Charles Francis Adams Sr.
Adams in 1861
22ndUnited States Envoy to the United Kingdom
In office May 16, 1861 – May 13, 1868
President	Abraham Lincoln Andrew Johnson
Preceded by	George M. Dallas
Succeeded by	Reverdy Johnson
Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts's3rd district
In office March 4, 1859 – May 1, 1861
Preceded by	William S. Damrell
Succeeded by	Benjamin Thomas
Member of theMassachusetts Senate
In office 1843–1845
Member of theMassachusetts House of Representatives
In office 1840–1843
Personal details
Born	Charles Francis Adams (1807-08-18)August 18, 1807 Boston,Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	November 21, 1886(1886-11-21) (aged 79) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Political party	Whig (Before 1848) Free Soil (1848–1854) Republican (1854–1870) Liberal Republican (1870–1872) Anti-Masonic (1872–1876) Democratic (1876–1886)
Spouse	Abigail Brown Brooks ​ ​ (m. 1829)​
Children	7, includingJohn,Charles Jr.,Henry, andBrooks
Parents	John Quincy Adams Louisa Johnson
Relatives	Adams political family
Education	Harvard University (BA)

Charles Francis Adams Sr. (August 18, 1807 – November 21, 1886) was an American historical editor, writer, politician, and diplomat.^[1] AsUnited States Minister to the United Kingdom during theAmerican Civil War, Adams was crucial toUnion efforts to prevent British recognition of theConfederate States of America and maintain European neutrality to the utmost extent. Adams also featured in national and state politics before and after the Civil War.

Adams was a member of one of the United States's most prominent political families: his father and grandfather were PresidentsJohn Quincy Adams andJohn Adams respectively, about whom he wrote a major biography. He had seven children, includingJohn Quincy II,Charles Jr.,Henry, andBrooks.

Adams served two terms in theMassachusetts State Senate before helping to found the abolitionistFree Soil Party in 1848; he was the party's vice-presidential candidate in theelection of 1848 on a ticket with former presidentMartin Van Buren. He was elected to theUnited States House of Representatives in 1858 and re-elected in 1860.

During theCivil War, Adams served as theUnited States Minister to the United Kingdom underAbraham Lincoln, where he played a key role in keeping the British government neutral and not diplomatically recognizing theConfederacy. After the War, he became alienated from theRepublican Party and was successively aLiberal Republican,Anti-Mason, andDemocrat. In1876, he was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee forGovernor of Massachusetts.

Adams became an overseer ofHarvard University and built the Stone Library atPeacefield, the Adams's family home which is now part of theAdams National Historical Park inQuincy, Massachusetts, to honor his father.

Adams was born inBoston on August 18, 1807, and he was one of three sons and a daughter born toJohn Quincy Adams (1767–1848) andLouisa Catherine Johnson (1775–1852).^[2] His older brothers wereGeorge Washington Adams (1801–1829) andJohn Adams II (1803–1834). His sister, Louisa, was born in 1811 but died in 1812 while the family was in Russia. He was named in part afterFrancis Dana. On July 4, 1826, Adams’ grandfather died of heart failure at the age of 90.

He attendedBoston Latin School andHarvard College, where he graduated in 1825. He thenstudied law withDaniel Webster, attainedadmission to the bar, and practiced in Boston. He wrote numerous reviews of works about American and British history for theNorth American Review.

During the presidency of his father 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 aWhite House ceremony, and both Charles and George declined to attend.^[3]

In 1840, Adams was elected to the first of three one-year terms in theMassachusetts House of Representatives and he served in theMassachusetts Senate from 1843 to 1845. In 1846, he purchased and became editor of theBoston Whig newspaper. In1848, he was the unsuccessful nominee of theFree Soil Party forVice President of the United States, running on a ticket with former presidentMartin Van Buren as the presidential nominee. That same year, on February 21, his father had suffered a massive stroke and collapsed on the floor of the House. He died two days later in the Speaker's Room in the Capitol building at the age of 80.

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. John Quincy Adams began a biography 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 grandmotherAbigail Adams,Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams (1840), 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'sDiary and Autobiography, his major political writings, and a selection of letters and speeches. The edition, titledThe 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 theMassachusetts 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 theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1857.^[5]

As aRepublican, Adams was elected to theUnited States House of Representatives in 1858, where he chaired theCommittee on Manufactures. He was re-elected in 1860 but resigned to becomeU.S. minister (ambassador) to theCourt of St James's (Britain), a post previously held by his father and grandfather, from 1861 to 1868. Powerful Massachusetts senatorCharles Sumner had wanted the position and so became alienated from Adams. Britain had already recognized Confederate belligerency, but Adams was instrumental in maintaining British neutrality and preventing British diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy during theAmerican Civil War.^[6]

Part of his duties included corresponding with British civilians, includingKarl Marx and theInternational Workingmen's Association.^[7] Adams and his son,Henry Brooks Adams, who served as his private secretary, also were kept busy monitoring Confederate diplomatic intrigues and the construction of rebelcommerce raiders (likehull N°290, launched asEnrica fromLiverpool^[8] but was soon transformed near theAzores Islands into sloop-of-warCSS Alabama) andblockade runners by British shipyards.

His main success as a diplomat was in keeping Britain neutral. He helped resolve theTrent Affair in 1861, in which an American naval officer had violated British rights. With the Union blockade of Confederate ports growing increasingly successful, little cotton now reached Europe except through Union channels. A strong element in Britain, including Chancellor of the ExchequerWilliam Gladstone, wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy. Adams warned doing so would mean war with the United States, as well as the cutting off of American food exports, which constituted about a fourth of the British food supply. The American Navy, increasingly strong, would try to sink British shipping.

The British government pulled back from talk of war when the Confederate invasion of the North was defeated atAntietam, and Lincoln announced that he would issue theEmancipation Proclamation. Adams and his staff collected details on the shipbuilding issue, showing how warships and blockade runners built for the Confederacy caused widespread damage to American interests, the former being against theU.S. Merchant Marine and the latter against theUnion Army on the battlefield. The evidence became the basis of the postwarAlabama Claims. The claims went to arbitration, with Adams in charge of the American side. However, the British in 1872 agreed to pay $15 million (~$349 million in 2024) in damages only for damages caused by British-built Confederate warships.^[9][10]

In 1844, while traveling with his cousinJosiah Quincy, Charles Francis Adams metJoseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, in Nauvoo, Illinois, and received a copy of the Book of Mormon which had previously belonged to Smith's first wife,Emma Smith. The book is now in the archive collections ofAdams National Historical Park. At the visit, Smith showed Adams and Quincy four Egyptian mummies and ancient papyri. Adams was not impressed by Smith, and wrote in his diary entry that day, "Such a man is a study not for himself, but as serving to show what turns the human mind will sometimes take. And herafter if I should live, I may compare the results of this delusion with the condition in which I saw it and its mountebank apostle."^[11]

Adams' companion and cousin, Josiah Quincy, also reflected on Joseph Smith's influence, writing:

"It is by no means improbable that some future textbook... will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet." Quincy, Figures of the Past 376.

Back in Boston, Adams declined the presidency of Harvard University, but became one of its overseers in 1869. In 1870 he built the firstpresidential 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 atPeacefield (also known as the "Old House") which is now part ofAdams National Historical Park inQuincy, Massachusetts.

In1876, Adams ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Massachusetts.^[12]

During the1876 Electoral College controversy, Adams sided withDemocratSamuel J. Tilden over RepublicanRutherford B. Hayes for the White House.

On September 3, 1829, he marriedAbigail Brown Brooks (1808–1889), whose father was shipping magnatePeter Chardon Brooks (1767–1849).^[2] She had two sisters, Charlotte, who was married toEdward Everett, a Massachusetts politician,^[13] and Ann, who was married toNathaniel Frothingham, aUnitarian minister.^[14] Together, they were the parents of:

• Louisa Catherine Adams (1831–1870), who married Charles Kuhn (1821–1899)
• 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 (1838–1899)
• Peter Chardon Brooks Adams (1848–1927)

Adams died in Boston on November 21, 1886, at the age of 79, and was interred inMount Wollaston Cemetery, Quincy.^[15] 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 atPeacefield on June 6, 1889.^[16]

Notes

Sources

• Adams Jr., Charles Francis,Charles Francis Adams, Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1900.
• 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 andDonald, David Herbert, eds.,Diary of Charles Francis Adams (2 vols.). Harvard University Press, 1964.
• Duberman, Martin.Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961, reissued by 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.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (1906). "Adams, Charles Francis (diplomatist)".The Biographical Dictionary of America. Vol. 1. Boston: American Biographical Society. pp. 36–37.
• 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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• United States Congress."Charles Francis Adams Sr. (id: A0000321859)".Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved2009-03-31.
• Appleton's Biography edited by Stanley L. Klos
• Works by Charles Francis Adams Sr. atProject Gutenberg
• Works by or about Charles Francis Adams Sr. at theInternet 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 thePortal to Texas History
• Selected diplomatic Letters of the Lincoln administration at Ford's Theatre site, including several to or from Adams
• Mount Wollaston Cemetery TourArchived 2020-10-21 at theWayback Machine (includes grave image)

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