Public Service Above Position

Avett Brothers bassist Bob Crawford brings John Quincy Adams back into the conversation with a debut book about principle, power and an extraordinary second act

By Monica Jones

For Bob Crawford, American history did not begin as a career plan. It began with books on a tour bus and a question big enough to keep him reading: Was there a line connecting the nation’s founding to the America he was living in?

Crawford, best known as the Grammy-nominated bassist for The Avett Brothers, started seriously reading history around 2004 and 2005. The work of David McCullough drew him in, particularly the way the author restored humanity to people often flattened into monuments and dates. Crawford initially went looking for a clear thread through the American story. He soon learned history was far less orderly than that.

“American history is not like a thread, or a straight road,” Crawford said. “It’s really like an ocean, and it’s deep, and it’s wide, and it’s complicated.”

The curiosity became a vocation in 2016, when Crawford and historian Ben Sawyer launched The Road to Now podcast. Sawyer had grown up with Scott and Seth Avett and the band’s tour manager, Dane Honeycutt, who had watched Crawford devour history books and insisted the two should meet. A decade later, Crawford is a public historian, podcaster and author with a master’s degree in history from Arizona State University.

His first book, America’s Founding Son: John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick, grew from a six-episode podcast series about the nation’s sixth president. The podcast gave Crawford six 30-minute episodes. The book gave him room to tell the fuller story—not simply of Adams, but of the abolitionists, political forces and ordinary citizens who shaped his evolution.

Adams kept appearing in Crawford’s reading because his life crossed nearly every major question of the young nation. He witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill as a child, served in diplomatic posts, became secretary of state under James Monroe, helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine and negotiated territory that expanded the United States. Then came a contentious election, a troubled one-term presidency and defeat.

That is where Crawford’s real interest begins.

Months after Adams lost reelection, his eldest son died by suicide. Adams, who had long suffered from depression and often steadied himself through work, returned to public life after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He remains the only former president to serve in the House, where he spent 17 years and, in Crawford’s estimation, made his greatest contribution.

“He’s definitely not our greatest president,” Crawford said, “but I do think he is our greatest public servant.”

America’s Founding Son focuses on Adams’ battle against slavery during the 1830s and 1840s. Crawford does not present that development as clean or immediate. Adams considered slavery morally wrong, but earlier in his career he approached it pragmatically, believing the federal government lacked the constitutional authority to interfere with it in states where it existed. In Congress, however, he saw how deeply slavery affected virtually every question before the government.

The turning point came as antislavery petitions poured into Congress. Southern lawmakers responded with what became known as the gag rule, preventing those petitions from being read or debated on the House floor. For Adams, the fight was no longer only about slavery. It was also about the First Amendment and the public’s right to petition its government.

“It radicalized him,” Crawford said. “In defending abolitionists’ rights to free speech, he slowly becomes an antislavery activist.”

The book also follows abolitionists Benjamin Lundy and Theodore Weld, who represented different generations of the movement. Their relationships with the famously reserved Adams became unexpectedly tender. They gathered information and pushed the cause outside Washington while Adams fought inside the halls of power—a partnership between grassroots activism and public office.

That history remains relevant, Crawford believes, because Americans often treat the presidency as the only office that truly matters. Adams’s second act challenges that assumption. When one of his sons questioned whether serving in Congress after the presidency was a step down, Adams rejected the premise. If his neighbors wanted him to serve even on a town council, he reasoned, how could he refuse?

“It’s this idea of public service being above position,” Crawford said.

Crawford is also concerned about the accumulation of presidential power and the fear that can keep public officials from challenging it. He sees Adams—who survived censure attempts, death threats and a hostile press—as a useful study in political courage. Adams could be difficult, cold and deeply flawed, but he was not easily cowed by power or popularity.

Crawford brought a historian’s rigor to the book, particularly its extensive notes and sources. He often begins a history book at the back, following citations into other books and original documents. He wanted his readers to have the same opportunity. “Party in the front, work in the back,” he joked. The narrative should feel alive, but the evidence still has to hold.

His life in music surfaced most clearly during editing. Writing, recording and songwriting all require material to be shaped, cut, reconsidered. “You have to read it out loud,” Crawford said. “That’s how music is, right? You record, and then you listen, and then you change it.”

He resists forcing a tidy metaphor between playing bass and writing history. The better connection is more practical: The Avett Brothers have given him an audience that may never have considered opening a book about John Quincy Adams. Crawford wants to meet those readers where they are and invite them into the larger story.

“My goal is to bring people into history,” he said. “To take it out of the academy and bring it to the street, because that’s what music’s all about.”

For listeners who arrive because they love the band but do not consider themselves history people, Crawford offers a simple entry point. This is the story of a man—not a monument, not a list of dates and not a flawless hero. Adams was an unsuccessful president, an imperfect husband and father, and a consequential servant of his country.

“Don’t be turned off by the subject matter,” Crawford said. “I hope that people will see the humanity in the historical narrative.”

EVENT INFORMATION

Bob Crawford will discuss America’s Founding Son at a free lunchtime author event Thursday, Oct. 8 at 11:30 a.m. at the Columbus Public Library, 3000 Macon Road. No reservations are required. Books will be available for purchase and signing. The Avett Brothers perform at RiverCenter for the Performing Arts on Sunday, Oct. 18 at 7:30 p.m.