RC (Adams Papers).

JQA in his 10 Jan. letter to TBA (Adams Papers) noted that “the spirit of the Port-Folio appears to have revived.” He also announced plans to send a review of William Sotheby’s recent translation of Virgil’s Georgics: “It will consist principally of extracts, from the book, and will fill a page or more, for four numbers.” The review was published in the Port Folio, 3:43–44, 50–51, 58–59, 66–68 (5, 12, 19, 26 Feb.). JQA also enclosed an epigram, which was attributed to Batisto when it was published in the Port Folio 3:48 (5 Feb.). The rhyme depicts a couple’s reaction to the arrival of “a bouncing boy” four months after their marriage: “The husband frowns, and bites his nails; / The wife, her sad mischance bewails” (Kerber and Morris, “The Adams Family and the Port Folio,” p. 455–456, 470).

From late 1802 to early 1803 TBA contributed several pieces to the Port Folio. The most significant was a five-part series as “The Examiner” responding to Thomas Paine’s “Letters to the Citizens of the United States.” Soon after Thomas Jefferson took office he invited Paine to return after fifteen years in Europe where he had joined the French revolutionary government and, after being imprisoned, wrote polemics against religion and the Washington administration. Just over two weeks after his 30 Oct. 1802 return, Paine began publishing his series of eight letters, the first four of which were published in the Washington, D.C., National Intelligencer in November and December, launching blistering attacks on JA and Washington and calling each of their administrations a “reign of terror.” Paine characterized JA as “a man of paradoxical heresies, and consequently of a bewildered mind.” In the “Examiner” series, TBA suggested that Jefferson’s falling out with James Thomson Callender prompted him to bring Paine back to the United States to serve as an alternate mouthpiece. Paine and Jefferson’s shared abhorrence of religion and dislike of Washington, TBA argued, were a natural basis for an 263 alliance “between the present chief magistrate of the American States (United they are not, but in name) and that creeping-thing called Thomas Paine.”

TBA also penned several unsigned pieces about the president. Among them were “Stanzas to Thomas Jefferson” and “Certificate of Good Character,” the latter of which condemned a resolution by the Va. House of Delegates that threatened critics of the president. TBA urged continued Federalist censure of Democratic-Republicans: “Their vices and their follies, their hypocrisy and their incapacity for Government, must and will be blazoned to the Country.” Another criticized Jefferson’s 15 Dec. 1802 annual message to Congress, calling it “a beggarly emaciated skeleton, which leaves the councils of the nation still hungry for information.” TBA faulted the president for failing to win peace with Tripoli, reversing course on tax policy, and engaging in fractious relations with Native Americans. In other unsigned pieces over the previous two months, TBA lampooned immigrant voter registration, commented on JQA’s translation of Baron Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow’s Der Freistaat von Nordamerika in seinem neusten zustand, compared London and Paris, and provided squibs on John Rutledge Jr., New York Evening Post editor William Coleman, and Rhode Island senator Christopher Ellery (vols. 9:xiv, 12:413–141; Kerber and Morris, “The Adams Family and the Port Folio,” p. 472–473; Port Folio, 2:372, 379, 383, 386–387, 388, 394–395, 398, 405–406, 407, 412–413; 3:6, 15, 22–23 [27 Nov. 1802; 4, 11, 18, 25 Dec.; 1, 8, 15 Jan. 1803]; Washington, D.C., National Intelligencer, 15, 22, 29 Nov. 1802; 6 Dec.; ANB ; Jefferson, Papers , 38:634).

TBA was referring to a recent newspaper war between the Port Folio and Francis Blake’s Worcester, Mass., National Aegis. On 15 Dec., the Aegis printed an editorial defending Paine and criticizing JA. The piece contained “two facts” about JA “which (if admitted) will serve to finish the climax of his political and private character.” One of these was JA’s supposed “proposal to make the Government hereditary, in the family of Lund Washington.” The other was JA’s alleged role in a 1777 coalition that sought to remove George Washington from the command of the army, for which see JA to TBA, 2 April 1803, and note 1, below. Blake lamented that while “Paine is denounced for an open avowal of his enmity” toward Washington, JA, “although he plotted secretly against him, is extolled for his steady and disinterested friendship.” TBA responded with an unsigned piece in the Port Folio, 3:14–15 (8 Jan.), lambasting Blake: “Of all Paine’s disciples, Mr. Blake appears to be the most faithful.” TBA denied that JA ever advocated for hereditary government and chastised Blake for presenting “Paine’s own deduction” as fact, calling it “hear-say, and, except a fool, every body knows that hear-say is no evidence, though Lawyer Blake may not know it.” The article also denied JA’s involvement in the effort to remove Washington, noting that both JA and Samuel Adams were delegates to the Continental Congress and hinting that the Aegis had accused the wrong man. Blake responded to TBA’s piece in the Aegis, 19 Jan., ridiculing its “most wonderful discovery—that ‘hearsay is no evidence’—in a court of Law.” Blake reiterated the accusations Paine leveled at JA, and, assuming that the unsigned piece was written by Joseph Dennie Jr., declared of Dennie that while he “may hold a distinguished rank in the Republic of letters … his tenets have degraded him, to the very lowest form, in the Republic, which we are pledged to support” (Kerber and Morris, “The Adams Family and the Port Folio,” p. 461, 473).

RC (Adams Papers).

Prior to TBA’s letter to JA of 18 Jan., above, his last extant is that of 18 April 1802, for which see JA to TBA, 12 March, note 4, above.

AA was likely referring to the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 15 Jan. 1803, which reprinted an article from the New-England Palladium, 4 Jan., calling on Federalists to vigorously criticize the Jefferson administration. In an accompanying piece, editors Enos Bronson and Elihu Chauncey likewise called on Federalist leaders to expose “the evil of the Jacobin system.” Doing so was imperative, they claimed, because Democratic-Republicans had “abandoned all old and established systems of policy and morals, and are alluring our people, by the glimmerings of a new philosophy, to the pit of distruction” (Dexter, Yale Graduates , 5:186).

AA’s most recent extant letter to TBA was that of 13 Dec. 1802, above.