In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

| 217 11 John Adams and the Choice of Hercules Manliness and Sexual Virtue in Eighteenth-Century British America Thomas A. Foster In August 1776 John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he had proposed that the image for the seal of the new nation be the “Choice of Hercules .” Referencing the classical allegory of choosing virtue over vice, Adams selected a particularly masculine, heroic figure to represent public and private virtue. He believed individuals should choose to lead moral personal lives and devote themselves to civic duty; for him, the image captured both the heart of the nation and also, as we shall see, his view of manhood. That Adams chose a decidedly manly figure to illustrate what was increasingly becoming associated with womanhood—private virtue—indicates his view that manliness included so-called feminine traits, including chastity and self-restraint. In eighteenth-century British America, proper manhood was secured by success in two main areas of a man’s life: his position as head-of-household and his “calling” or career.1 Sex mattered in these two most important areas of a man’s life. As head-of-household, a man ideally sired children and developed and maintained intimacy with his wife. (He was, of course, also ultimately responsible for the sexual conduct, or misconduct, of his dependents —his wife, children, and any servants or slaves.) His self-mastery could also deeply affect his public reputation, which could in turn affect his and his family’s economic affairs. In both respects he was to follow the three M’s of eighteenth-century sexual manhood—marriage, monogamy, and moderation . Family was not yet the idealized exclusive domain of women as it would be by the nineteenth-century, when home, hearth, and familial love were considered primarily female concerns, whereas business and politics were desexualized and male.2 Simply put, sexuality was one important and dynamic component of manliness in eighteenth-century British America. 218 | Thomas A. Foster Of course many men espoused or lived one of many counter-norms that also flourished—especially in the later eighteenth century.3 In print culture, for example, the rake, an antiheroic type known for his sexual conquests, was often celebrated as swaggering and virile, a hypermasculine model of manliness . But like most eighteenth-century Americans, Adams did not view selfretrained manliness as weak or effeminate. Indeed, he saw moral manliness as more masculine than the excesses of the uncontained rake. The personal writings of John Adams reveal a masculine identity predicated on sexual virtue and moral restraint. This chapter demonstrates that Adams utilized the mythic figure of Hercules to embody his notion of masculine virtue; I pay close attention to the sexual component of Adams’s beliefs. Relatively few early modern American men left sustained commentary about their sexual behaviors and identities, and John Adams is no exception. Yet his voluminous surviving letters, personal diaries, and unpublished autobiography reveal glimpses of his views of masculine sexual identity—much of which was articulated both explicitly and implicitly via the figure of Hercules. Historians of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have shown an enduring Christian evangelical model of manliness that emphasized chastity and self-restraint for men.4 Given the eighteenth-century resonance of republican notions of virtue, it should come as no surprise that from time to time, Adams invoked in his writings not a biblical or Christian reference to illustrate proper masculine sexual restraint, but rather the classical heroic figure of Hercules, a man notable for extraordinary masculine strength and physical power.5 Virtue and morality were broadly construed in early America, of course, encompassing much more than sexual conduct—but for Adams and others it notably also included specific sexual morality and linked it to a host of other concerns more typically associated with masculine comportment . As historian Ruth Bloch has shown, the meaning of “virtue” in early America drew on older meanings of “sexual purity and personal sacrifice” and newer “early modern republican forms” that focused on “male public spirit”—the “willingness of citizens to engage actively in civic life and to sacrifice individual interests for the common good.”6 As Bloch argued, the concept of virtue changed through the eighteenth century as the culture blended older and newer interpretations, drawing on religious, Enlightenment , and “literary sentimentalism” influences. The concept of private virtue became increasingly seen as an inherently feminine trait, while public virtue remained decidedly masculine.7 According to Bloch, neither public nor private virtue was the exclusive...

Share