Publication of the Adams Papers began in 1961, with the first volume of the Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, under the editorial direction of Lyman Butterfield, to whom all Adams biographers and students of the Adams family are indebted. Mr. Butterfield brought to the immense project the high scholarly and literary standards that have distinguished it to this day, as publication of the Papers continues in one splendid volume after another.
For the help they have been in my work with the Papers, I wish to express my thanks to each of the present editorial staff, Richard Ryerson, Anne Decker Cecere, Jennifer A. Shea, and Gregg L. Lint, but especially to the gracious, dedicated Celeste Walker, whose knowledge of the subject, whose answers to innumerable questions, and whose suggestions and thoughtfulness have been invaluable.
Notes on the sources and a full bibliography follow. However, certain works have been mainstays. Of the few biographies ever written of John Adams, those by Gilbert Chinard, Page Smith, and John Ferling are first-rate, fair in judgment, and well written. Other particularly valuable studies are Zoltan Haraszti's John Adams and the Prophets of Progress, The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, and two works on the Adams presidency by Ralph A. Brown and Stephen G. Kurtz. And to Joseph Ellis I owe a special word of gratitude, for it was his excellent Passionate Sage, on Adams in his last years, that started me on the path that led to this book.
I am greatly indebted also to three major works upon which I have relied: Dumas Malone's distinguished six-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, The Adams-Jefferson Letters in two volumes edited by Lester J. Cappon, and The Age of Federalism by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, a landmark work in American history if ever there was.
But how does one properly acknowledge the pleasure one finds in such books? Or in the works of those front-rank historians who have written with such extraordinary insight on the nation's founding time—Edmund Morgan, Gordon Wood, Bernard Bailyn, Pauline Maier, Richard Ketchum, David Hackett Fischer, to name only a few? Or how to describe adequately the delight of immersing oneself, as I have tried to do, in the writing of the eighteenth century—to read again after long years, or for the first time, the writers John Adams read and loved—Swift, Pope, Defoe, Addison, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, Johnson, and Voltaire? I so enjoyed Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, a book I knew little about, that I read it twice.
The research has been done in libraries, archives, museums, and historic sites in Massachusetts, Virginia, Philadelphia, Washington, Amsterdam, Paris, and London, and I thank all those who were so very helpful: Len Tucker, William Fowler, Nicholas Graham, Anne Bentley, Brenda Lawson, Oona E. Beauchard, Jennifer Smith, and the remarkably knowledgeable Peter Drummey of the Massachusetts Historical Society; the staff of the Boston Athenaeum; Brian Sullivan of the Harvard University Archives; Ellen Dunlap, Georgia Barnhill, Joanne Chaison, and Russell Martin of the American Antiquarian Society; Susan Godlewski, Gunars Rutkovskis, and Jamie McGlone of the Boston Public Library, repository of John Adams's own library; Marianne Peake, Caroline Keinath, Kelly Cobble, and John Stanwich of the National Park Service staff at the Adams National Historical Park, Quincy; Will LaMoy of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem; Paula Faust Newcomb, Peter J. Hatch, Lucia Stanton, Susan Stein, William L. Beiswanger, Ann Lucas, Fraser Neiman, Zanne MacDonald, Rebecca Bowman, Michael B. Merriam, and my friend and wise counselor Daniel P. Jordan of the Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Charlottesville; Karin Wittenberg, Michael Plunkett, Bryson Clevenger Jr., Margaret Hrabe, Christina Deane, Alice Parra, Irene Norvelle, Anne Benham, Terry Belanger, Kendon Stubbs, and Roger Munsick of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia; Dorothy Twohig and Philander Chase of the Washington Papers, also at the University of Virginia; Roy Strohl, Jack Bales, Douglas Sanford, and Beth Perkins of the Simpson Library at Mary Washington College; Charles Bryan and the staff of the Virginia Historical Society; Robert C. Wilburn of Colonial Williamsburg; Edward C. Carter III, Bruce Laverty, and Roy Goodman of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Martha Wolfe of Bartram's Garden; Jennifer Esler of “Clivedon”; Martha Aikens, Ann Coxe Toogood, and Frances Delmar of the National Park Service staff at Independence Park; John Carter and Michael Angelo of the Independence Seaport Museum; the staff of the Pennsylvania Historical Society; the staff of the Free Library of Philadelphia; James Billington, Jeffrey Flannery, David Wigdor, Gerald Gawalt, James Hutson, Staley Hitchcock, Larry E. Sullivan, and Mary Wolfskill of the Library of Congress; the staff of the White House Historical Association; Wagner Loderwyck of the Amsterdam Historical Museum; the staffs of the Rijksmuseum, the Van Loon Museum, and the Maritime Museum, Amsterdam; Michael Crump of the British Museum; and the staffs of Blenheim Palace and the Stowe Landscape Gardens.
In Philadelphia Bruce Gill helped me duplicate John Adams's climb up the bell tower of historic Christ's Church. With the help of Captain Samuel Tucker's log of the 1778 voyage of the Boston, Nat Benjamin of Martha's Vineyard plotted the ship's exact course across the North Atlantic to Bordeaux and explained the perils of a winter voyage on the North Atlantic; and Daniel and Alice Jouve were expert guides to the eighteenth-century American landmarks of Paris.
For their favors, interest, advice, and encouragement, I thank Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Adams, Merrill D. Peterson, Lee and George Cochran, Sandy Fisher, Jane and David Acton, Anne Sibbald, John Gable, Dr. C. A. Van Minnen, Douglas L. Wilson, Charles Fagan III, Daniel J. Boorstin, Theodore K. Rabb, Richard D. Brown, lan Macpherson, Vincent Scully, Suzy Valentine, Ann Nelson, Noel Bagnall, Deborah DeBettencourt, Chip Stokes and Bud Leeds, Curtis Tucker, Rebecca Purdy, Michelle Krowl, Richard Moe, Arthur Sack, Josiah Bunting III, Steve Spear, Bonnie Hurd Smith, Royall D. O'Brien, Mary Beth Norton, Paul and Cathy Rancourt, Robert Wilson, Roger Kennedy, Richard Gilder, the Reverend Sheldon W. Bennett, Joan Paterson Kerr, and Margaret Goodhue.
Richard Ketchum, Susan Stein, Celeste Walker, William Fowler, Richard Ryerson, Daniel P. Jordan, Lucia Stanton, Doric McCullough Lawson, John Zentay, Nat Benjamin, Richard Craven, Patrick J. Walsh, Richard A. Baker, Donald Ritchie, and Thomas J. McGuire each read parts or all of the manuscript, and for their thoughtful comments and criticism I am very grateful. They have made it a better book than it would have been without their contributions. Any errors of fact or interpretation it may contain are mine alone.
Patrick J. Walsh and Thomas J. McGuire also contributed to the research. But I am indebted above all to the tireless, ever resourceful efforts of my research assistant Michael Hill, who has been unfailingly involved from start to finish.
My friend and literary agent Morton L. Janklow has been an enthusiastic believer in the book all along. My editor, Michael Korda, has provided encouragement and expert guidance, as well as frequent kindnesses. Nor can I say enough for copy editors Gypsy da Silva and Fred Wiemer; the gifted designer of the book, Amy Hill; Wendell Minor, who designed the jacket; Sydney Wolfe Cohen, who did the index; and my son William B. McCullough, who took the jacket photograph.
For her help in dozens of ways, I thank my daughter Dorie Lawson, and for their sustained interest in my work, their patience and good cheer, I thank all of my family—children and spouses, grandchildren numerous and spirited, and foremost and always, my wife Rosalee.
—David McCullough
West Tisbury, Massachusetts
January 10, 2001
John Adams Page 75