ADAMS, HENRY (1838–1918)

Born to a family whose service to the Constitution was matched by a reverence for it "this side of idolatry," Henry Brooks Adams served the Constitution as a historian of the nation it established. His great History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison as well as his biographies of john randolph and albert gallatin and his Documents Relating to New England Federalism remain standard sources for the events and characters of the early republican years during which the Constitution was being worked out in practice. Among the highlights of these works are Adams's ironic account of thomas jefferson's exercise of his constitutional powers in the face of his particularist scruples, the Republican hostility to the federal judiciary, and the fate of states ' rights views. In reply to hermann von holst's criticism of the Constitution, Adams wrote in 1876, "the Constitution has done its work. It has made a nation." Adams's own disillusion with this nation affected his writings. Like others of his generation, he became more determinist as he became less sanguine, and the History shows this shift in his view as the Constitution is described becoming an engine of American nationalism, democracy, expansion, and centralization. In his novels, historical theory, letters, and The Education of Henry Adams, he came to regard the Constitution as almost a figment of human intention in a modern age—an age in which the kind of person it once was possible for an Adams to be has no role.

Robert Dawidoff
(1986)

Bibliography

Samuels, Ernest 1948–1964 Henry Adams. 3 Vols. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.