Adams Papers
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To John Adams from Daniel Roberdeau, 4 July 1788

From Daniel Roberdeau

Alexandria July 4th: 1788

Dear Sir

The public papers anounce your return with your family to your native land, and I cannot refrain my congratulations particularly as to the season in which so favorable a revolution has mervelously taken place without the direful concomitants universally attendant on such Events in profund peace. The experience I have had since I had the honor of seeing you in Europe1 furnishes the most irrefragable proof that our earlier Ideas of Government were very foreign from the truth, as they were grounded (at least mine) upon an unwarrantable opinion of the virtue of mankind. This delusion was created by the coertion of war, which produced assimilating effects, which inclined to a mode of government congenial with the ostensable brotherly love that then abounded, more than to energetic means. The rueful fall of man and his degenerate state too soon glared in full evidence “That man is to man the surest sorest Evil.”2 The contrast so shocking to a benevolent mind must occasion much rejoicing to every honest man, that the new System of government will take place to restrain the vile and encourage the virtuous.

I hope your Country will not forget your services and that she will be benefited by marking a line for you under the new system that will be more productive of usefulness, than all your former labours, and in the line of your professional Character.

I have the promise of Mr. John Lowell Lawyer of a reply to a letter written to him some time ago, you’ll oblige me by interesting yourself in the answer, which, with my Compliments you’ll be pleased to inform him I rely upon.3 I desire to salute Mrs: Adams as well as yourself on this grand annaversary, with most cordial Congratulations, for all the blessing with which the day abounds which are neither few or small I am with affectionate regard / Dear Sir / Yr. obedt. friend and very / humble. servant

Daniel Roberdeau

RC (Adams Papers).

1. Gen. Daniel Roberdeau, a Philadelphia merchant, represented Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1779. Between sessions, JA stayed with the Roberdeau family, observing to AA, “We are highly favoured. No other Delegates are so well off.” After the Revolutionary War, Roberdeau relocated to Alexandria, Va. Roberdeau reunited briefly with JA in late 1783, when he visited London to enroll his son, Isaac, in engineering school. He likely saw the news of JA’s 18 June 1788 return in the 3 July edition of The Maryland Gazette (vol. 4:197; AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, and others, Cambridge, 1963– . description ends , 2:350, 352; ANB description begins John A. Garraty, Mark C. Carnes, and Paul Betz, eds., American National Biography, New York, 1999–2002; 24 vols. plus supplement; rev. edn., www.anb.org. description ends ; Roberdeau Buchanan, Genealogy of the Roberdeau Family, Washington, D.C., 1876, p. 89).

2. Edward Young, The Complaint; or, Night Thoughts, Night III, line 217.

3. Roberdeau referred to JA’s longtime friend, federal judge John Lowell (1743–1802), of Newburyport, who moved to Boston in 1777. Roberdeau likely met him in Philadelphia during one of Lowell’s visits there, between 1778 and 1782 (vols. 4:246, 18:25; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates description begins John Langdon Sibley, Clifford K. Shipton, Conrad Edick Wright, Edward W. Hanson, and others, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Boston, 1873– . description ends , 14:655–656).

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    Adams Papers
    Title
    To John Adams from Daniel Roberdeau, 4 July 1788
    Author
    Roberdeau, Daniel
    Recipient
    Adams, John
    Date
    4 July 1788

    Reference

    Cite as
    “To John Adams from Daniel Roberdeau, 4 July 1788,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-19-02-0229. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 19, February 1787–May 1789, ed. Sara Georgini, Sara Martin, R. M. Barlow, Amanda M. Norton, Neal E. Millikan, and Hobson Woodward. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016, pp. 315–316.]

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