1From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 25 December 1800 (Adams Papers)
It is plain from Mr. Hamiltons pamphlet & from all the writings against the negotiation with France that neither that gentleman nor his fellow laborers in the great work of detraction have ever known the rise and progress of the measures they have successfully misrepresented & abused. In order to correct the public opinion, I inclose you authenticated copies of the messages, which I pray you...
2From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 15 April 1819 (Adams Papers)
Do not expect to escape so, I have a hundred if not a thousand letters to write you. which however I shall never write, upon the restoration of the tories to this Country, and their subsequent Conduct towards me—of that host of Vagabond Foreigners who have tormented and deceived this Simple American people for four and forty years—for the secret Correspondences’s and Corruption—Civil political...
3From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 24 September 1816 (Adams Papers)
I have received your favour of the 22d, & the French translation of my letter with Mably’s, & Marmontels original billets, which I lent to your father. You are welcome to publish the whole or any part of my Letters to your father & the papers I sent him—You may insert them in your own way & I have no objection to your stating that they came from your & y’r fathers & your Grandfathers / friend...
4From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 31 May 1817 (Adams Papers)
I have this moment received your favour of yesterday. In some future Letter I must write you an Apology for S. Adams and J. Hancock: which your inherent good nature will not reject. Please to give to your Son the inclosed Inquiston, with / Cordial regards of, We have this Moment the news of J Q A Acceptance, and hopes to embark in all May— MHi : Adams Family Papers, Letterbooks.
5From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 14 November 1800 (Adams Papers)
I have recd with great pleasure your favour of the fifth. Of the Book which my Enemy has written you shall hear more, hereafter. My Character Shall not lie under that load. I will not write in Newspapers nor in Pamphlets, while I am in my present Station, against that Pamphlet. Personal Injuries! I cry you mercy, what personal Injuries? Is making his Nephew a Captain a personal Injury? Is...
6From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 5 November 1816 (Adams Papers)
Though your Son is engaged in an honourable and a laudable pursuit, I apprehend he is not quite aware of all the embarrassments in his way. his objects are the literature and the history of his country. I will pass by the first for the present and confine myself to the second There were two pivots upon which the American revolution turned, These were The controversy between Governor Hutchinson...
7From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 19 November 1800 (Adams Papers)
In your late Letter you intimate that a certain Gentleman is not a Friend to the present Administration nor to those measures which will be necessary. I am anxious to be informed more particularly of the extent of your meaning. I always lived in friendship with him. He always visited me, till the British Treaty. Since that he has estranged himself. It can be nothing personal that I know of....
8From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 7 November 1816 (Adams Papers)
I like this prompt and quick correspondences, I have received your Sons acknowledgement dated the 6th of my letter to you of the 5th. Your Sons letter has greatly obliged me and I cordially wish him success but he has proposed to me a plan that would increase, my already established reputation for Vanity and Egotism to a mountain as high as blue hill, Wachusett or Monadnock. Before any...
9From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 9 September 1816 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for your kind Letter of the fifth—of this month—which—our meritorious friend Mr. Shaw, put into my hand, yesterday, I had before seen the paragraph in the Daily Advertiser— The Baron De Greishm—himself, in a subsequent vol—Sufficiently explains, and confutes the Error—of the rumour which had been propagated, I know not by whom in 1782—. You will find at the End of the first Vol—of...
10From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 23 April 1818 (Adams Papers)
I have Seldom read so much good sense, in so few Words as in your Letter of the 5th. Your Judgment of Mr Wirts Biography of My Friend Mr Henry, is in exact Unison with my own. I have read it with more delight than Scotts Romances in Verse and Prose or Miss Porters Scottish Chiefs and other Novels. I am sorry you have introduced me. I could wish my own Name forgotten, if I could devellope, the...
11From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 17 September 1816 (Adams Papers)
As in your favour of the fifth, you seem to regret “the Intermission of our Correspondence, your Renewall of it, may cost you more than you expected, namely a Surfeit of it. I wrote you on the 9th. a little Volume, upon a frivolous Anecdote of the voluminous Baron De Grimm, which he has himself corrected in a Subsequent Period of his own Correspondence. As I find this Mystery is circulating in...
12From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 12 May 1818 (Adams Papers)
In my Letters to you, I regard no order. And I think, I ought to make you laugh Sometimes: otherwise my Letters would be too grave, if not too melancholly. To this End I Send you Jemmibellero “the Song of the Drunkard” which was published in Fleets “Boston Evening Post” on the 13th. of May 1765. It was universally agreed to have been written by Samuel Waterhouse, who had been the most...
13From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 24 June 1817 (Adams Papers)
As we have amused ourselves with looking at a few pictures, suppose we should add one more to the Gallery. The Artist makes the scene of his action that spacious Apartment that we very properly denominated Fanuel Hall. The Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Judges, the Counsellors, the Representatives, the President and Professors & Students of the University; the Docters of Law, Physic, &...
14From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 14 February 1817 (Adams Papers)
The Metaphysical, Theological, Ecclesiasticcal and political Pendulums, which all go to gether, like clockwork, have swung to the Utmost extremity, one way: and are now, taking a Contrary direction, and there is reason to fear, will produce as many Calamaties to mankind as the former Vibration.—Our dear Country my dear Tudor, has an important Part to act in the drama before us.—How humble...
15From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 22 September 1816 (Adams Papers)
The mail of yesterday, brought me your favour of the 19th I presume you had not then received my little packet of the 17th containing little notes in the hand writing of De Mably and Marmontell. You Sir and your Son have my consent to do what you please with all my letters only excepting a request, that you would return to me the original notes from De Mably and Marmontel and their French...
16From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 9 February 1819 (Adams Papers)
In your last letter you consider me in debt, I will not dispute it. You seem to wish me to write something to diminish the fame of Samuel Adams to show that he was not a man of profound learning, a great lawyer, a man of vast reading, a comprehensive statesman. In all this I shall not gratify you. Give me leave to tell you, my friend, that you have conceived prejudices against that great...
17From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 25 December 1800 (Adams Papers)
I had last night, yours of the 24th.—The Anxiety of the two Setts of Persons you mention is eer this time relieved. Perhaps it may have been Succeeded by another. The Plan of bringing in Mr Pinckney by tacking him to my shoulder as a Rider, has not only been defeated but two opposite Characters have been brought in, with Splendid Tryumph. If 99 in 100 would have wonderd at the premature...
18From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 25 February 1800 (Adams Papers)
I have received your favor of the 17th & thank you for the information & opinion you give me respecting a dock yard which will be considered with all others upon the same subject in due time.—I thank you too for your letter, on a name for our Country. I have never thought much on this subject, & believe it had better be in silence for the present. Americans is a very comprehensive word, & has...
19From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 19 January 1817 (Adams Papers)
Thanks for your favour of the 14th. You urge me to explain the secret of Hutchinsons conduct. I have explained in my letter of the 11th. It was fear of explanations before the people of the doctrine of Impressments You may have but another nail upon the head; and there had been before and were afterwards many such nails, but they are too frivolous to be remembered one only, excepted, before...
20From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 25 September 1816 (Adams Papers)
In my letter of yesterday—I forgot to answer your question concerning Marmontels thoughts of writing on American affairs. Marmontel had been appointed by the King—Histiographer of France, while I was there. I suppose that thinking—the the Duties of his office would require him to write on the connection between this country France & America & hearing of my letter to De Mably—desired to see it....
21From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 13 December 1800 (Adams Papers)
Thank you for your favour of 30 Nov. No reply will be made while I am a public Man—Perhaps none will ever be made. But I make no Promises. Before this Letter reaches you, the duration of my Station, to which you apply Such Sublime Epithets that I dare not repeat them, will be ascertained to your Satisfaction as it is now to mine. If nothing flew on Eagles Wings as Said or done by me, but what...
22From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 18 December 1816 (Adams Papers)
Your kind letter of the 13th contains much truth, and nothing but the truth. I may return to it hereafter, but at present, with your leave, I will continue a few hints on the judicial character of Chief Justice Hutchinson. I pass over that scenery which he introduced, so showy & so shallow, so theatrical & so ecclesiastical, of scarlet and sable robes, of broad bands, & enormous tie wigs, more...
23From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 15 March 1791 (Adams Papers)
Thank you for yours of Feb. 27. You seem to threaten me with a Place in the Pages of some Tory Historian. If the Party “to a man supposed me the most energetic Plotter and intrepid Projector of all the Authors of the Revolution” I shall no doubt have it. The Papers signed Novanglus, and the Controversy with Brattle about the Independence of the Judges they could be no strangers to. Nor could...
24From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 10 December 1817 (Adams Papers)
I have read your discourse with pleasure, and the notes with terror. they open a field of controversy so solemn, as to intimidate the boldest champions of which race of heroes, I certainly have not the honour to be one. I may however pretend to be a humble projecter, and in that character would propose, 1st. To petition the holy league to purchase of the Turks, peaceably if they can, forcibly...
25From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 21 February 1818 (Adams Papers)
I presume you have read the elegant life of Patrick Henry by Mr. Wirt the Attorney General of the United States. If you have not you have ju a dilicious pleasure to come. Mr Wirt has accurately stated the Virginian Resolves and Mr Henrys Motion in suport of them and theory of treason that excited against him and a glorious anicdote it is. But we ought not to forget our own Massachusetts...
26From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 15 May 1817 (Adams Papers)
Mr William Smith Shaw has lent me the fourth Volume of his political pamphlets, the first tract of which is the Controversy between Governor Hutchinson, and the two Houses of the Legislature in 1773 concerning the Souvereign Authority of Parliament over the Colonies. I knew there was such a Pamphlet; but I had not seen it for more than forty Years, and I feared it was lost. I have enquired for...
27From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 1 June 1818 (Adams Papers)
No Man could have written from Memory Mr Otis’s Argument of four or five hours against The Acts of Trade as Revenue Laws Writts of Assistants, as a tyrannical Engine to execute them the next day after it was spoken. How awkward then would be an attempt to do it after a lapse of fifty seven years? Nevertheless, Some of the heads of his discourse are So indellibly imprinted on my Mind, that I...
28From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 11 January 1817 (Adams Papers)
Dr Morse having undertaken to continue Trumbul’s History: wrote urgently to me to assist him. I wrote him a few Anecdotes in a few Letters which he regularly acknowledged but my Facts were so new to him and so ill calculated to promote the Sale of his projected Book, that he soon neglected to answer me. There our Correspondence ended. You attempted to “bring the Old Gentleman out.” You have...
29From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 18 May 1817 (Adams Papers)
I pretend not to preserve any order, in my Letters to you. I give you hints, as they accidently occur to me, which, an hundred years hence, may be considered as Memoires pour Servir a l’histoire des Etas Unis.—I am about to write to you the most melancholly Letter, I ever wrote in my Life. One, which the most deeply touches my Soul with Greif.—And now, I know not where to begin, nor how to...
30From John Adams to William Tudor, Sr., 20 January 1801 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for your favour of the 9th. You ask, if it is true that Hamilton and Burr are on an easy and friendly footing? I have heard they are. But Hamilton has written several Letters to his Correspondents in this place, (one Gentleman of high Character told me he had seen three) earnestly dissuading from the Election of Burr, and exhorting the Election of Jefferson as the least of two...