John Adams

by David McCullough

WITH 1826 marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it was not long into the new year when Adams and Jefferson were being asked to attend a variety of celebrations planned to commemorate the historic event on the Fourth of July.

“I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.”

As efforts were made to give Adams more comfort, by changing his position, he awakened. Told that it was the Fourth, he answered clearly, “It is a great day. It is a good day.”

Adams lay peacefully, his mind clear, by all signs. Then late in the afternoon, according to several who were present in the room, he stirred and whispered clearly enough to be understood, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

That John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had died on the same day, and that it was, of all days, the Fourth of July, could not be seen as a mere coincidence: it was a “visible and palpable” manifestation of “Divine favor,” wrote John Quincy in his diary that night, expressing what was felt and would be said again and again everywhere the news spread.

on the nation’s fiftieth birthday, which, said Daniel Webster in a speech in Boston, was “proof” from on high “that our country, and its benefactors, are objects of His care.”

John Quincy would insist on keeping the house, and thus it was to remain in the family for another century.

Jefferson, by sad contrast, had died with debts exceeding $100,000, more than the value of Monticello, its land, and all his possessions, including his slaves.

By his will Jefferson had freed just five of his slaves, all of whom were members of the Hemings family, but Sally Hemings was not one of them. She was given “her time,” unofficial freedom, by his daughter Martha Randolph after his death.

It was his creative work that he wished most to be remembered for: Here Was Buried THOMAS JEFFERSON Author of the Declaration of American Independence, Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, And Father of the University of Virginia

Adams had, however, arrived at certain bedrock conclusions before the end came. He believed, with all his heart, as he had written to Jefferson, that no effort in favor of virtue was lost.

“He who loves the Workman and his work, and does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of Him.”

Once, in a letter to his old friend Francis van der Kemp, he had written, “Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding.” It could have been his epitaph.

As is almost impossible to believe, they also died on the same day—their day of days—July 4, in 1826, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence.

In so many respects, he was, to me, the more three-dimensional, warm-blooded, and compelling of the two.

Jefferson was much cooler, more guarded, far more reserved and withheld than Adams.

Q: If he was so universally praised, why is he so little remembered today? A: Adams was overshadowed by two great Virginians—Washington and Jefferson.

Until Andrew Jackson they were the only presidents who weren’t part of the Virginia dynasty.

This extraordinary, extremely important American deserves to be brought out of the shadows.

A lot of people think our great institutions, our freedoms, our structure of government sprang into being fully formed. Well, none of it just happened; people made it happen, and they did so with tremendous sacrifice, with great courage and great faith.

nothing ever had to turn out as it did.

Events of national consequence, or of individual lives, could have taken any number of turns for any number of reasons...

When Jefferson and Adams were at work on the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia was a city of 30,000 people. At the same time the British landed 32,000 troops on Staten Island.

Q: Of all the incidents and anecdotes you describe in the life of John Adams, which do you consider the most important? A: His voyage across the Atlantic on the frigate Boston in 1778. Taking his ten-year-old son with him, Adams sailed for France to assume his appointment as commissioner to the Court of King Louis XVI.

What he did believe passionately, and would put his life on the line for, was the notion that all men are equal in the eyes of God and before the law.

He was also very fearful of the tyranny of the majority. That’s why he was such an ardent—some would have said obsessive—champion of a bicameral legislature with its system of checks and balances.

The two men came from vastly different backgrounds. Few people today realize how very different Virginia and Massachusetts were one from the other back then. They could almost have been separate countries.

In New England one learned early that life was a battle and that one had to be resourceful, frugal, and hardworking in order to survive. The Virginia culture depended in large degree on indebtedness, an anathema to a New Englander like Adams.

If anyone deserves to be considered the voice of the ordinary man it is John Adams.

The greatest difference between Jefferson and Adams was that Jefferson avoided conflict.

Adams embraced conflict and struggle.

But what concerned me most in writing this book—what I felt of the utmost importance to the overall story—was how Adams reacted to the scandal.

He said such stories about slave masters and their slave women have always been told and always will be told because they are symbolic of the larger sin of slavery itself.