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Jerry Adler's avatar

I guess as someone who is also obnoxious, suspected and unpopular, I'd have to choose Adams, but glad I wasn't old enough to vote in 1800.

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Javier Truben's avatar

Thomas Jefferson was heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution, and Napoleon. While John Adams was worried that the American experiment would fail if radicals and opportunists took control and replicated another Reign of Terror with guillotines working at full speed. Hence, they drifted apart to become political adversaries.

Moreover, the brutal 80% mortality of the first settlers in the Tobacco Coast due to contaminated water, famine, and conflicts with Native Americans was the main reason to resort to the use of African slaves, which was undoubtedly immoral, but it played a crucial role in the progressive enrichment of the Southern colonies. And without the immense riches of tobacco and also cotton which they produced heroes like George Washington and also the financier genius Robert Morris, I guess the Declaration of Independence would have been drafted fifty years later and after crushing defeats.

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