I consider the true history of the American revolution & of the establishment of our present Constitutions as lost forever. -- President John Adams, at age 90. Ive been rewatching the John Adams miniseries from HBO, and had to verify this quote was real. (There is irony in that Adams was railing against using artistic license to fictionalize history, and here it happens right in the miniseries. Adams is shown as saying it to the painter Trumbell while viewing the famous painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Adams may well have said this to Trumbell, but in reality he wrote it in a letter). Full quote: John Adamss experience in the Continental Congress and as a diplomat gave him a nationalist perspective, but he did not share Hamiltons confidence in the nations elite. He embraced at different times both Jeffersons optimism and Hamiltons pessimism regarding his fellow countrymen, an ambivalence that remained at the core of his thinking. In contrast to both men, John Adams feared that the real Revolution would never be understood by his fellow countrymen. Eyewitness to the complicated back-room maneuvering of the Continental Congress as well as to the insincerity and cloaked messages of diplomatic life, he wrote to one correspondent, I consider the true history of the American revolution & of the establishment of our present Constitutions as lost forever. He asked Jefferson, Who shall write the history of the American revolution? Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it? press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7645.html
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 13:50:55 +0000
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