the room are to be found furnishings which had been placed in the White House when John and Abigail lived there. Several Louis XV chairs and a matching settee, among other pieces, date from John's ministerial years in the Netherlands when he had had to decorate the new American embassy in The Hague. He had brought these pieces back with him when he had returned to America and had carried them to the presidential mansion when he had been elected to the Presidency. Thereafter, as was then the custom in Washington, he had returned with them to Quincy at the end of his term. These possessions lent a marked air of elegance, grace, and historical pedigree to the Long Room.
Passing back into the hall, Bob then led us up the straight staircase to what, for me, would be the most meaningful room in the house: the upstairs study. This was the room where both Presidents, John and John Quincy, had spent the most time, reading their beloved books and writing the letters that would come to form some of the most famous of American literary correspondences. Here, John Adams, seated in the floral wing chair which remains placed in the corner where he loved to sit, had uttered his last public pronouncement to a small delegation of town leaders who had asked him to give them a Fourth of July message that they might read to the citizens of Quincy. “I will give you … Independence forever!" he had spoken (McCullough 645). Sitting right there in that corner. In that very chair.
Elsewhere in the room could be seen John Quincy Adams's W. Bardin terrestrial globe, a fitting possession for the most well-traveled diplomat in American history to that date. And then, almost nestled in the northeast corner of the study, stood John Adams's secretary desk, the spot where he had written the 158 letters that constituted his side of the indispensable correspondence with Thomas Jefferson that had reunited the old friends and past adversaries. And everything was still here, still placed as the Adamses had seen fit. Remarkable, simply remarkable.
As we left the study and proceeded down the passage that John Quincy had added to the house in order to make the study more directly accessible from the President's bedroom, I was reminded of this second Adams President's most noteworthy characteristic: his passionate love of reading. The passageway is literally lined with shelves, each groaning under the weight of an astonishing assortment of books. No wonder that John Quincy had asked his son Charles Francis to build a library on the grounds as his contribution to the homestead. The Adams family's voluminous collection of tomes had begun to outstrip the capacity of the house to hold them.
Our guide, Bob, then led us to the presidential bedroom. A decorative touch that I thought particularly apt was the addition of the Sadler tiles surrounding the fireplace grate. John Quincy had purchased them in Liverpool, England, in 1801, toward the end of his stint as Minister to Prussia, and he had sent them home to his mother. The tiles had then been installed in the presidential bedroom. Surely their blue and white distinctly Dutch design must have brought to mind John Adams's courageous efforts in Amsterdam during the Revolution, when he had labored so tirelessly to negotiate a loan from the Netherlands that would help pay for the munitions and supplies necessary to support the American armies fighting the British. In light of his father's recent defeat in seeking a second term as President, John Quincy's gift must have been seen as a most thoughtful and appreciative reminder of this earlier, crucially important success.
Bob now led our group back downstairs, and we ended up in the Long Hall. Taking note of the portraits of Charles Francis Adams, as well as of First Lady Louisa Catherine, he drew our attention to a framed and beautifully preserved floral wreath, hanging between portrait busts of George Washington and John Adams.
“This wreath was sent to Louisa Catherine Adams in 1826," Bob told us, “at the time of John Adams's death. Of course Abigail had already passed on by this time, so the women of the Seminary for Female Education in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had sent it to the current First Lady, Louisa Catherine Adams. They had wished to express their gratitude for President Adams's support for female education, evidenced in his visit to their school during the Revolution." The wreath was a perfect reminder of the sentiment that Abigail had written to her husband in Philadelphia during the long, hot days of the debate concerning Independence, “Remember the ladies." Clearly he had done so, and the wreath bore beautiful evidence that the ladies, too, had remembered him.
As we left the Old House, I thought that the tour was over. Happily I was mistaken, for we had one more stop to make: Charles Francis Adams's Stone Library.
It had been the wish of John Quincy that his son, Charles Francis, would construct a library on the property at Peace field to house the now over 12,000 volumes the two Presidents had accumulated over the years. Charles Francis had been unable to comply with his father's wishes during his lifetime, due to the demands of his extremely active scholarly pursuits and the vital ministerial service he had performed in England during the Civil War. Yet in 1870 he finally succeeded in creating the quintessential memorial to his father and grandfather here at Peace field, the Stone Library.
Our new docent led us to the door of this wisteria covered, chapel-like structure, and then she invited us to enter into the library's cordoned-off space to view its interior. Once inside we were immediately surrounded by two stories of shelves filled with thousands of books. I remember feeling distinctly that Professor Higgins from My Fair Lady might appear at any moment to lecture us on correct diction.
“You have come on a special day," our docent informed us. “Today, July 11, is John Quincy Adams's birthday, and this is the day when we show this particularly interesting book to our visitors." She moved to the large table in the middle of the room, opened a closed box, picked up out of it a folio sized volume, and brought it over to us.
“This is the Mendi Bible. It was given to John Quincy Adams by the Mendi prisoners who had been taken off the ship Amistad. It was their expression of gratitude for his successful defense of their right to return to their homes in Africa, argued in the Supreme Court of the United States. Look here," she continued, holding up a laminated piece of paper, "Inside the front cover of the book, each one of the Mendi people made his mark. This is a photocopy of that page. Here is the mark of their leader, Cinque."
I believe my goosebumps had goosebumps of their own. I was standing here, not two feet away from the gift of the Amistad people to their liberator, ex-President John Quincy Adams. I felt that I was in the very presence of history.
And the rest of the room would only deepen the feeling. In the southwest corner of the room stood John Adams's law desk, upon which he had drafted the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Standing before the library's north window could be seen John Quincy Adams's desk from the U.S. House of Representatives, from which, from 1831 until the day of his death in 1848, he had earned the name “Old Man Eloquent" because of his continuous, vociferous, and strident attacks on the presence of slavery within the United States. Everywhere here in the Stone Library there were to be seen crown jewels of early American history. It was a dazzling, unforgettable experience.
Since this first visit, Carol and I have returned here twice. With each succeeding tour we have noted and appreciated objects and aspects of the homes that we had missed in earlier years. But I will never forget that moment of wonder when the Mendi Bible was brought before me. It truly established for me the reality of this place, the reality of this father, and of his son, and of this indispensable family. I saw, as I had never seen before, the importance of visiting the homes of the Presidents, not simply as side trips stemming from a dutiful sense of patriotism, but as a means of discovering and appreciating the essence of the men who had molded and directed the United States. Their history was also my history. Their legacy has created my present, the America of today. I realized that understanding these men and the worlds they had inhabited could, in a very special way, open a door for every American to better understand both his country and himself. Taking the time and making the effort to do so has become a fascinating journey that has never ceased to inspire and enlighten me.
Thomas Jefferson: "...a work of art."
