Papers of John Adams, volume 20
I have the honour to enclose you a Postscript to the Report on Measures, Weights & coins now before your house. this has been rendered necessary by a small arithmetical error detected in the estimate of the cubic foot proposed in that report. the head of Superficial measures is also therein somewhat more developed.1
Nothing is known, since the last session of Congress of any further proceedings in Europe on this subject.
I have the honour to be with sentiments of the most profound
respect sir / Your most obedient / & most humble servt
RC (DLC:Jefferson Papers); internal address: “The honourable the President of the Senate.”
Adhering to a 15 Jan. 1790 resolution of the House of
Representatives, Jefferson set to work in April drafting a uniform system of weights
and measures meant to regulate trade and currency. He worked on the project with
singular focus for several months, battling intense headaches caused by spending long
hours on complex calculation. Along the way he consulted Alexander Hamilton, James
Madison, Philadelphia watchmaker Robert Leslie, and astronomer David Rittenhouse.
Jefferson sent the final report to the House on 4 July, and it was printed in several
New York newspapers during the first week of August. Sensing popular interest in
Jefferson’s great effort, George Washington urged Congress to take action on 7 Dec.
and again on 25 Oct. 1791, but it was not until 1792 that senators began to debate the
report (Jefferson, Papers
, 16:604–607, 614–616).
th1791
An unsealed letter from you came to my hand this day.1 for the letter I thank you. as it contained expressions of regard & esteem which I have been used to receive from your pen. for the manner I own myself at a loss—
Dos not an unsealed letter from you sir appear like a diminution of that Confidential intercourse that long subsisted? and Conveyed warm from the heart the strong expressions of friendship in many a close sealed packet.
Was you sir apprehensive that your own reputation might suffer by
an attention to any one of a family you had been used to hear
spoken off with respect and affection by all? only, the public first inspected
the Correspondence. Yet perhaps you might mean to do me honour by leting the world see
your polite encomium on a late publication.
Indeed I feel myself flattered by the Compliment. & yet more by its being in the stile of my old friend.—
I acknowledge I stand indebted to the vice president for one letter before his of the 26 Decmber.—2
But You must permit me to say some expressions in that letter appeared so irreconcilable with former sentiment that I was impeled much against my inclination to consider it as forbiding any further interruption.—
Delicate friendship Confines as its own disinterested attachment is
easily wounded.— I might perhaps feel too sensibly some former impressions that may
hereafter be explained.— but I can never tax myself with a voluntary neglect of
punctuallity: or the want of attention in any other instance towards friends I thought
unimpressable by the Ebullitions [. . .] party or
political malice.—
A Copy of the work you informed me you had just received I forwarded immediatly in publication. I knew not what should thus long have retarded its passage.
463Nor can I inform you sir from whom you received three other
Volumes. but Could I have supposed as you obligingly intimate that you Could have
disposd of so many with pleasure & advantage. they should have been much at your Service from
the hand of the author.—
Mr Warren returns both friendly and
respectful regards.— You will present me also to Mrs
Adams.
I am Respected Sir with Sincere Esteem / Your most Obedit / Humble Servant
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “Honble / Mr Adams / Vice president of the / United States”; endorsed:
“Mrs Warren”; notation by CFA: “Jany 14th 1791.” Some loss of text
where the seal was removed. Filmed at 14 Jan. 1791.
Of 26 Dec. 1790, above.
JA had previously written to Warren on 29 May 1789 (vol. 19:483–484).