Charles Francis Adams was an American politician, businessman and philanthropist. He served as the United States Secretary of the Navy under President Herbert Hoover.
Background
Charles Francis Adams was born on August 2, 1866 into upper-class Boston society at Quincy, Massachussets, United States. He was the great-great-grandson of President John Adams, great-grandson of President John Quincy Adams, and the third prominent Adams to bear the name Charles Francis, after his grandfather the diplomat (1807-1886), for whom he was named, and his lawyer-historian uncle (1835-1915). His father was John Quincy Adams (1833-1894), a successful lawyer and yachtsman who had once declined President Grover Cleveland's offer to be Secretary of the Navy; his mother was Fanny Crowninshield Adams, whose forebear Benjamin W. Crowninshield had been Secretary of the Navy under President James Madison.
Education
At Harvard College, from which he took the Bachelor of Arts cum laude in 1888, Adams was captain of his class sailing crew, served all four years as class president, and unprecedentedly remained Chief Marshal of his class for the rest of his life. He also studied at Harvard Law School and received a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1892.
Career
After a year touring Europe, he was admitted to the Suffolk county bar and served briefly in the law offices of Sigourney Butler and Judge Everett C. Bumpus.
In 1894, upon the death of his father, Adams assumed the family trusteeships. With the tireless energy that was a lifelong trait, he also skippered the yacht Pilgrim in her unsuccessful attempt to become the America's Cup defender (1893), served two terms on the Quincy city council (1893-1895), and, having refused to run for a third council term, was twice elected mayor of Quincy (in 1896 and 1897) with independent Republican support.
Adams' close association with Harvard acquired new importance with his appointment in 1898 as deputy treasurer and then treasurer of the Corporation of Harvard College, a post he occupied until 1929.
From 1900 until the end of his life, Adams was a leading director of American banks and corporations. He enjoyed a "particular genius for organization, fearlessness and fairness in dealing with people, and situations, and an absolute integrity that won him the confidence of all those who came in contact with him. "
Selected in 1914 as helmsman of the sloop Resolute, with Robert W. Emmons as manager, Adams defeated Vanitie to become the America's Cup defender. The competition was postponed because of World War I, but in 1920 Adams piloted the Resolute to a very close victory over Sir Thomas Lipton's challenger Shamrock IV, becoming the first amateur ever to defend the cup. He missed winning the 1928 King of Spain's Cup transatlantic race by one day in the schooner Atlantic and lost out narrowly in the Yankee in two further attempts (1930 and 1934) to become the America's Cup defender.
Popular in state politics, Adams in 1917 received more votes than any other candidate for delegate-at-large to the Massachusetts constitutional convention.
Adams was an ideal choice for Secretary of the Navy in the Hoover cabinet of 1929. Resigning all his business interests, Adams soon won the respect of both the President and the Navy. He relied heavily upon the senior admirals, notably William V. Pratt, the chief of naval operations during most of his tenure.
The revival of Japanese militancy became the chief concern of Adams' secretaryship. Inasmuch as he opposed "moral stands that could not be made good by force", including the Kellogg-Briand peace pact of 1928, Adams endorsed the London naval conference in 1930 and served ably as key American delegate to it; the British welcomed Adams for his family background and "his attractive personality and nautical interests, " qualities that "probably contributed to the softening of Anglo-American antagonism" in those years. A firm believer in building up to treaty limits to deter Japan, Adams announced in 1931 a new naval construction program that would lead to American naval parity with Britain within five years--only to have his plan drastically cut by the President.
In the Manchurian crisis of 1931, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson bypassed Adams in issuing orders to the fleet, but both men--alone among the cabinet--pressed Hoover for a stronger American naval presence in the Pacific. Early in 1932 Adams argued strongly before Congress for more naval appropriations, an action that almost led to an open break with the President. Nonetheless, Adams remained in office until the end of the Hoover administration. Adams then returned to finance, Harvard, and yachting. He continued to race until 1951. Adams also found time to serve in numerous philanthropic and charitable organizations.
Ever punctual, he reputedly never missed a single corporation board meeting throughout his busy life until his health began to fail, three years before his death.
Achievements
Adams applied his considerable financial and managerial skills to increase Harvard's endowments, enabling the university to survive the Depression with few dislocations.
He was a director of more than forty corporations and banks, among them the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, Pan American World Airways Corporation, Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, General Electric Company, and the State Street Trust Company of Boston, of which he became chairman of the board. He also served as president of the Harvard Alumni Association and as president of the Board of Overseers.
Adams was founding president of the Greater Boston Community Fund (1935-1949), national chairman of the 1940 Mobilization for Human Needs (Community Chest), and chairman of the Allocation Committee, United Nations Relief.
As a yachtsman, in 1939, at the age of seventy-three, he won the nation's three most prominent racing trophies, the King's, Astor, and Puritan cups, in a single racing season--an unprecedented achievement.
Politics
Adams shared his father's political stance and personality--they were both Democrats.
In 1920 the state Democratic party put his name forward as a Presidential elector without consulting him, and he shifted his support to the Republicans.
Personality
Adams was known affectionately to his friends and peers as "the Deacon" for his outward appearance of "a typical New England aristocrat, taciturn, self-contained, courteous and simple", or just as "Charlie, " and his popularity stemmed partly from his love of sailing, a sport he had enjoyed in Massachusetts Bay since boyhood.
Never an intellectual, he was pragmatic in all his pursuits, including sailing. He was recognized, after the turn of the century, as "the acknowledged head of all American helmsmen, amateur or professional. "
A "slight, wiry figure, topped by his ever-present white canvas sun hat", Adams was, "in his care for speed, the supreme rationalist, the supreme functionalist, " an absolutely imperturbable helmsman whose "only gift was a superb sensitivity to the helm and the trim of the sails. "
Quotes from others about the person
"Although a banker by profession, he is a seaman at heart, and that means much to men that follow the sea. He loved the Navy and the Navy loved him. The feeling was not like working for a Boss, it was serving a friend, and it was like this all the way down the line. " - William V. Pratt.
Connections
Adams married Frances Lovering, the daughter of a Massachusetts Congressman, William C. Lovering, in 1899; their son, Charles Francis Adams Jr. , became a prominent industrialist, and their daughter Catherine married Henry S. Morgan, a son and partner of financier J. P. Morgan the younger.
