Passionate Sage (38 page)

27.
Ibid
, 461–62.

28.
Ibid
, 458; Adams to William Cunningham, March 15, 1804,
Correspondence with Cunningham
, 18–19.

29.
Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 27, 1810,
Spur of Fame
, 174;
Works
, VI, 456–57, 460.

30.
Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, August 7, 1805,
Statesman and Friend
, 28–29.

31.
Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 27, 1810,
Spur of Fame
, 175; Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 1, 1812,
ibid
., 235; Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 25, 1808,
ibid
., 104; Adams to Franklin Vanderkemp, February 16, 1809,
Works
, IX, 610. These citations represent only a small fraction of the Adams correspondence devoted to the evils of banking.

32.
Taylor,
An Inquiry
, 41, 244–45; the fifth chapter of the
Inquiry
was entitled and devoted to “Banking.” Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 15, 1813,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 376; Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 28, 1811,
Spur of Fame
, 193; Adams to Benjamin Rush, July 3, 1812,
ibid
., 228.

33.
Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 13, 1811,
Old Family Letters
, 281; Taylor,
Inquiry
, 48–49, 289.

34.
Robert Shalhope,
John Taylor of Caroline: Pastoral Republican
(Columbia, S.C., 1980), offers the best overview of Taylor's life and his views on the banking industry. See Jacob E. Cooke,
Tench Coxe and the Early Republic
(Chapel Hill, 1978), for a good look at the republican arguments in support of banks. The standard overview of the banking industry is Bray Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War
(New York, 1957).

35.
Adams to John Pope, April 4, 1818, Reel 118; Adams to John Taylor, March 12, 1819,
Works
, X, 375; Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 28, 1811,
Spur of Fame
, 193.

36.
Works
, VI, 277. See also Haraszti,
Prophets of Progress
, 167, for the best discussion of the composition of
Davila
.

37.
Works
, VI, 239, 258–62; Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, August 9, 1813, Reel 95.

38.
Works
, VI, 232–34.

39.
Ibid
., 237. My point here about Veblen and Puritanism is not to suggest any direct causal connection either forward toward Veblen's theory of the leisure class or backward toward Jonathan Edwards or John Cotton. There is no evidence that Veblen ever read
Davila
, or that Adams studied the sermons of Edwards or Cotton. But then important attitudes and perspectives seldom get conveyed in such a simplistic and straightforward fashion. It would be more accurate and sensible to note that Adams grew up listening to New England sermons and to the constant talk about the complex relationship between works and grace. Likewise, the affinity between Adams's and Veblen's common recognition that non-material considerations underlay the scramble for wealth probably has something to do with each man's lifelong preference for paradoxical insights that verged on the perverse. Both men were also struck by the fact that the material necessities were more readily available in America, so that explanations of human motivation based primarily on basic material needs did not suffice.

40.
Ibid
., 247–48; Adams to George Washington Adams, December 27, 1821, Reel 124; Adams to Josiah Quincy, February 18, 1811,
Works
, IX, 633–34.

41.
Works
, VI, 245.

42.
Ibid
., 240.

43.
Ibid
., 241–43.

44.
Ibid
., 245, 397.

45.
Ibid
., 248; Adams to J. A. Smith, January 7, 1817, Reel 123.

46.
Ibid
., 248, 262, 254.

47.
Ibid
., 254–56.

48.
Ibid
., 266.

49.
The matter of Adams's legacy receives extended treatment in chapter 7. For now, it might be noted that his reputation as a political thinker or theorist has oscillated wildly: he has been “discovered” by scholars who were not otherwise inclined to appreciate his brand of wisdom; and he has been “dismissed” by scholars who otherwise claimed to admire his intellectual integrity. The standard work remains John R. Howe, Jr.,
The Changing Political Thought of John Adams
(Princeton, 1966). One of his unlikely champions is Vernon L. Parrington, a stalwart defender of Jeffersonian values and “democratic liberalism,” who nonetheless concluded that Adams's political insights “merit a larger recognition than has been accorded them by a grudging posterity,” and that Adams “remains the most notable political thinker—with the possible exception of John C. Calhoun—among American statesmen.” See Vernon Parrington,
Main Currents in American Thought
(2 vols., New York, 1927), I, 325. The strongest Adams advocate among contemporary scholars of American political thought is John Diggins,
The Lost Soul of American Politics
, 66–99, who sees Adams as the most astute student of political power within the founding generation. My own understanding of Adams as a political thinker has been greatly enriched by a spirited correspondence with Diggins, who sees Adams as an early-day deconstructionist and a precursor of Neitzsche, Derrida, and Foucault, a group that I suspect Adams would regard as an unholy trinity of “ideologians.”

6.
Intimacies

1.
Bernard Bailyn,
Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence
(New York, 1990), 3–21.

2.
Adams to Shelton Jones, March 11, 1809, Reel 118.

3.
Diary and Autobiography
, II, 362–63, for the comparison to a lion; Josiah Quincy,
Figures of the Past
(Boston, 1883), 61.

4.
Quincy quoted in Richard McLanathan,
Gilbert Stuart
(New York, 1986), 147.

5.
Adams to Elihu Marshall, March 7, 1820,
Works
, X, 388–89.

6.
Adams to John Jay, March 6, 1821, Reel 124; Adams to Vine Alttey [?], September 10, 1819, Reel 124; Theodore Parker,
Historic Americans
(Boston, 1871), 210, for the quotation about the Adams talkativeness.

7.
Adams to Daniel Cory, January 23, 1820, Reel 124; Adams to Charles Francis Adams, November 17, 1815, Reel 122.

8.
John Taylor to Adams, April 8, 1824,
Works
, X, 411–12.

9.
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, June 17, 1820, Reel 124. Robert Dawidoff,
The Education of John Randolph
(New York, 1979), is the best biography, and William Taylor,
Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character
, offers the most illuminating study of the Cavalier as type.

10.
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, April 27, 1820, Reel 124; Adams to David Sewall, January 18, 1816, Reel 122; Adams to David Sewall, May 22, 1821, Reel 124; Adams to David Sewall, May 13, 1811, Reel 118.

11.
Adams to Benjamin Rush, February 26, 1812, Reel 118.

12.
Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 14, 1813,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 372–73;
Diary and Autobiography
, I, 57.

13.
Adams to Richard Rush, November 13, 1816, Reel 123. See also Adams to William Tudor, August 12, 1813,
ibid
.

14.
Adams to William Cunningham, June 16, 1810,
Correspondence Between Adams and Cunningham
, 216–17; see also
ibid
., v–vii, for the critical assessment of Adams as president.

15.
Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, August 17, 1814, Reel 122. See above, chapter 2, for a fuller discussion of the argument over Warren's
History
.

16.
The standard work on gender relations in the post-revolutionary era remains Nancy F. Cott's
The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835
(New Haven, 1977); Barbara Welter's
Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century
contains the seminal essays on the shifting roles of middle-class women during the first third of the nineteenth century; the crucial work on the intersection of republicanism and gender is by Linda K. Kerber,
Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
(Chapel Hill, 1980). Mercy Otis Warren still awaits a biographer who can integrate her life into the scholarship on ideology and gender generated over the past two decades.

17.
Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, April 8, 1815, Reel 122.

18.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, May 30, 1815,
ibid
.

19.
Adams to Emma Willard, December 8, 1819, Reel 124; Adams to John Adams Smith, May 12, 1821,
ibid.;
Adams to Caroline de Wint, July 8, 1822,
ibid
.

20.
Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, March 14, 1818, Ford, ed.,
Writings
, X, 104. The most comprehensive study of Jefferson's educational thought is Harold Hellenbrand,
The Unfinished Revolution: Education and Politics in the Thought of Thomas Jefferson;
Adams to Caroline de Wint, February 11, 1820, Reel 124, for the reading list.

21.
Adams to Francis Vanderkemp, July 13, 1815,
Works
, X, 169. Paul C. Nagel's
Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family
(New York, 1983) is a brilliant exploration of the emotional life of the entire Adams family that, in its early chapters, offers the fullest account of domestic life at Quincy. While I do not agree completely with Nagel's interpretation of Abigail, which strikes me as somewhat hostile, his familiarity with the sources is unsurpassed by any other scholar, save perhaps the editors of
The Adams Papers
.

22.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, August 27, 1815, Reel 122.

23.
Adams to Alexander Johnson, January 2, 1814,
ibid.;
Adams to John Adams Smith, June 15, 1812, Reel 118.

24.
Adams to George Adams, December 15, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to John Quincy Adams, May 20, 1816,
ibid.;
Adams to John Quincy Adams, June 8, 1815,
ibid.;
Adams to George and John Adams, May 3, 1815,
ibid
.

25.
Adams to George Adams, January 27, 1822, Reel 124; Adams to Richard Peters, March 31, 1822,
Works
, X, 402; Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 10, 1823,
Adams-Jefferson Correspondence
, II, 587; Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, May 30, 1815,
Statesman and Friend
, 117; Adams to George and John Adams, May 6, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 14, 1815,
ibid
.

26.
Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, January 14, 1823, Reel 124.

27.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, October 17, 1815, Reel 122; Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 11, 1815,
ibid.;
Adams to John Quincy Adams, February 28, 1815,
ibid.;
Adams to John Quincy Adams, June 30, 1815,
ibid.;
Adams to John Quincy Adams, August 26, 1816,
ibid
.

28.
John Quincy Adams to Adams, July 7, 1814, Worthington C. Ford, ed.,
The Writings of John Quincy Adams
(7 vols., Boston, 1913–17), V, 57. The magisterial account by Samuel F. Bemis,
John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy
(New York, 1949), remains the authoritative version of John Quincy's public career. But his private life, and the connection between that life and his statesmanship, still await a biographer. There is a brilliant sketch of his character in George Dangerfield's
The Era of Good Feelings
(New York, 1952), 7–10, which has yet to be surpassed.

29.
Adams to John Quincy Adams, February 8, 1819, Reel 123; Adams to John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816,
ibid
.

30.
John Quincy Adams to Adams, January 3, 1817, Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds.,
The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams
(New York, 1946), 289–91.