Adams Papers Digital Edition

Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15

Abigail Adams to Catherine Nuth Johnson

Abigail Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams
72 Thomas Boylston Adams to William Smith Shaw, 14 May 1801 Adams, Thomas Boylston Shaw, William Smith
Thomas Boylston Adams to William Smith Shaw
Dear William Philadelphia 14th: May 1801.

I enclose you a paper, which contains the Sentence referred to in my last, passed upon the troopers who flogged Duane.1 You will be able to form from the perusal of it, a more accurate opinion of the merits, than you could from my statement.

The Circuit Court of the United States, under the new organization, opened on Monday— Present the three Judges— I attended & heard the charge delivered by Judge Tilghman; it was well received & I think, deservedly so. The Grand jury was summoned by the new Marshal and though composed of respectable characters, was a very mixed assemblage.

I have been since Monday noon until last evening at Norristown County Court, and did not hear the proceedings in the case of the Senate against Duane— You will see by the papers the grounds upon which the trial was postponed to next term— The non-attendance of the Commissioners named on behalf of the Senate to take depositions, was assigned as the principal inducement to put off the cause— Mr: Otis was one of the Commissioners & can inform you why he did not attend a second time.2 It is said he left Washington before the second day of meeting arrived. I have no doubt that he had the best of reasons for not going or rather for not staying till the second meeting, and the bare-faced impudence of Duane in making this a pretext for postponing his trial, ought not to have availed him. I am really alarmed when I see such a multiplicity of examples, wherein these paltry grounds are admitted in our Courts of Justice to delay the trials of these criminals. Judge Chase is the only instance of firmness on similar occasions that can be produced, & had the principle laid down by him in the case of Cooper & Callender been applied to the present, the trial must have proceeded.3 But who can bear to be libelled in the Aurora?

I am cordially your friend

T B Adams.

RC (MHi:Misc. Bound Coll.); addressed: “William S Shaw / Boston”; internal address: “W S Shaw”; endorsed: “T B Adams / rec 20 May” and “rec 20 May.”

 1.

TBA in a letter to Shaw of 10 May (MWA:Adams Family Letters) criticized the verdict in favor of William Duane in a 7 May trial in Philadelphia Mayor’s Court. The trial resulted from Duane’s reports in the Aurora General Advertiser, 16 April 1799 and 14 May, that claimed federalized city horse troops had received free lodgings when they were sent to Northampton, Penn., to quell Fries’ Rebellion. The troops responded by assaulting Duane at his house, prompting him to file civil suits that resulted in five awards of $100 73 to $120 each. The newspaper TBA enclosed has not been found, but the Philadelphia Gazette, 13 May 1801, printed an extensive report on the trial. The decision, TBA wrote in his letter to Shaw, demonstrated that “our magistrates are, some of them, so much influenced by popular considerations & so apprehensive of being abused in the Aurora, that they will sacrifice men of their own party at the shrine of vulgar favor” (vol. 13:435; Allen C. Clark, William Duane, Washington, D.C., 1905, p. 21).

 2.

On 11 May a session of the U.S. Circuit Court opened in Philadelphia, presided over by judges William Tilghman, Richard Bassett, and William Griffith. Tilghman opened the session with a charge to a grand jury called by John Smith, the marshal of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in which he discussed “the criminal law of the United States and the duties of Grand Juries.” The next day the court took up Duane’s postponed trial for contempt of Congress, for which see vol. 14:190–191. After hearing arguments from both sides the judges ruled that because a Senate committee that included Harrison Gray Otis had failed to finish interviewing witnesses before Congress adjourned on 14 May, a motion by Duane to again postpone the trial would be granted (John B. Wallace, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Third Circuit, 2d edn., Phila., 1838, p. 5–12; Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 11, 13 May). For a third trial involving Duane, see TBA to JQA, 8 June, and note 5, below.

 3.

In April 1800 Judge Samuel Chase in presiding over the sedition trial of Dr. Thomas Cooper in U.S. Circuit Court allowed Cooper three days to gather evidence. Chase was also the judge in the sedition trial of James Thomson Callender that resulted from attacks on JA and other Federalists in his The Prospect before Us, for which see AA to JQA, 30 May 1801, and note 5, below. Callender’s attorneys sought a delay of several months to give them time to prepare the case, but Chase allowed only five days (vol. 14:218–219, 220, 228; Smith, Freedom’s Fetters , p. 318–319, 346).