Charles Francis Adams Sr.

Adams was born in Boston on August 18, 1807, and he was one of three sons and a daughter born to John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) and Louisa Catherine Johnson (1775–1852).[2] His older brothers were George Washington Adams (1801–1829) and John Adams II (1803–1834). His sister, Louisa, was born in 1811 but died in 1812 while the family was in Russia.

He attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College, where he graduated in 1825. He then studied law with Daniel Webster, attained admission to the bar, and practiced in Boston. He wrote numerous reviews of works about American and British history for the North American Review.

During the presidency of John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), Charles and his brothers John and George were all rivals for the same woman, their cousin Mary Catherine Hellen, who lived with the Adams family after the death of her parents. In 1828, John married Mary in a White House ceremony, and both Charles and George declined to attend.[3]

Van Buren/Adams campaign poster

Adams lived on Mount Vernon Street, Beacon Hill, Boston, 1842–1886.[4]

In 1840, Adams was elected to three one-year terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and he served in the Massachusetts Senate from 1843 to 1845. In 1846, he purchased and became editor of the Boston Whig newspaper. In 1848, he was the unsuccessful nominee of the Free Soil Party for Vice President of the United States, running on a ticket with former president Martin Van Buren as the presidential nominee.

From the 1840s, Adams became one of the finest historical editors of his era. He developed his expertise in part because of the example of his father, who in 1829 had turned from politics (after his defeated bid for a second presidential term in 1828) to history and biography. The senior Adams began a life of his father, John Adams, but wrote only a few chapters before resuming his political career in 1830 with his election to the U.S. House of Representatives.[5]

The younger Adams, fresh from his edition of the letters of his grandmother Abigail Adams, took up the project that his father had left uncompleted and between 1850 and 1856, turned out not just the two volumes of the biography but eight further volumes presenting editions of John Adams's Diary and Autobiography, his major political writings, and a selection of letters and speeches. The edition, titled The Works of John Adams, Esq., Second President of the United States, was the only edition of John Adams's writings until the family donated the cache of Adams papers to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1854 and authorized the creation of the Adams Papers project; the modern project had published accurate scholarly editions of John Adams's diary and autobiography, several volumes of Adams family correspondence, two volumes on the portraits of John and Abigail Adams and John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams, and the early years of the diary of Charles Francis Adams, who published a revised edition of the biography in 1871. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1857.[5]

Back in Boston, Adams declined the presidency of Harvard University, but became one of its overseers in 1869. In 1870 he built the first presidential library in the United States to honor his father John Quincy Adams. The Stone Library includes over 14,000 books written in twelve languages. The library is located on the property of the "Old House" (also known as "Peacefield") at Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts.

In 1876 Adams ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Massachusetts.[11]

During the 1876 electoral college controversy, Adams sided with Democrat Samuel J. Tilden over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes for the White House.

Mr. and Mrs. Adams on the porch at Peacefield in Quincy

Portrait of Adams in 1867 by William Morris Hunt

On September 3, 1829, he married Abigail Brown Brooks (1808–1889), whose father was shipping magnate Peter Chardon Brooks (1767–1849).[2] She had two sisters, Charlotte, who was married to Edward Everett, a Massachusetts politician,[12] and Ann, who was married to Nathaniel Frothingham, a Unitarian minister.[13] Together, they were the parents of:

• Louisa Catherine Adams (1831–1870), who married Charles Kuhn
• John Quincy Adams II (1833–1894)
• Charles Francis Adams Jr. (1835–1915)
• Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
• Arthur George Adams (1841–1846), who died young
• Mary Gardiner Adams (1845–1928), who married Dr. Henry Parker Quincy
• Peter Chardon Brooks Adams (1848–1927)

Adams died in Boston on November 21, 1886, and was interred in Mount Wollaston Cemetery, Quincy.[14] He was the last surviving child of John Quincy Adams.

His wife Abigail's "health and spirits" worsened after her husband's death, and she died at Peacefield on June 6, 1889.[15]

Notes

Sources

• Butterfield, L. H. et al., eds., The Adams Papers (1961– ). Multivolume letterpress edition of all letters to and from major members of the Adams family, plus their diaries; still incomplete.
• Donald, Aida Dipace and Donald, David Herbert, eds., Diary of Charles Francis Adams (2 vols.). Harvard University Press, 1964.
• Duberman, Martin. Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886. Stanford University Press, 1968.
• Egerton, Douglas R. Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America. Basic Books, 2019.
• Frothingham, Paul Revere (1925). Edward Everett, Orator and Statesman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. OCLC 1517736.
• Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (1906). "Adams, Charles Francis". The Biographical Dictionary of America. 1. Boston: American Biographical Society. pp. 36–37. Retrieved October 22, 2020. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
• Varg, Paul (1992). Edward Everett: The Intellectual in the Turmoil of Politics. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press. ISBN 978-0-945636-25-0. OCLC 24319483.

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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Charles Francis Adams, Sr.

• United States Congress. "Charles Francis Adams Sr. (id: A0000321859)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
• Appleton's Biography edited by Stanley L. Klos
• Works by Charles Francis Adams Sr. at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Charles Francis Adams Sr. at Internet Archive
• Charles Francis Adams, Sr. Civil War era diaries Digital Edition
• Nagel, Paul. Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
• Texas and the Massachusetts Resolutions, by Charles Francis Adams, published 1844, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
• Selected diplomatic Letters of the Lincoln administration at Ford's Theatre site, including several to or from Adams
• Mount Wollaston Cemetery Tour (includes grave image)