Charles Francis Adams and Abigail Brooks Adams at Peacefield in Quincy, Massachusetts, circa 1883
Photograph taken by their daughter-in-law, Clover Adams
Charles Francis Adams Sr. was an American writer, politician and diplomat. Adams was a member of the Massachusetts State Senate and served as the United States Minister to the United Kingdom under Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. He is also known for his biography of President John Adams, his grandfather.
Background
Charles Francis Adams Sr. Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States on August 18, 1807; one of three sons and a daughter of John Quincy Adams and Louisa Catherine Johnson. He spent much of his early life traveling with his parents in Europe.
Education
Charles Francis Adams Sr. attended Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard College in 1825. He then studied law with Daniel Webster, was admitted to the bar on January 6, 1829, and commenced practice in Boston.
Adams began his career in 1840, when was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Three years later he began serving in the Massachusetts Senate, holding the position till 1845.
In 1846, Adams became editor of the Boston Whig newspaper. In 1848, he ran for Vice President of the United States as a member of the Free Soil Party, but unsuccessfully. After he turned his hand to writing, publishing works of social commentary and as well as works about his grandfather. He took up the project that his father had left uncompleted and between 1850 and 1856, published eight further volumes presenting editions of John Adams's Diary and Autobiography, his major political writings, and a selection of letters and speeches.
On March 4, 1859 Adams was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses. A month after the Civil War started, in May 1861 he was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to the position of United States Ambassador to England. He remained in England as the ambassador until 1868, and later returned to England in 1871 as a part of a special envoy that successfully negotiated American Civil War damage claims against England.
Back in Boston, Adams declined the presidency of Harvard University, but became one of its overseers in 1869. In 1872 Adams lost the presidential nomination of the Liberal Republicans at the last moment to Horace Greeley. In 1876 Adams ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Massachusetts. He retired to Boston to take up his career again as a writer focusing on the papers of his father.
(John Quincy Adams is regarded as one of the greatest dipl...)
Politics
Adams changed political parties several times during his career. It was the controversy over slavery, which first propelled Adams into prominence. In the Massachusetts state legislature, where he served from 1840 to 1845, he became a leader of those conservative antislavery members who concentrated on resisting the encroachments of the "slave power."
With the issue of the annexation of Texas, Adams became one of the leaders of the Conscience Whigs, that wing of the Whig Party which demanded guarantees that slavery would not be extended. The Conscience Whigs in Massachusetts merged with the broader Free Soil movement in 1848, and Adams ran unsuccessfully for the vice-presidency as that party's candidate.
However, Adams disapproved of the Free Soil tendency to ally with other parties in order to achieve office, and he therefore sharply curtailed his political activities during the 1850's. He returned to political life when he served as Republican representative to Congress from 1859 to 1861; during the secession crisis he was a leader of the moderate Republicans.
In 1972 Adams became a member of a new political party the Liberal Republicans and considered a run for the Presidency under it, but lost out to Horace Greeley.
Membership
Adams was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1857.
Connections
On September 3, 1829, Adams married Abigail Brown Brooks, the daughter of a shipping magnate Peter Chardon Brooks. The marriage produced seven children, among them historian Brooks Adams, writer Henry Adams, and Civil War General and railroad executive Charles Francis, Jr.