Adams Papers – serie

“I cannot O! I cannot be reconcil’d to living as I have done for 3 years past… Will you let me try to soften, if I cannot wholy releave you, from your Burden of Cares and perplexities?” So begins Abigail Adams’s correspondence to her husband in these volumes: a plea to end their long separation, as John Adams represented the United States in Europe while Abigail tended to family and farm in Massachusetts, and passed on to John crucial political information from Congress.In October 1782, the Adams family was as widely scattered as it would ever be, with young John Quincy Adams in St. Petersburg, John at The Hague, and Abigail in Braintree with her daughter and younger sons. With the summer of 1784, however, Abigail would have her fondest wish, as most of the family reunited to spend nearly a year together in Europe. As the Adams family traveled, and as the children came of age, so their correspondence expanded to include an ever larger and more fascinating range of Cultural topics and international figures. The record of this remarkable expansion, these volumes document John Adams’s diplomatic triumphs, his wife and daughter’s participation in the cosmopolitan scenes of Paris and London, and his son John Quincy’s travels in Europe and America. These pages also welcome Thomas Jefferson, who soon became one of Abigail’s closest friends, into the family correspondence. From the intimacies of the children’s education, sentimental and worldly, to the details of the firm friendship between Abigail and Madame Lafayette, to the grand drama of Edmund Burke and William Pitt the Younger debating in Parliament, the contents of these letters draw an incredibly rich picture of international life in the 1780s and an incomparable portrait of America’s first family of politics and letters.

This volume continues the incredible family saga of the Adamses of Massachusetts as told through their myriad letters to one another, to their extended family, and to such other notable correspondents as Thomas Jefferson and Mercy Otis Warren. The book opens in January 1786, when John and Abigail resided at Grosvenor Square in London, partaking of the English social scene, while John made slow progress on negotiations for an Anglo-American commercial treaty. Daughter Abigail ("Nabby"), also in London, had begun a courtship with William Stephens Smith that would culminate in their marriage in June 1786. Back in Massachusetts, John Quincy had rejoined his brothers Charles and Thomas, entered Harvard College, and begun to make preparations to study law. Writing back and forth across the Atlantic, the Adamses interspersed observations about their own family life--births and deaths, illnesses and marriages, new homes and new jobs, education and finances--with commentary on the most important social and political events of their day, from the scandals in the British royal family to the deteriorating political situation in Massachusetts that eventually culminated in Shays' Rebellion. As in the previous volumes in this series of the Adams Papers, the correspondence presented here offers a unique perspective on the eighteenth century from a preeminent American family.

Volumes 1 and 2 of the Diary of John Quincy Adams begin the publication of the greatest diary, both in mass and substance, in American History. Recording a span of sixty-eight years, it has been known heretofore only in partial form. When, over a hundred years ago, Charles Francis Adams edited his grandfather’s diary, he chose to omit “the details of common life,” reduce “the moral and religious speculations,” and retain criticisms of others only if they applied to public figures “acting in the same sphere with the writer.”Now the diary is being published complete for the first time. Starting with the entries of a twelve-year-old, the present volumes cover John Quincy Adams’s formative year—his schooling and travel abroad, study at Harvard, and the first months of training for the law. Adams’s six years overseas with his father took him to a half dozen countries, with lengthy stays in Paris, the Netherlands, and St. Petersburg. On his return he stayed for a time in New York, making the acquaintance of influential congressmen. To finish preparing for college, he lived with an aunt and uncle in Haverhill, caught up in a round of social activities. Entering Harvard with junior standing in the spring of 1786, he graduated in fifteen months.As Adams matured, diary entries became less a dutiful response to a father’s request and more a record of the young man’s perceptive observations and reflections—and thus a rich source for social history. There are accounts of play-going in Paris, evenings with Lafayette and Jefferson, the diversions of rural New England, apprenticeship in a Newburyport law office. And through the eyes of a serious but not unbending student we are given a picture of Harvard in the 1780s.Candid opinions of preachers, writers, men of affairs, and family members accompany the closest self-scrutiny. Here is a remarkable record of the passage from adolescence to manhood of a precocious and sensitive boy torn by self-doubt and driving himself to fulfill his promise and his parents’ expectations.

Volumes 1 and 2 of the Diary of John Quincy Adams begin the publication of the greatest diary, both in mass and substance, in American History. Recording a span of sixty-eight years, it has been known heretofore only in partial form. When, over a hundred years ago, Charles Francis Adams edited his grandfather’s diary, he chose to omit “the details of common life,” reduce “the moral and religious speculations,” and retain criticisms of others only if they applied to public figures “acting in the same sphere with the writer.”Now the diary is being published complete for the first time. Starting with the entries of a twelve-year-old, the present volumes cover John Quincy Adams’s formative year—his schooling and travel abroad, study at Harvard, and the first months of training for the law. Adams’s six years overseas with his father took him to a half dozen countries, with lengthy stays in Paris, the Netherlands, and St. Petersburg. On his return he stayed for a time in New York, making the acquaintance of influential congressmen. To finish preparing for college, he lived with an aunt and uncle in Haverhill, caught up in a round of social activities. Entering Harvard with junior standing in the spring of 1786, he graduated in fifteen months.As Adams matured, diary entries became less a dutiful response to a father’s request and more a record of the young man’s perceptive observations and reflections—and thus a rich source for social history. There are accounts of play-going in Paris, evenings with Lafayette and Jefferson, the diversions of rural New England, apprenticeship in a Newburyport law office. And through the eyes of a serious but not unbending student we are given a picture of Harvard in the 1780s.Candid opinions of preachers, writers, men of affairs, and family members accompany the closest self-scrutiny. Here is a remarkable record of the passage from adolescence to manhood of a precocious and sensitive boy torn by self-doubt and driving himself to fulfill his promise and his parents’ expectations.

John Adams reached Paris on October 26, 1782, for the final act of the American Revolution: the peace treaty. This volume chronicles his role in the negotiations and the decision to conclude a peace separate from France. Determined that the United States pursue an independent foreign policy, Adams's letters criticized Congress's naive confidence in France. But in April 1783, frustrated at delays over the final treaty and at real and imagined slights from Congress and Benjamin Franklin, Adams believed the crux of the problem was Franklin's moral bankruptcy and servile Francophilia in the service of a duplicitous Comte de Vergennes.Volume 14 covers more than just the peace negotiations. As American minister to the Netherlands, Adams managed the distribution of funds from the Dutch-American loan. Always an astute observer, he commented on the fall of the Shelburne ministry and its replacement by the Fox-North coalition, the future of the Anglo-American relationship, and the prospects for the United States in the post-revolutionary world. But he was also an anxious father, craving news of John Quincy Adams's slow journey from St. Petersburg to The Hague. By May 1783, Adams was tired of Europe, but resigned to remaining until his work was done.

On September 3, 1783, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay signed the definitive Anglo-American peace treaty. Adams and his colleagues strived to establish a viable relationship between the new nation and its largest trading partner but were stymied by rising British anti-Americanism. Adams’ diplomatic efforts were also complicated by domestic turmoil. Americans, in a rehearsal for the later Federalist-Antifederalist conflict over the United States Constitution, were debating the proper relationship between the central government and the states. Adams, a Federalist as early as 1783, argued persuasively for a government that honored its treaties and paid its foreign debts. But when bills far exceeding the funds available for their redemption were sent to Europe, he was forced to undertake a dangerous winter journey to the Netherlands to raise a new loan and save the United States from financial disaster.None of the founding fathers equals the candor of John Adams’ observations of his eighteenth-century world. His letters, always interesting, reveal with absolute clarity Adams’ positions on the personalities and issues of his times.

The Adams saga takes a stride through the first half of the nineteenth century, as Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams chronicles her life with John Quincy Adams. Born in London in 1775 to a Maryland merchant and his English wife, Louisa recalls her childhood and education in England and France and her courtship with John Quincy, then U.S. minister to the Netherlands. Married in 1797, Louisa accompanied her husband on his postings to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and London. Her memoirs of Prussia and Russia vividly portray the republican couple in the courts of Europe. Louisa came to America in 1801 and would share John Quincy’s career as U.S. senator, secretary of state, president, and congressman. Except for his presidency, her diaries for these years have been preserved, and they reveal a reluctant but increasingly canny political wife. Lamentations about loss, including the deaths of three of four children, abound. But here, too, are views of Napoleonic Europe and American sectional disputes, with witty sketches of heroes and scoundrels. John Quincy emerges in a fullness seldom seen—ambitious and exacting, yet passionate, generous, and gallant. Louisa's diaries conclude with her reckoning of an eventful life, which came to a close in 1852.

“Once more after an Interruption of ten Years, I pronounce myself a happy Man, and pray Heaven to continue me so.” Thus wrote John Adams in late August 1784 after the arrival in Europe of his wife Abigail and daughter Nabby. Adams and his family were living together in the pleasant Paris suburb of Auteuil. There Adams, with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, formed a joint commission to conclude commercial treaties with the nations of Europe and North Africa. For the first time since he had left America in 1778 on his first diplomatic mission, Adams was no longer engaged in “militia diplomacy.”Volume 16 of the Papers of John Adams chronicles fourteen months of Adams’ diplomatic career. As minister to the Netherlands he raised a new Dutch loan to save America from financial ruin. As joint commissioner he negotiated a commercial treaty with Prussia, proposed similar treaties with other European nations, and prepared to negotiate with the Barbary states. The commissioners also sought to resolve Anglo-American differences left over from the peace negotiations and arising from the two nations’ burgeoning trade. Volume 16 thus forms a prelude to the next phase of John Adams’ diplomatic career, for his February 1785 appointment as minister to the Court of St. James meant that the management of Anglo-American relations would be his responsibility alone.

The letters in this volume of Adams Family Correspondence span the period from July 1795 to the eve of John Adams’s inauguration, with the growing partisan divide leading up to the election playing a central role. The fiery debate over funding the Jay Treaty sets the political stage, and the caustic exchanges between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans only grow as rumors surface of George Washington’s impending retirement. From Philadelphia, John’s equanimity in reporting to Abigail and his children on the speculation about the presidential successor gives way to expectation and surprise at the voracity of electioneering among political allies and opponents alike. Although remaining in Quincy throughout this period, Abigail offers keen, even acerbic, commentary on these national events.From Europe, John Quincy and Thomas Boylston shed light on the rise of the French Directory, the shifts in the continental war, and the struggles within the Batavian government. Their letters also testify to the broader scale of the U.S. presidential election by chronicling French and British attempts to influence American politics. On a more personal note, John Quincy’s engagement to Louisa Catherine Johnson in London opens the next great collection of correspondence documenting the Adams family saga.

A man’s twenty-seventh year is “critical,” according to Charles Francis Adams. And so his proved to be. Twenty-five at the start of these volumes, Adams had yet to embark on the public career that would mark him a statesman, but by their conclusion he had been drawn into the maelstrom of politics. It was an unwilling plunge, dictated by what both he and his father, John Quincy Adams, regarded as betrayal of the elder Adams by Daniel Webster and his Whigs. Once in, however, he showed himself politically adept.This diary, kept from January 1833 to June 1836 and hitherto unpublished, has elements of hidden personal drama. Through private meetings and caucuses and newspaper articles signed with pseudonyms, the younger Adams found effective means to carry on political activities in the face of dilemmas posed by his father’s public prominence, his father-in-law’s contrary persuasions, and his own preferences. He emerged with growing self-respect and solid accomplishment as political journalist—his initial vocation.The diary has fresh disclosures also about the personality of John Quincy Adams, shrewdly assessed by an observer uniquely placed to interpret domestic scenes as well as the greatly waged struggles in Washington against the Southern “slaveocracy” and “gag rules.”Colorful figures in Boston’s political and social life are finely etched in outspoken appraisals characteristic of the Adamses. The diarist shows acuteness too in comments on books, sermons, paintings, the theater, and opera.

John and Abigail Adams remained fully engaged in American political life after they left Washington, DC, for retirement in Quincy. A highlight of Volume 15 of Adams Family Correspondence is a series of letters between Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson that debated fundamental questions of the nation’s tumultuous early years. A new generation rose in prominence in the period covered in the volume, with John Quincy Adams returning from abroad to take a seat in the United States Senate just in time to break with the Federalists and support the Louisiana Purchase. The family commented on other events of the era—Jefferson’s dismantling of John Adams’s judicial reforms, the mobilization of the US Navy for the Barbary wars, the growing bane of British impressment, and the duel that killed Alexander Hamilton.Equally compelling family stories emerge in the volume’s 251 letters. The failure of a British banking firm proved calamitous to the family’s finances, compelling John Quincy to quietly finance his parents’ retirement. Thomas Boylston Adams, acting as an occasional editor of the Port Folio, carved out his public persona as a man of letters. Louisa Catherine Adams wrote of motherhood and adjusting to a new country of residence while providing a spirited perspective on Washington society. As always, the heart of Adams Family Correspondence is Abigail Adams, who survived a near-fatal fall to continue providing letters of insight and wit that once again show why the correspondence of the Adams family is a national treasure.

A growing tension between the United States and Great Britain permeates the 236 letters printed in Volume 16 of Adams Family Correspondence. The Embargo Act of 1807 cut off trade with the British in response to the harassment of American ships. John and Abigail Adams witnessed their neighbors’ ensuing economic hardships and felt the sting of knowing that their son played a role in its passage. The efforts of US Senator John Quincy Adams to balance conscience with party and family loyalties are revealed in earnest correspondence, culminating in his resignation in the face of withering Federalist criticism. Louisa Catherine Adams’s loyalties were always with her senator husband, though her attentions were focused on raising their children. Family concerns also occupied Thomas Boylston Adams. He married Ann Harrod, and together they added two children to the growing flock under Abigail’s wing at Peacefield.Farther afield was the Adamses’ daughter, Nabby, who from New York shepherded her maturing sons through school and into adulthood. Nabby’s son William was caught up in foreign intrigue when he joined an expedition of Francisco de Miranda aimed at liberating Venezuela from Spanish rule. To the relief of all the Adamses, William safely returned home. In the background of all these activities was the concern of the Adamses and of all Americans who wondered if the young republic would survive a military test with Britain. The letters printed in this volume tell these stories and more, providing invaluable commentary by the people who again experienced uncertain days in the early American republic.

Vice President John Adams and the US government faced a turbulent world of rebellion in this volume of the Papers of John Adams, which chronicles the period from March 1791 to January 1797. The grim shadow of the French Revolution and the whirlwind of a massive European war left political leaders like Adams struggling to uphold the young nation’s neutrality. “I Suffer inexpressible Pains, from the bloody feats of War and Still more from those of Party Passions,” he observed. With the federal system newly in place, fresh challenges crept in on all sides. Adams and his colleagues sought to bolster the government against the effects of the Whiskey Rebellion, a seething partisan press, a brutal yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, and violent clashes with Native peoples on the Ohio frontier. Working with George Washington and an increasingly fractious cabinet, Adams approached a set of issues that defined US foreign policy for decades to come, including the negotiation, ratification, and funding of the controversial Jay Treaty, as well as the awkward cultivation of ties with France. Revealing exchanges to Adams from son John Quincy, a junior statesman who sent rich reports from war-torn Europe, underline the family’s enduring commitment to public service. Pausing on the cusp of his presidency, John Adams amplified his lifelong dedication to sustaining democracy, amid bouts of internal and external crisis: “I am happy that it has fallen to my share to do some thing towards setting the Machine in motion,” he wrote.

This volume of the Papers of John Adams explores the period from March 1798 to June 1799, showing how President John Adams strained to repair Franco-American relations. The XYZ Affair sank his initial plans for peace, compelling Adams to recalibrate his policy. Anxious to counter French privateering, he spearheaded legislation to expand the army, grow the navy, and arm merchant ships. Members of Adams’s cabinet also tried to flex executive power, garnering mixed results. Timothy Pickering clashed with the president when he angled to run enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. James McHenry and Benjamin Stoddert struggled to secure arms, recruits, and support for the military. Oliver Wolcott Jr. kept treasury dealings stable despite a yellow fever epidemic and the fragility of American trade. Adams remained in Quincy as the diplomatic crisis grew, tending to his ailing wife, Abigail, and leading from afar. He closely monitored implementation of the controversial Jay Treaty, relying on Charles Lee’s reports on the politicking of the claims commissions. The Adams administration imposed a national direct tax to pay for the military buildup, drawing dissent from Americans buffeted by economic chaos. As French attacks on US commerce soared and the Jay Treaty’s pro-British trade regulations took root, hundreds of patriotic addresses lauding Adams swept in from town meetings, local militias, state legislatures, college students, religious groups, and philanthropic societies. The president replied with gratitude, seizing the chance to reach beyond the Federalist stronghold of New England. Volume 23 charts Adams’s efforts to connect with citizens as public hope for peace with France steadily dissolved.

Volume 12 of Adams Family Correspondence, with 276 documents spanning from March 1797 through April 1798, opens with the inauguration of John Adams as president and closes just after details of the XYZ affair are made public in America. Through private networks of correspondence, the Adamses reveal both their individual concerns for the well-being of the nation and the depth of their public and political engagement with the republic. Abigail’s letters to friend and foe demonstrate the important role she played as an unofficial member of the administration. John Quincy and Thomas Boylston’s letters from The Hague, Paris, London, and finally Berlin offer keen observations about the political turmoil in France and its consequences, the shifting European landscape as a result of the war, and court life in Berlin following the coronation of Frederick William III.In the midst of crisis, the family’s domestic life and personal connections challenged and sustained them. The marriage of John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Johnson in London in July 1797 gave the family cause for celebration, while John’s appointment of John Quincy as U.S. minister to Prussia created a minor rift as the scrupulous younger Adams struggled with concerns about nepotism. Visits between the elder Adamses and their children Nabby and Charles in New York provided welcome distractions, even as John and Abigail worried about Nabby’s domestic situation. With the characteristic candor and perception expected from the Adamses, this volume again features forthright commentary from one family at the center of it all.

Volume 18 is the final volume of the Papers of John Adams wholly devoted to Adams’ diplomatic career. It chronicles fourteen months of his tenure as minister to Great Britain and his joint commission, with Thomas Jefferson, to negotiate treaties with Europe and North Africa. With respect to Britain, Adams found it impossible to do “any Thing Satisfactory, with this Nation,” and the volume ends with his decision to resign his posts. His diplomatic efforts, Adams thought, were too much akin to “making brick without straw.”John Adams’ ministerial efforts in London were disappointing, but other aspects of his life were not. He and Jefferson failed to finalize treaties with Portugal and Great Britain, but they did, through agent Thomas Barclay, conclude a treaty with Morocco. Barclay’s letters are the earliest and most evocative American accounts of that region. Adams witnessed the marriage of his daughter, Abigail 2d, to William Stephens Smith, promoted the ordination of American Episcopal bishops, and toured the English countryside, first with Thomas Jefferson and then with his family. Most significant perhaps was the publication of the first volume of Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. This work is often attributed to concern over Shays’ Rebellion, of which Adams knew little when he began drafting. In fact, it was Adams’ summer 1786 visit to the Netherlands that provoked his work. There, Dutch Patriot friends, involved in their own revolution, expressed interest in seeing “upon paper” his remarks “respecting Government.”

As the American colonies grew more restive, and a break with the mother country ceased to be unthinkable, John Adams was forced to spend less and less time with his beloved family. Although burdened by ever-expanding responsibilities in the Second Continental Congress, he found time for an amazing amount of correspondence. The majority of his letters were written to secure the facts that would enable this duty-ridden man to decide and act effectively on the issues being debated. Military affairs, a source of never-ending concern, provide some of the most fascinating subjects, including several accounts of the Battle of Bunker Hill, assessments of various high-ranking officers, and complaints about the behavior of the riflemen sent from three states southward to aid the Massachusetts troops.The heated question of pay for soldiers and officers strained relations between New England and southern colonies early. By refusing to confront the issue of slavery when it was raised by several correspondents, Adams sought to avoid exacerbating regional sensitivities further. When the question of independent governments for former colonies arose, at the request of several colleagues Adams sketched a model, Thoughts on Government, three versions of which are included here.His optimistic republicanism, however, was balanced by fear that a “Spirit of Commerce” would undermine the virtue requisite for republican institutions. Adams' important committee work included his draft in 1775 of rules for regulation of the Continental Navy, which have remained the basis for the governance of the United States Navy down into our own time, and his plan of treaties, which would guide American diplomats up to World War II. Both were derivative, but he skillfully adapted his materials to American needs and circumstances. These volumes reflect the spirit of those tumultuous years when the leaders emerging in America confronted each other, and exciting new ideas, as they tried to resolve the issues of a revolutionary period.

The publication of Portraits of John Quincy Adams and His Wife makes available a record which both affords unique visual documentation of the most varied political career in American history and exemplifies the work of the principal American portraitists from the days of Copley and Stuart to the dawn of the Daguerrean era. Included in the volume's 159 illustrations are all the known life portraits, busts, and silhouettes of John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams, along with important replicas, copies, engravings, and representative likenesses of their siblings.The book is organized into seven chapters which generally coincide with the major divisions of John Quincy Adams' political career. Within each chapter are discussed the artists, their relationships with the Adams's, and the provenance of each of their works. A comprehensive chronology of John Quincy Adams' life for each period accompanies the chapter to which it pertains. All important information about the size of each likeness, the inscriptions if any, the date executed, and present ownership where known is summarized in the List of Illustrations.The Adams's, as they watched themselves age over the years in the marble, ink, or oil of the artists who portrayed them, recorded much by way of commentary on the artistic talent and process at hand. Andrew Oliver, in his detailed and lively discussions of each likeness, makes full use of the diaries and correspondence preserved in the Adams Papers, thus combining a learned appreciation with an intimate glimpse of Adams's as they saw themselves. The volume continues the record of Adams family portraiture begun with Portraits of John and Abigail Adams. The two volumes together constitute Series IV of the distinguished Adams Papers publications.

"You may well Suppose that I was the Focus of all Eyes," John Adams wrote on 2 June 1785 of his first audience with George III, which formally inaugurated the post of American minister to Great Britain. Eager to restore "the old good Nature and the old good Humour" between the two nations, Adams spent the following months establishing the U.S. legation at No. 8 Grosvenor Square. For Adams, it was a period of multiple responsibilities and mixed success. He remained minister to the Netherlands and one of the joint commissioners charged with negotiating commercial treaties with the nations of Europe and North Africa--sensitive duties that occasionally called for Adams to encode his correspondence with the aid of his new secretary and future son-in-law, Col. William Stephens Smith.Rebuffed by the British ministry in his mission to enforce the peace treaty of 1783 and renew Anglo-American commerce, Adams identified and achieved other goals. He preserved American credit despite the bankruptcy of a Dutch banking house that handled U.S. loans, petitioned for the release of impressed sailors, marked the ratification of the Prussian-American treaty, championed the needs of the American Episcopal Church, and laid the groundwork for negotiations with the Barbary States. His attention was not confined solely to foreign affairs. John Adams's letters from London, laced with his trademark candor, demonstrate his ripening Federalist view of the new American government's vulnerability and promise.

“Huzza for the new World and farewell to the Old One,” John Adams wrote in late 1787, wrapping up a decade’s worth of diplomatic service in Europe. Volume 19 of the Papers of John Adams chronicles Adams’s last duties in London and The Hague. In the twenty-eight months documented here, he petitioned the British ministry to halt impressment of American sailors, toured the English countryside, and observed parliamentary politics. Adams salvaged U.S. credit by contracting two new Dutch loans amid the political chaos triggered by William V’s resurgence. Correspondents like Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette mulled over the Anglo–American trade war that followed the Revolution and reported on the French Assembly of Notables—topics that Adams commented on with trademark candor. He wrote the final two volumes of his work, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.Adams yearned to return home and see the American republic take shape. “For a Man who has been thirty Years rolling like a stone,” Adams wrote, the choice was whether to “set down in private Life to his Plough; or push into turbulent scenes of Sedition and Tumult; whether be sent to Congress, or a Convention or God knows what.” Back on his native soil of Massachusetts in June 1788, Adams settled into rural retirement with wife Abigail and watched the U.S. Constitution’s ratification evolve. By volume’s end, John Adams again resumes public life, ready to serve as America’s first vice president.

John Adams' Diary, partially published in the 1850's, has proved a quarry of information on the rise of Revolutionary resistance in New England, the debates in the early Continental Congresses, and the diplomacy and financing of the American Revolution; but it has remained unfamiliar to the wider public. "It is an American classic," Zoltán Haraszti said recently, "about which Americans know next to nothing." Yet the Diary’s historical value may well prove secondary to its literary and human interest. Now that it is presented in full, we have for the first time a proper basis for comprehending John Adams—an extraordinary human being, a master of robust, idiomatic language, a diarist in the great tradition.The Autobiography, intended for John Adams' family, consists of three large sections. The first records his boyhood, his legal and political career, and the movement that culminated in American independence. The second and third parts deal with his diplomatic experiences, and serve among other things as a retrospective commentary on the Diary; they are studded with sketches of Adams' associates, which are as scintillating as they are prejudiced, parts and in some cases all of which were omitted from Charles Francis Adams' 19th-century edition.