John Quincy Adams often used the occasion of his birthday, July 11, to reflect on his life to date, and to anticipate what was to come. As he grew older, Adams found his mind turning increasingly to the prospect of his death. On his 73rd birthday, in 1840, he wrote in his diary, “I am deeply sensible of the duty of beginning in earnest to wean myself from the interests and afflictions of this world, and of preparing myself for the departure to that which is to come.” A devout Christian, Adams lived in prayerful communion with his God, and felt that he must ready his soul to be called home from his “pilgrimage,” as he sometimes called his life.
And yet he wasn’t ready at all. After acknowledging his religious duty, Adams made a stark admission to himself: “The truth is, I adhere to the world and all its vanities, from an impulse not altogether voluntary, and cannot, by any exercise of my will, realize that I can have but very few days left to live.”
Adams was torn between soul and self. Piety, and wisdom, told him that the time had come to detach himself from the things of this world. His father had returned to the farm after losing the presidency, and stayed there for a quarter of a century until he died. The younger Adams lacked his father’s old-age equanimity. At times he found life in Quincy unbearably dull, and could scarcely wait for Congress to go back in session. And while Adams suffered from myriad ailments—rheumatism, sciatica, a periodic inflammation of the eye—he was actually in no danger of dying.
Adams soldiered on through his seventies, attending every meeting of Congress, delivering public speeches, reading and writing and arguing. He rarely missed a day in his diary. Then, after October 31, 1846, a gap appears. The diary only resumes on March 14, 1847, with an entry which Adams titled “posthumous memoir.” On November 10 of the previous year, he writes, he had been prepared to take a walk from his son Charles Francis’ house in Boston when his knees gave way and he sank to the ground. He was carried to bed, and attended day and night by a nurse. “From that hour,” he wrote, “I date my decease, and consider myself for every useful purpose to myself or to my fellow-creatures, dead; and hence I call this and what I may write hereafter a posthumous memoir.”
What a strange term! Adams was now describing his life from a point beyond his life. He felt that his perpetually restless spirit had at last been stilled; perhaps he welcomed the end of his pilgrimage. Yet the life force in this old man continued to beat. After several weeks he began to ride in a carriage, and then to walk to church. He insisted on returning to Washington for the upcoming session of Congress. He and Louisa made the trip, as always, by rail, steamer and carriage. The posthumous memoir was, in fact, written from his house on F Street, near the Capitol. After this last passage he found that he could no longer write, and began to dictate his journal to his grand-daughter Mary Louisa.
Charles Francis was later to become his father’s literary executor, and edited the twelve-volume collection of his journals, which includes about a third of the total. The last volume ends with an entry from June 1, 1847, when Adams returned to Quincy, because, Charles Francis tells us, his father no longer involved himself in public affairs. That’s true; and yet the diary shows that Adams’ iron grip on life had not altogether relaxed. He still critiqued the Sunday sermons he attended, still took walks, still read and pondered Paradise Lost. He had been thrilled by astronomy since his undergraduate days, and remained so. He and the other members of the Harvard Board of Overseers visited the university’s observatory, which Adams had done a great deal to bring into being. Adams was thrilled to see Mars, Saturn and Neptune, the planet that had just been discovered.
That fall Adams returned to Washington for the last time. In Congress he rose to introduce several petitions, and to oppose the war in Mexico. In his diary, he recorded all the mundane business of the Congress, as he had been doing since 1832. Few men loved the institution as he did. On January 4, 1848, he noted that a one Congressman rose to offer a resolution, another to make a point of order. There followed a notation: “Giddings of Ohio.” Joshua Giddings was a passionate abolitionist who revered Adams, and whom Adams loved. The diary, which Adams had begun keeping in 1779, at the age of 12, ends with him. There are, finally, no more words.
Adams lived until February 23. He was felled by a stroke on the floor of Congress, and died two days later.
As JQA fell silent, so will JQAspeaks. But this blog, unlike its subject, will quicken to life once again, when my biography of Adams appears, some time in 2015.
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