I’m watching the History Channel’s series on the Revolution today and it turns out I was wrong. They signed the DoI on the 2nd of July, not the 3rd as I stated.
Feuding Founding Fathers: Part II: The Pursuit of CrankinessJohn Adams... was a bundle of insecurities, a notorious carper, a man who, in the words of historian Jack D. Warren, qualified as "America's crankiest Founding Father." ...Alexander Hamilton added his take on Adams: "Well known are his disgusting egotism, distempered jealousy, ungovernable indiscretion, and vanity without bounds." ...Little wonder, then, while the rest of the country was plunged into mourning over the death of Hamilton after his fatal duel in 1804 with Aaron Burr, that Adams snorted "a caitiff had come to a bad end." Adams likewise... described Paine as "that insolent blasphemer of things sacred and transcendent, libeler of all that is good" ...Later in his life Paine remembered Adams as being "for independence because he expected to be made great by it; but it was not difficult to perceive, for the surliness of his temper makes him an awkward hypocrite, that his head was as full of kings, queens and knaves as a pack of cards." ...Adams... never forgave Benjamin Franklin for questioning his diplomatic skills while Adams was in France negotiating for assistance in the Revolutionary War. Adams attacked Franklin's morals, his ability, even his patriotism... "I can say with truth that one act of Mr. Adams's life, and one only, ever gave me a moment's personal displeasure," Jefferson wrote Abigail Adams in 1804. "I did consider his last appointments to office as personally unkind. They were from among my most ardent political enemies, from whom no faithful cooperation could ever be expected, and laid me under the embarra[ss]ment of acting thro' men whose views were to defeat mine, or to encounter the odium of putting others in their places." The next day Adams blew off Jefferson's inauguration and skipped town.
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