Writing a century later, Henry Adams opined, “For the large and increasing class of instructors, or persons interested in the improvement of instruction in this country, few more entertaining and suggestive books could be written than a history of instruction at Harvard College.” However, primary sources beyond the college’s own records were scarce—with one precious exception being a student’s diary covering 15 months in the years 1786–1787. Never mentioning his grandfather by name, Henry goes on to describe John Quincy as having “a fair share of youthful crudities, but was as free from extreme prejudices as could be expected from a young man of his age, while his manner of looking at things occasionally betrayed a mind which had come into closer contact with grown and educated men than with people of his own age. . . .”1
After nearly a year at Harvard, John Quincy would question, amid the quantity of trivial events which he had noted in his diary, whether there was sufficient matter worthy of remembrance to compensate for the time he spent in writing it down. At all costs, he wished to avoid “insipid narrative.”2
But while he fretted over his privacy—he could not keep his diary under lock and key, safe from his brother Charles and other curious eyes—he could not resist recording his intimate thoughts, thereby creating an extraordinary self-portrait during his formative Harvard years.
John Quincy had set out from Braintree with his cousin Lucy at 10 a.m. on March 22, purchasing some furniture upon arriving in Boston three hours later. From his corner room on the third floor of Hollis Hall, he could see as far as Charlestown and Boston and the spacious fields between. After time spent “fixing things to rights,” he reported to Nabby on the most prized part of his first day at Harvard: “We have had one of the most extraordinary northern lights that I ever saw. It is now ten o’clock, no moon, yet I can read a common print in the street.”3
The adjustments to this strangely welcome world were numerous. Unused to rising at 6 a.m., he did not hear the bell ring the next morning and was tardy for prayers. He learned that every time a student was tardy for prayers, he was fined a penny. As a result, Harvard’s newest scholar quickly decided “that a student must prefer not attending prayers at all to being a half minute too late.” He later complained that the bell was insufficiently loud to wake him for a Saturday seminar. But while he may have skipped other prayer sessions, this was the last class he would miss until a month before graduation.4
His trunks from Haverhill would eventually show up on March 29, “very apropos as I began to be quite scanty for clean linen.” And though comprehension of Harvard’s customs, traditions and laws might prove elusive, John Quincy’s indoctrination began immediately. It was customary for two students, chosen alphabetically, to speak passages from an English author; his turn came on Friday, his third day of college. Having decided to recite Jacques’s famed soliloquy from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, he was bemused by the response at his expense: at “the description of the Justice, in fair round Belly with good Capon lined,” every person present, tutors and scholars alike, burst into a loud laugh, as though “I myself, truly represented the character.”5
But no one, he learned, took lightly the sanctity of Harvard’s traditions and the zeal with which they were enforced by seniors. His diary lists several, including locked door at the start of lectures, and prohibitions against whispering, spitting on the floor, and freshmen wearing hats in the college yard. These rules and regulations seemed to have limited effect, however. After a meeting to review them, “several of the class went and had a high go. In consequence of which the librarian had a number of squares of glass broke in his windows. Drunkenness is the mother of every vice.”6
At college for ten days, though he admitted that “a person fond of studying will never want for employment,” John Quincy was overwhelmed by the structured environment in which he was so compulsively embedded. To give Nabby an account of one day was similar, he insisted, to that of a month:
One week we recite to Mr. James, the Latin tutor. The next to Mr. Read, in Euclid. The third to Mr. Jennison, in Greek, and the fourth to Mr. Hale, in Locke. Then begin again:
Monday morning at six, bell for prayers; from thence reciting; half after seven, breakfast; at nine, go to Mr. Williams upon practical geometry; at eleven, a lecture upon natural philosophy; half after twelve, dinner, and reciting again; five, prayers.
Tuesday, instead of practical geometry, at nine, it is a lecture from the Hebrew professor; at two in the afternoon, a lecture from the professor of divinity.
Wednesday, at nine, another lecture upon divinity; at eleven, lecture on philosophy; two, afternoon, lecture on astronomy.
Thursday, reciting in the morning.
Friday, nothing but a lecture on philosophy.
Saturday, reciting in the morning to Mr. Read, in Doddridge’s Lectures on Divinity, a pretty silly book, which I wonder to find among the books studied here.7
And “So they went from day to day,” he seemed to sigh. “If there was once a week an episode, such as going to Boston, or dining out, this was the greatest show of variety” that he could make.8
A month later, he was more at ease, telling his mother “I never was able any where to study, more agreeably, and with so little interruption.” As to the students, he found a “confused medley” of good and indifferent. He knew all his own classmates and sought out those with the best reputation, intellectually and ethically.9
That his personal appearance, of perpetual concern, had suffered as his studies grew more demanding, was obvious to his family, especially to his cousin Elizabeth Cranch. At tea with him, she reported to her Aunt Abigail: “I could not help laughing at Cousin John, for the learned dirt (not to say rust) he had about and around him. I almost scolded, however we seized his gown and jacket and had a clean one put on. I took my scissors and put his nails into a decent form, and recommended strongly a comb and hair-string to him. He invited me to come once a quarter, and perform the like good services [for] him again. Charles by contrast, though not too strikingly so, is naturally and habitually neat.” But, very sweetly, proud of all her beloved and respected “brothers,” she concluded, “they are all good—as yet.”10
Betsey’s sister Lucy, though less bothered by her cousin’s appearance, worried instead about his obsessive “steadiness,” his “very great attention to his studies” that she feared would injure his health. “He is determined,” she told her Aunt Abigail, “to be great in every particular.”11
There was no question that had John Quincy arrived three months earlier, he would have entered the senior class and graduated in June. But he had no regrets. He would have missed practice in public speaking in chapel, classroom, at his clubs, on a stunning breadth of subjects which he wisely surmised would be “advantageous.” The topics noted in his diary, posed by the tutor in metaphysics to affirm or deny in two or three pages, included: “Whether the immortality of the human soul is probable from natural reason”; “Whether internal tranquility be a proof of prosperity in a republic”; and “Whether inequality among the citizens be necessary to the preservation of the liberty of the whole.”12
He obviously relished this kind of intellectual jousting. His membership in the A. B. Club, presumably a rival to the more famous Speaking Club, had given him the chance to speak memorably on the subject of education, his family’s supremely enduring avocation. Indelible parental teachings chimed in the background as he declared: “The advantages which are derived from education is one of the most important subjects that can engage the attention of mankind; a subject on which the welfare of states and empires, as well as of small societies, and of individuals in a great measure depends.”13
Invited to join the Phi Beta Kappa Society on June 21 along with his classmate Josiah Burge and his cousin William Cranch, “There was in the admission,” he wrote, “a considerable degree of solemnity.” In his first talk to this group the subject was “Whether civil discord is advantageous to society,” and he could not think on first view of one topic more unfavorable to the person who must support the affirmative.14
Yet paragraphs later, in example after example, he concluded that “as discord, sometimes proceeds so far as to be very injurious to society, so when it is kept within proper bounds it is productive of the happiest consequences.”15
To illustrate, he pointed out that a ship was frequently used as the “emblem of an empire,” and the metaphor was very applicable: “When the serenity of the ocean is ruffled by a moderate gale, the vessel pursues its course steadily, and is in perfect security; but a total calm, is almost always the forerunner of an outrageous tempest.”16
So it was, John Quincy reasoned, “where the heads of government were never wholly in peace, never quite secure in their power, the empire was safe. Where there were two parties or more, continually watching each other’s conduct, always endeavoring to pry into each other’s secrets, it was very difficult to intrigue against the State without being discovered.”17
This nascent theorizing about the “proper bands” of government was unexpectedly put to the test only a month later. According to Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy’s “bookish studies of history and politics brought to bear for the first time on the political situation of his own day in his own country,” by the tumultuous uprising known as Shays’ Rebellion.18
On August 29, 1786, in Northampton, Massachusetts, a body of 300 or 400 armed men had “prevented the Court of Common Pleas from sitting and bruised the high sheriff dangerously,” John Quincy wrote in his diary one week later; as a result, “the Commonwealth is in a state of considerable fermentation.” Similar action was taken against the court in Worcester, where its members adjoined to a tavern but were prevented from meeting the following day.19
By early September, unable to raise the local militia to quell the rebels, the governor of Massachusetts issued a proclamation calling upon the people at large to support the state constitution and directed the state’s attorney to prosecute the abettors of these riots. At least the militia in Boston had offered their services and declared support for the government. “Where this will end time alone can disclose,” but, John Quincy feared, “it will not before some blood is shed.”20
The rebels, led by Daniel Shays, were a bitterly disillusioned and impoverished group consisting mostly of farmers who were former soldiers. The profound grievances that prompted their revolt included, as John Quincy noted, foreclosures on their farms and homes and the high cost of legal defense plus the intolerable penalty of servitude in debtor’s prison. They wanted lower taxes and the issuance of paper money to cover their indebtedness.
At his most pessimistic, John Quincy supposed that idleness, dissipation and extravagance had led to their desperate plight. On further deliberation, he came to think that such disturbances, if properly managed, might be advantageous to a republican government—but if allowed to gain ground, they must inevitably lead to a civil war with all its horrors. “Such commotions,” he thought, “are like certain drugs, which of themselves are deadly poison but if properly tempered may be made highly medicinal.”21
By the end of October, the insurrections were far from silenced; he feared that unless some vigorous measures were taken, the commonwealth must perforce fall. But in another month there was a more promising turn of events. Just before prayers the evening of November 27, 40 horsemen under the command of Oliver Prescott, a Groton physician, rode into Cambridge to protect the court at its next day’s sitting from the anticipated onslaught of 1,500 rioters, reported to be within four miles of the town.22
The unrest ended with the capture of rebel leaders. But when he heard that all prisoners convicted of treason would receive a full and free pardon, John Quincy wondered: “Is it much to the credit of our government, that a man who has stolen . . . should die for the offence, while others commit treason and murder with impunity?”23
The “tumults” sparked by Shays and his “ignorant restless desperadoes,” as his mother referred to them, had undermined John Quincy’s confidence. According to his grandson Charles Francis Adams, John Quincy was badly shaken that “a new set of men had come forward who could neither write English nor grasp principles of political action [but] breathed the full communistic spirit of the time.”24
Although the danger had passed, John Quincy questioned the viability of a government that had lacked sufficient vigor and energy to immediately suppress the insurrections; he also noted a degree of timidity and irresolution, “which does no honor to the executive power of a commonwealth.”25
Reluctantly, he questioned the so-called Articles of Confederation, drafted a week after the Declaration of Independence and ratified only in 1780, that permitted each state of the 13-member confederacy called “The United States of America,” to govern itself as free, sovereign and independent.
Much as the idealistic, 19-year-old John Quincy hoped that in two or three months public tranquility would be completely restored, he confided to his mother his concern that the present form of government would not continue long. While the poor complained of government oppression, “men of property” thought the Constitution gave too much liberty to unprincipled citizens. He worried “that a pure democracy appears to much greater advantage in speculation than when reduced to practice . . . and bids fair for popularity.”26
John Quincy also questioned his own position politically. He had feared that having received so large a share of his education in Europe, his countrymen might find him insufficiently devoted to a republican government. Instead, he had found, “that I am the best republican here, and, with my classmates, if I ever have any disputes on the subject, I am always obliged to defend that side of the question.”27
His unvarnished intellectual honesty in this matter could have uncomfortable consequences. In one such case, an academic debate resulted in stinging criticism by a classmate, relayed to John Quincy secondhand.
He had spoken on the question of “Whether inequality among the citizens, be necessary to the preservation of the liberty of the whole.” In the course of the talk he addressed the critical question of “What protection can any laws afford a citizen in a state where every individual thinks he has a right of altering and annulling them at his pleasure, and where nothing is wanting but the capricious whim of a vile rabble, to overturn all laws and government?”28
At this point in the debate, John Quincy turned to his opponent, William Cranch, and acknowledged that popular opinion would likely be against him, but that the logical extension of uncritical allegiance to equality was “manifest absurdity.” As nature had, in every other particular, created a very great inequality among men, he did not see on what grounds they all should share an equal degree of power. Accordingly, he had reached the conclusion that “too great a degree of equality among the citizens is prejudicial to the liberty of the whole, the present alarming situation of our own country will I think afford us a sufficient proof.”29
The overheard assessment of John Quincy’s performance—“Adams’s forensic at the last exhibition was the meanest . . . ever delivered in the chapel”—hurt John Quincy. Painfully aware that it was “a most unhappy circumstance, for a man to be very ambitious, without those qualities which are necessary to insure him success in his attempts. . . . Such is my situation,” he wrote on September 29:
If it be a sin to covet Honour
I am the most offending Soul alive.30
He mused further on his inability to convince his circle of friends that his deserts were equal to his pretensions. Often he wished that he had “just ambition enough to serve as a stimulus to my emulation, and just vanity enough to be gratified with small distinctions.”31
Often perhaps, but not very often. Getting by was not a tolerable concept for this son of famous patriot parents. His values on this matter were absolutely clear: better to strive and fail, because the man who would settle for fifth or sixth place and be content, while he has an equal chance of obtaining the first, “must be despicable.”32
Intermittently, John Quincy mentioned various diversions: picking blueberries, hunting, fishing, dancing. By far, music was his favorite pastime. His cousin William had bought him a flute on a rainy day during his first school vacation, and he had taken lessons on his new prized possession. He had never had an opportunity, he explained to Nabby, of paying steady attention to any musical instrument, and now that he was settled in one place, he was glad for the relaxation from study to amuse himself with a little music,
When the soul is press’d with cares
Awakes it with enlivening airs.33
By March 1787, he was able to copy flute music by hand, played for family and friends and performed with the Musical Society at Harvard. He complained that the flutes and violins were usually so difficult to keep in tune “that we can seldom play more than three or four items at a meeting.” They had lasted for only an hour on March 28 because “it would not be easy to collect a set of worse instruments than we have, among eight or ten violins and as many flutes . . . not more than two or three that will accord together, without scraping and blowing. . . .” Still, despite the failure to meet his perfectionist standards, and Nabby’s worry that it might be harmful to his health, he had found that the flute was his “greatest amusement and the chief relaxation after study, and indeed it affords me so much pleasure that I cannot think of giving it up.”34
His concern about musicianship was ongoing. Some years later at a reception in Holland, he would tell a French diplomat, as the band played the “Marseillaise,” that he was extremely fond of music and by dint of great pains had learned to play the flute very badly, but he could never learn to perform on the violin, because he lacked the ability to tune it. He consoled himself with the idea that he was American and therefore not capable of great musical powers; American genius was more inclined toward painting.
“Oh, do not say so!” the diplomat had countered. “You will be chargeable with high treason against the character of your country for such a sentiment, especially if you were to deliver it to an Italian or French connoisseur and virtuoso.” But John Quincy held his ground. The sound of the “Marseillaise” was forcible proof, he said, of the fact he had stated. The Americans fought more than seven years for their liberty, and if ever a people had inspiration for combining harmony with the spirit of patriotism, they had it during that time. Yet never during the whole period had a single song been written that “electrified every soul and was resounded by every voice” like France’s patriotic songs. He then genially conceded, in defense of his countrymen, that he knew many who had a musical ear.35
In addition to his amusements, he wrote his sister a steady stream of commentary on his superiors: “my real sentiments, unterrified by authority, and unabridged by prejudice.” Thus, a young preacher who looked already one foot in the grave, “appeared plainly to suffer while he spoke in a whining manner,” and governors with important airs and haughty looks seemed to have a maxim among them to treat the students pretty much like brute beasts. Of an unpopular tutor in college, reputed to be very ill natured and severe in his punishments, the rumor that he was leaving college was “too good news to be true,” whereas Mr. Read, who retained a little of the collegiate stiffness, “endeavors to be affable, and is very sociable.” In general, he concluded, “these people when distant from their seat of empire, divested of that power which gives them such an advantageous idea of their own superiority, are much more agreeable. . . .”36
As for his social life, he assessed one evening of dancing from seven until two in the morning by saying, “Of the ladies, some had beauty without wit, and some wit without beauty; one was blest with both, and others could boast of neither. But little was said . . . when the feet are so much engaged, the head in general is vacant.”37
The wise and sympathetic caution of Nabby’s response might have surprised her brother. It gave her great pleasure that his conduct was not marked with any youthful indiscretions, but she advised that “it might be politic in you not to prejudice the heads of the university against you by being satirical upon their foibles.” She nonetheless commiserated about the difficulties of paying attention to people who have not earned respect commensurate with their authority: “the mind revolts at the idea.” She ruefully assessed her own shortcomings, admitting, “I could never bring my countenance or my actions to oppose the sentiments which I possessed. I have almost envy’d some persons, that innocent and necessary art which could conceal under the veil of politeness, the opinions they possessed.”38
The weather had turned cold, leaves were falling from the trees, and it was not his preferred choice to spend his time reading, writing, walking and playing. “This is dull life, and convinced me, how grossly the whole herd of novel and romance writers err in trumping up a country life. Let them say what they will: the most proper situation for man is that which calls forth the exertion for faculties and gives play to his passions. A negative kind of happiness, like that of the brutes, may be enjoyed in the country, but the absence of pain or anxiety is not sufficient for a man of sensibility.”39
Even as he ruminated, he worried, as he told his mother about his correspondence with his sister, “I address almost all my egotism to her; and indeed seldom make mention to her of any thing or anybody besides myself.” After a worrisome three month silence, he responded to Nabby’s letter of the past September only to repeat what he had so frequently said: “that the noiseless tenor of a college life, and the unvaried uniformity of circumstances, cannot furnish a subject, either for interesting relation, or brilliancy of sentiment.”40
And then, in wry humor, forgetting his fear of being self-reverential, he noted:
On the 17th of October the fall Vacation began, and I went to Braintree. On the 1st of November the Vacation being ended I returned to Cambridge. Remarkable events! are they not. “But” say you, “how did you spend your time at Braintree during that fortnight”? Why Madam, I read three or four volumes of history, and Burlamaqui upon law; I wrote a few letters, but as they had not a voyage of 3,000 miles to undertake, I was not as much trouble in equipping them; I went a fowling once or twice, and had my labour for my pains. I prick’d off a few tunes and blew them on the flute. And further the deponent saith not.41
Then, weary of his playful patter, he grew pensive as he continued with his letter to Nabby.
I now return to my history. For six weeks after my returning here I went once to Mr. Gerry’s (he has bought a house and farm in this town, and came to live here about five months’ since). Excepting this visit and two or three at Mr. Dana’s, I went nowhere.—Upon recollection, I must also except one dancing party, that we had with a number of the young ladies in the town: I would describe it to you, and might possibly raise a smile, by characterizing the ladies; but I must avoid it, for fear of having another lecture for severity.—In December two violent snow storms which happened in one week; stopp’d up the roads in the country so effectually, that no wood came in town for three weeks. Many families in town, and two thirds of the students, were entirely destitute. I was without any, four of the coldest days we have had this season.
On Wednesday the 13th of December, the students were dismissed, for eight weeks. The vacation commenced three weeks sooner than common, on account of the impossibility of procuring wood. I determined to remain here through the vacation, for several reasons. I thought that four of us going at once to Mr. Cranch’s would make it troublesome, and inconvenient to them: and although I have always been treated there with as much attention and kindness as I could possibly wish, yet it was not like home; the absence of my parents and sister deprived Braintree of its chief attractions, and the place by reviving so frequently the idea of their absence caused too many melancholy sensations, to be an agreeable residence.42
He did not want to leave Cambridge and undertake the social obligations that would follow, but remaining in college entirely alone was not appealing. Fortunately, James Bridge, a classmate of excellent repute as a scholar and a gentlemen, was in similar circumstances, and the two young men agreed to chum together during the vacation and board at Professor Wigglesworth’s. “This gentleman is equally free from the supercilious frown of the president and the distant reserve of a tutor. He treats us with an unaffected complaisance, which is not the most remarkable characteristic of all the governors of the university; he commands respect, but not by insisting on it as a highwayman, who demands your purse.”43
In the professor’s house were two young ladies—his niece and daughter—and he could give Nabby a few traits of their characters:
Miss Catharine Jones, just turn’d of eighteen, has a share of wit, and a share of good nature, which is however sometimes soured by a small tincture of caprice. She is not wholly exempt from vanity; but as her understanding, rather than her person is the object of this vanity, she endeavours to appear sarcastic, because she supposes, a satirical talent must imply an uncommon share of wit. To sum up my opinion of her: I could esteem her as a friend, I could love her as a sister, but I should never think of her as a companion of my life.
Miss Peggy Wigglesworth is two years older than her cousin. Her complexion is of the browner order; but this defect, if a defect it be, is compensated by a rosy variety of colour; her face is not beautiful, but is remarkable for expressing all the candor, benevolence, and sincerity of her heart; her shape, would be genteel in France or England, though her size, would seem to give her the title of a pretty woman as Fielding expresses it. . . .
Notwithstanding all this, she is almost universally the object of, friendship and esteem, rather than of love. I am sensible of this fact myself, and when I search my own mind to find the causes of it, I am reduced to condemn either the passion of love, or the sentiments by which it is produced.44
There was a third young woman who had captured his attention. In the course of the vacation he had frequently been at Mr. Dana’s, where he had encountered Miss Almy Ellery. She was unfortunately somewhat deaf, but uncommonly sensible, and “(what I am griev’d to say is still more uncommon in this country) her mind is much improved by reading; so that she can entertain a company with a large variety of conversation, without having recourse to the stale, and trivial topics of common-place, or to the ungenerous, and disgraceful topic of scandal.” She wasn’t handsome, and he supposed her to be 27 years of age; yet if asked to choose a seat among 20 of the most beautiful young ladies in the state, it should certainly be by her side. “I have been endeavoring, my sister, ever since I returned from Europe, to find a female character like this, unite to great beauty of person.” His search so far had been unsuccessful, and he was beginning to have the same prejudice against beauty, “as you have expressed in one of your letters against handsome men.”45
Though he might protest, he was fascinated by young women within and outside of his circle, and despite his former infatuation with Nancy Hazen, he had been able to promise his mother that “with a little resolution and some good luck, your young Hercules has till now (that is the past summer) escaped the darts of the blind deity—and will be for 15 months very secure—there is now no lady with whom I am acquainted around here that I consider as dangerous. Study is my mistress.” It was against the law, he told his sister, for him “to look at a young lady till the 20th of July,” the date on which he would graduate from Harvard.46
In response to his sister’s advice, on several occasions John Quincy affected some concern of her tendering him “another lecture for severity.” Actually, their regard for one another’s well-being was mutually affectionate and sensitive. On John Quincy’s part, he had worried for months about his sister and her future with Royall Tyler. In May he had been relieved to receive a letter from his mother, of February 16, brimming with praise of Colonel William Smith’s courtship of his sister and the announcement that he must have anticipated: “Know then my dear son that this gentleman is like[ly] to become your brother.”47
His sterling credentials followed. His character was not only fair and unblemished but highly regarded wherever he was known; at the early age of 21 he had commanded a regiment through the war with prudence and bravery. A friend had said, “it would take more proofs and arguments to convince him that he would be guilty of a dishonorable action than any other man he ever knew in his life.” As to Nabby’s memory of former affections, they proved not to be founded upon a durable superstructure and had properly vanished “like the baseless fabric of a vision.”48
In response, John Quincy told his mother he had never “felt such strange sensations, as to reading the first page of my sister’s letter, where in the most delicate manner possible, she informed me of the connection.” He was thrilled by the news, given Tyler’s poor reputation. “The contrast was striking. Surely if there is a providence that directs the affairs of mankind, it prompted your voyage to Europe.”49
That summer, newly married and settled about half a mile from her parents on Grosvenor Square, Nabby supposed, “Mamma will inform him of every particular that he may wish to be informd of.” Meanwhile, he must continue to favor her with his daily journal with as much freedom as ever “for your sister is not altered, only in name. She feels, if possible, an additional attachment to her family. . . .”50
John Quincy’s college education continued: debates took place; tutors lectured on magnetism and electricity; the Phi Beta Kappa group met, as did the A. B. When he was honored by his class for a mathematics-related project, he wrote his father that their Euclid suppers at Auteuil and their Greek breakfasts at The Hague had been surprisingly productive. He also continued to fill his diary with detailed sketches of his classmates, none so admiring, affectionate and respectful as that of James Bridge. This friend clearly epitomized the qualities John Quincy most admired:
As a scholar and as a gentleman, he is inferior to no one in the class. . . . His natural abilities are very good, and they have been greatly improved by study. His passions are strong, but in general he keeps them well under command. His genius is metaphysical rather than rhetorical; in reasoning with him, we are rather convinced by the force of his argument than seduced by the brilliancy of his imagination. He is possessed of much benevolence, and ambition occupies a large share of his mind; he does not endeavour to conceal this, but freely owns his expectations, which are so sanguine, that I somewhat fear he will not entirely realize them all. His advantages however will be peculiar, and it is I think very probable that he will one day be eminent in the political line. Law will be his study and I have long hoped that we should be together in one office, but many difficulties attend the scheme, and I fear much that it will not take place. My friendship for this gentleman, and three or four more of my classmates, saddens very much the anticipation of commencement, when we must part, perhaps forever.51
By April he complained of waning interest, of sameness—highly entertaining lectures of the previous year afforded little amusement or instruction this time around—and of poor weather, lack of exercise and fatigue. Yet, in the very last weeks, he grew increasingly nostalgic. He was continually reminded of the ending of this particular journey, such as when he took books from the library for the last time on June 8.
He hoped that in two or three years more, he would have “taken down, without any violence, all the elegant castles which my imagination had built in the air, over my head, and which for want of a foundation, were liable to be overset and crush the builder, if any accident had happened.” In short, he was now so firmly persuaded of the superior advantages of a public education, that his only regret, he told his mother, was that, “I did not enter the university a year and a half sooner.”52
In preparation for commencement looming in July, President Willard on the morning of May 17 had assigned 18 seniors special roles in the ceremony. These included several orations in Latin, one in Hebrew, and two in English, one of which was allotted to John Quincy on the importance and necessity of public faith to the well-being of a community.
Commencement Day, Wednesday, July 18, was fair, cool and pleasant. At about 11 o’clock the procession began from the door of Harvard. The succeeding classes went first; the graduating class of 41 (several did not attend) preceded the president, professors and fellows of the university, who were followed by the governor and council of the commonwealth. The president opened the ceremony for prayer and the performances began.
His cousin Lucy had all along thought John Quincy resembled his mother, but she had never seen the likeness so striking as when he delivered his oration. “It was his mother’s mouth that smiled when he addressed the ladies, his mother’s eyes that glistened when he bade his classmates adieu—he spoke with great fire and energy, with a spirit that did honour to the son of a patriot and statesman.” His Aunt Elizabeth was sure no one could be a judge of her nephew’s eloquence unless they kept their eye fixed upon his face and “saw each passion, & each feeling called up” as he spoke.53
The Massachusetts Centinel weighed in on the ceremonies two days later.
The two principal performances were the orations by Mr. Adams and Mr. Freeman. The first of these certainly declaimed upon a well chosen subject . . . in a manly, sensible and nervous style of eloquence. The public expectations from this gentleman, being the son of an ambassador, the favourite of the officers of the college, and having enjoyed the highest advantages of European instruction, were greatly inflated. The performance justified the preconceived partiality. He is warmly attached to the republican style of his father, and descanted upon the subject of public justice with great energy.54
The orator himself was delighted. “I found our chambers as full of company as they could hold and was complimented and flattered on every side. One such day every year would ruin me.”55
John Quincy and his parents had discussed his future over many months. Back in August 1786, he had asked his father for recommendations of an office in which to study the law. His first choice would of course be his father’s, but if John was still detained in Europe, he needed to find an alternative. John Quincy wanted to avoid Boston for several reasons—it was “unfavorable to study, and . . . it would be almost doubly expensive.”56
His mother suggested either the office of John Lowell of Boston or Theophilus Parsons of Newburyport, both “gentleman eminent in the profession.” Mr. Lowell, however, was said to have a natural indolence that prevented pupils from learning as much as they might from a more active character. Mr. Parsons’s character was equally high as a lawyer; he had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and was known to enjoy young people of similar taste and inclinations. Both parents encouraged John Quincy to choose Newburyport over Boston.57
John Quincy did not look forward to long years ahead, having to study in order to qualify for business: “And then Oh! and then; how many more years, to plod along, mechanically, before getting into the world?” He was appalled at the idea of spending one third of a long life preparing to act a part during another third; and the last to be passed in rest and quiet waiting for the final stroke, “which places us just where we were 70 years before. Vanity! Vanity! all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”58
He arrived in Newburyport just before sunset on August 13, in decidedly low spirits. He was to live in this place without friends for three years; and whether happily or not, he fretted, “time only must discover; but the presages within my breast are not such as I should wish realized.”59
He had gone to see Mr. Parsons that afternoon and rented a place at Mrs. Leather’s, widow of shipwright Joseph Leather, on State Street, a block below Mr. Parson’s office, where he would board for the next several years. She was, in her new boarder’s eyes, “a good old woman, who even a hundred years ago would have stood in no danger of being hang’d for witchcraft.” She was, however, as he later reported to his mother, “civil and obliging, and what is very much in her favor, uncommonly silent so that if I am deprived of the charms, I am also free from the impertinence of conversation.”60
Before his final departure from Boston, Aunt Mary Cranch had found her nephew more affected at leaving his family than she could have imagined for someone. “Having been toss’d about the world,” that is, traveled so much. She seemed surprised by his anxiety about going to a place “where he knew no one & where he cared for nobody, & nobody cared for him,” and when he “found it necessary to draw the back of his hand across his eyes when he said it—& from sympathy” she had done the same. By way of comfort, she had reminded him not to forget that he would be within 14 miles of his Aunt Shaw, who loved him like a parent, and to whom he must go if he was unwell at any time. He had promised to write and to visit them in the winter. They had fixed him off so well that she thought he could not want too much done for him till then.61
John Quincy’s sorrow at yet another leave-taking did not, however, diminish his curiosity or penchant for analysis. Waking from a strange dream, he wrote in his diary on August 30, “I cannot conceive where my imagination ransack’d the ideas, which prevailed at that time (and which remained secret) in my mind. This part of the action of the human soul is yet to be accounted for: and perhaps has not been scrutinized,” he supposed, “with so much accuracy as it might have been.”62