SOURCE: “Erudite Effusions,” in Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, pp. 143-73.

In the following essay, Ellis examines Adams's defense of his political philosophy through his correspondence with John Taylor, the main critic of Adams's A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.

I am willing to allow your Phylosophers your opinion of the universal Gravitation of Matter, if you will allow mine that there is in some souls a principle of absolute Levity that buoys them irresistably into the Clouds … an uncontroulable Tendency to ascend. … This I take to be precisely the Genius of Burr … and Hamilton.

—Adams to Benjamin Rush, April 12, 1807

The Town of Quincy have been pleased to Elect me a Member of the [Massachusetts Constitutional] Convention—and wonderful to relate … I am sufficiently advanced in my dotage to have accepted the Choice...