Adams, John, second President

Letter signed ("John Adams"), 2 pages with integral franked address leaf ( 9 7/8 x 7 7/8 in.; 250 x 200 mm), "Montezillo" [i.e., Quincy], 31 August 1820, to Jonathan Mason of Boston, with reflections on the American Revolution; minor loss from seal tear on address leaf. Light blue cloth folding case, blue morocco spine lettered gilt.

Ruminations on the Revolution. Adams had enlisted the assistance of Boston lawyer and statesman Jonathan Mason, to preserve his recollections of history and his place in it for posterity.  Adams had long resented the idea that his contributions to the Revolution had been relegated to secondary status while those of others were in ascendance. This is even reflected in the name he had given to his comfortable but humble farm in Quincy.  After losing the election in 1800, he railed against the great men and estates of Virginia: Washington at Mount Vernon and Jefferson at Monticello, but he maintained his humor by naming his farm "Montezillo,"after a little hill as opposed to Jefferson's "lofty mountain" of Monticello.

On the causes of the Revolution, he writes: "The real principles, Motives, and feelings which gave rise to the Revolution have been very superficially and imperfectly investigated. For one example among many, The dread of the Hierarchy; and of the high principles in Religion and government; which then prevailed in the Church of England and which were more openly and dogmatically professed and asserted in America than in England itself—Are not sufficiently known, and have not been sufficiently considered.—Indeed it is almost impossible to convince at this day, any young Man; or even any middle aged Man of the extravagance to which those high doctrines were carried before the Revolution."

Adams then relates his own personal reaction at the time: "And of the Authority of the Church in matters of Religion—yet these Doctrines, I heard asserted almost every day—The idea that such a Church, and such doctrines and such Hierarchy where [sic] to be established by Act of Parliament appeared to me worse than Death—As I know this to be the feeling and Principle of all the Dissenters in America—I did not believe they would submit to it. ... I therefore believe as early as I can remember, that this Country would never submit to the Unlimited Authority of Parliament—And this opinion forced me to consider what would be the consequences of an attempt on the part of Great Britain, to carry into execution a Soverign Legislative Authority over Us. — War and Carnage, and devastation I saw—or thought I saw must be the consequence—and I fully believed that all the horrours of such a Contest would never wholly subdue the old non-conformist Spirit."