About the Book: Friends Divided : John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different
worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with
enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracys champion,
was an aristocratic Southern slaveowner, while Adams, the overachiever from New
Englands rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a
skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government.
They worked closely in the crucible of revolution, crafting the Declaration of
Independence and leading, with Franklin, the diplomatic effort that brought
France