Thomas Boylston Adams to Abigail Adams, 7 May 1802
Thomas Boylston Adams to Abigail Adams
Philadelphia 7th: May 1802.
Dear Mother.
Since the receipt of your favor of the 18th: ult: I have been absent from the City, a few days, attending a County Court, and tomorrow I expect to set out for another excursion of a similar nature. There is but little immediate benefit, derived from riding the circuit in order to attend the Courts in this vicinity; for the business is principally engrossed by those who reside in the shire towns, and if a City lawyer obtain any, it is chiefly accidental. The exercise however is healthful, and opportunities now & then occur of taking a volunteer part in some of the criminal trials, which afford at least a chance of displaying professional talents, where they exist. I was lately concerned, at the instance of the deputy Atty General, in one of these trials, and it proved to be an important one.1 The prisoner was ably defended, & all the affectation of zeal, which lawyers so well know how to assume on such occasions, was displayed in this instance; but ineffectually as to the acquittal on the merits of the case, for the jury found the prisoner guilty of the charge; an exception was taken to the indictment, however, which proved fatal, and the business must begin again, at the next term. This detail cannot be very amusing to you, but my apology for it is, that I so seldom have an opportunity of mentioning professional business, wherein I had a share. I have an excellent friend in one of the associate judges, of the County, where I am going next week— He lately married one of Mrs: Rutter’s Sisters, and lives within a few miles of the County town.2 I have passed several Sundays at his farm & never was more hospitably entertained in my life. He is a warm federal, and often talks of my father, though he did not know him personally. Your father, said he, is a plain farmer, like myself— Yes— “Well, I like him the better for that— How much wheat or corn does he raise in a year?” I said, no wheat, for it will not grow so near the sea as his farm lays, but he raises corn enough for his own consumption. “Does he send anything to market, as I do,?” I believe not. “Has he got a large barn?” Not more than half so large an one, as you have. The fact is, that the judges barn is one of the largest & best finished I ever saw— It is upwards of an hundred feet in front, by 45, or 6, deep, built of Stone, like the houses at German town.
I will send you by the first opportunity, a copy of the speeches on the bill for repealing the judiciary, delivered in Senate.3Those of the house are not yet published— Also a book for my father; “Barton on free Commerce,” I have no personal knowledge of its contents, except from the review of it in the Aurora.4 Its doctrines are entirely of the new school; or the modern law of Nations, as advocated by France—
Please inform my father, that the Harleian miscellany, though a single quarto volume, costs fourteen dollars, and I am afraid to venture on the purchase of it, without his direction.
The Books my brother sent me, came safe to hand—
With best love to all friends, I am, dear Mother / Your son
T. B. Adams.
PS. You will see in the Washington federalist, Mr: Stodderts letter, repelling the base & infamous attack upon his official character, while Secretary of the Navy, by the Committee, appointed to enquire into the subject of expenditures & appropriations. The Aurora attempts to answer Mr: S. but I think the precedent will be followed by others, who have been injured in the same way.5
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs: A Adams—”
1. In a 4 May letter to William Smith Shaw (MWA:Adams Family Letters), TBA discussed his participation in a perjury trial in Delaware County, Penn. He also assessed the differences between practicing law in urban and rural locations and reported on recent federal and state appointments in Pennsylvania. The deputy attorney general of Delaware County was Thomas Ross (ca. 1756–1822), who had been admitted to the Delaware County bar in 1789 and became deputy attorney general in 1799 (The Twentieth Century Bench and Bar of Pennsylvania, 2 vols., Chicago, 1903, 2:632; Inventory of the County Archives of Pennsylvania, rev. edn., Media, Penn., 1941, p. 242; Philadelphia National Gazette and Literary Register, 25 Oct. 1822).
2. Rebecca Jones (b. 1757), a sister of Sarah Jones Rutter, married John Jones (ca. 1744–1824), an associate judge of Montgomery County, Penn., on 7 Jan. 1802; they lived in Lower Merion (Howard M. Jenkins, Historical Collections Relating to Gwynedd, a Township of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 2d edn., Phila., 1897, p. 143, 158; PHC:Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Births, Deaths, and Burials, 1688–1826, p. 63; Philadelphia Gazette, 8 Jan.; Philadelphia American Daily Advertiser, 27 Dec. 1824).
3. Debates in the Senate of the United States on the Judiciary, Phila., 1802, , No. 3273, a summary of Senate debates on the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801 (Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 12 April 1802).
4. William Barton’s A Dissertation on the Freedom of Navigation and Maritime Commerce, Phila., 1802, , No. 1845, was published on 12 February. The book was dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, and it was favorably reviewed in the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 1 May (, 36:611).
5. On 14 Dec. 1801, prompted by treasury secretary Albert Gallatin, the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for a committee to investigate how federal money was appropriated and spent by the State, War, and Navy Departments. Led by Joseph Hopper Nicholson of Maryland, the committee requested information from Benjamin Stoddert about his spending as secretary of the navy, particularly his purchase of naval yards at Portsmouth, N.H.; Charlestown, Mass.; New York City; Philadelphia; Gosport, Va.; and Washington, D.C. In the report, which Nicholson delivered to the House on 29 April 1802, the committee found that the purchases were neither authorized nor legal. Stoddert defended his actions in a letter printed in the Washington Federalist, 4 May, arguing that the language of the enabling legislation enacted by Congress was sufficiently clear to justify the purchases and characterizing the report as a partisan attack: “The majority of this committee, have gone, to rob me of that, which is dearer than for[t]une or life—reputation.” The Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 7 May, responded to Stoddert’s defense, claiming that an analysis of the language of the acts provided no justification for the purchases (Jefferson, Papers, 36:211, 212; , 1:752, 753, 754, 755–757; ).