Out of the highest admiration these first volumes of the Papers of John Adams are dedicated to L. H. BUTTERFIELD Editor in Chief Emeritus without whose arrangement and interpretation of Adams Papers materials no ready succession of editors would have been possible.

This edition of The Adams Papers is sponsored by the massachusetts historical society to which the adams manuscript trust by a deed of gift dated 4 April 1956 gave ultimate custody of the personal and public papers written, accumulated, and preserved over a span of three centuries by the Adams family of Massachusetts

The acorn and oakleaf device shown above has been redrawn from a seal cut for John Quincy Adams after 1830. The motto is from Caecilius Statius as quoted by Cicero in the First Tusculan Disputation: Serit arbores quae alteri seculo prosint (“He plants trees for the benefit of later generations”).