Power and the Self in Henry Adams's Art of Biography

Abstract

Henry Adams's The Life of Albert Gallatin and John Randolph show early in his career his ambivalence about personal power and its relation to accomplishment. Gallatin and Randolph represent not only different political principles but also contrasting views of power. Gallatin's scientific mind makes possible his transcendence of politics to "practical statesmanship." Randolph's political nature leads him towards aggrandizement and political "terror." These biographies move not so much toward the revelation of character through action as toward a view of the self as larger than character and shaped by the response character permits it to make to circumstance. Gallatin's stature depends on his response to the loss of power, a response by which he is able to identify with the issue of events and to surrender any goals conflicting with that issue, thus exchanging personal power for historical significance.