William Smith Shaw to Abigail Adams, 31 October 1799
William Smith Shaw to Abigail Adams
Trenton Oct 31st 1799
My dear Aunt
Your favor of the 28th inst I this morning had the pleasure to receive and for which my best thanks are due you. With this you will receive a letter from Mr T. Adams received last evening—1 I think the probability is that he will be with us this Afternoon.
The Chief Justice and Govenor Davie have both left this place for New port where Captain Barrey is waiting to receive them and to carry them in the United States frigate to France. The same gentlemen who opposed the nomination opposed with persevering obstinacy their goeing. The newspapers have been filled with speculations on the subject. Attempts have been made to flatter and to threatnen The President out of the measure. Certain gentlemen have said, they knew The President too well—he had too much political sagacity—he had the good of his Country too much at heart to be guilty of a measure so impolitick, so derogotary to his character as a statesman, and so totally incompatible with the honor, peace and safety of the United States. They have threatened that in the event that our evoys go to France and make peace “we shall have again the British on our backs.”2 Still however The envoys will go and the party find to their bitter mortification, that The President is neither to be cajoled by flattery or terrifyed by threats—that he will not sacrifice to party purposes any measure of which he is convinced, that the interest and welfare of his Country demands.
The Citizens of Philadelphia are moveing in to the city very fast. The Secretary of the Treasury and family moved in yesterday. Many of the other gentlemen will soon follow. I am very happy to contradict the report of the death of Dr Maze—he is not dead but in a convalescent state.3
I received a letter from Johnson of the 8th of Oct he & family were very well and desired to be remembered to you
With respect I have the honor to be / your affectionate nephew
Wm S S—
RC (Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, New York, owned and operated by the Colonial Dames of America); internal address: “Mrs. Adams.”
1. Shaw likely enclosed TBA’s letter to him of 27 Oct., in which he reported that he had found two possible Philadelphia office locations and would visit Trenton, N.J., if he was able to procure a lease for one of them (MHi: Misc. Bound Coll.).
2. An extract from a letter from Amsterdam in the Elizabethtown New-Jersey Journal, 15 Oct., stated, “If our commissioners were now here, they probably would be able to make good terms with France; but in this event I fear we shall again have the English on our backs.”
3. AA appears to have confused newspaper reports of the death of a Thomas Craghead Mease from yellow fever in Philadelphia with Dr. James Mease (1771–1846), University of Pennsylvania M.D. 1792, a Philadelphia physician and former student of Benjamin Rush. In a letter written on 29 Oct. (DLC:Shaw Family Papers), AA offered Shaw her condolences, “I mourn with you the loss of Dr Maize. he was an amiable Man, and a skilfull Physician” (Philadelphia Gazette, 15 Oct.; New-York Gazette, 18 Oct.; ; Malcolm Bell Jr., Major Butler’s Legacy: Five Generations of a Slaveholding Family, Athens, Ga., 1987, p. 206).