599. John Adams. David McCullough. I can not express the enjoyment I derived from this book. Scholarly without being pedantic which is rare. A narrative style which brings John Adams, Abigail, family members, even Thomas Jefferson to life. I felt at times that I was sharing their life while nestled in an arm chair in a corner of the room.
The marriage of Abigail and John is most endearing. They were both strong willed, forceful and each in their own way ambitious. But every ounce of their being was dedicated and devoted to our incipient nation. Each seemed complete when the other was present. Failing that they wrote letters, hundreds, to each other. These are full of their love and admiration to each other, humor, and brilliant assessments of other major players in our early history.
John Adams began as a teacher. He soon decided to become a lawyer. He had though a deep and abiding love of farming and gave that serious thought too. His description of teaching is stuffed with humor, insight and a willingness to chuckle at himself. Here is the portion quoted in the biography:
“I sometimes in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a commonwealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society....At one table sits Mr. Insipid, foppling and fluttering, spinning his whirligig, or playing with his fingers as gaily and wittily as any Frenchified coxcomb brandishes his cane and rattles his snuff box. At another sits the polemical divine, plodding and wrangling in his mind about Adam’s fall in which we sinned, all as his primer has it.”
In the theater of politics he had considerable skill. Not so much with party politics which he found repulsive but in negotiations and argument. John Adams possessed the patience to see through long term, very long term goals. This is evidenced in the manner in which he approached the sequence needed to declare independence. Not only his own efforts were carefully geared to the task but he even watched events unfold, such as the highly favorable reaction give the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. He knew that the drive for independence would need to take advantage of that book. Another example would be the care with which he arranged for the first loan the United States would receive. That loan came from the Netherlands. Their government system which was slow by design concerning such things required a man of John Adams’ drive, force and patience. Interestingly he initiated the loan on his own when diplomacy in France had the slows. His private assessments are insightful combined with humorous. Here we see his views on Congress (the one which eventually produced the Declaration of Independence):
“This assembly is like no other that ever existed. Every man in it is a great man- an orator, a critic, a statesman, and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his criticism and his political abilities.
The consequence of this is that business is drawn and spun out to immeasurable length. I believe if it was moved and seconded tat we should come to a resolution that three and two makes five, we should be entertained with logic and rhetoric, law, history, politics and mathematics concerning the subject for two whole days, and then we should pass the resolution unanimously in the affirmative.”
As Vice-President, he supported President Washington in all matters. Privately in letters to Abigail, there were aspects of his position he found insignificant at best. But publicly he was a model of decorum. He had to learn what he should do as Vice-President. Of course he had no model to follow, no rules had been established. There were moments in the Senate when he became tedious. For he found it difficult to sit and manage Senate meetings instead of diving in and feasting on arguments at hand.
When President he knew that following Washington would bring its own set of difficulties. He kept the Cabinet which Washington had formed and asked to stay on when his term ended. Washington perhaps did this to provide continuity for the 2nd president but in the long term it was a major mistake. Cabinet members were more than disloyal to Mr. Adams, indeed many actively worked to sour Adams’ efforts. Also the Cabinet members were not stellar. At this time the runner up became Vice-President. Thus his VP was Thomas Jefferson who worked hard to thwart Adams’ effectiveness as President. Jefferson publicly despised party politics but was very good at using it effectively against Mr. Adams. By the end of his term he and Jefferson had more or less broke off what there was of their former close friendship.
When his lost the election for his second term, it seemed that he was relieved in a way. He went home and there took up farming with great joy, reading his books, writing to a myriad of friends and living life fully.
The friendship of Adams/Jefferson was reforged by Benjamin Rush, a long time friend of both men. He set the scene and then managed to get Mr. Adams to make the first move. A move which puts Rush near the top of those to whom we owe so much about the ideas and thoughts of these two great men. Large numbers of letters traveled back and forth. Mr. Adams wrote far more letters.
He and Abigail weathered the deep sadness of the death of a son, a daughter and other family members. These were compounded by the manner in which they died. Yet, through it all, Abigail was there and the two together like Baucis and Philemon cared for their common love and devotion. In a letter John once wrote “Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappoints. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding.”
I can not praise this book enough. Read it and anyone will come to love and admire these two and others. Read it and learn about our political system and its great strengths and the nature of politics. (This work gives a needed grip on how our political system works. These individuals breathed a rarefied air and ran on high octane fuel.) It is uplifting from beginning to end. It is my prayer that someday, someone do for Marcus Tullius Cicero what David McCullough has done for John Adams.
No comments:
Post a Comment