First Family

by Joseph J. Ellis

  In all respects save one, then, the mission to France had been an abject failure. Its diplomatic rationale, the treaty with France, had been accomplished before John even set sail. The separation from Abigail, in both time and distance, had generated emotional shock waves that shook her customary stoicism and produced a temporary breach in their partnership. And the working relationship with Franklin, which had performed magic in the past, was now damaged in ways that proved beyond repair.

  The sole exception to this depressing pattern was the relationship between John and John Quincy, which solidified under the pressures of their dramatic adventures together, especially their Atlantic crossing, and their more mundane day-to-day interactions in Paris. John’s earlier absences in Philadelphia, plus his deference to Abigail’s parental authority when he was home, had allowed a gap to develop between father and son, not so much a serious misunderstanding as the absence of any deeper understanding. That gap was closed during their eighteen months together at such close quarters.

  Part of the new alignment was a function of John’s conspicuous pride in his precocious son. Virtually everyone who met John Quincy commented on his stunning composure and remarkable maturity. (Later on this would cause problems, since it meant that John Quincy never really had a childhood.) Both Abigail and John put enormous pressure on the boy, often in language that violates our modern sensibilities for its uncompromising expectations. “There are talents put into your Hands,” wrote Abigail, “of which an account will be required of you hereafter, and being possessed of one, two, or four, see to it that you double their numbers.” John could easily have written the same words, though he could not have written the words that followed in Abigail’s letter: “But dear as you are to me, I had much rather you should have found your Grave in the Ocean you have crossed or any untimely death crop you in your Infant years, rather than see you an immoral profligate or a Graceless child.”24

  John tended to mix stern injunctions about diligence with self-deprecating jokes about the superiority of his son’s mastery of French. (John Quincy frequently translated for him.) When they went to the theater together—the beginning of John Quincy’s lifelong passion for the stage—John brought along a written version of the play in French, and John Quincy did a line-by-line translation for his father as the play proceeded, making him the teacher and his father the student. Small wonder that when Abigail began to berate her husband for failing to send longer and more intimate letters, John Quincy took his father’s side: “You complain as bad or worse than if he had not wrote at all,” he told his mother, “and it really hurts him to receive such letters.” He crossed out and never sent the next line: “If all your letters are like this, Papa will cease writing at all.” He had become his father’s son.25

  The final months in France were like lingering death. John decided in March 1779 that he could wait no longer for instructions from Philadelphia. Plans to sail from Nantes on the Alliance were delayed when the ship underwent emergency repairs, then canceled altogether when John was apprised that he should accompany the new French minister to the United States, Chevalier Anne-César de la Luzerne, on the Sensible. It finally departed from Lorient on June 17 and arrived at Boston on August 3. John and John Quincy were deposited on the same shore of Quincy Bay from which they had departed eighteen months earlier. They walked over Penn’s Hill again and into the house at Braintree. Abigail was crying again, but this time they were tears of joy.26

  INTERVAL

  We can imagine several scenes of blissful reunion: John turning his recurrent dream into reality by walking the Braintree fields hand in hand with Abigail, the children skipping alongside them; John Quincy being prodded to show off his fluency in French at the dinner table; Abigail crying with relief as she explained how marooned and lonely she had felt, but would never have to feel again.

  We can imagine all these scenes, and some of them almost surely occurred, but we cannot really know because no letters between John and Abigail exist, for the obvious reason that they were together again at last. Nor did either of them write many letters at all from August to November 1779, making this the most undocumented chapter in their more than half century as a couple. Apparently, they were so busy recovering their customary rhythms of affection and interaction, filling up the emotional hole that distance had created, that there was neither the time nor the inclination to do much else.

  There was one major exception, truly major because it almost offhandedly led to the most enduring political contribution of John’s entire career, his drafting of the Massachusetts Constitution, which remains (with multiple amendments) the oldest written constitution in the English-speaking world still in use.

  John was invited to join more than three hundred delegates at Cambridge on September 1, all charged with the task of drafting a new constitution for Massachusetts. An effort the previous year had run afoul of procedural disagreements, leaving Massachusetts, somewhat awkwardly, as the only state without a new constitution that embodied the republican principles of the American Revolution. The delegates selected a drafting committee of thirty men, which in turn selected a subcommittee of three that included John, which then proceeded to appoint him, as he put it later, “a Sub Sub Committee of one.” Working alone in his study at Braintree, he single-handedly composed the new constitution in late September and early October.27

  In retrospect, all the stars were perfectly aligned. With the possible exception of George Mason in Virginia, John was the most knowledgeable student of constitutional history in America. The advice he had offered in Thoughts on Government three years earlier had established his reputation on that score, and most of the new state constitutions adopted during the ensuing years had benefited from his guidance. The confidence the delegates to the Massachusetts Convention had in his competence reflected the broadly shared belief that there was an almost perfect match between John’s legal and intellectual talent and the needs of what he insisted be called the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

  Moreover, the creative context was ideal emotionally as well as intellectually. John worked at home with his family around him and with Abigail available to comment each evening on the fruits of that day’s work. In many of his previous (and subsequent) writings, John burdened his efforts with excessive displays of learning that verged on pedantry, long-winded asides that distracted the reader from the core message, often raising doubts that there was one. His temporary serenity amid the routinized domestic rhythms at Braintree, plus Abigail’s reliable presence as nightly editor, allowed his words and ideas to flow, his verbal twitches to subside, and his occasional excesses to be silently edited out. It was another perfect match.

  There were several distinctive touches to his draft constitution. “The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals,” he wrote in the preamble. “It is a social compact, by which the citizens unite with the whole people, that all may be governed by certain laws for the common good.” The proper title for such an arrangement was not state, which could apply to monarchies as well as republics, but commonwealth, which could apply only to a government that vested sovereignty in the people as a collective. So great was John’s prestige that no delegate ever questioned this decision, which made Massachusetts, along with Virginia and Pennsylvania, a commonwealth rather than a state forevermore.28

  Moreover, unlike most of the other state constitutions, which made the executive branch a mere appendage to a quasi-sovereign legislature, John’s draft created a powerful executive with an absolute veto over all legislation and a judiciary that was appointed rather than elected, serving not just a delineated term but “during good behavior.”

  As it turned out, the other delegates to the convention were not ready for such sweeping executive power, and modified his draft to permit the legislature to overturn a veto by a two-thirds majority. John always regarded this revision as a defacement, claiming that the preternatural fear of executive power represented an overlearning of the lessons of 1776.
Unlike George III, he reminded his critics, all Massachusetts governors would be elected annually. Without an absolute veto, he feared that governors would “be run down by the legislature like a Hare before the Hunters.” He lost this argument, though his insistence on a truly independent judiciary immune to popular pressure survived intact, a landmark contribution to American jurisprudence in which he took justifiable pride.29

  More than any of the other state constitutions, the Massachusetts Constitution was a postrevolutionary document that rejected as naive some of the most hallowed assumptions of the preceding decade; it insisted upon a political framework more akin to the federal constitution adopted eight years later. Under the revolutionary glow, all projections of government power were stigmatized, so most state constitutions presumed that the chief function of government was to serve as a conduit for popular opinion: to digest and refine it, to be sure, and then to enact it. John’s view of government, on the other hand, presumed that popular opinion was not a harmonious whole but a hydra-headed beast requiring orchestrated management, which meant channeling the different interests into separate constitutional compartments that would in turn police one another.30

  In a very real sense, John’s view of government was a projection onto the world of the control mechanisms necessary to subdue the powerful urges and impulses he felt surging through his own soul. More than any of the other American political thinkers of the age, he derived his most creative insights from a psychological understanding of the irrational side of human behavior. During the fall of 1779, with all his children surrounding him as he wrote, with Abigail once again present to listen and love, he reached a temporary level of mastery—all mastery was temporary in this context—over his abiding demons and self-destructive tendencies. Albeit momentarily, he found balance and proceeded to write, in record time, the most balanced state constitution in America.

  But the magic of this moment ended just as he was putting the finishing touches on his draft. In early October he received official word from Philadelphia that he had been appointed minister plenipotentiary to the court of France, whose main task was to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain ending the war. Neither John nor Abigail had been expecting his appointment, and neither realized the highly contentious, almost comically chaotic, manner in which it had happened.

  It represented the culmination of a long, bitter, often bizarre debate in the Continental Congress of several months’ duration. The debate had been triggered by Silas Deane’s published defense of his own highly suspicious conduct while serving on the American diplomatic commission in Paris. Deane exposed the multiple machinations within the American delegation, which in turn cast a shadow of suspicion over everyone else, John included. Deane’s sweeping allegations then touched off a chain reaction of highly partisan and extremely toxic debates within the congress, which are impossible to untangle because of the unrecorded backroom deals and relentless shiftings within the different camps. Henry Laurens, who presided over these debates in the congress, confessed that he himself was confounded by “the queerness of some of the queerest fellows that ever were invested with rays of sovereignty.”31

  Clearly, John’s very integrity had been questioned, unfairly and quite preposterously as Laurens saw it, but with sufficient vigor that John’s future role in public life was at stake. (His lifelong lament that jealous and small-minded enemies were plotting against him often has the distinct odor of paranoia, but in this particular instance they really were out to get him.) His appointment to the most significant and prestigious diplomatic post the country could offer was a clear indication that his friends in the Continental Congress had beaten back his enemies. But given the debate that had preceded that decision, so several friends warned him, it was imperative that John accept the assignment immediately and sail for France as soon as possible, lest his enemies, still lurking in the middle distance, overturn the decision.32

  There was never even a remote possibility that John would decline. Domestic concerns, real though they were, could not compete with his craving for public distinction. As he saw it, he had played a major role in launching the war for independence, so it was only right that he should be accorded an equivalent role in ending it. On November 4 he officially accepted the appointment, promising to “devote myself, without Reserve, or loss of time, to discharge the duties of it.” He intended to sail for France in eight to ten days.33

  The only real question, then, was whether Abigail and the children would join him. Given her multiple expressions of regret at not accompanying him on the previous trip, and given the anxiety she experienced—close to clinical depression—during their prolonged separation, it seems plausible to assume that she expressed a strong preference to come along. But there is no evidence that she did; in fact, there is no evidence whatsoever of their private conversations on this sensitive subject.

  A letter from John, written on board the Sensible just before it sailed, suggests that those conversations had been difficult and John had made the final decision that Abigail remain behind despite her protestations to the contrary: “Let me intreat you, to keep up your spirits and throw off Cares, as much as possible,” he urged. “We shall yet be happy, I hope and pray, and I don’t doubt it. I shall have Vexations enough, as usual. You will have Anxiety and tenderness enough, as usual. Pray strive not to have too much. I will write, by every opportunity I can get.”34

  She wrote him the same day, hoping the letter would arrive before he sailed: “My habitation, how disconsolate it looks! My table, I set down to it but cannot swallow my food. O Why was I born with so much Sensibility and, why possessing it have I so often been called to struggle with it?” By “sensibility” she meant her overwhelming emotional reaction to John’s prolonged absence, a pent-up sense of sorrow that she had managed to control before his departure but that then came surging over her once he was gone.35

  Clearly, they had exchanged mutual vows in the days before the voyage, he to write more frequently and expansively, she to avoid complaining when letters did not arrive in accord with his promises or her expectations. Clearly, at the parting this time, they were both brave. But most clearly of all, alone once again in the house, Abigail was miserable. If she had known that this separation would last for nearly five years, her misery might have been unbearable.

  A CRUEL DESTINY

  While Abigail attempted to reconcile herself to a life without love, John accepted the domestic sacrifice as the price, albeit a high one, that must be paid to earn a permanent place of prominence in American history. He attempted to reduce the domestic cost by bringing along Charles as well as John Quincy, who at ten and thirteen years of age respectively were deemed old enough to benefit from extended European exposure. His entourage also included two secretaries: Francis Dana, the senior staff member and former delegate to the Continental Congress; and James Thaxter, a Harvard graduate who had read law with John and tutored the Adams boys, the designated junior staffer.

  While Abigail battled ennui in a stony, self-imposed silence, John and his entourage found themselves launched on an adventure. The Sensible sprang a leak two days out of Boston that forced them to limp across the Atlantic—if British frigates had discovered them, they would have been easy prey—and eventually landed on Spain’s northwestern coast, a full one thousand miles from Paris. They mounted mules to scale the Pyrenees and endured smoke-filled accommodations, ever-present bedbugs, and overbearing Catholic priests, whom John described as surviving relics of the Inquisition. The hardships convinced him that he had made the correct decision to leave Abigail in Braintree. “What would we do,” he asked, “if you and all the family had been with me?” In an effort to demonstrate that she was always on his mind, he sent her a package from Bilbao that included green tea, several bolts of linen cloth, and eighteen dozen “Barcelona Hankuffs.”36

  Once he established his extended family in Paris, John made an obvious effort to write Abigail regularly and to ensure that his letters contained the kin
d of personal thoughts and impressions she so craved. A tour of the Royal Gardens, for example, prompted a discourse on the double-edged character of Parisian splendor: “There is every Thing here that can inform the Understanding or refine the Taste,” he observed. “Yet it must be remembered that there is every thing here too, which can seduce, betray, deceive, corrupt and debauch it.” A subsequent tour of the art museums produced a meditation on the march of civilization across generations, which has since become justifiably famous: “I must study Politics and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematics and Philosophy, Geography, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Music, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelain.” This was the man Abigail knew and loved, sharing himself over the distance the way she wished.37

  For several reasons, however, it could not last. The correspondence he felt compelled to maintain with the Continental Congress—he was at best assiduous, at worst obsessive, in reporting back to headquarters—soon began to nudge out the letters to Abigail. “I am so taken up with writing to Philadelphia that I don’t write to you as often as I wish,” he confessed somewhat guiltily. “I hope you won’t complain of me.” She did not, at one point claiming that she did not expect to receive more than a few letters a year. Even though she did not mean it, she felt obliged to say it.38

  Her low expectations, in fact, proved realistic. In part because it often took six months for a letter to reach her, and in part because many of John’s letters were lost at sea, any kind of ongoing conversation became impossible. They suddenly found themselves in a virtually silent partnership.

  Once again, this time for a much longer stretch, Abigail felt that she was a widow. On occasion she summoned up the bravado to joke about the nonnegotiable powers of the Atlantic Ocean. “Several packets have been sent to Neptune,” she quipped, “and I Query whether, having found his mistake, he has complaisance enough to forward them to you.” But her more abiding mood was depression and despair, describing her situation as “a cruel destiny” and herself “sitting in my solitary chamber, the representative of the lonely love.” One night she woke up from a dream in which John and both boys had returned to her, only to realize that it was merely a dream. “Cruel that I should wake,” she reported, “only to experience a renewal of my daily solicitude,” too disconcerted to write “solitude.” John concurred that they could only come together in a dream: “What a fine Affair it would be if We could flit across the Atlantic as they say the Angels do from Planet to Planet. I would dart to Penn’s Hill and bring you over on my Wings.”39