the irritability of some of his colleagues,' and particularly to John
Dickinson as 'a certain great fortune but trifling genius,' made him
personal enemies by whom he was never forgiven.
But, though for a moment an object of distrust to some of his
colleagues, this did not save him from hard work. About this time he
wrote: "I am engaged in constant work; from seven to ten in the morning
in committee, from ten to four in Congress, and from six to ten again in
committee. Our assembly is scarcely numerous enough for the business;
everybody is engaged all day in Congress, and all the morning and
evening in committee." The committee, which chiefly engaged Mr. Adams'
attention at this time, was one on the fitting out of cruisers, and on
naval affairs generally. This committee laid the foundation of our first
navy; the basis of our naval code being drawn up by Adams.
Governor Wentworth having fled from New Hampshire, the people of that
province applied to congress for advice as to how to manage their
administrative affairs. Adams, always ahead of his brother legislators,
seized the opportunity to urge the necessity of advising all of the
provinces to proceed at once to institute governments of their own. The
news, soon arriving of the haughty treatment of their petition by the
king, added strength to his pleading, and the matter being referred to a
committee on which Adams was placed, a report in partial conformity to
his ideas was made and adopted. Adams was a worker; this was a
recognized fact; and his State having offered him the post of Chief
Justice of Massachusetts, Adams, toward the end of the year, returned
home to consult on that and other important matters. He took his seat in
the council, of which he had been chosen a member, immediately on his
arrival. He was consulted by Washington, both as to sending General Lee
to New York, and as to the expedition against Canada. It was finally
arranged that while Adams should accept the appointment of Chief
Justice, he should still remain a delegate in Congress, and till more
quiet times should be excused as acting in the capacity of judge. Under
this arrangement he returned to Philadelphia. However, he never took his
seat as Chief Justice, resigning that office the next year.
Advice similar to that to New Hampshire on the subject of assuming
government, as it was called, had shortly afterwards been given upon
similar applications to Congress, to South Carolina and Virginia. Adams
was much consulted by members of the southern delegation concerning the
form of government which they should adopt. He was recognized as being
better versed in the subject of Republicanism, both by study and
experience, coming as he did from the most thoroughly Republican section
of the country. Of several letters which he wrote on this subject, one
more elaborate than the others, was printed under the title of "Thoughts
on Government applicable to the present state of the American
Colonies."
This paper being largely circulated in Virginia as a preliminary to the
adoption of a form of government by that State, was to a certain extent
a rejoinder to that part of Paine's famous pamphlet of 'Common Sense,'
which advocated government by a single assembly. It was also designed to
controvert the aristocratic views, somewhat prevalent in Virginia, of
those who advocated a governor and senate to be elected for life. Adams'
system of policy embraced the adoption of self-government by each of the
colonies, a confederation, and treaties with foreign powers. The
adoption of this system he continued to urge with zeal and increasing
success, until finally, on May 13th, he carried a resolution through
Congress by which so much of his plan was endorsed by that body as
related to the assumption of self-government by the several colonies. A
resolution that the United States 'Are and ought to be free and
independent,' introduced by R. H. Lee under instructions from the
Virginia convention, was very warmly supported by Adams and carried,
seven States to six. Three committees, one on a Declaration of
Independence; another on Confederation; and third on Foreign Relations,
were shortly formed. Of the first and third of these committees, Adams
was a member.
The Declaration of Independence was drawn up by Jefferson, but on Adams
devolved the task of battling it through Congress in a three days'
debate, during which it underwent some curtailment. The plan of a treaty
reported by the third committee, and adopted by Congress, was drawn up
by Adams. His views did not extend beyond merely commercial treaties. He
was opposed to seeking any political connection with France, or any
military or even naval assistance from her or any foreign power. On
June 12th Congress had established a board of war and ordinance, to
consist of five members, with a secretary, clerk, etc.,--in fact, a war
department. As originally constituted, the members of this board were
taken from Congress, and the subject of this narrative was chosen its
president or chairman. This position was one of great labor and
responsibility, as the chief burden of the duties fell upon him, he
continued to hold for the next eighteen months, with the exception of a
necessary absence at the close of the year 1776, to recruit his health.
The business of preparing articles of war for the government of the army
was deputed to a committee composed of Adams and Jefferson; but
Jefferson, according to Adams' account, threw upon him the whole burden,
not only of drawing up the articles, which he borrowed mostly from Great
Britain, but of arguing them through Congress, which was no small task.
Adams strongly opposed Lord Howe's invitation to a conference, sent to
Congress, through his prisoner, General Sullivan, after the battle of
Long Island. He was, however, appointed one of the committee for that
purpose, together with Franklin and Rutledge, and his autobiography
contains some curious anecdotes concerning the visit. Besides his
presidency of the board of war, Adams was also chairman of the committee
upon which devolved the decision of appeals in admiralty cases from the
State courts. Having thus occupied for nearly two years a position which
gained for him the reputation, among at least a few of his colleagues,
of having "the clearest head and firmest heart of any man in Congress."
He was appointed near the end of 1777 a commissioner to France, to
supercede Deane, whom Congress had concluded to recall. He embarked at
Boston, in the Frigate Boston, on February 12th, 1878, reaching Bordeaux
after a stormy passage, and arrived on April 8th at Paris. As the
alliance with France had been completed before his arrival, his stay was
short. He found that a great antagonism of views and feelings had arisen
between the three commissioners,--Franklin, Deane, and Arthur Lee, of
whom the embassy to France had been originally composed. As the recall
of Deane had not reconciled the other two, Adams devised, as the only
means of giving unity and energy to the mission, that it should be
intrusted to a single person. This suggestion was adopted, and in
consequence of it, Franklin having been appointed sole embassador in
France, Adams returned home.
He arrived at Boston just as a convention was about to meet to form a
State constitution for Massachusetts, and, being at once chosen a member
from Braintree, he was enabled to take a leading part in the formation
of that important document. Before this convention had finished its
business he was appointed by congress as minister to treat with Great
Britain for peace, and commerce, under which appointment he again sailed
for France in 1779, in the same French frigate in which he previously
returned to the United States.
Contrary to his own inclinations, Mr. Adams was prevented by Vergennes,
the French minister of foreign affairs, from making any communication of
his powers to Great Britain. In fact, Vergennes and Adams already were,
and continued to be, objects of distrust to one another, in both cases
quite unfounded. Vergennes feared least advances toward treating with
England might lead to some sort of reconciliation with her, short of the
independence of the colonies, which was contrary to his ideas of the
interest of France. The communications made to Vergennes by Gerard, the
first French minister in America, and Adams' connection with the Lee's
whom Vergennes suspected, though unjustly, of a secret communication
through Arthur Lee with the British ministry, led him to regard Mr.
Adams as the representative of a party in congress desirous of such a
reconciliation; nor did he rest until he had obtained from congress,
some two years after, the recall of Mr. Adams' powers to negotiate a
treaty of commerce; and, in conjunction with him, of several colleagues
to treat for peace, of whom Franklin, who enjoyed his entire confidence,
was one.
Adams, on the other hand, not entirely free from hereditary English
prejudices against the French, vehemently suspected Vergennes of a
design to sacrifice the interests of America, especially the fisheries
and the western lands, to the advancement of the Spanish house of
Bourbon. While lingering at Paris, with nothing to do except to nurse
these suspicions, Adams busied himself in furnishing communications on
American affairs to a semi-official gazette conducted by M. Genet, chief
secretary in the foreign bureau, and father of the French minister in
America, who subsequently rendered that name so notorious.
Finding his position at Paris uncomfortable, he proceeded to Holland in
July, 1780, his object being to form an opinion as to the probability of
borrowing money there. Just about the same time he was appointed by
Congress to negotiate a French loan, the party who had been selected for
that purpose previously, Laurens, not yet being ready to leave home. By
way of enlightening the Dutch in regard to American affairs, Adams
published in the _Gazette_, of Leyden, a number of papers and extracts,
including several which, through a friend, he first had published in a
London journal to give to them an English character. To these he added
direct publication of his own, afterward many times reprinted, and now
to be found in volume VII of his collected works under the title of
'Twenty-six Letters upon Interesting Subjects Respecting the Revolution
in America.' He had commenced negotiations for a loan when his labors in
that direction were interrupted by the sudden breach between England and
Holland, consequent upon the capture of Laurens and the discovery of the
secret negotiation carried on between him and Van Berkel, of Amsterdam,
which, though it had been entered into without authority of the Dutch
States, was made an excuse by the British for a speedy declaration of
war.
Adams was soon after appointed minister to Holland in place of the
captured Laurens, and at the same time was commissioned to sign the
articles of armed neutrality which had just made their appearance on the
political scene. Adams presented memorials to the Dutch government
setting forth his powers in both respects; but before he could procure
any recognition he was recalled in July, 1781, to Paris, by a notice
that he was needed there, in his character of minister, to treat for
peace.
Adams' suspicion of Vergennes had, meanwhile, been not a little
increased by the neglect of France to second his applications to
Holland. With Vergennes the great object was peace. The finances of
France were sadly embarrassed, and Vergennes wished no further
complications to the war. Provided the English colonies should be
definitely separated from the mother-country, which he considered
indispensable to the interest of France, he was not disposed to insist
on anything else. It was for this reason that he had urged upon, and
just about this time had succeeded in obtaining from Congress, through
the French Minister at Philadelphia--though the information had not yet
reached Paris--not only the withdrawal of Adams' commission to treat of
commerce, and the enlargement to five of the number of commissioners to
treat for peace, but an absolute discretion intrusted to the negotiators
as to everything except independence and the additional direction that
in the last resort they were to be governed by the advice of Vergennes.
The cause for sending for Adams, who still occupied, so far as was known
at Paris, the position of sole negotiator for peace; the offer of
mediation on the part of Russia and the German empire; but this offer
led to nothing.
Great Britain haughtily rejected it on the ground that she would not
allow France to stand between her and her colonies. Returning to Holland
Mr. Adams, though still unsupported by Vergennes, pushed with great
energy his reception as embassador by the States general, which at
length, April 19th, 1782, he succeeded in accomplishing. Following up
this success with his CUSTOMARY PERSEVERENCE, he succeeded before the
end of the year in negotiating a Dutch loan of nearly two millions of
dollars, the first of a series which proved a chief financial resource
of the continental congress. He also succeeded in negotiating a treaty
of amity and commerce. His success in these negotiations, considering
the obstacles with which he had to contend, and the want of support from
Vergennes, he was accustomed to regard as the greatest triumph of his
life.
Before this business was completed, Mr. Adams received urgent calls to
come to Paris where Jay and Franklin, two of the new commissioners, were
already treating for peace, and where he arrived October 26th. Though
Mr. Jay had been put into the diplomatic service by the procurement of
the party in congress in the French interest, his diplomatic experience
in Spain had led him also to entertain doubts as to the sincere
good-will of Vergennes. A confidential dispatch from the French
Secretary of Legation in America, intercepted by the British, and which
Oswald, the British negotiator at Paris communicated to Franklin and
Jay, with a view of making bad feeling between them and the French
minister, had, along with other circumstances, induced Franklin and Jay
to disregard their instructions, and to proceed to treat with Oswald
without communicating that fact to Vergennes, or taking his advice as to
terms of the treaty, a procedure in which Adams, after his arrival,
fully concurred.
It was chiefly through his energy and persistence that the participation
of America in the fisheries was secured by the treaty, not as a favor or
a privilege, but as a right--a matter of much more importance then than
now, the fisheries then being a much more important branch than now of
American maritime industry.
Immediately upon the signature of the preliminary articles of peace,
Adams asked leave to resign all his commissions and to return home, to
which Congress responded by appointing him a commissioner jointly with
Franklin and Jay, to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Great Britain.
His first visit to England was, however, in a private character, to
recruit his health, after a violent fever with which he had been
attacked, shortly after signing the treaty of peace. He spent some
time, first at London, and afterward at Bath; but while still an invalid
he was recalled, in the dead of winter, to Holland, which he reached
after a stormy and most uncomfortable voyage; there to negotiate a new
loan as the means of meeting government bills drawn in America, which
were in danger of protest from want of funds--a BUSINESS IN WHICH HE
SUCCEEDED.
Adams was included along with Franklin and Jefferson, the latter sent
out to take the place of Jay, in a new commission to form treaties with
foreign powers; and his being joined by Mrs. Adams and their only
daughter and youngest son, his other two sons being already with him,
reconciled him to the idea of remaining abroad.
With his family about him he fixed his residence at Auteuil, near Paris,
where he had an interval of comparative leisure.
The chief business of the new commission was the negotiation of a treaty
with Prussia, advances toward which had first been made to Adams while
at the Hague negotiating the Dutch loan, but before that treaty was
ready for signature Adams was appointed by congress as Minister to the
court of St. James, where he arrived in May, 1785. The English
government, the feelings of which were well represented by those of the
king, had neither the magnanimity nor policy to treat the new American
States with respect, generosity, or justice. Adams was received with
civility, but no commercial arrangements could be made. His chief
employment was in complaining of the non-execution of the treaty of
peace, especially in relation to the non-surrender of the western posts,
and in attempting to meet similar complaints urged, not without strong
grounds, by the British; more particularly with regard to the obstacles
thrown in the way of the collection of British debts, which were made an
excuse for the detention of the western posts. Made sensible in many
ways of the aggravation of British feelings toward the new republic,
whose condition immediately after the peace was somewhat embarrassing,
and not so flattering as it might have been to the advocates and
promoters of the revolution, the situation of Adams was rather
mortifying than agreeable.
Meanwhile he was obliged to pay another visit to Holland to negotiate a
new loan as a means of paying the interest on the Dutch debt. He was
also engaged in a correspondence with his fellow-commissioner, Mr.
Jefferson, then at Paris, on the subject of the Barbary powers and the
return of the Americans held captive by them. But his most engrossing
occupation at this time was the preparation of his "Defence of the
American Constitution," the object of which was the justification of
balanced governments and a division of powers, especially the
legislative, against the idea of a single assembly and a pure democracy,
which had begun to find many advocates, especially on the continent. The
greater part, however, of this book--the most voluminous of his
publications--consists of summaries of the histories of the Italian
republics, which, by the way, was not essential to the argument.
Although it afterward subjugated the author to charges of monarchical
and anti-republican tendencies, this book was not without its influence
on the adoption of the federal constitution; during the discussion of
which the first volume appeared. Great Britain not having reciprocated
the compliment by sending a minister to the United States, and there
being no prospects of his accomplishing any of the objects of his
mission, Adams had requested a recall, which was sent to him in
February, 1788, accompanied by a resolution of Congress conveying the
thanks of that body for 'The patriotism, perseverance, integrity and
diligence' which he had displayed in his ten years' experience abroad.
Immediately upon his arrival at home, Mr. Adams was RE-APPOINTED by
Massachusetts as a delegate to the continental congress; but he never
resumed his seat in that body, which was now just about to expire. When
the new government came to be organized under the newly adopted
constitution, as all were agreed to make Washington president, attention
was turned to New England for a vice-president. This office was then
held with much more regard than now. In fact, as the constitution
originally stood, the candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency
were voted for without any distinct specification as to rank, the second
office falling to the person having the second highest vote. Out of
sixty-nine electors, John Adams received the votes of thirty-four; and
this being the second highest number, he was declared vice-president.
The thirty-five votes were scattered upon some ten different other
candidates.
By virtue of his new office he became president of the senate, a
position not very agreeable to his active and leading temperament, being
better fitted for debate; but one in which the close division in the
senate, often resulting in a tie between the supporters and opponents of
the new system, many times gave him a controlling voice. In the first
congress, he gave no fewer than twenty deciding votes, always upon
important organic laws, and always in support of Washington's policy.
Down to this time Adams had sympathized with Jefferson politically,
with whom he had served both in congress and abroad. On the subject of
the French revolution, which now burst upon the world, a difference of
opinion arose between them. From the very beginning Adams, then almost
alone, had argued that no good could come from that movement,--as the
revolution went on and began to break out in excesses, others began to
be of this opinion.
Adams then gave public expression to some of his ideas by the
publication of his 'Discourses on Davila,' furnished to a Philadelphia
paper, and afterward collected and published in one volume,--taking the
history of nations, particularly Davila's account of the French civil
wars, and the general aspects of human society as his texts.
Adams pointed out as the great springs of human activity,--at least in
all that related to politics,--the love of superiority, the desire of
distinction, admiration and applause; nor, in his opinion could any
government be permanent or secure which did not provide as well for the
reasonable gratification, as for the due restraint of this powerful
passion. Repudiating that democracy, pure and simple, then coming into
vogue, and of which Jefferson was the advocate; he insisted that a
certain mixture of aristocracy and monarchy was necessary to that
balance of interests and sentiments without which, as he believed, free
governments should not exist. This work, which reproduced more at length
and in a more obnoxious form the fundamental ideas of his 'Defence of
the American Constitution,' made Adams a great bugbear to the
ultra-democratic supporters of the principles and policy of the French
revolutionists; and at the second presidential election in 1792, they
set up as a candidate against him George Clinton, of New York, but Mr.
Adams was re-elected by a decided vote.
The wise policy of neutrality adopted by Washington received the hearty
concurrence of Adams. While Jefferson left the cabinet to become in
nominal retirement the leader of the opposition. Adams continued, as
vice-president, to give Washington's administration the benefit of his
deciding vote. It was only by this means that a neutrality act was
carried through the senate, and that the progress was stopped of certain
resolutions which had previously passed in the House of Representatives,
embodying restrictive measures against Great Britain, intended, or at
least calculated, to counterwork the mission to England on which Mr. Jay
had already been sent.
Washington being firmly resolved to retire at the close of his second
presidential term, the question of the successorship now presented
itself. Jefferson was the leader of the opposition, who called
themselves republicans, the name democrat being yet in bad odor, and
though often imposed as a term of reproach, not yet assumed except by a
few of the more ultra-partisans. Hamilton was the leader of the federal
party, as the supporters of Washington's administration had styled
themselves.
Though Hamilton's zeal and energy had made him, even while like
Jefferson in nominal retirement, the leader of his party, he could
hardly be said to hold the place with the Federalists that Jefferson did
with the Republicans. Either Adams or Jay, from their age and long
diplomatic service, were more justly entitled to public honor and were
more conspicuously before the people. Hamilton, though he had always
spoken of Adams as a man of unconquerable intrepidity and incorruptible
integrity, and as such had already twice supported him for
vice-president, would yet have much preferred Jay.
The position of Adams was, however, such as to render his election far
more probable than that of Jay, and to determine on his selection as
candidate of the Federalist party. Jay, by his negotiation of the famous
treaty which bears his name, had for the moment called down upon himself
the hostility of its numerous opponents. Adams stood, moreover, as
vice-president, in the line of promotion, and was more sure of the New
England vote, which was absolutely indispensible to the success of
either.
As one of the candidates was taken from the North, it seemed best to
select the other from the South, and the selection of Thomas Pickney, of
South Carolina, was the result of this decision. Indeed, there were
some, Hamilton among the number, who secretly wished that Pickney might
receive the larger vote of the two, and so be chosen president over
Adams' head. This result was almost sure to happen,--from the likelihood
of Pickney's receiving more votes at the South than Adams, as he really
did,--could the northern federal electors be persuaded to vote equally
for Adams and Pickney, which Hamilton labored to effect.
The fear, however, that Pickney might be chosen over Adams led to the
withholding from Pickney of eighteen New England votes, so that the
result was not only to make Jefferson Vice-President, as having more
votes than Pickney, but also to excite prejudices and suspicions in the
mind of Adams against Hamilton, which, being reciprocated by him, led to
the disruption and final overthrow of the Federal party.
It had almost happened, such was the equal division of parties, that
Jefferson had this time been elected President. The election of Adams,
who had 71 votes to Jefferson's 68, only being secured by two stray
votes cast for him, one in Virginia, and the other in North Carolina,
tributes of revolutionary reminiscences and personal esteem. Chosen by
this slender majority, Mr. Adams succeeded to office at a very dangerous
and exciting crisis in affairs. The progress of the French revolution
had superinduced upon previous party divisions a new and vehement
crisis.
Jefferson's supporters, who sympathized very warmly with the French
Republic, gave their moral, if not their positive support, to the claim
set up by its rulers, but which Washington had refused to admit, that
under the provisions of the French treaty of alliance, the United States
were bound to support France against Great Britain, at least in defense
of her West India possessions. The other party, the supporters of Adams,
upheld the policy of neutrality adopted by Washington.
At the same time that Washington had sent Jay to England, to arrange, if
possible, the pending difficulties with that country; he had recalled
Morris who, as Minister to France, had made himself obnoxious to the now
predominent party there, and had appointed Monroe in his place. This
gentleman, instead of conforming to his instructions, and attempting to
reconcile France to Jay's mission, had given them assurance on the
subject quite in contradiction of the treaty as made, both the formation
and ratification of which he had done his best to defeat. He, in
consequence, had been recalled by Washington shortly before the close of
his term of office, and C. C. Pickney, a brother of Thomas Pickney, had
been appointed in his place. The French authorities, offended at this
change, and the ratification of Jay's treaty in spite of their
remonstrances, while they dismissed Monroe with great ovations, refused
to receive the new embassador sent in his place, at the same time
issuing decrees and orders highly injurious to American interests.
Almost the first act of Mr. Adams, as President, was to call an extra
session of Congress. Not only was a war with France greatly to be
dreaded and deprecated on account of her great military and naval power,
but still more on account of the very formidable party which, among the
ultra-Republicans, she could muster within the States themselves. Under
these circumstances, the measure resolved upon by Adams and his cabinet
was the appointment of a new and more solemn commission to France,
composed of Pickney and two colleagues, for which purpose the President
appointed John Marshall of Virginia, and Elbridge Gerry of
Massachusetts.
Instead of receiving and openly treating with those commissioners,
Talleyrand, lately an exile in America, but now Secretary of Foreign
Affairs to the French Government, entered into intrigue with them,
through several unaccredited and unofficial agents, of which the object
was to induce them to promise a round bribe to the directors and a large
sum of money to fill the exhausted French treasury, by way of purchasing
forbearance. As Pickney and Marshall appeared less pliable than Gerry,
Talleyrand finally obliged them to leave, after which he attempted,
though still without success, to extract money, or at least the promise
of it, from Gerry.
The publication of the dispatches in which these discreditible intrigues
were disclosed, an event on which Talleyrand had not calculated,
produced a great excitement in both America and Europe. Talleyrand
attempted to escape by disavowing his agents, and pretending that the
American ministers had been imposed upon by adventurers. Gerry left
France, and the violation of American commercial and maritime rights was
pushed to new extremes. In America the effect of all of this was to
greatly strengthen the Federal party for the time being.
The grand jury of the federal circuit court for Pennsylvania set the
example of an address to the president, applauding his manly stand for
the rights and dignity of the nation. Philadelphia, which under the lead
of Mifflin and McKean, had gone over to the Republicans, was once more
suddenly converted as during Washington's first term to the support of
the federal government. That city was then the seat of the national
newspaper press. All the newspapers, hitherto neutral, published there,
as well as several others which had leaned decidedly toward the
opposition, now came out in behalf of Adams.
Besides an address from five thousand citizens, the young men got up an
address of their own. This example was speedily imitated all over the
country, and the spirited replies of the president, who was now in his
element, served in their turn to blow up and keep ablaze the patriotic
enthusiasm of his countrymen. These addresses, circulated everywhere in
the newspapers, were collected at the time in a volume, and they
appeared in Adams' works, of which they form a characteristic portion. A
navy was set on foot, the old continental navy having become extinct. An
army was voted and partly levied, of which Washington accepted the chief
command, and merchant ships were authorized to protect themselves.
The treaty with France was declared at an end, and a quasi war with
France ensued. It was not, however, the policy of France to drive the
United States into the arms of Great Britain. Even before Gerry's
departure, Talleyrand had made advances tending toward reconciliation,
which were afterward renewed by communications opened with Van Murray,
the American minister to Holland. The effect of the French outrages, and
the progress of the French revolution had been to create in a part of
the federal party, at least, a desire for an absolute breach with
France--a desire felt by Hamilton, and by at least three out of the four
cabinet officers whom Adams had chosen and kept in office.
In his message to congress, announcing the expulsion of Pickney and
Marshall, Adams had declared that he would never send another minister
to France without assurance that he would be received. This was on the
21st of July, 1798. Therefore, when on the 18th of February following,
without consulting his cabinet or giving them any intimation of his
intentions, he sent into the senate the nomination of Van Murray as
minister to France, the act took the country by surprise, and thus
hastened the defeat of the federal party, his actions being so contrary
to his avowed intentions. Some previous acts of Adams, such as the
appointment of Gerry, which his cabinet officers had striven to prevent,
and his disinclination to make Hamilton second in command, until
vehemently urged into it by Washington, had strengthened the distrust
entertained of Adams by Hamilton.
Adams, in his attempt to reopen diplomatic intercourse with France, was
accused of seeking to reconcile his political opponents of the
Republican party, and thus secure by unworthy and impolitic concessions,
his own re-election as president. The opposition to Van Murray's
nomination prevailed so far that he received two colleagues, Ellsworth
of Connecticut and Davies of North Carolina; but the president would not
authorize the departure of Ellsworth or Davies until he had received
explicit assurances from Talleyrand that they would be duly received as
ministers. On arriving in France they found the Directory superseded by
Napoleon Bonaparte who was first counsel, with whom they managed to
arrange the difficulty.
But, however beneficial to the country, this mission proved very
disastrous to Adams personally, and to the political party to which he
belonged. He justified its appointment on the ground of assurances
conveyed to him through a variety of channels that France desired peace,
and he excused himself for his not having consulted his cabinet by the
fact that he knew their mind without asking it--to be decidedly hostile,
that is, to any such attempt as he had decided to make.
The masses of the federalists, fully confident of Adams' patriotism,
were well enough disposed to acquiesce in his judgment; but many of the
leaders were implacable. The quarrel was further aggravated by Adams'
dismissal of his cabinet officers and the construction of a new cabinet.
The pardon of Fries, who had been convicted of treason for armed
resistance to the levy of certain direct taxes in Pennsylvania, was
regarded by many at that time as a piece of misplaced lenity on the part
of Adams, dictated, it was said, by a mean desire of popularity in a
case where the severest example was needed. But Adams can hardly suffer
with posterity from his unwillingness to be the first president to sign
a death warrant for treason, especially as there was room for grave
doubts whether the doings of this person amounted to treason as defined
by the constitution of the United States.
In this divided condition of the Federal party the presidential election
came on. Adams was still too popular with the mass of the party to think
of dropping him altogether, and the malcontents reduced to the old
expedient of attempting, by secret understanding and arrangements, to
reduce his vote in the electoral college below that of C. C. Pickney,
the other candidate on the federal ticket.
The Republicans, on the other hand, under the prospect of an arrangement
with France, rapidly recovered from the blow inflicted upon them by the
violence and mercenary rapacity lately charged upon their French
friends, but which they now insisted, was a charge without foundation.
Taking advantage of the dissatisfaction at the heavy taxes necessarily
imposed to meet the expenses of warlike preparations, and especially of
the unpopularity of the alien and sedition laws--two acts of congress to
which the prospect of war had led--they pushed the canvass with great
energy; while in Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr they had two leaders
unsurpassed for skill in party tactics, and in Burr at least, one little
scrupulous as to the means to be used.
Not only was the whole blame of the alien and sedition acts, to which he
had merely assented without even recommending, laid on Adams' shoulders,
but he was the object of vehement and most bitter attacks for having
surrendered, under one of the provisions of Jay's treaty, one Thomas
Nash, an English sailor, charged with mutiny and murder. Nor was it
against his public acts alone, nor even to his political opponents, that
these assaults on Mr. Adams were confined. With strong feeling and busy
imagination, loving both to talk and write, Adams had been betrayed into
many confidences and into free expressions of feeling, opinions, and
even conjectures and suspicions--a weakness very unsuited to the
character of a statesman, and one which Adams had during his life many
times the occasion to rue.
During Washington's first term of office, Adams had thus been led into a
confidential correspondence with Tench Coxe, who at that time held the
position of assistant secretary of the treasury and had afterward been
appointed supervisor of the internal revenue. Since Adam's accession he
had been dismissed from his place on the charge of being a spy upon the
treasury department in the service of the _Aurora_, the principal
newspaper organ of the opposition,--with which party Coxe sympathized,
and, since his recent dismissal from office, acted.
In this state of mind Coxe betrayed a confidential letter to him from
Adams; which, after being handed around in manuscript for some time, to
the great damage of Adams with his own party, was finally printed in the
_Aurora_, of which Coxe had become one of the principal contributors.
The purport of this letter, written as long ago as May, 1792, was to
give countenance to the charge of the opposition that Washington's
cabinet, and of course Adams' which followed the same policy, was under
British influence; and that the Pickney brothers, candidates with Adams
on the presidential ticket, were especially liable to this suspicion.
The publication of this letter was followed by a still more deadly blow
in the shape of a pamphlet, written, printed and signed by
Hamilton,--probably intended by him for private distribution among his
friends, but which was made public by Aaron Burr, who had succeed in
obtaining some of the proof sheets.
This pamphlet had its origin in the same charge against Hamilton of
being under the influence of British gold, thrown out by Adams in
private conversation. To this he had refused to give any explanation
when written to by Hamilton, though when a similar request was made by
C. C. Pickney in consequence of the publication of the letter to Coxe,
Adams fully exonerated, in a published letter, both Pickney and his
brother from any suspicion which his letter to Coxe might seem
calculated to convey.
Hamilton declared in the conclusion of his pamphlet that, as things then
stood, he did not recommend the withholding of a single vote from Adams.
Yet, it was the leading object of his pamphlet to show, without denying
Adams' patriotism or integrity, or even his talents, that he had great
defects of character which disqualified him for the position of chief
magistrate, and the effect which he desired it to have must have been to
give C. C. Pickney the presidency, by causing a certain number of votes
to be withheld from Adams.
The result of the election, however, was to throw out both the federal
candidates, while Adams receiving forty-five votes and Pickney
fifty-four; Jefferson and Burr each received seventy-three. In the
ensuing struggle between Jefferson and Burr, Adams took no part
whatever. Immediately on the expiration of his term of office he left
Washington, where shortly before the seat of government had been moved,
without even stopping to be present at the inauguration of Jefferson,
against whom he felt a sense of personal wrong, probably thinking he
had been deluded by false professions as to Jefferson's views on the
presidential chair.
Though both were much given to letter-writing, and had to within a short
time before been on terms of friendly intercourse, this state of
feelings, on the part of Adams, led to strict non-intercourse for the
next thirteen years. The only acknowledgment which Adams carried with
him, in this unwelcome and mortifying retirement for his twenty-five
years' services was the privilege, which had been granted to Washington
on his withdrawal from the presidency, and after his death to his widow,
and bestowed likewise upon all subsequent ex-presidents and their
widows, of receiving his letters free of postage for the remainder of
his life.
Fortunately for Adams, his thrifty habits and love of independence,
sustained during his absence from home by the economical and managing
talents of his wife, had enabled him to add to what he had saved from
his profession before entering public life, savings from his salaries,
enough to make up a sufficient property to support him for the remainder
of his life, in conformity with his ideas of a decent style of propriety
and solid comfort. Almost all his savings he had invested in the farming
lands about him. In his vocabulary, property meant land. With all the
rapid wealth then being made through trade and navigation, he had no
confidence in the permanency of any property but land, views in which he
was confirmed by the commercial revulsions of which he lived to be a
witness.
Adams was the possessor, partly by inheritance and partly by purchase,
of his father's farm, including the house in which he himself was born.
He had, however, transferred his own residence to a larger and
handsomer dwelling near by, which had been forfeited by one of the
refugee tories of the revolution and purchased by him, where he spent
the next quarter of a century.
In this comfortable home, acquired by himself, he sought consolation for
his troubled spirit in the cultivation of his lands, in books and in the
bosom of his family. Mrs. Adams, to her capacities as a house-keeper,
steward and farm manager, added a brightness and activity of mind and a
range of reading, such as fully qualified her to sympathize with her
husband in his public as well as his private career. She shared his
tastes for books, and as his letters to her are unsurpassed by any
American letters ever yet published, so hers to him, as well as to
others, from which a selection has also been published, show her, though
exhibiting less of nature and more of formality than he, yet worthy of
admiration and respect as well as of the tenderness with which he always
regarded her.
To affections strong enough to respond to his, a sympathy equal to his
highest aspirations, a proud feeling and an enjoyment of it equal to his
own, she added what is not always found in such company, a flexibility
sufficient to yield to his stronger will without disturbance to her
serenity or his, and without the least compromise of her own dignity or
her husband's respect and deference for her. While she was not ignorant
of the foibles of his character, and knew how to avail herself of them
when a good purpose was to be served by it, yet her admiration of his
abilities, her reliance upon his judgment, her confidence in his
goodness, and her pride in his achievements, made her always ready to
yield and to conform. His happiness and honor were always her leading
object. This union was blessed with children well calculated to add to
this happiness.
Just at the moment of his retirement from office private grief was added
to political disappointment by the death of his second son Charles, who
had grown to manhood, had been married and had settled in New York with
flattering prospects, but had died under painful circumstances, which
his father speaks of in a contemporary letter as the deepest affliction
of his life, leaving a wife and two infant children dependent on him.
Colonel Smith, an officer of the revolution, who had been Adams'
secretary of legation at London and who had married his only daughter,
did not prove in all respects such a son-in-law as he would have wished.
Smith's pecuniary affairs becoming embarrassed, his father-in-law had
provided for him by several public appointments, the last of which was
that of the surveyor of New York, which position he was allowed to hold
until 1807, when he was removed from it in consequence of his
implication in Miranda's expedition. Nor did Thomas, the third son,
though a person of accomplishments and talents, fully answer the hopes
of his parents.
But all these disappointments were more than made good by the eldest
son, John Quincy, who subsequently to his recall from the diplomatic
service abroad, into which Washington had introduced him and in which
his father, urged by Washington, had promoted him, was chosen one of the
senators in congress from Massachusetts.
All consolations, domestic or otherwise, at Mr. Adam's command, were
fully needed. Never did a statesman sink more suddenly,--at a time too
when his powers of action and inclinations for it seemed
unimpaired--from a leading position to more absolute political
insignificance. His grandson tells us that while the letters addressed
to him in the year prior to March 1st, 1801, may be counted by the
thousands, those of the next year scarcely numbered a hundred, while he
wrote even less than he received. Nor was mere neglect the worst of it.
He sank, loaded with the jibes, the sneers, the execrations even, of
both political parties into which the nation was divided. In his
correspondence, which appears to have gradually increased and extended
itself, Mr. Adams loved to re-explain his theoretical ideas of
government, on some points of which he pushed Jefferson hard, and which
the result of the French revolution so far as then developed seemed to
confirm.
Another subject in which he continued to feel a great interest was
theology. He had begun as an Arminian, and the more he had read and
thought, and the older he grew to be, the freer views he took. Though
clinging with tenacity to the religious institutions of New England, it
would seem from his correspondence that he finally curtailed his
theology to the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount. Of his
views on this point, he gave evidence in his last public act, to which
we now approach.
Mrs. Adams had died in 1818, but even that shock, severe as it was, did
not loosen the firm grasp of the husband on life, its enjoyments and its
duties. When, in consequence of the erection of the district of Maine
into a State, a convention was to meet in 1820 to revise the
constitution of Massachusetts, in the framing of which Mr. Adams had
taken so leading a part, though in his eighty-sixth year, he was chosen
a delegate by his townsmen. Upon his first appearance, with a form yet
erect, though tremulous with age, in this Convention, which was
composed of the very cream of the great minds with which the State
abounded, Mr. Adams was received by members standing, and with every
demonstration of affection and esteem; and a series of resolutions were
forthwith passed, containing an enumeration and warm acknowledgement of
some of his principal public services, and calling on him to preside.
But this, while duly acknowledging the compliment, he declined, on the
score of his age and infirmities. The same cause also prevented his
taking any active part in the proceedings. Yet he labored to secure a
modification of the third article of the bill of rights, on the subject
of public worship and its support, an article which, when originally
drafting the rest of that instrument, he had passed over to other hands.
But the time had not yet come for such changes as he wished. The old
puritan feeling was still too great to acknowledge the equal rights,
political and religious, of other than Christians. Yet, however it might
be with his colleagues and fellow-citizens, Mr. Adams, in this movement,
expressed his own ideas. One of his latest letters, written in 1825, and
addressed to Jefferson, is a remarkable protest against the blasphemy
laws, so-called, of Massachusetts, and the rest of the Union, as being
utterly inconsistent with the right of free inquiry and private
judgment. It is in the letters of Mr. Adams, of which but few have ever
been published, that his genius as a writer and a thinker, and no less
distinctly his character as a man, is displayed. Down even to the last
year of his protracted life, his letters exhibit a wonderful degree of
vitality, energy, playfulness, and command of language.
As a writer of English--and we may add as a speculative
philosopher--little as he ever troubled himself with revision and
correction, he must be placed first among Americans of all the several
generations to which he belonged, excepting only Franklin; and if
Franklin excelled him in humor and geniality, he far surpassed Franklin
in compass and vivacity. Indeed, it is only by the recent publication of
his letters that his gifts in these respects are becoming well known.
The first installment of his private letters published during his
lifetime, though not deficient in these characteristics, yet having been
written under feelings of great aggravation, and in a spirit of extreme
bitterness against his political opponents, was rather damaging to him
than otherwise. In the interval from 1804 to 1812, Mr. Cunningham, a
maternal relative, had drawn him into a private correspondence in which,
still smarting under a sense of injury, he had expressed himself with
perfect unreserve and entire freedom as to the chief events of his
presidential administration and the character and motives of the parties
concerned in them.
By a gross breach of confidence, of which Mr. Adams, like other
impulsive and confiding persons, often had been the victim, those
letters were sold by Cunningham's heir in 1824, while the writer and
many of the parties referred to were still alive. They were published as
a part of the electioneering machinery against John Quincy Adams. They
called out a violent retort from Colonel Pickering, who had been
secretary of State to Washington and Adams, till dismissed from office
by the latter; but though Mr. Jefferson was also severely handled in
them, they occasioned no interruption to the friendly relation which had
been re-established between him and Mr. Adams.
Those two leading actors in American politics, at first so co-operative
and afterward so hostile, again reunited in friendly intercourse, having
outlived almost all of their fellow-actors, continued to descend hand in
hand to the grave. Adams lived to see his son president, and to receive
Jefferson's congratulations on the same. By a remarkable coincidence,
they both expired on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of
Independence, in which they both had taken so active a part, Adams,
however, being the survivor by a few hours.
Of Adams' personal appearance and domestic character in his old age, his
grandson gives the following account: "In figure, John Adams was not
tall, scarcely exceeding middle height, but of a stout, well-knit frame,
denoting vigor and long life, yet as he grew old inclining more and more
to corpulence. His head was large and round, with a wide forehead and
expanded brows. His eye was mild and benignant, perhaps even humorous
when he was free from emotion, but when excited it fully expressed the
vehemence of the spirit that stirred within."
"His presence was grave and imposing on serious occasions, but not
unbending. He delighted in social conversation, in which he was
sometimes tempted to what he called rodomontade. But he seldom fatigued
those who heard him; for he mixed so much of natural vigor of fancy and
illustration with the store of his acquired knowledge, as to keep alive
their interest for a long time."
"His affections were warm, though not habitually demonstrated toward his
relatives. His anger, when thoroughly aroused, was for a time extremely
violent, but when it subsided it left no trace of malevolence behind.
Nobody could see him intimately without admiring the simplicity and
truth which shone in his actions, and standing in some awe of the power
and energy of his will. It was in these moments that he impressed those
around him with a sense of his greatness. Even the men employed on his
farm were in the habit of citing instances, some of which have been
remembered down to the present day."
"At times his vehemence became so great as to make him overbearing and
unjust. This was apt to happen in cases of pretension and any kind of
wrong-doing. Mr. Adams was very impatient of cant, or of opposition to
any of his deeply established convictions. Neither was his indignation
at all graduated to the character of the individuals who might happen to
excite it. He had little respect of persons, and would hold an
illiterate man or raw boy to as heavy a responsibility for uttering a
crude heresy, as the strongest thinker or the most profound scholar."
The same writer makes the following remarks on his general character:
"His nature was too susceptible to emotions of sympathy and kindness,
for it tempted him to trust more than was prudent in the professions of
some who proved unworthy of his confidence. Ambitious in one sense he
certainly was, but it was not the mere aspiration for place or power. It
was a desire to excel in the minds of men by the development of high
qualities, the love, in short, of an honorable fame, that stirred him to
exult in the rewards of popular favor. Yet this passion never tempted
him to change a course of action or to suppress a serious conviction, to
bend to a prevailing error or to disavow one odious truth."
In these last assertions we do not fully concur. They involve some
controverted points of history; however, they may be made with far more
plausibility of Mr. Adams than of the greater portion of political men.
There is much in the life of John Adams worthy of careful consideration.
He rose from poverty to distinction; he was a capable man, capable of
filling the highest place in the estimation of his posterity, yet his
serious faults led to his political ruin. The careful perusal of his
life will enable one to understand the principles of the two great
parties of to-day, modified though they be, the fundamental principles
remaining the same.