Preface

THIS BOOK IS A SOMEWHAT ENLARGED VERSION OF THE LAMAR Memorial Lectures delivered at Mercer University in October 1975. A series of lectures is, of course, addressed to a listening audience, while a book is addressed to a reading audience; and since there is a difference between listening and reading, it is never easy to satisfy both audiences with the same production. The problem begins with the choice of a subject. For the Lamar Lectures I chose to treat the fifty-year-long relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson—a subject of compelling human interest in itself—as a dialogue of ideas on the meaning and purpose of the American Revolution. I have long been concerned with the theme, especially in relation to Jefferson, and welcomed the opportunity to develop it. It seemed to be manageable in four lectures which might not only hold a listening audience but also become a readable and instructive book. I hoped, too, that both lectures and book might make some small contribution to the nation’s observance of its two-hundredth anniversary.

I want to thank Professor Spencer B. King, Jr., and his colleagues at Mercer University for the invitation to deliver the lectures in this distinguished series. Their hospitality made my visit, and my wife’s, a genuine pleasure, and I could not have asked for a more receptive audience than the one they provided. Thanks are also due to the Rockefeller Foundation and its Bellagio Study Center, where I was a scholar-in-residence in the fall of 1974 and where the first draft of the lectures was written. This was as close as I ever hope to get to nirvana, yet everything about the Center proved conducive to creative work. In March 1975 I was on the faculty of the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies and had an opportunity to try out my ideas on the fellows from some dozen countries. I am grateful to them for their patience and their warm response. Finally, thanks are due to the Research Committee of the University of Virginia for funds to cover typing of the manuscript and to Mrs. Edith Good for her proficiency in this art.

In quotations from the writings of Adams and Jefferson, I have generally taken the liberty of modernizing spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

Merrill D. Peterson

Charlottesville, Virginia

January 30, 1976