The spring of 1791 began quietly enough. After a hasty special session of the Senate on 4 March to confirm nominations and iron out districting for a new tax on distilled spirits, John Adams and his fellow lawmakers made their migrations homeward. Adams was glad to go. He was proud that Congress had moved forward on several fronts and relieved that Alexander Hamilton’s economic framework had rooted the nation in steady revenue. The union grew, with Kentucky and Vermont advancing to statehood. Land speculators poured into the Northwest Territory, and banks sprang up in New York City. Cultural institutions like the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society sponsored inventions and promoted homegrown research. France exploded in revolution and Barbary depredations threatened Mediterranean commerce, but the United States felt like a bubble of Enlightenment progress. “There is nothing passing in this Country worth your knowing This Nation is too happy to shine or make a noise,” Adams wrote to a friend in England. Temporarily free of Senate duties, he embraced reading and farming. Adams ferried books to line Harvard College’s library shelves and round out the collections of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He enjoyed parsing the academy’s publications and looked to colleague Jeremy Belknap, founder of the newly formed Massachusetts Historical Society, for word of fresh scholarship.7

Adams’ serenity was short-lived. News of the French Revolution reverberated around the globe. Adams turned inward, but he took notice of two main texts that dueled for American readers’ attention. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, British M.P. Edmund Burke alleged that French revolutionaries warped natural rights xxiii theory to suit violent ends. Thomas Paine responded in his Rights of Man, arguing that the right of popular sovereignty trumped the natural despotism of hereditary government. John Adams, who advocated liberty and deplored the French mobs’ violence, claimed ties to both authors. He was friendly with Thomas Brand Hollis, who was linked to the publication of Paine’s work, but noted that he drew a hard line at “king-killing.” As he read these works along with the news, Adams’ early hopes for the French revolutionary government fizzled. He singled out as the cause of its failure its inability to craft a usable constitution with a unitary executive and a fairly elected legislature.8 Adams landed closer to Burke’s side of the debate. He expressed deep disappointment in a revolution failing before it was properly begun. “A Convention or a civil War, or both, must make some more judicious Provision, for repressing human Passions than has yet been adopted,” Adams wrote. He believed that Burke’s thesis, while sound, offered no path forward. Paine’s admirers soon hustled a U.S. edition into print. Without his consent, the secretary of state’s private remarks endorsing Paine and wounding Adams ended up in the preface. Thomas Jefferson castigated Adams for his “political heresies” in supporting monarchy and aristocracy alike, a charge that Adams hotly denied.9

Newspapers “industriously propagated” pieces on the ideological break between Adams and Jefferson, part of a larger dialogue on how the neutral United States planned to reckon with the needs of a fractured ally. The diplomatic implications were dire, given the United States’ lack of a national army or navy or funding for military growth. At stake, too, was the shifting interpretation of liberty after revolution. Federalists like Adams and Democratic-Republicans like Jefferson internalized the Burke-Paine controversy along nascent party lines. In early June a writer named Publicola entered the fray. Writing under this pseudonym, John Quincy Adams published eleven essays attacking Paine in a Federalist press organ, the Boston Columbian Centinel. Many readers, including Jefferson, initially misidentified the vice president as the author. Booksellers like Adams’ old acquaintance John Stockdale seized on the mistake to boost profits. During Paine’s sedition trial, prosecutors read aloud passages xxiv from the Publicola writings, to the senior Adams’ delight. After Publicola’s identity became known, Adams used the opportunity to mend fences with Jefferson—and then interrogated him on his political views. “I know not what your Idea is of the best form of Government. you and I have never had a Serious conversation together that I can recollect concerning the nature of Government. The very transient hints that have ever passed between Us, have been jocular and Superficial, without ever coming to any explanation,” Adams wrote. The summer of 1791 drew to a close and federal duties again beckoned them to Philadelphia.10

One “unfortunate Circumstance” had lingered during the hiatus. In their letters, John Adams and his colleagues often referred to the “Indian War” to describe the continued clashes between U.S. settlers and Native peoples in the Northwest Territory. The major battles took place in the present-day region of Ohio, mainly between U.S. forces and members of the Miami, Shawnee, and Wabash Nations. It was a complex and far-flung theater of war. British, Spanish, and French dealings with Native confederations in Georgia, Florida, and Canada also shaped U.S.–Native American relations. With British forces retaining command of western posts in flagrant violation of the Anglo-American peace treaty, Ohio emerged as a critical and contested territory for several groups. Among them were leaders of the Miami and Wabash Nations, who approached U.S. negotiators thus: “Restore to us our country and we shall be enemies no longer Brothers you make one concession to us by offering us your money and an other by having agreed to do us justice, after having long and injuriously withheld it.”11

Underfunded and largely untried, federal troops stumbled badly from the start. The shock of Brig. Gen. Josiah Harmar’s 1790 defeat by Shawnee forces near the Miami villages on the Maumee River rippled through the public and the press. Adams was not sure of the course of U.S. diplomacy with Native Americans, but he was remarkably well informed thanks to reports from secretary of war Henry Knox, U.S. peace commissioner Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, and secretary of the Senate Samuel Allyne Otis. “Although the Indian Campaign is an [evil,] yet the War I presume is a just and a necessary War,” Adams wrote to Knox, as a new wave of more than one thousand men, led by former Continental Army general Arthur St. xxv Clair, departed for Ohio in June 1791. Fighting resumed. Two years later, in an effort to stave off another costly war, George Washington dispatched Lincoln, U.S. postmaster general Timothy Pickering, and former Virginia governor Beverly Randolph to negotiate a land purchase and the enforcement of boundary lines with representatives of the Northwestern Confederacy. The mission failed. Lincoln’s comprehensive 11 September 1793 report, printed below, gives voice to both parties’ diverse perspectives on the relationship between land and sovereignty in the early republic. Perusing Lincoln’s account, John Adams concluded that British intervention—solidified by their grasp on the western posts—was eroding the United States’ capacity to secure its borders. For Adams and others in Washington’s cabinet, this reading of the “Indian War” reanimated the old pursuit of a new Anglo-American agreement.12

Storms in the press and on the frontiers clouded the presidential election of 1792. Each state elector cast two votes without distinguishing between the top two offices. On 13 February 1793, Adams rose to announce the electoral votes. Among them, he unsealed and read aloud four votes for Jefferson and one for New York senator Aaron Burr. Washington, who nearly died twice during his first term in office and continued to fight ill health, was unanimously reelected. Adams faced a tougher road. A Democratic-Republican contingent that opposed Hamilton’s economic policies put forth George Clinton as a contender. The New York governor garnered 50 votes total from his home state, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia and 1 vote from Pennsylvania. Adams earned 77 votes, thereby gaining a second term as vice president and a new insight on the regional growth of political parties. “In spite of calumny, art & intrigue, You have the firm support of Ten States. I congratulate You on the event, but still more congratulate my Country,” John Trumbull wrote. Whether those ten states (and more) would hold fast to Federalist tenets in the 1796 contest, Adams did not dare to predict. He hoped that the “frenchified delirium” of current events would not hinder American progress: “While they are exhausted I hope We may be Safe. But it may not be many Years before the impatience of our own People may involve them in Quarrells as exhausting as those of Europe.”13

“You Americans have inflamed the world,” Thomas Brand Hollis wrote to John Adams on 18 February 1793, shortly after the presidential electoral votes were read in Congress. This was the year that French revolutionaries annihilated the monarchy, ushered in the Reign of Terror, and attempted multiple experiments in national governance. In England and Ireland, lawmakers fought to extend civil liberties to Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters. On the tiny but profitable island colony of St. Domingue, an enslaved population steadily continued to overthrow French rule. Refugees from Europe and the Caribbean flooded into the United States, seeking a new start. The state of American prosperity hinged on maintaining calm as global friction worsened, Adams believed. “A Newtrality; absolute total Neutrality is our only hope,” he wrote.14 Newly cautious, he let incoming mail from Europe lie unanswered. Domestic affairs also suffered. A yellow fever epidemic swept through Philadelphia, devastating neighborhoods and scattering government officials. Finally, 1793 marked a political turning point for Adams, who settled back into his post and distanced himself from conflict in George Washington’s cabinet.

Events in France unfolded at a dizzying clip. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were stripped of their powers and imprisoned in August 1792. The new year brought a show trial for the king followed by his execution on 21 January 1793; the queen was guillotined on 16 October. Systems of law and order broke down. The National Guard clashed with protesters and the nation’s wobbly constitution buckled under the chaos. Urban shopkeepers and working-class artisans formed the radical “sans-culottes” who led mobs and incited riots. The violence swelled beyond Paris. Atrocities against clergy and executions for the “crime” of aristocracy took place in Toulon, Saint-Patrice, and Limoges. Counterrevolutionary efforts rose and fell in Brittany, La Vendée, and Lyons; Jacobin officials struck back with renewed bloodshed. Civil war splintered La Vendée, in western France, from 1793 to 1800. Shifts in leadership came suddenly, too. Competing factions in the National Convention jockeyed for successive turns in power, culminating in the final ouster of the Terror’s Jacobin architect, Maximilien Robespierre, in 1794, and the xxvii establishment of a more moderate Thermidorian regime. The National Convention held until July 1795, finally ceding to the establishment of a plural executive, the Directory, on 1 November.15

For John Adams, the French Revolution was tragedy and parable. “Disgrace to the Cause of Liberty, and a general Depravation of hearts and manners among the rising Generation, is much to be dreaded from the atrocious Conduct of Parties in France. The 18th. Century, which has been the Pride and Boast of Mankind for its Humanity is to end in horrors more horrible than the Proscriptions of Sylla or the Massacres of Charles the ninth,” Adams wrote. He relied on his daughter, Abigail 2d (Nabby), for European news during her travels to England with her husband, William Stephens Smith, and their young family. Once they returned, his sources were few. Just as he had done with ancient republics, John Adams investigated the intellectual opportunities and limitations of French government. The political lesson he drew was clear: A single executive supported by a bicameral legislature was still the best method of democracy. “Divine Vengeance will mark with horror the People, who in this enlightened Age, will in Spight of Reason and Experience, persist obstinately in their crude Projects of Simple Governments of any sort. I have no Idea of any greater Wickedness, than an Attempts to govern Societies by single assemblies. France will be a shambles of Carnage till she gets cured of this wicked and stupid Fanaticism,” he warned.16

Adams considered Franco-American relations to be in freefall. The arrival of a new French minister to the United States, Edmond Charles “Citizen” Genet, provoked a firestorm of criticism. His credentials were questionable, and his rhetorical attacks on Washington were plentiful. Genet, an avid propagandist, also recruited troops in the Carolinas and Georgia with an eye toward invading Spanish Florida. His antics throughout 1793 caused no end of trouble for the Washington administration and complicated longstanding Franco-American treaties. John Quincy Adams again amplified Federalist views on his father’s behalf, targeting Genet in a widely reprinted series of nine essays, published under the pseudonyms Columbus and Barneveld. Writing to his father, the younger Adams subsequently pointed out that Genet had leveraged his “newspaper xxviii controversies” in order to invoke “the vengeance of his Republic, and how faithfully his subalterns echoed his terrific strains.”17 John Adams agreed, perceiving the two long-feared factions, pro-British and pro-French, coalescing in Congress.

France’s next steps hardened those fault lines at home, to Adams’ grave concern. He sought to reassure family and friends that neutrality remained the nation’s paramount policy. “This Country is too happy in the Enjoyment of that Liberty which Cost them So dear to risque it, by medling in foreign Wars: and too gratefull to those who assisted them it, to join in any Crusade against them,” he wrote in the fall of 1793. It was not an easy time to be a French ally. Fighting with Austria and Prussia since 20 April 1792, France had declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands on 1 February 1793, extending the conflict to Spain on 7 March. Prussia and Austria attempted to overrun France by land and by sea, making inroads via the Austrian Netherlands and the Rhine. British forces aided French counterrevolutionary campaigns in Toulon and elsewhere. By May 1795, the French had invaded the Netherlands and set up the Batavian Republic as a client state. Nations such as Austria and Prussia peeled off, one by one, to secure separate peaces with an ever more powerful France. A young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, engineered the French Army’s success in seizing territory and holding onto it.18

For breaking news of the European war, Adams had a new and familiar correspondent to trust. On 26 May 1794, secretary of state Edmund Randolph alerted Adams that John Quincy would be named to his father’s old post as U.S. minister to the Netherlands. The senior statesman advised discretion to his son and recommended using The Hague as a listening post. “Be Secret. Dont open your Mouth to any human Being on the Subject except your Mother. Go and see with how little Wisdom this World is governed,” Adams wrote. Three days later, Washington nominated John Quincy and the Senate confirmed the appointment the following day. One of his first tasks, to transmit diplomatic papers to John Jay regarding Jay Treaty negotiations, nearly ended in disaster when John Quincy’s trunk was xxix tampered with on the coach to London and nearly fell into the grasp of local thieves. The young statesman soon found his feet and wrote proudly to Adams that Jay invited him to consult during the talks. “Upon the first occasion on which as the Servant of my Country, I have been called to think, and to speak, I am desirous to give you a full account of the manner, in which I have conducted. Young as I am and unused to the Station in which I am placed, my only hope is that the indiscretions of my noviciate may be few and unimportant,” John Quincy wrote.19 His earnest labor as part of the early U.S. diplomatic corps both benefitted by and evolved from John Adams’ experience.

John Quincy Adams’ letters to his father document the progress and crisis of the European war, often in microscopic detail. His intelligence regarding troop movements as well as constitutional developments in France and the rise of the Batavian Republic proved so valuable that his father shared private letters with Washington and others. These dispatches supplied a different view than did James Monroe’s Paris reports and shaped key foreign policy decisions. Since John Quincy’s saga as a statesman will be best featured in a future branch of Series III, the editors have followed a special rubric to select his letters for publication in the Papers of John Adams. His exchanges often conveyed public information or political news. They will be printed here when John Quincy either made a substantial comment or focused on John Adams’ role in public service or government policy. Adams’ missives to his son, which frequently blended personal and political news, are considered for publication in one of two series, the Adams Family Correspondence and the Papers of John Quincy Adams. The shared knowledge of both statesmen, evident in the depth and breadth of their letters, paints a fuller picture of early American efforts to sustain neutrality despite the daily encroachment of global war. This was certainly the case throughout the tumultuous era from 1794 to 1797, as John Adams took a giant step toward the presidency.

“The Foreign affairs of the United States are become so interesting that I hope all Classes of Men will have less disposition to domestic Dissention. It will require all the Wisdom and all the Integrity, of xxx the United States to conduct their affairs in the present Crisis, in Such a manner as to avoid the Calamities in which the European Nations are involved,” John Adams wrote to his old friend François Adriaan Van der Kemp in late 1793. Within several months, an agrarian uprising known as the Whiskey Rebellion ruptured western Pennsylvania. The rebels took issue with two rounds of taxes on distilled spirits, imposed on 3 March 1791 and 8 May 1792. Protesters tarred and feathered tax collectors, set fire to their homes, and skirmished with local militia. George Washington’s legislative efforts to curb the rioters failed, and in mid-July 1794 the dispute turned deadly. Drawing on state militias, Washington led a combined force of 13,000 men and suppressed the rebellion by November. Adams, who delivered the Senate address that praised Washington’s victory and condemned the “Democratical Societies” engendered by the Whiskey Rebellion, sensed another chance to push for the creation of a U.S. military. Yet he was concerned, as ever, about the power of a standing army.20

Foreign affairs were less straightforward to work out. At the top of Adams’ list was a longstanding desire to improve Anglo-American relations. In mid-April, Washington nominated John Jay for a mission to do so. Writing to Thomas Jefferson, Adams confided his pleasure with the plan: “The President has sent Mr Jay to try if he can find any Way to reconcile our Honour with Peace. I have no great Faith in any very brilliant Success: but hope he may have enough to keep Us out of a War. Another War would add two or three hundred Millions of Dollars to our Debt: rouse up a many headed and many bellied Monster of an Army to tyrannize over Us; totally dissadjust our present Government, and accellerate the Advent of Monarchy and Aristocracy by at least fifty years.”21 The consequences of Jay’s mission struck home for Adams, who had struggled for several years when he was U.S. minister at the Court of St. James to sign a trade deal with the stony British foreign ministry.

Negotiations proceeded well, though the final treaty drew fire. The Jay Treaty’s 28 articles ordered the British evacuation of the frontier posts, opened British access to the Mississippi River, and enforced the northern boundary line of the St. Croix River. The agreement secured compensation for U.S. merchants, reorganized Anglo-American trade relations, and defined contraband. To Adams’ xxxi mind, the Jay Treaty repaired some of the problems that had arisen since the signing of the definitive peace treaty. Most Americans disagreed. Jay was burned in effigy and newspaper critics took aim at the United States’ allegedly inferior status in the agreement. While the treaty made its way to Philadelphia, Adams took a quick trip home to Quincy. The treaty reached the Senate on 7 March, and the debate over ratification rolled into the summer of 1795. Lawmakers closely interrogated Art. 12, which limited U.S. trade with the West Indies to small vessels carrying seventy tons or less. Adams was gratified to preside over the roll call for ratification on 24 June, though the question of how to implement it remained, given popular resistance to it in the House of Representatives led by James Madison and others. Following several rounds of intense debate and multiple petitions from citizens, members of the House voted on 30 April 1796 to implement the necessary appropriations for carrying the treaty into effect. Jay, weighing the treaty’s longer significance in stabilizing U.S. neutrality and foreign credit after the Whiskey Rebellion, reflected to Adams that the country’s calamitous 1790s revealed true democratic growth. “I suspect that young nations like young people are apt to burn their Fingers; and that we have yet much wisdom to learn, and to pay for— I think I see in this country the seeds of Trouble; and that our political machines will in more Senses than one get out of order,” Jay wrote.22

Just as the nation achieved a balance, Washington challenged it. On 19 September, the first president published his Farewell Address. Madison and Alexander Hamilton largely authored the text, which was a valedictory to Washington’s decades of public service and a plea to his fellow citizens to sustain “good Laws under a free Government.” Adams had known of Washington’s intention to retire for some time and disdained the rampant political electioneering that enveloped the country. Once again, he spent the summer of 1796 “deliciously” hunkered down at Peacefield, tending to his farm and entertaining social calls. “The Hozanna’s of blind Enthusiasts, I never covetted,” he wrote during the prior presidential election season, and Adams now embraced it as a political credo. He scorned the emergent trend of electioneering, observing: “I have Seen very little of the trash that was circulated in hand Bills in the late Election, although I am told large quantities of them were Sent in every xxxii direction, at a great Expence, of some party or some Power.” Even the rapid ascent of newer, younger colleagues within the Federalist cohort could not sway John Adams to compete in the modern sense of campaigning. When one Peacefield visitor pressed Adams on his prospects in the 1796 election and pushed him to be Rhode Island’s top choice, the barest mention of a new Federalist rival left him uncharacteristically quiet: “He said by way of Episode that the President would resign, and that there was one Thing which would make R. Island unanimous in his Successor and that was the funding System. He said they wanted Hamilton for V.P.—I was wholly silent.”23

Adams’ choice of stiff silence played poorly with Jefferson, his chief competitor in the Democratic-Republican faction. As the election of 1796 heated up, relations between the two men grew strained. New campaign tactics emerged, nurtured by a host of rising politicians and partisan newspapers. They printed fake sample ballots hawking Jefferson. They distributed handbills extracting and distorting Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions to unveil his “monarchical” roots. Amid the glare and noise of the press, many citizens also worried about foreign meddling in the election, given the recent manipulations of French and British diplomatic agents. Others, like Abigail Adams, looked to the election as a chance to soothe party tensions, especially if Jefferson won the second seat. “Jefferson I hope will succeed. I believe the Government would be more conciliated, and the bitterness of Party allayd the former Friendship which subsisted between you would tend to harmonize,” she wrote to her husband as messengers came and went, delivering votes. Privately, John Adams was less sanguine. He spent much of December fretting over the results, torn between his ambition and the stress of waiting out the electoral process. He oscillated wildly between hope and despair, speculating that a loss might send him back to the joy of farming, or the tedium of legal casework. “Let me See! do I know my own heart? I am not Sure,” he wrote, telling Abigail that he could, at least, “pronounce Thomas Jefferson to be chosen P. of U. S. with firmness & a good grace.” John Adams regained his equilibrium enough to add an important caveat to his letter: “dont show this stuff.”24

State electors were to cast their votes by 7 December, and the first xxxiii results trickled in by mid-November. By month’s end, Adams knew the final result would be tight, but victory leaned his way. He wrote to Abigail that the race for the second seat ran apace and hinted that Jefferson enjoyed an edge over Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina: “A narrow Squeak it is as the Boys say, whether he or P. shall be Daddy Vice.” The final months of Adams’ vice presidency were a whirlwind. He did not open and count the votes of his victory until 8 February 1797. In the interim, Adams centered his energy on planning his first steps in office. The job had changed a lot since 1789. He was no Washington, and John Adams’ United States looked vastly different than it had even five years earlier. Approaching his new role, Adams turned to Harvard classmate Francis Gardner with a mix of excitement and nostalgia. “The Prospect before me, of which you Speak in terms of so much kindness and Friendship, is indeed Sufficient to excite very Serious Reflections. My Life, from the time I parted from you at Colledge has been a Series of Labour and Danger and the short Remainder of it, may as well be worn as rust. My Dependence is on the Understanding and Integrity of my fellow Citizens, for Support with submission to that benign Providence which has always protected this Country, and me, among the rest, in its service,” he wrote.25 Where, Adams wondered, should he begin?

In order to conceptualize his goals in office, John Adams turned to his rich network of correspondents for news, opinions, and ideas. He hired a secretary to keep up his Letterbooks, and resumed conversations with old friends, mercantile contacts, and politicians. Adams’ listening tour plays out in this volume’s last batch of letters. He delved into the question of infrastructure, investigated congressional bills relating to postal roads, and reiterated his animus toward paper money. Mostly, Adams thought deeply about the disintegrating state of Franco-American relations and the future of U.S. commerce. He solicited suggestions from confidants like John Trumbull and Thomas Welsh. Adams’ final flurry of questions and commentary, evident in his early 1797 correspondence with Tristram Dalton, Elbridge Gerry, and others, indicates his eagerness to learn about public opinions of the new government’s potential areas of growth. Adams readied himself to lead.

Volume 21 ends with a broken Europe, a struggling United States, and signs of the first deep cracks in the Adams-Jefferson friendship. One of the most remarkable letters printed below is one that John xxxiv Adams never saw. On 28 December 1796 Jefferson drafted a warm letter of congratulations to the incoming president. He lamented that public quarrels, spurred by the partisan press, had placed them in opposition. “I knew it impossible you should lose a vote North of the Delaware, & even if that of Pensylvania should be against you in the mass, yet that you would get enough South of that to place your succession out of danger. I have never one single moment expected a different issue; & tho’ I know I shall not be believed, yet it is not the less true that I have never wished it,” Jefferson wrote. Then he mailed it to confidant James Madison, who advised him not to send it lest he goad Adams’ temper. The second president and his vice president, recently rivals and now a team, pondered what lay ahead. Pausing on the cusp of his presidency, John Adams amplified his lifelong dedication to sustaining democracy, amid bouts of internal and external rebellion: “I have too much Confidence However in the Sense Spirit and Resources of this Country to be appalled at the Prospect of an approaching Storm we must make fair weather if we Can if we Cannot we must Ride it out like good Seaman.”26

During the span of 71 months covered by this volume, John Adams used Letterbooks 26, 27, 28, and 29, which correspond to reels 114, 115, 116, and 117 of the Adams Papers Microfilms. Letterbooks 26 and 27 have been fully described in a previous volume.27 Letterbook 28 contains John Adams’ scattered Diary entries from 11 January 1781 to 28 February 1781, offering insights into his life in the Netherlands. Four letters, all printed below, appear in the hands of Abigail Adams 2d, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas Boylston Adams, followed by 35 blank pages.28 Beginning on 18 January 1797, Samuel Bayard Malcom served as Adams’ secretary, as evidenced by the first entry of Letterbook 29, John Adams’ letter of the same day to William Stephens Smith. Several entries are in John Adams’ hand, but Malcom, Abigail Adams, Abigail 2d, and Thomas Boylston Adams acted as the main scribes. The last letter is John Adams’ 22 February 1799 missive to François Adriaan Van der Kemp thanking him for a xxxv work of poetry, followed by 275 blank pages. On the final sheet, Adams wrote a brief memorandum dated 7 March 1797: “drew an order for 2000 Dollars Warrant issued Same day. I redacted it the 9th.” For the second president’s new household needs in Philadelphia, see AFC , 12:7, 8, 32.

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 beginning of the 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. 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 John Quincy Adams Digital Diary; 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 originally cosponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University Press, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, offers searchable text for 49 of the Adams Papers volumes published prior to 2018. 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: An 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 John Quincy Adams Digital Diary presents verified and searchable transcriptions, alongside manuscript page images, from the 51-volume Diary that John Quincy Adams composed over nearly seventy years. This project, which is supported by the Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund, Harvard University Press, and private donors, builds on work completed by the Society as part of The Diaries of John Quincy Adams Digital Collection.

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 nearly 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 John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library, which contains a catalog record of the marginalia entered by Adams in his books.

Volume 21 explores 71 months of John Adams’ public life as he crafted the office of the vice presidency. The 379 printed and 256 omitted documents should be used in conjunction with the documents for the period appearing in the Adams Family Correspondence, 9:196–496, 10:1–474, and 11:1–535, wherein an additional 481 letters to or from John Adams appear. Abigail Adams’ letters reveal the personal and political concerns that threaded together the family’s life in Quincy, New York City, and Philadelphia. John Quincy Adams’ correspondence with his father supplies a greater understanding of the challenges faced by the early American diplomatic corps. Scholars should also consult John Adams’ Diary and Autobiography, 3:224–249, in which he made brief entries from 1 November 1791 to 10 September 1796. Adams recorded happy days spent farming and reading. His health improved. His newly christened “Peacefield” bore fruit, and his properties expanded to include a stake in the local granite quarries. xxxvii By August 1796, public duty again beckoned. John Adams relished the calm of Quincy but turned his thoughts to the presidency, writing: “Of all the Summers of my Life, this has been the freest from Care, Anxiety and Vexation to me. . . . Alas! what may happen to reverse all this? But it is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.”29