John Adams and Thomas Jefferson occupy the top tier in the American pantheon of Revolutionary Era giants. They knew each other for fifty years—from 1775 when they first met during the Second Continental Congress until they died, perhaps miraculously, on the 4th of July 1826—the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Born in October 1735, Adams was seven and a half years the senior of Jefferson, who was born in April 1743. They worked together as friends and partners for thirty years, but for twenty years they disliked and worked against each other—eleven of which they were estranged.
Physically, they were opposites. Jefferson was tall and lanky being over six feet tall, while Adams was short and stocky. In a crowd or a political assembly, Jefferson was uncomfortable and taciturn, while Adams was not only talkative, but often took the lead and sometimes found it difficult to refrain from speaking. Jefferson retained his full head of reddish hair that turned grey in old age during which time he suffered his one and only loss of a tooth and he needed spectacles in the evening. By middle age, Adams went partially bald and then later lost most of his teeth as well as his eyesight. They both periodically suffered with bad health—Jefferson from recurrent migraines that left him incapacitated and confined in a dark room for several days at a time and with sore wrists suffered from falls that made it painful for him to write, while Adams was in good health before 1770 but then was afflicted with rheumatism and perhaps hyperthyroid that had a variety of unpleasant physical and mental symptoms. Furthermore, Adams also suffered from what he called a “quiveration” of his hands.
Both men loved books, amassed large libraries, and were avid readers. Each attended college. Adams graduated from Harvard, while Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary for three years. Both became lawyers, served in their colonial assemblies, in the Continental Congress, as diplomats, and as Vice President and then as President of the U.S. Both loved agriculture and farmed when at home—Jefferson on a 5,000-acre plantation that sprawled down the side of a mountain in piedmont Virginia, while Adams owned a 600-acre parcel of rocky soil in Quincy, Massachusetts, less than ten miles south of Boston. Adams never owned a slave, while Jefferson never lived a day without many.
Militarily, neither served in the army. Jefferson had no desire for such service; while Adams, sure of his ability to lead, dreamed of combat and glory. In the mid-1780s, Adams opposed war against the Algerian pirates because he thought that the U.S. could not win such a war. Later, he advocated military preparedness and came to be known as the father of the American navy, yet he lost the chance to be re-elected President in 1800 when his statesmanship prevented a war with France. Jefferson, a staunch advocate for peace, favored war with Algiers in the mid-1780s because it would be easy to win. One of his first acts as President, was to send a small fleet to the Mediterranean to quickly defeat what proved to be a weak enemy—though the war dragged on for five years. Adams denounced agrarian violence, especially Shays’s Rebellion in his home state of Massachusetts; but, in his opinion, a beneficial consequence of the rebellion would be a strengthened federal government. Jefferson, by contrast, saw “a little rebellion now and then” as necessary like storms in the physical world in focusing attention on “encroachments on the rights of the people.” “Honest republican governors,” he said, should address grievances and impose mild punishments. Rebellions, in his view, were “a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
Economically, Adams and Jefferson were fiscal conservatives. Unlike Alexander Hamilton who saw the benefit of a large public debt that tied the interests of public creditors to the central government, both Adams and Jefferson saw the national debt as an evil that encouraged speculation. It should be paid off as soon as possible. Throughout the war and afterwards, Adams called for heavy taxation—“taxes as large as the People of America can possibly bear,” but taxes should always be coupled with economy in spending. When asked what he would have done if he had been re-elected in 1800, Adams responded, “I would not have repealed the taxes; no, not a shilling of them. With that revenue I would have fortified the frontiers on the lakes and rivers as well as on the ocean. I would have gradually increased the navy by additional ships every year that we might be in a condition to meet the mighty mistress of the ocean on her own element and convince her that she is not all powerful there.”
Jefferson emphasized restricting expenditures over increasing taxes. He ranked economy “among the first and most important of republican virtues” and considered a public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.” He accepted the need for public credit that would fund essential programs and allow the country to borrow money, but he would only borrow when absolutely necessary. Any debt should be discharged as expeditiously as possible. If an important government program needed to be implemented immediately, Jefferson would require that Congress should simultaneously provide for a tax that would entirely pay for the program within a few years. Jefferson criticized Federalists for creating a permanent national debt that profited only a few and for levying excessive taxes for unnecessary expenditures, like a large navy, seacoast defenses, and attacks on Indians. His administration eliminated most taxes except a low tariff. Despite the large expenditure for the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson successfully paid down much of the public debt. In 1820, he lamented the large federal deficit, blaming it on “the inattention of Congress to its duties, to their unwise dissipation & waste of the public contributions. They seemed, some little while ago, to be at a loss for objects whereon to throw away the supposed fathomless funds of the treasury.” Congress, he believed, needed a “pruning knife.”
Adams was a traditional New England Congregationalist who favored a close church-state relationship. Late in life, he and his wife Abigail became Unitarians. Jefferson, although born into an Anglican family, early on became a Deist and was widely condemned as an atheist. He drafted the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom that guaranteed separation of church and state. Ironically, Adams, the great democrat, was widely perceived as a monarchist; while Jefferson, a patrician and slaveowner, was perceived as a great democrat—a man of the people. Adams, the loyal Federalist became a man above even his own party, while Jefferson, who consistently despised political parties, worked hard to found an opposition party over which he became the titular head, arguing for the moral necessity on grounds of principle. Shortly after the Constitution’s adoption, Jefferson denied being a Federalist or an Antifederalist, insisting that “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” Six years later, he wrote that “Our citizens are divided into two political sects. One which fears the people most, the other the government.”
Adams always seemed to be a pessimist, yet was sufficiently optimistic to lead a rebellion against the mightiest nation in the world. He might best be characterized as an optimistic pessimist. To him, the glass was always half empty, but the glass was always a crystal goblet. On the other hand, Jefferson was always the optimist. With his keen interest in science, he always saw the glass as completely full—half with his favorite French wine, and the other half with air. His enemies (and sometimes even his friends) criticized him as an unrealistic political theorist.
Neither Adams nor Jefferson attended the Constitutional Convention as they were then serving in Europe as ministers plenipotentiary to England and France, respectively. Some historians claim that the Convention benefited from their absence because they would have been divisive. But that is doubtful. Both men were skilled legislators and would have assisted in creating consensus. Furthermore, Jefferson would have demanded the inclusion of a bill of rights, the omission of which almost derailed ratification. Adams, on the other hand, was virtually in attendance in that he had written the pamphlet Thoughts on Government in the Spring of 1776 that served as an instructional primer for state constitution-making. He also drafted nearly all of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780 which served as the primary model for the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in creating the new form of government. Finally, Adams’s The Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (1787), the first of a three-volume history of republican governments, laid out the principles of separation of powers, bicameralism, an independent judiciary, and balanced government, was reprinted and widely read in America.
Adams and Jefferson lived long enough after their retirement from public service to reflect on the events of the monumental Revolutionary and Founding eras in which they played crucial roles. They realized that history would remember what they had done, but they feared misinterpretation. Adams especially worried that others would achieve undeserved fame while he would be overlooked. Satirically, he wrote to his old friend Benjamin Rush that “The History of our Revolution will be one continued Lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical Rod (i.e., Franklin’s lightning rod), smote the Earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislatures and War.”
Both men saved their correspondence to help preserve the historical record and their contributions. Unlike Adams, Jefferson kept no diary and he destroyed the correspondence with his wife Martha after she died in 1782. These two omissions deprive posterity of the personal aspects of the man. Adams, on the other hand, maintained a lengthy diary that spanned fifty years. He also ignored his wife’s repeated pleas to destroy her correspondence saying that her letters were like a cannonade to his heart. He would have to forget her first before he could destroy her letters. Furthermore, Adams admonished Abigail to save all of their correspondence to show posterity the difficulties that they endured for the sake of liberty.
Their friendship deepened during their diplomatic service in Europe during the mid-1780s. Adams returned to America in June 1788 and Jefferson in November 1789. Their political divide emerged in the early 1790s as Adams served as Vice President and Jefferson as secretary of state in the Washington administration. They disagreed sharply over the government’s economic and foreign policies—particularly over the French Revolution. When Jefferson resigned at the end of 1793, Adams wrote his wife that “Jefferson went off Yesterday, and a good riddance of bad ware. I hope his Temper will be more cool and his Principles more reasonable in Retirement than they have been in office. . . . He has Talents, and Integrity I believe: but his mind is now poisoned with Passion, Prejudice and Faction.”
After Washington announced his retirement in September 1796, Adams and Jefferson faced off in the first contested presidential election. Adams narrowly defeated Jefferson who consequently then served as Vice President. After an initial rapprochement, the hostility between the two grew to a crescendo with the Alien and Sedition laws in 1798, the presidential election of 1800, and Adams’s lame-duck appointments of “the midnight judges” in 1801. Narrowly defeated in 1800, Adams refused to attend his opponent’s inauguration and returned to Massachusetts in March 1801 beginning a decade-long estrangement with Jefferson. Through the efforts of Dr. Benjamin Rush, a mutual friend, their correspondence was rekindled when Adams broke the ice and wrote to Jefferson on 1 January 1812. Upon hearing of the renewed correspondence, Rush wrote Adams: “I rejoice in the correspondence which has taken place between you and your Old friend Mr. Jefferson. I consider you and him, as the North and South poles of the American Revolution.—Some talked, some wrote—and some fought to promote & establish it, but you, and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all.”
The renewed correspondence allowed Adams and Jefferson to thoroughly re-examine the Revolutionary War. Before the estrangement, from 1777 through 1801, Adams and Jefferson exchanged 171 letters—80 from the former and 91 from the latter. During their re-engagement from 1812 through mid-1826 when they died, they exchanged 158 letters—109 from Adams and 49 from Jefferson. Although Jefferson wrote fewer letters than Adams, his were usually much longer. Each man drew upon his vast knowledge of English and colonial American history, political theory tracing back to ancient Greece and Rome, the Bible, the Enlightenment, the extensive public debate in England during the seventeenth-century struggle between Parliament and the king over the king’s prerogative powers, and human nature. They found that they often disagreed profoundly, but in a respectful tone, occasionally spiced with humor. The correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is truly an American literary treasure.
The Adams-Jefferson correspondence is available in the modern editions of their papers and online. The letters (including Jefferson’s correspondence with Abigail Adams) are available in a one-volume edition edited by Lester J. Cappon, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959). The Center for the Study of the American Constitution has published a single volume highlighting Adams’s and Jefferson’s perspective on forty different topics—Adams and Jefferson: Contrasting Aspirations and Anxieties from the Founding (Madison, Wis., 2013).