ABSTRACT
Henry Adams’s nine-volume work, the History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, was a concentration of intellect upon a limited subject matter and a limited time area. The extremity of the case required that it be a brilliant, not merely a moderate, success. Acknowledgment of brilliant success does not characterize a work. It is necessary to break down what the author put together; to analyze what he fused into synthesis; to name the parts of the whole; to indicate the intent, the tone, the bias of the work. From the time Henry Adams gave up teaching history and began to write history in 1877—when he moved from Boston to Washington—every interest and every energy of his mind pointed toward the finished History of the United States.
