Heirs of an Honored Name
The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America
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- $39.99
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- $39.99
Publisher Description
An enthralling chronicle of the American nineteenth century told through the unraveling of the nation's first political dynasty
John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace. When John Quincy Adams died in 1848, so began the slow decline of the family's political legacy.
In Heirs of an Honored Name, award-winning historian Douglas R. Egerton depicts a family grown famous, wealthy -- and aimless. After the Civil War, Republicans looked to the Adamses to steer their party back to its radical 1850s roots. Instead, Charles Francis Sr. and his children -- Charles Francis Jr., John Quincy II, Henry and Clover Adams, and Louisa Adams Kuhn -- largely quit the political arena and found refuge in an imagined past of aristocratic preeminence.
An absorbing story of brilliant siblings and family strain, Heirs of an Honored Name shows how the burden of impossible expectations shaped the Adamses and, through them, American history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Le Moyne College history professor Egerton (Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America) offers a new lens through which to view the 19th-century U.S. in this solid look at the descendants of John Quincy Adams. Adams, a president's son and a president himself, continued his distinguished career as a public servant and antislavery advocate after leaving the White House. His children and grandchildren were, inevitably, less accomplished. His son Charles Francis Sr., who was also elected to Congress, is the focal character here; Egerton traces his political career, which fell short of his hopes to become a third President Adams despite opportunities in 1872 and 1876, as well as his private life. Of the descendants as a group, Egerton writes, "although talented and highly educated, they all grew to dislike themselves, detest one another, and loathe their lineage." They turned their backs on John Quincy's politics as well, abandoning his progressive principles in favor of "the political culture of an earlier age, in which every man knew his place, and women were silent." By judiciously mining what he terms a "small mountain of highly quotable documentation," including diaries, letters, and essays, Egerton brings to life the third and fourth generations of America's first political dynasty. Readers interested in 19th-century culture or the dynamics of American political families will find food for thought here.
