Envisioning a John Adams Memorial

In March, as part of the mammoth John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, the legislation to create an Adams Memorial Commission was signed into law. Twelve commissioners are now supposed to be appointed, who will carry out the work of locating, designing, and building a memorial to John Adams in our nation's capital.

This has been something I have long wanted to see. Two years ago, I started a Facebook group for "Supporters of a John Adams Memorial in Washington D.C." The group now has more than a thousand members, many of whom had reached out to their representatives in Congress to advocate for this legislation. We would flatter ourselves that we had some impact on the decision to move this legislation forward, but you never know.

There is no doubt that Adams, one of the greatest Founding Fathers, richly deserves such a memorial. His name ranks with Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and other great Americans who have had memorials built to them. Now that the Adams Memorial Commission will be created, it is worth asking what form a memorial to John Adams should take. As an interested citizen, I feel I have as much right as anyone else to put forward some of my own thoughts and suggestions. So, here goes.

I feel very strongly that the design of this memorial should be traditional. Adams was a New England Yankee of Puritan stock, a man decidedly of the 18th Century, who was naturally suspicious of newfangled things. He believed deeply in the classical tradition of Greece and Rome and the design of the memorial should reflect that. It would be ridiculous, in my opinion, for Adams to be commemorated with anything like the abstract designs of postmodern architecture and sculpture that have become fashionable in our time. Far better, I think, for a future Adams Memorial to be designed along the same lines as the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials - a fine statue of the great man in stone or bronze set amidst a Neoclassical structure of some sort.

I think that the bulk of the memorial should not be made of marble, the primary material for the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials, but of granite. I think the essence of John Adams - steadfastness, ironclad integrity, unwillingness to compromise one's principles - is evoked more by granite than it is by marble. Moreover, Adams was a New England man through and through and New England is the source of some of the best granite in the world. It would be fitting if the Adams Memorial be constructed out of good, strong, New England granite. The United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, where John and Abigail are buried alongside their son John Quincy and his wife Louisa, was made of granite quarried from the Adams farm itself.

It seems to me that while the memorial should center around the man of John Adams himself, it must also be designed in such a way as to commemorate the rest of his remarkable family, particularly his extraordinary wife Abigail, whose fiery spirit animated and inspired Adams throughout his life and whose wisdom he turned to repeatedly throughout his career. Obviously, space must be made to remember his son John Quincy, arguably America's greatest diplomat, the sixth President of the United States, and a key figure in the rise of the abolitionist movement in America. If possible, mention should be made of Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of John Adams who played a crucial role in winning the Civil War as Lincoln's minister to Great Britain.

Many of the great Americans commemorated by great monuments in the nation's capital can have their achievement summarized into overall themes. Washington was the "Father of the Nation"; Martin Luther King led the fight for racial equality and justice; Lincoln preserved the Union and ended slavery; Jefferson gave voice to the values on which our republic was founded. This is simplistic, of course, for the careers of all these men were complex and complicated. But it is clear that the contributions of Adams cannot be neatly packaged in an overall theme. They simply were too widespread. I believe, however, that the design of the future Adams Memorial needs to incorporate elements that take into account the following facts:

1. Adams was the key figure in the Continental Congress who pushed the delegates to declaring independence from Britain.
2. He persuaded the Dutch to recognize American independence and to assist the American cause with crucially-needed financial loans, without which the Revolution might have failed.
3. He was the key negotiator of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War.
4. During his one term as President of the United States, Adams kept the United States out of what would have been a ruinous and unnecessary war with France.
5. As a champion of naval power in the Continental Congress, as a diplomat, and as President of the United States, Adams deserves to be called the father of the American navy.
6. He refused to own slaves as a matter of principle.
7. As the framer of the state constitution of Massachusetts and the author of the treatise Thoughts on Government, Adams became one of the most influential constitutional thinkers in American history, articulating the concepts of the separation of powers and checks and balances.
8. As exemplified by his willingness to serve as legal counsel for the British soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre, Adams stood as a champion of the rule of law and the idea that all people have the right to legal counsel no matter who they are or what they have been accused of.
9. In writing the Massachusetts state constitution, Adams included provisions that created a public education system in the state, knowing that an educated public was essentially if a democratic form of government was going to survive.

All the other memorials to great Americans on the Washington Mall include a selection of quotes from the men they commemorate. I don't think that the Adams Memorial should be any different. Here are some of the quotes I would like to see on the walls of a future Adams Memorial.

1. "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
2. "Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that ever took half the pains to preserve it."
3. "I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not."
4. "Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."

Every summer, I take a group of 8th graders to visit Washington D.C. I hope that I will be able, before I retire in twenty or twenty-five years, to begin visiting the Adams Memorial on these trips. When I do, I hope that it will be designed along lines similar to what I have suggested here. It would be a fitting memorial to a great American and a wonderful contribution to the civic architecture of our nation.