John Adams: The Biography

David McCullough's John Adams is a must-read for those who have seen the acclaimed HBO miniseries. For that matter, anyone interested in American history and how the groundwork was laid for both the strengths and weaknesses of our nation and our government will find it of immense interest. According to a review by Pauline Maier:

David McCullough set out initially to write a joint biography of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. But he worried, as he explained to lecture audiences over the past few years, that Adams could not hold his own with Jefferson. Once he started doing research, his concern shifted. Could Jefferson stand up to Adams? McCullough's biography of Adams inevitably has a lot to say about Jefferson, but on virtually all points of comparison between the two men, Jefferson comes in second....

The descendant of farmers from Braintree, Mass., Adams loved to talk and always said exactly what he thought....Adams remained true to his origins: his hands, McCullough says, were those of a man ''accustomed to pruning his own trees, cutting his own hay and splitting his own firewood.'' Similarly, throughout a long life, his wife, Abigail, did her own sewing and baking, fed her own ducks and chickens and churned her own butter. Abigail read widely but spoke like a Yankee: she said ''Canady'' for Canada, ''set'' for sit, ''aya'' for yes. So did John, though McCullough doesn't say so. In the 1850's, the first editor of Adams's writings, his grandson Charles Francis Adams, carefully corrected his language, excising expressions like ''he eat strawberries'' or ''she ain't obliged'' in an effort to fit John Adams into a heroic mode. It was hopeless; Adams was too obstreperously real to be idealized.

Yet few men, McCullough argues, contributed more to the early history of the United States. In 1776, Adams was, in Jefferson's words, ''the colossus of independence,'' the delegate most responsible for the Continental Congress's adopting independence. As a diplomat in Europe during the 1780's, he secured a loan from the Dutch without which, McCullough suggests, the Revolution might have failed. He served as vice president ''with unfailing loyalty to Washington,'' whose administration he supported by casting a still unmatched 31 tie-breaking votes in the Senate. In his own presidency, McCullough says, Adams ''achieved a rare level of statesmanship'' by beginning peace negotiations with the French Republic, an act of reconciliation that alienated many Federalist supporters and jeopardized his chance of re-election in 1800. On one contested issue after another over the course of his career -- his insistence as an American emissary that France could stop British resistance to American independence by deploying its navy along the coast of North America; his early suspicion of the French Revolution; his hearty support for an American Navy -- Adams proved right in the end.

Above all, however, McCullough's appreciation for Adams...depends on an adherence to certain old-fashioned moral guidelines, which is to say on strength of character. All contemporary observers affirm Adams's scrupulous honesty: he was, as the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush testified, ''a stranger to dissimulation.'' Adams also shared with his wife a powerful sense of public duty, which they fulfilled despite great financial and emotional sacrifice.

No one, and certainly not John Adams, made a fortune serving the United States in the late 18th century: ''All my emoluments as a member of Congress for four years,'' Adams observed in 1777, were ''not . . . sufficient to pay a laboring man on a farm.'' The Adamses' financial welfare depended on their Massachusetts farm, which Abigail managed even in trying circumstances with great skill. As a result, for all but a few exceptional years during Adams's long public career, he and Abigail lived dutifully but miserably apart.

In fact, McCullough is able to tell the extraordinary love story that threads through ''John Adams'' because the couple had so often to communicate through letters, which they saved. Abigail was John's partner in every sense: she not only managed the family's finances but was his greatest supporter, his most trusted political adviser and a source and object of immense affection. She pushed women's traditional domestic role to its outermost limits without questioning it: ''I believe nature has assigned each sex its particular duties and sphere of action,'' she once wrote, ''and to act well your part, 'there all the honor lies.' ''

In my review of the HBO production I expressed my disappointment at the portrayal of Louis XVI. As I suspected, the King did not laugh at Adams at their first meeting, although he mumbled "Pas un mot!" "Not a word!" out of surprise that Mr. Adams did not yet speak French, the language of diplomacy. (p.202) Adams and King Louis came to have respect for each other; Adams described the young King as having "goodness and innocence" in his face (p.202) As for Louis XVI's opinion of Adams, McCullough writes: "Vergennes, speaking for the King, offered praise [to Adams] for 'the wise conduct that you have held throughout the tenure of your commission,' as well as 'the zeal with which you have furthered the cause of your nation, while strengthening the alliance that ties it to His Majesty.'" (p.213)

John Adams described Marie-Antoinette thus:

She was an object too sublime and beautiful for my dull pen to describe...Her dress was everything that art and wealth could make it....She had a fine complexion indicating her perfect health, and was a handsome woman in her face and figure....not a feature of her face, nor a motion of any part of her person, especially her arm and her hand, could be criticized as being out of order. (p.203)

All in all, John Adams loved the France of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, in spite of his homesickness. To quote from the book:

As ardently as he longed for home, he hated to leave Paris, hated to leave France, and expected he would never return. 'The climate is more favorable to my constitution than ours,' he acknowledged to Abigail. He loved the food, the civility of everyday life. The French were 'the happiest people in the world...and have the best disposition to make others so. There is such a choice of elegant entertainments in the theatric way, of good company and excellent books that nothing would be wanting for me in this country but my family and peace to my country to make me one of the happiest of men.' (pp.212-213)

Adams was to later return to Paris in the service of his country, as well as serve in Holland and England. His real challenges were during his terms as Vice-President of the United States and eventually as President. He had to deal with many betrayals from false friends, including Thomas Jefferson. In 1805, after retiring to his farm, Adams wrote the following of American politics to his friend Benjamin Rush:

Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principal of our government? Is honor? Or is it ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs? (p.588)

John Adams could see many flaws in the new sysytem that would eventually lead to problems, neverthless he believed in the potential of the American people and had high hopes for the future. He lived to see his oldest son became President, but when people praised John Quincy Adams, John attributed his son's success to Abigail, saying: "He had a mother."