SOURCE: “‘Posterity Must Judge’: Private and Public Discourse in the Adams-Jefferson Letters,” in Arizona Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 4, Winter, 1994, pp. 1-30.

In the following essay, Blake discusses the correspondence between John Adams and Jefferson and situates their letters within the larger public political discourse of the time.

I first saw the Constitution of the United States in a foreign country. Irritated by no literary altercation, animated by no public debate, heated by no party animosity, I read it with great satisfaction. … In its general principles and great outlines, it was conformable to such a system of government as I had ever most esteemed.

John Adams, Inaugural Speech, March 1797

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The philosophical correspondence of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson descends to us as a public text, one which readers have widely admired for its intellectual depth, epistolary style, and remarkable perspective on friendship. Indeed few readers would object to Ezra Pound's...