Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

by Gordon S. Wood
Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

by Gordon S. Wood

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017

From the great historian of the American Revolution, New York Times-bestselling and Pulitzer-winning Gordon Wood, comes a majestic dual biography of two of America's most enduringly fascinating figures, whose partnership helped birth a nation, and whose subsequent falling out did much to fix its course.


Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slaveowner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government. They worked closely in the crucible of revolution, crafting the Declaration of Independence and leading, with Franklin, the diplomatic effort that brought France into the fight. But ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond. 

But late in life, something remarkable happened: these two men were nudged into reconciliation. What started as a grudging trickle of correspondence became a great flood, and a friendship was rekindled, over the course of hundreds of letters. In their final years they were the last surviving founding fathers and cherished their role in this mighty young republic as it approached the half century mark in 1826. At last, on the afternoon of July 4th, 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration, Adams let out a sigh and said, "At least Jefferson still lives." He died soon thereafter. In fact, a few hours earlier on that same day, far to the south in his home in Monticello, Jefferson died as well. 

Arguably no relationship in this country's history carries as much freight as that of John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Gordon Wood has more than done justice to these entwined lives and their meaning; he has written a magnificent new addition to America's collective story.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780735224735
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date: 10/23/2018
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 528
Sales rank: 201,134
Product dimensions: 8.30(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and professor of history at Brown University. His books have received the Pulitzer, Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes, as well as a National Book Award nomination and the New York Historical Society Prize in American History. They include Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, Revolutionary Characters, The Purpose of the Past, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Idea of America.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Eulogies 1

1 Contrasts 7

2 Careers, Wives, and Other Women 38

3 The Imperial Crisis 69

4 Independence 103

5 Missions Abroad 137

6 Constitutions 167

7 The French Revolution 204

8 Federalists and Republicans 240

9 The President vs. the Vice President 279

10 The Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800 320

11 Reconciliation 356

12 The Great Reversal 389

Epilogue: The National Jubilee 426

Acknowledgments 435

Notes 437

Index 485

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Whenever I read Gordon Wood, the dean of eighteenth century American historians, I feel as if I am absorbing wisdom at the feet of the master. Friends Divided is teeming with exceptionally acute and unvarnished insights into Thomas Jefferson and John Adams as they do battle for the nation's soul. Jefferson's sunny, almost Panglossian, optimism, juxtaposed with the dark, dyspeptic musings of Adams, presents readers with nothing less than a vivid composite portrait of the American mind.
Ron Chernow

As the dean of American historians, Gordon Wood had long shaped the nation's thinking about the true nature of the Founding. Now he turns his intellectual honesty and clear-eyed prose to the lives of Jefferson and of Adams, giving us a brilliant portrait of their complicated relationship. This is an indispensable account of two men, of the country they built, and of why their legacies matter even now. Bravo!
Jon Meacham, author of American Lion and of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

America's dialogue with its competing impulses had its origins in the fractured friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Gordon Wood brings his unmatched knowledge of the scholarly literature to the task of recovering both sides of what is still America's longstanding argument with itself.
Joseph J. Ellis, author of the forthcoming Then and Now: The Founders and US

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