On the last day of December 1780 John Adams wrote that he had just spent "the most anxious and mortifying Year of my whole Life." He had resided first at Paris, then at Amsterdam, attempting, without success, to open Anglo-American peace negotiations and to raise a Dutch loan. In volumes 9 and 10 of the "Papers of John Adams," over 600 letters and documents that Adams sent to and received from numerous correspondents in Europe and America provide an unparalleled view of Adams' diplomacy and a wealth of detail on the world in which he lived.

These volumes chronicle Adams' efforts to convince the British people and their leaders that Britain's economic survival demanded an immediate peace; his "snarling growling" debate with the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, over the proper Franco-American relationship; and his struggle to obtain a loan in the Netherlands, where policies were dictated by Mammon rather than republican virtue. Adams' writings, diplomatic dispatches, and personal correspondence all make clear the scope of his intelligence gathering and his propaganda efforts in the British, French, and Dutch press. The letters reflect his interest in Bordeaux wines, the fate of Massachusetts' Constitution that he had drafted in 1779, and political developments in Philadelphia, Boston, London, and St. Petersburg. The volumes leave no doubt as to John Adams' unwavering commitment to the American cause. Even in this most difficult year, he believed the revolution in America to be "the greatest that ever took Place among Men." He felt honored to serve a new nation where "the Wisdom and not the Man is attended to," whose citizens were fighting a "People's War" from which the United States would inevitably emerge victorious to take its rightful place on the world stage.

"I cannot O I cannot be reconciled to living as I have done for 3 years past Will you let me try to soften, if I cannot wholy) releave you, from your Burden of Cares and perplexities?'' So begins Abigail Adams' correspondence to her husband in these volumes: a plea to end their long separation, as John Adams represented the United States in Europe while Abigail tended to family and farm in Massachusetts, and passed on to John Crucial political information from Congress.

In October 1782, the Adams family was as widely scattered as it would ever be, with young John Quincy Adams in St. Petersburg, John at The Hague, and Abigail in Braintree with her daughter and younger sons. With the summer of 1784, however, Abigail would have her fondest wish, as most of the family reunited to spend nearly a year together in Europe. As the Adams family traveled, and as the children came of age, so their correspondence expanded to include an ever larger and more fascinating range of Cultural topics and international figures. The record of this remarkable expansion, these volumes document John Adams' diplomatic triumphs, his wife and daughter's participation in the cosmopolitan scenes of Paris and London, and his son John Quincy's travels in Europe and America. These pages also welcome Thomas Jefferson, who soon became one of Abigail's closest friends, into the family correspondence. From the intimacies 0f the children's education, sentimental and worldly, to the details of the 'arm friendship between Abigail and Madame Lafayette, to the grand drama of Edmund Burke and William Pitt the Younger debating in Parliament, the contents of these letters draw an incredibly rich picture of international life in the 17805 and an incomparable portrait of America's first family of politics and letters.