May 10, 1775: The Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. One of its most controversial events is a conversation John Adams said happened between him and Thomas Jefferson about who should write the Declaration of Independence. Adams said each of them offered for the other to have to honor of writing it and he eventually convinced Jefferson to accept. Jefferson denied this conversation took place. Historian Robert E. McGlone raises a great question about this. He asks: “Can historians authenticate disputed memories unverifiable by independent documentary evidence?” He concludes that “Adams’s story . . . represents a distinctive class of reminiscences characterized by unquestioned beliefs about special moments in life.” For McGlone, this type of memory tends to “confirm one or more cherished truths about the rememberer’s sense of self or about his or her understanding of life in general” and “they often do that better than they mirror the past.” Therefore, he writes, “Adams’s memory can be read as a refutation of the verdict of history, which had already bestowed on Jefferson fame that Adams felt rightly belonged to himself.”
Citations: Robert E. McGlone, “Deciphering Memory: John Adams and the Authorship of the Declaration of Independence,” The Journal of American History 85, no. 2 (September 1998): 411-412, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2567746; Augustus Tholey, “Leaders of the Continental Congress--John Adams, Morris, Hamilton, Jefferson / A. Tholey,” print (location unknown, c. 1894), https://lccn.loc.gov/00649557.
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