The unpopularity, as well as the fame, of his
father, was the heritage of the son. Perhaps the most decisive
indication of the weakening of sectional bias by his foreign
training is afforded by his diplomatic policy. An expansionist by
nature, he had been confirmed in the faith by his training in
foreign courts. "If we are not taken for Romans we shall be taken
for Jews," he exclaimed to one who questioned the wisdom of the bold
utterances of his diplomatic correspondence.
In one important respect Adams was the personification of his
section. He was a Puritan, and his whole career was deeply affected
by the fact. A man of method and regularity, tireless in his work
(for he rose before the dawn and worked till midnight), he never had
a childhood and never tried to achieve self-forgetfulness. His
diary, printed in twelve volumes, is a unique document for the study
of the Puritan in politics. Not that it was an entirely unreserved
expression of his soul, for he wrote with a consciousness that
posterity would read the record, and its pages are a compound of
apparently spontaneous revelation of his inmost thought and of
silence upon subjects of which we would gladly know more.
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