John Adams

CHAPTER I. Youth .1

CHAPTER IL At the Bar 17

CHAPTER m.

The First Congress 50

CHAPTER IV.

The Second Session of Congress . . . .82

CHAPTER V.

Independence 104

CHAPTER VI.

After Independence 130

CHAPTER VII.

First Foreign Mission . . . . . . 147

CHAPTER VIII.

Second Foreign Mission : in France and England 156 yi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

PAQB

The Treaty of Peace : the English Mission . .198

CHAPTER X.

The Vice-Presidency 241

CHAPTER XL The Presidency 265

CHAPTER XII.

INDEX 331

JOHN ADAMS.

CHAPTER I.

YOUTH.

In the first charter of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, granted by Charles I. and dated March 4, 1629, the name of Thomas Adams appears as one of the grantees. But he never crossed the Atlantic, and Henry Adams, possibly though not certainly his younger brother, first bore the name on this side of the water. In 1636 this Henry was one of the grantees of sundry parcels of land at Mount WoUaston, soon afterward made the town of Braintree, in which neighborhood descendants from him have continued to have dwellings and to own extensive tracts of land to the present day. The John Adams with whom we have to do was of the fourth generation in descent from Henry, and was born at Braintree, October 19, 1735. His father was also named John Adams ; his mother was Susanna Boylston, daughter of

Peter Boylston, of the neighboring town of Brookline.

The founder of the American family apparently could do little better for himself than simply to hold his own in the desperate struggle for existence amid sterile hills and hostile Indians. At his death he left, as his whole estate, a small bit of land, of which there was no dearth on the new continent, a house of three rooms, and a barn ; in the house there were three beds, some kitchen utensils, a silver spoon, and a few old books ; in the barn were a cow and calf, pigs and a little fodder. The whole property was valued at <£75 13s. Little by little, however, the sturdy workers in successive years wrenched increased belongings from the reluctant soil ; so that the inventory of the estate of our John Adams's father, who died in 1760, shows X 1,330 9s. M,

A man so well-to-do as this could afford to give one son a good education, and John Adams, being the eldest, had the advantage of going through Harvard College. Such was the privilege, the only privilege, with which primogeniture was invested by the custom of the family. Indeed, our John Adams's grandfather, who also had educated his eldest son at college, afterward divided his property among his other children, thinking that thus he made matters as nearly equal and fair between tliera all as was possible. John Adams was graduated in the class of 1755, which, as his son tells us, "in proportion to its numbers contained as many men afterwards eminent in the civil and ecclesiastical departments as any class that ever was graduated at that institution.'* He was reputed to be a very good scholar, but cannot be accurately compared with his comrades, since rank was not then given for scholarship. The students took precedence according to the social standing of their parents, and upon such a scale the Adams family were a trifle nearer to the bottom than to the top. In a class of twenty-four members John was fourteenth, and even for this modest station '' he was probably indebted rather to the standing of his maternal family than to that of his father." John Quincy Adams very frankly says that in those days " the effect of a college education was to introduce a youth of the condition of John Adams into a different class of familiar acquaintance from that of his father." Later in life John Adams became noted as an aristocrat, and incurred not a little ridicule and animosity through his proclivities and personal pretensions of this kind. In fact, he was that peculiar production of American domestic manufacture which may perhaps be properly described as a self-made aristocrat, a character familiar enough on this side of the Atlantic, but which Lord Thurlow almost alone could bring within the comprehension of Englishmen. Fortunately, in Adams's individual case, his ability to maintain the position prevented his passion from appearing so comical as the like feeling so often does with inferior men. Nor indeed was he always and altogether devoid of sound sense in this respect ; he wrote in 1791 that, if he could ever suppose family pride to be any way excusable, he should " think a descent from a line of virtuous, independent New England farmers for a hundred and sixty years was a better foundation for it than a descent from regal or noble scoundrels ever since the flood." The truth is that a proper pride in one's own descent, if it can be sustained, is neither an unamiable nor a mischief-working trait; Adams had it in the true American shape, and was influenced by it only in the direction of good. He was at once gratified and satisfied with having a lineage simply respectable.

The boyhood and youth of John Adams are incumbered with none of those tedious apocrypha which constitute a prophetic atmosphere in the initial chapter of most biographies. No one ever dreamed that he was to be a great man until he was well advanced in middle age, and even then, in the estimation of all persons save himself, he had many peers and perhaps a very few superiors. As " the fourth Harry, our King " philosophically remarked, upon hearing of " Lord Perse's " death at Otterbourne, " I have a hondrith captains in Inglande, he sayd. As good as ever was hee ; "

though probably enough Percy's valuation of himself was different. Pretty much the first authentic knowledge which we get of John Adams comes from his own pen. On November 15, 1755, just after his twentieth birthday, he began a diary. Intermittently, suffering many serious breaks provokingly to diminish its just value, he continued it until November 21, 1777. Only a few years more elapsed before the famous diary of his son John Quincy Adams was begun, which ran through its remarkable course until 1848 ; and it is said that a similar work has been done in the third generation. If this be so, much more than one hundred years of American annals will be illuminated by the memorials of this one family in a manner unprecedented in history and equally useful and agreeable. So portentous a habit of diary-writing is an odd form for the development of heredity. But at least it enables historical students to observe the descent of traits of mind and character more naturally transmissible than such a taste. The Adams blood was strong blood, too strong to be seriously modified by alien strains introduced by marriage. It was not a picturesque stream, but it was vigorous, it cut its way without much loitering or meandering, and when strange rivulets united with it they had to take its color as well as its course. John Quincy Adams, whose story has been told before that of his father in this series, was a veritable chip from the old block, a sturdy, close - fibred old block well adapted for making just such solid, slightly cross-grained chips. Only the son was more civilized, or rather more self-restrained and conventional than the father; the ruggedness of the earlier fighter and self-made man was rubbed smoother in the offspring, inheriting greatness and growing up amid more polishing forces.

In youth John Adams was an admirable specimen of the New England Puritan of his generation, not excessively strait-laced in matters of doctrine, but religious by habit and by instinct, rigid in every point of morals, conscientious, upright, pure-minded, industrious. The real truth about that singular community is that they mingled theology with loose morals, in a proportion not correctly appreciated by their descendants ; for historians have dwelt

YOUTH.

upon the one ingredient of this mixture, and have ignored the other, so that the truth has become obscured. Certain it is that long sermons and much polemical controversy were offset by a great deal of hard drmking and not a little indulgence in carnal sins. John Adams, like the better men of the day, reversed the proportions, and instead of subordinating morality to religion, he gave to morals a decided preponderance. In his diary he grumbles not only at others, but also very freely at himself, partly because it was then his nature always to grumble a good deal about everything and everybody, partly to fulfill the acknowledged Christian duty of self-abasement. He had an early tendency to censoriousness, not to be compared in degree to that development of this failure which disfigured his son, but furnishing a strong germ for the later growth. While passing through periods of discontent, which occasionally beset his opening manhood, his depreciatory habit was too strong to be checked even in his own case, and he constantly falls his own victim, beneath his passion for uncharitable criticism. Also like his son, though more intermittently and in a less degree, he is possessed of the devil of suspiciousness, constantly conceiving himself to be the object of limitless envy, malice, hostility, and of the most ignoble undermining processes. As a young man he often imagined that his neighbors and acquaintances were resolved that he should not get on in the world, though it does not appear that he encountered any peculiar or exceptional obstacles of this kind.

But to his credit it may be noted that in his early years he had a knowledge of these weaknesses of his disposition. He wishes that he could conquer his " natural pride and self-conceit ; expect no more deference from my fellows than I deserve ; acquire meekness and humility," etc. He acknowledges having been too ready ^^th " ill-natured remarks upon the intellectuals, manners, practice, etc., of other people." He wisely resolves " for the future, never to say an ill-natured thing concerning ministers or the ministerial profession ; never to say an envious thing concerning governors, judges, clerks, sheriffs, lawyers, or any other honorable or lucrative ofl&ces or officers ; never to show my own importance or superiority by remarking the foibles, vices, or inferiority of others. But I now resolve, as far as lies in me, to take notice chiefly of the amiable qualities of other people ; to put the most favorable construction upon the weaknesses, bigotry, and errors of others, etc. ; and to labor more for an inoffensive and amiable than for a shining and invidious character ; " — most wise communings, showing an admirable introspection, yet resolves which could not at present be consistently carried out by their maker. Adams's nature, both in its good and in its ill traits, was far too strong to be greatly re-shaped by any efforts which he could make. The elements of his powerful character were immutable, and underwent no substantial and permanent modifications either through voluntary effort or by the pressure of circumstances ; in all important points he was the same from the cradle to the grave, with perhaps a brief exception during the earlier period of his service in the Revolutionary Congress, when we shall see him rising superior to all his foibles, and presenting a wonderfully noble appearance. The overweening vanity, which became a ridiculous disfigurement after he had climbed high upon the ladder of distinction, was not yet excessive while he still lingered upon the first rounds. Indeed, he is shrewd enough to say : " Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly ; " and he even has occasional fits of genuine difiidence of his own powers and distrust as to his prospects of moderate success. Only Avlien that success actually came did all chance of curing himself of the fault disappear. As a young man he cherished no lofty ambition, or at least he kept it modestly in the background. He does not at all resemble his rival of later years, Alexander Hamilton ; he is conscious of no extraordinary ability, and longs for no remarkable career, nor asserts any fitness for it. His anticipations, even his hopes, seem limited to achieving that measure of prosperity, good repute, and influence, which attend upon the more prominent men of any neighborhood. A circuit of forty miles around Boston is a large enough sphere, beyond which his dreams of the future do not wander.

A youth who had received a collegiate education at a cost of not inconsiderable sacrifice on the part of his parents, lay in those days under a sort of moral obligation to adopt a profession. Between law,. divinity, and medicine, therefore, Adams had to make his choice. Further, while contemplating the subject and preparing himself for one of these pursuits he ought to support himself. To this end he obtained the position of master of the grammar school at Worcester, whither he repaired in the summer of 1755. His first tendency was to become a clergyman, not so much, apparently, by reason of any strong fancy for the clerical calling as because there seems to have been a sort of understanding on the part of his family and friends that he should make this selection, and he was willing enough to gratify them. It was not altogether so singular and foolish a notion as at first it strikes us. The New England clergy still retained much of the prestige and influence which they had enjoyed in the earlier colonial days, wben they had exercised a civil authority often overshadowing that of the nominal ofiicers of government. Men of great ability and strong character still found room for their aspirations in the ministry. They were a set to be respected, obeyed, even to some extent to be feared, but hardly to be loved, and vastly unlike the Christian minister of the present day. They were not required to be sweet-tempered, nor addicted to lovingkindness, nor to be charitably disposed towards one another, or indeed towards anybody.

On the contrary, they were a dictatorial, militant, polemical, not to say a quarrelsome and harshtongued race. They were permitted and even encouraged to display much vigor in speech and action. Nevertheless the figure of impetuous, dogmatic, combative, opinionated, energetic, practical, and withal liberal John Adams in a pulpit is exceedingly droll. He was much too big, too enterprising, too masterful for such a cage. He would have resembled the wolf of the story, who could never keep himself wholly covered by the old dame's cloak. His irrepressibly secular nature would have been constantly protruding at one point or another from beneath the clerical raiment. It would have been inevitable that sooner or later he should escape altogether from the uncongenial thraldom, at the cost of a more or less serious waste of time and somewhat ridiculous process of change. Fortunately his good sense or sound instinct saved him from a too costly blunder. Yet for many months his diary is sprinkled with remarks concerning the flinty theology, and the intense, though very unchristian, Christianity of those days. Nevertheless the truth constantly peeps out ; disputatious enough, and severe upon backslidings, he appears not sufficiently narrow in intellect and merciless in disposition ; he could not squeeze himself within the rigid confines which hemmed in the local divine. It is to no purpose that he resolves " to rise with the sun and to study the Scriptures on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings,'* and that occasionally he writes "Scripture poetry industriously" of a morning. The effort is too obvious. Yet he was religiously inclined. The great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which filled Europe with infidels, inspired him with a sense of religious awe. *' God Almighty," he says, " has exerted the strength of his tremendous arm, and shook one of the finest, richest, and most populous cities in Europe into ruin and destruction by an earthquake. The greatest part of Europe and the greatest part of America have been in violent convulsions, and admonished the inhabitants of both that neither riches nor honors nor the solid globe itself is a proper basis on which to build our hopes of security." The Byronic period of his youth even takes a religious form. He gloomily reflects that : —

" One third of our time is consumed in sleep, and three sevenths of the remainder is spent in procuring a mere animal sustenance ; and if we live to the age of three-score and ten, and then sit down to make an estimate in our minds of the happiness we have enjoyed and the misery we have suffered, we shall find, I am apt to think, that the overbalance of happiness is quite inconsiderable. We shall find that we have been, through the greater part of our lives, pursuing shadows, and empt}'^ but glittering phantoms, rather than substances. We shall find that we have applied our whole vigor, all our faculties, in the pursuit of honor or wealth or learning, or some other such delusive trifle, instead of the real and everlasting excellences of piety and virtue. Habits of contemplating the Deity and his transcendent excellences, and correspondent habits of complacency in and dependence upon Him ; habits of reverence and gratitude to God, and habits of love and compassion to our fellow-men, and habits of temperance, recollection, and self-government, will afford us a real and substantial pleasure. We may then exult in a consciousness of the favor of God and the prospect of everlasting felicity."

A young man of twenty who, in our day, should write in this strain would be thought fit for nothing better than the church ; but Adams was really at war with the prevalent church spirit of New England. Thus one evening in a conversation with Major Greene " about the divinity and satisfaction of Jesus Christ," the major advanced the argument that " a mere creature or finite being could not make satisfaction to infinite justice for any crimes," and suggested that " these things are very mysterious." Adams's crisp commentary was : " Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity." Again he asks : " Where do we find a precept in the gospel requiring ecclesiastical synods? convocations? councils? decrees? creeds ? confessions ? oaths ? subscriptions ? and whole cart-loads of other trumpery that we find religion incumbered with in these days ? " Independence in thought and expression soon caused him to be charged with the heinous unsoundness of Arminianism, an accusation which he endeavored neither to palliate nor deny, but quite cheerfully admitted. A few such comments, more commerce even with the tiny colo nial world around him, a little thinking and discussion upon doctrinal points, sufficed for his shrewd common sense, and satisfied him that he was not fitted to labor in the ministerial vineyard as he saw it platted and walled in. Accordingly, upon August 21, 1756, he definitely renounced the scheme. On the following day he writes gravely in his diary : —

" Yesterday I completed a contract with Mr. Putnam to study law under his inspection for two years. . . . Necessity drove me to this determination, but my inclination, I think, was to preach ; however, that would not do. But I set out with firm resolutions, I think, never to commit any meanness or injustice in the practice of law. The study and practice of law, I am sure, does not dissolve the obligations of morality or of religion ; and, although the reason of my quitting divinity was my opinion concerning some disputed points, I hope I shall not give reason of offense to any in that profession by imprudent warmth."

Thus fortunately for himself and for the people of the colonies, Adams escaped the first peril which threatened the abridgment of his great usefulness. Yet the choice was not made without opposition from " uncles and other relations, full of the most illiberal prejudices against the law." Adams says that he had "a proper veneration and affection " for these relatives, but that being " under no obligation of gratitude " to them he " thought little of their opinions." Young men nowadays are little apt to be controlled by uncles or even aunts in such matters, but John Adams's independence was more characteristic of himself than of those times.

CHAPTER 11.

AT THE BAR.

On August 23, 1756, Adams says that he " came to Mr. Putnam's and began law, and studied not very closely this week." But he was no sluggard in any respect save that he was fond of lying abed late of mornings. Justinian's Institutes with Vinnius's Notes, the works of Bracton, Britton, Fleta, Glanville, and all the other ponderous Latin tomes behind which the law of that day lay intrenched, yielded up their wisdom to his persistency. He had his hours of relaxation, in which he smoked his pipe, chatted with Dr. Savil's wife, and read her Ovid's " Art of Love," a singular volume, truly, for a young Puritan to read aloud with a lady ! Yet in the main he was a hard student ; so that by October, 1758, he was ready to begin business, and came to Boston to consult with Jeremiah Gridley, the leader and " father " of that bar, as to the necessary steps " for an introduction to the practice of law in this country." Gridley was veiy kind with the young man, who seems to have shown upon this occasion a real and becoming bashfuhiess. Among other pieces of advice the shrewd old lawyer gave to the youngster these two: first, "to pursue the study of the law rather than the gain of it ; pursue the gain of it enough to keep out of the briars, but give your main attention to the study of it ; " second, '' not to marry early, for an early marriage will obstruct your improvement, and in the next place it will involve you in expense." On Monday, November 6, the same distinguished friend, with a few words of kindly presentation, recommended Adams to the court for the oath. This formality being satisfactorily concluded, says Adams, " I shook hands with the bar, and received their congratulations, and invited them over to Stone's to drink some punch, where the most of us resorted and had a very cheerful chat." Through this alcoholic christening the neophyte was introduced into the full communion of the brethren, and thereafter it only remained for him to secure clients. He had not to wait quite so long for these trailing- footed gentry as is often the wearisome lot of young lawyers ; for the colonists were a singularly litigious race, suing out writs upon provocations which in these good-natured days would hardly be thought to justify hard words, unconsciously training that contradictory and law-loving temper which really went far to bring about the quarrels with Parliament, so soon to occur. Fees were small, mercifully adapted not to discourage the poorest client, so that the man w^ho could not afford " to take the law " might as well at once seek the tranquil shelter of the " town farm." Accordingly, though Adams was anxious and occasionally dispirited, he seems to have done very well.

He had many admirable qualifications for success, of which by no means the least was his firm resolution to succeed ; for throughout his life any resolution which he seriously made was pretty sure to be carried through. He was, of course, honest, trustworthy, and industrious ; he exacted of himself the highest degree of care and skill ; he cultivated as well as he could the slender stock of tact with which nature had scantily endowed him ; more useful traits, not needing cultivation, were a stubbornness and combativeness which made him a hard man to beat at the bar as afterwards in political life. In a word, he was sure to get clients, and soon did so. He followed the first part of Gridley's advice to such good purpose that he afterwards said : " I believe no lawyer in America ever did so much business as I did afterwards, in the seventeen years that I passed in the practice at the bar, for so little profit." Yet this '* little profit " was enough to enable him to treat more lightly Gridley's second item, for on October 25, 1764, he took to himself a wife. The lady was Abigail Smith, daughter of William Smith, a clergyman in the neighboring town of Weymouth, and of his wife, Elizabeth (Quincy) Smith. But the matrimonial venture was far from proving an " obstruction to improvement ; " for " by this marriage John Adams became allied with a numerous connection of families, among the most respectable for their weight and influence in the province, and it was immediately perceptible in the considerable increase of his professional practice." In other respects, also, it was a singularly happy union. Mrs. Adams was a woman of unusually fine mind and noble character, and proved herself a most able helpmate and congenial comrade for her husband throughout the many severe trials as well as in the brilliant triumphs of his long career. Not often does fate allot to a great man a domestic partner so fit to counsel and sustain as was Abigail Adams, whose memory deserves to be, as indeed it still is, held in high esteem and admiration.

History depicts no race less fitted by character, habits, and traditions to endure oppression

AT THE BAR.

than the colonists of New England. Nuraeri. cally the chief proportion of them, and in point of influence nearly all who were worthy of consideration, were allied with the men who had successfully defied and overthrown the British monarchy. The surroundings and mode of life of settlers in a new country had permitted no deterioration in the physical courage and hardihood of that class which, in Cromwell's army, had constituted as fine a body of troops as the world has seen to the present day. It was simply impossible to affect New Englanders through the sense of fear. Far removed from the sight of monarchical power, and from contact with the offensive display of aristocracy, they had ceased to hate this form of government and even entertained feelings of loyalty and attachment towards it. But these sentiments throve only upon the condition of good treatment; and on the instant when harshness destroyed the sense of reciprocity the good will of the dependent body disappeared. Even while the rebellious temper slumbered, the independent spirit had been nourished by all the conditions of social, intellectual, even of civil life. The chief officers of government had been sent over from England, and some legislation had taken place in Parliament ; but the smaller laws and regulations, which, with the ministers thereof, touched the daily lives and affairs of the people, had been largely established by the colonists themselves. They were a thinking race, intelligent, disputatious, and combative.

The religion which absorbed much of their mental activity had cherished these qualities ; and though their creed was narrow, rigid, and severe, yet they did not accept it like slaves of a hierarchy, without thought and criticism. On the contrary, their theology was notably polemical, and discussion and dispute on matters of doctrine were the very essence of their Christianity. Their faith constituted a sort of gymnasium or arena for the constant matching of strength and skill. They were ready at every sort of intellectual combat. The very sternness of their beliefs was the exponent of their uncompromising spirit, the outgrowth of a certain fierceness of disposition, and by no means a weight or pall which had settled down upon their faculties of free thought. Men with such bodies, minds, and morals, not slow to take offense, quick to find arguments upon their own side, utterly fearless, and of most stubborn mettle, furnished poor material for the construction of a subservient class. Moreover, they were shrewd, practical men of business, with the aptitude of the Anglo-Saxon for affairs, and with his taste for money-getting, his proneness for enterprise, his p.ission for worldly success ; hence they were very sensitive to any obstacle cast in the way of their steady progress towards material prosperity. The king and the ruling classes of Great Britain had no comprehension whatsoever of all these distinguishing traits of the singular race with whom they undertook to deal upon a system fundamentally wrong, and of which every development and detail was a blunder.

In nearly every respect John Adams was a typical New Englander of the times ; at least it may be said that in no one individual did the colonial character find a more respectable or a more comprehensible development than in him, so that to understand and appreciate him is to understand and appreciate the New England of his day ; and to draw him is to draw the colonists in their best form. It was inevitable from the outset that he should be a patriot ; if men of his mind and temper could hesitate, there could be no material out of which to construct a *' liberty party " in the province. At first, of course, older and better known men took the lead, and he, still a parvus lulus^ was fain to follow with unequal steps the vigorous strides of the fiery Otis, and of that earliest of genuine democrats, Samuel Adams. But the career of Otis was like the electric flash which

SO appropriately slew him, brief, brilliant, startling, sinking into melancholy darkness ; and John Adams pressed steadily forward, first to the side of his distinguished cousin, and erelong in advance of him.