Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
I have received two or three letters from you, which I have not
answered for want of a conveyance—1 My
objection to the Post Office, you know— I have two or three pieces by me, in a state of
preparation for you; which I purpose sending by the first convenient private
opportunity.— Mr: Hichborn brought me last week a letter
from you; but I have not been able to see him since, having been all the time at
Quincy.— My first object in writing you now, is to let you know the situation of your
dear mother; who is dangerously ill— I would not, on the one hand excite in your mind a
needless alarm; nor on the other leave you so uninformed of our apprehensions, that the
event we fear should come upon you altogether suddenly and unawares. She has been these
ten days in great pain, and is very weak— Dr: Warren who saw
her yesterday, speaks of her situation as very precarious, though not desperate—2 It will be as painful to you to read as it
is to me to write these particulars; yet it is best you should know them
I was not surprized at the indictments against Dennie &
Bradford, for a speculative paragraph upon Democracy— As you appear in your letters
confident that it is impossible a Jury should convict them, I am in hopes the contagion
is not so deep and universal as I have been apt to suspect—3 But you see what a Judge and a Jury both, have done with Croswell in
New-York;—4 If truth, consistency,
Justice or Law could were any restraint upon
democracy, and party spirit, I should join with you in thinking your client perfectly
safe— As it is—I hope you are not too sangwine— When Democracy has the upperhand, it is
like all other tyranny “Its power is as terrible, as its arguments are
contemptible.”5 Now that democracy has
the upperhand in Pennsylvania, is apparent by its excesses— It now feels strong enough
to commence its career of oppression, and it has selected Dennie, as one of its victims—
I have so little confidence in 298 the security to
life, liberty, or property in the State of Pennsylvania, that I most sincerely wish you
would shake the dust from your feet, and come where there is yet some sense of right,
and some government to protect a citizen, in his person, character and property, against
highwaymen and Jacobins.
If you have not a greater attachment to that residence, than I can see reason that you should have, I think you could make a much more comfortable, and agreeable one, in your native State— I have made arrangements to make my future abode, at Quincy; in the old paternal mansion; and if you could prevail upon yourself to exchange the noise and bustle of a great city for rural retirement, I have a project in my head, by which you could turn your time to account, better than I believe it possible where you are— But, as I expect to see you at Philadelphia, in about six weeks from this, I purpose to converse with you freely on this subject, and to submit my plan to your con[sideration]
It is my intention to take my family with me to Washington this
Winter— And I shall endeavour to reach Philadelphia about the 5th: of October— Pray let me know whether I shall be able to get lodgings at Mrs: Roberts’s, for one or two days?
We are all well here, and the town is hitherto healthy.
Ever faithfully your’s.
RC (Adams
Papers); addressed: “Thomas B. Adams Esqr /
Philadelphia.”; internal address: “Mr: T. B. Adams.”;
endorsed: “J. Q Adams Esqr: / 18th. August 1803 / 22d: Recd: / Ansd:”; docketed by JQA: “Boston
19. August 1803.”; notation by JQA: “Post paid.” Some loss of text where
the seal was removed.
TBA’s most recent extant letters to JQA
were dated 10 and 18 July (both Adams
Papers), in which he commented on Fourth of July festivities in Philadelphia,
discussed JQA’s contributions to the Port
Folio, and noted that Joseph Dennie Jr. faced a sedition trial, for which see
note 3, below. In the first letter TBA also congratulated
JQA on JA2’s birth and LCA’s health: “My
opinion of her grows more favorable in proportion to the increase of the male branch
of her family, and by the time She is prepared to name her fourth boy I hope she will
remember, that the joyless State of celibacy to which her husbands brother is
condemned, should recommend him to the compassionate regard of his prolific fruitful relatives, so far at least as to
perpetuate his name.”
That is, Harvard’s Hersey Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, Dr. John Warren.
Dennie and Philadelphia True
American editor Thomas Bradford appeared in Philadelphia Mayor’s Court on 4
July to answer an indictment for seditious libel. The charge stemmed from the
publication of an unsigned paragraph in the Port Folio,
3:135 (23 April), and reprinted in the True American, 6
May, which opined: “A democracy is scarcely tolerable at any period of national
history. Its omens are always sinister, and its powers are unpropitious. … It is on
trial here, and the issue will be civil war, desolation and anarchy.” TBA
commented to JQA that he doubted a jury would find the paragraph
seditious: “They dare not meet this American question,
even in the jacobin tribunals of Pennsylvania— at least such is my opinion.” The
prediction ultimately proved correct, though the case took more than two years to
resolve, after the charge against Dennie alone was transferred 299 to the Pennsylvania supreme court in December as
Respublica v. Dennie. The case remained there until Judge
Jasper Yeates delivered a charge to a jury in Nov. 1805, calling on them to decide
whether the U.S. Constitution allowed such speech, but cautioning, “It is no
infraction of the law to publish temperate investigations of the nature and forms of
government.” The jury acquitted Dennie (Burton Alva Konkle, Joseph Hopkinson, 1770–1842: Jurist, Scholar, Inspirer of the Arts, Phila.,
1931, p. 141–142; TBA to JQA, 18 July 1803, Adams Papers; Jasper Yeates, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania, 3d edn., 4 vols., Phila., 1889–1890, 4:266–271).
Harry Croswell, editor of the Hudson, N.Y., Wasp, was indicted for seditious libel by a New York grand
jury in January. Croswell attacked Thomas Jefferson the previous summer, writing that
the president had paid James Thomson Callender to smear JA as “a hoary
headed incendiary.” During a trial in New York Circuit Court begun on 11 July, Chief
Justice Morgan Lewis ruled against numerous defense motions before a jury found
Croswell guilty in September. The case pivoted on whether the truth of an allegation
was an absolute defense against libel, a position argued forcefully by Alexander
Hamilton in an unsuccessful appeal of People v. Croswell
in Feb. 1804. In 1805 New York legislators swayed by Hamilton’s argument enshrined the
truth defense in state law, an important milestone in American legal precedent (Julius
Goebel Jr., ed., The Law Practice of Alexander Hamilton,
5 vols., N.Y., 1964–1981, 1:775–797, 844–848).
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France, London, 1790, p. 159.
You will be so anxious to hear the state of your mother’s health that I cannot forbear writing you a line— Since I wrote you last no material change has taken place— The danger has not apparently increased, neither can we flatter ourselves that it has diminished— Her pain is not so severe as it was, and she has now little fever; but her weakness is the most formidable symptom— She has little or no expectation of her own recovery, but her spirits have sunk with her strength— Yet none of us dare indulge hopes— We can but wish and pray for the best.
She directs me to remind you of the advice she gave you in her last Letter, and to say she repeats it now—1 The subject is such however, as being confidential from you to her, she has not thought herself at liberty to explain to me— I shall wait your own time for the explanation, well aware that as confidence is a sacred trust when bestowed, it ought not lightly to be sollicited.
We are in hourly expectation of the arrival of your sister Smith, who left New-York to come here, this day week— Your mother is apprehensive she has been detained at Newport, and is anxiously desirous to see her.
In the present State of things, I am unable to employ much of my time, in your service— But I have three Articles, enough to supply my customary contribution for six weeks, ready for delivery when an 300 opportunity for conveyance shall present itself.— I have written nothing these three weeks, for a heavy heart dams up all the fountains of the muses— When lord Lyttleton wrote his monody, he had lost his affliction; unless it was all poetical fiction.2
I did not close my letter last Night; that I might give you the account of your mother’s situation to the latest moment possible— She had last night some rest— But it was with the assistance of an opiate— There is no material change since yesterday—3 Last Evening your Sister Smith arrived, after a detention of four days in quarantine at Newport.4
RC (Adams
Papers); endorsed: “J Q Adams Esqr: / 21—2—August
1803 / 26 Recd: / Ansd.”
AA to TBA, 20 June, above.
George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, wrote his celebrated poem,
“To the Memory of a Lady Lately Deceased: A Monody,” after the death of his first
wife, Lucy Fortescue, Lady Lyttelton, on 19 Jan. 1747 (
DNB
).
Concern for AA prompted letters from Hannah Phillips Cushing and Elizabeth Smith Shaw Peabody. Cushing wrote to AA on 8 Aug. 1803, inquiring about her recovery, inviting her to visit, and reporting that the U.S. Circuit Court duties of her husband William would soon resume. In a letter of 15 Aug., Peabody asked about AA’s health, conveyed news of William Smith Shaw, and discussed local events (both Adams Papers).
AA2 was fleeing an outbreak of yellow fever in New
York that had killed 46 people since 17 August. Vessels arriving at Newport, R.I.,
from New York were subject to a quarantine of eight days from the date of their
departure, with passengers and crew restricted to disembarking at a health office
outside the city. AA2 likely sailed on one of three New York vessels
recently quarantined at Newport: the brig Harriot, Capt.
Earl; the sloop Ann & Sarah, Capt. Marshall; or the sloop Semiramis,
Capt. Justin. She remained in Quincy until 23 Oct. (Boston Columbian Centinel, 27 Aug.; Newport Rhode-Island
Republican, 20 Aug.; Newport Mercury, 9, 23 Aug.;
AA to
JQA, 22 Oct., below).