United States: Essays 1952-1992 Chapter Summary & Analysis - "The Four Generations of the Adams Family" (1976) Summary

"The Four Generations of the Adams Family" (1976) Summary and Analysis

John Adams was born in 1735 in Massachusetts, the founder of a family line that remained at the center of national and world political affairs for almost two centuries. Four generations of this brilliant but self-effacing family ended, Vidal says, with Henry Adams who is recalled by a conversation Vidal had as a young person with Eleanor Roosevelt. The first lady scolded Adams gently for his cynicism about history when her husband was just starting his political career.

"Young man," Adams told president-to-be Roosevelt, "it doesn't make the slightest difference who lives in that [White House], history goes on with or without the president." As an amateur historian, Henry Adams spent his last days trying to understand the forces that shape history—and finally abandoned history altogether, Vidal says. "I don't give a damn what happened," Vidal quotes Adams. "What I want to know is why it happened—never could find out—stopped...
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