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Magill’s Literary Annual 2002

John Adams

by R. Baird Shuman

First published: 2001

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (New York). Illustrated. 751 pp. $35.00

Type of work: Biography and history

Time of work: 1735-1826

Locale: Boston, Braintree, and Quincy, Massachusetts; Paris; The Hague, Netherlands; Philadelphia; New York City; Washington, D.C.

This biography of the second president of the United States examines the life and thought of Adams, focusing also on the lives of his wife, Abigail, and their son, John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States, and upon Adams’s interactions with such statesmen as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington

If ever the author of a historical biography ran the risk of having too much primary material at his disposal, David McCullough ran such a risk in researching John Adams, one of the most carefully documented biographies in recent years. The Adams papers, held in the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, contains a “full collection of letters, diaries, and family papers of all kinds, ranging from the year 1636 to 1889.” The items, copied on 608 reels of microfilm, results in a full five miles of microfilm records. McCullough has searched this collection diligently and has successfully sidestepped the danger of creating a book so weighed down with factual information as to make it unreadable.

Despite its length—over seven hundred pages—this book is vibrant and exciting from start to finish. The factual material it presents is accurate and relevant, but never does McCullough permit it to outweigh the dramatic events that make Adams one of the most interesting early American patriots. The author’s skill in presenting John Adams and his wife, Abigail, as people to whom readers can relate directly is commendable. McCullough’s characters live and breathe and have a palpable being.

This book is far more than a biography of one man. Its broad scope makes it a cultural and political history of the United States during its formative stages. Adams’s interactions with early American statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, as depicted by McCullough, present unique insights into the characters and political maneuverings of these influential statesmen.

John Adams sprang from humble beginnings, the son and grandson of farmers. Because young John Adams showed exceptional ability, his father encouraged him to become the first member of the Adams family to attend college. Adams’s four years at Harvard were among the most fulfilling of his long life. The same cannot be said for his stint as a teacher in Worcester, Massachusetts, although the time spent there resulted in his rethinking and reshaping many of his most cherished beliefs. During this period, he read for the law for two years under the direction of a Worcester attorney, James Putman.

Certainly a turning point in Adams’s life came with his marriage, in 1764, to Abigail Smith. Because of her frail health, she had been schooled at home by her father, William Smith, a clergyman who, like Adams, had attended Harvard College. Abigail’s mother objected to the union, thinking that Abigail was marrying beneath her. The marriage, nevertheless, took place and was as successful, enduring, and fulfilling a union as can be imagined.

Abigail Adams was a remarkably canny person. On the surface she might have seemed provincial, having never strayed more than fifty miles from Braintree until 1784, when, at age forty, she reluctantly sailed for England to join her husband. He had, by that time, been abroad on embassies to France and the Netherlands for several years and was suffering greatly from the strain of having been separated from his family for such an extended period, although two of his sons, John Quincy and Charles, were with him at various times.

Abigail’s first exposure to European ways shocked her, although during her residence in Paris she became increasingly tolerant of the sort of freewheeling life that many Parisians lived. She saw stage plays in Paris and became a devotee of the theater. She also became enamored of opera and was a frequent patron of the Paris Opera. Abigail proved herself capable of adjusting to her circumstances, whether this involved struggling to make ends meet during her solitary years in Braintree, when money was always short, or fitting into a completely foreign society in which her husband was expected to function as a diplomat. Even in Paris, however, Abigail had to struggle to make ends meet—Adams’s salary of five thousand dollars a year did not permit the family to live in a manner befitting a ranking diplomat.

During Adams’s early days in France, as part of a three-member commission that included Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, Franklin was living rent-free in the palatial residence of the Comte de Vergennes. Adams considered this inappropriate, because Vergennes was involved financially with the United States and opposed Congress’s measures to devaluate the American currency, requesting that if devaluation occurred, sums owed France would be excluded from the devaluation. Franklin had arranged for Adams to live in Vergennes’s residence, which Adams did for some time, despite his reservations.

During his close association with Franklin, Adams lost respect for this senior statesman, coming to realize that Franklin took few controversial stands, was ethically slipshod, and was, besides, lazy and disorganized. The third member of the commission, Arthur Lee, was generally at odds with both Franklin and Adams, making it virtually impossible for Adams to make the sorts of contributions he wished as a member of the commission.

Eventually, largely through Franklin’s devious backstage maneuvering, Adams was deployed to The Hague as ambassador to the Netherlands, where he established the first American embassy anywhere in the world. By the time Abigail arrived, however, he had returned to Paris with young John Quincy, who by this time was fluent in French and had learned some Dutch. He was showing considerable promise and was the apple of his father’s eye.

If a single word can describe John Adams, that word would be “integrity.” Adams was basically honest and true to his word. His friend Benjamin Rush wrote of him, “This illustrious patriot has not his superior, scarcely his equal for ability and virtue on the whole of the continent of America.” During the days in which the Declaration of Independence was drawn and the United States Constitution was drafted, Rush concluded that “[e]very member of Congress in 1776 acknowledged him to be the first man in the House.” Few would dispute this claim.

Adams, living away from his beloved Braintree and his family, labored ceaselessly to bring to fruition the dream that he had for an independent United States, one in which government existed to assure the welfare and happiness of its citizens. The financial sacrifice that he made by serving in the Continental Congress was substantial and forced Abigail into the position of financial manager of her family. Greater still was the sacrifice that people like Adams would make if their cause failed. Each signatory to the Declaration of Independence was considered a traitor and was under threat of execution and confiscation of their property if their cause did not succeed. Adams was nothing short of heroic during this period.

When it became obvious that the colonies and Britain would be engaged in a war, Adams made a speech in Congress calling for the appointment of George Washington as commander of the army. Although Adams had reservations about Washington’s ownership of slaves, he recognized this Virginian as a man who could command a ragtag army and possibly mold it into a disciplined military force.

Despite his high opinion of Washington, the two men were never close. Adams served as the first vice president of the United States when Washington was elected president, but in that position he had little actual access to the president, nor did Washington call upon him frequently for his opinion on pressing matters. Adams faithfully attended every session of the Senate and often, as its president, was called upon to cast his vote when a tie occurred. He consistently voted along party lines and was unfailingly loyal to President Washington, although he became restless and frustrated in a job in which he was essentially powerless, a complaint of many subsequent vice presidents.

When Washington served as president, no term limits were in effect, so some speculated that Washington would hold the job virtually for life. The president, however, realizing the danger of the new nation’s becoming a pseudo-monarchy, decided to serve two terms and then to retire to Mount Vernon. Although John Adams seemed the logical successor, Thomas Jefferson was also in the running, as were Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Aaron Burr. James Madison, never an advocate of Adams, did what he could to assure Jefferson’s victory, and he came within three electoral votes of succeeding. When the final tally was in, Adams had seventy-one votes to Jefferson’s sixty-eight, Pinckney’s fifty-nine, and Burr’s thirty.

Adams’s presidency was marked by a number of trials. To begin with, the national capital in Washington, D.C., was not completed until the last year of his presidency. Adams served in the provisional capital, Philadelphia, where yellow fever epidemics every year brought governmental work to a halt as legislators fled the city for safer places. During one year of his presidency, Adams spent all of seven months at Peacefield, his farm in Braintree, where he received frequent dispatches from Philadelphia and acted as best he was able on governmental matters. During his term of office, the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were passed, casting a shadow over the Adams presidency.

Adams was also taken to task for building up a navy at the expense of creating and equipping a strong army. These factors all entered into forming considerable opposition to him as he completed his term of office. Alexander Hamilton waged a brutal campaign against Adams’s reelection and, in the end, succeeded, although by doing so, he—never a Jefferson enthusiast—helped Thomas Jefferson capture the presidency. Jefferson received seventy-three electoral votes to Adams’s sixty-five and Pinckney’s sixty-three. Aaron Burr had the same number of votes as Jefferson, so the outcome of the 1800 election was decided by the House of Representatives.

Adams served the last year of his term of office in Washington. He and Abigail lived in the half-finished President’s House, later renamed the White House. The plaster on its walls still wet, thirteen fires had to be kept blazing in the hearths to prevent the occupants’ being overcome by dampness. Abigail hung her laundry in the unplastered audience room on the east end of the main floor to dry.

Finally, in his mid-sixties, virtually toothless, worn down by his years of public service and particularly by his four years as president, John Adams retired with Abigail to their farm in Massachusetts. He lived on for another twenty-six years, dying eight years after his beloved wife.

Sources for Further Study

1 

America 185 (August 25, 2001): 26.

2 

American History 36 (October, 200l): 67.

3 

Business Week, June 4, 2001, p. 22.

4 

Campaigns and Elections 22 (August, 2001): 18.

5 

Commentary 112 (September, 2001): 75.

6 

The New Republic 223 (July 2, 2001): 35.

7 

The New York Review of Books 48 (June 21, 2001): 33.

8 

The New York Times Book Review 106 (May 27, 2001): 9.

9 

The New Yorker 77 (May 21, 2001): 99.

10 

Newsweek 136 (May 21, 2001): 58.

11 

People Weekly 55 (June 25, 2001): 49.

12 

Publishers Weekly 248 (August 13, 2001): 161.

13 

Time 157 (May 28, 2001): 88.

14 

U.S. News and World Report 131 (August 6, 2001): 56.

15 

The Washington Post, July 4, 2001, p. A19.

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Shuman, R. Baird. "John Adams." Magill’s Literary Annual 2002, edited by John D. Wilson & Steven G. Kellman, Salem Press, 2002. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=MLA2002_10990300301698.
APA 7th
Shuman, R. B. (2002). John Adams. In J. D. Wilson & S. G. Kellman (Eds.), Magill’s Literary Annual 2002. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Shuman, R. Baird. "John Adams." Edited by John D. Wilson & Steven G. Kellman. Magill’s Literary Annual 2002. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2002. Accessed April 05, 2026. online.salempress.com.