record number: 041885

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Dates:

30 June 1784

Original paper slip text:30 June 1784.

Author's location:

The Hague, Netherlands

Original paper slip text:The Hague.

Author:

John Adams

Original paper slip text:JA

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Recipient:

James Warren

Original paper slip text:James Warren.

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Title:

Length:

4 p.

Notes:

Offered for sale, Sotheby's, New York, 24 Jan. 2019, Lot 2087, $20,000–$25,000. - GKF
ALS offered for sale, Sotheby's, New York, 21 June 2007, Lot 4, $8,000-12,000. From Sotheby's: Fine Books and Manuscripts. 21 June 2007, p. 16.
ALS offered for sale, Item # 5039, Gallery of History, Las Vegas, July 1993.
ALS offered for sale, Kenneth W. Rendell, Cat. 150, 1980, Item 33, $5250
ALS offered for sale, Kenneth W. Rendell, Cat. 116, spring 1976, item 1, $2750.
ALS offered for sale, Kenneth W. Rendell, Cat. No. 100 (1974), Item 14, $2750.
The present letter was written from Holland while Adams was negotiating a new loan for the United States. "Your amiable son has done me the favor of his company here...and this morning goes to Amsterdam.... My son returned with him from London where I sent him to meet his mother and sister. But he was disappointed as well as I. I still expect Mrs. Adams every day, but her last letters...leave me still room—in short, everything public and private in which I have been concerned has been so much in doubt and suspense ever since the Peace, that if I have not learned to reconcile myself to anything, it is because I am not a philosopher. I now repent having written for my family, and that I have not gone home. Yet I ought not to repent because it was bono publico that induced me to resolve to stay in Europe, to try if I could, to execute a Commission which Congress promised to me, F. and J., and have not performed une perfidie tres permise dans un Grand Roi, as Voltaire says of the King of Prussia. Jay is Minister of Foreign Affairs. This is a great point in favor of our country. Wisdom and virtue have triumphed, for once, and I hope and believe that he will give an entire new cast to the complexion of our foreign affairs. And you may depend on it, that for some time to come as well as for a long time past, the character and system of our country has been entirely decided by our foreign affairs. If I had not been very sensible of this, you would never have heard of me a second time across Atlantic. If I had not been very sensible of this, you would have seen me at Milton again or heard of me in a British dungeon four years ago...."
30 June 1784, JA to James Warren, cont'd:
Information transferred from multiple blue slips now deleted. ER 9/1/2015

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