Adams and Jefferson

Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue documents the public lives and personal friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, from their first meeting as delegates to the Second Continental Congress to their deaths on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This study takes a look at some of the famous correspondence between the two statesmen who devoted their lives to a new chapter of freedom and self-government.Peterson draws an extended parallel between the backgrounds, experiences, personalities, and intellectual styles of Adams and Jefferson and examines their work in the achievement of independence and the design of new governments for Massachusetts and Virginia. While Adams and Jefferson had much in common, their ideas of human nature, history, society, and government included many differences that would reveal themselves in the course of time. Merrill D. Peterson looks at Adams and Jefferson's relationship across their lives, including their disputes in the midst of the coming French Revolution, their excitement for the establishment of a new American government under the Constitution, their contest for the presidency in 1796, and their eventual reconciliation.

Merrill D. Peterson (1921-2009) was Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia. His books include The Jefferson Image in the American Mind, which won the Bancroft Prize, and Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography.Andrew Burstein is the Charles Phelps Manship Professor at Louisiana State University. He is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality, Madison and Jefferson, and Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello.