20501To John Adams from D. Fraser, Sr., 18 October 1819 (Adams Papers)
You will herewith receive a copy of a Prospectus of a Biographical work of mine; in which, a Sketch of Your own Character , will thus be Inserted:— [ John Adams Esqr. Late President of the U-States; A Native of Massachusetts;—that State has produced Heroes & great Statesmen—& Philosophers, a Warren , An Adams , a Franklin , &c. Mr. Adams , is a man of Superior, talents,—a correct writer, & an...
20502To John Adams from John Manners, 19 October 1819 (Adams Papers)
I received, with peculiar gratification, your letters, together with the volume and other documents accompanying them, and am not insensible of the obligations under which you have laid me, by the kind attention with which you have been pleased to honour me. I have read with pleasure and interest your instructing letters and am satisfied of the correctness of your opinion respecting the...
20503To John Adams from Sylvester T. Goss, 30 October 1819 (Adams Papers)
My friend Mr Morton informs me, that you wish a few more copies of Novanglus &c, to distribute among your friends. I therefore with pleasure send you four copies, which I beg you to accept as a mark of my respect and veneration. I am Sir / your humble Sert MHi : Adams Papers.
20504From John Adams to Robert Walsh, Jr., 31 October 1819 (Adams Papers)
Your kind letter of the 12th. with the invaluable present of your “Appeal from the judgments of Great Britain,” was brought to me last Night. I call it invaluable, for although, I have only had time to hear the dedication and preface read, these are quite sufficient to justify that expression. I have for some time ardently wished to see this publication, and now am gratified to my utmost...
20505To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 1 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Will you receive my respectful congratulations on your having entered the last year of your seventeenth lustrum , with such a fair prospect of reaching the twentieth which I hope your vigor of body & mind may enable you successfully to accomplish— Having lost that kind parent, who was ever ready to oblige me, and through whose medium I have obtained so much important information from you, I...
20506From John Adams to William Phillips, Jr., 1 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Mr John Marston has requested me to write your Honour on a Subject in which I am very sensible I have no colour of right or pretentions to interfere, and on which I am not qualified to form a judgement.— All that I can say is, that I was acquainted with his Father, who had been an Officer in the Conquest of Louisbourg in one thousand seven hundred and forty five, that Mr Marston was himself in...
20507From John Adams to James Monroe, 3 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Will you please to accept a morsel of rusty Antiquity, which I know you cannot and ought not to be read, because your time is imperiously demanded for occupations more important to your Country and Mankind, as well as to yourself. Your learned, and Ingenious Son-in Law Mr Hay, may possibly have a curiosity to look into it—to him I pray you to present my Respectful Complements.— And believe me...
20508From John Adams to William Tudor, Jr., 5 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I thank you for your congratulations and kind wishes, the accomplishment of them is on high where I rejoice that it is— Dennis de Brett was a Merchant in London and a dessenter Esteemed among the Protestant Dessenters for which reason I suppose he was appointed Agent - he never gave any proofs of talents or influence - indeed he had none of the latter at Court, nor with the public, nor any...
20509To John Adams from John Marston, 5 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
To receive the approbation of the wise and the good.—To know that we are beloved and esteemed by those whom we respect and regard, are among the sweetest intellectual blessings, the human heart and mind are capable of enjoying. What then must have been my feelings my dear and venerable friend when Lieut Govr Phillips read to me, your excellent letter to him, in which you so kindly, & so...
20510To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 7 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Three long and dangerous illnesses within the last 12. months must apologise for my long silence towards you. The paper bubble is then burst. this is what you & I, and every reasoning man, seduced by no obliquity of mind, or interest, have long foreseen. yet it’s disastrous effects are not the less for having been foreseen. we were laboring under a dropsical fulness of circulating medium....
20511To John Adams from Thomas Herttell, 11 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Though I have not the pleasure of being personally acquainted with you, my knowledge of your exalted character, leads me to believe, you will pardon the liberty I have taken to request your acceptance of the accompanying pamphlet entitled “An expose of the causes of intemperate drinking, and the means by which it may be obviated”—Should it hereafter be deemed worthy of a second edition, I will...
20512To John Adams from David Sewall, 13 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Your Communication of the 11th. ultimo (altho’ by an amanuensis) was very gratifying.—I was led to suppose, & stil think it probable that our classmate Whittemore has some time since passed off the stage of human life; as I read in a News Paper a year or two since, among Obituary Notices, that of William Whittemore of Cambridge Æ. 80.—and also in the last University Cattaloge of H.C. a Strar...
20513From John Adams to John Farmer, 17 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I regret extremely the loss of your Memoire’s of Billerica which must have failed in the Post Office—because I have a great curiosity to see some what of the History of that Colony—the Thompson’s Bracketts and Adams’s which Migrated so early from Mount Wollaston to Billerica Chelmsford and New-hamsphire—I have a Strong ambition to Support a claim for Mount Wollaston for the honor of being the...
20514From John Adams to William Tudor, Jr., 17 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I inclose you a letter from Judge Sewall-and an anecdote of your Hero—He had intervals of Sound reason, and strong memory—his Paroxysm’s of Insanity appeared principally at the full, and change of the Moon—at least so it appeared to me and many others—and if we were not deceived by a Book of Dr Mead’s upon the Influence of those luminary’s upon the human mind and body which were then...
20515From John Adams to Robert Walsh, Jr., 17 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have now read, and have heard read, the whole of your Volume—and I cannot refrain from repeating my thanks, not only for the Present—but for the great public Nationall service you have performed, in the Compilation and Composition of it.—it is the most able, the most faithful, and the most ample apology for the United States—at the same time the gravest and best supported indictment against...
20516From John Adams to Thomas Hertell, 18 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I pray you to accept of my best thanks for your kind letter of November 11th—And for a most precious present—your Expose of the Causes of Intemperate drinking, and the means by which it may be obviated, is one of the best Pamphlets I ever read, with a knowledge of the World, an accuracy of observation, and a sagacity in Estimating Men, and things.—You have developed the causes of National...
20517To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 18 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I received your favour of yesterday inclosing Judge Sewall’s letter, and the anecdote of Otis, the letter I now return and I will take care of the inclosure to return it hereafter. It strikes me as a curious case, and worthy of being remarked upon, that a great lawyer unhappily subjected to mental derangement, should be admitted in a Court of Justice to give an opinion founded as he remarked...
20518From John Adams to Jacob Brown, 19 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Your address to the Agricultural Society for which I thank you—I have read with great interest and delight, it has almost, not quite, excited in me a wish to be younger than I am—the excitement expressed at the beginning is highly pathetic and oratorical, had I been the father and founder of such a County—I fear I should have been weak enough to have burst into tears— The system you so wisely...
20519From John Adams to William Tudor, Jr., 20 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I Shall not pause to consider whether my Opinion will be popular or unpopular with the Slave Holders, or Slave Traders, in the Northern the Middle, the Southern, or the Western, States—I respect all those who are necessarily subjected to this Evil.—But Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal Magnitude.—Mr Walsh in his late Scourge of the British Reviewers, has given such a picture of the Guilt,...
20520To John Adams from John Farmer, 20 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
Your favour was received last evening, and the subject of it shall receive immediate attention. For some time past, I have entertained the idea that the late Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was a descendant from the well known Rev. William Tompson of Braintree. In November, last year, I communicated my conjecture to Mr. Baldwin, of Chelmsford, son of the late Col. L. Baldwin of Woburn, and...
20521To John Adams from William Willis, 22 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have taken the liberty to enclose in this letter to your Son, which fredom I request you will excuse. Altho circumstances have placed me at a greater distance from you, yet neither distance, circumstances, nor time, will ever diminish my sincere respect; and solicitude for your happiness; nor the grateful feelings which I have ever retained, for the long and important Services, which you...
20522From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 23 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I congratulate you and myself on your recovery from the three Illnesses that have distressed you, the means that have been used to preserve you may, and I hope will have laid a foundation for good Health, and many more years of an already long Life. My Health is astonishing to myself, I can say, like Deborah Queen Ann Dutchess of Marlbourgh—who in one of her letters, after innumerating a...
20523From John Adams to David Sewall, 23 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
By your account which I believe is correct—Wentworth and Sewall are all that is left of my Class for my Consolation—and we must expect our turn for filing off one after the other—and perhaps altogether—and that in a very short time— What a Mortality there has been among the Governours—Langdon Strong Snyder Molleston Johnson Lee Raban all in a few months—I almost shudder with expectation to...
20524From John Adams to Andrews Norton, 24 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have now read your Inaugural Discourse, and my peculiar circumstances must be my apology for not having read it sooner—I have read nothing of its Compass composed with more Wisdom, or written with greater dignity, it is full of the Elements of Contemplation and though Johnson never knew a hard student—this Work at least is a demonstration that one exists— The science of Theology is indeed...
20525From John Adams to John Farmer, 25 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have not received your Memoirs of Billerica—they must have been nested some-where in the Post Office or have been taken out of the Mail— This letter however is intended to make a particular enquiry, a suspicion has darted into my head that the late learned ingenious scientific public Spirited and benevolent Count Rumford, was a descendant of your Billerica family of Tompsons—his Name, was...
20526From John Adams to John Farmer, 26 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have not yet received your Memoirs of Billerica—they must have rested somewhere in the Post Office—or have been taken out of the Mail This letter however is intended to make a particular inquiry—a suspicion has darted into my head that the late learned ingenious scientific public Spirited and benevolent Count Rumford—was a descendant of your Billerica family of Tompsons—his Name was Thomson,...
20527To John Adams from William Tudor, Jr., 27 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
I was very highly gratified by your opinion on the subject of slavery in the new States; its tenour was what I anticipated from the principles & actions of your whole life. A meeting is advertised for the next week of gentlemen of this town & vicinity, who are enemies of the trade and the further extension of slavery in the United States. I thought if I addressed some observations to the...
20528To John Adams from Emma Willard, 28 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
While an undistinguishing thirst for popularity is reprehensible, the desire to be known and approved by those great and good characters, whom we have from infancy been taught to venerate, is perhaps somewhat better than innocent; since its tendency is to call into action, and turn to beneficial purposes, some of the best faculties of our nature. Tho the writer is not unconscious of this...
20529To John Adams from Clarkson Crolius, 29 November 1819 (Adams Papers)
By the direct1on of the Society of Tammany, or Columbian order, I do myself the honor of transmitting to you, by this days mail, the address of that society, on the Subjects of national economy and domestic Manufactury. The society as well as myself, feel highly gratified, should the sentiments it contains coincide with your own. I have the honor to be, with / the highest consideration of...
20530From John Adams to Jacob Brown, 1 December 1819 (Adams Papers)
I beg your acceptance of the inclosed Pamphlets—the long Dissertation on the Agriculture of massachusetts is by the same hand that wrote the Address the Honble. Josiah Quincy, my friend and Neighbour—whom I greatly Esteem—though his Politicks have not been always approved—by his, and your, friend / and humble Servant— OrHi .