Tag: John Adams

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A Second Bonaparte: Searching for the Character of Alexander Hamilton

Thomas Jefferson, that American Sphinx,[1] is perhaps Alexander Hamilton’s only rival within the high pantheon of the founding generation for enigma. Hamilton’s character recalls Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women, a spiraling marble Renaissance masterpiece resident in Florence’s Piazza Signoria, featuring three intertwined figures that can only be captured conclusively from a host of vantage […]

by Steven C. Hertler
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Morris’s Misidentification: Miscasting Thomas Jefferson as an Obsessive Compulsive Personality

The characters and contributions of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton are collectively sketched by historian Richard B. Morris in, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries. Amid descriptions of Hamilton’s grandiose ambitions, Washington’s sullen stiffness, Adams’s humble origins, and Franklin’s protean diplomacy, […]

by Steven C. Hertler
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The Early Years: John Adams Lists Abigail’s Faults and Abigail Replies!

As a young country lawyer, John Adams thought he seemed to lack focus. “Ballast is what I want, I totter, with every Breeze. My motions are unsteady.”[1] History has shown that he eventually would find his “Ballast” in the steady personage of Abigail (Smith) Adams, his almost-equally-famous better half. Over the course of their fifty-four-year-long […]

by John L. Smith, Jr.
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Interview: Sarah Jane Marsh

Today, May 29, 2018, Disney Hyperion is introducing young readers to the American Revolution with Thomas Paine and the Dangerous Word, an eighty-page picture book biography written by Sarah Jane Marsh[1] and illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. The story focuses on Paine’s resilient early life and his call for independence through his famous pamphlet Common Sense. I […]

by Jett Conner
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New JAR Book: John Adams vs Thomas Paine: Rival Plans for the Early Republic by Jett B. Conner

We are very happy to announce our newest JAR book is now available for sale. John Adams vs Thomas Paine: Rival Plans for the Early Republic by Jett B. Conner [BUY NOW ON AMAZON] How Paine’s Common Sense and Adams’s Thoughts on Government shaped our modern political institutions. Initially admiring Thomas Paine’s efforts for independence, John Adams nevertheless was […]

by Editors
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How John Adams Won the Hancock Trial

Historian Oliver Morton Dickerson was studying American colonial newspapers when he noticed identical articles appearing in newspapers in New York, Pennsylvania, Boston, elsewhere in the colonies and in England. It was an anonymous column called A Journal of the Times.   The Journal covered daily events in Boston from September of 1768 through August of 1769 […]

by Neal Nusholtz
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Adams vs. Paine: A Critical Debate

There is a tendency today to lump the Founding Fathers together as though somehow they thought alike, acted in unison and actually got along with each other while leading the Revolutionary Cause and founding a new nation. Now that America’s founding is well over two hundred years old, distance brings clarity in understanding the period, […]

by Jett Conner
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“No Taxation without Representation” (Part 2)

In 1765 Parliament instituted a Stamp Act for the North American colonies, which proved wildly unpopular from Savannah to Halifax, and ultimately unworkable. The following year, there was a change of government in London. The new ministers repealed the Stamp Act, and across the ocean there was great rejoicing. However, those ministers also proposed a […]

by J. L. Bell
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John Adams’s Rule of Thirds

Dear Mr. History: I often hear that John Adams estimated that one-third of Americans supported the Revolution, one-third opposed it, and one-third was neutral.  That doesn’t seem right to me.  Does that mean that the Loyalist and Patriot efforts were about equal?  Was Adams correct in this?  Sincerely, One-third Skeptical Dear One-Third: Don’t hang your […]

by Michael Schellhammer