When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail’s response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.”
– David McCullough
Tag: John Adams
Quotable 59
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
– John Adams
Pen to Paper: The Declaration of Independence
“It is the glorious 4th of July!”
– John Adams
And so it is. Today we celebrate the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration was written by Thomas Jefferson. John Adams had noted Jefferson’s “happy talent for composition” and “remarkable felicity of expression” and assigned the paperwork to him. Unlike young men today, Jefferson protested that he was the junior member of the committee; surely an older, wiser, more experienced man such as Benjamin Franklin or Adams himself should write the crucial paper. Adams responded that anything he wrote would be savaged merely because it came from him. Besides, he told Jefferson, “You write ten times better than I do,” which is something you wouldn’t hear from a lot of older, wiser, more experienced men.
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