First Family

by Joseph J. Ellis

  34. JA to AA, 13 November 1779, AFC 3:224.

  35. AA to JA, 14 November 1779, AFC 3:233–34.

  36. John described the overland journey through Spain and southern France in DA 2:415–33 and 4:218–38; JA to AA, 11 December 1779, AFC 3:243–44.

  37. JA to AA, April-May, 1780, AFC 3:332–33; JA to AA, 12 May 1780, AFC 3–342.

  38. JA to AA, 6 April 1780, AFC 3:319; AA to JA, 13 April 1780, AFC 3:320–21.

  39. AA to JA, 23 August 1780, AFC 3:400–1; AA to Mercy Otis Warren, 1 September 1780, AFC 3:402–3; AA to JA, 25 December 1780, AFC 4:40; JA to AA, 2 December 1781, AFC 4:251.

  40. AA to JA, 10 April 1782, AFC 4:305–8.

  41. The effort by Vergennes to have John recalled is summarized in two editorial notes, AFC 3:390–95 and 4:174–76. For John’s version, see DA 3:103–5. The quotation is in DA 2:446. The debate and vote in the Continental Congress is in JCC 20:746.

  42. Benjamin Franklin to Continental Congress, 9 August 1780, AFC 3:395; Benjamin Franklin to R. R. Livingston, 23 July 1780, reproduced in AFC 5:251–52.

  43. Elbridge Gerry to JA, 30 July 1781, AFC 4:189.

  44. AA to James Lovell, 30 June 1781, AFC 4:165.

  45. AA to JA, 17 March 1782, AFC 4:293.

  46. AA to JA, 25 May 1781, AFC 4:128–31; JA to AA, 14 May 1782, AFC 4:323. John’s Dutch initiative, if recounted fully, would require a separate volume of its own. My account here is, and only intends to be, a brief summary, its brevity necessitated by the need to sustain the focus on the relationship between Abigail and John. The editorial note in AFC 3:390–95 describes John’s multiple movements and machinations in the Netherlands during 1780 and 1781.

  47. AA to JA, 9 December 1781, AFC 4:255–61; AA to JA, 5 August 1782, AFC 4:356–59.

  48. AA to JQA, 19 January 1780, AFC 3:268–69.

  49. JA to AA, 18 December 1780, AFC 4:34–35.

  50. John’s rather terrifying injunction to John Quincy dates from a later time, though it represents his consistent paternal posture. Obviously, when he was a young boy, John Quincy was not expected to become president, because no such office existed. But he was expected to lead a life of public service that culminated at the top. See Ellis, Passionate Sage, 195; AA to JQA, 26 December 1783, AFC 5:284. For a psychiatric interpretation of the pressure placed on John Quincy, see David F. Musto, “The Youth of John Quincy Adams,” American Psychological Society Proceedings 113 (1969), 269–82.

  51. JA to JQA, 14 May 1781, AFC 4:114.

  52. JQA to AA, 21 December 1780, AFC 4:38–39; JA to JQA, 23 December 1780, AFC 4:47; JA to JQA, 28 December 1780, AFC 4:55.

  53. AA to CA, 26 May 1781, AFC 4:135; JA to AA, 16 March 1780, AFC 3:305; JA to AA, 25 September 1780, AFC 3:424.

  54. JA to AA, 2 December 1781, AFC 4:249.

  55. AA to JA, 23 December 1782, AFC 5:54–59; AA to JA, 30 December 1782, AFC 5:61–63.

  56. JA to AA, 22 January 1783, AFC 5:75–76; JA to AA, 4 February 1783, AFC 5:88–89; AA to JA, 7 May 1783, AFC 5:151–52.

  57. Royall Tyler to JA, 13 January 1784, AFC 5:297–98; JA to Royall Tyler, 3 April 1784, AFC 5:316–17.

  58. G. Thomas Tanselle, Royall Tyler (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).

  59. JA to AA, 22 March 1782, AFC 4:300; JA to AA, 29 March 1782, AFC 4:303.

  60. JA to AA, 22 March 1782, AFC 4:301.

  61. JA to AA, 15 August 1782, AFC 4:360–61.

  62. It is possible, indeed probable, that John’s account of the number of letters lost at sea was inflated.

  63. JA to AA, 12 October 1782, AFC 5:15–16.

  64. JA to Edmund Jenings, 20 July 1782, AP 13:188–90.

  65. JA to AA, 8 November 1782, AFC 5:28–29, in which John describes how he and Jay pressured Franklin to accept the concept of a separate peace.

  66. DA 3:81. The story of the negotiations leading up to the Treaty of Paris has more twists and turns than this brief summary can possibly capture. The authoritative history is Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (New York, 1965). See also Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Peace and Peacemakers: The Treaty of 1783 (Charlottesville, 1986). The scholarship on this auspicious moment in American diplomatic history tends to divide along pro-Franklin or pro-Adams lines, with the former position enjoying a clear hegemony, invariably at the expense of Adams’s reputation. See, for example, James H. Hutson, John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution (Lexington, Ky., 1980). More recently, however, Adams advocates have become more numerous. See, for example, John Ferling, “John Adams, Diplomat,” WMQ 51 (April 1994), 227–52. While, like Ferling, I lean in the Adams direction, my deepest conviction is that the scholarly debate needs to free itself of the partisan prejudices of the participants and recognize that the success of the American negotiating team depended on the complementary strengths of both Franklin and Adams, but also on the extremely weak hand that history had dealt the British side.

  67. The correspondence and draft articles that paved the way for the Provisional Treaty are in PA 14:2–102. The treaty itself is in PA 14:103–9.

  68. AA to JA, 7 April 1783, AFC 5:116–17; JA to AA, 4 December 1782, AFC 5:46–47.

  69. JA to AA, 30 May 1782, AFC 5:167.

  70. JA to AA, 7 April 1783, AFC 5:119–21; JA to AA, 11 April 1783, AFC 5:121; JA to AA, 16 April 1783, AFC 5:125–27.

  71. AA to JA, 30 June 1783, AFC 5:188–90.

  72. JA to AA, 11 April 1783, AFC 5:121–22; DA 3:41–43, 50.

  73. JA to AA, 16 April 1783, AFC 5:125–27.

  74. AA to JA, 15 December 1783, AFC 5:280.

  75. AA to JA, 7 December 1783, AFC 5:276–78.

  76. JA to AA, 8 November 1783, AFC 5:265–66; AA to JA, 20 November 1783, AFC 5:271.

  77. AA to Elbridge Gerry, 19 March 1784, AFC 5:311–12; Elbridge Gerry to AA, 16 April 1784, AFC 5:320–21.

  78. AA to JA, 3 January 1784, AFC 5:291–92; AA to JA, 11 February 1783, AFC 5:302–3.

  79. Editorial note, AFC 5:350–51, for the voyage and arrival in London; DA 4:154–67, for Abigail’s diary. See also Levin, Abigail Adams, 167–73.

  CHAPTER FOUR. 1784–89

  1. Abigail kept a journal of her voyage and early weeks in London, written in the form of a long letter to her sister Mary Smith Cranch. The Copley portion of her commentary is in AFC 5:373–74.

  2. AFC 5:382; JA to AA, 1 August 1784, AFC 5:416; JA to JQA, 1 August 1784, AFC 5:416–17; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 30 July 1784, AFC 5:382.

  3. AFC 5:430, 433–35, 439–40; AA to Cotton Tufts, 8 September 1784, AFC 5:456–59. Howard C. Rice, The Adams Family in Auteuil, 1784–1785 (Boston, 1956).

  4. AA to Elizabeth Smith Shaw, 14 December 1784, AFC 6:29.

  5. AA to Mercy Otis Warren, 5 September 1784, AFC 5:446–51.

  6. AA to Lucy Cranch, 5 September 1784, AFC 5:436–38.

  7. AA to Hannah Quincy Lincoln Storer, 20 January 1785, AFC 6:65.

  8. AFC 6:66–67.

  9. AA to Elizabeth Smith Shaw, 13 December 1784, AFC 6:5–6; AA to Cotton Tufts, 2 May 1785, AFC 6:103–9.

  10. AA to JQA, 20 March 1786, AFC 7:97.

  11. AA to Elizabeth Smith Shaw, 11 January 1785, AFC 6:56–57; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 20 February 1785, AFC 6:67; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 15 April 1785, AFC 6:84.

  12. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 20 February 1785, AFC 6:67–68.

  13. AA to Cotton Tufts, 3 January 1785, AFC 6:43; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 15 April 1785, AFC 6:84.

  14. My effort here to recover the daily interactions of the Adams family at Auteuil represents a distillation of multiple letters from Abigail in 1784–85, in which the ordinary conversations are usually mentioned as asides. The last scene is described in AA to Royall Tyler, 4 January 1785, AFC 6:45. The fact that Abigail’s fullest account of a domestic scene was written to Tyler suggests that she still, at this stage, regarded him as a potential member of the Adams family.

  15. JA to James Warren, 27 August 1784; JA to Elbridge Gerry, 12 De
cember 1784, PA 7:382–83.

  16. AA to TJ, 6 June 1785, AFC 6:169–73; JA to TJ, 22 January 1825, AJ 2:606.

  17. More specific documentation of Jefferson’s visionary views of international trade appears in subsequent notes. This preliminary assessment of his mental habits is based on my earlier effort (in American Sphinx, 64–117) to capture his mentality at this stage of his career.

  18. JA to TJ, 4 September 1785, AJ 1:61.

  19. Lord Dorset to American Commissioners, 13 April 1785, JP 7:55–56; JA to TJ, 6 June 1786, AJ 1:133–34.

  20. TJ and JA to American Commissioners, 28 March 1786, JP 9:357–59.

  21. Editorial note, “Jefferson’s Proposed Concert of Powers Against the Barbary Pirates,” July-December 1786, JP 10:560–66.

  22. JA to TJ, 3 July 1786, AJ 1:142–43; JA to John Jay, 15 December 1784, Works 8:217–19; JA to TJ, 6 June 1786, AJ 1:133.

  23. JA to TJ, 31 July 1786, AJ 1:146; JA to TJ, 17 February 1786, AJ 1:121.

  24. The extensive correspondence between Abigail and Jefferson that documents my interpretation here can be found in AFC 6:223–24, 262–65, 333–34, 346–47, 390–92, 414–15, 422–23, 437–39, 441–42, 466–68, 488–89, 495–97.

  25. TJ to AA, 9 August 1786, AFC 7:312–13; AA to TJ, 19 October 1785, AFC 6:437–39.

  26. TJ to AA, 25 September 1785, AFC 6:390–92; AA to TJ, 7 October 1785, AFC 6:414–15.

  27. TJ to AA, 9 August 1786, AFC 6:312.

  28. TJ to AA, 22 February 1787, AFC 6:468–69; AA to TJ, 29 January 1787, AFC 6:455.

  29. AA to TJ, 26 June 1787, AFC 8:92–93.

  30. AA to TJ, 6 July 1787, AFC 8:107–9.

  31. AA to TJ, 10 July 1787, AFC 8:109–10.

  32. TJ to JA, 21 June 1785, AJ 1:34; JA to TJ, 22 May 1785, AJ 1:21.

  33. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 24 June 1785, AFC 6:192.

  34. DA 3:184.

  35. JA to John Jay, 2 June 1785, Works 8:255–59.

  36. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 24 June 1785, AFC 6:190; AA to JQA, 26 June 1785, AFC 6:196.

  37. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 24 May 1786, AFC 7:197–98; AA to Elizabeth Smith Shaw, 19 July 1786, AFC 7:264.

  38. AA to Elizabeth Smith Shaw, 2 September 1785, AFC 6:327–30; DA 3:184–86.

  39. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 30 September 1785, AFC 6:393.

  40. DA 3:187, 193, where an editorial note provides the Jefferson quotation.

  41. AA to Elizabeth Smith Shaw, 21 November 1786, AFC 7:392.

  42. Jefferson’s correspondence to American friends after meeting with John provides the most succinct statement of the diplomatic futility for an American ambassador in London: “With this nation nothing is done; and it is now decided that they intend to do nothing with us.” See TJ to James Madison, 25 April 1786, JP 9:433–34.

  43. AA to TJ, 6 September 1785, AFC 6:346–47.

  44. AA to Charles Storer, 23 March 1786, AFC 7:113–14.

  45. AA to JQA, 20 March 1786, AFC 7:98.

  46. JA to AA, 25 December 1786, AFC 7:412.

  47. JA to TJ, 22 May 1785, AJ 1:21; Jefferson’s analysis of African American inferiority in Notes is most conveniently available in Merrill Peterson, ed., The Portable Jefferson (New York, 1975), 186–93.

  48. AA to JQA, 16 February 1786, AFC 7:62–63.

  49. AA to WSS, 18 September 1785, AFC 6:366.

  50. AA to JQA, 21 July 1786, AFC 7:276; AA to CA, 1 February 1786, AFC 7:60–61; JA to CA, 2 June 1786, AFC 7:208.

  51. JA to JQA, 26 May 1786, AFC 7:205; JA to JQA, 23 January 1788, AFC 8:219–20.

  52. AA to JQA, 28 February 1787, AFC 7:474–75.

  53. For a sensitive and sensible discussion of Abigail’s recognition that gender equality was a clear consequence of the ideology used to justify the American Revolution, but that its arrival lay far in the future, see Elaine Forman Crane, “Political Dialogue and the Spring of Abigail’s Discontent,” WMQ 56 (October 1999), 745–74.

  54. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 15 August 1785, AFC 6:276–80; editorial note on the end of the Tyler courtship, DA 3:192.

  55. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 26 February 1786, AFC 7:77–80. See DA 3:183, for an editorial note on William Stephens Smith.

  56. WSS to AA, 5 September 1785, AFC 6:340–42; WSS to AA, 29 December 1785, AFC 6:508–9; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 21 March 1786, AFC 7:101.

  57. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 24 April 1786, AFC 7:147; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 25 February 1787, AFC 7:471; AA to Mercy Otis Warren, 14 May 1787, AFC 8:47.

  58. JA to Cotton Tufts, 27 August 1787, AFC 8:149. For news of the purchase, see Cotton Tufts to AA, 20 September 1787, AFC 8:162–63.

  59. AA to AA(2), 15 August 1786, AFC 7:318–20; AA to Cotton Tufts, 10 October 1786, AFC 7:359–64.

  60. John Jay to JA, 4 July 1787, quoted in editorial note, AFC 8:153.

  61. There is no modern edition of Defence, though there are selections from the text published in several anthologies of John’s political thought. The only place to find the unabridged version is in Works, vols. 4–6.

  62. The most favorable modern-day assessment of Defence is C. Bradley Thompson, “John Adams and the Science of Politics,” in Richard A. Ryerson, ed., John Adams and the Founding of the American Republic (Boston, 2001), 257–59.

  63. The hostile review in the London Monthly Review is quoted in an editorial note, AFC 8:79.

  64. AA to JQA, 20 March 1787, AFC 8:12; Works 4:290, for the quotations from Defence. The scholarly debate over John’s stature as a political thinker, based in part on his arguments in Defence, tends to focus on his dependence on classical categories of analysis (i.e., monarchy, aristocracy, democracy). Gordon S. Wood, in The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill, 1969), 567–92, makes the strongest case for reading Defence as an anachronistic work that was irrelevant to the more egalitarian context of the American republic. John P. Diggins, in The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism (New York, 1984), 69–99, on the other hand, sees Defence as prescient for its recognition that the absence of hereditary aristocracy in America did not mean the absence of class divisions or the hegemonic influence of political elites. I have offered my own interpretation of the issues at stake in Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (New York, 1993), 143–73, where I tend to agree with Diggins.

  65. AA to Cotton Tufts, 6 November 1787, AFC 8:203.

  66. TJ to JA, 20 February 1787, AJ 1:172.

  67. TJ to JA, 5 March 1788, JP 12:638.

  68. JA to TJ, 12 February 1788, AJ 1:224–25.

  69. AA to JA, 23 March 1788, AFC 8:247–48.

  70. TJ to JA, 13 November 1787, AJ 1:212; JA to TJ, 10 November 1787, AJ 1:210; JA to TJ, 6 December 1787, AJ 1:213–14.

  71. DA 3:215.

  CHAPTER FIVE. 1789–96

  1. Editorial note, quoting report in the Massachusetts Centennial, AFC 8:216–17.

  2. AA to AA(2), 7 July 1788, AFC 8:277–78.

  3. AA(2) to JA, 27 July 1788, AFC 8:282; AA(2) to JQA, 28 September 1788, AFC 8:299.

  4. JA to AA, 2 December 1788, AFC 8:312.

  5. JA to AA(2), 11 November 1788, AFC 8:305; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 24 November 1788, AFC 8:308.

  6. AA to JA, 15 December 1788, AFC 8:318–19; JA to AA, 28 December 1788, AFC 8:325.

  7. AA to JA, 3 December 1788, AFC 8:313–14; JA to TJ, 2 January 1789, AJ 1:234.

  8. JA to AA, 19 December 1793, AFC, vol. 9. The editors of the Adams Papers granted me access to the unpublished galleys of the forthcoming volume of the Adams Family Correspondence before pagination was finalized. Subsequent references to this volume will provide the date of the letters without pagination.

  9. Editorial note, 16 March 1789, AFC 8:340.

  10. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 28 June 1789, AFC 8:379; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 12 July 1789, AFC 8:391.

  11. JA to AA, 14 May 1789, AFC 8:352.

  12. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 9 August 1789, AFC 8:397.

  13. Editorial note, 21 April
1789, AFC 8:340; JA to JQA, 9 July 1789, AFC 8:387.

  14. Linda Grant De Pauw, et al., eds., Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 15 vols. (Baltimore, 1972–84) 9:3–13; James H. Hutson, “John Adams’ Title Campaign,” NEQ 41 (January 1968), 30–39.

  15. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 5 January 1790, AFC, vol. 9. There is no modern, easily accessible edition of Discourses on Davila; I have relied on the old edition in Works, vol. 6.

  16. JA to AA, 24 November 1792, AFC, vol. 9, where John describes a conversation that he overheard containing these accusations.

  17. Works 6:258–62.

  18. Works 6:237, 245; see also JA to JQA, 7 May 1794, UFC, and JA to TBA, 19 September 1795, UFC.

  19. AA to JA, 31 December 1793, AFC, vol. 9.

  20. JA to AA, 12 March 1794, UFC.

  21. JA to AA, 11 November 1789, AFC 8:342.

  22. AA to Cotton Tufts, 18 April 1790, AFC, vol. 9.

  23. Woody Holton, “Abigail Adams, Bond Speculator,” WMQ 64 (October 2007), 821–38; editorial note, AA to Cotton Tufts, 6 February 1790, AFC, vol. 9.

  24. AA to Cotton Tufts, 7 March 1790, AFC, vol. 9.

  25. AA to JQA, 11 July 1790, AFC, vol. 9; AA to Cotton Tufts, 1 September 1789, AFC 8:405; AA to AA(2), 21 November 1790, AFC, vol. 9.

  26. I have discussed the issues surrounding the treaty with the Creek Nation at greater length in American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic (New York, 2007), ch. 4.

  27. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 8 August 1790, AFC, vol. 9.

  28. TJ to JA, 10 May 1789, AJ 1:237.

  29. JA to TJ, 29 July 1791, AJ 1:247–48.

  30. TJ to JA, 17 July 1791, AJ 1:246.

  31. JA to TJ, 29 July 1791, AJ 1:249–50. John Quincy’s eleven essays appeared in the Columbia Centinel in June and July 1791.

  32. AA to JA, 7 January 1793, AFC, vol. 9.

  33. AA to JA, 27 May 1794, UFC; JA to AA, 11 March 1796, UFC.

  34. AA to Martha Washington, 25 June 1791, UFC; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 20 March 1792, UFC.

  35. AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 28 April 1790, 25 October 1790, UFC; AA to JQA, 7 November 1790, 5 November 1792, UFC.

  36. JA to JQA, 26 April 1795, UFC.