Table of Contents

List of Figures x

About the Contributors xi

Introduction: The Adams paradox 1
David Waldstreicher

Part I The First Generation 3

1 John Adams: The Life and the Biographers 5
R. B. Bernstein

2 John Adams and Enlightenment 36
Darren Staloff

3 The Revolutionary Politics of John Adams, 1760–1775 60
Colin Nicolson

4 John Adams in the Continental Congress 78
Karen N. Barzilay

5 John Adams’s Political Thought 102
David J. Siemers

6 John Adams, Diplomat 125
Wendy H. Wong

7 John Adams and the Elections of 1796 and 1800 142
David W. Houpt

8 The Presidency of John Adams 166
Douglas Bradburn

9 John Adams and Religion 184
John Fea

10 Abigail Adams and Feminism 199
Elaine Forman Crane

11 Abigail Adams: The Life and the Biographers 218
Margaret A. Hogan

Part II The Second Generation 239

12 John Quincy Adams: The Life, the Diary, and the Biographers 241
David Waldstreicher

13 John Quincy Adams and National Republicanism 263
Andrew Shankman

14 John Quincy Adams, Diplomacy, and American Empire 281
John M. Belohlavek

15 John Quincy Adams and the Elections of 1824 and 1828 305
David P. Callahan

16 The Presidency of John Quincy Adams 328
Padraig Riley

17 John Quincy Adams, Internal Improvements, and the Nation State 348
Sean Patrick Adams

18 John Quincy Adams: Apostle of Union 367
David F. Ericson

19 John Quincy Adams, Cosmopolitan 383
Bethel Saler

20 John Quincy Adams and the Tangled Politics of Slavery 402
Matthew Mason

21 John Quincy Adams’s Higher Learnings: Rhetoric, Science, and Intellectual History 422
Marlana Portolano

22 A Monarch in a Republic: Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams and Court Culture in Early Washington City 445
Catherine Allgor and Margery M. Heffron

Part III Images and Legacies 469

23 Thomas Jefferson and the John Adams Family 471
Herbert E. Sloan

24 The Adamses on Screen 487
Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein

25 An American Dynasty 510
Edith B. Gelles

References 542

Index 568

About the Author

David Waldstreicher is Professor of History at Temple University and co-editor of the Journal of the Early Republic. His books include Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (2004), Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (2009), and A Companion to Benjamin Franklin (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

Reviews

“This is a fine collection of essays on the Adamses and an excellent introduction to one of the most admired, despised, honored, and disrespected families in American history.”  (Presidential Studies Quarterly, 1 June 2015) “This is an excellent resource for any academic reference collection or special library with specialization in Colonial America, politics, or regional history.”  (Reference Reviews, 1 January 2014) “David Waldstreicher has compiled a glittering collection of essays surveying the lives and times of the second and sixth presidents of the United States. The public and private lives of John, John Quincy and the inimitable Abigail Adams continue to fascinate both academe and the reading public.”  (Expofairs.com, 6 May  2013)