1From Abigail Smith Adams to Katherine Dexter, 12 May 1816 (Adams Papers)
How can I address you, or offer human consolation for a wound which must bleed afresh at every attempt to assuage it? Yet if the tears of friendship, and a nation’s tears can afford any relief, be assured, dear Madam, they flow from all honest hearts, for you, for your children and for a country which mourns one of its brightest luminaries extinguished. A great man, fallen in the zenith of his...