The period of June 1836 to February 1840, from Charles Francis
Adams' twenty--eighth to thirty--second year, was characterized by
his turn from the political activities that had occupied him for
the preceding several years. The course of the Van Buren
administration he had helped to elect dissatisfied him, the
Massachusetts Whig leadership had earned his distrust, positions on
political issues that would either echo or oppose those being
vigorously espoused by his father, John Quincy Adams, he felt
inhibited from avowing publicly. So confronted, Charles found
occupation in preparing and expressing himself on economic matters
of moment--banking and currency--and moral questions generated by
the slavery issue. With increasing effectiveness he employed the
lecture platform and the press for the expression of views to which
he felt free to attach his name. On all these matters he found his
opinions at odds with the prevailing ones held among those
prominent in the Boston scene, as John Adams and John Quincy Adams
had found before him. Yet, despite a sense of loneliness, so
induced, his participation in the varied social life of the city
has its place in the Diary.
However, activities in Boston and its environs that provided a
focus for the record of the preceding years give way in these
volumes to wider scenes made available by train and ship. An
extensive journey with his wife by way of the Hudson River and the
Eric Canal to Niagara and Canada, a visit of some length and
interest in Washington, and stays of lesser length in New York City
are recounted.
Wide and persistent reading, the theater, numismatics, and the
building of a summer home in Quincy also occupied him and arefully
reflected in his journal. Family tragedies are not absent from its
pages. As the period comes to its close his long and distinguished
labors as editor of the family's papers had begun. A new
self-assurance has become evident.
General
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