My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams

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Synopsis
(from Forward: J. Ellis)My two favorite Sceanes of John and Abigail Adams come from their retirement years at Quincy. In the first John is out in the fields working alongside his hired hands, swinging the scythe as he murmurs curses under his breath against Tom Paine and Alexander Hamilton. Abigail is duly recording his murmurings, seconding his denunciations, noting that Thomas Jefferson should also be added to the rogues' gallery. In the second scene, Abigail has descended to the basement of the Quincy house to shell peas. John accompanies her, bringing along a copy of Descartes to read to her while she prepares dinner. It is the combination of pungency and intimacy embodied in these two Sceanes that gives the correspondence between John and Abigail such enduring significance, though a few other factors contribute to the ultimate impact. They happened to be living through the most tumultuous and consequential chapter in America's birth as a nation, when the core values were declared and the abiding institutions created. They happened to be centrally involved in these declarations and creations. They happened to preserve about 1,160 letters between them, recording their thoughts and feelings with uncommon candor. (Martha Washington destroyed all but three of the letters she and George exchanged.) And both of them happened to be, each in their own distinctive ways, prose stylists of equally uncommon felicity. If you want to understand how the American republic was improvised on the run, this is a seminal source. If you want to understand how a husband and wife can sustain their love over a lifetime of struggle and
Copyright:
2007

Book Details

Book Quality:
Excellent
Book Size:
511 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780674026063
Publisher:
N/A
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
The Massachusetts Historical Society
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Literature and Fiction, Politics and Government, Sociology
Submitted By:
BookLady
Proofread By:
Kari G
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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