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Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams

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John Adams, following his death in 1826, has been essentially a non-entity in the eyes of the general American public. While nearly any school child can tell you about George Washington and his cherry tree, and any middle-schooler can tell you about Jefferson and his contention in the Declaration of Independence that ALL men are created equal, Adams remains obscure. In fact most Americans know him as the Founder who by some "twist of cosmic fate" died on the same day as Thomas Jefferson, exactly fifty years following the Declaration of Independence. Beyond that however, if they know anything, it was that he was a wild and eccentric man, prone to irrational behavior. In writing and language that is equally accessible to the historian and the casual reader, Joseph Ellis reexamines the life of Adams primarily after his retirement to his family home in Quincy, Massachusetts. In doing so, Ellis brings a fresh perspective in understanding the legacy of one of the most misunderstood men of American history; a perspective that can help reform not only the historian's view, but the public's perception as well. Ellis dedicates merely the first chapter to the years that preceded Adams's retirement to Quincy. It is the essential background that one needs to know and understand in order to realize the full extent of the torment and bitterness experienced by Adams in the early years of retirement. During his years as President he suffered bitter attacks from both the High Federalists and the Jeffersonians for his attempts to "carve out a centrist political position from which he might better implement policies that served the long-term national interest" (Ellis 30). Unfortunately, most of his career as President was characterized by criticisms, just and unjust, of his temperament. It was these attacks, in particular Hamilton's Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq. President of the United State, in addition to what Ellis deems to be "an intense mixture of political commitment, palpable ambition, and painful insecurity" (Ellis 38) that lead to his bitterness following his failed bid for reelection. In truth, the bitterness following his retirement is what Ellis uses to demonstrate Adams growth through the years, from the impetuousness of character the blighted his political career, to the sagacity of over twenty years of self-analysis and retrospect. During the initial years of his retirement Adams spent time attacking those he felt had done him injury or had treated him unjustly. Through his friendship with Benjamin Rush, Adams was able to reestablish a relationship with Thomas Jefferson, the man who had beat him during his reelection bid. This is the starting point for the rest of what Ellis wants to communicate. He uses the Jefferson-Adams correspondence to establish many of the points he wants to communicate about Adams, and his unique view of the world. Ellis characterizes Adams as, "the supreme political realist of the revolutionary generation" (Ellis 173). He was a man who, amidst unbridled optimism and hope for the future, was willing to point out the potential pitfalls of society. Ellis states, "Even without the benefit of hindsight, Adams had warned Jefferson that individual freedom and social equality were incompatible ideas, that ignoring the conflict only assured the triumph of the privileged, as in fact happened" (Ellis 221). The brilliance of Adams was his ability to understand the problems facing fledgling America. According to Ellis his initiatives in foreign policy set the tone for America for the next hundred years (Ellis 42). He saw the precarious situation of the young country, predicted the coming of the War of 1812, the necessity of a strong navy, and a conflict over slavery that would tear the nation asunder. Adams's legacy was denied for many years simply because of its pessimistic nature was a stark contrast to the unbridled idealism of Jefferson and other Founding Fathers. Ellis demonstrates to the historian and the casual reader the greatness of a man who's contribution to American history is more often than not summed up in a few sentences, or one small paragraph. He takes a long look Adams, his beliefs, and his temperament, and elevates it, warts and all, to a level on which he can finally be understood. Ellis is establishing the posterity that has so long been denied to perhaps the greatest mind of the Revolutionary period.

Of all the Founding Fathers, Adams is perhaps the least respected. Washington and Jefferson are safely memorialized on Mount Rushmore and Franklin is regarded by all as the quintessential American. Yet even a cursory reading of a history of the founding of America shows time and again of the importance of Adams. Very early in the debates regarding the future of the colonies, Adams knew reconciliation would be impossible. He worked on over 30 committees of the Continental Congress, was a foreign minister to France and then later served as our second president. Yet popular history has not served him well, something Adams was quite aware of even in his own lifetime.

Author Ellis does an admirable job of portaying Adams as probably the most human of the Founding Fathers. Unable to control his temper or hide his true feelings, Adams always seemed to do the right thing yet in such a way that he received no credit for his actions. Ellis points out how Adams seemed to divine the future better than his contemporaries but his personality was such that few could admit he was right.

The book is not a biography but a thought provoking character study. The only quibble I have with the book is that the relationship between Adams and his nemesis, Alexander Hamilton is never fully developed. Adams only truly despised one person and even after the death of Hamilton was unable to write about him in any kind of conciliatory manner. I wished this relationship would have been explored further. Otherwise, I gained a great deal of respect for Adams and even began to like him. It is easy to identify with Adams, a work horse who said what he thought, no matter how unpopular. Studies like this will hopefully resurrect his reputation and restore him to his proper place in the history of the United States.

The felicitously written book has done a great deal to raise John Adams' reputation among the general public. Ellis concentrates on Adams' retirement years with chapters on his political writings, his correspondence with Jefferson, his other friendships, and his family life. While Ellis' goal is to explore Adams' character, this book necessarily covers Adams' remarkable achievements and explains clearly Adams' contributions as a political thinker. Adams was a complex figure; warm-hearted, sometimes vituperative, an unsystematic thinker and writer and thinker with remarkable insights. Adams refusal to accept the somewhat facile conventions of Jeffersonian liberalism made him an anachronism but his skepticism about American exceptionalism proved prescient. Adams was also remarkably accurate in major policy decisions. Over and over again, he made the right choice, even when his choices were unpopular. His pursuit of neutrality during his Presidency, for example, left him politically isolated but was undoubtedly the correct policy. As Ellis points out, Adams' reputation among scholars has risen steadily over the last fifty years. Today, he stands second only to Washington in the Pantheon of the Founders. Ellis's book and the just published biography by David McCullough are boosting awareness of Adams' achievements among the general public. An interesting corollary of this phenomenon is a corresponding fall in the reputation of Adams' political rival, intellectual antagonist, and friend; Thomas Jefferson. To scholars, Jefferson's achievements seem less than they did a generation ago. Pauline Maier summarized this clearly when she described Jefferson not as the author of the Declaration of Independence but rather as its draftsman; emphasizing the collective production of that great document. In the aftermath of the Civil Rights and Womens Movements, a man like Adams, who was able to treat intelligent women with relative equality, is more attractive than a probable sexual exploiter of his slaves like Jefferson. True to his Puritan heritage, Adams felt that reputation and adulation were snares and fatal to true virtue. His conduct towards his contemporaries tended to degrade his reputation. It is clear also that Adams hoped, perhaps expected, that posterity would rate him highly. As with other predictions, Adams appears correct.

I searched this book out after first reading Professor Ellis's outstanding character analysis of Thomas Jefferson in "American Sphinx". "Passionate Sage" was written before the Jefferson book (which won a National Book Award) and, as a critical analysis of John Adam's character , should be regarded as a companion piece to American Sphinx. The two books tell a similar story, but from the very different perspectives of Jefferson and Adams. With a fluent, gripping and readable style uncommon among professional historians, Professor Ellis makes a compelling case that the eccentric and volatile Adams is seriously underappreciated both for his towering contributions to this nation and for his unconventional yet oddly endearing personality. Anyone who likes American history should not miss this book.

Joseph Ellis has taken upon himself the task of bringing the relatively unknown 2nd President of the United States out of obscurity and making him relevant to today's industrial America. Surprisingly, Ellis finds a way to make this shadowy figure between Washington and Jefferson every bit as memorable and important as his predecessor and successor; no simple task, given that Adams was forcibly shoved from the pantheon of American heroes over a century ago.

Passionate Sage reveals Adams as he would have liked: Contrarian in every respect, an irritating mixture of sanguine and volcanic, pessimistic and hopeful, witty and reserved. More importantly, though, Ellis reveals Adams for the master of political thought that he was. No longer is Adams a footnote between the Great Leader and the Republican - in this slim tome, Ellis finds a way to enlighten readers to Adams' unparalleled contributions to Constitutional and American history. As history has shown, few men did more for the American cause than the underappreciated John Adams, and even fewer living Americans are aware of the monumental accomplishments the Sage of Quincy achieved in his nearly nine decades in America.

Though Passionate Sage falls victim to the dry definitions of a professional academic, these drudging pages do not occur with great frequency. However, the slim size of this volume does seem cluttered with pedantic and tangential discussions that distract from the subject himself - ironically, the same slight Adams suffered in his own time.

Ellis' fine work demonstrates that, unlike Jefferson, John Adams' vision of government still has much to teach us today. While Adams was blessed with a long and productive life, the author's focus on his retirement years deprives us of some insights and perspective on Adams' presidency and his days as an ambivalent leader of the revolutionary movement.

I would recommend this book highly; however, if you are only going to read one book on Adams, read John Ferlings' biography, which is broader in scope and just as well written.

Despite some controversy regarding Ellis's plagiarism from other sources for this book, I love it. I feel the the much more popular McCullough view of Adams is also excellent but would encourage people to t read this book because for me it presented the mind of John Adams much more clearly. I prefer it, despite the protests of my friends and colleagues who do not see what I see in this book, a gem.

Of all the Founders, John Adams is simultaneously one of the most enjoyable and the crankiest. He liked virtually nothing that was taking place in the political scene of his day, and he would certainly have disapproved of nearly everything taking place today. For instance, though he is considered a conservative, he would rail and rant against those on the Religious Right who want to claim that God especially favors the United States (he felt the notion of any Divine Favor on the US was an utter delusion). He would be outraged by the increased role that the economic elite play in today's political process, while at the same time rushing forth to point out that he had predicted its inevitability. He would further be outraged that the president, the part of the government he placed what little hope he had for a more democratic form of government, was not only refusing to fight the economic elite, but fighting for an expansion of its privileges. On the other hand, Adams might take some solace in the end of slavery. But on the whole, he would point out all the ways that the selfish passions of human beings had intruded into American political life.

Joseph Ellis, who is the finest popular historian of the Founding Generation currently at work, wrote this exceptional character sketch of John Adams several years before his similar sketch of Jefferson, his group portrait FOUNDING BROTHERS, or his excellent biography of Washington, HIS EXCELLANCY. If one has read FOUNDING BROTHERS, one knows that Adams is possibly Ellis's favorite of the founders. All of the other major Founders remind us more of statues, he points out, than real live flesh and blood human beings. One never makes that mistake with Adams. He is all flesh and blood and more than a little vitriol. Though arguably the most intellectual of the Founders (though Franklin was a practical genius, he wasn't nearly as literate as Adams; in fact, Adams's closest competitor, as in so many things, is Jefferson), he was a man of intense and always expressed passion. He could summon his formidable powers of reason, but only in a cause that inflamed his emotions.

Ellis does a great job for the most part of exploring Adams's fascinating character. He is guilty, in my opinion, of minimizing Adams quirks. For instance, Adams was incredibly grudging in any praise of Benjamin Franklin, veing one of the very few people of his age not impressed by the Sage of Philadelphia. Ellis hints at this, but doesn't dweel on it, but the almost pathological need that Adams possessed to denigrate Franklin and others is a major clue to his personality. Ellis dwells more on Adams need to elevate his contribution to the Revolution, or at least to make sure that his very real contributions were not forgotten or underestimated, as they most assuredly have been for most of the past two hundred years.

Ellis also does a good job of showing Adams's importance as a political thinker (though I would recommend even more highly John Patrick Diggins's short biography of Adams in this regard--Ellis is more of an historian, while Diggins is a political theorist, and is stronger in this regard). Adams is one of the great political critics in American history, though it is not often appeciated that he was, as so many other political thinkers are (one thinks of Marx or Nietzsche in this regard) better on attack than in contructing. Adams offers a host of trenchant and accurate analyses of the underlying dangers to democracy or any form of government, but despite his wealth of insight offers virtually nothing tempting in the place of what he criticizes. He was brilliant at seeing how things shouldn't be, but a bit vague on how things ought to be. Ellis mentioned but doesn't make graphic just how awful Adams is as a writer. I own and have struggled to read the collection THE POLITICAL WRITINGS OF JOHN ADAMS, edited by George W. Carey. Though I have read Hegel and Spinoza and Heidegger, I found much of this much, much harder going. Adams is frequently a terrifically uninteresting writer. He can lace monumentally dull and impenetrable material with passages laced with terrific insight. All this changes, however, when you turn to the Jefferson-Adams correspondence. Here he comes alive. Ellis does a good job of bringing this out.

Ellis makes the mistake, as so many do, of characterizing Adams as a conservative. Given the fact that he would detest virtually every aspect of conservatism today I find this characterization to be incomprehensible. I think he was a conservative by accident. Had the predominant trend of the day been conservative rather than Jeffersonian, I think we would have seen an impassioned Adams rising against what he perceived as the many mistakes of the conservative cause. I honestly don't believe that any government, conservative or liberal, radical or revolutionary, would have contented Adams. I've seen Thoreau characterized as a coyote, too wild for civilized life, destined to howl on the edges of society. I think that fits Adams as well.

I thoroughly recommend this biographical sketch (for it is not a true biography) by Ellis, though I would hasten to add that I perhaps like Diggins even briefer book a bit more. Though Adams was neglected for most of the period since his death, these days he has regained much of his deserved stature. Anyone not familiar with him needs to be. Next to Franklin he is probably the most likable of the Founders, and none of them anticipated the dangers facing our republic better than he.

Ellis again does an excellent job of making public figures who are seemingly lost to history real again. While not as flowery and readable as McCullough's work, I believe Ellis' effort to be more substantive. Following only Adams' post-presidency years, Ellis explores Adams' core political principles and beliefs through the struggles and battles of his sunset years.

Through Adams' fight with long-time friend Mercy Otis Warren over his legacy, to his arguments with Mary Wollstonecraft in the margins of her own books, Ellis is able to show an aging John Adams at his best (or worst): outspoken, irreverent, fiesty, and more often than not, correct. The reader is led through Adams' opinions on government, law, the French Revolution, and more. The curious reader would do well to compare Adams' and Jefferson's opinions of the French revolutionaries, keeping "track of score."

I only wish that Ellis could have written more. This book, while dry at times, will hold the reader's attention and leave them wanting more chapters.

Recommended to the general reader who has already read through a full-length Adams biography.

Written with wit, charm, and a keen eye for historical detail, this book restores John Adams to his rightful place as one of our most intelligent, prescient forefathers. Dealing primarily with his post-presidential life, the author creates a fascinating image of an aging, yet mentally sound patriarch attempting to rehabilitate his image and settle old scores with former foes. In addition to highlighting the legendary correspondence with Jefferson (where Adams doubled the epistolary output of Mr. Jefferson), the author also brings to light his lengthy disputes with Mary Wollstonecraft and Mercy Otis Warren. Fortunately, Adams is neither belittled nor attacked with the unfairness of hindsight. Instead, he is presented in the fullness of his complexity; often self-righteous, obsessive, and grouchy, yet always believing that the principles of the Revolution were best served by a national, rather than provincial, approach. Few have disputed Adams' eloquence or dignity and now, thanks to Mr. Ellis, we can finally see that Adams just might be one of the most relevant.