Adams Papers
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Thomas Boylston Adams to Rufus King, 2 June 1801

Thomas Boylston Adams to Rufus King

Philadelphia 2d: June 1801.

Dear Sir.

I take the liberty to enclose to your care a letter for my brother, who may possibly be in England, on his way to America, about the time this will arrive in that Country. I have been instructed by my brother, as long ago as the beginning of February, that I might draw bills upon you, to the amount of £ Stg 1400, and the reason why I have not complied with his wishes, in this respect, is ascribable only to the low rate of Exchange between the two Countries. I think it adviseable to wait for a more favorable market, which may possibly occur in the course of the summer or autumn.1

It is not in my power to present you with any information of an interesting nature, that will be recommended by its novelty. The general triumph of democratic candidates for office, throughout the Country, to the exclusion of better principles & abler heads, is a fact, as little equivocal, as any I could name. Your adopted State has lately made itself conspicuous, by a general “return to the error of her ways,” and our native State seems to be rapidly declining in the wisdom & energy of her Councils. I cannot help deploring these circumstances, because they manifestly are the offspring of error & delusion in the public mind, but time may possibly effect a remedy for this malady, which could not be accomplished by violence.

Our newspapers have very lately presented us with your correspondence with the new Ministry on the subject of our captured vessels. We are not a little proud, that the energetic & dignified language of your Note to Lord Hawkesbury was attended with the desired effect.2

I beg leave to present my best respects to Mrs: King,3 & have the honor to be / Sir, / Your very hble & obedt: Servt

Thomas B Adams.

RC (NHi:Rufus King Papers); addressed: “Rufus King Esqr: / Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States / London”; internal address: “Rufus King Esqr:”; endorsed: “Tho: B: Adams / 2d. June 1801 / Recd. July 6.”; notation: “wrote same Evg. to Bird S. & Bird / to state the probability that the Drafts / wd. not be made till the Autumn / and ask if it wd. suit them to / allow Mr. J. Q. Adams interest for the / money while the same shall have been / in their hands—” and “Mill hill Middlesex” and “Martha. Martin.”

1TBA wrote to JQA on 31 May, not found (TBA to JQA, 8 June, below). For JQA’s 7 Feb. letter to TBA, see vol. 14:559–562.

2On 12 April, King wrote to James Madison about his ongoing efforts to address British depredations on U.S. shipping in the West Indies, for which see AA to TBA, 22 April, and note 4, above. King enclosed copies of correspondence with the president of the Board of Trade, Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool and formerly 1st Baron Hawkesbury (1729–1808), in which King objected to the condemnation of the U.S. brigantine Leopard, Capt. Ropes. On 20 Oct. 1800 a British admiralty court in the Bahamas had condemned the Leopard for carrying Spanish trade goods from a U.S. port to a Spanish colony. King’s enclosures included a 16 March 1801 advocate-general’s report overturning the condemnation on the grounds that a neutral nation could carry products from a country at war with Britain to a colony of that country as long as there was an intermediate stop at a neutral port. King proposed to Madison that the documents be published in U.S. newspapers “as the most expeditious means of communicating them to the cruising Ships and Privateers in the American Seas.” The correspondence was duly printed in the Washington, D.C., National Intelligencer, 27 May 1801, and the Philadelphia Gazette, 30 May (DNB description begins Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, New York and London, 1885–1901; repr. Oxford, 1959–1960; 21 vols. plus supplements; rev. edn., www.oxforddnb.com. description ends ; King, Life and Corr. description begins Charles R. King, ed., Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, New York, 1894–1900; 6 vols. description ends , 3:426–429; Madison, Papers, Secretary of State Series description begins The Papers of James Madison: Secretary of State Series, ed. Robert J. Brugger, Mary A. Hackett, David B. Mattern, and others, Charlottesville, Va., 1986– . description ends , 1:91).

3Mary Alsop (1769–1819), the daughter of New York merchant John Alsop and Mary Frogat Alsop, married Rufus King in 1786 (vol. 7:142; DNB description begins Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, New York and London, 1885–1901; repr. Oxford, 1959–1960; 21 vols. plus supplements; rev. edn., www.oxforddnb.com. description ends ; Names of Persons for Whom Marriage Licenses were Issued by the Secretary of the Province of New York, Previous to 1784, Albany, N.Y., 1860, p. 5).

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