201From 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.
202From 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.
203From 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.
204From 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...
205From 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...
206From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 7 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
I thank you, my dear Son, for your Letters and for the Presidents Speech, which is Consolation for all our Miseries for 60 Years. But I must have done with public affaires. Your Sons who behave well have been with Us last Week. They leave Us this morning for their School. Mr and Mrs Clark, and my little darling Susanna Maria were comfortably lodged last Night at Dedham on their Way to...
207From 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...
208John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 8 December 1818 (Jefferson Papers)
Your Letter of Nov. 13 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 Montecello 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...
209From John Adams to Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, 22 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
your Letter has given me great delight Mrs Monroe has done herself great honour, and a durable Service to her Country, by the Example She has Sett by reversing the System of dissipation of her Predecessor. Madam Bingham and the Queen of France are not proper Models for a “Presidante” of the U.S. I most cordially approve of your Plan and that of your husband They wish him to Spend whole Nights...
210From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 24 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
Your favour of the 14th. found me deeply immersed in researches, not astromical or mineralogical or metaphisical; but after old Papers, Trunks Boxes Desks Drawers locked up for thirty Years have been broken open because the Keys are lost. Nothing Stands in my Way. Every Scrap Shall be found and preserved for Your Affliction for your good. I am now employed very anxiously and laboriously,...
211From 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...
212From John Adams to Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, 29 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
Your Journal to the 20th has Sett me on fire. Give my respectfull Compliments to Mr Clay and tell him that I Sincerely Unite with You—in Your request that he would bring in a Bill to Settle the Ettiquette of the United States. The debates in Congress Upon that important Subject, will amuse, divert, instruct and edify me to the End of my Life. I pitty Mrs Monroe; I pitty Mrs H; but above all I...
213From 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...
214John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 30 December 1818 (Jefferson 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 pro o f 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...
215From 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...
216From John Adams to Susanna Boylston Adams Clark Treadway, 8 January 1819 (Adams Papers)
Your letter of the 25th of December has given me new life You know not how much I have suffered from your long and total silence If you have not christened my dear little GGD by the name of Susanna Maria I shall be disappointed and greived I cannot bear Susan Maria Susan! It is worse than Sukey or Sue Susanna Maria sounds melodiously in my ear In this horrid blot see another proof of the...
217From 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.
218From 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...
I long to hear again from you, having received but one letter, concerning Mr Clarks your own or Susanna Maria’s Health. The Paine of Writing has become to me insupportable. It is with infinite difficulty that I can Say We are all well, that Miss Hall was married on the 26th, that I was at the Ceremony, and that Mr and Mrs Taggart Sat off, for Bergen on the next hour. Kiss the little Cherub for...
220From 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...
221From 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...
222From 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...
223John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 29 January 1819 (Jefferson 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 througout 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...
Your favour of the 20th: has given me great comfort you have learn’d the art of travelling by so many painful & hazardous experiments that I hope you never will become fond of it. Your indifference about your increasing your acquaintances in the City pleases me much the most rigorous economy and the strictest retirement becomes you & behoves you in your present situation and your future...
225From 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...
226From 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...
227From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 3 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
You made me a rich present when you allowed your son George to spend his vacation with me. He has been to me a companion and a friend. He has indulged in no dissipation, has been very constant to his studies & his reading. I cannot find it in my heart to say that he has indulged a little too much in his segars and in his flute. I see that you have the honour to be the target of all the sharp...
228From John Adams to Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, 3 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for your journals and pray you to continue them for they are a refreshing amusement to me in my desolation and solitude for such is my real condition through your three Sons visit me commonly once a week and cheer my drooping spirits and although my neighbours and friends are universally kind to me and solace my sorrows as much as they can and what is much more even my enemies seem...
The practice of borrowing hands to write for me is so modern & my skill in dictating so little familliar that I forgot one half of what I intended to say. Would you believe it was possible for me to forget the Bible and the good Samaritan as I fear I did in my last letter to you. Your Bible shall be sure to you if you can find one in Georgetown or Washington to your satisfaction purchase it...
230From 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...
231From 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...
232From 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...
233From 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...
234From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 8 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have been employed for a month or six weeks in hard labour to save you trouble. I have ransacked chests, trunks, boxes, bureaus, chests of drawers, escritouirs, or in fewer words, every hole & corner, from the basement story to the cockloft, in search of manuscript books & papers, and in course I have been obliged to break open locks whose key’s were lost and destroy every thing that lay in...
235From 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...
236From 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...
237From 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,...
238From 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...
239From 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...
240John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 13 February 1819 (Jefferson 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...
241From 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...
Our friend John lends me his hand to write you a line to acknowledge your favour of the 7th of this month. I sympathize with you in all your sorrows & congratulate with you in all your pleasures as I know you do in mine. Give my love to Mr. Clarke and wish him health and every blessing but you and I must submit him to a wise & benign providence. I can not wish you to exchange visits very often...
243From 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...
244From 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...
245From 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...
246From 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...
247From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 19 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for the noble pacquets of documents you send me, for though I cannot read them it is convenient to have them by me. I may get a friend to consult them for me as occassion may require. I thank your lady for me for her last journal. I am really grieved at her late severe indisposition which appears to me so alarming that she ought to be extremely cautious of exposing herself to any...
248John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 19 February 1819 (Jefferson 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 M r 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...
249From 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...
250From 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...