Copyright 2019 by Douglas R. Egerton
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First Edition: October 2019
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Egerton, Douglas R., author.
Title: Heirs of an honored name : the decline of the Adams family and the rise of modern America / Douglas Egerton.
Other titles: Decline of the Adams family and the rise of modern America
Description: First edition. | New York : Basic Books, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019011712 (print) | LCCN 2019981423 (ebook) | ISBN 9780465093885 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781541699700 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Adams family. | Adams, John Quincy, 17671848. | Adams, Charles Francis, 18071886. | United StatesPolitics and government17831865. | StatesmenUnited StatesBiography. | Statesmens familiesUnited StatesBiography. | Braintree (Mass.)Biography.
Classification: LCC E322.1.A39 E36 2019 (print) | LCC E322.1.A39 (ebook) | DDC 973.5/50922 [B]dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011712
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019981423
ISBNs: 978-0-465-09388-5 (hardcover), 978-1-5416-9970-0 (ebook)
E3-20190913-JV-NF-ORI
P RAISE FOR
H EIRS OF AN H ONORED N AME
This is a story of declension: the intergenerational devolution of a great American family line. In vivid and graceful prose, Douglas Egerton recounts the political and moral decay of the Adamses. In his time, John Quincy Adams became a leading, even heroic figure in the fight against slavery, a fight that eventually achieved victory through civil war. But in later years, his descendants turned their back on the principles that animated that struggle. In doing so, they paralleled and illuminated the retreat of the northern business and political elite as a whole from the goals of the nations second democratic revolution.
B RUCE L EVINE, author of The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South
The Adams family contributed a stunning procession of presidents, diplomats, historians, and intellectuals who played crucial roles in the birth and maturation of the Republic and its salvation during the Civil War. In this wonderfully engaging book, one of the most eminent historians of this period tells a compelling story of how this seemingly indispensable family became superfluous to the nation it had so dutifully served.
D ON H. D OYLE, author of The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War
In this riveting saga of the personal tribulations of Americas first familys later generations, Douglas Egerton beautifully charts the declension of the American Republic from its revolutionary and antislavery ideals. He adeptly mirrors the betrayal of emancipation and hopes for an interracial democracy after the Civil War in the Adams familys retreat from the duties of patriotism to narrow elitism. This is a collective historical biography of a superior order.
M ANISHA S INHA, author of The Slaves Cause: A History of Abolition
If good biography tells us what we need to know about its subjects and the society they inhabit, then in this splendid life story of the Adams family, Douglas Egerton takes us on a troubling journey through the many ways this patrician family, and the country, abandoned their lofty principles and commitment to equality for a crass denial of rights.
R ICHARD B LACKETT, author of The Captives Quest for Freedom and Making Freedom
Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America
The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief Violent History of Americas Most Progressive Era
Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War
Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America
Rebels, Reformers, and Revolutionaries: Collected Essays and Second Thoughts
He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey
Gabriels Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802
Charles Fenton Mercer and the Trial of National Conservatism
The Denmark Vesey Affair: A Documentary History (with Robert L. Paquette)
The Atlantic World: A History, 14001888 (with Alison Games, Kris Lane, and Donald R. Wright)
F OR MY HONORED FAMILY,
H ANNAH
K EARNEY
L EIGH
M ARC
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
P ERCY S HELLEY , Ozymandias, 1816
J OHN Q UINCY A DAMS married L OUISA C ATHERINE J OHNSON (February 12, 1775May 15, 1852) on July 26, 1797, and was the father of four children and the grandfather of nine grandchildren.
1. George Washington Adams (April 12, 1801April 30, 1829).
2. John Adams II (July 4, 1803October 23, 1834) married Mary Catherine Hellen (18061870) on February 25, 1828.
1. Mary Louisa Adams (February 23, 1829July 16, 1859) married William Clarkson Johnson (August 16, 1823January 28, 1893) on June 30, 1853.
2. Georgeanna Francis Adams (September 10, 1830October 2, 1839).
3. Charles Francis Adams Sr. (August 18, 1807November 21, 1886) married Abigail Brown Brooks (April 25, 1808June 6, 1889) on September 3, 1829.
1. Louisa Catherine Adams