Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

by Gordon S. Wood,
The Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 27, 2017

In 1811, with an adroit use of epistolary shuttle diplomacy, Benjamin Rush brokered a reconciliation between two former friends, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. When the ice broke, the second and third presidents of the United States commenced a correspondence that produced 158 letters and ended when both men died, fittingly, on July 4, 1826, 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.