Essays on the Presidents by Boller Paul F.;

Author:Boller, Paul F.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TCU Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

John Adams’s Marginal Comments

John Adams, the second president of the United States, was forever writing: letters, speeches, articles, and books, and he was certainly a stimulating writer. The multiplicity of nouns and adjectives that he piled up in his sentences, when he felt strongly about things, are a delight to read (and count). “In Congress,” he once complained, “Nibbling and quibbling—as usual. There is no greater Mortification than to sit with half a dozen Witts, deliberating upon a Petition, Address or Memorial. These great Witts, these subtle Criticks, these refined Geniuses, these learned Lawyers, these wise Statesmen, are so fond of showing their Parts and Powers, as to make their Consultations very tedious.” When Adams was reading books, he did more writing. His favorite books were written by the philosophes of the Enlightenment, and he wrote comments in the margins of the pages he was turning, making it quite clear what he thought about the points being made by the author. Fortunately, Zoltan Haraszti, Keeper of Rare Books and Editor of Publications at the Boston Public Library, made Adams’s marginal reactions to the ideas of the philosophes available to the public. The publisher thought the Adams book would be “fascinating reading for anyone.” Not necessarily. But for people who wanted to understand Adams’s strong feelings about life, his side-swipes in this book are indispensable.

. . .

Of the four leading philosopher-statesmen of the early republic—Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Adams—John Adams has been least known, least liked. Jefferson has been cherished as a symbol of the American democratic faith, Madison admired as the “Father of the Constitution,” and Hamilton respected for his realistic grasp of the economic forces that indicated the future development of the new nation. Adams alone has been claimed by no political party, invoked in no great cause, rarely quoted, and never apotheosized for the purposes of American folk hero–worship. Yet Vernon Parrington, whose own liberal predilections led him to class the conservative New Englander with the famous English Tory, Dr. Johnson, considered him the most notable political thinker, with the possible exception of Calhoun, among American statesmen; the late Harold Laski deemed him “the greatest political thinker whom America has yet produced”; and the violently anti-usurocratic poet Ezra Pound, for reasons best known to himself, called him the “Father of the Nation.” Nevertheless he is seldom read today, his definitive biography still remains to be written, and his political thought, except for Correa Walsh’s brilliant analysis, thirty-seven years ago, in The Political Science of John Adams, has never received extensive treatment by students of American intellectual history. Zoltán Haraszti, Keeper of Rare Books and Editor of Publications at the Boston Public Library, is therefore to be commended for calling our attention again to this unjustly neglected figure in the history of American thought in his excellent volume, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress.

While it is doubtful whether Haraszti’s presentation of Adams’s reactions to the ideas of the leading philosophes of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment will make “fascinating

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