John Adams Unbound
“Fame, Fortune, Power say some, are the Ends intended by a Library. The Service of God,
Country, Clients, Fellow Men, say others. Which of these lie nearest my Heart?"
Diary of John Adams, 1768
Believing at age 32 that an “ample and well chosen Assortment of Books” could serve seven
possible ends— Fame, Fortune, Power, God, Country, Clients, and Fellow Men—John Adams
(1735–1826) began assembling one of the greatest private libraries in early America.
This extraordinary collection of more than 3,500 volumes is the culmination of the second
president’s lifelong endeavor. John Adams’s personal library provides a unique window into the
mind and heart of this remarkable founding father as he built and used this collection throughout
his active personal and political life.
One of the largest private libraries of its time, the John Adams Library remains one of the few
early American book collections to survive intact. This library is particularly significant because
it provides first-hand insight into how John Adams shaped American history and how he was
shaped by his own moment in history through his lifelong dedication to reading and books.
As a young man, John Adams set forth to educate himself by collecting books on a wide variety
of subjects and by engaging the great thinkers, philosophers, and political minds through their
writings. Adams read actively—often with a pen clasped firmly in his hand—and his annotated
volumes reveal intimate and candid conversations with writers across oceans and across
centuries at every stage of his long life.
Amassing the library, even reading every title on its shelves, was not the goal for John Adams.
As the 32-year old Adams penned in his diary in 1768, the library was “only a means, an
instrument.” He wanted his books, annotations and all, to be placed into the service of his fellow
men. Through his donation of this incredible library, what John Adams termed his
“extravagant” passion for books has become a public treasure: the property of the people and
free to all.
Curator
Beth Prindle, Boston Public Library,
Boston, MA
Design
C&G Partners, New York, NY
Photography
Christopher Navin, Boston, MA
Tom Blake, Boston Public Library,
Boston, MA
National Park Service, Adams National
Historical Park
Advisory Board
Richard Brookhiser, John Ferling,
Pauline Maier, C. James Taylor
Tour Coordination
American Library Association Public
Programs Office, Chicago, IL
Special Thanks
Massachusetts Historical Society
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John Adams Unbound is a national traveling exhibition for libraries organized by the Boston
Public Library and the American Library Association Public Programs Office.
It is based on a major exhibition of the same name on display at the Boston Public Library,
Copley Square, in 2006 and 2007. To learn more about the John Adams Library, please visit
www.johnadamslibrary.org.
The traveling exhibition and tour have been made possible by a major grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to the Boston Public Library. John Adams Unbound has
been designated as part of the NEH’s We the People initiative, exploring significant events and
themes in our nation’s history and culture and advancing knowledge of the principles that define
America.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not
necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Image: Unknown artist, John Adams, undated. After the original 1783 portrait by John
Singleton Copley. Courtesy of National Park Service, Adams National Historical Park.
THE LIBRARY
John Adams acknowledged in his diary that it would require much “thought and care, as well as
money… to assemble an ample and well chosen assortment of books.” He took enormous pride
in his library, and his books served as essential tools in his varied roles as student, lawyer,
revolutionary, diplomat, president, and elder statesman. Toward the end of his life, Adams made
arrangements for the library to continue serving the public good. At the age of 86, Adams deeded
2,742 volumes from his personal collection in 1822 to the Adams Academy, a boys’ preparatory
school to be built in his hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts.
Plans for the school languished and Adams’s library, stored in a farmhouse behind the family
home, remained unused for two decades after his death. In 1848, John Adams’s grandson
Charles Francis Adams arranged to transfer the collection to the Quincy Town House and later to
the Town Hall. After the Adams Academy was finally completed in 1870, the books were
installed in open stacks but sadly left exposed to theft and mutilation by students and autograph
hunters.
In 1882, the John Adams Library was moved again to the new Thomas Crane Library in Quincy.
It was carefully arranged, housed in a special alcove and marked with an elegant wooden plaque,
but the collection received little public attention. Adams’s great-grandson, Charles Francis
Adams, Jr., ruefully noted that after ten years, the Adams Library had “been consulted by but
two persons, one of the two being myself.”
As the Boston Public Library’s elegant new McKim building in downtown Copley Square
neared completion in 1893, the Library Trustees approached the supervisors of the Adams
Temple and School Fund in Quincy to ask if they might consider relocating the John Adams
Library to a more central and accessible location in Boston. The supervisors agreed, and the
books were formally transferred to the care of the Boston Public Library in 1894. The collection
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is currently housed in the library’s Rare Books & Manuscripts Department, where it is still
available for use by interested researchers and scholars.
In 1982, the Boston Public Library established an in-house conservation lab funded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and a staff of six conservators began the nine-year
process of restoring the materials, including cleaning, resewing, and rebinding many of the
volumes in period materials. However, financial considerations prohibited treatment of the entire
collection during this period, and many items still require significant conservation. The David
McCullough Conservation Fund was established in 2001 by the Associates of the Boston Public
Library to provide a consistent source of funding for the restoration and preservation of this
unique and important collection.
The Library of John Adams. ca. 1882. Wooden Plaque. The John Adams Library at the Boston
Public Library.
Thomas Crane Library interior, ca. 1890. Photograph. Courtesy of the Thomas Crane Public
Library, Quincy, Massachusetts.
FELLOW MEN
John Adams’s passion for reading and book collecting blossomed slowly during his youth on a
Massachusetts farm in the 1740s. By his own admission, Adams was a reluctant student. At the
age of 13, young John informed his father that “I did not love books and wished he would lay
aside the thoughts of sending me to college.”
However, his father persevered and—with the help of a kindly teacher—Adams soon developed
a deep appreciation for the printed word that would endure for the rest of his life. His extensive
book collecting began in his teens with a few slim volumes of classics and mathematics. Even
these earliest volumes illustrate Adams’s active engagement with his books in their scrawled
signatures, smudges, notes, and doodles.
Abigail Adams shared her husband’s love of books, and together they passed on their reverence
for reading to future generations of the Adams family. From their earliest years, the four Adams
children—Abigail (Nabby), John Quincy, Charles, and Thomas Boylston—were instructed that
books counted among the world’s highest goods. It was a duty of citizenship, a call to religious
and moral contemplation, and a gateway to the imagination. John Adams impressed on his
children the importance of reading whenever the opportunity arose: “You will never be alone
with a poet in your pocket. You will never have an idle hour.”
Image: E. Malcolm, The “Old House,” The Adams Family Home in Braintree, Massachusetts,
1798. Courtesy of National Park Service, Adams National Historical Park.
Between the Pages
Plutarch, Plutarchi Chaeronensis: Vitae Parallelae, cum Singulis Aliquot, 1723–29. The John
Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
John Adams, Manuscript notes, undated. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
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John Adams wanted his children to learn, as he wrote nine-year-old son John Quincy, that books
were “of the utmost importance… in business, as well as the most ingenious and elegant
entertainment of your life.” During several periods abroad, John Adams oversaw his children’s
education and personally tutored them in classics, mathematics, and language. He and son John
Quincy read this copy of Plutarch aloud to one another over the breakfast table.
Books can serve many purposes, and many volumes in the Adams Library contain more than the
printed text. These leaves from New England trees were pressed between miscellaneous pages of
Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, where they remained for over a century. The image of each leaf
remains faintly outlined on the page where it was pressed.
These notes in John Adams’s handwriting include Greek, Latin, and English translations of key
terms and important phrases from his reading. They were loosely tucked between the pages of
the Plutarch for future reference by Adams or his children.
Our little flock send duty. I called them separately and told them Pappa wanted to send them
something, and requested of them what they would have. A Book was the answer of them all.
—Abigail Adams to John Adams, May 14, 1776
A Family Affair
I must study Politics and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematics and
Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematics and Philosophy…in order to give their
Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Music, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry
and Porcelain.
—John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780
Marcus Tullius Cicero, M. Tullii Ciceronis Orationum Selectarum Liber, 1734. The John Adams
Library at the Boston Public Library.
John Adams’s first known acquisition is this small copy of Cicero’s Orations filled with blots,
pen trials, and swaggeringly grandiose signatures. The book’s battered cover shows significant
wear from being jammed into fourteen-year-old Adams’s pocket as he walked the Massachusetts
countryside. Adams acquired the book in 1749 while preparing for Harvard. He believed that the
reading of his beloved Cicero even provided physical benefits; he recited the orations aloud
because “it exercises my Lungs, raises my Spirits, opens my Pores, quickens the Circulations,
and so contributes much to Health.”
John and Abigail Adams regarded books as essential tools for leading a moral, cultivated, and
successful life. While reading was certainly pleasurable for the Adamses and their children, it
was not an end in itself: it was a means for self-improvement and public service.
Cornelius Nepos, Cornelii Nepotis Vitae Excellentium Imperatorum, 1745. The John Adams
Library at the Boston Public Library.
This brief collection of biographies by Roman historian Nepos is loosely modeled on Plutarch’s
Lives. John Adams dated his copy 1781 and penned a whimsical ship drawing on the flyleaf
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alongside a number of “pen trials” in which he practiced his signature. The bookplate featuring
the Adams family crest indicates that his grandson Charles Francis Adams possessed the volume
at one time.
Jane Stuart, John Adams, undated. After the original 1800 portrait by her father,
Gilbert Stuart. Courtesy of National Park Service, Adams National Historical Park.
Jane Stuart, Abigail Adams, undated. After the original 1800–1812 portrait by her father, Gilbert
Stuart. Courtesy of National Park Service, Adams National Historical Park.
Artist unknown, Abigail Adams Smith, ca. 1795. After a portrait by John Singleton Copley.
Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Sidney L. Smith, John Quincy Adams, 1783. Courtesy of National Park Service, Adams
National Historical Park.
Artist unknown, Charles Adams, date unknown. Reproduced in Wide Awake, an Illustrated
Magazine, November 1888. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Mr. [?] Parker, Thomas Boylston Adams, 1795. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
CLIENTS
John Adams first established his reputation in the courtroom, not the political arena. As a young
lawyer in the 1760s, his eloquence and intelligence gained him early notice, and he ultimately
became one of Boston’s busiest attorneys. Adams’s early legal training shaped much of his
political philosophy, and he firmly believed that the rule of law in a civil society must be
immune to the clamors of public opinion.
The Boston Massacre trial of 1770 put Adams’s belief in every citizen’s right to a fair trial to a
difficult test. Although he knew that his reputation and legal practice would suffer greatly,
Adams agreed to serve as defense attorney for the British troops accused of “massacring” five
colonists during a skirmish one cold March evening. Drawing upon scores of volumes from his
large law library, Adams shaped a powerful argument for every man’s right to self-defense and
ultimately succeeded in winning the British soldiers’ freedom. Although he was later condemned
by fellow colonists for his assistance to the Crown, Adams stood firm on principle and deemed
his effort “one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country.”
These two graphic depictions of the Boston Massacre were the work of famous silversmith and
patriot Paul Revere. The simple hand-drawn sketch shows the British troops as small circles with
gun barrels in front of the Custom House and represents one of the earliest forensic maps in
American history. Revere’s vivid, hand-colored engraving is one of the most famous images of
the event, but very few of the details in this dramatic rendering of the massacre can be
substantiated from the available testimony and evidence.
Image: Paul Revere, Autograph Manuscript Drawing of the Boston Massacre, 1770.
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Paul Revere, The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston, engraving, 1770. Boston
Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts Department.
Trial of the Century
March 5, 1770, marked a watershed moment in America’s growing unrest and a major milestone
in John Adams’s legal career. That evening, a local crowd converged on a small group of British
soldiers in front of Boston’s Custom House. The townspeople pelted the redcoats with sticks,
oyster shells, and snowballs, provoking the anxious soldiers to fire into the crowd, killing five
colonists. Anger swelled among the Bostonians. Publications soon proclaimed the event the
“Boston Massacre,” and a war of propaganda raged between indignant colonists and British
loyalists.
These rare manuscript notes are among the few original artifacts to survive from the Boston
Massacre Trial in late 1770. John Adams scrawled pages of these extremely detailed notes in his
role as defense attorney during the Boston Massacre trial and noted important eyewitness
testimony in his “Evidence of Commotions that Evening.”
John Adams, Manuscript Notes from the Boston Massacre Trial, 1770. Boston Public Library,
Rare Books & Manuscripts Department.
Benjamin Blyth, John Adams, 1766. Pastel. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
I suffered very much for want of Books, which determined me to furnish myself, at any Sacrifice,
with a proper Library: and accordingly by degrees I procured the best Library of Law in the
State.
— Autobiography of John Adams
Precedent: Past and Present
“[Self-defense] is a law we have taken and sucked in and imbibed from nature herself: a law
which we were not taught, but to which we were made,—which we were not trained in, but which
is ingrained in us.”
— Cicero, Pro Milone
In the margins, John Adams has transcribed a passage from the Pro Milone, a murder case
argued on the grounds of self-defense by ancient Roman jurist Cicero. The handwritten Latin
annotation sits next Justice Blackstone’s contemporary rationale for the same point of law. Many
of Adams’s most compelling legal arguments drew equally from both modern and historic
sources.
The publication of William Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1765 marked a significant innovation
in legal writing. Unlike its weighty English common law predecessors, Blackstone’s work was
succinct, readable, and portable. Adams heavily referenced this four-volume work in 1770
during his preparation to defend the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial.
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1768.
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Artist unknown, Sir William Blackstone. Engraving. Boston Public Library, Rare Books &
Manuscripts Department.
Artist unknown, Marcus Tullius Cicero. Engraving. Boston Public Library, Rare Books &
Manuscripts Department.
A Family Affair
Matthew Hale, The History of the Pleas of the Crown, 1736. The John Adams Library at the
Boston Public Library.
Three generations of Adams lawyers inscribed the title page of this famous work of English
common law: John Adams in 1760, during his earliest years as attorney; son John Quincy during
his years as minister plenipotentiary to Prussia; and grandson George Washington Adams, a
future Massachusetts State Representative.
COUNTRY
Over the course of John Adams’s long life, America grew rapidly from a group of looselyaffiliated British colonies to a powerful nation of twenty-four states. Adams was not a mere
witness to the creation of this new and unprecedented republic: he was instrumental in defining
the new country. He negotiated its geographical borders and commercial rights, persuaded
European powers to officially acknowledge the United States’ independence, contributed to its
most important founding documents, and served as the country’s first vice president and second
president.
The books in John Adams’s library provided their owner with invaluable geographical,
philosophical, and political resources. Adams voraciously absorbed all he could from his books to
make sense of the changing world around him and tested his new knowledge in the heat of
revolutionary and diplomatic action. His dynamic, addictive reading gave force to his shaping of
key documents of American government and the very nation as a whole.
The American commissioners signing the Treaty of Paris (from left): John Jay, John Adams,
Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin.
Image: Unknown artist, The Treaty of Paris (unfinished), oil portrait after the original by
Benjamin West, 1783. Courtesy of National Park Service, Adams National Historical Park.
I would cheerfully retire from public life forever, renounce all Chance for Profits or Honors
from the public, nay I would cheerfully contribute my little Property to obtain Peace and Liberty.
— But all these must go and my Life too before I can surrender the Right of my Country to a free
Constitution.
—John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 7, 1775
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The “Common Sense” of Adams
The most famous pamphlet of the American Revolution, Common Sense was written by
Englishman Thomas Paine in early 1776 as a provocative call to action for the colonies to
declare their independence from Britain. First published anonymously, Common Sense was often
attributed to John Adams, although Adams claimed to a friend that he could “not have written
anything in so manly and striking a style.” Nearly half a million copies of the influential 48-page
pamphlet were printed and circulated during its first year of publication.
John Adams purchased two copies of Common Sense en route to the Continental Congress in
Philadelphia in February, 1776, and sent one home to his wife Abigail, who circulated among
their friends. Although he supported Englishman Thomas Paine’s call for immediate
independence for the American colonies, Adams feared that Paine had “a better hand at pulling
down than building.” As he penned to Abigail, “This writer seems to have very inadequate ideas
of what is proper and necessary to be done in order to form constitutions for single colonies as
well as a great model of union for the whole.”
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
Facsimile copy.
Unknown artist, Thomas Paine, undated. Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts
Dept.
Constitutionally Sound
The Massachusetts Constitution, 1780. Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts
Department.
Constitutions des Treize Etats-Unis de l’Amerique, 1783. The John Adams Library at the Boston
Public Library.
Adams had recently returned from France in 1779 when he was selected as a delegate to the
Massachusetts constitutional convention and asked to write the draft constitution for the state.
The Massachusetts Constitution remains the oldest functioning written constitution in the world
to this day. The document echoed many of Adams’s recommendations in his earlier Thoughts on
Government, particularly the separation and balance of political powers and the establishment of
an independent judiciary.
The Constitutions des Treize Etats-Unis de l’Amerique is one of the rarest and most valuable
books in the Adams Library. Published in Philadelphia in 1783, it is the first complete French
translation of all thirteen American state constitutions, as well as the Declaration of
Independence and the Articles of Confederation. Benjamin Franklin arranged for its publication
several weeks before the Treaty of Paris was signed, and only one hundred large paper copies
were printed for the French king, queen, and their foreign ministers. This copy was bound for
Adams and features a variation of his family crest on the cover.
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Really, there ought not to be a state, a city, a promontory, a river, an harbor, an inlet, or a
mountain in all America but what should be intimately known to every youth who has any
pretensions to liberal education.
— John Adams to Abigail Adams, August 13, 1776
The Adams Atlas
Adams purchased this beautiful atlas of North America while serving as a diplomat in France in
the 1780s. The largest of all the books in his library, the atlas contains hand-colored maps from
two separate atlases that Adams had bound together as a single volume. This particular map
includes the New England country that Adams knew best. His hometown of Braintree (written
here as “Brantree”) is located just south of Boston. Some roads appear simply as double lines. It
is clear that Adams actively used this atlas for reference purposes, hand-indexing the exterior of
each folded map for easy accessibility.
Although the maps were printed by a French publisher, they are based on the best English
cartographic sources of the period. The date on each map represents the publication date rather
than the date the map was first engraved. The elaborate, decorative cartouche in the lower righthand corner idealizes the original landing at Plymouth Rock by the Pilgrims. Although a
seemingly idyllic setting, it also represents England’s commercial interests in the New World,
with the beaver and its fur pelt, tree timber, and the fish swimming along the new land’s
extensive seaboard. A smiling Native American gently bows, welcoming the new arrivals.
[Thomas Jeffreys], “A Map Of The Most Inhabited Part of New England,” Atlas Ameriquain
Septentrional: Contenant les Details des Differentes Provinces de ce Vaste Continent, published
by Georges-Louis Le Rouge, 1778. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
FORTUNE
As a public servant, John Adams never amassed the fortune he might have earned as a successful
attorney. While he freely made the sacrifice, he also lamented his limited means compared to
those of the independently wealthy Founding Fathers. He and his wife Abigail lived very
frugally with one notable exception: he spent enormous sums
on books.
From an early age, John Adams devoted a significant portion of his income to books and book
buying. In 1771, Adams resolved at the age of 36 to make a steady investment in books printed
abroad. He wrote in a letter to his nephew Isaac Smith in London: “I want to agree with some
bookseller of character, in whom I could entirely confide, to send me Books whenever I shall
want them and write for them as long as I shall live. As I am a little inclined to be extravagant in
that kind of entertainment, it is very likely I may write for books to the amount of twenty, perhaps
thirty, pounds sterling a year.”
Adams did not purchase books with a collector’s eye—their value for him lay in their contents.
However, Adams’s library today is indeed worth a fortune. Many volumes are extremely rare,
and their connection with Adams and his many annotations make the collection truly priceless.
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Image: James Green, “Circulating Library,” Poetical Sketches of Scarborough, 1813. Color
Engraving. Courtesy of Boston University.
An Expensive Habit
Antoine-Nicolas Dézallier d’Argenville, Voyage Pittoresque des Environs de Paris,
1779. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
John Adams, Accounts of Books Purchased, 1780. Courtesy of the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
Unknown artist, John Adams, undated. Engraving. Private collection.
The Voyage Pittoresque was one of the most popular guidebooks of eighteenth-century Paris,
featuring descriptions of the royal houses, castles and other “pleasure grounds” located within a
15-mile radius from the city. Adams noted in his diary that he first borrowed a set of these
Parisian guidebooks in 1778 from the flirtatious Madame Brillon. Here he documents the
purchase of his own set of two small volumes for eight livres, or roughly $70 today.
Although a man of modest means, John Adams could not resist the temptations presented by
books and spent significant sums on them, however meager his income. He purchased hundreds
of books during his years in Europe between 1778 and 1788; son John Quincy lamented upon
their return that it took a day and a half to unpack their books alone. Adams kept sporadic
accounts of his book acquisitions and sometimes noted purchase prices in the upper right-hand
corner of title pages alongside his signature.
The Rare and Wonderful
Giacomo Barozzio da Vignola, Regola delli Cinque Ordini d’Architettura di M. Iacomo Barozzio
da Vignola, ca. 1680. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
This beautiful plate book represents the work of leading Renaissance Italian architect, Giacomo
Vignola. First published in 1564, Vignola’s treatise was the earliest known printed work to
define fixed rules for the five orders of classical architecture. The printed Italian text has been
painstakingly translated into French on each facing page by Adams. He took great care to avoid
writing over the architectural illustrations themselves, preventing the migration of ink through
the page.
Ambrogio Leone, De Nola Opsculum, 1514. The John Adams Library at the Boston
Public Library.
Nearly 500 years old, this historic volume of Renaissance archaeology is the earliest
printed book in the collection. These engravings are the first known archaeological plans of an
Italian city other than Rome to appear in print. Adams owned over forty books printed before
1600, nearly all of them rarities in the United States at the time.
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Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1723. The John Adams Library at
the Boston Public Library.
Strabo, Strabonos Peri tes Geographias Biblia Iz, 1549. The John Adams Library at the Boston
Public Library.
Phaedrus, Fables de Phedre : avec des Notes, des Eclaircissements, & un Petit Dictionnaire à la
Fin, a l’Usage des Commençants, 1770. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
Alessandro Giraffi, Le Rivolutioni di Napoli, 1647. The John Adams Library at the Boston
Public Library.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Vida, y Hechos del Ingenioso Caballero Don Quixote
de la Mancha, 1777. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de La Houssaie, Histoire du Gouvernement de Venise, 1676. The John
Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
John Milton, A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works of
John Milton, both English and Latin, 1698. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public
Library.
I have had the very richest Clients in the Province: Yet I am Poor in Comparison of Others… I
ought however, to be candid enough to acknowledge that I have been imprudent. I have spent an
Estate in Books.
— John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 29, 1774
POWER
Eighteenth-century Enlightenment Europe was filled with idealists, but practical John Adams
had little patience for romantic optimism in politics or government. Voltaire, Turgot, Condorcet,
and others emphasized rationalism over religion and asserted that reason could overcome human
passions, but Adams believed that tyranny was an inevitable expression of human nature. Adams
was certain that personal ambition would always overpower reason—history and his long
experience in politics had proven that reality time and again. Only the formal institution of
governmental checks and balances could control man’s competitive instincts.
For Adams, the French Revolution proved to be a telling modern example of the dangers of
unchecked power. Soon after learning that a mob had stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789,
Adams predicted the popular uprising against the French monarchy would fail to create a stable
democracy. During the next decade, the escalating violence, chaos, and bloodshed committed
during the Reign of Terror only confirmed his belief in the need for multiple branches in
government. However, Adams’s early public warnings found few supporters, and he resorted to
the margins of his books to record his disapproval.
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Image: C. Chardon, Journée du 21 janvier 1793, La Mort de Louis Capet
(The Death of King Louis XVI), 1793. Courtesy of Musée de la Révolution Française, Vizille.
Adams vs. Wollstoncraft: A War of Words
Mary Wollstonecraft, An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French
Revolution, 1794. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
One philosophical treatise infuriated John Adams in particular: Mary Wollstonecraft’s An
Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution (1794). A
member of an influential London radical group that included William Godwin and Thomas
Paine, Wollstonecraft was very sympathetic to the French cause.
In 1792 she left England to observe the revolution in Paris firsthand and penned this work in
France several years after her landmark feminist treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Adams’s objections range from points of style and lack of historical evidence to personal attacks
on the author and her gender. Most importantly, Adams continually reinforces the need for
checks and balances within a civil society. Wollstonecraft’s admiration of France’s simple onehouse legislature draws his greatest condemnation: “It is Silly to be eternally harping upon
Simplicity in a form of Government. The Simplest of all possible Governments is a Despotism in
one.”
A Man would be more Simple with but one Ear, one Arm, one Leg. Shall a Legislature have but
one Chamber then, merely because it is more Simple? A Waggon would be more Simple if it went
upon one Wheel: yet no Art could prevent it from oversetting at every step.
— John Adams
I flatter myself it will be allowed by every humane and considerate being, that a political system
more simple than has hitherto existed would effectually check those aspiring follies, which, by
imitation, leading to vice, have banished from governments the very shadow of justice and
magnanimity.
— Mary Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft’s arguments angered Adams so greatly that he filled the small volume with over
10,000 words of handwritten annotations in the margins. It is the most heavily annotated book in
the collection. On many pages, Adams’s extensive scrawled commentary eclipses the printed text
of Wollstonecraft.
“ Power must be opposed to Power: Force to Force: Strength to Strength, Interest to Interest, as
well as Reason to Reason, Eloquence to Eloquence, and Passion to Passion.”
John Adams’s dire predictions proved true: the collapse of the French Revolution in 1794 and
the chaos and political uncertainty that followed greatly facilitated the rise of Napoleon
Bonaparte. Napoleon’s coronation as emperor in 1804 fulfilled John Adams’s prophetic
warnings of the dangers of unchecked power and imbalanced government.
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“ This is a Lady of a masculine masterly Understanding… With a little Experience in
Public affairs…She would have produced a History without the Defects and Blemishes pointed
out with too much Severity perhaps and too little Gallantry in the Notes.”
Wollstonecraft did not live to gain the “little experience” Adams recommended in this note. She
died in 1797 at the age of 38 from complications following the birth of her daughter Mary (the
future Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein).
“ Not one of the Projects of the Sage of La Mancha was more absurd, ridiculous or delirious
than this of a Revolution in France... I thought so in 1785 when it was first talked of. I thought so
in all the intermediate Time, and I think so in 1812.”
Hand-dated annotations indicate that Adams read and commented in this work twice: as vice
president under George Washington in 1796, and in his retirement sixteen years later during the
Napoleonic Wars in 1812, as this note reflects.
“Is a Declaration then a foundation? No more than a heap of Sand or a Pool of Water. They
Stand as firmly without a Declaration as with, if nothing more is done. Laws and
Guardians of Laws must be made and Guardians to watch one another.”
FAME
John Adams was a man driven by ambition, although he often denied the charge. In his later
years, he grew increasingly embittered by the public’s exaltation of America’s more charismatic
founders: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton.
All were lavishly praised with orations and marble monuments, yet Adams felt his own
contributions to American independence—including his call for revolution in the Continental
Congress and pivotal diplomatic negotiations abroad—had been painfully obscured.
In particular, Adams was insulted by contemporary books written about the American
Revolution and its heroes that exalted some founders but neglected to account for the important
role Adams himself had played. As he wrote to friend Benjamin Rush in 1790: “The history of
our revolution will be one continued lye from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will
be that Dr Franklin’s electrical Rod smote the earth, and out sprung General Washington.” In
his retirement, Adams resorted to the margins of his books to personally revise the written record
of American history.
Image: John Henri Isaac Browere, John Adams, 1825. Plaster bust. Courtesy of Fenimore Art
Museum, Cooperstown, NY. Gift of Stephen C. Clark. Photo: Richard Walker.
Revisionist History
William Gordon, History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the
United States of America, 1788. The John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
Gilbert De Pusy Lafayette, President John Adams, undated. Boston Public Library,
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Print Department.
Thomas Jefferson, engraving. Boston Public Library, Prints Department.
Reverend William Gordon had spent years interviewing revolutionary leaders, including Adams,
for his History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the United States of America. Adams
angrily noted in the margins that Gordon’s account was “designed more for Booksellers’ and
Author’s Profit than for the Honour of America or the Cause of Truth.” He took particular
offense at his own listing in the List of Subscribers included in the first volume: “His Excellency
John Adams Esq., the late American Plenipotentiary.” Thomas Jefferson’s listing features a
noticeable elevation in title; yet Adams had served far longer and in many more varied posts. As
Adams peevishly scrawled in the margin: “How happened it that Jefferson was an Ambassador,
and the first subscriber only a Minister? Oh History! How accurate thou art?” Mausoleums,
statues, monuments will never be erected to me. I wish them not. Panegyrical romances will
never be written, nor flattering orations spoken, to transmit me to posterity in brilliant colors.
No, nor in true colors. All but the last I loathe.
— John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 23 March 1809
Enduring Legacy
J. Andrews, The President’s House, engraving, ca. 1805. Boston Public Library, Rare Books &
Manuscripts Department.
William Weyks, Manuscript Translation of Dedication. August 15, 1825. The John Adams
Library at the Boston Public Library.
John Luzac, Ioannis Luzac Oratio De Socrate Cive, 1796. The John Adams Library at the Boston
Public Library.
“~~To the Illustrious John Adams~~
Vice President of the Federal Republic of North America and ....... the Entire Representative
Senate Adams, equally in Genius and Talents, most illustrious…”
Manuscript Translation of Dedication. August 15, 1825.
While John Adams’s fame never attained the heights of glory heaped upon other Founding
Fathers, he enjoyed a far greater measure of respect and recognition than his disgruntled letters
and annotations suggest. The Adams Library is filled with tokens of esteem from admirers,
including books signed as presentation copies by their authors and others bearing printed
dedications to Adams himself.
Adams met Dutch publisher John Luzac, a fervent supporter of the American cause, during
Adams’s ambassadorship to the Netherlands in the 1780s. The two men collaborated on
numerous publications, including the first European translation of the Massachusetts
Constitution. Adams was 89 years old and nearly blind when this lengthy printed dedication to
him in John Luzac’s work was translated from Latin into English by friend William Weyks. The
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two-sided manuscript was simply tucked loosely into the volume. Remarkably, the document
survived intact through all the library’s transfers.
Peter Thacher, A Sermon Preached to the Society in Brattle-Street, Boston, March 25th, 1798,
Occasioned by the Death of Madam Rebecca Gill, 1798. The John Adams Library at the Boston
Public Library.
Adams received many books as gifts, and this small volume’s decoratively embossed cover
belies its somber contents—two sermons eulogizing Adams’s distant relative Rebecca (Boylston)
Gill, wife of then- Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor.
GOD
John Adams was fascinated by questions of religion and spirituality. He read widely in the
subject all his life, and he even considered becoming a minister in his younger years before
settling upon the law. Despite his lifelong pursuit of religious studies and interest in spiritual
controversies, his fundamental beliefs remained constant. As he affirmed to Jefferson at the age
of 81, “The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my Religion.”
As steadfast as he was in his own faith, Adams could not resist ongoing debates regarding the
nature of miracles and questions of religious toleration. His books became places where Adams
could consider, question, and ultimately confirm his basic Unitarian belief in God and the
inscrutability of divine mysteries. These pilgrimages carried him beyond his own moment, from
the realms of ancient pagan mythologies into the mysteries of the Koran and beyond, to explore
the many religions and sects of the world in which he lived. The end result of his study only
confirmed for Adams that his own fundamental beliefs were sound. As he reported to Jefferson,
the reading of all these volumes had “made no Change in my moral or religious Creed, which
has for 50 or 60 Years been contained in four short Words, ‘Be Just and Good.’”
Image: Reverend George Whitney, “The First Congregational (Unitarian) Church,” A History of
Old Braintree and Quincy, 1878. Engraving cut in 1827.
Comparative Religion
The Koran, Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mahomet, 1806. The John
Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
Adams’s interest in religion extended to the Koran, the holiest book of Islam. Although this text
is not annotated, Adams often made positive references to Muhammed and the tenets of Islam in
other writings. This copy is the first printed American edition of the Koran.
Andre Dacier, Bibliotheque des Anciens Philosophes, 1771. The John Adams Library at the
Boston Public Library.
Dacier’s compilation of works by ancient philosophers includes the Golden Verses of
Pythagoras. Famous for the geometrical theorem that bears his name, Pythagoras founded a
quasi-religious order and offered proscriptions for morality, diet, and behavior. This volume is
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relatively unmarked with the exception of the Golden Verses, which Adams ranked line by line.
Some verses are deemed “good” and “too true” while others simply “mad!”
Jacob Bryant, A New System, or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology, 1775–1776. The John
Adams Library at the Boston Public Library.
This page from Bryant’s three-volume work exemplifies Adams’s suspicion of elaborate
religious ceremony. Above are two images of ancient Egyptian ships carried in ritual procession,
and below Adams’s exasperated response: “Is this Religion? Good God!” While the ancient
world may have fascinated Adams, he felt no compunction about criticizing religious practices
that struck him as little more than mindless mummery.
I have more to say on Religion. For more than sixty years I have been attentive to this great
subject. Controversies between Calvinists and Arminians, Trinitarians and Unitarians, Deists
and Christians, Atheists and both, have attracted my attention.
— John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 1813
Exploration of Faith
Image: Jane Stuart, John Adams, undated. After the original 1823 portrait by her father, Gilbert
Stuart. Courtesy of National Park Service, Adams National Historical Park.
Between 1812 and 1816, John Adams embarked on a systematic investigation of ancient
religions, reading scores of volumes on the subject each year. In his late seventies at the time,
John Adams periodically updated his friend Thomas Jefferson on his progress. Thomas Jefferson
commented that Adams’s ambitious undertaking marked “a degree of heroism to which I could
not have aspired even in my younger days.” While Adams drew from a wide range of authors for
his analysis, his primary reading focused on monumental works by three noted religious
scholars: Benjamin Franklin’s associate, Antoine Court de Gébelin; the celebrated classicist,
Jacoonary, Charles Dupuis.
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