John Adams

John Adams
© 2001 David McCullough
751 pages

The memory of some American presidents looms over the national mind like their monuments tower above the landscape. But John Adams has no monument on the National Mall: his face does not stare down from Mount Rushmore or any piece of currency. He is, or was, until the publication of this book, largely forgotten – a downright shameful fact given the importance of his accomplishments.

Name an aspect of the American Revolution, and John Adams was there.  In the early years, his voice was among the most ardent scolding Britain for its abuse of colonial legal rights: at the Continental Congress, he began and led the charge for independence, championed George Washington as leader of the Continental Army, and defended the Declaration of Independence as its author Thomas Jefferson sat by idly.  During the revolution, he endured a long separation from his wife while working to effect war-winning alliances and afterwards, established the new nation’s  credit. Upon his return to the new United States, he served as vice president and then president, pursuing a solitary course of action that kept America from being embroiled in the Napoleonic wars, earning him the contempt and hostility of both parties, but the praise of historians to come.  John Adams was constantly making American history despite not being born into power, wealth, or influence – he was there because time and again he inserted himself into history’s way and stubbornly stood for what he viewed as the right course of action.

While John Adams isn’t a hagiography,  McCullough’s appraisal of his subject is mostly complimentary.  Adams’ heroic aura comes not from grand idealism – for Adams was a pragmatist – or dashing military deeds, but in more mundane virtues. He was hardworking, morally upright, faithful to his cause, driven by duty to live up to his potential, and ever-constant.  When compared to his mercurial and petty contemporaries, not to mention the current lot of demagogues masquerading as public officials, Adams seems the embodiment of statesmanship. McCullough’s criticism is limited to acknowledging that Adams could have, at times, a bit of a temper.

Modern readers may find Adams’ comparative conservatism more problematic than any hot-headedness. Although Jefferson might have viewed the Revolution as being a progressive step forward in the history of mankind, Adams saw colonial rights as being a function of British, and then American, law: they were not so much newly proclaimed as redeemed from the recent abuses of the king. He put little faith in the judgment of excitable masses especially the judgment of men who didn't own land enough to make them financially independent:  men beholden to bosses were too easily influenced to build a free republic on. He also believed that aristocracies were inevitable, and should be thus planned for – their influenced acknowledged, and limited and removed from actual power – and that a government functioned best with a powerful executive whose decisions could not be easily over ridden. Given his fondness for English law, little wonder that the pro-French party railed against him as a closet monarchist with British sympathies and that members of his own party distanced themselves from him at best (as did George Washington) or openly reviled him, like Alexander Hamilton. With Jefferson conspiring with the French minister and both political parties acting as though civil war was about to break out and planning extralegal martial action, little wonder that Adams sullied his reputation somewhat with the Alien and Sedition acts. To his credit, he lived to regret signing those acts – something Wilson never did, and something it is doubtful Bush or Obama ever will do.

 John Adams was no idealist, but his actions speak louder than the words of those we cherish as champions of human progress, like Jefferson – who repeated the thought that all men were created equal in his Declaration, but persisted in keeping his own slaves.  Adams reviled the practice and refused so much as to hire someone else’s slaves: he and his family did most of the work  on their farm while Jefferson sat idly in Monticello, singing praises of Napoleon and tinkering with his gadgets. And for all his conservatism, Adams looked to the future and prepared the United States for it. While Jefferson dreamt of a pastoral republic filled with gentleman farmers (and their slaves, one assumes), Adams saw the future of the nation writ in industry, and commerce. One wonders – had the Erie Canal been proposed in a second Adams administration, instead of Jefferson’s first, would it have found presidential support instead of being a project of New York State alone?

 John Adams is an extraordinarily rich biography. McCullough’s reputation as an historian speaks for itself: this is as engrossing as a novel, and filled with details about Adams as a husband, father,  farmer, public official, statesman, and friend. Of the three McCullough works I've read, this was the most outstanding, in part because of its subject. I've found in him much to admire. 

           

This Week at the Library (16 November)

It's been a slow week for reading, at least from the library. Unable to pursue my library reads, I re-read Prelude to Foundation and began re-reading Forward the Foundation. Otherwise, so little has been catching fire lately that after reading The Greater Journey by David McCullough, I returned my books to the library and spent a couple of leisurely hours sitting and strolling in various aisles, hoping to find something that would. I think I did, but first, a minireview...

©  2011 David McCullough 

558 pages

David McCullough is a popular name among American historians, known most for his 1776 and a large biography of John Adams.  The Greater Journey is somewhat less focused, but is essentially a history of Paris (1830-1900) as seen through the eyes of American visitors, most of whom were visiting professionally. For the majority of these Americans -- whose numbers include famous names like Samuel Morse and Fenimore Cooper -- the journey to Paris was their first trip outside the United States, and the novelty of being a 'foreigner' made their experiences all the more vividly memorable.  Through them we experience Paris as it was in the late 19th century, beginning in the Bourbon Restoration era but enduring decades of political change -- a Second Republic, a Second Empire, and a Third Republic, in addition to war with Germany and several protracted sieges. The Americans featured here are professionals of one kind or another -- physicians,   architects, writers -- but the artists dominate the work outside of the space devoted to political change. The range of years allows the reader to experience the tremendous change of those years, as the globe shrinks underneath telegraph cables and steam engine tunnels.  Given my interest in France and this period, I certainly enjoyed the book for the most part, although all the art history overwhelmed me. The photographs and prints of artwork included are stunning.

This week...

• Plan and Simple: A Woman's Journey to the Amish, Sue Bender. I am at the same time intrigued by the Amish devotion to simple living and revulsed by their cultish atmosphere and suppression of individuality with practices like shunning. Sue Bender is an artist who shares my objection to forced conformity, but felt herself mesmerized by Amish art and decided to spend a summer living with them.
• The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, Bernard Lewis. I read Lewis' What Went Wrong? concerning the effects of modernization in the middle east and the ongoing hostile reaction to it during the summer, and have been meaning to sample more of Lewis.
• A Light in the Window, Jan Karon; the second in the Mitford series..
• Vagabond, Bernard Cornwell. Alas, my library doesn't appear to have Sharpe's Skirmish, and I've been mulling over whether or not to pursue in the series or attempt to acquire the novel first. 

I was really in the mood for something WW2-related, specifically a novel -- but I didn't feel like getting into James Jones' From Here to Eternity, and the loud colors and huge rendering of W.E.B. Griffin's name on his  several rows of books left me with the impression that they were meant as cheap thrillers.