Review by New York Times Review
THOMAS JEFFERSON, describing John Adams in a letter, wrote, "He is so amiable, that I pronounce you will love him if you ever become acquainted with him." The feeling was mutual. "I always loved Jefferson, and still love him," Adams said when he was an old man. Their friendship lasted (with interruptions) for 51 years, from their meeting in 1775 in the Continental Congress to their deaths on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Gordon S. Wood, the Alva O. Way university professor at Brown, who has been writing history as long as Jefferson and Adams knew each other, examines their relationship in "Friends Divided." There was ample potential for division in this romance. Jefferson was a Virginia aristocrat whose first election to the colonial legislature at age 26 was an easy trot to home plate from third base. Adams, the son of a farmer/shoemaker, thrust himself into the Massachusetts elite by unremitting application as a lawyer and activist. Although both men deplored slavery, Jefferson owned slaves all his life, while Adams never owned any. As an intellectual, Jefferson was a water-strider, skimming over every subject; Adams bored into history. Jefferson wrote for the ages; Adams admitted, "I have never had time to make my poor productions shorter." Jefferson was shy, gracious and smooth. Adams was warm and ardent with friends, prickly and argumentative with rivals (and friends). Politics brought them together, as radical representatives of the two most radical American colonies at the dawn of the Revolution. Adams was the workhorse of the Continental Congress, laboring on committees and making the case for independence in speeches. Jefferson, a quieter presence, was assigned to put America's principles and grievances on paper; his stylistic gifts (and some tough editing by his colleagues) made an immortal document. As the Revolutionary struggle ground on, Adams was dispatched to Europe as a diplomat while Jefferson served as governor of Virginia. But in the 1780s the victorious new nation wanted Jefferson's services as a diplomat too, and the patriots were reunited in Paris and London. There Jefferson, recently widowed, befriended Adams's formidable wife, Abigail. He talked politics with her and became her personal shopper, informing her that when buying figurines for her dining room he passed on one of Venus because "I thought it out of taste to have two at table at the same time." Although both men were abroad when the Constitution was written and ratified, each did well under the new system, Adams being elected the first vice president in 1789, and Jefferson becoming the first secretary of state the following year. But in the 1790s their friendship buckled, and finally shattered. Mere ambition would have split them. Everyone assumed that George Washington would be president as long as he wanted the job. But after he retired, only one man could take his place. There was also an issue that separated the two friends: the revolution in America's sometime ally France (the Bastille fell three months after Washington's first inauguration). Jefferson thought the French Revolution was glorious: "Rather than it should have failed," he wrote, "I would have seen half the earth desolated." Adams thought it was doomed from the start: "To think of Reinstituting Republics . . . would be to revive Confusion and Carnage, which must again End in despotism." America's first two-party system - Jefferson's Republicans versus Adams's Federalists - coalesced in part around these opposing estimates of revolutionary France. In the first Washingtonless presidential election, in 1796, Adams edged Jefferson by only three electoral votes (which, under the electoral system of the day, made Jefferson vice president). Four years later, in a contest marked by grotesque vituperation, Jefferson beat Adams. Adams refused to attend his successor's inauguration. Silence fell between the two men. Abigail sent Jefferson a letter of condolence after the death of his daughter Polly in 1804, but their tentative correspondence almost immediately went nuclear. Friendship was finally restored through the efforts of Benjamin Rush, a colleague from the Continental Congress, who conducted a two-year campaign of exhortation, flattery and guile. Among Rush's stratagems was telling Adams that he had had a dream in which Adams broke the ice by writing Jefferson. Adams finally did so on New Year's Day, 1812. Enemies no more, the two corresponded until the end. THIS IS AN ENGROSSING STORY, which Wood tells with a mastery of detail and a modern plainness of expression that makes a refreshing contrast with the 18thcentury locutions of his subjects. Critiquing one of Adams's involved and pedantic arguments, Wood says simply, "No one could understand what he meant." What does their friendship mean to us after almost 200 years? Wood finds relevance in one of their most arcane interests, political theory. Adams, taught by his wide reading of history and his struggles as a sharp-elbowed outsider, held grim views of humanity and politics. Inequality was baked into human nature: Some were born rich, others smart, still others beautiful. Those who enjoyed these advantages were aristocrats, who would ever seek to cement their power as oligarchs. The march to oligarchy would happen here: There was "no special providence for Americans, and their nature is the same with that of others," Adams warned. Only a strong, nonpartisan executive could keep grasping aristos in line. Jefferson, by contrast, projected hope. He admitted that humans differed in their abilities - most notoriously in his discussion of slavery in "Notes on the State of Virginia," which stinks of pseudoscientific racism. Yet at the same time he believed that all people, including blacks, possessed a moral sense, which he defined as "a love of others" and "a sense of duty to them." The virtual universality of the moral sense made democracy practical, since everyone had the capacity to make the most important judgments. "State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor," Jefferson wrote; "the former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules." Adams's fascination with oligarchy prefigures the concerns of sociologists as different as Karl Marx, David Brooks and Donald Trump (drain the swamp). Wood acknowledges the force of Adams's fears. He also clearly admires him as a contrarian: "In all of American history, no political leader of Adams's stature, and certainly no president, has ever so emphatically denied the belief in American exceptionalism." Jefferson he finds too sunny for this world. "He was the pure American innocent," Wood says. "He had little understanding of man's capacity for evil and had no tragic sense whatsoever." In the end, however, Wood, almost against his inclinations, declares Jefferson the winner of this philosophical smackdown. The proof of the theory is in the eating. Jefferson explained, as well as anyone, how democracy could work; since America has endured, it is at least possible that Jefferson was right. Jefferson's power as a poet and sloganeer also makes us want him, and America, to be right. Wood sums up: "Despite or perhaps because of his innocence and naïve optimism, he offered his fellow Americans a set of stirring ideals that has carried them and their country through all of their many ordeals." Adams's reputed last words may be the last word: Unaware that Jefferson had died only five hours earlier, he murmured, "Thomas Jefferson survives." No one of Adams's stature 'has ever so emphatically denied the belief in American exceptionalism.' RICHARD BROOKHISER is the author of "Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Celebrated historian Wood begins his study of Founding Father frenemies John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by contending that while Jefferson's star has remained ascendant . . . Adams' seems to have virtually disappeared from the firmament. David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Adams and the resulting Emmy-winning HBO series based on it apparently made little impression on this author. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating, if at times dense, portrait of two brilliant men. Adams was blunt, brash, and well-spoken, with a dark view of human nature thanks to his Puritan upbringings. Jefferson was genteel, politic, an optimist about democracy. Wood recreates their oft-tested friendship and parses their writings for their beliefs about politics and America's future. Wood's hard work is marred by his supposition that Jefferson's role in writing the Declaration of Independence has lodged Jefferson, not Adams, in Americans' permanent memory, that Adams himself knew that Jefferson was the superior man. The world has changed, and now Jefferson is judged by his role as a willing slaveowner and his relationship with slave Sally Hemings. Contemporary readers may be unpersuaded by Wood's argument.--Gwinn, Mary Ann Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wood (The Idea of America), a Pulitzer and Bancroft prize-winning professor of history at Brown, harnesses a career's worth of historical knowledge to produce an artful tale of two of the most accomplished founding fathers. "The ironies and paradoxes expressed in the lives of these two Founders epitomize the strange and wondrous experience of the nation itself," Wood explains. Though the U.S. emerged as a sovereign nation, its people remained divided by conflicting political philosophies. Adams and Jefferson often ended up on opposite sides, with political differences driving an almost irrevocable wedge between them. Tracing the trajectory of this fragile friendship, Wood reveals how and why Jefferson rather than Adams has endured as the embodiment of the nation's heritage. Through the first two chapters, Wood introduces Adams and Jefferson by comparing and contrasting their backgrounds and characters. The two men became acquainted during meetings of the Second Continental Congress, where they agreed on the divisive question of independence. Later, political differences surfaced over the new U.S. Constitution, the French Revolution, and American party politics, all of which strained their friendship. Wood glides through the political intricacies and intrigues of the times, offering incisive analyses, especially of the ongoing debate over slavery, finely illuminating the minds of Adams and Jefferson. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Both John Adams (1735-1826) and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) died on the golden jubilee of America's founding, within hours of each other. This well-known story opens Wood's (history, Brown Univ.; The Idea of America) biography of an unlikely friendship that had the power to bring the nation together; yet, one also fraught with an ideological divide that threatened the strength of their relationship. Adams, a middle-class pessimist, was known for telling hard truths that he believed the American people needed to hear. Jefferson, in contrast, was a slave-holding aristocrat who espoused the exceptional nature of Americans and told people what they wanted to hear. Wood's outstanding scholarship and beautiful, masterly prose tells each man's experience, and he's unafraid to discuss hard facts, such as Jefferson's blind spot on slavery or Adams's reverence for the British monarchy. More importantly, their friendship reveals why Americans remember the words of Jefferson over those of Adams. Jefferson's charm and optimistic view of the American experiment better fit Abraham Lincoln's unification narrative as the Union started to crumble. VERDICT Essential reading from a Pulitzer Prize-winning giant of early American history for both casual history readers and historians.-Jessica Holland, Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The acclaimed historian engages in a compelling examination of the complex relationship of the Founding Fathers who eventually served as the second and third presidents of the United States.It is well-known that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson lived long lives and famously died on the same day, July 4, 1826. But what might be lesser known is that these two men of vastly different personalities and political views went from close allies to enemies to late-in-life friends. Adams was a self-made man who could seem abrupt and did not win admirers easily. Jefferson, on the other hand, was born to a life of privilege and honor, and he acted diplomatically almost without fail. Northerner Adams felt certain that humans could never achieve full equality, but he opposed slavery. Southerner Jefferson seemed to believe in the possibility of equality yet owned slaves. A leading historian of the Revolution and winner of both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes, Wood (History/Brown Univ.; The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States, 2011, etc.) traces how these two remarkable yet flawed men viewed each other through the decades and how the changing nature of their relationship influenced the public policy of their fledgling nation, at home and overseas. The author is especially adroit at explaining how Adams' ambassadorship to England and Jefferson's ambassadorship to France altered their views of the world and to some extent accelerated the conflicts between them. Wood also clearly explains Jefferson's popularity among nonhistorians, while Adams often seems overlooked in lay discussions of early American history. Among the other well-known personages in the narrative are Abigail Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Rush, all portrayed vividly by the author, whose approachable writing style is equal to his impressive archival research. An illuminating history of early Americans that is especially timely in the ugly, partisan-filled age of Trump. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
