John Adams S Republic

VIII. Redefining the Republican Tradition, 1784-1787 -- IX. John Adams's Republic in Republican America, 1787-1800 -- X.A Retrospective Retirement, 1801-1826 -- Conclusion: Memory and Desire in America's Republican Revolution -- Notes -- An Essay on Sources -- A Chronology of John Adams's Political Study and Writings -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Z

Gordon S. Wood presents the final volume in his definitive three-volume edition of the writings of a great American Founder. A powerful polemicist, insightful political theorist, and tireless diplomat, John Adams (1735–1826) was a vital and controversial figure during the early years of the American republic. Once overshadowed by Washington and Jefferson, Adams has become the subject of renewed interest, with a best-selling biography and acclaimed television series reintroducing him to millions. Now, this final volume of a comprehensive three-volume edition makes his important writings from the early national period broadly available to general readers. Bringing together letters, diary excerpts, political essays, speeches, and presidential messages, Writings from the New Nation 1784–1826 illuminates Adams's service as a diplomat in the Netherlands and England; his eight years as vice president under Washington; and his tumultous single term as president. The first person to win a contested presidential election and then to be defeated for reelection, Adams faced bitter criticism from both Jeffersonian Republicans and Hamiltonian Federalists while striving to prevent an undeclared naval conflict with Revolutionary France from escalating into full-scale war. Selections from A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787–88) and Discourses on Davila (1790–91) demonstrate his insights into the strengths and weaknesses of ancient and modern political systems, while letters to his wife and children illuminate the passionate and mercurial personality of one of our most fascinating Founders. This volume is published simultaneously with Abigail Adams: Letters, the first comprehensive collection of the extraordinary correspondence of Adams's wife and key advisor. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams presents the principal shorter writings in which Adams addresses the prospect of revolution and the form of government proper to the new United States. Though one of the principal framers of the American republic and the successor to Washington as president, John Adams receives remarkably little attention among many students of the early national period. This is especially true in the case of the periods before and after the Revolution, in which the intellectual rationale for independence and republican government was given the fullest expression. The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams illustrates that it was Adams, for example, who before the Revolution wrote some of the most important documents on the nature of the British Constitution and the meaning of rights, sovereignty, representation, and obligation. And it was Adams who, once the colonies had declared independence, wrote equally important works on possible forms of government in a quest to develop a science of politics for the construction of a constitution for the proposed republic.

The fundamental article of my political creed, declared John Adams, is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. The consequences of this article for Adams' thought are nowhere better articulated than in this anthology, which presents his remarkable attempts at constructing a complete political system based on constitutional, balanced, representative government.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: Creating the American Republic reveals the thoughts and actions of two founders of the American Republic who could hardly have been more dissimilar in background and personality. Both their friendship and rivalry were born in the cauldron of the American Revolution and nurtured by the flames of ambition and clashing political philosophies. Together they helped plan and plot a revolution and led its defining moment, the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. After a new American Republic emerged from the revolution, Jefferson and Adams became lightening rods in the political storms that nearly wrecked the American ship of state on the shoals of sectionalism, political parties and personal principles. Adams's belief that Jefferson had become a Jacobin and Jefferson's belief that Adams was a monarchist fueled a desperate struggle to control the direction of the American nation. Personal friends and political enemies, Adams and Jefferson might be called frenemies in today's vernacular. Principle, ambition and pride were the mainstays of their successes and their failures.

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A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 From the great historian of the American Revolution, New York Times-bestselling and Pulitzer-winning Gordon Wood, comes a majestic dual biography of two of America's most enduringly fascinating figures, whose partnership helped birth a nation, and whose subsequent falling out did much to fix its course. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slaveowner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government. They worked closely in the crucible of revolution, crafting the Declaration of Independence and leading, with Franklin, the diplomatic effort that brought France into the fight. But ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond. But late in life, something remarkable happened: these two men were nudged into reconciliation. What started as a grudging trickle of correspondence became a great flood, and a friendship was rekindled, over the course of hundreds of letters. In their final years they were the last surviving founding fathers and cherished their role in this mighty young republic as it approached the half century mark in 1826. At last, on the afternoon of July 4th, 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration, Adams let out a sigh and said, "At least Jefferson still lives." He died soon thereafter. In fact, a few hours earlier on that same day, far to the south in his home in Monticello, Jefferson died as well. Arguably no relationship in this country's history carries as much freight as that of John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Gordon Wood has more than done justice to these entwined lives and their meaning; he has written a magnificent new addition to America's collective story.