1From John Adams to Jacob Bigelow, 28 January 1817 (Adams Papers)
Accept my Thanks for your Inaugural Oration. It would have been a great pleasure to me, to have heard it: but at my Age, all Such pleasures are forbidden me. The Edinbourgh Reviewers have Said, that, “if the whole of American Litterature were annihilated with the exception perhaps of something of Franklin, the World would loose nothing of the Usefull or agreable.”! These Gentlemen have merited...