Frank Founding Father

THE ADAMS PAPERS (Volumes I to IV)--Edited by L. H. Bufterfield--Harvard University Press ($30).

On Nov. 18, 1755, an earthquake rumbled through Braintree, Mass. Shaken awake by the tremors, a 20-year-old schoolteacher was so impressed that he forthwith began a diary ("The house seemed to rock and reel"). These scratched words were the first of what was to become one of the great avalanches of words in U.S. history. The schoolteacher was John Adams, who became the U.S.'s first Vice President, its second President, and the patriarch of a remarkable clan of statesmen and historians that ranged from his son, John Quincy Adams the sixth President, to Charles Francis Adams,* Secretary of the Navy under President Hoover. In his diary, an autobiography and letters by the hundreds, John Adams chronicled his career, set the firm pattern for his descendants of making history with one hand and writing about it with the other. Down through the generations, the members of the family faithfully sent their own papers to the Stone Library in Quincy, Mass., where John Adams made his last home.

Under the provisions of a family trust, the papers of all the Adamses were held in private until 1954, when they were turned over to the Massachusetts Historical Society. TIME Inc. contributed $250,000 to the project of editing the works, which turned out to cover more than five miles of microfilm. After six years of study, a team of scholars under American History Authority L. H. Butterfield begins publication with four volumes that contain the diary and autobiography of John Adams.

"Uncommon Enterprize." As a young man, John Adams fancied the ladies, and advised his nieces to practice the good old New England custom of bundling. In 1759, at the age of 23, Adams vowed mightily: "Shall I sleep away my whole 70 Years? No by every Thing I swear I will renounce the Contemplative, and betake myself to an active roving Life by Sea or Land, or else I will attempt some uncommon unexpected Enterprize in Law."

True to his word, Adams became one of the best lawyers in Boston. At the Continental Congresses, he helped shape the Declaration of Independence. During the war years, he tangled with the best European minds as a member of the mission to France along with Benjamin Franklin, later served as the first U.S. Minister to the Court of St. James's.

Though Adams became skilled in the subtleties of diplomacy, he remained at heart a pragmatic, hidebound Yankee who viewed Europe's sophisticated society with suspicion. Far from being awed by Franklin, who was lionized by the French, Adams found the old man to be more interested in wining and dining than in the job of persuading the French to help the embattled young nation fight against the British. "The Life of Dr. Franklin was a Scene of continual discipation," wrote Adams. "He came home at all hours from Nine to twelve O Clock at night." Though Adams faithfully recorded the best of the bawdy jokes he heard, his New England morality was shocked when a French lady leaned across the dinner table and asked him to explain, as an obviously direct descendant of Adam, how the first man and woman "found out the Art of lying together." Adams did his best "to set a brazen face against a brazen face," explained it was a simple matter of instinct. But later upon reflection he wrote: "If such are the manners of Women of Rank, Fashion and Reputation in France, they can never support a Republican Government. We must therefore take great care not to import them into America."

Amidst the diplomatic whirl, he could always spare a thought for his farm back in Quincy, invariably took time to investigate the quality of the local manure. The English manure was fine, wrote Adams, "but it is not equal to mine, which I composed of Horse Dung from Bracketts stable in Boston, Marsh Mud from the sea shore and Street Dust, from the Plain at the Foot of Pens hill." The Europeans found him "a Character."

Where to Stop? For all his virtues as a dedicated reporter on his own life and thoughts, Adams had his shortcomings. His slapdash autobiography ends in 1780. He inexplicably stopped writing at certain key points in his career, including the years of his presidency (1797-1801). Unfortunately, the editors failed to provide any commentary bridging sections of the diary, faithfully left in reams of material that glaze the eye of the nonhistorian. To fill in the gaps and round out the man, readers will have to wait until the editors of The Adams Papers publish John Adams' witty, newsy letters as part of the 20 volumes or so that will be devoted to family correspondence.

In all, the editors guess that there may be 100 volumes to be mined out of the varied writings of the Adams family, although they have set themselves the cut-off date of 1889, the year of the death of Abigail Brooks Adams, wife of Charles Francis Adams, who was Minister to the Court of St. James's during the Civil War, and the last of old John's grandsons. This will exclude the contributions of Historian Henry Adams (The Education of Henry Adams), the most elegant of family stylists. But, given the indefatigable energy of the Adamses down to this day, the editors apparently concluded that they would have to stop somewhere, before new production outran the presses.

-* Whose son, the fourth Charles Francis Adams, is chairman of the board of the Raytheon Manufacturing Co.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.