That part of the Diary of Charles Francis Adams which begins at the midpoint of his twenty-fifth year and concludes just before his twenty-ninth birthday presents, on casual view, few variations from the journal entries made during his three preceding years and published as volumes 3 and 4 of the Diary . The daily routine described in the Introduction to those volumes1 was followed in the years with which we are here concerned without any essential change or interruption. Two brief journeys, one to Cape Cod, Nantucket, and New Bedford, the other to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, did break for the moment the physical limits which circumscribed his movements. There are, of course, a different set of familial events to be recorded and to be responded to. Two sons were born to make the continuity of the presidential line of Adamses a realizable dream; the diarist, upon the death of his one surviving brother, became the sole representative of his generation. Nevertheless, his own characterization of his diary for the earlier years as “a pretty monotonous record of the very even tenour of my life”2 can with seeming equal justice be said of the entries which make up the present volumes. Moreover, at the conclusion of these years Adams was outwardly as much the private man, committed to his studies and to meeting his considerable family responsibilities, as he had been earlier. Evidence of change and growth is not immediately apparent.

It was with this modicum of insight that the present editors, upon cursory examination of the Diary for the period succeeding that with which they were then immediately concerned, pronounced in the Introduction to volumes 3 and 4 that in “the years covered by these volumes and for some years thereafter” there was no evidence that Charles Francis Adams would ultimately choose politics and public life as a profession. They entered no caveat to his own conclusion at the end of 1832 that “I ... never shall succeed as a political writer. Let me turn then as soon as possible to Literature.”3 Sentiments of xxiisimilar purport from the diarist are, to be sure, to be found in the pages below. And the grounds which the editors adduced for Adams’ rejection of a political career for himself would, as we shall see, remain as valid deterrents: “His own temperamental unsuitability, the lack of opportunity so long as his father remained in the arena, and the unhappy experiences of each of the Adams statesmen at the hands of an ungrateful citizenry.”4

Two political developments in 1833 and 1835, however, drew Charles Francis Adams himself into the arena without full awareness, at least in the initial stages, of the extent or depth of his commitment. They were the nomination of his father by the antimasonic party in Massachusetts as its candidate for Governor in the election of 1833 and the effort of a coalition to effect the election of John Quincy Adams as United States Senator by the Massachusetts legislature in January–February 1835. Each effort proved unsuccessful, and in each the Adamses believed decisive roles in his defeat were played by those who had been Adams’ friends, allies, or political debtors. In each, because John Quincy Adams maintained his characteristic stance of non-campaigner, someone was needed who could keep the candidate fully informed of decisions and developments and who could in turn make the candidate’s thinking available to those who were active in his behalf. In each, the choice fell, almost by default and certainly without formal decision, upon Charles Francis Adams.

In the gubernatorial contest of 1833, hope of Adams’ success rested upon his adding to the antimasonic nomination that of the National Republicans, his nominal party. When that effort failed, in a National Republican convention torn by conflict between Adams’ supporters and those who were resistant to any tie to Antimasonry, it became clear that it would be all but impossible for the nominee of any of the three dominant parties to secure a majority in the election. Adams thereupon determined that he would withdraw before debate and balloting on the electoral choice began in the Legislature. It became the responsibility of Charles Francis Adams to make that decision known to the Antimasons and to find the means to effect Adams’ purposes with the least damage to the disconsolate party. The gain in knowledge of the ways of politics was considerable, but the experience left the diarist with no desire to prolong his participation. “I am more and more disgusted with politics. If I had not duties which my name and station prescribe to me I would forswear them altogether.”5 When xxiiithe choice of Governor had been made, despite his reflection that “I have had some moments of trial and have got through them pretty well,” he concluded, “I hope this will put an end to my share in political affairs for this year.”6 When, later in 1834, he was offered the opportunity to participate further as a delegate to the antimasonic convention, he found reasons to decline.7

Still, the bitterness felt by the Adamses following the long struggle in the Legislature, January—February 1835, to choose between Governor John Davis and John Quincy Adams to fill the unexpired term of Nathaniel Silsbee in the Senate proved the goad required to overcome Charles Francis Adams’ continuing distaste for politics and strong inclination to avoid them. During and after that protracted legislative battle, Charles Francis Adams acquired the certainty that Daniel Webster had devised the scheme which denied the election to Adams’ father.8 In opposing, during the remainder of 1835, Webster’s aspirations for the National Republican nomination as President, Adams found the means to assuage that bitterness; but he also found himself ever more deeply enmeshed in politics. Under the immediate impact of his father’s defeat, Adams had resolved, “I will not cultivate revengeful feeling, but it is hard in this case to restrain it.”9 As his association with the Antimasons progressed, however, he became the advocate of an alliance, earlier unthinkable for any Adams, with the Jacksonian Democrats as the means to thwart Webster. Moved by the “character of Mr. Webster and the efforts he has made to destroy or see destroyed through his friends my father’s influence in Massachusetts,” Adams recorded, “I am resolved upon an attempt at counteraction and for this purpose laid down what I think is the only mode.”10 Persisting, “We pretty clearly matured the plan of operations for the campaign. Thus is as I hope a nucleus formed for a party organization which shall save us from the undermining action of treacherous friends.”11 As the operation began to take effect, Adams’ tone became inexorable: “We must go on, and drive the party to the wall.... I shall be content if the party is punished which has endeavoured to destroy all my father’s standing.”12 Meanwhile, the other voice was not stilled. “My domestic happiness is such why should I strive to shade it by dabbling in the dirty water of our political affairs. Yet I am in xxivspite of warning playing with these edge tools.”13 And Adams was forced to recognize that in the pursuit, “all my studies, and occupations of every sort are stopped.”14

The circumstances which dictated the focusing and delimiting upon politics of Adams’ activities in 1835 coincided with Adams’ conviction that during his twenty-seventh year (August 1834–August 1835) he must fix upon his vocation: “It is the critical moment of my life and I am twenty-seven years old. Let that fact and its associations ... stir me up.”15 He elsewhere called it, “The year ... which I have regarded as the turning point of most men’s lives.”16 Adams had accounted for its special significance for him on his twenty-seventh birthday:

I have observed that this has frequently been the particular age at which men famous for talent have begun to develope it to the world. This was the age at which my father began his public career, and at which Cicero made his defence of Roscius.... This was the age at which Demosthenes entered upon the public business.... I have long been impressed with the idea that if I made no reputation at all at this age, I should never make any.17

Yet until the Webster challenge presented itself, a full half of that year had passed during which Adams had chided himself: “The brightest year of my life is passing.... I am now the only son of my father, the only representative in my generation of the distinguished branch of the name and I am vegetating in a useless hot-bed of enervating luxury.”18

During that critical year Adams was again, by fierce loyalty to his family and its place in history, brought out of a “shell of modesty” which saw him give over to another such legal work as he had, break such political ties as he had forged in the earlier gubernatorial campaign. Nevertheless, it was also family history which had operated and would continue to operate as a deterrent to his activity in the public sphere. Absorption in the careers of his father and grandfather had brought him to an awareness of the costs of public reputation: “When I ... reflect upon the last sixty years of my family in two generations, I ask myself if distinction has not been dearly purchased. If prosperity and adversity have not been fearfully mixed.”19 Even his brother John’s last years of decay and defeat, Charles attributed to “the slippery steps of the Presidential palace.”20 Such costs he had xxvjudged unacceptable to him: “However much ... I may regret the charge of degeneracy which my children as well as I must endure, I would rather endure it, than pay a price for fame which would take with it all my happiness.”21

Moreover, in the moments when Adams did contemplate a possible public career, the immediate scene which confronted him in Boston was one he judged altogether unfavorable to one of his name. He reported this without reservations in a letter to his father:

It is a matter of regret to me here to see the extent of the prejudices against you—prejudices inherited from father to son and appearing to strike root in the very constitution of society.... Those prejudices exist and strike root against others who are succeeding you in the same career with equal if not greater force.22

These prejudices which Charles Francis Adams was wont to feel disqualified him from participation were the product of the many struggles in which Adamses had asserted independence of party and had thereby incurred the wrath and distrust of party politicians generally. Whether or not one judged that honor redounded to John Adams and John Quincy Adams from these battles, Charles Francis Adams saw emerging from the pattern of the family’s conflicts evidence that familial qualities were an important, perhaps decisive, element in the never-ending strife. Those qualities—“too much fury,” a want of prudence, arrogance, “an overbearing disposition,” and a “kind of vehement obstinacy”—Adams identified and found within himself, causing him to conclude, “We were not made for politicians.”23

Adams believed too that beyond politics he, like his family before him, was at odds with the values and attributes that typified for him the Boston milieu—“adoration of Mammon,” “religious gloom,” “unbending rigidity,” “the sad coloured livery” of immoderate gravity.24 His every effort to participate in any public way in the community seemed all but impossible.

He sometimes attributed his rejection “in the place of my birth to the deadly coldness of hereditary prejudice and rancour,” sometimes to “my own distant and reserved manners,” but the City’s dislike, in xxviany event, “is closing me up like an oyster in its own shell.”25 This sense of being totally out of harmony with his surroundings made him feel often “in an enemy’s Country”; made him revert from time to time and with more or less seriousness to the notion of exile.26 “Utterly discouraged, I find nobody that thinks as I do or appears to feel any sympathy with or for me.”27

Alternating with these feelings of frustration about the possibilities of any activity of a public sort that arose from his sense of disharmony were the feelings of discouragement and perplexity which accompanied those ventures he did undertake. A chief ground for these was the ever-present problem posed by the continual presence and prominence of his father on the political scene. To agree with John Quincy Adams on any issue was but to be thought his echo, to disagree publicly would be embarrassing to both, even to express a view on an issue on which his father had not been heard was to risk identifying him with the view or to be thought his mouthpiece. Adams put the problem succinctly: “In any public situation I ... should often embarrass as well as be embarrassed by him. This will be a caution to me for future guidance. Domestic politics must be avoided. I must decline every prospect of place in which they are agitated. This is no sacrifice to me for I prefer my present independence.”28 As he here suggests, where his independence is impinged upon, it must, for the time being, take precedence over such public opportunities as might present themselves.

Privately he was free to express to his father his disagreement with him over the choice between Davis and Morton for Governor, the son preferring Morton; yet when some months later, invited to be a delegate to the antimasonic convention to nominate a candidate for Governor, he found it necessary to decline lest he have to take a public position in support of Morton, opposed by John Quincy Adams out of his anti-Jacksonism.29 Only privately were he and his father free to differ as between Webster and Van Buren after Van Buren, seeking to court the South, softened his stand on incendiary publications and xxviisupported the Mexican and Florida war policies of Jackson. For John Quincy Adams these actions made Webster, despite their political differences, more satisfying than the expedient Van Buren, the candidate of Charles Francis Adams’ antimasonic-democratic coalition, designed to thwart Webster in Massachusetts. For Charles Francis Adams the episode was another warning which “shows the necessity of my keeping free from party engagement,” and “justifies my caution about committing my name.”30

In point of fact, the very nature of the antimasonic party with which Charles Francis Adams was affiliated almost precluded for him public identification with it. A minority party with a distinctly middle-class membership, it could accomplish its objectives only by offering to throw its weight first to one and then to another of the major parties. In these successive coalitions sharp shifts were often necessary on basic issues. One such issue, basic to both Adamses, father and son, was that relating to the Bank of the United States, the renewal of its charter and the removal by the President of public deposits from it. As the Antimasons swung toward the Democrats in 1834 and 1835, the tendency in the party organs and among the party leaders to become anti-Bank was marked. Such an eventuality would bring to an end the Adams affiliation; even the drift brought firm remonstrances from John Quincy Adams, usually through his son. On one such occasion, when Charles Francis Adams at his father’s request made objection to the journalist Benjamin F. Hallett about the articles on the subject that had been appearing in the Daily Advocate, the editor replied: He had been willing to consider it a dead question that he held opinions of rather a radical sort respecting banks and was opposed to the National Bank but ... it was his design to avoid all notice of it.... The understanding between us therefore is that hereafter no attacks upon the Bank are to go into the paper.... This experience will however warn me not to go into deep water.31

When some months later John Quincy Adams expressed again his dissatisfaction with the Advocate’s course on the Bank, the diarist wrote, “I seized the opportunity to press ... Hallett that we are upon a barrel of gunpowder respecting that. This is a tender subject between us and I felt we had better pass it.”32

The issue continued to hang in uneasy balance and was one of the considerations that made public affiliation with the party at that juncture an unacceptable risk for Adams. When a meeting at Feneuil Hall in support of Van Buren was being planned, Adams was asked to come forward and make a speech. “I explained to [to   the chairman ... frankly all my difficulties.... He admitted their solidity but said he did not like to report them.... He desired me to assign no reasons ... but rather to put myself upon ... the unwillingness to risk my voice in Faneuil Hall.”33

Adams’ unannounced difficulties undoubtedly related in part to his reluctance to commit his father by any act of his, in part to his own uneasy alliance with the party to whose policies he only selectively adhered, and in part to his desire to avoid by any public act of his a display of the many differences in political and social beliefs that lay beneath the otherwise wholly happy relations existing between Adams and his father-in-law, Peter Chardon Brooks.

Brooks’ interests were those of the manufacturing-shipping-banking community in Boston. He was a National Republican in politics, particularly close to the careers and thinking of Daniel Webster, his attorney on occasion, and of Edward Everett, husband of Brooks’ daughter Charlotte. On specific issues too his position was opposed to that taken by Charles Francis Adams. Brooks was anti-Antimasonry and was among those who favored strong measures against abolitionists.34

By his public stand on these and related issues, Alexander Hill Everett, the Governor’s brother but associated at the time in political ventures with Charles Francis Adams, had made himself “obnoxious to my Wife’s relations by his political course.”35 The lesson was plain. Clearly the maintenance of harmony prevailing between the Brooks and Adams households demanded constant watchfulness and tact. Yet withholding for long periods the expression of differences on matters deeply felt was to Adams as irksome as it was necessary. After a period of months during which the Charles Francis Adams family resided with Mr. Brooks, Adams wrote, “I have lived agreeably and have received nothing but kindness and attention from ... Mr. Brooks.... But my privations are too great. I feel like a boy who has no right to utter an opinion.”36

Adams was provided opportunity to observe the deleterious effect xxixupon family relations that occurred when a publicly taken position crossed what was regarded as a family interest. Such a moment came when Edward Everett as Governor was asked to participate in a Charlestown celebration of the Warren Bridge becoming toll-free. Brooks and his sons as large stockholders in the bridge corporation had fought hard to maintain the toll. “Governor Everett forgetful of his relations with Mr. Brooks ... made a speech ... which coming to Edward Brooks’ ears irritated him so much as to make him ungovernable.” As the family party that evening broke up “there were indications of a heavy thunder squall” and “Mr. Everett became the mark of some biting observations.”37 Some months earlier, when the case was still under adjudication, Adams had identified the issue as of the sort that confirmed his hesitation to risk personal relationships by entering upon public office:

Here is a question that would come across me as a legislator in a most unpleasant manner. I would support the principle at all hazards, and yet the act would forfeit half the votes even of the best disposed towards me. I must lay it down as a rule of action to decline all invitation to take Office.... The rule may be laid down safely and if upon occasion the country should really do me the favor to call for my services in a manner perfectly unequivocal, then will be the remote day for forming an exception.38

Charles Francis Adams, fully sensitive, perhaps oversensitive, to the obstacles in his course toward public office, even public activity— obstacles that might be personified as Peter Chardon Brooks, John Quincy Adams, the ghosts of Adamses past, and a part of Charles Francis Adams himself—under the necessities of family loyalty and of his “critical year,” yet found the means to play and effective political role while evading the obstacles. The means, earlier undeveloped, lay to his hand—political journalism.

In earlier years Adams had written and published numerous articles, mostly of a literary or historical character.39 The few that were addressed to current problems or issues were sporadic and without cumulative effect. Their public reception, though more favorable than their author granted, left him disconsolate, and in the early months of 1833 ready to desist entirely. “I will lie on my oars”; “I lay down my pen forever”; “I begin to feel a greater doubt of my power of ever being able to apply my capacity to any serviceable end.”40

The decisive moment came without preparation or full awareness. In the midst of the gubernatorial campaign of 1833, Hallett asked for “a series of political papers for the present election.” Selecting the subject, “The Proscription of Antimasonry,” in answer to the charge leveled at his father, Adams “wrote till midnight.” When the numbers won praise from his father, Adams was “much encouraged.”41 But the flurry ended with the election, and there was no resumption of political composition until he began, during the senatorial election of January-February 1835, a series generally directed, for reasons that have already appeared, against Webster’s presidential aspirations. Upon the outcome of the senatorial contest, however, Adams allowed the series to lapse. It was not resumed until May when, in the columns of the Advocate, Hallett asked “our able and much respected correspondent” to continue his numbers. “The crisis calls for them now.”42 As the renewed numbers continued they became more and more incisive in their attack on Webster. Newspaper comment was at last provoked. “The Newspapers are all full of allusions to my numbers which have at last roused public attention. This is the cast of the die with me.”43 Thereupon, without pause he rushed into the composition of what was to prove his major success of these years, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, directed wholly against Webster.44

Thereafter, despite occasional reversions to an earlier mood,45 Adams’ commitment to political writing was firm and his output more than respectable both in quantity and quality. By June 1836, the date at which these volumes conclude, he had published since January 1835 a total of fifty-five articles, or “columns” as we would call them, in nine series on current political issues. These had achieved eighty-three known printings and reprintings in six newspapers.

In keeping with Adams’ need to avoid public identification with the views he was expressing, all his writings were signed with pseudonyms. Apparently, knowledge of the authorship of the articles was possessed by a relatively limited group. Those whose names were suggested when the numbers were referred to in public discussion did not include Charles Francis Adams. When Adams confided his secret to his closest friend, one who was politically knowledgeable, the diarist records that his friend was “astonished.”46 No doubt the preservation of his secret xxxiin the Brooks circle was owing partly to the circumstance that the newspapers in which Adams’ communications appeared were not those regularly read there. The Diary offers no evidence that Mr. Brooks became aware.

If there were advantages in keeping some unaware, there were equal advantages to be obtained from making others—notably John Quincy Adams—full partners in the secret. The articles were the means by which John Quincy Adams could be informed, without the pain that would come to both from public airing, of his son’s disagreements on public issues: “There are many points upon which I differ from my father, although I do not press them at present upon public notice; it follows that my being able not to press them arises from my private situation where I can select my topics. In any public one I could do so far less.”47 Mentions of John Quincy Adams’ commendations of the articles, both those that were in agreement with his views and those that were not, are frequent in the Diary.48

The course, then, which Charles Francis Adams had taken to resolve his dilemmas met his objectives fully. He was saved from all the complexities that would have beset him in seeking public office or in any other form of public activity; yet the body of his writing promised reputation. “I do not want Office at all, the labour of it would be burdensome. But I want reputation. I want that without which as my father’s son I cannot very well get along. At least without mortification.”49 In that direction, there was the pride to be had from the attempts made in various quarters to identify the author of the articles, in that among the names advanced were those of A. H. Everett and John Quincy Adams, “the two best political writers in the State if not in the Country.”50 When the diarist looked back, he could write:

The year has passed which I have regarded as the turning point.... It has not however gone without adding to me a little reputation.... It surely cannot be said that this life has been wasted when at twenty seven I am even momentarily compared to the most ancient and best established reputations for ability in the Country.”51

The result is a sense of assurance and confidence in himself and his powers that is new in the Diary. Adams can now appraise a piece by him as “long on the road but good when it gets there. I think it a piece of superior writing.” Again, he relishes the power the articles xxxiiconfer: “I have now the right end of the Whip and mean to apply the lash. I have no favour to ask of any body and can do it if I develope the force God has given me.” He responds to praise with the comment: “There are some who comprehend the value of the services I am rendering.” And looking to the future, “I hope to be able to do something of value to my generation. But I am not over-ambitious.”52

The progression is not constant, nor is the confidence maintained at all times, but that a change has taken place is evident in a reversal of his attitude toward the Diary itself. At the lowest point he writes, “I am ashamed of my Diary and of myself. Never was my Diary so perfectly uninteresting and never was I so much tempted to close its pages forever.... My interest in political affairs is failing very much. Indeed I am becoming a piece of vegetation.” The advance, after the demonstration of accomplishment, to a new appraisal of the Diary and, by extension, of himself is marked: “The events recorded and Opinions expressed are it is true of very little value to any body.... But they are still the materials of my life, they form the landmarks by which I can understand myself.... As such I prize them, as such I wish to continue them.”53

Before the period covered by the present volumes Charles Francis Adams had settled upon an appropriate form for the entries in his journal (see volume 1:xxxix–xl). From 1827 onward he was to follow a single form that would remain essentially unchanged and to continue without any significant break until 1880.

The journal entries from 1 January 1833 to 12 June 1836, the time spanned in the present volumes, are consecutively written in three manuscript-diary volumes. In the Adams Papers serial numbering they are designated D/CFA/9, 10, and 11 (Microfilms, Reel Nos. 61–63). Adams gives to the volumes the numbers 7, 8, and 9. An explanation of the discrepancy between his numbering and the numbers assigned in the Adams Papers as they now stand is given in volume 1:xxxvii–xxxviii.

All three manuscript volumes measure 10″ x 8″, and are bound in half calf with green boards. The spine of each is missing. The volumes contain, respectively, 368, 380, and 369 pages.

From 1 January to 31 December 1833, the journal entries occupy all the pages remaining in D/CFA/9 following those containing the entries for the year 1832. Beginning on 1 January 1834 (below, p. 238) and continuing through 12 December 1835 (volume 6:280), the journal entries are continued through the whole of D/CFA/10. The eleventh volume of the Diary (D/CFA/11) contains the journal entries for the period 13 December 1835–31 August 1837, of which the entries through 11 June 1836 are included within the present volumes (volume 6:281–409).

The editorial method followed in volumes 5 and 6 of the Diary of Charles Francis Adams has been that followed in the first two volumes with the modifications introduced in volumes 3 and 4. That method, including textual and annotational policy, and the modifications have been explained fully in the Introductions to the earlier volumes, 1:xl–xlvi and 3:xxxix–xl.

What was said in the Introduction to volumes 1 and 2 (1:xlii) about the rendering of Adams’ notation of the hour and minute of arising and retiring is not relevant here since the notation is not used during the period covered by these volumes. However, as he had done since May 1830, Adams regularly indicates for each page in these manuscript volumes a notation of place. The method employed to normalize the position of these place notations in the journal entries and to express typographically variants from his usual practice in the manuscript is explained at volume 3:xxxix–xl.

The statement made in the Introductions to the earlier volumes of the Diary of Charles Francis Adams (1:xlv and 3:xl) about the annotation of books and other publications mentioned in the Diary apply in Volumes 5 and 6 according to the pattern of volumes 3 and 4. The bibliographical appendix of borrowings included in volume 4 has not been carried forward in the present volumes.