John Adams and the pursuit of happiness

Meanwhile, Adams' wife, Abigail probably had better political sense than her husband, and was a better judge of people--and she loved politics. There is a wonderful scene in the White House after Adams had been defeated for reelection by Jefferson. Jefferson was invited to come over and have dinner, as were many members of the Senate and House of Representatives. He sat at the table beside Abigail, asking, "Who's that man over there?" and "Who's this one over here?" She told him everything about them--where they came from, what their constituency was, what their interests were. She was as bright as can be and had a backbone of iron. She probably did not weigh 100 pounds, standing only about five-foot-one. I think she is one of the greatest Americans of all time--and you can discover her, too, in her marvelous correspondence with her husband during his long absences.

Something I always like to emphasize is that there never was a simpler past. We often hear, "Oh, that was a simpler time," but it always is wrong. Imagine Abigail's life. Up in the morning at about five to light the fireplace that served as the kitchen, call the children down, cook breakfast, tend the stock, and try to keep the farm solvent during the entire war with her husband gone and with inflation and with shortages of everything. Schools were closed, so she had to educate her offspring at home. Her day did not end until nine or 10 at night when the children would go upstairs to their bedrooms, where it could be so cold that the water in the bowls that they used to wash their faces was iced over. Abigail then would sit down at the kitchen table with a single candle and script some of the greatest letters ever written by any American.

In one plaintive correspondence, she writes: "Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors"--and we do not. We do not know what they went through--epidemics of smallpox or dysentery, which could take the lives of hundreds of people even in a little town like Quincy, Mass. It by no means was a simpler time. They had to worry about things that we do not even think about any more, and suffer discomforts and inconveniences of a kind that we never even imagine. We have little idea of how tough they were. Imagine John Adams setting off in the middle of winter to ride nearly 400 miles on horseback to get to Congress. Try riding even 40 miles sometime. John and Abigail were separated, in all, more than 10 years because of his service to the country.

Much is written about Adams' vice presidency under Washington, and about his presidency, but his diplomatic duties were as important as anything else he did. Primarily, he got the Dutch to give us massive loans, which really saved our Revolution; we probably would have lost the war with England had it not been for Holland. He went to the Netherlands on his own, knowing nobody. He did not speak Dutch. He did not have authorization from Congress because, being abroad, he was out of touch with that body. Somehow, though, he succeeded. He once said that, if anything were written on his tombstone, it should be that he was the man who got the Dutch to provide the loans to win the war. Yet, this fact is little known or understood by most Americans.