30. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 13, 1813, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 355–56.
31. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1815, ibid., 456.
32. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 16, 1816, ibid., 500–01; on Tracy’s book, see Adams to Jefferson, February 1, 1817, ibid., 506–07.
33. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 9, 1813, ibid., 351.
34. Modern-day historians and political scientists have been less interested in Adams’s psychological reflexes than the intellectual implications of his political vocabulary. His obsession with aristocracy, in this view, was merely part of a larger commitment to classical categories of analysis that had become anachronistic in the emerging democratic culture of post-revolutionary America. The seminal account of Adams as an attractive anachronism, rooted in the classical politics of pre-modern America, is Gordon Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969), 567–92. I am trying to argue that Adams had several piercing insights into the forces shaping American politics and society precisely because he refused to accept the modern vocabulary of Jeffersonian democracy. Wood implicitly acknowledges this in his treatment of Adams, and explicitly does so at the end of the chapter cited above: “For too long and with too much candor he had tried to tell his fellow Americans some truths about themselves that American values and American ideology would not admit.” Precisely. More on this important theme follows in chapter 5 below.
35. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 9, 1813, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 351–52; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, Aug [14?], 1813, ibid., 365; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 19, 1813, ibid., 409.
36. In the margins of his copy of Harrington’s Oceana, Adams wrote: “The controversy between the rich and the poor, the laborious and the idle, the learned and the ignorant, distinctions as old as the creation and…grounded on unalterable nature…will continue, and rivalries will spring out of them.” See Haraszti, Prophets of Progress, 34–35.
37. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 13, 1813, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 355.
38. Thomas Jefferson to Adams, October 28, 1813, ibid., 387–92.
39. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813, ibid., 400; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 16, 1814, ibid., 437–38.
40. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1813, ibid., 376; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 2, 1813, ibid., 371–72; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813, ibid., 398.
41. Adams to Joseph Mulligan, November 20, 1818, Reel 123.
42. Benjamin Rush to Adams, February 17, 1812, Spur of Fame, 211. Professional historians have been engaged in a furious debate about the evolution of republicanism as an ideology after the Revolution. In that debate, which has at times taken on a superheated character reminiscent of the scatalogical rhetoric of the radical Whigs in the 1760s and both political parties in the 1790s, Adams is generally cast as the prototype of the classical mentality, fundamentally at odds with the emerging liberal mentality represented by Jefferson. While this formulation accurately conveys Adams’s disenchantment with most of the values associated with Jeffersonian liberalism—its embrace of an individualistic ethic, its contempt for the past, its faith in the workings of the marketplace, its repudiation of activist government—too often the formulation makes Adams into a notorious anachronism, out of touch with the triumphant impulses of democratic capitalism. If we are to embrace a strict historicism, both Adams and Jefferson, as well as all their colleagues in the revolutionary generation, were time-bound creatures whose political values were shaped in a world that is lost forever to us. If we step back from strict historicism, however, and ask what enduring ideas underlay Adams’s vision and his classical vocabulary or idiom, it seems clear that he is best understood as a critic of liberalism whose reverence for the past and for gradual change links him with latter-day conservatives, whose diagnosis of inherent social inequality links him with latter-day radicals, and whose belief in the active role of government links him with what in twentieth-century politics is, ironically, referred to as the liberal tradition. For an appreciation of Adams’s role as critic of the Jeffersonian camp, see the often brilliant book by Watts, The Republic Reborn. For a critical assessment of the Jeffersonian legacy, see Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, 1980). For the most incisive introduction to the terms of the debate among professional historians, see the matched pair of scholarly articles: Joyce Appleby, “Republicanism in Old and New Contexts,” and Lance Banning, “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic,” both in William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, XLIII (1986), 3–34.
43. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, January 29, 1819, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 532; also Adams to Jefferson, February 24, 1819, ibid., 534–35.
44. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 1, 1817, ibid., 507; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, May 5, 1817, ibid., 513.
45. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, January 22, 1825, ibid., 606; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, February 15, 1825, ibid., 609.
46. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 16, 1816, ibid., 501; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 21, 1820, ibid., 561; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, January 22, 1825, ibid., 607.
47. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 21, 1819, ibid., 540.
48. Thomas Jefferson to Adams, October 12, 1823, ibid., 601.
49. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 10, 1823, ibid., 601–02.
50. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 21, 1819, ibid., 551; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 3, 1821, ibid., 571.
51. Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, May 11, 1805, Ford, ed., Works, X, 141; the quotation from Coles and Jefferson’s response are conveniently available in Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 999. See also McCoy, The Last of the Fathers, for a splendid discussion of the inadequacy of Jefferson’s legacy as it faced the persistence of slavery.
52. Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, Ford, ed., Works, XII, ii; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, August 1, 1816, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 484; Jefferson’s autobiography in Ford, ed., Works, I, 77.
53. Adams to Reverend Coleman, January 13, 1817, Reel 123; see also the letter to Peter Ludlow and James Sheys, February 21, 1819, Reel 123, where Adams acknowledges there was a rough equivalency to the problem presented by slavery and by the proper conduct toward the Indians.
54. Adams to William Tudor, November 20, 1819, Reel 124; Adams to Joshua Cushman, March 16, 1820, Reel 124; Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, January 29, 1820, Reel 124; see also the same views expressed in Adams to Robert J. Evans, June 8, 1819, Works, 379–80; Adams to Robert Walsh, January 19, 1820, Reel 124; Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, December 23, 1819, Reel 124.
55. Thomas Jefferson to Hugh Nelson, February 7, 1820, Ford, ed., Works, X, 156; Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, ibid., 157–58; Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, November 28, 1820, ibid., 165–68. The best secondary account is Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 981–95.
56. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 25, 1825, Adams-Jefferson Letters, II, 610.
57. This view of Jefferson’s decline at the end is in keeping with Merrill Peterson’s treatment in Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 980–1009. See also Peterson’s Adams and Jefferson, 126–28, where even Peterson, one of Jefferson’s ablest defenders, concludes that by the 1820s “the two men seemed to change places. Adams was serene, Jefferson morbid. The New Englander found the path of tranquility…while…the Virginian lost it in the gloom that invaded a declining [southern] society….”
5. Erudite Effusions
1. Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1813, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 376; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, October 28, 1813, ibid., 392; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 12, 1813, ibid., 394; Adams to Richard Rush, November 5, 1813, Reel 122.
2. Adams to John Langdon, February 21, 1812, Reel 118; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 12, 1813, Adam
s-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 394; the Adams correspondence with John Taylor is published in Works, VI, 443–521, without dates for the individual letters.
3. John Taylor, An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (New Haven, 1950; first published 1814); A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America and Discourses on Davila are available in Works, IV, 270–588, V, VI, 3–399; Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 27, 1810, Old Family Letters, 270.
4. Adams to Mathew Carey, June 21, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, July 5, 1814, ibid. The claim of influence on Burke is at best an exaggeration and at worst a total fabrication.
5. The marginal comment of 1812 is reproduced in Works, VI, 227; the comment on the likelihood of civil war, dating from 1813, is in Haraszti, Prophets of Progress, 173.
6. Adams to Benjamin Franklin, January 17, 1787, John Bigelow, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1904), XI, 298–99; Adams to James Warren, January 9, 1787, Ford, ed., Warren-Adams Letters, II, 281.
7. Works, IV, 274; Adams to Nicholas Boylston, July 24, 1819, Reel 123.
8. See Haraszti, Prophets of Progress, 46–48, 167–68, for the most reliable assessment of both works in terms of originality.
9. The chief books on Adams as a political theorist are: Correa M. Walsh, The Political Science of John Adams (New York, 1915); Edward Handler, America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); and John R. Howe, Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (Princeton, 1966), which remains the best full-length treatment, even though the interpretation of Adams as changing dramatically in the 1780s strikes me as misguided. The wisest book on Adams as a political thinker remains Haraszti, Prophets of Progress. The most insightful treatment of Adams’s political theory within the context of the republican ideology, and therefore the starting point for any modern reinterpretation, is Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 567–92. Leslie Wharton’s Polity and the Public Good links Adams’s political theory to the social conditions of New England in intriguing ways. Ralph Lerner’s The Thinking Revolutionary is critical of Wood for “overcontextualizing” Adams’s ideas, and distinguishes between “thought” and “ideology” in ways that suggest Adams’s continuing relevance. Among the scores of scholarly articles, two strike me as most helpful: Stephen Kurtz, “The Political Science of John Adams: A Guide to His Statecraft,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, XXV (October 1968), 605–13, and Joyce Appleby, “The New Republican Synthesis and the Changing Political Ideas of John Adams,” American Quarterly, XXV (1973), 578–95.
10. Works, IV, 287, 371.
11. Ibid., 219, 287, 290, 292; Adams to James Madison, April 22, 1817, Works, X, 257. See also Howe, Changing Political Thought, 133–55; McCoy, Elusive Republic, 96–100; and Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 567–79, for the best secondary accounts.
12. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, June 6, 1787, Boyd, ed., Papers of Thomas Jefferson, XI, 401–02.
13. Works, IV, 398; Haraszti, Prophets of Progress, 223; Adams to Josiah Quincy, February 18, 1811, Works, IX, 634.
14. Adams to Benjamin Rush, March 26, 1806, Old Family Letters, 96; Adams to John Quincy Adams, November 22, 1815, Reel 122; Haraszti, Prophets, 178; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 15, 1823, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 595–96.
15. Works, IV, 290.
16. Ibid., 380–81.
17. Works, III, 447–64, for the Dissertation; Works, IV, 396–97, and Adams to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1808; Spur of Fame, 108, for typical Adams formulations on housing the aristocracy in the upper house. DeLolme’s work was originally published in London in 1771. The influence of DeLolme is the main point of Appleby’s interpretation, cited above. Despite his insistence throughout his retirement that he never sanctioned anything but election to the Senate, in Davila Adams suggested at one point that “hereditary descent would be better.” See Works, VI, 249.
18. Taylor, An Inquiry, 34; Wood, Creation, 587–92, which was the first account to recognize the implications of Taylor’s argument for Adams’s “irrelevancy.” Indeed, it is Taylor’s critical perspective that Wood adopts as his own throughout his treatment of Adams’s Defence, even though it is clear from his tone and concluding paragraph that Wood admires Adams’s analysis and thinks it more profound than the liberal ideology that displaced it.
19. Works, VI, 482.
20. Taylor, Inquiry, 31–34, 37, 158–59, 372.
21. Ibid, 54, 101, 171, 372, 374.
22. Works, VI, 483, 476–77, 511.
23. Ibid, 467.
24. Ibid, 453–54, 457.
25. Ibid, 452.
26. Ibid, 469, 457.
27. Ibid, 461–62.
28. Ibid, 458; Adams to William Cunningham, March 15, 1804, Correspondence with Cunningham, 18–19.
29. Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 27, 1810, Spur of Fame, 174; Works, VI, 456–57, 460.
30. Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, August 7, 1805, Statesman and Friend, 28–29.
31. Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 27, 1810, Spur of Fame, 175; Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 1, 1812, ibid., 235; Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 25, 1808, ibid., 104; Adams to Franklin Vanderkemp, February 16, 1809, Works, IX, 610. These citations represent only a small fraction of the Adams correspondence devoted to the evils of banking.
32. Taylor, An Inquiry, 41, 244–45; the fifth chapter of the Inquiry was entitled and devoted to “Banking.” Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1813, Adams-Jefferson Correspondence, II, 376; Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 28, 1811, Spur of Fame, 193; Adams to Benjamin Rush, July 3, 1812, ibid., 228.
33. Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 13, 1811, Old Family Letters, 281; Taylor, Inquiry, 48–49, 289.
34. Robert Shalhope, John Taylor of Caroline: Pastoral Republican (Columbia, S.C., 1980), offers the best overview of Taylor’s life and his views on the banking industry. See Jacob E. Cooke, Tench Coxe and the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, 1978), for a good look at the republican arguments in support of banks. The standard overview of the banking industry is Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War (New York, 1957).
35. Adams to John Pope, April 4, 1818, Reel 118; Adams to John Taylor, March 12, 1819, Works, X, 375; Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 28, 1811, Spur of Fame, 193.
36. Works, VI, 277. See also Haraszti, Prophets of Progress, 167, for the best discussion of the composition of Davila.
37. Works, VI, 239, 258–62; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, August 9, 1813, Reel 95.
38. Works, VI, 232–34.
39. Ibid., 237. My point here about Veblen and Puritanism is not to suggest any direct causal connection either forward toward Veblen’s theory of the leisure class or backward toward Jonathan Edwards or John Cotton. There is no evidence that Veblen ever read Davila, or that Adams studied the sermons of Edwards or Cotton. But then important attitudes and perspectives seldom get conveyed in such a simplistic and straightforward fashion. It would be more accurate and sensible to note that Adams grew up listening to New England sermons and to the constant talk about the complex relationship between works and grace. Likewise, the affinity between Adams’s and Veblen’s common recognition that non-material considerations underlay the scramble for wealth probably has something to do with each man’s lifelong preference for paradoxical insights that verged on the perverse. Both men were also struck by the fact that the material necessities were more readily available in America, so that explanations of human motivation based primarily on basic material needs did not suffice.
40. Ibid., 247–48; Adams to George Washington Adams, December 27, 1821, Reel 124; Adams to Josiah Quincy, February 18, 1811, Works, IX, 633–34.
41. Works, VI, 245.
42. Ibid., 240.
43. Ibid., 241–43.
44. Ibid., 245, 397.
45. Ibid., 248; Adams to J. A. Smith, January 7, 1817, Reel 123.
46. Ibid., 248, 262, 254.
47. Ibid., 254–56.
48. Ibid., 266.
49. The matter of Adams’s legacy receives extended treatment in chapter 7. For now, it might be noted that his reputation as a political thinker or theorist has oscillated wildly: he has been “discovered” by scholars who were not otherwise inclined to appreciate his brand of wisdom; and he has been “dismissed” by scholars who otherwise claimed to admire his intellectual integrity. The standard work remains John R. Howe, Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (Princeton, 1966). One of his unlikely champions is Vernon L. Parrington, a stalwart defender of Jeffersonian values and “democratic liberalism,” who nonetheless concluded that Adams’s political insights “merit a larger recognition than has been accorded them by a grudging posterity,” and that Adams “remains the most notable political thinker—with the possible exception of John C. Calhoun—among American statesmen.” See Vernon Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (2 vols., New York, 1927), I, 325. The strongest Adams advocate among contemporary scholars of American political thought is John Diggins, The Lost Soul of American Politics, 66–99, who sees Adams as the most astute student of political power within the founding generation. My own understanding of Adams as a political thinker has been greatly enriched by a spirited correspondence with Diggins, who sees Adams as an early-day deconstructionist and a precursor of Neitzsche, Derrida, and Foucault, a group that I suspect Adams would regard as an unholy trinity of “ideologians.”
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