Who was John Adams?
When we think of the American Revolution, we naturally think of George Washington, who commanded the Continental Army and became the young Republic’s first president; of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and became the third president; or again of the iconic Benjamin Franklin who er captured lightning with a kite? John Adams might not even come to mind at all in the shadow of those three other great men, though he had a very significant part to play in the founding and preservation of the fragile young nation. Born on October 30, 1735 to a modest family, John Adams rose to prominence as a Massachusetts lawyer. As a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, Adams was nominated, along with Jefferson, Franklin and a few others, to draft a Declaration of Independence from Britain. Jefferson became its primary author, but Adams was its foremost defender in the Congress. Adams was subsequently dispatched to Europe to negotiate for financial and milita
John Adams, it was said, was a good husband, a good father, a good citizen, and a good man, McCullough reports. This is generally how Adams saw himself, but one wonders whether his alcoholic sons Charles (I renounce him, declared Adams on learning of his sons condition) or Thomas (a brute in manners and a bully in his family, is how a nephew described him) would characterize Adams this way. Or whether Congressman Matthew Lyons, whom Adams jailed for calling his presidency a continual grasp for power, would affirm Adams good citizenship. Or whether any of the other democratic newspaper editors whom Adams imprisoned for criticizing his presidency (a reign of witches is how Jefferson described the period) would find him admirable. Or whether the fifteen boatloads of would-be Americans, who fled the country in fear of Adams arbitrary powers, would agree that he was a good man. Who was John Adams? becomes, therefore, a matter of whom one asks and what one values, and it is here that David M
BOSTON–Founding Father John Adams was crazy about books. Terrified that he might “live and die an ignorant, obscure fellow,” he spent extravagantly on them and plunged into them with feverish intensity. At 21, he devised a reading program: to rise with the sun and study the Scriptures on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings; and to read ancient authors in Latin on the other three mornings. Noons and nights he would devote to English authors. Adams was far too human to become such an automaton, and his yearning heart often led him to disappointment, but his relentless drive for self-improvement did turn him into one of the most consequential figures of all time–a man whose deep understanding of human nature and political history formed the underpinning of our brilliantly conceived nation, with its federal and state constitutions constraining and balancing government power. Without Adams and his well-thumbed library, we–and countless others who have benefited from America’s
Though according to Benjamin Franklin he was “sometimes and in some things absolutely out of his senses,” John Adams is riding a wave of popularity now, thanks to a recent biography and an HBO mini-series. Adams is the quintessential Founding Father, an honest, prickly, dutiful, witty patriot who sacrificed himself and his family to his country. Thanks to his voluminous diaries and letters, we glimpse the man behind the legend, and he’s surprisingly like us. He doubts himself; he can be petty or magnanimous; he’s preoccupied with his health; he enjoys a fine meal and desperately misses his wife. But despite his Everyman qualities and his dedication to the new nation, was Adams actually all that admirable? In January 1776, he penned sentiments that Hillary Clinton or Michael Bloomberg could cheerfully spout: “…it is the Part of a great Politician to make the Character of his People, to extinguish among them the Follies and Vices that he sees, and to create in them the Virtues and Abilit
