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Excerpt from the draft of a letter, March 1846, from Congressman and former President John Quincy Adams to Joseph Sturge, an English philanthropist and abolitionist who had visited the United States in 1841.

Recalling his family's experiences in 1775, "the eighth year of my age," Adams describes the Battle of Bunker Hill, which he watched with his mother, Abigail Adams, from a hilltop in Quincy. Compare John Quincy Adams's account, written 70 years later, with the one his mother wrote the day after the battle.