John M. Belohlavek

596 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 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 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00643 by guest on 01 October 2021 REVIEW ESSAYS 597 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 career. 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 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00643 by guest on 01 October 2021 598 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 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 education 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 diary. 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 expectations 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 father. 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 revolution 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 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00643 by guest on 01 October 2021 REVIEW ESSAYS 599 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 financial 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 appears 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, including 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 education 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.

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