The Adams-Jefferson Letters
The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams

Edited by Lester J. Cappon


Published: 1959, 1988

$55.00 hardcover ISBN 0-8078-1807-0
$21.95 paperback ISBN 0-8078-4230-3

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From the Preface

No correspondence in American history is more quotable or more readily recognized for its historical significance than that of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Yet, only now, a century and a third after their deaths in 1826, is their exchange of letters presented in full. Publication was first anticipated in their lifetime but never encouraged by them. During the political controversies which case a long shadow over their public careers, they suffered embarrassment from the unauthorized printing of occasional letters written in confidence. The years of retirement, they hoped, would provide a partial escape from the virulence of party strife and the publicity of high office. But statesmen, even in retirement, still belong to the public, as Jefferson learned from personal experience. He concluded in 1815 that his correspondence with Adams had been observed in the post offices, because a printer "has had the effrontery to propose to me the letting him publish it. These people think they have a right to everything however secret or sacred." [1]

If idle curiosity or selfish motives often aroused the momentary interest of the public, the intelligent citizen had some appreciation, however limited, of the writings of these statesmen as records of historical events. Adams and Jefferson, who lived long enough to acquire perspective on their own times, had become historical figures to the younger generation. As actors on the Revolutionary stage, they were asked innumerable questions about that heroic period, scarcely a half-century removed, which had already acquired the aura of history in the minds of the American people. The two venerable patriots themselves were well aware of their role as "Argonauts"[2] to be remembered by posterity. Adams best expressed the point when he hoped for publication of all of Jefferson's letters "in volumes." Even though some letters might "not always appear Orthodox," he wrote, "they will exhibit a Mass of Taste, Sense, Literature and Science, presented in a sweet simplicity and a neat elegance of Stile, which will be read with delight in future ages."[3] This is explanation enough for Adams's saving all he had received. Jefferson too preserved his great accumulation of correspondence, although he agreed that "an hour of conversation would be worth a volume of letters."[4] It is the recipients' copies, originally filed at Quincy and Monticello, that provide the basis for the present edition.

"Posterity," asserted Adams, who seemed more willing than Jefferson to designate their papers public property, "would . . . know on what kind terms they lived";[5] but during the course of a century this information was derived only piecemeal from successive editions of their letters, from Henry Randall's discursive account of Jefferson's life and times and friendship with Adams,[6] and, as a centennial commemoration, from Paul Wilstach's selection from their correspondence of 1812-26.[7] Actually, many of the letters exchanged by Adams and Jefferson have been in the public domain a long time, although they are scattered throughout their published writings rather than assembled as the integrated correspondence of both. During the nineteenth century a small percentage of Jefferson's letters appeared in the writings edited soon after his death by his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph, by Henry A. Washington in the 1850's, and by Paul Leicester Ford in the 1890's, the last being the most reliable in respect to texts. The sole edition of Adams's Works, carefully prepared by his grandson Charles Francis Adams from the manuscripts in the family's custody, was published in the early 1850's. Soon after the turn of the century came the Lipscomb and Bergh edition of Jefferson's Writings, more extensive but less authoritative than Ford. All of these were based largely, if not exclusively, upon retained copies (loose or in letter-books, in polygraph or letter-press) rather than upon the recipients' copies which have prime value for research. Until the planning in the mid-1940's of the Princeton edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson by Julian P. Boyd, no one had dealt with the problem of evaluating for publication the total correspondence — what Jefferson read in his mail as well as what he wrote in his own letters.

The richness of the Adams-Jefferson correspondence can be most fully appreciated by following the letters in chronological sequence. Only then can the reader sense the mental vigor of the two men and exclaim with Adams, "So many Subjects crowd upon me that I know not, with which to begin."[8] During their years in public office they gave close attention to the daily problems that pressed upon them, with occasional reflections revealing the statesmanship behind their decisions. Later, as elder statesmen in retirement, they sat in judgment on the world which had passed through two revolutions, on their country which had won independence and confirmed it, and on themselves; and they did so with an open-mindedness and a feeling of conviction that subsequent generations cannot fail to admire.
— Lester J. Cappon, editor




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