Adams Papers Digital Edition

Diary of John Quincy Adams, volume 1

Friday June the 15th 1781.

Sunday June the 17th 1781.
Saturday June the 16th 1781. JQA

1781-06-16

 Saturday June the 16th 1781. Adams, John Quincy
Saturday June the 16th 1781.

This day Mr. Brice, Commodore Gillon, Colo. Searle, Major Jackson, Captn. Coltyzer and Mr. Jennings din'd here; Major Jackson1 has read in Lloyd's list an account of an old French sixty four gun Ship's having been taken by the Jamaica fleet with eighty pieces of brass cannon twenty thousand suits of cloaths and two Millions of Livres on board bound to North America, but this news is not yet ascertain'd. We have a letter in one of the papers from Commodore Johnstone, containing the details of the action which I spoke of yesterday; he gives himself a Victory but his letter gives but a poor and broken account of it, and the French might call it a victory to them with as much (and perhaps more) truth than the English can.

From Guthrie's grammar (continuation from Yesterday) Chap 4th §:6th.2

1.

William Jackson, from South Carolina, who served under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln in his southern campaign, 1778–1780, and then accompanied John Laurens to Europe in the spring of 1781 to obtain additional financial aid and military supplies. In August, JA put CA in the care of Jackson, who was returning to America on the ill-fated South Carolina. Both changed passage in La Coruña, however, and finally arrived in Massachusetts in Jan. 1782 (Adams Family Correspondence, 4:55, 170–171).

 2.

On the next three pages of the Diary, JQA copied the final two paragraphs on Dutch “population, inhabitants, manners, customs and diversions,” begun on 14 June (p. 402).