101To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 5 July 1814 (Adams Papers)
Since mine of Jan. 24. your’s of Mar. 14. was recieved. it was not acknoleged in the short one of May 18. by mr Rives, the only object of that having been to enable one of our most promising young men to have the advantage of making his bow to you. I learned with great regret the serious illness mentioned in your letter: and I hope mr Rives will be able to tell me you are entirely restored....
102To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 10 June 1815 (Adams Papers)
It is long since we have exchanged a letter, and yet what volumes might have been written on the occurrences even of the last three months. in the first place, Peace, God bless it! has returned to put us all again into a course of lawful and laudable pursuits: a new trial of the Bourbons has proved to the world their incompetence to the functions of the station they have occupied: & the recall...
103To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 10 August 1815 (Adams Papers)
The simultaneous movements in our correspondence have been really remarkable on several occasions. it would seem as if the state of the air, or state of the times, or some other unknown cause produced a sympathetic effect on our mutual recollections. I had set down to answer your letters of June 19. 20. 22. with pen, ink, and paper before me, when I recieved from our mail that of July 30. you...
104To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 11 January 1816 (Adams Papers)
Of the last five months I have past four at my other domicil, for such it is in a considerable degree. no letters are forwarded to me there, because the cross post to that place is circuitous and uncertain. during my absence therefore they are accumulating here, & awaiting acknolegements. this has been the fate of your favor of Nov. 13. I agree with you in all it’s eulogies on the 18th....
105To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 8 April 1816 (Adams Papers)
I have to acknolege your two favors of Feb. 16. & Mar. 2. and to join sincerely in the sentiment of mrs Adams, and regret that distance separates us so widely. an hour of conversation would be worth a volume of letters. but we must take things as they come. You ask if I would agree to live my 70. or rather 73. years over again? to which I say Yea. I think with you that it is a good world on...
106To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 1 August 1816 (Adams Papers)
Your two philosophical letters of May 4. and 6. have been too long in my Carton of “Letters to be answered.” to the question indeed on the utility of Grief, no answer remains to be given. you have exhausted the subject. I see that, with the other evils of life, it is destined to temper the cup we are to drink. Two urns by Jove’s high throne have ever stood, The source of evil one, and one of...
107To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 14 October 1816 (Adams Papers)
Your letter; dear Sir, of May 6. had already well explained the Uses of grief, that of Sep. 3. with equal truth adduces instances of it’s abuse; and when we put into the same scale these abuses, with the afflictions of soul which even the Uses of grief cost us, we may consider it’s value in the economy of the human being, as equivocal at least. those afflictions cloud too great a portion of...
108To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 25 November 1816 (Adams Papers)
I recieve here, dear Sir, your favor of the 4th. just as I am preparing my return to Monticello for winter quarters; and I hasten to answer to some of your enquiries. the Tracy I mentioned to you is the one connected by marriage with La Fayette’s family. the mail which brought your letter brought one also from him. he writes me that he is become blind & so infirm that he is no longer able to...
109To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 11 January 1817 (Adams Papers)
Forty three volumes read in one year, and 12. of them quartos! dear Sir, how I envy you! half a dozen 8vos. in that space of time are as much as I am allowed. I can read by candlelight only, and stealing long hours from my rest; nor would that time be allowed me indulged to me, could I, by that light, see to write from sun-rise to one or two oclock, and often from dinner to dark, I am drudging...
110To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 5 May 1817 (Adams Papers)
Absences and avocations had prevented my acknoleging your favor of Feb. 2. when that of Apr. 19. arrived. I had not the pleasure of recieving the former by the hands of mr Lyman. his business probably carried him in another direction; for I am far inland, & distant from the great line of communication between the trading cities. your recommendations are always welcome, for indeed the subjects...
111To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 8 September 1817 (Adams Papers)
A month’s absence from Monticello has added to the delay of acknoleging your last letters; and indeed for a month before I left it our projected College gave me constant employment; for being the only Visitor in it’s immediate neighborhood, all it’s administrative business falls on me, and that, where building is going on, is not a little. in yours of July 15, you express a wish to see our...
112To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 17 May 1818 (Adams Papers)
I was so unfortunate as not to recieve from mr Holly’s own hand your favor of Jan. 28. being then at my other home. he dined only with my family, & left them with an impression which has filled me with regret that I did not partake of the pleasure his visit gave them. I am glad he is gone to Kentucky. rational Christianity will thrive more rapidly there than here. they are freer from...
113To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 7 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
It is very long, my dear friend, since I have written to you. the fact is that I have was scarcely at home at all from May to September, and from that time I have been severely indisposed and not yet recovered so far as to sit up to write, but in pain. having been subject to troublesome attacks of rheumatism for some winters past, and being called by other business into the neighborhood of our...
114To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 13 November 1818 (Adams Papers)
The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal event of which your letter of Oct. 20. had given me ominous foreboding. tried myself, in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. the same trials have taught me that, for ills so...
115To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 19 January 1819 (Adams Papers)
About a week before I recieved your favor of Dec. 30. the 22d. No. of the North American review had come to hand, without my knowing from what quarter. the letter of mr Channing to mr Shaw, which you have been so good as to inclose, founds a presumption that it was from mr Channing, and that he is the editor. I had never before seen the work; but have read this No. with attention and great...
116To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 21 March 1819 (Adams Papers)
I am indebted to you for mr Bowditch’s very learned mathematical papers, the calculations of which are not for every reader, altho’ their results are readily enough understood. one of these impairs the confidence I had reposed in La Place’s demonstration that the excentricities of the planets of our system could oscillate only within narrow limits, and therefore could authorise no inference...
117To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 15 May 1819 (Adams Papers)
your letter of Apr. 2. was recieved in due time, and I have used the permission it gave me of sending a copy of that of Mar. 2. to the editor of Tracy’s Political economy. Mr. S. A. Wells of Boston, grandson of our old friend Saml. Adams, and who proposes to write the life of his grandfather, has made some enquiries of me relative to revolutionary antiquities which are within your knolege as...
118To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 9 July 1819 (Adams Papers)
I am in debt to you for your letters of May 21. 27. & June 22. the first delivered me by mr Greenwood gave me the gratification of his acquaintance; and a gratification it always is to be made acquainted with gentlemen of candor, worth and information, as I found mr Greenwood to be. that on the subject of mr Samuel Adams Wells shall not be forgotten in time and place, when it can be used to...
119To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 7 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Three long and dangerous illnesses within the last 12. months must apologise for my long silence towards you. The paper bubble is then burst. this is what you & I, and every reasoning man, seduced by no obliquity of mind, or interest, have long foreseen. yet it’s disastrous effects are not the less for having been foreseen. we were laboring under a dropsical fulness of circulating medium....
120To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 10 December 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have to acknolege the reciept of your favor of Nov. 23. the banks, bankrupt law, manufactures, Spanish Treaty are nothing. these are occurrences which like waves in a storm will pass under the ship. but the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, & what more, God only knows. from the battle of Bunker’s hill to the treaty of Paris we never had so...
121To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 14 March 1820 (Adams Papers)
A continuation of poor health makes me an irregular correspondent. I am therefore your debtor for the two letters of Jan. 20. & Feb. 21. it was after you left Europe that Dugald Stuart, concerning whom you enquire, and Ld. Dare, second son of the Marquis of Lansdowne came to Paris. they brought me a letter from Ld. Wycombe whom you knew. I became immediately intimate with Stuart, calling...
122To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 15 August 1820 (Adams Papers)
I am a great defaulter, my dear Sir, in our correspondence, but prostrate health rarely permits me to write; and, when it does, matters of business imperiously press their claims. I am getting better however, slowly, swelled legs being now the only serious symptom, and these, I believe, proceed from extreme debility. I can walk but little; but I ride 6. or 8. miles a day without fatigue; &...
123To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 22 January 1821 (Adams Papers)
I was quite rejoiced, dear Sir, to see that you had health & spirits enough to take part in the late convention of your state for revising it’s constitution, and to bear your share in it’s debates and labors. the amendments of which we have as yet heard prove the advance of liberalism in the intervening period; and encourage a hope that the human mind will some day get back to the freedom it...
124To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 12 September 1821 (Adams Papers)
I am just returned from my other home, and shall within a week go back to it for the rest of the autumn. I find here your favor of Aug. 20. and was before in arrear for that of May 19. I cannot answer, but join in, your question, of May 19. are we to surrender the pleasing hopes of seeing improvement in the moral and intellectual condition of Man? the events of Naples & Piedmont cast a gloomy...
125To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 1 June 1822 (Adams Papers)
It is very long, my dear Sir, since I have written to you. my dislocated wrist is now become so stiff that I write slowly and with pain, and therefore write as little as I can. yet it is due to mutual friendship to ask once in a while how we do? the papers tell us that Genl. Starke is off at the age of 93. Charles Thomson still lives at about the same age, chearful, slender as a grasshopper,...
126To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 27 June 1822 (Adams Papers)
Your kind letter of the 11th. has given me great satisfaction for altho’ I could not doubt but that the hand of age was pressing heavily on you, as on myself, yet we like to know the particulars and the degree of that pressure. much reflection too has been produced by your suggestion of lending my letter of the 1st. to a printer. I have generally great aversion to the insertion of my letters...
127To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 1 November 1822 (Adams Papers)
I have racked my memory, and ransacked my papers to enable myself to answer the enquiries of your favor of Oct. 15. but to little purpose. my papers furnish me nothing, my memory generalities only. I know that while I was in Europe, & anxious about the fate of our seafaring men, for some of whom, then in captivity in Algiers we were then treating, and all were in like danger, I formed...
128To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 25 February 1823 (Adams Papers)
I recieved in due time your two favors of Dec. 2. & Feb. 10. and have to acknolege for the ladies of my native state their obligations to you for the encomiums which you are so kind as to bestow on them. they certainly claim no advantages over those of their sister states, and are sensible of more favorable circumstances existing with many of them, & happily availed of, which our situation...
129From Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 11 April 1823 (Adams Papers)
The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of “ mon Dieu ! jusque à quand”! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god . he was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Dæmonism. if ever man worshipped a false god, he did. the being described in...
130To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 4 September 1823 (Adams Papers)
Your letter of Aug. 15. was recieved in due time, and with the welcome of every thing which comes from you. with it’s opinions on the difficulties of revolutions, from despotism to freedom, I very much concur. the generation which commences a revolution can rarely compleat it. habituated from their infancy to passive submission of body and mind to their kings and priests, they are not...