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Volumes Published
Series I: Diaries
Diary and Autobiography of John Adams,
4 vols.
1755–1804
The Diary, partially published in the 1850s, has proved a
quarry of information on the rise of Revolutionary resistance in
New England, the debates in the early Continental Congresses, and
the diplomacy and financing of the American Revolution; but it has
remained unfamiliar to the wider public. "It is an American classic,"
Zoltán Haraszti has said, "about which Americans know next
to nothing." Actually the Diary's historical value may well
prove secondary to its literary and human interest. Now that it
is presented in full, we have for the first time a proper basis
for comprehending John Adams—an extraordinary human being,
a master of robust, idiomatic language, a diarist in the great tradition.
From none of the other founders of the Republic do we have anything
like a record at once so copious and so intimate.
The Autobiography, intended for John Adams' family but
never finished, consists of three large sections. The first records
his boyhood, his legal and political career, and the movement that
culminated in American independence. The second and third parts
deal with his diplomatic experiences, and serve among other things
as a retrospective commentary on the diary; they are studded with
sketches of Adams' associates which are as scintillating as they
are prejudiced. Parts and in some cases all of these sketches were
omitted from Charles Francis Adams' 19th-century edition.
In 1779 John Adams wrote, "I am but an ordinary Man. The Times
alone have destined me to Fame—and even these have not been
able to give me, much." Then he added, "Yet some great Events, some
cutting Expressions, some mean Hypocrisies, have at Times, thrown
this Assemblage of Sloth, Sleep, and littleness into Rage a little
like a Lion." Both the ordinary Man and the Lion live on in these
volumes.
The Earliest Diary of John Adams, a
supplement
1753–1759
The existence of this diary was totally unsuspected until its somewhat
accidental discovery among papers at the Vermont Historical Society
during a search by Wendell D. Garrett, associate editor of The Adams
Papers, for Adams family letters of a later period.
In part, the diary antedates by more than two years all other
diaries of John Adams, and as a whole it is an invaluable addition
to The Adams Papers. The editors' introduction describes the romantic
and dramatic circumstances under which it is supposed the diary
left the hands of the Adams family and found its way into the possession
of young Royall Tyler, later a successful writer and distinguished
Vermont judge, but in the 1780s a suitor for the hand of John Adams'
daughter Abigail. Among other matters, the newly found diary contains
material on John Adams' life as an undergraduate at Harvard, his
law studies, his ambitions, and his observations on girls.
As L. H. Butterfield, former editor in chief of The Adams Papers,
said of John Adams, "He almost never fails to give even his casual
reflections a characteristic turn. He is a great stylist. . . .
His wry, amusing, engaging comments, whether on literature, science,
or government, show an original mind at work."
Diary of John Quincy Adams, vols. 1–2
November 1779–December 1788
These volumes begin the publication of the greatest diary, both
in mass and substance, in American history. Recording a span of
68 years, it has been known heretofore only in partial form. When,
over a hundred years ago, Charles Francis Adams edited his grandfather's
diary he chose to omit "the details of common life," reduce "the
moral and religious speculations," and retain criticisms of others
only if they applied to public figures "acting in the same sphere
with the writer."
Now the diary is being published complete for the first time.
Starting with the entries of a 12-year-old, the present volumes
cover John Quincy Adams' formative years—his schooling and
travel abroad, study at Harvard, and the first months of training
for the law. Adams' six years overseas with his father took him
to a half dozen countries, with lengthy stays in Paris, the Netherlands,
and St. Petersburg. On his return he stayed for a time in New York,
making the acquaintance of influential congressmen. To finish preparing
for college, he lived with an aunt and uncle in Haverhill, caught
up in a round of social activities. Entering Harvard with junior
standing in the spring of 1786, he graduated in 15 months.
As Adams matured, diary entries became less a dutiful response
to a father's request and more a record of the young man's perceptive
observations and reflections—and thus a rich source for social
history. There are accounts of playgoing in Paris, evenings with
Lafayette and Jefferson, the diversions of rural New England, apprenticeship
in a Newburyport law office. And through the eyes of a serious but
not unbending student we are given a picture of Harvard in the 1780s.
Candid opinions of preachers, writers, men of affairs, and family
members accompany the closest self-scrutiny. Here is a remarkable
record of the passage from adolescence to manhood of a precocious
and sensitive boy torn by self-doubts and driving himself to fulfill
his promise and his parents' expectations.
Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vols.
1–2
January 1820–September 1829
Third and last of the Adams dynasty of statesmen, Charles Francis
Adams followed in his grandfather's and father's footsteps by keeping
a diary from youth to old age. With only a few gaps in the earliest
years, Charles Francis Adams' diary extends from 1820 to 1880, furnishing
a massively detailed and intensely personal record of the writer's
life as an undergraduate at Harvard, manager of the Adams family's
business affairs, historian and biographer, Free Soil political
leader and Republican congressman, United States minister in London
during the Civil War, arbitrator of the Alabama claims at
the Geneva Tribunal, and father of a whole constellation of gifted
sons.
Unlike John Adams' Diary and Autobiography (4 vols., 1961)
and John Quincy Adams' Diary (2 vols. to date), that of Charles
Francis Adams has never before been even selectively published.
This is partly because the protracted efforts of the family to prepare
a satisfactory edition after the writer's death finally broke down
under the sheer bulk of the material.
The present two volumes reveal Charles Francis Adams as a sensitive
and self-critical young man during his college years, in the social
whirl of Washington while his father was secretary of state and
president, during his training in Daniel Webster's Boston law office,
and throughout his prolonged courtship of Abigail B. Brooks, a New
England heiress. A central theme of these volumes is the struggle
that raged within young Adams' mind and heart between the warm,
poetic heritage of his Southern-born mother and the cold, political,
New England legacy of his Adams forebears. The defeat of his father
in the 1828 election, the tragic death of his older brother, and
his marriage to Abigail in 1829, with which these volumes end, were
way stations in his course toward making himself a "New England
man."
Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vols.
3–4
September 1829–December 1832
Covering the period from Adams' marriage to the end of 1832, these
volumes record the early years of his maturity during which he was
seeking to find his vocation. Engaged in the day-to-day management
of John Quincy Adams' business interests in Boston and Quincy, he
nevertheless had no inclination toward commerce or the active practice
of law. Son and grandson of presidents, proud heir to a name already
great and controversial in American politics, he also at this time
considered himself "not fitted for the noise of public life." Dependent
for support on his father and father-in-law but determined to maintain
his independence, he devoted his available time to a program of
studies and writing that would prepare him for a career he hesitated
to name but in which he wished distinction. His own public career
still years away, he was drawn at this period to the study of American
history and his famous grandparents' papers, an effort that would
continue and that would make him the family's archivist and editor.
These volumes offer manifold opportunities for an enlarged understanding
of a complex and able man who was later to assume positions of high
responsibility. In addition to furnishing innumerable personal and
familial insights, this portion of the diary is of capital importance
for the historian of society and culture. Probably no more detailed
and faithful record exists of Boston life in the period.
Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vols.
5–6
January 1833–June 1836
A man's 27th year is "critical," according to Charles Francis Adams.
And so his proved. Twenty-five at the start of these volumes, Adams
had yet to embark on the public career that would mark him a statesman,
but by their conclusion he had been drawn into the maelstrom of
politics. It was an unwilling plunge, dictated by what both he and
his father, John Quincy Adams, regarded as betrayal of the elder
Adams by Daniel Webster and his Whigs. Once in, however, he showed
himself politically adept.
This diary, kept from January 1833 to June 1836 and hitherto unpublished,
has elements of hidden personal drama. Through private meetings
and caucuses and newspaper articles signed with pseudonyms, the
younger Adams found effective means to carry on political activities
in the face of dilemmas posed by his father's public prominence,
his father-in-law's contrary persuasions, and his own preferences.
He emerged with growing self-respect and solid accomplishment as
political journalist—his initial vocation.
The diary has fresh disclosures also about the personality of
John Quincy Adams, shrewdly assessed by an observer uniquely placed
to interpret domestic scenes as well as the greatly waged struggles
in Washington against the Southern "slavocracy" and "gag rules."
Colorful figures in Boston's political and social life are finely
etched in outspoken appraisals characteristic of the Adamses. The
diarist shows acuteness too in comments on books, sermons, paintings,
the theater, and opera.
Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vols.
7–8
June 1836–February 1840
The period of June 1836 to February 1840, from Charles Francis Adams'
28th to 32d year, was characterized by his turn from the political
activities that had occupied him for the preceding several years.
The course of the Van Buren administration he had helped to elect
dissatisfied him, the Massachusetts Whig leadership had earned his
distrust, positions on political issues that would either echo or
oppose those being vigorously espoused by his father, John Quincy
Adams, he felt inhibited from avowing publicly. So confronted, Charles
found occupation in preparing and expressing himself on economic
matters of moment—banking and currency—and moral questions
generated by the slavery issue. With increasing effectiveness he
employed the lecture platform and the press for the expression of
views to which he felt free to attach his name. On all these matters
he found his opinions at odds with the prevailing ones held among
those prominent in the Boston scene, as John Adams and John Quincy
Adams had found before him. Yet, despite a sense of loneliness,
so induced, his participation in the varied social life of the city
has its place in the diary.
However, activities in Boston and its environs that provided a
focus for the record of the preceding years give way in these volumes
to wider scenes made available by train and ship. An extensive journey
with his wife by way of the Hudson River and the Erie Canal to Niagara
and Canada, a visit of some length and interest in Washington, and
stays of lesser length in New York City are recounted.
Wide and persistent reading, the theater, numismatics, and the
building of a summer home in Quincy also occupied him and are fully
reflected in his journal. Family tragedies are not absent from its
pages. As the period comes to its close his long and distinguished
labors as editor of the family's papers had begun. A new self-assurance
has become evident.
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Online:
Adams Time Line
Adams Genealogy
Biographical Sketches
Quotations
Selected Manuscripts
Adams Electronic Archive
JQA: One President's Adolescence
Other Resources:
Related Web Sites
Books about the Adamses
Adams Family Papers manuscript collection
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