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Deeply versed in history, [John Adams] said over and over that America had no special providence, no special role in history, that Americans were no different from other peoples, that the United States was just as susceptible to viciousness and corruption as any other nation. In this regard, at least, Jefferson's vision has clearly won the day.

Gordon S. Wood

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Gordon S. Wood
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: November 27
Historian
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University Teacher
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Massachusetts
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More quotes by Gordon S. Wood

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[John] Adams said his objective in writing his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States and his Davila essays was to counter what he thought was the unfair criticism of the American state constitutions made by the French philosophers, especially [Anne Robert Jacques] Turgot.
Gordon S. Wood
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[John's Adams] description of [Benjamin] Franklin in a letter to [his wife] Abigail in 1775 is laudatory. Only when he experiences all the adulation paid to Franklin in Paris does he begin to change his tune.
Gordon S. Wood
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[ Massachusetts constitution] was [John Adams] attempt to justify that structure by the traditional notion of social estates - that the executive represented the monarchical estate, the senate the aristocratic estate, and the house of representatives the estate of the people.
Gordon S. Wood
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I think [John Adams] developed a much deeper suspicion of France and the other European powers than he had earlier. He lost much if not all of the utopian thinking about international politics and diplomacy expressed in his Model Treaty of 1776 and became much more cynical about the world.
Gordon S. Wood
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If history teaches anything, it teaches humility.
Gordon S. Wood
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It was [John's Adams] Massachusetts constitution if anything that influenced people.
Gordon S. Wood
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[John] Adams never hid his jealousy and resentment of the other Founders, especially Benjamin Franklin.
Gordon S. Wood
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[John Adams's] vividly descriptive prose is supremely quotable. Adams wears his heart on his sleeve and reveals all of his ambitions, doubts, and insecurities, especially in his diary, which is one of the greatest and most readable in all of American literature.
Gordon S. Wood
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The Massachusetts constitution was written much later than the other revolutionary state constitutions, and thus it avoids some of the earlier mistakes. The executive is stronger, with a limited veto the senate is more formidable and the judiciary is independent.
Gordon S. Wood
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[John Adams] experience with the French philosophers only convinced him further of the need for a bicameral legislature representing the two principal social orders and, equally important, an independent executive.
Gordon S. Wood
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By 1782 [John Adams] had come to feel for [Benjamin] Franklin no other sentiments than Contempt or Abhorrence.
Gordon S. Wood
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By the time [John Adams] came to write his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States in 1787 he had as dark a view of the American character as that of any critic in our history.
Gordon S. Wood
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[John] Adams identified himself with the political theories of [James] Harrington, [John] Locke, and [Charles-Louis] Montesquieu, whose ideas of constitutionalism, he believed, were applicable to all peoples everywhere they were his contribution to what he called the divine science of politics.
Gordon S. Wood
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A mutual friend, Benjamin Rush, brought [Tomas Jefferson and John Adams] together in 1812, and they went on to exchange letters for the rest of their lives. But in their correspondence they tended to avoid the most controversial issues, such as slavery.
Gordon S. Wood
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Creating senates, the French critics said, implied that there was another social order besides the people represented in the houses of representatives. [John] Adams actually agreed with that implication and argued that the aristocracy and the people had to have separate houses this was the only way the power of the aristocracy could be contained.
Gordon S. Wood
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Americans, [John Adams] wrote in 1780, believed that their revolution is as much for the benefit of the generality of Mankind in Europe, as for their own.
Gordon S. Wood
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I think [John] Adams was correct when he said that his May resolutions were an Epocha, a decisive Event, and tantamount to a declaration of independence.
Gordon S. Wood
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[John] Adams's letters reveal his persistence and determination to win over the Dutch against all odds and to convince them and the other peoples of Europe of the potential greatness of the United States and of the importance of the Revolution to the world.
Gordon S. Wood
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[John Adams' writings] had indicted the United States for slavishly copying the English constitution by erecting bicameral legislatures in their state constitutions, most drafted in 1776.
Gordon S. Wood
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The Declaration [of Independence] was a committee report, and [Tomas] Jefferson was simply the draftsman. [John] Adams's crucial role in bringing about independence in the Continental Congress has tended to get forgotten.
Gordon S. Wood