1To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 14 December 1808 (Adams Papers)
Has your right hand forgotten its Cunning from pain or Sickness? or have you ceased to contemplate the present interesting Crisis of your beloved Country?—or have you become fearful of committing your apprehensions of her future destiny to paper? If none of these events have come to pass, why am I not favoured with Answers to my two last letters?— Say my dear and venerable friend what is to be...
2To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 3 April 1807 (Adams Papers)
The difficult and complicated labors of my professorship consisting of teaching, examining, reviewing theses &c &c being now nearly over, I sit down with great pleasure to pay my epistolary debts. You are my largest, and most lenient Creditor. The first dividend of my time of Course is due to you. I concur with you in your reflections upon the Western insurrection, but not altogether in your...
3To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 25 November 1806 (Adams Papers)
I have seldom been more highly gratified than by the receipt of your letter of Novr 11th. The latter part of it accords perfectly with Opinions I have long cherished. You may see a short account of those Opinions in an Oration delivered before our Philosophical Society upon “the influence of physical Causes upon the moral faculty” published in the first Volume of my Inquiries. They shocked for...
4To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 15 December 1807 (Adams Papers)
An inflammation in my eyes which for several days has confined me to my house, and rendered writing difficult and painful, must be my Apology for the Shortness of this letter. I admire the Correctness of your history of the ten talents committed to the Subject of your letter. Upon the talent of his taciturnity Mr Liston gave me the following Anecdote, “that he was the only person he had ever...
5To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 18 February 1808 (Adams Papers)
I have escaped for ten minutes from the pressure of business, lectures–pupils, and the Charge of the Pennsylvania hospital, to drop you a few lines which I beg you will consider as the preface only of a longer letter a few Weeks hence, when I shall be relieved from three fourths of my present labors. Our Citizens are making great preparations for celebrating the birth day of the first...
6To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 2 March 1809 (Adams Papers)
Your favor of the 19th. of February was alike acceptable with all your former letters. The papers will inform you that our government is about to yeild to the Clamors of your part of the United States against the Embargo laws. Had our Legislators been better historians they would have promptly saved their honor, and preserved the peace of our Country. Augustus repealed a law to compel...
7To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 26 June 1806 (Adams Papers)
Herewith you will receive a small publication that contains several new Opinions in Physiology, and which admit of being applied to the cure of several diseases. If you have no inclination to read it, please to put it into the hands of your family physician. He may probably pick up something from it that may be the means of lessning the pain, or preventing the mortality of a disease in your...
8To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 13 January 1809 (Adams Papers)
In a situation such as you have seen a Sea Captain in a Gale of Wind, I sit down to acknowledge the receipt of your two last instructing letters. Present events will justify your opinion of the present measures of our rulers. Your Account of the pernicious influence of a belief in the time in Which the prophesies are to be fulfilled is to much opposed to the System of the divine government...
9To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 24 October 1806 (Adams Papers)
Ever since the receipt of your last letter I have passed my days like an arrow shot from a bow. At a time of life when (to use an expression in one of your letters written to me soon after your return from England) “nature sighs for repose,” I live in a Constant round of business, which employs both body and mind. Even my studies (the times for which are taken from family Society or Sleep) are...
10To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 9 June 1807 (Adams Papers)
Permit me to trouble you with the delivery of the enclosed letter to Dr Tufts. It contains an Account of the death of his patient Mr: Land, and a small sum of money to be sent by the Doctor to Mr: Land’s parents in new Hamshire. I sent you Mr Stevens’s pamphflet “on the dangers of the Country” a few days ago. I beg your Acceptance of it. Since the date of my last letter I have been made very...