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Heirs of an Honored Name (HoH Podcast – Ep, 106)
Dr. Douglas R. Egerton is an expert on American history and a professor of history at Le Moyne College. A prolific historian, his latest book is called, Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America (Basic 2019). His books include Thunder At the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America (2016), The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era (2014), Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (2010) and Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (2009). His first book, Charles Fenton Mercer and the Trial of National Conservatism (1989), examined the career of the founder of the American Colonization Society, a group of conservative white antislavery politicians who wished to send freed slaves to Liberia. His other books, Gabriel's Rebellion (1993), He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey (1999), and Rebels, Reformers and Revolutionaries (2002) explore slave rebelliousness.Egerton has also written numerous essays and reviews regarding race in early America; some of the latter have appeared in the Sunday Boston Globe and The Nation. He has appeared on the PBS series "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" (2013), "Africans in America" (1998) and "This Far by Faith" (2002). During the 2011-12 academic year, he held the Mary Ball Washington Chair (Fulbright) at the University College Dublin. In spring 2015, he was the Merrill Family Visiting Professor of History at Cornell University. In 2017, he won the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize for Thunder at the Gates (2016).
Read the Book:
From the Publisher: An enthralling chronicle of the American nineteenth century told through the unraveling of the nation’s first political dynasty
John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace. When John Quincy Adams died in 1848, so began the slow decline of the family’s political legacy.
In Heirs of an Honored Name, award-winning historian Douglas R. Egerton depicts a family grown famous, wealthy — and aimless. After the Civil War, Republicans looked to the Adamses to steer their party back to its radical 1850s roots. Instead, Charles Francis Sr. and his children — Charles Francis Jr., John Quincy II, Henry and Clover Adams, and Louisa Adams Kuhn — largely quit the political arena and found refuge in an imagined past of aristocratic preeminence.
An absorbing story of brilliant siblings and family strain, Heirs of an Honored Name shows how the burden of impossible expectations shaped the Adamses and, through them, American history.
Some highlights:
Biographical approach to history
Reading the letters of an "unsolved family"
Modern Political Dynasties
American history as seen through one important family
Charles Francis Adams
Thunder at the Gates
Family Values of the Adams
The importance of going abroad
Class tensions and interaction from the top
"Clover" Adams and her photography
Reception of the book release
Modern parallels to the Adams
Suggestions:
Douglas:
The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
Steven: Talk to your family, what is your history?
Cover image: From A Cycle of Adams Letters (Charles Francis and Henry Adams Pictured)
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Dr. Douglas R. Egerton is an expert on American history and a professor of history at Le Moyne College. A prolific historian, his latest book is called, Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America (Basic 2019). His books include Thunder At the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America (2016), The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era (2014), Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (2010) and Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (2009). His first book, Charles Fenton Mercer and the Trial of National Conservatism (1989), examined the career of the founder of the American Colonization Society, a group of conservative white antislavery politicians who wished to send freed slaves to Liberia. His other books, Gabriel's Rebellion (1993), He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey (1999), and Rebels, Reformers and Revolutionaries (2002) explore slave rebelliousness.Egerton has also written numerous essays and reviews regarding race in early America; some of the latter have appeared in the Sunday Boston Globe and The Nation. He has appeared on the PBS series "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" (2013), "Africans in America" (1998) and "This Far by Faith" (2002). During the 2011-12 academic year, he held the Mary Ball Washington Chair (Fulbright) at the University College Dublin. In spring 2015, he was the Merrill Family Visiting Professor of History at Cornell University. In 2017, he won the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize for Thunder at the Gates (2016).
Read the Book:
From the Publisher: An enthralling chronicle of the American nineteenth century told through the unraveling of the nation’s first political dynasty
John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace. When John Quincy Adams died in 1848, so began the slow decline of the family’s political legacy.
In Heirs of an Honored Name, award-winning historian Douglas R. Egerton depicts a family grown famous, wealthy — and aimless. After the Civil War, Republicans looked to the Adamses to steer their party back to its radical 1850s roots. Instead, Charles Francis Sr. and his children — Charles Francis Jr., John Quincy II, Henry and Clover Adams, and Louisa Adams Kuhn — largely quit the political arena and found refuge in an imagined past of aristocratic preeminence.
An absorbing story of brilliant siblings and family strain, Heirs of an Honored Name shows how the burden of impossible expectations shaped the Adamses and, through them, American history.
Some highlights:
Biographical approach to history
Reading the letters of an "unsolved family"
Modern Political Dynasties
American history as seen through one important family
Charles Francis Adams
Thunder at the Gates
Family Values of the Adams
The importance of going abroad
Class tensions and interaction from the top
"Clover" Adams and her photography
Reception of the book release
Modern parallels to the Adams
Suggestions:
Douglas:
The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
Steven: Talk to your family, what is your history?
Cover image: From A Cycle of Adams Letters (Charles Francis and Henry Adams Pictured)