By Sara Georgini, Series Editor, Papers of John Adams

As he crested the midpoint of his presidency, John Adams’ public life exploded in crisis. “My Administration, will not certainly be easy to myself.— It will be happy, however if it is honourable,” he observed to predecessor George Washington on 22 June 1798. Our newest scholarship from the Adams Papers, Volume 23 of the Papers of John Adams, illuminates the host of challenges he faced from March 1798 to June 1799. First and foremost, the second president struggled to make peace with France while accelerating plans for national defense. The bribery fiasco of the XYZ Affair and catastrophic failure of the first mission to France, coupled with privateers’ relentless attacks on American commerce, made that task trickier to accomplish.

When Adams doubled down on his French policy—despite protest from his cabinet and Congress—support flowed in via hundreds of patriotic addresses from all sixteen states in the union. Adams sat down and answered as many as possible, reveling in a wide-ranging dialogue with his fellow citizens about revolutionary legacies, French missteps, and executive power. “Nothing in the course of my Life, has given me a more exquisite pleasure, than the frank acknowledgments from Various quarters,” Adams wrote to Bristol, Penn., residents on 4 My 1798, adding: “Your Freedom and Independence deserve to be maintained at every hazard—”

His popularity peaked quickly. Adams signed off on the Alien and Sedition Acts in July, a legacy-tarnishing set of laws that eroded individual freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Democratic-Republicans pushed back. They leveraged the new legislation to foment rebellion against the Adams administration. “I apeal to your conscience if it is not to intimidate the people and force them to a compliance with the unjust unreasonable unconstitutional laws,” author Margaret Rodgers Irvin Smith railed to Adams on 25 April 1799, continuing: “There is more power put into your hands than ever ought to be comited to any one man.” Meanwhile, mounting trouble with France called for a more robust army and navy. The implementation of a direct tax to cover military costs sparked episodes of dissent and even local fury, such as Fries’ Rebellion.

In Volume 23 we use 408 documents to tell fresh stories from the founding era that illuminate President John Adams’ role at home and in the world. This period represents the high tide of archival treasure in the Adams Family Papers. With that in mind, we worked hard to amplify and contextualize new voices while capturing the complex political tumult of early America. One story that leapt from the manuscripts was Adams’ pursuit of a trade deal with the revolutionary Black republic of St. Domingue (now Haiti). In his dealings with general Toussaint Louverture, Adams labored to reestablish profitable commerce in the Caribbean by creating a carveout for St. Domingue amid the roiling embargoes of the Quasi War. Elsewhere, Adams welcomed diverse commentary from a vast realm of correspondents, including Christopher McPherson, a free Black religious thinker; Abigail Fellows Cunningham, a Charlestown acquaintance; and trusted confidantes like Tristram Dalton, John Jay, and Adriaan François Van der Kemp.

With reelection hopes still hazy on the horizon, the president prepared for war and planned for peace. This chapter of John Adams’ public life reveals a series of tough balancing acts: Extend diplomacy and fund military buildup. Evade foreign influence and encourage free trade. Protect civil liberties and defend national security. The political ground shifted under Adams’ feet as well. Rejecting the notion that he should act as head of the Federalist Party, he strained to sustain principles of constitutional balance. On 29 March 1798, with the Franco-American alliance in tatters, John Adams laid out his executive view of affairs to attorney general Charles Lee, writing: “If any one entertains the Idea that because I am a president of three votes only, I am in the Power of a Party, they shall find that I am no more so, than the Constitution forces upon me.”

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges support for this volume from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Packard Humanities Institute. All letterpress volumes of The Adams Papers are printed by Harvard University Press.

By Kevyn Spill, Adams Papers Intern

Hello, my name is Kevyn Spill. I have worked as a remote intern for the Adams Papers at the MHS during the summer. I am currently a rising senior student attending Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I had the privilege of transcribing documents for the Papers of John Quincy Adams and researching correspondence for the upcoming Winning Peace select topics webpage, which details John Adams’s role in negotiating Anglo-American peace at the end of the Revolutionary War. In the process of this research, one letter in particular stuck out to me as an interesting reflection of John Adams’s character while he served in politics, that being a letter addressed to his wife Abigail on 27 February 1783.

By this time, John Adams had already written several letters detailing his desire to leave France and return home. He missed his wife, children, and extended family dearly. In other letters, Adams worried about the health and well-being of his brother-in-law Richard Cranch. However, he felt it was his “Destiny” to remain in France and secure peace for his new nation. He understood that he had “come into Life at a critical dangerous time, and to see Prospects before me that I dreaded and wished to avoid but could not, with Honor or a good Conscience.”

With this in mind, Adams referenced both John Dryden and Roman senator Scipio in his understanding of what it means to be a good patriot and servant to his country. Dryden was a popular English poet and playwright who described a patriot as someone who helps their country flourish. Scipio, Adams noted, “served his Country, when it was in need of his Courage and Conduct” but “dismounted from the Saddle, when he found the Beast which bore him began to grow restif and ungovernable.”

Adams believed he had similarly served his nation in its time of need and could now return to more peaceful endeavors. “No Honors, not a Crown—no Profits, not all the Indias, would be the smallest Temptation to me now to go thro’ it again, nor would ever have tempted me to begin it,” he wrote. “I thought it my Duty and that I should be a guilty Wretch if I did not do it.”

While Adams longed to be reunited with his family in Massachusetts, he remained in France and signed the Definitive Anglo-American Peace Treaty on 3 September 1783, thus winning peace for the early republic he had fought so hard to create. “I took my Part according to the Dictates of my Heart and Head,” Adams wrote, “and have gone thro’ it and all its Horrors, and landed the Public safe and glorious in the Harbour of Peace.” 

For more information about the Adamses and their roles in and reflections on securing peace at the end of the Revolutionary War, see the upcoming Winning Peace select topic page.

I am incredibly thankful for the Adams Papers to give me the opportunity to work on both the Winning Peace select topic page and correspondence of John Quincy Adams over the summer. I look forward to using what I learned here in my future studies and career.

By Gwen Fries, Adams Papers

New England’s son Noah Kahan makes his triumphant return to Fenway Park this week, including an 11 July show on the birthday of John Quincy Adams. Kahan’s works have long reminded me of JQA but none moreso than Kahan’s most recent album, The Great Divide, an intensely personal look at life in a New England family.

“You’re home, and I’m so grateful you are. Because you’re going to fix it; you’re going to patch it up. Honey, we’re fragile. You’ve always been so tough.”
—American Cars

I’ve already written at length about JQA’s close relationship with his sister, Nabby. Nabby was the family’s regulating ballast. Endlessly tender and patient, she was a bedrock for Adams. This tribute Kahan wrote for his sister couldn’t be more apt.

“I’m cursing every exit sign and my devotion to hoping you might change your mind and to hating you for going.”
—Downfall

It may seem strange to choose a song with the chorus “I’ll keep rooting for your downfall” as the one to sum up a marriage, but John Quincy’s relationship with his wife, Louisa Catherine, was anything but straightforward. Two strong but opposing personalities, they had trouble living together and even more trouble living apart. Louisa had no appetite for public life, and her husband’s return to Congress after losing his presidential bid was one of the most strained moments of their marriage. (“Staying Still” is also a JQA/LCA anthem!)

“I wish you could know me, and I wish I could know you much more sometimes
Wish I could do nothing with you, sit in the yard while the day dies.”
—Willing and Able

This album is one long run of songs written for the three Adams brothers—JQA, Charles, and Thomas. An elder brother who was handpicked by George Washington for diplomatic service would hardly encourage fraternal affection, particularly as the younger boys failed to keep up academically and professionally (and struggled with alcohol abuse). Yet John Quincy never stopped adoring his brothers, chiseling away at the wall between them with job offers and much-needed funds.

“I’m an astronaut; you’re the moon. I stare at you, I sing to you, I circle you.”
—Orbiter

In my opinion, the true north of JQA’s life was his mother, Abigail. This track Kahan wrote for his mother perfectly encapsulates their relationship. JQA’s wife, Louisa Catherine, understood this relationship well, reflecting that her mother-in-law was “the guiding Planet around which all revolved.”

“Everybody’s asleep, let’s talk about him. Talk about high school, talk about death
Where do we go when we die? I wouldn’t mind right here. No, I wouldn’t mind at all.”
—Dan

17 August 1826 found a grieving John Quincy Adams writing to his “dear friend and cousin” William Cranch about the loss of their fathers and “the memory of the Scenes of our childhood.” Cranch was born two years and one week after his cousin and remained one of the few constants of Adams’s life. The cousins went from running around the Massachusetts countryside together as small boys to serving the federal government in Washington, D.C. As Adams aged and outlived his parents, sisters, brothers, two sons and a daughter, his cousin William was always there to remember what everyone else had forgotten.

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Packard Humanities Institute.

By Miriam Liebman, Assistant Editor, Adams Papers

Adams Family Correspondence, volume 17, forthcoming in 2027, is filled with politics, diplomacy, war, and strong opinions, but also many personal changes for the Adams family. Several beloved Adams family members and dear friends die between 1809 and 1812, the years covered in this volume. In the midst of this sorrow, John and Abigail watch their grandchildren develop into teenagers and young adults. Letters of the third generation first appeared in volume 16, but their correspondence plays a more prominent role in the series as they grow older. While some of the grandchildren are more famous than others due to their own careers or family drama, I want to highlight one of the lesser-known Adams grandchildren, Susanna Boylston Adams.

Susanna Boylston Adams (1796–1884) was the eldest daughter of Charles and Sarah Smith Adams (Sarah Smith Adams was the sister of William Stephens Smith, who married Charles’ sister Nabby!) Susanna and her younger sister, Abigail Louisa Smith Adams, spent much of their youth with grandparents John and Abigail after their father’s death in 1800.

In 1817, Susanna married Lt. Charles Thomas Clark, who died two years later. She remarried in 1833 to William R. H. Treadway, who died in 1836. The Adams family provided her with financial support until her death. The first letter to Susanna in our collection is an 1808 letter from her grandmother, printed in volume 16, with most of her early correspondence falling into the timeline of volume 17. Her writings are even more frequent in the Adams Papers as she gets older.

Susanna was born during her grandfather’s presidency but grew up in the idyll of her grandparents’ farm in Quincy. Her social circle was filled with cousins (including Nabby’s daughter, Caroline Amelia Smith) as well as young women in the greater Quincy area, including Ann Hall, an orphan raised by the Adamses’ neighbors, and Ann Gerry, daughter of Elbridge and Ann Thompson Gerry. She also traveled locally, including to Newburyport to spend time with friends. In October 1810, Abigail wrote to her in Newburyport that this was the “first time you have gone so far from home without a guide.” She reminded Susanna about proper etiquette and social behavior.

Most of the extant correspondence is comprised of letters that Susanna received rather than those she wrote, but we are able to learn quite a bit about Susanna from her incoming mail and how often she addressed letters as her grandmother’s assistant. She had an especially close relationship with John Adams; Abigail noted he loved reading Susanna’s letters, hearing her sing and play guitar, and going on outings together, including a visit to the First Church of Weymouth.

For more on Susanna Boylston Adams, be sure to check out Adams Family Correspondence, volume 17, when it is published in 2027!

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Packard Humanities Institute. Volume 16 and 17 of the Adams Family Correspondence also received support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

by Gwen Fries and Rhonda Barlow, The Adams Papers

On 4 October 1815, twelve-year-old John Adams II sat down at a desk outside London to write a letter to his grandfather. The middle child of John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams had spent several years of his life being raised by John and Abigail on their farm, Peacefield, while his father and mother served in a diplomatic role in St. Petersburg, Russia. Now reunited with his parents, John II wanted to write a letter to his grandfather to show how far his education had come. His little brother, Charles Francis Adams, had just composed a letter in French. Not to be bested, John II was going to do it in Latin.

The problem was John II was an indifferent scholar. He loved to be the center of attention, stalking his aunts and cousins around Peacefield and chattering incessantly. What he possessed in charm and charisma, he lacked in concentration. Thus, his father insisted on looking over the letter before it was sent. John Quincy, ever the perfectionist, had some thoughts.

Rarer than an extant copy of a child’s Latin is an extant draft of a Latin composition. We’re given a clear visual of how he thought through each word of the letter and how his father refined it. I could see the juvenile writing and the interlineated corrections, but I had to tag in Adams Papers research associate Rhonda Barlow to make sense of what I was seeing. She translated John II’s letter thus:

My dear grandfather,

I received your letter from you on 23 July beginning that you were awakened by a morning bombardment. You say that you have no taste for noisy rattling and clapping, but I have and my brothers have.

I am a student at Ealing which has 275 boys served by Dr. Nicholas from the schools of Oxford[.] I am very pleased with him.

It is the first time that I ever wrote a letter in Latin, and thus you will expect I make many mistakes.

I am your obedient grandson

J Adams

Then she translated John Quincy’s interlineations:

My Dear Grandfather

I received your letter written by you on the 23d of the month of July where you reported that you were awakened by a morning bombardment.

You say that you take no pleasure in applause and toasts but they are pleasing to my brothers and I.

I am a student in the school of Dr. Nicholas, at Ealing, where I have 275 fellow-students. Our teacher, the doctor, is an alumnus of Oxford University, and I am very grateful.

This letter is my first in the Latin language, Dearest Grandfather, I wish you to receive it kindly; and that you forgive its many faults.

Farewell, my grandfather, and love, your most humble and most loving grandson.

J. Adams

Barlow explained to me that JQA’s edits were in the spirit of conforming more to classical Latin. The one exception to this is the word “bombarda,” which John II likely plucked out of the Ainsworth Latin Dictionary, and which his father and grandfather enjoyed. (To be fair to the tweenager, classical Latin wouldn’t have a word to mean gun, and it’s the noisy nature of guns that’s key to the sentence.)

The letter went from the composition of a careless child to the product of a skilled linguist. “Your classical letter of the 4th. of Octr, does you honour, upon every Supposition that I can make,” his delighted grandfather responded on 14 Dec. 1815. However, a hint of suspicion crept in amongst the praise. “If you have composed it yourself, it is highly honourable to the Skill and care of your Preceptors and to your own Application to your Studies; All of which must have concurred in producing Such a proficiency in so Short a time.”

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition has been provided by the Packard Humanities Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

by Sarah Hume, Editorial Assistant, Adams Papers

The latest Adams Presidential Library rotating exhibit has arrived! The relationship between George Washington and John Adams unfolds through documents and artifacts in Washington and Adams: A Tale of Two POTUSes, on view at the MHS through mid-December, 2025.

The two men met in 1774 during the First Continental Congress. Adams immediately found Washington to be a talented military man of good character. When the time came for the Continental Congress to choose a leader for the new army, Adams had the perfect man in mind; he recommended George Washington as commander.

“Mr. Washington, who happened to sit near the Door, as soon as he heard me allude to him, from his Usual Modesty darted into the Library Room,” Adams wrote. “A Gentleman whose Skill and Experience as an Officer. . . would command the Approbation of all America, and unite the cordial Exertions of all the Colonies better than any other Person in the Union.”

The Washington and Adams families grew close during and after the American Revolution, with a 15-year-old John Quincy Adams even hanging a portrait of Washington in his room. Upon Washington’s inauguration as the nation’s first president, Abigail Adams observed, “He appears to be the most sensibly affected with the supreme and over Ruling providence which has calld him to Rule over this great people rather to feel Humble than Elated.”

Behind the scenes, Washington, and Adams as vice president, worried about setting precedents for the new nation. They corresponded about protocols for congressional recesses, informal visits, and the correct title to use for the chief executive. Washington submitted a list of queries to Adams about best practices. “Many things which appear of little importance in themselves and at the beginning may have great & durable consequences from their having been established at the commencement of a new general Govt.,” Washington noted.

With the election of 1796, the nation chose Adams as its second president, the first peaceful transfer of power between two US executives. Even so, Adams feared the public would find him “less Splendid” than Washington, whose popularity and military background differed from Adams’s public reception and diplomatic experience. “He Seem’d to me to enjoy a Tryumph over me,” Adams wrote of Washington. “Methought I heard him think Ay! I am out and you fairly in! see which of Us will be happiest.”

Adams, however, would not let Washington stay retired for long. In September 1798, he nominated the Virginian once again to command the nation’s army, despite Washington’s “sorrow at being drawn from [his] retirement” (Washington to Adams, 25 Sept. 1798).  When Washington died a year later, Adams guided a mourning nation through the loss. The legacy of the two remained intertwined and their relationship continues to be a topic of interest.

See these documents and more in the new rotating exhibit Washington and Adams: A Tale of Two POTUSes and keep an eye on the MHS Calendar of Events for a gallery talk that will be announced later this fall!

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Current funding of the edition is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Packard Humanities Institute.