Passionate Sage (37 page)

40.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1813,
ibid
., 376; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 2, 1813,
ibid
., 371–72; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813,
ibid
., 398.

41.
Adams to Joseph Mulligan, November 20, 1818, Reel 123.

42.
Benjamin Rush to Adams, February 17, 1812,
Spur of Fame
, 211. Professional historians have been engaged in a furious debate about the evolution of republicanism as an ideology after the Revolution. In that debate, which has at times taken on a superheated character reminiscent of the scatalogical rhetoric of the radical Whigs in the 1760s and both political parties in the 1790s, Adams is generally cast as the prototype of the classical mentality, fundamentally at odds with the emerging liberal mentality represented by Jefferson. While this formulation accurately conveys Adams's disenchantment with most of the values associated with Jeffersonian liberalism—its embrace of an individualistic ethic, its contempt for the past, its faith in the workings of the marketplace, its repudiation of activist government—too often the formulation makes Adams into a notorious anachronism, out of touch with the triumphant impulses of democratic capitalism. If we are to embrace a strict historicism, both Adams and Jefferson, as well as all their colleagues in the revolutionary generation, were time-bound creatures whose political values were shaped in a world that is lost forever to us. If we step back from strict historicism, however, and ask what enduring ideas underlay Adams's vision and his classical vocabulary or idiom, it seems clear that he is best understood as a critic of liberalism whose reverence for the past and for gradual change links him with latter-day conservatives, whose diagnosis of inherent social inequality links him with latter-day radicals, and whose belief in the active role of government links him with what in twentieth-century politics is, ironically, referred to as the liberal tradition. For an appreciation of Adams's role as critic of the Jeffersonian camp, see the often brilliant book by Watts,
The Republic Reborn
. For a critical assessment of the Jeffersonian legacy, see Drew McCoy,
The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America
(Chapel Hill, 1980). For the most incisive introduction to the terms of the debate among professional historians, see the matched pair of scholarly articles: Joyce Appleby, “Republicanism in Old and New Contexts,” and Lance Banning, “Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic,” both in
William and Mary Quarterly
, 3rd Series, XLIII (1986), 3–34.

43.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, January 29, 1819,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 532; also Adams to Jefferson, February 24, 1819,
ibid
., 534–35.

44.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 1, 1817,
ibid
., 507; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, May 5, 1817,
ibid
., 513.

45.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, January 22, 1825,
ibid
., 606; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, February 15, 1825,
ibid
., 609.

46.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 16, 1816,
ibid
., 501; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 21, 1820,
ibid
., 561; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, January 22, 1825,
ibid
., 607.

47.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 21, 1819,
ibid
., 540.

48.
Thomas Jefferson to Adams, October 12, 1823,
ibid
., 601.

49.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 10, 1823,
ibid
., 601–02.

50.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 21, 1819,
ibid
., 551; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 3, 1821,
ibid
., 571.

51.
Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, May 11, 1805, Ford, ed.,
Works
, X, 141; the quotation from Coles and Jefferson's response are conveniently available in Peterson,
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation
, 999. See also McCoy,
The Last of the Fathers
, for a splendid discussion of the inadequacy of Jefferson's legacy as it faced the persistence of slavery.

52.
Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, Ford, ed.,
Works
, XII, ii; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, August 1, 1816,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 484; Jefferson's autobiography in Ford, ed.,
Works
, I, 77.

53.
Adams to Reverend Coleman, January 13, 1817, Reel 123; see also the letter to Peter Ludlow and James Sheys, February 21, 1819, Reel 123, where Adams acknowledges there was a rough equivalency to the problem presented by slavery and by the proper conduct toward the Indians.

54.
Adams to William Tudor, November 20, 1819, Reel 124; Adams to Joshua Cushman, March 16, 1820, Reel 124; Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, January 29, 1820, Reel 124; see also the same views expressed in Adams to Robert J. Evans, June 8, 1819,
Works
, 379–80; Adams to Robert Walsh, January 19, 1820, Reel 124; Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, December 23, 1819, Reel 124.

55.
Thomas Jefferson to Hugh Nelson, February 7, 1820, Ford, ed.,
Works
, X, 156; Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820,
ibid
., 157–58; Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, November 28, 1820,
ibid
., 165–68. The best secondary account is Peterson,
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation
, 981–95.

56.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 25, 1825,
Adams-Jefferson Letters
, II, 610.

57.
This view of Jefferson's decline at the end is in keeping with Merrill Peterson's treatment in
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation
, 980–1009. See also Peterson's
Adams and Jefferson
, 126–28, where even Peterson, one of Jefferson's ablest defenders, concludes that by the 1820s “the two men seemed to change places. Adams was serene, Jefferson morbid. The New Englander found the path of tranquility…while…the Virginian lost it in the gloom that invaded a declining [southern] society….”

5.
Erudite Effusions

1.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1813,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 376; Thomas Jefferson to Adams, October 28, 1813,
ibid
., 392; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 12, 1813,
ibid
., 394; Adams to Richard Rush, November 5, 1813, Reel 122.

2.
Adams to John Langdon, February 21, 1812, Reel 118; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 12, 1813,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 394; the Adams correspondence with John Taylor is published in
Works
, VI, 443–521, without dates for the individual letters.

3.
John Taylor,
An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States
(New Haven, 1950; first published 1814);
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America
and
Discourses on Davila
are available in
Works
, IV, 270–588, V, VI, 3–399; Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 27, 1810,
Old Family Letters
, 270.

4.
Adams to Mathew Carey, June 21, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, July 5, 1814,
ibid
. The claim of influence on Burke is at best an exaggeration and at worst a total fabrication.

5.
The marginal comment of 1812 is reproduced in
Works
, VI, 227; the comment on the likelihood of civil war, dating from 1813, is in Haraszti,
Prophets of Progress
, 173.

6.
Adams to Benjamin Franklin, January 17, 1787, John Bigelow, ed.,
The Works of Benjamin Franklin
(New York, 1904), XI, 298–99; Adams to James Warren, January 9, 1787, Ford, ed.,
Warren-Adams Letters
, II, 281.

7.
Works
, IV, 274; Adams to Nicholas Boylston, July 24, 1819, Reel 123.

8.
See Haraszti,
Prophets of Progress
, 46–48, 167–68, for the most reliable assessment of both works in terms of originality.

9.
The chief books on Adams as a political theorist are: Correa M. Walsh,
The Political Science of John Adams
(New York, 1915); Edward Handler,
America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams
(Cambridge, Mass., 1964); and John R. Howe, Jr.,
The Changing Political Thought of John Adams
(Princeton, 1966), which remains the best full-length treatment, even though the interpretation of Adams as changing dramatically in the 1780s strikes me as misguided. The wisest book on Adams as a political thinker remains Haraszti,
Prophets of Progress
. The most insightful treatment of Adams's political theory within the context of the republican ideology, and therefore the starting point for any modern reinterpretation, is Wood,
Creation of the American Republic
, 567–92. Leslie Wharton's
Polity and the Public Good
links Adams's political theory to the social conditions of New England in intriguing ways. Ralph Lerner's
The Thinking Revolutionary
is critical of Wood for “overcontextualizing” Adams's ideas, and distinguishes between “thought” and “ideology” in ways that suggest Adams's continuing relevance. Among the scores of scholarly articles, two strike me as most helpful: Stephen Kurtz, “The Political Science of John Adams: A Guide to His Statecraft,”
William and Mary Quarterly
, 3rd Series, XXV (October 1968), 605–13, and Joyce Appleby, “The New Republican Synthesis and the Changing Political Ideas of John Adams,”
American Quarterly
, XXV (1973), 578–95.

10.
Works
, IV, 287, 371.

11.
Ibid
., 219, 287, 290, 292; Adams to James Madison, April 22, 1817,
Works
, X, 257. See also Howe,
Changing Political Thought
, 133–55; McCoy,
Elusive Republic
, 96–100; and Wood,
Creation of the American Republic
, 567–79, for the best secondary accounts.

12.
James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, June 6, 1787, Boyd, ed.,
Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, XI, 401–02.

13.
Works
, IV, 398; Haraszti,
Prophets of Progress
, 223; Adams to Josiah Quincy, February 18, 1811,
Works
, IX, 634.

14.
Adams to Benjamin Rush, March 26, 1806,
Old Family Letters
, 96; Adams to John Quincy Adams, November 22, 1815, Reel 122; Haraszti,
Prophets
, 178; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 15, 1823,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 595–96.

15.
Works
, IV, 290.

16.
Ibid
., 380–81.

17.
Works
, III, 447–64, for the
Dissertation; Works
, IV, 396–97, and Adams to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1808;
Spur of Fame
, 108, for typical Adams formulations on housing the aristocracy in the upper house. DeLolme's work was originally published in London in 1771. The influence of DeLolme is the main point of Appleby's interpretation, cited above. Despite his insistence throughout his retirement that he never sanctioned anything but election to the Senate, in
Davila
Adams suggested at one point that “hereditary descent would be better.” See
Works
, VI, 249.

18.
Taylor,
An Inquiry
, 34; Wood,
Creation
, 587–92, which was the first account to recognize the implications of Taylor's argument for Adams's “irrelevancy.” Indeed, it is Taylor's critical perspective that Wood adopts as his own throughout his treatment of Adams's
Defence
, even though it is clear from his tone and concluding paragraph that Wood admires Adams's analysis and thinks it more profound than the liberal ideology that displaced it.

19.
Works
, VI, 482.

20.
Taylor,
Inquiry
, 31–34, 37, 158–59, 372.

21.
Ibid
, 54, 101, 171, 372, 374.

22.
Works
, VI, 483, 476–77, 511.

23.
Ibid
, 467.

24.
Ibid
, 453–54, 457.

25.
Ibid
, 452.

26.
Ibid
, 469, 457.