ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS American diplomatist, son of John Quincy Adams, and grandson of John Adams, was born in Boston (Mass.) Aug. 18, 1807. His father, having been appointed minister to Russia, took him in 1809 to St. Petersburg, where he acquired a perfect familiarity with French, learning it as his native tongue. After eight years spent in Russia and England, he attended the Boston Latin school for four years, and in 1825 graduated at Harvard. He lived for two years in the executive mansion, Washington, during his father's presidential term, studying law and moving in a society where he met Webster, Clay, Jackson and Randolph. Returning to Boston, he devoted ten years to business and study, and wrote for the North American Review. He also undertook the management of his father's pe cuniary affairs, and actively supported him in his contest in the House of Representatives for the right of petition and the anti slavery cause. In 1835 he wrote an effective and widely read political pamphlet, entitled, after Edmund Burke's more famous work, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. He was a mem ber of the Massachusetts general court from 1840 to 1845, sitting for three years in the House of Representatives and for two years in the Senate; and in 1846-48 he edited a party journal, the Boston Whig. In 1848 he was prominent in politics as a "Con science Whig," presiding over the Buffalo convention which formed the Free Soil party and nominated Martin Van Buren for president and himself for vice-president. He was a Republican member of the 36th Congress, which assembled Dec. 5, 1859, and during the second session (Dec. 3, 186o—March 4, 1860 he rep resented Massachusetts in the Congressional Committee of 33 at the time of the secession of seven of the Southern states. His selection by the chairman of this committee, Thomas Corwin, to present to the full committee certain propositions agreed upon by two-thirds of the Republican members and his calm and able speech of Jan. 31, 1861, in the House served to make him conspic uous before Congress and the country. Together with William H. Seward, he stood for the Republican policy of concession ; and, while he was criticized severely and charged with inconsistency in view of his record as a "Conscience Whig," he was of the same mind as President Lincoln, willing to concede non-essentials, but holding rigidly to the principle, properly understood, that there must be no extension of slavery. He believed that as the Repub licans were the victors they ought to show a spirit of conciliation, and that the policy of righteousness was likewise one of expe diency, since it would have for its result the holding of the border slave states with the North until March 4, when the Republicans could take possession of the government at Washington. With the incoming of the new administration, Secretary Seward secured for Adams the appointment of minister to Great Britain. So much sympathy was shown in England for the South that his path was beset with difficulties; but his mission was to prevent the interfer ence of Great Britain in the struggle; and while the work of Lin coln, Seward and Sumner, and the cause of emancipation, tended to this end, the American minister was insistent and unyielding, and knew how to present his case forcibly and with dignity. He laboured with energy and discretion to prevent the sailing of the "Alabama"; and, when unsuccessful in this, he persistently urged upon the British Government its responsibility for the destruction of American merchant vessels by the privateer. In his own diary he shows that underneath his calm exterior was keen anxiety. Adams was instrumental in getting Lord John Russell to stop the "Alexandra," and to order the detention in Sept. 1863 of the two ironclad rams intended for the Confederate States. Adams re mained in England until May 1868. His last important work was as a member, in 1871-72, of the tribunal at Geneva which settled the "Alabama" claims. He died at Boston, Nov. 21, 1886.
He edited the works of John Adams (1850-56), and the Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (1874-77)• See the excellent biography (Bos ton, 190o) by his son, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and E. W. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (1925).