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United States has been so democratic, and its society so fluid,
that the very idea that the nation could spawn a dynasty seems positively
un-American. In truth, families that have been rich or powerful
for more than two generations have been rare. Moreover, as historian
Bert Folsom has convincingly shown, vertical mobility has repeatedly
been bidirectional, up and down: Families have gone from riches
to rags quite as frequently as from rags to riches.
The major exception
was the Adams family of Massachusetts: In the telling of NR
senior editor Richard Brookhiser, they were America's first dynasty.
The patriarch was John Adams, a principal architect of independence,
minister to the Court of St. James's, first vice president, second
president, and incidentally the author of serious works in history
and political philosophy. Next came his son, John Quincy Adams,
a person so precociously learned as to boggle the imagination, whose
first diplomatic post came when he was in his twenties, who went
on to have an eminently successful career as the leading American
diplomat of his era, reaching a climax as secretary of state. In
that position he negotiated important treaties with Britain and
Spain and formulated the Monroe Doctrine. Then came his less-than-successful
term as president. (Brookhiser wryly points out that, though efforts
have been made during the last few decades to rehabilitate John
Adams's presidency, efforts to salvage J.Q.'s have been negligible
"because the task is so obviously impossible.") But J.Q.
had a significant career after he left the presidency, serving 17
years in the House of Representatives, where he was an outspoken
enemy of slaveholders and their congressmen.
The next two
generations never held such exalted positions, but they were major
figures nonetheless. The most significant public service of Charles
Francis Adams, J.Q.'s son, was as American minister to London during
the Civil War, in which capacity he was instrumental in persuading
the British government not to grant formal recognition to the Confederacy.
Had it done that, Britain and France would likely have offered to
arbitrate the conflict, and that in turn would almost certainly
have ensured the independence of the South. Charles Francis was
thus a key figure in preserving the nation his grandfather had helped
bring into existence. Charles Francis's third son, Henry Adams,
would among other things become one of the greatest historians the
United States has ever produced; his nine-volume History of the
United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison is still regarded as a classic.
These four
Adamses, it should be pointed out, were not entirely characteristic
of the family line. Along the way, among the various brothers and
offspring, were a number of no-goodniks and a surprising number
of alcoholics. Perhaps that last is not so surprising, for even
John Quincy partook deeply of the sauce: As an old man he correctly
identified 11 of 14 Madeiras in a blind taste test. There may have
been a propensity for alcoholism in the genetic pool; or, as Charles
Francis put it, "vices are hereditary in families." For
all that, Brookhiser is on solid ground in regarding the foursome
as a dynasty.
In treating them as such, the author took on a formidable task.
Not the least challenging part was the depth and breadth of understanding
of American history that it entailed. The Adamses, even Henry, were
at or near the centers of power in every major facet of American
development from the Revolution until World War I, and to comprehend
the men it is necessary to know the story well enough to be able
to sketch in the big picture without losing sight of the individual
subjects. The difficulty was compounded by Brookhiser's decision
to do what he did in the compass of a short book, not much more
than 200 pages of text. Having lived for half a century in the company
of professional historians, I can honestly say that I have known
only a handful who know enough to have done what Brookhiser has
done, and scarcely any who would have done it with such wit and
charm.
Another difficulty
Brookhiser faced is that these people, though admirable, were far
from likeable. They were brilliant, well-educated, honorable public
servants. They were also vain, self-righteous, envious, hypocritical,
irascible, cantankerous snobs and whiners. Benjamin Franklin, in
an often quoted passage, said of John Adams that he was "always
an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things,
absolutely out of his senses." Similar comments could be and
were made about the others.
Compensating
for their unloveliness, the Adamses were prolific letter writers
and diarists, and these documents furnish plenty of spice that Brookhiser
samples with glee. Charles Francis edited and published ten volumes
of his grandfather's writings and twelve volumes of John Quincy's
diaries (about half the total). Brookhiser comments that J.Q.'s
"diary is a masterpiece, a lode of glittering observations
and judgments, all of them intelligent, some even fair-minded."
Charles Francis himself never missed a day of recording in his diary
from 1826 to 1880, though late in life he burned it all, as did
Henry with his diaries.
Brookhiser
quotes extensively from those of John and John Quincy, providing
his readers with colorful comments about their contemporaries as
well as, inferentially, about the Adamses themselves. In the First
Continental Congress in 1774, John observed that Caesar Rodney of
Delaware was "the oddest looking man in the world . . . his
face is not bigger than a large apple." He thought James Duane
of New York "sly" and "squint-eyed." William
Livingston of New Jersey had "nothing elegant or genteel about
him"; John Rutledge of South Carolina had "nothing of
the profound, sagacious, brilliant, or sparkling" about him.
"We have not men fit for the times," John wrote early
on, but after a week he decided that "there is in the Congress
a collection of the greatest men upon this continent in point of
abilities, virtues, and fortunes. The magnanimity and public spirit
which I see here make me blush for the sordid, venal herd which
I have seen in my own Province."
John Quincy
wrote of Jefferson that he had "a memory so pandering to the
will that in deceiving others he seems to have begun by deceiving
himself." Charles Francis described William H. Seward, Lincoln's
secretary of state, as "a wiry old scarecrow" who "dressed
in a coat and trousers made apparently twenty years ago and by a
bad tailor at that." Henry wrote that the "progress of
evolution, from President Washington to President Grant, was alone
evidence enough to upset Darwin." Of Theodore Roosevelt, he
wrote after a White House dinner party that he was annoyed by the
young president's "infantile superficiality with his boyish
dogmatism of assertion. . . . We are a boys' school run wild."
Historians
tend to pick up the writing styles of their sources, and Brookhiser
has delightfully penned Adams-like barbs of his own or found them
elsewhere. Of the elsewhere variety, he recounts a "probably
apocryphal" story that John C. Calhoun (whom J. Q. Adams regarded
as the only public man whose intellect he "rated as highly
as his own") once attempted to write a poem, beginning "Whereas
. . ." And Brookhiser describes John Adams's discursive and
rambling literary style and remarks that "if John were a child
in a modern-day school, he would probably be diagnosed with attention
deficit disorder."
In sum, Brookhiser
has done it again: As in his books on Washington and Hamilton, he
has given us a work that is a joy to read and solid history into
the bargain.
For more on America's First Dynasty, see NRO's interview
with Richard Brookhiser.
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