Empire: World History - 154. The Founding Fathers: John Adams (Ep 4)

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Often given less attention than the other Founding Fathers, John Adams is no less significant. Not only did he go on to be the second US President, but he was an accomplished diplomat and had a strong moral compass - he was one of the few Founding Fathers who was a committed abolitionist. Listen as William and Anita look at his life and extraordinary marriage to Abigail Adams. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. And we continue our romp through the lives of the founding fathers today. Our dash! we are going to focus on a man who I really don't think gets enough attention

because I think he's an extraordinary character and I'm completely mesmerized by him. John Adams. You're right, I think he's definitely the least known. Alexander Hamilton would have been the least known 10 years ago, but is that the best known? Yeah, but John Adams, you know, my God, without him, Jefferson wouldn't have written the Declaration of Independence. Without him, Washington would not have led the colonial army against the British.

Without him, Boston, arguably, would not have rallied the 13 colonies to stand up against the British. Without him, history would have been so completely different. And you needed a man like John Adams, who was just confoundingly stubborn, obstinate, vain, yes, but clever, and had a moral compass, which I think is amazing. Absolutely right, which is not true necessarily of all of them. No, but steadfastly true to what he believed, which was, there is such a thing as the rule of law, there is such a thing as morality, there is such a such a thing as justice, it may not be comfortable, but we have to pursue it. He was an abolitionist with his wife, Abigail, and he had a marriage of equals, which I think also is extraordinary.

I'm as obsessed with Abigail Adams as I am with John Adams, and also a long lifetime friendship with his bitter political rival, you know, their first friends, him and Jefferson. Then they become implacable enemies when they are in two different parties in the newly born America. And then they become the best of friends again and they write to each other and die on the same day, which happens to be the 4th of July, the 4th of July Independence Day. So look, I mean, there's so much that's poetic and lyrical, but shall we just crack into to when he was born and wherewithes in his point? So he was born October the 19th, 1735, in a place called Braintree in Massachusetts.

Not to be confused with its Essex rival, Anita. But as we know, you know, these places are all mirror images or the names have all been sort of transplanted from places where, I suppose, the first who came over lived at one time. We're talking about sort of cozy, rural, villagey life. Farmers inhabit this land. And there is a real New England, Massachusetts identity. You are a Massachusetts man first and foremost. There are all these sort of tiers of existence. If you are a Boston man, you are proud of being a Boston man. There are things that are entailed by describing yourself as a Boston man. and Massachusetts men are much like that.

And, you know, he thinks of himself as from farming stock. His father is also called John Adams. It's a bit confusing. And he looks a bit sort of farmer Johnish, doesn't he? He has a sort of little sort of bald-haired sort of nesting in a sort of... He wasn't born that way. He was sort of a later life kind of thing. By the time, he's big enough to have his portrait painted.

He looks very much sort of like a kind of rural, rural squire. He is also so irascible. There's this wonderful painting. of the founding father signing the Declaration of Independence, and John Adams is the most intemperate in the painting, and while the painting was being done, hilariously. He was fighting with the painter, was he? Fighting and arguing with the painter the whole time.

I mean, he's not an easy way. Abigail was a saint, but a saint who stood up to him, teased him. I'm going to stand my ground on this one, actually. There's a picture of him I've got in front of me now as a young man, and he also looks like a farmer here. He's very much the sort of plain-faced sort of. He is plain-faced, yes, he is plain-faced, I'll give you that, but he wasn't bald on top.

Where's my point? It's the sort of suet pudding of a complexion. Stop being rude to poor John Adams. He was already quite insecure about his looks. He wasn't as tall as a couple of the other, like Jefferson and Washington. And this height thing is kind of important. When you walk into a room, you want to dominate it. Five foot eight in his growing up thing.

Washington was the one who would have made an impression when he walked in, I think. Well, he was only six foot. Jefferson was taller, six foot two, actually. If we're going to play top trumps. He would have sat at the corner of the room. well, Washington strode in as a sort of man's man. John Adams was not shy in any way. But look, he looked like a farmer because he's off farming stock.

His father called John Adams was a Puritan deacon. Well respected, not part of the local elite at all, but was a huge, huge influence on young John Adams. He was a Puritan, and that also reflected in John's tastes throughout his life, dressed soberly, ate frugally, and was pushy. So his father, it's hilarious. So his father was a farmer as well as being a deacon. They all had land. They all farmed. And he says to his son one day, look, who's good at school. You know, he does Latin at school. He's given a classical education. He quite like, but he's bored at school. He doesn't like it.

He doesn't particularly like one of his schoolmasters. And so he sort of tries to bunk off school. He prefers to go hunting and fishing. So his father says to him, look, really, would you rather be a farmer? And he says, yes, I would. And so I says, all right, then. And he makes him work, you know, do really heavy manual labour for a few days. And then he says to him, John, do you still want to be a farmer? And he says, well, yes, I do. I really like it. And his father said, tough, you're going to Harvard.

I'm not having this bullshit from you. You're going to Harvard and you're going to study and you're going to do better. And, you know, being an obedient, devout kind of man, he says, okay, you know, I will honor my father. I'll do what he says. And so he enrolls at Harvard, even though he'd much rather be sort of mulching pig poo and sort of spreading fertilizer. age. He loves that life. He does pruding away at trees. He does what he says. But when he's at Harvard, he does excel. He does Latin, natural sciences, moral philosophy. Is there any sense at this period that Harvard is the kind of peak of academic excellence that it is today? Would it have been

the grandest college in the new world? Well, I don't, probably, because I don't know many other places in the United States where Cicero and Tacitus are, you know, being recited in the original. and that's what he learns to do. He loves his Roman heroes. He reads them in Latin. Plato, Thucydides, he'll read in the original Greek. He thinks the original Greek is a supreme language. If you weren't at a hoity tooit, you wouldn't really be in a position to say,

Thucydides in Greek is the primary way of learning. I think that probably answers your question. He does also, I mean, he develops, despite this sort of unlikely dislike of school, when he's younger, when he wants to be just a farmer. He loves letters. And he says to his son, who will eventually be another president of the United States, John Quincy Adams. He says, Johnny, you'll never be alone with a poet in your pocket. Oh, lovely.

There's another nice little quote. He says that by the time he gets to Harvard, he thrives on studying, saying it invigorates my body, it exhilarates my soul. Yeah, I mean, I think he was a little bit of that Puritan thing going on. And you have to sort of, he's a great writer of his life, unlike some of the founding fathers. George Washington doesn't want to talk about his life at all, finds himself, quite boring. Adams, though, does pour over his early life and, you know, what brought him here, and particularly in letters to Abigail, and then letters to Jefferson, you know, in his later life, they talk about their childhood, or he does, and talks about what it was to grow up as him.

He talks about being a bit of a ladiesman, they're weirdly, but a weird sort of puritanical ladiesman. So he talks about being at Harvard. He says, I had my favourites among the young women and spent many of my evenings in their company. And this disposition, though controlled the seven years after my entrance into college, returned and engaged me too much till I was married. I shall draw no characters nor give any enumeration of my youthful flames. It would be considered as no compliment to the dead or living. This, though, I will say, they were all modest and virtuous girls and always maintained that character through life. No virgin or matron has ever had cause to blush at the sight of me or to regret her acquaintance with me. No father, brother, son or friend has ever had cause of grief

or resentment of any intercourse between me. It's all very well, but I think I'd much prefer to have a drink with Ben Franklin than him, wouldn't you? No, no, I really like him. I really like him. He says, my children may be assured there are no illegitimate brothers or sisters that have ever existed. No, he's not a bore. He's a man of principle. He's actually somebody that you could sit and have a drink with without thinking, you know, they've got, you know,

that they're interested in your mind, for God's sake. It's quite, I think he's quite cool. Look, towards the final year. I think it's this brain tree thing. I think it's an Essex. I think it's an Essex Allegiance. Well, maybe, maybe. But I mean, I quite like a man who treats a woman like an equal.

And he seems to do that, and particularly in his marriage, I think he's fabulous. He's better in that sense than Thomas Jefferson will agree with that. Yeah. So he, in his final year at university, has decided that he wants to be a lawyer because he sees, and I think there's something really, if you don't mind me doing a little bit of, pop psychology here. Would I ever criticize you for pop psychology, Anita? Well, his mother is a firebrand, okay, and she loses her, may I say, I'm not on the

BBC, I may say, she loses her shit quite spectacularly in the house on frequent occasions. And he finds that really rattling, and he recognises it in himself. And everybody who knows Adams throughout the year, is that the portrait painter being one of them, say he has an explosive temper. He can go into absolutely maniacal rages. And he recognises that in himself at a young age. And the thing that gives him order and stability is the law. Because in the law, you have reason, you have cause and effect.

And so he really does love the law. Even though, you know, the Puritans, and he's of the Puritans, they don't like lawyers. They see them as venal and self-serving. Do they not? I've always imagined sort of puritans would be rather good lawyers. They do not like the law. They don't like it. It's money-oriented.

It's about property. It's not about the Lord. So he does it anyway. And that's sort of quite independent thinking on his part, his father being a deacon and all that. And he's actually pretty good at public speaking. Even at Harvard, you start getting this sense of it. But he can't decide what exactly he's going to do with all of this education. He knows he's ambitious, though, doesn't he?

He says, I'm not ashamed to own that a prospect of an immortality in the memories of all the worthy to the end of time would be a huge gratification to my wishes. He's sort of ambitious and a little bit pompous. He is, and for a little while he's trying to sort out what he's going to do in the future, what kind of law and where he's going to be. He sort of tries his hand out as a teacher. I love this because I think this is foreshadowing of the man who would be president,

even though he probably wouldn't have thought so at the time. So he talks about going into the classroom. He likes children. They're fine. But what he really loves is observing children. And he writes when he's a schoolmaster, I love him because he writes all this down. I sometimes in my sprightly moments consider myself in my great chair at the school as some dictator, the head of a commonwealth. In this little state, I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature.

I have several renowned generals. They are three feet high. Several deep projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles and cockleshells with an ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the royal society. And here he sits. That's very nice. That's nice. Yeah, I like that.

So he is a man who watches people, analyzes people, but also sees himself at the head of the table, I think, quite notably. It is something, this sort of like pomposity of his, that when he does eventually settle down with this marvelous woman called Abigail Smith. So she's only 15 when they meet? She is only 15 when they meet. And he's 25. And she's not been very well either.

I mean, that age gap is not a peculiar thing at the time. You know, if you are a young gal who is venturing into the world, you're often married off to somebody who's older because they have property and they have means. You're not married to somebody of the same age. So, you know, it sounds like a lot. But they don't get married at 50. They are introduced. The courtship. He's already courting somebody else.

He's in love with another woman who's Abigail's second cousin. Yeah, but she's not really that bothered. She's not that interested, to be honest. Because he's not a looker. I mean, as you've so graciously pointed out, he's not, he's not that much. of a looker and he knows that he's not that much of a looker. But Abigail, at the time when they meet, when she's 15, she's not very well. They meet in the summer of 1759. She's sort of a shy, quite frail looking girl. She's often been ill in childhood. She has recurring headaches and insomnia and she's been really quite ill before the first meeting. But nevertheless, she looks the most terrifying old lady in the portrait that I'm looking at now in her bodied. So let me tell you what painters of the day said about her, because they've never done her justice. There's some little pastel that's done at both of them when they meet.

And she doesn't look, it's kind of flat, flat face, you've nothing of the brightness of her eyes. But there was a very gifted American artist called Gilbert Stewart, who, when he's working on a portrait of the older Abigail Adams, he remarks that he wished that God would have allowed him to paint Abigail Adams when she was young. And in his words, she would have made a perfect Venus, because there is a very important. such beauty in the way she moves her face and the way she moves her eyes and her countenance. I'm looking at Gilbert Stewart's picture of her now and he hasn't brought that out, I think it's fair to say. But she's an old lady at that point. She's looking at him daggers in the picture.

Mesmerizing about her. She's my friend. Shut up. I love her. Shut up. She doesn't like be painted anymore than their husband. Leave him alone. Anywho, they don't get married for another couple of years, but they do sort of write to each other and they write in a really lovely, gorgeous way to each other. Like, you know, she calls them throughout her, I'll have my dearest friend. And he will often write to him, my dearest friend. And they will tell each other in this lifetime of correspondence,

everything. She's very well educated. She's been homeschooled. She's grown up in a really kind household. And she's exactly the antidote that he needs. And she's a big reader, huh? She studies Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, all that sort of stuff. Yeah.

And they, you know, what he says about her is that she is a constant feast to him. Like he's properly, properly in love with her when they get married. They do, I mean, they do dig at each other, though. It's very, very funny. He doesn't like the way she walks. He says she walks like a pigeon, a stately strut. Yes. Well, it's teasing, though.

It's not mean, you know, and it's kind of cute. And he sort of like teased. She also doesn't think she's much of a singer. No, she doesn't have a good voice. But you can't have everything, can you, poor Abigail? But what she also writes about him. You're worried you know this couple. I do. Well, I like, yeah, I think I'd be all right with the Adams.

I'm going to be next door with Ben Franklin. Yeah, I'm going to bring with him. I put around to Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin and John Adams were very good friends, by the way. They really enjoyed each other's company. They even sort of washed up in France together, although Adams could not make sense of how rogue Franklin went in France. But she says Abigail of John that, you know, as he's progressing in his career, he's becoming a substantial man. I think somebody comments that, you know, he's a man of substance. And she says, yes, substantial and other ways to him.

My good man is so very fat that I am lean as a rail, she says. But she adores him, adores him. And they have this very happy household. He writes to London, he spends a fortune in books, John Adams, and reading material, which they both read together. They enjoy these things. He instructs a London bookseller with a standing order. And the instruction is every book and pamphlet of reputation upon the subjects of law

and government as soon as it comes out must be sent to him. He says, I want to see my wife and children every day. I want to see my grass and my blossoms and corn. But above all, except the wife and children, I want to see my books. I like that side of it. This is better. No, no, he's adorable. And the letters are truly. Anyway, they have children together. Again, as I say, one of them, John Quincy Adams, who will be president is the oldest son, second child. Are there any other, How many other families have two presidents? I mean, the Roosevelt's were obliquely. Oh, yeah, fathers and Bush.

Of course. Yeah. One day Trump maybe? I mean, no. Let's see. Let's see. I can't look in the future. But look, the stamp act that we talked about before in one of our founding fathers episodes,

which one was it? Was it in the Jefferson one that we were talking about, how the stamp act kind of really made everybody furious? It is the thing that turns around. really happy man who's practicing law is doing quite well into somebody who wants the British out. And the stamp act, do you want to remind everybody what the stamp act is or I'm happy to do it? Should I do it? I can do it very quickly. Hang on. I've got a nice little thing. I just checked in the Bodleyan and it is the Adams's and the bushes are the only two.

Right. So it is just as in other founding father stories, it is the stamp act that wakes up the revolutionary in John Adams. No one likes to pay tax. Well, the stamp act, the thing about it was, is that I just want to expand on what we said before. Every bit of written or printed material other than private correspondence, or pamphlets, newspapers, advertisements, deeds, diplomas, bills, bonds, all legal documents, ships, papers, even playing cards, were required to carry revenue stamps, some costing as much as 10 pounds. And this is the first new law that attempts to tax Americans directly. And the Parliament, British Parliament, has passed this law because it wants to pay for the French Indian War to meet the expense of maintaining

the colonies. You know, we're doing this for you so you can pay us. By now, you know, the Adams are in Boston and it releases such anger in Bostonians who, you know, this is a place on the coast, this is a place of commas, it's a place of reading, this is a place where people have really fought very hard to establish themselves. So, mobs start patrolling Boston and complaining. I mean, Adams himself, describes it like devils let loose. They stone the residence of Andrew Oliver, who's the Secretary of the province. They threaten to tar and feather anybody who stands up for the Stamp Act. There is a cousin of John Adams who is equally fascinating, called Samuel Adams. A pint of Sam Adams. As in the beer, yeah. As in the beer. So Samuel Adams is one of the founders of the Sons

of Liberty who are leading this crusade against the Stamp Act. And it is a Boston beer, if I'm not mistaken. It's a Boston beer and also Sam Adams will be one of the key players chucking tea over the side of a boat in Boston at a tea party that we're not going to talk about today. So you've got these two cousins who are deeply fond of each other that have a very different idea about what to do about unfair in positions from Britain. One thing that shows that he does have a sense of humour or so maybe doesn't, I don't know. He does have a sense of humour. His choice of pseudonym. Hicking on him. Yeah.

when he wants to write something not under his own name. And the nom de plume that he chooses is a brilliantly, brilliantly crafted creation in itself. He calls himself Humphrey Plough Jogger. Plow Jogger. Plow Jogger. He has a number of pseudonyms, which I love. But he starts writing essays in the papers under Humphrey Plow Jogger,

which are, you know, sort of funny. They have deliberately bad spelling and grammar, you know, things that he writes. I have a book learned. enough so I rightly all that. Enough to write so politely is the great general folks, great men who does nothing but quarrel with another and put pieces

in newspapers against one another. So he writes, he's getting this reputation as being a, you know, he's doing really well, he's doing very good cases, he's got a lovely wife who adores him, his family is growing, he has a side hustle on doing satire

like his own private eye of the day, writing his takey letters to newspapers, Humphrey Plow Jogger. But then the Stamp Act happens and join us after the break when we find out what it does to change this happy man in a happy life into somebody who is going to turn the world upside down. And you'll be all very pleased to hear that there is a derriple involved in this story. They're not in a very flattering way, I should say. Oh, thank God. Welcome back. So just before the break, I was saying how the Stamp Act had caused a lot of problems in Boston and people were, you know, furious about it there.

They were rampaging. What did he call them, gangs of ruffians, mobs of ruffians? He didn't like it. He didn't like this. He thought that you could legally argue against what was being done, and he sought to sit down with a pen and try and do it. But this all comes to a head on a very cold

moonlit evening, March the 5th, 1770, and it's been snowing. There are drifts of snow on the streets of Boston. It's a pretty chilly spot at the best of that is Boston. Very, very cold. And a custom house. And Custom House has been the target of a lot of anger because of this stamp act. And it represents the whole thing of, you know, the British boot on the colonial throat. And this throng of several hundred people have converged at Custom House.

And there is this one guard who's standing there who's being taunted and, you know, jeered at and jostled. And so eight British soldiers are ordered out to go and stand with him, loaded muskets, fixed bayonets. the captain has a drawn sword and this shouting and this hullabaloo is getting louder and louder and louder and suddenly in this sort of pell-mell that's going on the soldiers opened fire and five men are killed and sam adams who is john adams firebrand sons of liberty cousin is there and he starts yelling at the top of his voice bloody butchery this you know accusing the british of opening fire and this becomes known as the boston massacre it's the bloody sunday of its day isn't it yeah and it becomes even more than the fatalities. I mean, it's awful when anyone is killed. But it turns into

this sort of bloodbath story because Paul Revere, you know, his name, got the horse right here, his name is Paul Revere. He does a portrait of the massacre, which then, thanks to Sam Adams, gets printed and printed and printed and disseminate it all around the colonies. So this is what the Brits do. They shoot people down in cold blood. A line of red coats with their muskets out. Exactly. The slaughter of the innocence is how he portrays. it. But the day after the massacre, John Adams is only 34 at the time. And, you know, his cousin is leading the charge against these British officers saying that they are responsible for the massacre. Posse comes to him. A posse is the wrong word because we're not in the Wild West. But a group of

petitioners come and they say, look, these soldiers and their captain, they're going to go to trial. And no one else is going to take this case. Will you take this case and defend them? And he's in a right old pickle because he doesn't like the British. He does not agree. with the stamp duty. He certainly doesn't agree with having soldiers out of their barracks and in among the people, and this thing has happened. So his first instinct, though, is to say yes, because he believes that everybody has the right to a fair defence in law. And he is acutely aware that this is going to be hard for him. In his words, he says, incurring a clamour and populist suspicions and prejudices against him was going to happen. He knows, he knows this. And criticism

you know, for a man like Adams, who's slightly pompous. It is always a difficult thing. But we should say that the situation is diffused by the heroic commander of Boston, who is none other than Anita Allen? God, is it one of yours? I don't know why it's, Durhampool? Is it? Lieutenant Colonel William Durampal, though less. Does he defuse it? He does diffuse it. And he sends all the, he's not there when the massacre takes place, when the shooting takes place. And he diffuses it by removing all the soldiers to Castle William. Oh, to get them out of, yeah, because it's them being out of barracks. It's a problem. How could you forget this important detail? I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have known.

I should have known, forgive me. But listen, the case that is now rolling ahead, even though your forebearer has called soldiers back, there are still some men on trial for their life, and they have got to prove that they didn't shoot first, or that, you know, they didn't open fire without reason. And poor John Adams is the man who's got to go prove it to people who will have. hate him for it. And he sort of says about, you know, having to sit down, even knowing that everybody, including your own cousin, who's going to hate what you're doing, the only way to compose myself and collect my thoughts he wrote in his diary is to sit down at my table, place my diary before me, take my pen in my hand. This apparatus takes off my attention from other objects. Pen, ink,

paper, a sitting posture, are great helps to attention and thinking. And so he comes up and he finds a defense which is so brilliant because not only does he in the defense of these men. He proves actually that they didn't fire without reason that they were having lobs of ice thrown at them and oyster shells and bits of wood and somebody else is shouting, go on fire then you bastards. And then that's how it all degenerates, that it isn't just the troops came out and shot. He gets them all off. Only two of them are punished with manslaughter and they get branded on their thumbs.

but the rest are, you know, he gets... But they're not tried for murder. They're not tried for murder. Branded on their thumbs. Branded on their thumbs. That was the punishment for the two who were found guilty of manslaughter. But what I love, what I really love, is that in his speech, even for the prisoners that he's trying to defend, he manages to sound like a revolutionary.

So I'll just read you a bit. We have entertained a great variety of phrases to avoid calling this, this sort of people. a mob. Some call them shavers, some call them geniuses. The plain English is gentlemen. It is most probably a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish teags and outlandish jacktars. And why should we scruple to call such people a mob? I cannot conceive, unless the name is too respectable for them. The sun is not about to stand still or go out nor the rivers to dry up because there was a mob in Boston on the 5th of March that attacked a party of soldiers. soldiers quartered in a populous town will always occasion to mobs where they prevent them.

They are wretched conservatives with the peace. So he's saying, you know what? Okay, they are not guilty, these soldiers, but you brought this on yourself because you stationed these soldiers in a populist city. I mean, he wins the case. It elevates him to the stratosphere. And even, you know, the people who disagreed with him have to respect his integrity for fighting this case. They also know exactly where he stands on the way in which the British are overstepping the mark. And this sets him up, John Adams, to be elected as the Boston representative, who will go ultimately to the Congress that will change America.

If you want to hear the last of our founding fathers, which is Benjamin Franklin, who to me is the most wonderful of them all, you can go now to Empirapoduk.com and hear it. straight away. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Droompool. Not the one at the Boston Baskalo.