Fortunate Son

Dear Friends,

I apologize for not being a good blogger.  The school year overwhelmed me as I took on two new classes this past academic year.  It was a good year and I hope to blog consistently over the summer and try to blog on a more regular schedule come August.
I confess to having a fascination with the Adams family.  No, not the TV series, but the actual Adams family consisting of John, Abigail, John Quincy, Charles Francis, and Henry Adams among others.  This fascination began with my reading of Paul Nagel's Descent From Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family.  I first read this book in the mid 1980s when I was a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club.  I joined this in high school and it proved to be formative for my intellectual development.
I love Nagel's compelling narrative of this family and the many tragedies that befall such a prominent American family.  This book came out years before the John Adams resurgence and the surge in interest in the founding fathers that scholars like Joseph Ellis ushered in during the last decade.
I found there to be striking similarities between the Adams family and the Kennedy family.  Both were Massachusetts families with a real passion for public service and both had numerous members who fell prey to alcohol or drug abuse.  There were definite high points in both families, but there were considerable setbacks too.  One family had strong and long lasting ties to the founding of the country and the other was a family of Irish immigrants who rose to the top of American society through force of will and perhaps a bit of bootlegging.
So, when I came across Harlow Giles Unger's John Quincy Adams, I couldn't resist trying it out.  I had purchased this book, but it languished on a shelf for many months until I started reading it over the Winter break this past year.  I was immediately hooked by the skillful narrative. Unger starts the action with John and his young son John Quincy in mortal peril from an approaching British ship.  The United States has fought the Revolutionary War and John Adams is going to Europe to attempt to establish some diplomatic relations with European powers.  He decided it would be good for his eldest son to accompany him to Europe for the education and the experience.
John Quincy proves to be an asset for his father even at a young age of 14 as he works as a secretary for another American diplomat.  I was continually astonished at the brilliance of John Quincy Adams.  He seemed to learn languages almost at will and when he returned to the U.S. to attend Harvard, he was fluent in French, spoke Dutch, German, and had been well versed in the classical languages of Latin and Greek too.  He was a prodigious reader and gained tremendously valuable experience in diplomacy through his contacts with other American and European diplomats.
John Quincy also met the most famous men and women of his era.  He knew Ben Franklin, was a close confidant of Thomas Jefferson, and in his long and productive life, he met kings, czars, and the most prominent intellectuals of his day in both Europe and the U.S.  He was able to remember some of the Revolutionary War battles and lived to see the U.S. defeat Mexico in the Mexican-American War.  He is largely responsible for the Monroe Doctrine as it was written, played a significant role in the Missouri Compromise of 1820.  He was a fervent abolitionist who is renowned for his representation of the slaves who had killed their captors aboard the Amistad, and had the opportunity to serve as the Supreme Court Chief Justice, but turned it down.  He served as Ambassador to many of the major European countries, was President, and then served and died on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He also was a loving father, a good husband, and generous provider for members of his extended family, several of whom were left without their fathers who died from alcoholism.
He lived several lifetimes and yet never wavered from his fierce love and patriotism in service of his nation.  In fact, his sense of honor may have cost him a second term as president, but he stood by his principles and refused to campaign for reelection while serving his first term.
John Quincy Adams comes alive in Unger's account.  Unger, like David McCullough before him, uses correspondence of the Adams (John and Abigail too) family, but sparingly.  He shows a tremendous grasp of the material and the historical milieu.  Unger has written several books about other colonial figures and it shows in his story.  He is at ease with the various political parties, constitutional issues, and cultural divides evident in the infancy of the United States.
I have not read any of Unger's other works, but I plan to seek them out.  He is a graceful writer who writes in a compelling style that reminds me of some of my favorite historical authors like Robert Caro and William Manchester.  Though I have suffered through doctoral colloquia in History, I typically don't like writing by academics, because they are often dry and pretentious.  Unger is second to none in terms of his historical expertise, but like Caro and Manchester, he writes so vividly that I felt I had a good sense of the motivations of this American patriot and fortunate son, John Quincy Adams.
If you like biographies and works on the American colonial period, I highly recommend John Quincy Adams.  It is an excellent work!