William Smith Shaw to Abigail Adams Smith, 28 October 1799

William Stephens Smith to Abigail Adams Smith

Union Camp, Oct. 28th, 1799.

My Dear Wife:

I have received your letter of the 24th, this day, the after part of which has been taken up in the reception of the 13th regiment into our camp.1 The scene was brilliant, and attended by the whole of the inhabitants of the adjacent country. It is now over; and after giving a welcome in my tent to the officers and respectable inhabitants, and it being 10 o’clock at night, I compose myself to communicate with you.

* * * * *

With respect to the accommodation I have provided, very few who know me, would doubt of there being ample, and the best the country affords, and few countries can furnish more comfortable.

There are a great many cross-grained things in the affairs of this life, my dear, which must be borne up against, with firmness; and when we allow ourselves to consider what a variety of character it necessarily takes to compose a world, with the aid of a little philosophy, we may rise superior to most of the common occurrences of life; at least, not permit them too pointedly to interfere with that negative, if not positive happiness, which depends greatly upon ourselves, and the proper organization of our own minds.

Never tell me my dear baby is sick; if you were to write me she was dead, I could bear it; for I bow with reverence to the final decisions of a wise and overruling Providence; but when I think she is in pain, and that my assiduities as a parent might relieve her from a pang, I am tortured that I cannot fly to give her a momentary comfort in the lap of affection and parental tenderness. For Heaven’s sake take care of her, and let me know speedily she is better. Give my affectionate love to my dear mother and yours, my sisters and my lovely babe. We are still in tents, and from the arrangements made, are likely to be so for some time to come. The troops bear the cold well, and seem to be bouyed above the frost; for they say, look at the Colonel, he never goes to a fire, or seeks comfort in a house, and why should we complain? In short, they are ready to undergo “the toils of war, and bear the hardships that their leader bears;”2 who cannot, however hard the struggle may be between duty and love, leave them to freeze or burn, without him.

Adieu, my dear.

W. S. Smith.

MS not found. Printed from AA2, Jour. and Corr. description begins Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, Daughter of John Adams, … Edited by Her Daughter [Caroline Amelia (Smith) de Windt], New York and London, 1841–[1849]; 3 vols. Note: Vol. [1], unnumbered, has title and date: Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1841; vol. 2 has title, volume number, and date: Correspondence of Miss Adams … Vol. II, 1842; vol. [3] has title, volume number, and date: Correspondence of Miss Adams … Vol. II, 1842, i.e., same as vol. 2, but preface is signed “April 3d, 1849,” and the volume contains as “Part II” a complete reprinting, from same type and with same pagination, of vol. 2, above, originally issued in 1842. description ends , 2:154–156.

1. The letter from AA2 has not been found. WSS was charged with the command of the 12th Infantry Regiment, which on 4 Oct. Alexander Hamilton ordered to move from Scotch Plains, N.J., to winter quarters on Green Brook in Plainfield, N.J. There it would be joined by two other regiments in a combined Union Brigade that consisted of 1,116 enlisted men and 130 officers. WSS informed Hamilton on 14 Oct. that the 11th Regiment would rendezvous with the 12th and both would reach camp the next day. The 13th Infantry Regiment marched from its encampment at New Haven, passing through Elizabethtown, N.J., on 28 Oct., where “their music was excellent, and their marching perfectly military,” according to the Elizabethtown New-Jersey Journal, 29 Oct. (vol. 13:337; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 15 Nov., below; Hamilton to WSS, 4 Oct., PWacD:Sol Feinstone Coll., on deposit at PPAmP; AA2, Jour. and Corr. description begins Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, Daughter of John Adams, … Edited by Her Daughter [Caroline Amelia (Smith) de Windt], New York and London, 1841–[1849]; 3 vols. Note: Vol. [1], unnumbered, has title and date: Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1841; vol. 2 has title, volume number, and date: Correspondence of Miss Adams … Vol. II, 1842; vol. [3] has title, volume number, and date: Correspondence of Miss Adams … Vol. II, 1842, i.e., same as vol. 2, but preface is signed “April 3d, 1849,” and the volume contains as “Part II” a complete reprinting, from same type and with same pagination, of vol. 2, above, originally issued in 1842. description ends , 2:166; Carlos E. Godfrey, “Organization of the Provisional Army of the United States in the Anticipated War with France, 1798–1800,” PMHB description begins Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. description ends , 38:132, 160–171 [1914]; WSS to Hamilton, 14 Oct., DLC:Hamilton Papers; Hamilton, Papers description begins The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett, Jacob E. Cooke, and others, New York, 1961–1987; 27 vols. description ends , 23:508; “Narrative of Colonel Samuel Blakeslee,” Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, 8:431–432 [1905]; Elizabethtown New-Jersey Journal, 22 Oct.).

2. Joseph Addison, Cato, Act III, scene ii, lines 30–31.

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Source Project: Adams Papers
Title: William Smith Shaw to Abigail Adams Smith, 28 October 1799
Author: Shaw, William Smith
Recipient: Adams, Abigail (daughter of JA and AA)
Date: 28 October 1799

Reference

Cite as: “William Smith Shaw to Abigail Adams Smith, 28 October 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-14-02-0028. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 14, October 1799 – February 1801, ed. Hobson Woodward, Sara Martin, Christopher F. Minty, Amanda M. Norton, Neal E. Millikan, Gwen Fries, and Sara Georgini. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019, pp. 41–42.]

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