Adams Papers
Documents filtered by: Author="Adams, John" AND Recipient="Jenings, Edmund"
sorted by: date (descending)
Permanent link for this document:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-13-02-0051

From John Adams to Edmund Jenings, 5 June 1782

To Edmund Jenings

June 5. 17821

Dr Sir

Just a Line, by our venerable Friend, President Laurens, with whom your Communions will be sweet.2 Pray let me know if Mr Jay is coming to Paris, or come. The last Victory of Rodney, to whom Heaven grants them to shew that it dispizes them, has restored the national Delirium, in all its Effervescence. We shall have no Peace I suppose, in Consequence. War then! War? Yet I sigh for Peace as much, as a Dutchman.

Yours &

J. Adams

RC (Adams Papers).

1JA was at The Hague on 5 June, making it likely that he gave this letter to Henry Laurens when Laurens paid him a “very short Visit” when he passed through The Hague on his journey from Amsterdam to Le Vigan in southern France (to Benjamin Franklin, 13 June, below).

2Opposite this sentence in the left margin is the following notation by Jenings: “NB. <Very> the most bitter I recal <Hy L Candour> Ed J. 1783.” Jenings refers to his dispute with Henry Laurens over several anonymous letters that sought to sow dissension among the peace commissions and that Laurens believed Jenings had written. For the letters and the dispute, see the letter from Monitor, 20 May, and note 1, above. Laurens later recalled that he immediately suspected Jenings, but when Laurens visited him, they apparently got along well because Laurens wrote to Edward Bridgen on 11 June that “I have received much Satisfaction from a short acquaintance of three days, and promise myself much more hereafter by Correspondence—Our Ideas on American Affairs are in Unison” (Laurens, Papers description begins The Papers of Henry Laurens, ed. Philip M. Hamer, George C. Rogers Jr., David R. Chesnutt, C. James Taylor, and others, Columbia, S.C., 1968–2003; 16 vols. description ends , 15:528–529). But see also Laurens’ 25 Aug. letter to JA, below.

Index Entries