Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
r:26. 1802.
I received last night your favour of the 17th and thank you for the pamphlets you sent me—1 I had read these before. Most of the pamphlets
are sent me by one or another, as well as the newspapers. To read so much malignant
dulness is an odious task; but it cannot well be avoided— I have the History too of my
Administration.— Good God! Is this a public Man sitting in Judgment on Nations? And has
the American People so little Judgment, Taste and Sense to endure it? The History of the
Clintonian Faction as it is called I should be glad to see. The Society he asserts to
exist and which you say has not been denied I fear is of more consequence than you seem
to be aware of.2 But to dismiss this
Society for the present, there is another sett of beings, who seem to have unlimited
influence over the American People— They are a detachment I fear from a very black
Regiment in Europe which was more than once described to me by Stockdale of Piccadilly
whom you must have seen at my house in Grosvenor Square— “Mr: Adams,” said this bookseller “the Men of learning in this town are stark mad.
I know one hundred Gentlemen in London, of great learning and ingenuity, excellent
writers upon any subject; any one of whom I can hire at any time for one guinea a day to
write upon any theme, for or against any cause, in praise or in defamation of any
character.” A number of the most profligate of these have come to this Country, very
hungry, and are getting their bread by destroying all distinction between right and
wrong, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice.
You speak of “moderate people on both sides”— If you know of any such, I congratulate you on your felicity. All that I know of that description are of no more consequence than if there were none.
225Commerce will decline, and the revenue fail— What expedient the Government will have recourse to, I presume not to conjecture.— I mourn over the accumulated disgraces we are bringing on ourselves; but I can do nothing.
The prisoners from Saint-Domingo, will be dangerous settlers in the Southern States.3 The french care very little whether turning them loose is insult or injury; provided we will cordially receive, or tamely connive at them.
My health is good, and my Spirits would be high, if the Prospect
before us did not present clouds, portending bad Weather.— My love to Coll: Smith and the children.— The young Gentlemen I hope, think
of Greece and Italy.— I am your affectionate father.
LbC in JQA’s hand (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs: A. Smith— New-York.”; APM
Reel 118.
Not found.
John Wood’s A Full Exposition of the
Clintonian Faction; and the Society of the Columbian Illuminati, Newark, N.J.,
1802, Shaw-Shoemaker, No. 3580, was
published on 7 September. Wood criticized James Cheetham and offered an animated
description of the Clintonians’ connections to deism and the Theistical Society of New
York (Burr, Political Correspondence
, 2:727–728).
In August about 1,500 prisoners from among the formerly enslaved
population of Guadeloupe arrived in New York City aboard the French frigates La Consolante and La
Volontaire and the corvette Salamandre. The
prisoners were among about 3,000 expelled from the island for rebelling against French
rule after the reestablishment of slavery. The Boston Columbian Centinel, 8 Sept., printed reports that numerous battle-tested
prisoners bent on rebellion had escaped the ships, adding, “Should they journey South
they will be an unwelcome sample ‘of oppressed humanity.’” The French navy relocated
around 2,000 of the exiles on the Florida coast and about 1,000 in Brest, France
(Boston Columbian Centinel, 21 Aug.; Madison, Papers,
Secretary of State Series
, 3:503, 555–556, 599; Jefferson, Papers
, 38:303,
384–386).
The apt and excellent quotation from Horace’s epistles, in your
letter of 26th: ulto: made me
turn over all the editions and translations of the old poet, that came within my
reach, to find the context—1 When once
a man takes up Horace, it is not easy to lay him down again— So in turning over the
leaves, I stumbled by the strangest accident imaginable upon the fourth Ode of the
second book— But what is yet more surprizing, and indeed almost incredible to my self,
is, that upon opening the book again, the enclosed imitation, drop’d out from between the leaves— I send it you for your opinion
with regard to its authenticity; and also of its merit as an imitation— It strikes me
that if it be really genuine, Pain’s poetry is better than his 226 prose— But
The great difficulty seems to be that the tender tale of
Sally has not yet been long enough known to have made its way across the Atlantic, and
back again— But indeed Pain being so much in the philosopher’s confidence may have
been acquainted with the facts earlier than the American public in general—2 In short I cannot find my way out of the
critical labyrinth, and leave it to your taste and ingenuity to discover the clue.
I have read the life of Gifford, in some of our newspapers, extracted from his book; and it gives me a very favourable opinion of the man— The tale of Genius bursting into light through the petrified shell of poverty and neglect, is always pleasing, and few instances of the kind, so extraordinary as that of Gifford have ever come to my knowledge— His Juvenal I shall certainly purchase as soon as it shall undress itself enough to meet the level of my finances—3 I have been so much used to find myself out-done in poetical translation, that I shall feel no mortification, at being once more excell’d by him— Sotheby has made me callous upon that score; and if my Vanity wanted a backdoor to retreat from, it would immediately suggest, that my translation was a hasty and unfinish’d production, not intended for publication, and his, by his own account the labour of twenty years.—4 I am willing to impute it therefore to your indulgence or partiality that you thought the American version would in any respect bear a comparison with the other.
The whale-oil for which you write is too rank, because too stale
to send you— Political disquisitions like those in our newspapers, are flowers of a
day, and turn to mere chaff and straw, unless you catch them at the hour of their
bloom— The pieces to which I refer appeared in the Boston
Gazette, nearly a month ago— They are therefore dead and gone— Nor shall you
misspend your time so much as to read them— The National Intelligencer has republished
a garbled extract from the last number only, (there were 6 in all) but he has taken
special care not to publish the two first numbers, which contained his dressing— He
thinks the author a verbose critic, and complains that he
liberally quotes the antient poets, and proves every
thing from them—5 Poor thing— If
the enclosed Ode should ever meet his eye, he will find more proved from the antient
poets than will be welcome to him.
Our friends here and at Quincy are all well— My George only excepted— He breeds his teeth with much pain and difficulty; and for the last four months has scarcely had a week’s respite— We are not 227 without some cases of malignant fever here; but as the season is advancing we hope it will very speedily subside wherever it has appeared upon the continent.
Bradford the printer, I observe, advertises a subscription for a complete edition of Burke’s works—to be comprized in eight volumes octavo— I want you to put my name down as a subscriber—6
Ever faithfully your’s
This letter was prepared to be sent you by Mr: Walter, a young Gentleman who has just completed his
course of legal studies, and is going to make a tour of some weeks, as far as
Washington—7 He bears a very good
character as a scholar, and is a particular friend of Shaw.— But he goes off very
early in the morning, and perhaps I shall miss the opportunity by him— In that case I
shall send it by the mail—
RC (DLC:John Quincy Adams Papers); internal address: “T. B. Adams Esqr.”; endorsed: “J. Q Adams Esqr:
/ 5th: Octr: 1802 / 19th: Do: Recd: / 20th Do Answd:.”
Not found.
JQA, using the pseudonym “Thomas Paine,” penned the
poem “Horace, Book II, Ode 4. To Xanthia Phoceus,” which was published in the Port Folio, 2:344 (30 Oct.). In the original ode, Horace
writes of Xanthia’s love for the enslaved woman Phillis. JQA’s version
was directed toward Thomas Jefferson, whose relationship with the enslaved Sally
Hemings was recently publicized in James Thomson Callender’s Richmond, Va., Recorder, 1 September. Hemings (1773–1835) was the daughter
of Elizabeth Hemings, an enslaved woman, and Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles.
Sally accompanied Jefferson’s daughter Mary to Europe in 1787. While there she served
as one of the family’s household staff and as maid to Martha Jefferson. She later
worked in the household at Monticello and gave birth to several children fathered by
Thomas Jefferson.
JQA began the piece: “Dear Thomas, deem it no
disgrace / With slaves to mend thy breed, / Nor let the wench’s smutty face / Deter
thee from the deed,” and continued, “Though nature o’er thy Sally’s frame / Has spread
her sable veil, / Yet shall the loudest trump of fame / Resound your tender tale.” An
editorial note appeared below the poem in the Port Folio:
“The pretence, that Thomas Paine wrote this Ode, is mere poetic fiction. To my certain
knowledge he did not write it, and indeed to speak in the
Gallic idiom, he is incapable of writing such verses”
(Kerber and Morris, “The Adams Family and
the Port Folio,” p. 469–470; Elise Lemire, “Miscegenation”: Making Race in
America, Phila., 2002, p. 18–19, 21–22; Jefferson, Papers
, 38:323–325;
Jefferson’s
Memorandum Books
, 1:686; Jefferson, Papers, Retirement Series
, 3:610–611;
Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An
American Controversy, Charlottesville, Va., 1997, p. xxvi, xxvii, 1–2, 23–25).
For Sally Hemings’ stay with the Adamses in London in 1787, see vol. 8:xxiii, 94, 108. See also
TBA to JQA, 30
Nov. 1802, and note 4, below.
British editor and satirist William Gifford (1756–1826), Oxford
1782, published a translation of Juvenal’s satires in London prefaced with an
autobiographical sketch that was printed in the Philadelphia American Daily Advertiser, 6, 7 September. The Philadelphia Gazette, 3 Sept., advertised the publication of a U.S. edition,
and both JQA and TBA subscribed to an edition that was
published the following year. An 1806 London edition is in JQA’s library
at MQA (
DNB
; The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, transl. William Gifford, 2 vols.,
Phila., 1803, 2:[270], Shaw-Shoemaker, No. 4466; CFA, Diary
, 6:140). For the publication of JQA’s translation of
Juvenal’s thirteenth satire in the Port Folio, see vol.
14:286–287, 289–290.
William Sotheby (1757–1833), a British poet, published in London
in 1798 a translation of Christoph Martin Wieland’s 1796 epic poem Oberon, a copy of which is in JQA’s library at
MQA (
DNB
; Catalog of the Stone Library). For JQA’s
translation of the same work, see vol. 14:258.
The Boston Commercial Gazette, 23,
30 Aug. 1802, 2, 9, 13, 16 Sept., published an anonymous six-part series that
responded to the publication of JA’s 1790 letters to Samuel Adams, for
which see
JQA to
TBA, 27 Aug. 1802, and note 2, above. The series criticized
commentary that appeared in other newspapers, including the Washington, D.C., National Intelligencer, and defended JA
against the charge that he was a monarchist. As JQA observed, editor
Samuel Harrison Smith disparaged the series in the National
Intelligencer, 27 September.
From 22 May to 9 Oct. Philadelphia printer Samuel Fisher Bradford
(1776–1837) and publisher and bookseller John Conrad (1777–1851) advertised in the
Philadelphia Gazette of the United States seeking
subscribers for a proposed six-volume edition of Edmund Burke’s writings. Although
subscriptions were collected in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., the
edition was not published (Jefferson, Papers, Retirement Series
, 7:289; Jefferson, Papers
, 39:176).
That is, Arthur Maynard Walter, for whom see vol. 13:334.