1.
The lecture delivered at the Masonic Temple in Boston as one of the series of public lectures undertaken by the Massachusetts Historical Society was largely a recital of selected letters exchanged between JA and AA, and quoted in extenso
386(the holograph text is in the Adams Papers, shelved as M/CFA/23.3, not microfilmed). It is notable as marking the first occasion on which any considerable number of letters from the Adams family archives were communicated publicly. It should be thought of as prelude to CFA’s publication in 1840 of Letters of Mrs. Adams, the preface to which is in large part a restatement of the views expressed in the lecture:
“John Adams was one of the many actors in the public drama whose course must abide a scrutiny from other hands than mine. But he had a wife to whom he communicated much of the secret emotion of his soul, and who reciprocated the confidence in a manner which it may be advisable to disclose not from the poor vanity of exalting her, but from an earnest desire to present to the attention of those among the living who value historical memorials, an illustration of the connection between the domestic feelings and the public principles of the Revolution.
“It will at once be understood that I propose nothing in the way of eulogy or biography, that I consider any contribution which in my own person I could make in the way of general essay or dissertation, to aid the objects of the Historical Society as a cipher in comparison with the ability to resort to ancient papers never before seen, and that I draw from such papers only with a view to the illustration of an age that is past.”