Adams Papers Digital Edition

Diary of John Quincy Adams, volume 1

Acknowledgments

Titlepage and Cover

liii Guide to Editorial Apparatus Guide to Editorial Apparatus
Guide to Editorial Apparatus
Textual Devices

The following devices will be used throughout The Adams Papers to clarify the presentation of the text.

[...], [....] One or two words missing and not conjecturable.
[...]1, [....]1 More than two words missing and not conjecturable; subjoined footnote estimates amount of missing matter.
[ ] Number or part of a number missing or illegible. Amount of blank space inside brackets approximates the number of missing or illegible digits.
[roman] Editorial insertion or conjectural reading for missing or illegible matter. A question mark is inserted before the closing bracket if the conjectural reading is seriously doubtful.
<italic> Matter canceled in the manuscript but restored in our text.
Adams Family Code Names

In dealing with an assemblage of papers extending over several generations and written by so many members of a family who often bore the same or similar names, the editors have been obliged to devise short but unmistakable forms for the names of the persons principally concerned. They could not be forever adding dates and epithets to distinguish between the two or more Abigails, Charles Francises, Johns, John Quincys, and Louisa Catherines in the family. The following table lists the short forms that will be used in the annotation throughout The Adams Papers , together with their full equivalents and identifying dates. It includes the principal writing members of the “Presidential line” of the Adamses and certain others in that line (and their husbands and wives) who either appear frequently in the family story or have been important in the history of the family papers. Users should bear in mind that this table is highly selective, and in no sense is a complete genealogical table for each generation.

First Generation
JA John Adams (1735–1826)
AA Abigail Smith (1744–1818), m. JA 1764
Second Generation
AA2 Abigail Adams (1765–1813), daughter of JA and AA, m. WSS 1786
WSS William Stephens Smith (1755–1816), brother of Mrs. CA
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JQA John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), son of JA and AA
LCA Louisa Catherine Johnson (1775–1852), m. JQA 1797
CA Charles Adams (1770–1800), son of JA and AA
Mrs. CA Sarah Smith (1769–1828), sister of WSS, m. CA 1795
TBA Thomas Boylston Adams (1772–1832), son of JA and AA
Mrs. TBA Ann Harrod (1774–1846), m. TBA 1805
Third Generation
GWA George Washington Adams (1801–1829), son of JQA and LCA
JA2 John Adams (1803–1834), son of JQA and LCA
Mrs. JA2 Mary Catherine Hellen (1807–1870), m. JA2 1828
CFA Charles Francis Adams (1807–1886), son of JQA and LCA
ABA Abigail Brown Brooks (1808–1889), m. CFA 1829
ECA Elizabeth Coombs Adams (1808–1903), daughter of TBA and Mrs. TBA
Fourth Generation
LCA2 Louisa Catherine Adams (1831–1870), daughter of CFA and ABA, m. Charles Kuhn 1854
JQA2 John Quincy Adams (1833–1894), son of CFA and ABA
CFA2 Charles Francis Adams (1835–1915), son of CFA and ABA
HA Henry Adams (1838–1918), son of CFA and ABA
MHA Marian Hooper (1842–1885), m. HA 1872
MA Mary Adams (1845–1928), daughter of CFA and ABA, m. Henry Parker Quincy 1877
BA Brooks Adams (1848–1927), son of CFA and ABA
Fifth Generation
CFA3 Charles Francis Adams (1866–1954), son of JQA2
HA2 Henry Adams (1875–1951), son of CFA2
JA3 John Adams (1875–1964), son of CFA2
Descriptive Symbols

The following symbols will be employed throughout The Adams Papers to describe or identify in brief form the various kinds of manuscript originals.

D Diary (Used only to designate a diary written by a member of the Adams family and always in combination with the short form of the writer's name and a serial number, as follows: D/JA/23, i.e. the twenty-third fascicle or volume of John Adams' manuscript Diary.)
Dft draft
Dupl duplicate
FC file copy (Ordinarily a copy of a letter retained by a correspondent other than an Adams, for example Jefferson's press copies and polygraph copies, since all three of the Adams statesmen systematically entered copies of their outgoing letters in letterbooks.)
Lb Letterbook (Used only to designate Adams letterbooks and al-lvways in combination with the short form of the writer's name and a serial number, as follows: Lb/JQA/29, i.e. the twenty-ninth volume of John Quincy Adams' Letterbooks.)
LbC letterbook copy (Letterbook copies are normally unsigned, but any such copy is assumed to be in the hand of the person responsible for the text unless it is otherwise described.)
M Miscellany (Used only to designate materials in the section of the Adams Papers known as the “Miscellany” and always in combination with the short form of the writer's name and a serial number, as follows: M/CFA/32, i.e. the thirty-second volume of the Charles Francis Adams Miscellany—a ledger volume mainly containing transcripts made by CFA in 1833 of selections from the family papers.)
MS, MSS manuscript, manuscripts
RC recipient's copy (A recipient's copy is assumed to be in the hand of the signer unless it is otherwise described.)
Tr transcript (A copy, handwritten or typewritten, made substantially later than the original or than other copies—such as duplicates, file copies, letterbook copies—that were made contemporaneously.)
Tripl triplicate
Location Symbols

The originals of most of the letters and other manuscript documents printed, quoted, and cited in this edition are in the Adams Papers in the Massachusetts Historical Society. But the originals of the Adamses' outgoing letters and dispatches, and of many other papers by them, are preserved in numerous public and private archives and collections in this country and elsewhere. Locations of privately owned documents are given in expanded or at least completely recognizable form. Locations of documents held by public institutions abroad are indicated by abbreviations generally familiar to scholars; in the United States by the short, logical, and unmistakable institutional symbols used in the National Union Catalog in the Library of Congress, of which a published listing is available and which do not vary significantly from the library location symbols in the familiar Union List of Serials.

The following list gives the symbols and their expanded equivalents for institutions owning originals drawn upon in the present volumes. A similar listing, appropriate to the volumes concerned, will appear in the Guide to Editorial Apparatus prefixed to succeeding volumes of the Diary of John Quincy Adams.

DLC Library of Congress
MB Boston Public Library
MBAt Boston Athenæum
MH-Ar Harvard University Archives
MHi Massachusetts Historical Society
lvi
MQA Adams National Historic Site, Quincy, Massachusetts
MWA American Antiquarian Society
NN New York Public Library
NNMus Museum of the City of New York
Other Abbreviations and Conventional Terms
Manuscripts and other materials, 1639–1889, in the Adams Manuscript Trust collection given to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1956 and enlarged by a few additions of family papers since then. Citations in the present edition are simply by date of the original document if the original is in the main chronological series of the Papers and therefore readily found in the microfilm edition of the Adams Papers (see below). The location of materials in the Letterbooks and the Miscellany is given more fully, and often, if the original would be hard to locate, by the microfilm reel number. The portion of the Adams manuscripts given to the Massachusetts Historical Society by Thomas Boylston Adams in 1973 and retained in the editorial office of the Adams Papers. Other materials in the Adams Papers editorial office, Massachusetts Historical Society. These include photoduplicated documents (normally cited by the location of the originals), photographs, correspondence, and bibliographical and other aids compiled and accumulated by the editorial staff. Adams manuscripts dating 1890 or later originally part of the Trust collection together with Adams manuscripts acquired from other sources, administered by the Massachusetts Historical Society on the same footing with its other manuscript collections. The corpus of the Adams Papers, 1639–1889, as published on microfilm by the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954–1959, in 608 reels. Cited in the present work, when necessary, by reel number. Available in research libraries throughout the United States and in a few libraries in Europe and Canada. The present edition in letterpress, published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. References between volumes of any given unit will take this form: vol. 3:171. Since there will be no overall volume numbering for the edition, references from one series, or unit of a series, to another will be by title, volume, and page; for example, JQA, Papers, 4:205. (For the same reason, references by scholars citing this edition should not be to The Adams Papers as a whole but to the particular series lviior subseries concerned; for example, John Adams, Diary and Autobiography, 3:145; Adams Family Correspondence, 6:167.) Francis Dana, Journal, 1779–1780, 1781, in Dana Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Annie Haven Thwing, comp., Inhabitants and Estates of the Town of Boston, 1630–1800; typed card catalogue, with supplementary bound typescripts, in the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Short Titles of Works Frequently Cited
Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams. With an Introductory Memoir by Her Grandson, Charles Francis Adams, 4th edn., Boston, 1848.

Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, Daughter of John Adams,... edited by Her Daughter [Caroline Amelia (Smith) de Windt], New York and London, 1841–[1849]; 3 vols.

Note: Vol. [1], unnumbered, has title and date: Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, 1841; vol. 2 has title, volume number, and date: Correspondence of Miss Adams ... Vol. II, 1842; vol. [3] has title, volume number, and date: Correspondence of Miss Adams ..., Vol. II, 1842[!], i.e. same as vol. 2, but preface is signed “April 3d, 1849”[!], and the volume contains as “Part II” a complete reprinting from same type, and with same pagination, of vol. 2 (i.e. “Vol. II”), above, originally issued in 1842.

 Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1963– . Almanach royal, année M.DCC.LXXVIII [&c.]. Présenté à sa majesté pour la première fois en 1699, Paris, no date. American Philosophical Society, Proceedings. Annales dramatiques; ou, dictionnaire général des théâtres, Paris, 1808–1812; 9 vols. Charles H. Bell, Bench and Bar of New Hampshire, Boston, 1894. Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams, New York, 1949–1956; 2 vols. [vol. 1:] John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy; [vol. 2:] John Quincy Adams and the Union. E[mmanuel] Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays par un groupe d'écrivains spécialistes français et étrangers, new edn., [Paris], 1960; 8 vols. lviii The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts, Salem, 1905–1914; 4 vols. Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1949, Washington, 1950. David Erskine Baker and others, eds., Biographia Dramatica; Or, A Companion to the Play House ..., London, 1764–1812; 3 vols, in 4. The Book of Abigail and John Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762–1784, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, and Mary-Jo Kline, Cambridge, 1975. Boston Directory, issued annually with varying imprints. City of Boston, Record Commissioners, Reports, Boston, 1876–1909; 39 vols. Clarence Dietz Brenner, A Bibliographical List of Plays in the French Language, 1700–1789, Berkeley, 1947. I. Minis Hays, comp., Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1908; 5 vols. Catalogue of the John Adams Library in the Public Library of the City of Boston, Boston, 1917. Worthington C. Ford, ed., A Catalogue of the Books of John Quincy Adams Deposited in the Boston Athenæum. With Notes on Books, Adams Seals and Book-Plates, by Henry Adams, Boston, 1938. Diary of Charles Francis Adams, Cambridge, 1964– . Vols. 1–2, ed. Aïda DiPace Donald and David Donald; vols. 3–6, ed. Marc Friedlaender and L. H. Butterfield. George Wingate Chase, The History of Haverhill, Massachusetts, from Its First Settlement, in 1640, to the Year 1860, Haverhill, 1861. Alexandre Cioranescu, Bibliographie de la littérature française du dix-huitième siècle, Paris, 1969. Alexandre Cioranescu, Bibliographie de la littérature française du dix-septième siècle, Paris, 1965. Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications. John J. Currier, History of Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1764–1905, Newburyport, 1906–1909; 2 vols. lix Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928–1936; 20 vols. plus index and supplements. Descendants of Edmund Quincy, 1602–1637, Who Settled in What is Now Quincy, Massachusetts in 1635, comp. H. Hobart Holly, Quincy, 1977. Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, with Annals of the College History, New York, 1885–1912; 6 vols. François Alexandre Aubert de La Chesnaye-Desbois and——Badier, Dictionnaire de la noblesse, 3d edn., Paris, 1863–1876; 19 vols. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, New York and London, 1885–1900; 63 vols. plus supplements. Essex Institute Historical Collections. A Pocket Almanack ... Calculated Chiefly for the Use of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ... To Which is Annexed, The Massachusetts Register [title varies], Boston: T. and J. Fleet, 1779–1800; 22 vols. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, William B. Willcox (from vol. 15), and others, New Haven, 1959– . The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert Henry Smyth, New York and London, 1905–1907; 10 vols. Frederick Freeman, The History of Cape Cod: The Annals of Barnstable County, Including The District of Mashpee [second vol. subtitled: The Annals of the Thirteen Towns of Barnstable County,] Boston, 1860–1862; 2 vols. Louis Gottschalk, Lafayette, Chicago, 1935–1950; 4 vols. [vol. 1:] Lafayette Comes to America; [vol. 2:] Lafayette Joins the American Army; [vol. 3:] Lafayette and the Close of the American Revolution; [vol. 4:] Lafayette between the American and the French Revolution (1783–1789). William Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar; And Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World..., London, 1779. Thomas Francis Harrington, The Harvard Medical School: A History, Narrative and Documentary, 1782–1905, ed. James Gregory Mumford, New York, 1905; 3 vols. [Isaac Smith, comp.], Catalogus Bibliothecae Harvardianae Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum, Boston, 1790. Harvard University, Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates, 1636–1930, Cambridge, 1930. lx Vital Records of Haverhill, Massachusetts to the End of the Year 1849, Topsfield, 1910–1911; 2 vols. Francis B. Heitman, comp., Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, new edn., Washington, 1914. Professional and Industrial History of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Boston, 1894; 3 vols. Anselme de Sainte Marie and——Du Fourny, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France, des pairs, grands officiers de la couronne et de la maison du roy, et des anciens barons du royaume ..., Paris, 1868–1890; 2 vols. J. C. F. Hoefer, ed., Nouvelle biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu' à nos jours, Paris, 1852–1866; 46 vols. Charles Beecher Hogan, ed., The London Stage, 1660–1800, Carbondale, Ill., 1968. Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica with an English Translation, by H. Rushton Fairclough, Cambridge, 1947. Correspondence of the Late President Adams. Originally Published in the Boston Patriot. In a Series of Letters, Boston, 1809[–1810]; 10 pts. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1961; 4 vols. The Earliest Diary of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1966. Legal Papers of John Adams, ed. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, Cambridge, 1965; 3 vols. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850–1856; 10 vols. Worthington C. Ford and others, eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Washington, 1904–1937; 34 vols. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd and others, Princeton, 1950– . “The Journal of Elizabeth Cranch,” ed. Lizzie Norton Mason and James Duncan Phillips, Essex Institute, Historical Collections, 80:1–36 (Jan. 1944). Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Philadelphia, 1874–1877; 12 vols. lxi The Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington C. Ford, New York, 1913–1917; 7 vols. Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XlXe siècle ..., Paris, [1865]; 15 vols, and supplements. André Lasseray, Les français sous les treize étoiles (1775–1783), Macon and Paris, 1935; 2 vols. Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française..., Paris, 1881–1884; 4 vols. and supplement. Henry Lyonnet, Dictionnaire des comédiens français (ceux d'hier) biographie, bibliographie, iconographie ..., Paris, 1908–[1911?]; 2 vols. The Massachusetts Register and United States Calendar, Boston, 1801–1847; 47 vols. Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections and Proceedings. Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne, Paris: Michaud Frères, 1811–1862; 85 vols. Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936, Cambridge, 1936. New England Historical and Genealogical Register. P. C. Molhuysen and others, eds., Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, Leyden, 1911–1937; 10 vols. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford, 1933; 12 vols, and supplement. Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630–1877. With a Genealogical Register, Boston and New York, 1877. Supplement and Index..., by Mary I. Gozzaldi, Cambridge, 1930. William S. Pattee, A History of Old Braintree and Quincy, with a Sketch of Randolph and Holbrook, Quincy, 1878. The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., Edinburgh, 1764; 6 vols. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. lxii Repertorium der diplomatischen Vertreter aller Länder seit dem Westfälischen Frieden (1648), ed. Ludwig Bittner and others, Oldenburg, &c., 1936–1965; 3 vols. John Langdon Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Boston, 1873– . The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, Oxford, 1965; 5 vols. William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit; or Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of Various Denominations, New York, 1857–1869; 9 vols. Henry Storch, Picture of Petersburg, English transl., London, 1801. Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon, Örebro and Stockholm, 1857–[1907]; 10 vols. Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1907–1950; 37 vols. Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren (Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, vols. 72–73), Boston, 1917–1925; 2 vols. Frederick Lewis Weis, comp., The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England, Lancaster, Mass., 1936. Francis Wharton, ed., The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Washington, 1889; 6 vols. Henry B. Wheatley, London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, London, 1891; 3 vols. William Willis, A History of the Law, the Courts, and the Lawyers of Maine, from Its First Colonization to the Early Part of the Present Century, Portland, 1863. William and Mary Quarterly.