Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/114

JOHN ADAMS and bestowed likewise upon all subsequent ex- presidents and tbeir widows, of receiving his letters free of postage for the remainder of his life. Fortunately for Adams, his thrifty hab- its and love of independence, sustained during his absence from home by the economical and managing talents of his wife, had enabled him to add to the savings from his pro- fession before entering public life, savings from his salaries enough to make up a suf- ficient property to support him for the rest of his life in a style of decent propriety and solid comfort, in conformity to his ideas. Almost all his savings he had invested in the farming lands about him. In his vocabulary, property meant land. With all the rapid wealth then being acquired by trade and navigation, he had no confidence in the permanency of any property but land, views in which he was con- firmed by the commercial revulsions of which he lived to be a witness. He was the possessor, partly by inheritance and partly by purchase, of his father's farm, including the house in which he was himself born ; but he had trans- ferred his own residence to a larger and hand- somer dwelling near by, forfeited by one of the refugee tories of the revolution, and of which he had become the purchaser, where he spent the next quarter of a century. In this comfortable home, acquired by himself, he sought consolation for his troubled spirit in the cultivation of his lands, in books, and in the bosom of his family. Mrs. Adams, to her capacities as a housekeeper, steward, and farm manager, added a brightness and activity of mind and a range of reading, such as fully qualified her to sympathize with her husband in his public as well as his private career. She shared his taste for books, and, as his published letters to her are unsurpassed by any American letters ever yet printed, so hers to him as well as to others, from which a selection has also been published, show her, though with less of nature and more of formality than his letters exhibit, yet worthy of the admiration and re- spect as well as of the tenderness with which he always regarded her. To affections strong enough to respond to his, a sympathy equal to his highest aspirations, a proud feeling of su- periority and an enjoyment of it equal to his own, she added what is not always found in such company, a flexibility sufficient to yield to his stronger will, without disturbance to her serenity or his, and without the least compro- mise of her own dignity or her husband's re- spect and deference for her. While she was not ignorant of the foibles of his character, and knew how to avail herself of them when a good purpose was to be served by it, yet her admiration of his abilities, her reliance upon his judgment, her confidence in his goodness, and her pride in his achievements, made her always ready to yield and to conform. His happiness and honor were always her leading object. This union was blessed with children well calculated to add to its happiness. Mr. Adams indeed had the misfortune to lose by death, just at the moment of his retirement from office, private grief being thus added to po- litical disappointment, his second son, Charles. He had grown to manhood, had been married and had settled in New York with flattering prospects, but had died under painful circum- stances, which his father speaks of in a con- temporary letter as the deepest affliction of his life, leaving a wife and two infant children de- pendent on him. Col. Smith, an officer of the revolution, who had been Adams's secretary of legation at London, and who had married his only daughter, did not prove in all respects such a son-in-law as he could have wished. His pecuniary affairs becoming embarrassed, his father-in-law had provided for him by sev- eral public appointments, the last of which was that of surveyor of the port of New York, which position he was allowed to hold till 1807, when he was removed from it in conse- quence of his implication in Miranda's expedi- tion. Nor did Thomas Boylston Adams, the third son, though a person of accomplishments and talents, fully answer the hopes of his parents. But all these disappointments were more than made good by the oldest son, John Quincy Adams, who subsequently to his recall from the diplomatic service abroad, into which Washington had introduced him, and in which his father (urged to it by a letter from Wash- ington) had promoted him, was chosen one of the senators in congress from Massachusetts. All consolations, domestic or otherwise, at Mr. Adams's command, were fully needed. Never did a statesman sink more suddenly, at a time too when his powers of action and inclination for it seemed wholly unimpaired, from a lead- ing position to more absolute political insig- nificance. His grandson tells us that while the letters addressed to him in the year prior to March 1, 1801, may be counted by thou- sands, those of the next year scarcely number a hundred, while he wrote even fewer than he received. Nor was mere neglect the worst of it. He sank, loaded with the jibes, the sneers, the execrations even of both political parties into which the nation was divided. It is easy to see now that hardly any degree of union or skill on the part of the federalists, a minority from the beginning and only sustained from the first by the name of Washington and the talent and activity of the inferior leaders, could have prevented the ultimate triumph of the other party. But, as is usual with con- temporaries, the disposition then was to ex- plain everything by the skill or luck of indi- vidual movements, and a large portion of the most active leaders of the federal party were inclined to hold Adams personally answerable both for the breach in their ranks and for their subsequent overthrow. At the same time, the other party, identifying him with all the meas- ures most obnoxious to them, especially the alien and sedition laws, long continued to use his name as a sort of synonyme for aristocracy,