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EDITOR’S NOTE

With a few minor exceptions, this volume includes all of John Adams’s Revolutionary and pre-Revolutionary political writings. All documents are reproduced in their entirety and, with one exception, have been taken from volumes 3 and 4 of Charles Francis Adams’s ten-volume collection of The Works of John Adams (Boston, 1850–56). In turn, the Charles Francis Adams documents were reproduced from original newspaper publications. “Two Replies of the Massachusetts House of Representatives to Governor Hutchinson” was taken from the original Journal of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts.

In the spirit of introducing modern readers to documents reproduced in exactly the same form in which they were read by eighteenth-century readers, I have decided against annotating any of these documents. In order to recapture the distant past we must first appreciate its strangeness and differentness from the present. My intention is to permit Adams to speak for himself and to challenge the modern reader to further study the philosophic and political contexts in which Adams wrote. Nor, for the most part, have I attempted to modernize the text. The definitive annotated edition of Adams’s Revolutionary writings will be found in the ongoing publication of the Papers of John Adams (Boston, 1977–). I have also removed all footnotes and annotation used by Charles Francis Adams.