A MAN OF FAMILY

Having earned a bad reputation as a history buff I found myself at Christmas engulfed in what else -- history books. One of them was, of course, John Adams by David McCullough. I say “of course” because John Adams has made a big comeback lately after being left in obscurity for two hundred years or so. Even when I was a schoolboy all we knew about him was that for some mysterious reason he had been the first vice-president of the United States, after which he became President for one term and disappeared from history.

John got this kind of neglect at a time when history was actually taught in schools and we kids couldn’t help but absorb some of it, no matter how we resisted. Years later when I questioned my own children to find out if they knew any Presidents, they were able to come up with George Washington but struck out completely on his successor. I took them out of that school, but it probably was no worse than the generality. And I’m afraid John Adams was the kind of man who just wasn’t meant to be memorable. Being sandwiched in between Washington and Jefferson as President didn’t add very much to his renown either. They’re both on Mount Rushmore but he isn’t.

There was one odd thing about him that did get my notice when young and now has surfaced again in the present John Adams enthusiasm. This was his action in the year 1787 in sending a mission to France to talk peace instead of war with the Directory, the revolutionary junta then running the country. These bandits had been snatching American ships on specious grounds, greatly agitating the conservative anti-revolutionary Federalist party, to which Adams belonged, who were demanding war with our old friends the French, and were joined by a fair number of the liberal Republicans, but not their leader, Jefferson.

Adams’s mission got a rough reception from the French, but eventually turned the tables by revealing that they had refused to pay them a bribe of $250,000 to secure their goodwill. This put the French on the spot, alienating their American friends and bringing war in sight. They immediately changed their tune and proposed a peaceful solution to the affair. Adams ignored the war hawks in America and concluded a treaty with the French, thereby saving the country from a war it did not need or really want. From the beginning Adams had believed that the French would eventually pull in their horns and this judgment had been vindicated.

In spite of this success, many of the Federalists had been disappointed when their war plans were thwarted and in particular Alexander Hamilton, who was out of office but not out of politics, had turned against Adams because he had been prevented from carrying out his plan to raise an army to annex Mexico and all the territory north and south of it, replacing the Spanish Empire with an American one. He had come to regard Adams as a small-minded hidebound little bourgeois who was unable to think big and appreciate the possibilities of expanding America to take in the whole Western Hemisphere. He himself did not have that problem.

So thanks to Hamilton and other former friends Adams lost in 1800, becoming the only president out of the first five not to get two terms. The next man to suffer this rebuff was his son John Quincy Adams. His son was Charles Francis Adams, who became Lincoln’s ambassador to England. One day he told the Prime Minister that if England built any more warships for the Confederacy like the Alabama “it would be superfluous in me to tell your Lordship that this is war.“ John Adams lived again. He had kept peace but he had always believed in a strong navy in order to keep it better. No more Alabamas were built.

Adams’ navy enthusiasm as well as many of his other characteristics had its roots in his Massachusetts upbringing where plain living and high thinking were the order of the day. He was a farmer’s boy and actually enjoyed working on the family farm. This testifies to his work habits as New England farms are very discouraging of such. One day his father took him out for a hard days’ harvesting in company with him and at the end of the day asked him how he liked it. He liked it fine, John said. “Well I didn’t” said his father, “and tomorrow you’re going back to school.”

John got to be a lawyer and then a delegate to the Continental Congress which in 1776 issued the Declaration of Independence, which he signed. This greatly irritated the British government, but all the same they decided to give the American upstarts another chance to get right with the King by accepting a peace offer he had sent. John and Benjamin Franklin and Edward Rutledge met with Lord Howe, the peace commissioner, on Staten Island and listened to the offer. One of its provisions was a promise of pardon to all the American rebels who accepted the settlement. No way, said John and company. That was it. The meeting was over. It was just as well. Howe had pardons in his pocket for immediate use, but none of them were for John Adams. He was to hang, says his biographer.

Adams is back, as I’ve said. He’s not alone either. Abigail, his wife, accompanies him. During his eclipse she has gotten more attention than him because she chronicled her time better than anyone else. She left more of a record of the 18th Century than most professional historians of that time. Most of her writing is in her constant letters to her husband, which he always matched with letters of his own. When it came to such writing both of them showed they were highly qualified to be the spokesmen for their time and place. David McCullough says that there is no memorial of Adams in Washington at all. I expect that when there is one it will be different from other Presidential monuments -- it will include his wife.

I was given this biography because the donor had learned about Adams from a TV documentary which covered his career. The book, I believe, is a tie-in with the program. This was a surprise hit, showing that there was more of a public appetite for American history than anyone knew of. In fact, a sequel is planned. (No, not really, it’s just that no mention of TV is complete without some such news. Just see the original and read the book and you’ll have J. Adams in full and you won’t need a sequel).