Adams Papers

21 Sunday.
[from the Diary of John Adams]

21 Sunday.

Vernal Equinox. Heard Mr. Wibird preach two excellent Discourses from Eccles. 9.12.1 Spent the Evening at Mr. Wibirds with Messrs. Quincy,2 Cranch, Savel, in Conversation upon the present Scituation of publick affairs. Mr. Quincy exerted his Talents in the most Eloquent Harrangue. Mr. Cranch quoted the bishop of Quebecks Letter concerning the french Missionaries among the Indians.3 Some, he says, are very good men.

1Rev. Anthony Wibird (1729–1800), minister in the North Precinct of Braintree (afterward Quincy) from 1754 until his death.

2Presumably the elder Josiah Quincy (1710–1784), more often referred to in this Diary as Colonel Quincy.

3A confusing and perhaps confused reference. CFA’s explanation (JA, Works description begins The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850–1856; 10 vols. description ends , 2:11, note) is not satisfactory, since “A Letter from Canada,” which he cites and which was printed in the Boston Evening Post, 8 Sept. 1755, was not written by the Bishop of Quebec and did not purport to be from his hand. (It is a transparent fabrication, designed to stir up anti-French and anti-Catholic feeling in New England.) But the discussion at Parson Wibird’s house no doubt related to the activities of such men as Le Loutre, the Bishop of Quebec’s vicar-general in maritime Canada. Le Loutre’s work among the French Neutrals, or Acadians, had led directly to their enforced exile from Nova Scotia in 1755. Shiploads of these unfortunate people were arriving at intervals in Boston Harbor during 1755–1756, and they were naturally the subject of frequent conversation. See Hutchinson, Massachusetts Bay, ed. Mayo description begins Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo, Cambridge, 1936; 3 vols. description ends , 3:28–31; Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, Boston, 1907, vol. 1: chs. 4, 8; Lawrence H. Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, Caldwell, Idaho, and N.Y., 1936– , vol. 6: chs. 8–10.

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