July 17. 1796 Sunday.
Warm but clear. Billings at home but running down Cellar for Cyder.
We are to have a Mr. Hilliard.
Yesterday Dr. Tufts and Mr. Otis and Family dined with me. Otis was very full of Elections and had many Things to say about Pinckney and Henry, Jefferson and Burr. He says there was a Caucus at Philadelphia, that they agreed to run Jefferson and Burr—that Butler was offended and left them. O. takes it for granted the P. will retire. Pickering has given out publickly that he will. Mrs. W. takes it for granted that he will. Collections, Packages and Removals of Cloaths and furniture of their own have been made. Anecdotes of Dandridge, and Mrs. W.s Negro Woman. Both disappeared—never heard of— know not where they are. When the Electors are chosen the Declaration is to be made.—Q. Is this Arrangement made that the Electors may make him the Compliment of an Election after a Nolo, and thus furnish an Apology for Accepting after all the Talk?1
Mr. Otis confirms the Account of the nomination and Appointment of my Son to be Minister Plenipotentiary of the U.S. at the Court of Portugal.2 He also confirms the Adjournment of Congress to the Constitutional Day, 1. Monday in December. Mrs. W. is not to return to Phil[adelphia] till November.
Mr. Hilliard of Cambridge preached for Us. He is the Son of our old Acquaintance Minister of Barnstable and afterwards at Cambridge. Mr. Quincy and Mr. Sullivan drank Tea with Us.
1. JA’s informant on the political situation was Samuel Allyne Otis, secretary of the U.S. Senate, whose second wife, the former Mary Smith, was AA’s first cousin (, 4:607). The maneuvers by both Federalists and Republicans to obtain the succession to the Presidency were in some degree checked by Washington’s silence concerning his own intentions until the publication of his advice to his countrymen, ever since known as his “Farewell Address,” in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, 19 Sept. 1796.
CFA omitted two sentences in the foregoing paragraph: (1) that beginning “Anecdotes of Dandridge,” and (2) JA’s final query to himself. On the sudden disappearance of Bartholomew Dandridge, Mrs. Washington’s nephew and one of the President’s secretaries, see , 35:77–79, 135–136, 159, 162. The reasons for it were less discreditable than gossip imputed.
2. JQA, who had been serving as minister resident of the United States at The Hague since 1794, was appointed, with the unanimous consent of the Senate, minister plenipotentiary to Portugal on 30 May 1796 (Commission in Adams Papers under that date; see also AA to JQA, 10 Aug. 1796, Adams Papers). But because of orders from Secretary of State Pickering to remain at The Hague until a replacement could be sent there, JQA never went to Lisbon; instead, he was commissioned in 1797 by his father, now President, to go to Berlin to negotiate a new commercial treaty with Prussia (Commission, 1 June 1797, in Adams Papers; see also , 1:88–90).