1To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 2 March 1809 (Adams Papers)
Your favor of the 19th. of February was alike acceptable with all your former letters. The papers will inform you that our government is about to yeild to the Clamors of your part of the United States against the Embargo laws. Had our Legislators been better historians they would have promptly saved their honor, and preserved the peace of our Country. Augustus repealed a law to compel...
2To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 20 February 1809 (Adams Papers)
Soon after the receipt of your last letter in which you Advise me to shake off my retired habits and prejudices, and to come forward in Support of the petitions of my fellow Citizens for a repeal of the Embargo laws, I went to bed at my usual hour, and dreamed that I had yeilded to your Advice; and in consequence of it, determined to appear at a federal town meeting which was to be held the...
3To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 13 January 1809 (Adams Papers)
In a situation such as you have seen a Sea Captain in a Gale of Wind, I sit down to acknowledge the receipt of your two last instructing letters. Present events will justify your opinion of the present measures of our rulers. Your Account of the pernicious influence of a belief in the time in Which the prophesies are to be fulfilled is to much opposed to the System of the divine government...
4To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 14 December 1808 (Adams Papers)
Has your right hand forgotten its Cunning from pain or Sickness? or have you ceased to contemplate the present interesting Crisis of your beloved Country?—or have you become fearful of committing your apprehensions of her future destiny to paper? If none of these events have come to pass, why am I not favoured with Answers to my two last letters?— Say my dear and venerable friend what is to be...
5To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 21 October 1808 (Adams Papers)
The election in Pennsylvania has issued in a manner totally unexpected by the federalists, and beyond the expectations of the Democrats. I was deceived in the Opinion I gave you in my last letter by some of my federal friends who pretended to know the dispositions of the interior And frontier Counties Stse of the State. Mr: Langdon will be returned governor by a majority of nearly 30,000...
6To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 22 September 1808 (Adams Papers)
The politicks of our City are under the direction of three Classes of people, old tories, merchents, and brokers. They are neither anticipating, nor retrospective animals. All their calculations are for the present moment. They know nothing of its treaties, nor of the former volcanic eruptions of the power and tyranny of France. The last shower with them is always the heaviest. Why then do you...
7To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 16 September 1808 (Adams Papers)
I shall answer your letter of Augst: 31st: by giving you an Account of one of my late dreams. After having recently observed the fatal effects of intemperances in the use of Ardent Spirits in one of my patients, and reflecting afterwards upon the incalculable evils they are spreading through our Country, I went to bed a few evenings ago at my usual hour, and during the night I dreamed that I...
8To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 24 August 1808 (Adams Papers)
In Contemplating the events that have lately taken place in Spain, and their probable Consequences, I we feel disposed to exclaim in the bold Apostrophe of Jeremiah “O! thou Sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? Put up thyself into thy Scabbard, rest, and be Still.” Chapt: 47. verse 6th: shall we hope that a Voice from heaven has arrested the destroyer of nations, or is he...
9To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 13 July 1808 (Adams Papers)
The Campaign of Summer diseases being opened,—and my duties calling me at all hours of the day into the field of sickness and distress, I have not had time ’till now to answer your last letter. I shall abruptly say in reply to the latter part of it, that the Union of the Democrats and Quids in our state was founded upon the dread of federal power manifested in the supposed removal of your son...
10To James Madison from Benjamin Rush, 21 June 1808 (Madison Papers)
Agreeably to your request, I have written to General Armstrong in favor of my friend Dr. Clark. I enclose my letter to you, to be forwarded to him by the first Conveyance that offers to France. I cannot conclude my letter without expressing my sympathy with you in the arduous labors to which the present State of our Country has exposed You, nor can I refrain from communicating to you the great...
11To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 13 June 1808 (Adams Papers)
Public and private news & anecdotes are now so limited by the present state of our Country, that I have had nothing worth putting upon paper for your Amusement since the reciept of your letter. The principal design of this hasty scrawl is to inform you that you still live in my Affections, and that few persons occur oftener to my thoughts. Indeed I can scarcely review any of the memorable...
12To James Madison from Benjamin Rush, 6 May 1808 (Madison Papers)
The letter you did me the favor to enclose me a few days ago is from a Dr: Thomas Clark- a British physician of great respectability Who is now a prisoner upon parole at Vendun in France. He has long contemplated becoming a Citizen of the United States, through part of which he passed a few years ago on his Way from the East Indies to Great Britain at Which time I became acquainted with him....
13To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 5 April 1808 (Adams Papers)
A bad cold, added to the pressure of business, has delayed my answer much longer than I intended to your last acceptable letter. You have mistaken the Church to which I belong in supposing that prayers will one day be offered up in it to the great man whose birth day has lately been celebrated in our Country. During the life of Dr Ewing whose influence was very extensive in the Presbyterian...
14To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 18 February 1808 (Adams Papers)
I have escaped for ten minutes from the pressure of business, lectures–pupils, and the Charge of the Pennsylvania hospital, to drop you a few lines which I beg you will consider as the preface only of a longer letter a few Weeks hence, when I shall be relieved from three fourths of my present labors. Our Citizens are making great preparations for celebrating the birth day of the first...
15To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 15 December 1807 (Adams Papers)
An inflammation in my eyes which for several days has confined me to my house, and rendered writing difficult and painful, must be my Apology for the Shortness of this letter. I admire the Correctness of your history of the ten talents committed to the Subject of your letter. Upon the talent of his taciturnity Mr Liston gave me the following Anecdote, “that he was the only person he had ever...
16To Thomas Jefferson from Benjamin Rush, 28 November 1807 (Jefferson Papers)
I have just now received a letter from Dr Waterhouse in which he has requested me to address you in favor of his petition to be appointed Successor to Dr Eustis in the Charge of the marine hospital at Boston. Dr Waterhouse stands high with all the Scientific members of his profession. The New England states are indebted to him for introducing Vaccination into them,—and at an expense too of...
17To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 31 October 1807 (Adams Papers)
I am ashamed of my long silence after the receipt of the two last letters from my kind friend and benefactor. The hurry introduced into my ordinary mass of business by the Influenza and its Consequences, must be my apollogy for my seeming inattention to your interesting favors.— You have happily distinguished between Prudence and Art . I agree with you in your history of Disinterestedness. It...
18To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 9 July 1807 (Adams Papers)
I once met Alexander Cruden the Author of the Concordance of the Scriptures at Charles Dilly’s. He was then about 70 years of Age. The only thing he said while I was in his Company made an impression upon my mind which the lapse of near 40 years has not worn away. It was this. “God punishes some Crimes in this world to teach us there is a Providence, and permits Others to escape with impunity,...
19To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 9 June 1807 (Adams Papers)
Permit me to trouble you with the delivery of the enclosed letter to Dr Tufts. It contains an Account of the death of his patient Mr: Land, and a small sum of money to be sent by the Doctor to Mr: Land’s parents in new Hamshire. I sent you Mr Stevens’s pamphflet “on the dangers of the Country” a few days ago. I beg your Acceptance of it. Since the date of my last letter I have been made very...
20To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 12 May 1807 (Adams Papers)
In one of your former letters you say as an excuse for your not assuming the reserve of certain public men, that you never beleived yourself to be a “great man”, and of Course did not expect that every thing you said, and did & wrote would be the subject of public Observation and Scrutiny. I consider your not preserving a Copy of your letter to your youthful friend Mr Webb as a proof of the...
21To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 22 April 1807 (Adams Papers)
I enclose you the letter I mentioned in my last, from the person whom I supposed to be your son in law. The letter from his son has been mislaid. I have neither friend, nor Correspondent in new york of the name of Wm Smith except your son in law, and having never before seen his hand writing, and supposing he had dropt Ste his middle name of Stephens, I had no doubt of the letter coming from...
22To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 3 April 1807 (Adams Papers)
The difficult and complicated labors of my professorship consisting of teaching, examining, reviewing theses &c &c being now nearly over, I sit down with great pleasure to pay my epistolary debts. You are my largest, and most lenient Creditor. The first dividend of my time of Course is due to you. I concur with you in your reflections upon the Western insurrection, but not altogether in your...
23To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 23 January 1807 (Adams Papers)
I have been waiting like Horace’s Clown till the Stream of my business should so far lessen that I could pass over it, in order to acknowledge the receipt of your interesting letter upon the Subject of the perfectibility of human nature, but as that Stream, from adventitious currents pouring into it, rather encreases, than lessens, I have seized a few moments merely to testify my gratitude for...
24To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 25 November 1806 (Adams Papers)
I have seldom been more highly gratified than by the receipt of your letter of Novr 11th. The latter part of it accords perfectly with Opinions I have long cherished. You may see a short account of those Opinions in an Oration delivered before our Philosophical Society upon “the influence of physical Causes upon the moral faculty” published in the first Volume of my Inquiries. They shocked for...
25To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 24 October 1806 (Adams Papers)
Ever since the receipt of your last letter I have passed my days like an arrow shot from a bow. At a time of life when (to use an expression in one of your letters written to me soon after your return from England) “nature sighs for repose,” I live in a Constant round of business, which employs both body and mind. Even my studies (the times for which are taken from family Society or Sleep) are...
26To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 22 August 1806 (Adams Papers)
You ascribe wonders to the influence of Silence and Secrecy in public men. I agree with you in their effects upon characters, and human Affairs. Dr South says the “world was made for the bold.” But they possess but only half of it,—the other half was made for the “Artful”—among whom I include nearly all silent men. I say nearly all, for we now and then meet with persons who are silent from...
27To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 11 July 1806 (Adams Papers)
At the request of my Wife I called upon a friend of mine a few days ago to borrow “the secret memoirs of the Court of St: Cloud.” He said he had not a copy of it—but politely put into my hands “Cumberlands memoirs of his own life”, which I have since filled up the leisure minutes of the day in reading. It is a pleasant Work, and contains a good deal of information of men and things which would...
28To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 26 June 1806 (Adams Papers)
Herewith you will receive a small publication that contains several new Opinions in Physiology, and which admit of being applied to the cure of several diseases. If you have no inclination to read it, please to put it into the hands of your family physician. He may probably pick up something from it that may be the means of lessning the pain, or preventing the mortality of a disease in your...
29To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 10 June 1806 (Adams Papers)
My long delay in answering your last letter has arisen from two causes—an unusual share of business from an unusually sickly Spring—and the Want of Subjects for a letter that would be interesting to you. I perfectly accord with you in your opinions respecting the tendency, and issue of the present state of things in the World. Never perhaps was there a time in which there was more to fear from...
30To James Madison from Benjamin Rush, 7 April 1806 (Abstract) (Madison Papers)
§ From Benjamin Rush. 7 April 1806, Philadelphia. “The bearer Captain John McDougall goes to Washington in order to solicit the humanity of our Government. He carries with him ample testimonies of his integrity, and particularly of his innocence in a transaction which has lately endangered the loss of his Ship. I have known him for many years, and have reason to believe him to be a man of high...