Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was born in Boston on 27 May 1835, the third child and second son of Charles Francis and Abigail Brooks Adams. He was the great-grandson of John Adams, the second president of the United States, and the grandson of John Quincy Adams, the sixth. His father was minister to Great Britain during the Civil War and was instrumental in forestalling British recognition of the Confederacy.

Of the fourth generation in a distinguished line, Adams inherited the family tradition of public duty and civic responsibility, and the interaction between the received tradition and the dynamic materialism of the Gilded Age dramatically shaped his career and character. During his long life, he was variously Union cavalry officer, social reformer and bureaucrat, investor and sometime speculator in land and securities, businessman and corporate executive, civic leader, Harvard overseer, and historian.

Adams's work as historian was, in effect, a second...