Adams Papers
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Abigail Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 5 July 1801

Abigail Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams

Quincy july 5th 1801

my dear Thomas

I told William Shaw of the event which You have s[. . . .]olely questioned, and from the best Authority, even the hand writing of the Father in a letter to me; of the 14 of April. “The day before yesterday at half past three oclock afternoon, my dear Louissa gave me a son, she has had a very severe time through the winter, and is now so ill that I dare not write to her Mother to give her notice of this Event;— I will humbly hope that in a few Days I may be relieved from my anxiety on her account and be enabled to announce to her Mother only news of joy— The Child is well.” three days after in a Letter to your Father, he says, [“]the Drs assure me She is out of danger”— In his last however of the beginning of May, he says she was Still confined to her Bed, he had then just received his Letter of permission to return, which he had communicated to the Government.1 he says he shall take measures immediatly to execute the buisness, but Louissa’s low and weak state renderd it uncertain when he should be enabled to leave Berlin—

I feel very anxious for him in all respects; I pray God send him a safe and fortunate passage to his native Land, with his poor weak and feeble wife, and Boy. I know and feel how many cares, of Body, and mind, he will have to encounter of a private nature, to have to begin anew the world, and that in a profession which he never loved, in a place which promisses him no great harvest, where there are so many reapers; with a mind so richly stored for employments of the highest grade; and a capacity which has been cultivated and improved, may I say to you? beyond any other native American? to be obliged to go to the drugery of the Law, for a Support, is a humiliating prospect; but this resort I shall press upon him with all Maternal persuasion. the post of honour will be a private Station under the ruling administration, and tho it is not probable any tender will be made to him of any employment in the Gift of the Pressident, the state may think of him; but the advice of Years of experience will be, to decline all and every effort to draw him from the pursuit of an independance which shall place him in circumstances of ease, if ind[us]tery and application to his profession can effect it— It was a refined Sense of duty which led the Character You both revere, in times of great peril and danger, to sacrifice his private interest & his personal pleasures, to the great interest of the public, You both have witnessd how his Career has been thwarted by those whose advantage he sought, and whose welfare he undeviatingly pursued— “the obstinancy with which mankind persist in habitual errors, and the voilence with which they indulge inveterate passions a deep regreet for their follies, and the honour which there vices create are sufficient motives to drive us from their presence. He whose free and independant Spirit is resolved to permit his mind to think for itself; who disdains to form his feelings, and to fashion his opinions upon the Capricious notions of the world, and sufficiently firm not to obey implicitly the hasty notions of others. who Seeks to cultivate the just feelings of the Heart; and to pursue truth, must detach himself from the degenerate croud, and seek his enjoyments in retirement;”2 and here we find them

“the world forgetting, by the world forgot”3

Sergant is sacrificed, and Astronomer Davis raised upon his Ruins,4 he certainly understood the calculation of Eclipses. the Gloom & Night of Jacobinism has obscured the Sun of federalism— with smooth words and lulling sounds, the Multitude are to be hushed into a tranquil slumber— Peace to their Manes—

[If] mr Radcliffe should visit Quincy, we shall be civil to him.

The Gazzet which I mentiond to you is a summary of all the great Events in Europe, for the month of march and part of April. I directed William to give it to the Editor of the P[all]adium to enliven his leaden pages.— Dennie gives the Palladium, the puff direct, but I really think it too dull to be mischievious5 some good lucubrations find their way into it, but it is a party paper and the paper of a party who have committed suicide upon themselves, in pulling down the Pillar, they have crushed themselves beneath the ruins; they have lost all their influence with the real & true American federalist. Ames was rejected from the counsel this year, merely because he was considered as the head of the junto party.6 the time is fast approaching when their conduct will be execrated, and their ingratitude receive its reward—

My pen has run beyond its usual latitude, and the hour warns me to close

Your ever affectionate / Mother

Abigail Adams

RC (Adams Papers); endorsed: “Mrs: A ADAMS. / 5th: July 1801 / 25th: Recd:.” Some loss of text due to a torn manuscript.

1JQA to AA, 14 April, and to JA, 18 April and 1 May, all above.

2A combination of two passages in Johann Georg Zimmerman, Solitude, 2 vols., London, 1799–1800, 2:46, 51–52.

3Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard,” line 208.

4Winthrop Sargent (1753–1820), Harvard 1771, served as governor of the Mississippi Territory from 1798 until 7 May 1801, when his commission expired. Sargent’s appointment and tenure had been opposed by Thomas Terry Davis of Kentucky and William Charles Cole Claiborne of Tennessee, the latter of whom was appointed Sargent’s successor on 25 May and accepted the position on 2 Aug. (ANB description begins John A. Garraty, Mark C. Carnes, and Paul Betz, eds., American National Biography, New York, 1999–2002; 24 vols. plus supplement; rev. edn., www.anb.org. description ends ; Jefferson, Papers description begins The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, and others, Princeton, N.J., 1950– . description ends , 33:49; 34:125–126, 561; Marshall, Papers description begins The Papers of John Marshall, ed. Herbert A. Johnson, Charles F. Hobson, and others, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1974–2006; 12 vols. description ends , 4:166, 243; 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 , 1:320–321, 360–361). For Sargent’s visit to Peacefield, see JA to TBA, 11 July, and note 3, below.

5AA was referring to JQA’s semimonthly gazette of events in Europe, for which see JQA to TBA, 11 April, and note 2, above. The Adamses had received the first three of JQA’s five installments by this point, although AA was apparently unaware that JQA cautioned TBA on 21 April that the series should be kept private: “It will not do for publication— The plan I think might be improved so as to make it very useful, for communicating a concise view of European events— But as yet both persons and things are spoken of with a great deal too much freedom for it to meet the public perusal” (Adams Papers). At AA’s behest, the series was published in Alexander Young and Thomas Minns’ New-England Palladium, 19, 23 June; 7 July; and 11, 15 Sept. as “Summary of European Events” described by “a gentleman of extensive intelligence and close observation, now residing in Europe.” The newspaper was formerly the Massachusetts Mercury and officially from 2 Jan. 1801 through 8 March 1803 the Mercury and New-England Palladium. Young and Minns had changed the newspaper’s name after installing a new editor, Warren Dutton. Dutton (1774–1857), Yale 1797, was selected for the role by Jedidiah Morse, who sought to reassert Federalist principles in a Boston newspaper. In the Port Folio, 1:175 (30 May 1801), Joseph Dennie Jr. described the newspaper “as a bank of deposit for all the statesmen and wits of New-England.” He also noted that subscriptions had increased by 500 and attributed the rise to the “accomplished editor” Dutton (Dexter, Yale Graduates description begins Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of College History, New York and New Haven, 1885–1912; 6 vols. description ends , 5:277, 278; Robert Edson Lee, “Timothy Dwight and the Boston Palladium,” NEQ description begins New England Quarterly. description ends , 35:231–232 [June 1962]; 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 , 25:149).

6On 29 May the Mass. General Court convened to select members of the governor’s council. Hamiltonian Federalist Fisher Ames was not selected, despite his having served as a council member from 1798 to 1800 (Boston Columbian Centinel, 30 May 1801, 3 June; Biog. Dir. Cong. description begins Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005, Washington, D.C., 2005; rev. edn., bioguide.congress.gov. description ends ).

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