Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, 29 May 1798
Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch
29th May. 1798
my dear sister
I just write you a line to day, to tell you we are well, and to inclose Letters from my Family. we have not any thing new since I wrote you last, except a fine rain, which is truly a blessing for the Grass and Grain were in a suffering condition, and the dust so intollerable as to render riding very dissagreable. I am to drink tea on Board the Frigate United States this afternoon if the weather permits— on saturday the Captain hopes to go out—1 I was glad to see by the papers of yesterday that Captain Beals was arrived.2 I should have been sorry if he had lost his place on Board the Frigate.
I inclose to you a paper containing a number of addresses and answers.3 I think Russel might Enlarge his paper and take some of them in, that the knowledge of the prevailing spirit & sentiments might be diffused, especially as not a Jacobin paper publishes one of them, but an Insolent impudent thing of 14 or 15 Grenadeers with, a st domingo Captain at their head, has found its way into all these papers—4 but Russels paper is pretty much like what Peter says the Nyork papers have been of late, “not worth a Curse.”5 the Mercury might like to publish some of them.6
How does the Farm look says the President? oh that I could see it, and ramble over it— does not sister Cranch say a word about it? have you heard lately from Atkinson. Poor little Caroline has got the Ague & fever. Yours affecly
A Adams—
RC (MWA:Abigail Adams Letters); addressed: “Mrs Mary Cranch / Quincy.”
1. In late April and early May, Capt. John Barry had been at New York’s Governors Island testing guns for the frigate United States, docked at Philadelphia. Barry, for whom see vol. 4:4 and , 4:117, returned to Philadelphia with the guns on 19 May. The frigate was scheduled to depart the city on 31 May but did not do so until 10 June (Philadelphia Carey’s United States’ Recorder, 1 May; New York Argus, 22 May; New-York Gazette, 1 June; New York Daily Advertiser, 11 June).
2. News of Capt. Richard Copeland Beale’s arrival in Boston appeared in the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 29 May.
3. The enclosure has not been found, but AA likely sent the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States of either 26 or 29 May. The 26 May issue included addresses to JA from Fayetteville, N.C.; Chester County, Penn.; and Fredericksburg, Va., as well as JA’s reply to the citizens of Upper Freehold, N.J. On 29 May the newspaper published the addresses from and the answers to Pottstown, Penn.; Berks County, Penn.; and the young men of Reading, Penn. (, p. 207–209, 225–227).
4. The address to JA of Capt. Bernard Magnien’s corps of grenadiers, for which see Francis Dana to AA, 27 May, and note 2, above, was widely published by Philadelphia’s Democratic-Republican press, including the Aurora General Advertiser, 16 May; Carey’s United States’ Recorder, 17 May; and the Universal Gazette, 24 May. The Federalist Gazette of the United States, 16 May, identified Magnien as “a foreigner from St. Domingo,” and Porcupine’s Gazette, 17 May, labeled the address “impudent and rascally” and claimed it deserved “to be published as a mark of Democratic infamy and of French influence.” The address was also printed in the Baltimore Federal Gazette, 18 May; the New York Journal, 19 May; and the Hartford, Conn., American Mercury, 24 May.
5. Philadelphia Porcupine’s Gazette, 21 May.
6. Both the Massachusetts Mercury and, more extensively, the Boston Columbian Centinel printed a number of addresses and replies over the next month; however, both newspapers primarily printed those from Massachusetts communities. See, for example, Massachusetts Mercury, 5, 15, and 22 June, and Boston Columbian Centinel, 2, 13, 16, 20, and 23 June.