Adams, John, On African Americans

By: Robert H. Gudmestad

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Adams, John, On African Americans

John Adams was born in Massachusetts in 1735 and grew up in relatively humble circumstances. After graduating from Harvard, he passed the bar and began his legal career. Adams's law practice was steady but unspectacular at a time of growing tension with England. He was a reluctant Revolutionary, even defending the British troops who fired on the crowd for unclear reasons in the Boston Massacre, but served faithfully in the First and Second Continental Congresses. Adams is well known for his insistence on a formal declaration of independence.

He remained in public service as a wartime diplomat to France and Holland and was instrumental in negotiating the treaty that ended the American Revolution. Adams continued his work overseas as ambassador to the English court before returning to the United States, where he was chosen as George Washington's vice president. Adams then succeeded Washington as president and faced a host of problems with England and France. He returned to Massachusetts after his defeat in the 1800 election and stayed out of the public spotlight until his death in 1826. Adams was known for his blunt style and had opinions on most matters of his day. He was relatively silent, however, about his opinions on African Americans and made little mention of slavery or blacks in his diary. While Adams eventually became a dedicated opponent of slavery, his opinions of African Americans are difficult to discern and probably shifted during his lifetime.

John Adams, second president of the United States, in an engraving of c. 1828 by Pendleton's Lithography from the original series by Gilbert Stuart for Messrs. Doggett of Boston.

Library of Congress.

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Adams saw few blacks in his early years, as there were only about five thousand slaves in Massachusetts during the colonial era. He probably shared many of the prevailing white prejudices against blacks. Adams wrote a note to the Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson in 1773 and signed it “Crispus Attucks,” perhaps as a tribute to the African American man slain at the Boston Massacre; it was more probable, however, that Adams was comparing the situation of colonists to that of blacks, implying that both were being discriminated against in the British Empire. As a congressman, he voted against black enlistment in the Continental army, arguing that African Americans could not be trained to be effective soldiers. His reaction to Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia also implied that Adams believed in racial inferiority. Jefferson described African Americans as inferior to whites even as he worried about the negative effects of slavery; Adams made no distinction between the two ideas, simply comparing Jefferson's words to diamonds.

In the course of his public career Adams came in contact with more African Americans and his opinions seemed to moderate somewhat. While in Paris in 1787 Sally Hemings, the slave and future mother of four children of Thomas Jefferson, lived with John and Abigail; she is the only slave known to have lived with the Adams family. John did not comment on the then fourteen-year-old Hemings, but Abigail thought her too immature to care for the children in the house. A free black woman served the Adams family as a cook while John was vice president, and she was the only servant who kept her employment when the family was forced to reduce expenses. The Adams family moved to Washington in the final months of John's presidency; the capital was home to many African Americans, something that did not escape Abigail's attention. She commented that she hated to see slaves working in the city and that the peculiar institution destroyed their initiative to work. In her opinion, two free men could do the work of a dozen slaves.

Even if Adams thought poorly of blacks, he hated slavery and spent much of his life trying to destroy it. He eventually gained the necessary financial resources, but Adams never purchased a slave; the thought repulsed him. In fact, neither he nor his family ever owned a slave, although Abigail's family owned two at one point. Massachusetts was one of the first states to emancipate its slaves in the Revolutionary era, and Adams shared this general opposition to the institution. He was good friends with Benjamin Rush, a man well known for his early and vigorous opposition to slavery. Adams wrote in 1765 that God had never intended the American colonies for slaves and wondered a decade later if Americans who held slaves had the right to complain about their lack of liberty. Adams, though, did not openly oppose slavery during the American Revolution; his goal was to simply win the war and sort out side issues later. Once the colonies won their independence on the battlefield, Adams assumed slavery would slowly die out.

In the end, despite his deep opposition to slavery, Adams took no action to bring about its demise. He thought the federal government should stay clear of the matter. He was confident that the states would see the best course—emancipation—and that freedom would slowly move south. Adams expected Virginia to be the first major southern state to emancipate its slaves, with Thomas Jefferson leading the way; he was wrong. Emancipation stalled at the Mason-Dixon Line, and Jefferson as well made almost no effort to combat slavery.

Adams remained silent with regard to slavery while serving as vice president and then as president. He gave several reasons for his lack of effort: He thought he might incite slave insurrections in the South if he spoke out, writing that he was terrified of armies of slaves marching across the country. Adams also noted that he had not been farther south than Washington and did not understand the southern plantation system. Thus he was in no position to judge the merits of slavery and would leave decisions with regard to the institution up to those who knew about it firsthand. Adams said little during his retirement as well, probably to protect his son's political career from controversy.

In private, Adams's doubts about slavery grew constantly. He described it as a crime against humanity that created catastrophic problems. One problem for Adams was miscegenation. He remarked that interracial sexual relations were unavoidable wherever slaves were present; he presumably believed that the power and exploitation inherent in slavery created opportunities for sexual exploitation. In the wake of the charges about Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings, Adams wrote that he believed one southern woman who said that every Virginia planter had fathered children with his slaves.

Adams never directly challenged Jefferson about the accusations but did tell his old friend that slavery was a growing problem, which future generations would have more difficulty confronting. He added that he believed abolition to be the only way to preserve the country, as it could not endure half slaveholding and half free. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 fueled Adams's fears. He endorsed the legislation that would have freed slaves in the state of Missouri, since it would have set a precedent for the federal government to abolish slavery in other states. A victory in the Missouri debates would have squarely positioned the federal government against the expansion of slavery and might have increased antislavery belief and action in the South. Adams thought further expansion of slavery would be harmful to the United States. The extension of the plantation system, with what Adams called great hordes of black serfs, would discourage immigration by white farmers.

Adams believed the danger to be so great at the time that he made his longest public statement to date on slavery. He said that the Revolutionary generation never intended for slavery to expand; slavery needed to be stopped so that whites could migrate to the West and not be concerned with the institution's detrimental effects. He described slavery as a gangrene infection that could kill its patient, even warning that if slavery was not terminated it would tear the nation in two. Adams was also scared that slaves would rebel against whites if forced to move to Missouri and that whites would respond by annihilating all African Americans.

A significant legacy of John Adams's fight against slavery was his son, John Quincy Adams. The elder Adams helped shape the staunchly antislavery opinions of the younger. John Quincy Adams battled against the southerners in the House of Representatives who prevented the discussion of antislavery petitions and was the primary attorney for the Amistad captives.

See also Abolitionism; American Revolution; Attucks, Crispus; Hemings, Sally; Jefferson, Thomas, on African Americans and Slavery; Massachusetts; Missouri Compromise; Race, Theories of; and Stereotypes of African Americans.

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