Charles Francis Adams Jr. betrays his legacy
Charles Francis Adams Jr, the great-grandson of founding father John Adams, is a 25 year-old Congressional aide during the election of 1860. In defiance of his family dynasty’s legacy of moderate conservatism, young aristocratic Charlie changes his life on a journey to the hardscrabble western states while assisting a family friend’s campaign tour for the Republican Party. Far away from polite Boston society where he had been nurtured, Charlie sees young people, poor people, and oppressed immigrants demanding progressive changes. Mobs rally around firebrand speakers who demand that the wealthy powerful coastal elites — specifically meaning HIS family — accede to major reform. Chanting “labor over capital,” mobs demand small-farm prairie socialism, free homes for the homeless, and a job guarantee on Federal infrastructure projects. Marking a stark shift of self-perception, Charlie burns the diaries he had kept for ten years and then, one midnight in Minnesota, Charlie joins the Wide Awakes on a march through St. Paul. It would be as if one day, the great-grandson of Donald Trump declared himself a Marxist.