John Adams and the pursuit of happiness

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2007 by David McCullough

I THINK THAT WE NEED history as much as we need bread or water or love. To make the point, I want to discuss a single human being and why we should know him. First off, he is an example of the transforming miracle of education. When he and others wrote in the Declaration of Independence about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," what they meant by "happiness" was not longer vacations or more material goods. They were talking about the enlargement of the human experience through the life of the mind and spirit. They knew that the system of government they were setting up would not work if the people were not educated. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "it expects what never was and never will be."

John Adams was born into a poor farm family. He often is imagined as a rich Boston blueblood. He definitely was not. His one great advantage, or break, was a scholarship to college--to Harvard College, which, at that time, had all of four buildings and a faculty of seven. Adams entered Harvard when he was 15 and discovered books. After that, he later recalled, "I read forever."

At a young age, he began to keep a diary--it was about the size of the palm of your hand, and his handwriting so small you need a magnifying glass to read it--with the idea that, by reckoning day-by-day his moral assets and liabilities, he could improve himself: "Oh! that I could wear out of my mind every mean and base affectation, conquer my natural pride and conceit," he wrote. His natural pride and conceit would be among the things his critics would throw at him for the rest of his life. What is so interesting here is that he recognized this himself so early.

On July 21, 1756, at the age of 20, he wrote this memorable entry: "I am resolved to rise with the sun and to study Scriptures on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, and to study some Latin author the other three mornings. Noons and nights I intend to read English authors.... I will rouse up my mind and fix my attention. I will stand collected within myself and think upon what I read and what I see. I will strive with all my soul to be something more than persons who have had less advantages than myself."

The next morning, however, he slept until seven and, in a one-line entry the following week, he wrote: "A very rainy day. Dreamed away the time," There was so much that he wanted to know and do, and he would have moments when he thought life was passing him by: "I have no books, no time, no friends. I must therefore be contented to live and die an ignorant, obscure fellow."

Adams went to Harvard with the implicit understanding that he would become a minister, but he never really was drawn to that calling. In August 1756, he signed a contract with a young Worcester attorney to stay under his inspection (as they put it) for two years. The day after, inspired by a sermon he had heard and also perhaps by a feeling of relief over his decision, he walked outside and recounted that the night sky was an "amazing concave of Heaven sprinkled and glittering with stars" that threw him "into a kind of transport," such that he knew such wonders to be gifts of God. "But all the provisions that [God] has [made] for the gratifications of our senses," he continued, "are much inferior to the provision, the wonderful provision, that He has made for the gratification of our nobler powers of intelligence and reason. He has given us reason to find out the troth, and the real design and true end of our existence."

Adams quickly rose in his profession and took an interest in politics. By the time he became the nation's second president in 1796, he had served a multitude of duties for his country. He had been one of those who explained the philosophy and principles of the American Revolution to the people of the time through what he wrote in newspapers. He had defended the hated British soldiers who were arrested and put on trial after the so-called Boston Massacre, when nobody else would defend them. Asked to do so, and knowing that it might destroy his political career, he thought it his duty in a society governed by law--and it did not hurt his career one bit because people saw that he was a man of conviction. He had served brilliantly in the Continental Congress. Among other accomplishments, he was the one who put the name of George Washington in nomination to become the commander in chief of the Continental Army; he chose Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence; later on he would place John Marshall on the Supreme Court. If he had done nothing but these three things, he would be someone we should know.

Deliberating the Declaration

Adams more than anyone got the Continental Congress to vote for the Declaration of Independence. We have no records of what he said. Deliberations took place behind closed doors, out of fear of spies in Philadelphia. Keep in mind that only about one-third of the country supported the Revolution. Another third was opposed--the Loyalists or Tories, who saw themselves as the true patriots because they were standing by their King. The remaining third, in the human way, were waiting to see who won. Yet, Adams convinced the Congress to vote for the Declaration and many wrote about it afterwards. If you have seen the musical "1776," you will remember that he is the central character. That is as it should he. There are many people in it singing, "Why don't you be quiet, John Adams?" or "Why are you so obnoxious, John Adams?" When I was working on my biography of Adams, I tried to find out who called him obnoxious, and I found only one--Adams himself. He wrote to a friend many years later that he must have been rather obnoxious back then, but felt he had to make it happen.