Читать книгу A View from Abroad - Jeanne E. Abrams - Страница 6

But you must remember that my voyages and journeys are not for my private information, instruction, improvement, entertainment or pleasure; but laborious and hazardous enterprises of business [on behalf of my country]. I shall never be polished by travel.

John Adams to Nabby (Abigail) Adams Smith, December 12, 1779

I would not exchange my country for the wealth of the Indies, or be any other than an American, though I might be queen or empress of any nation upon the globe.

Abigail Adams to John Adams, May 18, 1778

OCEAN TRAVEL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WAS ALWAYS an uncertain undertaking, yet John Adams took it in stride. “This morning weighed the last anchor and came under sail before breakfast. . . . Thus I bid farewell to my native shore.”1 With that laconic notation written in his diary on February 15, 1778, while the Revolutionary War still raged, John Adams set out to launch his diplomatic career in Europe, directed by Congress to seek support for the American cause. John and Abigail Adams undertook—in John’s case twice—lengthy physical journeys from Boston across the Atlantic, which included an often dangerous three-thousand-mile voyage, not to mention numerous trips overland by coach or carriage once they arrived abroad. By the time John returned permanently to the United States in 1788 after nearly ten years in Europe, he was a seasoned traveler who had covered nearly thirty thousand miles across land and sea in all kinds of weather on behalf of his fledgling nation.

The story of their trips abroad is fascinating on its own, but of more significance than their physical travels were the cultural, social, and political journeys John and Abigail experienced while in Europe, which expanded their formerly provincial worlds. Before they left America, they gleaned all they knew of Europe from what they had read and heard through the related experiences of others. On the eve of the American Revolution, Adams had fretted that he and his compatriots were unfit for the challenges of their times, and being “deficient” in “Travel” was one of his chief concerns.2 Going to Europe would surely remedy that lack for the Adamses. Living in France and England influenced their opinions about American nationhood, the formation of an ideal American character, and what it meant to be American. Their time in Europe afforded them the firsthand opportunity to contrast the Old World with the New in regard to the manners of the people, the conditions of the respective societies, and the differing forms of government.

At the same time, their years abroad deepened their appreciation for being Americans and strengthened their nationalist commitment. In their travels through France, England, the Netherlands, and in John’s case also Spain, they observed a variety of political structures and societal forms. Their time in Europe mirrored the challenges that many prominent American founders, including George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John and Sarah Jay experienced in the process of building a new national and personal identity after they separated from England. The Adamses struggled with how to elevate their status as civilized and cultured Americans who still appreciated many aspects of Old World refinement and culture. At the same time, they also grappled with how to carve out a unique American persona that was independent from British control and unfettered by centuries of English tradition. For years, the area along the American Eastern Seaboard was a colonial extension of England.

For this reason, seemingly inconsequential practices such as choosing what European fashions, china, and furniture to purchase and bring back home on their return voyage took on great significance. Despite the fact that Abigail often decried European luxury, the fine porcelain and other adornments she bought for their new house in Braintree, Massachusetts, became symbolic of the cultural refinement appropriate for American leaders. She understood that material possessions reflected genteel behavior. Similarly, John emphasized American simplicity and frugality, but his pride and joy became an intricately carved French desk he had acquired in Paris. As historian Kariann Akemi Yokota has observed, “Creating a national identity—unbecoming British—was a tricky business.”3 Indeed, the same could be said about shaping one’s individual American identity in the wake of the revolution. Simultaneously, Europe allowed the Adamses to lay claim to a cosmopolitan exposure they deemed valuable for building knowledge and excellence in character. Living in Europe also enabled John and Abigail to examine and define what separated Americans from French, Dutch, and especially English citizens, and what in their eyes made Americans superior.

Past biographies of the Adamses have to varying degrees all touched on their time in Europe. However, A View from Abroad: The Story of John and Abigail Adams in Europe is the first full-length study that focuses exclusively on their residence in Europe to tell that story in detail and show its effect on their evolving American identity and their vision for the nation’s future governance and development.4 It aims to be a narrative history that presents a composite portrait of the Adamses as they navigated Europe. They were privileged but uncomfortable with privilege, engaged abroad yet missing home, dealing with changeable allies and an uneasy peace with a former enemy. A View from Abroad serves as a travelogue through time and place; it is an intimate portrayal of some of the most important people of their era and how they conducted themselves beyond America’s borders. It is the story of a family, a marriage, and future presidents. The prolific letters and diaries of John and Abigail as well as of their children Nabby and John Quincy provide us with an intimate window into their hearts and minds and reveal the various ways they were influenced by a culture at once familiar and foreign.

Their writings also cast an illuminating lens on daily life in Europe during the late eighteenth century and the inner workings of the French and English courts. John and Abigail witnessed firsthand the height of royal excess as well as the deep social and economic divides in Europe during the era. The two met the absolutist French rulers Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette at the Palace of Versailles and the staid but still imposing British monarchs, King George III and Queen Charlotte, at St. James’s Palace. Abigail looked with disdain upon the elite opulence she encountered in France and in England. She was even more appalled by the number of Parisian women who were driven into prostitution by dire poverty. Equally disturbing was the sight of countless beggars in tattered clothing in London, as well as farm laborers who toiled in the bucolic English countryside in order to eke out a bare living.

Although the Adamses came to admire much about the storied culture and venerable history of France, England, and the Netherlands, they viewed life in America as morally, politically, and socially superior to the Old World. By the time they left Europe in 1788, however, one of their greatest fears was that Americans would be corrupted by European mores and soon aspire to the same level of luxury and opulence, which would threaten moral and civic virtue. This was by no means an entirely new concern for John.5 In a letter written to Abigail in April 1776, less than three months before the Declaration of Independence, John warned of the pitfalls of meaningless extravagance. He declared, “Whenever Vanity and Gaiety, a Love of Pomp and Dress, Furniture, Equipage, Buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant Entertainments get the better of the Principles and Judgments of Men or Women there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what Evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.”6

Abigail had always exhibited a fundamentally optimistic personality, but John was more skeptical about human nature. His political thought had evolved over time, yet his worries about the rise of a new American aristocracy, composed of wealthy citizens, prominent merchants, and influential grand landowners who focused on self-aggrandizement instead of the public good, stretched back to the 1770s. That view only became more pronounced in the 1780s as he and Abigail surveyed their fellow Americans from their European vantage point.7

As Adams put it in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, the political tract he authored between 1785 and 1786 while living in England, there was “no special providence for Americans, and their nature is the same with that of others.”8 In his eyes, human nature throughout the world remained constant over time. Only a well-ordered republic that featured a balanced, three-branch government and was based on the rule of law, not men, could control the serious threat of the rise of an oligarchy and help shape a citizenry committed to public virtue and civic responsibility. It was a political model that he hoped Americans would adopt. He believed that such a form of government would mitigate the inherent dangers that all nations faced, and it was an outlook he advocated until the end of his days.

The Adamses shared a vision of the ideal American future. Indeed, John and Abigail were deeply committed to the view that an effective republic required a robust system for curbing the quest for excessive power, especially among ambitious politicians and oligarchs. Yet they acknowledged that leaders required some level of strength to be effective. The challenge would be to maintain the delicate balance between liberty and authority. For the Adamses, unbridled power and too much democracy were both to be feared. As historians Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein have observed, this was not a popular notion among some Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, who espoused a vision of American exceptionalism and maintained an abiding faith in the judgment of “the people.” Adams has often been criticized for offering too conservative and cautious an approach to contain the “undemocratic self-aggrandizement” that he believed operated at the expense of broad liberty. He worried that “the people” would easily be misled by charismatic leaders.9

Both the Adamses departed for Europe with preconceived notions. In the American imagination at the time, Europe was viewed as the site of monarchial and aristocratic displays of power while America was, by contrast, regarded by its citizens as an exemplar of virtue and egalitarianism. Use of the word “Europe” for many Americans became a code for everything that needed to be eradicated in the quest to become an independent American nation: rank, status, elaborate ceremonies, excessive luxury, corruption, ostentatious fashions, and profligate lifestyles.10 Despite their reservations about interacting in such a European society, John and Abigail were motivated to make the journey to the Old World not because of their desire to tour the globe or acquire a European polish, but because of their intense patriotism and underlying commitment to the public good.

Ironically, it was the Adamses’ encounters with fellow Americans in Europe as well as correspondence with relatives back home, such as Abigail’s uncle Cotton Tufts, her sister Mary Cranch, and John’s political colleagues in Congress like the powerful Robert Livingston, rather than their interactions with Europeans that convinced them that public virtue had declined precipitously in their homeland. They feared that a rising oligarchy posed a serious threat to the viability of the new republic. After Abigail joined John in Europe, she too became increasingly worried about the fate of America and what she perceived to be the erosion of standards in her home country.

Still, despite their concerns, they remained in Europe longer than they had planned or wished for in order to continue to press for stronger financial support and favorable commercial treaties with France, England, the Netherlands, and other European powers. For John, his sense of duty to America often trumped personal responsibilities. On behalf of his country, he had left his family behind for years, first while serving in Congress, and later as an American emissary working abroad to secure treaties of peace, amity, and commerce. At the same time, he yearned for distinction and was clearly flattered at being named a foreign minister. He welcomed the opportunity to play an active role in history. Despite his deep and genuine affection for his wife and children, he often ended up privileging public service over his family. Adams himself recognized his ambition, vanity, and need for recognition as a character flaw. Yet he was gratified that his compatriots thought enough of him to confer the appointment, indicating, John believed, that his colleagues understood that he had been essential to securing American independence and that he would conscientiously further America’s economic and political interests in Europe.

Abigail cared far less about fame than John. In 1778 she declared, “My soul is unambitious of pomp or power.”11 If we take Abigail at her word, she harbored little desire for advancing her personal status. Despite their collaborative relationship, it appears that in this regard she primarily supported her husband’s diplomatic service in Europe out of a strong sense of patriotic duty, familial affection, and loyalty, as well as for the sake of holding her marriage together. She understood how important the assignment was to John’s self-esteem and sense of worth.

Still, Abigail was reluctant for him to remain in Europe after his first posting. In 1783, while John was in the Netherlands, she wrote passionately, “If Congress should think proper to make you an other appointment, [I] beg you not to accept it. Call me not to any further trials of your long absence from your family.”12 Despite her heartfelt plea, John did accept another diplomatic post, and finally, a resigned Abigail joined him in Europe, despite her initial reluctance. Resilience was one of her most notable qualities, and once Abigail set sail for Europe, she made the best of her circumstances and availed herself of every possible cultural opportunity.

John’s first journey abroad at the age of forty-two was not to be the typical leisurely grand tour of Europe that so many elite, affluent men had undertaken before him. For example, wealthy Philadelphian William Bingham, who later became John’s political ally, had visited Europe in 1773, when he was in his early twenties, to combine pleasure and business. Earlier George Washington’s well-to-do Virginia planter father sent George’s older half-brothers to England to be polished by a British education. John sailed to Europe because he regarded his diplomatic duties as essential to the well-being of the new nation. Nevertheless, he often struggled as an absent husband and father to retain his cherished family ties and to balance them with his public calling. Not only his wife but also their offspring suffered from the repeated and lengthy separations, and all four of the Adams children endured troubled lives as adults.

Abigail was often lonely and sometimes resentful while John was away. In strongly worded letters like the one above, she urged him to return home. Yet, because she felt that her husband was essential to the success of the American cause, she relented and supported John’s diplomatic role. It was a path that her mentor and fellow patriot Mercy Otis Warren was unable to sustain in relation to her own husband. As Warren’s biographer Rosemarie Zagarri noted, Mercy was unable to keep “acting the part of the Republican Wife who was willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the good of the country.”13

From youth, Abigail had been taught by her parents and her religious tenets to meet personal challenges with acceptance and fortitude. These factors served as her succor when separated from her husband for long periods, and they helped her endure personal illness and the loss of several of her children. Ultimately, she stood behind John in his political undertakings because of her deep-rooted sense of moral and civic responsibility and her religious faith, which emphasized America’s special destiny and her belief that Providence guided her family. As she put it dramatically in the summer of 1780, she was convinced that “the welfare and happiness of this wide-extended country, ages yet unborn, depend on their happiness and security upon the able and skillful, the honest and upright, discharge of the important trust committed to him [John].”14

John and Abigail spent several years together in Europe, but John’s residence stretched nearly a full decade. He embarked on his first trip to Europe in 1778 after he was appointed an American emissary to France to develop critically needed support. Many years later, he recalled how hard it had been to leave a “dearly beloved Wife and four young Children” and that he had been cognizant of his “Want of qualifications for the Office [of foreign minister].” Yet he claimed to have weighed the pull of family ties against the dire situation because “my Country was in deep distress and in great danger. Her dearest Interest would be involved in the relations she might form with foreign nations.”15

In many ways, Adams was the American founder most suited to promoting the country’s interests abroad. Even before he arrived in Paris in 1778, John had understood that the establishment of political and economic ties with European countries was crucial to the future success of the nascent American nation. As several historians have argued, American leaders from colonial days to the American Revolution and the early years of the republic saw commerce as the cornerstone of American diplomacy. Few understood the centrality of commerce better than Adams. In 1776 he had been instrumental in creating the American Plan of Treaties, which aimed at establishing reciprocal economic agreements with France. Inspired by Enlightenment thought, many American leaders, including Adams, had hoped to substitute the principles of free trade for the old mercantilist philosophy that had long reigned in Europe. However, as they attempted to promote equitable commercial treaties, Adams and his fellow American diplomats in France and then in England found themselves stymied at every turn by European leaders who jockeyed to secure their nations’ hegemony in the transatlantic world.16

Adams was among the most economically and politically astute of the revolutionary leaders, but he did not boast an aristocratic background like many of the leading patriots from Virginia and New York. Despite his own modest beginnings and middling social status, Adams learned to negotiate the proper royal etiquette in Europe, even as he detested empty civility and hypocrisy. Still, he was never a natural diplomat like Benjamin Franklin. John’s detractors viewed him as vain, ambitious, and irascible. His family, friends, and other supporters saw him as a man of unshakable integrity.

John Adams was all of the above: brilliant, learned, fiercely independent, honest to a fault, as well as prickly and impetuous at times, but he also could be warm, loyal, affectionate, and congenial and possessed a wry sense of humor. Moreover, to some degree he learned to temper his own personal vanity and quest for recognition as well as his frequent frustration with official protocol. While in Europe, his unshakable commitment to the public good of his country often allowed him to control his considerable ambition and swallow his pride, at least in public. It is these contradictory traits that make Adams a complex and fascinating figure, and the story of his and Abigail’s European sojourn so compelling.

Nevertheless, John Adams has often been overshadowed by other more charismatic American founders, such as Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and, more recently, Alexander Hamilton. As historian Joseph J. Ellis observed, Adams has been the “most misconstrued and unappreciated” among the great men in American history, arguably the most “fully human member of his remarkable generation of American statesmen.”17 Although in recent years a number of writers have paid more attention to Abigail than to John, both Adamses have often been derided as uninspiring, backward-looking, pessimistic conservatives who had little faith in democracy. For example, eminent historian Gordon S. Wood maintains that Adams “became the representative of a crusty conservatism that emphasized the inequality and vice-ridden nature of American society.”18 Yet even Wood seems to have fallen victim to the very cult of personality that Adams warned of. At times Wood mistakes charisma, which other American founders such as Jefferson exuded, for integrity and substance. Guaranteeing liberty rather than equality for his fellow Americans was Adams’s fundamental goal.

John’s service in Congress had launched his national political career, and it was his time in distant Europe that marked a turning point for the fragile American nation. Before he sailed for Europe, the furthest John had ventured from New England was about five hundred miles, during a harrowing winter trip south to Baltimore on horseback in 1777 during the war. In Paris, he served as one of the American representatives to the glittering French court of Louis XVI. He played a pivotal role in the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the Revolutionary War, and he afterwards became America’s first envoy to the London Court of St. James’s, which was a far cry from his provincial milieu in Massachusetts.

Adams was certainly no country bumpkin. Before we examine his stay in Europe and that of Abigail in the coming chapters, it will be helpful to explore their early lives in order to put their time abroad in context. John was the son of a respected Massachusetts Congregationalist deacon. He was descended from a long line of modestly successful middle-class yeoman farmers who had long resided in the agricultural hamlet of Braintree, about fourteen miles from Boston. He was well educated, and the colony of Massachusetts boasted the highest rate of male literacy in America. Still, fewer than 1 percent of New England males received a college education; Adams was one of the privileged few. He graduated from Harvard College, which enlarged his intellectual horizons and placed him among elite Massachusetts society. He quickly became one of the busiest and most respected lawyers in Massachusetts. John also possessed a keen insight into economics and the intricacies of commercial trade that served him well. Indeed, it was a combination of good fortune, stubborn persistence, and financial acumen that enabled him to later secure much-needed loans from the Dutch to help pay off debts that had accrued during the war.

Adams could also be an articulate and volcanic speaker, and a persuasive, albeit somewhat ponderous writer. He launched the first of his political tracts in the early 1760s with an article in the Boston Evening Post. In the 1770s, during the days leading up to the American Revolution, he penned a series of influential pieces in the Boston Gazette, known as the Letters of Novanglus, in which he argued for colonial autonomy. Later, he authored the seminal Thoughts on Government, a publication that helped convince his fellow Americans to support the revolution and also served as a guide for several state constitutions.

Fortunately, he was vivid, candid, and engaging in his private correspondence and diary entries, which make his complicated personality come alive. John was also one of the most well-read men in America during his era. Thomas Jefferson rivaled and perhaps exceeded Adams as an inveterate reader, yet for all his breadth of knowledge, Jefferson had not read as deeply as Adams. Adams delved into law, history, theology, political philosophy, and literature, and he was an accomplished political scientist. Although fine art, drama, and music were far from his main focus, he appreciated their aesthetic value, even if he lacked sophistication. In short, he was what today we would term a dedicated lifelong learner if not a Renaissance man on the level of Jefferson.19

Yet Europe was an ocean apart, both literally and figuratively. Although he had at times rubbed elbows with the colonial elite, John had never before witnessed the levels of wealth and privilege he would encounter in France and England. The Old World stood in stark contrast to the simpler, relatively egalitarian way of life he so admired in his hometown of Braintree and in the Massachusetts colony as a whole. Adams began his European voyage with virtually no command of spoken French and little firsthand knowledge of contemporary European political intrigue or the customs of foreign diplomacy. His knowledge of Europe came from books, and most of those had been published long before he embarked on his transatlantic journey. Certainly, he had never come face to face with real-life monarchs or the splendor that characterized the French and English courts and the lifestyles of the nobility.

Yet it is important to recognize that royalism and reverence for the British king had a long history in the American colonies. Until at least 1774, even emerging committed revolutionaries such as the Adamses and George Washington had celebrated the English monarchy and regarded King George III as a benevolent father figure. Indeed, elements of the imperial past were often interwoven into the early republic, and the quest to form a new national character reflected struggles over opposing worldviews among Americans. As historian Brendan McConville has argued, the fundamental battle was between those who “viewed the world as new, tabula rasa, and believed human nature . . . moldable and remakeable” and those like Adams who were attempting to rework past institutions in a new form.20 When he later met with the king as the American minister to England, John developed an ambivalent but respectful relationship with George III, and he saw much to emulate in the British form of a constitutional monarchy. As Yokota has pointed out, “The process of ‘becominge American’ . . . did not necessarily entail a categorical rejection of British culture.”21 Many upwardly mobile Americans still aspired to acquire a “mother-country polish.”22

When he first departed for Europe, Adams moved forward with determination and unremitting diligence, and worked relentlessly to rectify the omissions in his life experience. He arrived in Paris on April 8, 1778, full of hope that the efforts of the joint group of three commissioners, which included Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, would be productive. Ultimately, John did play an important role in securing critical French naval support for the American forces. Although many of his diplomatic efforts abroad would be unsuccessful, Adams’s most pivotal accomplishment turned out to be the significant loans he secured in the Netherlands for the struggling American nation. His dogged single-mindedness and often unconventional diplomatic undertakings, pursued largely on his own in isolation, helped convince the Dutch to invest in the economic promise of the fragile American republic.

John’s wife did not join him in Europe for several years, but even from afar, Abigail remained his supportive if sometimes reluctant partner, and she continued to play an influential role in his life. Fourteen years before he set sail for Europe, on October 25, 1764, John Adams had married Abigail Smith, daughter of a prominent Weymouth liberal Congregationalist minister, William Smith, and Elizabeth Quincy Smith, who stemmed from a well-known Boston political merchant family. It was a union initially opposed by her parents, especially by Abigail’s mother, who did not care much for the brash young lawyer whose status and prospects she deemed beneath her daughter’s social station. When Abigail and John wed, Massachusetts was still a loyal English colony in the far-flung British Empire, and Elizabeth Smith could never have dreamed that one day her daughter would later become the wife of a leading political figure in the newly created United States and become the nation’s second First Lady.

Despite her parents’ opposition, the strong-minded Abigail stood fast in her desire to marry John. From the beginning, Abigail kept the brilliant and principled but sometimes vain and erratic John grounded, and her natural serenity and optimism helped tame his often-mercurial temperament. Her influence became particularly important after she joined John in Europe, where the need for skilled diplomacy was crucial. As historian Joseph J. Ellis put it, Abigail provided John’s “ballast.”23

Like most women in early America, Abigail Adams never formally attended school. Her voracious appetite for knowledge was fed by relatives and especially by her soul mate and husband. Abigail read deeply and widely, from Shakespeare and novels to philosophy, history, and political theory. Reading would have been possible only after working demanding days overseeing the household and the family farm once her children were asleep. In 1780, not long after John and their eldest son had departed for Europe, she wrote to advise John Quincy, himself a future president, “Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought with ardor and attended with diligence.”24 It was a maxim she followed her entire life. In regard to the question of widespread education, she and John were of one mind. Although advanced knowledge could not cure all political and social ills, education helped build character and could produce the enlightened citizenry they believed was indispensable to successful self-government and the future of the American experiment.

From the first days of her marriage, Abigail became part of a politically minded family. In the days leading up to the American Revolution, the Adamses were incensed with what they perceived to be Great Britain’s encroachment on liberty in the colonies and the loss of their rights as English subjects. John became a leading member of the Continental Congress, and his stint as a Massachusetts representative in Philadelphia gained him valuable political experience and the opportunity to test his philosophy and world outlook while honing his speaking and writing skills. Although Abigail remained behind at home, caring for their four children, supervising the family farm and finances, her unwavering support of John and the revolutionary cause enabled him to play a pivotal role on the American road to independence.

In many ways Adams was out of his element in the more sophisticated social circles he moved in once he arrived in Europe. From the moment he stepped onto French soil, however, he was determined to conduct himself with dignity, exhibiting the diligence he applied to all his endeavors. Moreover, John adjusted surprisingly well to life on the Continent. He began his European service by studying French aboard ship. Unlike Franklin, Adams became a competent speaker and writer in the language, even composing sections of his diary in French. At times, these jottings included his growing critical attitude toward Franklin and suspicion of the French foreign minister, Comte de Vergennes, as well as his ambivalent feelings toward Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.

There was much that John found to be of value in the civilized culture of the Old World. As he wrote to Abigail, “There is everything here that can inform understanding, or refine the taste, and indeed one would think that could purify the heart.” At the same time he saw serious flaws in French society that he believed were antithetical to American values, especially the Yankee ideals of honesty, fiscal and community responsibility, and the Puritan-inspired moral code he had absorbed from childhood, which played a central role in shaping his thought and behavior throughout his life.25 John was neither a strict Calvinist, a Puritan, nor a prude, but he was a man of moral integrity, one who set high ethical standards. Above all, he rejected extremes and valued balance, both in how individuals conducted their personal lives and in their form of government.

John took self-reflection and self-improvement seriously, and he combined select segments of the religious values of his youth with some of the Enlightenment-inspired progressive ideals about religion and political philosophy he had incorporated in his education at Harvard, which moved him toward a more liberal world outlook.26 Still, it is important to recognize that religious faith underpinned the lives of the Adamses. American identity in the postrevolutionary and early national period was shaped by both republicanism and Protestantism. It was in Paris that John penned the oft-quoted philosophical dictum that drove his public service to the American nation during and after the American Revolution: “I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”27 John remained a lifelong advocate of the study of political science as a tool for understanding and improving the human condition. Indeed, one of the driving forces that shaped his character was the overarching desire to help create an American nation that would ensure the well-being of all its citizens, regardless of their social or economic status.

Before her voyage to join John in Europe, Abigail had never been more than fifty miles from home. She too admired the social and political structure of the close-knit community in which she had grown up and hoped that it would be replicated on a wider scale as the American nation matured. Indeed, John and Abigail believed that New England should serve as the model for the creation of a new national identity.28 Abigail may initially have had reservations about traveling to Europe and leaving her accustomed life, but from the beginning, she was determined to conduct her time there with dignity and propriety. Despite her distaste for the dictates of high fashion, she understood the role comportment and stylish clothing played in projecting one’s social image. She worked diligently to serve as an able representative of the nascent American nation and endeavored to earn the respect of French and English leaders and members of the upper crust.

Despite the centuries-old history and cultural sophistication she encountered in Europe, Abigail remained convinced that life in America provided significantly more opportunity for citizens from all walks of life. The time she spent near Paris and then in London reinforced Abigail’s view that Americans were blessed in comparison to those living in the Old World, even in England, which she considered the most enlightened and progressive of the European nations. “How little cause of complaint have the inhabitants of the United States, when they compare their situation, not with despotic monarchies, but with this land [Great Britain] of freedom,” she declared. Moreover, Abigail looked askance at Americans who overtly criticized their homeland (even though she would often do so herself). “The ease with which honest industry may acquire property in America, the equal distribution of justice to the poor as well as the rich, and the personal liberty they enjoy,” she argued, “all call upon them to support their government and laws to respect their rulers and gratefully acknowledge their superior blessings.”29

Abigail’s patriotic zeal would only become stronger over time. She would later insist that her beloved country was a sovereign nation, one that should always remain independent of European influence. As she declared to her sister Mary Cranch years later when John served as president and when war with France appeared to be a distinct possibility, “As an independent Nation [the United States], no other has a Right to complain, or dictate to us, with whom we shall form connections.”30 Moreover, John and Abigail came to believe that America should set the standard for the world as a well-ordered society and that the American nation, if it adopted the proper form of government, would serve as an example of virtuous civic responsibility. In short, the Adamses exhibited an appreciation and reverence for human excellence in all aspects of life, which they hoped would characterize their new nation.

Shortly before Abigail and her daughter were due to sail for Europe in 1784, John provided Nabby with some fatherly advice. “I hope that your journeys in Europe, and your returning voyage to your own country, will be equally prosperous. . . . I need to say to you, that the end of travel, as well as study, is not the simple gratification of curiosity, or to enable one to shine in conversation, but to make us wiser and better.”31 It was certainly a philosophy that John and Abigail took to heart. The Adamses’ travels in Europe provided them with a firsthand framework of comparison and an opportunity that allowed them to judge for themselves and to inform their fellow citizens about the potential superiority of America. At the same time, they viewed their life abroad as an opportunity to expand their life experience.

By the time Abigail set sail for their return to America, she had significant concerns about the future of the United States. Still, she left Europe even more convinced of America’s potential. Although John was optimistic about America’s long-term success, he maintained serious reservations. He feared that the luxury, dissipation, and inequality he had witnessed in Europe would soon affect his fellow Americans, and that the potential for deep divisions between social classes, if left unchecked, would increase over time. Because of his advocacy for a strong (and virtuous) executive, whom he believed could help counteract those forces by lending a wise, impartial, and steadying hand, John was often criticized as being a monarchist. Even his former close friend, the Boston writer and staunch revolutionary patriot Mercy Otis Warren, later offered such a harsh opinion. In her history of the American Revolution, she charged that John had abandoned his earlier revolutionary principles under the corrupting influence of the French and English royal courts.32

Nothing could have been further from the truth. John may have found elements to admire personally in both Louis XVI and George III, and particularly in the benefits of a constitutional monarchy with a balanced government, which he had experienced firsthand in England. However, their time in France and England only made the Adamses more fervently nationalistic Americans, and they believed that political leaders should govern, not rule. Their European residence was an experience that was filtered through their American background and upbringing and their evolving perspectives. From their perch across the Atlantic, it allowed them to identify more clearly the flaws in American society that they had seen developing for some time.

Living near Paris and then in London played a role in shaping John and Abigail’s thinking about the ideal American character, one that would emphasize public and personal virtue, restraint, and frugality. With the notable exception of Thomas Paine, whose fiery pamphlet Common Sense helped spark the American Revolution and who disdained mixed government, most American leaders supported a bicameral legislature. Yet the Adamses sincerely believed that support of John’s particular vision of a balanced government would protect property, religious freedom, the rule of law, and liberty and would at the same time foster an exemplary spirit in the emerging United States. In 1786 John wrote the French aristocrat Comte de Sarsfield that he hoped “to see rising in America an Empire of Liberty & a Prospect of two or three hundred Millions of freemen, without one noble or one King.”33

John was neither a reactionary conservative nor a monarchist. What he advocated was an executive with sufficient power and authority who could play a central role in steering an American republic on the right path by counterbalancing the negative influences of aristocratic forces, what he termed “the few,” on the one hand, and the unchecked democratic influences of “the people,” or “the many,” on the other.34 Indeed, John believed that it was human nature to amass power, and what he feared most was a rising American oligarchy composed of wealthy or charismatic aristocrats who would prevail over those citizens who possessed genuine virtue and talent, a situation that he believed would put the future of his native land in serious jeopardy.35

As beliefs about the American character and nationhood evolved among newly independent Americans like Abigail and John as well as some of their revolutionary comrades, such as Thomas Jefferson and John Jay, they were all forced to reevaluate their place in the transatlantic world. The Adamses reflected one important strain of thought regarding an American identity, but they were not representative of all Americans. Their outlook was based on a distinct New England sensibility and was also shaped in reaction to their experiences abroad. Their views served as a counterpoint, for example, to those espoused by many prominent southerners. As historian Brian Steele has pointed out, not only did Jefferson believe that “his generation had made the world anew,” but he also believed that Americans were exceptional and peculiarly fit for democracy.36 While both the Adamses agreed that geography, abundant natural resources, and land offered Americans unprecedented opportunities to prosper and live in peaceful contentment, they held the deep-seated belief that human nature was fundamentally the same all over the globe.

John and Abigail crossed paths with many Americans abroad, but not all of them shared their outlook. Like the Adamses and Jefferson, New York revolutionary and American diplomat John Jay and his wife, Sarah Livingston Jay, and wealthy Philadelphians William Bingham and his young wife, the cultured Anne Willing Bingham, had also spent time in Europe. Jay and Adams had first met when they served in Philadelphia as delegates to the First Continental Congress, and both men had played a pivotal role in writing their own state constitutions in the 1770s. Jay even served as president of the Continental Congress for a time, where he first met European diplomats who had been dispatched from Spain and France. Along with Benjamin Franklin, Jay and Adams later worked together while stationed in Europe to negotiate the Treaty of Paris to end the Revolutionary War in 1783.

In the 1790s Bingham, a prominent merchant and patriot, became an ardent Federalist and supporter of Adams during his presidency. He also became an influential politician, who served as a United States senator from 1795 to 1801. Anne Bingham became one of the leaders of Philadelphia society when they returned to America in 1786. Abigail and John crossed paths with the Binghams frequently in both France and England. Abigail never developed the admiration for European society and the cultured female French salonniéres exhibited by Anne, but the two women became well acquainted in Paris, a connection that developed further in London and when the Adamses later lived in Philadelphia, the temporary capital of the United States. Nonetheless, Abigail looked askance at Anne’s admiration of French customs and manners and her extravagant style of dress.

The political outlook of both Bingham and Jay, whom one biographer called the “most conservative of the leading founders,” included strong skepticism about the desirability of widespread popular democracy and firm support for a bicameral legislature. In fact, Jay and Bingham would align more closely in later years with Adams’s political philosophy than with that of Thomas Jefferson.37 Despite his great wealth, Bingham exhibited a dedication to the public good that Adams admired. In 1780 Bingham expressed a sentiment that mirrored Adams’s concerns about the decline of American public virtue, when he observed that “they were no longer governed by that pure, disinterested patriotism, which distinguished the Infancy of the contest [the American Revolution].”38 The three men regarded the concept of American exceptionalism in much narrower terms than Jefferson. Perhaps most importantly, they did not share his level of faith in the ability of Americans to govern themselves wisely. As Steele has argued, “Jefferson’s confidence in the American people was rooted in his sense that they were exceptional,”39 but Adams never regarded Americans as unique examples of humankind.

John Adams espoused what many have considered a rather dour view of the human capacity for improvement, but it was an outlook he would have likely defended as mere prudent pragmatism. Wood has contended that it was the optimistic, enlightened worldview of Thomas Jefferson that has most strongly resonated with American citizens over time, and not that of John Adams, whom Wood has labeled “uninspiring.” Nor, by extension, does Wood praise the outlook of Abigail Adams. In light of today’s political and social American landscape, however, the Adamses’ concerns seem far more prescient and reflective of reality. Wood’s portrayal of John Adams exaggerates the challenging aspects of his character and unfairly suggests that John’s political views were more driven by “long-simmering . . . jealousies and resentments . . . that sprang from his tormented soul” than his integrity and deeply reasoned concerns about America’s long-term future. Similarly, Wood contends that Abigail became bitter as she aged.40

It is far more accurate to assert that Adams was an unflinching realist rather than a pessimist, and historian Edith B. Gelles, who has probably provided the most sensitive and nuanced picture of Abigail, has observed that she possessed “uncanny optimism,” which survived intact into her last years.41 As John entered his old age, he mellowed and became more hopeful about the American future. He believed that by coupling a more realistic appraisal of human nature with a firm commitment to human rights, the new American republic could succeed in guaranteeing liberty, unlike other republican experiments that had failed in the past. John and Abigail’s years abroad reinforced many of their earlier views about the relationship between human nature and governance as they continued to refine their world outlook.

At the same time, however, their stay in Europe cemented their bond with their native land and kept them strong patriotic Americans, ones who had to reconcile their love of country with their realistic concerns. When Abigail and John Adams returned to America in 1788, like many of their fellow American who had toured overseas, they had enjoyed many aspects of their stay and acquired a more sophisticated cultural veneer and a wider life experience, but at heart, they remained fervent Americans. Even while the Adamses resided abroad, their center of gravity always remained in America.