A recent American Experience program on Channel 9 presented the partnership of John and Abigail Adams. Their loving and lasting relationship through the trials of separation, war and death brought the travails of the Revolutionary war and the birth of our nation vividly to life. Her letters to him always began dearest friend. The love expressed was clear, even in the less torrid (than our times) language used.
More importantly, the program showed the importance of John Adams in directing our path toward a free nation. Calling him a Titan, it showed him as instrumental in breaking us free from the English crown and providing us with the important framework for our constitution. His visits to France and England impressed on him the dangers to a sound government of a propertied elite with undue influence on society and government. One of his speeches thundered that we must accept this opportunity to build a country of liberty and equality for all its citizens, unlike any other country in the world. In that hopeful dream, he insisted our government be balanced between the three branches, legislative, judicial and administrative, which he again hopefully thought would prevent our becoming an aristocracy of a sort. He admitted to being obnoxious on the subject but eventually he gained the support of the majority to his views.
Adams had previously written the Massachusetts Commonwealth Constitution, which governs the state to this day. That constitution, in turn, according to some historians, was a model for our own nations constitution.
One can only wonder what this Titan for democracy would think about our situation today, where presidential candidates run million-dollar campaigns paid for by their propertied supporters, legislative candidates do the same and judges all too often reflect the values of the propertied class as well. Its too soon, I hope, to say the dream is dead but it sure looks like a mighty frail and pale image of what it could have been. Ben Franklin, in response to a question by a lady about what the constitutional convention had brought us, said, a republic, Madame, if you can keep it.
Benita Helseth
Lake Stevens