John Adams, The Anacyclosis President

For those who are familiar with the Polybian Anacyclosis, little more needs to be said to underscore how Anacyclosis formed a central theme of John Adams’ thinking.  We will nevertheless briefly reiterate for those who are less familiar with Anacyclosis.  In this essay, John Adams laid out the Greek typology of constitutional forms, or regime types, in accordance with the classical Polybian sequence of Anacyclosis. Of course, John Adams does not here reference Anacyclosis by name.  He also does not close the cycle by linking the stage of ochlocracy with monarchy.  His description nonetheless plainly captures the essence of Anacyclosis, which we further elaborate on our page What is Anacyclosis?

But John Adams’ devotion to Anacyclosis – a devotion that was so firm and enduring that he even referenced it as “the Creed of my whole Life” – is important for reasons that extend beyond pure intellectual curiosity.  John Adams was not only an American statesman who was well-versed in the Classics.  He was not only perhaps the only Founding Father to demonstrate that he had an explicit understanding of Anacyclosis.  He was an essential Founding Father.  He was integral to the future course of the United States.  And his devotion to Anacyclosis is indelibly marked on the American constitutional landscape. 

John Adams was a lawyer by trade.  During the Revolutionary War, he kept himself quite busy, serving on 26 committees of the Continental Congress.  He served as chairman of eight of those committees. He nominated George Washington to lead the Continental Army and helped him to supply it as the chairman of the Board of War and Ordinance.  By his own account, he persuaded Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.  In 1780, he drafted the Constitution of Massachusetts, which predates the United States Constitution by seven years and remains in effect. Notably, this Constitution not only creates a tripartite division of government, separating the executive, legislative, and judicial departments.  It was used as a reference by the Philadelphia Delegates when the Federal Constitution was conceived.

John Adams was not physically present in Philadelphia while the United States Constitution was being crafted.  He was rather serving as America’s first ambassador to Great Britain after peace had been concluded.  In January of 1787, John Adams wrote Volume I of his A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.  This treatise was available in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia by March of 1787.  The delegates arrived in Philadelphia in late May and commenced work in earnest in June.  This treatise is important because we know the Philadelphia delegates were aware of it and read it, and we know by its contents that it communicated the theory of Anacyclosis directly to them.  Letter XXXI described Polybius’ account of Anacyclosis in its entirety, Letter XXXII described the account of Anacyclosis from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Letter XXXIII contained Plato’s foundational account of constitutional degeneration.  Thus, while John Adams was not physically present at Independence Hall, he was most certainly intellectually present.   

In addition to the focused accounts of Anacyclosis, John Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions is peppered throughout with references to the Greek typology of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.  But the Defence of the Constitutions is not the only writing by John Adams that makes direct or indirect reference or allusion to Anacyclosis.  The doctrine of the mixed constitution – the notion that Anacyclosis can be arrested or braked by applying a constitution comprised of an equitable and balanced mixture of the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy – is referenced many times throughout John Adams’ life.  We find, for instance, the reference in the 1763 essay noted above.  We also find references in his pre-revolutionary Novanglus papers, in which John Adams debated the Tory writer Massachusettensis.  In his January 9, 1775 letter, John Adams wrote the following: