Deciphering Memory John Adams And Authorship Of The...

In this paper, I wanted to review â€Å"Deciphering Memory: John Adams and the Authorship of the Declaration of Independence† by Robert E. McGlone. Many people knew that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. John Adams was one of the people who supported Independence and signed his name on the Declaration of Independence. From this article, I understood that memory could help people to find the truth. In the article, the author used lots resource and the pictures to explain that John Adams could remembers all experiences in his life and he had an authority to write a draft of theDeclaration of Independence.Because the Congress approved Jefferson’s idea, no people were curious about the draft and how many people were involved to plan for the draft. The author’s purpose was arguing that people’s memories could explain the facts in their life. McGlone wanted to let reader knew that memories was a key to solve some mysterious things. In this essay, he argued that recent advances in cognitive psychology have cracked open a code book that historians can use, even on memories two hundred years old. I believe that the author did not challenge for the historical viewpoint. As similar as other article I had read, McGlone just use lots of sources to support his argument. First source:â€Å"In a letter dated August 22, 1822, to the once-mistrusted Timothy Pickering, Adams recalled that he and Jefferson had formed a subcommittee to draft a declaration of independence.