wholly negligent in seeking an answer to that question, especially during the past forty years. During that time there has been a veritable Adams industry dedicated to the goal of recovering his reputation.
I acknowledge my debt to the staff of The Adams Papers and the Massachusetts Historical Society, where the papers of the Adams family have been housed since 1902. The real breakthrough for Adams scholars came in the 1950s, however, when the enormous collection was put on microfilm. (Stretched in a straight line, the 608 reels would extend about five miles.) All students of Adams also owe an incalculable debt to Lyman Butterfield, who supervised the modern letterpress edition of The Adams Papers with a combination of wit and wisdom that remains unmatched in modern editorial scholarship. Butterfield effectively rescued the passionate and pungent parts of the Adams character from the massive probity of Charles Francis Adams, who had published the initial edition of the papers in the 1850s according to standards that were exemplary for their day, but which also served as a singular example of those cloistered qualities that have given the Victorian era a bad name ever since. (Humorless, self-restraining to the point of parody, Charles Francis earned a reputation within the family and without as âthe greatest Iceberg in the Western Hemisphere.â) Thanks to Butterfield, John Adams was allowed to âcome out,â to become a man of endearing eccentricities, the most lovable and fully human member of his remarkable generation of American statesmen.
Additional thanks are also owed to that generation of Adams biographers who first exploited the uncensored papers that Butterfield and his staff made available: Catherine Drinker Bowen, who recovered Adamsâs prominent role in the American Revolution in her best-selling novel; Zoltán Haraszti, whose perky and persuasive study of the Adams library enhanced Adamsâs status as a thinker; Manning Dauer and Stephen Kurtz, whose respective books on the Adams presidency refurbished his image as the principled political leader of the Federalists; Lester J. Cappon, whose unabridged edition of the correspondence with Thomas Jefferson returned Adams to his old position as Jeffersonâs intellectual alter ego; Page Smith, whose authoritative two-volume biography captured the passionate friendship with Abigail; Peter Shaw, who probed the complex character of the Adams personality more deftly and deeply than had ever been done before; the writers and actors who created The Adams Chronicles for public television, who brought Adams to life before a huge national audience as the founding father of Americaâs most prominent and intellectually distinguished family. They have all been my predecessors, guides, and teachers as I tried to conjure up my own picture of âthe famous Adams.â
At Mount Holyoke my fellow conjurers, who read parts of different chapters of my work-in-progress, included Christopher Benfey, Daniel Czitrom, Rebecca Faery, John Faragher, Amy Kaplan, Anthony Lake, Carole Straw and Donald Weber. Two old friends, William Henry and David Maytnier, read early drafts and offered encouraging responses from outside the scholarly circle. Students who helped with the ordering of microfilm, checking of notes, and clarity of the prose included Catherine Allgor, Julie Seibert, and Caroline Wood.
The staffs of the University of Massachusetts Library at Amherst and the Williston Memorial Library at Mount Holyoke, especially Marilyn Dunn, always came through when it counted. A generous grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation freed me from my deanly duties for the year 1988â89, when the bulk of the research was done. I am also grateful to the Trustees of Mount Holyoke College, especially William Smethurst, who awarded me the Ford Foundation Chair in American History, which carried an annual allowance that subsidized research trips. The faculty at
I acknowledge my debt to the staff of The Adams Papers and the Massachusetts Historical Society, where the papers of the Adams family have been housed since 1902. The real breakthrough for Adams scholars came in the 1950s, however, when the enormous collection was put on microfilm. (Stretched in a straight line, the 608 reels would extend about five miles.) All students of Adams also owe an incalculable debt to Lyman Butterfield, who supervised the modern letterpress edition of The Adams Papers with a combination of wit and wisdom that remains unmatched in modern editorial scholarship. Butterfield effectively rescued the passionate and pungent parts of the Adams character from the massive probity of Charles Francis Adams, who had published the initial edition of the papers in the 1850s according to standards that were exemplary for their day, but which also served as a singular example of those cloistered qualities that have given the Victorian era a bad name ever since. (Humorless, self-restraining to the point of parody, Charles Francis earned a reputation within the family and without as âthe greatest Iceberg in the Western Hemisphere.â) Thanks to Butterfield, John Adams was allowed to âcome out,â to become a man of endearing eccentricities, the most lovable and fully human member of his remarkable generation of American statesmen.
Additional thanks are also owed to that generation of Adams biographers who first exploited the uncensored papers that Butterfield and his staff made available: Catherine Drinker Bowen, who recovered Adamsâs prominent role in the American Revolution in her best-selling novel; Zoltán Haraszti, whose perky and persuasive study of the Adams library enhanced Adamsâs status as a thinker; Manning Dauer and Stephen Kurtz, whose respective books on the Adams presidency refurbished his image as the principled political leader of the Federalists; Lester J. Cappon, whose unabridged edition of the correspondence with Thomas Jefferson returned Adams to his old position as Jeffersonâs intellectual alter ego; Page Smith, whose authoritative two-volume biography captured the passionate friendship with Abigail; Peter Shaw, who probed the complex character of the Adams personality more deftly and deeply than had ever been done before; the writers and actors who created The Adams Chronicles for public television, who brought Adams to life before a huge national audience as the founding father of Americaâs most prominent and intellectually distinguished family. They have all been my predecessors, guides, and teachers as I tried to conjure up my own picture of âthe famous Adams.â
At Mount Holyoke my fellow conjurers, who read parts of different chapters of my work-in-progress, included Christopher Benfey, Daniel Czitrom, Rebecca Faery, John Faragher, Amy Kaplan, Anthony Lake, Carole Straw and Donald Weber. Two old friends, William Henry and David Maytnier, read early drafts and offered encouraging responses from outside the scholarly circle. Students who helped with the ordering of microfilm, checking of notes, and clarity of the prose included Catherine Allgor, Julie Seibert, and Caroline Wood.
The staffs of the University of Massachusetts Library at Amherst and the Williston Memorial Library at Mount Holyoke, especially Marilyn Dunn, always came through when it counted. A generous grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation freed me from my deanly duties for the year 1988â89, when the bulk of the research was done. I am also grateful to the Trustees of Mount Holyoke College, especially William Smethurst, who awarded me the Ford Foundation Chair in American History, which carried an annual allowance that subsidized research trips. The faculty at
Similar Books
