Irascible Patrician

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR. by Edward Chase Kirkland. 256 pages. Harvard University. $5.95.

Owing to some genetic magic, the Adamses never produced black sheep, though there were times when the family anxiously expected Charles Francis Jr. to baa. Instead of settling down to the law after he left Harvard, 26-year-old Charles went dashing off to the Civil War, rose to the rank of brevet brigadier general. Since no other Adams had ever been a soldier, Charles Francis Sr., Lincoln's Minister to the Court of St. James's, concluded that there was a defect in his son's character. More over, on his return from the war, Charles did not immerse himself in cultural affairs, as his more renowned brother Henry did. Nor did he show the slightest interest in becoming President of the U.S., like his great-grandfather and grandfather. Instead, he set out to get rich as quickly as possible and became president of the Union Pacific Railway.

Charles Francis Jr. was an Adams who spent his life refusing to conform. Edward Kirkland, professor emeritus of American history at Bowdoin College, deftly exposes the reasons why. He concludes that while Adams is little remembered today, he was the most brilliant Adams of a generation in which the family's genius flowered. However, his superior talents made him impatient and irascible. "He resented having been born young," Professor Kirkland says. He also resented having been born an Adams, and in his 60s he formally stated why this was so: "In plain language, I do not like my own father--a strong, not generous, kindly or sympathetic nature."

In the end, Charles found it impossible to ignore his heritage. He had made a fortune developing the Kansas City stockyards and investing in real estate, street railways, fertilizer and packing plants, and he had reigned six years as president of the Union Pacific (Jay Gould deposed him in a power struggle in 1890). Bored with business, he turned to intellectual pursuits. Eventually, like a proper Adams, he became a historian of some note, president of the American Historical Association, an overseer of Harvard. By the time he died in 1915 at the age of 79, he had become such a complete victim of the family compulsion to put words on paper that he had even written his autobiography. As Adams autobiographies go, Charles's proved less than scintillating. It remained for Professor Kirkland to provide a properly engrossing study of a remarkable tycoon.

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