James Madison Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-11-02-0564

To James Madison from John Adams, 6 December 1816

From John Adams

Quincy Decr 6. 1816

Dear Sir

As I feel a kind of Ambition to introduce to the past present and future Presidents of U.S. Some of our most amiable Men, least bigotted least Superstitious Characters, and most catholic Minds, (in the moral, not Ecclesiastical Sense of the Word) I take the Liberty to introduce to you The Rev. Mr Henry Colman.1

As it was known that he intended a Journey to the Southward for his Health which is delicate, he has been appointed to carry our Massachusetts votes for President to Washington. He knows they are all for Mr King & Col. Howard.2 This knowledge however has not diminished his Desire to pay his respects to Mr Madison and Mr Monroe.

You may depend upon it he is a Man of Honour and Candour; and that you will never have reason to repent of any Civilities you may Shew him.

Such is the State of Minds here, that had Mr Madison been Candidate, he would probably have had the Votes of Massachusetts, and consequently of all New England. Mr Monroe had not been So long and So well known. And our Orlando Furioso, took Advantage to inflame anew the dying Embers of a Party Spirit.3 Otherwise you might have Seen Massachusetts voting for Mr Monroe. I am, Sir with Usual Respect, Your most obedient

John Adams

RC (MHi); letterbook copy (MHi: Adams Papers). RC docketed by JM.

1Dartmouth-educated Henry Colman (1785–1849) was a prominent Unitarian minister in Massachusetts. The author of many religious tracts, he devoted the later years of his life to the study and promotion of agriculture (James W. Thompson, “Tribute to the Memory of Rev. Henry Colman,” Monthly Religious Magazine 6 [1849]: 481–501; Donald B. Marti, “The Reverend Henry Colman’s Agricultural Ministry,” Agricultural History 51 [1977]: 524–39).

2Adams referred to Rufus King of New York and John Eager Howard of Maryland who headed the Federalist ticket in the 1816 presidential election.

3Adams probably referred to the pamphleteer John Lowell, an inveterate critic of the Madison administration, who had mocked the president as a “knight” who in 1815–16 had entered into a contest of “Theological Gladiators” by attacking the proposals of the Rev. Jedidiah Morse for the latter’s efforts to curb Unitarian tendencies in New England by calling for a new system of church governance to give councils of ministers greater authority over wayward churches (John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 30–31 Aug. 1815 [MHi: Adams Papers]; Peter S. Field, The Crisis of the Standing Order: Clerical Intellectuals and Cultural Authority in Massachusetts, 1780–1833 [Amherst, Mass., 1998], 197–207; and [John Lowell Jr.], An Inquiry into the Right to Change the Ecclesiastical Constitution of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts. […] [Boston, 1816; Shaw and Shoemaker description begins R. R. Shaw and R. H. Shoemaker, comps., American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801–1819 (22 vols.; New York, 1958–66). description ends 38106]).

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