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visible in these works. It is easy to imagine readers in the lobby of the still-thriving Nonantum Resort, or the Cape Arundel Inn, perusing Butler’s pages, and Building Old Cambridge will not only be enjoyed and read with profit by city residents but could and should be- come a text for students in Cambridge and Boston studying historic preservation, cultural landscapes, and/or urban planning. But in both Cambridge and Kennebunkport, where (like everywhere) audiences are diverse, multi-layered, and mobile, readers will bring to these books needs both anticipated and unpredictable. Works like these in practice serve multiple constituencies, from local educators and their students, to avocational readers of history, to researchers who will find in these pages evidence and leads that support scholarship on topics we cannot even yet imagine. Perhaps an enterprising historian or two will propose mobile applications that take this content on the road, to the streets of these places, amplifying the deep local knowl- edge here in new ways for a wider variety of uses and occasions. Until then, these volumes should and will find receptive audiences.

Marla R. Miller directs the Public History Program at UMass Amherst. Among other scholarship she is the editor, with Max Page, of Bending the Future: 50 Ideas for the Next 50 Years of Historic Preservation in the United States (2016), and Cultivating a Past: Essays on the History of Hadley, Mas- sachusetts (2009).

“AM I GAGGED”? JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AND PRINCIPLED LEADERSHIP john m. belohlavek

The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams. By Phyllis Lee Levin. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. Pp. 524. $35.00 cloth.)

John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit. By James Traub. (New York: Basic Books, 2016. Pp. xviii, 620. $35.00 cloth.)

M I gagged?” the old man defiantly roared over the cacophony “A of voices surrounding him. That question and the image of

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John Quincy Adams in 1836 challenging his fellow Congressmen to silence him on the constitutional right of petition is perhaps the one moment more than any other that marks a long and distinguished ca- reer. The notion of government functioning within a framework of open debate, the Bill of Rights, and evolving republican and demo- cratic principles has been a hallmark of a nation struggling since the revolution to identify the limits of individual, state, and federal rights. Adams pre-eminently embodies that journey from the political tra- vails and international imbroglios of the early republic through the advent of the issue of slavery and the foreshadowing of civil war. For many years, scholarly interest in Adams largely revolved around his eminently successful stint as Secretary of State under James Monroe as well as his courageous, if somewhat less successful, defense of the first amendment in Congress. In both instances, Adams emerged as a man of vision whose journey was firmly grounded in principle. Authors, and the broader reading public, have discovered John Quincy as a man of ideals and not only as diplomat and congress- man. His life experience, both public and private, represents a sense of morality, dedication, and patriotism that too often appears in con- temporary political rhetoric, but infrequently in practice. While un- relentingly ambitious, Adams’s self-sacrifice and commitment to the physical, educational, and technological growth of the republic make many of us wistful for his re-incarnation. Accordingly, the Adams revival is at full throat. Decades ago, Samuel Flagg Bemis held the sacred ground with added support arriving from young scholars of foreign affairs such as James E. Lewis Jr. and William Weeks. Within the last decade, however, a score of books have been published on various aspects of Adams’s life. Sym- pathetic full biographies of John Quincy and Louisa Catherine have been accompanied by, among others, specific explorations of Adams’s attitudes towards slavery, the gag rule, political philosophy, the Bible, Freemasons, and the War of 1812. Selections from his diary and memoirs are readily available. Of particular interest is the melding of interest in Adams from both academics and writers whose work is aimed at a more popular audience. Much to everyone’s mutual ben- efit, their subject intellectually challenges and informs while yield- ing an engaging family story that spans generations and frequently reaches the level of high drama. Phyllis Lee Levin strives to enhance, and indeed revise, our un- derstanding of Adams the man. He is clearly flawed and haunted by his perceived failures but passionate in his love of country and the

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improvement of mankind. Levin, who has previously surveyed the lives of first ladies Abigail Adams and Edith Wilson, has a clear com- fort zone in dealing with the subject. Her study of The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams is a detailed investigation of the first four decades of Adams’s life—exploring his informal and formal edu- cation in the worlds of philosophy, languages, classics, politics, and diplomacy. The book concludes with the end of Adam’s service as Minister to Russia in 1814. Thus, the reader witnesses his formative years—a period filled with self-revelation and accomplishment, including an amazing European childhood, several foreign posts, and a term in the U.S. Senate. Levin admits that John Quincy has failed to appear, either with his contem- poraries or on the pages of history, as a likeable individual. In the place of the cold, austere Puritan, Levin would like us to find a more sensitive humanitarian. His complexity, she contends, can be located by a careful reading of the original, not the edited, version of his di- ary. Prior editions, though well intended, leached the more intimate side of the man from the text, the loving, caring Adams often disap- pearing amidst matters of public policy. Levin’s reliance on his diary, however, can be fraught with its own limitations. Without becoming overly psychological in approach, Levin shows how John Quincy, the first-born son (1767), had extraordinary ex- pectations and pressure placed upon him in childhood. While most Americans have a fondness for the curmudgeonly John and feisty Abi- gail, their control of John Quincy’s life might be labeled obsessive. Relentless, structured educational demands, especially in language and the classics, were intended to make the son the image of his fa- ther. The parents largely succeeded. Levin’s John Quincy has little boyhood, a six-year-old struggling to attain the perfection expected of him. Parental tutoring gave way to almost a decade (1778–1785) abroad with his father. As John bounced around Europe seeking financial aid for the revo- lution and the nascent republic, the son found himself dispatched to a variety of schools. Results appear mixed. No doubt, travel through England, France, Spain, Holland, Russia, and Sweden provided an education unavailable in a classroom. His fluency in French led to an assignment to St. Petersburg as the interpreter for Francis Dana, the first U.S. Minister to Empress Catherine’s court. Adams was fourteen years old. Certainly, opportunities to dine and converse with both American (Jefferson and Franklin) and continental dignitaries raised the social

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and intellectual bar for the young man. He leaned towards pompos- ity as he critiqued the theater, art, music, and politics in both En- gland and France. As much as he enjoyed Europe, however, Harvard was his destiny. John Quincy was incapable of defying his parents, who sent him off in 1785 into an unfamiliar world. Levin adeptly an- alyzes the challenges awaiting as Adams commenced his studies in Cambridge and attempted to adjust to social life in comparatively parochial New England. His family remained in London where John and Abigail micromanaged the lives of their other children only to lesser degrees than John Quincy. Levin’s revelations about the soap opera-like courtships and marriages, professional careers, and finan- cial failures of the Adams children are painful to read. No one es- caped lofty expectations. The author details his vacillating appraisal of college social and aca- demic life, noting the perhaps predictable boredom and depression that Adams endured. His legal apprenticeship of three years in re- mote Newburyport only exacerbated the situation. Law was his or- dained career, a vocation that Adams reluctantly embraced and felt pessimistic about the prospects. His social world in this period ap- pears equally grim, relieved by rounds of drinking and partying with friends and romantic crushes on the flirtatious Nancy Hazen and more serious Mary Frazier. At 5’7”, with a tendency towards portli- ness and unkempt appearance, Adams seems an unlikely suitor. Levin illustrates the vulnerable John Quincy as she describes the frustra- tion and pathos he suffered in succumbing to his parents’ wishes and abandoning his strong emotional relationship with Frazier. Whether class, background, age, finances, legal practice, or timing, there would never be the right moment and woman suitable for John Quincy, in- cluding Mary Frazier and Louisa Catherine Johnson. Practicing law in Boston in the early 1790s, John Quincy found the dullness he anticipated. Levin hints at the unthinkable—Adams’s en- nui may have driven him to engage prostitutes. Regardless, his edu- cation continued, particularly self-discovery concerning his views on politics and people. He had already demonstrated several elements of his personal philosophy that would endure through a lifetime: sym- pathy for the oppressed combined with a fear of unlimited democ- racy and the mob. Daniel Shays’s ill-fated rebellion in Massachusetts and the excesses of the French Revolution propelled his thinking and led to the anonymous authorship of numerous well-received es- says attacking the French and defending U.S. neutrality at the dawn of a new round of European wars. Levin shows how John Quincy

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found satisfaction and eventual recognition in the political sphere, even as his legal career languished and depression seemed to loom perpetually. George Washington rescued him from his professional doldrums with an appointment as Minister to Holland in 1794, followed by a four-year stint in Prussia in 1797. The absence from the law and parental oversight allowed John Quincy to evolve as a diplomat and keen observer of the European scene, as well as assert a modicum of personal independence. Levin shines in her ongoing discussion of the courtship and marriage (1797) of the stoic John Quincy and genteel Louisa Catherine. A troubled relationship, the author allows, but one that worked in spite of their very real differences in temperament and interests. Abigail never really sanctioned the nuptials and was candid in her skepticism about Louisa’s ability to adjust to a New England lifestyle. Sadly, the omnipresent tension and insensitivity led Louisa to fashion a mean-spirited image of her husband in an autobiography— The Adventures of a Nobody (1840). While sympathetic with Louisa whose numerous failed pregnancies, perpetual ill-health, and depres- sion seemed to consume her, Levin is also highly critical of a woman whose acerbic attacks on John Quincy are deemed unfair (“enough acid to permanently deface his image,” [284]) and have colored his historical persona. The Adams’s found a new world awaiting them with a Jefferso- nian victory in 1801. Thankfully escaping his profession, John Quincy was soon elected by the Federalists to the Massachusetts, and then the U.S., senate (1803). Avoiding the political wrangling of his fa- ther’s presidency, John Quincy positioned himself as an incorrupt- ible non-partisan. With every principled stand, whether over the Louisiana Purchase or the Embargo of 1807, unappreciative Fed- eralists marginalized their uncontrollable senator. The final apostasy of supporting James Madison for president prompted Adams’s exit from the Senate and appointment to Russia in 1809. Five positive years in St. Petersburg and then several more in London simply confirmed his standing as the pre-eminent American diplomat and expert on foreign affairs. While his “remarkable education” had not concluded, his reputation was firmly in place and the ensuing advance to become Secretary of State and then president was, in fact, perhaps unremarkable. James Traub’s, John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit continues the saga of a virtuous man of moral and physical courage tormented by his own ambition and fears for the fate of the new republic. As a full

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biography, the author examines the youthful Adams in two hundred pages. Traub and Levin are largely in agreement on the qualities and defects of their subject. His public persona: simple manner, Christian faith, and intellectual prowess melded with the political: commitment to the Union, limited democracy, and opposition to slavery. As Traub explains, “Adams was a brilliant man who seemed to know everything about everything” (p. xvi). The authors concur on John Quincy’s soli- tary nature and his hardness in relationships—which cost him dearly both in family matters and in government. One searches fruitlessly for emotional models in John or Abigail that would have given the young Adams a sense that unconditional love and support trumped strict discipline and achievement. The resultant youth could be hot- tempered, imperious, and vain. Traub concurs that Adams found his true self in public service where ambitions and ideals might be combined. His principles cost him dearly, as the author discusses how his views in the U.S. Senate resulted in the dissolution of old New England friendships and ulti- mate political exile. Sadly, he frequently sacrificed family as well, and his marriage to Louisa Catherine, who “had been raised to be a fine, if useless, ornament,” (82) would often prove not to be a trusting, mutually satisfying bond. Traub appears somewhat sympathetic with Louisa, suggesting that she possessed a physical and intellectual vigor often denied her. If Congress did not offer Adams salvation, certainly foreign service would do so. Traub lauds John Quincy for his accomplishments in Alexander’s Russia and negotiating the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. Ironically, the combative Adams had more problems with his American colleagues, especially Henry Clay, than the En- glish. Two successful years as Minister in London positioned Adams nicely for his selection to head the State Department by Monroe, who Traub views as well-intentioned, if not brilliant. The author gives us a visionary John Quincy, who saw the expanding U.S. as a continen- tal force. Unyielding in his goals, the Secretary pushed Indians and Spaniards aside. “For Adams, American destiny had a moral force of its own” (223). As for Latin America, members of Congress led by Clay, advocated an active U.S. role of recognition, support, and possible alliance with the former Spanish colonies. The cautious New Englander persua- sively maneuvered the administration towards a restrained posture. Skeptical that the colonials were prepared to embrace republican principles, Adams, the realist, countered famously that the U.S. “goes

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not abroad in search of monsters to destroy” (258). Adams left his mark, boldly advancing American interests in the hemisphere, chal- lenging Russian expansion in the Northwest, encouraging the status quo for Spanish-held Cuba, and tempering the president’s idealism in the Monroe Doctrine. Anything less than the presidency would have been considered fail- ure by John Quincy and his family. The collapse of political parties by 1824 proved unfortunate. Adams disdained appealing to voters and, as Traub notes, was not good at it. His style and principles thus hand- icapped him in the contest that ensued. Instead of an easy victory, Adams was the runner-up to the upstart Andrew Jackson in both the electoral and popular vote. The absence of a majority may have pro- duced the infamous “corrupt bargain” in which Clay proffered his support to Adams in exchange for an appointment as Secretary of State, but like most historians, Traub sees no smoking gun, conced- ing that ambition prevailed and Adams sacrificed his principles. Clay believed reward would follow, and so it did, fueling the Jacksonian campaign for 1828. The Adams presidency appears enigmatic. No other chief execu- tive brought greater foreign policy experience and a more aggressive domestic vision to the White House than John Quincy. A diverse cabinet, led by Clay, provided honest counsel, if not always support. For the first two years of his term, the administration controlled the House of Representatives; yet his presidency barely rises above medi- ocrity. A 2017 C-Span poll of almost 100 historians placed Adams at 21 of 44 presidents. Even this ranking may be too generous. He is given high marks for “moral authority,” “pursuing equal justice for all,” and “setting the agenda.” In spite of a futuristic vision of an economic partnership with the Latin Americans (the Panama Congress) and an ambitious agenda of national projects for fostering transportation, technology, and educa- tion, with few exceptions, the efforts failed. The time was not right for an activist state. Indeed, the ideas themselves were often unpop- ular in a rising climate of individual liberty and states’ rights, but the blame must also be shouldered by Adams whose personal political style was at best diffident. Traub posits that Henry Clay, astute, or- ganized, and charismatic, “might have made a much better president than Adams did” (327). The White House years were a low point in the relationship be- tween John Quincy and Louisa Catherine. Louisa’s ongoing depres- sion was compounded by the suicide in 1829 of son George, whose

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life had spiraled downward into financial ruin and alcoholism. Traub ably investigates the generally unhappy ebb and flow of family rela- tions while eschewing Levin’s more critical attitude towards Louisa. John Quincy’s election to Congress to 1830 did little to improve their rapport. Adams savored this final phase of public life, the soli- tary, iconoclastic rebel defying the “slaveocracy” and defending first amendment freedoms. “Old Man Eloquent” continually brought abo- litionist petitions before the House, prompting exasperated mem- bers to pass a “gag rule” prohibiting their introduction. Undaunted, Adams’s repeated efforts led to motions of censure, and ultimately winning him the respect, if not the admiration, of his colleagues. Traub credits Jackson, Clay, and Congress for asserting American nationalism while also compromising on issues such as the tariff and nullification. John Quincy, non-partisan except for a brief flirtation with the Anti-Masons, was not so generous. He denounced most of the leaders of the day, Whigs and Democrats, as scoundrels, victims of their own ambition or tools of the slave power. As the author suggests, perhaps Adams would not have been so sharply critical of others if he had been willing to admit to his own unflagging aspirations. In the early 1830s, Adams separated himself from organized abo- lition, fearing the demands of immediate emancipation might well prompt civil war. Slavery was a moral evil, but the union must be pre- served. Even so, Adams became an icon in the anti-slave community highlighted by his involvement in the triumphant defense in federal court of the Africans seized on the Amistad in 1839. Other victories were achieved; the gag rule finally defeated. But Texas annexation and the Mexican War loomed on the horizon—and with them the dreaded expansion of slavery into new western territories. John Quincy tum- bled into fatalism about disunion by early 1844, telling his fellow con- gressmen, “I say now, let it come! Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come! Let justice be done though the heavens fall” (508). His fatal stroke on the floor of the House in 1848, and the state funeral in the Capitol provided a fitting end to an extraordinary public life. Ironically, John C. Calhoun served as a pallbearer. Both Levin and Traub offer well-written and well-researched, very comprehensible accounts of John Quincy and the Adams family. Amidst the many choices on the subject, readers of the Quarterly will benefit from exploring these volumes. Grounded in primary sources, especially John Quincy’s diary, their research incorporates recent scholarship and, importantly, seeks balance. Minor errors dis- tract, e.g., Virginian John Randolph of Roanoke does not come from South Carolina (Traub, 349) or New Yorker Millard Fillmore from

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New Hampshire (Traub, 453), but do not damage the narratives. More analytical conclusions would also have been welcome. Without denying Adams’s ambition and arrogance, brilliance, and integrity, Levin assures us of his humanity. Traub presents a patriot of intellect and vision, a public man limited by a myopic view of his own drive and inflexibility to adjust to the realities of the personali- ties and politics of a rising democracy. Nonetheless, as we yearn for the principled public servant, John Quincy continues to command our attention and these volumes further our knowledge. Traub contends, “To know Adams is not to love him. It is, however, to admire him greatly” (xviii). Certainly, John Quincy was conveniently principled, sometimes ris- ing to high dudgeon when it suited his purpose, in other situations, looking aside. For many historians, Adams has become a touchstone for thoughtful, constitutionally-based political attitudes and values af- fecting both foreign and domestic policies. Whether resting on ei- ther conservative or liberal foundations, perhaps the time has come to explore more fervently the principled nature of American leadership over the past two centuries.

John M. Belohlavek is professor of nineteenth-century American his- tory at the University of South Florida in Tampa. His most recent book is Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican-American War.

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