1To John Adams from William Cunningham, 11 March 1809 (Adams Papers)
On the first of the month I received your favour of the 22d. ult. with a copy of a speech of a ci-divant Minister to the Six Nations. Having been ill of the prevailing influenza, and expecting, mail after mail, to receive your answer to my letters of the 20th. and 23d. of Feb. I have delayed this acknowledgment. I hope that this evening will relieve my impatience to see the speculations you...
2To John Adams from William Cunningham, 14 March 1809 (Adams Papers)
My solicitude to see your strictures upon Mr. Pickering’s Letter was satisfied by the last mail. I acquit myself, by the enclosure of the sheets, of one of the stipulations upon which you transmitted them to me—the other has not been violated. Nothing on the Impressment of our Seamen, has yet appeared which unfolds the subject so lucidly and satisfactorily either as to law or expediency. I am...
3To John Adams from William Cunningham, 31 March 1809 (Adams Papers)
I know not when my sensibilities have been more exquisitely touched than they were by the perusal of your favour of the 20th. inst. and by the concluding sentence of your Letter to Messrs. Wright and Lyman, which I read at the same time. Thoroughly sensible as I am of the wrong which has been done you, I am yet persuaded that the natural effect of your own reflections upon it is to its...
4To John Adams from William Cunningham, 6 May 1809 (Adams Papers)
I was duly favoured with yours of the 24th. ult. The species of sensibility excited by your Letters in March, are defined by the interest I take in whatever affects your repose, your happiness, and your just claims on the affection, confidence and gratitude of a Country reared under your paternal care. If it can be necessary to be more particular—they were the various and refined emotions...
5To John Adams from William Cunningham, 14 June 1809 (Adams Papers)
I am favoured with yours of the 7th. inst. After telling me that the employment of your thoughts upon your public essays precludes your attention, for the present, to my letters, I should be bereft of apology for filling again a whole sheet, if you had not also said that you are in no apprehension of being inundated. Amidst the heaviest outpouring which may be supposed to be congregating in...
6To John Adams from William Cunningham, 30 June 1809 (Adams Papers)
I received, by the last mail, your esteemed favour of the 22d. inst. The united testimony of your most amiable Family, in repulsion of the calumny which was said to have originated with Mr. Whitney, has not disappointed me. Should it become again a topick at your social board, I pray that my affectionate respects may go along with it to the company. The gentleman who gave me the information I...
7To John Adams from William Cunningham, 24 July 1809 (Adams Papers)
To my letter of the 30th. ult. I have not been favoured with an answer. I feel an uncertainty, from which I wish to be relieved, whether that letter got to your hands. When I gave you the name of my informer, that your Family were in opposition to your making public any elucidations, I thought it incumbent on me to apprise him of it; accordingly, in a day or two after the date of my last. I...
8To John Adams from William Cunningham, 9 August 1809 (Adams Papers)
I duly received your favour of the 31st. ult. The separation from you of your Son, would be, I knew, as painful to you both, as was the parting of Paris and Priam, when the son took leave of the Father for Lacedemon; but I was equally sensible, that I should have dishonoured the noble sacrifices you have made in the service of your country, had I have suggested a motive to induce your...
9To John Adams from William Cunningham, 18 August 1809 (Adams Papers)
The last mail brought me your favour of the 8th of July, with a postscript of the 13th. inst. Whether you had received my letter of the 9th. inst. does not appear by you favour. You request the return of the Letter to yourself uncopied—you will find it enclosed, but if you have no particular reasons to the contrary, you would oblige me by entrusting it to my possession. It contains many things...
10To John Adams from William Cunningham, 9 September 1809 (Adams Papers)
On our way home from Quincy, we were detained by the kindnesses of friends till the last evening. Of the pleasant events of our excursion, none are recollected with more delight than the attentions we received at your house. Nor have I to express my obligations to any but yourself, for any part of the secret history you orally communicated. Your Letter of the 22d. ult. I received, with the...
11To John Adams from William Cunningham, 23 September 1809 (Adams Papers)
My letter of the 9th. inst. had an enclosure which it is so interesting to myself, as well as to you, that it should get to your possession, that I cannot suppress my solicitude to be advised of its safe reception. The present covers the last National Aegis, in which you will find your juvenile Letter to your friend Webb, which I have caused to be inserted in the paper according to your...
12To John Adams from William Cunningham, 17 October 1809 (Adams Papers)
Your favour of the 27th. ult. arrived when I was at Worcester attending a session of the Supreme Court to get some redress for a most gross and injurious Fraud. Immediately on my return, I set out for Boston, from whence I returned last evening. These jaunts have occasioned this delay in the acknowledgment of your Letter. “Poor Democrats, Republicans, and still poorer Americans, are,” you say,...
13To John Adams from William Cunningham, 28 October 1809 (Adams Papers)
I have received your favour of the 23d. The sentence from your Letter of the 27th. ult. which made the theme of my answer, I understood as being extended to the whole body of the Federalist. Several circumstances conspired to induce me to make of it an unqualified application to that party. I cannot, and it is unnecessary to recite them all—two or three shall suffice. In your Letter to the...
14To John Adams from William Cunningham, 18 November 1809 (Adams Papers)
Since my last of the 28th. ult. I have not had the pleasure to hear from you. I lately received some information concerning you, which I deem it a duty of friendship to communicate. I had it from one of the Supreme Junta residing at the “Head Quarters of good principles.” It is of a confidential nature though no secrecy was imposed—and is—That yourself and Mr. Gray are to be the candidates for...
15To John Adams from William Cunningham, 22 November 1809 (Adams Papers)
I have received your favor of the 15th. inst. It is no more than I expected, that your elucidations of the great transactions in which you were uinterruptedly engaged through the different periods of their existence, and in the making of which you have repeatedly had occasion to make personal allusions, would necessarily lead you into extensive correspondences. I think I told you as much soon...
16To John Adams from William Cunningham, 9 December 1809 (Adams Papers)
I am indebted to you for your favour of the 29th. ult. If you will compare your Letters of the 23d. of Oct. and the 15th. of Nov. with the one I am now answering, you will perceive, I think, that you have given me some occasion to suspect, that you distrust my qualifications for public employment. But as such a suspicion is irreconcileable with the character of your communications; and as I...
17To John Adams from William Cunningham, 29 December 1809 (Adams Papers)
When I wrote to you on the 9th. inst. I did not expect that I should again trouble you; nor did I look for an answer, except to the postscript, nor to that unless you chose to continue the communications you have made me embargoed in my bosom. To this hour, I can very truly assure you, that the contents of your Letters are unknown to any human being but myself, excepting those to whom they...
18To John Adams from William Cunningham, 15 January 1810 (Adams Papers)
I am without an answer to my last of the 29th. ult. in which I observed, that a confession respecting you sons, made in your Letter of the 22d. of June, was unlucky, but I reserved for another Letter the principal fact and the reflections upon it, which give that aspect to the acknowledgement alluded to. If you will review your Letter of the 8th. of July, but which you detained in your own...
19To John Adams from William Cunningham, 28 January 1810 (Adams Papers)
I have received your favour of the 16th. inst. After I had distinctly named the causes of a deliberation, whether my fidelity as a Citizen must yield to my fidelity as a Friend, you might, I think, have dismissed the suspicion that they originated in any disappointment of my hopes; especially as you had recently told me of the treachery, perfidy, malice and revenge you had, in numerous...
20To John Adams from William Cunningham, 8 February 1811 (Adams Papers)
In the last Letter with which you favoured me, you expressed a hope “that you should soon find me more calm.” I am unconscious of having ever written a word to you, in the way of censure, which was tinctured with malevolence; or which rose to any higher asperity than a sensibility to Truth, and a solicitude for my Country would excuse. And I am sure that what I am now about to say is untouched...
21To John Adams from William Cunningham, 18 April 1811 (Adams Papers)
So much time has elapsed since the date of my letter in February, that I have dismissed all expectations of an answer. Of the destruction of Babylon, and the birth of Cyrus, considering how much the evidence of a system of Religion is depending on that event and on that character, I may have spoken more at random than a due regard to prevailing sentiments will allow. The whoredoms of Babylon...
22To John Adams from William Cunningham, 21 January 1812 (Adams Papers)
Enclosed in a communication for the Palladium. I shall delay forwarding it to the Printers for a few days, that if it contains anything unwarranted by your Letters to and Conversations with me, you may point out wherein. I have been cruelly and unjustly treated by you. I have, nevertheless, in all that I have done, been Sparing—Review your Letter to me of the 16th. of Jan. 1810, in connection...