Henry Adams

On March 19, 1861, Abraham Lincoln appointed Charles Francis Adams Sr. United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Henry accompanied his father to London as his private secretary. He also became the anonymous London correspondent for The New York Times. The two Adamses were kept very busy, monitoring Confederate diplomatic intrigues and trying to obstruct the construction of Confederate commerce raiders and blockade runners by British shipyards (see Alabama Claims). Henry's writings for the Times argued that Americans should be patient with the British. While in Britain, Adams was befriended by many noted men, including Charles Lyell, Francis T. Palgrave, Richard Monckton Milnes, James Milnes Gaskell, and Charles Milnes Gaskell. He worked to introduce the young Henry James to English society, with the help of his closest and lifelong friend Charles Milnes Gaskell and his wife Lady Catherine (nee Wallop).[6]

While in Britain, Henry read and was taken with the works of John Stuart Mill. For Adams, Mill's Considerations on Representative Government showed the necessity of an enlightened, moral, and intelligent elite to provide leadership to a government elected by the masses and subject to demagoguery, ignorance, and corruption. Henry wrote to his brother Charles that Mill demonstrated to him that "democracy is still capable of rewarding a conscientious servant."[7] His years in London led Adams to conclude that he could best provide that knowledgeable and conscientious leadership by working as a correspondent and journalist.

In 1870, Adams was appointed professor of medieval history at Harvard, a position he held until his early retirement in 1877 at 39.[3] As an academic historian, Adams is considered to have been the first (in 1874–1876) to conduct historical seminar work in the United States. Among his students was Henry Cabot Lodge, who worked closely with Adams as a graduate student.

Adams was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1875.[8]

Adams's The History of the United States of America (1801 to 1817) (9 vols., 1889–1891) is a highly detailed history of the Jefferson and Madison administrations with a focus on diplomacy.[9] Wide praise was given for its literary merit, especially the opening five chapters of volume 1, describing the nation in 1800. These chapters have also been criticized; Noble Cunningham states flatly, "Adams misjudged the state of the nation in 1800." In striving for literary effect, Cunningham argues, Adams ignored the dynamism and sophistication of the new nation.[9] Such arguments aside, historians have long recognized it as a major and permanent monument of American historiography. It has been called "a neglected masterpiece" by Garry Wills,[10] and "a history yet to be replaced" by the great historian C. Vann Woodward.

In the 1880s, Adams wrote two novels, starting with Democracy, which was published anonymously in 1880 and immediately became popular in literary circles in England and Europe as well as in America. (Only after Adams's death did his publisher reveal his authorship.) Democracy exposes the corruption of political life in Washington, D.C., building on Adams' unique insider's perspective. His other novel, published under the nom de plume of Frances Snow Compton, was Esther, whose heroine was believed to be modeled after his wife.[11]

During the late 1860s and early 1870s, Adams edited, with the assistance of his brother Charles Francis Adams, the major American intellectual-literary journal, The North American Review. During his tenure it published a number of articles exposing corrupt malpractices in finance, corporations and government, anticipating the work of the "muckrakers" by a generation. The brothers collected several of their most important essays in Chapters Of Erie (1871). This experience marked the public commencement of Henry Adams' critical observation of, and radical disenchantment with, the operations and ascendancy of corporations and centralized finance in the economic, social and political life of America. Summarizing the observations of a lifetime, he wrote to his brother Brooks on September 20, 1910 (vol. 6, pp. 369–370, Letters, ed. Levenson et al.): "Our system of protection [of industry and commerce]... is fatal to our principles.... Railways, trusts, banking-system, manufactures, capital and labor, all rest on the principle of monopoly ... The suggestion that these great corporate organisms, which now perform all the vital functions of our social life, should behave themselves decently, gives away our contention that they have no right to exist. Nor am I prepared to admit that more decency can be attained through a legislature made up of similar people exercising similar illegal powers.... From top to bottom the whole system is a fraud.... The conviction of having reached this point where we have no choice but to go on in our own rot, drove me out of all share in public affairs twenty years ago.. Every one who has assumed such a share since then has only muddled and made the matter worse."

In 1884, Adams was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.[12] In 1892, he received the degree LL.D., from Western Reserve University.[3] In 1894, Adams was elected president of the American Historical Association. His address, entitled "The Tendency of History," was delivered in absentia. The essay predicted the development of a scientific approach to history, but was somewhat ambiguous as to what this achievement might mean.

During the 1890s, Adams exercised a profound and fruitful influence over the thought and writings of his younger brother Brooks. Brooks' essay, "The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma," an offshoot of their decades long conversations and correspondence, was published years later.

Adams was an accomplished poet and in later life a friend of young poets—notably George Cabot Lodge and Trumbull Stickney—but published nothing in his lifetime. His important poems "Buddha and Brahma" and "Prayers to the Virgin and the Dynamo" are included (respectively) in the Library of America's Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Anthologies, and a half dozen sonnets, a Troubadour translation, and one lyric are scattered through the letters. It is an open question whether the Massachusetts Historical Society or other archives preserve more.

Henry Adams seated with dog on steps of piazza, c. 1883

In 1904, Adams privately published a copy of his "Mont Saint Michel and Chartres", a pastiche of history, travel, and poetry that celebrated the unity of medieval society, especially as represented in the great cathedrals of France. Originally meant as a diversion for his nieces and "nieces-in-wish", it was publicly released in 1913 at the request of Ralph Adams Cram, an important American architect, and published with support of the American Institute of Architects.

He published The Education of Henry Adams in 1907, in a small private edition for selected friends. Only following Adams's death was The Education made available to the general public, in an edition issued by the Massachusetts Historical Society. It ranked first on the Modern Library's 1998 list of 100 Best Nonfiction Books and was named the best book of the 20th century by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative organization that promotes classical education.[13] It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919.

Some center-right intellectuals view the book critically. Conservative journalist Fred Siegel considered the worldview expressed therein to be rooted in resentment of America's middle class. "Henry Adams," wrote Siegel, "grounded the intellectual's alienation from American life in the resentment that superior men feel when they are insufficiently appreciated in America's common-man culture."[14] Others view Adams's critique of the commercialism, corruption and pecuniolatry of American mercantile culture as central.

John Quincy Adams II (1833–1894) was a graduate of Harvard (1853), practiced law, and was a Democratic member for several terms of the Massachusetts general court. In 1872, he was nominated for vice president by the Democratic faction that refused to support the nomination of Horace Greeley.

Charles Francis Adams Jr. (1835–1915) fought with the Union in the Civil War, receiving in 1865 the brevet of brigadier general in the regular army. He became an authority on railway management as the author of Railroads, Their Origin and Problems (1878), and as president of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1884 to 1890. He collaborated with Henry on the editing of The North Atlantic Review and other projects.

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) practiced law and became a writer. His books include The Gold Standard (1894), The Law of Civilization and Decay (1895), America's Economic Supremacy (1900), The New Empire (1902), The Theory of Social Revolutions (1914), and The Emancipation of Massachusetts (1919). Henry's influence on and involvement with his youngest brother's thought and writing was profound and enduring.

Louisa Catherine Adams Kuhn Her brother describes her death in 1870 from tetanus following a carriage accident in Bagni di Lucca in his Chaos Chapter of The Education of Henry Adams. She is buried in Florence's 'English' Cemetery.

Adams was a member of an exclusive circle, a group of friends called the "Five of Hearts" that consisted of Henry, his wife Clover, geologist and mountaineer Clarence King, John Hay (assistant to Lincoln and later Secretary of State), and Hay's wife Clara.

One of Adams's frequent travel companions was the artist John La Farge, with whom he journeyed to Japan and the South Seas.

From 1885 until 1888, Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight (1846–1917), the State Department's chief librarian, lived with Adams at his home at 1603 H Street in Washington, D.C., where he served as Adams's literary assistant, personal secretary, and household manager. Dwight would go on to serve as archivist of the Adams family archives in Quincy, Massachusetts; director of the Boston Public Library; and U.S. Consul at Vevey, Switzerland.

On June 27, 1872, Adams married Clover Hooper in Beverly, Massachusetts. They spent their honeymoon in Europe, much of it with Charles Milnes Gaskell at Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire.[15] While there, exemplifying the New England civic conscience she and Henry shared, Clover wrote "England is charming for a few families but hopeless for most ... Thank the Lord that the American eagle flaps and screams over us." Upon their return, Adams went back to his position at Harvard, and their home at 91 Marlborough Street, Boston, became a gathering place for a lively circle of intellectuals.[16] In 1877, his wife and he moved to Washington, DC, where their home on Lafayette Square, across from the White House, again became a dazzling and witty center of social life. He worked as a journalist and continued working as a historian.

Adams Memorial modeled 1886–1891, cast 1969 Augustus Saint-Gaudens

On Sunday morning, December 6, 1885, after a late breakfast at their home, 1607 H Street on Lafayette Square, Clover Hooper Adams went to her room. Henry, troubled by a toothache, had planned to see his dentist. While departing his home, he was met by a woman calling to see his wife. Adams went upstairs to her room to ask if she would receive the visitor and found his wife lying on a rug before the fire; an opened vial of potassium cyanide, which Clover had frequently used in processing photographs, lay nearby. Adams carried his wife to a sofa, then ran for a doctor. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Charles E. Hagner pronounced Clover dead.[17]

Much speculation and numerous theories have been given concerning the causes of Clover Adams's suicide. Her death has been attributed to depression over her father's death,[18] as well as a family history of mental depression and suicide . Posthumous speculation has been made more difficult by Henry Adams's destruction of most of Clover's letters and photos following her death.[19] His autobiography maintains a profound silence about his wife after her suicide. Adams's grief was profound and enduring. The event was life-shattering for Adams and profoundly altered the course of his life.

Henry, his brother, Charles Francis Adams, Clover's brother Edward, and her sister Ellen, with her husband Ephraim Gurney, were the attendees at a brief funeral service held on December 9, 1885, at the house on Lafayette Square. Interment services followed at Rock Creek Cemetery, but the actual burial was postponed until December 11, 1885, because of the inclement weather.[20] A few weeks later, Adams ordered a modest headstone as a temporary marker.[21] Later he commissioned a monument for her tomb from his friend, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who created a masterpiece for her memorial.

Portrait of Elizabeth Sherman Cameron (1900) by Anders Zorn

Henry Adams first met Elizabeth Cameron in January 1881 at a reception in the drawing room of the house of John and Clara Hay.[22] Elizabeth was considered to be one of the most beautiful and intelligent women in the Washington area. Elizabeth had grown up as Lizzie Sherman, the daughter of Judge Charles Sherman of Ohio, the niece of Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman in Hayes's cabinet, and the niece of General William Tecumseh Sherman. Her family had pressured Lizzie into a loveless marriage with Senator J. Donald Cameron, brokering a prenuptial agreement that provided her with the income from $160,000 worth of securities, a very large amount in 1878, equivalent to about $5 million in 2022.[23] The arranged marriage on May 9, 1878, united the reluctant 20-year-old beauty with a 44-year-old widower with six children. Eliza, his eldest, who had served as her father's hostess, was now displaced by a stepmother the same age. The children never accepted her. The marriage was further strained by the Senator's coarseness and indifference and his fondness for bourbon and the world of political corruption he inhabited, which is reflected in Adams's novel Democracy.

Henry Adams initiated a correspondence with Lizzie on May 19, 1883, when she and her husband departed for Europe. That letter reflected his unhappiness with her departure and his longing for her return.[24] It was the first of hundreds to follow for the next 35 years, recording a passionate yet unconsummated relationship. On December 7, 1884, one year before Clover's suicide, Henry Adams wrote to Lizzie, "I shall dedicate my next poem to you. I shall have you carved over the arch of my stone doorway. I shall publish your volume of extracts with your portrait on the title page. None of these methods can fully express the extent to which I am yours."[25]

Adams's wife, Clover, who had written a weekly letter to her father throughout her marriage except for the brief hiatus during her breakdown along the Nile, never mentioned concerns or suspicions about Henry's relationship with Lizzie. Nothing in the letters of her family or circle of friends indicates her distrust or unhappiness with her husband in this matter. Indeed, after her death, Henry found a letter written by Clover to her sister Ellen which had not been mailed. The survival of this letter was assured by its contents which read, "If I had one single point of character or goodness, I would stand on that and grow back to life. Henry is more patient and loving than words can express—God might envy him—he bears and hopes and despairs hour after hour—Henry is beyond all words tenderer and better than all of you even."[26]

On Christmas Day 1885, Adams sent one of Clover's favorite pieces of jewelry to Cameron, requesting that she "sometimes wear it, to remind you of her."[27]

Considered a prominent Anglo-Saxonist of particularly the nineteenth-century, Adams has been portrayed by modern historians as anxious about the immigration of the era into the United States, particularly from Eastern Europe.[30] More starkly put, Adams also wrote of his belief that "the dark races are gaining on us".[31] He considered the U.S. Constitution itself as belonging to the Anglo-Saxon "race", and as an expression of "Germanic freedom".[32] He went so far as to criticize fellow scholars for not being absolute enough in their Anglo-Saxonism, such as William Stubbs, whom he criticized for downplaying the significance, as he saw it, of "Germanic law" or hundred law in its contribution to English common law.[33]

Adams was nevertheless highly critical of the English. He referred to them as a "besotted race" from whom nothing good could come and "wanted nothing so much as to wipe England off the earth."[34]

Adams's attitude towards Jews has been described as one of loathing. John Hay said that when Adams "saw Vesuvius reddening ... [he] searched for a Jew stoking the fire."[35]

Adams wrote: "I detest [the Jews], and everything connected with them, and I live only and solely with the hope of seeing their demise, with all their accursed Judaism. I want to see all the lenders at interest taken out and executed."[36] To one friend, he wrote: "Bombard New York. I know no place that would be more improved by it. The chief population is Jew, and the rest is German Jew."[37]

His letters were "peppered with a variety of antisemitic remarks", according to historian Robert Michael, as in the following citations from historian Edward Saveth:

"We are in the hands of the Jews", Adams lamented. "They can do what they please with our values." He advised against investment except in the form of gold locked in a safe deposit box. "There you have no risk but the burglar. In any other form you have the burglar, the Jew, the Czar, the socialist, and, above all, the total irremediable, radical rottenness of our whole social, industrial, financial and political system."[38]

Edward Chalfant's definitive three-volume biography of Adams includes an exhaustive, well-documented examination of Adams's "antisemitism" in its second volume, Improvement of the World.[39] He shows that most of the time when Adams says "Jews" he means "financiers." This accords with the historical English usage referenced by the second definition under the Oxford English Dictionary entry, a usage that was common in Adams's time and social milieu. It also accords with Adams's frequent laments that "the eighteenth-century fabric of a priori, or moral, principles" had been replaced with "a bankers' world" and that the "banking mind was obnoxious".[40]

Adams esteemed individual Jewish personages. In the "Dilettantism" chapter of The Education of Henry Adams he wrote of historian Francis Palgrave that "the reason of his superiority lay in his name, which was Cohen, and his mind which was Cohen also". (Palgrave, the son of a Jewish stockbroker, had changed his name from Cohen upon marriage.) In the "Political Morality" chapter of the same volume he praises the Jewish statesman Benjamin Disraeli over the Gentiles Palmerston, Russell and Gladstone, writing: "Complex these gentlemen were not. Disraeli alone might, by contrast, be called complex."[41]

In 1910, Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a "theory of history" based on the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy.[42][43] This, essentially, states that all energy dissipates, order becomes disorder, and the earth will eventually become uninhabitable. In short, he applied the physics of dynamical systems of Rudolf Clausius, Hermann von Helmholtz, and William Thomson to the modeling of human history.

In his 1909 manuscript The Rule of Phase Applied to History, Adams attempted to use Maxwell's demon as a historical metaphor, though he seems to have misunderstood and misapplied the principle.[44] Adams interpreted history as a process moving towards "equilibrium", but he saw militaristic nations (he felt Germany pre-eminent in this class) as tending to reverse this process, a "Maxwell's Demon of history."

Adams made many attempts to respond to the criticism of his formulation from his scientific colleagues, but the work remained incomplete at Adams's death in 1918. It was published posthumously.[45]

Adams said, "I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world."[46]

In Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, Adams argues that the previous nineteen hundred years of civilization dating from the birth of Christ had been dominated by the feminine, fertile image of the Blessed Virgin, and that the industrial "dynamo" was a masculine, destructive force which would upend history.[47]

• Democracy: An American Novel, Esther, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, The Education of Henry Adams (Ernest Samuels, ed.) (Library of America, 1983) ISBN 978-0-940450-12-7
• History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (Earl N. Harbert, ed.) (Library of America, 1986) Vol I (Jefferson) ISBN 978-0-940450-34-9. Vol II (Madison) ISBN 978-0-940450-35-6