A Little Sneak Peek

August 2024 Imperfect Union

Hello friends! Lots of new faces here, so before I give you a sneak peek, a bit of an introduction might be worthwhile. I’m Lindsay Chervinsky, a presidential historian, author of a few books, and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. My dog, John Quincy Dog Adams (Quincy for short) makes regular appearances, and I have a love of very silly fiction when I need a break.

For the last 5.5 years, I’ve published this newsletter every month on the 15th. I originally started as a way to share fun stories, noodle out some history thoughts in a less formal fashion than other publications, and offer historical context for contemporary issues. It has turned into such a lovely community and way for me to connect with readers and fellow history nerds.

Imperfect Union is free and always will be. I want history to be accessible for as many people as possible, and this contribution is my small way to do that. It also makes it a bit easier or more comfortable for me to ask for your help once every four years or so when I publish a book. For those of you who have been around for a while, you’ll remember me explaining this process when I published The Cabinet, but it bears repeating for Making the Presidency too.

Pre-orders are utterly essential to the life of a book. They determine whether the media pays attention and for how long. They determine whether bookstores carry the book and where they put it in the store, which is surprisingly important. They determine how long the press continues to support the book. And those magical best seller lists? All based on preorders and the first week of sales.

How it works: all of the preorders register as “day 1” sales and they are added to the first week of sales to determine your numbers. Totally opaque and annoying, but there it is. So here is my ask, if you enjoy my content and are able to support this effort, I’d be really grateful if you would consider pre-ordering a copy of Making the Presidency. Or several and give them as gifts to friends, family, and colleagues.

You can pre-order a signed copy with special book plate for 30% HERE. Or you can pre-order wherever you buy books. And if you’ve already pre-ordered, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am very grateful.

Yesterday was a very big day in my house. I received my first copy in the mail yesterday. There is nothing quite like that feeling.

Ok, are you ready to read some words?

Introduction:

On March 21, 1797, John Adams walked two blocks from his lodgings at Francis Hotel to the President’s House on the corner of Sixth and Market Streets in Philadelphia. A few minutes later, his carriage and the cart with his possessions pulled into the courtyard beside the large, brick mansion. The second President of the United States walked through the door of his new home and into a terrible mess.

Adams wandered through the rooms, inspecting the state of the house with sinking dismay. The green floral carpets under his feet were threadbare and fraying at the edges. The paint on the walls was flaking off, the mantels were darkened from smoke and soot, and the tables were scratched. Adams felt the draperies on the windows, which were faded from the sun and hanging in tatters. He opened the cabinets in the servants’ hall and in the kitchen. Only a few pieces of chipped china, cracked crystal, and dented cookware remained.

He walked up the staircase to the second floor, where he found an empty public drawing room. The elegant green upholstered sofas, armchairs, and stools that had once filled the reception space, had been sold. Red damask upholstered chairs and sofas filled the family drawing room, but not one chair was “fit to sit in.” Adams continued to the bedrooms, where the bolsters were lumpy, and the feather beds required mending.

After spending his first night in the house, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, describing the scene. “Don’t expose this Picture,” he cautioned. He had taken the oath of office as the second president two weeks earlier and he knew Americans had enough on their minds. The nation was in disrepair, they didn’t need to know the President’s House was too.

The presidency had survived the ordeal of creation. George Washington had served successfully for eight years and painstakingly filled out the contours of the office, which gaps and vagaries in the Constitution had left for him to resolve. But no one else possessed his stature or enjoyed the same level of public trust— and no one else ever would again.

Adams was tasked with navigating the presidency without that unique prestige. He was guaranteed to fall short in comparison to Washington. The challenge of the second president, therefore, called for someone to battle the growing partisan divisions without Washington’s presence to provide unity, to withstand cabinet schemes fomented by department secretaries to increase their authority at the expense of the president, and to combat European countries’ efforts to exploit the United States’s weaknesses for their own imperial aims. The office required a president willing to sacrifice his reputation and popularity on behalf of the nation.

Whoever came next was going to mold the office for all the chief executives to follow. John Adams was an experienced diplomat and a thoughtful constitutional thinker. He was also irascible, stubborn, quixotic, and certain that he knew best most of the time. He proved the right man for the moment.

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John Adams was born on October 30, 1735, on a small farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. A fifth- generation New Englander, Adams followed the family tradition. He was raised in the Congregationalist faith, farmed, received an education at Harvard University, and then turned to the study of law.

An early supporter of the colonies’ resistance movement against Great Britain, Adams burst onto the national scene in October 1770 when he defended the British officers charged with murdering civilians in the Boston Massacre. Adams’s decision to accept the British as clients was deeply unpopular with his neighbors, but he was determined to show that the revolution was one based on laws and principles, not passion and mobs. This stubborn commitment to do what was right, despite the political costs, would prove to be Adams’s guiding principle years later as president.

Over the next twenty- seven years, Adams devoted himself to public service. He worked tirelessly on dozens of committees in the Continental Congress, engineered the nomination of George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and harangued his fellow delegates to declare independence.

Starting in November 1777, Congress sent Adams to France, The Hague, and London to represent the new nation abroad and negotiate treaties with European nations. He authored a treaty with the Netherlands, which served as the model for similar agreements with several other nations, and staunchly defended American interests in the negotiations over the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War in 1783.

The end of the war did not bring stability to American relations with Europe, however. Across the Atlantic, European empires still coveted North American territory and were all too pleased to exploit American weakness or pick off wavering states when opportunities arose. Great Britain and France traded places again and again as the greatest threat or ally to the United States, depending on their economic and naval policies of the moment. Dutch bankers held sizable American debts while Spain lingered in western parts of North America and controlled key waterways.

Adams’s years abroad convinced him that the European empires would continue to wage war against each other and seize what they wanted whenever possible. He understood that they cared little for the goals and priorities of the United States and instead saw the new nation as a pawn to be leveraged in their centuries- old squabbles. He also developed a deep commitment to neutrality, eager to avoid battles that would harm American trade, threaten the safety of the nation, and sacrifice lives and treasure.

Adams’s fellow citizens recognized his sacrifices by rewarding him with the vice presidency in 1789. Faithfully representing the Washington administration, he presided over the Senate almost every day for eight years and cast twenty- nine tie- breaking votes. From his perch in the Senate, Adams watched as many of his predictions about Europe proved prescient…..

Books:

Just a reminder: I haven’t read (or haven’t finished) the books below. They’ve caught my eye, but I’m not necessarily vouching for them. I share published reviews in the links below (as well as on Goodreads and in my Instagram stories - see book review highlights).

Because of everything in the last month, my reading is a little slow. Repeating a few in case you are behind too!