Conservatives who are gratified at the success of David
McCullough's wonderful new biography of John Adams will find even
more of the real Adams-Adams unplugged, one might say in
"The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams."
-Michael Potemra, National Review/July 23, 2001
The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams presents the
principal shorter writings in which Adams addresses the prospect of
revolution and the form of government proper to the new United
States. Though one of the principal framers of the American republic
and the successor to Washington as president, John Adams receives
remarkably little attention among many students of the early
national period. This is especially true in the case of the periods
before and after the Revolution, in which the intellectual rationale
for independence and republican government was given the fullest
expression.
The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams illustrates
that it was Adams, for example, who before the Revolution wrote some
of the most important documents on the nature of the British
Constitution and the meaning of rights, sovereignty, representation,
and obligation. And it was Adams who, once the colonies had declared
independence, wrote equally important works on possible forms of
government in a quest to develop a science of politics for the
construction of a constitution for the proposed republic.
C. Bradley Thompson is an Associate Professor of History and
Political Science at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio, and the
author of John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty.
