“I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy.”
For parents, and anyone working hard so someone else can have more.
This line comes on
About this line
Adams wrote it from Paris, far from the family and the philosophy he loved, doing the grim necessary work of a new republic — so that the generations after him could afford the beautiful, useless things. A father’s generational trade, spelled out in a private letter.
Why we carry this line
The spelling was correct for Adams’ time. But the sentiment was even more correct, no matter the year it was said. Timeless. One generation’s grind buying the next one’s freedom — got me.
What happened next
Adams wrote this to his wife, Abigail, from Paris in May 1780. Congress had sent him to negotiate peace with Britain, and the war was far from over. All around him were palaces, paintings and porcelain he had no time to enjoy.
So he laid out a three-generation plan. He would study politics and war. His sons would study “Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture,” so their children could study “Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.”
The spelling isn’t a mistake. “Politicks” and “Musick” were standard English in 1780. Noah Webster dropped many of those k endings in his 1806 dictionary, and American spelling followed.
His son John Quincy Adams became president. His grandson Charles Francis Adams was America’s minister to Britain during the Civil War.
It was his great-grandson, the historian Henry Adams, who wrote a whole book about two French cathedrals and their architecture, statuary and stained glass. The plan worked; it just took one generation longer.
Documented source
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