John Adams Quotes
Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample? Are not two thirds of the nation now with the administration? Divided we have ever been, and ever must be. Two thirds always had and will have more difficulty to struggle with the one third than with all our foreign enemies.
John Adams, 1735-1826, 2nd President of the United States (Federalist, MA), Letter to Thomas McKean, August 31, 1813
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Garfield reminded Americans of how radical and unusual the concept of democracy had been at the time of the adoption of The Constitution, and that the American Revolution was one of ideas as well as armies.
Warren was killed shortly thereafter at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
On creating a sense of national unity and destiny:
Crittendon, at the outbreak of the Civil War, had a Governor who wanted Kentucky to secede and join the Confederacy, but he and other leaders thwarted that and the state legislatures defied the governor and forced him to resign. 16 percent of Kentucky men held slaves and keeping Kentucky and Maryland in the Union was a very high priority for President Lincoln. See {633812}.
The simplistic view that the American colonists were patriots and the British were the colonizers against whom the colonists revolted is not really accurate. The American colonists were polarized into patriots and loyalists. The Loyalist Americans ranged from many of those merchants whose business depended upon England, those whose family were still in England, those whose religion made them loyal to the Church of England, slaves who would be free under British law, Americans who had strong cultural and intellectual ties to England and those Americans who were great believers in monarchy and whose honor required that they fulfill the oath that they had taken to the King of England. Some of the worst atrocities of the American Revolution occurred in the battles of these Americans against each other. See {82105} for more on this point.
John Adams Jr. was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain, and he served as the first vice president of the United States. Adams was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with many important figures in early American history, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
