Adams Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-15-02-0127

Abigail Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 10 October 1802

Abigail Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams

Quincy October 10th 1802

Dear Thomas

I have not written you a line since I received yours; from the Yellow Springs, for some time I knew not where you were, and began at last to feel, not a little anxious untill I was releived by your Brothers informing me that he had Received a Letter from you, dated at Philadelphia.1 there again I thought you had too Soon return’d, as the Weather of Sep’br and chiefly since october came in, has been intensely Hot, and the fever which has been in Boston, tho chiefly confind to one Street, has been uncommonly fatal—2 Scarcly one seiz’d has recoverd— In Quincy we have been more healthy than for several years past. we had upon the Farms Six weeks ago a Malignant Dysentery but it was confined to a few families, all of which with one exception, recoverd.— I now despair of seeing you here as the Season is so far advanced. I hope you have derived some benifit from your excursion through the Summer: we have past an agreable one here; your Brothers Society, and that of his family have added much to our enjoyment. he usually comes out on Saturdays, and returns on mondays. his family sometime pass the week with us. George is a lovely Boy, chatters like a Magpye it would have given me sincere pleasure to have had a visit from you, but journeying is expensive; and you are the best judge whether You could afford it— Judge Cranch jun’r and family have been upon a visit to their Friends ever since June. they leave us this week, as well as mrs Johnson. they will go to Nyork by water and from thence by land, so that you may possibly see them in Philadelphia, unless they should take a vessel at Newyork for Washingtown— what a scene is opened there? have Americans any feeling left? can they Submit to the Government of Duane Cheetham Wood, Lyon, Jones,3 and Callender.? fellows who ought to have been long ago exalted— is there any American Blood in Pensilvana? or can You only make a bluster and do nothing.? We are indeed a degraded people, unworthy of the blessings we have enjoyed, and thrown away: You see by the papers that they are bringing your Brothers Name foremost upon the federal list, and there is no saying them nay, tho he has opposed it.4 I am averse to it, as you know but what can you say against the solicitation of Friends. the urgency and what they term pressing necessity of the case You sir are the only man we can bring forward to unite the Federal votes &c &c here I am, sacrifice me for the public, as you have done those who have gone before me. I have only one hope that they will even fail to carry him, for I cannot see any prospect of producing any good— true there is yet a Year to run and the present Administration may not have a Hydra Head—but the Labour of a Hercules will not restore to this people what they will lose in the short period of four years. I see no chance for quiet no hopes for Social Harmony. the bitterness of Party thirsts for more than the cooling Stream— the Spirit of Party, is blind and deaf, but not dumb.

Where we are to land I know not— how mean does Dallas appear with his prostituted name to the address, prostituted it must have been now, or when he united with the Bar in his petition to arresst the repeal of the Judiciary—5 I am ready to ask is there any Principle? any honour any thing like what I call virtue in a Jacobin? The Rogues have fallen out, but will honest Men obtain their Rights? What a Scene does Callender unfold, if still a Lyar. he has the art of wearing the plain unvarnishd tale of truth when writing against the former administrations. he call’d not upon his adversaries to deny his assertions— he dared not challenge them to the contest. he skulked in the dark, and Scatterd his poison only amongst those whom he knew it would opperate upon— I have not a worse, nor so bad an opinion of him, as of his base low mean employer; out upon him, let him be accursed amongst Men and his name a reproach— I have removed every vestage of him out of sight—

You will be weary of my reproaches I have done— I pray you to present my Regards to all the good people of my acquaintance and be assured of the / affection of your / Mother

Abigail Adams

RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “Mr Thomas B Adams / Philadelphia”; endorsed: “Mrs: Abigail Adams / 10th: October 1802 / 21st: Recd / 24th: Ansd:.”

1TBA’s letter to AA has not been found. His letter to JQA was likely that of 26 Sept., not found (JQA to TBA, 5 Oct., and note 1, above).

2JQA reported an alarm of yellow fever in a Boston neighborhood on 1 Sept. and on 22 Sept. wrote that some had left the city due to the report (D/JQA/24, APM Reel 27).

3Meriwether Jones (1766–1806) was a prominent Democratic-Republican in Virginia, where he was the state’s public printer and a former member of the Va. House of Delegates (Jefferson, Papers description begins The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, and others, Princeton, N.J., 1950– . description ends , 40:569).

4For JQA’s candidacy in the Massachusetts congressional elections, see AA to TBA, 7 Nov., and note 3, below.

5An address “To the Republicans of Pennsylvania” in the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 27 Sept., called on Democratic-Republicans to put aside their differences and elect party members in the upcoming election or face a return of a Federalist “reign of terror.” Alexander James Dallas was one of eight Philadelphia Democratic-Republicans who signed the address, which was immediately published as a pamphlet. Under JA, the address claimed, “the law itself, assumed the form of a weapon made for the federalists alone to wield.” When JA made his late-term judicial nominations, “the midnight hour was invaded, to rivet the last fetter upon a rival administration” by creating “a judicial fortress, within which the routed federalists might safely repose, and from which the triumphant republicans might be successfully annoyed.” Federalists answered in the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 2 and 5 Oct., identifying the author as Dallas and arguing the address was “false in its premises and its conclusions, from beginning to end” (The Address of the State Committee of Republicans … of the State of Pennsylvania on the Concerns of the Election of 1802, [Phila.], 1802, Shaw-Shoemaker description begins Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801–1819, New York, 1958–1966; 22 vols.; supplemental edn., Early American Imprints, www.readex.com. description ends , No. 2134). For Dallas’ support of the 2 Feb. petition by members of the Pennsylvania bar opposing the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, see TBA to JA, 15 Feb. 1802, above.

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