“The cup of Humiliation was full,” Abigail declared to Mercy Otis Warren, describing the profound effect on the American populace that resulted from the publication of the dispatches from the U.S. envoys to France—Elbridge Gerry, John Marshall, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney—along with the Adams administration’s instructions. Throughout May and June 1798 dozens of memorials poured into Philadelphia, and the tide of public opinion turned toward the government and in support for its chief executive. “If addresses would defend our Country, it will be well fortified,” Abigail wrote, as the clamor for war increased. Congress started to act in earnest, putting in place the defensive measures the president had been urging for months. The “wooden walls” that John held “most nearly at Heart” finally came to fruition. A department of the navy was created with Benjamin Stoddert appointed its first secretary, and the nation’s frigates advanced toward readiness. Congress authorized U.S. vessels to seize armed French privateers. Merchants in American port cities rallied behind the idea of “millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute,” banding together to fund through subscription the construction and equipping of additional naval vessels. Pledges came in from Newburyport to Baltimore, but “Boston outstrips them all,” Abigail declared proudly to John Quincy of the more than $100,000 pledged by the New England center.2

After a provisional army was authorized in May, John Adams commissioned George Washington as its commanding officer. The move was politically savvy by the second president, since the decision to raise a standing army was controversial, and John’s lack of military experience meant that he needed both a symbol and a strategist. “The urgent necessity, I am in, of your advice and assistance, indeed of your Conduct and Direction of the War,” he wrote to Washington on 7 July.3 John’s decision was not without consequence. Washington was adamant in his choice of Alexander Hamilton as second in command, allowing the Adamses’ political adversary a legitimate platform to spread his brand of federalism, thereby deepening the cracks within the Federalist Party.

Providing for the nation’s defense was a monumental task. John split his time between crafting unique responses to the stream of memorials flooding his office and nominating qualified individuals to fill government posts and staff the military. He was overrun with requests for patronage. Extended family and friends petitioned Abigail to intercede on their behalf, and even Charles was lobbied for access to the executive. Labeling Hamilton a “Universal Recommendator,” Charles reported that many of Hamilton’s army appointments were “spoken of as extremely improper.” When the wary president asked for more information, Charles did what he could to provide intelligence from New York. When the extent of U.S. military preparations became known in Europe, John Quincy too became a conduit, especially, for French émigrés who wished to volunteer in American war efforts.4

Perhaps most troublesome of all the patronage requests that crossed the president’s desk was that for his son-in-law, William Stephens Smith. When Washington agreed to take command of the army, Smith’s name was among those he recommended as an adjutant general. John therefore submitted the nomination, but the Senate refused to consent. When Smith’s name was again put forward for a lesser appointment, it placed the president in an awkward position. John wrote to his son-in-law, hoping Smith would decline consideration. Smith’s “pride and ostentation” were responsible for xxi the current predicament, John explained, but furthermore, “It is a great misfortune to the public that the office I hold should be disgraced by a nomination” the Senate felt obligated to reject, in part, because of Smith’s alleged “dishonorable and dishonest” conduct in his financial and political activities. That his nomination might be refused a second time was untenable to the president, but Smith’s pride was “humbled to that degree” that he acceded to the lesser appointment, prompting John to lament to Abigail that the situation put his “Phylosophy to a Tryal.”5

Amid preparations for the nation’s defense, rumors swirled about the mission to France and solidified in mid-June when the first of the commissioners, John Marshall, arrived home. Elbridge Gerry, the favorite of the French Directory, believed his departure might bring a final rupture between France and the United States. He therefore chose to remain in Paris. Shocked, the Adamses felt betrayed by their longtime friend. John Quincy, who gave his parents early notice of Gerry’s actions, thought the erstwhile envoy had “done no honour to the trust with which he was charged.” He reported that Gerry had separated himself from the other envoys and had associated with “men notoriously and professedly hostile to the American Government, and devoted through every extremity to the french Directory.” John was particularly “distrest” at the situation, because he had chosen Gerry against the advice of his cabinet, and Gerry’s actions undermined his authority. Democratic-Republicans leveraged the situation to argue against additional defensive measures. Further, the opposition claimed that additional information from Gerry had been “palmd upon the publick to answer” the president’s views. This haranguing of John by the opposition was for Abigail not only the work of the editors of Democratic-Republican newspapers, whom she viewed as hirelings of France, but a direct result of a fleet of French agents active within the United States. The implications were dire. If “all is not surpressd,” she declared to Mary Smith Cranch, “we shall come to a civil war.”6

Abigail’s views were increasingly shared by others, including the Federalist majority in Congress. By July 1798 the four bills that collectively became known as the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed and signed into law by John. The three alien acts—the Naturalization xxii Act, the Alien Act, and the Alien Enemies Act—were passed between 18 June and 6 July, increasing the residency requirements for citizenship, empowering the president to expel unnaturalized residents deemed dangerous to the nation, and creating a mechanism for removing foreign residents in the event of war. The Sedition Act, signed by the president on 14 July, made it illegal to publish “false, scandalous and malicious writings” against the government. Abigail, who wholeheartedly supported the measures, lamented that they had been “shaved and pared, to almost nothing.” Marshall publically denounced the laws, and a direct challenge came from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who authored a series of resolutions introduced in the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures, respectively, that questioned the constitutionality of the laws. Ultimately nothing came of the resolutions in other states, but the challenge laid the theoretical groundwork for states’ abilities to nullify federal law.7

On 7 July 1798 Congress formally broke off relations with France by repealing the Franco-American treaties. When Congress adjourned a few weeks later without taking the final step—declaring war—it embroiled the United States in a Quasi-War with its former ally. Over the course of the summer, news filtered in that led John to believe diplomacy was still an option, including a letter from John Quincy to Abigail, suggesting that the French Directory “begin to perceive that in case of a War, America would not be so impotent and despicable an enemy as they have long affected to consider her.” This realization, John Quincy argued, made France open to negotiation.8 With Gerry’s arrival in Boston in October and subsequent interview with the president, the idea of conciliation was confirmed.

Returning to Philadelphia in November, without Abigail, John’s opening message to Congress on 8 December again urged military preparedness. It also stated his willingness to pursue diplomacy: “We do not fear war,” but “we shall give no room to infer that we abandon the desire of peace. An efficient preparation for war can alone insure peace,” he declared; “harmony between us and France may be restored at her option.” The confirmation came from William Vans Murray, the U.S. minister resident to the Netherlands, who notified the government that France made diplomatic overtures, and xxiii from John Quincy, whose “beautiful Morcell” to John of 25 September unequivocally stated his belief in France’s willingness to treat.9

In February 1799 the president nominated William Vans Murray as U.S. minister plenipotentiary to France. Although committed to the diplomatic course, Adams qualified that Murray would depart only after France sent assurances that an American minister would be received. John acted alone, and the response to the president’s decision was swift and unyielding. His cabinet, especially Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, distanced themselves, letting it be known far and wide that they had not been privy to the plan. Thomas Boylston, then in Quincy, reported to John that “Boston Yankees were sadly confounded” by the news. He described the mixed response among the city’s political circles, one of which claimed amusingly: “It seems to us an ill-timed & unadvised measure, and we heartily wish THE OLD WOMAN had been with the President to prevent it.” Abigail thought, “This was pretty sausy,” assuring her husband that the “flock of frightned pigions” was wrong; she considered the move to be a “master stroke of policy.” Ultimately, John agreed to send a three-man mission instead of a lone representative. Some advised sending John Quincy and Rufus King. Recognizing that such a move “would probably defeat the whole measure,” John nominated Oliver Ellsworth and Patrick Henry instead. William R. Davie replaced Henry over the summer, but it was not until the fall that he and Ellsworth would sail for Europe.10

John returned to Quincy in March 1799, despite concerns over his absence from the seat of government. There he remained for the next six months. In August Thomas Boylston reported from Philadelphia that rumors were gaining ground about a divided executive. The president, resolute in his convictions, was unwilling to “follow the extravagances of any body,” it was said, and this set him at odds with that cohort of Federalists deemed “the violent war party” by Democratic-Republicans. The rumors were not unfounded, but John had made his peace months before. “It is time for me to bid farewell to Politicks,” he wrote to Abigail with perhaps more equanimity that he actually felt. “I have got to the End of two Years … which I did not expect to do so well as I have.” He claimed not to be xxiv “much vexed or fretted” with opposition to his attempts to secure a peaceful resolution with France, because he believed the wisdom of diplomacy would bear out. Ultimately he was right, but in the fall of 1799 a divide irrevocably opened that would bring to a close a life-time of public service. That summer, however, there was still hope. “He continues firm as a Rock,” Abigail informed John Quincy, “tho the Waves sometimes beat, and the Billows Roar.”11

“After being six Months in a City, you can hardly conceive the delight one feels at Entering a Wilderness of sweets,” Abigail reported to Mary Smith Cranch after a refreshing visit to a friend’s estate outside Philadelphia in June 1798. She was tired. She longed to return to Quincy, and she was worried about John. “He is pale and looks languid, & cannot get time to excercise,” she told her uncle Cotton Tufts. News from home compounded her anxiety: the recent deaths of several friends; the extreme illness of her niece Elizabeth Quincy Shaw; concern for the physical and emotional well-being of her nephew, William Cranch; and the devastating news of Thomas Welsh’s financial ruin, which triggered losses for William Smith and John Quincy. And yet Abigail persisted in her public duties. She reveled in the wave of patriotic fervor sweeping the nation, and she applauded the flood of memorials to the president, especially rejoicing after a selection was published in Boston. When Mary gently criticized the president’s reply to the Boston memorial, claiming that it was not “So Strikingly understood” as she had hoped, Abigail agreed, despite the fact that she managed to “get an alteration in it.” That she was John’s trusted advisor was incontrovertible.12

Abigail also served as the president’s intermediary, frequently replying on his behalf to the many family and friends who sought his assistance or counsel. Abigail best understood her public role to be a countermeasure to the misinformation spread by the opposition. “I could not do a better service than to put our Country men upon their Gaurd,” she explained to Mary Cranch, as she continued to xxv leverage her influence and access to information in order to shape public opinion. Mary was her most frequent correspondent in this endeavor, and Abigail wrote to her sister both to vent her thoughts on public affairs and to relay information she thought timely for Boston. “I am considered as the fountain head from whence truth is to be looked for,” Mary reported to her sister, “scarcly welcome without I bring my pocket full of Letters.” Abigail also enlisted new allies in her efforts, including Jeremy Belknap. She opened a correspondence with the Boston minister in May 1798 by sending extracts of her sons’ letters from Europe with the request that Belknap have them published by the Boston press. After Belknap’s untimely death in June, she would elicit the same assistance from John Russell, editor of the Boston Russell’s Gazette, who pledged his support to Abigail for any similar “commands in future.”13

As spring edged into summer and the congressional session dragged on, Abigail grew weary. She yearned for the respite of Quincy, particularly if she could “shut out all the political clouds which darken our horizen,” she informed Mercy Otis Warren. The heat in urban Philadelphia was oppressive, so much so that at times she could not “do any thing but labour to Breathe.” Her health began to falter. When she and John finally left the capital in late July, the journey proved her undoing. The couple arrived in Quincy on 8 August, and for the next eleven weeks Abigail lay dangerously ill with a “Complication of Disorders.” All feared for her life. Nabby, who accompanied her parents to Quincy, described to John Quincy a “gloom over the face of every thing here … it scarce seems like home without her enlivening chearfullness.” Abigail’s silence through this period forms one of the pivotal points of the volume. From 1 May through 29 July 1798 Abigail penned 76 letters, of which 51 are printed here. From 30 July to 13 November she wrote none.14

Improved enough by the fall to again take up her pen, Abigail remained too ill to return to the capital and resume her duties at John’s side. John missed his “Talkative Wife.” Abigail found the separation particularly severe. Her recent brush with death brought the couple closer. “Having during our connection been so often seperated, we wish the few years remaining to us might be spent together,” she xxvi explained to John Quincy, even as she acknowledged the impossibility of it: “I early learnt the lesson of sacrificing to the Publick.”15

Absent from the scene of political action, Abigail occupied herself with family affairs and reconciled herself to the solitude of Quincy. She hosted the wedding of her niece, Elizabeth Smith, and she resumed her practice of sending John updates on the Adamses’ properties, including the construction of a new barn and stables at Peacefield. When she did turn her pen toward politics, she gave herself “pretty free latitude” in her opinions. “As I have not any body to talk politicks to this Evening, I have amused myself by writing them,” she explained to William Smith Shaw. As best she could, Abigail provided John with public perceptions of his administration. More often, she served as a commentator on information received from sources closer to the action. John wrote regularly, but his letters were characteristically brief. Instead, the president relied on Shaw to relay the detailed news of the day. Abigail cautioned Shaw to keep an “open Ear, but a close mouth” but suggested that he could write to her with “a confidence which you know you may not talk in.”16 Shaw’s letters reflect the young man’s evolution from earnest but immature Harvard student to trusted eyewitness to the daily interactions of the federal government. His letters bring a refreshing new voice to the volume.

After six months in Berlin, John Quincy, Louisa Catherine, and Thomas Boylston Adams had settled into the routine of life in the Prussian capital. They persevered through what John Quincy called the “inconvenience” of their first social season at the Prussian court. Louisa, who sometimes came up with excuses to avoid the “Elegant Mob,” found respite in the hospitality of the expatriate English family of Dr. Charles Brown. Thomas Boylston quite enjoyed the entertainments of court life but found other aspects tedious.17 The three achieved a certain equilibrium, but it was fleeting.

For more than a year Thomas Boylston had written of his intention to return to the United States and resume the practice of law. xxvii Even as he acquiesced in accompanying his brother to Berlin, he implored his parents to find his replacement as John Quincy’s secretary. With Thomas Welsh Jr. designated for that role, Thomas Boylston left Berlin in the fall of 1798. His departure created a void that both John Quincy and Louisa struggled to fill. “Would to heaven we could have you back again,” Louisa wrote to her brother-in-law a week after his departure. “I did not think I should have felt the loss of your society so much but we really are not like the same family as for your brother I never saw him so much affected.” For four years Thomas Boylston had been a “faithful friend, and kind companion, as well as an industrious and valuable assistant,” confided John Quincy, who parted from his brother with a “heavy heart.”18

Compounding the disruption of Thomas Boylston’s exit was Louisa’s continued ill health. John Quincy reported to his cousin William Cranch in June 1798 that while he enjoyed the “blessings of wedded love,” he had yet to experience the joys of fatherhood. Louisa, he wrote, “adds every day to the ties of affection which united us, and but for a misfortune of which you will have heard before this time, I might have now … participated in all the sources of domestic felicity.” Although an infrequent correspondent, Louisa’s letters reveal much of her state of mind. To her sister Ann Johnson she confided, “In one short year I have met with some disappointments and afflictions which nothing but the extreme tenderness of my beloved husband could make me bear.” She felt “so deeply wounded by this last stroke”—her second miscarriage—that she could “write upon no other subject.” After suffering a third miscarriage in the spring of 1799, the couple escaped from the “unpleasant residence” in Berlin. They spent several weeks in Bohemia, where they hoped Louisa’s health would be improved by the area’s mineral springs. They also visited Dresden, where John Quincy was impressed by the surrounding landscape, “sometimes wild and sublime, and sometimes elegant and cheerful.” The couple returned to Berlin in the middle of October. With Louisa’s health restored, they were ready to weather another social season.19

The routine of John Quincy’s public duties sustained the young diplomat through trying personal times. His new credentials to King Frederick William III arrived from the United States and were presented on 5 July 1798. He entered into negotiations to renew the xxviii treaties with Sweden and Prussia, although he reported to the secretary of state in October that the fear of offending France hampered progress. Unable to advance negotiations with Sweden, John Quincy focused his attention on Prussia. By April 1799 he anticipated no further impediments, and on II July he signed a second Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, echoing the actions of his father fourteen years earlier.20

From his vantage point in Berlin, John Quincy offered both news and insight regarding European events. France continued to push across the continent. The Swiss cantons fell, “turned into a field of desolation, wretchedness and servitude slavery,” he declared to Abigail in describing the formation of the newest French client state. Gains in Italy were won, then lost, and war resumed between France and Austria. Napoleon’s movements, especially, drew the world’s gaze. As French forces amassed at Toulon, speculation was rife over the intended target. Initial rumors suggested an incursion against Britain, but “a very serious design of settling a Colony in Egypt” also emerged, John Quincy reported to his father. France launched its campaign into Egypt in June 1798, capturing Alexandria then Cairo and meeting with early successes before suffering significant setbacks, including British rear admiral Horatio Nelson’s decimation of the French Navy at the Battle of the Nile.21

While John Quincy offered detailed accounts of events in Europe, it was his insight into Franco-American relations that made John Quincy’s letters “Worth Gold” in his father’s opinion. “I find your reputation, very high here for punctuality accuracy and frequency,” Thomas Boylston reported to his brother from Philadelphia. John Quincy wrote less frequently to John during this period than he had in the past, worried about the security of his mail. Thus, John Quincy’s letters to Abigail take on new meaning. “What is your declaration of peace and friendship, but a smile upon the face while you plunge the stiletto to the heart?” he wrote to his mother in June, offering an astute synthesis of the XYZ Affair and a vigorous condemnation of the subsequent defense put forth by French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. John Quincy’s letters drew from extensive reading of the foreign press and a robust correspondence with the American diplomatic establishment in Europe. xxix His synthesis provided in-depth analysis of the main characters on the European stage and an accurate, a timely, and, more significantly, an influential assessment of France’s changing views toward its relationship with the United States.22

Concern over the security of his correspondence prompted John Quincy to send some letters in duplicate and to retain letterbook or press copies for most of his correspondence. For the period of this volume, John Quincy variously employed five letterbooks, numbered 5 and 7 through 10, comprising reels 129, 131, 132, 133, and 134 on the Adams Papers Microfilm. Letterbooks 5 and 8 contain his official public correspondence, while Letterbooks 7, 9, and 10 comprise the record of his private correspondence. Only his private letters to family have been considered for inclusion in this and future volumes of the Adams Family Correspondence; his remaining private letters and all public material will be published in Series III, where his public letterbooks will be discussed in greater detail.

Letterbook 7 is unique among John Quincy’s letterbooks as it contains press copies of letters that were pasted onto the pages of the book. Several blank pages, including some with alphabetical tabs for indexing purposes, precede the entries, which chronologically begin and end with letters to Thomas Boylston Adams of 26 December 1795 and 30 May 1801, respectively. While most appear in chronological order, a few were pasted out of order or subsequently came loose of their pages and have been included after the chronological run. Thus, the final letter in the book is one to Joshua Johnson of 9 January 1797. This letterbook served two purposes for John Quincy. First, it included letters that were written when John Quincy lacked a secretary, for example, in 1795 and 1796, while he was in London and Thomas Boylston remained as chargé d’affaires at The Hague, and in May 1801, after Welsh Jr. departed Berlin.23 John Quincy also made press copies of letters he wished to keep private, including his courtship correspondence with Louisa Catherine and letters to his brothers, and others, regarding his business affairs in America.

Letterbook 9 is titled on its first page in Thomas Boylston’s hand, “Private Letter book. Begun 18 February 1798. / At Berlin.” John Quincy added above this, “Private— From 18. Feby: 1798. / to / 6. July 1799.” It comprises 368 pages, followed by a two-page index by recipient and page number. The entries are in the hands of both xxx Thomas Boylston and Welsh Jr. The entries by Thomas Boylston begin with a letter to John Adams, dated 17 February, and conclude with a letter to Jean Luzac of 29 September 1798. The remaining entries are by Welsh Jr., with some emendations by John Quincy, and begin with a 25 September 1798 letter to John Adams and conclude with a 6 July 1799 letter to William Vans Murray.

The first page of Letterbook 10 was inscribed by John Quincy, “Private— From 9. July 1799. / to / 28. April 1801.” On the second page, Welsh Jr. wrote, “Private Letter Book— Begun 9 July. 1799. / At Berlin.” The entries are entirely by Welsh Jr., and the pages are numbered I through 209, followed by 249 unnumbered pages with entries.

Thomas Boylston Adams returned to the United States on II January 1799. Grateful to “tread once more the land of my Fathers,” Thomas Boylston traveled first to Philadelphia to visit his father, for whom the “happy Event … dissipated a gloom” created by Abigail’s absence from the capital. John found his youngest son much the same in appearance but informed his wife that Thomas Boylston’s “mind is well stored with Ideas and his Conversation entertaining,” traits that also characterize his letters.24

Thomas Boylston’s years as his brother’s secretary had bred a respect for faithful correspondence. His time in Europe brought maturity, and his letters reflect a keen intellect, a firm grasp of the realities of the world around him, and a sharp wit. “The farce is yet kept up,” he reported to Abigail in September 1798, commenting on the facade put forth by France in its actions toward the United States. The Directory, he claimed, “most graciously & condescendingly & gratuitously & lovingly, and abundance of more ly’s raised the Embargo” that had been decreed two months earlier on American vessels in response to increased defensive measures. Visiting Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1799, Thomas Boylston sketched the bustle of activity in the future federal city, including the “fine spacious & magnificent pile” that was the unfinished President’s House.25

Thomas Boylston chose to make his way in Philadelphia, despite xxxi his parents’ hopes that he would again make his home in Massachusetts. Before settling in, however, he traveled north to New England and as far south as Mount Vernon. His travels afforded him the opportunity to visit family and friends. It also allowed him to sort out John Quincy’s business affairs in the United States, after the failure of Charles Adams and Thomas Welsh to do so, and his assiduous attention to the task earned Thomas Boylston his brother’s gratitude and praise. Thomas Boylston particularly enjoyed the hospitality he received during his southern tour, even though in Washington, D.C., he was “bowed & scraped to & feasted & flattered” that he might report favorably on the city, which he found in need of “reformation … or nothing honorable, useful or decorous will ever result from it.” Thomas Boylston returned to Philadelphia convinced that there was “federalism enough … to answer present exigencies.”26

The rest of Thomas Boylston’s time was spent preparing to launch his career as a man of letters and law. In Boston, Annapolis, and Philadelphia, he mined the Adamses’ broad social networks to meet local politicians and members of the judiciary. He attended sessions of the local and federal courts, and he applied for admission to the Pennsylvania bar. Most of Thomas Boylston’s time, however, was spent on a rigorous, self-imposed course of literary study. “I converse with Cicero, Tacitus, Ovid, Horrace,” he reported to William Smith Shaw in July, and it was Shaw who became his most frequent correspondent that spring and summer, although only Thomas Boylston’s letters remain extant. They were relatively close in age and united in outlook, and their correspondence was a proving ground for their nascent identities as gentleman scholars. Shaw, a recent Harvard College graduate and later a founder of the Boston Athenæum, was receptive to Thomas Boylston’s critique of an education system that assigned a classical canon without providing the instruction to fully understand it. The two young men traded current publications and ideas, and this exchange situates them as active participants in New England’s emerging networks of intellectual discourse.27

Thomas Boylston’s letters to Shaw also reveal his desire to undertake more serious scholarly enterprises. “I should sometimes indulge an itching which besets me for scribling,” Thomas Boylston explained after receiving one publication. He found it challenging to articulate his arguments, and one composition was thrown out rather than xxxii being submitted for publication. He found the courage to submit another, but when that was overlooked by the press Thomas Boylston complained to Abigail that “Philadelphia Printers are poor tools to work with” and vowed not to repeat the attempt. Thomas Boylston’s self-doubt was similarly visible in a communication to Joseph Dennie Jr., editor of the Walpole, New Hampshire, Farmers Weekly Museum. Having previously offered to contribute to Dennie’s newspaper, Thomas Boylston now demurred. He worried that his enthusiasm for the endeavor outstripped his ability “to afford the nourishment requisite for its vigorous support.” That offer would flower fully through Thomas Boylston’s contributions to Dennie’s Port Folio in the first years of the nineteenth century. Thomas Boylston continued to tinker with scholarly pursuits. The youngest Adams was on the path shared by his father and eldest brother, choosing his pen as a means of making sense of a turbulent political era.28

For a complete statement of Adams Papers editorial policy as revised in 2007, see Adams Family Correspondence, 8:xxxv–xliii. Readers may also wish to consult the descriptions of the editorial standards established at the beginning of the project in Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 1:lii–lxii, and Adams Family Correspondence, 1:xli–xlviii. These statements document the original conception of the Adams Papers project, though significant parts of them have now been superseded.

The only major addition to the 2007 policy regards the selection for publication in the Adams Family Correspondence series of John Quincy Adams’ letters from his diplomatic posts to his father. In general, we will include those letters only when they focus substantially on family matters. If their contents revolve largely or entirely around diplomatic and political affairs, they will be reserved for consideration and likely inclusion in the Papers of John Adams or the Papers of John Quincy Adams. John Quincy’s letters to other family members—especially Abigail, to whom he often wrote at the same time as he did to his father—will continue to be published routinely in the Family Correspondence books.

The Massachusetts Historical Society is committed to making Adams family materials available to scholars and the public online. Four digital resources in particular complement the Adams Family Correspondence volumes: The Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection, the Adams Papers Digital Edition, and the Online Adams Catalog. All of these are available through the Historical Society’s website at www.masshist.org.

The Adams Family Papers Electronic Archive contains images and text files of all of the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society as well as John Adams’ Diaries and Autobiography. The text is fully searchable and can also be browsed by date.

The Diaries of John Quincy Adams Digital Collection provides digital images of John Quincy Adams’ entire 51-volume Diary, which he composed over nearly seventy years. The images can be searched by date or browsed by diary volume.

The Adams Papers Digital Edition, a project cosponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University Press, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, offers searchable text for the 44 Adams Papers volumes published prior to 2013 (excluding the Portraits volumes). There is a single consolidated index for volumes published through 2006, while the indexes for more recent volumes appear separately. This digital edition is designed as a complement to the letterpress edition by providing greater access to a wealth of Adams material.

The Online Adams Catalog represents a fully searchable electronic database of all known Adams documents, dating primarily from the 1760s to 1889, at the Massachusetts Historical Society and other public and private repositories. The digital conversion—based on the original Adams Papers control file begun in the 1950s and steadily updated since that time—was supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and was initiated with Packard Humanities Institute funds in 2009. The catalog allows public online access to a database of over 110,000 records, with some 30,000 cross-reference links to online, printed, and microfilm editions of the items, or to websites of the holding repositories. Each record contains information on a xxxiv document’s author, recipient, and date and on the location of the original, if known.

The letters in volume 13 of the Adams Family Correspondence may be supplemented with material from the same time period included in John Quincy Adams’ Diary available online (as described above) and in the letters of John Adams and John Quincy Adams published, respectively, in The Works of John Adams, edited by Charles Francis Adams, 8:572–691 and 9:3–37, and Writings of John Quincy Adams, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford, 2:283–437. Also of interest may be the Diary and Autobiographical Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams, edited by Judith S. Graham and Beth Luey, 1:83–124, the Diary that Thomas Boylston Adams kept in 1798, published as Berlin and the Prussian Court in 1798: Journal of Thomas Boylston Adams, Secretary to the United States Legation at Berlin, edited by Victor Hugo Paltsits, and the unpublished Diary that Thomas Boylston Adams kept after his return to the United States, which is part of the Adams Papers, All Generations collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Future volumes of the Papers of John Adams will provide considerably more coverage of John’s public activities during these years.

The letters included in this volume of Adams Family Correspondence sustained a family separated by circumstance and service. Much of their experience was writ large on the American and European social and political landscapes. The Adamses were keen observers of the revolutionary age, and their correspondence enabled them to make sense of a world fraught with uncertainty on both a public and a private scale. Their candid reflections and heartfelt communications provide unparalleled insight into American experience at the end of the eighteenth century.