By February 1787, John Adams, the first American minister to Great Britain, had grown restless in what felt like an increasingly powerless post. Sent to secure an Anglo-American trade agreement in June 1785, Adams spent the next three years rebuffed by the British xxi ministry. Hampered by congressional inattention and by the states’ obstruction of the Anglo-American peace treaty, Adams’ efforts at diplomatic reconciliation with the Court of St. James brought few tangible results. He presented a series of memorials to the Marquis of Carmarthen, the British secretary for foreign affairs, intended to address several long-simmering issues: British occupation of the frontier posts; compensation for the slaves and property seized by the British Army at the evacuations of Boston, New York City, and Charleston, S.C.; and even recognition of the 20 January 1783 cessation of hostilities. After a few months’ work in London, Adams held “very faint hopes of ever receiving an Answer to any Letter or Memorial of mine to the British Ministry.” For, when it came to implementing a difficult peace with Britain, the fault lay on both sides of the Atlantic. In America, the states lagged in repealing acts that violated Articles 4 and 6 of the peace treaty. Meanwhile, British creditors pressed to collect prewar debts and argued over how to collect the related interest.3

Acknowledging infractions of the treaty on both sides, Adams was hardly well-positioned to renegotiate a commercial partnership in the United States’ favor. Adams’ first try at submitting a draft commercial agreement on 29 July 1785 came to nothing, and a second attempt by Adams and Thomas Jefferson on 4 April 1786 fared no better. John Jay’s letter of 2 April 1787 brought Adams some measure of relief. The secretary for foreign affairs enclosed a copy of Congress’ 21 February resolution mandating that states lift obstructions to those articles and comply with the treaty’s terms. Jay recommended sharing the news “informally” with Carmarthen. Jay thought that “it would have a good Effect, and tend to abate the Irritation which long Delays & Silence may have occasioned.” Adams did so on 10 May, but still the ministry did not budge.4

As John Adams observed, Britain’s interest in the United States had dimmed. Under the expanding powers of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, Parliament was too busy to consider undertaking a trade deal with its former colonies. Members were absorbed in debating Pitt’s vast economic reforms and watching the drama of Warren Hastings’ corruption trial. Tremors of Dutch political upheaval antagonized Anglo-French relations, steadily sapping any British interest in the United States. When it came to questions related to trade and diplomatic relations with the new nation, Adams noted that xxii in Parliament and in the newspapers, “a dead Taciturnity prevails.” By the autumn of 1787, the American minister had sent multiple public and private pleas to Jay seeking a formal recall. “A Life so useless to the public and so insipid to myself as mine is in Europe, has become a burthen to me, as well as to my Countrymen,” Adams wrote.5 Congress, however, lacked the quorum to decide his fate.

With his commission to Britain expiring in February 1788, Adams’ final representations to Carmarthen took a slightly different turn. Citing newspaper reports, captains’ visits, and personal letters, Adams protested the British Navy’s impressment of American sailors. The practice was commonplace in the Atlantic world. In London, it was carried out by violent press gangs who stripped crew from the merchant ships docked along the Thames River. Adams was especially concerned because American ships had been illegally boarded, and his fellow citizens seized. “I will demand every Man, as fast as I shall be informed of his being pressed,” Adams vowed. On 22 September 1787, Adams took the case one step further. He carried accounts of impressment to Carmarthen’s office at Whitehall. Reading over the complaints, Carmarthen promised to “take Measures to have the Men restored and Precautions against Such Mistakes in future.”6 According to the ministry, the Admiralty issued general orders to safeguard foreign ships, but British impressment of American sailors persisted well beyond Adams’ presidency. Aside from the issues of the prewar debts and naval impressment, Adams also dealt with diverse queries from prospective immigrants and scholars, and in one remarkable case, he traveled to Portsmouth to investigate claims against Robert Muir, who had plotted to counterfeit North and South Carolina currency.

At an impasse with the British ministry, Adams turned to reporting on the waves of political crisis rocking Europe. Supplying vivid analyses of shifting dynamics and embattled leaders, many of Adams’ correspondents here recur from earlier volumes. Piecing together Jefferson’s and the Marquis de Lafayette’s accounts of the legislative and economic reforms unfolding at the Assembly of Notables in 1787 and again at the convening of the Estates General two years later, Adams perceived France’s prerevolutionary peril. Called by King Louis XVI to evaluate and mend the ruinous state of national finances, the Assembly met from 22 February to 25 May. With the rest of the world, John Adams watched the Assembly’s drive toward xxiii economic reform. European gazettes printed the major speeches, while a mob of cartoonists lunged for their pens. Jefferson delayed his continental tour at least twice, mainly in order to keep tabs on the proceedings. Adams, from his perch at No. 8 (now No. 9) Grosvenor Square, longed to go and see the “Illustrious” group. “I wish I could be a Sylph or a Gnome & flit away to Versailles on a sun-Beam—to hear your August Debates,” he wrote to Lafayette.7 First on the Assembly’s agenda was the dangerous problem of France’s plundered treasury. Adams was particularly apprehensive that the Franco-American loans designated to aid the Revolutionary cause might be dragged explicitly into the Assembly’s debates. Both he and Jefferson were relieved when they were not.

To Adams’ mind, the late eighteenth century was both an age of revolutions and an age of constitutions that shifted the continent’s balance of power. “England will rise in Consideration and Power, and France will Fall, in the Eyes of all Europe,” he wrote. Despite France’s stark fiscal woes, he shared Lafayette’s and Jefferson’s wary optimism for a new French constitution grounded by elected officials. But early efforts to enforce some of the notables’ mandates, including new taxes and additional power for provincial assemblies, faltered. Over the following months, popular sentiment toward the luxury-loving Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, gradually soured. The first episodes of mob violence, and of the state’s unsuccessful effort to quell it, appear in this volume. Jefferson, who frequently shopped for Abigail Adams on the busy streets of Paris, saw his daily landscape undergo a dramatic political change. Jefferson reported that “the king, long in the habit of drowning his cares in wines, plunges deeper & deeper: the queen cries but sins on.”8

For John Adams, the ongoing political turmoil in Europe was quickly eclipsed by a financial crisis closer to home. In early May 1787 he received the Board of Treasury’s bills of exchange that were meant to cover the 75,000-guilder June interest payment on the 1784 Dutch-American loan. When Adams visited agent John Rucker at his London home to process the payment, he discovered that the debt-ridden New York merchant had fled the country. Anxious to salvage American credit in Europe, Adams protested the bills immediately. He alerted the Amsterdam loan consortium, comprising the firms of Wilhem & Jan Willink and Nicolaas & Jacob van Staphorst, to the loss. Adams held off on informing Jay and the board until he xxiv had a firm solution in sight. He consulted the consortium and, acting under his 1780 commission to raise funds in the Netherlands, proposed opening the third Dutch-American loan of [1 June 1787] to cover the interest payments of June 1787 and February 1788. “If it can I will Sign the Contract by Virtue of my Full Power, and Congress will no doubt ratify it,” he wrote. The bankers agreed, and Adams hurried to Amsterdam with traveling companion Dr. John Brown Cutting, arriving by 28 May 1787, and signed the loan and 2,000 obligations, before he returned to London on 9 June. “His presence was necessary immediately to save the honour and credit of the United States,” Abigail Adams observed to William Stephens Smith. The American minister sent the contract for the third Dutch loan to Congress on 16 June, and Congress ratified it on 11 October.9

John Adams spent his last summer in Europe traveling with family—including his first grandchild, William Steuben Smith—in rural Devonshire, compiling the second volume of his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, and mulling his legacy. As he sifted historical examples of republican government to use in his work, Adams sensed a costly global revolution brewing against royal authority. He wrote: “The present Conjuncture appears the most critical and important in Europe, of any that has ever happened in our Times. Mankind Seems impatient under the Yoke of Servitude that has been imposed upon them, and disposed to compell their Governors to make the Burthen lighter.” To buttress the Defence’s arguments for tripartite government, Adams delved into the medieval pasts of modern-day Italy and Switzerland. Meanwhile several scholars laboring on histories of the American Revolution, such as Philip Mazzei, Mercy Otis Warren, David Ramsay, and Rev. William Gordon, also wrote to Adams, eager to consult his memory of events and gather recommendations for sources. Adams, for his part, was conflicted about his impending exit from the public stage. Although he eagerly watched and waited for the Constitution to be ratified and the federal government to coalesce, he also yearned for “Retirement among the Rocks and Hills of Old Braintree.” There, he could be “a Preceptor to my own Boys, and a Writer Perhaps of History, Memoirs and Biography to be printed, twenty Years after my death.”10

Gaining the liberty to go home proved difficult for John Adams, due mainly to the creation of and deliberations over the Constitution. Many of Congress’ members were at the quasi-secretive Constitutional Convention, and Congress therefore lacked a quorum to conduct regular business. “The Convention at Philadelphia is composed of Heroes, Sages and Demigods, to be sure who want no Assistance from me, in forming the best possible Plan,” Adams wrote, but he longed to contribute. The second volume of his Defence, tracing the rise and fall of medieval Italian and Swiss republics, appeared in September 1787, as the threat of a general war shadowed the continent. Adams’ Defence landed in bookshops at a time when, as the British antiquarian Thomas Brand Hollis remarked, “the American Spirit is up in France Holland & Brabant & I hope in Peru may it live.” Additional proofs of America’s progress toward a stable federal government arrived soon after publication of the Defence’s second volume. Thanks to Elbridge Gerry and Richard Henry Lee, Adams received his first copies of the Constitution in the early winter of 1787. He approved of the balanced, tripartite frame of government. It was reminiscent of the one Adams had drafted for the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, but he acknowledged that there was room for amendment. Adams sent it to Jefferson, asking: “What think you of a Declaration of Rights? should not Such a Thing have preceeded the Model?”11 As he began his preparations to travel home, Adams incorporated the text of the Constitution as an epilogue to the third volume of his Defence, printed in London in January 1788.

Then Adams turned homeward. To wrap up his affairs in Europe, Adams had to navigate the complex diplomatic etiquette of a double leave-taking from The Hague and the Court of St. James. Reluctant to endure winter travel to Amsterdam, he mailed separate memorials of farewell to the States General and to the newly restored stad-holder, William V, Prince of Orange. Both were rejected by Hendrik Fagel, secretary to the States General, compelling Adams to travel to The Hague in early March. The political scene there had changed greatly within a few months. Throughout the previous autumn, Adams had tracked the resurgence of William V and lamented the Patriot Party’s eviction from power in the Netherlands. Volume 19 contains reportage of the Dutch political crisis from Adams’ Patriot friends, including Mennonite minister François Adriaan Van der xxvi Kemp and the United States’ agent at The Hague, C. W. F. Dumas. These events abroad affected progress at home. As public unrest in the Netherlands worsened, Adams stood firmly with the worried loan consortium. Between audiences at The Hague, he met with the bankers to negotiate the fourth Dutch loan of [13 March 1788], which Congress ratified on 4 July. Adams also met with Jefferson and officially transferred management of American funds and credit in Europe to him.

Adams saw George III, briefly, for the last time on 20 February. Owing to a snarl in diplomatic etiquette and to the queen’s illness, Adams forfeited a similar farewell audience with Charlotte.12 Reflecting on his years of diplomatic service, Adams tallied two recent victories: the ratification of the Moroccan-American Treaty of Peace and Friendship; and the slow progress of the proposed Portuguese-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, which his son-in-law and secretary, William Stephens Smith, assessed during a special goodwill mission to Lisbon.13 The Adamses’ impending departure saddened their many friends. “I learn with real pain the resolution you have taken of quitting Europe. your presence on this side the Atlantic gave me a confidence that if any difficulties should arise within my department, I should always have one to advise with on whose counsels I could rely. I shall now feel be-widowed,” Jefferson observed. Adams packed up his papers and Letterbooks, entrusting them to the care of family in Braintree. He sold his chariot at The Hague. He closed up the American legation in Grosvenor Square. “And now as We Say at Sea,” Adams wrote to Jefferson, “huzza for the new World and farewell to the Old One.”14

Near midday on Tuesday, 17 June 1788, John and Abigail Adams sailed into the port of Boston aboard the brig Lucretia. Cheering crowds “several thousand” deep, ringing church bells, and booming cannon salutes filled Adams’ first view of his native country in nearly xxvii ten years. John and Abigail made their way to their new home in Braintree, where they spent the summer making repairs and tending the farm. Happily—and too briefly—John Adams resumed a quiet life of farming and reading. “If it lay in my Power, I would take a Vow, to retire to my little Turnip Yard, and never again quit it,” he wrote. In parallel form, Adams’ outgoing correspondence ebbed and his incoming letters multiplied. Old colleagues, like Dr. Benjamin Rush and former law clerk John Thaxter, wrote warm letters to reconnect. With the summation of Adams’ Defence complete, more praise flooded in. “We have needed and at this Time Specially need the very Lights you have furnished,” wrote Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College.15

Delighting in his return to rural life, Adams curbed letter-writing to friends abroad, though news of Europe’s tempestuous politics reached Braintree. As he settled into serene retirement, the Russo-Turkish, Austro-Turkish, and Russo-Swedish wars continued to erupt far away. “And the few Months that have passed since I have been at home, have been the happiest portion of my Life. The Agriculture, the Manufactures and the commerce of this Country, I found in a much more flourishing Condition than I expected: and the political state of it, by the acceptance and organization of the new Government manifestly improving,” he wrote. There were hints, however, that Adams’ interlude in Braintree would not last long. Throughout the summer, Adams monitored the states’ unfolding ratification of and proposed amendments to the Constitution. He held off from making substantive political commentary until July, once New York and Virginia had approved it. His daughter, Abigail 2d (Nabby), voiced the hopes of several friends and colleagues when she confided to brother John Quincy about their father’s political future: “He has it I beleive in his Power to do as much perhaps the most towards establishing her Character as a respectable Nation—of any Man in America—and Shall he retire from the World and bury himself amongst his Books—and Live only for himself!— No—I wish it not.”16

By the winter of 1788, as the states chose presidential electors and the outlines of the first federal Congress came into view at the ballot box, Adams again grew restless. He was pleased, overall, with the men chosen to represent New England interests. And he had declined the General Court’s call to serve in the last session of the xxviii Continental Congress. To his old friend Theophilus Parsons, Adams wrote: “I have long revolved in an anxious mind the Duties of the Man and the Citizen, and without entering into Details, at present, the Result of all my Reflections on the Place of a Senator in the New Government is an unchangeable Determination to refuse it.” Throughout the autumn of 1788, a stream of support for Adams’ political ascent materialized in the mail. Rev. Jeremy Belknap, later a founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Dr. Benjamin Rush conveyed widespread support in Pennsylvania for Adams as a contender for the vice presidency. Friends and family in Massachusetts and New York sent similar reports. Though formal political campaigning was not yet part of the national election cycle, Massachusetts newspapers printed tributes to Adams’ career. “The Choice will be in the Breasts of Freemen, and if it falls upon me it will most certainly be a free Election,” Adams wrote to Rush, adding: “You tell me, my Labours are only beginning.— Seven and twenty years have I laboured in this rugged Vineyard, and am now arrived at an Age when Man sighs for Repose.”17 In Adams’ comparatively thinner correspondence for the year of 1788, he rarely touched on the topic of resuming public service. Yet when he looked ahead, Adams sounded cautious—and hopeful—about his prospects.

Volume 19 ushers in a new era of federal government under the Constitution, significantly reframing John Adams’ public role. The pressing needs of the budding federal system swiftly upended his plans for a peaceful retirement. After several months of ratification conventions and a lengthy debate over possible federal seats, by early 1789 most states had selected and sent representatives to New York with a long list of proposed amendments in hand. Finding Federal Hall still under construction, the first Congress met for less than an hour on 4 March 1789. It took another month for the Senate to achieve a quorum. On 6 April the senators began to open and count votes from the Electoral College. George Washington was the unanimous choice for president. Adams, who received 34 out of 69 votes, was elected as the United States’ first vice president.

The election results of 1789 somewhat appeased regional interests xxix by situating a Virginian and a New Englander in the top two seats. In James Madison’s view, Adams did “not unite the suffrages of his own State, and is unpopuler in many other places,” but Washington warmed to the people’s choice of Adams as vice president. “He will doubtless make a very good one,” Washington observed to Henry Knox. In backing Adams’ election, Washington saw a way to form a functioning government and curtail the growth of antifederalism. From Paris, where he wrote of Russia’s multiple wars, the regency crisis gripping George III’s court, and the downward plunge of Louis XVI, Thomas Jefferson sent words of support: “No man on earth pays more cordial homage to your worth nor wishes more fervently your happiness.— tho’ I detest the appearance even of flattery, I cannot always suppress the effusions of my heart.” Adams’ frequent correspondents sent congratulations and urged him to hasten to New York. Hailing Adams as “Vice President of the Western Empire,” William Stephens Smith wrote: “The Virtuous members of this Government are very anxious to see you here, they promise themselves great aid in their pursuits from your Council and influence, and I am sure you will not fail in being here as soon as possible.”18

Basking in ceremonial fanfare, Adams traveled to New York City in mid-April 1789 to lead the country alongside Washington. Proudly, he took his seat as president of the Senate, but to the ever-candid Adams, the Federalists’ decisive win felt bittersweet. The 54-year-old statesman faced an unprecedented task in shaping the largely undefined office of the vice presidency. “The Period from the 17. June 1788 to this 2d of March 1789 has been the Sweetest Morsel of my Life, and I despair of ever tasting Such another,” John Adams confessed to Mercy Otis Warren as inauguration day approached, adding: “There never was and never will be found for me, an office in public Life, that will furnish the Entertainment and Refreshment of the Mountain the Meadow and the Stream.”19

Life in New York City was a marked change from quiet Braintree. Arriving on 20 April, Adams stayed with John and Sarah Livingston Jay, just a few minutes’ walk from the hub of federal activity. Adams’ incoming mail piled up as he worked without the aid of a secretary. He restricted his outgoing correspondence to the bare minimum and repeatedly begged Abigail to join him. On 21 April John Adams formally presided over the opening session of the Senate. There, he xxx looked out over a crowd of familiar faces and pledged to advance the goals of his revolutionary generation: “Those celebrated defenders of the liberties of this country, whom menaces could not intimidate, corruption seduce, nor flattery allure: Those intrepid assertors of the rights of mankind, whose philosophy and policy, have enlightened the world, in twenty years, more than it was ever before enlightened in many centuries, by ancient schools, or modern universities.”20 A mix of business and pleasure, Adams’ days were a whirlwind of meetings, visits, and reunions. Within a month, he rented Richmond Hill, an estate on the west side facing the Hudson River (now the southern part of Greenwich Village). Less than a year had passed since Adams’ return home. Now he joined with Washington to celebrate the nation’s first inauguration day.

Amid “the Acclamations of the People,” Adams witnessed Washington’s swearing-in on 30 April.21 Congress had spent weeks debating the inaugural protocols, drafting Washington’s oath, and warring over what the president’s title should be. Aside from moderating the Senate, however, the details and duties of the vice president’s office remained hazy. After the ceremonial pomp of the first inauguration faded, Adams was sworn in by John Langdon, the Senate president pro tempore, on 3 June. Subsequently, he administered the oath to eighteen senators and to the Senate’s secretary, Samuel Allyne Otis.

As the first federal Congress struggled to implement the Constitution, John Adams was flooded with requests for patronage. Otis, who edged out longtime congressional secretary Charles Thomson for his post, had the vocal support of Abigail and John, which made him a rare exception. Many Americans hoped to attain lucrative positions as port collectors, naval officers, or customs inspectors. Office seekers appealed to Adams’ Federalist views, Harvard College roots, or New England connections. Within the Adams Papers, these letters form a unique genre documenting patronage in early American politics. They demonstrate Adams’ precise comprehension of the constitutional limits on his powers. They illuminate the aftereffects of the American Revolution and of uprisings like Shays’ Rebellion on a fragile union.

Many applicants, like the jurist Robert Treat Paine, opened with a personal reminiscence of Adams. Then, they burnished their educational qualifications and professed a deep love of public service. xxxi Most, like Paine, badly needed the work to eradicate lingering debt. “I have been out of the line of public Notice, And am not without Apprehensions that the Change of Government may Still further reduce me,” Paine wrote. Few understood exactly what the nature of government employment might be, and so they were careful to acknowledge Adams’ role in guiding the new system to their benefit. For example, Capt. Robert Duncan, who hosted Adams in his Philadelphia home for several months in 1777, asked for the opportunity to apply his mercantile experience. In directly addressing the vice president, Duncan couched his request for patronage in nationalist language: “For the first time I have to crave your forgiveness Sir in calling your attention for a single moment from great and important National matters to the concernes of an individual.”22

Moved by the sentiment but bound by the Constitution, Adams rejected Duncan’s plea, along with a sea of similar requests for jobs. As he knew, the Constitution stipulated that the president made nominations for appointments that required the advice and consent of the Senate; the vice president’s role was restricted. Adams made the point plainer to Warren: “I should bely the whole coure of my public and private Conduct and all the Maxims of my Life if I should ever consider public Authority entrusted to me to be made subservient to my private Views or those of my Family or Friends.”23 From his first days in office, Adams staked out constitutional boundaries for the vice president’s powers.

As he labored with Congress to draft laws and collect revenue, Adams settled into a Senate routine. Initially, he did not find sessions “very fatiguing,” and he told Cotton Tufts that the senators showed ample respect for his station. But Adams missed Abigail, his growing family, and the “fresh and Sweet Air” of daily walks in Braintree. On 3 May 1789 Adams reflected on the many challenges that lay ahead for the nascent American republic. Writing to former pupil William Tudor, Vice President John Adams anticipated that the “consciousness of contributing Somewhat at present, and the hope of assisting yet more, to the formation of a national Government, which may bind Us together on one hand, and Secure our Liberties equally from a single Tyrant, a Junto of Barons, and a Mob of Madmen on the other will Support me for a time in the public service.”24

During the span of twenty-eight months covered by this volume, John Adams used Letterbooks 5, 24, 25, 26, and 27, which correspond to reels 93, 112, 113, 114, and 115 of the Adams Papers Microfilms. The first three have been fully described in previous volumes.25 On the spine of Letterbook 26 is the notation, “No. 31 1789–90. 97.” The entries begin with Adams’ 18 May 1789 letter to Jabez Bowen, and they end with a copy of Adams’ 17 September 1776 report on the conference with Adm. Lord Richard Howe at Staten Island, N.Y.

A memorandum in John Quincy Adams’ hand, dated 24 November 1829, explains the composition of Letterbook 26 thus: “The first 25 pages of this book contain the copies of a few Letters written by John Adams in 1789–90. and in 1797. Then follow copies of the last Letters which he dictated in 1825 and 1826. until within a few days of his decease. After these are copies of original Letters written by him from 1755 to 1776. of which he kept no copies, and of some of which no other copy is extant than that herein contained. One Letter to Nathan Webb of 12. Octr. 1755. was first published in the Boston Monthly Anthology of May 1807. Two to Charles Cushing, dated 1. April and 19. Octr. 1756. were published in the Nantucket Inquirer   1815. Two Letters written in Decr. 1775. were intercepted by General Gage and then published— The copies here are made from copies of those publications— The other copies here are from the original Letters.” After 347 blank pages, Adams resumed use of Letterbook 26 on 21 July 1789, in order to document his accounts with the United States as vice president and to copy a request for “two thousand Dollars negotiated at the Bank, for his Use.” The main body of the entries in Letterbook 27, p. 1–172, begins with Adams’ 20 May 1789 letter to Richard Price. The last is his 7 January 1793 letter to David Bull, followed by 192 blank pages.

John Adams’ maintenance of his Letterbooks, which he began keeping in May 1776, earns special mention in Volume 19. Preparing to depart Europe for America, he arranged for the safe passage of his papers via an earlier, separate route. Of the growing archive, Adams wrote: “They are contained in a large Trunk, and are so numerous as to fill it, so that there is no room for any Thing else in it. I Suppose the Custom house officers will let it pass: but they may open it if they please. Yet I hope they will not disturb the order of the xxxiii Papers.”26 Aside from entries in Adams’ hand, the bulk of the copies in all four Letterbooks were made by William Stephens Smith, who acted as his secretary in London. Less frequently, Abigail and Nabby performed the same task. A number of unknown hands, including one secretary who copied several letters for Adams in May 1789 into Letterbook 27, are also featured therein.

There have been no substantive changes made in the editorial method since 2007, when the editors made changes following a comprehensive review of the project’s editorial practices. For a statement of the policy as then determined, see the Papers of John Adams, 14:xxix–xxxvii. Those interested in following the evolution of the editorial method from the beginnings of the editorial project should consult the Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 1:lii–lxii, and the Papers of John Adams, 1:xxxi–xxxv; 9:xx–xxiii; 11:xx–xxi.

The Massachusetts Historical Society is committed to making Adams family materials available to scholars and the public online. The Packard Humanities Institute contributes significantly to all Adams Papers’ digital projects. Four digital resources of particular interest to those who use the Papers of John Adams volumes are the Adams Papers Digital Edition; The Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive; The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection; and the Online Adams Catalog. All are available through the Historical Society’s website at www.masshist.org.

The Adams Papers Digital Edition, a project cosponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University Press, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, offers searchable text for 45 of the Adams Papers volumes published prior to 2014 (excluding the Portraits volumes). There is a single consolidated index for volumes published through 2006, while the indexes for more recent volumes appear separately. This digital edition is designed as a complement to the letterpress edition by providing greater access to a wealth of Adams material.

The Adams Family Papers Electronic Archive contains images and text files of all of the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society as well as John Adams’ Diaries and Autobiography. The text is fully searchable and can also be browsed by date.

The Diaries of John Quincy Adams Digital Collection provides digital images of John Quincy Adams’ entire 51-volume Diary, which he composed over nearly seventy years. The images can be searched by date or browsed by diary volume.

The Online Adams Catalog represents a fully searchable electronic database of all known Adams documents, dating primarily from the 1760s to 1889, at the Massachusetts Historical Society and other public and private repositories. The digital conversion—based on the original Adams Papers control file begun in the 1950s and steadily updated since that time—was supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and was initiated with Packard Humanities Institute funds in 2009. The catalog allows public online access to a database of over 110,000 records, with some 30,000 cross-reference links to online, printed, and microfilm editions of the items, or to websites of the holding repositories. Each record contains information on a document’s author, recipient, and date and on the location of the original, if known.

Also of value to users of the Papers of John Adams is the online catalog of the John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library. The catalog includes a record of the marginalia entered by Adams in his books as well as a growing number of digitized volumes. For additional information, see www.johnadamslibrary.org.

Volume 19 explores 28 months of John Adams’ vibrant public life, as he transitioned from diplomat to vice president. The 341 documents printed and 215 omitted should be used in conjunction with the documents for the period appearing in Adams Family Correspondence, 7:457–475 and 8:1–366, wherein an additional 54 letters to or from John Adams appear. Abigail Adams’ letters provide details on daughter Nabby’s entrance into motherhood, the family’s cultural travels in London and Devonshire, and the Adamses’ candid reflections on returning home after sampling cosmopolitan life in Europe. While his brothers made their way through Harvard, John Quincy Adams trained his professional lens on the law. His correspondence with his sister, as she set up her home in New York, is rich in political xxxv observations about the ratification of the Constitution and the shape of the federal government. Scholars should also consult John Adams’ Diary, which he briefly resumed in [July–August 1787] to chronicle the family’s tour of Plymouth, England. Abigail also recorded that trip, as well as their voyage home to the United States several months later, for which see John Adams’ Diary and Autobiography, 3:203–217.