A Lonely Spirit of Independence

...Living an isolated life as Vice President on his return to the United States, he became "a recluse and an eccentric' His Presidency thus seemed doomed to failure, especially since he handled it "in his old spirit of lonely independence when the new party politics demanded an opposite approach...

...The second President's writings are fascinating and have inspired some excellent biographical studies...

...My view here is different from Shaw's, but not contrary to it—a circumstance confirming my feeling that given all the available primary sources, we can each turn to them and get a better understanding of the man for ourselves than can be given us by anyone else...

...The description is a fair reflection of the author's tendency to dally with words, as Adams himself did—except that his semantic entanglements clearly derived from a desire to rationalize behavior he did not understand or like...

...Shaw tells us John's Revolutionary activities were a search "for recognition rather than fame...

...The middle chapters of Shaw's study, dealing with this period, focus on the conflict with Benjamin Franklin...

...That being the case, why was Adams so concerned with fame...

...Consequently, when Peter Shaw promises to depict Adams' character anew, we respond eagerly, for we are already involved...

...Adams' diary was a record of his search for self-improvement (read "salvation"), and despite his welcoming admiration he courted unpopularity (presumably his rewards were spiritual...

...He excused his aggressiveness by concluding that the desire to excel might be found in anyone, and that society should locate great men and direct their ambition to socially useful ends...

...Outside his own family there were only a few men whose approbation he could bear...

...It is unclear whether his final words, uttered on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, were said with exasperation or exuberance: "Thomas Jefferson still survives...

...As a lawyer and statesman, John was willing to be away from home for long periods of time...

...As a young lawyer in Brain-tree, he noted in his diary (Spring 1759) that "I had an acking Void within my Breast, this night...

...his "doubts and guilts" were more Puritan...

...and finally, having somewhat boldly chosen "the insecure and still only barely respectable legal profession" as his path to success, he returned home to establish a practice ("there is some Strange Attraction between the North Parish in Brain tree and my Heart," he wrote years afterward...

...That kind of inner turmoil might account for the troubles he experienced while serving in Europe...

...Although John was basically Yankee, the author suggests, his aspirations were less worldly than those of the merchants and the professional men he competed against...

...it would not happen again until John Quincy Adams was in the White House...

...John Adams was the first President to lose an election...

...He slipped out of Washington just before Jefferson's inauguration, going back once more to Braintree...

...His diary, autobiography and family correspondence have been published in paperback editions (Atheneum), as have the letters he and Abigail exchanged with Thomas Jefferson (Simon & Schuster...

...Unlike the stoical Washington or the mysterious Jefferson, he has revealed himself to us and we, in turn, have recognized something of ourselves in him...

...Closely related to Adams' insecurities were his self-admonitions regarding discipline, duty, regularity, control, and the efficient use of time...

...soon he had his family back in Boston and wrote, "Politicks are the finest Study and science in the World...

...If Adams "regarded himself as a representative of American innocence faced with the duplicities of the Old World," Franklin was the "sophisticated, Europeanized American...

...But I wonder whether introspection was not simply frightening to Adams, and whether popularity (or recognition or fame) compensated for the bad feelings that came from looking inward...

...Nevertheless, Adams remains an intriguing figure —and not merely because of his prominence...

...He entered politics and found the newspaper essay a perfect vehicle for presenting himself "as the man of selfless public virtue whom he had posited in his diary...

...Regrettably, for all of Shaw's use of such psychoanalytic terminology as "guilt" and "anxiety," he does not deal with his material psychologically—at least not in any systematic way...

...Morgan's succinct, penetrating essay, "John Adams and the Puritan Tradition" (New England Quarterly, 1961), to Catherine Drinker Bowen's typically sensitive and scholarly work, John Adams and the American Revolution (1949), to Page Smith's engaging two volumes, John Adams (1962...

...It was during this time that he conceived a real distrust of mankind...

...That Adams became a lawyer, returned to Braintree and made an evident effort "to master the world" was more than a fortuitous conjunction of events...

...In addition, it provided him an entry into politics...

...His talents were recognized in Boston, where he was asked to argue for reopening the courts after the Stamp Act, but he was defeated for selectman in Braintree, a real personal blow...

...I feel anxious, eager, after something...

...This constant questioning, I believe, was at the core of John Adams' character...

...Law was the perfect profession for John Adams, not only because it enabled him to cope with his ambitions but because it demanded these other qualities...

...Reviewed by Joseph E. Illick Professor of History, San Francisco State University No private papers left by a public figure are richer—or more readily available—than those of John Adams...

...He sparred publicly with Thomas Hutchinson (whose ambition was "a nightmare version of his own passion"), served in the General Court, suffered a nervous collapse at 35, and returned to Brain-tree...

...Shaw analyzes Adams' youthful ramblings about himself by pitting Puritan against Yankee influences, a shorthand that is not false but is not very illuminating...

...The fire had gone out of him...

...Surely we should ask what the meaning of this was in terms of the politics of the family...

...In either case, he was wrong, which is ironic considering his life-long self-doubt...

...The retirement was short-lived...

...Shaw believes that John's defiance, his "fiery independence," was symptomatic of the times...

...Yet it is legitimate to ask if his devotion to public service had, among its ex-plantations, a deep-seated and unmentioned motive having to do with his relationship to the family...

...This, by the way, explains why Adams became so intolerant of those who were without ambition...

...Shaw observes that Adams turned to public affairs after he failed to resolve his ambition problem through self-examination...

...The years in England left Adams a confirmed pessimist and at least theoretically a stoic accepter of inevitable neglect and unpopularity...

...The latter, we are told, expressed "his anxieties not by suffering guilt like his Puritan forebears but through conflict with others?something that needs to be remembered in the case of John Adams' lifelong contentiousness...

...One of his first actions was to attempt to remove all the amateurs from the legal field in Suffolk County...

...It absorbed his time, called upon intellectual discipline, and set him forth as the dutiful defender of social order and control...

...Further, it signified a long-term change in personal character from the 17th-century Puritan to the 18th-century Yankee...

...Shaw handles the encounter very well, showing the difficulty of Adams' situation and the complexity of his reaction, including "the most severe breakdown of his life" in 1781...

...He asked himself the same question and found it necessary "to work out a psychological system with the puzzle of fame at its center...

...There he wrote an autobiography vindicating himself and simultaneously told Benjamin Rush, "I am not, never was & never shall be a great man...

...His opening chapters, "Ambition" and "The Way to Fame," trace the protagonist's first quarter century...

...However, "Adams had not really solved the problem of ambition...

...At the same time, "his vague program of self-improvement" turned to "a more organized effort to master the world...

...He wrote of his "dread of Contempt," his "sense of Neglect...

...Shaw is explicit about motivations...

...What is it...

...During these years his father forced him to go to Harvard, thinking the young man would join the clergy...

...Anyone attempting to offer us a fresh look at John Adams, then, faces competition considerably more impressive than WNET's The Adams Chronicles (whose originality, ironically enough for television, lay in showing us the darker recesses of the family through the behavior of its deviant members...

...Two years later John suffered a collapse that Shaw views as a turning point...

...Significantly, he dealt with this by rushing out into the village, conversing with his neighbors, and finding that "I have lost no Credit yet...

...John bolted Braintree for Worcester, where he taught school and later studied law...

...From then until he left Europe (in 1788) he spent his days writing about government, rather than contesting with his diplomatic cohorts for recognition...

...These range in size from E.S...

...He resolved to "sett the Town to talking about me...

...Moving from Worcester to Brain-tree, partly because the most prominent lawyers were in nearby Boston, he "replaced his Worcester guilt for desiring fame with a regret for the psychic costs that he was now paying in its pursuit...

...Hence, fame was synonymous with public service...