1. “STATE STREET, 1801,” BY JAMES BROWN MARSTON, 1801 |
157[unavailable]
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Writing to his brother Thomas Boylston Adams on 9 January 1802, John Quincy Adams excused the
tardiness of his letter, citing “the continual occupation I have found in moving,
repairing and furnishing my house, and entering upon my office” (below). On 26
December 1801, he had secured a lease for a place of business at 10 State Street owned
by John Lowell Jr. John Quincy spent the first days of the new year moving books and
making arrangements, including having a sign hung. On 5 January 1802 he resumed his
legal career, working as a Boston attorney out of that office until 30 June of the
following year when he prepared to begin his work as a U.S. senator in Washington,
D.C. “I gave it up sooner than I should perhaps; at the request of Mr: Lowell of whom I hired it,” John Quincy wrote in his
Diary. “As a summer room it is too much exposed to the heat— And as the Supreme Court
is postponed untill November, I shall not have business enough, in the interval before
I go to Congress, to make it worth the cost.” |
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| The focal point of James Brown Marston’s 1801 oil painting of
downtown Boston is the Old State House. The Declaration of Independence and
Proclamation of Peace with Great Britain were read from its balcony, while the square
in the foreground was the site of the Boston Massacre. John Quincy navigated these
streets to reach his office at 10 State Street, which is just out of view here on the
left side of the street, close to the Old State House. |
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Marston (1775–1817), originally from Salem, was a member of
the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association and rose to the rank of captain in
the state militia. He was a commercial painter in Boston by 1800, though only one
other painting of his is extant (D/JQA/24, 26 Dec. 1801,
1–2, 4–5 Jan. 1802, APM Reel 27;
D/JQA/27, 30 June 1803, APM Reel 30; M/JQA/18, APM Reel 215; Witness to America’s Past: Two Centuries of Collecting by the Massachusetts
Historical Society, Boston, 1991, p. 135; Boston Columbian Centinel, 17 Dec. 1800, 31 March 1802). |
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Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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| x |
2. THOMAS MCKEAN, ENGRAVING BY DAVID EDWIN, AFTER
GILBERT STUART, 1803 |
261[unavailable]
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On 18 January 1803 Thomas
Boylston Adams wrote from Philadelphia to his father, John Adams, offering to send a
recently published engraving of an “eminent personage
here, with whom you have been long acquainted” (below). The print was of Pennsylvania
governor Thomas McKean, and the image, the younger Adams sardonically noted, was “so
profusely decorated with the symbols of nobility and the emblems badges of Royalty, that I think every
genuine Democrat in the Country, should take it as a model for his own resemblance.”
Adorning McKean’s left breast was the medal with eagle and rosette representing
membership in the Order of the Cincinnati. Below the portrait is a heraldic crest with
the Latin phrase “MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO,” the
latter the McKean family motto, “A Sound Mind in a Sound Body.” Although he had not
seen the engraving when he replied to his son on 28 January, John recognized that “Parade,
Ceremony, Pomposity and Finery” were all trappings appreciated by the Pennsylvania
governor. “Whatever may be said of that Gentlemans Consistency of Conduct, his
Uniformity of Principle and System, his Fidelity to his Friends, his conjugal
Felicity, his Constancy in his opinions, his Modesty, his Humility, his Meekness or
his Temperance; thus much must be confessed, that he Understands the Management of the
People of Pensilvania, better than any of the Federalists,” John wrote of his “old
Friend McKean” (below). |
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Taken from a ca. 1802 portrait of McKean by the artist Gilbert
Stuart, the engraving was made in January 1803 by British-born engraver David Edwin.
Edwin (1776–1841) immigrated to Philadelphia in 1797 with training in stipple
engraving, a technique well suited to portraiture. The artist soon flourished in the
city’s publishing trade, working first with artist Edward Savage before striking out
on his own in 1801 (Charles Henry Hart, Historical Descriptive
and Critical Catalogue of the Works of American Artists in Collection of Herbert L.
Pratt, N.Y., 1917, p. 40; Charles Knowles Bolton, Bolton’s American Armory: A Record of Arms Which Have Been in Use Within the
Present Bounds of the United States, Boston, 1927, p. 112;
ANB
). |
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Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Institution.
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3. VALUATION OF JOHN ADAMS’ QUINCY REAL ESTATE,
PETER BOYLSTON ADAMS, 23 JUNE 1803 |
285[unavailable]
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| On 5 May 1803 John Adams asked his brother Peter Boylston Adams to assess the
value of several properties the former president owned in Quincy, explaining that he
was making the request “for very particular reasons which it is not at present
necessary to explain” (Adams Papers, Adams
Office Manuscripts). The reason was the loss of John and Abigail Adams’
retirement savings in the failure of the London banking firm Bird, Savage, & Bird.
John Quincy Adams had placed $18,000 of his father’s assets with the firm, xi relying on its reputation as the British banking
house of the U.S. government. Weakened by losses in the East Indies and French attacks
on British shipping, the house failed without warning. John Quincy lost $13,000, but
the effect on his father was “more distressing to me than to himself,” he wrote in his
Diary, calling it “among the most painful things that ever happened to me.” After
learning of the failure while in Boston, John Quincy went to Quincy on 2 April to
inform his parents, writing, “They felt it severely; but bore it with proper firmness
and composure.” |
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| Abigail called the news “a Catastrophe so unexpected to us,”
and it was made more severe by John’s purchase of additional real estate earlier on
the same day that John Quincy brought the news (
AA to TBA, 26 April,
below). Within hours of learning of the failure and before telling his parents, John
Quincy began the process of selling his Boston properties to raise money for his
parents’ relief. He and his father later agreed that he would purchase several of his
father’s Quincy real estate holdings, thus necessitating John’s request to his brother
Peter Boylston to assess the current value of his properties. The document is one of
only a few by Peter Boylston in the Adams Papers. The centerpieces of the 23 June
valuation were the John Adams and John Quincy Adams Birthplaces, assessed at $3,000
and $2,000, respectively. In total the seventeen properties on the list had an
assessed value of $16,802.50. |
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| On 8 August John Quincy signed a deed of sale from his father,
with his mother signing as dower holder. John also prepared a memorandum describing
the purchase (both Adams Papers, Adams Office
Manuscripts). John Quincy paid the full assessed value for the first five
properties on the valuation, as well as those listed seventh and eleventh. For the two
pastures listed twelfth he paid $1,093, or $173 above the listed value. John Quincy
did not purchase the remaining properties, substituting instead two lots of salt marsh
and a small lot at Penny Ferry. For those fourteen lots he paid a total of $12,812.
John Quincy on 15 August “rode out with my father on horseback this forenoon, and
viewed the lands which he has conveyed to me.” |
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John Quincy’s actions had the full support of his wife, Louisa
Catherine Adams, according to her later comment: “To prevent the possibility of loss
to his Father he immediately began to dispose of his property so as to secure his
Father from loss— The energy and decision with which he acted on this occasion was
highly honourable and meritorious” (
JQA to TBA, 2 April 1803, and note 1, below;
D/JQA/27, 2 April, 15 Aug., 31 Dec., APM Reel 30;
AA to TBA, 26 April, and
notes 1 and 2, below;
JQA to WSS, 2 Jan. 1804, and note 1, below;
AA to TBA, 8
May 1803; JQA to JA, promissory note, 8 Aug., Adams Papers; LCA, D&A
, 1:185–186). |
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From the original in the Adams Family Papers, Adams Office
Manuscripts. Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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| xii |
4. DETAIL FROM MAP OF LOUISIANA, SAMUEL
LEWIS, 1804 |
311[unavailable]
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| The 30 April 1803 Louisiana Purchase negotiated with France by U.S. envoys James
Monroe and Robert R. Livingston more than doubled the size of the United States,
adding 875,000 square miles at a cost of $11.25 million, or less than 4 cents per
acre. As part of the deal the envoys agreed that the United States would assume up to
$3.75 million in claims by U.S. merchants against France, bringing the total cost to
$15 million. Napoleon Bonaparte made the offer after the defeat of French forces in
St. Domingue led him to abandon plans for a French republic in the Americas. President
Thomas Jefferson approved of the purchase because it simultaneously expanded the
nation and protected it from foreign entanglements along its inland borders. |
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| The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty for the Cession of
Louisiana on 21 October, along with conventions detailing the payment process and the
assumption of U.S. claims against France. John Quincy Adams was sworn in as a senator
the day after the ratifications and participated in debates on bills that authorized
acceptance of the territory, raised revenue to fund the purchase, authorized the
collection of duties, and organized the territory into two parts—the Louisiana
District in the north and Orleans Territory in the south. The freshman senator notably
broke with his Federalist colleagues to vote in favor of funding the purchase, citing
“the immense importance to this Union of the possession of the ceded country.” |
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| A ceremony in New Orleans on 20 December officially
transferred Louisiana from France to the United States. French officials turned over
the city’s fort to the newly appointed governor, William Charles Cole Claiborne
(1775–1817), a former congressman from Tennessee. Exploration of the new territory was
undertaken by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who departed on 14 May 1804 from a
camp near St. Louis on a trek to the Pacific coast and back. Joined en route by Native
guide and translator Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman, the party returned to St.
Louis on 23 September 1806. |
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Philadelphia cartographer Samuel Lewis (ca. 1753–1822) created
this 1804 map for London publisher Aaron Arrowsmith (1750–1823). The map, based on
exploration reports from the British Navy and maps drawn by British fur traders and
Native Americans, was printed in Arrowsmith and Lewis’ New and
Elegant General Atlas, Phila., 1804 (
JQA to AA, 9 Dec. 1803,
and note 2, and
JQA to
TBA, 14 Jan. 1804, and note 1, both below; Wood, Empire of
Liberty
, p. 367–374; Roberts, Napoleon
, p. 324–326; Jefferson, Papers
, 39:320–321; 40:169–172, 303–304; 41:63–66; Miller, Treaties
, 2:498, 512, 516;
U.S. Statutes at Large
, 2:245–248, 251–254,
283–289; U.S. Senate, Exec. Jour.
, 8th Cong., 1st. sess., p. 449–450;
Washington, D.C., National Intelligencer, 27 Jan. 1804;
Biog. Dir.
Cong.
; Gary E. Moulton, The Lewis and Clark
Expedition Day by Day, Lincoln, Neb., 2018, p. xvii, xxii, xxxii–xxxiii, l,
lxix). |
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Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map
Division.
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| xiii |
5. ANNA MARIA BRODEAU THORNTON, BY GILBERT
STUART, 1804 |
339[unavailable]
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“We were last evening at a Ball given by Mrs.
Thornton,” Louisa Catherine Adams reported to Abigail Adams on 11 February 1804 (below), before regaling her
mother-in-law with a snapshot of the social politics at play in the nation’s capital
during the first decade of the nineteenth century. Scandalous attire and “great airs”
by some of the women present “destroyed the harmony of the party,” Louisa scoffed, as
some in attendance caused disruptions over points of etiquette. The scene of the
“ridiculous business” was the F Street home of Anna Maria Brodeau Thornton
(1774–1865), the daughter of Ann Brodeau, an English emigrant who ran a successful
women’s boarding school in Philadelphia. Thornton married Dr. William Thornton at
Christ Church in Philadelphia on 13 October 1790. Well educated and, as her husband
gushed in 1791, possessing “uncommon genius in all works of art and fancy,” Anna Maria
Thornton was a prominent figure in Washington society, chronicling much of her life in
the capital in her substantial diary. |
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This oil on canvas portrait of Anna Maria Thornton was
executed by the artist Gilbert Stuart in 1804. She is one of a number of Washington
elites and foreign dignitaries captured on canvas by the artist during his extended
residence in the capital from December 1803 to July 1805 (Papers of William Thornton, ed. C. M. Harris, Charlottesville, Va., 1995, p.
xliv, 152;
Dolley
Madison Digital Edition
; Anna
Thornton Diary;
LCA to JQA, 12 [6] May
1804, and note 4, below). |
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Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,
Andrew W. Mellon Collection.
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