John Adams

Summary

David McCullough's John Adams is a full narrative biography of the second president of the United States, built largely on the Adams family papers and especially on the letters between John and Abigail Adams. It follows Adams from his boyhood on a farm in Braintree, Massachusetts, where he was born in 1735, through Harvard College, schoolteaching in Worcester and the law, to his marriage in 1764 to Abigail Smith, whom McCullough presents as his closest adviser and equal partner. As a Boston lawyer Adams defends the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre of 1770, believing every accused man deserved counsel. In the Continental Congress at Philadelphia from 1774 he becomes the most forceful advocate of independence, proposes George Washington as commander of the army, serves on the committee that asks Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration, and argues the case for independence on the floor in July 1776, while Abigail manages the farm and family through war and a smallpox epidemic. The middle of the book follows Adams abroad. He sails for France in 1778 with his ten-year-old son John Quincy, works uneasily beside Benjamin Franklin in Paris, returns home to draft the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, and then wins Dutch recognition and loans for the United States, falling gravely ill in Amsterdam. With Franklin and John Jay he negotiates the Treaty of Paris of 1783, is joined by Abigail and their daughter Nabby, forms a close friendship with Jefferson in Paris, and serves as the first American minister to Great Britain, where he presents himself to George III. Returning in 1788, he becomes vice president under Washington and in 1796 is elected president. McCullough treats his single term in detail: the crisis with revolutionary France, the XYZ Affair and the undeclared naval war, the building of the navy, the Alien and Sedition Acts that he signed, the division within his own Federalist party led by Alexander Hamilton, and his decision, against much of his party, to send a peace mission to France, which he later counted the proudest act of his life. He moves into the unfinished President's House in November 1800 and loses the election of that year to Jefferson. The last part describes a long retirement at Peacefield in Quincy: grief at the death of his son Charles, the illness and death of Nabby, the renewal in 1812 of his friendship and correspondence with Jefferson through Benjamin Rush, Abigail's death in 1818, pride in John Quincy's election as president in 1825, and Adams's death on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of independence and the same day Jefferson died. The book was published by Simon & Schuster in May 2001, was a best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2002.

Top Lessons

• Defending the unpopular in the name of law

  Adams agrees to defend the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre because he believes no one should be denied counsel, and he wins acquittal for most of them at real cost to his popularity. McCullough treats the decision as a sign of the integrity that marked his public life.

• A marriage of equals

  Through years of separation, John and Abigail write to each other about farming, children, war, politics and faith. McCullough presents their partnership as a source of Adams's strength: Abigail runs the farm, advises him frankly and bears hardships of war and illness while he serves abroad.

• Choosing peace over party

  In 1799, against the wishes of many in his own party, Adams sends envoys to France and avoids a full war. McCullough argues that Adams put the country's interest above his own reelection, and records that Adams later regarded this as the proudest act of his life. Historians have also weighed it against the Alien and Sedition Acts he signed in the same crisis.

• Friendship restored

  Adams and Jefferson become friends in Paris, bitter rivals in the 1790s and correspondents again after 1812, when Benjamin Rush encourages them to write. Their late letters on philosophy, religion and the Revolution show that old enemies can be reconciled.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The biography gives a sustained picture of eighteenth-century family medicine through the Adams correspondence. Adams underwent smallpox inoculation in Boston in 1764, before his marriage, and Abigail had herself and the children inoculated in Boston in the summer of 1776 while he was in Congress, a procedure that carried real risk before vaccination. Adams suffered a serious fever in Amsterdam in 1781, which McCullough describes as nearly fatal. Their daughter Nabby underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer in 1811 without anesthesia and died of the disease in 1813. Their son Charles struggled with drinking and died in 1800, a grief Adams felt deeply. Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration, appears as a friend and correspondent. Adams's old age includes tremors, failing eyesight and loss of teeth, and Abigail died in 1818 of what was then called typhoid fever. McCullough reports these events from the letters; any modern diagnosis beyond what contemporaries recorded is uncertain.

• Part I

  Adams's smallpox inoculation of 1764 and Abigail's inoculation of the children in Boston in 1776.

• Part II

  Adams's grave fever in Amsterdam during the negotiations with the Dutch Republic in 1781.

• Part III

  Charles Adams's decline and death in 1800 during his father's last months as president.

• Part III

  Nabby's mastectomy in 1811, her death in 1813, and Abigail's death in 1818.

• Part III

  Adams's infirmities in old age and his death at Quincy on 4 July 1826.