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John Adams to John Quincy Adams
Docno: AFC05d196
Recipient: JA
Date: 1784-06-11
[dateline] The Hague June 11. 1784
[salute] My dear Boy
I am so pleased with your Letters, in general, that you may well believe that of the 6. has contributed very much to my Happiness.
As you have found the Way into the Gallery, I hope you will not neglect it, but attend every Day. It is a great and illustrious School.
I return you inclosed, the Letter from Mr. Dexter to Mr. Temple,1 to whom present my Compliments. In a Letter I wrote a Year ago to Mr. Adams2 I urged upon him to make and publish a Collection of his Writings and I have mentioned it many Times in Conversation with Americans. It is a Work which ought to be given to the Public: But Mr. Adams will never do it. It will be done, imperfectly by some
{p. 343}
other, hereafter. My Advice to you is to Search for every Scratch of his Pen, and lay it up with Care.
My Respects to G. Pownal and Mr. Jackson. I have no News about the Donation.3 Thank Mr. Jackson for introducing his polish Acquaintance,4 and assure him that his Friends Shall ever meet with a cordial Reception from me and his Intelligence will be not only agreable but usefull to me.
I have not yet seen Mr. Bingham nor the Packet by him.
I would not have you stay long. I want you. Send me my Books &c. I dout whether your Mamma will come: but could judge better, if I had the Packet by Mr. Bingham.
I should be glad to see the Resolves against the Cincinnati, and any other News from America.
[salute] Your Father
[signed] John Adams
1. See JQA to JA, 6 June, above. The letter is likely that of [Sept. 1782], in MHS, Colls.
, 6th ser., 9:482–484, in which the Boston merchant Samuel Dexter asserts that in 1775 the Massachusetts provincial congress had given him custody of all the letters found in Gov. Thomas Hutchinson's Milton home, and that the Rev. William Gordon had them for only a brief period (see JA, Papers
, 3:117). Dexter had made extracts from these letters demonstrating that John Temple, far from being a loyalist, was denounced by Hutchinson, who wanted his removal from his customs house position because he was so much liked by the colonists. In copying out the extracts, Dexter did not sign his name; but in his letter to Temple, Dexter expressed his willingness to be identified. The extracts, with commentary, appeared in the Continental Journal (Boston), 26 Sept. 1782, signed simply “Y.” In writing to Temple, Dexter mentioned “malicious invectives” against Temple “and my old friend Mr. Adams.” Although Dexter does not make clear whether he meant JA or Samuel Adams, this reference may have led JA to comment below on Samuel Adams' reluctance to publish his papers.
2. JA to Samuel Adams, 5 April 1783 (NN: George Bancroft Coll., printed in NYPL, Bull., 10:235 [April 1906]; see JA to AA, 28 March 1783 and note 10, above).
3. See JQA to JA, 6 June, note 3, above.
4. An unnamed Polish nobleman of wide acquaintance among the influential about whom Jonathan Jackson wrote at some length in a letter to JA of 7 June (Adams Papers).
Cite web page as: Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2007.
http://www.masshist.org/ff/
http://www.masshist.org/ff/