Roger Bishop

Abigail Adams is by far the most richly documented American woman of the Revolutionary era. There have been many biographies of this wife of our second president and mother of our sixth, and we think we know her. But, as historian Woody Holton demonstrates in his magnificent new biography Abigail Adams, she was a complex person who played many roles and is not easily understood. Drawing on more than 2,000 of her surviving letters and other sources, Holton, whose excellent Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution was a finalist for the National Book Award, has given readers a compelling and rounded portrait of an exceptional and multifaceted Founding Mother.

In some ways Adams was a conventional woman of her time. She usually agreed with her husband on political matters. On the most controversial legislation of his term as president, the Alien and Sedition Acts, perhaps the most devastating attacks on civil liberties ever passed by Congress, she felt that the legislation was not strong enough. But in many other areas, such as religion, educating the family’s children (and grandchildren) and almost everything else domestic—financial matters—she and John differed widely. As Holton shows, she was a shrewd investor and expert businesswoman who, in many ways, was primarily responsible for the family’s healthy finances.

Two persistent themes run throughout her life. The first is advocacy for more rights for women, especially with regard to education. One of Adams’ greatest regrets in life was her lack of formal education (though she was indeed educated and enthusiastic about learning; she was taught by relatives and shared books and ideas with groups of friends.) Holton demonstrates that, contrary to the beliefs of some historians, Adams’ interest in women’s rights was not a subject confined to letters to her husband, but was emphasized in her correspondence with many others, both female and male.

A second broad emphasis was on financial stability. From an early age she was aware that if she wanted to accomplish certain things in life, such as helping the poor (as her mother had done), she would need a husband who was reasonably well-to-do. But she was a wise investor in her own right, favoring government securities over property, which John preferred. She was also an expert businesswoman. When John served in various positions that took him away from home, as was often the case, she would give him orders for various products to be sent to her for resale. Money gained with her business acumen enabled her to help many others, most prominently her sisters and their families.

Perhaps the clearest expression of Adams’ interests and concerns is a will she wrote in 1816, a time when married women were not legally allowed to control property. Holton describes it as an act of rebellion. She mentions at the beginning of the document that there were certain gifts she had earlier given to her sons, but most of the beneficiaries in her will were her female relatives. Adamsl notes that her will was “by and with his [John’s] consent.” Of all of their collaborations during lives of significant accomplishments that involved great sacrifices, disappointments and tragedy, Holton writes that this previously unreported will “may have been the most extraordinary of all.”

This exceptional biography should be read by anyone who wants to understand life in the Adamses’ era, particularly with regard to the role of women. Holton’s insightful and sensitive work gives us a fresh perspective on a unique life and helps us appreciate anew Abigail Adams’ role in the founding of the new nation.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

James Monroe served in more public positions than anyone else in American history. He was both a U.S. congressman and a senator, a governor of Virginia, secretary of state and secretary of war, ambassador to France and Great Britain and minister to Spain, and the fifth U.S. president, serving two terms. A hero of the American Revolution, Monroe served at Valley Forge and was seriously wounded in battle at Trenton. Despite such an imposing resume, Monroe’s contributions to the nation are usually overshadowed by those of his close friends Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

In his compelling new biography, The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, Harlow Giles Unger demonstrates that Monroe was a major player with significant achievements, including the Louisiana Purchase. Even his supposed diplomatic failures look like impossible tasks. Unger, an award-winning author of 15 books, including four biographies of other founding fathers, deftly guides us through Monroe’s pre-presidential period, which includes assisting a wounded Lafayette during the Revolution and rescuing Thomas Paine from a French prison.

Unger argues that the three presidents between Washington and Monroe—John Adams, Jefferson and Madison—were merely “caretakers” whose administrations left the country divided and bankrupt, her borders vulnerable and, after the War of 1812, despite the heroic efforts of Monroe as acting secretary of war, the capital seriously damaged. Holding two top cabinet positions (secretary of state was the other) Monroe was hailed for his brilliant military strategy and astute management of peace negotiations. As president, Monroe was a transitional figure, the last of the founding generation, but also responsible for westward expansion and economic recovery. He worked hard to achieve unity, appointing representatives of a wide range of views. He made long tours of the country that helped to bring people together. Despite problems, including the Panic of 1819, there were good reasons to refer to his presidency as “the era of good feelings.”

Unger vigorously refutes those historians who claim that Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wrote what Monroe is best known for, the “Monroe Doctrine.” Monroe had almost eight years of experience as a seasoned diplomat in the most sensitive posts, was a highly regarded lawyer and a gifted politician. Once he decided to include in his seventh annual message to Congress a manifesto about the U.S. staying free of entangling alliances and defining America’s sphere of influence, he conducted a series of cabinet meetings in which he asked for written and oral arguments on the subject. Adam’s diplomatic experience did give him more influence than others, yet, Unger notes, only one of Adams’ submissions appears in the final policy statement.

The Monroes were a close-knit family and James’ beautiful wife Elizabeth was a formidable influence, especially in matters of taste and style. She also demonstrated extreme courage in 1795. Realizing that her husband, who had obtained the release of Americans from French prisons, might jeopardize his diplomatic status if he tried to rescue someone who had only honorary American citizenship, she decided to go herself. She was able to get Lafayette’s wife, Adrienne, freed after 16 months in prison.

Unger’s outstanding biography of Monroe is consistently illuminating and a fine introduction to its subject.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson corresponded for almost 25 years, yet met in person only twice. Beginning with a letter from the reclusive poet in 1862 to a literary figure she knew only through his essays and social activism, and lasting till her death in 1886, it is arguably one of the most important relationships in American literary history. In that initial letter, which included four of her poems, Dickinson famously asked, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” Their connection, as described by Brenda Wineapple in her luminous new book, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was “based on an absence, geographic distance, and the written word.” After their first meeting at her home, in 1870, Higginson wrote that Dickinson “drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her.” But he recognized her unique talent and wished to help her if he could. Though he admitted after Dickinson’s death that he could not teach her anything, Wineapple shows how Higginson’s encouragement and support were meaningful for both of them.

Wineapple, the acclaimed biographer of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gertrude and Leo Stein, and Janet Flanner, makes a very persuasive case that Higginson, whose place in the poet’s life and work has often been downplayed, did indeed perform a singularly significant role. In their letters, she writes, “they invented themselves and each other, performing for each other in the words that filled, maintained, and created the space between them.” They shared a passion for the natural world and literature; Wineapple demonstrates how through the years Dickinson dipped into Higginson’s work and rewrote it for her own poetic purposes.

She trusted and liked him and, as far as is known, there was no one else except her sister-in-law to whom she gave more of her poems. Only a few of Dickinson’s poems were published during her lifetime. Higginson played a central role in the posthumous publication of her work, collaborating with Mabel Loomis Todd in selecting and editing the first two volumes of poems. He found a publisher and wrote an introduction for the first volume. Higginson has often been criticized for changing the poems – eliminating Dickinson’s dashes at certain points and substituting more “appropriate” words – but this charge is probably not fair. Mrs. Todd, who copied many of the poems, admitted that it was she who made most of the changes.

White Heat succeeds magnificently in shining a light into the work of two unlikely friends. Dickinson did not live as isolated a life as we might imagine, while Higginson was indeed a radical activist, a supporter of John Brown, a strong advocate for women’s rights, and the leader of the first federally authorized regiment of freed slaves during the Civil War. But his compassion and literary sensibility were also at the heart of what he was about.

This book is not, Wineapple writes, conventional literary criticism or biography. She lets Dickinson’s poetry speak largely for itself, as Higginson first read it. The result gives us a powerful insight into two extraordinary figures who were there, in a rather unusual way, for each other.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a regular contributor to BookPage.

Noah Webster devoted his life to establishing a distinctly American culture. At the beginning of his literary career he noted the importance of America being, in his words, “as independent in literature as she is in politics—as famous for arts as for arms.” His best-known contribution toward this end was, of course, his American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, but his legacy includes much more. His American Spelling Book sold an incredible 100 million copies. He drafted America’s first copyright laws and was the first editor of the first daily newspaper in New York City. He served as a state legislator in both Connecticut and Massachusetts, he was involved in the founding of Amherst College, and his habit of counting houses wherever he went inspired the first census. One scholar has called him a “multiple founding father,” but most people do not remember him that way.

In his enlightening and absorbing The Forgotten Founding Father, Joshua Kendall helps us understand both Webster’s achievements and the reasons why he is not recognized in the same company as his role model Benjamin Franklin. Kendall’s previous book, the widely praised The Man Who Made Lists, was a biography of Peter Mark Roget, of thesaurus fame, another word-obsessed man.

Although his contemporaries recognized Webster’s great abilities, they were also aware of his negative traits: He was arrogant and tactless, often argumentative, a perpetual self-promoter and wholly self-absorbed. Kendall has closely examined Webster’s diaries and letters, including some that the family has long suppressed, and believes that Webster could not help himself—that he suffered from what psychiatrists today would identify as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Kendall thinks that Webster’s 30-year struggle to finish his dictionary was a case in which his “pathology was instrumental to his success.” But it also may have been a factor in the many contradictory identities he displayed over the years, including patriot, political reactionary, peacemaker, ladies’ man and “prig.” Words seemed always to be his best friends, and defining them was an obsession that ruled him.

Kendall’s discussion of the content of Webster’s dictionary is eye-opening and fascinating. Although Webster borrowed generously from Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, he also expanded it to 70,000 words—12,000 more than the latest edition of Johnson’s. Webster celebrated America’s founders and offered countless references to American locales. He also used many references from his own life. The definitions were often didactic, in line with Webster’s devout Christian values, and his questionable etymological ideas appeared on occasion; he had “a penchant for making wild guesses about the roots of words.”

There is so much more in Kendall’s superbly written and carefully balanced narrative of an American original. One comes away convinced that this complex and often difficult man was a major force for creating a sense of American nationalism and unity among his fellow citizens.