CANTO LXVI

Canto 66 marks a turn in the Adams section: it is sharply divided into two parts, biographical and theoretical. The first part takes up and concludes the thread that Pound had followed in the preceding canto. In canto 65, Pound had left Adams on the threshold of the treaty with Great Britain, which he, together with Benjamin Franklin and John Jay signed on 3 September 1783 in Paris. The treaty marked the end of the American revolutionary war, and the recognition of the United States as an independent country. 

Canto 66 picks up the thread to recount what Adams did next. In October 1783, he moved from France to Britain. This was a long-term stay, but the canto does not tell us that Adams was appointed the first American ambassador to Britain in 1785. His anxieties regarding his contacts at the British court, as well as the alarming news that the Paris Treaty was not respected would have become more understandable if the reader had had this information. Adams was ambassador until 1788 and wrote his three-volume work A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America during this time. 

The canto does mention that Adams was joined in London by Thomas Jefferson in 1786. The most picturesque section of the poem recounts the trip they made together to the great mansions and historical locations near London: Woburn Farm, Stowe, Stratford, Stourbridge, Woodstock, High Wycombe, Pope’s pavilion at Twickenham, Thomson’s seat, and finally, Leasowes, in April 1786. 

From these impressions of rich and beautiful England, the canto suddenly jumps forward ten years, to 1796. During this time of silence, Adams had returned to the U.S. in 1788 and served two terms as vice-president to George Washington. In the summer of 1796, Adams was on his farm, following the progress of presidential elections through the reports of friends and acquaintances. He was elected, with Thomas Jefferson as vice-president. 

The canto does not follow the summer of 1796 with any further events to outline the elections, or Adams’s tenure as second President of the United States. It swerves abruptly from its biographical course to Adams’s dissertation, his articles in the press, instructions to committees, and legal theorizing from his early career. Chronologically speaking, we are returned to 1765, thirty years previously. The dividing line, written in caps, is “WHERETOWARD THE ARGUMENTS HAD BEEN,” which marks the new, more theoretically oriented segment. The canto surveys Adams’s legal and political ideas in his early publications, from 1765 to 1773. For the biographical background of these writings, readers are kindly referred to canto 64, which details Adams’s life during this period.

Roxana Preda, 12 April 2025.

RELATED CANTOS

CANTO XXXI – [Adams and Jefferson in Paris]

CANTO XXXII – [the revolution was in the minds of the people]

CANTO XXXIII – Adams’s political principles