selected with comments by Paul Wilstach
originally published in 1925
paperback; 197 pages
Here is a book whose material was the collaboration of two of the greatest Americans. These two men had in their earlier years been friends. Then they were tossed apart on the fork of politics, each believing the other to have been at the end of the handle, each blaming the other in a silence of years, until brought together toward the end of their long lives; not together in the corporeal sense, not that they ever saw each other again, but in the better and fuller sense of understanding. Not all the letters which Jefferson and Adams wrote to each other are given here, not even all the letters exchanged in their later period of reconciliation. And such as are here reproduced are not in all instances quoted in full. But it is believed that what is here offered in part only, will give the substance and temper of the whole; indicating what subjects occupied their later leisure and what was their attitude toward these subjects and toward each other after having become reconciled.
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