“It is to be a school of Political Prophets I Suppose — a Nursery of American Statesmen…I am making of it annual, for Sending an entire new set every year, that all the principal genius’s may go to the University in Rotation — that we may have Politicians in Plenty. Our great Complaint is the scarcity of Men fit to govern Such mighty Interests, as we are clashing in the present Contest — a scarcity indeed! For who is Sufficient for these Things? …You and I have too many Cares and occupations and therefore We must recommend it to Mrs Warren and her Friend Mrs Adams to teach our Sons the divine Science of the Politicks: And to be frank, I suspect that they understand it better than we.”
-John Adams, who had been appointed to serve as a delegate to the First Continental Congress, in a letter to James Warren, a legislator in the Massachusetts General Court, who was also to serve (June 25, 1774).