151From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., September 1818 (Adams Papers)
The Charters were quoted or alluded to by Mr Otis frequently in the whole course of his Argument: but he made them, also a more distinct and more Solemn head of his discourse. And here, these Charters ought to be copied verbatim. But an immense Verbiage renders it impossible. Bishop Butler, some where complains of this enormous abuse of Words in publick Transactions and John Reed and...
152From John Adams to DeWitt Clinton, 1 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
I thank you, Sir, for the very acceptable Present of a Memoir, not less ingenious than curious, on the Antiquities of the Town of Pompey in your State If I were to hazard a Conjecture, it would be, that the French had made a populous and flourishing Settlement there, excited the Jealousies of the Six Nations, who invaded and exterminated them. Those Six Nations Seem to have been the Goths and...
153From John Adams to François Adriaan Van der Kemp, 2 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
As Misery is Said to derive Some consolation from the Misery of others; your Letter of 18. Septr. has given me Some miserable Comfort, to find to find that your Batavian Predecessors in New York were not much more tollerant than my Yankee Ancestors in New England. But I admire your East India Company and their Director, and their Threat, of the Authority of their H. M. the States General. How...
154From John Adams to Ann Frances Bulkeley Humphreys, 3 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
The unexpected Honour of your Obliging Letter of the 30th of September and the rich presents it contained have excited in my Bosom more tenderness of Sentiment, than you could foresee. The Pin which preserves a Sample of General Humphrey’s hair is to me a Pearl of great price and his Portrait, though I think it has not done him justice is yet so much of a resemblance, that it shall be...
155From John Adams to Alden Bradford, 4 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
I have received with pleasure your favour of the 30th. of September; and can express nothing but the most respectful Approbation of the Proposal to publish in a Volume the Speeches of the Governors of Massachusetts from 1765 to 1775. with the Answers. and if a Pamphlet of the Town of Boston within the Same Period, the last Effort of Mr Otis could be added it would enhance its Value.— These...
156From John Adams to Joseph Wheaton, 7 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
I have not Sooner answered your Letter of the 11th of July because I really knew not what to say to it.— You and I have grievances: but I have no better Advice to give you or myself, than my Friend Otis gave to Molineux, “to put the List in our Pocketts, least the World should laugh at us”— The History of Your Life written by yourself would be as curious and for what I know, as instructive as...
157From John Adams to William Mumford, 9 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
Though I have no intercourse with government, and very little to do with this world; I might have transmitted your letter of July 7th. to the President, if I had thought that either of the Floridas was ours. But knowing the fact to be otherwise, it would have been trifling to solicit a Secretaryship or Judgeship in such a territory. You might with more propriety apply to the Hyper honourable...
158From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 11 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
I am really grieved at your Misfortune, if it were only on the Principle of Rochefaucault and Swift, that “In all Misfortunes of our Friends We first Consult our private Ends.” I lost a long expected and desired Visit. But when I reflect that your head might have been precipitated into the magnificent Entrance into the Domicil of a Woodchuck, I am Seized with horror. A late Experiment in...
159From John Adams to Peter Paul Francis Degrand, 12 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
I can express my Feelings on the Recipt of your favour of the 5th of this month, only by my Thanks for your Politeness in Sending me from your own Stores a case of your excellent Hermitage Wine. I have long since taken a final Leave of my old and dear Friend Wine— Could I obtain the Common Wine of Burgundy, which I have heretofore purchased for two Louis a Burrique, or the Bino de Pais which I...
160From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 20 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
One trouble never comes alone! At our Ages We may expect more and more of them every day in groups, and every day less fortitude to bear them. When I saw in Print that You was gone to the Springs, I anxiously Suspected that all was not healthy at Monticello. You may be Surprised to hear that your favour of the 7th has given me hopes. “Imposthume, general Eruptions Colliquative Sweats,”...
161From John Adams to Henry Colman, 11 November 1818 (Adams Papers)
Your favour of the 2d is among the dearest of my Consolations. The whole World Sympathises with me. All Animosities and Party feelings are forgotten. It is impossible that Relations, Friends, Neighbours or the Public could have been more kind. An Example to the World has dissapeared but cannot be forgotten. I can Say no more. Your Friend MWA : Paine Family Papers.
162From John Adams to John Lowell, 15 November 1818 (Adams Papers)
In the distresses and confusions of my family I saw not your address from yourself till yesterday I had read it on its first publication. It is full of information instructive to the Farmers of this Country elegantly written and perfectly adapted to the occasion on which it was delivered. Accept the sincere of your obliged / humble Servant MHi : Adams Family Papers, Letterbooks.
163From John Adams to François Adriaan Van der Kemp, 15 November 1818 (Adams Papers)
I cannot answer your two last Letters. Of Thomas Adams I know nothing; except that a Man of that name was one of the Counsell of Plymouth and named in the Charter, and Parson Prince Somewhere Says the most active Man in promoting the Translation of the Charter to New England. Our Friend D. A. Tyng, cannot Surely expect Miracles from his and your Friend PHi : John Adams Papers.
164From John Adams to William John Coffee, 18 November 1818 (Adams Papers)
The distress of my family must be my apology for neglecting your two letters till this time. The information in your last, is as afflictive to me, as it is new. An uninterrupted personal friendship with Mr Jefferson, notwithstanding all political conjunctions and oppositions for forty three years has endeared him to me; and your account of his danger is a great addition to my other, almost...
165From John Adams to Joseph Milligan, 20 November 1818 (Adams Papers)
The repeated kindness expressed in your letter of 30th. Oct’br, and the beautiful present of your book on Gardening, demand the thanks of an entire stranger. The volume for our Agricultural Society shall be presented as you desire Agriculture and Horticulture are become fashianable in the from Nova Scotia and Canada to the Mississippi, and I am mistaken in the character of my Countrymen, if...
166From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 8 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
Your Letter of Nov. 15 gave me great delight not only by the divine Consolation it afforded me under my great Affliction: but as it gave me full Proof of your restoration to Health. While you live, I Seem to have a Bank at Monticello on which I can draw for a Letter of Friendship and entertainment when I please. I know not how to prove physically that We Shall meet and know each other in a...
167From John Adams to Horace Holley, 25 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
Although I have lately received many kind and admirable Letters from my Friends, for which they have my Sincere thanks; Yet neither on the late most melancholly and affecting Occasion nor in my whole life have I ever received one so congenial to my own Sentiments, and so consolating to my feelings as yours, of the fourth of this month. If we reason from Analogy, and how can We reason otherwise...
168From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 30 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
Late last night I received Your Report and your translation of Tracy, for both of which, tho’ I have read neither I thank You. but the full proof of Your returning health has given me more Pleasure than both. I envy your Eyes and hands and Horse. Mine are too dim, too tremulous and my head is too dizzy for the Sovereign Doctor. All is now Still and tranquil. There is nothing to try Mens Souls...
169From John Adams to Joseph Milligan, 31 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
I know not how to express my obligation to you for the repeated presents of beautiful books the proof of Mr Jeffersons Convalescence was more precious to me than all the rest I had indeed before received a most excellent letter from his own hand which convinced me that his health might be restored but the spirit which dictated the resolution to mount the sovereign Doctor Horse convinced me...
170From John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, 9 January 1819 (Adams Papers)
You asked me for papers; but I know not what papers you wish If such as the bundle enclosed with please you I can fill your register for years Whither you print any part or none I pray you to return them as you have always done to I wait for another volume of your register J.A MHi : Adams Family Papers, Letterbooks.
171From John Adams to James Brackett, 15 January 1819 (Adams Papers)
I am informed that Mr Pratt and Mr Hunt are cutting wood upon my land by your order that they cut last year twenty cord and have now marked out 30 more If this is true I presume it is by mere mistake of the boundaries between you and me. I shall be obliged to you if your will inform me upon what lot of yours they are cutting which joins me and wish that this may be inquired into. I am...
172From John Adams to Henry Channing, 29 January 1819 (Adams Papers)
Accept my thanks for your present of a register and much more for your affectionate and sympathizing letter of the 27th although my sorrows have been silent and although I have received every consolation that Friendship could have administered and although I seem not to have a enemy left upon the earth yet my secret grief has very sensibly shaken my frame and my greatest remaining consolation...
173From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 29 January 1819 (Adams Papers)
If I am not humble I ought to be, when I find myself under the necessity of borrowing a juvenile hand to acknowledge your kind favour of the 19.th: I have read your university report throughout with great pleasure, and hearty approbation; Of Tracy’s report I have read as much as I could, the translation appears to me an original written with all the purity, accuracy, and elegance, of its...
174From John Adams to John Pickering, 29 January 1819 (Adams Papers)
I am ashamed to have delayed so long and at last to be obliged to Borrow a hand to acknowledge the receipt of your learned and ingenious essay on the pronunciation of the Greek language. I rejoice to see that men of letters are rising up to investigate such subjects with an extent of learning and a reach of sagacity that would do honor to any of the learned men in Europe. Accept my thanks for...
175From John Adams to Daniel Coney, 1 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
My right arm and hand have become so enfeebled that I am under the necessity of borrowing another to acknowledge receipt of your obliging favour of Jany. 25th: The question you state to me is of so much importance and the decision of it leads to consequences so extensive that a volume might be written in favour of the affirmative and another in favour of the negative. My forces are not...
176From John Adams to James Brackett, 2 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I am informed that Mr. Brackett has cut off one lot of Mr Adams’s land almost half way down from the upper end, by mistake. It is not worth while at your age & mine for us to go to law about a few acres of mud and a few cords of wood. I therefore propose that we agree upon two or three honest neighbours and upon a skillful, experienced & scientific surveyor to go upon the spot and decide the...
177From John Adams to James Brackett, 5 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I wrote you a few lines on Jany: 15th. and another on Feby: 2d. but have received no answer to either. I should be glad to receive a candid answer to both. Your two Sons indeed called upon me yesterday but with no answer to my letters. I proposed to them three plans for settling the dispute between us. The first was that your brother Captain Hall & my brother Captain Adams should go upon the...
178From John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, 5 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I send you enclosed two pieces of paper. 1st. “Broken Hints to be communicated to the committee of Congress for the Massachusetts.” by Major Joseph Hawley of Northhampton. This is the original paper which I read to Patrick Henry in the fall of the year 1774 which produced his rapturous burst of approbation & his solemn asseveration “ I am of that Man’s mind .” 2d. A letter from Jonathan...
179From John Adams to Gulian C. Verplanck, 6 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
Had I been able to write or read your should not have been a month without an answer to your obliging favour of Jany: 7th: It was only the last evening that I had an opportunity to court a young Lady of sixteen to read your discourse to me & to her I am obliged this morning to write this feeble expression of my gratitude. I have no recollection that I ever heard or perused any American oration...
180From John Adams to J.B. Binon, 7 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have received your polite favour of the 3d: of this month. I am afraid that you are engaged in speculations that will never be profitable to you. The age of sculpture & painting have not yet arrived in this country and I hope it will not arrive very soon. Artists have done what they pleased with my face & eyes head & shoulders, stature & figure and they have made of them monsters as fit for...
181From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 9 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
In your last letter you consider me in debt, I will not dispute it. You seem to wish me to write something to diminish the fame of Samuel Adams to show that he was not a man of profound learning, a great lawyer, a man of vast reading, a comprehensive statesman. In all this I shall not gratify you. Give me leave to tell you, my friend, that you have conceived prejudices against that great...
182From John Adams to James Brackett, 10 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have received your letter of the 5th: of Feby. As you have not agreed to any of my proposals in my last letter I now make a new one and that is that we both write in a petition or requisition to the fence viewers of the town that they would go upon the spot choose their own surveyor examine all the witnesses that they may summon or that either party may produce before them & determine the...
183From John Adams to Josiah Nightengale, 11 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have received information that you have mistaken the boundary line between your lot in the six hundred acres & mine that I bought of the late Genl. Ebenr: Thayer as to have cut & carried off a considerable quantity of wood from my land. I therefore propose to you to join with me in an application to the fence viewers of the town requesting them to go upon the spot choose their own surveyor,...
184From John Adams to James Brackett, 12 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have received your favour of yesterday. The condition you mention or refer to is altogether inadmissable. No line or section of any line or point of any line between us has ever been agreed upon by me or any person authorized by me or by my order or with my consent or knowledge. I have been informed that boundary trees or blazed trees have been cut down & carried away that heaps of stones...
185From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 13 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
As you was so well acquainted with the philosophers of France I presume the name and character of Mademoiselle De Lespinasse is not unknown to you. I have almost put out my eyes by reading two volumes of her letters which as they were printed in 1809 I presume you have read long ago. I confess I have never read any thing with more ennui, disgust and loathing. The eternal repitition of mon dieu...
186From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 14 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
Your letter of 20th: of two sheets of paper would require eight sheets at least to answer it and I cannot write one line. My head is brimfull & running over with observations on Mr Jefferson’s letter but I will not commit one of them to writing. What great work you have in contemplation I know not. I have not even read “Tempus.” Do you suppose I am sleeping on a bed of roses? Samuel Adams many...
187From John Adams to Thomas Dawes, 16 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
Inclosed are copies of two letters written by me to my Wife one in the morning, and the other in the evening of the 3d: of July 1776 the day after the vote of Independence was passed in Congress. An extract of one of them has been published in the newspapers. Once on a time, upon my Stony field Hill, you interrogated me concerning that extract in so particular a manner that I thought you felt...
188From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 17 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I sincerely and cordially pity you. But why are you not candid & explicit with me? If you expect me to assist you in your sublime and beautiful projects why do you not let me know what they are? From your enigmatical letter I can conclude nothing but that you are employed in a work to prove Governor Adams and Govr: Hopkins the joint authors of American Independence. If this is your design you...
189From John Adams to Benjamin Guild, 19 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I am very much obliged to your excellent mother—your amiable lady and your worthy self for the copy of Mr. Jones’ letter though it I know nothing of the character or history of Mr. Jones’ letter though are so many circumstances of resemblance between his affliction and mine that I have read it with satisfaction for while it occassions a revival of my own Borrows, it at the same time renews my...
190From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 19 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
As you know I have often been ambitious of introducing to your acquaintance some of our literary characters, I now send you in the same spirit, some mathematical papers by our Mr. Bowditch who has translated La Place’s mechanique coeliste & has written commentaries upon it as voluminous as the book—; which are thought by our scientific people to be one of the greatest astronomical productions...
191From John Adams to Peter Ludlow, Jr., 20 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have recd your polite favour of the 11th. of this month. You request my opinion upon a variety of great and difficult questions which would require discussions and answers too voluminous for a man of my age and various infirmities to compose. I have read the printed life of General Jackson and have given some attention to the late accounts of his public conduct and have conceived a great...
192From John Adams to William Willis, 21 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for your address to the New Bedford Auxilliary Society for the suppression of Intemperance which I have read with pleasure and edification it abounds in ingenuity and information it is eloquent and pathetic it is pious and virtuous it addresses itself to the understanding & the heart. A drunkard is the most selfish being in the universe he has no sense of modesty shame or disgrace...
193From John Adams to Benjamin Waterhouse, 23 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
Enclosed is your letter to me of Feb’y 10th wh’ I return to you as you request— I wrote to the President in your favour in as strong terms as I could pen—it is a rule as well established as it is indispensible, that the President shall answer no letters, recommendations, or testimonies, in favour of candidates for office, accordingly, although Mr. Monroe did not answer my letter in your...
194From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 24 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I am diligently & laboriously occupied, in reading & hearing your “political economy”—I call it yours because I do not believe that Tracys is more of an original in point of purity, perspicuity or precission—I have read as yet only to the 90th page—it is a connected chain of ideas & propositions, of which I know not which link to strike out. His philosophy appears to me to be precisely that of...
195From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 2 March 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have taxed my eyes with a very heavy impost to read the senator Tracy’s Political Economy & been amply rewarded for the expense. When I first saw the volume I thought it was impossible I should get through, it, but when I had once made a beginning I found myself led on in so easy a train from proposition to proposition, every one of which appeared to me self evident, that I could not leave...
196From John Adams to James Brackett, 3 March 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have received with pleasure your civil & friendly letter of Feb’y 26th I am very far from censuring your fathers attachment to the lands of his ancestors I have felt & still feel a similar fondness for those of my own, these are natural feelings & amiable sentiments I have not tender Motives for doating on the lot in questions it was purchased for me with the hard earnings of my laborious...
197From John Adams to Anonymous, 5 March 1819 (Adams Papers)
If you will look among your mothers papers—you will find a letter from me to that lady a few years ago on the subject of the “group” I have there asserted that She alone could have written it I have certified with my name on the copy of it in Mr. Shaws atheneum my knowledge on the Subject—to attribute it to Mr. Barrett was the greatest of absurdities no other being in the universe at that time...
198From John Adams to Alden Bradford, 5 March 1819 (Adams Papers)
The zeal of my young friend Samuel Adams Welles for the glory of his Grandfather is natural, amiable & laudable. I wish he would publish his researches—The appeal to the world of the town of Boston I wish to see published not for the honor of Mr Otis or Mr Adams—but for the sake of justice to the town of Boston & the Massachusetts Bay it contains the essence of all that was afterwards done in...
199From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 7 March 1819 (Adams Papers)
On the 20 of January 1768 the House of Representatives appointed a committee to prepare a petition to the King & letters to his ministers & a letter to the agent knowing that Such a committee was appointed & that they were buisily employed in preparing these representations meeting Mr Otis one morning I asked him how do you proceed with your petitions & letters he answered I have drawn them...
200From John Adams to Alden Bradford, 12 March 1819 (Adams Papers)
There has been some misunderstanding between us. I fear the mistake was originally mine; the “Appeal to the world” was not the pamphlet I intended. In the discourses on Davilla publish’d—in the year ’89 page 87th. beginning I find this paragraph: Americans! Rejoice &c continued to the words “alteration of the constitution” In the margin of this vol—appears in my hand writing these words “This...