Posted on 07/02/2011 6:59:08 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
When President Obama ponders tough decisions at the White House, he may join the cadre of presidents who have sought inspiration in the Truman Balcony’s stunning vista, gazing at the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, which commemorate our first and third commanders in chief. But there’s a man missing from this presidential panorama.
Where is John Adams, our feisty second president and lifelong American patriot? If George Washington was the sword of the revolution and Thomas Jefferson the pen, why have we neglected the voice of our nation’s independence?
Adams himself predicted this omission. “Monuments will never be erected to me . Romances will never be written, nor flattering orations spoken, to transmit me to posterity in brilliant colors,” he wrote in 1819, nearly two decades after his single term in office. At his farm in Quincy, Mass., Adams worried that he would be forgotten by history, and for good reason: The temperamental Yankee could never outshine Washington and Jefferson, Virginia’s two-term presidential all-stars — one a brilliant general unanimously chosen to lead the nation, the other the eloquent author of the Declaration of Independence.
SNIP
What’s the case for Adams? Before the revolution, he was the nation’s first attendant to the American legal tradition of due process, defending British soldiers who fired on colonists during the Boston Massacre. One of Massachusetts’s representatives to the First and Second Continental Congresses, Adams was a champion of separation from England and the fiercest advocate of Jefferson’s declaration. Without his persuasive speeches in the Philadelphia chamber, the document wouldn’t have been signed. While Jefferson was silent during what he considered the convention’s editorial debasement of his work, Adams defended every clause, including an excised call for the abolition of slavery. Jefferson called Adams “a colossus on the floor” of the Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
RE: Uh, we don’t build memorials to lawyers
Obviously, Abe Lincoln must have been an exception.
You would be correct.
It has been estimated that everyone with even a drop of European blood is well over 99% likely to be a descendant of Charlemagne.
Even if some few are not, their likely mate is over 99% likely to be one, so their children will be.
Anyone who has children who have children who have children - eventually becomes the ancestor of a large % of humanity.
Thanks for the ping. IMHO, Adams deserves a memorial, imperfect though he was. One of the key things he did right was pick Washington as CIC of the Continental Army...
I don’t remember that scene. Maybe I’m talking about a different movie. This was on a CD and produced by the Mormon Church.
Nor can I. It took a special culture for it to succeed here. Our culture is far different now and, with the huge increase of government dependency, I doubt that a renewed effort to reinstate the Constitution would succeed now...certainly not at the ballot box.
>Actually Napoleon was very pro-American. His father had lived here a while.<
So did his 2nd uncle. Even when uttered on his deathbed ‘they wanted me to be like Washington” (lost in translation), Napoleon in an autob I read 4 years ago, maintained a hidden fascination and worship of Washington and Jefferson.
For many it was to retrieve the ancient rights of free Scotsmen. That was a two-fer.
I remember there being some controversy when Roosevelt was added. He doesn’t really belong there. As I recall, Borglum added him because he was a fellow “progressive”, which seems more plausible to me.
You’re right that his descendants know who he is. I’m on, through my maternal line, and was very proud growing up to study his and Abigail’s letters to each other, among other things. It’s hard to take liberal notions of female repression seriously when you’ve learned about a woman like Abigail Adams who stayed home and kept the family going while her husband was off starting a country.
I thought it was superb.
Nice to see a film or TV series about 1776-1783 that didnt have the British as Redcoat nazis and didnt reduce the conflict to simplistic tosh (yes, Mr Patriot Gibson, thats you)
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