They are building a monument to John Adams.

It will be with the other presidential monuments in D.C.–near Jefferson's, fittingly enough. I don't know any more about it than that–nothing about the time frame or the design. If I were designing it, I would make it not only close to the Jefferson Memorial, but visible from it. And I would build it along utterly different lines from the stark simplicity of Washington's monument and the fluid elegance of Jefferson's. It should be short and squat, maybe a little ugly. Perhaps made from red New England brick, to contrast all that white marble. Visitors should leave it feeling energized–even agitated–rather than calmed.

It's very unlikely that anyone would take my advice, even if I were in a position to offer it. Monuments aren't supposed to look like that, after all. No matter. I'm pleased enough that they're building one for Adams, period.

John Adams is my favorite among the players of the American Revolution, in part because until recently his contributions have been minimized, ignored, or misunderstood. There are reasons for this. Adams' contributions were behind the scenes, and blended with the efforts of others: he did not command troops, like Washington, or pen a document of historical significance, like Jefferson. And he was nobody's idea of a hero. Short-tempered, irritable, rude, irascible to the point of prompting rumors of mental instability, Adams did not and does not embody the calm, benevolent, and wise "founding father" image. He was still living when that particular mythos began to take shape, and he knew at the time he was not a part of it. "Monuments will never be built to me," he wrote in one of his bitter moods. I'm pleased he was wrong.

The recent surge in Adams interest and Adams popularity may be due to David McCullough's excellent biography. It came out around the same time as Joseph Ellis' Founding Brothers, a book of essays about the Revolution's key figures. McCullough's biography and two of Ellis' essays deal with Adams in an even-handed manner, and the Adams that emerges (although undeniably fallible, human, and at time foolish) prompts respect rather than ridicule or dismissal.

I was an Adams fan before the recent surge in popularity. I would not have wanted to work for him, work with him, or live in his house, but I would have enjoyed being his correspondent. If his faults and irritating mannerisms were many, his virtues were intertwined with them. If he was obnoxious, tactless, prone to alienating his allies and offending his friends, and so hyperactive (possibly due to hyperthyroidism) as to be maddening, he was also honest, forthright, honorable once his word was given (which is more than can be said for his vice-president), passionate about his convictions, and courageous in pursuing them. There are worse things to build monuments to.

And maybe we're building a monument to something bigger, as well. Both the McCullough biography and Founding Brothers make, in a dignified manner, the point that the ridiculous-but-delightful musical 1776 made some time ago. That life is messy.

In elementary school, they told us that the Founding Fathers were Great Men. They sat down in Philadelphia in 1776 with a mandate from God, and calmly and certainly wrote the Declaration of Independence. Then they fought the British, and then they founded the first democracy ever, and then independence and democracy spread to the rest of the world. They knew what they were doing. They were carried by a sure and steady tide.

It was a mythos that became popular while Adams was still alive, and one he loathed. 1776 puts the following words into his mouth:

I'll not be in the history books. Only Franklin. Franklin did this, and Franklin did that, and Franklin did some other damn thing. Franklin smote the ground, and out sprang General Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Then Franklin electrified him with that miraculous lightning-rod of his, and the three of them–Franklin, Washington, and the horse–conducted the entire War for Independence all by themselves.

It's a great speech. What makes it even better is that John Adams really did write almost exactly that, in a 1790 letter to Benjamin Rush: "The History of our Revolution will be one continued lye [sic] from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electric rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. Then Franklin electrified him... and thence forward those two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislations, and War." 1776 added the horse, for the humor value, but the original words were Adams'.

Ellis writes,

As Adams remembered it... 'all the great critical questions about men and measure from 1774 to 1778' were desperately contested and highly problematic occasions, usually 'decided by the vote of a single state, and that vote was often decided by a single individual.' Nothing was clear, inevitable, or even comprehensible to the soldiers in the field at Saratoga or the statesmen in the corridors at Philadelphia: 'It was patched and piebald policy then, as it is now, ever was, and ever will be, world without end.' The real drama of the American Revolution... was its inherent messiness.

There was nothing certain in what those "great men" did in Philadelphia. It was improvised, patched together, made up from one moment to the next, with every outcome uncertain until it was safely past.

And of course it was! All history is like this! It is a much different thing to be a part of it than it is to read it. This is a tough lesson for someone like me–a student of literature and social history. I am trained to see patterns, grand designs made of a hundred thousand details, shimmering in one complete tapestry. Even if I do not know the end of a story, I know that it has an end, and that every moment adds one more detail to that end. I deal in finished products.

It's much different, of course, when you're weaving the tapestry you're standing in. I understood that intellectually the first time I watched 1776, sometime in the summer of 2000. I didn't get it viscerally until September of the following year.

On September 11, 2001, I was working in Cambridge, within sight of the Charles River, the Hancock Building, and the Prudential Tower. I came into work to find people clustered around a media feed on somebody's computer. I walked past them, then walked back. "Did I miss something?" I had.

For me, the defining moment of that day came at about 10:30 that morning. When the Sears Tower had been evacuated, Boston's financial district had been evacuated, all aircraft had been ordered to land, and five were unaccounted for.

We sat in an office within sight of the Prudential Tower, and began to reckon it out. Which five cities not yet hit would be the likely targets? Chicago. Los Angeles. San Francisco. Philadelphia? One of the larger cities in Texas? And us. We decided that Boston was on the list, but not high on it. We thought about going home, but a few subway stops further from the river made little difference, and who knew if the subways were safe? We stayed around the media feed and Matt Ford's radio, and waited.

I know three small children who have no meaningful memory of 9/11. Someday, they will learn about it history class. At the end of the year, lumped in with the Eighties and the Gulf War, on a sweltering hot June day with cicadas humming outside and summer vacation just around the corner. And I will never be able to convey to them, ever, what it was like at about 10:30 that morning, before we knew how the day would end.

In September of 1776, with the revolution in full swing and its prospects appearing bleak, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were chosen to meet with Lord Richard Howe. Howe promised pardons for the members of Congress if the colonists would surrender–but he eyed Adams sadly as he said it. John Adams was not one of those to whom clemency would be granted. Should the colonies sue for peace–then or later–he was to hang.

On that day, Schroedinger's cat was still firmly in the box. Presidency and honor, or a rope and a tree limb? Both were still possible.

One was significantly more possible than the other. There were those who fled to Canada or pledged their loyalty to England not because they were against the colonists' cause–but because they did not think it could be won. These men acted assuming the colonies would fail. It was a reasonable assumption. A bunch of rag-tag rebels went up against the army and navy of the largest empire on earth at that time. Any sensible person would have gone to Canada. No one wagering would have bet on the colonies.

The thing is that John Adams did. A sensible man in his position would have looked at the news from the front, noted that he was one of the first on the list to be hanged, and moved his wife and small children somewhere less central than right outside Boston. He would have stopped agitating, stopped thrusting himself into the spotlight, stopped railing against the conservatives of the Congress. He would have yielded to practicality.

Instead, he acted as though he had no doubt. As though his cause could not fail.

And it did not.

Because of him? Well, that's stretching it a bit. It succeeded because of the efforts of many, and the errors of a few. History is an intersection of personalities and chances, and there are many reasons the river flows in the direction it does. But the victory is partly because of him–the man whose "sense of urgency", as McCullough phrases it, "made the Declaration of Independence happen when it did." It is partly because of the others like him–the others who did not yield to practicality.

For logical reasons–they are the ones who joined the Colonial Army, who provided the arms, who went abroad to raise support, who fed the soldiers. And for less logical reasons as well–many theories and philosophies suggest that we create the universe we live it. Belief is a powerful motivator towards health and personal success. Couldn't belief in the impractical have created a universe in which the Revolution could succeed?

There are some life lessons embedded in the John Adams story (among them, If they managed a war and a country by making it up as they went along, maybe it's okay that I manage my professional life the same way.) And more generally, more importantly– Perhaps revolutions are won by those who have no doubt. Perhaps such intense belief changes the odds, just a little. Perhaps the most important thing you can do is walk forward confidently, and act as though you cannot fail. Because then you are less likely to.

There are worse things to build monuments to.

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