September 3, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, John Adams carried the weight of a nation that was still fragile and untested. He was the second president of the United States, a man caught between loyalty to his principles and the demands of politics. The late historian David McCullough shares Adams’ story not as a list of accomplishments—but as the life of a husband, father, and revolutionary who believed deeply in the republic he helped create. We’d like to thank the John Adams Institute for allowing us to share this story with our listeners.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And up next a story about one of our founding fathers,
a star of all stars, and that is John Adams.
To tell the story is David McCullough, who wrote the
(00:30):
Pool of Surprise winning biography which turned into an HBO series.
That John Adams story are about to hear was given
by McCullough at the John Adams Institute in the Netherlands.
We'd like to give a heartfelt thank you to the
John Adams Institute and their podcast Bright Minds for allowing
(00:50):
us to share this story with our listeners. Here's David
McCullough with the story of John Adams.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I've often stopped in recent years to try to figure
out what it is I've been writing about in my
writing life. For a long time, I thought maybe I
must have a water obsession. The first book was about
the Johnstown Flood, the second was about a bridge over
the East River, the third was about the Panama Canal.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
But I think.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
At route everything that I have been trying to do
in my work is about courage, and principally chiefly the
courage of one's convictions, and the story of John Adams,
again and again and again is a story of courage.
I thought I would begin my remarks with the painting
(01:39):
that hangs in our national capital. It's the most famous
painting ever done by an American. It is seen by
more people than any other painting ever painted by an
American as it hangs there where millions go through as
visitors every year. It's John Crumble's signing of the Declaration
of Independence. It is seventeen seventy six, and almost everything
(02:03):
about it is inaccurate. The room didn't look like the
room is portrayed. The curtains that the windows are not
the same, the furniture is wrong, the doors are in
the wrong place. The Declaration of Independence was not signed
on the fourth of July seventeen seventy sixth They didn't
(02:24):
begin signing it until August of seventeen seventy six, and
not everyone was present for the signing because many of
them hadn't returned to Congress yet. Some of them didn't
show up until fall, and one man didn't get back
until seventeen seventy seven. But there is one thing about
it that it's entirely accurate, and those are the faces
of the people portrayed the signers of the declaration, a
(02:47):
declaration that set out to really.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Change the world.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
And it wasn't something handed down by a king or
a potentate or a czar, but the decision of a
group of citizens acting on their own, acting very bravely
on their own, because by signing that document, they were
signing their death warrants. They were committing treason. If captured,
they would be hanged. So when it says at the end,
(03:14):
we pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor, that's
not just rhetoric, that's not just talk. That's the literal truth.
If you study the painting, you'll notice that all the
lines of perspective all come down to three characters in
the foreground, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, who
(03:36):
were the three responsible for the document itself. Jefferson did
the draft, Adams and Franklin were sort of his collaborators.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
But if you.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Study it further, you'll see that the figure that stands
in the exact center of the painting, and clearly the
intention of the artist is to draw your eye to
him is John Adams. John Adams was not the art
of the Declaration of Independence. He chose the author of
the Declaration of Independence. He said it must be written
by Jefferson. What he did was make it happen. He
(04:08):
got the Congress to vote for it. He was the
driving spirit. If Jefferson was the pen, Adams was the voice.
He was, in that sense, one of the most important
Americans who ever lived, and had he done nothing else
with his career, he would be a figure that we
would know about from that time. We know very little
(04:29):
about what he said in his great speech. We know
very little about what he said in any of his speeches.
Because all the sessions of Congress were conducted behind closed
doors in secrecy. Philadelphia was full of spies. There was
every chance that the word would get out. Adams went
on then to have one of the most astonishing careers
(04:50):
in all of American history. He became our emissary to
France with Franklin, he became his own Masri to the Netherlands,
spent two years here, and succeeded on his own against
all kinds of odds without authorization, to begin with, not
(05:10):
knowing the language, not knowing anybody here, bringing two of
his little boys with him, he succeeded in negotiating a
loan from the Netherlands from the Dutch bankers of five
million guilders or two million dollars. At a point where
we were in desperate need of money to fight the
war seventeen eighty two, there was by no means any
(05:35):
guarantee that we would win the war. In fact, every
sign suggested that we had a chance. But there were
some people who would not give up, and Adams was
one of them. He then, after the war, became our
first ambassador to the Court of Saint James's as at
the same time he was still the ambassador to the Netherlands,
(05:58):
and as a consequence he came back and forth many
times from London to Amsterdam and the Hague to negotiate
further loans. After he left the Court of Saint James's,
he returned to the United States to become our first
vice president and then succeeded George Washington as president. He
(06:20):
served one term, after which he was defeated by Thomas
Jefferson in one of the most rancorous, difficult, closest selections
in our history, with vicious charges being made on both sides,
and a contest that wound up in the House of
Representatives and was only settled after thirty six votes when
one man changed his vote. So when we read about
(06:44):
presidents of the United States becoming president by a very
slim margin or by a controversial contest, it all is
a very old story. Adams then returned to his home
in Braintreem, Massachuset, where he lived for another twenty five years.
Now Here was a man who traveled farther in the
(07:06):
service of his country, at greater risk, at a greater discomfort,
and greater chance of his losing his life, not to
say his livelihood support his family, of any of the
major figures of that time.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And you've been listening to David McCullough tell the story
like no one else can. The story of John Adams
continues here on Our American Stories. Lee Hibibe here the
host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
(07:40):
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
a lot. Go to Alamericanstories dot com and give. And
(08:09):
we continue with our American Stories and with Pulitzer Prize
winning biographer David McCullough sharing the story of John Adam.
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I had been interested in Jefferson since I was a
youngster and went to visit Monticello for the first time,
and I felt that Jefferson was a figure I would
like to write about. I had never ventured into the
eighteenth century, and it was a country I felt I
wanted to visit, and now that I've been there, I
(08:43):
may never come back. But I had the idea because
I was very interested in the fact that John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson had died on the same day, incredibly
on the same day, and that it was there in
effect day of day July fourth, the fiftieth anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence eighteen twenty six, and I thought,
(09:07):
what if I began with the death of these two men,
these two very important and very different men representing entirely
different parts of the country. My concern was that how
was I going to keep glamorous, famous Thomas Jefferson from
forever upstaging this short, stout, cranky yankee John Adams. And
(09:32):
it was only when I got into the material that
I realized that this was a biographer's dream. A writer's
job is to get below the surface, it seems to me,
and to do that with Jefferson would be extremely difficult, because,
among other things, he didn't want you to get below
the surface any more than necessary. And as a consequence,
(09:52):
he destroyed every letter that his wife ever wrote to him,
in every letter he wrote to her. In fact, we
don't even know what she looked like. By contrast, they're
over one thousand, five hundred letters just between John and
Abigail Adams, and they pour it out, you know exactly
what they felt. You don't have to speculate. I wonder
how he felt about that follower. What kind of mood
(10:14):
were they in that morning? You know exactly, because all there,
and they wrote such letters to their children and to
many of their close friends. So I was drawn by
the material, was drawn by the fact that how could
it be that this tiny little population at a remote frontier.
Keep in mind that the settlement of the United States
(10:35):
at that point was only about fifty miles inland along
the eastern seaboard, that's all it was. Massachusetts in seventeen
seventy six was still two thirds, not just Wood's Forest,
as was Pennsylvania. How did these men come to be?
How do they arise without the benefit of great educations
in Europe and availability of books to everyone and the rest.
(10:56):
How did that happen? That to me is close to
a miracle. And more No one reads about the revolution
more than one reads, particularly about fighting the war, because
after all, the declaration of independence was only that a
declaration unless they won the war. And when you see
what happened and why it happened, you have to think
again and again.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
It was very nearly a miracle.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
When the direction of the wind changed the course of
history on one night. So all of this is of
extreme interest to me and those people, they're so endlessly interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I want to begin by.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Reading you something John Adams wrote about himself, and he
wrote this when he was feeling quite low. He had
not succeeded very well in his first turn at diplomacy
in France, and he was going home after a relatively
brief stay, and he stopped and looked at himself in
the mirror, and he wrote about his face. He said,
(11:58):
by my physical constitution, I am but an ordinary man.
The times alone have destined me to fame. He saw
too much weakness and languor in his nature. When I
look in the glass, my eye, my forehead, my brow,
my cheeks, my lips all betray this relaxation.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yet he could be roused. He knew.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean scandal's hypocrisies,
have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep and
littleness into a rage, A little like a lion. That's
John Adams. He is a flesh and blood human being.
And when he says, by my physical condition, I am
(12:45):
but an ordinary man. The times alone have destined me
to fame, I can guarantee you that he's fishing. He
doesn't believe it for a minute.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
He knows he's not an ordinary man. He's anything but ordinary.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Now he is commonly thought of as a rich Boston
blue blood. He was none of those. He wasn't rich,
he wasn't a Bostonian, he wasn't a blue blood.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
He was a.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Farmer's son, a farmer's son who, through a scholarship, had
the good fortune to go to Harvard. His father, we know,
could read write his name, but that's about all. His
mother almost certainly was illiterate. And when he went to Harvard,
as he said, I discovered books and I read forever.
(13:30):
He became the most widely and deeply read American of
that very bookish day. And he knew right away that
he wanted to excel. Now that's a little different from ambition.
He wanted to excel. He wanted to be good at
what he did, and he wanted to serve the public good.
The Americans of that time had no history. They had
(13:53):
no history to read, no history to have as part
of their own sense of who they were. What they
had was classical history education. Americans and most of the
founders were educated men. They had not just learned to
read and write in Latin and Greek, but they knew
Roman history and Greek history, and they knew from the
Roman and Greek history the classic models of valor, of honor,
(14:18):
and virtue. When Adams finished Harvard, he went to become
a school teacher. He was the first of our presidents
to begin his career as a school teacher, and in
that period when he's searching to find out what he's
going to do with his life, what he's going to
make of his life, he poured out his innermost feelings
(14:39):
as he would all of his life, in writing on paper.
And those little diaries have all survived. They're about the
size of the palm of your hand, and they're in
a microscopic handwriting. I had to use a magnifying glass
to read it. And of course that's in part because
paper was so expensive, and this boy, this year.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Young man, had no money.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I will read you an excerpt from July twenty first,
seventeen fifty six. In other words, twenty years before seventeen
seventy six, he's twenty years old. I am resolved to
rise with the sun and to study scriptures on Thursday, Friday,
Saturday and Sunday mornings, and to study some Latin author
and the other three mornings, noons and nights, I intend
(15:24):
to read English authors. I will rouse up my mind
and fix my attention. I will stand collected within myself
and think upon what I read and.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
What I see.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I will strive with all my soul to be something
more than persons who have had less advantage than myself.
Now clearly that is a young man with a rare
idea of what he might be and a very good mind.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's so admirable.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
But then the next morning he slept until seven o'clock
and the one line entry following a very rainy day
dreamed away all my time. When I read that, I
knew I had my man. Here's somebody that I can
identify with. He's a human being.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And you are listening to David McCullough tell one heck
of a story about the great John Adams, and it's
so interesting to hear how McCullough even shows Adams is.
It was not his intention. He'd started by wanting to
cover Jefferson and tell Jefferson's story. But the more he prodded,
the more he poked, the more he realized that Adams
(16:32):
was more interesting. In the end, let's face it, Adams
chose Jefferson, as he said, to write the declaration. Jefferson
was the pen, but Adams the voice. And if you
go to Monticello and I went to the University of
Virginia Law School in Charlottesville, everything Jefferson all the time.
What I learned in three years there reading almost everything.
(16:52):
You can't know Jefferson, he hit himself. And by the way,
we have friends like this and people like this in
our lives. You don't know them, don't tell you anything
about themselves. The story of John Adams continues, and boy,
do we know a lot about John Adams. You're about
to hear so much more, so much more. We all
need to know and learn. And we'd like to give
(17:14):
a heartfelt thank you to the John Adams Institute and
their podcast Bright Minds for allowing us to share this
story with our listeners. The institute's name commemorates the man
who is the first American emissary to the Netherlands in
seventeen eighty. The story of John Adams continues with David
McCullough here on our American Stories. And we continue with
(18:09):
our American stories, and with David McCullough telling the story
of one of our founders and perhaps the founder, John Adams.
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
He finally decides that he is not going to be
a school teacher, and he's not going to be a
minister as his father had hoped, As most parents of
students who went to Harvard hoped, as most of the
faculty expected the students to become preachers, ministers, Protestant ministers.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Instead, he decides he.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Will become a lawyer, he will enter public life. And
this was a great struggle because he knew he was
going against his father's wishes.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And he adored his father.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
And one Sunday after church he was a very devout Christian.
I should emphasize, inspired by the sermon he had heard,
he went out under the night sky to behold the
glorious spectacle of a starry night. And beholding the night sky,
he wrote, the amazing concave of heaven sprinkled and glittered
(19:17):
with stars. I am thrown into a kind of transport.
He knew that such wonders were the gifts of God.
And then he writes, but the greatest of all was
the gift of an inquiring mind. But of all the
provisions that he has made for the gratification of our senses,
this same twenty year old wrote, are much inferior to
(19:40):
the provision, the wonderful provision that he has made for
the gratification of our nobler powers of intelligence and reason.
He has given us reason to find out the truth
and the real design and true end of our existence.
He then says, it will be hard work to become
(20:01):
an attorney, to learn the law, to qualify for the bar.
But the more difficult and dangerous the enterprise, the higher
the crown of laurel is bestowed on the conqueror. But
the point is now determined. I shall have the liberty
to think for myself. Now, what did the founders of
(20:23):
our country believe? What did they think when they talked
about the pursuit of happiness. They didn't mean long vacations.
They didn't mean travel to foreign, exotic places. They didn't
mean a nice, comfortable afternoon in a hammock, or a
(20:43):
lot of expensive possessions.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
What they meant.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
What they were talking about was an extension and enlargement
of the experience of life through the life of the
mind and the life of the spirit. And they all
talk about this is not some notion imposed upon them
by latter day biographers and historians. Jefferson said, any nation
that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never
(21:06):
was and never can be. In other words, you cannot
have a self governing system without a population that is educated.
Adam's story could very well be taken as a metaphor
for the transforming miracle of education. And it's all through
(21:26):
his life, and it is most dramatically and I think
most memorably illustrated by the fact that he brought John
Quincy with him to Europe and later on the second trip,
John Quincy and Charles who was even younger, little boys
and they were not big boys, who were small for
(21:48):
their age, who came across in the winter time on
two voyages. The first voyage was absolutely horrendous. Everything that
could have gone wrong went wrong. They were hit by
a hurricane, they engaged clothed with the British warship, fought
a battle. People were killed, they were stalled in the sea,
(22:09):
they were be calm for days on end. The food
was wretched, the accommodations were miserable. In the winters months
on the North Atlantic, virtually no one was out there
who valued his life.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Even in peacetime.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Nobody from New England went to see in the winter
time if it could possibly be avoided, and Adams did
it twice, and twice he took these young boys with him.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Why would he do that?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Why would his wife, their mother risk their lives, And
the answer is very simple.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Their education. She wanted them.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And one cannot underestimate the importance of Abigail Adams, not
just in the story of John Adams, but in the
history of what happened to Adams, Jefferson, and so many
of them. She was, without question, one of the most
remarkable Americans of all time. She wanted that young boy
to come because she wanted him to have the example
of his father to live with see down a day
(23:05):
to day basis. She knew that he was coming to
Europe at the time of the Enlightenment, that he would
have the chance to be with the great French intellectuals
and intellectuals in other countries, that he would have a
chance to learn different languages, all of which he did,
all of which happened. Now after the horrendous voyage of
the first trip over, and he had returned to the
(23:27):
United States with his father, and his father was called
back here and his mother said, you're going again. He said, no,
I've done that, and it was so terrifying he didn't
want to leave a second time. So she wrote him
a letter, a letter in which she spelled out what
she expected of him. And I don't think there's anything
(23:52):
that I know of in all of the writings the
literature of eighteenth century Americans that expresses it quite so well.
What was it that was moving these people, these very
imperfect people, none of whom was a god, none of
whom was unflawed? She said to him, these are and
remember she's writing to a little kid. These are the
(24:15):
times in which a genius would wish to live. It's
not in the still calm of life or the repose
of a pacific station that great characters are formed. The
habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.
Great necessities call out great virtues. Great necessities call out
great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by
(24:37):
scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which otherwise
would lay dormant, waken to life and form the character
of the hero and the statesman. Well, you know he
had to go after reading that. But keep in mind,
in that last sentence she is referred to the mind
and the life of the mind several times before she
comes to that last sentence. But then in the last
(24:59):
sentence she makes the point when a mind is raised
and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those
qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, waken to life. In
other words, you have to have it here too, not
just here. John Adams had an immensely successful life, but
(25:20):
for him the real success was in seeing his son, sons,
and daughter arise as thinking, independent, good citizens. The most
noteworthy of all of whom was John Quincy Adams. Now
John Quincy Adams is a whole subject unto himself, but
(25:42):
let me just say briefly that I believe that if
it were possible to give all the presidents of the
United States an IQ test, John Quincy Adams would come
in at the front, even ahead of his father.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
And you've been listening to the late great by biographer
David McCullough tell the story of John Adams. And by
the way, he was telling this story at the John
Adams Institute in the Netherlands. And by the way, they
have a terrific podcast called Bright Minds, which I'd urge
all of you to listen to. And my goodness, what
we learned from this man. He goes to Harvard, which
(26:18):
at the time is a divinity school, thinks about teaching
thinks about ministry, but in the end disappoints his father,
whom he admired, because he wants to pursue the law.
And my goodness, what a correct choice that John made
as it relates to his future pursuing the law. And
by the way, those letters between John and Abigail, if
(26:39):
you ever get a chance to read them, there's nothing
quite like them anywhere in all of literature, frankly, and
what a story of a marriage. How those two communicated,
lifted each other up, fought each other, pushed each other.
And my goodness, that letter that Abigail wrote to her son,
what a letter Great necessities call out great virtues. She
(27:01):
wrote to her young son, calling him to ride that
rough winter Atlantic again and risk life to learn. When
we come back, more of the story of John Adams
with David McCullough here on our American Stories. And we
(27:39):
continue with our American stories and the story of John
Adams as told by the late author David McCullough. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
John Quincy Adams became the first full fledged ambassador to
the Netherlands, in that he was the first to be
appointed by a President of United dates when he was
twenty nine years old, and he was the most well equipped,
the most gifted, the most appropriate ambassador that Washington appointed
(28:11):
in all of his presidency at twenty nine years old.
He was a diplomat at fifteen, when his time there
was up and it was time for he returned by
himself at age fifteen, all the way across from Saint
Petersburg here to the Netherlands, which in that time was
like traveling to the moon and back, and on his own. Now,
(28:32):
you see that boy wasn't just brilliant. He had been
raised to be that way, and he'd been raised to
be grown up, an adult and responsible, far earlier than
we raise our children that way today, much more so.
He became president, and he was not a particularly effective
or successful president. He was not a failure as a president,
(28:55):
but he was not one of our great presidents. And
we don't, for some reason, or there are probably good explanations,
we don't include one term presidents in the pantheon of
great American presidents unless they're killed in office and then
they rise to the top. And neither John Adams nor
John Quincy Adams served more than one term. But it
(29:20):
was after John Quincy Adams left the presidency that his
heroic and important time in our history begins, because he
was the only president, the only former president before or since,
who went back to serve in the House of Representatives,
which was thought at the time to be such a
step down as to be almost embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
But he said, to.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
His credit, and he meant it, because no Adams ever
said anything they didn't mean, which was part of the
disadvantage they operated under as diplomats and politicians. He said
that he considered it to be the highest honor he'd
ever had. And what happened was he went back to
Washington and went into the Congress, went into the House
of Representatives now Statuary Hall, And there's a mark on
(30:07):
the floor at Statuary Hall, the old House of Representative,
marking the spot where he battled slavery day in day out,
year in year out. He was called old Man Eloquent.
And he died there, died with his boots on, as
we say, fighting the good fight to the end. And
most interestingly, his mother and father were very strongly anti
(30:33):
slavery all their lives. John Adams was the only I
hope you know this. If you don't, I hope you
won't forget it. John Adams was the only one of
our founders who did not own a slave ever, as
a matter of principle, Abigail Adams, in the worst years
of the early years of the Revolution, when everything seemed
to be going wrong, when pestilence and disease were sweeping
(30:54):
through her part of Massachusetts, said, I wonder if our
sufferings are not the punished God's punishish for the sin
of slavery.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
So there, years later is the.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Son battling on the floor of the Congress against slavery.
He was his father and mother's son to a.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Very large degree.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Abigail liked to quote a line from an English poet,
adversity is a good man's shining time. And this is
true of so many of them. They knew they weren't
perfect as human beings, and they knew what they had
done wasn't perfect. To attain a life where all men
(31:37):
were created equal would take a long lot of hard
work and struggle and greek and disappointment. But that was
the idea, That was the advantage. They created the ideal,
and the successors were supposed to achieve it. In the
theme of the American experiment as an ongoing experiment. They
(31:58):
sent True North for us, in a fact, and we've
been trying to reach it ever since and will continue
to do so. And they were such noble people in
their willingness to serve the country and their heartfelt belief
in what was at stake. Now, some of them did
not feel that Washington's army had deserters by the thousands,
(32:21):
deserters and people who went over to the other side,
people who quit, people who quit the Congress, people in
Congress who went over to the other side. They were
by no means all heroes, but enough of them were,
and the greatest of them, by far of all, was Washington.
There would not have been the country we have if
(32:43):
it hadn't been for Washington. So when people say that
John Adams was eclipsed by Washington, or he was in
the shadow of Washington.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Of course he was.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
We have never had a figure in our country who
had the same power over people as George Washington. He
was a figure of union during the war and a
figure of union after he became president, when already the
country was starting to pull apart because of factions and
rivalries based in large part on slavery, and on sectionalism.
(33:17):
They were very great men and quite imperfect, and they
changed the world. When George Washington turned over his command
of the Continental Army to the Congress, relinquished power as
no general had ever done before, no conquering general had
(33:38):
ever done before. George the third King George the Third
had heard that this might happen, and he said, if
he does that, he will be the greatest man in
the world. That was the example, which goes back, of
course to Cincinnatis, the Roman model. So they were learning
from history, profiting from history, drawing strength from his way.
(34:00):
Not the same history we draw strength from our examples from,
but a different history. But we should draw history from
their example, and we should draw a sense of what
humanity can be from their example. In a way, nobody
ever lived in the past. There is no such thing
as the past. Jefferson Adams Washington. They didn't walk around saying,
(34:25):
isn't this fascinating? Living in the past, aren't we quaint
in our funny clothes? They were living in the present,
but it was their present, not ours, and it was
different from ours, which means that they were different. What
had happened was this John Adams, in his final journey,
(34:45):
had come to the conclusion that, contrary to the ideals
of the Enlightenment, that everything could not be explained, that
there were inevitable mysteries, and that that was a good thing,
that we need mysteries. And as he grew older, he
(35:07):
began to lose everything. His friends died, his beloved daughter
died of a hideous mastectomy, Then Abigail died. One of
his other sons had destroyed himself with alcohol. He had
seen his son become President of the United States, but
he'd lost his friends, He'd lost his hair, he'd lost
(35:29):
his teeth, he couldn't ride a horse anymore. It was
as if the Lord had destroyed the last thing he had.
Everything it would seem was gone, and everything was there
to make this supposedly pessimistic man even more pessimistic than ever.
But a very curious thing had happened. He became increasingly optimistic.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
With age.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
History ought to be something that reminds us of who
we are and what we stand for, what we believe.
The previous Librarian of Congress, Daniel Borston, once said, trying
to approach the future without a sense of the past
is like trying to plant cut flowers. We must know history.
(36:19):
We must understand who these people were and all that
they did for us, and we must draw strength and
confidence from them. And my message is this, we are
up against a foe, all of us who believes in
(36:42):
enforced ignorance, and we don't and we never will.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
And a terrific job on the editing by Greg Hangler
and a special thanks to the John Adams Institute in
the Netherlands sharing this audio us and their podcast Bright Minds.
It's terrific. Go to the John Adams Institute website to
hear more from them. And my goodness, that voice, McCullough's voice,
there's nothing like it. It's featured so prominently in ken
(37:13):
Burn's The Civil War, but it's his heart and love
of the founders and have history. And he's right. If
we don't know where we came from, we won't know
who we are. And read the John Adams book, watch
the HBO series. Your whole family should watch them. You'll
get to know more about your country. In the end,
Adam has propelled himself to greatness. He wanted that education,
(37:36):
he wanted it all, and in the end he knew
he was not an ordinary man. He knew it, and
he knew it young, and boy was he not. And
my goodness, that final part of his life when he
loses everything and imagine losing your friends, then losing your wife,
losing your hair, your teeth, everything. And yet he grew
more optimistic with age and understood that the Enlightenment at
(37:59):
science and read and could not explain everything. Back to
that divinity where it all started. The story of John Adams,
the story of America, and the story of so much more.
Here on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And up next a story about one of our founding fathers,
a star of all stars, and that is John Adams.
To tell the story is David McCullough, who wrote the
(00:30):
Pool of Surprise winning biography which turned into an HBO series.
That John Adams story are about to hear was given
by McCullough at the John Adams Institute in the Netherlands.
We'd like to give a heartfelt thank you to the
John Adams Institute and their podcast Bright Minds for allowing
(00:50):
us to share this story with our listeners. Here's David
McCullough with the story of John Adams.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I've often stopped in recent years to try to figure
out what it is I've been writing about in my
writing life. For a long time, I thought maybe I
must have a water obsession. The first book was about
the Johnstown Flood, the second was about a bridge over
the East River, the third was about the Panama Canal.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
But I think.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
At route everything that I have been trying to do
in my work is about courage, and principally chiefly the
courage of one's convictions, and the story of John Adams,
again and again and again is a story of courage.
I thought I would begin my remarks with the painting
(01:39):
that hangs in our national capital. It's the most famous
painting ever done by an American. It is seen by
more people than any other painting ever painted by an
American as it hangs there where millions go through as
visitors every year. It's John Crumble's signing of the Declaration
of Independence. It is seventeen seventy six, and almost everything
(02:03):
about it is inaccurate. The room didn't look like the
room is portrayed. The curtains that the windows are not
the same, the furniture is wrong, the doors are in
the wrong place. The Declaration of Independence was not signed
on the fourth of July seventeen seventy sixth They didn't
(02:24):
begin signing it until August of seventeen seventy six, and
not everyone was present for the signing because many of
them hadn't returned to Congress yet. Some of them didn't
show up until fall, and one man didn't get back
until seventeen seventy seven. But there is one thing about
it that it's entirely accurate, and those are the faces
of the people portrayed the signers of the declaration, a
(02:47):
declaration that set out to really.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Change the world.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
And it wasn't something handed down by a king or
a potentate or a czar, but the decision of a
group of citizens acting on their own, acting very bravely
on their own, because by signing that document, they were
signing their death warrants. They were committing treason. If captured,
they would be hanged. So when it says at the end,
(03:14):
we pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor, that's
not just rhetoric, that's not just talk. That's the literal truth.
If you study the painting, you'll notice that all the
lines of perspective all come down to three characters in
the foreground, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, who
(03:36):
were the three responsible for the document itself. Jefferson did
the draft, Adams and Franklin were sort of his collaborators.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
But if you.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Study it further, you'll see that the figure that stands
in the exact center of the painting, and clearly the
intention of the artist is to draw your eye to
him is John Adams. John Adams was not the art
of the Declaration of Independence. He chose the author of
the Declaration of Independence. He said it must be written
by Jefferson. What he did was make it happen. He
(04:08):
got the Congress to vote for it. He was the
driving spirit. If Jefferson was the pen, Adams was the voice.
He was, in that sense, one of the most important
Americans who ever lived, and had he done nothing else
with his career, he would be a figure that we
would know about from that time. We know very little
(04:29):
about what he said in his great speech. We know
very little about what he said in any of his speeches.
Because all the sessions of Congress were conducted behind closed
doors in secrecy. Philadelphia was full of spies. There was
every chance that the word would get out. Adams went
on then to have one of the most astonishing careers
(04:50):
in all of American history. He became our emissary to
France with Franklin, he became his own Masri to the Netherlands,
spent two years here, and succeeded on his own against
all kinds of odds without authorization, to begin with, not
(05:10):
knowing the language, not knowing anybody here, bringing two of
his little boys with him, he succeeded in negotiating a
loan from the Netherlands from the Dutch bankers of five
million guilders or two million dollars. At a point where
we were in desperate need of money to fight the
war seventeen eighty two, there was by no means any
(05:35):
guarantee that we would win the war. In fact, every
sign suggested that we had a chance. But there were
some people who would not give up, and Adams was
one of them. He then, after the war, became our
first ambassador to the Court of Saint James's as at
the same time he was still the ambassador to the Netherlands,
(05:58):
and as a consequence he came back and forth many
times from London to Amsterdam and the Hague to negotiate
further loans. After he left the Court of Saint James's,
he returned to the United States to become our first
vice president and then succeeded George Washington as president. He
(06:20):
served one term, after which he was defeated by Thomas
Jefferson in one of the most rancorous, difficult, closest selections
in our history, with vicious charges being made on both sides,
and a contest that wound up in the House of
Representatives and was only settled after thirty six votes when
one man changed his vote. So when we read about
(06:44):
presidents of the United States becoming president by a very
slim margin or by a controversial contest, it all is
a very old story. Adams then returned to his home
in Braintreem, Massachuset, where he lived for another twenty five years.
Now Here was a man who traveled farther in the
(07:06):
service of his country, at greater risk, at a greater discomfort,
and greater chance of his losing his life, not to
say his livelihood support his family, of any of the
major figures of that time.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And you've been listening to David McCullough tell the story
like no one else can. The story of John Adams
continues here on Our American Stories. Lee Hibibe here the
host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
(07:40):
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
a lot. Go to Alamericanstories dot com and give. And
(08:09):
we continue with our American Stories and with Pulitzer Prize
winning biographer David McCullough sharing the story of John Adam.
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
I had been interested in Jefferson since I was a
youngster and went to visit Monticello for the first time,
and I felt that Jefferson was a figure I would
like to write about. I had never ventured into the
eighteenth century, and it was a country I felt I
wanted to visit, and now that I've been there, I
(08:43):
may never come back. But I had the idea because
I was very interested in the fact that John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson had died on the same day, incredibly
on the same day, and that it was there in
effect day of day July fourth, the fiftieth anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence eighteen twenty six, and I thought,
(09:07):
what if I began with the death of these two men,
these two very important and very different men representing entirely
different parts of the country. My concern was that how
was I going to keep glamorous, famous Thomas Jefferson from
forever upstaging this short, stout, cranky yankee John Adams. And
(09:32):
it was only when I got into the material that
I realized that this was a biographer's dream. A writer's
job is to get below the surface, it seems to me,
and to do that with Jefferson would be extremely difficult, because,
among other things, he didn't want you to get below
the surface any more than necessary. And as a consequence,
(09:52):
he destroyed every letter that his wife ever wrote to him,
in every letter he wrote to her. In fact, we
don't even know what she looked like. By contrast, they're
over one thousand, five hundred letters just between John and
Abigail Adams, and they pour it out, you know exactly
what they felt. You don't have to speculate. I wonder
how he felt about that follower. What kind of mood
(10:14):
were they in that morning? You know exactly, because all there,
and they wrote such letters to their children and to
many of their close friends. So I was drawn by
the material, was drawn by the fact that how could
it be that this tiny little population at a remote frontier.
Keep in mind that the settlement of the United States
(10:35):
at that point was only about fifty miles inland along
the eastern seaboard, that's all it was. Massachusetts in seventeen
seventy six was still two thirds, not just Wood's Forest,
as was Pennsylvania. How did these men come to be?
How do they arise without the benefit of great educations
in Europe and availability of books to everyone and the rest.
(10:56):
How did that happen? That to me is close to
a miracle. And more No one reads about the revolution
more than one reads, particularly about fighting the war, because
after all, the declaration of independence was only that a
declaration unless they won the war. And when you see
what happened and why it happened, you have to think
again and again.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
It was very nearly a miracle.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
When the direction of the wind changed the course of
history on one night. So all of this is of
extreme interest to me and those people, they're so endlessly interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I want to begin by.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Reading you something John Adams wrote about himself, and he
wrote this when he was feeling quite low. He had
not succeeded very well in his first turn at diplomacy
in France, and he was going home after a relatively
brief stay, and he stopped and looked at himself in
the mirror, and he wrote about his face. He said,
(11:58):
by my physical constitution, I am but an ordinary man.
The times alone have destined me to fame. He saw
too much weakness and languor in his nature. When I
look in the glass, my eye, my forehead, my brow,
my cheeks, my lips all betray this relaxation.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yet he could be roused. He knew.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean scandal's hypocrisies,
have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep and
littleness into a rage, A little like a lion. That's
John Adams. He is a flesh and blood human being.
And when he says, by my physical condition, I am
(12:45):
but an ordinary man. The times alone have destined me
to fame, I can guarantee you that he's fishing. He
doesn't believe it for a minute.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
He knows he's not an ordinary man. He's anything but ordinary.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Now he is commonly thought of as a rich Boston
blue blood. He was none of those. He wasn't rich,
he wasn't a Bostonian, he wasn't a blue blood.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
He was a.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Farmer's son, a farmer's son who, through a scholarship, had
the good fortune to go to Harvard. His father, we know,
could read write his name, but that's about all. His
mother almost certainly was illiterate. And when he went to Harvard,
as he said, I discovered books and I read forever.
(13:30):
He became the most widely and deeply read American of
that very bookish day. And he knew right away that
he wanted to excel. Now that's a little different from ambition.
He wanted to excel. He wanted to be good at
what he did, and he wanted to serve the public good.
The Americans of that time had no history. They had
(13:53):
no history to read, no history to have as part
of their own sense of who they were. What they
had was classical history education. Americans and most of the
founders were educated men. They had not just learned to
read and write in Latin and Greek, but they knew
Roman history and Greek history, and they knew from the
Roman and Greek history the classic models of valor, of honor,
(14:18):
and virtue. When Adams finished Harvard, he went to become
a school teacher. He was the first of our presidents
to begin his career as a school teacher, and in
that period when he's searching to find out what he's
going to do with his life, what he's going to
make of his life, he poured out his innermost feelings
(14:39):
as he would all of his life, in writing on paper.
And those little diaries have all survived. They're about the
size of the palm of your hand, and they're in
a microscopic handwriting. I had to use a magnifying glass
to read it. And of course that's in part because
paper was so expensive, and this boy, this year.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Young man, had no money.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I will read you an excerpt from July twenty first,
seventeen fifty six. In other words, twenty years before seventeen
seventy six, he's twenty years old. I am resolved to
rise with the sun and to study scriptures on Thursday, Friday,
Saturday and Sunday mornings, and to study some Latin author
and the other three mornings, noons and nights, I intend
(15:24):
to read English authors. I will rouse up my mind
and fix my attention. I will stand collected within myself
and think upon what I read and.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
What I see.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I will strive with all my soul to be something
more than persons who have had less advantage than myself.
Now clearly that is a young man with a rare
idea of what he might be and a very good mind.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's so admirable.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
But then the next morning he slept until seven o'clock
and the one line entry following a very rainy day
dreamed away all my time. When I read that, I
knew I had my man. Here's somebody that I can
identify with. He's a human being.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And you are listening to David McCullough tell one heck
of a story about the great John Adams, and it's
so interesting to hear how McCullough even shows Adams is.
It was not his intention. He'd started by wanting to
cover Jefferson and tell Jefferson's story. But the more he prodded,
the more he poked, the more he realized that Adams
(16:32):
was more interesting. In the end, let's face it, Adams
chose Jefferson, as he said, to write the declaration. Jefferson
was the pen, but Adams the voice. And if you
go to Monticello and I went to the University of
Virginia Law School in Charlottesville, everything Jefferson all the time.
What I learned in three years there reading almost everything.
(16:52):
You can't know Jefferson, he hit himself. And by the way,
we have friends like this and people like this in
our lives. You don't know them, don't tell you anything
about themselves. The story of John Adams continues, and boy,
do we know a lot about John Adams. You're about
to hear so much more, so much more. We all
need to know and learn. And we'd like to give
(17:14):
a heartfelt thank you to the John Adams Institute and
their podcast Bright Minds for allowing us to share this
story with our listeners. The institute's name commemorates the man
who is the first American emissary to the Netherlands in
seventeen eighty. The story of John Adams continues with David
McCullough here on our American Stories. And we continue with
(18:09):
our American stories, and with David McCullough telling the story
of one of our founders and perhaps the founder, John Adams.
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
He finally decides that he is not going to be
a school teacher, and he's not going to be a
minister as his father had hoped, As most parents of
students who went to Harvard hoped, as most of the
faculty expected the students to become preachers, ministers, Protestant ministers.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Instead, he decides he.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Will become a lawyer, he will enter public life. And
this was a great struggle because he knew he was
going against his father's wishes.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And he adored his father.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
And one Sunday after church he was a very devout Christian.
I should emphasize, inspired by the sermon he had heard,
he went out under the night sky to behold the
glorious spectacle of a starry night. And beholding the night sky,
he wrote, the amazing concave of heaven sprinkled and glittered
(19:17):
with stars. I am thrown into a kind of transport.
He knew that such wonders were the gifts of God.
And then he writes, but the greatest of all was
the gift of an inquiring mind. But of all the
provisions that he has made for the gratification of our senses,
this same twenty year old wrote, are much inferior to
(19:40):
the provision, the wonderful provision that he has made for
the gratification of our nobler powers of intelligence and reason.
He has given us reason to find out the truth
and the real design and true end of our existence.
He then says, it will be hard work to become
(20:01):
an attorney, to learn the law, to qualify for the bar.
But the more difficult and dangerous the enterprise, the higher
the crown of laurel is bestowed on the conqueror. But
the point is now determined. I shall have the liberty
to think for myself. Now, what did the founders of
(20:23):
our country believe? What did they think when they talked
about the pursuit of happiness. They didn't mean long vacations.
They didn't mean travel to foreign, exotic places. They didn't
mean a nice, comfortable afternoon in a hammock, or a
(20:43):
lot of expensive possessions.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
What they meant.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
What they were talking about was an extension and enlargement
of the experience of life through the life of the
mind and the life of the spirit. And they all
talk about this is not some notion imposed upon them
by latter day biographers and historians. Jefferson said, any nation
that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never
(21:06):
was and never can be. In other words, you cannot
have a self governing system without a population that is educated.
Adam's story could very well be taken as a metaphor
for the transforming miracle of education. And it's all through
(21:26):
his life, and it is most dramatically and I think
most memorably illustrated by the fact that he brought John
Quincy with him to Europe and later on the second trip,
John Quincy and Charles who was even younger, little boys
and they were not big boys, who were small for
(21:48):
their age, who came across in the winter time on
two voyages. The first voyage was absolutely horrendous. Everything that
could have gone wrong went wrong. They were hit by
a hurricane, they engaged clothed with the British warship, fought
a battle. People were killed, they were stalled in the sea,
(22:09):
they were be calm for days on end. The food
was wretched, the accommodations were miserable. In the winters months
on the North Atlantic, virtually no one was out there
who valued his life.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Even in peacetime.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Nobody from New England went to see in the winter
time if it could possibly be avoided, and Adams did
it twice, and twice he took these young boys with him.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Why would he do that?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Why would his wife, their mother risk their lives, And
the answer is very simple.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Their education. She wanted them.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And one cannot underestimate the importance of Abigail Adams, not
just in the story of John Adams, but in the
history of what happened to Adams, Jefferson, and so many
of them. She was, without question, one of the most
remarkable Americans of all time. She wanted that young boy
to come because she wanted him to have the example
of his father to live with see down a day
(23:05):
to day basis. She knew that he was coming to
Europe at the time of the Enlightenment, that he would
have the chance to be with the great French intellectuals
and intellectuals in other countries, that he would have a
chance to learn different languages, all of which he did,
all of which happened. Now after the horrendous voyage of
the first trip over, and he had returned to the
(23:27):
United States with his father, and his father was called
back here and his mother said, you're going again. He said, no,
I've done that, and it was so terrifying he didn't
want to leave a second time. So she wrote him
a letter, a letter in which she spelled out what
she expected of him. And I don't think there's anything
(23:52):
that I know of in all of the writings the
literature of eighteenth century Americans that expresses it quite so well.
What was it that was moving these people, these very
imperfect people, none of whom was a god, none of
whom was unflawed? She said to him, these are and
remember she's writing to a little kid. These are the
(24:15):
times in which a genius would wish to live. It's
not in the still calm of life or the repose
of a pacific station that great characters are formed. The
habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.
Great necessities call out great virtues. Great necessities call out
great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by
(24:37):
scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which otherwise
would lay dormant, waken to life and form the character
of the hero and the statesman. Well, you know he
had to go after reading that. But keep in mind,
in that last sentence she is referred to the mind
and the life of the mind several times before she
comes to that last sentence. But then in the last
(24:59):
sentence she makes the point when a mind is raised
and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those
qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, waken to life. In
other words, you have to have it here too, not
just here. John Adams had an immensely successful life, but
(25:20):
for him the real success was in seeing his son, sons,
and daughter arise as thinking, independent, good citizens. The most
noteworthy of all of whom was John Quincy Adams. Now
John Quincy Adams is a whole subject unto himself, but
(25:42):
let me just say briefly that I believe that if
it were possible to give all the presidents of the
United States an IQ test, John Quincy Adams would come
in at the front, even ahead of his father.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
And you've been listening to the late great by biographer
David McCullough tell the story of John Adams. And by
the way, he was telling this story at the John
Adams Institute in the Netherlands. And by the way, they
have a terrific podcast called Bright Minds, which I'd urge
all of you to listen to. And my goodness, what
we learned from this man. He goes to Harvard, which
(26:18):
at the time is a divinity school, thinks about teaching
thinks about ministry, but in the end disappoints his father,
whom he admired, because he wants to pursue the law.
And my goodness, what a correct choice that John made
as it relates to his future pursuing the law. And
by the way, those letters between John and Abigail, if
(26:39):
you ever get a chance to read them, there's nothing
quite like them anywhere in all of literature, frankly, and
what a story of a marriage. How those two communicated,
lifted each other up, fought each other, pushed each other.
And my goodness, that letter that Abigail wrote to her son,
what a letter Great necessities call out great virtues. She
(27:01):
wrote to her young son, calling him to ride that
rough winter Atlantic again and risk life to learn. When
we come back, more of the story of John Adams
with David McCullough here on our American Stories. And we
(27:39):
continue with our American stories and the story of John
Adams as told by the late author David McCullough. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
John Quincy Adams became the first full fledged ambassador to
the Netherlands, in that he was the first to be
appointed by a President of United dates when he was
twenty nine years old, and he was the most well equipped,
the most gifted, the most appropriate ambassador that Washington appointed
(28:11):
in all of his presidency at twenty nine years old.
He was a diplomat at fifteen, when his time there
was up and it was time for he returned by
himself at age fifteen, all the way across from Saint
Petersburg here to the Netherlands, which in that time was
like traveling to the moon and back, and on his own. Now,
(28:32):
you see that boy wasn't just brilliant. He had been
raised to be that way, and he'd been raised to
be grown up, an adult and responsible, far earlier than
we raise our children that way today, much more so.
He became president, and he was not a particularly effective
or successful president. He was not a failure as a president,
(28:55):
but he was not one of our great presidents. And
we don't, for some reason, or there are probably good explanations,
we don't include one term presidents in the pantheon of
great American presidents unless they're killed in office and then
they rise to the top. And neither John Adams nor
John Quincy Adams served more than one term. But it
(29:20):
was after John Quincy Adams left the presidency that his
heroic and important time in our history begins, because he
was the only president, the only former president before or since,
who went back to serve in the House of Representatives,
which was thought at the time to be such a
step down as to be almost embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
But he said, to.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
His credit, and he meant it, because no Adams ever
said anything they didn't mean, which was part of the
disadvantage they operated under as diplomats and politicians. He said
that he considered it to be the highest honor he'd
ever had. And what happened was he went back to
Washington and went into the Congress, went into the House
of Representatives now Statuary Hall, And there's a mark on
(30:07):
the floor at Statuary Hall, the old House of Representative,
marking the spot where he battled slavery day in day out,
year in year out. He was called old Man Eloquent.
And he died there, died with his boots on, as
we say, fighting the good fight to the end. And
most interestingly, his mother and father were very strongly anti
(30:33):
slavery all their lives. John Adams was the only I
hope you know this. If you don't, I hope you
won't forget it. John Adams was the only one of
our founders who did not own a slave ever, as
a matter of principle, Abigail Adams, in the worst years
of the early years of the Revolution, when everything seemed
to be going wrong, when pestilence and disease were sweeping
(30:54):
through her part of Massachusetts, said, I wonder if our
sufferings are not the punished God's punishish for the sin
of slavery.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
So there, years later is the.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Son battling on the floor of the Congress against slavery.
He was his father and mother's son to a.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Very large degree.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Abigail liked to quote a line from an English poet,
adversity is a good man's shining time. And this is
true of so many of them. They knew they weren't
perfect as human beings, and they knew what they had
done wasn't perfect. To attain a life where all men
(31:37):
were created equal would take a long lot of hard
work and struggle and greek and disappointment. But that was
the idea, That was the advantage. They created the ideal,
and the successors were supposed to achieve it. In the
theme of the American experiment as an ongoing experiment. They
(31:58):
sent True North for us, in a fact, and we've
been trying to reach it ever since and will continue
to do so. And they were such noble people in
their willingness to serve the country and their heartfelt belief
in what was at stake. Now, some of them did
not feel that Washington's army had deserters by the thousands,
(32:21):
deserters and people who went over to the other side,
people who quit, people who quit the Congress, people in
Congress who went over to the other side. They were
by no means all heroes, but enough of them were,
and the greatest of them, by far of all, was Washington.
There would not have been the country we have if
(32:43):
it hadn't been for Washington. So when people say that
John Adams was eclipsed by Washington, or he was in
the shadow of Washington.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Of course he was.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
We have never had a figure in our country who
had the same power over people as George Washington. He
was a figure of union during the war and a
figure of union after he became president, when already the
country was starting to pull apart because of factions and
rivalries based in large part on slavery, and on sectionalism.
(33:17):
They were very great men and quite imperfect, and they
changed the world. When George Washington turned over his command
of the Continental Army to the Congress, relinquished power as
no general had ever done before, no conquering general had
(33:38):
ever done before. George the third King George the Third
had heard that this might happen, and he said, if
he does that, he will be the greatest man in
the world. That was the example, which goes back, of
course to Cincinnatis, the Roman model. So they were learning
from history, profiting from history, drawing strength from his way.
(34:00):
Not the same history we draw strength from our examples from,
but a different history. But we should draw history from
their example, and we should draw a sense of what
humanity can be from their example. In a way, nobody
ever lived in the past. There is no such thing
as the past. Jefferson Adams Washington. They didn't walk around saying,
(34:25):
isn't this fascinating? Living in the past, aren't we quaint
in our funny clothes? They were living in the present,
but it was their present, not ours, and it was
different from ours, which means that they were different. What
had happened was this John Adams, in his final journey,
(34:45):
had come to the conclusion that, contrary to the ideals
of the Enlightenment, that everything could not be explained, that
there were inevitable mysteries, and that that was a good thing,
that we need mysteries. And as he grew older, he
(35:07):
began to lose everything. His friends died, his beloved daughter
died of a hideous mastectomy, Then Abigail died. One of
his other sons had destroyed himself with alcohol. He had
seen his son become President of the United States, but
he'd lost his friends, He'd lost his hair, he'd lost
(35:29):
his teeth, he couldn't ride a horse anymore. It was
as if the Lord had destroyed the last thing he had.
Everything it would seem was gone, and everything was there
to make this supposedly pessimistic man even more pessimistic than ever.
But a very curious thing had happened. He became increasingly optimistic.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
With age.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
History ought to be something that reminds us of who
we are and what we stand for, what we believe.
The previous Librarian of Congress, Daniel Borston, once said, trying
to approach the future without a sense of the past
is like trying to plant cut flowers. We must know history.
(36:19):
We must understand who these people were and all that
they did for us, and we must draw strength and
confidence from them. And my message is this, we are
up against a foe, all of us who believes in
(36:42):
enforced ignorance, and we don't and we never will.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
And a terrific job on the editing by Greg Hangler
and a special thanks to the John Adams Institute in
the Netherlands sharing this audio us and their podcast Bright Minds.
It's terrific. Go to the John Adams Institute website to
hear more from them. And my goodness, that voice, McCullough's voice,
there's nothing like it. It's featured so prominently in ken
(37:13):
Burn's The Civil War, but it's his heart and love
of the founders and have history. And he's right. If
we don't know where we came from, we won't know
who we are. And read the John Adams book, watch
the HBO series. Your whole family should watch them. You'll
get to know more about your country. In the end,
Adam has propelled himself to greatness. He wanted that education,
(37:36):
he wanted it all, and in the end he knew
he was not an ordinary man. He knew it, and
he knew it young, and boy was he not. And
my goodness, that final part of his life when he
loses everything and imagine losing your friends, then losing your wife,
losing your hair, your teeth, everything. And yet he grew
more optimistic with age and understood that the Enlightenment at
(37:59):
science and read and could not explain everything. Back to
that divinity where it all started. The story of John Adams,
the story of America, and the story of so much more.
Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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