John Adams’ Letter to Us

You think I am kidding, but I am not. It takes no sleuth to understand that John Adams – like many around him – read, thought, and wrote with an eye to the future. He knew he was speaking to us, you and me when he wrote.

It’s crazy to think about, but the Founding Fathers, while they could not predict jet flight, cell phones, social media, or advanced weapons, were under no illusions. They knew the past and present and had a strong instinct for the future.

Most of all, they knew human nature – because they lived fully, believed deeply, and fought for what they believed, understanding if they did not, it would not happen.

They were not just fighters. They read widely – from Herodotus, Seneca, and Thucydides to Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, and Ceasar; from Homer, Virgil, Voltaire, and Gibbon to near contemporaries like Locke and Montesquieu. They read, fought, and wrote.

We seldom think about it, but all that we have around us, not just abstract freedoms, the ability to dream, wonder, work, and achieve, but the actual inventions, the advancements in science, medicine, and even the technology on which you are reading this, owe their existence to first causes, the biggest one our Founders’ personal concern for us.

Let me put this differently. Founding a Republic was a radical idea, one that cost many their lives, their families, their homes, their property, and their peace of mind.

But if not for their concern to win the future, to set it all in motion – through the Constitution and their pointed writings – what they nobly envisioned would not exist.

No one else was doing it. Those who later put freedom on foreign soil took inspiration from them, our Founders. Without what they did, all we see around us would not be.

They were determined that the future of America could be good– if we understood. “Understood what?” you ask.  Well, for starters, the depth of their conviction, the pain endured to impart the gift, and the moral burden imposed by someone else’s sacrifice.

Some will say, “Oh no, they did it for themselves.” In part, they did, but they were far, far more focused on the future. That is what compelled the risk, urgency, and sacrifice. They actually believed that we – their unborn, unnaturalized future kinsmen – would get it.

They thought, and so they wrote. They wrote – so we would think.  One feather dip at a time, they reminded us we were kings and queens of our own lives. We were sovereign – but to stay that way, we would have to keep government limited and stand our ground.

What did they write? So much it would fill acres stacked high. But here is what one of them, John Adams – arguably the least celebrated – passed forward, nuggets.

On truth: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” How simple and true.

On education: “I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading…Let us tenderly and kindly cherish…knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.” Beyond secular authors, he read the Bible – we know because all this comes from his diary.

On innocence: “It is…important that innocence be protected…if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, ‘whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,’ and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.” Indeed.

On the other innocence: “It should be your care to elevate the minds of children…to exalt their courage, to excite in them … an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.” True then, truer today.

Adams wrote letters to his wife, Abigail. In one: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”

In another: “Liberty once lost is lost forever…” In another, he chided himself: “Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly…This is enough.”

Finally, he wrote in one poignant letter addressed directly to us: “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 I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”

May we understand – and with work in our time, preserve the work of Adams and our countrymen, our benefactors, forestalling their repentance of labors for us. If we can just rise with this one objective, each day is sure to be good. Remembering unleashes strength. That is really what Adams was saying.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.