Fathoming the First Family of the Early Republic

I am not, never was, and never shall be a great man, John Adams admitted in 1790 (Ferling, p. 446). Two hundred years later the of John Adams remains problematic. What explains the elevation of such a personality to the highest public offices, particularly after the completion of the Revolution in 1788? asks a contemporary historian, considering the temperamental gulf and unrepublican proclivities that set Adams apart from other Americans.' Both John Ferling's balanced, well-informed, and readable biography and Joseph J. Ellis's felicitously written and probing inquiry into the mind and personality of John Adams, focusing on the passionate sage after he left public life, make a strong case for Adams's claims to greatness, warts and all. From early in life, Adams sought greatness, self-consciously, systematically, intensely, yet always guilt-ridden, a portrait richly documented as for no other contemporary, thanks to the extraordinary diaries and letters which The Adams Papers have made available to modern scholarship in the past thirty years. These records provide Edith Gelles, too, with remarkable data for reconstructing the life of Abigail Adams, who made no small sacrifices for the sake of her country and her husband's pursuit of greatness and who achieved in her own right a notable place in American history occupied by few other American woman. For Gelles the challenge is to see Abigail Adams in her own right, rather than in the shadows cast by her famous husband's luminous career

Context (archaeology · Geography · American Constitutional Law and Politics

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