Thomas Boylston Adams to John Quincy Adams, 30 June 1803
Thomas Boylston Adams to John Quincy Adams
Philadelphia 30th: June 1803.
Dear Brother
Your favor of the 20th: inst: came to hand yesterday, in the condition, which you have the cover here enclosed, except that the wax was not broken.1 By some means or other, the packet was sent on to Washington, and the name of J. Adams. on the back of it, must have excited the curiosity of some body, who from appearances, took the very excusable liberty, in this free country, to inspect its contents. I send you the cover, that you may inform me, whether the seal you commonly use was upon it. If the letter has been violated, (& I have no doubt it has) your reflections and mine, on the occurrence, will I trust correspond— I should think the fact ought to be publicly exposed.
From your letter I am able to understand, that my Mother, instead of Billy Shaw’s, met with the sad accident, which he undertook to acquaint me with, in his way. Our dear mother (Says Shaw) met with a most sad accident. I thought of no body in this world but my Aunt Peabody, when I read this, and in my reply to William’s letter, condoled with him upon the disaster as having befallen his dear mother.2 If William meant to be understood figuratively, I have no objection to his having two mothers,—but literally, I defy any body to prove that his Aunt is his mother.
Your biography is a choice article, and is a full compensation for your late silence—3 Except a few squib’s, of late, I have done little. No 26—speaks pretty plain, and I hope you will not disapprove the manner of repelling a most daring attack upon the freedom of discussion and writing. The controversy will be managed with discretion, and nothing like a personal warfare shall be maintained with a cutthroat desperadoe.4
The numbers you want, I have ordered to be sent. The American Lounger, is a kind of omnis-homo & omne-mulier. Scarcely two numbers are by the same hand— Old-school—analized Mr: Gideon’s Elixer-bitters—5 He has written two or three papers within a short time, which are I think distinctly marked. Are none of your Boston friends—Loungers? Or is the family exclusively confined to a southern climate?
I expect ere long a mallet will be levelled at my head, as I have been lately told, that I am strongly suspected of being jointly concerned. I must bear it cooly, if I can; but such infamously scandalous & false personalities, as have been published of some of my friends, would if applied to me, discompose my philosophy. To be lampooned in such a vehicle as the Aurora and the Citizen, would not hurt my reputation—indeed I believe it would promote my interest in one shape or other; but to be called hard names, without resenting the affront, would gall me much.
Give my love to my mother and tell her, that I am grieved to hear of the pain she has suffered in consequence of the fall— I was fearful that sickness was the cause of her long silence. I always get a fit of the blue’s if I dont receive a letter from her often.
Our Sister Adams was on a visit, lately to Mrs: John Smith, who accompanied her home to New-Ark, last week. Mrs: Adams seemed to be out of spirits and not in good health.
I am glad to hear, that your flour came safe. The Supplementary Encyclopædia is not forgotten—6
Yours &ca:
1st: July.
Your’s of the 27th: has just come to hand, with an enclosure, to which due attention shall be paid. The publication of the letters of foreign correspondence, was to have commenced this week, but I fear it has been postponed. The Review will be very acceptable; but there is no press for it immediately.7
The saucy & insolent style, which Duane’s Aurora employs of late against Dennie; and the great abundance of personal & vulgar abuse, bestowed upon him will be serviceable to him at a distance. Duane thought he could make Dennie commit himself, by some libellous replication, and the best way to beguile him into such a trap was to begin by libelling him. Since the reply, Duane has charged Dennie with being in the vocative. Of this he may be induced to doubt. The dread of this Ruffian among all ranks of people here, is so great, that he may be properly denominated a second Abaelino, the great Bandit.8 Half the federalists subscribe to the Aurora, as a sort of peace offering to screen themselves from the depredations of this giant of Slander.
The article to which you allude in No. 25— an introduction to the translation of Silius Italicus, was sent from Baltimore—the promised extracts have not yet come to hand.9
Your’s
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “John Q Adams Esqr: / Boston.”; endorsed: “Thomas. 30. June 1803. / Recd: 5. July 1803. / Ansd:.”
1. JQA’s 20 June letter to TBA (Adams Papers) discussed his contributions to the Port Folio and reported AA’s accident: “Your mother about a fortnight ago, met with an unlucky accident, in falling down stairs, which has confined her, great part of the time since— It was a great mercy that she did not lose her life— She is on the recovery and begins to ride out.” The cover sheet TBA enclosed to JQA has not been found.
2. Neither William Smith Shaw’s letter to TBA nor TBA’s response has been found.
3. In his letter of 20 June JQA enclosed a biography of French writer Jean Pierre Claris de Florian, suggesting that it be published in two parts. The work appeared anonymously in the Port Folio, 3:228–229, 234–236 (15, 23 July) and suggested that Florian’s difficult childhood gave a “tincture of pleasing melancholy to his writings” ( p. 471).
4. William Duane in the Philadelphia Aurora, 20 June, castigated the Port Folio for its Federalist politics and called Joseph Dennie Jr. a “weak young man … who has come all the way from New-Hampshire to catechise and anti-republicanise the poor ignorant people of this commonwealth.” TBA responded anonymously in issue 26, Port Folio, 3:206 (25 June), calling Duane’s attack “daring, libellous, and slanderous invective” aligned with the rhetoric of Philadelphia Democratic-Republicans. “Their beer house potations, and their tavern intemperance, may serve to raise their courage,” TBA wrote, “but it shall not depress ours.” The Dennie-Duane feud continued when the Aurora, 29 June, declared the Port Folio should be called “the Portable Foolery,” deriding its frequent appeals to the classics as a “compound of laborious pedantry” and calling its attacks on the Jefferson administration treasonous ( p. 475).
5. Dennie’s “American Lounger” series launched in the Port Folio, 2:1 (16 Jan. 1802), inviting contributions from “my worthy brethren, and I may add sisters also,” and stating that “without assistance from correspondents, the American Lounger will boast but a short existence.” By the date of this letter 65 installments had appeared, some of which were written by women. The column would continue for more than two decades and exceed 500 installments. TBA contributed an “American Lounger” piece in the Port Folio, 2:129 (1 May). Two weeks earlier a letter by a writer claiming to be the mother of a man who joined a Tuesday evening literary club called the group “intolerable.” TBA responded pseudonymously as a member of the club, writing that the group was “harmless, inoffensive, and I will add modest.” As TBA noted, Dennie wrote an “American Lounger” installment in the Port Folio, 3:185–186 (11 June 1803), which ridiculed Algerine Elixir, a yellow-fever medicine advertised by Boston music teacher Jacob Gideon as a recipe acquired by a friend from “a doctor in Algiers, whom he had the good fortune to serve as a slave for five years” ( p. 472; Boston Gazetteer, 28 May; Port Folio, 15:58 [Jan. 1823]; TBA to Shaw, 4 May 1802, MWA:Adams Family Letters).
6. See TBA to JQA, 30 Nov., and note 8, above.
7. JQA’s letter of 27 June 1803 and its enclosures have not been found. The second enclosure was probably JQA’s review of George Richards Minot, Continuation of the History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, from the Year 1748 to 1765, vol. 2, Boston, 1803, which appeared anonymously in four installments in the Port Folio, 3:236–237, 246–247, 253–254, 261–262 (23, 30 July; 6, 13 Aug.). Minot’s volume is notable in that it printed JA’s minutes of James Otis’ 1761 argument on the writs of assistance, for which see , 2:106–107, 122–123, 134–135, 139–144. Without mentioning JA, JQA praised Minot for demonstrating the importance of the writs in sparking the American Revolution, noting that Minot drew on “manuscript minutes, taken at the bar” to detail the argument of “the Demosthenes of New-England, James Otis.” The review praised the author in general for his impartiality and clear language, concluding, “The character of Mr. Minot as an historian has long been known, and is equally conspicuous in the present publication” (p. 246, 262). For the Port Folio publication of C. W. F. Dumas’ correspondence with Benjamin Franklin and other revolutionary-era figures, see TBA to JQA, 16 May 1802, and note 3, above.
8. Abaellino, the Great Bandit, a drama about Abaellino Obizzo’s transformation from Neapolitan nobleman to Venetian bandit after the confiscation of his estates during the Spanish Inquisition, debuted in New York in Feb. 1801 and was performed in Boston in Nov. 1802 and Philadelphia in Jan. 1803 (Heinrich Zschokke, Abaellino, the Great Bandit, transl. William Dunlap, N.Y., 1802, , No. 3607; New York Commercial Advertiser, 10 Feb. 1801; Boston Columbian Centinel, 20 Nov. 1802; Philadelphia Gazette, 9 Jan. 1803).
9. A brief biography of Roman poet Silius Italicus, by “a learned gentleman, late of Maryland,” was printed in the Port Folio, 3:196–197 (18 June). An introduction to the biography stated that extracts of a translation of his works by the same author would follow.