Posterity by Dorie McCullough Lawson

UINCY A DAMS
    â€œGo and see with how little Wisdom
this World is governed.”
    â€œAll my hopes are in him, both for myself and my country,” Vice President John Adams wrote of his eldest son in 1794. Of admirable character and extraordinary intellect, John Quincy Adams was a Boston lawyer and one of the most prolific political writers of the day. At just twenty-seven years old, he was widely read and traveled; he had been educated in Paris, Amsterdam, Leyden, and Harvard; he was fluent in seven languages; and he had served with the American minister to Russia. That John Quincy Adams was prepared for his first political appointment—Minister to Holland—his father was certain.
    Here John Adams, the vice president of the United States under President George Washington, writes a confidential letter to his son.

    Philadelphia May 26. 1794
    My dear Son
    The Secretary of State called upon me this morning to inform me by order of the President, that it is determined to nominate you to go to Holland as Resident Minister. The President desired to know if I thought you would accept. I answered that I had no Authority from you. But it was my Opinion that you would and that it would be my Advice to you, that you should.
    The Salary is 4500 Dollars a Year and as much for an Outfit.
    Your knowledge of Dutch and French; Your Education in that Country; your Acquaintance with my old Friends there will give you Advantages, beyond many others. It will require all your Freedom and all your other Virtues as well as all your Talents.
    It will be expected that you come here to see the President and Secretary of State, before you embark. I shall write you as soon as the Nomination is made and advised by Senate. Be Secret. Dont open your Mouth to any human Being on the Subject except your Mother. Go and see with how little Wisdom this World is governed.
    Adieu,
John Adams
    J OHN J AMES A UDUBON TO
V ICTOR A UDUBON
    â€œ. . . every exertion in our power should be kept up, with truth, firmness, dignity and consistency
from begainning to end.”
    John James Audubon was the illegitimate son of a French slave-dealing sea captain. By the time he was thirty-four, he had been jailed for unpaid debts. In 1819, after he admitted bankruptcy and was released from jail, he redirected his efforts away from business and began painting portraits and teaching. During the following year, 1820, he concluded that his ambition was to publish a series of paintings of all of the birds of North America. From that point forward, with passion and single-mindedness, he pursued his dream. “My Birds, My Beloved Birds of America fill all my time and nearly all my thoughts,” he wrote.
    Searching for specimens, he spent weeks and months in the woods, at times sleeping on the snow wrapped in a buffalo robe and eating everything from red-winged blackbirds to roasted wasps. When his two sons were young, Audubon's work kept him from them and his wife for years at a time and when the boys grew older he brought them in on the project. John, the younger son, often traveled with his father and served as his assistant. The elder, Victor, helped with editing and with the business of publishing. Audubon felt that Victor had “become [his] Right Arm and hand.” In writing to his sons, he referred not to “my work,” but to “our work.”
    Here America's most celebrated naturalist-artist writes to Victor, twenty-six years old, who was in England supervising the engraving, tinting, and printing of his father's plates and soliciting subscriptions for the work.

    Charleston S.C. Jan'y 14th, 1834
    My Dear Beloved Victor.—
    God willing we will be with you about the 4th of July next!—
    I have been much tormented for some weeks passed on account of the requisitions which you have made that I should return to England as early in the Spring as possible—no
reasons
have you given and sorry indeed will I be, if on our arrival in