Passionate Sage (39 page)

31.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, April 23, 1813, Reel 95; Adams to John Quincy Adams, November 28, 1813,
ibid
.

32.
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, December 17, 1822, Reel 124; Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 14, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to John Quincy Adams, November 26, 1815, Reel 123.

33.
Quoted in David F. Musto, “The Youth of John Quincy Adams,” American Philosophical Society,
Proceedings
, CXIII (1969), 269–82; see also Musto's “The Adams Family,” Massachusetts Historical Society,
Proceedings
, XCIII (1981), 40–58. Musto is a psychiatrist who attributes John Quincy's neurotic behavior to excessive parental pressure during childhood and adolescence, and singles out Abigail, more than John, as the chief culprit. Edith B. Gelles, “The Abigail Industry,”
William and Mary Quarterly
, 3rd Series, XLV (October 1988), 656–83, concurs with the notion that John Quincy experienced excessive pressure in his youth, but defends Abigail against the charge of being the most relentlessly demanding parent. My own instinct, as a historian and parent, is to recognize the plausibility of such psychologizing, but to embrace agnosticism; there are some things we will never know.

34.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, October 28, 1817, Reel 123; Adams to John Quincy Adams, May 24, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to Alexander Johnson, January 4, 1823, Reel 124.

35.
The “bulldog among spaniels” observation is by the British diplomat W. H. Lyttleton in a letter to Sir Charles Bagot, January 22, 1827, quoted in Dangerfield,
Era of Good Feelings, 7
.

36.
Louisa Catherine Adams to Adams, March 12, 1820, Reel 264; Louisa Catherine Adams to Adams, December 22, 1819,
ibid
.

37.
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, February 20, 1820, Reel 124; Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, January 29, 1820,
ibid
.

38.
Louisa Catherine Adams,
The Adventures of a Nobody
, Reel 269, 122.

39.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, October 20, 1815 [1818],
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 529; see Nagel,
Descent from Glory
, 129–30, for a description of the deathbed scene; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, September 25, 1819, Reel 124; Adams to Caroline de Wint, March 15, 1820,
ibid
. There is, of course, an enormous secondary literature on Abigail, though the focus tends to be on the earlier years. Edith B. Gelles, “The Abigail Industry,” is the best review of the many biographies; see also her insightful “Abigail Adams,”
New England Quarterly
, LII (1979), 500–21. Finally, Paul C. Nagel's
The Adams Women
(New York, 1983) offers a more critical assessment of Abigail and a highly laudatory interpretation of Louisa Catherine.

40.
The Abigail quotation is from Nagel,
Descent from Glory
, 174; Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography
(Boston, 1961), 17–18.

41.
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, January 14, 1823, Reel 124; Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, November 11, 1821,
ibid.;
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, February 20, 1820,
ibid.;
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, December 17, 1822,
ibid
.

42.
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, June 25, 1819, Reel 123.

43.
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, January 29, 1820,
ibid.;
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, May 10, 1823, Reel 124; Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, April 22, 1823,
ibid
.

44.
Adams to Nicholas Boylston, August 24, 1822,
ibid
.

45.
Quincy,
Figures of the Past
, 61, 73–74; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 17, 1826,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 614.

46.
Quincy,
Figures of the Past
, 77, 74–75.

47.
Ibid
., 65.

48.
Ibid
., 69, 71.

49.
Adams to Jefferson, December 2, 1822,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 586; Quincy,
Figures of the Past
, 80–82.

7.
Legacies

1.
Lyman H. Butterfield, “The Jubilee of Independence, July 4, 1826,”
The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
, 61 (1953), 119–40, for the best account of the celebration. Adams to John Whitney, June 7, 1826,
Works
, X, 416–17, for the letter to the Quincy committee.

2.
Thomas Jefferson to Mayor Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826, which is available in several editions of Jefferson's papers, but the handwritten original is in the Massachusetts Historical Society.

3.
Douglass Adair, “Rumford's Dying Speech, 1685, and Jefferson's Last Words on Democracy, 1826,” in Trevor Colbourn, ed.,
Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair
(New York, 1974), 192–202.

4.
Henry S. Randall,
The Life of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1858), III, 544–48, which reprints the first-person recollections of the family gathered at the bedside.

5.
Eliza Quincy,
Memoirs of the Life of Eliza S. M. Quincy
(Boston, 1861), 205–09;
Niles' Weekly Register
, July 22, 1826; Butterfield, “Jubilee of Independence,” 134–35, summarizes the scenes at both bedsides.

6.
Niles' Weekly Register
, July 22, 1826, for the Rush quote; Merrill Peterson,
The Jefferson Image in the American Mind
(New York, 1960), 2–10, for the Binney quote and for an excellent account of the national response to the simultaneous departure of the two patriarchs.

7.
A Selection of Eulogies, Pronounced in the Several States, in Honor of Those Illustrious Patriots and Statesmen, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
(Harford, 1826), 98, 94, 121–22, 128, 422, 282.

8.
Ibid
., 3–17, 336, 149–50, 180.

9.
Ibid
., 380, 256, 233.

10.
Ibid
., 336, 178–79, 185–86, 94, 160.

11.
My discussion of the image of “the founders” in the following paragraphs is indebted to Wesley Frank Craven,
The Legend of the Founding Fathers
(New York, 1956); George Forgie,
Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and His Age
(New York, 1979), 13–53, which raises the analysis of the psychological role of “the fathers” to new levels of sophistication; and to McCoy,
The Last of the Fathers
, 9–38, which offers fresh insight into the characteristics being held up for emulation, characteristics being held up for emulation.

12.
Daniel Webster,
The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster
(18 vols., Boston, 1903), I, 252–53.

13.
Robert E. Spiller and Alfred R. Ferguson, eds.,
The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Cambridge, Mass., 1971), I, 7. The quotation is from Emerson's
Nature
.

14.
Marcus Cunliffe, ed.,
The Life of Washington
(Cambridge, Mass., 1962), which is a modern edition of the Mason Weems biography. See also John Marshall,
The Life of George Washington…First President of the United States
(5 vols., Philadelphia, 1804–07), which is the biography Adams joked about as a verbal mausoleum. The best books on Washington's popular image in the nineteenth century are: Marcus Cunliffe,
George Washington: Man and Monument
(Boston, 1958); Paul Longmore,
The Invention of George Washington
(Berkeley, 1988); and Barry Schwartz,
George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol
(New York, 1987).

15.
Peterson,
Jefferson Image
, 36–37, offers the best succinct version of Jefferson's role in the Webster-Hayne debate. Richard E. Ellis,
The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States Rights, and the Nullification Crisis
(New York, 1987), provides the best of the recent secondary accounts.

16.
Charles M. Wiltse, ed.,
The Papers of Daniel Webster
(Hanover, NH, 1986), I, 285–348, for the famous Webster reply to Hayne.

17.
Peterson,
Jefferson Image
, which is the most comprehensive and probing study of any prominent American's reputation as it moves from generation to generation and adapts to different contexts.

18.
Forgie,
Patricide in the House Divided
, 123–58, offers the fullest review of the role of “the founders” in the slavery debates of the 1850s. For the speeches themselves, see Henry V. Jaffa and Robert W. Johannsen, eds.,
In the Name of the People: Speeches and Writings of Lincoln and Douglas in the Illinois Campaign of 1859
(Columbus, Ohio, 1959).

19.
For Jefferson's tortured and inconsistent position on slavery, see William Cohen, “Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Slavery,”
Journal of American History
, 56 (1969), 503–26; also, a more pro-Jefferson view that plays down his views on the Missouri question, William Freehling, “The Founding Fathers and Slavery,”
American Historical Review, 77
(1972), 81–93.

20.
Interestingly, there is no scholarly study of Adams's views on slavery. The starting place for such a study is the 1770s, especially Adams's correspondence in the Continental Congress. See, for example, the anonymous requests sent him, pleading for an immediate end to slavery, in
Papers
, III, 18–20, 411–12. The clearest statement of his own view, which tended to warn against insisting on emancipation because of the divisions it would create in the shaky confederation against England, can be found in
Papers
, IV, 208–12, 469, and V, 242. For his position on the Missouri question, the correspondence with Louisa Catherine in 1819–20 is the best source, discussed above in chapter 4. The interpretation offered here is too abbreviated to do full justice to the nuances of Adams's response to what proved to be the most glaring failure of the revolutionary generation. The subject deserves a full-length treatment.

21.
See Peterson,
Jefferson Image
, 220–22, for an elegant summary.

22.
For the background to Croly's book, see Eric F. Goldman,
Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform
(New York, 1956), 146–61.

23.
Herbert D. Croly,
The Promise of American Life
(New York, 1909), 28, 45–46.

24.
Ibid
., 42–43.

25.
Ibid
., 30, 33, 41, 46.

26.
Ibid
., 29, 36.

27.
There is no scholarly study of Hamilton's legacy akin to Peterson's book on Jefferson. My interpretation here relies primarily on Peterson,
Jefferson Image
, 221–26. See also Henry Cabot Lodge,
Life and Letters of Alexander Hamilton
(Boston, 1882).

28.
See Butterfield, “Jubilee of Independence,” 128, for the description of the Quincy railroad track. For the most insightful study of Henry Adams as historian, see William H. Jordy,
Henry Adams: Scientific Historian
(New Haven, 1952).

29.
Henry Adams,
History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
(2 vols., 1988); Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography
(New York, 1961), which is the most convenient and accessible version of the classic originally published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1918. See also Jordy,
Henry Adams
, 43–120, 256–88.

30.
The secondary literature here is almost as boundless as the America allegedly coming into existence in the 1830s. Two recent books strike me as seminal: John Higham,
From Boundlessness to Consolidation: The Transformation of American Culture, 1848–1860
(Ann Arbor, 1969), and Robert Wiebe,
The Opening of American Society: From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion
(New York, 1984). Older but still standard accounts include Curtis Nettles,
The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775–1815
(New York, 1962), and Douglass C. North,
The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860
(New York, 1961). For a nice summary of current historical wisdom on the shift from republicanism to liberalism, see the symposiums on Gordon Wood's
Creation of the American Republic
in
William and Mary Quarterly
, 3rd Series, XLIV (July 1987), 549–640. Finally, I find John Murrin's version of the ideological issues at stake most cogent in his “The Great Inversion, or Court Versus Country: A Comparison of the Revolutionary Settlements in England (1688–1721) and America (1776–1816),” in J. G. A. Pocock, ed.,
Three British Revolutions
(Princeton, 1980), 368–453.