John Adams to Abigail Adams, 24 November 1793
John Adams to Abigail Adams
Hartford Nov. 24. 1793
My dearest Friend
We have had an agreable Journey to this Town, have been to Meeting all Day and heard two excellent Discourses from Mr Strong:1 We are to drink Tea at Col Wadsworths. Trumbul and his Lady are at New Haven.2 At four or five O Clock in the Morning We proceed. The Weather to day is Soft and fine, tho We had last night a violent Wind & Rain. Accounts from Philadelphia are unanimous in favour of the Healthiness of the City: Yet I think with Col Wadsworth that a Pause at Trenton to consider and inquire will not be much amiss.
The Virginia Assembly have taken up the Presidents Proclamation and Seventy Odd against forty Odd, voted it right.3 But When the Minority found themselves cast they prevailed with the Majority to vote that they had nothing to do with it. Enough however was done to convince Us that We shall not be, wholly under the Directions of a foreign Minister.
Thatcher has taken for his Vade mecum Fontenelles History of oracles. I mentioned to him Farmer upon Devils: a Title that charmed him so much that he is determined to send for Farmers Works.4
Mr storer requests that you would let his Family know We are thus far safe. Brisler does the same. I am, my dearest / yours forever
J. A
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “Mrs Adams / Quincy / near Boston”; internal address: “Mrs A.”; endorsed: “novbr 24. / 1793.”; notation: “Free” and “Free / John Adams.”
1. Rev. Nathan Strong (1748–1816), Yale 1769, had served as minister of the First Church of Hartford, Conn., since 1774 ().
2. Poet and attorney John Trumbull and his wife, Sarah Hubbard Trumbull, who had lived in Hartford since 1781. Trumbull had attended Yale and practiced law in New Haven early in his career ().
3. By a vote of 77 to 43, the Va. House of Delegates passed a resolution on 1 Nov. 1793 declaring George Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation “a politic and constitutional measure, wisely adopted at a critical juncture, and happily calculated to preserve to this country the inestimable blessings of peace” (Philadelphia Federal Gazette, 12 Nov.).
4. George Thatcher’s “vade mecum,” or guidebook, was Bernard Le Bovier Fontenelle’s History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests, transl. Aphra Behn, London, 1688. Hugh Farmer (1714–1787), a noted dissenting minister and theologian, had published a number of tracts, including An Essay on the Demoniacs of the New Testament, London, 1775 ().