The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams

FOREWORD

Write_ i-xviii.indd 9 3/30/12 1:55 PM FoREWORD Modern scholars ofthe American Revolution have published countless books on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. Surprisingly, John Adams has not fared so well. On the whole, historians have neglected Adams's Revolutionary thought, and a one-volume collection of his political writings has not been available for several decades. This anomaly in the scholarly literature is curious because Adams is often regarded as the most learned and penetrating thinker of the founding generation, and his central role in the American Revolution is universally recognized. Benjamin Rush thought there was a consensus among the generation of 1776 that Adams possessed "more learning probably, both ancient and modern, than any man who subscribed the Declaration of Independence." Another contemporary is reponed to have said that "The man to whom the country is most indebted for the great measure of independence is Mr. John Adams.... I call him the Atlas of American independence."1 John Adams witnessed the American Revolution from beginning to end: he assisted James Otis in the Writs of Assistance case in ry6r, and he participated in negotiating the peace treaty with Britain in 1783. As a Revolutionary statesman, he will always be remembered as an important leader of the radical political movement in Boston and as one of the earliest and most principled voices for independence in the Continental Congress. Likewise, as a public intellectual, Adams wrote some of the most important and influential essays, constitutions, and treatises of the Revolutionary period. IfSamuel Adams and Patrick Henry represent the spirit ofthe independence movement , John Adams exemplifies the mind of the American Revolution. Despite his extraordinary achievements, Adams has always posed a genuine problem for historians. From the moment he entered public life, he always seemed to travel the road not taken. Americans have rarely seen a political leader of such fierce independence and unyielding integrity. In de1 . Benjamin Rush quoted in Joseph J. Ellis, The Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of john Adams (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 29; Richard Stockton quoted in The Works of john Adams, Second President ofthe United States, ed. Charles Francis Adams, ro vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1850- 56), n6. lX Write_ i-xviii.indd 10 3/30/12 1:55 PM FoREWORD bate he was intrepid to the verge of temerity, and his political writings reveal an utter contempt for the art of dissimulation. Unable to meet falsehoods halfWay and unwilling to stop short of the truth, Adams was in constant battle with the accepted, the conventional, the fashionable, and the popular. He would compromise neither with Governor Thomas Hutchinson nor with the Boston mob. From his defense of English soldiers at the Boston Massacre trial to his treaty with the French in 18oo, he had a way of shocking both his most ardent supporters and his most partisan opponents. To some, however , the complexity of the man and his thought are the very reasons why he is worth studying. John Adams was born on October 19, 1735, in Braintree, Massachusetts. His father, Deacon John Adams, was a fifth-generation Massachusetts farmer, and his mother, the former Susanna Boylston, descended from another old New England family. The young man's sense of life and moral virtues were shaped early by the manners and mores of a Puritan culture that honored sobriety, industry, thrift, simplicity, and diligence. After graduating from Harvard College, Adams taught school for three years and began reading for a career in the law. To that end, he adopted a strict daily regimen of hard work and Spartan-like austerity. In his diary, he implored himself to "Let no trifling Diversion or amuzement or Company decoy you from your Books, i.e., let no Girl, no Gun, no cards, no flutes, no Violins, no Dress, no Tobacco, no Laziness, decoy from your Books." He was always demanding of himself that he return to his study to tackle the great treatises and casebooks of the law. Labour to get Ideas of Law, Right, Wrong, Justice, Equity. Search for them in your own mind, in Roman, grecian, french, English Treatises ofnatural, civil, common, Statute Law. Aim at an exact Knowledge of the Nature, End, and Means of Government. Compare the different forms of it with each other and each of them with their Effects on Public and private Happiness . Srudy Seneca, Cicero, and all other good moral Writers. Study Montesque, Bolingbroke...