John Adams, the Second President
A Review of David McCullough’s Biography
I began a personal project last year. The books we read in school don’t usually go into detail about presidents and their lives. This is tragic, because many of the decisions that shaped our country, for better or worse, were made by presidents grappling with issues unique to their times.
In the case of early presidents—indeed, all of the Founding Fathers—they were taking on a new role. Once cannon smoke cleared after the last battle for independence, they faced the task of building a new government.
To proceed with this, tasks needed to be carried out, including creating laws, establishing boundaries, and building an army.
Each region in the colonies prioritized different things. Some opposed slavery; others, tragically, defended it.
In general, one wish remained: they wanted to be part of this experiment.
President, Leader, Human
The flaw of humanity has always existed in presidents, much as it does in famous authors.
When we read an author’s biography, we often discover that they’re humans we don’t always like. It’s different in the case presidents. Such instances of humanity can lead to tragic decisions that affect those that they serve.
That’s why it was important to establish checks and balances. John Adams played a crucial part in the establishment of this form of government.
The presidents were born into different eras. I’m still working through the Founding Fathers, and will be at the ‘birth’ of our country for a while.
Last year, I read a book about George Washington. He was rightly regarded as a hero, and when chosen to be the first president, few seemed to have had any protest—except for Washington himself, who did not feel up to the task.
I also read a book about his mother, Mary Ball Washington, and wrote an article about her:
A Like-New Copy
While browsing a used bookshop in December, I found a like-new copy of John Adams by David McCullough. It felt like the universe was telling me to set aside author biographies, shifting attention to our second president.
Other books about John Adams tend to be a blend of his life with those of Franklin and Jefferson. Otherwise, they chronicle his marriage to a powerful woman named Abigail.
David McCullough’s book provides an excellent balance of all these things. We cannot tell the story of John Adams without those other characters. I was still glad to find a work where Adams was the primary focus.
This book proved to be a long read; at over six hundred pages, it absorbed the month of February. The good news is that all of those words were necessary. McCullough told Adams’s story in stunning detail, not wasting a page.
I’ve yet to decide if I will move right on to Jefferson. Whichever book I study next, I decided to write this review while it was fresh in my mind.
The Bookmarks
Though I knew this biography was going to be long, I feel that I took more time than usual to finish it.
There might be a reason: lately, I read with the intention of blogging. I scoured the paragraphs for interesting details, marking them with (removable!) sticky page markers:
John Adams now has a colorful array of markers, waiting for me to return to them in the future.
The Writing
John Adams is one of the most beautiful biographies I’ve read. The author has a steady, engaging style. He tells the story with such skill that it never feels like ‘a piece of nonfiction.’ Instead, it has the charm of a novel, bringing brave men and women to life.
It’s not difficult to find books about George Washington. Given his fame and the legends built around him, we can explore his life from many angles. Various histories offer unique perspectives.
In John Adams, Washington is (of course) featured as an important character. However, the book does not focus on him. It offers a panoramic view of the entire world during and after the Revolution, dedicating time to many prominent figures, not letting them overshadow Adams.
It’s true that Adams did not have the same kind of legacy as General Washington. Adams’ most powerful moments seem to have been during the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
He also shone brightly during overseas trips to France, England, and the Netherlands. He served there as an ambassador for our infant nation.
I believe that, during those trips, he proved how capable he was of one day being president.
The Adams Family
Adams’s wife, Abigail, is portrayed as having been his greatest source of strength, a woman with bold ideas, strong enough to hold her own in a debate. She was a leader in her own right.
Though Adams is famous for choices that challenged a powerful Empire, he was more than that. At home, he was a devoted husband and caring father.
Famously, his son John Quincy would go on to become the sixth President of the United States.
His other sons, Charles and Thomas, also studied the law and politics. Charles would, unfortunately, lose his fortune—and eventually his life—to alcohol and depression.
His daughter, Abigail (commonly called Nabby), was just as clever as her brothers. Adams wrote many letters to his daughter, valuing her opinion. She lived to the age of forty-eight, when she discovered that she had breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy in her father’s house. Anesthesia did not yet exist in those days, and Adams suffered during his daughter’s operation as if he himself felt the pain.
Nabby did not live long after the operation. Her surviving husband was a bit eccentric; he could not seem to hold a good job. While he was still around to provide for their children, it appears she mostly entrusted them to the care of her parents.
Above All Else, Books
I could relate to John Adams as a book lover. He taught himself through books, dedicating hours of the day to subjects such as mathematics, science, history, and philosophy. I have written about his bibliophilia here.
He proved an excellent tutor to John Quincy. Of all the Adams children, this young man was seen to have qualities most similar to his father. He was clever with matters of law, ambassador in Russia at a young age, and very capable of winning debates.
Adams was not alone in his love for books. McCullough often recounts interactions with Thomas Jefferson. There were times they got on splendidly; however, there also existed seasons of rivalry. These grew especially heated when Adams became president and Jefferson his vice president.
Their opposing political views made compromise difficult. At one point, eleven years passed with no communication between them. Only the intercession of a mutual friend encouraged the aging leaders to correspond again.
Once A Bookworm…
Even after retirement, John Adams continued to correspond with colleagues such as Jefferson. In his lifetime, he sent an amazing volume of letters, writing several every day.
These letters, gathered and explored as a full story, provide a great portrait of the second President.
Adams was frugal with his money; the only place where he might have indulged was a bookshop. His collection, by the end of his life, was impressive.
Jefferson, on the other hand, always sought to sport the latest style and the most elegant furniture. When Jefferson’s debts had piled so high that he needed a way to pay them, he sold the books to the Library of Congress.
I quote from John Adams:
After prolonged debate in Congress, a figure of $23,950 was agreed to, and in April 1815 ten wagons carrying 6,707 volumes packed in pine cases departed from Monticello.
Jefferson immediately commenced to collect anew. He could “not live without books,” he told Adams, who understood perfectly. The remained two of the greatest book lovers of their bookish generation. Adams’s library numbered 3,200 volumes.
The art of annotating books is not unique to our BookTok generation. Adams’s notes might not have gone viral in his lifetime, but the volumes he loved tended to include his thoughts:
Unlike Jefferson, who seldom ever marked a book, and then only faintly in pencil, Adams, pen in hand, loved to add his comments in the margins. It was part of the joy of reading for him, to have something to say himself, to talk back to, agree or take issue with, Rousseau, Condorcet, Turgot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Adam Smith, or Joseph Priestley.
One of the many things proved by John Adams was that we can grow by looking at different viewpoints. How can we argue for what we believe to be true, if we do not know the points that’ll be used against us?
One of the authors Adams disagreed with but learned from was Mary Wollstonecraft. Though Adams disagreed with much of what was in her book, he did not boycott it; rather, he took the time to read it and jot down his thoughts:
At times his marginal observations nearly equaled what was printed on the page, as in Mary Wollstonecraft’s French Revolution, which Adams read at least twice and with delight, since he disagreed with nearly everything she said. To her claim that government must be simple, for example, he answered, “The clock would be simple if you destroyed all the wheels, but it would not tell the time of day.”
Such witty responses were fully characteristic of John Adams.
John Adams’s life was remarkable. It cannot be summed up in one blog post, but the biography by David McCullough, in my opinion, did a remarkable job capturing its subject—his flaws as well as virtues.
I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in history. I do plan to write more articles based on facts I learned here; there is a ton of potential!
Our Founding Fathers fought for freedom. Let us always have the same sort of courage as they did, and let us never tire of learning.
Please let me know what you think in the comments! I really want to talk about John Adams now!
Excellent piece, mariella! Wonderfully done! I am now greatly interested in reading this book for sure. Maybe i can find an audiobook for it.
I read this year's ago and have been a huge McCullough fan ever since. When you get to Teddy Roosevelt on the list of presidents, definitely read Mornings on Horseback.