Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
th.1803
I recieved your letter dear Madam and should have answer’d it had not the illness of the two children prevented me1 John was very sick cutting two teeth but is now perfectly recover’d and larger and fatter 308 than ever George has been very ill owing to a severe cold which occasioned a smart fever for several days which reduced him very much he has not yet left his room but is nearly recover’d—
Mrs. Pain and Mrs. Morton are both here2 Mrs. P. looks charmingly and is very much admired Mrs. M. is not quite so much the fashion as last winter I have
seen them both several times.— The arrival of Mr. & Mrs. Merry has afforded great satisfaction as they seem
inclined to live in great stile and magnificence and which will enliven the society very much. they have taken the houses which
my Mother and Mrs. Tom Peter lived in the two are to be
thrown into one enclosed with a handsome railing and a large and elegant garden laid out
at the back of the house this will certainly be a great advantage to the City.3
Mrs. Hellen is in a very ill state of
health indeed we are extremely anxious on her account the loss she has sustained preys
heavily on her spirits and the illness she suffered so immediately after redoubled her
affliction and proved a severe shock to her constitution.4
The family all desire their best respects Mama looks very thin and Pale and has quite lost her spirits remember me affectionately to the president and Louisa and believe me dear Madam your affectionate
P. S. I left some Music in the Room I slept in I would thank Mr. Shaw to send it me if you can find it and half a dozen
lb. of Shells and the same of Chocolate from Ticknors5 Mr. Whitcomb will
pay for them.
RC (Adams
Papers); addressed: “Mrs Adams”; docketed: “L C A
/ to / A A / 1803.”
Not found.
Although LCA wrote Boston in her dateline, this
letter was written from Washington, D.C., where Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton had
accompanied her husband, Boston attorney Perez Morton, while he pursued claims on
behalf of clients (Madison, Papers, Secretary of State Series
, 5:192–195,
6:193–194; Emily Pendleton and Milton Ellis, Philenia: The
Life and Works of Sarah Wentworth Morton, 1759–1846, Orono, Maine, 1931, p.
99).
George III appointed Anthony Merry (1756–1835) minister
plenipotentiary to the United States on 16 September. He and his wife, Elizabeth Death
Leathes (d. 1824), departed England on 25 Sept. and landed in Norfolk, Va., on 4 Nov.,
arriving in Washington, D.C., on the 26th. The minister presented his credentials to
Secretary of State James Madison on 28 Nov. and was received by Thomas Jefferson the
next day, for which see
JQA to AA, 22 Dec., and note 1, below. The Merrys
resided on K Street in Foggy Bottom, occupying two adjacent properties that had
previously been home to Martha Parke Custis and Thomas Peter (vol. 13:89; LCA, D&A
, 1:201; Jefferson, Papers
, 41:387–388; Douglas E. Evelyn and Paul
Dickson, On This Spot: Pinpointing the Past in Washington,
D.C., 3d edn., Sterling, Va., 2008, p. 214).
Ann Johnson Hellen’s son Washington died on 19 Sept. at the age
of seventeen months (LCA, D&A
,
1:195–196).
Elisha Ticknor (1757–1821) was a Boston 309 shopkeeper and educator who sold groceries from a
shop at 42 Marlborough Street (Jefferson,
Papers, Retirement Series
, 8:584;
Boston Directory,
1803, p. 121, Shaw-Shoemaker,
No. 3862).
I inclose you a letter from my wife, who would have written you earlier but that George has been very ill with a fever, for several days— He is however, thank God now recovered.
I have not written to you so often myself as I ought to have done, the only reason for which has been the ardour with which I have thoughtlessly thrown myself into the vortex of public business— The only object or use of which is to engross all my time—
We have pass’d an Amendment to the Constitution to designate persons in the choice of President and Vice-President— It is in a strange form, owing to the extraordinary difficulty of getting a Constitutional number of the Senate to agree to it.1
We are also going on swimmingly about Louisiana— More swimmingly than heedfully as I suppose.2
Your’s faithfully.
RC (Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, New
York, owned and operated by the Colonial Dames of America); addressed: “John Adams
Esqr. / Quincy. / Massachusetts.—”; internal address:
“Mrs: A. Adams.”; docketed: “J. Q. Adams to his / mother
Dec. 9. 1803.”
On 17 Oct. Democratic-Republican John Dawson of Virginia introduced in the House of Representatives a resolution to amend the constitutional process for electing a president and vice president, while on the 21st party colleague DeWitt Clinton of New York introduced a similar resolution in the Senate. Initiated in response to the congressional impasse in the election of 1800, the measures eventually became the 12th Amendment, reforming a system that awarded the presidency to the highest vote getter and the vice-presidency to the second place finisher. Under the proposed new system, separate elections would be held for the offices of president and vice president, virtually ensuring that both would be of the same party. In races in which there was no majority winner, the House would decide the contest, with each state casting a single vote.
Debate took place in the House from 19 to 28 Oct. 1803 and in the
Senate from 23 Nov. to 2 Dec., with a key issue being the number of candidates for
each office that would receive consideration in the event the House decided the
election. House Democratic-Republicans proposed two, but Federalists argued for five.
The Senate compromised at three, the number in the resolution when it passed on 2 Dec.
by a 22 to 10 vote, with JQA among those opposed. In a speech near the
close of the debate, JQA voiced his support for an effort “to establish
the single principle of discrimination in the choice of the two highest officers of
the union” but claimed the amendment as constituted did so at the expense of northern
states and was “founded upon a manifest intention to attack the fundamental federative
principle of the constitution.” The House adopted the Senate version on 8 Dec.,
sending the amendment to the states for ratification. The amendment was 310 ratified by thirteen of the seventeen states
between 21 Dec. and 27 July 1804, while Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and
Delaware either rejected the amendment or took no action on it at the time. Secretary
of State James Madison declared the amendment adopted on 25 Sept. (Joshua D. Hawley,
“The Transformative Twelfth Amendment,” William & Mary Law
Review, 55:1542–1561 [2014]; Thomas J. Wickham, Constitution, Jefferson’s Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives of the
United States One Hundred and Fourteenth Congress, Washington, D.C., 2015, p.
95–98;
Annals of
Congress
, 8th Cong., 1st sess., p. 209; Jefferson, Papers
, 42:153; Washington Federalist, 2 Jan.).
Thomas Jefferson in a 16 July 1803 proclamation (Adams Papers) called for Congress to convene
on 17 Oct. to consider the 30 April Franco-American treaty and two conventions
regarding Louisiana, for which see Descriptive List of Illustrations, No. 4, above. The Senate ratified the
treaty and conventions by a vote of 24 to 7 on 20 Oct., and Jefferson proclaimed the
ratifications the following day. While Jefferson and other Democratic-Republicans saw
the acquisition of the territory as a triumph, Federalists believed it would erode the
power of the northern states and therefore attempted to block subsequent legislation.
JQA, who took his seat in the Senate the same day the ratification was
proclaimed, split his vote on several pieces of related legislation. The first
authorized the president to take possession of the ceded territory. It was introduced
in the Senate on 21 Oct. and passed on the 26th by a vote of 26 to 6, with
JQA joining the Federalist opposition. A bill to fund the purchase was
introduced on 28 October. During debate on 3 Nov. JQA broke with his
Federalist colleagues, arguing that the constitutional objections they raised could be
overcome and declaring his support because of “the immense importance to this Union of
the possession of the ceded country.” The bill passed the same day with
JQA among the majority in the 26 to 5 vote. The House passed the bill
on 7 Nov., and Jefferson signed it into law on 10 November. Summarizing his first
weeks of congressional service, JQA described “the danger of adhering to my own principles,” writing in his
Diary: “The Country is so totally given up to the Spirit of party, that not to follow
blind-fold the one or the other is an inexpiable offence. … Yet my choice is made, and
if I cannot hope to give satisfaction to my Country, I am at least determined to have
the approbation of my own reflections” (Jefferson, Papers
, 41:67; Miller, Treaties
, 2:498, 512, 516;
U.S. Statutes at Large
, 2:245–248; U.S. Senate, Exec.
Jour.
, 8th Cong., 1st sess., p. 449–450;
Annals of Congress
, 8th Cong.,
1st sess., p. 9, 16, 17, 26, 65–68, 73, 546–548, 558, 1231;
D/JQA/27, 3 Nov., 31 Dec., APM Reel 30).