3744. HISTORY (American), Revolutionary.—[continued].
I am now reading Botta's
History of our own Revolution. Bating the
ancient practice which he has adopted of putting
speeches into mouths which never made
them, and fancying motives of action which we
never felt, he has given that history with more
detail, precision and candor, than any writer I
have yet met with. It is, to be sure, compiled
from those writers; but it is a good secretion of
their matter, the pure from the impure, and
presented in a just sense of right in opposition
to usurpation.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 63.
(M.
1817)
