John Adams, Slavery, and Race: Ideas, Politics, and Diplomacy in an Age of Crisis

Providing the first full investigation of second U.S. president John Adams' attitudes toward slavery, blacks, and the Haitian Revolution, this iconoclastic study illuminates the inner and outer worlds of Adams for scholars and general readers.

• Supplies a knowledge of John Adams' views—information that reveals him as hardly a paragon in matters of racial equality—that will facilitate a more realistic appraisal of early American culture, politics, and diplomacy at a time when the dogma of "American exceptionalism" is under attack at U.S. universities and in the media

• Fills a major gap in our collective knowledge of Adams, a seminal figure in American history, correcting scholars' false assumptions, exposing flawed research, and disclosing a "darker side" of the great second U.S. president

• Reveals the real reasons John Adams assisted Toussaint Louverture and his black rebels in the Haitian Revolution