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Library of America #213
John Adams: Revolutionary Writings, 1755-1775
Propelled by the power of his pen and the clarity of his judgment, an ambitious young provincial lawyer named John Adams became a major figure in the American Revolution. This first of two volumes gathering his essential writings to 1783 includes the complete newspaper exchange between "Novanglus" (Adams) and "Massachusettensis" (Loyalist Daniel Leonard), as well as extensive diary excerpts and characteristically frank personal letters-many to his "dearest friend" Abigail-that convey the excitement and danger of the mounting crisis with Britain, from the Stamp Act riots of 1765, to the Boston Massacre and Tea Party, to the First Continental Congress, where Adams became a leader of the patriot cause. A companion volume carries the story forward to the Pace Treaty of 1783.
750 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2011
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202 people want to read
About the author
John Adams
943 books131 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
John Adams was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain. During the latter part of the Revolutionary War and in the early years of the new nation, he served the U.S. government as a senior diplomat in Europe. Adams was the first person to hold the office of vice president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. He was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with important contemporaries, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams and his friend and political rival Thomas Jefferson.
A lawyer and political activist prior to the Revolution, Adams was devoted to the right to counsel and presumption of innocence. He defied anti-British sentiment and successfully defended British soldiers against murder charges arising from the Boston Massacre. Adams was a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress and became a leader of the revolution. He assisted Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and was its primary advocate in Congress. As a diplomat he helped negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain and secured vital governmental loans. Adams was the primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which influenced the United States Constitution, as did his essay Thoughts on Government.
Adams was elected to two terms as vice president under President George Washington and was elected as the United States' second president in 1796. He was the only president elected under the banner of the Federalist Party. Adams's term was dominated by the issue of the French Revolutionary Wars, and his insistence on American neutrality led to fierce criticism from both the Jeffersonian Republicans and from some in his own party, led by his rival Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, and built up the Army and Navy in the undeclared naval war with France. He was the first president to reside in the White House.
In his bid in 1800 for reelection to the presidency, opposition from Federalists and accusations of despotism from Jeffersonians led to Adams losing to his vice president and former friend Jefferson, and he retired to Massachusetts. He eventually resumed his friendship with Jefferson by initiating a continuing correspondence. He and Abigail generated the Adams political family, including their son John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. John Adams died on July 4, 1826 – the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Adams and his son are the only presidents of the first twelve who never owned slaves. Historians and scholars have favorably ranked his administration.
John Adams was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain. During the latter part of the Revolutionary War and in the early years of the new nation, he served the U.S. government as a senior diplomat in Europe. Adams was the first person to hold the office of vice president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. He was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with important contemporaries, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams and his friend and political rival Thomas Jefferson.
A lawyer and political activist prior to the Revolution, Adams was devoted to the right to counsel and presumption of innocence. He defied anti-British sentiment and successfully defended British soldiers against murder charges arising from the Boston Massacre. Adams was a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress and became a leader of the revolution. He assisted Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and was its primary advocate in Congress. As a diplomat he helped negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain and secured vital governmental loans. Adams was the primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which influenced the United States Constitution, as did his essay Thoughts on Government.
Adams was elected to two terms as vice president under President George Washington and was elected as the United States' second president in 1796. He was the only president elected under the banner of the Federalist Party. Adams's term was dominated by the issue of the French Revolutionary Wars, and his insistence on American neutrality led to fierce criticism from both the Jeffersonian Republicans and from some in his own party, led by his rival Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, and built up the Army and Navy in the undeclared naval war with France. He was the first president to reside in the White House.
In his bid in 1800 for reelection to the presidency, opposition from Federalists and accusations of despotism from Jeffersonians led to Adams losing to his vice president and former friend Jefferson, and he retired to Massachusetts. He eventually resumed his friendship with Jefferson by initiating a continuing correspondence. He and Abigail generated the Adams political family, including their son John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. John Adams died on July 4, 1826 – the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Adams and his son are the only presidents of the first twelve who never owned slaves. Historians and scholars have favorably ranked his administration.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 16, 2025
John Adams In His Own Words -- 1
David McCollough's best-selling biography made John Adams (1735 -- 1826) a revered figure to many Americans. With the Library of America's publication of two volumes of Adams' "Revolutionary Writings", readers will have the opportunity to get to know Adams through his own words and thought. Gordon Wood, the distinguished Pulitzer-Prize winning historian of early America and Professor Emeritus at Brown University has prepared and selected the texts, provided a detailed chronology of Adams' life, and added brief explanatory notes to the selections.
The first volume in the set, which I will discuss in this review, covers the years 1755, when Adams was a student at the age of 20, through 1775, while Adams was serving in the Continental Congress. The second volume "John Adams: Revolutionary Writings 1775-1783" (Library of America, No. 214) continues with Adams' service in the Continental Congress and concludes in 1783 with the negotiation of the treaty of peace with Great Britain and the winning of American independence. There is a great deal to be digested in these volumes, but there is much more to learn about Adams that is outside their scope. The volumes do not cover the Constitutional period, Adams' vice-presidency and presidency, his long, productive period of retirement, and many of his lengthy later works of political philosophy. These years are covered in a third Library of America volume. For all the virtues of this collection, much of Adams remains to be discovered. The letters Adams exchanged late in life with Thomas Jefferson, for example, are ripe with wisdom and are important in understanding early America and the long, eventful relationship between these two Founders.
In reading these two volumes, the persistent reader can hear Adams' own words and consider his achievements and thought. This opening book consists of 72 letters together with diary entries, newspaper articles, essays, and public messages. The volume is in three broad sections, the first of which is titled "Lawyer and Patriot" and covers the years 1755 -- 1774. The second section is titled "The Continental Congress" and covers extensively the years 1774 -- 1775. The third section includes selections from Adam's unfinished autobiography, written in 1802, which track the events covered in the text.
In his letters, Adams revealed a great deal of himself, including his frequently conflicting traits of ambition, vanity, honesty, and commitment to public service and to making something useful of his life. Thus, in the early selections of the book, the reader gets to know Adams as a young man struggling with his career choices as he determines to become a lawyer, with his religious faith, and with his ambition. The volume also touches upon his courtship of Abigail Smith, whom Adams married in 1764. Abigail and her frequently absent husband exchanged many revealing letters, as she became his famous helpmeet and confidant.
The book covers an eventful period in pre-revolutionary America and Massachusetts as Adams, a diligent, eloquent, and successful young lawyer, rose to a position of prominence. After the French-Indian war, Britain began to tax the American colonies beginning with the Stamp Act of 1764. This tax, and subsequent actions would lead to the rupture with Britain and ultimately to independence. From the beginning, this volume shows, Adams was active in the Revolutionary movement and in protecting the colonies against what he perceived as tyranny from Great Britain. Many of Adams' essays and newspaper articles supportive of the early revolutionary cause are included here. They begin with the early, tongue-in-cheek essays under the name of "Humphrey Ploughjobber" and progress to a still important work, Adams' "Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law" of 1765, which sets forth Adams' understanding of the British constitution and of the abuses Britain was perpetuating in the colonies. The volume also includes a lengthy series of essays in which Adams explains his understanding of judicial independence and how he believed it was threatened by continuing acts of Parliament.
The longest section of this volume consists of essays Adams published in 1775 under the name of "Novanglus". The Novanglus essays were replies to essays written by one Daniel Leonard under the name of "Massachusettensis". Adams knew Leonard, but at the time of the exchange he did not know that Leonard had written these essays. The Massachusettnis and the Novanglus essays are included in their entirety. In 1819, Adams himself collected and published them in a book The subject of the exchanges is, broadly, the political and legal relationship between Britain and the colonies and about whether the colonies were justified in attempting to declare their independence. At one time, Leonard had sympathized with independence, but he wrote in "Massachusettensis" as a strong Loyalist. He argued that Britain had the legal and moral right to legislate for the colonies and that Britain's governance of the colonies had been, on the whole, mild and beneficent. He criticized Adams and his fellow revolutionists as incendiaries and feared that they would bring disaster to themselves and to the colonists. Adams, for his part, in long and difficult essays largely denied Britain's right to legislate for the colonies and denied its power to tax because the colonies had no representation in Parliament. Adams was critical of Britain's governance and argued that a cabal had been formed in the colonies and in Britain to reduce the colonies to subjection and to establish tyranny. The learning and arguments of both Massachuettensis and Novanglus are prodigious. To my reading, Adams does not always get the better of the argument. These essays are difficult and wordy, but they capture much of what was at issue between Britain and her colonies. They also show the role of Adams in the struggle.
Adams' thought shows revolutionary fervor and a commitment to representative government. It also exhibits a deep skepticism about human nature and a fear that the different economic groups in society would tend towards tyranny or anarchy unless they were made part of a mixed government with strong checks and balances among the potential factions. The tensions in Adams' political thinking make it both difficult and rewarding. It resists easy categorization. I conclude this review by quoting from the last paragraph of a "Draft of an Essay on Power" which Adams wrote in 1763. In 1807, Adams returned to this product of his youth to declare that "this last paragraph has been the Creed of my whole Life and is now March 27, 1807 as much approved as it was when it was written by John Adams." Adams wrote, in his 1763 draft essay as follows.(p. 90)
" No simple Form of government, can possibly secure Men against the Violences of Power. Simple Monarchy will soon mould itself into Despotism, Aristocracy will soon commence an Oligarchy, and Democracy, will soon degenerate into an Anarchy, such an Anarchy that every Man will do what is right in his own Eyes, and no Mans life or Property or Reputation or Liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral Virtues, and Intellectual abilities, all the Powers of Wealth, Beauty, Wit and Science, to the wanton Pleasures, the capricious Will, and the execrable Cruelty of one or a very few".
This selection of Adams' early writings makes for serious, sustained reading and thought. A good background in American history will be beneficial in reading this book. The Library of America and Wood deserve gratitude for making this volume and its companion volume of Adams' Revolutionary Writings accessible to lay readers. The book will reward readers interested in the Founders and in American history and political thought.
Robin Friedman
David McCollough's best-selling biography made John Adams (1735 -- 1826) a revered figure to many Americans. With the Library of America's publication of two volumes of Adams' "Revolutionary Writings", readers will have the opportunity to get to know Adams through his own words and thought. Gordon Wood, the distinguished Pulitzer-Prize winning historian of early America and Professor Emeritus at Brown University has prepared and selected the texts, provided a detailed chronology of Adams' life, and added brief explanatory notes to the selections.
The first volume in the set, which I will discuss in this review, covers the years 1755, when Adams was a student at the age of 20, through 1775, while Adams was serving in the Continental Congress. The second volume "John Adams: Revolutionary Writings 1775-1783" (Library of America, No. 214) continues with Adams' service in the Continental Congress and concludes in 1783 with the negotiation of the treaty of peace with Great Britain and the winning of American independence. There is a great deal to be digested in these volumes, but there is much more to learn about Adams that is outside their scope. The volumes do not cover the Constitutional period, Adams' vice-presidency and presidency, his long, productive period of retirement, and many of his lengthy later works of political philosophy. These years are covered in a third Library of America volume. For all the virtues of this collection, much of Adams remains to be discovered. The letters Adams exchanged late in life with Thomas Jefferson, for example, are ripe with wisdom and are important in understanding early America and the long, eventful relationship between these two Founders.
In reading these two volumes, the persistent reader can hear Adams' own words and consider his achievements and thought. This opening book consists of 72 letters together with diary entries, newspaper articles, essays, and public messages. The volume is in three broad sections, the first of which is titled "Lawyer and Patriot" and covers the years 1755 -- 1774. The second section is titled "The Continental Congress" and covers extensively the years 1774 -- 1775. The third section includes selections from Adam's unfinished autobiography, written in 1802, which track the events covered in the text.
In his letters, Adams revealed a great deal of himself, including his frequently conflicting traits of ambition, vanity, honesty, and commitment to public service and to making something useful of his life. Thus, in the early selections of the book, the reader gets to know Adams as a young man struggling with his career choices as he determines to become a lawyer, with his religious faith, and with his ambition. The volume also touches upon his courtship of Abigail Smith, whom Adams married in 1764. Abigail and her frequently absent husband exchanged many revealing letters, as she became his famous helpmeet and confidant.
The book covers an eventful period in pre-revolutionary America and Massachusetts as Adams, a diligent, eloquent, and successful young lawyer, rose to a position of prominence. After the French-Indian war, Britain began to tax the American colonies beginning with the Stamp Act of 1764. This tax, and subsequent actions would lead to the rupture with Britain and ultimately to independence. From the beginning, this volume shows, Adams was active in the Revolutionary movement and in protecting the colonies against what he perceived as tyranny from Great Britain. Many of Adams' essays and newspaper articles supportive of the early revolutionary cause are included here. They begin with the early, tongue-in-cheek essays under the name of "Humphrey Ploughjobber" and progress to a still important work, Adams' "Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law" of 1765, which sets forth Adams' understanding of the British constitution and of the abuses Britain was perpetuating in the colonies. The volume also includes a lengthy series of essays in which Adams explains his understanding of judicial independence and how he believed it was threatened by continuing acts of Parliament.
The longest section of this volume consists of essays Adams published in 1775 under the name of "Novanglus". The Novanglus essays were replies to essays written by one Daniel Leonard under the name of "Massachusettensis". Adams knew Leonard, but at the time of the exchange he did not know that Leonard had written these essays. The Massachusettnis and the Novanglus essays are included in their entirety. In 1819, Adams himself collected and published them in a book The subject of the exchanges is, broadly, the political and legal relationship between Britain and the colonies and about whether the colonies were justified in attempting to declare their independence. At one time, Leonard had sympathized with independence, but he wrote in "Massachusettensis" as a strong Loyalist. He argued that Britain had the legal and moral right to legislate for the colonies and that Britain's governance of the colonies had been, on the whole, mild and beneficent. He criticized Adams and his fellow revolutionists as incendiaries and feared that they would bring disaster to themselves and to the colonists. Adams, for his part, in long and difficult essays largely denied Britain's right to legislate for the colonies and denied its power to tax because the colonies had no representation in Parliament. Adams was critical of Britain's governance and argued that a cabal had been formed in the colonies and in Britain to reduce the colonies to subjection and to establish tyranny. The learning and arguments of both Massachuettensis and Novanglus are prodigious. To my reading, Adams does not always get the better of the argument. These essays are difficult and wordy, but they capture much of what was at issue between Britain and her colonies. They also show the role of Adams in the struggle.
Adams' thought shows revolutionary fervor and a commitment to representative government. It also exhibits a deep skepticism about human nature and a fear that the different economic groups in society would tend towards tyranny or anarchy unless they were made part of a mixed government with strong checks and balances among the potential factions. The tensions in Adams' political thinking make it both difficult and rewarding. It resists easy categorization. I conclude this review by quoting from the last paragraph of a "Draft of an Essay on Power" which Adams wrote in 1763. In 1807, Adams returned to this product of his youth to declare that "this last paragraph has been the Creed of my whole Life and is now March 27, 1807 as much approved as it was when it was written by John Adams." Adams wrote, in his 1763 draft essay as follows.(p. 90)
" No simple Form of government, can possibly secure Men against the Violences of Power. Simple Monarchy will soon mould itself into Despotism, Aristocracy will soon commence an Oligarchy, and Democracy, will soon degenerate into an Anarchy, such an Anarchy that every Man will do what is right in his own Eyes, and no Mans life or Property or Reputation or Liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral Virtues, and Intellectual abilities, all the Powers of Wealth, Beauty, Wit and Science, to the wanton Pleasures, the capricious Will, and the execrable Cruelty of one or a very few".
This selection of Adams' early writings makes for serious, sustained reading and thought. A good background in American history will be beneficial in reading this book. The Library of America and Wood deserve gratitude for making this volume and its companion volume of Adams' Revolutionary Writings accessible to lay readers. The book will reward readers interested in the Founders and in American history and political thought.
Robin Friedman
March 15, 2013
This sort of exposes how ridiculous any "rating" system is. I found it incredibly moving to read this great thinker's early work, his evolution from a young man into a respect jurist to an essayist arguing for the "consensual" relationship between Great Britain and her colonies, arriving at the Continental Congress and thinking it this close to Olympus, only to be crushed with disappointment at its lethargy once his beloved Boston comes under direct attack. Can't wait for Volume Two!
_I_ thought it was great, but will you? I read to inform ACTION PRESIDENTS, and found it thrilling, but I wouldn't have ever read it for "pleasure." I took a star off for that ... does that make any sense? I'm not sure it does to me.
_I_ thought it was great, but will you? I read to inform ACTION PRESIDENTS, and found it thrilling, but I wouldn't have ever read it for "pleasure." I took a star off for that ... does that make any sense? I'm not sure it does to me.
March 14, 2017
It is difficult to rate a book whose whole essence is taken from correspondence and journal entries, as the author didn't write to entertain, but to record. Here, I give my hero John Adams four out of five stars, only because some of the entries were extremely tedious and long-winded. But learn I did, and the research paid off, in my never-ending attempt to get into the minds of as many founding fathers as I dare. Highly entertaining? No. Informative? Yes!!!
November 6, 2025
This collection covers Adams and his writings in his early career, and the build-up to the revolution. Alot of Adams's own diary entries and letters here, showing his early studies in law onto his career as a lawyer. His essays (Usually published under a pen name) also appear. Later we get scenes of the firs Continental Congress, and the situation around Boston as British crackdowns increase. His complete essay debate with Daniel Leonard is also included, as are Leonard's entries so the reader gets the full context. Those especially reminded me a lot of modern day political commentators going back and forth with youtube videos, each trying to tear down the others to the point you don't always remember what started it! I guess some things never change...The one warning I'll give is that Adams writes very much like a lawyer, going into great detail (and sometimes length) to disprove a point. You want to know how medieval law can be twisted into supporting into liberty, you'll find it. You want to know how owing allegiance to King as his person is different from owing allegiance to the King as head of England, you'll see it, in extravagant detail. Just be aware, you'll get into the weeds with Adams. But that said, it remains a great collection that gets across the kind of person Adams was, and shows just how passionate and stubborn he was about standing against Britain's push to tax people without consent.
December 20, 2019
THIS WAS AWESOME MAN GOING IN MY LIBARY YESS.
August 21, 2025
Four stars until the Massachusettensis–Novanglus stuff.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews