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Summary
Summary
In 1762, John Adams penned a flirtatious note to 17 year-old Abigail Smith. In 1801 Abigail wrote to wish her husband a safe journey home after serving as president of the nation he helped create. This book contains these letters that span nearly 40 years.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hogan and Taylor, editors of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, have given history buffs a treat-the most comprehensive edition of letters between two extremely lively writers, America's second president and his wife. This edition contains 289 letters covering a longer period of time than the two earlier editions of selected letters. Here are trenchant political exchanges, such as Abigail's famous plea to her husband and the Continental Congress to "Remember the Ladies," and Adams's less famous, revealing reply: he noted that while it was well known that the Revolution had prompted children, slaves and apprentices to rebel, "your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented." Many of the letters are personal, from coquettish courtship epistles to Abigail's moving premonition that the baby she was carrying would be stillborn. The letters shine a light on such aspects of daily life as illness, Sunday sermons and cuisine. Ellis's gushing foreword explains the rarity of such intimate correspondence-Martha Washington, for instance, destroyed most of the letters she and George wrote. Readers will agree that this book is a treasure. 27 b&w illus. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Both Abigail and John Adams decried long separations during their marriage (while acknowledging them as necessary for the greater public good), but the unintended legacy of such trials were the thoughtful, loving, and literate letters exchanged by the couple that open a window on the birth and early years of our republic. This volume, the third to be transcribed from the original manuscripts, is the first to include selections from the entire body of the Adams' correspondence, from their courtship (when John addressed Abigail as Miss Adorable) until Abigail left the White House near the end of John's presidential term, reminding him, I want to see the list of judges. Theirs was a devoted and true marriage of minds, with Abigail the spouse who managed home (four children plus extended family) and farm, at the same time serving as her husband's eyes and ears on the home front and most valued counsel (particularly during the second term of John's vice presidency, when he considered Washington treated badly by the opposition, and presidency). Yet Adams the politician was also father and farmer, critical of his daughter's suitor in one letter and moving from discussion of a treaty to advice on spreading manure on his fields in another. Although intending this volume for reading pleasure rather than study, the editors basically retain the writers' spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, a bow to authenticity that may slow reading but helps convey the letters' times. This is a treasure, for general readers and scholars alike.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A new edition of the correspondence of John and Abigail Adams. ALL the nation's founding fathers were concerned about how history would judge them, none more so than John Adams. Adams often voiced his apprehension that his contribution to American independence would be overshadowed by the attention paid to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Yet the survival of more than 1,100 letters exchanged by John and Abigail Adams, 289 of which are included in this welcome new edition, gives Adams an advantage over his contemporaries in the historical record. In widowhood, Martha Washington destroyed almost all her private correspondence with George, and Jefferson likewise burned the letters he had exchanged with his wife, Martha. We therefore have no direct evidence of those men's relationships with their wives, whereas the correspondence of John and Abigail - never intended to be shared outside a small circle of family members and friends - has become justly famous. "My Dearest Friend" begins with a 1762 courtship letter to the 17-year-old Abigail Smith from the 26-year-old John Adams, and ends (except for an epilogue describing Abigail's death in 1818) with the last surviving letter Abigail wrote John, shortly before he left Washington in 1801 at the end of his largely unsuccessful four-year presidency. The editors point out that this edition is intended to be "read and enjoyed, not necessarily studied," and so they have refrained from extensive annotations, although they occasionally add introductory paragraphs or brief clarifying comments. Nearly every letter is printed in its entirety, without modernized spelling or punctuation. That practice is especially revealing of Abigail's contributions, because, lacking formal education, she wrote with a charming idiosyncratic diction. Readers seeking continuous contemporary commentary on the Revolutionary era will not find it here, because Abigail and John obviously did not write to each other when they were together. For long stretches there are few or no letters, most notably from their marriage in 1764 until John became a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774, and from 1784 to 1788 (when they were both in France or England). Further, the correspondence from 1789 to 1801 is sporadic covering only those periods when Abigail was living at home in Quincy without her husband. Yet the extended absences the couple endured while John served the new nation in Congress or the diplomatic corps work to our benefit today, and the 170 pages filled with more sporadic exchanges written after the late 1780s, while John served as vice president and president, provide valuable insights into the early days of partisan politics. From John's salutation in the first letter - "Miss Adorable" - to the epilogue and his final signature in a letter to his son John Quincy about Abigail's death - "your Aged and Afflicted Father" - the Adamses' correspondence gives modern Americans an extraordinarily personal view of our country's founding. Intermingled with comments on the great events of the day - the Battle of Bunker Hill, the vote for independence, the inauguration of Washington as president - are discussions of daily life, stories of neighbors and relatives, complaints about the high cost of living and laments over such family tragedies as a stillborn daughter and the deaths of parents. Their courtship letters are especially delightful. A few months before their marriage John playfully addressed to Abigail a "Catalogue of your Faults" that included such flaws as neglecting card-playing, being too modest and spending too much time "Reading, Writing and Thinking." Abigail's response adopted the same jocular tone: "I was so hardned as to read over most of my Faults with as much pleasure, as an other person would have read their perfections." Amusingly, a series of letters details a mix-up in September 1776 when some prized tea that John dispatched from Philadelphia to Abigail was misdirected to Samuel Adams's wife, who then proudly invited Abigail to drink "a very fine dish of Green Tea" she thought had been sent by her "Sweet Heart." (Abigail ended up with only "about half" the tea, for it had been "very freely used" before the error was corrected.) Abigail and John wrote unreservedly to each other, despite knowing that their correspondence might be intercepted and read by unfriendly eyes - as indeed some of it was (one such letter, published in 1775 in a loyalist newspaper, is included in this collection). Upon learning that his former friend Jefferson intended to resign as secretary of state in late 1793, John observed, "Instead of being the ardent pursuer of science that some think him, I know he is indolent, and his soul is prisoned with Ambition." Reporting on Jefferson's departure from Philadelphia a few days later, he told Abigail, "good riddance of bad ware." Three years later, Abigail was somewhat more positive: "Tho wrong in Politicks, tho formerly an advocate for Tom Pains Rights of Man and tho frequently mistaken in Men and Measures, I do not think him an insincere or a corruptable Man. My Friendship for him has ever been unshaken." But her affection for Jefferson did not extend to other Southern "real and haughty Aristocrats"; she contrasted them to the "Real and true Republicans" like her husband, expressing her hope that "their Negroes will fight our Battles." In addition to quotidian details, political commentary and descriptions of notable events, readers will find a variety of pithy remarks here. John's comment on the First Continental Congress, for example, might resonate with viewers of C-Span today: "Every Man in it is a great Man - an orator, a Critick, a statesman and therefore every Man upon every Question must shew his oratory, his Criticism and his Political Abilities." And feminists might well applaud Abigail's praise of female rulers: "History informs us that of the few Queens who have reigned for any length of Time as absolute Sovereigns the greatest part of them have been celebrated for excellent Govenours." BECAUSE Joseph Ellis has been an outspoken critic of social and women's history, he appears a peculiar choice to write the foreword, despite his many publications on the Revolutionary era. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he treats Abigail here more as her husband's adjunct and supporter than as her own woman. Neither Ellis nor, for that matter, the editors call the reader's attention to the ways in which Abigail boldly challenged John: how, when he complained about the poor education of America's sons, she responded with even more vociferous criticisms of the education offered its daughters; or how, most famously, she admonished him to "Remember the Ladies" in the "New Code of Laws" the nation would have to adopt, because "all Men would be tyrants if they could." On that occasion John pronounced her "saucy" and dismissed her concern with a "laugh," but at other times he took her much more seriously. "You are really brave, my dear, you are an Heroine," he told her in July 1775. And so she was. When asked in 1782 if she would have agreed to John's departure for Europe had she known how long he would be gone, she responded that "I feel a pleasure in being able to sacrifice my selfish passions to the general good." How many Americans today would say the same? A few months before their marriage John playfully addressed to Abigail a 'Catalogue of your Faults.' Mary Beth Norton is the author of "Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800."
Choice Review
The collected correspondence of John and Abigail Adams provides an insightful, detailed perspective of the founding of the American republic and the toils and blessings of marriage and daily life in late-18th-century America. Hogan and Taylor, editors for the Massachusetts Historical Society, have worked on numerous similar editing projects dealing with the Adams family papers. In this volume they have successfully presented the most complete set of letters between John and Abigail that has ever been published. No other transcriptions of historical documents have been included to support the couple's words, which have their own unique value. Joseph J. Ellis, noted historian on John Adams and other Founding Fathers, provides a brief foreword that will appeal to general readers and offers insight into the importance and rarity of such a collection of correspondence. The introduction and the notes on the text throughout the book prove valuable, but are often too brief. Even informed readers would desire more in-depth explanations and historical background to enhance John and Abigail's heartfelt exchanges. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers to upper-division undergraduates. E. A. McAllister University of Maryland
Table of Contents
| Foreword | p. vii |
| Introduction | p. xiii |
| Note to the Reader and Acknowledgments | p. xix |
| Courtship and Marriage | |
| "Love Sweetens Life": October 1762-July 1774 | p. 3 |
| "The Decisive Day Is Come": August 1774-December 1775 | p. 37 |
| Independence | |
| "We Are Determined to Foment a Rebelion": January-October 1776 | p. 95 |
| "Kind Providence Has Preserved to Me a Life": January-November 1777 | p. 159 |
| The Years Abroad | |
| "I Cast My Thoughts Across the Atlantick": February 1778-April 1782 | p. 203 |
| "A Signal Tryumph": July 1782-March 1788 | p. 259 |
| A New Government | |
| "The Most Insignificant Office": December 1788-January 1794 | p. 315 |
| "This Whirligig of a World": February 1794-December 1795 | p. 353 |
| The First Couple | |
| "I Am Heir Apparent": January 1796-January 1797 | p. 397 |
| "The Chief Majestracy of a Nation": February 1797-February 1801 | p. 435 |
| Epilogue: The Death of Abigail | p. 477 |
| Chronology | p. 483 |
| Index | p. 489 |
