Calumnists of the Revolution

John Adams on Thomas Jefferson:
“[He has] a mind, soured, yet seeking for popularity, and eaten to a honeycomb with ambition, yet weak, confused, uninformed, and ignorant.”

Thomas Jefferson on John Adams:
“[He is] distrustful, obstinate, excessively vain, and takes no counsel from anyone.”

Alexander Hamilton on Thomas Jefferson:
“A man of profound ambition and violent passions… the intriguing incendiary, the aspiring turbulent competitor… prone to projects which are incompatible with the principles of stable and systematic government.”

John Adams on Alexander Hamilton:
“[Consider] the profligacy of his life; his fornications, adulteries and his incests.”

Alexander Hamilton on John Adams:
“disgusting egotism… distempered jealousy… ungovernable indiscretion… vanity without bounds.”

Thomas Jefferson on Alexander Hamilton:
“I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded by the slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which not only has received and given him bread, but heaped its honors on his head.”

John Adams on Benjamin Franklin:
“His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency… From five complete years of experience of Dr. Franklin… I can have no dependence on his word… I wish with all my soul he was out of public service.”

Benjamin Franklin on bloggers:
“I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men.”

Brotherly Love among the Founding Fathers [American Heritage]