Editorial Note

Following the favorable reception of his 1787–1788 work, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Vice President John Adams ventured deeper into the lessons of Europe’s republican past. Encouraged by Thomas Jefferson and others to pursue the subject of hereditary aristocracy as “a proper sequel,” Adams mulled the skills needed for such a task, namely, greater foreign-language fluency and access to more research materials (vol. 19:5). Over the course of two years, he produced his Discourses on Davila: A Series of Papers on Political History. Ardent Federalist John Fenno serialized Adams’ Discourses in the Gazette of the United States between 28 April 1790 and 27 April 1791. The first 22 essays appeared in the Gazette’s New York City edition, and the next ten were published in Philadelphia, after Fenno moved his business to the federal seat. The essays were printed anonymously but Adams’ authorship was an open secret; he confirmed it to son Charles in mid-February 1792. Originally intended as an English translation of French history, John Adams’ 32 essays morphed into an extensive and influential commentary on social class, religion, and revolution.

Adams embarked on the project in the fall of 1789, inspired by his reading of Histoire des guerres civiles de France, 3 vols., Amsterdam, 1757, which was a popular French translation of Italian author Enrico Caterino Davila’s Historia delle guerre civili di Francia, Venice, 1630. Davila (1576–1631), a former soldier and diplomat who was a native of Padua, offered a rich chronicle of the French Wars of Religion that stretched from 1560 to 1598. According to Adams, Davila’s account of the sixteenth-century struggles between the monarchy and the nobility, along with the internecine conflicts of the aristocracy, supplied a resonant history lesson for eighteenth-century events in America and France. The June 1790 catalog of Adams’ library lists an English translation of Davila’s text as well, but he relied on the French translation, which bears significant annotations in his hand.

In terms of structure, Adams’ Discourses may be read in two parts. He spent the initial eighteen essays translating the first five books of Davila’s history, weaving in a few brief comments. The next fourteen essays featured Adams’ reflections on British economist Adam Smith’s ideas of social rank and ambition as discussed in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. When he reached No. 31, Adams announced that he was concluding his analysis of France’s “melancholy history.” The final printed installment of Adams’ series showcased French jurist Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563), whose essay Discours sur la servitude volontaire ou Contr’un attacked both the tyranny of absolute monarchy and the modes of popular surrender to it. Though his Discourses fell silent in the Gazette of the United States, Adams found he had more to say. An incomplete draft of a 33d essay intended for his Discourses is in the Adams Papers. It has never previously been published and is printed below. There, Adams criticized the unicameral legislature and weak executive branch espoused by the Marquis de Condorcet in his 1788 treatise, Quattre lettres d’un bourgeois de New Haven sur l’unité de la législation.

To his pride and provocation, Adams found an American audience that was still eager to hear and to war over his political philosophy. Throughout the 1790s, Adams’ Discourses repeatedly rekindled the dissent already aflame between factions of staunch Federalists and emergent Democratic-Republicans. The historical essays became a partisan lightning rod, as Congress battled through regional interests and as the French Revolution’s violence rippled onto American shores. Adams’ new and increasingly vocal rival Jefferson, for example, seized the opportunity to praise Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man while denouncing Adams’ “political heresies” at play in the Discourses. This view, coupled with sharp criticism from several “Jacobinical journals,” led Adams to cease writing the Discourses (Jefferson, Papers description begins The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, and others, Princeton, N.J., 1950–. description ends , 20:293; AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963–. description ends , 9:263). Characteristically, he did not wholly give up on the topic. From 30 April to 9 July 1791, Adams published a serialized translation of La Boétie’s scholarship in the Gazette.

As with his Defence and other writings, John Adams had a personal perspective on how to interpret the Discourses’ significance and scope (vols. 18:539, 544, 546–550; 19:130–12). Addressing his son Thomas Boylston on 19 September 1795, the vice president wrote: “I wish The Discourses on Davila were collected and printed as a fourth Volume, for they are in reality a Key to the whole. That Emulation in the human heart which is universal, and is not a Love of Equality but a desire of Superiority, is there develloped as the eternal & universal Cause of Parties and Factions, which renders the double Ballance indispensible in every free Republican Government” (Adams Papers).

The Discourses enjoyed yet other public reincarnations after John Adams was elected president in 1797. John Russell began reprinting the Discourses in the Boston Gazette from 2 September 1799 to 30 June 1800, emphasizing Adams’ foresight regarding the French Revolution’s descent into terror. In the 15 May issue, Russell solicited subscriptions for a book-length collection of the Discourses, thereby ensuring “a more durable publicity” for Adams’ work. Five years later, Russell and James Cutler printed a Boston edition titled Discourses on Davila. A Series of Papers, on Political History. Written in the Year 1790, and then Published in the Gazette of the United States. By an American Citizen. They omitted Adams’ No. 32 and set the price at one dollar. Russell and Cutler added a postscript echoing Adams’ call for a balanced constitutional government. They advertised the book as “the offspring” of the author of the Defence, and “as correlative parts, or an additional volume to the above work.” Savoring his copy of the 1805 edition, a retired John Adams wrote the following in the margin: “Napoleon! Mutato nomine, de te fabula narrabatur! This book is a prophecy of your empire before your name was heard” (JA, D&A description begins Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1961; 4 vols. description ends , 3:225; AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963–. description ends , 9:262–264, 335; Hoefer, Nouv. biog. générale description begins Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer, ed., Nouvelle biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours, Paris, 1852–1866; 46 vols. description ends ; Catalogue of JA’s Library description begins Catalogue of the John Adams Library in the Public Library of the City of Boston, Boston, 1917. description ends ; Descriptive List of Illustrations, No. 2, above; C. Bradley Thompson, John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty, Lawrence, Kans., 1998, p. 270–274; Boston Gazette, 22 April 1805, 6 June).

Drafts of 17 of the 32 published essays, as well as the manuscript of No. 33, are filmed at Adams Papers Microfilms, Reel 374. For editorial arrangements of the Discourses that draw on John Adams’ related marginalia, see JA, Works description begins The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850–1856; 10 vols. description ends , 6:221–403, and Haraszti, Prophets description begins Zoltán Haraszti, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress, Cambridge, 1952. description ends , p. 39, 165–179, 334–335. A modern reprint of the 1805 Discourses was issued by Da Capo Press in 1973.