![]() ![]() 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. ![]() “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. 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. 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. 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. ![]() ![]() Adams often voiced his apprehension that his contribution to American independence would be overshadowed by the attention paid to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. All the nation’s founding fathers were concerned about how history would judge them, none more so than John Adams. ![]()
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