Very few people have ever heard of Charles Adams. It is almost shocking to discover that this entirely forgotten man was a part of the illustrious family of John and Abigail Adams. Charles was just as bright as any of his siblings. Why, then, was Charles left behind? Charles Adams’s life was covered up. Though it started out with promise, Charles’s life ended in scandal and pain, and his shining, celebrated family was not about to let him be a stain on them. 

Charles was born on his family’s farm in Braintree, Massachusetts, on May twenty-ninth of 1770.¹ Charles’s began life like any of his siblings, and when he was nine years old him and his older brother John Quincey were given the opportunity to travel to France with their father.² It is somewhere on this trip, however, while he was still a boy, that a pattern emerges of Charles not seeming to fit with his family. Charles was sent home two years into the trip. His father stayed in Amsterdam, and so did John Quincey. Charles undertook the voyage across the Atlantic alone.³ 

Just a few years after arriving back in America, Charles entered Harvard.⁴ Charles studied to be a lawyer, like his two brothers would once they joined him there. But it became clear that Charles was not like his brothers. Charles’s disciplinary record from Harvard is longer than that of Thomas and John Quincey put together. He missed reciting. Eleven times. He missed prayer. Nine times. He was also late for prayer, missed lectures, was fined for extensive damage to Harvard property, was fined for miscellaneous bad behavior and was punished for sneaking off to a tavern.⁵ Though it is not clear where the story came from, there is even a Harvard legend that it was Charles who began the yearly tradition of running naked across Harvard Yard.⁶ In just a few years Charles had gone from John Adams’s beloved little boy, who was eager to be everything his parents wanted him to be, to a wild rebel John and Abigail struggled to control.⁷ 

Controlling their children was a subject John and Abigail Adams took very seriously. They dictated every step of their children’s lives, and they could make their children obey these dictates. Love and approval were something the Adams children had to earn. If they followed their parents instructions, life could go very well for them. If they stepped out of line, John and Abigail were all too adept at wordlessly conveying disapproval and shame.⁸ John Quincey was good at winning his parents’ praise, and so they played him off of the others, making it clear that Thomas and Charles should follow his example. After Charles’s wild years at Harvard, it was time for him to step back in line. 

Charles actually wanted to follow the plan his parents made for him. Charles never resisted the path they envisioned; he really did enjoy studying law.⁹ After graduation Charles does not seem to have attended any more wild parties, or been fined for any more property damage. Charles had calmed down. But Charles’s definition of a calm life was not what his family thought it should be. In May of 1789, John Quincey received a letter from his cousin William Cranch informing him of something Charles had done. What exactly the letter said is lost to history, but whatever it said alarmed John Quincey. He immediately dropped everything and traveled to Haverhill to speak to Charles. John Quincey explained in his response to Cranch that he had previously written a letter to Charles about whatever it was Charles was doing, and that after receiving Cranch’s letter he “conversed with [Charles] at Haverhill upon the subject in such a manner as must I think lead him to be more cautious.” What could Charles have been doing that John Quincey had to drop everything to go and talk to him about? And why did he have to tell Charles to be more “cautious”? If Charles had been partying like he had at Harvard, surely John Quincey would have told him to be more temperate, more dignified, more responsible, but cautious? That Charles’s action caused John Quincey to tell him to be more “cautious” suggests that either he felt what Charles was doing could prove dangerous for Charles, or that there could be consequences if anyone else found out. John Quincey ends this portion of his letter to Cranch by telling him “However I depend much more upon the alteration which is soon to take place in his situation, than upon any advice or counsel, that I can ever give him. I am well convinced that if any thing [sic] can keep him within the limits of regularity, it will be his knowlege of my fathers being [near him and the?] fear of being discovered by him.”⁹

In July, John Adams was indeed reunited with Charles, and he began to arrange his son’s legal career. Adams wrote to an acquaintance, Alexander Hamilton, and asked if Charles could work as a clerk in Hamilton’s law office.¹⁰ Hamilton accepted Charles, and Charles was back on the track his parents had laid for him. This would not last long. While working in Hamilton’s office, Charles met John W. Mulligan. Mulligan was the son of Hamilton’s longtime friend Hercules Mulligan, and so was a friend of the Hamilton family. Having just finished law school himself, Mulligan was also working as a clerk. The two became close, and at some point in the years that followed, they moved in together.¹¹ Charles’s parents did not approve. 

Charles’s relationship with Mulligan bothered his parents, particularly his father. The word homophobia is unusually accurate when applied to John Adams, because Adams’s dislike of homosexuality really was almost a fear. He viewed homosexuality as a moral defect, and saw it as one of the first symptoms that morality in general was beginning to decay.¹² Adams was therefore vigilant for signs of homosexuality, and when he detected it, wanted it stamped out. Later, during the reign of Napoleon, Adams would tell a friend that Napoleon “was made…to inflict ten thousand Lashes on the back of Europe, as a divine Punishment Vengeance for the Atheism Infidelity, Fornications Adulteries Incests, and Sodomies.”¹³ Abigail’s homophobia was less intense, and could be termed casual. Though she did not go on anti-gay rants, her assumption that all gay men were stylish and bubbly slipped into her everday speech, such as when she said of her husband’s clumsiness at parties “…to be a Gallant a man must have a little of the Fop,” or when she told her son “I do not wish a Senator to dress like a Beau, but I want him to conform so far to the fashion, as not to incur the Character of Singularity.”¹⁴⁻¹⁵ 

When John became suspicious of his son’s closeness with another male, he wanted it stamped out too, but Charles, he believed, could be put right much more easily than Europe. John simply made use of his usual tools: it became clear to Charles that his parents did not approve of what was going on, that Charles ought to be ashamed of his behavior, and that he could make everything right by removing the cause of their annoyance.

John and Abigail were not going to get their way this time. Charles refused to give up Mulligan. Instead the two lovers turned to their now former employer, Hamilton, who put them in touch with Baron von Steuben. Charles and Mulligan moved in with Steuben and became the newest members of his self-chosen family.¹⁶ Adams must have been annoyed that Charles and Mulligan were still living together, but he did not seem to dislike Steuben. Adams often ended his letters to Charles during this time with well wishes for Steuben, and once when discussing New York politics asked Charles “What says the Wise Baron to all of this?”¹⁷ If Abigail had a problem with Steuben, she never spoke of it, and to say nothing about a person she did not like would be out of character for Abigail Adams. In fact, Charles’s brother-in-law William Smith (the husband of his sister Nabby) had been acquainted with Steuben during the war, and Nabby and William named their son William Steuben Smith.¹⁸

Charles and Mulligan lived together with Steuben for about a year, between January of 1793 and May of 1794.¹⁹ Near the end of this time, however, Charles began to live on his own in New York City again, only visiting occasionally.²⁰ Charles had to establish his legal practice. Not long after Charles passed his bar exam, Steuben moved upstate. Mulligan chose to move with him as his personal secretary, but Charles remained in the city.²¹ 

Charles’s decision to remain in the city was not an attempt to distance himself from his sexuality. Charles became a member of a literary club called the Friendly Club. Dedicated to deep philosophical discussions of literature and politics, the Friendly Club was a close knit, freeing environment that did nothing to impede flirtatious interactions between its members, and many of the men (perhaps even most of them) were LGBT+. Charles also continued to spend time with Mulligan when he was able.²² 

Then, in September 1795, Charles married Sarah “Sally” Smith, Nabby’s sister-in-law.²³  As there is no evidence to indicate that they had become engaged, it is believed that Charles and Sally eloped before telling either of their families. Charles and Sally had been connected before. Prior to establishing his career as a lawyer Charles had courted Sally briefly, something that had alarmed Charles’s parents.²⁴ Charles was reprimanded for courting before he was ready to support a family, and his father insisted that they break up. Charles told his father that he would conduct his relationship with Sally how he wanted, but their relationship did seem to cease for a time.²⁵ In both courtship and marriage Charles used his relationship with Sally as a rebellion against his parents. Charles knew he had no choice about whether or not to marry, so he found a way to do it on his terms, in a way that did not feel like he was just doing it to please his parents. It is possible that he loved Sally, but the fact that in the interval between their courtship and their marriage Charles had a long and apparently intense relationship with Mulligan calls this into question, as does the course that their marriage was to take. 

For the next couple of years, Charles life seemed to stay on the course intended for it. Charles’s law practice grew, and he became an intimate observer of New York politics. His first daughter, named Susanna, was born August eight of 1796.²⁶ His second daughter, Abigail, was born September eight of 1798.²⁷ Though he was still no John Quincey, everything in Charles’s seemed to be going exactly as his parents had envisioned it. 

In 1799, it all fell apart. In October of that year, John Adams stopped on his way from his home to the nation’s capital to see his daughter Nabby.²⁸ Adams was shocked to find Charles’s wife and daughters living there as well. Charles was not with his family. It has been widely assumed Charles abandoned his family, but the murky records of the situation could just as easily support Sally having taken the children and left Charles. Adams wrote to Abigail “Sally opened her Mind to me for the first time. I pitied her, I grieved, I mourned but could do no more. a Madman possessed of the Devil can alone express or represent—. I renounce him.—K[ing] Davids Absalom had some ambition and some Enterprize. Mine is a mere Rake, Buck, Blood & Beast.”²⁹ Rake was the male equivalent of whore at the time, though perhaps without the implication of prostitution.³⁰ Buck referred to a stylish, effeminate, undisciplined young man.³¹ Beast meant largely the same thing it would mean to negatively call someone a beast today.³² What it meant at the time to call someone “blood” is unclear, though possibly Adams meant that the only connection he now acknowledged with Charles was a biological one. Adams never saw or corresponded with his son again.

This massive rupture between John and Charles seems to come from nowhere. Knowing this all came to a head in October, the logical thought is to look back at their correspondence in the months preceding. Throughout Charles’s adult life, correspondence between Charles and his father was constant: as soon as one received a letter from the other, they wrote and sent a response, especially in the calmer years of Charles’s life. But in February of the year that John was to disown Charles, Charles’s letters stop. Not just his letters to his father, either: Charles’s February nineteenth letter to his father is the last known letter Charles wrote to anyone.³³ It is impossible that Charles’s life suddenly came apart in the first two weeks of October; clearly the seemingly perfect course of Charles’s life since his marriage was not what it appeared to be. As his mother once said, Charles was “not at peace with himself.”³⁴ Charles had been living a tormented double life, torn between the world in which men met each other through the Friendly Club and he could spend time alone with LGBT+ men including John Mulligan, and the world in which he could fulfill his potential only by being a good husband, a good father, and a good son. It is possible that the disaster of October was the result of Charles’s inability to keep the two worlds separate anymore, or his own collapse from trying.

Just as interesting as the lead up to October is the aftermath. In Abigail’s letters to her cousin Mary Cranch, her main confidant, Abigail would delicately allude to Charles’s problems as having been caused by Charles being an alcoholic.³⁵ Charles may have been an alcoholic: the subject of Charles’s alcoholism seems like too much of a regret to Abigail to just have been a cover for what was really going on, and Charles was punished for alcohol use in his Harvard days. Because of this, many historians have said that Charles’s drinking was the reason his parents were angry with him. Yet drinking is not one of the things Adams berated Charles for in the letter to Abigail where he disowned his son. I explained the meanings of rake, buck, blood and beast. Adams’s other insult was a comparison of Charles to King David’s son Absalom. As researcher Bob Arnebeck explains, “Drunkenness was not one of Absalom’s sins.”³⁷ Absalom’s biggest crime was attempting to overthrow his father, and Adams uses him as the quintessential example of a disobedient son.³⁸ John Adams did believe excessive drinking was a sin, and frequently included “drunks” in lists he made of sinful persons.³⁹ Why then did Adams not mention alcoholism in the letter where he disowned Charles, if that was the main reason he was angry at him?

Additionally, it is a myth that Charles died of cirrhosis of the liver, a condition commonly caused by alcoholism.⁴⁰ In a letter to John Quincey just after Charles’s death, Abigail told him that his brother died of “dropsy of the chest.”⁴¹ Though this is no longer a medical term, it referred to a condition now known as pleurisy.⁴² Pleurisy can be caused by a multitude of respiratory diseases, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and even cancer.⁴³ As Charles’s sister Nabby later died of breast cancer, it is possible this was a genetic disease that ran in the family, and could very well have been the cause of Charles’s pleurisy.⁴⁴⁻⁴⁵ 

The disappearance of all of Charles’s letters from the last two years of his life, the fact that what John and Abigail said to each other is different than what they told others, and the mystery shrouding his true cause of death, all suggest that Charles’s final years were the subject of a small cover up. The same thing had happened when Abigail’s brother William had met his ruin, which actually was the result of alcoholism. The Smith family as well as the Adams family did what they could to erase and forget him.⁴⁶ They did the same with Charles. 

Charles died late on the night of November thirty-first of 1800.⁴⁷ Though he was living on his own, with his children now staying with his mother, his wife and his sister did come to see him frequently in his final days, and his mother visited once, two weeks before his death.⁴⁸ His father remained true to his promise never to see Charles again.⁴⁹

The Adams’s are often remembered as the perfect American family. But at the same time that John and Abigail were forging their son John Quincey into presidential material, they crushed their son Charles with unrelenting homophobia. After Charles’s death, the family did what they could to hide the truth about Charles, and he has been forgotten. Perhaps it would be some consolation to Charles to know that he will not totally fade from the memory of the American people. Some, at least, will remember what he went through, and use him as a window to the past.

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1. John Adams, David McCullough, 68
2. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-children/ “The Adams Children”
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. https://history.mysterystream.net/index.php/2019/09/10/the-adams-brothers-at-harvard-college/ “The Adams Brothers at Harvard”, J.L. Bell
6. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-children/ “The Adams Children”
7. See #6
8. http://bobarnebeck.com/LEnfant.htm#N_32_ “To Tease and Torment”: Two Presidents Confront Suspicions of Sodomy”, Bob Arnebeck
9. John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 1 April 1790
10. John Adams to Alexander Hamilton, 21 July 1789
11. Charles Adams to John Adams, 26 December 1792
12. John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 23 1807
13. John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, 9 March 1807
14. Abigail Smith Adams to William Smith Shaw, 2 February 1799
15. Abigail Smith Adams to John Quincy Adams, 24 March 1806
16. See my post “Baron von Steuben’s Family”
17. John Adams to Charles Adams, 2 March 1794
18. See #6
19. On when Charles began living with Steuben: http://bobarnebeck.com/mulligan.html, on when he stopped living with Steuben: Charles Adams to John Adams, 9 May 1794
20. Charles Adams to Abigail Adams, 22 September 1794
21. See #8
22. Ibid. 
23. Charles Adams to John Adams, 4 October 1795
24. See #8
25. Charles Adams to John Adams, 12 March 1794
26. Charles Adams to Abigail Adams, 8 August 1796
27. Charles Adams to John Adams, 28 October 1798, and 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/69580987/abigail-louisa_smith-johnson

1. John Adams, David McCullough, 529
2. John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 12, 1799
3. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/rake “Rake 2”
4. Beyond the Founders, “The Little Emperor”, Nancy Isenberg, 139
5. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/beast 
6. https://www.founders.archives.gov/?q=%20Author%3A%22Adams%2C%20Charles%22&s=1111211111&r=61
7. See #6
8. Abigail Adams to Mary Cranch October 31, 1799
9. Abigail Smith Adams to John Quincy Adams, 29 January 1801
10. See #21
11. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Absalom “Absalom”
12. John Adams to Benjamin Rush, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsfNG4YXsPI
13. For the myth that Charles died of cirrhosis of the liver, see his Wikipedia page, as well as its source: http://www.firstladies.org/time-line/timeline.aspx?beginning=1800&ending=1800
14. Abigail  Adams to John Quincy Adams, 29 January 1801
15. http://www.doctortreatments.com/Dropsy-of-the-Chest.html “Dropsy of the Chest”
16. https://www.sharecare.com/health/pleurisy-inflammation/what-is-pleurisy, Penn Medicine Answer
17. See #6 for Nabby’s breast cancer
18. On breast cancer causing pleurisy: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/2250349 On breast cancer having genetic factors: https://www.breastcancer.org/risk/factors/genetics
19. See #21
20. John Adams, David McCullough, 555.  Abigail said he died on December 1, and this confusion could be explained if he died very late on the thirtieth. (For her statement that he died on the first, see #41.)
21. For his wife and sister being with him see #41, for his mother visiting two weeks before his death, Abigail Adams to Mary Cranch, 10 November 1800
22. Abigail Adams to Mary Cranch, 10 November 1800