WHAT A LIFE this man led.. When most people never traveled more than a few miles from the place they were born, John Adams helped to form a new nation .. sailed the seas.. saw France, Sweden, Denmark London.... Saw his son elected president.. Passed away at age 90 in his own bed - What a life, indeed! (I meant to say Puerto Rico - Stupid auto-correct!)
In the series, the court has always had a high opinion of Adams. The king however, respected Adams because of what he stood for, and not what he had done.
Jess Kaii Adams was actually well known among the British public for defending the troops of the Boston massacre in court and hilariously he later ran into one of the captains he had defended in court during his time in Britain
Always loved the fact that Adams' meeting with King George III was officially recorded! So what you saw and heard in the HBO miniseries actually took place. As for Adams laughing at the opinion piece of his being hanged? I could believe the real Joun Adams would have reacted that way...😎🇵🇷🇺🇸🗽🦂
@@erincosta565 George the III did go through 3 bouts of insanity in his reign. But between them he made impressive recoveries and was a much beloved monarch. Modern science points to porphyria as a potential cause though arsenic may have been the result of his death in the third. Despite his insanity I find his will power in his times of clarity to set things right to be impressive and respectable. Most people would have ended themselves or fallen into depression.
When reputation mattered more as an internal source of esteem rather than an external source of threat(via twitter mob getting you unpersoned for example), I don't think this modern day hysteria machine could have been taken quite as seriously. Or at least, I hope it wouldn't have.
I love how she can just order the colonel to remove the papers and adams goes along with it. Accepts it. Allows him to snatch the paper from his hand. Lol
Laura Linney was fantastic as Abigail! Sharp witted, keeping up with the man that is the Second President of the United States. I know this was Paul Giammati's role, but Linney hit Abigail perfectly.
Abigail Adams was probably the smartest and most influential First Lady right up until the turn of the 20th century. It's a pity she was born in an era where women had very little public voice; if she had been born 150 years later she'd likely be more intimately involved in affairs of state and a more proactive influence on her husband's administration like Eleanor Roosevelt was. Nonetheless she provided a sage voice of wisdom and influenced John Adams' career and presidency (and by extent our young nation) for the better to the fullest extent that any woman could in those days.
thehorrorgeek1 I disagree. A free, independent press is integral to any functioning democracy. Even if the purveyors in question are no more than a gross pack of liars and calumners paid to assassinate the reputation of an honest public servant, one should pay them no more mind than the braying of an ass. The truth will always out.
He was annoyed because they were accusing him of the wrong type of vanity my interpretation is that he has spent his whole life as a civil servant trying to improve people's lives and is angry and confused that he doesn't get recognition for it owing to his crotchety and disagreeable temperament, and he doesn't realise that to be hard-working and to be charismatic are two different things
It's always shocked me that John Adams was chosen to be the Ambassador to England: a man who's greatest life's achievement was to lead a revolution against a government who's policy goals included seeing him and his cousin twisting at the ends of ropes. Now he was to go to that nation and government and be a friendly face, and they were expected to accept him as a dignitary. It's not even as if John Adams had the personality to be an Ambassador in the first place. Then again, "Only Nixon could go to China"!
John Adams was the kind of a man though, that he would do his job, and do it with a sense of duty, even if he had personal feelings to the contrary. He defended those British Soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre as previously mentioned in this thread. His legacy was very often overlooked. The book and this series have helped revers that.
Adams was fairly sympathetic to Britain in comparison to most of the other Founding Fathers, and he was one of the few men of high stature who had bona fide diplomatic credentials. He was no-nonsense and a committed patriot but also observed the finer points of diplomatic propriety and decorum. As a previous responder said, he was also committed to law and duty and was grudgingly respected by the British for his defense of the Boston Massacre soldiers despite holding deep personal reservations about their actions. He was the perfect man for the job - firm but fair. Someone like Hamilton who was downright enamored with Britain would have been a pushover and allowed King George to do whatever he pleased in negotiations, while a revolutionary bomb-thrower like Jefferson who openly cheered on the French guillotining Louis XVI (who was our vital ally!) would have been so toxic to affairs with Britain that he might have damn well started a second war. Maybe Adams didn't achieve a great deal as ambassador but he did the best he could with a nigh-impossible job and normalized relations at a time when the gaping wound between our nations was still wide open, let alone even a scar yet.
@@bobsnow6242 This series and Paul Giamatti’s performance really opened my eyes to the inestimable contribution made by John Adams. This little guy who had the misfortune to follow Gen. Washington as President gets labeled a clanging gong and a failure, or at least a bore… but without John Adams, would we even have a country? He galvanized the Massachusetts delegation into declaring independence, and Massachusetts convinced the rest of the colonies. He drafted Jefferson to craft our Declaration. He finessed financing from the Dutch, without which the new nation would have gone under, and I don’t think there was another person among the founding fathers to whom the hard-nosed Dutch would’ve been willing to lend money. It’s a safe bet that Mr. Franklin or Mr. Jefferson would’ve been a disaster in The Hague. The choice of Mr. Adams to be the first Ambassador of the United States to the Court of St. James was also sound. King George had been quite keen to award Adams some high honor after the Boston Massacre trial and so was better disposed toward John despite the circumstances of their eventual meeting. Adams gets overshadowed by more charismatic figures of Revolutionary history but we owe him so much. He was an absolutely crucial factor in our success. RIP JA and David McCullough, who illuminated him for us.
King George was hurt by the colonies' secession, hurt personally, and he feared for their survival. That really showed in this performance, great work all around.
the only "hurt" King George felt was losing the nearly infinite natural resources that would have been available in the colonies. the "new world" was intended to be the domain, playground, and as-near-to-heaven-on-earth-as-you-can-get for him and his domineering cohorts in the monarchy. any sincerity of concern was long gone, as his treatment of the colonists in the years leading up to the revolution clearly demonstrated. his portrayal in this scene, imho, is more accurately interpreted as similar to the character major fambrough in dances with wolves; a man who has basically lost touch with reality and cannot realize/admit that events have overtaken his control.
@@cloudwatcher724 That's a somewhat of an accurate statement. George III wasn't a skilled statesman nor did he excel in foreign affairs. However your statement of the 13 colonies being some sort of Heaven-on-earth replica is largely false. There were exotic resources like Cotton, Corn, Small game pelts, (Beaver was extremely popular) Cotton was the most important to the British Empire because they needed it for the production of Sail canvas.
Colonel Smith knows who really runs that house lol. He snatched it right out of his hands lol. I imagine that would normally be the equivalent of taking the TV remote from Dad nowadays lol
Women have always ran the households lol my grandpa did whatever my grandmother told him whenever he was indoors, the home was her domain, except the garage lol
I love how much the task of managing John's affairs is the domain of Abigail. She is like a coach making sure the player is fit for the game. When something messes with her husband, she doesn't fuck around. She has no problems giving orders to military officers when it is within her realm of authority.
He Defended the British Soldiers from the Boston Massacre in Court to the best of his ability, while believing personally the Colonies should declare and fight for their Independence. It's impressive especially when you consider the times.
Christopher Metcalf we have yet to see if this is a conservative "dead cat bounce", or if it's in fact a reaction to the left's overbearing and unconstitutional policies. If it's a dead cat bounce, it will fizzle out quietly eventually. If it is a reaction to the left that sustains itself... The left is in for quite the reality check in regards to this country specifically.
king George would have said “United States do not suffer,” not “does” not suffer. The States were thought of as a confederacy after the revolution, and not a singularity.
I like how this seems to be the most realistic dramatization of the American Revolutionary/early history period ever put to film. Not just in the sense of period accurate costumes and settings/setpieces and props and accents, etc. But in the sense of depicting that era the way it actually was. Almost every other film or show is so overly-reverential and idealized and seeks to friggin DIEFY the founding fathers, to the point where the actual history is completely lost. The scene where Adams looks at Turnbull's painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence sums up what I mean perfectly. So many of them just make it all seem so perfect and harmonious and covers up all the blemishes. England and King George were evil tyrants who were big meanies to the colonists, so they all decided to have independence and all the big dogs came together at once and signed the Declaration with unanimity, and then we fought the Brits for a bit, won, and then they set up a perfect government right away with no issues at all. It all just came together by divine providence or whatever. Kindergarten-tier history. Completely oversimplified and downright propaganda. When in reality, it was NOTHING like that.
Yes, but let's not assume the only motive for deifying the founders and the new republic were simply to idealize or whitewash history. That would be naive. The founders knew that a shared mythology about the country was essential for maintaining civility and order.
Dutch Republic: "First time?" It all comes down to power. Thanks, king/emperor whoever. But now we are strong enough to look after ourselves. Come to think of that, we've been doing quite well for ourselves these past years. Yeah yeah yeah, thanks for fighting on our behalf but you have your empire to keep up while we merchants tend to look more at the bottom line. The bottom line says, we would be even more succesful without you! Only thing we gotta straighten out, is how to turn our mercantile power into actual military power and then it's adios amigos! We make our own money, protect ourselves and we'll be making lots more of money without you, Sir! Good Riddance.
They had one of the most healthy and mutual relationships, not just for the time, but into today. John respected her intellect, her ability, and always took her counsel. Never treated her as beneath him at least as far as the letters we have indicate. Must have been bizzare for some of the men at the time who knew him but they were one hell of a pair
In the immortal words of Shemp Howard: "His dead body was found wrapped up in newspapers. Now, I know you can't believe everything you see in the papers, but the fact remains he's dead."
This only makes me appreciate the Ethan Allen riposte in the Lincoln movie so much more...I wish someone had told the British press something equivalent at the time.
As a witty comeback it would have gone down quite well in many parts of Britain. None of this “respect the troops” malarkey in the age of the press gang and the local regiment on the loot.
“I pray Mr Adams, that the United States does not suffer unduly from its want of a monarchy” . In a society where there is no ruler appointed by God then Gods judgement comes more harshly when God is rejected.
@@RoseNoho what a salty triggered reply. Just jumping to a conclusion and snapping. Someone's feelers are hurt. By the way, journalism is dead and the media is a circus
Colonel Smith’s little eye roll when he senses Adams is about to go on another spell. 😂 Poor man probably has to put up with 50 quotations a day from his boss
On a happy note, King George gave a rosy review of his meeting with Adams even praising him openly; but as this shows the British press would never dare cover that positive news regarding an ambassador from the former colonies in a war they felt should not have lost.
I always thought if i was Adams in this scene I would have to pen a letter to each of those papers thanking them for writing an issue worth using in the outhouse on two occasions 😂
@@fds7476 nope it was a genetic blood disorder that can be inherited. The King was congenitally sane and was actually quite intelligent. So much bad press for the King particularly in the United States. But then the Americans have always clutched at any excuse to explain their illegal declaration of independence.
"We will strive to answer one's prayers, your majesty." That is why you send a lawyer to represent you in a difficult negotiation. I can't imagine an answer that is more dignified for the USA and less insulting for the UK.
I'd love for King George III to be able to come back and see the American-British relationship today. Are there two countries in the world closer allies to one another?
@@jgkloosterman Yeah you are right about that. Worlds longest undefended border. Our only war against Canada was when it was a British colony. I'd say Canada, Britain. And close to that, Australia and New Zealand.
You must pay them no mind sir! -hides that hes enjoying reading the roast. Col Smith snatches the paper out of his bosses hands at abigail's notorder. Hilarious.