Adams Papers
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John Quincy Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams, 2 September 1804

John Quincy Adams to Louisa Catherine Adams

Quincy 2. September 1804.

Since I wrote you last Tuesday in Boston I have received another letter from you, dated the 21st: of August, which has completed the satisfaction I enjoyed in the receipt of those which had preceded it— After a painful expectation of nearly three weeks, I was thus compensated by four letters in the course of as many days—1 I was not mistaken in my calculation upon your punctuality, but am still ignorant by what accident three of the letters were so long detained before their arrival. The most probable account I can imagine of it is that two, were kept at the Post-Office in Boston, although they are directed to send them all out here as they arrive— I consider however all the anxiety I endured as less than a feather’s weight since I have learnt that you and the children were well.

I always feel obliged to you for your advice, and have often derived useful advantage from your counsels and admonitions— The precautions which you have more than once intimated to me, I know are founded in the purest and tenderest affection— Of the perfectly pacific character of my temper, I believe you have no doubt, and I believe you will never complain of my not going far enough to avoid contention— But I can neither sacrifice my honest and deliberate opinions, nor the expression of them when and where it appears to me proper, upon any consideration; and least of all could I find it in my heart to give them up, from motives of personal apprehension— On this subject I can only add, that I hope you will never have cause to blush for the conduct of your husband on any occasion.

Your observation that all resentments ought to be buried in the grave, are at once indicative of a good heart and a sound understanding— I am so far from extending any animosities further than this life, that I cannot harbour them for any length of time against the living— But the estimate of a man’s character and temper is one thing—forming such an estimate upon grounds of hatred or malice is another— The man who has injured me, I can sincerely and heartily forgive— But if he has injured me without provocation, and without atonement, I can never view him as deserving marks of honour, esteem, or affection, living or dead— To join in any such marks would be a species of hypocrisy to which I cannot descend.— The inky cloak, and customary suits of solemn black, says Hamlet do but seem—for they are what a man may put upon—2 Now I think that these ought not to be assumed, when a man has not that within which passes Show— Upon this principle I refused to wear crape last Winter, for S. Adams, and old Pendleton—3 Upon the same principle I would neither wear crape nor join in a funereal procession for Hamilton— I had no respect for the men— Of old Pendleton I knew very little, and that little was not to his honour— Adams and Hamilton neither of them had ever personally offended me, but one of them had betrayed a sacred trust of my father, and the other had slandered him in a lying pamphlet, besides innumerable other injuries to another near connection— Could I have united in testimonials of veneration, of admiration, of gratitude to such men without being myself a traitor and a liar?— In my opinion I could not.

In saying this I hope you will not consider me as intolerant.— I have great respect for many of the characters who have gone the farthest in this posthumous idolatry of Hamilton— To mention only Mr: Ames, whose eulogy you have doubtless seen, and admired; there are few men in the world whom I more truly esteem, and respect than Ames—4 I am persuaded he firmly believed in all the hyperboles he has lavished upon his memory— But if Ames will believe in political transubstantiation I have no objection— I must only decline adopting his creed— My belief of Hamilton is that he was a man of considerable, but overrated abilities, openly and scandalously vicious in his private character, and of views and projects worse than equivocal as a public man— This opinion of mine, as he says of that he entertained of Burr, may be erroneous, but is not taken up on light grounds—5 I could produce glaring facts for every word of it— His tragical end, I lament as much as any man— The distress of his family, I feel for in common with the warmest of his friends; but in very deed I do not think he was either a demi-god or a Saint.

The death of Mrs: Sargent was an event at which I could not but be in some degree affected— Soon after I first arrived from Washington, on meeting her husband, I enquired how her health was, and he told me she had been very ill— I concluded however that it was merely an illness usual in her situation, and that she had recovered— The next I heard of her was that she was dead— But without intending to affect either indifference or sensibility, I must assure you that I lamented her loss as I should have done that of any other young woman the wife of my friend— The sentiments I had felt with regard to her for at least ten years, were those of a Common acquaintance, coupled perhaps with a peculiar coldness of reserve— I had none of the feelings of St: Preux in Rousseau’s Heloïse; and might very safely have gone upon a water party, with her, without the least temptation of plunging her and my self headlong over-board—6 I never felt the wish to see her, nor was I conscious of a wish to avoid her— It is not in my recollection that since my return from Europe, I ever saw her more than two or three times— As to your suspicions of her disposition towards me, I imagine there was little or no foundation for them— Judging from what I had told you my self, and from what perhaps others had told you of the early attachment that once subsisted between us, you naturally construed every thing that you might witness in her words or actions, with a bias towards the opinion you had formed, and helped in fancy the inferences you drew— I sincerely join you in the hope that she is removed to a better world.

The Supreme Court of the State has been in Session this fortnight, at Boston, and has occasioned my going there three times in the week just expired— But the Court adjourned yesterday without coming to the Causes in which I was engaged— They took up an whole week in trying the cause of Mr: Boylston, against Mr: Gill, of which you have often heard— Mr: Boylston has recovered a Judgment, for one hundred and six thousand dollars—7 So you may suppose he is in high Spirits—

I generally call at Whitcomb’s when in Boston— His wife is as round as the terraqueous globe; and not very well; but as I heard a man say in Court the other day, her sickness will soon fall into her arms—8 The House at Concert-Hall is still repairing; and will be very elegant— The dancing Hall is lengthened nearly one half; and widened in proportion. But I doubt whether he will make so much of it as he did of his Coffee-House.— I have at length leased for three years the house he was in, to a frenchman named Delisle—A Restorator—which is another name for A Coffee-House—So it has not changed its destination— But he is to give me a hundred dollars a year Rent more than Whitcomb gave—9 The House has been two months empty.—

The drought, and heat, and dust are excessive— A very light thunder shower while I have been writing has cleared up without cooling the atmosphere— But it grows so dark, and my paper comes so near to a close, that I have scarcely space or light more than to add, that in space or out, in light or in darkness I am ever affectionately yours.

RC (Adams Papers).

1LCA’s 5, 12, and 14 Aug. letters to JQA are all above; her letter of 21 Aug. has not been found. LCA also wrote to JQA on 25 and 28 Aug.; on the 25th she reported that GWA and JA2 were “both in perfect health” and that she was glad to hear JQA was enjoying Quincy: “I hope it will help to relieve the depression and … indisposition which you at present labour under. I know nothing so calculated to remove this as chearful company.” In her letter of the 28th, LCA commented on the U.S. military presence in New Orleans and on the separation of Elizabeth Parke Custis Law and Thomas Law. JQA wrote again to LCA on 28 Aug., enclosing $50 and noting, “I have never failed to write you every week, but our Post-Offices somewhere or other are very negligent or careless” (all Adams Papers).

2Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, scene ii, lines 77–78, 83–84.

3For JQA’s opposition to a Senate resolution calling for the wearing of crepe following the deaths of Samuel Adams and Edmund Pendleton, see AA to JQA, 22 Oct. 1803, note 2, above.

4Fisher Ames published a sketch of Alexander Hamilton’s life in the Boston Repertory, 7 Aug. 1804. “I could weep too for my country, which, mournful as it is, does not know the half of its loss,” Ames wrote. “My soul stiffens with despair, when I think what Hamilton would have been.

5JQA was quoting Hamilton’s “Statement on Impending Duel with Aaron Burr,” which he wrote immediately before the duel and which was published posthumously in the New York Evening Post, 16 July. In the document, Hamilton stated that “impressions” he had of Burr “were entertained with sincerity and uttered with motives and for purposes, which might appear to me commendable … (until they could be removed by evidence of their being erroneous).” Hamilton alleged that Burr had assumed a tone that was “positively offensive” toward him and further noted: “I trust, at the same time, that the world will do me the Justice to believe, that I have not censured him on light grounds, or from unworthy inducements” (Hamilton, Papers description begins The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett, Jacob E. Cooke, and others, New York, 1961–1987; 27 vols. description ends , 26:278, 279, 280, 281).

6In recalling Mary Frazier Sargent, JQA evoked Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Julie; ou, La nouvelle Hélotse, in which the tutor Saint-Preux falls in love with his student, Julie, but her father forbids their marriage. Julie later dies from drowning (Peter France, ed., The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, Oxford, 1995).

7The Mass. Supreme Judicial Court during its Aug. 1804 Boston session heard a case brought by Ward Nicholas Boylston, administrator of the estate of his uncle Thomas Boylston, against Moses Gill (1762–1832), nephew and executor of the estate of Massachusetts lieutenant governor Moses Gill. The court ruled that Gill’s estate was liable for a debt he incurred before his death and awarded Boylston $106,176. One of the cases JQA had expected to be heard was Pollock v. Babcock. In the summer of 1803 JQA represented Boston insurance underwriter Adam Babcock, who argued that a $15,000 claim for lost cargo by Allan Pollock was invalid because the cargo was seized after Pollock’s vessel entered a Brazilian port at which U.S. trade was banned. Pollock countered that weather forced him into the port and he had no intention of trading. The court later ruled in Pollock’s favor (vols. 4:342, 8:12, 61; Dudley Atkins Tyng and others, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, [4th edn.?], 100 vols., Boston, 1866–1870, 3:524–525, 6:234–239; D/JQA/27, 28 Aug. 1804, APM Reel 30; JQA to Rufus Greene Amory, 6 March, Adams Papers).

8Elizabeth Epps Whitcomb gave birth to a son in Nov. 1804 (TBA to JQA, 17 Nov., Adams Papers).

9Caton Delisle operated a dining business in Boston from at least 1798. His lease of JQA’s Half-Court Square property commenced on 1 Sept. 1804, and he was recorded at that location through 1807, providing “first qualities of Wines and Cordials, brown and Turtle Soup.” In 1806 JQA recorded receiving rent for the property of $900 per year (D/JQA/27, 30 Aug. 1804, 1 Sept. 1804, 12 July 1806, APM Reel 30; Boston Directory, 1798 description begins Boston Directory [title varies], issued annually with varying imprints. description ends , p. 40; Boston Directory, 1805 description begins Boston Directory [title varies], issued annually with varying imprints. description ends , p. 42, 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. 8057; Boston Directory, 1806 description begins Boston Directory [title varies], issued annually with varying imprints. description ends , p. 41, 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. 50652; Boston Directory, 1807 description begins Boston Directory [title varies], issued annually with varying imprints. description ends , p. 60, 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. 12180; Boston Columbian Centinel, 22 Sept. 1804).

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