Adams John Quincy - Lincoln and the abolitionists: John Quincy Adams, slavery, and the Civil War

It is sensible to state that with this book, as with my last two, my major indebtedness is to the new digital world, to the computer technology that has revolutionized historical and literary research. I remember the index cards and the steel index card box in which, fifty years ago when I wrote Thomas Carlyle: A Biography , I stored my research notes. And the thousands of miles I traveled and the months I spent in faraway archives for my next three biographies. Now the computer on my desk has become the portal to websites that provide access to most of the manuscript archives and book collections of the world. Scholarly writers, especially biographers, have had our writing lives cushioned and extended. Also, the organization of digitalized files makes possible a tidiness and an accessibility that not even a compulsive arranger could have managed before. And my word-processing program has allowed me to write better than I ever could without it. Revision is the lifeblood of a good writer. The computer has given me the chance to write and rewrite almost painlessly.

Complicated legal and cultural problems have arisen in regard to who benefits and who loses (especially institutionally) from this new world of online resources. Not everyone is a winner. Libraries have to redefine themselves and retool, an expensive activity. And the application of this technology to the buying and selling of books creates its own issues. Many independent bookstores have gone out of business. Chain bookstores have had to adapt. And Amazon dominates the book marketplace. This extraordinary company, though, has made its own positive contribution to my life as a writer. In many instances, I need actual physical books. The irony for professional nonfiction writers like myself, who have chosen to live at a distance from research libraries, is that, just as it radically transforms the book marketplace, Amazon also delivers to my door overnight almost all the books I need. For someone who now lives in Boothbay, Maine, that is a great asset.

Still, the magic of computers and next-day delivery notwithstanding, there are particular libraries that have been frequent presences in the creation of this book. Nearby, the excellent Bowdoin College Library and its ever-helpful staff; at greater distances and mostly online, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the Gilder-Lehrman Institute. There are a number of people, some connected with institutions, others not, who have been of particular help. Douglas Wilson has kindly shared with me his expertise about Jefferson and Lincoln. At the Massachusetts Historical Society, Emily Ross has provided a much-needed scan of a Charles Francis Adams diary entry, and Dan Hinchen offered helpful guidance in regard to Adams and Elijah Lovejoy. Bill and Jane Ann Moore, the foremost experts on Lovejoys life and writings and co-directors of the Lovejoy Society at Princeton, Illinois, have generously helped with source material and guidance. Penny White at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia has helped with a scan of a letter from Charles Fenton Mercer to John Hartwell Cocke.

The image archives that have permitted me to reproduce items in their collections are separately acknowledged, but the people who have helped facilitate this warrant acknowledgment: Erin Beasely, the National Portrait Gallery; Joshua Blay, the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent; Jaime Bourassa, the Missouri History Museum; Caroline Keinath, the Adams National Historical Park, National Park Service; Bruce Kirby, the Library of Congress; Ellen Sandberg, the Granger Collection; Tatyana Shinn, the State Historical Society of Missouri; and Patricia H. Svoboda, the National Portrait Gallery.

My apologies to those who have been rewarded for their curiosity about what I was writing with mini-lectures when a sentence or two would have been appropriate. And my thanks to those who didnt let on that writers are better read than heard. To four friends, special thanks: to Peter Felsenthal for his photographic expertise; to Susan Hirschman for her warm interest and hospitality; to Charles Molesworth, who kindly read the manuscript and from whom I have borrowed his phrase about Elijah Lovejoy: an immortal ghostly shadow; and to Maureen Halmo for empathetic support on a wide range of concerns. The first reader, Rhoda Weyr, provided helpful editing; the second, Georges Borchardt, my longtime agent, has the great talent of being both magically concise and helpfully precise. My excellent technician, Mike Gudroe, has kept my computers alive and well. At HarperCollins, my thanks to my editor, Jonathan Jao, whose commitment to the book has been expressed throughout in word and deed; and to the associate editor Sofia Groopman, who has kept me informed and well chaperoned through the production process. HarperCollins has given the book the advantage of an excellent copyeditor, Jenna Dolan, an excellent proofreader, Susan Gamer, and a superlative production editorial department, led by John Jusino. My thanks for the blessing of three estimable children, Julia, Noah, and Benjamin, who amid the demands of their own lives find moments in which to be interested and encouraging.

Fred Kaplan

Boothbay, January 2017

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary

Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer

The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography

Coffee with Mark Twain

Gore Vidal: A Biography

Henry James: The Imagination of Genius

Charles Dickens: A Biography

Thomas Carlyle: A Biography

Sacred Tears: Sentimentality in Victorian Literature

Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction

Miracles of Rare Device: The Poets Sense of Self in Nineteenth-Century Poetry

F RED K APLAN is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer , which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize; John Quincy Adams: American Visionary ; and Thomas Carlyle , which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of biographies of Charles Dickens, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Gore Vidal. He lives in Boothbay, Maine.

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O n a blessedly cool early morning in late October 1837, after what had seemed an endless Washington summer, seventy-year-old congressman and ex-president John Quincy Adams, having recently returned to the nations capital from his Massachusetts home, opened his morning newspaper. The advertisement he read in the National Intelligencer startled him. It was headed Sale of Slaves: a mother and two of her children, the property of James H. Birch, a well-known slave dealer, were to be auctioned at four oclock that afternoon by Edward Dyer, auctioneer and corn merchant. It riveted his attention.