31From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 3 May 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have particular reasons—for asking the favour of you to inform me—in what year you wrote those three Essays—pray inform me in what Year—they were written—and under what Signature, in the Boston Centinal recommending a System of Neutrallity to the United States—I believe they were written in the year. 90. 91. or 92.—I believe they were printed together in a small Pamphlet—I must, and I will...
32From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 13 March 1819 (Adams Papers)
Your comprehensive letter of the 14th Feb’y has given me great entertainment & delight, I hope you will not mistake my employment in collecting my papers as intended to prepare materials for you to write my life for upon a serious retrospection of it—I find I am ashamed of it. I have had so great opportunities to do good and have done so little, and that little so awkwardly that I should blush...
33From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 19 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for the noble pacquets of documents you send me, for though I cannot read them it is convenient to have them by me. I may get a friend to consult them for me as occassion may require. I thank your lady for me for her last journal. I am really grieved at her late severe indisposition which appears to me so alarming that she ought to be extremely cautious of exposing herself to any...
34From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 8 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have been employed for a month or six weeks in hard labour to save you trouble. I have ransacked chests, trunks, boxes, bureaus, chests of drawers, escritouirs, or in fewer words, every hole & corner, from the basement story to the cockloft, in search of manuscript books & papers, and in course I have been obliged to break open locks whose key’s were lost and destroy every thing that lay in...
35From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 3 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
You made me a rich present when you allowed your son George to spend his vacation with me. He has been to me a companion and a friend. He has indulged in no dissipation, has been very constant to his studies & his reading. I cannot find it in my heart to say that he has indulged a little too much in his segars and in his flute. I see that you have the honour to be the target of all the sharp...
36From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 24 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
Your favour of the 14th. found me deeply immersed in researches, not astromical or mineralogical or metaphisical; but after old Papers, Trunks Boxes Desks Drawers locked up for thirty Years have been broken open because the Keys are lost. Nothing Stands in my Way. Every Scrap Shall be found and preserved for Your Affliction for your good. I am now employed very anxiously and laboriously,...
37From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 7 December 1818 (Adams Papers)
I thank you, my dear Son, for your Letters and for the Presidents Speech, which is Consolation for all our Miseries for 60 Years. But I must have done with public affaires. Your Sons who behave well have been with Us last Week. They leave Us this morning for their School. Mr and Mrs Clark, and my little darling Susanna Maria were comfortably lodged last Night at Dedham on their Way to...
38From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 10 November 1818 (Adams Papers)
The bitterness of Death is past. The grim Specter So terrible to human Nature has no Sting left for me. My consolations are more than I can number. The Separation cannot be So long as twenty Separations heretofore. The Pangs and the Anguish have not been So great as when you and I embarked for France in 1778. The Sympathy and Benevolence of all the World, has been Such as I Shall not live long...
39From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 10 October 1818 (Adams Papers)
Exoterick and Esoterick Doctrine. See the American Encyclopedia Tit. Exoterick: the French, Title Exoterique; the Dictionaire de Trêvoux, the Same Title, Stephens’s Thesaurus Tit. Exotericus, Gesners Dictionary Tit. Exotericus, and Acroaticus, Fabers Thesaurus Tit. Exotericus. See Also Herodotus Diadorus Siculus, Pausanias Strabo, Plutarch, Aetius , Aristotle Cicero and Aulus Gellius. See also...
40From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 20 May 1818 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for the documents you Send me, which I give to the Athenaeum believing they will do more good there than in my possession. I dare not write to you upon public Affairs, because I do not understand them. All that appears under your Signature is cooly approved as Usual, and will be, till fifty Years after you are dead and then it may possibly be admired by a fine Antequarians. Your...