Reading of the Letters of John and Abigail Adams

Stephen Breyer, Rosanna Warren, Anthony Lewis, and Margaret Marshall, who participated in a reading of the letters of John and Abigail Adams.

The Academy celebrated its 220th anniversary at a Stated Meeting on May 10, 2000, with a reading from the correspondence between Academy cofounder John Adams and his equally remarkable wife, Abigail Adams. Following the Annual Meeting earlier in the day, which marked the beginning of President Freedman's three-year term, Fellow Bernard Bailyn gave the Communication at the 1834th Stated Meeting. Bailyn, Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University, spoke about the personal characteristics of Adams as revealed in both his diary and his autobiography.

Outgoing President Daniel C. Tosteson then introduced four distinguished readers to share excerpts from the Adams' correspondence, written against the backdrop of the American Revolution and the idealism of the new nation. The four were the Honorable Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court; two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Lewis, columnist for the New York Times; the Honorable Margaret H. Marshall, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the first woman to hold that post); and Rosanna Warren, Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and a member of the Academy Council. The reading was broadcast on the C-SPAN cable network over Labor Day weekend.

For more information please contact Charles Rooney at (617) 576-5047

Back to the November 2000 Newsletter