John Adams.(Review)

John Adams By David McCullough Simon & Schuster, 353 pages, $35

As David McCullough's new biograhy of John Adams suggests, Adams and Thomas Jefferson will remain forever linked within the history of the origins of the American Republic. The author apparently began with the intention of writing about both men, but ended up focusing on Adams.

McCullough has divided Adams's life into three sections. The first part takes us from the beginnings of his career through his leadership in the movement that culminated in independence. The second covers his diplomatic efforts in France and London to secure victory during the Revolution, and stability in the years that followed. The final part details his vice presidential years, his Presidency, and his time in retirement. The book culminates with Adams's death on the Fourth of July, 1826, the same day Thomas Jefferson passed away.

How to explain the growing appreciation of John Adams today, while Jefferson's reputation appears to be in decline? Reading McCullough's account of their intertwined lives, many would agree that Jefferson's character appears flawed when compared to Adams's. Thomas Jefferson was a master (like William Jefferson Clinton) of telling people what they wanted to hear. He was capable of a disingenuousness and even duplicity that was alien to Adams. In short, Jefferson lacked the one ingredient most valued by the men of his generation such as George Washington: virtue.

Honesty and personal virtue are where Jefferson fails next to Adams. This is evident in the letters between the two men (though, unfortunately, McCullough fails to assess the correspondence in any great detail). Of course, a man might be honest, even virtuous, yet utterly wrongheaded, so we need to know more about the substance of Adams's beliefs. If I had to select one weakness in this book, it would be McCullough's failure to adequately explore the basic framework of Adams's worldview and values.

While both Adams and Jefferson could agree that there was "a natural aristocracy among men," and that "the grounds of this are virtue and talents," they differed fundamentally about the nature of these talents and how virtue could be taught. As some Chinese scholars have noted, Jefferson was quite Confucian in his thinking. This is not accidental; Confucian notions--such as the idea that an academic system should be the primary basis for identifying human ...