The Emancipation of Massachusetts (Barnes & Noble Digital Library‪)‬

In Adams’s first important historical work, published in 1887, the author argues that Puritan Massachusetts had once been a theocracy where there was no place for freedom of religion, speech, or opinion, and that succeeding generations had to struggle for these freedoms. The book also contains the first expression of Adams’s preoccupation with the relationship between historical events and economic conditions.