Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams
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11. The quotation is from Adams to John Quincy Adams, November 12, 1818, Reel 123.
12. Adams to William Tudor, May 15, 1817, Reel 123. On Hutchinson’s tragic role in the coming of the American Revolution, see Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, 1974).
13. Diary and Autobiography, III, 434–35; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, January 25, 1806, Reel 118; Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 7, 1809, Old Family Letters, 237.
14. Diary and Autobiography, IV, 5; ibid., III, 330; Adams to Abigail Adams, March 19, 1776, Family Correspondence, I, 363; Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, October 29, 1805, Statesman and Friend, 31.
15. Diary and Autobiography, III, 335–36.
16. Adams to Benjamin Rush, September 30, 1805, Old Family Letters, 86; Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 21, 1811, Reel 118; Adams to William Cunningham, September 27, 1809, Correspondence Between Adams and Cunningham, 167; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 12, 1813, Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters (2 vols., Chapel Hill, 1959), II, 392–93, hereafter cited as Adams-Jefferson Letters.
17. Adams to Abigail Adams, May 17, 1776, Family Correspondence, I, 410–11; Diary and Autobiography, III, 335, 352.
18. Diary and Autobiography, III, 418–19. See also ibid., IV, 118–19, for Adams’s discussion of Franklin in Paris; Adams to William Temple Franklin, May 5, 1817, Reel 123; Diary and Autobiography, IV, 69; Adams to Rush, August 14, 1811, John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (San Marino, Calif., 1966), 185–86.
19. Adams to Benjamin Rush, March 14, 1809, Spur of Fame, 135.
20. Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, August 23, 1806, Reel 118.
21. Adams to Elkanck Watson, August 10, 1812, Reel 118; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July [3], 1813, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 349; Adams to Harriet Welsh, March 22, 1822, Reel 124; Adams to James Perspignam, March 4, 1823, Reel 124. See also Adams to Richard Rush, August 24, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to Harriet Welsh, May 9, 1821, Reel 124; Adams to John Holmes, August 10, 1815, Reel 122.
22. Adams to Benjamin Rush, April 22, 1812, Old Family Letters, 375–81; ibid., 161–73.
23. Adams to Nicholas Boylston, November 3, 1819, Reel 124.
24. Katherine Anthony, First Lady of the Revolution: The Life of Mercy Otis Warren (New York, 1958). See also Lester Cohen, “Mercy Otis Warren: The Politics of Language and the Aesthetics of Self,” American Quarterly, XXXV (1983), 481–98.
25. Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, January 29, 1783, in Warren-Adams Letters, Massachusetts Historical Society (2 vols., Boston, 1925), II, 188–89.
26. Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, July 11, 1807, in Charles Francis Adams, ed., Correspondence Between John Adams and Mercy Warren, reprinted in Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society, IV, 5th Series (1878), 21.
27. Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, July 27, 1807, ibid., 354, 358.
28. Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, August 3, 1807, ibid., 400–11.
29. Mercy Otis Warren to Adams, August 7, 1807, ibid., 422–23; Mercy Otis Warren to Adams, August 15, 1807, ibid., 449; Mercy Otis Warren to Adams, July 28, 1807, ibid., 359, 364.
30. Mercy Otis Warren to Adams, July 28, 1807, ibid., 360; Mercy Otis Warren to Adams, July 16, 1807, ibid., 480; Mercy Otis Warren to Adams, August 15, 1807, ibid., 456.
31. Mercy Otis Warren, History of the American Revolution (3 vols., Boston, 1805), III, 394–95; Mercy Otis Warren to Adams, July 28, 1807, Adams-Warren Correspondence, 363.
32. Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, July 20, 1807, ibid., 335; Mercy Otis Warren to Adams, August 15, 1807, ibid., 354.
33. A fuller discussion of Adams’s political theory is offered below, in chapters 4 and 5. But particularly relevant for an understanding of the modern scholarly debate over “republicanism” as it related to Adams, the following have been helpful, even if they are not always in agreement about the meaning of that important term: Joyce Appleby, “The New Republican Synthesis and the Changing Political Ideas of John Adams,” American Quarterly, XXV (1973), 578–95; Isaac Kramnick, “The Great National Discussion: The Discourse of Politics in 1787,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, XLV (1988), 3–32; Ralph Lerner, The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic (Ithaca and London, 1987); and Leslie Wharton, Polity and the Public Good: Conflicting Theories of Republican Government in the New Nation (Ann Arbor, 1980), especially 33–55.
34. Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, July 20, 1807, Adams-Warren Correspondence, 353; Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, August 8, 1807, ibid., 432.
35. See Lester Cohen, “Explaining the Revolution: Ideology and Ethics in Mercy Otis Warren’s Historical Theory,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, XXXVII (1980), 200–18. For a devastating and sprightly polemic against the efficacy of Warren’s version of republicanism, see John P. Diggins, The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism (New York, 1985).
36. Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, August 19, 1807, Adams-Warren Correspondence, 477–78.
37. Adams to William Cunningham, February 22, July 31, and June 7, 1809, Correspondence Between Adams and Cunningham, 93, 151, 124.
38. Adams to James Lloyd, February 6, 1813, Works, X, 113.
39. Adams to James Davis, August 4, 1819, Reel 123.
40. See above, chapter 1, for treatment of the Adams presidency. The quotation is from Adams to James Lloyd, February 6, 1815, Works, X, 115.
41. Adams to Nicholas Boylston, November 3, 1819, Reel 124; Works, X, 310, which reprints the selection from the Boston Patriot.
42. Ibid., IX, 281; Adams to William Cunningham, March 20, 1809, Correspondence Between Adams and Cunningham, 107; Adams to James Lloyd, February 11, 1815, Works, X, 119; Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, March 6, 1813, Statesman and Friend, 92–93.
43. Adams to Mathew Carey, September 9, 1820, Reel 124.
44. Adams to George Washington Adams, February 3, 1823, Reel 124; Adams to John Quincy Adams, May 14, 1815, Reel 122.
45. Adams to Alexander Johnson, December 14, 1822, Reel 124; Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 13, 1819, Reel 123; Adams to James Davis, August 14, 1819, Reel 123; Adams to Harrison Gray Otis, March 21, 1823, Reel 124.
46. Adams to William Bentley, August 18, 1819, Reel 124.
47. Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, May 3, 1821, Reel 124; Adams to Benjamin Rush, July 7, 1812, Old Family Letters, 401; Adams to Jedidiah Morse, March 4, 1815, Works, X, 133; Adams to Hezekiah Niles, January 3, 1817, Reel 123.
48. Adams to George Alexander Otis, July 2, 1820, Reel 124.
49. Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, December 22, 1818, Reel 123; Adams to John Quincy Adams, December 24, 1818, Reel 123; Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 27, 1812, Old Family Letters, 432.
3. Irreverencies and Oppositions
1. Diary and Autobiography, I, x–xiv.
2. Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 27, 1805, Spur of Fame, 24; Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 22, 1806, ibid., 72; Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 26, 1812, Reel 118.
3. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 11, 1813, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 328; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 16, 1814, ibid, 437; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, December 27, 1816, Works, X, 235.
4. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 3, 1812, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 302; Adams to John Marshall, August 11, 1800, Works, IX, 73.
5. See the preface in Haraszti, Prophets of Progress; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, January 11, 1817, Adams-Jefferson Letters, 505.
6. Haraszti, Prophets, 21, for the quotations. I have browsed in the Adams collection at the Boston Public Library to review the marginal comments for myself, but citations are to the Haraszti account, which is both readily accessible to readers and a model of spirited scholarship.
7. Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), is the authoritative scholarly account of Bolingbroke’s life and thought. See also H. T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke (London, 1970)
.
8. Haraszti, Prophets, 54–79.
9. Ibid., 258.
10. Ibid., 116–38.
11. Ibid., 181–85, 187.
12. Works, VI, 279; Adams to Richard Price, April, 1790, quoted in Haraszti, Prophets, 81.
13. Adams to Thomas McKean, June 21, 1812, Works, X, 16; Adams to Jefferson, July 13, 1813, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 355.
14. Adams to Jefferson, July 15, 1813, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 357–58; Adams to Charles Holt, September 4, 1820, Works, X, 391; Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 27, 1805, Spur of Fame, 24. There are several other books in the Adams library that deal with the French Revolution and contain Adams’s marginalia, but none with the volume or bite of his comments on Wollstonecraft. The secondary literature on the French Revolution is, of course, immense. The recent publication of Simon Schama’s Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York, 1988) is a brilliant and colorful account guided by convictions that Adams would have found compatible with his own.
15. Haraszti, Prophets, 187, 203.
16. Ibid., 187, 167. Adams’s understanding of the new word “ideology” is itself a large subject, discussed at greater length in chapter 5.
17. Ibid., 221–22.
18. Ibid., 201.
19. Ibid., 218–19, 214, 234.
20. Adams to Josiah Quincy, February 9, 1811, Works, IX, 630.
21. Adams to William Keteltas, November 25, 1812, Works, X, 23; Adams to Rush, June 12, 1812, Reel 118.
22. Adams to William Plumer, March 28, 1813, Works, X, 35; Thomas McKean to Adams, January, 1814, ibid., 87–89; Adams to John Trumbull, March 18, 1817, Reel 123. For the best scholarly discussion of the signing confusion, see Gary Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, 1979).
23. Adams to Alexander Everett, March 14, 1814, Reel 121; Adams to Thomas McKean, November 26, 1815, Works, X, 182.
24. Adams to William Tudor, April 5, 1818, Reel 123; Adams to John Quincy Adams, May 20, 1818, ibid. For a brilliant analysis of William Wirt’s treatment of Patrick Henry, see William Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (New York, 1961), 81–89.
25. Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, January 20, 1818, Works, X, 279; Adams to William Tudor, June 5, 1817, ibid., 262–63; Adams to William Tudor, June 1, 1817, ibid., 259.
26. Adams to William Tudor, February 16, 1823, Reel 124; Adams to William Tudor, February 1, 1823, ibid., Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, March 19, 1817, Statesman and Friend, 126–28.
27. Adams to William Tudor, June 7, 1818, Reel 123. For a modern scholarly assessment of Otis’s role in the Revolution, see John J. Waters, The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, 1968).
28. Adams to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818, Works, X, 282.
29. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 14, 1815, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 455.
30. Adams to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818, Works, X, 283.
31. Adams to Jefferson, May 29, 1818, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 525; Adams to William Tudor, September 18, 1818, Works, X, 359.
32. Adams to William Tudor, November 7, 1816, Reel 122; Adams to James Madison, July 25, 1818, Reel 123.
33. Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 8, 1812, Old Family Letters, 322; Adams to Benjamin Rush, September 30, 1805, Spur of Fame, 39. For more on Adams’s notion of neutrality, see also Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, April 1, 1811, Reel 118; Adams to James Lloyd, March 29, 1815, Works, X, 146–49.
34. Works, IV, 401, for the quotation from the Defence; Adams to Benjamin Rush, October 22, 1812, Reel 118.
35. Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, April 1, 1811, Reel 118; Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 28, 1810, Old Family Letters, 258–59; Adams to Benjamin Rush, July 25, 1808, Reel 118.
36. Adams to Richard Cranch, August 11, 1813, Reel 121; Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, September 17, 1813, Statesman and Friend, III.
37. Adams to William Cunningham, February 11, 1809, Correspondence Between Adams and Cunningham, 82; Adams to John Quincy Adams, February 5, 1805, Reel 118; Adams to John Adams Smith, October 10, 1819, Reel 124.
38. Adams to Thomas Truxton, November 30, 1802, Works, IX, 586; Adams to Joseph Varnum, December 26, 1808, Reel 118; Diary and Autobiography, III, 343–49.
39. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 1, 1812, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 301; Adams to Richard Rush, July 15, 1813, Reel 95.
40. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1812, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 311; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, May 27, 1813, ibid., 325; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 11, 1813, ibid., 329.
41. Adams to Richard Rush, October 8, 1813, Reel 95; Adams to Benjamin Rush, March 23, 1809, Spur of Fame, 137; Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 19, 1811, ibid., 198–99. For the most recent study of the impact of the War of 1812 on American culture, see Steven Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820 (Baltimore and London, 1987), especially 28–42, for a discussion of Adams. For a comprehensive review of the causes and consequences of the war, see J. C. A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1738–1830 (Princeton, 1983). The most recent scholarly monograph, which tends to endorse Adams’s assessment of policy mismanagement, is Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana, 1989). Finally, there is the classic account by Henry Adams, now conveniently available in the Library of America edition, History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (2 vols., New York, 1988).
42. Adams to John Quincy Adams, December 23, 1813, Reel 95; Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 17, 1812, Spur of Fame; Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 23, 1813, ibid., 276; Adams to Richard Rush, January 7, 1814, Reel 95.
43. Adams to Mathew Cary, July 7, 1813, Reel 95; Adams to Richard Rush, December 12, 1813, ibid.; Adams to William Smith, November 20, 1814, Reel 122; Adams to Governor Plummer, December 4, ibid.
44. Adams to James Madison, November 28, 1814, Works, X, 106; Adams to John Quincy Adams, February 25, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 11, 1815, ibid.; Adams to Richard Rush, October 12, 1814, ibid.; Adams to Horatio Gates Stafford, June 4, 1815, ibid.
4. The American Dialogue
1. Adams to Thomas McKean, June 21, 1812, Works, X, 16; Adams to Robert Fulton, June 23, 1813, Reel 95; Adams to Benjamin Rush, November 29, 1812, Reel 118.
2. Adams-Jefferson Letters, preface, for the statistical evidence on the correspondence; Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 3, 1813, Old Family Letters, 338.
3. For the most convenient summary of the history of the correspondence and public reaction to it, see Adams-Jefferson Letters, I, introduction.
4. Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 11, 1810, Spur of Fame, 44; Adams to John Quincy Adams, July 15, 1813, Reel 95; Adams to Benjamin Rush, March 4, 1809, Reel 118; Adams to William Cranch, May 23, 1801, Reel 118. Adams’s critique of Jefferson’s leadership as president has found a modern voice in Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1990)
5. Adams to Colonel Ward, January 8, 1810, Reel 118. For the most psychologically sensitive account of the Sally Hemings accusation by modern historians, see Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968), 461–69.
6. The best secondary account is Merrill D. Peterson, Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (Oxford, 1978); Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 6, 1785, Adams-Jefferson Letters, I, 28; see also Joyce Appleby, “The Jefferson-Adams Rupture and the First French Translation of John Adams’ Defence,” American Historical Review, LXXIII (1968), 1084–91; on the fear of the Hamilton wing of the Federalists that Adams and Jefferson might form a political alliance in 1796, see Charles, Origins of the American Party System, 54–74; Fisher Ames to Rufus King, September 24, 1800, Life and Correspondence of King, III, 304.
7. Adams to William Cunningham, January 16, 1804
, Correspondence Between Adams and Cunningham, 7–9; Adams to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1808, Spur of Fame, 107–08.
8. Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 21, 1809, Old Family Letters, 249. Jefferson had already made an indirect and unsuccessful attempt to resume the friendship in 1804. He wrote to Abigail in response to her letter consoling him on the recent death of his younger daughter. Jefferson conceded that Adams’s “midnight appointments…gave hurt,” but claimed he was willing to forgive. But the gesture went unanswered by Adams, who was still too raw and resentful in 1804. See Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, June 13, 1804, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 270.
9. Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 31, 1809, Old Family Letters, 246; Adams to Benjamin Rush, July 3, 1812, ibid., 297–98.
10. Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, December 5, 1811, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1892–99), IX, 300. See also Lyman H. Butterfield, “The Dream of Benjamin Rush: The Reconciliation of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,” Yale Review, 40 (1950–51), 297–319.
11. Adams to Jefferson, January 1, 1812, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 290; Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 10, 1812, Reel 118; Donald Stewart and George Clark, “Misanthrope or Humanitarian? John Adams in Retirement,” New England Quarterly, XXVIII (1955), 232, for the Adams remark about “a brother sailor.”
12. Thomas Jefferson to Adams, January 21, 1812, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 291–92.
13. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 3, 1812, ibid., 295; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, April 8, 1816, ibid., 467; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 3, 1816, ibid., 471.
14. Thomas Jefferson to Adams, January 21, 1812, ibid., 291–92; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 3, 1812, ibid., 295; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 24, 1821, ibid., 576.
15. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 21, 1812, ibid., 304, and note by Cappon.
16. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 11, 1819, ibid., 542; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, July 9, 1819, ibid., 543–44; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 21, 1819, ibid., 545; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, August 21, 1819, Reel 124.