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Biography of John Adams Is Reminder
of Proud Heritage
Massachusetts'
Heritage of Faith and Fatherhood
Book Review:
"John Adams" By David McCullough
By Paul Moreno
February 2003 Print Edition
Massachusetts has always been a political
and cultural leader-for better in the era of the American
Revolution, for worse today.
David McCullough's biography of John Adams reminds
us of the proud heritage of Massachusetts in the American
founding.
Adams, the most conservative of the founding fathers,
is finally starting to get the respect he deserves.
McCullough's book sold over a million copies in hardcover,
and is now out in paperback.
But people praising the book do not point out what
really made Adams great: faith and fatherhood.
"What has preserved this race of Adamses in all
their ramifications in such numbers, health, peace,
comfort, and mediocrity?" Adams wrote to Benjamin
Rush. "I believe it is religion, without which
they would have been rakes, fops, sots, gamblers,
starved with hunger, or frozen with cold, scalped
by Indians.."
As McCullough concludes, Adams was "both a devout
Christian and an independent thinker." Prayer
got him through his most difficult times, and he rebuked
many of the "enlightened" figures of his
day who mocked Christianity.
McCullough is especially good at describing the sacrifices
that Adams made for his family and for his country.
Adams' father, deacon John Adams, was his idol, and
Adams always believed that "our fathers have
earned and bought [liberty] for us at the expense
of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and
their blood." Adams did the same for his children.
And all Americans can claim to be John Adams' children.
Even if we cannot trace our ancestry back to the Adams
or other founding families but, as Lincoln said, when
we "look through that old Declaration of Independence
they find those old men say that 'We hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,'
and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught
in that day evidences their relation to those men,
that it is the father of all moral principle in them,
and that they have a right to claim it as though they
were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of
the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are."
While Jefferson wrote most of the Declaration of Independence,
Adams was most responsible for getting it approved,
McCullough points out.
He also wrote the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780-the
oldest constitution still in use in the world, and
the model for the United States Constitution of 1787.
Adams was among the first Americans to realize the
dangers of the French Revolution. "I know not
what to make of a republic of thirty million atheists,"
he said, while Jefferson and others continued to praise
the revolution even after the guillotine and terror
had killed thousands. In 1793 Jefferson wrote, "The
liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue
of the contest. rather than it should have failed,
I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there
but an Adam and an Eve left in every continent, and
left free, it would be better than it now is."
Of course, Adams had his foibles. He was vain and
irascible, and he signed the Sedition Act of 1798.
But he was accused of being many things that he wasn't-overly
suspicious, and partisan. In fact, his refusal to
take advantage of partisanship was what ruined his
presidency. He kept the United States out of war with
France when going to war would have strengthened his
political position.
Adams thought that this was the greatest accomplishment
of his life. It was a life for which all Americans
should be grateful.
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