John Adams and the pursuit of happiness

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

Adams never failed to answer the call of his country to serve, and he was called upon again and again, always to the detriment of his livelihood and often with risk to his life. He was asked to go to France during the Revolution, and set sail with his 10-year-old son, John Quincy, in the dead of winter. British cruisers were lying off the coast of Massachusetts, just waiting for someone like Adams to make a run for it to try to obtain French war support. Had he been captured, he would have been taken to England, to the Tower of London, and hanged. Keep in mind that everybody who signed the Declaration potentially was putting their head in a noose. When our Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, that was not just rhetoric. Keep in mind, too, that they were up against the greatest military power on Earth and had very little military experience. They had no money--there was not a bank in all of America in 1776. Moreover, no colonial people ever had revolted successfully against their mother country. Everything was against them.

Adams and his son took a boat out to the frigate Boston on Feb. 13, 1777, from a place called Houghs Neck, near Braintree. Adams never had set foot on a ship before. The crossing would take weeks, perhaps months, if they made it--and, as it turned out, everything that could have gone wrong did. They were hit by a hurricane. They encountered an enemy ship and fought a battle. They were becalmed for a long period, but they eventually made it. Adams served in France for about a year, then was called home.

Returning, he wrote the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts--the oldest written constitution still in use anywhere in the world today--which is a rough sketch of our national Constitution that was put together 10 years later. It was complete with a bill of rights and with a paragraph unlike anything in any previous such document. Listen to it, and remember that it was written in wartime by a man who was the first of his family to have an education: "Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences...."

Many people today are saying that we should be teaching morals in our schools. They could find support in the closing line of this section of the Commonwealth Constitution, which speaks of the necessity "to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments among the people." Again, if Adams had done nothing but write this remarkable document, he would be someone whose character would deserve our attention. No sooner had he finished it than he was called upon once again to go abroad to France.