The MagazineFounding PartnersThe Adams love affair, in word and deed.Jul 4, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 40
• By EDWARD ACHORN
 First Family  Abigail and John Adams by Joseph J. Ellis Knopf, 320 pp., $27.95 Before her death in 1802, Martha Washington took care to burn all but two of the letters she had exchanged with her husband, the greatest man in American history. That act deprived George Washington’s critics of unguarded moments to be used as raw material for casting his actions in the worst possible light—a cottage industry to this day—but it robbed the rest of us of priceless insights into the private life and personal reflections of this now eternally aloof and godlike figure. So we are forever fortunate that a similar fate did not befall the correspondence of John and Abigail Adams, which Joseph J. Ellis aptly calls “a treasure-trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between any prominent American husband and wife in American history.” Their 1,016 surviving letters to each other constitute a marvelously literate, loving, and detailed look into their lives and times—fodder for Adams haters, to be sure, since John all too often stewed over his prejudices and wounded pride, but a nonetheless fascinating look into two compelling people and the world-shaking events they hastened. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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