[Lady In Blue]

It's hard to believe that after 200 years,President John Adams does not have a monument on the Potomac river in Washington,D.C.

[Lady In Blue]

You might find this interesting.I did.I think it's long past due,John Adams deserves a national monument.I've e-mailed my congressman,the President;Vice President.

[satchmodog9]

Read the book and I loved it. Found out a lot of great information. I highly recommend it. Adams was a great man. We will never see his likes again.

[The_Expatriate]

There's no picture of John Adams on our money.

He is surely more deserving of having his picture on the five-dollar bill than the tyrant currently depicted there.

[Free the USA]

Check the Bump List folders for articles related to and descriptions of the above topic(s) or for other topics of interest.

[Highway55]

“John Adams” by David McCullough

This was very good read.

John Adams was a great man!

[Sci Fi Guy]

I think that McCullough's book is the best monument right now. I was thinking that another great forgotten President is Calvin Coolidge.

[nonliberal]

"John Adams" was a great book. When you are done with it you become depressed that there are no men like him alive today.

[sneakers]

Thanks for the excellent post. John Adams has been my favorite Founding Father since a most wonderful college history professor taught a class about him in 1987. It's high time this great man had a monument dedicated to him. I too am going to contact my congressman.

I have David McCullough's book and am reading it now. So far, it's excellent!

[monkey]

Why is Adams the least known of the Founding Fathers?

George Mason is the least known.

The monument to FDR, if you've not seen it, is a kissy-up, socialist advertisement. They could fit five monuments to deserving Presidents, like Adams, in the space.

[lockeliberty]

I read a 2 volume set on John Adams by an author who's last name I believe is Page. These books are rather extensive and after reading them you understand how much influence Adam's had over the Continential Congress. Also, Adam's wrote a detailed defense of the Constitution while an ambassador in London. Overall Adams may have been the most influential founding father we had. His efforts in securing loans from the Dutch, French, and Prussians may have been the decisive factor in defeating the British.

[dvwjr]

We needed a Constitution and so, while he was still overseas, it was modeled after the one Adams had written for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

From what I've read about the Constitutional Convention, this is not exactly so. Anyone else think any differently?

[CougarGA7]

Its good to see someone standing up for John Adams. I'm a direct decendent of his. I didn't know about this book but I will go out and buy it today. One of the stories my father told me was of a bet that John Adams had with Thomas Jefferson. They made a bet on who would live longer. When John Adams uttered his last words, "Thomas Jefferson survives" he did not know that Jefferson had died a few hours earlier in Virginia. Both of them died on Independence Day in 1826. John Adams had won the bet but never knew it.

[Charles Henrickson]

Our family listened to the audio version of the book last summer on our way out to Williamsburg and D.C. for vacation. Adams truly has to rank up there with the most important of our Founding Fathers. And he was so smart!

McCullough does a fine job in writing this book, and he himself is an excellent speaker. I heard him speak here in St. Louis last June, on Adams. I had heard him also give a talk here a couple of years earlier. A wise man. And a great voice, too.

[Lady In Blue]

Roll Call: Opinion

June 14, 2001

Honor Adams

Washington is monument city, crowded with large and small memorials to our greatest presidents, many Civil War generals, the wars America has fought and even some poets. What's missing is recognition for founding father John Adams, America's second president, but we're pleased that attention is now being paid via a House bill sponsored by Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.) and a Senate measure by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Attention to Adams - long overdue - has been stimulated by two new books by distinguished historians David McCullough and Joseph Ellis, who testified this week along with Roemer before the House Resources subcommittee on national parks and public lands. Roemer's bill would create a monument honoring not only Adams but his wife, Abigail, one of America's most accomplished first ladies; their son, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president; and other members of a family distinguished for its public and academic service.

As with the World War II Memorial, a controversy has arisen over the placement of the Adams monument. Roemer said it should be on the Tidal Basin between the monuments to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. That's certainly fitting historically, but three federal commissions have voted to ban new monuments in that vicinity. The Fine Arts Commission, the National Capital Memorial Commission and the National Capital Planning Commission jointly agreed last year to block additional construction in that area of the Mall because they judged that too many structures were being erected there.

This judgment has to be ratified by Congress, however. The Senate passed the ban last year, but the House didn't. Commission members interviewed by The Washington Post said this week that they are not prepared to make an exception for John Adams. One person who serves on two of the commissions, John Parsons of the National Park Service, said, "The relationship between Jefferson and Adams is so strong, we will have to find a site relative to each; but not on the Tidal Basin." That might be an opening for a location near the Tidal Basin, but not on it.

We hope that Congress will indeed honor the Adams family. But Congress should also let the various commissions do their work before rushing to judgment about where an Adams memorial should go. People were in such a hurry to honor "the greatest generation" that Congress stepped in to decree approval for an architecturally undistinguished World War II Memorial that would be planted in the wrong place. The Adamses deserve an elegant memorial honoring their wisdom and service.

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[JulieRNR21]

Finished reading 'John Adams' a few weeks ago. It is a great book that every American should read. Adams had 'bad press' unlike Jefferson & Franklin (yep...even in those days the press had its darlings (McCains)....LOL