Henry Adams
Presented on: Thursday, May 9, 1985
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic America Our Critical Heritage:
James Fenimore Cooper, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Adams, Mark Twain
Presentation 6 of 13
Henry Adams:
The History of the United States in the Times of Jefferson and Madison
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, May 9, 1985
Transcript:
The date is May 9th, 1985. This is the sixth lecture in a series of lectures on Our Critical Heritage by Roger Weir. Tonight's lecture is on Henry Adams, the history of the United States in times of Jefferson and Madison.
These are hard lectures. They are hard because we're dealing now with very intelligent people who are really dynamic. And Henry Adams is almost never handled in American history courses except for undergraduates. They will give them his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams. And they give that to you, and they say, you will have a quiz on this in two weeks. And that's it. But Henry Adams is a watershed in American thought. With Henry Adams pattern in history becomes self-conscious. With him the American experience becomes articulated in a way that had not been made explicit before. And Adams is the first individual in world history to gain an insight into the fact that history has within itself rhythms of manifestation that when kept track of yield a structure. And that the structure points to the 20th century as being the make it or break it point in world history. And for Adams, it was astonishing to him that this should be so.
He came from one of the most distinguished of all American families. His great grandfather was the John Adams of the American revolution. Our second president. His grandfather was John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. And his father was Charles Freer Adams, whom Lincoln appointed as his ambassador to England during the civil war. So as to keep England from siding with the Confederacy. And Charles Francis Adams took his 13-year old son, Henry Adams with him to England as his secretary. So, Henry Adams broke in working as a young adolescent in one of the most difficult and tenuous of all assignments. In fact, the assignment of CF Adams to England during the civil war was almost as apical in its outcome as Franklin's French embassy, when he was minister plenipotentiary for the nascent United States.
So that Henry Adams as a youngster was quickly brought into the world scene on a very high level. And this is reminiscent of his grandfather, John Quincy Adams, who was taken at the age of 11 by his father, the John Adams, with him to the Netherlands during the American Revolutionary War. And so, Henry Adams grandfather learned the same way that he learned. And there's a great affinity between Henry Adams and his grandfather, John Quincy Adams.
If we look to the father, we don't see the significance. If we look even to the great grandfather, which were prone to do, we don't see the significance. But the relationship between the grandfather and the grandson is significant. Very often individuals who interiorize their sense of reality. Look not to the parental generation, but to grandparental generation. This is why individuals who are taught at the maturation phase of life to interiorize their experience, like the American Indian, that they refer them to the grandfathers or the grandmothers as sources of insight. And one then would have a relationship with reality on a grandparent basis. That the parent basis is physical, is material. But the grandparent basis is metaphysical and is spiritual. That one's origins are not in the continuity of the material world, but in the articulate leaping and jumping of the track of the spirit as it manifests every other generation.
So that Henry Adams, as a youngster, learned to look at the world in the way that his grandfather looked. His grandfather had grown up not only with his dad, John Adams, but had grown up at one of the most crucial points of world history. He was a familiar as a youngster with Benjamin Franklin and with Thomas Jefferson in their heyday. And so, John Quincy Adams understood the Republic in a way that few individuals ever understood it. And he embodied in himself the ethic of selfless service to the country because the country was a very special entity. And that it required the selfless dedication of generations of individuals in order to manifest its true nature. John Quincy Adams, in fact, is the only individual who ever after holding the presidency went back and ran for Congress and became a Congressman.
And even though he was a very touchy individual, personally. Very inept and tackles in social graces. Inarticulate in his voice. He grumbled a little bit and it was difficult to hear articulation. In the late 1830s and early 1840s when it began to occur to thinking individuals that the country might be in trouble. Whenever John Quincy Adams stood up in the U.S. Senate to deliver a rare speech, people were hushed to hear what the old man had to say. He was vulnerable. He may not be likable. He may be somewhat of a curmudgeon. He is not a source of political favor. But he's venerable because he was there at the beginning. He was there at the creation. He has in living memory the exact reality of how it happened. And that man will not lie to us. And so, he was listened to.
No one listened to him closer than his grandson, Henry Adams. And in fact, it's the, the personal sagacity of John Quincy Adams handing a baton of vision onto the grandson that ruins Henry Adams life. Because he can never be the ordinary person. He can never be the boy next door. He can never be the manly companion out on the town. He could never just be a man.
He is a bearer of a terrible secret that the Republic is a metaphysical ideal. A vision which will not happen unless every generation makes it so. That if we miss one generation, the experiment is over. The vision is off. And we degenerate into another nation state. Into another nascent empire. And given the tremendous amperage of the American heritage, the American past, an American empire when dwarf the Romans. Or the Chinese. Or anyone else. And so, there is a great responsibility in Henry Adams, mine for individuals who understand to retain a selfless commitment to that ideal and to try to find ways to approach in communication their fellow men. And Henry Adams will bear that burden all of his 80 years.
And when he dies in 1918, he will feel on one hand completely an outsider and rejected by his own country. And yet on the esoteric inner side that he dies at the flash point of consciousness in human history. For Adams believed, rather understood, that history has a phase form process, which only in the late 19th early 20th century could be self-conscious. That there never was a time in history when the ordinary individual could be self-conscious of it. Could understand. And in fact, in his phase development of human history he used to contrast the 12th century with the 20th century. He used to say that the heart of men matured in the 12th century. And that the symbolic center of that heart vision of humanity was symbolized by the Virgin Mary. Not the Virgin Mary of someone being stuffed away but the Virgin Mary as a moving image that encouraged men to aspire towards reality. And that all the great Gothic cathedrals were temples to her vision. And that Chartres especially was the place that expressed the capacity for man to structure his vision on this earth in terms of her appeal. Grow up and be whole. Join the cosmic family. But in contrast to the Virgin Mary in the 12th century, Henry Adams was convinced that the symbol of the late 19th early 20th century was the electric dynamo. And that this power of the machine become electrolyzed, symbolized by the dynamo, was the image around which a culminating apex vision of man's manifestation processes would have to be wrought.
In fact, he said that the religious shell of world history culminated in 1600. And that out of this religious shell, a new age called the mechanical age was born. That the religious became refined and infused the mechanical stage of human history. So that it was not opposed to the religious, but rather encapsulated the religious. And that the mechanical likewise gave birth in 1900 to the electrical age. And that this was a step forward in a geometric process. And that by 1917, the electricals phase would quickly give birth to the ethereal phase of human history that would culminate in 1921 in a vision of the unity of man. In terms of the ethereal vision, which could be backed up by the electrical theory, which could be fortified by the mechanical application, which could be nestled into a religious cosmic understanding. So that it was like a target. And that 1921 was the bullseye of that target.
Adams also felt that time was being condensed. That time was being pushed into thought. And that thought was taking all the energy of time and increasing the flow of time. So that as the year 1600 came, thought began to rise in its capacity. And by 1900 was going off the ground. And by 1917 would reach an azeotropic point at which point man's thoughts, self-consciousness, of what he was and what he could do would transcend the time dimension and he would have any internal vision. Prefigured by the heart vision of the age from 1050 to 1250 culminating with the construction of Chartres cathedral. But then in 1917 man would finally understand what he needed to do.
He also felt that the law of conservation of energy was a vector of truth. And like of vector of truth was the product of two forces, which were in controvertible. That a vector is the resolution of two directions which cannot be broken. One is the second law of thermodynamics. And a compliment to that as the law of evolution. But they go together with biology and mechanics. Physics and biology disclose the visionary continuity of reality.
He also grabbed it so that there was like a movement of a comet around the sun. And it's closest point of touching would be like 1917. That man's consciousness of his purpose would mature at that time.
These are visions towards the end of Henry Adams life. And he wrote some of the most startling documents ever written. The other 19th century philosophies pale in comparison. Marxism is a kindergarten toy not even worth handling compared to the incredible incisiveness of the mind of Henry Adams. But he's been forgotten. He's been shunted aside because it takes a lot of courage to realize the responsibility is still there.
What did this man then as a youngster learned from his grandfather? John Quincy Adams had a vision. And in his inaugural message, December 6th, 1825, he had this to say to the country. This is 1825.
The great object of the institution of civil government is the improvement of the condition of those who are parties to the social compact. And no government in whatever form constituted can accomplish the lawful ends of its institution. But in proportion, as it improves the condition of those over whom it has established is a direct ratio. If you're not improving the lives of the people, then the government is out of order. It's only reason for being instituted is for this purpose, which can be measured. Which can be seen.
He goes on,
Roads and canals by multiplying and facilitating the communications and intercourse between distant regions and multitudes of men are among the most important means of improvement. But moral, political, intellectual, improvement are duties assigned by the author of our existence to social no less than individual man.
In other words, there are religious responsibilities for institutions, not in some doctrinaire approach, but to the body of the people as a social entity.
He writes,
For the fulfillment of those duties governments are invested with power. And to the attainment of the end, the progressive improvement of the condition of the govern, the exercise of delegated powers is a duty as sacred and as indispensable as the use or patient or powers not granted is criminal and odious.
So that the powers of the institution are for specific purposes. And any transgression of those powers is a transgression not only of a social contract, but if a sacred vision. A responsibility, individual, and social.
He goes on to list several necessities that need to be established. One of them, in fact, two of them related together, were offered by George Washington and needed to be consolidated. That the country should have a military academy for training specifically those generals and their staff to protect that institution, to protect those people. So that they do not rise out of the ranks of any particular faction. They do not rise out of petty greed for any particular group. But that they are professionally trained to represent the nation as a whole in times of crisis by delegated authority. And so, the establishment of a military academy is to be a stopper on tyranny from this side, from this angle. But balancing out the military academy, John Quincy Adams says, and Henry Adams understood, as Washington first put out, balancing the military academy there needs to be a national university. He says here in 1825.
So, convinced of this was the first of my predecessors in this office. Now, first in the memory as living, he was first in the hearts of our country men. That once and again in his addresses to the congresses with whom he cooperated in the public service. He earnestly recommended the establishment of seminaries of learning to prepare for all the emergencies of peace and war. A national university, a university of the United States and a military academy.
And he goes on to say that along with those two institutions, we need a third institution. That by 1825 it is seen that there is a third necessity for the vision of the American people. And that is the surprisingly, the establishment of a national observatory. John Quincy Adams in 1825 says it is necessary for us to have this. That there is in fact, a great need for this. That in fact, he says,
Connected with the establishment of a university or separate from it must be undertaken the erection of an astronomical observatory. With provision for the support of an astronomer to be in constant attendance of observation, upon the phenomenon of the heavens. And for the periodical publication of his observations. It is with no feeling of pride as an American that the remark may be made but on the comparatively small territorial surface of Europe, there are existing upwards of 130 of these lighthouses of the skies. But that in the Americas, in the whole hemisphere, there's not even one.
Send somebody down to close the door.
The purpose for having an observatory is to remind the American people that there is a vision to be maintained. That the balance is not between the tension of peace and war, but that the balance between peace and war is held together for an ulterior motive. A spiritual purpose. And without that third element the American people are going to lose their vision. They've had it easy. They've had a long gestation period. Franklin and Jefferson were champions for almost a hundred years between the two of them. Almost a full century they carried the load. They carried the vision. Like Prometheus's carrying divine fire in the stock of fennel. They never once let it go out. But now it has to be passed to the people. It can't be passed to someone strong like Franklin and Jefferson. It has to be passed to the people because the time has come for them to do it. And not for any other strong men. This is why the presidencies after Jefferson were trying their best to be nondramatic. Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams himself, all tried to be self-effacing and step back from the stage of history. Stop occupying this tremendously polarizing, energizing point of leadership. Because the leadership does not belong with a man, it belongs with the people. And the time has come to give them all of the keys of the power. The country is yours. Treat it well. Pass it on. That that message was necessary.
And in order to preserve that vision, a national observatory should be established to remind everyone, we have a heavenly vision. We have a cosmos within which we operate that is directly, practically germane to what we do every day. This is the way people used to talk in this country. Openly. This is the way Henry Adams grew up.
He grew up understanding that the United States was a very peculiar place. It was not a nation like France was a nation. It was not a nation like England was a nation. It was in fact, a together of the peoples of the earth. And he will say again and again, the central vision of Jefferson was to keep this country from becoming a nation state. To keep it fluid and open so that we would have a vision of man as a whole. And that it was not for some personal present that we bring power together. But for the future of mankind as a whole that this has done. That this is a sacrifice. This is a making sacred. This is a transformation.
So, Henry Adams grew up with this. And had within himself this tremendous understanding. When he came back to the United States. He came back from England. Back from the confines of the intellectual tradition of his family. Back from the insular companionship of his father's company and his father's office and his grandfather's papers and memories. And he came back to the United States and the country was in a shambles. The civil war had smashed the union. The union had survived as a viable political ideal. But the country, in fact, physically was dismembered.
It is called an American history reconstruction. And the emphasis is on construction again. It had to be built all over again. The body was alive, but it was maimed. I think we mentioned in one of the Lincoln lectures that the number of killed in the civil war was nearly a half million men killed. And nearly that many maimed. That's almost equal to the casualty list of the second world war. All of this on native ground. All of this with a population of only about 18 million people. It was catastrophic. There was almost nothing that was working except the war machine. The industrial base had geared itself and for four years at increasingly produced a war machine. And this was what was wrong with the United States in the late 1860s. that the only base of power left was the military.
Adams came back. He looked around for something that he could do. He accepted a temporary appointment to be a professor of history at Harvard. And he went to Harvard and he was to stay there for seven years. During this time, he tried to find vehicles that he could express to the American people the tremendous scintillating vision that he had understood. And so, he founded a magazine, a periodical called The North American Review. One of the really great publications at the 19th century. Even more significant than The Dial was for the new England Transcendentalist. The North American Review.
Adams edited for six long years at Harvard. And he specialized in medieval history. This in itself was a great change. Because Adams himself uncovered and laid bare for all time, for us, the fact that in 1800 Harvard University had only a staff of four professors and four tutors. There were only eight individuals that comprise the whole of Harvard University. There was the principal. There was a professor of theology. There was a professor of mathematics. And they added another professor later on and four tutors. And that was the entire staff of Harvard university in 1800.
So that when Adams joined the faculty in 1870, it was a new Harvard. It was the beginning of the explosion of capacity in the United States. Adams specialized in medieval history, but he couldn't get rid of the nagging suspicion that what was significant was the present. That the present had to make sense. The civil war, his own family history, the American revolution itself, all of these events swirling in him. What did it mean?
By the late 1870s Adams realized that he could no longer be a professor. You get to a point where you transcend the university. It becomes like paper Mache; one cannot do it anymore. Its just not real. And if one has an ethical responsibility to deliver communication, to deliver a vision, you cannot stay in a university. You in your life energy poke through the structure every day. Without meaning to you create schisms and injure. And send off polarities. Create jealousies. Just by virtue of the dynamic that one carries.
So, Adams removed himself from Harvard and went to the only place that he could find refuge. He went to Washington D.C. And he would stay there for the rest of his life. He went to Washington enthused. He knew what he had to do. He had tried his hand at various ways of communication. He had discovered the limits of their capacity. He had married. He had a beautiful young wife whom he loved madly. Hed done a lot of traveling. So, he set off to start writing. And he began writing two different kinds of things. One, he began to write novels. Political satirical novels. One of them called Democracy was a best seller. It's still in print and still sells. And he wrote two or three other ones. And on the other hand, he began to write histories. He encapsulated all of his professorial learning in a monumental work called Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. And when that was published, it was like a high watermark in American intellectual history. As a work of historiography, it is impeccable. It is still read with reverence and insight today.
But for Adams again and again, the haunting thing was the United States. The vision he had understood. And the present. The ever scintillating present. The fact that no one was understanding the country was not being reconstructed. It was not being put back together. It was a different place. It was on the surface, the United States. But there was no vision in it anymore. The last man who had understood it was Lincoln, who had been taken from the scene suddenly. The last man who could have made some effective renewal of the vision. Some re-consecration of the meaning, what are we doing here? Why have we come from all the ends of the earth and been given all of the sources of power there are in the world? Every advantage. All nine of the muses have turned over their gifts to the American people. For us to make money? For us to carve up the wilderness into real estate? Impossible.
So, Adams began to look back to the beginnings. And he began working on a great monumental nine volume history, The History of the United States in the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison. And he felt convinced that somehow the transition had happened there. That what needed to be reconstructed were not the factories so much, but the moral vision. And that the moral vision was based on a cosmic insight. And that was only available to a certain quality of personality. A certain character. And a character, which was permeable to the excellencies of intelligence. And this needed to be reinstated. And he felt somehow that Jefferson was the central figure. He was the fulcrum. That all of the gifts had come together and been given to him. He was the righting point of history. This is how we will do it. And that it had been misunderstood.
So, he went back and, and in these nine volumes Adams again and again tried to go meticulously over the information. He's the first of the great scientific historians. He's the first to say, let's look at all of the evidence. Let's not even think that we know anything at all about this. Let's go to the documents. Let's read the millions of pages if we have to. And let's find out exactly what happened at this hour on this day. What was happening here at this hour, at this day. Lets patiently sift through the material and open ourselves up. We're expecting a vision but we're not going to give it any shape. We're going to let the shape declaim itself. Because what happened will tell us what the vision was. If we are a meticulous. That there is a science of history like there is a science of astronomy. Like there's a science of physics. And if we will only patiently review exactly what has transpired, what has occurred and no periodicity in it. And orient ourselves towards receiving the intuitive vision from this, we will then understand. And this is what he did.
The trouble was is that the nine volumes were so arid that nobody read them. And Adam's completely crushed by the situation, wrote a history of himself in the third person, The Education of Henry Adam, saying you can't understand my work? Here. Here's an individual. Crucified on the ignorance of the public. Their unwillingness to even attempt to learn. And of course, The Education became a best seller. And no one almost no one reads Henry Adams great work.
Well, let's take a break and have some tea. And we'll come back and I'll try and give you some more, at a lower key.
I guess you can see perhaps a little bit that Henry Adams is very difficult to understand and appreciate. And the best book on Henry Adams took 40 years to write. And the man who wrote it was a famous literary critic, R.P. Blackmur. And his book, book on Henry Adams was published after his death. Friends of his got together and brought out the material from his drawer. He had worked on this book for some 40 years. And he never published it because he never felt that he had gotten to a point where he could publish it and express it. This is how he begins. Just give you a few excerpts from it. He says,
Where you're a small man is a knoll to be smoothed away, Henry Adams is a mountain to be mined on all flanks. For pure samples of human imagination, without loss of size or value. That is the double test of greatness. That it shown attractive force, massive and inexhaustible, and a disseminate for us, which is the inexhaustible spring or constant declaration of value. And we elucidate our reaction to the two forces. We measure the greatness.
And then turning to near the end of his book,
Whatever Adam's role is to be called; it has one constant element. It makes terms with his times. And one constant motive, to make the terms expressive both of himself and of his times. Now, at the end of every flight he made, whether in act or thought whether to Tahiti or to the 12th century, he found himself in closer contact with 20th century America. His pilgrimage was prodigal. And its riches were in the return. What he brought back became a part of the way to understand and what he discovered at home. It had become a trade of personality. The result of a lifetime. To express new terms of relation with each return. And a full return would be composed when to formulate the universe was identical with the task to formulate the self. As Yates says, it is in the full moon when the maximum is reflected that the self is lost.
So, we have here, and this is why it's going to take four lectures to even just skirt the issue. We have here someone who is extraordinarily fruitful. Not just for this country but because of the way in which he saw this country for the whole of the human race. As a fulcrum for Adams, Jefferson is the seminal figure. He says here,
The contradictions, the contradictions in Jefferson's character have always rendered at a fascinating study. Excepting his rival Alexander Hamilton, no American has been the object of estimates so widely differing and so difficult to reconcile. Almost every other American statesman might be described in a parenthesis. A few broad strokes of the brush would paint the portraits of all the early presidents with this exception. And a few more strokes would answer for any member of their many cabinets. But Jefferson could be painted only touch by touch with a fine pencil. And the perfection of the likeness dependent upon the shifting and uncertain flicker of its semi-transparent shadows.
Because you see the difficulty with someone like Jefferson is that he was trained. He was brought into being. He was matured by someone like Franklin.
END OF SIDE ONE
who was the most invisible of all. He's invisible like Socrates was invisible. Whereas it only in the effects, do you see it. Jefferson is like a Plato to Franklins Socrates. He's the visible man. He's the incarnation of this incredible universal insight and energy. But he does not present a target. He does not present some static persona, which you can tack down and describe. He is constantly effervescent. Constantly shifting. Opalescent like a gem. Multi-dimensional in every aspect. And almost impossible to see because as one acclimates oneself to any particular angle, he disappears into the globe of some other facet. And it's only by a scintillating matching of one's capacity that Jefferson blinks into view. Not as some stationary point but as some revolving cosmos, the nature of man has changed.
And this is the point that Adams will make that the nature of man has changed. We're no longer in a religious cradle where we have to be spoon-fed. We're no longer even in some mechanical situation where we have to learn by rote. All that's been moved up in pace. Moved up in capacity to an electrical instantaneity. And even that has given birth to something even more refined.
In this book on Henry Adams published by Yale university Press entitled Henry Adams Scientific Historian by William Jordy. This came out in 1952. Almost impossible to find now. He writes this,
Behind the human intellect Adam's disclosed man's struggle with the inner voice of conscience. Thus, his interest in the Louisiana purchase, for instance, lay less than the grandeur of its acreage than in the method by which the Republicans would justify an acquisition, which in Jefferson's own words, made blank paper of the constitution.
You see, we're constantly having to pinch ourselves to come awake. We're constantly diluted and thinking all this is just history. Well, my friends, it is reality. It is the moving face of the eternal. What else could it be? Is this an illusion? That all of this has transpired? It has a form. It has a structure. It has a meaning. Discernible. Not at all needing to be wildly guessed at. It can be understood. Jordy goes on talking about Adams because Adams is understanding this. This is how it happens. Where does it lead to? What does it amount to in our time?
So, Jordy writes. So, he, Adams, investigated the moral implications of Jefferson's ill inability to just own the embargo after it's acknowledged failure. You know, Jefferson did not want to involve the United States in the European Napoleonic Wars. So, he set up an embargo. He kept all of the American ships in port. All of them for no matter what purpose. Because he was creating like a magnetic seal to keep that energized vision intact because it had just happened. It was just happening. And so, like some great alchemist for the whole nation, he knew that the experiment has to simmer now. You can't drain off energy now. This is a very delicate operation. And the embargo was unpopular to say the least. Everyone was against it.
Adams in his history is tremendous. He goes section by section through the country showing us the background, the sociological stance. New England separate from New York. Different kinds of people. Pennsylvania different from that. Virginia and the Southern States different from that. All of the reactions to this and Jefferson all the time handling each and every detail but in the same way consistently. Why? Because he's preserving a totally new situation. This act has made the constitution a blank sheet of paper. Nothing is written. Whatever destiny is there is now open for a new structure. And Adams will say that Jefferson was very conscious of the fact that the revolution of 1776 was but a first step leading to the real revolution of 1800. And that in 1800, the United States would change its whole dynamic. Its whole form.
In fact, when we go to Henry Adams. And this is the two-volume condensation called The Formative Years in two volumes done by Herbert Agar. This was published in 1948. He begins with the physical and economic conditions. Typical Henry Adams. He doesn't start with the ideas. He doesn't start with the vision. He starts with laying out before us what have we got here? He says to begin, According to the census of 1800. So, he's going to come and look at the United States in 1800. He's going to lay forth a complete cross section of what was happening because this is the mandala of reality. This is actually what was happening. What was manifest. What was there. He says, According to the census of 1800, the United States of America contained five thousand 5 million, 308,483 persons. So, they're just 5.3 million people in 1800. Of this, he says there were about a million blacks, negros who were slaves. And he says that he would take away the women and the children there were less than a million males upon whom the whole burden fell. He says, for instance in Massachusetts, there were only 45,000 voting individuals in the election of 1800. He says on such skimpy possibilities, world history was resting. They had to make decisions that 25,000 individuals carried a whole section of the country. The individuals were, were extremely important.
He says, in fact,
In 1800 even after two centuries of struggle the land was still untamed for us covered every portion, except here and there. A strip of cultivated soil. The minerals lay undisturbed in their rocky beds. And more than two thirds of the people clung to the seaboard within 50 miles of Tidewater where along the wants of civilized life could be supplied. The center of population rested within 18 miles of Baltimore, North and East of Washington.
I think the center of population today is Kansas or Oklahoma. Can you imagine the shift, the tremendous energy, the force of history that it takes to do that in less than 200 years for us.
And he then portrays the United States as a vast unknown. That the land itself was not known. That the population didn't know where they were. They were not self-conscious in terms of the actual land where they were. That they were still in their minds. They were still living a European life. The revolutionary war was still a European revolution against another part of Europe. They were still mentally Europeans.
But in 1800 they became Americans. In 1800 it dawned on them that this land was there. It was available. He says the scale alone was mind boggling. He says, if you look at a map of Europe, there's almost no point in Europe that is more than 300 miles from any coast. He says from New York to Chicago was over a thousand miles. And there's several thousand miles beyond that. The scope, the scale, was incredible. And they had almost nothing to work with. There were no roads. There was nothing. Everything had to be made. He emphasizes by saying that the Allegheny Range was pierced by just two or three trails and that was it. One going over the Cumberland gap. One coming down through Virginia, South into Tennessee. One going from Pennsylvania from Philadelphia over to Pittsburgh. And that was it. Everything had to be done. There was no capital to do it with. Well there was capital to run little businesses on the seacoast but to develop a whole new world, there was nothing. And yet people began to move enmasse without any preparation. Without any real collateral except their own instinct.
And he says by 1800 people took a census of Kentucky and were surprised to find that there were some 200,000 people living in Kentucky already. That they had drifted individually by ones and twos, a family, or a couple families. Already had amount of just 200,000 people. He goes on to say there were about 45,000 people in Ohio at that time. Mostly along the Ohio river. Cincinnati had 15,000 people already in it. That there weren't many cities in the United States at that time that had 15,000 people. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Cincinnati. All of a sudden it occurred in 1800 that a whole wedge of population with its apex at Nashville Tennessee had moved over the Alleghenies in some half million people total and already gone. No one had blown a bugle. No one had laid out a plan. It was the result of hundreds of thousands of individuals saying, let's go and see what kind of a life we can make for ourselves there.
And he says, this great wedge was like a telescope vision. And that Jefferson's saw the future through this movement. That he could see that this was the development that was going to come. And of course, for those who were here for the Franklin and Jefferson lectures realize that all of this had been planned. That as early as the 1740s, Franklin was talking about extending the United States to the Mississippi River. All of this had been worked for. The psychology of it had been literally broadcast in the air and individuals receiving that invisibly, as it were and understanding that it was all right. It's all right to go. The wilderness is not an enemy. It's a promise. That the garden of Eden is not some little oasis that might hold 2000 people, but it'll hold millions and it's there.
So, he says. Adams says,
If the physical task, which lay before the American people had advanced but a short way towards completion, little more change would be seen in the economic conditions of American life. The man who in the year 1800 venture to hope for a new era in the coming century could lay his hand on no statistics that silenced doubt.
In fact, when he looked at history, it immediately and with great conclusiveness told him that it can't be done. That it would take several thousand years or at least several hundred years to even make a dent. He would say they would, they would look at colonists coming in in the early 1600s and now 200 years later they've gone maybe 50 or 75 miles. He says, you know someone from the 12th century could have stepped into the United States in 1800 or Europe in 1800 and been at home. Not that much had changed.
But within 20 years of 1800, by 1820, everything had changed. Everything. Because man's vision had become energized. Hed realized he's not insignificant. He's not helpless. Especially if the people work together. It's a long way to carry freight if you're going to carry it on your back. But people together can make other vehicles. They can open up canals and rivers and so forth. And we saw the tremendous significance that the Erie canal has spiritually through James Fenimore Coopers eyes on the United States. How they, if you remember, the critics said that it would take a hundred years to pay for the Erie canal and it paid for itself within three or four years. And was turning over profits.
Adams then says. Writes, The growth of character, social and national, the formation of men's minds more interesting than any territorial or industrial growth defied the tests of censuses and surveys. So, he goes through all the thing about surveys and censuses and possibilities. And what was there. And then he sets that aside. He says, that's interesting, but this is more interesting.
No people could be expected least of all when infancy to understand the intricacies of its own character. And rarely has a foreigner been gifted with insight to explain what natives did not comprehend. Only with diffidence could the best-informed Americans venture in 1800 to generalize on the subject of their own national habits of life and thought.
And then he goes on to say, quotes James Fenimore Cooper, that actually the basic diet, for instance, in that time. The basic element in the diet, everyone had grain so there was bread. But the basic element was pork. This is where the term pork barrel comes from. He cites Cooper's Chainbearer. He says, In fact, salt pork three times a day was regarded as an essential part of the American diet in The Chainbearer Cooper described what he called American poverty as existed in 1784. And he quotes Cooper.
As for bread said, the mother, I count that for nothing. We always have bread and potatoes enough. But I hold a family to be in a desperate way when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel. Give me the children that's raised in good sound pork before all the game in the country. Game's good as a relish and so it was bread, but pork is the staff of life. My children, I like to bring up on pork.
In fact, many European travelers would say, you know the backwoods Americans are very lazy. They plant some corn seeds in between the stumps of trees And then they turn the pigs out loose in the forest. And when the autumn comes, they harvest the corn and the pigs and feast. But they couldn't have been too lazy because they all got an awful lot done.
Adam was, goes on to delineate again and again, the character of the United States in 1800. And he uncovers, something which we uncovered, that the only dependable road in the whole United States was the postal road that Benjamin Franklin established from Maine to Georgia. And he says it took 20 days. And that's how long it took when Franklin established it. 20 days to get from Maine, Bangor Maine, down into the environs of Augusta Georgia. It took 20 days. That was the only road that went anywhere in the whole United States. Everything else went by sea or by river. Or painstakingly on little trails that were almost impassable.
So that the design that was available was only available to the visionary capacity. That in fact, the United States was not a unity physically. It was not a material unity at all. That New England was as different from New York. And New York as different from Pennsylvania. And all three of those as different from Virginia. And the Carolinas even more diff different than that. They were all different. They were all really self-sufficient in their own ways. And the only thing that unified them at all was this eerie sense of history that they had shared something valuable. And that this eerie sense of history was beckoning them West, together. Y'all come. It's an open door, 2000 miles wide. Go through it.
I think I mentioned once about two years ago in a Jefferson lecture, Jefferson had a vision one time. He was pacing as was his way on the roof of Monticello towards evening time. And he stood facing the East, looking out over the valley, down in towards a Charlotte. And he seemed to see the Milky Way flash in like a light. And he turned around and looked and it seemed, he said in one of his memoirs, almost like a flight of angels moving over the Alleghenies. Moving off towards the setting Sun. Illuminating the horizon for an instant and then it was gone. It was a vision. It was in his capacity.
So, Adams goes on and delineates. I've got to skip over everything here. Delineates the whole country in 1800. Tells us section by section. Then after the first six chapters, when he's laid this out. Set the stage. Then he puts the man in motion. And it begins this way. Chapter seven, The Inauguration,
The man who mounted the steps of the Capitol March 4th, 1801 to claim the place of an equal between Pitt and Bonaparte possessed a character which showed itself in acts. But person and manner can be known only by contemporaries. And the liveliest description was worth less than a moment of personal contact.
So, he goes on and he gives us a personal vision of Jefferson from someone who was there at the inauguration, who had jotted down some notes.
Jefferson is a slender man has rather the air of stiffness in his manner. His clothes seemed too small for him. He sits in a lounging manner. One hip commonly and with one of his shoulders elevate, elevated much above the other. His face has a sunny aspect. His whole figure has a loose shackling air. He had a rambling vacant look. And nothing of that from collected department, which I expected would dignify the presence of a secretary or a minister. I looked for gravity, but a laxative manner seemed to shut about him. He spoke almost without ceasing, but even as discourse partook of his personal demeanor. It was loose and rambling. And yet he scattered information wherever he went. And even brilliant settlements sparkled from him.
Because kaleidoscopic Jefferson was not the old static man that the European mind had been used to. He was somebody different. Somebody who were just now 200 years later, getting around to appreciate. He was a multidimensional individual. And he intended to build a world where human beings like that could thrive.
He writes here, that
For eight years, this tall, loosely built somewhat stiff figure in red waist coat and yarn stockings. Slippers down at the heel and clothes that seemed too small for him. Maybe imagined as our Senator McClay described him, sitting on one hip, one shoulder high above the other. Talking almost without ceasing to his visitors at the White House. His skin was thin. Peeling from his face on exposure to the sun and giving it a tethered appearance.
Even the skin was not quite there. It's like an impression. Constantly shifting and impressionist version of a man.
His sandy face with Hazel eyes and sunny aspect. This loose shackling person. This rambling and often brilliant conversation belonged to the controlling influences of American history. More necessary to the story than three fourths of the official papers, which only hid the truth. Jefferson's personality during these eight years appeared to be the government. And impressed itself like that of Napoleon, although by a different process on the mind of the nation. In the village simplicity of Washington, he was more than a King. For he was alone in social as well as in political preeminence. Except the British legation no house in Washington and was open to general society. The whole mass of politicians, even the Federalists, were dependent on Jefferson and the palace for amusement. But they refuse to go there. They looked like bears, brutalized and stupefied. Jefferson showed his powers at their best in his own house. Where among friends as Jenny genial and cheerful as himself, his ideas could flow freely and be discussed with sympathy. Such with the men with whom he surrounded himself by choice and none, but such were invited to enter his cabinet.
And this whole manner of Jefferson became the quality that infused itself in the revolution of 1800 into the American manner. And Adams goes on again and again, to describe the tremendous character of the United States. And finally comes to a description like this, which we'll end with tonight. He's comparing the United States as a man and Europe as a man. And he's contrasting. He will portray the United States as a man who was a fighter stripped down to the waist. And this compared to Europe, he says,
Compared with this life young figure, Europe was actually in decrepitude. Meer class distinctions. The Patois or dialect of the peasantry. The fixity of residents. The local costumes and habits marking a history that lost itself in the renewal of identical generations. Raised from birth, barriers which paralyzed half the population. Upon this massive inert matter rested the church and state holding down activity of thought. Endless wars withdrew many hundred thousand men from production and charge them and change them into agents of waste. Behind this stood aristocracies, sucking their nourishment from industry. Pressing on the energies and ambition of society with the weight of an incubus. Picturesque and entertaining as these social anoma
anomalies were, they were better fitted for the theater or for a museum of historical costumes then for an active workshop preparing to compete with such machinery as America with soon command. From an economical point of view, they were as incongruous as would have been the appearance of a medieval Knight in helmet and armor with battle axe and shield to run the machinery of Arkwrights cotton mill.
And in fact, it is exactly that image that we'll see that Mark Twain, a great contemporary of Henry Adams will take up when he writes A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Well more next week, if you can take it.
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