The key players throughout the book are Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The introduction describes the context of where and how they met, as well as the initial friendship that grew between them, before they eventually became rivals.

Larson sets the stage: “[T]he year was 1776, and their respective colonies [...] had sent them to Philadelphia as delegates to the Second Continental Congress” (1). The other members of the Continental Congress named both Adams and Jefferson to the special committee charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence. Larson characterizes Adams as someone who “always relished a spirited argument, including with himself, and he inevitably remained his own most astute critic,” whereas Jefferson “avoided direct confrontation, even with himself” (2). Together they collaborated to draft the Declaration of Independence and respected each other as fellow patriots. But the “common goals of national independence and sovereignty that united patriot leaders during the Revolutionary Era gave way to differing views on domestic and foreign policy during Washington’s second term as president” (3-4), which meant that by the election of 1800, the two men faced off as political rivals.