Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15

Thomas Boylston Adams to William Meredith, 8 February 1804 Adams, Thomas Boylston Meredith, William

Thomas Boylston Adams to William Meredith

Dear Sir Quincy 8th: February 1804

On the 3d inst: I enclosed to you, Bank Notes of various descriptions, amounting to two hundred and ninety dollars, accompanied by a letter of advice as to the disposal of the money. I hope you will receive it and apply it as requested.

I have, since I left your City, been leading a desultory, or as Joe says, a miscellaneous life, and have therefore collected very little information worthy of record. My promise to write to Mrs: Meredith is not forgotten, but unavoidably postponed, on divers accounts.1 My 335 thoughts have been so much occupied, with my future state that I have not applied my attention to the more immediate calls upon my time; and I must intreat, thro’ you, a little further respite, before I am condemned as a faithless man.

I expected to have it in my power to inform you of my admission to the Bar in this State. I attended, yesterday, for the purpose of being sworn in, at the Shire-town for our County of Norfolk, called Dedham; but from some unknown cause, the chief Justice was absent and there being but one judge present, no Court was held; as a single judge has not even the power of adjournment; so, I had a long ride for my pains and came back no more of a lawyer than I went.2 I shall keep an Office here, at Quincy, but I do not expect very soon to be over-run with Clients.

There seems to be some prospect in your State of vacancies being made on the Bench, & such is the spirit of emulation—or ambition, or something else— I know not what to call it, in the lawyers heart, that I dare be bound there will not be a single tear shed over the departed judge-ships, should the three victims threatened, actually be immolated. I have no personal interest now in these removals; nor can I avoid condemning the accursed spirit, which has stimulated the persecution of judges, throughout the Country; but if the accusations were well-founded against the judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, I know not three men whose services might in their judicial capacities, so readily be dispensed with. I should like to hear from you on this subject; as also, respecting D——s trial.3

Among the original letters, published in the port-Folio, I perceive that two short ones, from John Adams to Mr: Dumas, have been published—this is expressly contrary to my injunctions to Dennie & as I understood, his promise.4 I do not know how many letters there are from the same person in the correspondence, but I wish you to charge Joe, on pain of my displeasure & wrath, not to print or suffer to be printed another line above that signature. All the others are posthumous letters and can attract no ill-will upon the living—the same cannot be said of those to which I refer. I know not who is employed to transcribe those letters, but I think some of them might be suppressed without injury to the integrity of the plan. What the d——I can be made of the cyphers?5 If I had Joe here I’d give him a scolding for his inattention to the manner of publishing those letters. I must break short off, as a boy is waiting to take my letter to the post Office— Remember me kindly to all friends.

sincerely your’s

T B Adams. 336

RC (PHi:Samuel Washington Woodhouse Coll.); addressed: “William Meredith Esqr / Philada:”; internal address: “Wm Meredith Esqr:.”

TBA’s letter to Meredith and its enclosures have not been found. Philadelphia lawyer and banker William Meredith (1772–1844) and his wife, Gertrude Gouverneur Ogden Meredith (1777–1828), who was a niece of Gouverneur Morris, were contributors to the Port Folio and friends of Joseph Dennie Jr. This letter marked the beginning of a correspondence that lasted until 1817 (Morris, Diaries , 2:889; Richard Lewis Ashhurst, “William Morris Meredith, 1799–1873,” American Law Register, 55:202–203).

The Mass. Supreme Judicial Court announced in the New-England Palladium, 20 Jan. 1804, that it would convene in Dedham, Mass., on 7 Feb. despite an earlier publication stating that the session would be held on 27 March. No February court session took place, however, because even though on 7 Feb. the Mass. house of representatives authorized “any one justice of the Supreme Court to hold the term at Dedham, this day,” the bill did not become law until 20 February. The court convened on 6 March, and it was at that time that TBA was admitted to the bar (Boston Columbian Centinel, 8 Feb., 14 March; New-England Palladium, 21 Feb.).

Justices Edward Shippen IV, Thomas Smith, and Jasper Yeates, all Federalists on the Penn. Supreme Court, faced impeachment in early 1804, reported the New-England Palladium, 3 February. The issue arose when Philadelphia merchant Thomas Passmore petitioned the state legislature in Feb. 1803, after the justices allowed a case to proceed against him despite his opponent missing a key filing deadline. Passmore’s petition was tabled until the next session, when a committee recommended impeachment in Jan. 1804. The legislature declined to charge a fourth justice, Democratic-Republican Hugh Henry Brackenridge, but called on Thomas McKean to remove him from office, a request the governor refused on the grounds that less than two-thirds of the full branch voted, as called for in the state constitution. The Penn. house of representatives voted to impeach the three justices on 20 March. The senate did not take up the issue until the following session. It found the men guilty in Jan. 1805 but failed to achieve the two-thirds majority required for removal (Elizabeth K. Henderson, “The Attack on the Judiciary in Pennsylvania, 1800–1810,” PMHB , 61:119–120, 125–126 [April 1937]; G. S. Rowe, Embattled Bench: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Forging of a Democratic Society, 1684–1809, Newark, Del., 1994, p. 270; John J. Hare, ed., The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: Life and Law in the Commonwealth, 1684–2017, University Park, Penn., 2018, p. 428; Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 27 Jan. 1804; Brackenridge, Modern Chivalry, ed. Ed White, Indianapolis, Ind., 2009, p. 573, 580–581). For Dennie’s trial for seditious libel, see JQA to TBA, 19 Aug. 1803, and note 3, above.

The Port Folio had published Revolutionary-era letters exchanged by U.S. officials and C. W. F. Dumas since JQA supplied Dennie with copies of Dumas’ letters in 1802, for which see TBA to JQA, 16 May 1802, and note 3, above. Among those published were four letters from JA to Dumas on European events and Anglo-American affairs dated 21 May 1780, 6 June, 5 Sept. (printed as 3 Sept.), and 4 Oct. and printed in the Port Folio, 4:20–21 (21 Jan. 1804), 4:29 (28 Jan.), 4:35 (4 Feb.), and 4:62 (25 Feb.) (JA, Papers , 9:330–331, 380–381, 384; 10:125–126, 252–254).

The Port Folio, 3:415 (24 Dec. 1803), printed a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Dumas, 29 March 1780, with enciphered passages rendered as strings of capital letters without a key or explanation. Similarly, in the same, 4:13 (14 Jan. 1804), a letter from an unidentified correspondent dated 22 April 1780 used strings of asterisks for enciphered text.

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