Sons of Adamses
America’s first dynasty.

By Forrest McDonald, professor of history at the University of Alabama & author, most recently, of States' Rights and the Union, 1776-1876
March 26, 2002 9:45 a.m.

he 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.