With July 4th a day away I’ve been looking at ordering this book of Adams Jefferson Letters Complete Correspondence. Both men died on the same day, July 4, 1826, fifty years after both signing the Declaration of Independence and both were past Presidents of the United States.
Tackling the 690 pages Paperback of the 1988 version published by the University of North Carolina Press could take a while. “Lester J. Cappon’s edition, first published in 1959 in two volumes, provides the complete correspondence between these two men and includes the correspondence between Abigail Adams and Jefferson.”
The Goodreads description concludes with “This reissue of “The Adams-Jefferson Letters in a one-volume unabridged edition brings to a broader audience one of the monuments of American scholarship and, to quote C. Vann Woodward, ‘a major treasure of national literature.'”
It was nice to come across a six page PDF entitled “Adams Jefferson Letters Complete Correspondence”. It has excerpts and images along with NHC footnotes added, “by the National Humanities Center for use in a Professional Development Seminar___”. I’ve included an image of Page 1 here along with a link.
Adams-Jefferson Letters Complete Correspondence book
Over at Goodreads it includes this in their description:
“An intellectual dialogue of the highest plane achieved in America, the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson spanned half a century and embraced government, philosophy, religion, quotidiana, and family griefs and joys.
First meeting as delegates to the Continental Congress in 1775, they initiated correspondence in 1777, negotiated jointly as ministers in Europe in the 1780s, and served the early Republic–each, ultimately, in its highest office.
At Jefferson’s defeat of Adams for the presidency in 1800, they became estranged, and the correspondence lapses from 1801 to 1812, then is renewed until the death of both in 1826, fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence...”
See if reading the six-page PDF inspires finds you wanting to read more of these historic letters in the one-volume unabridged edition.
We have included John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in a previous blog post back in 2016 in Presidents Day and Presidential Letters, it included a section on The Presidential Letters at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
From the Overview:
“… The Massachusetts Historical Society is famous for the thousands of letters of Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas Jefferson held in the Adams Family Papers and the Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Papers. This guide describes more than 3,500 letters found in other collections written by all U.S. presidents through George H. W. Bush. While the guide emphasizes letters written during each president’s term of office, it includes an overview of letters written throughout the lifetime of each president.
Join me tomorrow for my 4th of July blog post – it will be my third year to be writing one!
Anchors Aweigh,
Helen
Adams Jefferson Letters Complete Correspondence Attribution & Thank you to the following who are referenced today
Adams Jefferson Letters Complete Correspondence six page PDF, image above of page 1, and excerpt
Adams-Jefferson Letters by Lester J. Cappon , Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abigail Adams, Image above upper left book cover, at Goodreads. Paperback, 690 pages. Published September 30th, 1988 by University of North Carolina Press (first published 1959).
AnchoredScraps.com daily blog post: Presidents Day and Presidential Letters, February 15, 2016, by Helen Rittersporn. Included from that blog post Excerpt from Presidential Letters at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
You may also enjoy reading from AnchoredScraps Rare Thomas Jefferson Letter Discovered For Sale 7-05-2016
