New in this release, and added to all previous volumes of the Adams Papers Digital Edition, are mouseover expansions of all of the Adams family code abbreviations used in the edition (such as AA2 for Abigail Adams [1765–1813], daughter of John and Abigail).

Adams Family Correspondence, volume 8, drawing from nearly 250 letters, follows the Adams family from March 1787 to the close of 1789. The correspondence covered in this volume evokes a period of transition both for both the nation and the Adams family. John Adams made the transition from the first Minister to the Court of St. James to first Vice President of the United States under the new Constitution, after only a brief respite at their newly acquired farm in Quincy, which John Adams named Peacefield. Meanwhile, their daughter Nabby, married in 1786, gave birth to John and Abigail’s first grandchildren, and their sons, John Quincy, Charles, and Thomas Boylston, furthered their studies at Harvard and embarked on their own legal careers.

Volume 9 of the Adams Family Correspondence chronicles the early years of the American republic under the new Constitution with Vice President John Adams faithfully presiding over the Senate. Internationally, the United States faced diplomatic challenges as the outbreak of the French Revolution raised questions about the position and response the nation should take in regard to both France and Europe in general. On the domestic front, all of the Adams children completed their transition to adulthood, with the youngest son, Thomas Boylston, graduating from Harvard. The correspondence of the children, both among themselves and to their parents, takes center stage in this volume of nearly 300 letters spanning from January 1790 to December 1793 and reveals not only their sentiments on national and world events, but also the intimate details of family and farm.

The 350 letters of The Papers of John Adams, volume 14, explore the slow and difficult diplomatic conclusion to the American Revolutionary War from October 1782 to May 1783. Wary of France’s motives and desirous of establishing a fully independent way, John Adams and the American Peace Commissioners determined to strike a peace with Great Britain separate from France, but issues ranging from loyalists to fishing rights slowed progress. Meanwhile, Adams continued his role as minister to the Netherlands overseeing the distribution of funds of the Dutch-American loan, followed fifteen-year-old John Quincy’s long journey from St. Petersburg to The Hague, and took a keen interest in how best to write an accurate history of the American Revolution. As always, Adams’s letters reveal a wealth of insight into not only the history of the period but his own thought processes.

(UVA Press wishes to thank Sara Sikes of the Adams Papers, and her staff, for assistance with proofreading of the digital volumes.)

This latest installment of the DMDE takes the reader through 1844 and the sale of Montpelier, the Madisons’ estate in Orange County, Virginia. In 1844 Dolley finally realized that her debts (and those of her son, John Payne Todd) had become too great for her to continue running the property; her only choice was to sell. This she did to a Richmond merchant with local family connections, Henry Wood Moncure. After 1844 Dolley would never again return to Virginia. As of this installment the reader has now twenty editorial essays on topics ranging from the enslaved community at Montpelier to the nineteenth-century “autographomania” that led collectors to seek out James and Dolley Madison’s signatures. Among the new biographical identifications are entries on nearly twenty members of the Montpelier slave community. Also new are three high-resolution images of Montpelier survey plats from the Orange County Courthouse that accompany an editorial essay by Ann L. Miller.

The images in the gallery below are scans of plats based on surveys in preparation for the sale of the Montpelier estate. The largest plat, covering two pages, includes the entire plantation and immediate surroundings.

Forthcoming installments of the DMDE will focus on Dolley’s life after her return to Washington, DC, locally honored and publicly feted, while privately still struggling to keep herself financially afloat.

This is the story of a false story.

We live and sometimes die for our stories; some benign (“God is Love,”"All Men are Created Equal”) others not (“lebensraum,”"separate but equal”). Among the false stories doggers tell are: “Registries don’t ruin breeds, breeders ruin breeds,” “Corrections are cruel,” and “Dogs offer unconditional love.”

We all have stories about our own dogs who are “natural outrunners” or who are “kind to their sheep” or “reliable around kids” or who “suffer from separation anxiety.” Some of these stories are true, others false.  Whichever, they color our expectations and the dogs’. They direct our training.

Last weekend Fly and I attended a Patrick Shannahan clinic in Maryland. Patrick is a fine, gentle teacher, and I learned from him, but my important discovery came watching a dog—not my own—trained by another trainer.

Backstory: when I bought Fly, Beverly Lambert told me a story about Fly and a Scottish trial man. Fly’s crate is her safe place and when she wouldn’t come out, her brand-new owner dragged her out and Fly bit him. Whereupon he got “harsh” with Fly and she responded by refusing to work for him. Period. A fully trained three-year-old open-trial winner gave up her career—not for everyone, Bev worked her, but she never worked for the Scot again.

Bev said something like, “You don’t see many Border Collies who’ll stand up for their rights.”

Good story. Dog is mistreated and removes the punchpowl. Brave Fly! The Defiant One!

When Fly came to me, she was a Wild Child and she wouldn’t work sheep. Period. Finally I tricked her into working and we’ve gone on from there. But Fly’s story was always: The Defiant One. Never mind in 30 years I’ve never seen one of these Defiants; never mind that while The Defiant One may lurk in some terrier genetic codes, it isn’t anything a Border Collie breeder would breed for. Never mind that she wouldn’t work for me—although I HADN’T dragged her out of the crate nor abused her. Fly had her story and I was sticking with it!

Backstory 2: After I’d had her six months we ran at Joanie Swanke’s in the Dakotas. Joanie’s outrun was four to five hundred yards blind through sagebrush on three range yearlings. You couldn’t see the work very well, and the three wild sheep broke 1-2, or 1-1-1 or broke back to the letout or over the ridge out of sight in a very big prairie.  One dog went missing and was recovered trying to fetch an antelope. It was very difficult work—so difficult that Tommy Wilson and Sly took twelve minutes to get the ewes to his feet. Tommy is a far, far better trainer/handler than I am.

Fly didn’t really want to outrun and disappeared at a lope. Since I couldn’t see I didn’t say anything, and directly she was behind her sheep, just a dot, and I couldn’t see well enough to read the pressure so stayed mum. As they moved past the letout, I couldn’t see well enough to command. I didn’t say anything until they were at the fetch panels. It was, the judge told me, the best outwork of the day, and the memory of it kept me going with Fly when good sense said quit. This story was “Dog so talented she could handle difficult work w/o help.”

Last weekend, both stories changed. Fly’s pup Rose was at the clinic, and she was her Mama’s daughter. If Rose had any genes from her sire, they weren’t on display. It was like seeing Basic Fly—absent all Fly’s training, work, and life experience.

Rose hated stress, and the balance point between necessary training corrections and losing her was unusually delicate—and that point shifted up and down the scale.

Linda Tesdahl had been training Rose for a year, and we watched while her owner and Patrick worked. Rose, like her Mama, is a piece of work. Talented but . . .er . . .

At the end, Rose was on sheep a hundred feet from her handler’s feet when he said, “That’ll do, Rose.” And Rose came off happily and straight to his feet! Which, in my experience, is really weird. Unless something really awful has happened, well started young Border Collies don’t want to/won’t come off their sheep. “Do you mean it?  Ah, you don’t really, really mean it! Just a minute more. I’ve come back partway, is that far enough? Don’t you want to send me again?”  We’ve all seen it. I said how odd Rose’s willingness to quit was, and Linda said, “She’s coming off stress.” Which was my Aha! Because 500 yards from me, Fly is perfectly willing to come off her sheep–just like her daughter. And both hate stress.

Story: Fly is thumped. Defies the man who thumped her by removing the thing (sheepwork) he cares about most. Great story. But impossible. How would Fly connect the thumping with working sheep? Even if she did, why would she later refuse to work for me?

So what’s the more likely story? If I were writing it, I’d continue after the thumping. We have a still angry handler. HANDLERS DON’T GET BIT! Fly is now chained in the stall. But the handler wants to end on a good note. He unclips Fly and takes her out to his training sheep, intending to get a brief gather and fetch, say, “Good Lass” and put her up. But he’s still angry and maybe she picks up on that and hesitates and he gets on her again—verbally this time—and Fly’s doggy mind is spinning and she shuts down hard. And stays shut down. In a brand new home with no anti-stress reserves (affection, safe routine) she shuts down. And Fly has learned that shutting down (like coming off sheep) removes the stress she hates.

No, its not as good a story (no movie sale), but it is more likely to be true.

So why’d she do so good on those range sheep?

Because she did it on her own—no handler commanding her. The most difficult sheep are much less stressful than her handler’s demands.

I’ll want to keep that in mind.

Thursday, 3/21, 7 pm: Staunton Public Library, Staunton, VA
Saturday, 3/23, 4 pm: New Dominion Books,Charlottesville, VA (as part of Virginia Festival of the Book)
Friday, 3/29, 7 pm: Campbell Hall, Williamsville, VA
Saturday, 3/30, 7 pm: Old Dairy Barn, Warm Springs, VA
Sunday, 3/31, 4-6pm: Library, Monterey, VA
Saturday-Sunday, 4/6-4/7: Patrick Shannahan Clinic, Ellicott City, MD
Saturday, 4/13, 7 pm: Mcintyres Books, Fearrington, NC
Saturday, 4/14: 7:30 pm: Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh/Durham, NC
Wednesday-Saturday, 5/15-5/18: Bluegrass Stockdog Trial (SDT), Lexington, VA
Friday-Sunday, 5/24-5/26: Carolina SDT, Lawndale, NC
Tuesday-Thursday, 6/4-6/6: Slash J SDT, Clearmont, WY
Friday-Sunday, 6/7-6/9: Letcher Ranch SDT, Clearmont, WY
Thursday, 6/20: Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA
Thursday, 7/4: Cascade SDT, Bathe, NH
Thursday-Sunday, 8/7-8/11: Grass Creek SDT, Kingston, Ontario
Saturday-Monday, 8/31-9/2: Highland SDT, Williamsville, VA

Wednesday, April 3, 7 p.m. at Book People, Austin, TX

Friday, April 26, 7 p.m. at Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX

Outside the Wire: American Soldiers’ Voices from Afghanistan is available now.

When Gordon Wood recently delivered the inaugural Washington Lecture at George Washington University, he was introduced by Denver Brunsman, author of the forthcoming The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Brunsman reveals that, as 25-year-old grad student, he shared a cubicle with the eminent Wood when both were on a fellowship in London. The entire lecture, which is lively and informative, may be viewed here. We might add that we also published Wood’s Representation in the American Revolution way back in 1969 and released a revised edition of this small, classic work in 2008.