Adams Papers
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From John Adams to Cotton Tufts, 28 June 1789

To Cotton Tufts

Richmond Hill June 28. 1789

Dear sir

I have received your favour of the 22.— Mrs Adams, Mr Charles and Miss Louisa, arrived on Wednesday the 24th. after a tedious Passage of five days from Newport. We are all very happy.

Mr Samuel Tufts needs no other merit but that of being your Brother, to convince me that he has a great deal: but if he is a Candidate for any Employment he must apply directly to the first Magistrate. The Authority and Duty of the first Executive Magistrate, it is to investigate the Characters and Merits of all Competitors and the Reputation of his Reign is responsible for his faithful and impartial Use of it. I Shall be obliged to you however, for your State of Mr Tufts’s merits.1

Mr Jackson, of N. Port Mr Pickman of Salem and Mr Sargant of Glocester have applied I Suppose: for Places but this is under the Rose.2

I am with sincerest affection

John Adams.

RC (NN:Edward S. and Mary Stillman Harkness Coll.); internal address: “Dr Tufts.”; endorsed: “John Adams Esq / June 28. 1789.” LbC (Adams Papers); APM Reel 115.

1For Samuel Tufts’ query, see Theophilus Parsons’ letter of 8 July, and note 2, below.

2Newburyport merchant Jonathan Jackson did not receive a collectorship, but George Washington nominated him as marshal for the district of Massachusetts on 24 Sept., and he was confirmed by the Senate two days later (AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963–. description ends , 8:313; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates description begins John Langdon Sibley, Clifford K. Shipton, Conrad Edick Wright, Edward W. Hanson, and others, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Boston, 1873–. description ends , 15:64; First Fed. Cong. description begins Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America, March 4, 1789 – March 3, 1791, ed. Linda Grant De Pauw, Charlene Bangs Bickford, Helen E. Veit, William C. diGiacomantonio, and Kenneth R. Bowling, Baltimore, 1972–2017; 22 vols. description ends , 2:44, 46). For the patronage requests of William Pickman and Epes Sargent Jr., see vol. 19:382, 431.

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