The Fires of Honorable Ambition

“America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy” — John Quincy Adams’s famous words are often quoted to justify noninterference in other nations’ affairs. Yet when he spoke them, Adams was not advocating neutrality or passivity but rather outlining a national policy that balanced democratic idealism with a pragmatic understanding of the young republic’s capabilities and limitations. America’s rise from a confederation of revolutionary colonies to a world power is often treated as inevitable, but in Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic, Charles N. Edel argues that he served as the central architect of a grand strategy that shaped America’s rise. Adams’s particular combination of ideas and policies made him a critical link between the founding generation and the Civil War–era nation of Lincoln. Here is a brief excerpt looking at Adams’s education.

Any discussion of John Quincy Adams’s education must begin with his parents. John and Abigail Adams instilled in their eldest son the idea that he was destined for great things from an early age. As the two most important influences in his life, they labored to ingrain in him a sense of service to others, a thirst for knowledge, and the drive to excel. Warning his son against complacency, John Adams once admonished young John Quincy that “you come into life with advantages which will disgrace you if your success is mediocre. And if you do not rise to the head not only of your Profession, but of your Country, it will be owing to your own Lasiness, Slovenliness, and Obstinacy.” Abigail was even more blunt. Writing him just after his first Atlantic crossing, she instructed her son to become “an ornament to society, an Honour to your Country, and a Blessing to your parents.” She demanded that he strictly adhere to “those religious Sentiments and principals which were early instilled into your mind and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.” In case this was not a serious enough admonition, she concluded, “dear as you are to me, I had much rather you should have found your Grave in the ocean you have crossed, or any untimely death crop you in your Infant years, rather than see you an immoral profligate or a Graceless child.”

Evidence of parental pressure on John Quincy is overwhelming and frequently seems excessive. John and Abigail pushed their children to succeed, constantly reminded them of the advantages they had over others, and warned them against complacency. Their ambitions, for themselves and their children, certainly mark them as unique. But in the context of mid-to late eighteenth-century Massachusetts, which retained many of its Puritan folkways, their child rearing loses much, though certainly not all, of its distinctiveness. According to a historian of the period, this was a culture that thought the “first and most urgent purpose of child rearing was . . . the ‘breaking of the will.’ ” In such a culture, personal happiness and individual desires took a subservient role to familial duty and communal obligations.

While their admonitions might seem harsh, this was the Adams creed — through hard work and virtue, excellence, advancement, power, and fame would surely follow. This unwavering drive for excellence and devotion to duty was imprinted on the entire family, but most especially on John Quincy. Already at the age of ten he was parroting the line. “We are Sent into this world for Some end,” he informed his younger brother Charles. “It is our duty to discover by Close study what this end is & when we once discover it to pursue it with unconquerable perseverance.” It was not much of a mystery what the end was. From his infancy on, his parents repeatedly told him that service to the commonwealth was the first duty of citizenship. And they expected him to become a leader of their new country.

John and Abigail left an extensive written record not only of their own relationship, but also of their hopes, fears, and aspirations for themselves, their children, and their young country — all of which they believed were intimately linked. Not surprisingly, their correspondence is filled with questions of what they should teach their children. The Adamses sought to shape their children, and particularly John Quincy Adams, into statesmen who would play a leading role in the affairs of their new country. This education would be grounded in history, Christian ethics, and civic virtues. In a letter to Robert Livingston, the secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation, John Adams described the model statesman. While it was a none-too-subtle hint that he was amply qualified for future diplomatic postings himself, what is more interesting is his description of the proper training for such an individual. The elder Adams thought that a statesman “should have had an education in classical learning, and in the knowledge of general history, ancient and modern, and particularly the history of France, England, Holland, and America. He should be well versed in the principles of ethics, of the law of nature and nations, of legislation and government, of the civil Roman law, of the laws of England and the United States, of the public law of Europe, and in the letters, memoirs, and histories of those great men, who have heretofore shone in the diplomatic order, and conducted the affairs of nations, and the world.”

This was exactly the education that John Quincy was pursuing under his parents’ tutelage. He learned to speak ancient Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Dutch, and German. In Greek, he read Homer, Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch; in Latin, Suetonius, Livy, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus, Juvenal, Horace, and Ovid. He plodded through European history, became versed in the various religions, and devoured political philosophy. He became a daily reader of the Bible and an avid fan of Shakespeare. The great Roman orators taught him wisdom and folly. The story of Abraham and his descendants highlighted “all the vicissitudes to which individuals, families, and nations are liable.” But it was the Bard of Avon who surpassed all others as “a teacher of morals.” Years later, Adams recalled that his “enthusiastic admiration” of Shakespeare commenced “before the down had darkened my lip.” That admiration, “little short of idolatry,” stemmed from his belief that the English playwright was “a profound delineator of human nature and a sublime poet.”20 This broad reading was designed to teach him the varieties of human nature, to build his critical thinking capacity, and to teach him to command the English language and bend it to his purposes.

Reading history would stand at the heart of Adams’s education. The idea that history should occupy a central position in education was a common one in colonial and revolutionary America. In 1749, Benjamin Franklin wrote that encouraging the study of history was the best way that “the first principles of sound Politicks be fix’d in the Minds of Youth.” Thomas Jefferson believed that “history, by apprizing them [students] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.” The founding generation had all read the same Greek, Roman, and British authors and absorbed their lessons. They believed that there were discernible laws of history that, much like the laws of nature, regulated political affairs. They thought that if they read widely and studied deeply, they could understand the patterns of behavior in men, societies, institutions, and governments. Their reverence for history was driven not by romantic nostalgia, but by practical considerations. By comparing historical events and analyzing the results, they believed they could develop a predictive tool for governance.

Among this historically conscious group, John Adams stood out for his views on the value of history as a policy tool. As a youth, he had decided he would form “an exact knowledge of the nature, end, and means of government.” He could accomplish this by comparing “the different forms of [government] with each other, and each of them with their effects on public and private happiness.” These were the writings of an ambitious young attorney, but this concept stayed consistent throughout his life. His most mature work of political philosophy, the three-volume 1787 Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, was a historical survey of different types of governments in the ancient and modern world. Adams examined the democratic republics of the Low Countries and Switzerland and compared them to Athens and Thebes. He looked at the aristocratic republics in Zurich and Venice and measured their virtues and vices against Rome’s. He analyzed the monarchical republics of England and Poland in light of Homer’s monarchies. He considered the political ideas of the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Enlightenment, and the British Commonwealth men, drawing on authorities from Plato to Tacitus to Machiavelli to Locke and Milton. The point of this broad and often tedious work was to prove Adams’s insistence that “all nations from the beginning have been agitated by the same passions.” Comprehensively cataloguing those passions illuminated certain principles that were applicable to all men in all places at all times. Adams concluded that “nations move by unalterable rules” and that a close reading of history could reduce governing to a science.

As he developed his thinking on both the science of governing and the central importance of republican ideas, John Adams instructed his son on the importance of reading, above all other historians, Thucydides. “There is no History,” Adams wrote, “perhaps, better adapted to this usefull Purpose than that of Thucidides, an Author, of whom I hope you will make yourself perfect Master, in original Language, which is Greek, the most perfect of all human languages. . . . You will find in your Fathers library, the Works of Mr. Hobbes, in which among a great deal of mischievous Philosophy, you will find a learned and exact Translation of Thucidides. . . . You will find it full of Instruction to the Orator, the Statesman, the General, as well as to the Historian and Philosopher.”

This is an intriguing letter. Why does Adams say that Hobbes’s works contain “a great deal of mischievous Philosophy”? And why is Adams insistent that Thucydides serves a more useful purpose than any other author?

The first answer is fairly obvious. Leviathan, which was undoubtedly included in the works of Hobbes, was the standard text on absolute rule and the inviolability, once entered, of the social contract between subject and sovereign, no matter the abuses of the latter. Yet Adams deeply believed in the need to resist tyranny and struggle on behalf of liberty. The second answer rests on Adams’s view of Thucydides, suggesting that the ancient Greek historian offered much practical knowledge.

Thucydides intended his work to serve as an aide “to the understanding of the future . . . [and] not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.” His work was meant to be didactic, not only to his contemporaries but also to future generations of aspiring statesmen and strategists. Thucydides argued that while understanding history meant understanding context, some things, especially human nature, were unchanging. He argued that if a close study of the past was the best method for deducing general truths and discerning recurrent patterns of behavior between men and nations, history would be the best tool for the training of a future statesman. This sounded remarkably like John Adams’s own argument for treating the study of history as a science.

Adams found the parallels between the American Revolution and the Peloponnesian War striking enough that he began commenting on this in his letters to his wife. “There is a striking Resemblance, in several Particulars between the Peloponnesian and the American War,” Adams wrote. “The real motive to the former was a Jealousy of the growing Power of Athens, by Sea and Land The genuine Motive to the latter, was a similar Jealousy of the growing Power of America. The true Causes which incite to War, are seldom professed, or Acknowledged.” In this comparison, Adams offered his view of what causes conflict in the international system. According to Adams, Thucydides thought that the causes of the Peloponnesian War were both material — the rise of Athens’s navy, commerce, and wealth — and intangible — “fear, honor, and interest.” Because “the future Circumstances of your Country, may require other Wars, as well as Councils and Negotiations,” John Adams thought Thucydides the best possible instructor in the art of statecraft. Placing the ancient and modern conflicts side by side, Adams showed how without a proper understanding of history, the present would become unintelligible and the future indiscernible. According to this logic, statesmen should use their knowledge of history to order and make sense of the present and as a model for what to do and what to avoid doing in the future. Such thinking would profoundly affect John Quincy, who came to believe that historical knowledge was primarily useful as an aide that furnished “lessons of analogy which have some use for application to every position of affairs among men.”