John Adams' Crisis of Conscience

摘要

WHEN John Adams complained in old age that the historyof the Revolution would never be written, his words appliedwith particular aptness to the period between 1761 and 1776.Once Independence was declared, participants began to keep records ofall kinds with an eye to history, but in the uncertain years before 1776much that later became of interest was either not recorded or not preserved.Ironically enough, though Adams worried about being overlookedin accounts of the early part of the Revolutionary story, andthough his own records were among the most circumstantial and complete,they, too, left unanswered questions about the period before 1776.