16-05-2025
What John Adams and his family can teach America today, according to this presidential historian
In late March, Kurt Graham gave the Howard R. Driggs Memorial Lecture at Southern Utah University, telling students about his own personal Mount Rushmore, which would feature presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Harry S. Truman and George W. Bush.
'I didn't pick these presidents because I think they're the best presidents we've ever had,' Graham said, adding, 'Although you can make a case for some of them, they're certainly not the worst presidents we ever had.'
He picked them, Graham likes to joke, 'by sheer accident of my career.' He has, at one time or another, been the director of each man's presidential library, a vocation he did not envision when he was studying English as an undergrad at Brigham Young University.
It has been an unexpected journey for the Wyoming native who's crisscrossed the country multiple times for work in service to history, and the Founding Fathers' ideals.
After directing the Church History Museum of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, and then the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, Graham spent nearly a decade in charge of Harry Truman's library in Kansas City, Missouri.
He later went on to serve as the interim director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, Texas, and then, last year, relocated to New England after becoming the founding president of the Adams Presidential Center in Quincy, Massachusetts.
It's a landmark role, stewarding the memory of one America's most influential Founding Fathers, and also that of Adams' son, the sixth president of the United States. The timing could not be better, either, as the work coincides with preparations for the United States' 250th anniversary next year.
'There is nothing like the American founding. The revolution is unlike any other event in the history of the world, because it didn't just change the lines on a map, it changed the whole society. … All of a sudden, 'all men are created equal.' That's insane. That is absurd,' Graham told me. 'If that's not exceptional, what is it?'
Boston traffic is notoriously bad, and Graham twice offered to meet outside of Quincy, the town where John Adams wrote the Massachusetts Constitution and where he lived with his wife, Abigail, in a house they named 'Peace field.'
When I declined, he gave me advice on parking in the dense town center to make the process a little easier. We met for lunch at a Japanese restaurant a block away from the Hancock Adams Common, a promenade linking the town's historical sites and lined with statues of the Founding Fathers.
He is 6 feet, 3 inches tall, and at 58, exudes the presence of an executive or statesman with a distinguished salt-and-pepper gray spreading around his temples. A youthful smile is quick to appear and is quite disarming. But it's his professorial characteristics and his passion for presidential history that are the lasting impressions.
Graham grew up in Cowley, Wyoming, a town with fewer than 900 residents, close to the Montana border. His father was in the Navy, and so the family moved around, but they called Wyoming home. While neither of Graham's parents went to college, they were both smart and made sure their two boys would get a quality education.
'A monarch can rule over a corrupt people, but a republic can't. You can't have a corrupt citizenry and have a virtuous republic.'
Kurt Graham
A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Graham went to Brigham Young University, where after his undergraduate degree, he stayed to do graduate work in American studies. Afterward, he earned a Ph.D. at Brown University, studying under one of the greatest scholars of American history, Gordon Wood.
Wood's focus is on the founders and the Revolutionary War period. He also happens to be the historian referenced in the film 'Good Will Hunting' when the character Matt Damon plays belittles a smug Harvard student in a Cambridge bar, saying, 'You're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about ... the pre-Revolutionary utopia.'
One of the many things Wood is known for is illuminating James Madison's notion of the 'disinterested man.'
In an essay in 'Toward a More Perfect Union: Six Essays on the Constitution,' Wood parsed out the debate between the Federalists, who wanted a larger federal government, and the Anti-Federalists, who were opposed. Madison, a Federalist, struggled with what he took to be petty priorities of the Virginia Legislature, believing that the people needed to elect 'disinterested' men to help govern toward the higher ideals of a democratic government.
'(The founders) called it 'disinterestedness' ... not someone who was uninterested, it was someone who is impartial,' Graham said.
'A republican citizen, a leader, is someone who can rise above the fray and make a decision for the public good even if it's against your own self-interest … it's for the good of the whole society.'
Graham said that the founders banked on that sense of civic decency and virtue in the way they designed the government. 'A monarch can rule over a corrupt people, but a republic can't,' he said. 'You can't have a corrupt citizenry and have a virtuous republic.'
Which is part of the reason why he believes that the Adams Presidential Center is such a timely effort.
'No matter what your persuasion is, no matter what you're thinking, nor whatever candidate you wish you could vote for, the thoughtful, careful, informed approach that the founders took is what's missing,' he said.
'The more we can remind ourselves that we are and want to be like the Adams, the Washingtons, the Jeffersons and Madisons of the world, that is important.'
The Adamses, Graham said, are the only family within the founding generation whose legacy was not tainted by slavery. John and Abigail Adams fully believed that 'all men are created equal,' and John Quincy was so dedicated to abolitionism that he died arguing against slavery on the floor of Congress.
'We're really trying to focus on those values and the motives that the Adams had, because their sense of patriotism, duty and morality led them to public service,' Graham said.
It's a rare opportunity for Graham as the center is being built from the ground up and is the first honoring the Adams family and, as such, is something of a blank canvas. Graham is ushering in a new point of access for scholars and history buffs, and — perhaps most importantly — educators and students of all ages.
'Anyone who loves their country is a patriot. Believe it or not, people who think differently than you, who vote differently than you, who have completely different ideas about the way we should conduct our public policy — they're patriots."
Kurt Graham
The center will remind everyday folks of the Adams family's role in defining the thing that Graham thinks actually makes America exceptional: taking the radical idea of republicanism, which declared that men could govern themselves, and creating out of it an original and functional form of government.
'We've always been proud of the fact that in America we show that we are capable of governing ourselves,' Graham said. 'Will that always be true? I don't think we can take that for granted, and I think that Adams' warnings are incredibly timely.'
'Remember Democracy never lasts long,' wrote John Adams in 1814. 'It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.'
The primary focus of the center, which does not yet have a location, is to both develop and share educational programming — everything from teacher training and youth leadership seminars to school-bound curriculum materials and lecture series. Events have already begun, with some in Massachusetts and more currently being organized. The center will also be the home of the Educating for American Democracy initiative, a consortium dedicated to strengthening and funding civics education.
'We wanted to use (the Adams family's) example of leadership, sacrifice, public service, and citizenship to inspire the next generation,' said retired Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Graham's boss, as the chairman of the Adams Presidential Center board of directors.
'For young people, we really want to help them on their journey toward critical thinking, citizenship and finding a way to serve something greater than themselves, whether it's in public service or just community service.'
Graham's recent lecture in Cedar City was a meditation on the ideals of character, patriotism and public service. He highlighted the character of each man on his personal Rushmore: Bush, ever the problem solver, whose legacy is wrapped up in 9/11 even though his other accomplishments include an international program combatting AIDS; Truman's decisiveness toward Israel, ending a war by any means necessary and desegregating the military; John Quincy Adams and his lifelong diplomacy toward equality and sovereignty (he was the primary author of the Monroe Doctrine); and John Adams' fight for freedom, and the first peaceful transition of power.
Graham defines patriotism in sharp contrast to nationalism. 'Patriotism, by its very definition, is diverse, it's inclusive, nobody has a lock on it. Anyone who loves their country is a patriot,' he said. 'Believe it or not, people who think differently than you, who vote differently than you, who have completely different ideas about the way we should conduct our public policy — they're patriots.'
'If there's a formula here, it's that patriotism plus character equals public service,' Graham said.
That notion of public service and what it takes is important to Dunford, too. The general believes that the Adams Presidential Center can help Americans better understand their role as a citizen.
'Having finished 42 years of active duty in public service, my own view is that from time to time we become a bit complacent about our democracy, we take what we have for granted and we spend a lot of time focusing on the problems of the day,' Dunford said.
'Sometimes we don't look back and reflect on the journey that we're on. We are in pursuit of a more perfect union.'
Graham published his Ph.D. thesis on the first federal judiciary as his first book, 'To Bring Law Home.' (He's currently writing another one, about the 'Jefferson Bible,' a version of the Bible in which Jefferson removed all of the miracles that had been recorded in scripture.)
When he took his first museum-related job at the Buffalo Bill Center, leaving a teaching position at California State University, San Bernardino, it was a risk to leave academia and return to his home state, but he's never regretted the decision, and has had the support of his wife and five children, who range in age from 12 to 30.
This current post feels something like a homecoming. 'Certainly, I identify readily and fully as a Westerner,' he said. But he also feels deeply connected to New England — especially Quincy, Massachusetts, which he refers to as the 'intellectual epicenter of the American Revolution.' (He pronounces Quincy properly, like a local — kwin-ZEE, not kwin-see.)
Since the 2024 election, Graham has avoided broadcast news. Partisanship and polarization make him tense. It's not that he doesn't love his country or have a stake in national issues — he is passionate about local matters and local news. It's just that he thinks there are deeper subjects to consider than what is trending.
'I feel like my own health and my own attitude about the world is better when I think about how things were controversial and difficult before,' said Graham. 'But, I don't know, I find living in the 1790s kind of refreshing.
'They had knock-down, drag-outs, but they were substantive in how they sought to solve those problems,' Graham said. 'I'm not sure we are.'
Adams and Jefferson, who debated and disagreed with one another, not only stayed friends, but came to their debates from a place of thoughtfulness, he noted. They were in conversation with each other, but also in conversation with the likes of 'Cicero, Rousseau, Aristotle, Locke and Hume.'
Their perspectives, so dedicated to education, bred understanding, decency and a common concern that Graham thinks is supremely important for successful democracies. 'There was this big conversation, and big questions with big consequences being asked, and they wanted to engage in that.'
As does Graham. The Adams Center is envisioned as an outlet that will help foster history and civics education, and rekindle these bigger conversations about virtue, liberty, knowledge and duty bringing them back to the forefront of American minds. A people lucky and hard-working enough to self-govern — again, what makes America exceptional.
The American founding, Graham reiterates, is 'unique, it's sui generis, they created something out of nothing — if you will, something new under the sun. And yet, we just take that for granted.'
He's hoping his new mission will change that.
Graham did not set out to do this line of work — he says he's 'quit a lot of good jobs to get here' — but he does know one way he can participate in the centuries-old notion of civic duty.
'I've just come to the personal conclusion,' he said, 'that my contribution to my country is to build the Adams Presidential Center.'
