John Adams

by David McCullough

His one unfailing source of pleasure, “the joy of my heart,” was John Quincy, who, he told Abigail proudly, was “esteemed” by all.

When Lee declined, strife within the commission grew worse.

concealment of one’s dislike for another was not a form of dishonesty or deception, but an acceptable, even wise way of conducting the business of life.

There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation . . . is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral . . . that it is a duty and a virtue.

Franklin as a diplomat “observed much and acted little.”

he saw French naval support as the crucial necessity and felt duty-bound not just to voice his opinion to Vergennes, but to press for a greater commitment of French naval power, even at the risk of annoying the proud foreign minister.

ON SEPTEMBER 14, 1778, at Philadelphia, Congress named Benjamin Franklin minister plenipotentiary to the Court of Louis XVI.

But Congress had neglected to provide any instruction for what he, Adams, was to do, neither recalling him nor assigning him to a new post, which was both mystifying and insulting. Adams was not even mentioned in the communiqué.

In truth, he was hurt and angry, and justifiably. He had been badly served by a Congress that told him nothing and showed no gratitude for all he had done. He felt himself strangely adrift, less able than ever in his life to sense what lay in store for him. In a letter to James Warren, he vowed never again to allow himself to be made the sport of wise men or fools.

1779,

June

Telling her not to imagine Adams doing anything in his private hours in Paris other than attending museums, Lovell, by insinuation, raised the question of what else Adams might be doing.

Abigail could have called a halt to the exchange with Lovell at any time, had she wished. But she did not.

ON AUGUST 2, 1779,

After the frustrations and disappointments of France, such a chance to shine again must have seemed a godsend.

October 30, 1779,

But it was the establishment of an independent judiciary, with judges of the Supreme Court appointed, not elected, and for life (“as long as they behave themselves well”), that Adams made one of his greatest contributions not only to Massachusetts but to the country, as time would tell.

It was, in all, a declaration of Adams’s faith in education as the bulwark of the good society, the old abiding faith of his Puritan forebears.

unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading,”

In the end, the convention approved nearly all of his draft, with only a few notable changes.

The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.

If he had cause for complaint in such times of stress and uncertainty, so too, he knew, did others.

Then, in October, out of the blue, came word from Philadelphia that Adams had been chosen by Congress to return to France as minister plenipotentiary to negotiate treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain, a position he had neither solicited nor expected.

Francis Dana,

Again Abigail was to remain behind, but this time nine-year-old Charles would also accompany his father, along with John Quincy.

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

John Thaxter

Samuel Huntington, the new president of Congress,

December 8, 1779,

El Ferrol,

It had been a closer call than anyone liked to think. In less than an hour at anchor at El Ferrol, with the pumps stopped, there ...

From La Coruña, their route passed through Betanzos, once the capital of the kingdom of Galicia, then Lugo, Astorga, Burgos, and Bilbao.

To the Americans the wretchedness of the Spanish people, the squalor of the wayside taverns, were appalling.

Everywhere he saw poverty and misery, people in rags. “Nothing appeared rich but the churches, nobody fat but the clergy,” he noted sadly.

But only to Abigail, in a letter written at Bilbao, did he concede that he had made a mistake coming overland.

Still, no representative of any government would have been treated with more courtesy and friendship than were Adams and his party in town after town, as he was to report proudly.

nearly two months after departing from El Ferrol, three months after setting sail from Boston.

The proud, immensely shrewd French Foreign Minister had become one of the great figures of eighteenth-century Europe by dint of exceedingly hard work and by making himself a consummate man of the world. French support for the American war was his policy and he its champion from the start, despite the fearful drain it imposed on the treasury of France.

His purpose, first, last, and always, was to weaken and humble Britain and, at the same time, expand French trade in America.

“Always keep in mind,” Vergennes would tell the Minister of Finance, “that in separating the United States from Great Britain, it was above all their commerce we wanted.”

For Vergennes’s American policy he had a vivid image: “He means . . . to keep his hand under our chin to prevent us from drowning, but not to lift our heads out of water.”

It was precisely Franklin’s subtlety, his worldliness, that made him invaluable as a diplomat.

Adams, on the other hand, was truly a provincial. Worse, he was a novice; and there was no telling the damage such a man might do.

Determined to improve European understanding of the American cause, he became, with Vergennes’s sanction, his own office of information and propaganda, supplying anonymous articles to the Mercure de France,

yet I have many reasons to think that not one of them, not even Spain or France, wishes to see America rise very fast to power.

Let us treat them with gratitude, but with dignity. Let us remember what is due to ourselves and our posterity as well as to them. Let us above all things avoid as much as possible entangling ourselves with their wars and politics . . .

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

His great worry, as he reported to Congress, was that the French were growing tired of the war.

Further, Adams correctly suspected it was the French intention, once the war was ended, to keep America poor and dependent—“Keep us weak. Make us feel our obligations. Impress our minds with a sense of gratitude.”

Without French help, the United States could not win the war, yet it was purely for their own purposes that the French were involved.