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American Experience: John and Abigail Adams

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Poster for American Experience: John and Abigail Adams

About this film

Bernard Margolis, president, Boston Public Library; Kelly Cobble, curator, Adams National Historic Park; Jonathan Chu, dean, education, UMass Boston; Peter Drummey, librarian, Mass Historical Society; Elizabeth Deane, producer, American Experience, WGBH The Adams story provides a strikingly intimate look inside a marriage of true companions, says Deane, for whom life included not just the great events memorialized in textbooks, but also laughter, loneliness and family tragedy.To present the couple's story in their own words, Deane drew extensively on the more than 1,000 Adams letters that survive, born of their lengthy time apart, as John served his country at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and as a diplomat in Europe. Their revealing, often deeply personal correspondence, chronicles an inspiring political marriage along with the birth of a nation. A visionary and gifted political thinker, Adams moved a reluctant Congress to declare independence from England, and single-handedly secured millions of dollars in loans to keep the American army from collapse during the Revolutionary War. Later, he was named the first US ambassador to England. He penned the Massachusetts const…

Directors & creators

WGBH

Subjects

history

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