PositiveProvidence Journal... a must-read for students of 19th-century America ... Egerton is to be praised for his in-depth coverage of not only the sons of Charles Francis Adams, but also the women who married into the family. Egerton uses the lives of Adams family members as a window into the Civil War era ... Egerton’s prodigious research clearly reveals that there were critical moments in which the Adams family could have impacted the direction of the Republican Party and, therefore, the nation as a whole. Whereas John Quincy Adams helped build a basis for antislavery party politics in the 1830s and 1840s that would eventually lead to a major transformation in American politics, his grandchildren were consumed with reversing these trends.
