I am still slogging away at David McCullough’s biography of John Adams. I am normally a very fast reader, but I have only been able to read for about half an hour each day, due to time constraints, etc. So it is slow-going. John Adams is now the Vice President … and the entire assembly is trying to hammer out what their roles will be, how it will go, what the rules are … It is exhilarating to think of. The birth of a nation. So here are some quotes:
–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. Whena 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. — Abigail Adams, in a letter to her son, John Quincy Adams
— 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, artchitecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. — John Adams
–“Determined, and unalterably determined, I am.” — John Adams
— “He means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise man, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.” — Ben Franklin, 1783, about John Adams (in a letter to Robert Livingston)
— “I only fear that his unquenchable thirst for knowledge may injure his health.” — John Adams on Thomas Jefferson
–The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it … The parent storms, the child looks on, catcheds the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances … if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is to be born to live and labor for another … or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him … Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” — Thomas Jefferson
An excerpt from the narrative of the book:
British prejudice toward the French struck Abigail as ludicrous, now that she had lived in France, and made her realize how greatly she disliked prejudice in any form. But then unexpectedly, she was brought up short to find it in herself.
Having read and loved the plays of Shakespeare since childhood, she was thrilled by the chance to see an actual stage production. The great English tragedienne Sarah Siddons … appeared in Othello, making the transition from Lady Macbeth to Desdemona … the Adamses were amongthe glittering audiences that filled the Drury Lane … To Abigail, Mrs. Siddons was brillant … “interesting beyond any actress I had ever seen.”
Yet to read of Desdemona in the arms of a black man was, Abigail found, not the same as seeing it before her eyes. “Othello [played by John Kemble] was represented blacker than any African,” she wrote. Whether it was from “the prejudices of education” or from a “natural antipathy”, she knew not, “but my whole soul shuddered whenever I saw the sooty heretic Moor touch the fair Desdemona.” Othello was “manly, generous, noble” in character, so much that was admirable. Still she could not separate the color from the man. Filled with self-reproach, she affirmed that there was “something estimable” in everyone, “and the liberal mind regards not what nation or climate it springs up in, nor what color or complexion the man is of.”
— “We must not, my friend, be the bubbles of our own liberal sentiments.” — John Adams to Thomas Jefferson
— If you are conscious to yourself that you possess more knowledge upon some subject than others of your standing, reflect that you have had greater opportunities of seeing the world, and obtaining a knowledge of mankind than any of your contemporaries. That you have never wanted a book but it has been supplied to you, that your whole time has been spent in the company of men of literature and science. How unpardonable would it have been iin you to have been a blockhead. — Abigail Adams in a letter to John Quincy Adams, during his first semester at Harvard
In the following quote, John Adams writes to Thomas Jefferson, and defines the main difference between them .. the difference which would forevermore be a bone of contention between these two great complex men:
— “You are afraid of the one, I, the few. We agree perfectly that the many should have full, fair, and perfect representation [in the House]. You are apprehensive of monarchy; I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.”
— “Gentlemen, I feel a great difficulty how to act. I am Vice President. In this I am nothing,but I may be everything.” –– John Adams
Another excerpt from the book:
“The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us,” young schoolmaster Adams had written in his percipientletter to Nathan Webb, and to Adams now, as to others, dissolution remained the greatest single threat to the American experiment. “The fate ofthis government,” he would write from New York to his former law clerk, William Tudor, “depends absolutely upon raising it above the state governments.” The first line of the Constitution made the point, “We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Another excerpt:
[Adams] was adamantly opposed to the notion espoused by some that in the ideal republican government public officials should serve without pay– an idea that had been supported by both Franklin and Washington, two of the wealthiest men in the nation. Were a law to be made “that no man should hold an office who had not a private income sufficient for the subsistenceand prospects of himself and his family,” Adams had written earlier while in Longon, then the consequence would be that “all offices would be monopolized by the rich; the poor and the middling ranks would be excluded and an aristocratic despotism would immediately follow.” He thought public officals should not only be paid, but that their salaries should be commensurate with their responsibilities and necessary expenses.”
Another excerpt:
…James Lovell wrote from Massachusetts to tell Adams people were saying he had cast his vote with the President only because “he looked up to the goal”. Of course he looked up to it, Adams answered. How could it be otherwise? “I am forced to look up to it, and bound by duty to do so, because there is only one breath of one mortal between me and it.”
— Public business, my son, must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not. A young man should weigh well his plans. Integrity should be preserved in all events, as essential to his happiness, through every stage of his existence. His first maxim then should be to place his honor out of reachof all men. In order to do this he must make it a rule never to become dependent on public employments for subsistence. Let him have a trade, a profession, a farm, a shop, something where he can honestly live, and then he may engage in public affairs, if invited, upon independent principles. My advice to my children is to maintain an independent character. — John Adams to his son Thomas
The French revolution breaks out in 1789 … and causes much discussion on this side of the Atlantic.
For Adams, the news from France had the effect of an alarm bell … He let it be known that while he understood the reasons for the revolution in France — the oppressive abuses of the government, the overbearing and costly “armies of monks, soldiers and courtiers” –and though he strongly supported the ideals espoused by French patriots, he viewed the situation with dire misgivings. “The French Revolution,” he wrote to a Dutch friend, Francis van der Kemp, “will, I hope, produce effects in favor of liberty, equity, and humanity as extensive as this whole globeand as lasting as all time.” Yet, he could not help foresee a tragic outcome, in that a single legislative assembly, as chosen by the French, could only mean “great and lasting calamities”.
…he had “learned by awful experience to rejoice with trembling.” He could not accedpt the idea of enshrining region as a religion, as desired by the philosophes. “I know not what to make of a republic of thirty million atheists.”
From experience he knew the kinds of men such upheavals could give rise to, Adams told another correspondent. In revolutions, he warned, “the most fiery spirits and flighty geniuses frequently obtained more influence than men of sense and judgement; and the weakest man may carry foolish measures in opposition to wise ones proposed by the ablest.” France was “in great danger”. Ahead of anyone in the government, and more clearly than any, Adams foresaw the French Revolution leading to chaos, horror, and ultimate tyranny.
…”Everything will be pulled down…” [Adams wrote to Samuel Adams] “So much seems certain … But what will be built up? Are there any principles of political architecture? … Will the struggle in Europe be anything other than a change in impostors?”
Jefferson, as evidenced by his quote listed above (the tree of liberty needing to be watered occasionally with the blood of patriots and tyrants), thought the French Revolution was a great thing. This added to the differences between the two men. Incredible: our country would not be the same without John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Together, they were more powerful than they were as individuals. Their differences of opinion continue to be evident today in the political dialogue in this country … The United States needed BOTH of these men. Equally.
So Jefferson returns from France to Virginia and writes a piece on democracy for the Gazette of the United States. Here’s an excerpt from McCullough’s book:
The Gazette of the United States hadby now carried the text of a formal reply by Jefferson to the welcome he had received from his Virginia neighbors. It was a declaration of his faith in reason and democracy that he had taken great pains over.
“It rests now with ourselves to enjoy in peace and concord the blessings of self-government so long denied to manknind: to show by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes err, but its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived. Let us then, dear friends, forever bow down to the general reason of society.”
But to Adams the “sufficiency” of reason alone for the care of human affairs was by no means clear, and it was exactly the will of the majority, particularly as being exercised in France, that so gravely concerned him. He was certain France had “severe trials” to endure, as he wrote to a friend. The will of the majority, if out of hand, could lead to “horrible ravages”, he was sure. “My fundamental maxim of government is never to trust the lamb to the wolf,” and in France, he feared, the wolf was now the majority.
What I love so much about John Adams is what a realist he was about human nature, and the imperfectability of man. The French believed in a perfect society, run by reason. You must never ever leave out human nature.
— Amidst all their exultations, Americans and Frenchmen should remember that the perfectibility of man is only human and terrestrial perfectibility. Cold will still freeze, and fire will never cease to burn; disease and vice will continue to disorder, and death to terrify mankind. — John Adams
Now I LOVE the following excerpt. I couldn’t agree more:
Like Washington and many others, Adams had become increasingly distraught over the rise of political divisiveness, the forming of parties or factions. That political parties were an evil that could bring the ruination of republican government was doctrine he, with others, had long accepted and espoused. “There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other,” Adams had observed to a correspondent while at Amsterdam, before the Revolution ended. Yet this was exactly what had happened. The “turbulent maneuvers” of factions, he now wrote privately, could “tie the hands and destroy the influence” of every honest man with a desire to serve the public good. There was “division of sentiments over everything,” he told his son-in-law William Smith. “How few aim at the good of the whole, without aiming too much at the prosperity of parts!”
