Jack and Abby-America's First Politcal Power Couple

Click on title to link to a "The Boston Sunday Globe" book review of a biography of Abigail Adams by Woody Holton.

DVD REVIEW

March is Women’s History Month

John and Abigail Adams: An American Experience, PBS, 2006

Over the past twenty years or so there have been various attempts by historians of the period to reshuffle and expand the pantheon of the American Revolution. These efforts have included highlighting lesser male personalities like financier Robert Morris, paying attention to the role of the Founding Mothers and a deeper look into the plebeian base of that revolution. Those efforts have also, most prominently of late, included reordering the place that John Adams, an acknowledged early revolutionary leader and second President of the United States, in that pantheon. Leading this charge has been David McCullough’s (one of the inevitable ‘talking heads’ in this docudrama) best-selling book and now this PBS film. Brother Adams (and Sister Abigail) have arrived.

I will confess here, as I have previously in this space, that I am something of a ‘homer’ on the Adams family. I was born in their hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts and so imbibed the spirit of the place and their effect on it from early youth with visits to their homes and tombs. Some of my first political readings in elementary school were biographies of various members of the family (Which may explain quite a bit, right?).

I never, however, at that time, or later, saw them as central to the revolutionary experience. Washington, Samuel Adams (a cousin), the Sons of Liberty and, above all, Tom Paine fired my imagination. To be kind, as I have also mentioned before in this space, I had characterized John Adams as a ‘conservative revolutionary’ (an oxymoron, to be sure) and nothing in this documentary has changed my opinion on that matter. John Adams represented (except in his early firebrand pre-revolutionary period) individually and later through his ‘party’, the Federalists, the closest approximation to what Lafayette represented in the French revolution- the idea of rule by a small-entrenched elite over the ‘mob’-the so-called Republic of Virtue.

This documentary, although something of a valentine to John and Abigail, does not hide this fact but rather downplays it by highlighting other aspects of a rather long political career. The chronology presents Adams as the pre-revolutionary firebrand, the supreme political operative of the Continental Congresses, the diplomatic emissary to various European countries during the war including invaluable service in getting funds from the Dutch, the gentleman farmer chafing at the bit in political slow times, the formative role as first Vice President, the stormy one term as a beleaguered president, the love- hate relationship with his arch political opponent Jefferson and threaded throughout this career his strong dependence on Abigail as wife, mother, political confidante and ‘soul mate’. For those who thought that political power couples only started with Bill and Hillary this will be a surprise. Frankly, what this documentary has done for me is to reinforce my elementary school-derived high opinion of Abigail. As for the closet (and at times not so closet) Tory John I will let David McCullough argue his case.