Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, 19 June 1798
Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch
Quincy1 19 June 1798
my dear sister
I expected to have heard from you on Saturday, but no Letter came and on Wedensday but still no Letter. I was dissapointed, but knowing your many avocations I concluded it must arise from thence. I hope not from Sickness tho you wrote me you was not well. I who have more leisure, and no care of Family affairs but my order can and do devote almost every morning in writing to some Friend or other.
You will hear before this reaches you of the arrival of mr Marshall at Nyork. mr Pinckney is gone to the South of France, with a permit, for the Health of a daughter suposed in a consumption. mr Gerry stays untill he hears from our Government which as appears to me, is a very wrong step.2 The Government you will be informd received last week an other dispatch of a Letter from Talleyrand, and a very lengthy reply by our Envoys—which being in a press copy & part cypher, two copies being to be prepared of it, could not be got ready in one or two days— in the mean time Talleyrand had sent out to Bache his Letter, for to be publishd here, & without, the replie of our Envoys. this he exaltingly gave to the publick on saturday.3 it really appears a very fortunate circumstance that, our Government, should have received tho by an other conveyance the dispatches about the same time and so soon be able to counteract the villany intended by Talleyrand. it has an other good effect, that of convincing the most unbelieving—of the close connection between the Infernals of France & those in our own Bosoms, and in any other Country Bache & all his papers would have been seazd and ought to be here, but congress are dilly dallying about passing a Bill enabling the President to seize suspisious persons—and their papers— we shall be favourd soon I suppose with the pamphlet written by the Clerk in Talleyrands office—4 all this however works for good, and will tend to work out our Salvation I hope. I will send the papers as soon as publishd. in the mean time I send you some pamphlets to be distributed for the publick Benifit, and Send one in my Name to mrs Webb with my compliments—5
We are all well but a servant who has been voilently attackd with an inflamitory Soar Throat, & very dangerously sick for several days. We hope he has past the worst.
the Season has not yet been uncommonly Hot. I am weary of conjectures, so shall say nothing of when it is probable Congress will rise. I believe they will decarle War against the French first.
Mr Marshalls arrival will hasten the buisness— o mr Gerry! mr Gerry, that You had but been wise enough, & resolute enough to have come too.
mrs Malony got home yesterday morning, in six days— I have not seen her, I have only heard that She is come— with a kind remembrance to all Friend yours
A A
RC (MWA:Abigail Adams Letters); addressed: “Mrs Mary Cranch / Quincy”; endorsed by Richard Cranch: “Letter from Mrs / A: Adams, Quincy, / June 19th. 1798.”
1. AA repeated the mistake she made in the dateline of her 13 June letter to Cranch, above.
2. New York and Philadelphia newspapers reported John Marshall’s arrival in New York on the ship Alexander Hamilton, Capt. William Wise, on 17 June; Charles Cotesworth Pinckney’s removal to the south of France for his daughter’s health; and Elbridge Gerry’s decision to remain in Paris “to wait the determinations of our government” (New York Daily Advertiser, 18 June; Philadelphia Carey’s United States’ Recorder, 19 June; , p. 49).
3. In a message to Congress of 18 June, JA submitted a dispatch received on 14 June from the American commissioners to France dated 3 April and two enclosures: a letter of 18 March from Talleyrand to the commissioners and the commissioners’ 3 April response. The letter from Talleyrand argued that French depredations against American shipping were made in retaliation for American actions, namely the failure to observe the 1778 Franco-American Treaty, the conclusion of the Jay Treaty, and the hostility of the Adams administration toward France. Talleyrand concluded that the Directory would negotiate only with Gerry, the “one of the three, whose opinions, presumed to be more impartial, promise, in the course of the explanations, more of that reciprocal confidence which is indispensable.” In their 3 April 1798 answer, the commissioners offered a detailed rebuttal of French charges and reiterated the justice and necessity of American actions in maintaining its neutrality, as well as the government’s desire to resolve their differences with France. Talleyrand’s letter without the commissioners’ reply appeared in the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 16 June (, 2:188–199).
4. The Philadelphia Gazette, 18 June, reported that a packet addressed to Benjamin Franklin Bache and bearing Talleyrand’s seal had been given to William Lee by one of Talleyrand’s clerks to deliver. The same day, the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States reported that the letter from Talleyrand to the commissioners was only part of what Bache had received, but they had not learned what more the packet contained.
5. The enclosures have not been found but likely were Anthony Aufrere’s The Cannibals’ Progress.