Charles Francis Adams Sr.
Alcoholism ran in the Adams family. John Adams son Charles died at the age of 29 of cirrhosis, after struggling with the bottle for years. John Quincy Adams had three sons, two of whom died young after long bouts with alcoholism, which may have been brought on by a depressive illness, which went undiagnosed at the time. Quincy’s son George Washington Adams died a suicide after problems with drinking, his brother John Adams II likewise suffered from the ravages of alcoholism and died at the age of 31. Charles Francis Adams managed to avoid what seemed to be a family curse. He studied law under Daniel Webster after graduating from Harvard and then practiced in Boston.
Charles entered politics in 1840, serving in the Massachusetts Assembly as a representative and later in the state senate. He purchased a newspaper in 1846, the Boston Whig, and had an unsuccessful run for vice-president in 1848, running on a ticket with former president Martin Van Buren for the Free Soil Party. It was elsewhere in the 1840s that Charles found his true calling, that of an historical editor. He gathered and edited the letters of his grandmother, Abigail Adams, into a successful volume and then took up a project which had been abandoned by his father, that of editing the papers and correspondence of John Adams.
Charles produced a two volume biography of his grandfather, eight editions of a work entitled John Adams’ Diary and Autobiography, and a collection of John Adams’ speeches, political writings, diary notations regarding political events, and other notes. Entitled The Works of John Adams Esq. Second President of the United States, this was until 1954 the only source for scholars and researchers looking for primary sources regarding John Adams and his career during the Revolution and the beginning of the republic. In 1954 the Adams family donated John Adams’ original papers to the Massachusetts Historical Society and a review of the original materials revealed that Charles was faithful to the historical record.
Charles was elected to Congress twice beginning in 1858, but resigned in 1861 to accept Lincoln’s appointment of him to be the US Minister to the Court of Saint James, a post which had been held by both his father and grandfather. By the time Charles arrived in London the British had already recognized the South as a belligerent, but not as an independent nation, and Charles was instrumental in maintaining the status quo. Charles was also tasked with monitoring the activities of the representatives of the Confederacy in London who were not accredited by the British government, but were allowed to remain in London, as well as keeping an eye on the ships built for the South in British shipyards.
Charles was offered the office of President of Harvard University when he returned to the United States, but declined it in favor of building the first Presidential Library in the nation, dedicated to his father in 1870. The library remains in operation in the 21st century, located at the Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts. In the 1870s Adams became one of the most important contributors to the concept of resolving international disputes through the process of arbitration, and demonstrated its effectiveness in resolving the Alabama affair over restitution of damages by the British built Confederate commerce raider. Charles Adams died in 1886, survived by four sons.