1To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., July 1823 (Adams Papers)
The legislature of Massachusetts, at its last session passed an Act to incorporate certain Gentlemen and their associates under the name of the Bunker Hill Monument Association . The undersigned a Committee in behalf of the Corporation are directed to lay before you the objects of the Association, and to inform you that you have been elected an honorary member of it. It is intended to erect a...
2To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 21 May 1822 (Adams Papers)
I took up in a bookstore this morning a work that has just appeared in two volumes entitled “ The History of the American Revolution by Paul Allen .” Mr Allen is a man of talents and I presume has written a valuable history—but I looked over only one or two pages in his first volume where he is speaking of the Congress at New York in 1765—and which he concludes in the following manner:—“The...
3To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 29 July 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have found since I had the honour of writing to you last, a book among my Fathers papers belonging to you.—There is also a note from the printer and a corrected copy of your inaugural speech which I in close— My mother & Mrs. Stewart went a few days since to Kennebec to pass a few weeks with my eldest sister, and where I have heard of their safe arrival—The Historical Society have deputed me...
4To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 26 February 1823 (Adams Papers)
I return you my sincere thanks for the kind opinions reiterated in your letter of the 17th. inst. and also for your obliging answers to my inquiries relative to Botta. Though I felt no disposition to engage further in biography, yet any suggestion coming from you cannot fail of engaging my earnest attention. Your recommendation therefore to take the lives of Samuel Adams & Josiah Quincy I have...
5To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 11 July 1819 (Adams Papers)
You will have been informed before this letter reaches you of the bereavement that has happened to my family. My Father had only complained of indisposition, for two or three days, and had been out every day previous to his death. This took place last Thursday morning at 7 o’clock—it was sudden & without pain as he had always desired. He was buried on Friday evening. Cheif Justice Parker...
6To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 20 March 1823 (Adams Papers)
In looking over a number of Delaplaine’s Repository , which was lent to me by Mr. Vaughan, for the purpose of reading a life of Dr Franklin written by Walsh, I was also attracted by an account of Samuel Adams which I had never seen. It contains some interesting anecdotes but there is one that strikes me as being somewhat exaggerated, and as the peice of history is a very interesting one I turn...
7To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 2 February 1817 (Adams Papers)
An attack of rhumatism which has confined me to my room & kept me in such a feverish, irritable state as to be almost incapable of any thing, has alone prevented my writing to return my thanks for the few hints on the subject of the Jesuits; I hope Sir, you will be willing to continue the subject which has long appeared to me one of the most interesting in modern history. The peice you sent...
8To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 19 February 1818 (Adams Papers)
Though I had no personal views whatever in proposing the Resolve which I had the honor to introduce which went to request you to permit your Bust to be taken for the purpose of being placed in the State House; yet I have thought you might permit me to say a few words on the subject. My motive was a conviction of high state expediency. I intended to follow it with the portraits of those other...
9To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 10 February 1823 (Adams Papers)
Your most kind & approving letter, respecting “the life of James Otis, ” I received the day before I left town to pass a few weeks with my friends in this mansion. I had not an opportunity at the moment to return you my thanks, but I cannot resist troubling you with them now. My anxiety was great to know your opinion, and as you beyond all other men living or dead, was the best qualified to...
10To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 23 July 1820 (Adams Papers)
I may be almost afraid after so long an interruption that you may have forgot a correspondent, that you have so kindly aided & encouraged. I make some progress with my biography of James Otis, and it is not wholly my fault that I go on so slow—I wish to give some account incidentally of the Liberty Tree in Boston, which was so famous, and which I presume gave growth to all the others,...
11To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 6 December 1819 (Adams Papers)
I received yesterday your kind letter of the 1st instant—Notwithstanding the great weight attached to your name and which each party would be eager to place in their own scale, I am ready to agree that it is most unreasonable to wish to involve you in the subaltern quarrels of our time, when you bore the heat & burden of the day half a century since, in questions of far different magnitude. I...
12To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 29 July 1820 (Adams Papers)
I should not perhaps have troubled you with my thanks particularly for your kind answers to my queries respecting Liberty trees; if you had not mentioned the “Letters on the Eastern States.” The work was published anonymously, and I wished to remain unknown as the author, but this seems to have been an absurd expectation on my part, as most of my acquaintances, insist that they detect me in...
13To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., July 1821 (Adams Papers)
After waiting nearly in vain to obtain further documents for the biography of James Otis, I have resolved to begin to make the most of the materials, I now possess—I hope in the course of a few days to have completed, the first part of his life, embracing his youth, & what may be called the private part of his professional career—It will all be comprized in a few pages, so few are the...
14To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 18 May 1817 (Adams Papers)
I was going to trouble you with a letter on the subject of a continuation of the remarks on the Jesuits, which it would I presume be desireable for the Editor to receive by the first of next month, as the number for July will then go to press, when my Father gave me your letter of the 15th inst. to read. The pamphlet you mention of Hutchinson’s I have never seen. I am going to prepare an...
15To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 6 November 1816 (Adams Papers)
My Father has communicated to me your letter of yesterday, which he means to answer particularly himself, but in the mean time, I do not wish to lose a moment in assuring you of the gratification I shall feel in being instrumental in communicating to the publick any observations from you on the points you have mentioned. The illustration of American history is with me a very favorite object,...
16To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 1 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Will you receive my respectful congratulations on your having entered the last year of your seventeenth lustrum , with such a fair prospect of reaching the twentieth which I hope your vigor of body & mind may enable you successfully to accomplish— Having lost that kind parent, who was ever ready to oblige me, and through whose medium I have obtained so much important information from you, I...
17To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 9 September 1818 (Adams Papers)
I write to return my thanks for your kind answer to my letter respecting the biography of James Otis—which I did not receive in course being absent from town, but it was forwarded to me by my Father. I am here with Mr Baldwin making some surveys of the ground for the Canal; and shall not lose the opportunity of inquiring among the gentlemen of this County for anecdotes of the great Patriots...
18To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 25 March 1817 (Adams Papers)
I set out the first of next week on the journey to the South in execution of a State commission to examine the various penitentiaries. I have a desire to visit Washington if time will permit, and will certainly attempt to get there if my brother in law Captain Stewart will accompany me from Philadelphia as he has proposed—I knew Mr Monroe in England, and I may perhaps say he honored me with a...
19To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 15 June 1822 (Adams Papers)
I have some difficulty in fixing on that period in Otis’s career, when he in a manner withdrew himself from leading in public affairs, and rendered himself obnoxious to public suspicion as to the motives of his conduct. Judge Minot speaks of it under the head of the year 1763, but I found in the journals that Otis was chairman of a Committee for writing Manduit, on the affairs of the Province...
20To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 24 August 1822 (Adams Papers)
I write to ask your leave to make use of two passages from your letter to my father of June 1. 1817. I wish to introduce them in notes to corroborate, my remarks. I can mention them with your name, or simply as an extract from a MS. letter . The first relates to Hancock—"At the time of this prosperity, I was one day walking in the Mall with and accidentally met Samuel Adams. In taking a few...
21To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 27 January 1823 (Adams Papers)
At length I have the pleasure to send you a copy of my life of James Otis . I can hardly express to you the various emotions that arise in thus presenting you with a volume which may be entirely attributed to you, which in almost every page relies upon your authority, and which affords so many proofs of of your kind communications to me. Often as your name appears, I have had some difficulty...
22To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 10 August 1819 (Adams Papers)
In a short memoir of my Father, prepared for the Volume of the Historical Society now in the press, I have made a few extracts from the letters of his distinguished correspondents. And from among your early letters those which I now inclose for you to see and which I hope you will permit me to print in these Transactions. The one to my grandfather is taken on account of the most kind &...
23To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 3 December 1821 (Adams Papers)
I take the liberty of sending you a copy of a Report which is to be acted upon in Town meeting this day week—A chain of circumstances forced me to be a good deal instrumental in getting this affair into its present shape. Several gentlemen of the Committee devoted their great legal knowledge & very sound discretion to the preparation of the Bills, which should furnish the ground work of our...
24To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 4 July 1818 (Adams Papers)
An indisposition which has considerably impeded my movements for a few weeks past, has prevented my having the honour of paying my respects to you as I have wished to do, and being about accompanying my sister Mrs Gardiner to Kennebec, I shall not be able to make my visit to Quincy till after my return towards the end of the month— I have for some time past thought of an undertaking which the...
25To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 18 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I received your favour of yesterday inclosing Judge Sewall’s letter, and the anecdote of Otis, the letter I now return and I will take care of the inclosure to return it hereafter. It strikes me as a curious case, and worthy of being remarked upon, that a great lawyer unhappily subjected to mental derangement, should be admitted in a Court of Justice to give an opinion founded as he remarked...
26To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 7 December 1817 (Adams Papers)
I take the liberty of sending to you the only copy entire , which I possess of the Discourse I delivered before the Humane Society last Spring. I have promised it to Mr Shaw ultimately, and when you have read it, if you will take that trouble I will thank you to give it to him I do not ask you to read the Discourse itself which is a trifling performance on the trite subject of Charity, but the...
27To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 25 April 1819 (Adams Papers)
Having understood that Dr. Townsend whose wife was formerly intimate in the Otis family might possibly give me some anecdotes of James Otis, I called on him, a day or two since. He said he knew nothing particular but still mentioned two or three things which I wish to mention to you to know if they will recall any thing to your mind that I can make use of—The first thing was the trial of the...
28To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 22 September 1816 (Adams Papers)
My Father has done me the favour to Communicate to me, the letters he has received from you on the subject of Grimm’s story of the Abbè de Mably. In the journal I conduct, my principal object is American literature & history past & contemporary. Anything relating to any portion of either is particularly agreable to me; and I need not say therefore how much gratified I should be, in being...
29To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 27 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I was very highly gratified by your opinion on the subject of slavery in the new States; its tenour was what I anticipated from the principles & actions of your whole life. A meeting is advertised for the next week of gentlemen of this town & vicinity, who are enemies of the trade and the further extension of slavery in the United States. I thought if I addressed some observations to the...
30To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 27 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
I asked my Father the evening before I left town on a visit here, if he had written to you as I had wished him to do on the subject of obtaining from Mr Rodney the papers or a copy of them in his possession relating to James Otis—He told me he had not, because Mr Shaw had done it, and that you had written to Mr Rodney on the subject—I have made a beginning to collect materials and hope to make...