John Adams and His Classical Heritage

Katherine Manning, '99

A Classical American Dynasty: John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Family

John Quincy Adams-Painting by George C. Bingham

John Adams: 1735-1826

As a lawyer, writer, Founding Father, the nation’s first Vice President and second President, John Adams stands out as the patriarch and origin of this great American family. John was born on October 30, 1735 in Braintree, Massachusetts, to a family of distinguished soldiers, farmers and politicians. As the eldest son, John knew that his parents intended for him to be their only child to attend college. From the time he was a toddler, young John was sent to the local primary and secondary schools to prepare. After being taught by his father to read, John attended the town primary school, where he was instilled with the values of Puritan Orthodoxy through the popular New England Primer. Thus, in his early years, John’s schooling emphasized Christian moral teachings and the bible—only later would the classics play a role in his education.

John soon advanced to the local Latin school, run by Joseph Cleverly, who was, unfortunately, a dour man who did not put much effort into teaching his impressionable pupils. The attitude of Cleverly had much to do with young John’s aversion to school in his youth. In his Autobiography, John recalls one particular episode:

My Enthusiasm for Sports and Inattention to Books, allarmed my Father, and he frequently entered into conversation with me upon the Subject. I told him [I did not] love Books and wished he would lay aside the thoughts of sending me to Colledge. What would you do Child? Be a farmer. This is certainly an ironic sentiment from a young man who was to become one of the most ardent lovers of classical education in early America. Thankfully, John’s father refused to let his son’s frustrations interfere with his education, allowing him to study under tutor Joseph Marsh. Certainly, under Marsh, John received a classical education very similar to the one outlined by Nathaniel Williams, schoolmaster of the Boston Latin Grammar School, in a 1712 letter to Nehemiah Hobart. Williams’ curriculum describes the intense study and memorization of Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, Erasmus, and many other classical authors. Students typically read these works in their original languages and then translated passages into English, and then back into Latin or Greek. Such a rigorous study of antiquity prepared John for the entrance examination at Harvard College, which he took in 1751.

John relays the story of the examination in his Autobiography with a great sense of vulnerability and nervousness. Unfortunately, Marsh was unable to go with his student to Cambridge, canceling at the last minute due to poor health. This added to John’s nervousness, which was heightened when he was presented with "a Passage of English to translate into Latin." He continues the account:

It was long and casting my Eye over it I found several Words the latin for which did not occur to my memory. Thinking that I must translate it without a dictionary, I was in a great fright and expected to be turned by, an Event that I dreaded above all things. Mr. Mayhew went into his Study and bid me follow him. There Child, said he is a dictionary, there a Grammar, and there Paper, Pen, and Ink, and you may take your own time. This was joyfull news to me and I then thought my Admission safe. At Harvard, John’s love of learning blossomed as he pursued a curriculum steeped in the classics, which was common for eighteenth century American universities. As freshmen, John and his classmates studied Greek, Latin, and rhetoric, "which was defined in a commencement thesis of 1693 as ‘the art of speaking and writing with elegance’." Classical authors such as Cicero, Terence and Sallust, were studied and analyzed, and monthly declamations were given by the students in order to practice classical rhetoric and reinforce the works of these writers. Each year, students added subjects such as natural and moral philosophy, metaphysics, geography and mathematics to their course load, but the classics continued to form the core of their studies at Harvard. During his college education, John Adams continued as a student of the classics, expanding on what he had learned as a grammar school student from his entrance exam through commencement.

One of the greatest primary sources in early American history exists in John Adams’ diary, begun in 1753 while he was still a student at Harvard. Not only does it chronicle the greatest moments in the life of a Founding Father and the challenges of forming a new, democratic government, John’s diary also reflects the important role that antiquity played in his life. In a constant effort to improve his mind, John studied history, philosophy, and literature, most of which came from ancient Greece and Rome. As a young aspiring lawyer in 1758, John wrote:

Few of my Contemporary Beginners, in the Study of Law, have the Resolution, to aim at much Knowledge in the Civil Law. Let me therefore distinguish my self from them, by the Study of the Civil Law, in its native languages, those of Greece and Rome. This affinity for the classics, which clearly extended back to John’s early adulthood, would manifest itself throughout his long life. As historian James Peabody put it, "a solid grounding in Latin and in the elements of Greek at college facilitated John Adams’ entry into educated society as well as giving him the greatest pleasure in subsequent years." He frequently wrote with feelings of exhilaration after completing a difficult text in Greek or Latin, and often quoted from his favorite classical texts. On August 19, 1760, John made an enthusiastic prediction after finishing Pope’s translation of Homer, writing, "I will be bound that in 6 months I would conquer him (Homer) in Greek, and make myself able to translate every Line in him elegantly."

John’s belief that antiquity was a valuable educational tool extended to his children as well. There exist diary entries pertaining to his son John Quincy’s early education, such as this brief one from April 17, 1779: "Yesterday and to day in the forenoon, assisted my Son in translating Cicero’s first Phillippick against Cataline." These passages from his diary exemplify John’s use of antiquity in its various aspects—literary, historical, and etymological—and they speak to his love of learning and his desire to constantly increase his knowledge.

Equally as effective as a primary source in studying the life of John Adams are his letters to family, friends and colleagues. Some of the most fascinating letters written by John are addressed to his wife, Abigail, and his friends Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Rush. So many of these letters contain allusions to and discussions about the classics that their importance in American history cannot be denied—especially when they so thoroughly occupy the thoughts and works of unparalleled leaders like Adams, Jefferson and Rush.

The correspondence between John and Abigail Adams reveals the nature of their long relationship—they were a loving couple, completely committed to each other and dependent on each other’s advice and intellect. References to antiquity appeared frequently in their letters from the beginning of their correspondence. One early and obvious application of the classics in the Adams’ letters was the use of pseudonyms, a practice common in colonial American writing. Choosing a pseudonym or nickname was "evidently done not only to display one’s literary attainments but also to gain—or pretend to gain—at least temporary freedom from Puritan morals and manners." Early in their courtship, John began referring to Abigail as "Diana," the Roman name associated with Artemis, Greek goddess of chastity, the hunt, childbirth, and the moon. She is linked in mythology with virtues such as strength, morality and purity of character, making this a very complimentary nickname for John to choose. In one of the earliest letters written by John to Abigail, dated August 1763, he wrote, "Should Diana make her appearance every morning instead of Aurora, I should not sleep as I do, but should be all awake and admiring by four, at latest." John himself adopted the name "Lysander," a Spartan general and ambitious seeker of the throne who died in 395 B.C. Though he was an excellent military leader, his desire to become King of Sparta eventually brought about his fall from the political elite. John’s use of the name was probably meant to reflect Lysander’s earlier political prowess. This early correspondence between John and his wife provides an introduction to the classical influence that would pervade their letters throughout their marriage.

The letters between John Adams and Benjamin Rush are extremely interesting because they introduce a difference of opinion regarding the importance of the classics in early America, and in doing so reinforce the strength of John’s love for antiquity. Rush was a doctor and patriot from Pennsylvania whom John met in 1774, and their frequent correspondence began in 1805. The classics were a frequent subject upon which the two men debated. According to John Schutz and Douglass Adair, "their letters were to be written in the classical fashion with the great Cicero primarily in mind, whose letters they believed to be the most revealing documents in Roman history." In these letters, John continues to trumpet the excellence of the classics, as he did in his diary; for instance, on July 23, 1806, he wrote to Rush, "Demosthenes and Cicero, the two consummate masters, died martyrs to their excellence." Obviously, John Adams viewed many classical authors, politicians and orators as patriotic heroes to be emulated, especially during Revolutionary times in America. On December 4, 1805, John wrote to Rush to express his anger that his friend had destroyed "the anecdotes and documents you had collected for private memoirs of the American Revolution." The reasons behind John’s distress are made clear throughout the letter:

The period in the history of the world the best understood is that of Rome from the time of Marius to the death of Cicero, and this distinction is entirely owing to Cicero’s letters and orations. There we see the true character of the times and the passions of all the actors on the stage . . . Cicero had the most capacity and the most constant as well as the wisest and most persevering attachment to the republic. Almost fifty years ago I read Middleton’s Life of this man . . . Change the names and every anecdote will be applicable to us. John sees ancient history as a model for the present—the struggles of true patriots in Rome, such as Cicero, mirror the recent fight between the American colonists and the British in order to secure freedom. The tone of this letter comes from John’s belief that history must be preserved in order to serve future generations, just as Roman history served his own generation.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the correspondence between Adams and Rush is their debate about the merits of classical education. In Rush’s opinion, "were every Greek and Latin book (the New Testament excepted) consumed in a bonfire, the world would be the wiser and better for it." Rush believed that education of young men was too much slanted in favor of the classics, an ornamental and frivolous concern, when subjects such as theology and history would prove more useful. Though he was against emphasizing the classics in school, Rush did have "great respect for them as the basis of thought for educated men." Such an argument went against everything that John Adams had come to know and love about the classics, and he spent a great deal of time arguing this particular point with his friend. "I do most cordially hate you for writing against Latin, Greek, and Hebrew," Adams wrote to Rush on September 16, 1810. "I never will forgive you until you repent, retract, and reform." This ongoing debate between these two brilliant men brought out some of John’s most passionate writings in favor of the classics. Clearly, John saw the classics as imperative in a young democratic society that was in desperate need of republican role models. John believed that the American Revolution itself "was responsible for turning men’s thoughts again to the classics and dispelling the ignorance of centuries. Would we dare minimize this heritage of our Revolution?" In response to Rush’s desire to rid the country of classical education, John wrote,

My friend, you will labor in vain. As the love of science and taste for fine arts increases in the world, the admiration of Greek and Roman science and literature will increase. Both are increasing very fast. Your labors will be as useless as those of Tom Paine against the Bible, which are already fallen dead and almost forgotten . . . John believed that the American Revolution "turned the thoughts and studies of men" to antiquity because in Greek and Roman history, patriotic role models such as Cato and Cicero could be discovered and admired, and "their language, their antiquities, their forms of government" could be copied.

The relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson remains one of the most dynamic in American history. Their roles as political and legislative leaders introduced fierce competition and animosity into their lifelong friendship, and the record of their extensive correspondence speaks to the fascinating nature of their relationship. Because the classics were so much on the minds of eighteenth and nineteenth century Americans, they were not absent from the Adams-Jefferson correspondence. Jefferson and Adams also engaged in a debate over the merits of classical education, though it did not quite reach the intensity of John’s debate with Benjamin Rush. On July 5, 1814, Jefferson wrote to his friend:

When sobered by experience I hope our successors will turn their attention to the advantages of education. I mean of education on the broad scale, and not that of the petty academies, as they call themselves . . . where one or two men, possessing Latin, and sometimes Greek, a knowledge of the globes, and the first six books of Euclid, imagine and communicate this as the sum of science. Clearly, Jefferson sees the classics as a limited source of knowledge, and those learned in the classics often mistakenly believe that their education is sufficient, that antiquity combined with a few other subjects is "the sum of science." This is how John interpreted Jefferson’s letter, and on July 16 he responded, referring to the waning of the classics in education as "the greatest Grief of my heart, and the greatest Affliction of my Life!" Discussing the pertinent subjects in schools, John said "Classicks, in spight of our Friend Rush, I must think indispensable." John’s letters reveal him to be a passionate, unwavering supporter of classical education in America.

Close attention to John’s personal papers reveals his admiration for one particular Roman lawyer, writer and orator—Cicero. In fact, according to historian James Michael Farrell, "so extraordinary was Cicero’s historical reputation, so brilliant was his character, so extensive was his fame, that Adams made a conscious effort to model his own public life after Cicero’s glorious career." Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in 106 B.C., educated in Rome, and by 70 B.C. had become one of Rome’s leading attorneys prospering politicians. Considered the greatest Roman orator, his morals and values were unshakeable: "As a politician his notable quality was his consistent refusal to compromise; as a statesman his ideals were more honourable and unselfish than those of his contemporaries." Cicero was known for defending men in dire situations, often times with tremendous personal and political risk. As a man who held himself to high moral standards in a very public forum, Cicero provided a model for John Adams, a classical hero who represented patriotism, steadfastness and morality in an unstable political environment. Cicero (often referred to in John’s diaries as "Tullius" or "Tully") clearly had an impact on John from his days at Harvard, when he wrote in his diary,

Yesterday and to day I have read loud, Tullius 4 Orations against Cataline. The Sweetness and Grandeur of his sounds, and the Harmony of his Numbers give Pleasure enough to reward the Reading if one understood none of his meaning. Besides I find it a noble Exercise. It exercises my Lungs, raises my Spirits, opens my Porr[s], quickens the Circulations, and contributes much to health. Interestingly, John felt such affection for Cicero and such respect for his works that it seemed to have a physical effect on him. This passionate admiration for Cicero was to follow John long after he left Harvard Yard, throughout his legal and political career, in which Cicero had a direct influence.

As he began the practice of law, "A Field in which Demosthenes, Cicero, and others of immortal Fame have exulted before me!", John Adams delved deeper into his studies of Cicero, reading specific cases and making comments in his diary about Cicero’s methods and techniques. In 1758, John wrote,

Tully, in that Peroration [in his defense of Milo], expresses the Passions of his own Mind, his Love, his Gratitude, his Grief and fear, and at the same time moves the Passions of the Judges, the Centurions and soldiers by appealing to them . . . The power with which Cicero defended his clients struck a chord with John, who seemingly attempted to express the same passion in his own work. Over sixty years later, after achieving the highest of political goals and garnering the respect of his colleagues and countrymen, John still looked to Cicero as a role model. In a letter to Elihu Marshall, dated March 7, 1820, he wrote, "I can read Cicero de Senectute (an essay on aging), because I have read him for almost seventy years, and seem to have him almost by heart." Farrell believes that throughout his life, John Adams hoped to attain the kind of fame that Cicero had achieved. "Doubtless he thought the extraordinary circumstances of his own time called for a modern-day Cicero," Farrell writes. " ‘Why not John Adams?’ he might have wondered." Cicero’s influence on John Adams can be seen in both the Boston Massacre trial and his "Novanglus" essays, two important pinnacles of John’s career.

On the night of March 5, 1770, a street scuffle between a squad of British soldiers stationed in Boston and an angry mob of civilians resulted in the deaths of five members of the mob. Because American history paints John Adams as a consummate "Son of Liberty," it is often forgotten that he successfully defended the soldiers responsible for the shooting, and he did so, according to Farrell, by looking to Cicero. Farrell poses two important questions surrounding the case: 1) why did John take on the defense of the British soldiers? and 2) how did he resolve the precarious conflict between his own political beliefs, which stood firmly on the side of the radical Whigs, and his belief that the soldiers should rightfully be acquitted? Each of these can be answered by paralleling two important cases of Cicero’s—his defense of Sextus Roscius, cited in De Officiis, and Pro Milone, his defense of Titus Annius Milo—to the Boston Massacre trial.

The answer to the first question can be found in this statement, made by John in his Autobiography: "Council ought to be the very last thing that an accused Person should want in a free Country." There is no doubt that John believed in his decision to defend the soldiers, calling it "one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country." John’s position on this trial did not differ from that of Cicero in his defenses of Roscius and Milo. In each of these cases, Cicero defended unpopular men because he believed they were innocent of the crimes of which they were accused. In 80 B.C., Roscius was falsely accused of murdering his father, but most attorneys refused to take on his defense because doing so might mean offending the dictator Cornelius Sulla, whose associates were prosecuting the case. When Cicero stepped forward, however, he "successfully defended Roscius and attacked the prosecution without openly offending Sulla," which is exactly what John hoped to do in his defense of the British Soldiers.

There are some important parallels between Cicero’s defense of Roscius and John Adams’ final address in defense of the British soldiers, and Farrell suggests that the parallels were a deliberate attempt on John’s part to imitate Cicero. Farrell points out that "Adams had internalized Cicero’s legal ethic as he discovered it in De Oratore and especially De Officiis," providing a template from which John could work on the Boston Massacre trial. In Cicero, John found a model for emulation, a brilliant legal mind who had already accomplished the impossible and could direct John in the Boston Massacre trials.

Because the British soldiers had, indeed, shot the five victims in front of multiple witnesses, their case became one of self-defense. John had to convince the jury that the soldiers felt threatened by the mob that attacked them with stones and snowballs, and prove that they took action to protect themselves. In this way, the Boston Massacre case was similar to Pro Milone, in which Milo killed Clodius, a Roman gang leader, after a street fight. In his defense of Milo, Cicero had to establish the principle of self-defense, "because the jury, in Cicero’s mind, was inclined to believe that all murder required punishment." In order to do this, he cited examples from Roman law and legal history in which homicide was justifiable, making them analogous with the encounter between his client and Clodius.

In those analogies, the person killed was somehow criminal or vicious, and the person who did the killing was justified by law, circumstance, or decency. Those killed were ‘criminals,’ ‘thieves,’ ‘indecent assailants,’ ‘assassins and brigands.’ Those who killed were the state, the law, and an ‘upright youth.’ Cicero wanted the jury to see this case as one of justifiable homicide rather than simply self-defense. Milo, an upstanding politician who found himself in a dangerous situation, killed Clodius, an evil criminal.

John Adams followed the same path as Cicero by setting out to prove that "every instance of one man’s killing another, is not a crime." He formed his analogies from examples in British law and hypothetical collective experience. The execution of a man sentenced to death does not make the official who killed him a murderer, for example. A man also has the right, said John, to kill a potential robber threatening to steal his money. These analogies, like Cicero’s, portrayed the victim of the murder as a criminal, and the killer as an authority figure, such as a sheriff, or an ordinary man, much like the members of the jury. Thus, John proved that not only is self-defense a reason for homicide, but there are many instances in which the murderer is "right" for other, character-based reasons.

Throughout his speech, John developed three basic lines of argument that follow from Cicero’s De Inventione, a work that outlines basic strategies for forensic arguments, or public, rhetorical addresses often delivered in a courtroom setting. According to Cicero, in any criminal case,

‘all propositions are supported in argument by attributes of persons or of actions.’ By ‘attributes,’ Cicero meant those personal qualities of agents or those inherent qualities of events which, in various ways, contribute to our knowledge of the character of the person or event . . . In addition, Cicero wrote, ‘suspicions may be derived’ from ‘the persons and the act taken together.’ In order to show that the soldiers acted in self-defense by killing the five civilians, John used Cicero’s method of argumentation. First, he used the attributes of action to describe the mob and prove that the soldiers’ lives were in danger. For instance, he systematically attacked Crispus Attucks, perhaps the massacre’s most legendary victim, by portraying him as someone who looked terrifying, a madman who spearheaded the entire attack. Repeating his name throughout portions of his speech, John probably hoped the jury would make the connection between Attucks and the word "attacks," a common rhetorical strategy. Second, he used the attributes of persons to prove that the soldiers’ simply responded to the threatening mob, which was responsible for the soldiers’ actions and thus for the deaths that resulted. Third, he combined the attributes of action and person to show "that the massacre, as an event, had attributes which were consistent with the personal attributes of the mob." By arguing that the soldiers were a legal assembly, whereas the mob was not, John created a disjunction similar the one in Pro Milone, in which Cicero pointed out that Clodius had planned to ambush Milo, who was basically minding his own business. Through this disjunction, John was successfully able to make these arguments clear to the jury.

After the initial consideration of getting the soldiers acquitted, John had to figure out how to condemn the actions of the civilian mob without condemning the city of Boston and the entire radical movement, of which he was a part. In order to do this, he turned once again to Cicero’s Pro Sexto Roscio, in which Cicero had to be careful not to offend Sulla while defending Roscius. He created a persona for his client—"the innocent Roscius came to represent the cherished Roman ideal of the farmer-citizen." Thus, Roscius became a person with whom the jury could identify and sympathize, perhaps even someone they could admire. Against this, Cicero characterized Titus Roscius and Chrysogonus, Sextus Roscius’ accusers. "These men were powerful . . . because of their connections with Sulla," but "they had subverted Sulla’s administration by their disdain for law and justice." In this line of defense, Cicero divorced the actions of Roscius’ accusers from Sulla, enabling the jury to acquit Roscius without offending Sulla. Similarly, in the Boston Massacre case, John "had to convince the jury to find his clients innocent on the merits of the case without the jury believing they were making a political statement either for or against the community’s political leaders." Also, offending the Sons of Liberty would have jeopardized John’s promising political future, as risk he wished to avoid at all costs. To accomplish these difficult tasks, John adopted a strategy much like Cicero’s, beginning with his description of the prestigious tradition of English law in his closing oration. Then, just as Cicero compared Roscius with the ideal farmer-citizen persona, John identified the soldiers as the personification of traditional English law. As such, they were carrying out their duties, whereas the mob "paid no heed to reason or law and, as a result, endangered the society itself." Yet John was careful to differentiate between this careless mob and the citizens of Boston and the Sons of Liberty, by describing them as outsiders "whose thoughtless destructive enterprises could not be ascribed to ‘the good people of the town.’" Just as Cicero had done in Pro Sexto Roscio, John managed to successfully defend his clients without offending his political allies or making a political statement, by separating the actions of the offending party from the citizens and politicians with whom he was associated.

Cicero’s vast influence upon John Adams is also evident in another aspect of John’s work—his writing. Upon his return from the Continental Congress and Massachusetts’ First Provincial Congress in December 1774, John Adams discovered in the Boston Gazette the writings of "Massachusettensis," a Tory sympathizer who was determined "to keep Up the Spirits of their Party, to depress ours," and "to spread intimidation" among the Whigs. Though John believed until a few years before his death that Massachusettensis was Jonathan Sewall, the letters were actually written by Taunton lawyer Daniel Leonard. Both of these men were two of "the most intimate Friends I ever had in my Life" who had been "Seduced from my Bosom" by British Governor Thomas Hutchinson and the Tory movement. Distressed that no one had yet responded to these discouraging letters, John wrote his own responses from January to April of 1775, which were published in the Boston Gazette under the pseudonym "Novanglus." In his elaborate tale of the Tory leadership’s conspiracy to illegally tax Massachusetts’ citizens and infringe upon their natural rights, John mirrors the conspiracy rhetoric employed by Cicero in his famous orations against Catiline.

In 63 B.C. Catiline, "a discontented patrician from a noble family, burdened with heavy debt and unable to secure political power through legitimate means," gathered a group of rebels to plot an attempt to take over Rome. Part of this treacherous plan included the assassination of Cicero, the Roman consul. Learning of the plot ahead of time, Cicero delivered what is considered to be the most famous oratorical performance in history, successfully thwarting Catiline’s conspiracy. According to Farrell, this "most famous classical paradigm of conspiracy" provided the model for John’s "Novanglus" essays. In his attack on the Tory junto—including Hutchinson, Francis Bernard, Andrew Oliver and Peter Oliver—John parallels the events in the British-American conflict with those in the Catilinarian conspiracy, with which he was very familiar. "Adams saw his own struggle against Thomas Hutchinson in terms of Cicero’s battle with Catiline," says historian Stephen Botien. Thus, it makes sense that John would emulate Cicero’s conspiracy rhetoric in his own "Novanglus" letters.

John developed a "perspective on conspiracy and a vocabulary of guilt, darkness, desperation, pestilence, and disease with which he revealed and opposed the intrigues of the Tories" from Cicero’s orations against Catiline. Cicero described Catiline and his co-conspirators as an enormous threat to Roman citizens, claiming that the rebels were planning "to fire the city, to massacre the Senate," while John claimed that the Tory junto would make the colonists "the most abject sort of slaves to the worst sort of masters." In this manner, John attempted to frighten the citizens of Boston into believing his conspiracy theory, just as Cicero had centuries before. In another important parallel, John uses the disease metaphor that Cicero used to describe the Catilinarian conspiracy and its probable effects on the people and government of Rome. The installment dated February 6, 1775 reads

When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. This powerful rhetoric was used by John, as by Cicero, to encourage the people to rise against the tyranny that he perceived in the Tory leadership.

The similarities between the language that Cicero used and that used by John are uncanny, as John even repeated some key phrases that appeared in the Catilinarian orations. Cicero commented on the "fireballs and torches" of the Catilinarian army, and John spoke of the "fire and sword" of the colonists in defending their country and rights. In another parallel, John Adams used images of light and truth to describe the heroism of himself and his fellow Whigs, and images of darkness and deception were used to describe the Tories. "This dialectic of light and dark, hidden and exposed, ran as a constant theme in both the Catilinarian orations and the ‘Novanglus’ letters and created a heroic persona for each rhetor," writes Farrell. Cicero wrote of Catiline, "neither the obscurity of night can conceal thy traitorous assemblies, nor the walls of a private house prevent the voice of they treason from reaching our ears." In the "Novanglus" essays, John announced "my intention, of pursuing the tories, through all their dark intrigues, and wicked machinations." This language of darkness, light, secrecy and honesty leads to another parallel between these two rhetoricians—the theme of guilt which permeates their essays. Cicero wrote of one of the conspirators, who was "confounded or infatuated rather by the sense of his guilt," just as Catiline himself was "struck dumb by self-conviction." John praised the power of guilt, which he believed would bring down the oppressive Tory junto. In his February 13, 1775 installment, John wrote:

There is not in human nature a more wonderful phenomenon . . . than the shiftings, turnings, windings and evasions of a guilty conscience. Such is our unalterable moral constitution, that an internal inclination to do wrong, is criminal; and a wicked thought, stains the mind with guilt, and makes it tingle with pain. Both Cicero and John Adams were so convinced of their own righteousness in the cause of freedom that they were certain that their enemies would fall to the sufferings of guilt. The parallels between Cicero’s orations against Catiline and John’s "Novanglus" essays continue throughout John’s early letters, and they exemplify the manner in which John Adams emulated Cicero in all aspects of his work and thought.

John Adams was typical of his generation of educated American men, in that the classics influenced both the personal and public aspects of his life to an astonishing degree. This enormous influence was a result of John’s classical education, as well as of the times he lived in. During the Revolution, when American colonists were seeking models of patriotism who struggled to secure their own freedom, they looked to the leaders and heroes of ancient Rome and Greece, learning from the stories of such great men as Cato and Cicero to guide their own quest for democracy. It is no surprise that John Adams was so enamored of antiquity, and he was not an unusual case in his day.