Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was the grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams.  His mother, Abigail, came from the wealthy Brooks family and his father, Charles Francis Adams, carried the family torch as he served in the US House of Representatives and was appointed by Abraham Lincoln to serve as his Minister, or ambassador, to England during the Civil War, during which England’s sympathies with the Confederacy. In England he was quite taken with the work of John Stuart Mill, who championed the notion of an enlightened elite to provide leadership to governments elected by the masses and prey to ignorance, demagoguery and corruption. After the war he returned to the United States and settled in Washington, working as a journalist with an interest in rooting out corruption.  He was appointed Professor of Medieval History at Harvard in 1870 and returned to Boston. He retired in 1877, settled in Lafayette Square in Washington and worked as a journalist and historian and maintained a lively circle of friendships. After the tragic suicide of his wife Clover he  traveled extensively and continued to write and publish, most notably a nine-volume History of the United States of America (1801 – 1817), considered by many to be a “neglected masterpiece”, and the novels Democracy and Esther. He served as president of the American Historical Society in 1894 and pursued a theory of history based on the second law of thermodynamics.  His scholarly activities were diminished by a stroke in 1912, but he continued to travel and maintain his many friendships until his death in 1918.