Since these two volumes have been so long in the making, it would be appropriate to repeat many if not most of the names of individuals and institutions mentioned gratefully in the Acknowledgments furnished in all the volumes of The Adams Papers published during the last decade. To do so is manifestly impossible, and the following list of those who have rendered valuable aid in the preparation and production of volumes 3 and 4 of Adams Family Correspondence , sometimes in a continuous way and sometimes on small and specialized but important matters, is highly selective.

Two institutions brought The Adams Papers into being, and a third has been vital to its welfare from an early stage.

The Massachusetts Historical Society, under the directorship of Stephen T. Riley, has continued to provide the enterprise a home, the great bulk of the original documentary materials, and essential services of many kinds, even during the period of turmoil of the last several years while it was enlarging and renovating its own physical plant. To the Society and its entire staff we extend our heartfelt thanks.

Harvard University Press, under whose Belknap Press imprint we are honored to have the edition appear, has maintained its editorial and production standards, which are the highest, in a time of stress for all publishers. The unfailing vigilance and resourcefulness of our HUP editor since the very outset, Ann Louise McLaughlin, we shall never cease to marvel at and be grateful for. And the enthusiastic and constructive interest in every aspect of our enterprise shown by Mark Carroll, both before and during his term as director of the Press from 1968 through early 1972, must be recorded with the editors' personal and professional gratitude and admiration.

The financial role of the National Historical Publications Commission since 1964, through funds granted by the Ford Foundation to the National Archives Trust Fund Board, has been formally acknowledged on the copyright page of this volume. But the services performed by the Commission and its staff, for us as for many other like undertakings, have been too multifarious to be detailed. Yet we xlivmust express our particular thanks to H. B. Fant for his exhaustive searches, under a plan foresightedly worked out by Oliver W. Holmes, for Adams materials among the vast manuscript holdings of the Library of Congress. To Dr. Holmes himself, executive director of the Commission from 1961 through February 1972, we have, along with his countless friends in the historical and archival communities, expressed elsewhere some part of what we feel about his incomparable leadership in the field of documentary editing and publication.

Many other institutions and those who direct and staff them have continued what has become something like a working collaboration between them and our editorial undertaking. Among those that must be named in any such listing are the Adams National Historic Site at Quincy, the Harvard University Library, the Boston Athenaeum, the Boston Public Library, the American Antiquarian Society, the New-York Historical Society, the Reference Branch of the New York Public Library, the American Philosophical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Library of Congress.

In specialized fields we have had the help of, among others, the following: John Alden, Jacob Blanck, and Edwin Wolf 2d on bibliographical problems; the late R. M. Gummere and Zeph Stewart on classical languages; G. D. Goudappel of the Delft Gemeente-archief on Dutch newspapers of John Adams' time; Laurence Wylie on J. Q. Adams' juvenile French; William C. Edwards on the genealogy of early Braintree families; Kimball C. Elkins, Harley P. Holden, Mary Meehan, and Clifford K. Shipton on biographies of 18th-century Harvard graduates; Whitfield J. Bell Jr. on early members and elections in the American Philosophical Society; R. Marquant and Rémi Mathieu of the Archives Nationales on the early Paris postal system; and H. C. Johnson on documents in the Public Record Office, London.

A special word of thanks is due to all those who have helped us in locating, reproducing, and annotating the illustrations. These include, as always, Harold Hugo and his colleagues at The Meriden Gravure Company, as well as Alan Fern and Virginia Daiker of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; W. Downer of the Leyden Gemeente-archief; David McKibbin of the Boston Athenaeum; George S. Rogers of The Papers of Henry Laurens, University of South Carolina; J. W. Schulte Nordholt of the University of Leyden; and Nicholas B. Wainwright of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

As hitherto, our use of original manuscripts owned by other institutions and individuals is acknowledged at the points where these xlvmanuscripts are printed or quoted—in the case of institutions by symbols, of which a list, with their expanded forms, appears in the Guide to Editorial Apparatus which follows, and in the case of private owners by their full names. Without such continuing generosity on the part of all concerned, our work would fall far short of its scholarly goals.

We are indebted, as heretofore, to a former associate editor of The Adams Papers, Wendell D. Garrett, and to members of the Society's Publication Committee for reading galley proofs; these include Malcolm Freiberg, Stephen T. Riley, and Clifford K. Shipton.

Virtually all members of The Adams Papers staff over the last decade have had some part, incidental or substantial, in the preparation and production of the two volumes now issued. (Transcription of the letters themselves had of course begun even earlier.) Mr. Garrett, before he left his post as associate editor in 1966, had done preliminary collation and furnished materials for annotating many of the letters printed herein. Since then, two Ford Fellows in advanced historical editing, Gaspare J. Saladino, 1968–1969, and B. Richard Burg, 1970–1971, have made editorial contributions during their terms of duty. Former editorial assistants and associates who contributed notably to the work include Susan F. Riggs, D. Maureen Clegg, Sarah I. Morrison, Patricia O'R. Drechsler, and Nancy J. Simkin. The current team of Kate Heath and Kathleen O'Mara have ably and cheerfully assisted the editors in seeing the greater part of these volumes through the press.