A man's twenty-seventh year is "critical," according to Charles Francis Adams. And so his proved. Twenty-five at the start of these volumes, Adams had yet to embark on the public career that would mark him a statesman, but by their conclusion he had been drawn into the maelstrom of politics. It was an unwilling plunge, dictated by what both he and his father, John Quincy Adams, regarded as betrayal of the elder Adams by Daniel Webster and his Whigs. Once in, however, he showed himself politically adept.
This diary, kept from January 1833 to June 1836 and hitherto unpublished, has...
A man's twenty-seventh year is "critical," according to Charles Francis Adams. And so his proved. Twenty-five at the start of these volumes, Adams ...
