Notes
As early volumes carrying Abigail Adams’s correspondence are out of print and microfilmed copies not readily available, I have thought it most useful to readers to cite the published rather than unpublished sources whenever possible. Throughout, for example, in cases of repetitive material, that is, when I have read a letter in an early volume, then on microfilm, then among volumes published by The Adams Papers, I have cited the latter in an attempt to make Abigail and her world most accessible to readers. The following abbreviations refer to persons most frequently mentioned below in the Notes for Abigail Adams.
AA |
| Abigail Adams |
JA |
| John Adams |
AAS |
| Abigail Adams Smith (“Nabby”) |
WSS |
| William Stephens Smith (Colonel) |
JQA |
| John Quincy Adams |
LCA |
| Louisa Catherine Adams |
CA |
| Charles Adams |
TBA |
| Thomas Boylston Adams |
MC |
| Mary Cranch |
RC |
| Richard Cranch |
ESP |
| Elisabeth Shaw Peabody |
CT |
| Cotton Tufts |
TJ |
| Thomas Jefferson |
MW |
| Mercy Warren |
JW |
| James Warren |
All sources are cited fully at their introduction in each of the chapter notes, then shortened on repetition within each chapter. Most frequently cited sources, whose complete citations can be found in the Bibliography, have been abbreviated as follows:
AFC |
| Adams Family Correspondence |
Bancroft, History |
| George Bancroft, History of the United States of America |
DAJA |
| Diary and Autobiography of John Adams |
Earliest Diary |
| The Earliest Diary of John Adams |
Familiar Letters |
| Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife Abigail, during the Revolution |
Frothingham, Joseph Warren |
| Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren |
JA Works |
| The Works of John Adams |
JQA Diary |
| The Diary of John Quincy Adams |
JQA Memoirs |
| Memoirs of John Quincy Adams |
Letters of JA |
| Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife |
Life of JA |
| John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, The Life of John Adams |
New Letters |
| New Letters of Abigail Adams |
Roof, Col. Smith |
| Katharine Metcalf Roof, Colonel William Smith and Lady |
Schouler |
| James Schouler, History of the United States of America |
Selected Writings of JA and JQA |
| Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams |
Three Episodes |
| Charles Francis Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History |
Writings of Thomas Jefferson |
| The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson |
Preface
1. Phyllis Lee Levin, Great Historic Houses of America (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970), p. 26.
Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841).
2. AA to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, February 3, 1814, pp. 274–5, ibid.
3. The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56), 10:359.
Henry Adams is most acclaimed for his two works, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1918; Sentry ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961) and Mt. Saint Michel and Chartres (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913).
4. JA to Mary Palmer, July 5, 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 2:34.
5. The mansion in London is located at 9 Grosvenor Square, presently the property of the Japanese. In Paris, the Adamses rented a house from the Comte de Rouault. The house, now known as the Hotel des demoiselles de Verrieres, may still be seen at 45 rue d’Auteuil in the 16th Arrondissement. It is now owned by La Compagnie française des Pétrole and is used as the office of the president of Total CFP. Neither house is open to the public.
6. E. B. White, Essays of E. B. White (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 237.
7. The New York Times, July 24, 1983, sec. 2, p. 1.
The Gilbert Stuart portrait, with her husband John’s, hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Stuart recorded the payment of a $100 deposit “Received of Mrs. Adams” on May 20, 1800. Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John and Abigail Adams (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1967), p. 132. The Adamses then waited impatiently for the portrait to be finished. In December 1804, John Quincy Adams wrote to his mother: “Stuart is nowhere, and perhaps if I had the right to call on him for the picture he might be induced to finish it, under the apprehension that it would be liable to injure his reputation by its being exhibited in the owner’s possession in its unfinished state—At any rate, it is so excellent a likeness, that being the only one extant of you, I am very anxious to have it in our own power to whoever of us it may rightfully belong.” JQA to AA, December 19, 1804, Reel 404, Adams Papers. When the portrait was finally completed fifteen years later, Abigail wrote: It is “no more like me than that of any other person.… It has however a strong resemblance of you.” AA to JQA, June 8, 1815, Oliver, Portraits, p. 137.
8. AA to MW, December 1777, Reel 348, Adams Papers. The entire quotation reads: “Our Country is as it were a Secondary God, and the first and greatest parent. It is to be preferred to wives, children, friends and all things the Gods only excepted.”
JA to AA, August 10, 1776, AFC, 2:83. (Original in JA Letterbook, Reel 90, Adams Papers, reads: “My best, my dearest, my worthyiest, my wisest friend in this world…”).
1. In Youth the Mind Is Like a Tender Twig
1. The Boston Weekly News-Letter, January 5, 1744.
2. ESP to AA, April 5, 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 3:4.
3. The dramatic contrasts of weather, which apply to Weymouth as well as Quincy, are recorded by Charles Francis Adams in his An Autobiography (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916), p. 6, and in Henry Adams’s The Education of Henry Adams (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1918; Sentry ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961), pp. 8–9. Among Abigail Adams’s multitudinous references, including mention of daffodils as “daffies,” see her letter to Abigail Adams Smith, May 8 1808, De Windt Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
4. No definite record exists regarding Abigail’s height. Wilhemina S. Harris, Superintendent of the Adams National Historic Site, has written on November 4, 1981: “As you requested, we had our museum aide measure Abigail’s gown [carefully preserved under glass in a bureau drawer at the Site]. She found it to be from shoulder to hem 51 1/2 inches. Adding head, shoulders, neck and feet to the amber satin dress Abigail wore for the Gilbert Stuart portrait, she would seem to have stood about 5 feet 7 inches tall.” Note: new evaluation, 2001, 5 feet 5 inches tall.
Francis Adrian Van der Kemp to AA, November 5, 1813, Reel 416, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
LCA to George Washington Adams, June 14, 1812, Reel 413, Adams Papers. The baby “looks like Grandmama Adams … the finest pair of black eyes you ever saw.”
JA to AA, November 4, 1775, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 1:76.
AA to Isaac Smith, Jr., February 7, 1762, Smith-Carter Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
AA to Hannah Lincoln, October 5, 1761, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 1:3–4.
5. AA to Hannah Lincoln, October 5, 1761, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 1:5.
6. AA to Isaac Smith, Jr., March 16, 1763, AFC, 1:4.
AA to John Thaxter, February 15, 1778, AFC, 2:391.
7. The Mary Phillips School, for example, located near Christ Church in Boston, charged three shillings weekly for instruction in this craft, advertising in The Boston Gazette, April 7, 1766.
AA to ESP, February 26, 1811, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
AA to Isaac Smith, Jr., March 16, 1763, AFC, 1:4.
AFC, 1:53, n. 1.
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 17 vols. to date (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1873–), 11:370–6.
Charles Francis Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1892), pp. 700, 704, 708-9.
9. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 7:588-91.
The Oath of a Free Man was “I doe solemnly bind my self in the sight of God that when I shall be called to give my voyce touching any such matter of this State, in which Freemen are to deal, I will give my vote and suffrage as I shall judge in mine own conscience may best conduct and tend to the pub-like weal of the body, with respect of persons, or favour of any man.” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Stephen Daye, 1638).
10. AA to Caroline Smith, February 2, 1809, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 1:216.
December 25, 1765, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 1:274.
Three Episodes, pp. 704–5.
AA to MC, September 11, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
AA to JA, October 25, 1775, AFC, 1:313. See also obituary of Elizabeth Quincy Smith, AFC, 1:273.
AA to Isaac Smith, Jr., March 16, 1763, AFC, 1:4.
11. See Eunice Paine to Robert Treat Paine, February 21, 1749, Robert Treat Paine Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society: “I shall think myself obliged to you for every help to me in my search after this knowledg which has a Lasting Seat in the Soul.…”
AA to Isaac Smith, Jr., February 7, 1762, Smith Carter Collection.
12. AA to Hannah Lincoln, October 5, 1761, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 1:6.
13. The Earliest Diary of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1966), p. 12.
Summer 1759, DAJA, 1:108.
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 7:588–91. Sibley’s refers to Parson Smith having slaves, giving a woman named Phoebe her freedom. If she chose to remain with one of his daughters he added one hundred pounds to that daughter’s inheritance “for her trouble.”
14. DAJA, 1:109.
ESP to AA, March 27, 1784, Shaw Family Papers.
15. RC and JA to Mary Smith, December 30, 1761, AFC, 1:1.
JA to Benjamin Waterhouse, March 25, 1817, Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Statesman and Friend (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1927), p. 131.
16. JA to Skelton Jones, March 11, 1809, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56), 9:610–13.
JA to AA, successive letters, including October 4, 1762, and August 1763, AFC, 1:2, 8.
17. December 26, 1765, DAJA, 1:274.
John Adams’s father died on May 25, 1761, leaving one-third of his estate to his wife. John Adams’s slightly smaller share of the remaining two-thirds divided among the three brothers was due to his having received a “Libberal Education.” Wills and Deeds, Reel 607, Adams Papers. See also DAJA, 3:277.
18. Joseph Gardner Bartlett, Henry Adams of Somersetshire, England and Braintree, Mass. (New York, privately printed, 1927), pp. 93–5.
Samuel Bates, ed., Records of the Town of Braintree (Randolph, Massachusetts: D. H. Huxford, 1886), pp. 39, 46, 83, 87, 90, 99, n. 17.
JA to [?], February [?], 1799, JA Letterbook, Reel 95, Adams Papers.
John Adams’s Book: Being Notes on a Record of the Births, Marriages and Deaths of Three Generations of the Adams Family, 1734–1807, ed. Henry Adams II (Boston: Boston Atheneum, 1934), pp. 1, 3.
19. DAJA, 1:65–66.
20. Ibid., 1:95, 99.
21. JA to Nathan Webb, October 12, 1755, JA Letterbook, Reel 118, Adams Papers.
DAJA, 1:54, 271.
The description of Otis is based on his portrait in William Tudor, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts (Boston: Wells & Lilly, 1823).
22. JA to AA, July 3, 1776, AFC, 2:28.
23. DAJA, 3:260.
January 1761, DAJA, 1:195.
24. At that time there was controversy over the choice of having smallpox in the “natural” way, as opposed to the “artificial” way, by inoculation. A census after the epidemic of 1764 proved to the dubious that in 4,977 cases of inoculation only 46 had died. Of the 619 who endured smallpox without inoculation, 124 had died. Zabdiel Boylston, John Adams’s great-uncle, experimented with inoculation against smallpox on June 26, 1721, on his own child and two servants. He published an “Historical Account of the Small Pox inoculation in New England upon all sorts of persons, whites, Blacks, and of all Ages and Constitutions” including some “Short directions to the unexperienced in this Method of Practice,” in London in 1730, dedicated to the Princess of Wales. It was only after Edward Jenner’s discovery of a milder vaccine, that of cow pox, that inoculation against smallpox became less hazardous. John Adams called smallpox “worse than the sword!” In June 16, 1776, he wrote to Abigail saying that “small pox is ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians and Indians, together. This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from Canada. This the cause of our disgraces at the Cedars. I don’t mean that this was all. There has been want approaching to famine, as well as pestilence.” Letters of JA, 1:119.
John B. Blake, Public Health in the Town of Boston, 1630–1822 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), chaps. 4–5.
“Smallpox Inoculation in Colonial Boston,” Journal of the History of Medicine, 8 (1953): 284–300.
AA to JA, April 7, 1764, AFC, 1:15.
JA to his granddaughter Caroline Smith De Windt, January 1, 1820, Journal and Correspondence, 1:239–40: “Innoculation for smallpox was first introduced into the British Empire in the town of Boston.… Zabdiel Boylston, a younger brother of my grandfather, Peter Boylston of Brookline, innoculated his own children in 1720, one hundred years ago, and after he innoculated his negroes at their express desire, and carried his own family safely through the distemper. His success in the town of Boston spread to England, and produced an invitation to him to embark for that country to innoculate the royal family. He did embark, but before he arrived, the royal children had aquired courage enough to trust their own surgeons.” And, “This year completes a century since my Uncle Boylston introduced the practice of innoculation into English dominions; but what improvements have been made since 1720, partly by experience, but much more by the discovery of Dr. Jenner? The history of this distemper is enough to humble human pride.” January 24, 1820, 1:242.
The terror of smallpox is succinctly expressed by Abigail’s father. William Smith wrote in December 1763: “The small pox being in Town, I have been obliged to retire into the Country—and when I shall return is uncertain. I must therefore beg the favor of you to dispose of the Boots I spoke for, if you have made them.…” Diaries of the Reverend William Smith and Cotton Tufts, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 42, October 1908–June 1909, p. 469.
25. JA to AA, April 11, 1764, AFC, 1:23.
AA to JA, April 16, 1764, AFC, 1:32.
Description based on Blyth pastel in Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John and Abigail Adams (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1967), p. 7. See also Henry Wilder Foote, “Benjamin Blyth of Salem,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 71 (1953–57): 69–71, 81–2.
26. JA to AA, May 7, 1764, AFC, 1:44–6.
27. AA to JA, May 9, 1764, AFC, 1:46–7.
28. JA to AA, April 11, 1764, AFC, 1:22.
JA to AA, September 30, 1764, AFC, 1:48.
Also, according to Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Parson Smith disliked lawyers, and didn’t even want John’s horse in his barn. John, therefore, had to tie his to a tree by the roadside when he came to visit. At the wedding of John and Abigail, Parson Smith preached that John “came neither eating nor drinking, & they say he hath a devil.” 7:590.
29. JA to AA, September 30, 1764, AFC, 1:49.
30. October–December 1758, Earliest Diary, p. 73.
2. Mountains Arise to Hinder Me
1. November 20, 1761, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 1:225, n. 1. Also, Waldo C. Sprague, “The President John Adams and President John Quincy Adams Birthplaces” (Quincy, Massachusetts, 1959).
January 24, 1765, DAJA, 1:251.
2. Before college, John Adams had broached the possibility of being a farmer with his father. DAJA, 3:257. DAJA, 1:89, 98, 247, among others, testify repeatedly to his passion for the land.
March 18–19, 1759, DAJA, 1:80.
Spring 1759, DAJA, 1:88–9.
DAJA, 1:247, 252, n. 1.
3. AA to MC, July 15, 1766, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 1:54.
AA to AAS, May 8, 1808, De Windt Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
4. JA to AA, May 27, 1776, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 1:114.
AA to JA, June 17, 1776, AFC, 2:14.
5. December 27, 1760, DAJA, 1:185 and 1:211, n. 6.
JA to Samuel Adams, October 18, 1790, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56), 6:414–420.
January 15, 1766, DAJA, 1:294.
James K. Hosmer, Samuel Adams (New York: Chelsea House, 1980), pp. 68, 119.
AA to Isaac Smith, Jr., April 20, 1771, AFC, 1:76.
James Lovell to AA, May 29, 1781, AFC, 4:145.
James Lovell to AA, October 5, 1781, AFC, 4:223.
6. Abigail made no secret of her “large share of Grandmother Eves curiosity.” When her “very indulgent partner [John Adams] was beyond mail pouch reach,” she claimed “some small right of knowledge from others.” AA to John Thaxter, February 15, 1778, AFC, 2:392.
For John Adams’s lifelong acknowledgment of his wife’s “taste for political speculations,” see JA to AA, January 12, 1794, Letters of John Adams, 2:138.
Abigail Adams proved such an effective informant that her letters “contain more particulars then any Letters I had before received from any Body.” JA to AA, July 7, 1775, AFC, 1:241.
AA to JA, December 30, 1773, AFC, 1:90.
7. AA and JA to MC, January 12, 1767, AFC, 1:58. The Adams’s familiarity with available publications is repeatedly cited. See also JA to AA, April 15, 1776, Letters of JA, 1:98: “I send you every newspaper that comes out.”
The Boston Gazette or Country Journal, September 1, 1755. Benjamin Edes and John Gill purchased this weekly, the colonies’ second newspaper (founded in 1719), and began publishing April 7, 1755.
8. George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, 6 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897), 3:30, 34, 39.
Richard Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic of the United States, 10th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1910), p. 161.
9. Bancroft, History, 3:98.
Richard Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 85.
10. Bancroft, History, 3:59–61, 73.
11. Ibid., 3:58, 77–8, 104.
12. Ibid., 3:80–1.
Bancroft, History, 3:104.
13. December 20, 1765, DAJA, 1:265.
August 15, 1768, DAJA, 1:261, n. 1; also, Braintree Town Records (Braintree, Massachusetts), pp. 399–402, 406–7.
14. February 1765, DAJA, 1:255–8.
By the time the essay was reprinted in the London Chronicle, in November and December of 1765, it owed its title, A Dissertation on the Feudal and Canon Law, to Thomas Hollis. In 1804, John Adams pronounced the essay a “lamentable Bagatelle” that might have been called an “Essay upon Forefathers Rock” (meaning Plymouth Rock). JA Works, 10:589; DAJA, 3:284.
DAJA, 3:282.
JA Works, 3:464–8.
15. Four days prior to publication in The Boston Gazette, the instructions were printed in Richard Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter on October 10, 1765. DAJA, 1:265, n. 1.
16. December 19, 1765, DAJA, 1:266.
17. December 25, 1765, DAJA, 1:274.
DAJA, 3:282.
18. March 28, 1766, DAJA, 1:308.
19. May 26, 1766, DAJA, 1:312.
20. January 1759, DAJA, 1:71–2.
JA to RC, June 29, 1766, AFC, 1:52.
21. JA to RC, June 29, 1766, AFC, 1:52.
22. DAJA, 1:250, 272, 331.
23. AA to MC, July 15, 1766, October 13, 1766, January 31, 1767, and successive letters, AFC, 1:54, 57, 61.
24. April 8, 1767, DAJA, 1:334.
January 16, 1766, DAJA, 1:294.
25. AA to MC, July 15, 1766, AFC, 1:54.
26. August [7 or 14], 1766, and November 3, 1766, DAJA, 1:318–20.
27. AA to MC, October 6, 1766, AFC, 1:55.
28. Bancroft, History, 3:262–3.
October 19, 1769, DAJA, 1:344.
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 190.
29. DAJA, 3:288.
The Boston Gazette, August 17, 1767; see also issues of September 21, 1767, and November 2, 1767.
Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1865), p. 79.
30. Frothingham, Joseph Warren, p. 29.
31. JA to RC, June 29, 1766, AFC, 1:52.
AA to MC, July 15, 1766, AFC, 1:53.
AA to MC, October 6, 1766, AFC, 1:56.
32. January 30, 1768, DAJA, 1:338.
33. AA to JA, September 14, 1767, AFC, 1:62; and AFC, 1:62, n. 3.
John Adams’s Book: Being Notes on a Record of the Births, Marriages and Deaths of Three Generations of the Adams Family, 1734–1807, ed. Henry Adams II (Boston: Boston Atheneum, 1934).
DAJA, 1:338.
AA to MC, January 31, 1767, AFC, 1:60.
34. AA and JA to MC, January 12, 1767, AFC, 1:57–8.
35. Ibid., 1:57.
3. An “Eaqual” Share of Curiosity
1. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:286–287.
2. Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1865), p. 101.
3. DAJA, 3:290.
August 10, 1769, DAJA, 1:339, n. 1.
4. August 10, 1769, DAJA, 1:339, n. 1.
DAJA, 3:291.
DAJA, 2:68.
5. JA to AA, June 29, 1769, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73) 1:66.
DAJA, 3:291.
AA to LCA, January 30, 1813, Reel 415, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
6. Frothingham, Joseph Warren, pp. 117–9.
7. February 26, 1770, DAJA, 1:350.
8. DAJA, 3:291.
Frothingham, Joseph Warren, pp. 123–4.
9. DAJA, 3:291.
Frothingham, Joseph Warren, pp. 127–8. The five dead were Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Patrick Carr, James Caldwell, and Samuel Maverick.
The Boston Gazette, March 12, 1770.
10. DAJA, 3:292.
11. DAJA, 3:293. Preston, aware of the vicissitudes of the case, published from the Boston jail, in the Gazette on March 12, 1770, his thanks “to the inhabitants in general of this Town—who throwing aside all Party and Prejudices, have with the utmost Humanity and freedom, stept forth Advocates for Truth in Defence of my injured innocence.”
The Boston Gazette, June 25, 1770, supplement.
The Essex Gazette (Salem, Massachusetts), March 25, 1771.
12. DAJA, 3:294–5.
13. DAJA, 3:296.
September 22, 1772, DAJA, 2:63, n. 2.
John earned his living dealing with cases concerning lapsed legacies, bastardy, stolen casks of molasses, drunkenness, trespassing, assault. In a later case, tried with his friend James Otis, he won freedom, with a verdict of self-defense, for the four American sailors who had harpooned the jugular vein of a British lieutenant foolish enough to ignore warnings of dread consequences for boarding their boat, the Pitt Packet of Marblehead. The principal at stake was impressment, forbidden in America.
14. September 22, 1772, DAJA, 2:63.
15. November 28, 1772, DAJA, 2:68.
16. ESP to Isaac Smith, Jr., April 13, 1768, AFC, 1:63.
AA and JA to Isaac Smith Jr., January 4, 1770, AFC, 1:67–9, quoting Hamlet, act 3, sc. 3.
17. AA to MW, February 27, 1774, AFC, 1:98.
18. AA and JA to Isaac Smith, Jr., January 4, 1770, AFC, 1:67–8.
19. AA to Isaac Smith, Jr., April 20, 1771, AFC, 1:76.
20. Ibid., p. 77.
At this time, Mrs. Macaulay was writing the fifth of an eight-volume series on the History of England, from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (London, 1763–1783). The first volume, History from Accession of James I to Elevation of House of Hanover, was reviewed in The Boston Gazette, September 4, 1769. The critic, John Hampden, considered the volume a “work of inexpressible merit. It is written in the true spirit of Liberty, and much more in that of the Constitution, than all the annals of the island from the landing of Julius the pirate and robber to those of Will the Norman.” The book, dealing with the “diabolical” reigns of the Stuarts, proof that destruction came from the North, and that the persecuted would find asylum in the West, according to the reviewer, was recommended “to every Son and Daughter of Liberty in North-America.”
21. ESP to Isaac Smith, Jr., April 13, 1768, AFC, 1:65.
22. Reverend James Fordyce, D.D., Sermons to Young Women, 4th ed. in 2 vols. (London, 1767), available at the Adams National Historic Site. Fordyce also published The Character and Conduct of the Female Sex (London, 1776).
AA to MC, January 31, 1767, AFC, 1:61.
23. John Shebbeare, Letters on the English Nation, 2 vols. (London, 1755).
AA to Isaac Smith, Jr., April 20, 1771, AFC, 1:77.
24. AA to MW, July 16, 1773, AFC, 1:84.
The description of Mercy Warren is based on her portrait by John Singleton Copley in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The portrait is discussed and reproduced in AFC, 1:xiii, 240. Mercy Otis Warren was probably more fortunate than most women of her era; her education might almost be considered formal and even extensive. She was admitted to her brother James Otis’s lessons with his tutor, the clergyman and Yale graduate Jonathan Russell. Mercy and James were said to have been as inseparable as George Eliot and her brother Isaac. Presumably, their reading of Pope, Dryden, and Milton as well as Raleigh’s History of the World molded America’s first female historian and playwright, who could be counted on for a baroque style and provocative opinions.
Mercy cultivated not only Abigail’s but John’s friendship, enlisting the latter’s assistance in what amounted to research for the books she would eventually write. Once John was officially committed to the movement for independence, she planned a shrewd trade, agreeing to his offer “to draw the Character of every new Personage … on Condition you will do the same.” Correctly, she assumed she would be the “gainer.” “I expect,” she wrote John, “to be made Acquainted with the Genius, the taste, and Manners,… of the Most Distinguished Characters in America … and Perhaps before the Conflict is Ended, with some of Those Dignifyed personages who have held the Regalia of Crowns And Scepters, and in the Zenith of power are the Dancing Puppets of other European Courts.” AFC, 2:377, n. 1.
25. AA to MW, February 3, 1814, Reel 417, Adams Papers.
MW to AA, December 11, 1775, AFC, 1:339.
AA to MW, December 7, 1773, AFC, 1:89.
AA to MW, April 13, 1774, AFC, 1:378.
Just as Catharine Macaulay was said to have inspired the French Madame Roland to be “La Macaulay de son pays,” it is possible she may also have motivated Mercy Warren. Mrs. Macaulay sent a volume of her history to James Otis, the “great Guardian of American Liberty.” Forty-two years later, Mercy produced her three-volume History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, announcing that “the world is now viewing America, as experimenting a new system of government, a Federal Republic, to which the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland bear little proportion.”
26. AA to MW, December 11, 1773, AFC, 1:89.
27. MW to AA, January 19, 1774, AFC, 1:92.
28. AA to MW, December 5, 1773, AFC, 1:88.
The Boston Gazette, November 29, 1773.
29. Frothingham, Joseph Warren, p. 279.
30. AA to MW, December 5, 1773, AFC, 1:88–9. Nathan Hale is remembered for his reputed last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
31. Ibid.
32. MW to AA, January 19, 1774, AFC, 1:91.
33. George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, 6 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897), 3:455–6, 6:364.
Richard Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic of the United States, 10th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1910) p. 306.
34. Bancroft, History, 3:450–6.
The Boston Gazette, December 20, 1773.
December 17, 1773, DAJA, 2:86.
“You may depend upon it they were no ordinary Mohawks,” John Adams has written. “The profound secrecy in which they held their names and the total abstinence from plunder, are proofs of the character of the men. I believe they would have tarred and feathered anyone of their number who should have been detected in pocketing a pound of Hyson.” JA to Hezekiah Niles, Editor of The Weekly Register (Baltimore), May 10, 1819, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56), 2:334.
JA to JW, December 17, 1773, ibid, 9:333.
James Warren and his wife Mercy were a curious pair. Warren, nine years older than John Adams, was the latter’s close friend in the early years. Unlike John Adams, Warren claimed he was “Content to Move in a small Sphere,” which probably accounts for their falling out during the Revolution. He expected “no distinction but that of an honest Man who has exerted every nerve.” Mercy, who would be the first to cheer Abigail on in the cause of patriotism during her lengthening separations from John, was oddly contented with her husband’s refusal of major appointments and his self-imposed limitations on his involvement. Possibly, their age may explain the course they took.
It was Warren who said that though, as a general rule, the “fair” ought to be excused from the arduous cares of war and state, he certainly thought that Mercy and Abigail (“Marcia and Portia”) ought to be exceptions: “I have ever ascribed to those Ladies a Share and no small one either,—in the Conduct of our American affairs.” Alice Brown, Mercy Warren, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896), p. 240.
35. December 17, 1773, DAJA, 2:85.
The Boston Gazette, January 11, 1774.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. AA to MW, February 27, 1774, AFC, 1:97.
39. MW to AA, January 19, 1774, AFC, 1:91.
AA to MW, February 27, 1774, AFC, 1:98.
40. AA to MW, February 27, 1774, AFC, 1:98.
41. Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols. (Boston, 1880–81), p. 52.
Bancroft, History, 3:476–81.
William Tudor, The Life of James Otis (Boston, 1823), pp. 437–9.
42. Bancroft, History, 4:6.
43. Ibid., 3:476–82.
Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 97–8.
44. Bancroft, History, 3:476–82.
Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, pp. 97–8.
45. Bancroft, History, 4:44.
46. DAJA, 2:96, n. 1.
JA to AA, May 12, 1774, AFC, 1:107.
47. JA to AA, May 12, 1774, AFC, 1:107.
48. DAJA, 3:307.
The decision of that meeting of the Boston legislature in Salem was stirring: “in Consideration of the unhappy Differences” between Great Britain and the colonies, “it is highly expedient and necessary that a Meeting of Committees from the several Colonies on this Continent be had … to consult upon the present State of the Colonies and the Miseries to which they are reduced by the Operation of certain Acts of Parliament respecting America.” Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts [1715– ] (Boston, reprinted by the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1919), May–June 1774, p. 44.
June 20, 1774, DAJA, 2:96.
49. JA to AA, June 23 to July 9, 1774, AFC, 1:108–35.
50. July 1774, AFC, 1:136, n. 5 (re: JA conversation with Jonathan Sewall).
JA to AA, July 1, 1774, AFC, 1:119.
51. June 25, 1774, DAJA, 2:97.
52. JA to AA, July 9, 1774, AFC, 1:135.
John mentioned on May 12 that it was expensive to keep a family in Boston. The family already seemed to have moved back to Braintree while John kept his office on Queen Street in Boston.
53. AA to JA, August 15, 1774, AFC, 1:140. See also AFC, 1:140, n. 2.
August 10, 1774, DAJA, 2:97–8.
54. AA to JA, August 19, 1774, AFC, 1:142–3.
4. The Die Is Cast
1. AA to JA, September 14–16, 1774, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 1:21.
AA to JA, August 19, 1774, Letters of Mrs. Adams. 1:13.
2. AA to JA, September 16, 1774, Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1875) p. 85.
3. AA to JA, August 19, 1774, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 1:14.
JA to AA, August 28, 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 1:145.
4. AA to JA, September 16, 1774, AFC, 1:153–4.
5. AA to MW, April 13, 1776, AFC, 1:377.
AA to JA, April 7, 1776, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 1:95.
6. JA to AA, June 23, 1774, AFC, 1:109.
JA to AA, June 30, 1774, AFC, 1:117.
7. AA to MW, April 13, 1776, AFC, 1:377.
JW to JA, April 27, 1777, AFC, 2:239, n. 1.
JA to AA, August 28, 1774, AFC, 2:145.
On February 28, 1774, John negotiated the purchase of his father’s homestead for £440 from his brother Peter Boylston Adams. This comprised a home (John’s birthplace), a barn, and thirty-five acres, as well as eighteen acres of pasture in the North Common. John rationalized the latter purchase by estimating that its “numerous growth” of red cedars, perhaps 1000, would, if properly pruned, be worth a shilling each in twenty years. He also noted that this pruning would make “good fuel” after the cattle had picked the greens. In June of 1776, John agreed to buy twenty-eight additional acres of woodland, this time from his widowed sister-in-law Mrs. Elihu Adams, at a price of forty shillings per acre. In August 1787, John instructed Dr. Cotton Tufts to purchase “That Piece of land and every other, that adjoins upon me.” He was referring to fifty-six acres mentioned by Tufts to Abigail. Adams’s letter completely captures his ideas on the subject of property: “My view is to lay fast hold of the Town of Braintree and embrace it, with both my arms and all my might. There to live—there to die—there to lay my bones—and there to plant one of my sons, in the Profession of the Law and the practice of Agriculture, like his father.—To this end, I wish to purchase as much land there, as my utmost forces will allow that I may have farm enough to amuse me and employ me, as long as I live.” JA to CT, August 27, 1787, JA Letterbook, Reel 112, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
On April 24, 1796, John Adams wrote Abigail about purchasing land belonging to the Hayden family. Despite the price being “exorbitant,” he said he “must have it.” Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:225.
8. JA to AA, September 26, 1775, AFC, 1:286.
9. September 24, 1775, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 2:182.
10. JA to AA, October 29, 1775, AFC, 1:317–8.
11. Ibid.
12. JA to AA, August 28, 1774, AFC, 1:145.
13. JA to AA, February 18, 1776, AFC, 1:349.
Abigail Adams’s grammar was A New French Grammar Teaching a Person … to Read, Speak, and Write that Tongue by J. E. Tandon, 3rd ed., rev., London, 1736. AA to JA, March 16, 1776, AFC, 1:359–60.
14. JA to AA, July 7, 1776, AFC, 2:39.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. JA to AA, April 15, 1776, AFC, 1:384.
18. Ibid.
AA to JA, May 14, 1776, AFC, 1:408.
19. See JA to AA, June 29, 1774, AFC, 1:114: “Let us teach [our children] not only to do virtuously but to excell.”
AA to MW, July 16, 1773, AFC, 1:85.
20. AA to MW, July 16, 1773, AFC, 1:85.
21. MW to AA, July 25, 1773, AFC, 1:86–7.
22. DAJA, 3:307.
AA to JA, September 14, 1774, AFC, 1:151.
JA to AA, August 28, 1774, AFC, 1:144.
23. AFC, 1:148, n. 3.
The Boston Gazette, October 24, 1774.
AA to JA, September 14, 1774, AFC, 1:151–2.
24. AA to JA, September 14, 1774, AFC, 1:151–2.
25. AA to JA, September 16, 1774, AFC, 1:152.
AFC, 1:154, n. 2.
26. MC to Isaac Smith, Jr., October 15, 1774, AFC, 1:171.
27. Isaac Smith, Jr., to MC, October 20, 1774, AFC, 1:175.
28. AA to JA, September 22, 1774, AFC, 1:161.
AA to JA, October 15, 1774, AFC, 1:170.
October 14, 1774, DAJA, 2:152, n. 2.
William Tudor to AA, September 3, 1774, AFC, 1:149.
AA to Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay, 1774, AFC, 1:177.
29. AA to JA, May 24, 1775, Letters of Mrs. Adams, Vol. I, p. 34. William Tudor to AA, September 3, 1774, AFC, 1:149.
30. September 2, 1774, AFC, 1:148, n. 6.
AA to JA, September 2, 1774, AFC, 1:148.
31. Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1865), p. 332.
32. The Essex Gazette (Salem, Massachusetts), September 20, 1774.
33. AA to MW, August 27, 1775, AFC, 1:276.
34. AA to JA, April 17, 1777, AFC, 2:212.
AA to JA, June 17, 1776, AFC, 2:13.
AA to JA, May 27, 1776, AFC, 1:416.
35. AA to JA, September 23, 1776, AFC, 2:133.
JA to AA, May 22, 1776, AFC, 1:412.
JA to AA, July 29, 1776, Letters of John Adams, 1:143.
AA to JA, July 31, 1775, AFC, 1:269.
AA to JA, July 25, 1775, AFC, 1:263.
36. JA to AA, January–October, 1776, JA Letterbook, Reel 90, Adams Papers.
37. AA to JA, October 22, 1775, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 1:75.
JA to AA, May 17, 1794, Letters of John Adams, 2:160.
38. AA to JA, September 2, 1774, AFC, 1:146.
39. JA to AA, July 2, 1774, AFC, 1:121.
AA to JA, July 5, 1775, AFC, 1:239.
40. JA to AA, August 28, 1774, AFC, 1:144.
August 23, 1774, DAJA, 2:109.
41. JA to AA, September 29, 1774, AFC, 1:163.
42. JA to AA, October 7, 1774, AFC, 1:164.
43. August 31, 1774, DAJA, 2:117.
September 2, 1774, DAJA, 2:119–20.
September 3, 1774, DAJA, 2:121.
October 11, 1774, DAJA, 2:151.
44. JA to AA, October 9, 1774, AFC, 1:166.
September 14, 1774, DAJA, 2:134.
September 22, 1774, DAJA, 2:136.
45. JA to AA, September 16, 1774, AFC, 1:156.
46. Ibid.
47. JA to AA, October 9, 1774, AFC, 1:166.
48. Ibid.
49. AA to JA, October 16, 1774, AFC, 1:172–3.
AA to MW, November [ca. 5], 1775, AFC, 1:323.
50. October 24 and 28, 1774, DAJA, 2:156–7.
51. AA to Catharine Macaulay [1774], AFC, 1:177.
AA to MW, January 25, 1775, AFC, 1:180.
The Boston Gazette, January 17 to April 17, 1775. The paper stopped publishing thereafter because of the so-called Battle of Lexington and resumed in Watertown on June 5, 1775. AFC, 1:195, n. 2.
52. AA to MW, January 25, 1775, AFC, 1:180.
53. AA to MW, February 3[?], 1775, AFC, 1:183–4.
54. Ibid.
55. Frothingham, Joseph Warren, p. 455.
Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters of John Trumbull (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), p. 3.
Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and their World (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), p. 130.
56. Richard Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 101.
DAJA, 3:314.
57. AA to JA, May 7, 1775, AFC, 1:194.
58. AA to Edward Dilly, May 22, 1775, AFC, 1:200.
59. AA to JA, May 24, 1775, AFC, 1:204–5. For day of week see AFC, 1:203, n. 1.
60. AA to JA, May 24, 1775, AFC, 1:204–5.
61. AA to JA, June 16[?], AFC, 1:217.
62. AA to JA, June 18, 1775, AFC, 1:222.
63. Ibid., 1:223.
AA to JA, July 31, 1775, AFC, 1:269.
AFC, 1:271, n. 2.
Frothingham, Joseph Warren, pp. 26, 517.
64. AA to JA, June 18, 1775, AFC, 1:223–4, n. 3.
Charles Francis Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1892), p. 859.
Eliza Susan (Morton) Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Eliza S. M. Quincy (Boston: J. Wilson and Son, 1861), p. 209. Reminiscing during a visit on July 17, 1826, JQA told Eliza Quincy: “I remember living in the house where I was born, at the foot of Penn’s Hill. The day after the battle of Lexington men came, and took the pewter spoons out of our kitchen to melt them up into bullets. On the day of the battle of Bunker Hill, I heard the cannon, and, with my mother, saw the smoke of Charlestown from Penn’s Hill; and I recollect her distress on receiving intelligence of the death of Warren. During the seige of Boston, I used to go up that hill every evening to see the shells thrown by the American and British forces; which, at night, had the brilliancy of fire works.”
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874–77), 1:545.
Seventy-one years after John Quincy Adams was taught these lines by his mother, he wrote to the English Quaker, Joseph Sturge, in March 1864, that he could still repeat Collins’s poem by memory. AFC, 1:223–4, n. 3.
65. AA to JA, July 5, 1775, AFC, 1:240.
AA to JA, April 7 and 10, 1776, AFC, 1:374–5.
Julius Caesar, act 3, sc. 1, slightly adapted to AA’s purpose. The complete passage reads: “Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood! /Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,—/Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,/To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue,—/A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;/Domestic fury and fierce civil strife/ Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.”
66. AA to JA, June 22, 1775, AFC, 1:225–6.
67. AA to JA, June [16?], 1775, AFC, 1:217, 219.
AA to JA, June 25, 1775, AFC, 1:230.
AA to JA, July 12, 1775, AFC, 1:244.
AA to JA, July 5, 1775, AFC, 1:240.
AA to JA, July 16, 1775, AFC, 1:249.
68. AA to JA, June 25, 1775, AFC, 1:232.
69. JQA Memoirs, 1:5.
70. JA to AA, June 10, 1775, AFC, 1:213.
71. AA to James Bowdoin, June 16, 1775, AFC, 1:220.
72. AA to JA, June 16, 1775, AFC, 1:218.
73. Ibid.
JA to AA, May 29, 1775, AFC, 1:207.
74. JA to AA, June 17, 1775, AFC, 1:215.
The Boston Gazette, August 14, 1775 (extract of letter of George Washington, June 20, 1774).
DAJA, 3:323, 336.
75. AA to JA, July 16, 1775, AFC, 1:246–7.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid., p. 247.
78. Ibid., pp. 249–50.
79. AA to MW, July 24, 1775, AFC, 1:255.
80. AA to JA, July 25, 1775, AFC, 1:260–1. See also JA to AA, July 7, 1775, AFC, 1:242.
5. Ten Thousand Difficulties
1. Elihu Adams served as captain in Colonel Benjamin Lincoln’s company during the alarm of April 19, 1775, and at Grape Island off Weymouth in May. He died on August 10 or 11, 1775. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:326, n. 4.
AA to JA, September 16–17, 1775, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 1:278–9.
2. AA to JA, September 16–17, 1775, AFC, 1:279.
3. Ibid., 1:280.
4. AA to JA, September 25, 1775, AFC, 1:284.
AA to JA, September 29, 1775, AFC, 1:287–8.
Patty’s last name is unknown. She was thought to be a servant or “bound girl,” possibly a relation of the family who had lived in the Adams household for four years. AFC, 1:278, n. 2.
5. AA to JA, October 22, 1775, AFC, 1:309–10.
6. Ibid., 1:310.
7. AA to JA, October 25, 1775, AFC, 1:312.
JA to AA, October 23, 1775, ibid.
8. JA to AAS, October 20, 1775, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 2:3–4.
9. AA to JA, October 25, 1775, AFC, 1:313.
JA to TBA, October 20, 1775, AFC, 1:305.
10. AA to JA, October 9, 1775, AFC, 1:297.
AA to JA, October 25, 1775, AFC, 1:313.
11. JA to AA, October 29, 1775, AFC, 1:316–7.
12. Ibid., 1:317.
13. AA to JA, October 25, 1775, AFC, 1:313.
AA to JA, November 12, 1775, AFC, 1:325.
AA to JA, November 5, 1775, AFC, 1:320.
14. The Boston Gazette, August 15, 1768.
AA to JA, May 4, 1775, AFC, 1:204–5.
15. AA to JA, July 5, 1775, AFC, 1:240.
AA to JA, July 23, 1775, AFC, 1:252–3.
16. JA to AA, July 23, 1775, AFC, 1:253.
By this time, John Adams was thoroughly disillusioned with John Dickinson, a fact that was to come to public attention within the next month. On August 17 The Massachusetts Gazette printed two letters John had written on July 24, one intended for Abigail and the other for James Warren. John’s letter to Warren bared his opposition to Dickinson’s motion for a second petition to the King seeking reconciliation, calling it “a measure of imbecility.” John alluded to Dickinson, though not by name, as a “certain great Fortune and piddling Genius” who has “given a silly Cast to our whole Doings.” John had been told that Dickinson’s political sentiments were influenced by the Quakers, who intimidated his mother and his wife, both of whom were continually after Dickinson. “From my soul I pitty Mr. Dickinson,” John said, admitting that if his own mother and wife expressed such sentiments he was certain that if they did not wholly unman him and make him an apostate, they would make him the most miserable man alive.
Abigail worried about the effect of these letters, but John assured her they “had no such bad Effects, as the Tories intended.” Far otherwise, from what he could see and hear; he had “fresh Proofs that every Body is coming fast into every political Sentiment contained in them.” He could mention compliments passed upon them, he said, and if a “serious Decision” could be made on them, he seemed positive the public voice would be found in their favor. AFC, 1:256, n. 1. JA to AA, October 2, 1775, AFC, 1:291.
17. AA to JA, November 5, 1775, AFC, 1:320–1.
18. AA to JA, November 12, 1775, AFC, 1:325.
JA to AA, November 18, 1775, AFC, 1:327.
JA to AA, December 3, 1775, AFC, 1:331–2.
19. JA to AA, December 3, 1775, AFC, 1:332.
AA to JA, November 27, 1775, AFC, 1:328–9.
20. AA to JA, November 27, 1775, AFC, 1:329.
21. AA to JA, November 12, 1775, AFC, 1:324.
22. AA to JA, November 27, 1775, AFC, 1:329.
23. Ibid., 1:329–30.
AA to JA, December 10, 1775, AFC, 1:337.
24. AA to JA, December 10, 1775, AFC, 1:336.
25. Ibid.
26. JA to AA, July 24, 1775, AFC, 1:256.
JA to AA, February [13?], 1776, AFC, 1:347.
27. DAJA; 2:231; 2:232, n. 2 and 2:162, n. 1.
JA to AA, July 24, 1775, AFC, 1:255–6.
28. December 9, 1775, DAJA, 2:224, n. 1.
JA to AA, February 18, 1776, AFC, 1:348.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia, 1776), reprinted in The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip S. Foner (Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1948), pp. 3–46.
John was also eager to learn whether he was expected to remain in Congress or to assume his unsolicited appointment as Chief Justice of Massachusetts. He had accepted this office the previous November 24 and promised to fulfill it “as soon as the Circumstances of the Colonies will admit of an Adjournment of the Congress.” DAJA, 3:359. November 18, 1775, AFC, 1:328.
29. JA to AA, February 18, 1776, AFC, 1:348.
Writings of Paine, pp. 17, 20.
30. AA to JA, February 21, 1776, AFC, 1:350.
AA to JA, March 2, 1776, AFC, 1:352.
31. JA to AA, March 19, 1776, AFC, 1:363.
32. Ibid.
John Adams informed Abigail on April 28, 1776, that the writer of Common Sense was Paine, “a Gentleman, about two Years from England.” AFC, 1:400.
33. Writings of Paine, pp. ix–xliv.
David Freeman Hawke, Paine (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), p. 182.
34. John Adams, Thoughts on Government: Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies (Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1776), reprinted in Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment (New York: George Braziller, 1965), pp. 246–50.
DAJA, 3:358–9.
35. AA to JA, May 9, 1776, AFC, 1:404.
36. JA to AA, May 27, 1776, AFC, 1:420.
37. AA to JA, February 21, 1776, AFC, 1:350.
AA to JA, March 2, 1776, AFC, 1:353.
38. AA to JA, March 3 and March 4, 1776, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 1:90.
39. Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 106–7.
AA to JA, March 10, 1776, AFC, 1:356, n. 3.
AA to JA, March 2–5, 1776, AFC, 1:353.
40. AA to JA, March 16–18, 1776, AFC, 1:357–8.
41. Ibid., 1:360.
42. AA to JA, March 16, 1776, AFC, 1:357.
43. AA to JA, March 31, 1776, AFC, 1:370.
44. Ibid., 1:369.
AA to JA, July 25, 1775, AFC, 1:261–2.
45. AA to JA, March 31–April 15, 1776, AFC, 1:371.
46. AA to JA, March 16, 1776, AFC, 1:359.
AA to JA, March 31, 1776, AFC, 1:370.
47. AA to JA, September 22, 1774, AFC, 1:162.
A few months after the death of his father, John Quincy Adams, Abigail’s grandson, Charles Francis Adams, was nominated to run for Vice-President on Martin Van Buren’s ticket at a convention of antislavery delegates. Later still, Henry Adams claimed that Abigail’s descendants were “anti-slavery by birth, as their name was Adams and their home was Quincy.” Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Sentry ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961), p. 25.
48. AA to JA, July 25, 1775, AFC, 1:263.
49. JA to AA, April 28, 1776, AFC, 1:400.
JA to AA, April 14, 1776, AFC, 1:381–2.
50. JA to AA, April 14, 1776, AFC, 1:382–3.
51. AA to JA, May 7, 1776, AFC, 1:402.
52. AA to MW, October 19, 1775, AFC, 1:301.
53. AA to MW, April 13, 1776, AFC, 1:378.
54. MW to AA, April 17, 1776, AFC, 1:385.
55. Ibid., 1:385–6.
56. AA to MW, April 27, 1776, AFC, 1:396–7.
57. MW to AA, January 28, 1775, AFC, 1:182.
58. AA to JA, April 27, 1776, AFC, 1:397.
59. JA to Joseph Palmer, May 26, 1776, JA Letterbook, Reel 89, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. JA to AA, April 28, 1776, AFC, 1:401, see also AFC, 1:401, n. 6.
AA to JA, May 7, 1776, AFC, 1:402.
64. AA to JA, May 9, 1776, AFC, 1:405.
AA to JA, May 7, 1776, AFC, 1:402.
65. JA to AA, May 17, 1776, AFC, 1:410; and AFC, 1:411, n. 2.
DAJA, 3:335, 382–6.
66. JA to AA, May 17, 1776, AFC, 1:410–1.
JA to AA, May 22, 1776, AFC, 1:412.
67. AA to JA, May 27, 1776, AFC, 1:416.
68. Ibid.
AA to JA, June 17, 1776, AFC, 2:13–5.
69. JA to AA, June 26, 1776, AFC, 2:23.
AA to John Thaxter, July 7, 1776, AFC, 2:37.
70. Ibid.
71. JA to AA, July 3, 1776, AFC, 2:27.
AA to JA, July 13, 1776, AFC, 2:45.
72. JA to AA, July 3, 1776, AFC, 2:27–8.
The motion on June 9, by Richard Henry Lee, on “certain resolutions respecting independency,” directed the delegates “to propose [that Congress] declare the United Colonies free and independent states.” After some debate, a committee was appointed on June 11 to draft the declaration. Its five members included Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston. AFC, 2:23, n. 2.
73. JA to Mr. Clap[?], July 1, 1776, Reel 89, Adams Papers.
JA to AA, June 26, 1776, AFC, 2:24.
JA to AA, July 3, 1776, AFC, 2:28.
74. JA to AA, July 3, 1776, AFC, 2:30.
75. Ibid., 2:30–1.
76. Ibid., 2:28, 31.
77. AA to JA, July 13–14, 1776, AFC, 2:46.
78. Ibid.
6. To Rob Me of All My Happiness
1. The Boston Gazette, March 3, 1777.
AA to JA, March 8, 1777, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 2:171–2.
2. JA to AA, September 6, 1776, AFC, 2:120–1.
For John Adams’s highly personal account of one aspect of his conference with Admiral Howe, his rooming situation with Benjamin Franklin, see September 9, 1776, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:417–20.
“The Taverns were so full We could with difficulty obtain Entertainment. At Brunswick but one bed could be procured for Dr. Franklin and me, in a Chamber little larger than the bed, without a Chimney and with only one small Window. The Window was open, and I, who was an invalid and afraid of the Air in the night (blowing upon me), shut it close. Oh! says Franklin dont shut the Window. We shall be suffocated. I answered I was afraid of the Evening Air. Dr. Franklin replied, the Air within this Chamber will soon be, and indeed now is worse than that without Doors; come! open the Window and come to bed, and I will convince you: I believe you are not acquainted with my Theory of Colds. Opening the Window and leaping into Bed, I said I had read his letters to Dr. Cooper in which he had advanced, that Nobody ever got cold by going into a cold Church, or any other cold Air: But the Theory was so little consistent with my own experience, that I thought that I would run the risque of a cold. The Doctor then began an harrangue, upon Air and cold and Respiration and Perspiration, with which I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep … I remember little of the lecture, except, that the Human Body, by Respiration and Perspiration, destroys a gallon of Air in a minute … There is much Truth I believe, in some things he advanced: but they warrant not the assertion that Cold is never taken from cold air … I have often asked him, whether a Person heated with Exercise, going suddenly into Cold Air, or standing still in a current of it, might not have his Pores suddenly contracted, his Perspiration stopped, and that matter thrown into the Circulations or cast upon the Lungs which he acknowledged was the Cause of Colds. To this he never could give me a satisfactory Answer. And I have heard that in the Opinion of his own Physician Dr. Jones he fell a sacrifice at last, not to the Stone but to his own Theory: having caught the violent Cold, which finally choaked him, by sitting for some hours at a Window, with the cool Air blowing upon him.”
3. JA to AA, September 14, 1776, AFC, 2:124.
4. JA to AA, January 3, 1777, AFC, 2:145.
DAJA, 2:256, n. 2.
JA to AA, March 7, 1777, AFC, 2:170.
5. JA to AA, April 2, 1777, AFC, 2:195–6.
JA to AA, April 3, 1777, AFC, 2:197–8.
6. JA to AA, October 4, 1776, AFC, 2:137.
JA to AA, April 2, 1777, AFC, 2:195.
AA to MW, [January?, 1776], AFC, 1:423.
AA to JA, April 17, 1777, AFC, 2:211.
7. JA to AA, October 11, 1776, AFC, 2:141.
The Boston Gazette, November 4, 1776.
AA to JA, January 26, 1777, AFC, 2:147.
8. AA to JA, February 8, 1777, AFC, 2:157. Both “An Act to prevent Monopoly and Oppression” which was passed January 25, 1777, and a supplementary act, passed May 10, 1777, were equally unpopular and ineffective. AFC, 2:157, n. 1.
AA to JA, April 17, 1777, AFC, 2:212.
AA to JA, September 20, 1776, AFC, 2:128–9.
AA to JA, June 1, 1777, AFC, 2:251.
9. JA to AA, March 22, 1777, AFC, 2:181.
JA to AA, June 16, 1776, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 1:118.
JA to JQA, April 8, 1777, AFC, 2:204.
10. JA to JQA, March 16, 1777, AFC, 2:177.
JA to TBA, March 16, 1777, AFC, 2:178; see also AFC, 2:178, n. 1.
JA to CA, March 17, 1777, AFC, 2:180.
JA to AAS, March 17, 1777, AFC, 2:178–9.
11. AA to JA, August 29, 1776, AFC, 2:112. Virginia Woolf echoed Abigail’s need in her book A Room of One’s Own (London: Hogarth Press, 1929).
12. AA to JA, September 23, 1776, AFC, 2:133.
JA to AA, February 10, 1777, AFC, 2:159.
AA to JA, April 17, 1777, AFC, 2:213.
13. AA to JA, April 2, 1777, AFC, 2:193.
AA to JA, June 15, 1777, AFC, 2:266.
AA to JA, June 1, 1775, AFC, 2:250.
14. AA to JA, July 9, 1777, AFC, 2:277.
AA to JA, July 10, 1777, AFC, 2:279.
15. John Thaxter to JA, July 13, 1777, AFC, 2:282.
AA to JA, July 16, 1777, AFC, 2:282.
JA to AA, June 4, 1777, AFC, 2:255.
16. JA to AA, July 28, 1777, AFC, 2:292.
AA to JA, August 12, [1777?], AFC, 2:308.
17. AA to JA, August 5, 1777, AFC, 2:301.
18. AA to JA, August 22, 1777, AFC, 2:324.
AA to JA, September 10, 1777, AFC, 2:340.
19. AA to JA, July 30, 1777, AFC, 2:294–5.
20. JA to AA, August 30, 1777, AFC, 2:333–4.
JA to AA, September 1, 1777, AFC, 2:336.
JA to AA, October 26, 1777, AFC, 2:361, n. 1.
21. JA to AA, October 26, 1777, AFC, 2:361.
22. AA to JA, October 20, 1777, AFC, 2:354.
AA to JA, November 16, 1777, AFC, 2:367.
November 15, 1777, DAJA, 2:267; DAJA, 2:267, n. 1.
November 21, 1777, DAJA, 2:269, n. 1.
DAJA, 4:1.
AFC, 2:372, n. 1.
Silas Deane, who shared a joint commission with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, was recalled on November 21. DAJA, 2:270.
23. AA to James Lovell, December 15, 1777, AFC, 2:370–1; see also AFC, 2:371–2, n. 1.
24. Daniel Roberdeau to JA, November 28, 1777, AFC, 2:373, n. 1.
25. AA to Daniel Roberdeau, December 15, 1777, AFC, 2:372–3.
26. AA to James Lovell, December 15, 1777, AFC, 2:370–1.
27. Ibid., 2:371.
28. MW to AA, January 2, 1778, AFC, 2:376.
AFC, 2:385, n. 1.
29. DAJA, 4:5.
DAJA, 2:276.
AFC, 2:376, n. 3.
AA to John Thaxter, February 15, 1778, AFC, 2:390.
List of Stores sent on board the Boston, February 1778, Reel 348, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
James Lovell to JA, undated but around November 28, 1777, AFC 2:372, n. 1.
AFC, 2:375, n. 3.
30. JA to AA, February 13, 1778, 11:30 A.M., AFC, 2:388.
JA to AA, February 13, 1778, 5:00 P.M., AFC, 2:389.
31. AA to John Thaxter, February 15, 1778, AFC, 2:390–1.
32. Ibid., 2:392.
James Lovell to AA, March 21, 1778, AFC, 2:404.
7. A Call So Honorable
1. AA to Hannah Storer, March 1, 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 2:397.
AA to JA, March 8, 1778, AFC, 2:402.
AA to MW, December 10, 1778, AFC, 3:132.
Samuel Cooper to AA, March 2, 1778, AFC, 2:398–9.
AA to John Thaxter, May 26, 1778, AFC, 3:26.
2. AA to JA, September 30, 1778, AFC, 3:51.
AA to JQA, September 29, 1778, AFC, 3:97.
AA to JA, October 25, 1778, AFC, 3:110–1.
AA to JA, July 15, 1778, AFC, 3:60–2.
AA to JA, June 10, 1778, AFC, 3:36.
AA to Hannah Storer, March 1, 1778, AFC, 2:397.
3. AA to JA, June 18, 1778, AFC, 3:47.
Prior to Elizabeth Smith’s marriage to Shaw, Abigail was plainly critical of the couple. Initially, she disapproved of her sister’s seemingly flirtatious behavior. Three years later, with the wedding date set, Abigail almost boasted to John that she had never exchanged a word on the subject of the marriage with Betsy, partially, it appears, out of embarrassment. “All her acquaintance stand amazed.—An Idea of 30 years and unmarried is sufficient to make people do very unaccountable things.” Somewhat sanctimoniously, she added, “Thank Heaven my Heart was early fix’d and never deviated.” Abigail was incorrect about her sister’s age: Betsy turned twenty-seven in April of 1777. AA to JA, March 9, 1777, AFC, 2:173.
4. AA to John Thaxter, September 29, 1778, AFC, 3:98.
AA to John Thaxter, April 9, 1778, AFC, 3:6.
AA to JA, July 15, 1778, AFC, 3:61–2.
AA to JA, September 29, 1778, AFC, 3:95.
The mixed use of dollars and pounds in Abigail’s account of her expenses in explained by Samuel Eliot Morison in The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965) pp. 143–4 under “Currency Controversies.” As no precious metals were produced in the colonies, the balance of trade with England was unfavorable. Having no metal currency, each colony, or group of colonies, established a currency of account called “lawful money” in pounds, shillings, and pence that were worth less than English sterling. The standard for this lawful money was the Spanish milled dollar or “piece of eight,” eventually chosen as the standard for the United States silver dollar. Since overvaluing the Spanish dollar and undervaluing sterling did not help the colonists, they turned to paper money. Personal promissory notes and bills of exchange had long been used as currency in the colonies. These “bills of credit,” from which the phrase “a dollar bill” is derived, relieved the currency shortage in time of war. Consequently, the demand grew for issuing them in time of peace.
5. AA to JA, June 30, 1778, AFC, 3:52.
AA to JA, July 15, 1778, AFC, 3:60.
6. April 8, 1778, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 2:296.
February 13–March 14, 1778, DAJA, 2:269–86.
February 24–26, 1778, DAJA, 2:15.
7. March 30–April 9, 1778, DAJA, 4:32–43.
March 30–April 9, 1778, DAJA, 2:291–7; see also DAJA, 2:297, n. 2.
JA to AA, April 19, 1778, AFC, 3:14.
8. AA to JA, July 15, 1778, AFC, 3:60.
JA to AA, June 3, 1778, AFC, 3:31.
JA to AA, April 25, 1778, AFC, 3:31.
April 9, 1778, DAJA, 2:296.
JA to AA, April 12, 1778, AFC, 3:9–10.
9. DAJA, 4:118–9.
April 9, 1778, DAJA, 2:297.
February 9, 1779, DAJA, 2:346.
10. June 23, 1779, DAJA, 2:391–2.
DAJA, 4:69, 80–1.
JA to AA, April 25, 1778, AFC, 3:17.
February 9, 1779, DAJA, 2:346–7.
11. May 27, 1778, DAJA, 4:118–9.
12. May 10, 1778, DAJA, 2:311, n. 1.
AA to JA, June 30, 1778, AFC, 3:52.
May 20, 1778, DAJA, 2:314.
DAJA, 3:86–7.
AA to JA, July 15, 1778, AFC, 3:60.
13. April 21, 1778, DAJA, 2:304.
DAJA, 4:120.
14. February 9, 1779, DAJA, 2:347.
April 4–10[?], 1786, DAJA, 3:186.
April 16, 1778, DAJA, 2:302.
15. JA to Samuel Adams, May 21, 1778, DAJA, 4:106–8.
16. April 27, 1778, DAJA, 4:78.
May 21, 1778, DAJA, 4:108–9.
JA to AA, December 3, 1778, AFC, 3:129.
17. JA to AA, November 27, 1778, AFC, 3:122–3.
18. Ibid., 3:123.
19. AA to JA, May 18, 1778, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841). 1:122. AA to JA, November 12–13, 1778, AFC, 3:118–9.
20. JA to AA, December 2, 1778, AFC, 3:124.
21. JA to AA, December 3, 1778, AFC, 3:128–9.
22. AA to JA, December 27, 1778, AFC, 3:139–40.
23. JA to AA, December 18, 1778, AFC, 3:138.
24. AA to JA, December 27, 1778, AFC, 3:139–40.
25. AA to JA, January 2, 1779, AFC, 3:147.
26. JQA to AA, February 20, 1779, AFC, 3:175.
27. JA to AA, February 26, 1779, AFC, 3:179.
JA to AA, February 28, 1779, AFC, 3:182.
28. JA to AA, February 21, 1779, AFC, 3:177.
JA to AA, February 28, 1779, AFC, 3:182.
JA to AA [February ?, 1779], AFC, 3:183.
JA to AA, February 20, 1779, AFC, 3:174.
29. JA to AA, February 19, 1779, AFC, 3:173.
30. AA to James Lovell, January 4, 1779, AFC, 3:147–8.
31. James Lovell to AA, January 19, 1779, AFC, 3:150.
32. James Lovell to AA, March 9, 1779, AFC, 3:187.
33. February 11, 1779, DAJA, 2:351–2.
34. JA to AA, February 28, 1779, AFC, 3:181–2.
35. JA to AA, February 20, 1779, AFC, 3:175.
JA to AA, [February ?, 1779], AFC, 3:183, n. 1.
36. May 22, 1779, DAJA, 2:377.
JQA to AA, February 20, 1779, AFC, 3:176.
37. AA to James Lovell, June 18–26, 1779, AFC, 3:206–7.
MW to AA, July 6, 1779, AFC, 3:209.
38. AA to Samuel Adams, July 30, 1779, AFC, 3:215–6.
Samuel Adams to JA, July 31, 1779, AFC, 3:217, see also AFC, 3:217, n. 2.
39. Daniel Roberdeau to JA, November 28, 1777, AFC, 2:373, n. 1.
May 17, 1779, DAJA, 2:375.
8. This Cruel State of Separation
1. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 4:191.
Enclosure of Samuel Huntington, November 4, 1779 DAJA, 4:179.
2. AA to James Lovell, November 18, 1779, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 3:236.
JA to AA, November 14, 1779, AFC, 3:234.
AA to JA, November 14, 1779, AFC, 3:233–4.
AA to JA, October 25, 1782, Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1875), p. 405.
3. AA to JA, August 5, 1782, AFC, 4:358.
4. AA to JA, April 15, 1780, AFC, 3:320.
AA to JA, July 16, 1780, AFC, 3:377.
5. AA to JA, November 13, 1780, AFC, 4:13.
AA to JQA, January 19, 1780, AFC, 3:268.
AA to CA, January 19, 1780, AFC, 3:270.
6. AA to JA, November 13, 1780, AFC, 4:13.
AA to JQA, January 19, 1780, AFC, 3:268.
AA to CA, January 19, 1780, AFC, 3:269.
AA to JQA, March 20, 1780, AFC, 3:310.
7. AA to JQA, March 20, 1780, AFC, 3:311–2.
AA to JQA, January 19, 1780, AFC, 3:268.
8. AA to CA, January 19, 1780, AFC, 3:270.
9. AA to JA, June [10?], 1778, AFC, 3:37.
10. AA to JA, January 18, 1780, AFC, 3:261.
11. RC to JA, January 18, 1780, AFC, 3:264.
AA to JA, January 18, 1780, AFC, 3:262; see also AA to James Lovell, December 13, 1799, AFC, 3:249.
AA to James Lovell, February 13, 1780, AFC, 3:273. For details on John Paul Jones, see Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959), pp. 148–50.
12. James Lovell to AA, January 8, 1781, AFC, 4:61,63.
James Lovell to AA, December 15, 1777, AFC, 2:333.
James Lovell to AA, February 16, 1779, AFC, 3:172.
James Lovell to AA, December 27, 1779, AFC, 3:254.
James Lovell to AA, November 23, 1779, AFC, 3:239.
James Lovell to AA, August 19, 1778, AFC, 3:76.
13. AA to James Lovell, March 17, 1781, AFC, 4:92.
James Lovell to AA, January 13, 1780, AFC, 3:257.
AA to James Lovell, June 24, 1778, AFC, 3:48.
James Lovell to AA, June 13, 1778, AFC, 3:43.
14. James Lovell to AA, January 6, 1780, AFC, 3:256.
AA to James Lovell, February 13, 1780, AFC, 3:274.
15. April 21, 1778, DAJA, 2:304.
DAJA, 4:86–7.
AFC, 3:229.
16. June 6, 1771, DAJA, 2:30, n. 1.
DAJA, 2:345–6.
Julian Boyd, “Silas Deane: Death by a Kindly Teacher of Treason,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 16 (April–October 1959): 165–87, 319–42, 515–50.
Edmund S. Morgan, “The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 24 (January 1967):25.
17. See n. 16 above.
April 21, 1778, DAJA, 4:68.
May 2, 1778, DAJA, 4:86.
Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York: The Viking Press, 1938), p. 580.
Deane eventually wrote letters intercepted by the British and published in loyalist papers, urging Americans to reunite with Great Britain. He died in exile, on board ship, sailing from Great Britain to Canada, neither in his lifetime nor in history convincingly exonerated from his alleged crimes. But, in 1842, Congress voted for a partial restitution of $37,000 to his heirs based on finding Arthur Lee’s accusations “ex parte and a gross injustice.”
18. JA to William Whipple, September 11, 1779, AFC, 3:229–30, 232.
19. February 8, 1779, DAJA, 2:345; see also DAJA, 2:346, n. 1.
Silas Deane to John Jay, November 1780, Deane Papers in Collections of the New-York Historical Society (1886–90), 4:262.
AA to MW, January 22, 1779, AFC, 3:154.
20. AA to MW, February 28, 1780, AFC, 3:287–8.
21. Ibid.
22. AA to Elbridge Gerry, March 13, 1780, AFC, 3:297.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 3:298–9.
25. Elbridge Gerry to AA, April 17, 1780, AFC, 3:323–5.
26. AA to JA, April 15, 1780, AFC, 3:321–2.
27. Ibid.
AA to JA, May 1, 1780, AFC, 3:335.
JA to AA, June 17, 1780, AFC, 3:366.
AA to JA, July 24, 1780, AFC, 3:381.
AA to JA, October 8, 1780, AFC, 4:2.
AA to MW, February 28, 1780, AFC, 3:289.
AA to JA, July 5, 1780, AFC, 3:371.
AA to JA, July 16, 1780, AFC, 3:376.
28. JA to AA, December 11, 1779, AFC, 3:243.
JA to AA, December 12, 1779, AFC, 3:245.
JA to AA, December 16, 1779, AFC, 3:252.
JA to AA, March 15, 1780, AFC, 3:301.
JA to AA, May 12, 1780, AFC, 3:342.
29. AA to JA, November 13, 1780, AFC, 4:12–3.
30. JA to AA, September 4, 1780, AFC, 3:410.
JA to AA, September 15, 1780, AFC, 3:414.
31. JA to AA, February 12, 1780, AFC, 3:271.
32. John A. Garraty, The American Nation, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 174–5.
Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 105, 107.
33. Encyclopedia of American History, pp. 116, 118.
Garraty, American Nation, p. 175.
Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution: the Foundation of American Diplomacy (New York and London: D. Appleton–Century Company, Inc., 1935), pp. 184, 186–7.
34. AFC, 3:391, n. 5.
July 27, 1780, DAJA, 2:442.
AFC, 3:394.
During this period, John championed the American cause in French, Dutch, and even British publications, wrote voluminously to his colleagues at home, incessantly to the Comte de Vergennes, who was convinced, after almost six months of correspondence, that Adams, as he told Franklin, was not endowed with “that conciliating spirit which is necessary for the important and delicate business with which he is entrusted.” Nor were the “Delicacies” of the Comte de Vergennes perfectly consonant with John’s way of thinking. John loathed Vergennes’s insistence that he conceal powers to negotiate a treaty of commerce with the Court of London; he yearned for a “frank and decent Communication” of his full powers. Vergennes, on his part, disputed Adams’s analyses of America’s financial policy and of France’s disposition of its naval power. Humiliating notes informed John that in Vergennes’s opinion, “toute duscution ultérieure entre nous a cet égard serois superflüe”; in another, “que le Roi n’a pas besoin de vos Sollicitations pour s’occuper des interets des Etats-unis.” John’s “fishing expedition” was the sort of “suitoring” for alliance that Franklin detested. He was humiliated, he said, by the “Idea of our running about from Court to Court begging for Money and Friendship, which are the more withheld the more eagerly they are sollicited, and would perhaps have been offer’d if they had not been asked.” AFC, 3:391–2, 395.
35. JA to AA, September 25, 1780, AFC, 3:424.
JA to AA, December 18, 1780, AFC, 4:34–5.
Rector Verheyk to JA, November 10, 1780, AFC, 4:11–2.
36. AA to JQA, January 21, 1781, AFC, 4:67–8.
37. AA to JA, March 19, 1781, AFC, 4:93.
AA to John Thaxter, March 2, 1780, AFC, 3:294.
38. Alice Lee Shippen to Elizabeth Welles Shippen (Mrs. Samuel Adams), June 17, 1781, AFC, 4:154.
AA to James Lovell, June 30, 1781, AFC, 4:164.
39. Alice Lee Shippen to Elizabeth Welles Shippen, June 17, 1781, AFC, 4:154.
40. James Lovell to AA, June 26, 1781, AFC, 4:163, and see accompanying note.
JA to the Comte de Vergennes, July 17, 1780, AFC, 3:392, n. 5.
Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution, pp. 176–8.
41. James Lovell to AA, June 26, 1781, AFC, 4:163, and accompanying notes.
Benjamin Franklin to Robert Livingston, July 22, 1783, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert Henry Smyth, 10 vols. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1905–7), 9:62.
42. AA to James Lovell, June 30, 1781, AFC, 4:166.
43. AA to Alice Lee Shippen, June 30, 1781, AFC, 4:167–8.
44. AA to James Lovell, June 30, 1781, AFC, 4:165–6.
45. Ibid., 4:165.
James Lovell to AA, February 22, 1778, AFC, 2:393.
AA to Elbridge Gerry, August 4, 1781, AFC, 4:193.
AA to Elbridge Gerry, July 20, 1781, AFC, 4:183.
January 12, 1783, DAJA, 4:104–5, and n. 1, p. 105.
46. James Lovell to AA, July 13, 1781, AFC, 4:173.
James Lovell to AA, August 10, 1781, AFC, 4:194.
This letter, dated August 9, 1780, and sent to Congress, begins: “Mr. Adams has given Offense to the Court here, by some Sentiments and Expressions contained in several letters written to the Count de Vergennes.” See AFC, 3:395, n. 5.
47. July 1 and July 6, 1781, DAJA, 2:456–7, and n. 2, p. 458.
JA to AA, July 11, 1781, AFC, 4:169, and n. 1, p. 170.
48. JA to AA, July 11, 1781, AFC, 4:169.
JA to AA, October 9, 1781, AFC, 4:224.
In June 1781, Congress had revoked JA’s sole power to treat for peace with Great Britain by appointing him first among five joint commissioners, the others being Franklin, Jay, Laurens, and Jefferson. Their instructions were “to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or truce without knowledge and concurrence” of the ministers of their generous ally, the King of France. John received these papers on August 24, 1781.
49. DAJA, 3:4.
JA to AA, December 2, 1781, AFC, 4:250.
50. AA to JA, December 9, 1781, AFC, 4:255–7.
51. AA to JA, December 23, 1781, AFC, 4:271.
AA to JA, December 9, 1781, AFC, 4:257.
AA to JA, March 17, 1782, AFC, 4:295.
AA to JA, April 10, 1782, AFC, 4:306.
52. AA to JA, April 10, 1782, AFC, 4:305–6.
53. JA to AA, March 22, 1782, AFC, 4:300.
JA to AA, March 29, 1782, AFC, 4:301–2, and n. 2, p. 302.
54. AA to JA, June 17, 1782, AFC, 4:328.
55. AA to JA, April 10, 1782, AFC, 4:306.
AA to JA, March 17, 1782, AFC, 4:293.
AA to JA, June 17, 1782, AFC, 4:328.
56. JA to AA, April 1, 1782, AFC, 4:303, and n. 3, p. 304.
JA to Francis Dana, March 15, 1782, Dana Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
DAJA, 3:9, n. 1.
Bemis, Diplomacy of the American Revolution, p. 169.
57. JA to AA, August 15, 1782, AFC, 4:361.
JA to AA, May 14, 1782, AFC, 4:323.
JA to AA, July 1, 1782, AFC, 4:337.
JA to CT, August [?] 1782, AFC, 4:370.
58. JA to AA, June 16, 1782, AFC, 4:324–5.
JA to John Boylston, July 5, 1782, AFC, 4:341.
John Thaxter to AA, July 27, 1782, AFC, 4:355.
59. Benjamin Waterhouse to AA, September 10, 1782, AFC, 4:380.
JA to AA, August 15, 1782, AFC, 4:360.
John Thaxter to AA, July 27, 1782, AFC, 4:355.
JA to Robert Livingston, November 8, 1782, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
JA to Robert Livingston, November 21, 1782, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
60. JA to AA, May 14, 1782, AFC, 4:323.
JA to JW, June 17, 1782, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–6), 9:513: “God willing, I don’t want to go to Vermont. I must be within the scent of the sea.”
61. AA to JA, July 17, 1782, AFC, 4:344–5.
62. AA to JA, August 5, 1782, AFC, 4:358.
AA to JA, September 3, 1782, AFC, 4:371–2.
AA to JA, November 13, 1782, Familiar Letters, p. 408.
AA to JA, November 25, 1782, ibid., p. 409.
63. AA to JA, November 13, 1782, ibid.
AA to JA, September 5, 1782, AFC, 4:376–7.
64. JA to AA, May 14, 1782, AFC, 4:323.
AA to JA, September 29, 1781, AFC, 4:221.
65. JA to AA, August 12, 1782, Reel 107, Adams Papers. The next sentence reads: “It has no example in History and therefore no reasonings can be drawn from example to decide it.”
JA to John Jay, September 21, 1780, JA Letterbook, Reel 102, Adams Papers.
66. November 3, 1782, DAJA, 3:45.
JA to AA, August 17, 1782, AFC, 4:364.
November 30, 1782, DAJA, 3:82.
67. January 20, 1783, DAJA, 3:106.
68. JA to AA, February 18, 1783, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:89–90.
JA to AA, February 27, 1783, ibid., 2:91.
69. Ibid, 2:92.
70. JA to AA, July 1, 1782, AFC, 4:337.
71. JA to Robert Livingston, July 9, 1783, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
72. JA to Edmund Jennings, August 12, 1782, Reel 108, ibid.
January 11, 1783, DAJA, 3:102.
DAJA, 4:120.
73. Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Huntington, August 9, 1780, Writings of BF, 9:126–8.
74. Ibid.
75. Garraty, American Nation, pp. 174–5.
JA to AA, February 26, 1783, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
Charles Francis Adams, An Autobiography (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916), p. 30.
76. JA to Elias Boudinot, February 5, 1783, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
77. Ibid.
78. JA to Francis Dana, February 22, 1783, ibid.
JA to JW, April 9, 1783, ibid.
January 11, 1783, DAJA, 3:103.
79. JA to JW, April 9, 1783, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
JA to AA [after February 1783], ibid.
80. JA to Arthur Lee, April 6, 1783, ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. JA to JW, April 13, ibid.
83. JA to JW, April 9, 1783, ibid.
JA to Arthur Lee, April 12, 1783, ibid.
84. JA to JW, April 16, 1783, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
85. JA to JW, September 2, 1782, JA Works, 9:513–4.
JA to JW, April 9, 1783, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
86. JA to MW, January 29, 1783, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
87. September 7, 1783, DAJA, 3:142, n. 1.
JA to AA, May 30, 1783, Letters of JA, 2:93.
JA to AA, April 8—June 8, 1783, ibid., 2:95.
JA to JW, September 2, 1782, JA Works, 9:513–4.
88. JA to JW, September 2, 1782, JA Works, 9:513–4.
Samuel Adams to JA, November 4, 1783, JA Works, 9:520: “Your negotiation with Holland … is all your own, the faithful historian will do justice to your merits, perhaps not till you are dead. I would have you reconcile yourself to this thought.”
89. September 7, 1783, DAJA, 3:141–2.
June 22, 1784, DAJA, 3:168, n. 1.
90. JA to JW, August 27, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
JA to Henry Knox, December 15, 1784, ibid.
91. JA to AA, September 7, 1783, Letters of JA, 2:100, 102.
92. September 14, 1783, DAJA, 3:143–4, n. 4.
Le Comte d’Antigne, De Boulogne à Auteuil, Passy et Chaillot à Travers les Ages (Paris: Lapina, 1922), p. 11.
JA to AA, September 7, 1783, Letters of JA, 2:102.
93. October 27, DAJA, 3:152, n. 3.
94. JA to AA, November 8, 1783, Letters of JA, 2:104–5.
JA to C. W. F. Dumas, May 16, 1783, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
9. A Mere American
1. AA to MC, July 6, 1784, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:3–12.
2. AA to MC, July 6, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:9.
Abigail Adams’s Diary of her voyage from Boston to Deal, 20 June–20 July 1784, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:157.
3. AA to MC, July 6, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:4–5.
June 23, 1784, DAJA, 3:157.
4. AA to MC, July 10, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:14.
June 24, 1784, DAJA, 3:157–8.
5. AA to MC, July 10, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:15–6.
July 1, 1784, DAJA, 3:160.
AA to ESP, July 1784, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
6. AA to MC, July 6, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:10.
7. Ibid., 2:11.
AA to MC, July 8, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:13.
June 28, 1784, DAJA, 3:158–9.
July 9, 1784, DAJA, 3:165.
8. AA to MC, July 6, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:5–11.
9. AA to MC, July 8, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:13–4.
AA to JA, February 11, 1784, Reel 362, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
July 18, 1784, DAJA, 3:166.
10. AA to MC, July 6, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:9–11.
AA to JA, December 15, 1783, The Book of Abigail and John, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 372.
AA to ESP [July 10? 1784], The Book of Abigail and John, p. 383.
11. JA to AA, October 14, 1783, The Book of Abigail and John, p. 365.
12. AA to JA, December 23, 1782, The Book of Abigail and John, pp. 333–5.
13. December 23, 1782, The Earliest Diary of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1966), p. 18.
14. Ibid., p. 23.
15. AAS to ESP, June 1782, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73), 4:335.
16. Grandmother Tyler’s Book: The Recollections of Mary Palmer Tyler (Mrs. Royall Tyler), 1775–1866, ed. Frederick Tupper and Helen Tyler Brown (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925), p. 74. Earliest Diary, p. 25.
17. Ibid, p. 77.
AA to JA, October 8, 1782, The Book of Abigail and John, p. 330.
Earliest Diary, p. 20.
18. AA to JA, December 23, 1782, The Book of Abigail and John, pp. 334–5.
19. Ibid., p. 335.
20. JA to AA, January 22, 1783, The Book of Abigail and John, pp. 336–8.
21. Ibid., p. 338.
22. JA to AA, January 29, 1783, The Book of Abigail and John, pp. 339–340.
JA to AA, February 4, 1783, The Book of Abigail and John, p. 340.
23. JA to Francis Dana, March 24, 1783, JA Letterbook, Reel 108, Adams Papers.
JA to Joseph Palmer, August 26, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
Joseph Palmer to JA, June 16–18, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
24. Royall Tyler to JA, January 13, 1784, Reel 362, Adams Papers.
25. Ibid.
RC to JA, January 20, 1784, Reel 362, Adams Papers.
26. JA to AA, January 25, 1784, The Book of Abigail and John, pp. 373–374.
JA to Royall Tyler, April 3, 1784, Reel 362, Adams Papers.
27. JA to Royall Tyler, April 3, 1784, Reel 362, Adams Papers.
28. Royall Tyler to JA, August 27, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
29. AAS to AA, January 6, 1784, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 2:28–9.
July 1, 1784, DAJA, 3:160–1.
AA to Royall Tyler, July 10, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
30. AA to Royall Tyler, July 10, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. AA to MC, July 16, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:17–8.
AA to MC, July 18, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:18.
34. June 20, 1784, DAJA, 3:154–5.
July 17, 1784, DAJA, 3:166.
35. James Lovell to AA, February 22, 1778, AFC, 2:393.
AA to James Lovell, June 11, 1780, AFC, 3:362–4.
James Lovell to AA, June 26, 1781, AFC, 4:162.
AA to JA, April 28, 1783, The Book of Abigail and John, p. 347.
36. James Lovell to AA, June 16, 1781, AFC, 4:148–52.
37. AA to James Lovell, January [8?], 1782, AFC, 4:274.
RC to JA, July 3, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
38. AA to MC, July 20, 1784, The Book of Abigail and John, pp. 384–8.
39. Ibid.
10. As Happy as a Lord
1. JA to AA, July 26, 1784, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:106–107.
2. Ibid.
3. TJ to JA, June 19, 1784, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:16.
JA to AA, August 1, 1784, The Book of Abigail and John, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 397.
4. AA to MC, July 25, 1784, The Abigail Adams Letters, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
AA to MC, July 20, 1784, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1841), 2:26.
5. AA to MC, July 20, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:22, 24–5.
6. Ibid., 2:22–4.
7. Ibid., 2:22, 25–26.
AA to MC, July 24, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:26, 29.
AA to MC, July 26, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:37.
AA to MC, July 30, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:44.
8. The London Chronicle, July 22, 1784.
9. AA to MC, July 25, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:31.
10. AA to MC, July 24, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:26–30.
AA to MC, July 25, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:31–3.
AA to ESP, July 28, 1784, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
11. AA to ESP, July 28, 1784, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to MC, July 24, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:28.
AA to MC, July 25, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:33.
12. AA to ESP, July 28, 1784, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to MC, July 24, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:27–9.
AA to MC, July 26, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:38–9.
13. AA to ESP, July 28, 1784, Shaw Family Papers.
14. AA to MC, July 30, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:43.
15. Ibid., 2:43–4.
16. AAS Diary, August 7, 1784, The Book of Abigail and John, pp. 397–8.
17. JA to C. W. F. Dumas, August 25, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
18. AA to MC, December 12, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:64.
11. À la Mode de Paris
1. August 8, 1784, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 1:7.
JA to Antoine Cerisier, December 12, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society.
JA to Joseph Palmer, August 26, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
AA to MC, September 5, 1784, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:45–6.
JA to JW, August 27, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
2. AA to Royall Tyler, September 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
AA to MC, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:50.
3. AA to MC, September 5, 1784, ibid., 2:48–51.
Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1:71.
AA to Betsy Cranch, May 12, 1785, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
4. AA to MC, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:49–50.
5. Ibid., 2:46.
AA to CT, September 8, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
6. AA to ESP, December 14, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:70.
7. AA to MC, September 5, 1784, ibid., 2:48.
JA to JW, August 27, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
8. AA to Lucy Cranch, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:54–5.
AA to ESP, December 14, 1784, ibid., 2:68.
9. September 19, 1784, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1:18–9.
September 5, 1784, ibid., 1:17–8.
AAS to MW, September 5, 1784, ibid., 2:31–2.
Mercure de France, September 14, 1784, September 18, 1784, November 20, 1784.
10. Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John and Abigail Adams (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1967), p. 137.
AA to ESP, May 8, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:92.
AA to MC, February 20, 1785, ibid., 2:81–3.
AA to MC, December 9, 1784, ibid., 2:60.
AA to Royall Tyler, January 4, 1785, Reel 364, Adams Papers.
11. AA to MC, February 20, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:81–3.
12. Ibid., 2:82–3.
13. April 2, 1785, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1:68–9.
August 15, 1784, ibid., 1:14.
AAS to Lucy Cranch, September 4, 1784, The Abigail Adams Letters, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
14. AA to MC, May 8, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters.
15. AA to ESP, December 14, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:68–9.
AA to MW, September 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
AA to MW, September 5, 1784, Warren-Adams Letters, 2 vols. (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925), 2:242.
16. AA to Rev. John Shaw, January 18, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:71–4.
17. Ibid.
18. AA to MC, September 5, 1784, ibid., 2:52.
AA to ESP, December 14, 1784, ibid., 2:68–9.
AA to MW, September 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
19. Ibid.
20. AA to Rev. John Shaw, January 18, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:73.
21. AA to MW, September 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
AA to Hannah Storer, January 20, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:75–6.
22. AA to MC, December 9, 1784, ibid., 2:60.
23. Ibid., 2:60–2.
24. Ibid., 2:61–2.
AA to Lucy Cranch, September 5, 1784, ibid., 2:55–6.
25. AA to Lucy Cranch, September 5, 1784, ibid., 2:55–6.
March 20, 1785, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1:61.
May 9, ibid., 1:74–5.
26. AA to Lucy Cranch, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:55–6.
AA to CT, September 8, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
27. AA to Lucy Cranch, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:55–6.
28. AA to MC, September 5, 1784, ibid., 2:52.
AA to CT, September 8, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
29. AA to MC, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:52.
AA to CT, September 8, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
30. AA to CT, September 8, 1784, ibid.
AA to MC, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:51–2.
31. AA to CT, September 8, 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers.
AA to MC, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:51–2.
12. A Degree of Tristeness
1. AA to MC, September 5, 1784, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:47.
AA to MW, September 1784, Reel 363, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
2. AA to Royall Tyler, January 4, 1785, Reel 364, Adams Papers.
3. AA to MC, December 12, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:63.
AA to Royall Tyler, January 4, 1785, Reel 364, Adams Papers.
4. JA to Elbridge Gerry, December 12, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
JA to Thomas Cushing, August 27, 1784, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
5. JA to MW, May 6, 1785, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
6. Ibid.
7. Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 134.
8. AA to MC, December 12, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:66.
Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:180, n. 1.
JA to Samuel Adams, April 27, 1785, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
9. December 14, 1784, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874–77), 1:19.
AA to MC, December 12, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:66.
AA to MC, April 15, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
10. AA to MC, April 15, 1785, ibid.
AA to ESP, January 11, 1785, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
11. AA to MC, December 12, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:66.
AAS to Lucy Cranch, June 23, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters.
12. AA to ESP, May 8, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:90.
AA to MC, May 8, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:93–4.
AA to Lucy Cranch, May 8, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters.
13. AA to MC, May 8, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:93–5.
14. AA to MC, May 10, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:95.
AA to MC, March 14, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:85.
November 1784, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 1:31–2.
February 21, 1785, ibid., 1:49.
15. October 14, 1784, ibid., 1:23.
AA to MC, May 8, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:94.
16. JA to TJ, May 22, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:21.
AA to TJ, June 6, 1785, ibid., 1:28.
17. JA to TJ, May 22, 1785, ibid., 1:21.
18. Ibid., 1:22.
19. TJ to JA, May 25, 1785, ibid., 1:23.
20. AA to TJ, June 6, 1785, ibid., 1:28.
13. In Public Character
1. AA to TJ, June 6, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:29.
2. Ibid., 1:29–30.
3. London Chronicle, June 4–7, 1785.
AA to MC, June 24, 1785, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:96.
London Gazette, June 4, 1785.
4. For details on early ballooning, see Vincenzo Lunardi, An Account of the first Aerial Voyage in England in a Series of Letters (London, 1784). With this is bound his: An account of five aerial voyages in Scotland (London, 1786).
AA to Betsy Cranch, September 2, 1785, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
5. AA to Lucy (Mrs. Cotton) Tufts, September 3, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
6. AA to Betsy Cranch, September 2, 1785, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to Isaac Smith, June 30, 1785, Smith-Carter Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
7. London Chronicle, June 2, 1785.
8. JA to TJ, June 3, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:27–8, and see p. 27, n. 27.
9. JA to John Jay, June 2, 1785, Reel 107, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
June 1, 1785, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 1:78.
10. Public Advertiser, June 6, 1785.
Ibid., June 10, 1785.
London Chronicle, June 11, 1785.
11. TJ to AA, September 25, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:70.
12. Ibid.
13. AA to ESP, September 15, 1785, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
ESP to AA, January 2, 1786, Reel 367, Adams Papers.
14. AA to TJ, October 19, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:84.
JA to John Jay, May 1785–February 1786, JA Letterbook, Reel 107, Adams Papers.
AA to MC, June 24, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:98–9.
15. AA to MC, June 25, 1785, ibid., 2:102.
AA to MC, August 15, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
AA to MC, June 24, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:100.
16. AA to MC, June 24, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:100.
17. Ibid., 2:100–1.
AA to MC, June 25, 1785, ibid., 2:101–2.
AAS to JQA, July 4, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
18. AA to MC, June 26, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:102–3.
19. Ibid., 2:103–4.
20. Ibid., 2:104–5.
AA to ESP, August 15, 1785, ibid., 2:108.
21. AA to MC, June 24, 1785, ibid., 2:96–8.
22. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:180–1, n. 1.
23. AA to MC, June 24, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:97.
AA to ESP, August 15, 1785, ibid., 2:106.
AA to MC, August 15, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters.
24. AA to JQA, September 6, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:113.
AA to MC [?], 1785, Reel 366, Adams Papers.
25. AA to MC, August 15, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters.
26. AA to Isaac Smith, June 30, 1785, Smith-Carter Collection.
AA to JQA, September 6, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:114–6.
AA to ESP, August 15, 1785, ibid., 2:108.
27. London Chronicle, July 1, 1785.
28. AA to JQA, September 6, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:114.
AA to ESP, September 15, 1785, Shaw Family Papers.
29. JA to TJ, January 19, 1786, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:117.
AA to JQA, September 6, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:114–5.
DAJA, 3:180–1, n. 1.
London Chronicle, July 1, 1785.
30. AA to JQA, September 6, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:114–5.
31. JA to TJ, June 7, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:31.
32. JA to John Jay, December 3, 1785, JA Letterbook, Reel 112, Adams Papers.
33. AA to MC, September 30, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:117–8.
34. AA to ESP, March 4, 1786, ibid., 2:124–8.
AA to Lucy Cranch, April 2, 1786, ibid., 2:129–34.
35. AAS to MC, June 22, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters.
AAS to JQA, July 4–August 11, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
36. AA to JQA, September 6, 1785, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:113–4.
37. AAS to JQA, July 4, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
38. AAS to JQA, November 27, 1785, Reel 366, Adams Papers.
39. AAS to JQA, July 4, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
40. JQA to AAS, October 1, 1785, Reel 366, Adams Papers.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. AAS to JQA, November 27, 1785, Reel 366, Adams Papers.
44. AAS to JQA, July 4, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
45. Ibid.
46. AAS to JQA, September 24, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
47. AAS to JQA, July 4, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
AAS to JQA, February 8–27, 1786, Reel 367, Adams Papers.
48. AA to MC, January 6, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
14. Circumstances and Connections Respectable
1. AA to MC, August 2, 1784, The Abigail Adams Letters, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
2. MC to AA, October 8, 1786, Reel 369, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
3. MC to AA, January 16, 1785, Reel 364, Adams Papers.
MC to AA, January 4, 1785, ibid.
4. ESP to AA, April 30, 1785, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
5. AA to CT, May 2, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
AA to Royall Tyler, January 4, 1785, Reel 364, Adams Papers.
6. MC to AA, June 4, 1785, Reel 364, Adams Papers.
7. MC to AA, July 22, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
AA to MC, August 15, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
AA to JQA, August 11, 1785, Reel 365, Adams Papers.
11. AA to JQA, February 16, 1786, Reel 367, Adams Papers.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
AA to TJ, June 6, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:29.
Katharine Metcalf Roof, Colonel William Smith and Lady (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929), pp. 38, 92.
15. Ibid., pp. 90, 94–5.
16. Ibid., pp. 95, 101.
17. Matthew Ridley to C. W. Livingston, September 5, 1785, Matthew Ridley Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
18. AA to MC, July 4, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, act 5, sc. 4.
19. Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 1: xi.
20. AA to MC, February 26, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
21. Ibid.
AA to CT, January 10, 1786, Reel 367, Adams Papers.
22. AA to CT, January 10, 1786, ibid.
CT to AA, October 12, 1785, Reel 366, Adams Papers.
23. MC to AA, November 8, 1785, Reel 366, Adams Papers.
24. MC to AA, March 22, 1786, Reel 367, Adams Papers.
MC to AA, May 7, 1786, Reel 368, Adams Papers.
MC to AA, July 2, 1786, ibid.
MC to AA, July 11, 1786, ibid.
Roof, Col. Smith, p. 99.
25. MC to AA, February 9, 1786, Reel 367, Adams Papers.
MC to AA, April 22, 1787, Reel 369, Adams Papers.
26. AA to MC, March 21, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
AA to MC, April 24, 1786, ibid.
27. The fruits of this visit were ornamental rather than political. Jefferson sat for the portrait by Mather Brown that brought great pleasure to the Adams family. Abigail informed Jefferson that the painting “dignifies a part of our room, tho it is but a poor substitute for those pleasures which we enjoy’d some months past.” AA to TJ, July 23, 1786, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1: 145.
AA to MC, April 6, 1786, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:135–6.
AA to ESP, April 24, 1786, Reel 367, Adams Papers.
28. AA to MC, March 21, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
AA to MC, February 26, 1786, ibid.
29. AA to MC, May 21, 1786, ibid.
AA to MC, June 13, 1786, ibid.
AA to MC, July 4, 1786, ibid.
30. AA to MC, June 13, 1786, ibid.
AA to MC, July 4, 1786, ibid.
31. AA to MC, July 4, 1786, ibid.
AA to ESP, July 19, 1786, Shaw Family Papers.
AAS to Lucy Cranch, May 25, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
AA to MC, May 25, 1786, ibid.
32. JA to RC, July 4, 1786, JA Letterbook, Reel 113, Adams Papers.
AA to MC, July 4, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
33. AA to MC, June 13, 1786, ibid.
AA to MC, January 26, 1786, ibid.
34. AA to MC, May 25, 1786, ibid.
35. CT to AA, October 12, 1785, Reel 366, Adams Papers.
CT to AA, April 13, 1786, Reel 367, Adams Papers.
CT to AA, July 6, 1786, Reel 368, Adams Papers.
CT to AA, August 15, 1786, The Earliest Diary of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1966), p. 28, n. 76. Also Reel 368, Adams Papers.
36. AA to MC, June 13, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
MC to AA, July 2, 1786, Reel 368, Adams Papers.
37. MC to AA, September 24, 1786, ibid.
MC to AA, September 28, 1786, ibid.
38. Shays, a captain during the Revolution, led a disillusioned and bitterly impoverished group, initially about five hundred, mostly former soldiers, in revolt against foreclosures on their farms and homes, against the high cost of legal defense, and against the dread servitude in debtor’s prison. They also wanted taxes lowered and paper money issued. What is referred to as Shays’ Rebellion lasted six months, from August 1786 to the end of February 1787, ending with almost immediate pardons for all but Shays and three other leaders, who received a delayed pardon the following year. The “Tumults” engendered by Shays were of deep concern to Abigail. She aired her views of the “ignorant wrestless desperadoes” in a candid exchange with Thomas Jefferson. AA to TJ, January 29, 1787, and TJ to AA, February 22, 1787, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1: 168–9; 1:172–3. The topic is discussed more fully in chapter fifteen.
The Earliest Diary of John Adams, pp. 28–9.
39. Royall Tyler, The Contrast in Dramas From the American Theatre 1762–1909, ed. Richard Moody (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Co., 1966), p. 34.
40. Ibid., p. 51.
41. Ibid., pp. 33–59.
42. AA to Betsy Cranch, April 2, 1786, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
43. AA to MC, April 24, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
44. AA to MC, May 25, 1786, ibid.
AA to MC, April 24, 1786, ibid.
45. AA to MC, April 24, 1786, ibid.
AA to MC, May 25, 1786, ibid.
AA to MC, July 4, 1786, ibid.
15. One of the Choice Ones of the Earth
1. AA to TJ, June 6, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:30.
TJ to AA, June 21, 1785, ibid., 1:33.
2. The Adams-Jefferson Letters, thirty-five letters exchanged between TJ and AA over 32 months.
3. AA to TJ, October 7, 1785, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:79.
TJ to AA, September 25, 1785, ibid., 1:69.
4. AA to TJ, October 7, 1785, ibid., 1:79.
TJ to AA, October 11, 1785, ibid., 1:81.
AA to TJ, February 11, 1786, ibid., 1:120.
TJ to AA, November 20, 1785, ibid., 1:98.
5. AA to TJ, June 6, 1785, ibid., 1:29.
TJ to AA, June 21, 1785, ibid., 1:33–4.
TJ to AA, August 9, 1786, ibid., 1:148.
6. AA to TJ, November 24, 1785, ibid., 1:100.
TJ to AA, August 9, 1786, ibid., 1:149.
7. AA to Isaac Smith, March 12, 1787, Smith-Carter Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
8. AA to TJ, February 11, 1786, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:119.
AA to Isaac Smith, April 8, 1786, Smith-Carter Collection.
AA to ESP, November 21, 1786, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3d ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:161–2.
AA to MC, March 15, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
9. AA to ESP, November 21, 1786, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:160.
10. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:201, n. 1.
AA to MC, September 12, 1786, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:145.
11. DAJA, 3:201–2, n. 1.
AA to MC, September 12, 1786, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:145–52.
Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 2:53–4.
12. AA to MC, January 20, 1787, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:162.
13. Ibid., 2:162–7.
14. Ibid., 2:166–7.
15. Ibid., 2:167.
16. JA to Benjamin Hichborn, January 27, 1787, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56), 9:551.
JA to Philip Mazzei, June 12, 1787, JA Works, 9:552.
JA to JW, January 9, 1787, Warren-Adams Letters, 2 vols. (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925), 2:281–2.
17. R. H. Lee to JA, September 3, 1787, JA Works, 9:553.
AA to TJ, January 29, 1787, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:168.
18. AA to TJ, January 29, 1787, ibid., 1:168.
About the participants in Shays’ Rebellion, Abigail’s grandson Charles Francis Adams would write: “They breathed the full communistic spirit of the time … a new set of men had come forward who could neither write English nor grasp principles of political action.” Charles Francis Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1892), p. 896.
19. TJ to AA, December 21, 1786, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:159.
AA to TJ, January 29, 1787, ibid., 1:168–9.
20. TJ to AA, February 22, 1787, ibid., 1:173.
Jefferson wrote to John Adams on February 23, 1787, to thank him for his copy of the Defense. He said he had read it with “infinite satisfaction and improvement,” supposed it would do “great good” in America, and hoped its “learning and good sense” would make it “an institute for our politicians.” However, he asked Adams to reconsider his statement that “Congress is not a legislative, but a diplomatic assembly.” Jefferson continued: “Separating into parts the whole sovereignty of our states, some of these parts are yeilded to Congress. Upon these I should think them both legislative and executive; and that they would have been judiciary also, had not the Confederation required them for certain purposes to appoint a judiciary. It has accordingly been the decision of our courts that the Confederation is a part of the law of the land, and superior in authority to the ordinary laws, because it cannot be altered by the legislature of any one state. I doubt whether they are at all a diplomatic assembly.” The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:174–5.
21. TJ to AA, December 21, 1786, ibid., 1:159.
22. AA to TJ, January 29, 1787, ibid., 1:168–9.
23. AA to ESP, January 20, 1787, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
24. AA to Lucy Cranch, April 26, 1787, The Abigail Adams Letters.
AA to MC, March 16, 1787, ibid.
25. AA to Lucy Cranch, April 26, 1787, ibid.
26. AA to MC, April 28–May 11, 1787, ibid.
27. AA to TJ, June 26, 1787, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:178.
AA to TJ, June 26, 1787, ibid., 1:179.
AA to TJ, July 6, 1787, ibid., 1:183.
Sally Hemings was the daughter of John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson’s thrice-widowed father-in-law, and the mulatto slave, Betty Hemings. This made her half-sister to Martha Jefferson, and half-aunt, if there is such a designation, to little Polly. Sally Hemings was actually only fourteen years old at the time of the crossing, though she appeared older. She would also be the subject of exhaustive speculation as to whether she was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress while in Paris and, subsequently, the mother of his children.
28. AA to TJ, July 6, 1787, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:183.
AA to TJ, June 26, 1787, ibid., 1:178.
29. AA to TJ, July 6, 1787, ibid., 1:183–4.
AA to TJ, July 10, 1787, ibid., 1:186–7.
30. TJ to AA, July 1, 1787, ibid., 1:179–80.
TJ to JA, July 1, 1787, ibid., 1:180–2. Mr. Jefferson was reportedly strolling along the Seine in September of 1786 with Maria Cosway, the delicate wife of the miniature painter. He was in high spirits, fell, and dislocated his wrist. The next month, he referred to the accident in a letter to Colonel Smith as a long story, “one of those follies from which good cannot come but ill may.” One possible reason that Jefferson chose not to leave Paris for Polly was his expectation of a visit from Mrs. Cosway.
AA to TJ, July 6, 1787, ibid., 1:183–4.
31. AA to TJ, July 10, 1787, ibid., 1:185.
AA to MC, July 16, 1787, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:179–80.
32. JA to TJ, July 10, 1787, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:187.
AA to TJ, June 27, 1787, ibid., 1:179.
33. AA to Lucy Cranch, April 26, 1787, The Abigail Adams Letters.
AA to MC, September 11, 1785, ibid.
AA Diary, July 20, 1787, DAJA, 3:203.
34. AA Diary, July 20, 1787, ibid.
35. AA to MC, September 15, 1787, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:183–4.
36. Ibid., 2:184–5.
37. Ibid., 2:189.
38. AA to Lucy Cranch, October 3, 1787, ibid., 2:191–4.
39. Ibid., 2:192–3.
40. Ibid., 2:196–7.
JA to TJ, March 1, 1787, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:176.
41. DAJA, 3:217, n. 7.
JA to CT, August 27, 1787, JA Letterbook, Reel 112, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
42. AA to MC, March 8, 1787, The Abigail Adams Letters.
DAJA, 3:211, n. 2.
43. AA to MW, May 14, 1787, Warren-Adams Letters, 2:290.
JA to TJ, March 1, 1787, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:176.
44. AA to TJ, September 10, 1787, ibid., 1:198.
TJ to AA, October 4, 1787, ibid., 1:201.
45. TJ to JA, August 30, 1787, ibid., 1:195.
TJ to AA, October 4, 1787, ibid., 1:201.
46. AA to TJ, December 5, 1787, ibid., 1:213.
47. TJ to JA, November 13, 1787, ibid., 1:211.
JA to CT, February 12, 1788, courtesy of The New-York Historical Society, New York.
48. AA to MC, May 11, 1787, The Abigail Adams Letters.
The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, eds. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. xix.
49. AA to MC, May 25, 1786, The Abigail Adams Letters.
AA to MC, October 20, 1787, ibid.
AA to MC, February 10, 1788, ibid.
AA to MC, September 12, 1786, ibid.
50. AA to MC, February 10, 1788, ibid.
AA to MC, September 11, 1785, ibid.
51. AA to TJ, February 26, 1788, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:227.
52. JA to AA, March 11, 1788, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:110–1.
JA to AA, March 14, 1788, ibid., 2:111–2.
53. JA to AA, March 11, 1788, ibid., 2:110–1.
JA to AA, March 14, 1788, ibid., 2:111–2.
54. TJ to AA, February 2, 1788, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:222.
AA to TJ, February 21, 1788, ibid., 1:226–7.
55. AA to TJ, February 21, 1788, ibid.
56. AA Diary, March 30, 1788, DAJA, 3:214–5. Esther Field was pregnant, apparently, at the time she married John Briesler, according to a letter from ESP to MC, May 8, 1788, Library of Congress: “I am very sorry Esther has mortified and grieved sister by her foolish conduct. Why did not the silly girl read her Bible and be married before?… I pity sister—for, instead of Esther’s being any help, she will require herself the kindest assistance. If she should be aboard ship, it must be dreary.”
AA to AAS, May 29, 1788, Journal and Correspondence, 2:78–9.
16. In a Flurry with Politics
1. Massachusetts Centinel, June 18, 1788.
Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:266.
2. AA to AAS, July 7, 1788, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 2:84–6.
AAS to AA, August 13, 1788, ibid., 2:93.
3. AA to AAS, July 7, 1788, ibid., 2:84–6.
4. JA to Thomas Brand-Hollis, December 3, 1788, The Works of John. Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56), 9:557.
JA to Benjamin Rush, December 2, 1788, ibid., 9:556.
5. JA to Benjamin Rush, December 2, 1788, ibid.
JA to AAS, July 16, 1788, Journal and Correspondence, 2:87.
AAS to AA, September 7, 1788, ibid., 2:97.
JA to AAS, November 11, 1788, ibid., 2:105.
6. JA to AAS, July 16, 1788, ibid., 2:87–9.
7. AAS to JA, July 27, 1788, ibid., 2:89–93.
8. Ibid.
AAS to AA, October 5, 1788, ibid., 2:102–3.
9. AAS to JA, July 27, 1788, ibid., 2:90–2.
JA to AAS, July 16, 1788, ibid., 2:88–9.
AAS to AA, October 5, 1788, ibid., 2:102–3.
10. JA to AA, December 2, 1788, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:113–4.
11. JA to William McCreary, September 1788, JA Letterbook, Reel 93, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
12. JA to Thomas Brand-Hollis, December 3, 1788, JA Works, 9:557.
Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 145–6.
13. AA to ESP, September 27, 1789, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:203.
14. AA to MC, June 28, 1789, New Letters of Abigail Adams, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947), p. 12.
AA to MC, June 19, 1789, ibid., p. 11.
15. Originally owned by Abraham Mortier, the house, called Richmond Hill, stood near what now is called Macdougal Street. John rented it from a Mrs. Jephson. It was bought on June 17, 1797, by Aaron Burr, moved, turned into a theater, and then torn down in 1849.
JA to AA, May 14, 1789, Letters of JA, 2:115–6.
AA to MC, January 24, 1789, New Letters, p. 7.
16. AA to ESP, September 27, 1789, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:201–2.
AA to Thomas Brand-Hollis, September 6, 1790, ibid., 2:204–5.
17. AA to MC, June 28, 1789, New Letters, pp. 12–4.
AA to MC, January 24, 1789, ibid., pp. 7–8.
AA to MC, August 9, 1789, ibid., p. 19.
AA to William Smith, August 1789, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
18. AA to MC, July 12, 1789, New Letters, p. 17.
AA to MC, August 9, 1789, ibid., p. 20.
AA to MC, November 3, 1789, ibid., p. 33.
19. AA to MC, August 9, 1789, ibid., p. 20.
AA to MC, November 1, 1789, ibid., p. 31.
AA to MC, November 3, 1789, ibid., p. 33.
20. AA to MC, August 9, 1789, ibid., p. 22.
AA to MC, September 1, 1789, ibid., pp. 22–3.
AA to MC, July 12, 1789, ibid., pp. 14–5.
21. AA to MC, October 11, 1789, ibid., pp. 29–30.
AA to MC, January 5, 1790, ibid., p. 35.
AA to MC, June 28, 1789, ibid., p. 13.
AA to MC, July 12, 1789, ibid., p. 15.
22. AA to MC, June 28, 1789, ibid., p. 13.
23. Description based on Wollaston’s painting of Martha Washington in The Writings of George Washington, Jared Sparks, ed., 12 vols. (Boston: American Stationers’ Company, 1837) 1:105, see facing page.
Ibid, 1:457, note, “So little remains, which is known to have come from the pen of this lady.…”
Janet Whitney, Abigail Adams (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1947), p. 295.
24. Martha Washington to MW, December 26, 1789, The Writings of George Washington, 1:457–9, n. Janet Whitney, Abigail Adams (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1947), p. 295.
AA to MC, July 12, 1789, New Letters, p. 15.
AA to MC, October 11, 1789, ibid., p. 30.
25. AA to MC, July 12, 1789, ibid., p. 15.
26. Ibid.
27. AA to MC, January 5, 1790, ibid., p. 35.
28. Ibid.
29. AA to MC, May 30, 1790, ibid., p. 49.
30. AA to MC, September 1, 1789, ibid., p. 23.
AA to MC, January 5, 1790, ibid., p. 36.
AA to MC, March 15, 1790, ibid., p. 41.
AA to CT, January 18, 1790, [courtesy of] The New-York Historical Society, New York.
31. AA to CT, April 18, 1790, [Courtesy of] The New-York Historical Society.
32. AA to MC, August 9, 1789, New Letters, pp. 19–21.
33. Ibid, pp. 20–1.
34. JA to Alexander Jardine, June 1, 1790, JA Works, 9:567.
JA to Richard Price, April 19, 1790, ibid., 9:563–5.
35. JA to James Sullivan, September 17, 1789, ibid., 9:562.
JA to Alexander Jardine, June 1, 1790, ibid., 9:567.
JA to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1790, 9:565.
John Adams, “Discourses on Davila” in The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), pp. 125–35.
36. John Adams, “A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” in Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment (New York: George Braziller, 1965), p. 255.
37. JA to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1790, JA Works, 9:565.
AA to MC, August 9, 1789, New Letters, p. 21.
38. AA to MC, September 1, 1789, ibid., pp. 24–6. Church’s poem is reprinted in a footnote to this letter.
39. Ibid., p. 26, quoting a favorite proverb of Abigail’s: “As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.”
40. AA to MC, March 21, 1790, ibid., p. 43.
AA to MC, April 3, 1790, ibid., p. 44.
AA to MC, April 21, 1790, ibid., p. 46.
AA to MC, September 1, 1789, ibid., p. 23.
41. AA to MC, April 28, 1790, ibid., pp. 46–8.
AA to MC, May 30, 1790, ibid., pp. 48–9.
42. AA to CT, October 5, 1789, [Courtesy of] The New-York Historical Society.
AA to MC, June 13, 1790, New Letters, p. 51.
43. AA to MC, July 27, 1790, ibid., p. 55, n. 4.
AA to MC, September 1, 1789, ibid., p. 23.
Hamilton’s proposal for funding debts incurred by the United States was taken up during the second session of the first Congress. Three major points of frenzied debate revolved around: 1) foreign debt of $11,710,378, due France, Holland, and Spain; 2) domestic debt, incurred by the Continental Congress, amounting to $42,414,085; and 3) state debts of $25,000,000. Agreement was reached that foreign and domestic debts be paid; state debts were assumed to the amount of $21,500,000. James Schouler, History of the United States of America under the Constitution, rev. ed in 7 vols. (1880–1894; reprinted, New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1970), pp. 145, 155.
44. AA to MC, August 29, 1790, ibid., pp. 57–8.
AA to MC, August 8, 1790, New Letters, p. 56.
Some 25 Creek warriors, led by Andrew McGillivray, the half-breed son of a Scottish-born Tory father, arrived in New York on July 21, 1790. The next day, Washington approved an act of Congress which forbade all trade with Indian tribes without a license from the President, and prohibited purchase of Indian lands except under government authority. For further details see Schouler, History, 1:171–2.
45. AA to MC, October 3, 1790, New Letters, p. 59.
AA to CT, October 3, 1790, [Courtesy of] The New-York Historical Society.
AA to MC, October 10, 1790, New Letters, pp. 60–1.
46. AA to CT, October 3, 1790, [Courtesy of] The New-York Historical Society.
AA to MC, October 10, 1790, New Letters, p. 61.
47. AA to MC, October 10, 1790, ibid., pp. 60–1.
AA to MC, October 25, 1790, ibid., p. 63.
17. A Prospect of Calamities
1. AA to AAS, November 21, 1790, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:207–9, 213.
2. Ibid., 2:209.
AA to AAS, November 28, 1790, ibid., 2:210.
3. AA to AAS, November 21, 1790, ibid., 2:207.
AA to MC, January 9, 1791, New Letters of Abigail Adams, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947), p. 67.
4. AA to ESP, March 20, 1791, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:222.
AA to AAS, December 26, 1790, ibid., 2:211.
AA to AAS, January 8, 1791, ibid., 2:213–4.
5. AA to AAS, December 26, 1790, ibid., 2:212.
AA to ESP, March 20, 1791, ibid., 2:221–2.
6. AA to CT, March 11, 1791, [Courtesy of] The New-York Historical Society, New York.
7. Ibid.
8. AA to MC, December 12, 1790, New Letters, p. 67.
AA to CT, April 2, 1790, [Courtesy of] The New-York Historical Society.
AA to ESP, March 20, 1791, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:221–2.
9. AA to JQA, September 9, 1790, Reel 374, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
10. Ibid.
11. JQA to JA, August 9, 1790, ibid.
12. August 14, 1756, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964) 1:41.
JQA to JA, August 9, 1790, Reel 374, Adams Papers.
13. JQA to JA, August 9, 1790, ibid.
JQA to AA, August 14, 1790, ibid.
14. JA to JQA, October 4, 1790, ibid.
15. AA to JQA, August 20, 1790, ibid.
16. JQA to AA, August 14, 1790, ibid.
17. AAS to JQA, June 6, 1790, Reel 373, Adams Papers.
18. James Bridges to JQA, January 28, 1790, ibid.
AAS to JQA, April 18, 1790, ibid.
19. AAS to JQA, April 18, 1790, ibid.
AAS to JQA, June 6, 1790, ibid.
20. ESP to AA, September 28, 1790, Reel 374, Adams Papers.
MC to AA, December 12, 1790, ibid.
21. JQA to AA, August 14, 1790, ibid.
AA to JQA, August 20, 1790, ibid.
AA to JQA, September 3, 1790, ibid.
Another young woman named Nancy, the future Mrs. Lyle, said to have been admired by John Quincy and his mother, was the niece of William Hamilton, from whom the Adamses rented Bush Hill in Philadelphia. Bush Hill was named and built by Andrew Hamilton, who died in 1740, one year after its completion. It was passed on to James Hamilton and then to his nephew William. Encyclopedia of Philadelphia, by Joseph Jackson (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the National Historic Association), 2:354 and Ashmead’s newspaper cuttings, vol. 10, pp. 54–55.
22. AA to JQA, September 22, 1790, Reel 374, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, August 20, 1790, ibid.
23. AA to JQA, September 22, 1790, ibid.
24. JQA to AA, August 29, 1790, ibid.
25. James Bridges to JQA, September 28, 1790, ibid.
26. AA to JQA, November 7, 1790, ibid.
JQA to AA, October 7, 1790, ibid.
27. AA to JQA, November 7, 1790, ibid.
28. Ibid.
JQA to AA, November 20, 1790, ibid.
AA to JQA, December 26, 1790, ibid.
29. JQA to AA, November 20, 1790, ibid.
AA to JQA, December 26, 1790, ibid.
30. JQA to AA, November 20, 1790, ibid.
James Bridges to JQA, April 20, 1791, ibid.
JQA to TBA, April 2, 1791, ibid.
JQA to TBA, April 20, 1791, ibid.
31. JA to JQA, June 1791, Reel 375, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, April 18, 1791, Reel 374, Adams Papers.
32. James Bridges to JQA, September 28, 1790, ibid.
33. JQA to TBA, October 28, 1791, Reel 375, Adams Papers.
34. James Bridges to JQA, June 1791–December 1792, ibid.
James Bridges to JQA, January 23, 1792, ibid.
35. AA to MC, December 12, 1790, New Letters, pp. 66–7.
AA to AAS, December 26, 1790, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:211–2.
AA to JQA, December 26, 1790, Reel 374, Adams Papers.
WSS to Benjamin Walker, June 22, 1792, Katharine Metcalf Roof, Colonel William Smith and Lady (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929), p. 215.
36. AA to MC, December 12, 1790, New Letters, pp. 67.
AA to MC, January 9, 1791, ibid., p. 68.
37. AAS to Lucy Cranch, May 6, 1785, The Abigail Adams Letters, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
AA to AAS, January 25, 1791, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:216.
AA to AAS, February 21, 1791, ibid., 2:218.
38. AA to AAS, January 8, 1791, ibid., 2:214.
AA to AAS, February 21, 1791, ibid., 2:218–9.
39. AA to AAS, January 8, 1791, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:212–3.
40. AA to AAS, January 25, 1791, ibid., 2:216.
41. JA to WSS, March 14, 1791, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 2:111–2.
42. AA to WSS, March 16, 1791, ibid., 2:108–9.
43. AA to AAS, January 25, 1791, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:216.
Autobiography, January 1776, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 3:330.
44. The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:240.
The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip S. Foner (Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1974), p. 244.
Thomas Paine, “Rights of Man,” in The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine, p. 251.
45. The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 226.
JA to TJ, July 15, 1813, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:357–8.
46. See chap. 16, nn. 35–39 and accompanying text.
“Rights of Man,” in The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine, p. 251.
47. JA to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1790, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56), 9:565. Also, 6:232–7; 246–8; 252; 274–7.
48. JA to Marquis de Lafayette, May 21, 1782, JA Works, 7:593.
49. AA to CT, June 14, 1791, [Courtesy of] The New-York Historical Society.
JA to Marquis de Lafayette, May 21, 1782, JA Works, 7:593.
50. JA to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1790, JA Works, 9:565.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
Selected Writings of JA and JQA, p. 225.
53. Ibid., p. 226.
54. Ibid.
55. John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, The Life of John Adams, 2 vols. (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1968), 2:150–1.
56. TJ to JA, July 17, 1791, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:245–6.
57. Ibid., 1:246.
58. TJ to George Washington, May 8, 1791, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University, ed. Julian Boyd, 21 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950–), 20:291.
TJ to James Madison, May 9, 1791, ibid., 20:293.
TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, July 3, 1791, The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: The Modern Library, 1972), p. 505.
59. JA to TJ, July 29, 1791, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:247–8.
60. Ibid., 1:249.
61. Ibid., 1:248–9.
The American Enlightenment, ed. Adrienne Koch (New York: George Braziller, 1965), p. 261.
62. JA to TJ, July 29, 1791, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:249.
63. Ibid., 1:250.
64. TJ to JA, August 30, 1791, ibid., 1:250–1.
65. Ibid., 1:251–2.
AA to TJ, May 20, 1804, ibid., 1:269.
66. AA to MC, October 30, 1791, New Letters, p. 74.
AA to MC, December 18, 1791, ibid., pp. 74–5.
67. AA to MC, December 12, 1790, ibid., pp. 65–6.
AA to AAS, December 26, 1790, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:210–1.
AA to ESP, March 20, 1791, ibid., 2:220–1.
AA to MC, February 5, 1792, New Letters, p. 77.
AA to MC, March 20, 1792, ibid., pp. 78–9.
AA to MC, April 20, 1792, ibid., pp. 81–2.
68. AA to MC, February 5, 1792, ibid., p. 77.
69. Roof, Col. Smith, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929), pp. 210–2, 232.
AA to MC, March 29, 1792, New Letters, p. 80.
70. JA to AA, April 15, 1794, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:155–6.
71. JA to AA, January 9, 1793, ibid., 2:117–8.
JA to AA, May 17, 1794, ibid., 2:160.
JA to AA, January 5, 1795, ibid., 2:173.
72. JA to AA, April 3, 1794, ibid., 2:150–1.
JA to AA, January 22, 1794, ibid., 2:139.
JA to AA, January 24, 1793, ibid., 2:122.
73. JA to AA, December 19, 1793, ibid., 2:134.
74. JA to AAS, October 29, 1792, Journal and Correspondence, 2:124.
JA to AA, December 4, 1796, Letters of JA, 2:232–3.
JA to AAS, January 7, 1794, Journal and Correspondence, 2:127, 130.
JA to AA, March 2, 1794, Letters of JA, 2:145.
JA to AA, December 5, 1793, ibid., 2:130–1.
AA to AAS, February 3, 1794, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:224.
75. JA to AA, April 3, 1794, Letters of JA, 2:150.
JA to AA, January 24, 1793, ibid., 2:121.
AA to TBA, November 8, 1796, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:232.
76. Ibid.
JA to AA, March 1, 1796, Letters of JA, 2:206.
77. JA to AA, November 19, 1794, ibid., 2:167.
78. JA to AA, February 20, 1796, Letters of JA, 2:203.
79. Washington was reelected with 132 votes; George Clinton received 50 votes from the anti-Federalist opposition.
JA to AA, January 9, 1793, ibid., 2:117.
JA to AA, December 19, 1793, ibid., 2:133.
JA to AA, April 19, 1794, ibid., 2:156–7.
JA to AA, April 16, 1796, ibid., 2:221.
80. JA to AA, January 7, 1796, ibid., 2:189.
81. Ibid.
JA to AA, February 15, 1796, ibid., 2:201–2.
82. JA to AA, February 10, 1796, ibid., 2:197–8.
JA to AA, February 15, 1796, ibid., 2:202.
18. A Sense of the Obligations
1. AA to Elbridge Gerry, December 31, 1796, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 57:499 (1923–24).
2. Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 154.
AA to TBA, November 8, 1796, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:232.
AA to Elbridge Gerry, December 31, 1796, MHS Proceedings, 57:499.
3. AA to TBA, November 8, 1796, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:232.
4. JA to Thomas Welsh, March 10, 1797, JA Letterbook, Reel 117, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
AA to TBA, November 8, 1796, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:231.
5. TJ to JA, December 28, 1796, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959) 1:262–3.
Jefferson, who resigned as Secretary of State on July 31, 1793, actually left office that December 31. Jefferson was pro-France, Washington less so, and inclined to consult Hamilton on foreign affairs.
6. TJ to JA, December 28, 1796, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:263.
7. Ibid., 1:262, n. 54.
TJ to James Madison, January 1, 1797, The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: The Modern Library, 1972), p. 539.
8. TJ to James Madison, January 1, 1797, ibid., pp. 539–40.
9. AA to Elbridge Gerry, December 31, 1796, MHS Proceedings, 57:499.
10. JA to Henry Knox, March 30, 1797, JA Letterbook, Reel 117, Adams Papers.
11. JA to Tristram Dalton, January 19, 1797, JA Letterbook, Reel 117, Adams Papers.
JA to Elbridge Gerry, February 20, 1797, JA Letterbook, Reel 117, Adams Papers.
12. TJ to Elbridge Gerry, May 13, 1797, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 540–1.
13. TJ to Philip Mazzei, April 24, 1796, ibid., p. 537.
14. Ibid.
TJ to Elbridge Gerry, May 13, 1797, ibid., p. 541.
15. AA to Elbridge Gerry, December 31, 1796, MHS Proceedings, 57:500.
JA to Thomas Welsh, March 10, 1797, JA Letterbook, Reel 117, Adams Papers.
16. AA to Elbridge Gerry, December 31, 1796, MHS Proceedings, 57:500.
17. Ibid., 57:499.
AA to TBA, November 8, 1796, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:232.
18. AA to JA, February 8, 1797, ibid., 2:235–6.
19. JA to AA, February 9, 1797, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:243.
JA to AA, March 5, 1797, ibid., 2:244–5.
20. JA to AA, March 5, 1797, ibid.
21. The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–1856), 9:105–11.
22. JA to AA, March 5, 1797, Letters of JA, 2:245.
JA to AA, March 9, 1797, ibid., 2:247.
JA to AA, March 17, 1797, ibid., 2:252.
23. JA to AA, March 9, 1797, ibid., 2:247.
JA to AA, March 13, 1797, ibid., 2:250.
24. JA to AA, March 17, 1797, ibid., 2:252.
25. JA to AA, March 9, 1797, ibid., 2:248.
JA to AA, March 13, 1797, ibid., 2:250.
JA to AA, April 24, 1797, ibid., 2:253.
26. AA to JA, April 26, 1797, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:236–7.
27. AA to MC, May 5, 1797, New Letters of Abigail Adams, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947), p. 88.
AA to MC, May 16, 1797, ibid., p. 89.
JA to AA, March 2, 1793, Letters of JA, 2:128–9.
28. JA to AA, March 2, 1793, ibid., 2:129.
29. AA to MC, May 16, 1797, New Letters, p. 89.
30. AA to MC, April 30, 1797, ibid., p. 87.
AA to MC, May 16, 1797, ibid., pp. 89–90.
31. AA to MC, May 16, 1797, ibid., p. 90.
AA to MC, May 24, 1797, ibid., p. 91.
32. JA to JQA, March 31, 1797, James Schouler, History of the United States of America under the Constitution, rev ed. in 7 vols. (1880–1894; reprint ed., New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1970), 1: 363–7, 385.
AA to MC, May 16, 1797, New Letters, p. 90.
33. JA to AA, April 24, 1797, Letters of JA, 2:254.
AA to MC, May 24, 1797, New Letters, pp. 91–2.
34. Schouler, 1:356.
35. AA to TBA, November 8, 1796, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:233.
AA to MC, June 3, 1797, New Letters, p. 94.
36. AA to MC, June 3, 1797, ibid., pp. 94–5.
37. AA to MC, May 24, 1797, ibid., p. 92.
38. Aurora, May 19–20, 1797.
39. Aurora, May 20, 1797, June 6, 1797.
40. AA to MC, June 3, 1797, New Letters, p. 94.
Schouler, 1:367.
AA to MC, June 23, 1797, New Letters, p. 99.
41. Aurora, June 6, 1797.
AA to MC, June 3, 1797, New Letters, p. 95.
Aurora, January 30, 1797.
42. AA to MC, June 23, 1797, New Letters, p. 99.
AA to MC, June 6, 1797, ibid., p. 96.
AA to MC, June 3, 1797, ibid., p. 95.
43. George Washington to JA, February 20, 1797, Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington, 12 vols. (Boston: Russell, Shattuck, and Williams, 1836), 11:188.
44. JQA to AA, November 14, 1796, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874–77), 1:194.
45. AA to MC, June 3, 1797, New Letters, p. 95.
AA to William Smith, December 18, 1797, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
JA to JQA, June 2, 1797, JA Letterbook, Reel 117, Adams Papers.
46. AA to MC, June 8, 1797, New Letters, pp. 96–7.
47. Ibid., p. 97.
48. AA to William Smith, November 21, 1797, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to MC, December 26, 1797, New Letters, p. 120.
AA to MC (enclosed with letter of December 12, 1797), ibid., pp. 118–9.
49. AA to MC, June 23, 1797, ibid., pp. 98–9.
AA to MC, July 21, 1797, ibid., p. 104.
50. AA to MC, July 6, 1797, ibid., p. 101.
AA to MC, July 19, 1797, ibid., p. 104.
AA to MC, July 29, 1797, ibid., pp. 106–7.
AA to MC, June 23, 1797, ibid., p. 99.
AA to William Smith, July 19, 1797, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to William Smith, July 29, 1797, ibid.
51. Abigail was indirectly related to the Greenleafs. James Greenleaf’s sister, Anna, married Abigail’s nephew, William Cranch; William’s sister, Lucy, married Greenleaf’s brother, John.
AA to MC, June 8, 1797, New Letters, p. 97.
AA to MC, July 29, 1797, ibid., p. 106.
52. AA to MC, June 8, 1797, ibid., pp. 97–8.
AA to MC, February 21, 1798, ibid., pp. 134–5.
53. AA to MC, July 6, 1797, ibid., pp. 100–1.
Ibid.
Blount was expelled from Congress on July 8, 1797, found guilty “of a high misdemeanour, entirely inconsistent with his public trust and duty as a Senator.” Impeachment proceedings foundered when the exiled Blount was elected to Tennessee’s Senate and, as its president, declined to appear before the Senate in person. Blount was abetted further by his lawyer, who claimed his client, having already been expelled from the Senate, was no longer subject to impeachment under regulations of the federal Constitution. “And so, like most later ones, the first of federal impeachment trials in our history was lost in legal convolutions,” James Schouler concluded in his History of the United States, dated 1880.
54. AA to MC, July 6, 1797, New Letters, p. 101.
AA to MC, July 11, 1797, ibid., p. 103.
AA to MC, July 19, 1797, ibid., p. 104.
55. AA to William Smith, June 10, 1797, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to William Smith, July 19, 1797, ibid.
56. July 26, 1797, JQA Memoirs, 1:199.
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Sentry ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961), p. 17.
JA to JQA, October 25, 1797, JA Letterbook, Reel 119, Adams Papers.
57. The Education of Henry Adams, p. 17.
JQA to AA, February 28, 1796, Reel 381, Adams Papers.
58. AA to JA, March 20, 1796, Reel 381, Adams Papers.
CA to JQA, April 24, 1796, ibid.
59. AA to JQA, February 29, 1796, ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. JQA to AA, February 20, 1796, ibid.
JQA to AA, February 28, 1796, ibid.
JQA to AA, March 20, 1796, ibid.
JQA to AA, March 30, 1796, ibid.
62. JA to JQA, May 19, 1796, ibid.
AA to JQA, May 20, 1796, ibid.
63. AA to JQA, May 25, 1796, ibid.
AA to TBA, June 10, 1796, ibid.
64. JQA to AA, February 8, 1797, Reel 383, Adams Papers.
65. JQA to LCA, June 2. 1796, Reel 381, Adams Papers.
JQA to AA, June 30, 1796, ibid.
66. JQA to AA, May 5, 1796, ibid.
67. JQA to AA, January 18, 1797, Reel 383, Adams Papers.
JQA to AA, February 8, 1797, ibid.
JQA to AA, June 30, 1796, Reel 381, Adams Papers.
68. JQA to AA, May 5, 1796, Reel 383, Adams Papers.
JQA to LCA, February 7, 1797, Reel 383, ibid. See also January 20, 1797.
JQA to LCA, February 12, 1797, Reel 383, Adams Papers.
69. Joshua Johnson to JQA, November 29, 1796, Reel 382, Adams Papers.
Joshua Johnson to JQA, December 16, 1796, ibid.
JQA to Joshua Johnson, January 9, 1797, Reel 383, Adams Papers.
JQA to LCA, January 10, 1797, ibid.
JQA to LCA, January 7, 1797, ibid.
70. JQA to LCA, January 10, 1797, ibid.
71. LCA to JQA, January 17, 1797, ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. JQA to AA, January 18, 1797, ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. JQA to AA, July 6, 1797, Reel 385, Adams Papers.
JQA to JA, July 22, 1797, ibid.
AA to ESP, September 25, 1797, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
78. JQA and LCA to JA and AA, July 28, 1797, Reel 385, Adams Papers.
79. August 5, 1828, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vols. 1–2 ed. Aida Dipace Donald and David Donald, 6 vols. to date (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1964), 2:264, n. 1.
Louisa Catherine Adams, The Adventures of a Nobody, Reel 269, Adams Papers.
80. Ibid.
81. AA to William Cranch, November 19, 1797, Reel 386, Adams Papers.
82. AA to MC, October 31, 1797, New Letters, p. 110.
AA to MC, December 12, 1797, ibid., p. 116.
83. AA to MC, November 15, 1797, New Letters, p. 111.
84. AA to MC, October 22, 1797, ibid., pp. 108–9.
AA to MC, November 15, 1797, ibid., pp. 110–1.
AA to MC, December 26, 1797, ibid., p. 120.
85. AA to MC, October 31, 1797, ibid., p. 109.
AA to MC, November 15, 1797, ibid., p. 111.
86. AA to MC, October 31, 1797, ibid., pp. 109–10.
AA to MC, November 15, 1797, ibid., p. 111.
AA to MC, November 28, 1797, ibid., p. 113.
AA to MC, February 6, 1798, ibid., pp. 130–1.
87. AA to MC, April 26, 1798, ibid., p. 166.
AA to MC, February 6, 1798, ibid., p. 130.
AA to MC, January 5, 1798, ibid., p. 123.
88. AA to MC, January 20, 1798, ibid., p. 124.
89. Ibid., pp. 124–5.
90. AA to MC, February [1–5], 1798, ibid., pp. 126–8.
For an example of Abigail’s ardent public-relations efforts on behalf of the President, it is worth looking at her letter to Mrs. Cranch on February 28, 1798. She notes here that she had seen a copy of the Columbian Centinel of February 17 in which she recognizes her own writing: “I saw the centinal last Saturday and thought I knew my own Letter, but did not know whether it was an extract from one to you, or to Mr. Smith, to whom I sometimes freely scrible.” The letter in the Centinel, signed “A Correspondent,” was edited for publication, most likely, by Richard Cranch. The letter reads: “A writer in the Chronicle of yesterday, under the signature of Plain Truth asserts ‘that the President of the United States received dispatches from France a month ago, notwithstanding which the most profound secrecy has been maintained on this all-important subject.’ Under this assertion, the writer proceeds to abuse the President and deceive the public. To prevent this incendiary from deceiving the public, you may from good authority declare the assertion of Plain Truth, to be without the least foundation. By letters from Philadelphia to the 6th February, not a word at that time had been received by the Executive from our envoys at Paris. Letters had been received from Mr. King as late as October, and from Mr. Murray, at the Hague, to the 10th November. Those gentlemen at that time were as much in the dark with respect to our Envoys, as we are here. The character of the President for patriotism and integrity is too firmly fixed with every true American, to be injured in the least by the abuse of such a vile incendiary as Plain Truth.” New Letters, p. 136, n. 1.
91. AA to MC, February 15, 1798, New Letters, p. 133.
92. Ibid.
AA to MC, February 28, 1798, ibid., p. 137.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
95. AA to MC, March 27, 1798, ibid., pp. 147–8.
AA to MC, March 13, 1798, ibid., pp. 143–4.
96. Ibid.
AA to MC, March 14, 1798, ibid., p. 145.
97. AA to MC, March 13, 1798, ibid., pp. 143–4.
AA to MC, March 27, 1798, ibid., p. 148.
98. AA to MC, March 13, 1798, ibid., p. 144.
19. Enough of Public and Private Anxiety
1. AA to MC, April 26, 1798, New Letters of Abigail Adams, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947), pp. 164–5.
Joseph Hopkinson, “Hail Columbia” adapted to the President’s March sung at the theater by Mr. Gilbert Fox (Philadelphia: J. Ormrod, 1798).
2. AA to MC, April 26, 1798, New Letters, pp. 164–5.
3. AA to MC, April 26, 1798, New Letters, pp. 164–5.
AA to William Shaw, March 20, 1798, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
4. AA to MC, April 26, 1798, New Letters, p. 165.
James Schouler, History of the United States of America under the Constitution, rev. ed. in 7 vols. (1880–1894; reprinted, New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1970), 1:385–93.
AA to MC, April 22, 1798, New Letters, p. 162.
5. AA to MC, April 4, 1798, ibid., p. 151, n. 3. (Mention has been made of a fourth agent, Madame de Villette, widow of a Royalist Colonel.)
Schouler, 1:385–93.
JA to Congress, March 19, 1798, John Adams, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1850–1856), vol. 9:156.
AA to MC, March 20, 1798, New Letters, p. 196.
6. AA to MC, April 4, 1798, ibid., pp. 150–1.
7. Ibid., p. 151.
8. Ibid., p. 152.
9. Ibid.
AA to MC, July 3, 1798, ibid., p. 199.
AA to William Smith, April 8, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
AA to MC, April 7, 1798, New Letters, p. 154.
AA to MW, April 25, 1798, Warren-Adams Letters, 2 vols. (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925), 2:337.
10. AA to William Smith, April 8, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to MC, May 20, 1798, New Letters, p. 176.
AA to AAS, April 11, 1798, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 2:151–2.
11. AA to AAS, April 11, 1798, ibid., 2:152.
AA to MC, April 13, 1798, New Letters, p. 156.
12. AA to MC, May 18, 1798, ibid., p. 175.
AA to MC, April 22, 1798, ibid., p. 161.
AA to MC, April 13, 1798, ibid., p. 156.
AA to MC, May 10, 1798, ibid., pp. 171–2.
13. AA to AAS, April 11, 1798, Journal and Correspondence, 2:152.
AA to MC, March 20, 1798, New Letters, p. 147.
TJ to Phillip Mazzei, April 24, 1796, Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment (New York: George Braziller, 1965), p. 338.
James Madison to TJ. February 1798, ibid., p. 451.
AA to AAS, April 11, 1798, Journal and Correspondence, 2:153.
14. AA to MC, May 18, 1798, New Letters, p. 175.
AA to MC, May 20, 1798, ibid., p. 176.
15. AA to MC, May 18, 1798, ibid., p. 175.
AA to MC, May 21, 1798, ibid., p. 178.
AA to MC, May 20, 1798, ibid., p. 177.
16. AA to William Shaw, June 2, 1798, Shaw Family Papers.
17. Ibid.
18. AA to MC, May 21, 1798, New Letters, p. 178.
AA to William Shaw, June 2, 1798, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to MC, June 8, 1798, New Letters, p. 190.
19. AA to MC, June 13, 1798, ibid., p. 192.
20. Ibid.
21. AA to MW, June 17, 1798, Warren-Adams Letters, 2:339.
22. AA to MC, January 5, 1798, New Letters, p. 123.
AA to MW, June 17, 1798, Warren-Adams Letters, 2:339.
23. AA to MC, June 19, 1798, New Letters, p. 193.
AA to William Smith, June 26, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to MC, June 25, 1798, New Letters, p. 196.
24. AA to MC, July 3, 1798, ibid., p. 199.
AA to Catherine Johnson, June 6, 1798, Autograph File, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
AA to MC, June 25, 1798, New Letters, p. 196.
25. AA to MC, July 3, 1798, ibid., p. 199.
JA to George Washington, July 7, 1798, Dreer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
26. AA to MC, July 3, 1798, New Letters, p. 199.
AA to MC, July 9, 1798, ibid., p. 201.
27. AA to MC, July 17, 1798, ibid., p. 207.
28. AA to William Smith, July 17, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to William Smith, July 23, 1798, ibid.
29. AA to William Smith, July 23, 1798, ibid.
AA to MC, May 26, 1798, New Letters, p. 179.
30. AA to MC, June 19, 1798, ibid., p. 193.
AA to William Smith, July 23, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection.
31. AA to MC, April 26, 1798, New Letters, p. 166.
Aurora, July 2, 1798.
32. AA to William Smith, April 8, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection.
33. Alexander Hamilton to Jonathon Dayton, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett, 26 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–), 23:604.
Samuel Eliot Morrison, The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, 2 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1913), Vol. 1, p. 111.
34. AA to MC, May 26, 1798, New Letters, p. 179.
35. The Naturalization Act, June 18, 1798, U.S. Statutes at Large, 1:566; also reprinted in Documents of American History, ed. Henry Steele Commager, 2 vols. (Englewood Clifts, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1973) p. 175.
36. The Alien Act, June 25, 1798, U.S. Statutes at Large, 1:570; reprinted in Commager, p. 176.
37. The Alien Enemies Act, July 6, 1798, U.S. Statutes at Large, 1:577; reprinted in Commager, p. 177.
38. AA to MC, June 19, 1798, New Letters, p. 193.
The Sedition Act, July 14, 1798, U.S. Statutes at Large, 1:596–7; reprinted in Commager, pp. 177–8.
39. Sedition Act, Commager, p. 178.
40. September 2, 1836, The Diary of John Quincy Adams, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929), pp. 469–70.
41. November 16, 1798, “Kentucky Resolutions” in Commager, pp. 178–9.
December 24, 1798, “Virginia Resolutions,” ibid., pp. 179–80.
TJ to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799, The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: The Modern Library, 1972), p. 545.
42. JA to TJ, June 14, 1813, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:329.
JA to TJ, June 25, 1813, ibid., 2:334.
43. AA to TJ, July 1, 1804, ibid., 1:273.
44. Ibid.
45. AA to MC, March 5, 1798, New Letters, p. 141.
AA to MC, February 6, 1798, ibid., p. 130.
AA to MC, April 22, 1798, ibid., p. 163.
AA to MC, April 26, 1798, ibid., p. 166.
46. AA to MC, April 22, 1798, ibid., p. 160.
AA to MC, April 28, 1798, ibid., p. 167.
47. AA to MC, April 22, 1798, ibid., p. 160.
AA to MC, July 12, 1798, ibid., p. 202.
48. AA to MC, July 17, 1798, ibid., pp. 206–7.
49. AA to MC, June 27, 1798, ibid., p. 198.
AA to MC, April 4, 1798, ibid., p. 152.
JA to George Washington, October 9, 1798, JA Letterbook, Reel 119, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
JA to JQA, October 16, 1798, ibid.
20. Evils of a Serious Nature
1. JA to AA, November 28, 1798, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:255–6.
2. AA to William Shaw, December 14, 1798, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
3. Ibid.
AA to ESP, December 30, 1798, ibid.
4. JA to AA, December 13, 1798, Letters of JA, 2:256–7.
JA to AA, November 28, 1798, ibid., 2:256.
5. JA to AA, December 13, 1798, ibid., 2:257.
6. AA to Catherine Johnson, June 16, 1798, Autograph File, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
AA to William Shaw, December 14, 1798, Shaw Family Papers.
7. AA to William Shaw, March 4, 1799, ibid.
8. AA to William Smith, July 23, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. JA to WSS, December 19, 1798, JA Letterbook, Reel 117, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. JA to CA, December 21, 1798, ibid.
15. JA to WSS, May 22, 1799, JA Letterbook, Reel 119, Adams Papers.
16. AA to ESP, December 30, 1798, Shaw Family Papers.
17. Ibid.
AA to William Shaw, January 6, 1799, ibid.
18. AA to William Smith, December 26, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to William Smith, December 30, 1798, ibid.
AA to William Shaw, January 6, 1799, Shaw Family Papers.
19. AA to MC, January 17, 1799, New Letters of Abigail Adams, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947), p. 208.
AA to MC, June 13, 1798, ibid., p. 191.
AA to William Smith, December 28, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to William Smith, December 26, 1798, ibid.
20. Janet Whitney, Abigail Adams (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1947), p. 286.
AA to TBA, January 23, 1799, Reel 394, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, February 1, 1799, ibid.
JQA to AA, March 16, 1799, ibid.
AA to William Smith, December 28, 1798, Smith-Townsend Collection.
21. AA to MC, October 31, 1799, New Letters, pp. 210–1.
DAJA, 3:244–5.
TBA to JA, September 20, 1800, Reel 398, Adams Papers.
22. AA to MC, October 31, 1799, New Letters, pp. 210, 212.
23. AA to William Shaw, February 8, 1799, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to Catherine Johnson, June 16, 1798, Autograph File, Houghton Library.
24. AA to William Shaw, December 23(?), 1798, Shaw Family Papers.
25. AA to William Shaw, December 14, 1798, ibid.
AA to William Shaw, December 20, 1798, ibid.
26. AA to William Shaw, December 20, 1798, ibid.
27. AA to William Shaw, January 6, 1799, ibid.
AA to William Shaw, January 14, 1799, ibid.
28. AA to William Shaw, January 3, 1799, ibid.
AA to MC, February 15, 1798, New Letters, pp. 132, 133, n. 3.
29. AA to William Shaw, January 3, 1799, Shaw Family Papers.
30. AA to William Shaw, January 25, 1799, ibid.
31. AA to William Shaw, December 23, 1799, ibid.
32. Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976) p. 154.
John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, The Life of John Adams, 2 vols. (1871; reprint ed., New York: Haskell House Publishers Ltd., 1968) 2:235, 244, 256.
See generally Ch. 23–89, 1 Stat. 547–612 (1798). An Act to establish an Executive department, to be denominated the Department of the Navy, Ch. 35, 1 Stat. 553 (1798). An Act to declare the treaties heretofore concluded with France, no longer obligatory on the United States, Ch. 67, 1 Stat. 578 (1798). An Act for an additional appropriation to provide and support a Naval Armament, Ch. 23, 1 Stat. 547 (1798). An Act to authorize the President of the United States to cause to be purchased, or built, a number of small vessels to be equipped as galleys, or otherwise, Ch. 39, 1 Stat. 556 (1798). An Act further to protect the Commerce of the United States, Ch. 68, 1 Stat. 578 (1798). An Act more effectually to protect the Commerce and Coasts of the United States, Ch. 48, 1 Stat. 561 (1798). An Act to suspend the commercial intercourse between the United States and France, and the dependencies thereof, Ch. 53, 1 Stat. 565 (1798). An Act authorizing the President of the United States to raise a Provisional Army, Ch. 47, 1 Stat. 558 (1798).
33. Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, June 2, 1798, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett, 26 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–), 21:479.
34. Alexander Hamilton to James McHenry, June 27, 1799, ibid., 23:227.
35. AA to William Shaw, January 25, 1799, Shaw Family Papers.
36. “Du Pont and Talleyrand, 1798” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 49:63–5 (November 1915).
37. Ibid., 49:64–5, 75, n. 1.
38. Ibid., 49:65–6.
39. Ibid., 49:66–76.
40. Ibid., 49:76–8.
41. Life of JA, 2:260–7.
42. AA to William Shaw, December 20, 1798, Shaw Family Papers.
43. Life of JA, 2:271–3.
44. Ibid., 2:273–5.
Timothy Pickering to Alexander Hamilton, February 25, 1799, Hamilton Papers, 22:500.
Robert Liston, the British Minister to the United States to Lord Grenville, British Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs, February 22, 1799, ibid., 22:489, n. 3.
Theodore Sedgwick to Alexander Hamilton, February 19, 1799, ibid., 22:487–8.
45. Life of JA, 2:276–7.
46. Ibid., 2:280–1.
AA to William Shaw, March 4, 1799, Shaw Family Papers.
47. AA to William Shaw, March 9, 1799, ibid.
48. Ibid.
Life of JA, 2:282, 284.
49. AA to William Shaw, March 9, 1799, Shaw Family Papers.
50. AA to ESP, April 7, 1799, ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Life of JA, 2:286, 289–290.
53. Life of JA, 2:286–92.
AA to MC, December 30, 1799, New Letters, p. 224.
54. AA to MC, December 30, 1799, ibid.
55. AA to Elizabeth Smith, January 30, 1800, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to MC, January 28, 1800, New Letters, pp. 228, 230.
21. At Least Fall with Ease
1. JA to AA, October 25, 1799, Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841), 2:262–3.
2. AA to MC, October 31, 1799, New Letters of Abigail Adams, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947), pp. 210–2.
AA to MC, November 26, 1799, ibid., p. 216.
AA to MC, March 18, 1800, ibid., p. 242.
AA to MC, November 15, 1799, ibid., p. 214.
3. AA to MC, December 4, 1799, ibid., pp. 218 and 207, n. 2.
4. AA to William Smith, November 19, 1799, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
AA to MC, March 15, 1800, New Letters, pp. 238–9.
AA to William Smith, November 22, 1799, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to JQA, January 5, 1800, Reel 397, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
5. AA to MC, November 26, 1799, New Letters, pp. 216 and 213, n. 4.
AA to William Smith, November 22, 1799, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to William Smith, November 19, 1799, ibid.
6. New Letters, p. 236, n. 1
AA to MC, March 18, 1800, ibid., p. 239.
AA to William Smith, December 25, 1799, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to MC, December 11, 1799, New Letters, p. 221.
7. AA to William Smith, December 25, 1799, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to MC, December 30, 1799, New Letters, p. 225.
8. AA to MC, December 22, 1799, New Letters, p. 222.
9. AA to William Smith, December 25, 1799, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to William Smith, January 16, 1800, ibid.
AA to MC, [December] 31, [1799], New Letters, p. 226.
New Letters, p. 229, n. 1.
10. AA to MC, January 28, 1800, New Letters, p. 229.
11. Ibid, pp. 228–9.
12. Ibid., p. 229.
AA to MC, February 27, 1800, ibid, p. 235.
13. AA to MC, February 27, 1799, New Letters, p. 234.
14. AA to MC, March 5, 1800, ibid., p. 236.
AA to William Smith, January 16, 1800, Smith-Townsend Collection.
AA to MC, January 28, 1800, New Letters, p. 230.
AA to William Smith, March 3, 1800, Smith-Townsend Collection.
15. AA to MC, March 5, 1800, New Letters, pp. 236–7.
16. AA to MC, May 3, 1800, ibid., p. 250.
AA to MC, May 5, 1800, ibid., p. 251.
17. AA to MC, May 5, 1800, ibid.
AA to TJ, July 1, 1804, Abigail Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3d ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:252.
James Thomson Callender, The Prospect Before Us, 2 vols. Vol. 2 in 2 parts (Richmond: M. Jones, S. Pleasants and J. Lyon, 2, part 1:83, 1800–1), 1:67.
18. AA to William Smith, May 16, 1800, Smith-Townsend Collection.
John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, The Life of John Adams, 2 vols. (1871; reprint ed., New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1968), 2:302, 307–12.
James Schouler, History of the United States of America under the Constitution, rev. ed. in 7 vols. (1880–1894; reprinted, New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1970), 1:477.
19. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 355.
AA to MC, May 2, 1800, New Letters, p. 253.
20. AA to ESP, July 18, 1800, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
21. James Schouler, History, 1:432, 459–61, 475.
New Letters, p. 270.
Alexander Hamilton, Papers, 25:174, n.24.
22. AA to MC, May 5, 1800, New Letters, p. 252.
23. Life of JA, 2:314–5.
24. Ibid., 2:316–7.
25. Ibid., 2:311, 321, 325.
26. Ibid., 2:329, 337.
27. Ibid., 2:337.
Letter from Alexander Hamilton Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esquire, President of the United States. October 24, 1800, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 25:169–234.
28. Letter from Hamilton, ibid, p. 190–4.
29. Ibid, p. 233–4.
30. The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1854), 9:241–311.
JA to TJ, July 12, 1813, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:352–4.
New Letters, p. 258, n. 4.
31. AA to MC, November 21, 1800, ibid., p. 258.
AA to MC, November 10, 1800, New Letters, p. 255.
32. AA to MC, May 26, 1800, New Letters, p. 253.
AA to MC, November 10, 1800, ibid., p. 255.
33. AA to MC, December 8, 1800, ibid., p. 261.
JA to TJ, March 24, 1801, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:264.
34. ESP to William Shaw, December 27, 1800, Shaw Family Papers.
35. JQA to TBA, December 20, 1800, The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 256.
36. AA to TBA, November 13, 1800, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:237–9.
37. Ibid.
Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 156–7.
38. AA to TBA, November 13, 1800, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:238.
39. Ibid.
JA to AA, November 2, 1800, Letters of JA, 2:267.
40. Ibid.
41. AA to MC, November 10, 1800, New Letters, p. 255.
AA to MC, November 21, 1800, ibid., pp. 256–7.
42. AA to AAS, November 21, 1800, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:240–1.
AA to AAS, November 27, 1800, ibid., 2:243–4.
43. AA to ESP, undated fragment, probable date somewhere between November 16, 1800 and January 1801, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, 2:268.
AA to AAS, November 27, 1800, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:243.
44. AA to MC, November 21, 1800, New Letters, p. 257.
AA to AAS, November 21, 1800, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:242.
45. AA to AAS, November 21, 1800, ibid., 2:241–2.
46. AA to MC, February 7, 1801, New Letters, pp. 264–5.
47. Ibid., p. 265, quoting King John, act 3, sc. 4.
48. Ibid., p. 266.
49. Ibid., p. 265, n. 1.
AA to William Shaw, February 14, 1801, Shaw Family Papers.
50. JA to AA, February 16, 1801, Letters of JA.
TJ to AA, June 13, 1804, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:270.
The Judiciary Act reduced the Supreme Court to five members and increased the number of district judges to sixteen. Before this, Supreme Court justices traveled the circuit.
51. AA to ESP [see n. 43 above], Shaw Family Papers.
JA to CT, December 28, 1800, JA Letterbook, Reel 120, Adams Papers.
52. JA to Samuel Dexter, March 23, 1801, JA Works, 9:580–1.
53. AA to ESP [see n. 43 above], Shaw Family Papers.
54. Ibid.
AA to MC, January 15, 1801, New Letters, p. 263.
55. AA to ESP [see n. 43 above], Shaw Family Papers.
56. AA to WSS, May 3, 1801, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:245.
22. Faithful Are the Wounds
1. AA to JQA, September 23, 1801, Reel 401, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
JQA to JA, September 4, 1801, ibid.
JA to JQA, September 12, 1801, JA Letterbook, Reel 118, Adams Papers.
2. AA to JQA, September 23, 1801, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
AA to TBA, July 5, 1801, ibid.
3. AA to JQA, September 23, 1801, ibid.
LCA to JQA, October 4, 1801, ibid.
4. AA to JQA, September 23, 1801, ibid.
AA to TBA, July 5, 1801, ibid.
5. JQA to JA, September 4, 1801, ibid.
JQA to LCA, September 23, 1801, ibid.
LCA to JQA, September 16, 1801, ibid.
6. JQA to LCA, September 23, 1801, ibid.
JQA to LCA, September 29, 1801, ibid.
TBA to AA, October 24, 1801, ibid.
7. LCA to JQA, September 22, 1801, ibid.
JQA to LCA, September 29, 1801, ibid.
AA to TBA, December 27, 1801, ibid.
8. AA to TBA, December 27, 1801, ibid.
9. Louisa Catherine Adams, The Adventures of a Nobody, Reel 269, Adams Papers.
Louisa Catherine Adams, Record of a Life, Reel 265, Adams Papers.
Mrs. John Quincy Adams’s Narrative of a Journey from St. Petersburg to Paris in February 1815 was published in Scribner’s magazine in October 1903, with an introduction written by her grandson Brooks Adams.
10. Adventures of a Nobody, Reel 269, Adams Papers.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. LCA to George Washington Adams, June 25, 1825, Reel 470, Adams Papers.
16. Adventures of a Nobody, Reel 269, Adams Papers.
Record of a Life, Reel 265, Adams Papers.
17. Record of a Life, ibid.
18. Adventures of a Nobody, Reel 269, Adams Papers.
Record of a Life, Reel 265, Adams Papers.
JQA to LCA, October 8, 1801, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
19. Adventures of a Nobody, Reel 269, Adams Papers.
20. AA to MC, April 16, 1800, Reel 397, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, April 27, 1800, ibid.
AA to Catherine Johnson, March 20, 1802, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
21. Adventures of a Nobody, Reel 269, Adams Papers.
LCA Diary, October 25, 1812, Reel 264, Adams Papers.
22. AA to TBA, December 13, 1802, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
23. AA to TBA, November 7, 1797, Reel 386, Adams Papers.
24. AA to TBA, July 6, 1802, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
AA to TBA, December 13, 1802, ibid.
25. AA to TBA, December 13, 1802, ibid.
26. AA to TBA, February 28, 1802, ibid.
AA to ESP, July 18, 1809, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
27. AA to TBA, December 27, 1801, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
AA to TBA, February 28, 1802, ibid.
28. JQA to TBA, November 28, 1801, ibid.
29. TBA to JQA, December 7, 1801, ibid.
Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868), p. 30.
30. TBA to JQA, January 12, 1803, Reel 402, Adams Papers.
JQA to TBA, June 20, 1803, ibid.
31. TBA to JQA, December 15, 1803, ibid.
32. JQA to AA, November 7, 1803, ibid.
33. AA to TBA, January 27, 1803, ibid.
34. AA to Ann Harrod, February 19, 1805, Reel 404, Adams Papers.
35. Ibid.
AA to Ann Harrod, March 24, 1805, ibid.
36. AA to ESP, June 10, 1801. Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress.
AA to TBA, February 7, 1802, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
AA to AAS, July 31—August 8, 1808, Radcliffe Women’s History Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
AA to MW, January 16, 1803, Warren-Adams Letters, 2 vols. (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925), 2:342.
37. AA to MW, January 16, 1803, ibid.
38. AA to AAS, December 28, 1808, De Windt Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
39. JA to TBA, September 4, 1801, JA Letterbook, Reel 118, Adams Papers.
JA to F.A. Van der Kemp, February 5, 1805, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56), 9:590.
JA to Christopher Gadsden, April 16, 1801, JA Works, 9:585.
October 5, 1802, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964), 3:253.
AA to AAS, December 28, 1808, De Windt Collection.
40. AA to AAS, December 28, 1808, ibid.
John was given a Newfoundland dog. JQA to JA, March 12, 1802, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
AA to TBA, July 6, 1802, ibid.
41. AA to Hannah Cushing, September 1, 1804, Reel 403, Adams Papers.
42. December 31, 1803, The Diary of John Quincy Adams, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Longman, Green & Co., 1929), p. 21.
AA to AAS, August 29, 1808, De Windt Collection.
43. October 21, 1803, JQA Diary, p. 18. October 31, 1803, ibid.
44. December 31, 1803, ibid., p. 21.
45. AA to JQA, December 18, 1803, Reel 402, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, January 10, 1804, Reel 403, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, December 3, 1803, Reel 402, Adams Papers.
46. AA to JQA, December 18, 1804, Reel 404, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, December 8, 1804, Reel 403, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, January 27, 1805, Reel 404, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, February 15, 1806, ibid.
AA to JQA, March 24, 1806, ibid.
47. AA to LCA, December 8, 1804, Reel 403, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, January 27, 1805, Reel 404, Adams Papers.
48. AA to Mrs. Quincy, March 24, 1806, ibid.
AA to JQA, March 24, 1806, ibid.
49. LCA to AA, December 1805, ibid.
LCA to AA, January 6, 1806, ibid.
50. AA to JQA, January 9, 1806, ibid.
51. AA to LCA, January 16, 1806, ibid.
AA to LCA, January 19, 1806, ibid.
LCA to AA, May 11, 1806, ibid.
AA to LCA, February 15, 1806, ibid.
52. AA to Mrs. Quincy, March 24, 1806, ibid.
53. JQA to LCA, May 14, 1804, ibid.
AA to TJ, May 20, 1804, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 1:269.
AA to TBA, May 23, 1802, Reel 401, Adams Papers.
54. AA to TJ, May 20, 1804, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:268–9.
55. Ibid., 1:269.
56. John Eppes to TJ, June 14, 1804, Thomas Jefferson Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
57. TJ to John Page, June 25, 1804, quoted in The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:265.
TJ to AA, June 13, 1804, ibid., 1:269–70.
58. TJ to AA, June 13, 1804, ibid., 1:270.
59. Ibid., 1:270–1.
60. Ibid., 1:270.
61. AA to TJ, July 1, 1804, ibid., 1:271–2.
62. Ibid., 1:272.
63. Ibid., 1:273–4.
64. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970), chap. 12.
Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974), p. 349.
AA to TJ, July 1, 1804, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:274.
65. AA to TJ, July 1, 1804, ibid.
66. TJ to AA, July 22, 1804, ibid., 1:275–6.
67. AA to TJ, August 18, 1804, ibid., 1:276–7.
68. Ibid., 1:277.
69. AA to TJ, July 1, 1804, ibid., 1:274.
AA to TJ, August 18, 1804, ibid., 1:277–8.
70. TJ to AA, September 11, 1804, ibid., 1:278.
71. Ibid., 1:278–9.
72. AA to TJ, October 25, 1804, ibid., 1:280–1.
73. Ibid., 1:281.
74. Ibid., 1:281–2.
75. Ibid., 1:282.
AA to TJ, July 1, 1804, ibid., 1:274.
76. JA postscript to AA to TJ, October 25, 1804, ibid., 1:282.
77. TJ to Benjamin Rush, January 16, 1811, quoted in The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 1:268.
The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:284.
23. Rather Too Much than Too Little
1. Katharine Metcalf Roof, Colonel William Smith and Lady (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929), p. 272.
WSS to JQA, November 28, 1805. Reel 404, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
AA to JQA, November 29, 1805, ibid.
2. Roof, Col. Smith, pp. 268–70.
3. Roof, Col. Smith, pp. 266–71.
JQA to LCA, July 13, 1806, Reel 404, Adams Papers.
JQA to LCA, November 28, 1806, ibid.
4. JQA to TBA, March 19, 1806, ibid.
Roof, Col. Smith, p. 269.
WSS to JQA, March 23, 1806, Reel 404, Adams Papers.
WSS to JQA, March 29, 1806, ibid.
5. JQA to AA, March 14, 1806, ibid.
WSS to JQA, March 29, 1806, ibid.
6. JQA to LCA, May 4, 1806, ibid.
7. LCA, The Adventures of a Nobody, Reel 269, Adams Papers.
November, 1804, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874), pp. 316–7.
January 11, 1805, The Diary of John Quincy Adams, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929), p. 28.
January 11–12, 1831, ibid., pp. 408–9.
8. November 25, 1805, ibid., p. 37.
November 23, 1804, ibid., p. 25.
January 11, 1805, ibid., p. 28.
JQA to LCA, July 13, 1806, Reel 404, Adams Papers.
9. ESP to AA, May 10, 1806, ibid.
ESP to AA, August 10, 1806, ibid.
10. AA to JQA, January 16, 1807, Reel 405, Adams Papers.
JQA to LCA, December 17, 1806, Reel 404, Adams Papers.
JQA to LCA, May 24, 1806, ibid.
LCA to JQA, June 2, 1806, ibid.
AA to JQA, February 27, 1807, Reel 405, Adams Papers.
11. AA to JQA, January 16, 1807, ibid.
12. AA to MW, March 9, 1807, ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. In a letter to Mercy Warren dated February 8, 1805, Thomas Jefferson enclosed his own subscription, and that of the heads of government departments, for her History and wrote that he had “no doubt the work she has prepared will be equally useful to our country and honourable to herself.” Warren-Adams Papers, 2 vols. (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925), 2:345.
JA to MW, July–August 1807, Warren-Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
JA to MW, July 11, 1807, ibid.
15. JA to MW, July–August 1807, ibid.
JA to MW, July 11, 1807, ibid.
16. JA to MW, July 11, 1807, ibid.
JA to MW, July 20, 1807, JA Letterbook, Reel 118, Adams Papers.
17. JA to MW, July 27, 1807, Warren-Adams Papers.
JA to MW, July 20, 1807, JA Letterbook, Reel 118, Adams Papers.
18. JA to MW, August 2, 1807, ibid.
JA to MW, August 1, 1807, Warren-Adams Papers.
19. MW to JA, July 23, 1807, ibid.
MW to JA, August 27, 1807, ibid.
20. Elbridge Gerry to MW, November 1807, ibid.
MW to AA, December 28, 1807, Reel 405, Adams Papers.
21. AA to AAS, December 8, 1808, De Windt Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
22. AA to ESP, June 5, 1809, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:265.
AA to AAS, May 13, 1809, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 2:194.
AA to Caroline Smith, February 2, 1809, ibid., 1:216.
AA to AAS, August 29, 1808, De Windt Collection.
23. AA to Caroline Smith, February 2, 1809, Journal and Correspondence, 1:216.
AA to AAS, May 8, 1808, De Windt Collection.
AA to AAS, July 13, 1808, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
AA to AAS, May 13, 1809, Journal and Correspondence, 2:194–6.
24. December 31, 1807, JQA Diary, p. 50.
25. JQA to JA, December 27, 1807, Reel 405, Adams Papers.
JA to JQA, January 8, 1808, JA Letterbook, Reel 118, Adams Papers.
AA to AAS, May 8, 1808, De Windt Collection.
Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 163.
AA to AAS, March 18, 1808, De Windt Collection.
AA to AAS, April 17, 1808, ibid.
AA to AAS, March 27, 1808, ibid.
26. Encyclopedia, pp. 163–4.
27. AA to AAS, March 18, 1808, De Windt Collection.
LCA to AA, January 24, 1808, Reel 405, Adams Papers.
28. JA to JQA, January 8, 1808, JA Letterbook, Reel 118, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, February 15, 1808, Reel 405, Adams Papers.
29. AA to AAS, March 18, 1808, De Windt Collection.
30. AA to AAS, March 27, 1808, ibid.
AA to Mrs. Cushing, March 1808, Reel 405, Adams Papers.
31. June 3 and 8, 1808, JQA Diary, p. 57.
AA to AAS, June 19, 1808, De Windt Collection.
32. AA to AAS, August 29, 1808, ibid.
33. LCA to JQA, March 1, 1808, Reel 405, Adams Papers.
Department of State to JQA, June 29, 1809, Reel 407, Adams Papers.
July 11, 1809, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 1795 to 1848, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 12 vols. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1874–77), 1:550.
July 5, 1809, ibid., 1:549.
34. According to the Cecil Textbook of Medicine, St. Anthony disease is seen only sporadically now. It results from eating bread made from rye wheat infected with ergot fungus.
July 5, 1809, JQA Memoirs, 1:549.
AA to JQA, February 1809, Reel 407, Adams Papers.
LCA to JQA, February 12, 1807, ibid.
AA to ESP, June 5, 1809, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:263–6.
35. August 5, 1809, JQA Diary, p. 60.
AA to JQA and LCA, August 5, 1809, Reel 408, Adams Papers.
36. AA to ESP, July 18, 1809, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
37. AA to ESP, August 27, 1809, Reel 408, Adams Papers.
38. Ibid.
39. AA to Caroline Smith, November 30, 1809, Journal and Correspondence, 1:218.
24. The Young Shoots and Branches
1. AA to William Smith, February 20, 1816, De Windt Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
AA to Caroline Smith, August 12, 1809, Reel 408, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
2. October 23, 1809, The Diary of John Quincy Adams, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929), pp. 62–3.
AA to Catherine Johnson, February 23, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
3. October 23, 1809, JQA Diary, p. 63.
AA to Catherine Johnson, February 23, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
Robert Ker Porter, Travelling Sketches in Russia and Sweden, 2 vols. (London: Richard Phillips, 1809).
4. AA to JQA, March 20, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
AA to Catherine Johnson, February 23, 1810, ibid.
AA to LCA, January 21, 1811, Reel 411, Adams Papers.
5. AA to Catherine Johnson, September 13, 1810, Reel 410, Adams Papers.
AA to Catherine Johnson, November 1809, Reel 408, Adams Papers.
6. AA to Catherine Johnson, November 1809, ibid.
7. AA to AAS, April 14, 1810, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 2:208.
AA to ESP, April 23, 1810, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
AA to JQA, May 7, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
8. AA to Catherine Johnson, December 19, 1809, Reel 408, Adams Papers.
AA to Catherine Johnson, May 30, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
9. AA to Catherine Johnson, November 1809, Reel 408, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, July 25, 1810, Reel 410, Adams Papers.
10. AA to Catherine Johnson, November 1809, Reel 408, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, May 28, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
AA to ESP, April 23, 1810, Shaw Family Papers.
11. AA to Catherine Johnson, May 8, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
12. AA to JQA, March 20, 1810, ibid.
AA to ESP, June 13, 1810, ibid.
AA to LCA, May 15, 1810, ibid.
LCA to AA, May 13, 1810, ibid.
LCA to AA, January 4, 1810, ibid.
13. JQA to AA, February 7, 1810, ibid.
LCA to AA, May 13, 1810, ibid.
LCA to MC, June 5, 1810, ibid.
14. AA to MC, September 5, 1784, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 3rd ed. in 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 2:48–51.
15. LCA to AA, May 13, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
AA to John Smith, February 11, 1810, ibid.
AA to Harriet Welsh, March 30, 1815, Reel 422, Adams Papers.
16. AA to Catherine Johnson, November 1809, Reel 408, Adams Papers.
17. AA to LCA, January 21, 1811, Reel 411, Adams Papers.
18. AA to LCA, May 15, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, February 28, 1811, Reel 411, Adams Papers.
19. AA to Catherine Johnson, July 13, 1810, Reel 410, Adams Papers.
JA to JQA, July 3, 1816, JA Letterbook, Reel 122, Adams Papers.
AA to AAS, April 27, 1813, Journal and Correspondence, 2:214.
AA to AAS, April 10, 1810, ibid., 2:210.
AA to LCA, May 15, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
20. AA to Catherine Johnson, July 13, 1810, Reel 410, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, May 15, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
James Madison to AA, August 15, 1810, Reel 410, Adams Papers.
21. AA to Catherine Johnson, September 13, 1810, ibid.
AA to ESP, November 24, 1810, Shaw Family Papers.
22. James Madison to His Imperial Majesty, October 10, 1810, Reel 410, Adams Papers.
Department of State to JQA, October 15, 1810, ibid.
23. James Madison to JQA, October 16, 1810, ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. AA to Caroline Smith, February 26, 1811, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:266.
Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976) p. 166.
27. Encyclopedia, pp. 166–7.
AA to JQA, January 20, 1811, Reel 411, Adams Papers.
AA to ESP, December 29, 1811, Shaw Family Papers.
JA to Josiah Quincy, February 9, 1811, The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), pp. 157–9.
AA to AAS, April 14, 1810, Journal and Correspondence, 2:208.
28. AA to LCA, January 12, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
AA to Caroline Smith, February 26, 1811, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:267.
AA to Caroline Smith, December 9, 1809, Journal and Correspondence, 1:318.
29. AA to Caroline Smith, January 24, 1808, Journal and Correspondence, 2:210–1.
30. AA to ESP, May 5, 1812, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to George Washington Adams, May 25, 1812, Reel 413, Adams Papers.
31. AA to ESP, February 28, 1811, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to George Washington Adams, January 9, 1813, Reel 415, Adams Papers.
AA to John Smith, February 11, 1810, Reel 409, Adams Papers.
32. AA to John Adams (grandson), January 5, 1812, Reel 413, Adams Papers.
33. AA to JQA, March 12, 1812, ibid.
AA to JQA, January 5, 1812, ibid.
AA to JQA, February 17, 1812, ibid.
34. AA to LCA, February 18, 1811, Reel 411, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, March 4, 1811, ibid.
35. AA to LCA, March 4, 1811, ibid.
AA to LCA, February 28, 1811, ibid.
36. AA to JQA, March 4, 1811, Reel 411, Adams Papers.
37. Ibid.
38. AA to Catherine Johnson, March 5, 1811, ibid.
AA to Catherine Johnson, March 30, 1811, ibid.
AA to JQA, April 29, 1811, ibid.
39. JQA to JA, June 7, 1811, ibid.
JQA to AA, June 11, 1811, ibid.
JQA to AA, August 12, 1811, Reel 412, Adams Papers.
40. JQA to AA, June 30, 1811, Reel 411, Adams Papers.
41. AA to Catherine Johnson, July 31, 1811, Reel 412, Adams Papers.
AA to Catherine Johnson, September 22, 1811, ibid.
AA to JQA, September 24, 1811, ibid.
42. AA to Catherine Johnson, July 31, 1811, ibid.
WSS to AA, June 29, 1811, Reel 411, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, September 24, 1811, Reel 412, Adams Papers.
AA to ESP, November 1811, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to ESP, December 29, 1811, ibid.
43. AA to JQA, November 17, 1811, Reel 412, Adams Papers.
AA to ESP, October 22, 1811, ibid.
44. AA to ESP, July 10, 1811, Shaw Family Papers.
45. AA to WSS, July 23, 1811, De Windt Collection.
46. WSS to AA, August 12, 1811, Reel 412, Adams Papers.
WSS to AA, September 15, 1811, ibid.
47. AA to WSS, August 28, 1811, De Windt Collection.
AA to WSS, September 27, 1811, ibid., 66. Katherine Metcalf Roof, Colonel William Smith and Lady (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929), p. 311.
48. AA to Mrs. Benjamin Rush, September 14, 1813, Reel 412, Adams Papers.
Dr. Rush, after reading details of Abigail Smith’s ailment, wrote not only to her but to her father. Dr. Rush to JA, September 20, 1811: After fifty years’ experience, “I must protest against all local applications, and internal medicines for her Relief. They now and then cure, but in 19 cases out of 20 in tumour of the breast, they do harm, or suspend the disease until it passes beyond that time in which the only Radical Remedy is ineffectual. This Remedy is the Knife. From her account … it may be too late.” Reel 412, Adams Papers.
AA to ESP, October 22, 1811, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to ESP, December 29, 1811, ibid.
AA to JQA, November 17, 1811, Reel 412, Adams Papers.
The full names of the doctors who operated on Mrs. Smith are Thomas Welsh, Amos Holbrook, and probably John Collins Warren.
49. AA to JQA, November 17, 1811, ibid.
AA to JQA, December 8, 1811, ibid.
AA to ESP, December 29, 1811, Shaw Family Papers.
50. John Adams wrote to Benjamin Rush on December 25, 1811: “I perceive plainly enough, Rush, that you have been teasing Jefferson to write to me, as you did me some time ago to write to him. You gravely advise me to receive the olive branch, as if there had been war; but there has never been any hostility on my part, nor that I know, on his. When there has been no war, there can be no room for negotiations of peace.” Selected Writings of JA and JQA, pp. 164–6.
JA to TJ, January 1, 1812, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:290.
51. AA to Miss Otis, January 12, 1812, Reel 413, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, January 5, 1812, ibid.
JQA to AA, May 28, 1812, ibid.
AA to ESP, April 20, 1812, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to JQA, April 12, 1812, Reel 412, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, May 10, 1812, Reel 413, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, July 29, 1812, Reel 414, Adams Papers.
52. Encyclopedia, p. 169.
AA to James Monroe, August 5, 1812, Reel 414, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, July 29, 1812, ibid.
Roof, Col. Smith, p. 311.
53. AA to James Monroe, August 5, 1812, Reel 414, Adams Papers.
54. AA to WSS, September 6, 1812, ibid.
WSS to AA, November 30, 1812, ibid.
55. WSS to AA, January 25, 1813, Reel 415, Adams Papers.
56. AA to Caroline Smith, November 19, 1812, Letters of Mrs. Adams, 2:268–72.
57. Ibid.
58. AA to Caroline Smith, November 22, 1812, ibid.
59. JQA to AA, September 21, 1812, Reel 414, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, January 25, 1813, Reel 415, Adams Papers.
LCA to George Washington Adams, June 14, 1812, Reel 413, Adams Papers.
60. AA to JQA, February 1, 1813, Reel 415, Adams Papers.
AA to George Washington Adams and John Adams (grandson), January 25, 1813, ibid.
AA to LCA, January 30, 1813, ibid.
61. AA to JQA, February 27, 1813, ibid.
62. JA to JQA, March 1, 1813, ibid.
63. AA to JQA, April 23, 1813, ibid.
LCA to AA, April 4, 1813, ibid.
64. LCA to AA, April 4, 1813, ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. JQA to AA, December 31, 1812, Reel 414, Adams Papers.
67. AA to James Monroe, April 3, 1813, Simon Gratz Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
JQA to James Monroe, forwarded by AA, February 26, 1813, ibid.
68. On September 21, 1812, John Quincy noted in his Diary that “the Emperor was much concerned and disappointed to find the whole benefit which he expected his subjects would derive commercially from that event defeated and lost by the new war … between the United States and England; that he had thought there were various indications that there was on both sides a reluctance at engaging and prosecuting this war, and it had occurred to the Emperor that perhaps an amicable arrangement of the differences between the parties might be accomplished more easily and speedily by indirect than by a direct negotiation” and that the Emperor had made enquiries about whether there was “any difficulty or obstacle on the part of the Government of the United States if he should offer his mediation for the purpose of effecting a pacification.” JQA Diary, pp. 98–9.
James Monroe to AA, April 10, 1813, Reel 415, Adams Papers.
James Monroe to JA, April 10, 1813, ibid.
69. James Monroe to JA, April 10, 1813, ibid.
70. AA to James Monroe, April 20, 1813, ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. AA to JQA, April 23, 1813, ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. The dying captain’s last words were said to be, “Don’t give up the ship!” Encyclopedia, pp. 173–4.
AA to JQA, July 1, 1813, Reel 416, Adams Papers.
WSS to JA, July 15, 1813, Reel 416, ibid.
75. AA to JQA, August 30, 1813, Reel 416, Adams Papers.
WSS to AA, July 7, 1813, Reel 416, ibid.
AA to JQA, July 14, 1813, ibid.
76. JA to TJ, August 16, 1813, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2:366.
77. AA to TJ, postscript to JA to TJ, July 15, 1813, ibid., 2:358.
TJ to AA, August 22, 1813, ibid., 2:366–7.
78. AA to TJ, September 20, 1813, ibid., 2:377.
79. TJ to JA, October 12–13, 1813, ibid., 2:386.
80. William Cranch to AA, September 3, 1813, Reel 416, Adams Papers.
25. The Close of the Drama
1. AA to F.A. Van der Kemp, February 23, 1814, Reel 417, Adams Papers, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
AA to ESP, January 13, 1814, Shaw Family Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
2. AA to JQA, February 10, 1816, Reel 429, Adams Papers.
3. AA to ESP, January 13, 1814, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to ESP, February 10, 1814, ibid.
4. AA to JQA, February 27, 1814, Reel 417, Adams Papers.
AA to ESP, February 10, 1814, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to LCA, December 21, 1814, Reel 421, Adams Papers.
5. AA to F.A. Van der Kemp, February 23, 1814, Reel 417, Adams Papers.
6. AA to F.A. Van der Kemp, May 26, 1815, Reel 423, Adams Papers.
AA to ESP, February 10, 1814, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to Harriet Welsh, December 8, 1814, Reel 421, Adams Papers.
7. AA to ESP, February 10, 1814, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to ESP, May 12, 1814, ibid.
AA to ESP, January 13, 1814, ibid.
8. AA to ESP, May 12, 1814, ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. WSS to AA, March 13, 1814, Reel 417, Adams Papers.
AA to ESP, February 10, 1814, Shaw Family Papers.
11. AA to Caroline Smith, October 23, 1814, Abigail Adams Smith, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, ed. Caroline Smith De Windt, 2 vols. (New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), 1:228.
AA to ESP, September 13, 1814, Reel 419, Adams Papers.
AA to Harriet Welsh, March 18, 1814, Reel 417, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, March 8, 1814, ibid.
12. AA to WSS, March 22, 1814, ibid.
AA to Harriet Welsh, March 18, 1814, ibid.
AA to JQA, June 12, 1814, Reel 418, Adams Papers.
AA to Harriet Welsh, March 22, 1814, Reel 417, Adams Papers.
13. AA to ESP, September 13, 1814, Reel 419, Adams Papers.
14. AA to ESP, November 20, 1814, Reel 420, Adams Papers.
15. JA to Sally Adams, October 26, 1814, JA Letterbook, Reel 122, Adams Papers.
16. AA to ESP, November 20, 1814, Reel 420, Adams Papers.
17. AA to Caroline Smith, October 23, 1814, Journal and Correspondence, 1:228.
AA to ESP, September 13, 1814, Reel 419, Adams Papers.
18. AA to Caroline Smith, October 23, 1814, Journal and Correspondence, 1:229.
19. Henry Warren to AA, October 19, 1814, Reel 420, Adams Papers.
20. JA to Benjamin Waterhouse, January 10, 1810, Statesman and Friend: Correspondence of John Adams with Benjamin Waterhouse 1784–1822, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1927), p. 47.
21. AA to MW, August 9, 1812, Reel 414, Adams Papers.
22. MW to AA, September 1, 1812, ibid.
Elbridge Gerry to MW, December 17, 1812, Warren-Adams Letters, 2 vols. (Boston: the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925), 2:373–5.
23. AA to MW, December 30, 1812, is held by the New Hampshire Historical Society. Printed in Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 5th series, 4 (1878), p. 501.
MW to AA, January 26, 1813, Reel 415, Adams Papers.
24. JA to Elbridge Gerry, April 17, 1813, Warren-Adams Letters, 2:378, 380.
25. Ibid., 2:379.
MW to JA, July 10, 1814, ibid., 2:394–5.
26. JA to MW, August 17, 1814, JA Letterbook, Reel 122, Adams Papers.
AA to Caroline Smith, October 23, 1814, Journal and Correspondence, 1:228.
27. AA to JQA, September 7, 1814, Reel 419, Adams Papers.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
Richard B. Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, Bicentennial ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 181.
30. AA to ESP, September 13, 1814, Reel 419, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, December 21, 1814, Reel 421, Adams Papers.
31. AA to ESP, September 13, 1814, Reel 419, Adams Papers.
32. AA to JQA, October 18, 1814, Reel 420, Adams Papers.
33. Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe, ed., The Articulate Sisters (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), pp. 12–3.
34. AA to ESP, February 26, 1815, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to ESP, April 10, 1815, ibid.
AA to Caroline Smith, February 19, 1815, Journal and Correspondence, 1:230.
AA to Harriet Welsh, February 24, 1815, Reel 422, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, February 28, 1815, ibid.
Encyclopedia, p. 182.
35. AA to Harriet Welsh, March 5, 1815, Reel 422, Adams Papers.
AA to Caroline Smith, February 19, 1815, ibid.
JQA to AA, December 24, 1814, as copied by AA, March 5, 1815, ibid.
36. AA to JQA, March 8, 1815, ibid.
AA to ESP, February 26, 1815, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to JQA, March 10, 1815, Reel 422, Adams Papers.
37. AA to JQA, May 6, 1815, Reel 423, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, April 11, 1815, ibid.
AA to Harriet Welsh, April 6, 1815, ibid.
38. AA to Abigail “Abbe” Shaw Felt, April 15, 1815, ibid.
AA to LCA, April 14, 1815, ibid.
AA to F.A. Van der Kemp, May 26, 1815, ibid.
39. AA to JQA, June 8, 1815, Reel 424, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, May 6, 1815, Reel 423, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, May 30, 1815, ibid.
40. AA to Harriet Welsh, August 6, 1815, Reel 426, Adams Papers.
41. AA to JQA, November 9, 1815, Reel 429, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, October 20, 1815, Reel 427, Adams Papers.
42. AA to JQA, May 5, 1816, Reel 431, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, October 20, 1815, Reel 427, Adams Papers.
AA to [?], May 10, 1815, Reel 423, Adams Papers.
43. AA to JQA, May 5, 1816, Reel 431, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, October 12, 1815, Reel 427, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, January 3, 1818, Reel 442, Adams Papers.
44. AA to LCA, March 1816, Reel 430, Adams Papers.
AA to F.A. Van der Kemp, April 11, 1816, ibid.
AA to F.A. Van der Kemp, April 10, 1817, Reel 437, Adams Papers.
45. AA to F.A. Van der Kemp, April 10, 1817, ibid.
AA to JQA, August 7, 1816, Reel 433, Adams Papers.
46. AA to LCA, September 2, 1815, Reel 426, Adams Papers.
AA to Harriet Welsh, October 16, 1815, Reel 427, Adams Papers.
LCA to AA, June 15, 1815, Reel 424, Adams Papers.
LCA to AA, October 2, 1815, Reel 427, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, October 20, 1815, ibid.
47. LCA to AA, January 21, 1816, Reel 429, Adams Papers.
48. AA to LCA, March 27, 1816, Reel 430, Adams Papers.
49. JA to LCA, 1819, JA Letterbook, Reel 123, Adams Papers.
JA to JQA, 1819, ibid..
August 5, 1828, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vol. 1–2 ed. Aida Dipace Donald and David Donald, 6 vols. to date (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1964), 2:42.
LCA, Reel 273, Adams Papers.
LCA to AA, January 21, 1816, Reel 429, Adams Papers.
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Sentry ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961), pp. 18–9.
JA to LCA, April 2, 1819, JA Letterbook, Reel 123, Adams Papers.
50. AA to Harriet Welsh, September 5, 1815, Reel 426, Adams Papers.
51. LCA to AA, July 4, 1816, Reel 432, Adams Papers.
52. AA to LCA, May 20, 1815, Reel 423, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, May 28, 1816, Reel 431, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, September 30, 1816, Reel 434, Adams Papers.
53. AA to JQA, January 18, 1816, Reel 429, Adams Papers.
AA’s Will, dated January 18, 1816, copy in her own handwriting, Reel 607, Adams Papers.
54. AA to Harriet Welsh, March 15, 1816, Reel 430, Adams Papers.
AA to Abigail “Abbe” Shaw Felt, March 30, 1816, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to JQA, March 22, 1816, Reel 430, Adams Papers.
55. AA to JA, January 1, 1797, Reel 383, Adams Papers.
AA to AAS, June 19, 1808, De Windt Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
AA to John Adams (grandson), May 21, 1816, Reel 431, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, March 22, 1816, Reel 430, Adams Papers.
56. AA to Harriet Welsh, June 7, 1816, Reel 432, Adams Papers.
57. AA to JQA, June 10, 1816, ibid.
JA to CA, June 25, 1816, JA Letterbook, Reel 122, Adams Papers.
AA to LCA, June 28, 1816, Reel 432, Adams Papers.
The colonel’s son, William Steuben Smith, produced a pamphlet on his father’s behalf. Published in 1824, it was called “FACTS in Refutation of the Aspersions Against the Character and Memory of Col. Wm. Stephens Smith, as Recorded by Col. Tim. Pickering, in his Review of the Correspondence between The Hon. John Adams and the Late Wm. Cunningham, Esq.”
58. JA to JQA, June 26, 1816, JA Letterbook, Reel 122, Adams Papers.
JA to JQA, July 3, 1816, ibid.
59. JA to JQA, July 18, 1816, ibid.
JA to JQA, July 26, 1816, ibid.
AA to JQA, August 27, 1816, Reel 433, Adams Papers.
AA to Harriet Welsh, August 1, 1816, ibid.
60. AA to JQA, September 30, 1816, Reel 434, Adams Papers.
AA to Richard Rush, May 20, 1816, Reel 431, Adams Papers.
Richard Rush to AA, November 11, 1816, Reel 434, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, November 20, 1816, ibid.
61. AA to John Adams (grandson), October 24, 1816, ibid.
62. AA to JQA, November 5, 1816, ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. AA to JQA, November 20, 1816, ibid.
AA to JQA, December 6, 1816, Reel 435, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, March 12, 1817, Reel 436, Adams Papers.
65. AA to JQA, March 17, 1817, ibid.
AA to Hannah Cushing, March 17, 1817, ibid.
JA to JQA, March 18, 1817, JA Letterbook, Reel 123, Adams Papers.
66. AA to [?], March 24, 1817, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
AA to JQA, April 13, 1817, Reel 437, Adams Papers.
AA to JQA, May 10, 1817, ibid.
AA to JQA, March 12, 1817, Reel 436, Adams Papers.
67. AA to JQA, August 10, 1817, Reel 438, Adams Papers.
LCA to AA, August 14, 1817, ibid.
68. AA to Harriet Welsh, August 18, 1817, ibid.
Charles Francis Adams, Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1900), p. 10.
69. AA to Harriet Welsh, August 18, 1817, Reel 438, Adams Papers.
AA to Susan Boylston Adams Clark, August 26, 1817, ibid.
AA to T.B. Johnson, October 18, 1817, Reel 440, Adams Papers.
70. AA to JQA, December 14, 1817, Reel 441, Adams Papers.
AA to William Shaw, September 13, 1817, Shaw Family Papers.
AA to John Adams (grandson), September 17, 1817, Reel 439, Adams Papers.
AA to Harriet Welsh, November 18, 1817, Reel 440, Adams Papers.
71. AA to Harriet Welsh, October 17, 1817, ibid.
AA to Harriet Welsh, October 1, 1817, ibid.
AA to LCA, November 12, 1817, ibid.
AA to Harriet Welsh, November 24, 1817, ibid.
72. LCA to AA, November 12, 1817, ibid.
AA to LCA, December 12, 1817, Reel 441, Adams Papers.
73. AA to LCA, January 7, 1818, Reel 442, Adams Papers.
AA to Harriet Welsh, March 1818, Smith-Townsend Collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
74. AA to LCA, January 3, 1818, Reel 442, Adams Papers.
LCA to George Washington Adams, February 4, 1818, ibid.
LCA to George Washington Adams, September 23, 1817, Reel 439, Adams Papers.
75. Articulate Sisters, pp. 21–2.
AA to Richard Rush, July 15, 1817, Reel 438, Adams Papers.
LCA to AA, January 7, 1818, Reel 442, Adams Papers.
76. AA to LCA, January 24, 1818, ibid.
AA to Harriet Welsh, January 30, 1818, ibid.
77. AA to LCA, January 3, 1818, ibid.
AA to LCA, February 20, 1818, ibid.
AA to LCA, February 1, 1818, ibid.
78. AA to LCA, February 27, 1818, ibid.
79. AA to LCA, February 20, 1818, ibid.
John Adams’s Book: Being Notes on a Record of the Births, Marriages and Deaths of Three Generations of the Adams Family, 1734–1807, ed. Henry Adams II (Boston: Boston Atheneum, 1934) p. 4.
80. AA to LCA, May 20, 1818, Reel 443, Adams Papers.
81. AA to JQA, May 30, 1818, ibid.
82. AA to LCA, May 20, 1818, ibid.
Eliza Susan Quincy, July 2, 1818, Articulate Sisters, pp. 27–9.
AA to LCA, August 21, 1818, Reel 444, Adams Papers.
83. LCA to AA, August 25, 1818, ibid.
Benjamin Waterhouse to JQA, October 21, 1818, ibid.
84. LCA to JA, October 31, 1818, ibid.
85. Harriet Welsh to LCA, October 22, 1818, ibid.
Harriet Welsh to LCA, October 23, 1818, ibid.
Harriet Welsh to LCA, October 26, 1818, ibid.
TBA to JQA, November 1, 1818, Reel 445, Adams Papers.
86. AA to TJ, April 29, 1817, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:511.
JA to TJ, October 20, 1818, ibid., 2:529.
TJ to JA, November 13, 1818, ibid.
87. JA to Caroline De Windt, July 12, 1820, Journal and Correspondence, 1:246–7.
JA refers to Rachel (Wriothesley) Vaughn, Lady Russell, see Some Account of the Life of Rachel Wriothesley, Lady Russell … Followed by a series of Letters (London, 1819).