Reviews for Charles Francis Adams

The average rating for Charles Francis Adams based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-26 00:00:00 Ronald Neely The Second Charles Francis Adams I became interested in reading Charles Francis Adams' autobiography after reading a largely unsympathetic portrayal of the man in a new book by Richard White, "Railroaded" which examines the building and managemement of the transcontinental railroads following the Civil War. Adams served for six years as President of the Union Pacific Railroad before its 1890 bankruptcy and acquired the reputation of a reformer, which White finds mostly undeserved. In reading White's book, I had the impression that there was more to Adams than White wanted to admit. Charles Francis Adams (1835 -- 1915) was the great grandson of John Adams and the grandson of John Quincy Adams. His father and namesake was the United States Ambassador to Great Britain during the Civil War and played a pivotal role in keeping Britain out of the conflict and in maintaining peace. Charles Francis Adams was also a strong presidential contender in his own right. Adams' younger brother Henry became famous as a historian and of the author of his own autobiography, "The Education of Henry Adams". Charles Francis Adams, Jr. was faced with the pressure of living up to his famous forbearers, and it showed. The pressure is apparent throughout his Autobiography which he wrote in 1913 for the Massachusetts Historical Society of which he had long served as president. The autobiography was published in 1916 following Adams' death together with a lengthy Memorial Address delivered by Henry Cabot Lodge. Although it has fallen into obscurity, perhaps due to the inevitable comparison with his brother's great book, Charles Adams' Autobiography is worth knowing. Adams tries honestly to reflect on his own life. In part, Adams appears as the curmudgeonly class-conscious son of privilege portrayed in Richard White's study of the transcontinentals, but there is more to him. Adams reflects on his shortcomings as well as on his undoubted achievements and offers what he sees to be the sense of and result of his long life. Discussing the high accomplishments and Puritanical, driven characters of his two presidential ancestors and of his father, Adams concludes that he got more pleasure and enjoyment from life than did his forbearers. He concludes a lengthy discussion of this matter: "In other directions also, I have perhaps, accomplished nothing considerable, compared with what my three immediate ancestors accomplished; but on the other hand, I have done some things better than they ever did; and, what is more and most of all, I have had a much better time in life -- got more enjoyment out of it. In this respect I would not change with any of them." Adams' Autobiography has many of the components of a modern coming of age story as the author reflects throughout on what he wanted to do with his life and on his search for a calling. The book is in five chapters which describe, respectively, Adams early years and education through Harvard, his legal career and his observations of politics following the election of Lincoln, Adams' experiences in Washington, D.C. in 1861 before his father became Ambassador to Britain, Adams' Civil War experiences, in which he rose to the rank of Colonel, and finally, his lengthy and varied life following the Civil War. Each of these chapters are highly interesting and have a great deal to say about Adams and his era. It is valuable to hear Adams discuss his father who, when Adams was a child, took him fishing for one day while begrudging the time because it took him away from matters of importance. Adams discusses his unsuccessful legal career in which he labored for some years in a profession for which he was unsuited and which he hated. Adams discusses Civil War Washington and his reactions to people he knew including William Seward, Charles Sumner, and Andrew Johnson. The Civil War and Harvard were the formative influences on Adams' life. The central portions of the Autobiography describe Adams' decision to enlist while most of the rest of his family was in Britain. The War, Adams writes, helped give him a sense of purpose. It gave him a sense of independence and comradeship and of nature all of which he lacked in his upbringing. Subsequent experiences and reading taught Adams about Darwinism and severely modified his Puritanism and religious beliefs. These experiences also taught him about his calling as a historian and as a writer. Adams became a successful businessman in his work as a railroad executive and in other endeavors. He lived, as he acknowledged, as busy and varied life in which he combined his business interests with his scholarly interests. He felt, with some justification, that he had spread himself too thin. The Autobiography expresses his wish to earn a vast sum of money in business and then leave it to Harvard to encourage the growth of education and wisdom, Unfortunately, the Autobiography has long been out of print. I am reading a copy of the 1916 edition and I can't vouch of the accuracy of the offprint which I am reviewing. It is worth knowing about Charles Francis Adams' Autobiography and the insights it offers into himself and into the Civil War Era and Gilded Age. The book will be of most value to readers with a serious interest in these periods of American history. Robin Friedman

Review # 2 was written on 2009-03-18 00:00:00 Francis Chartrand This is a curious little book. As an autobiography it suffers from the fact that it leaves out nearly all of the most interesting parts of Franklin's life. This is a bit like reading an autobiography of John Lennon that ends a few years before he meets Paul McCartney. I'm not saying there is no interest in what is here, but any sort of version of such a man's life that ends well short of the American Revolution is more than a little heart breaking. There are very amusing parts of this - particularly around how he sought to improve himself both morally, through a thirteen step plan, and as a writer. In fact, as 'advice to a young writer' this book offers some wonderful advice. He would read what he considered to be well written articles and then, a day or two later, would try to re-compose them, as accurately as possible, from memory. Then he would go back to the original article and compare his effort with that. As he persisted with this strategy he would sometimes find he had improved on the original, making the ordering of the points raised more logical or finding a particularly apt phrase that made the point in a way better than had been done in the original. This is such good advice. It is remarkably hard for us to take the reader into consideration when we write - and this method forces us to do exactly that. We think we know what we mean when we write something, but all too often we are only sure of our meaning at the moment we write it, and sometimes not even then. My favourite metaphor is that a writer must 'take the reader in hand'. And that is the level of care that is called for in our writing. His advice on arguing and avoiding words that imply too much certainty in our views is also well worth heeding. It is interesting to read someone so steeped in the Enlightenment. To read a humanist who, as much as anything else, was keen to see a general improvement in humanity - whether through more universal access to learning (he set up the first subscription library and was instrumental in forming the first university in Pennsylvania) or in finding ways to ensure the streets are kept clean and well lit. In a world so much defined by Galbraith's memorable phrase about our being prepared to accept personal affluence set amidst public squalor, we can look back in wonder at the civic conscious people of the past. There is something 'homespun' in the wisdom contained here, but the writing is always beautifully clear and this book does make you wish he had dedicated more time to telling more of his life - even the parts on his experiments with electricity are skimmed over in ways that leave you wishing for much, much more.