John Adams to Abigail Adams, 15 November 1775
John Adams to Abigail Adams
Novr. 15th. 1775
This I suppose will go by Mr. James Bowdoin who has just arrived here from London.1 He has been very obliging in communicating to me Pamphlets and News Papers in which last I find that some Parts of Novanglus have been retailed out there and have brought on a Battle in the public Papers between Hutchinson and Pounal.2 Mr. Bowdoin has been to Italy, Holland, France and England and is returned an honest and warm American. He says to his Astonishment, he found the great American Controversy better understood, and the Consequences of it more clearly foreseen in France than in England.
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “To Mrs. Adams Braintree.”
1. James Bowdoin Jr. (1752–1811), Harvard 1771, who had been studying in England and traveling on the Continent; he became a merchant, state representative and senator, and, by appointment of Pres. Jefferson, U.S. minister to Spain ().
2. The parts of JA’s “Novanglus” papers (published earlier this year in the Boston Gazette) that had been “retailed” in England consisted of extracts that appeared in the first volume of John Almon’s Remembrancer, or Impartial Repository of Public Events, London, 1775, p. 24–32, 45–54, under the title “History of the Dispute with America; from its Origin in 1754, to the Present Time.” The allusion to “a Battle in the public Papers” between former Governors Thomas Hutchinson and Thomas Pownall remains obscure and may be groundless gossip.