Adams Family Correspondence, volume 13
I thank God, it is now in my power to give you the pleasure you
desired of receiving from me a chearful Letter. This Moment they brought me from the
Post Office a Letter from our dear Thomas dated the 12 informing me of his Arrival at
New York. He will come on to Phyladelphia and only laments that he cannot have the
pleasure of embracing both his Parents at once. His Passage has not been uncommonly long
tho the Weather must have been turbulent enough. From the bottom of my heart I rejoice
at this happy Event, which has dissipated a gloom which hung over and surrounded me.
Both the N. York News papers announce his arrival in a pleasing Style, for which I give
them credit.1 You must be patient and not
be too much in Haste to embrace him. He must stay with me, sometime. We will write you
all our Plans and Speculations. We have had a thaw and long rains for many days which
must have injured the Roads so that I cannot foresee when he will arrive but I hope it
will be soon enough to dance at the Ball, which will be on Wednesday night the 16th.
2
At a time when I am necessarily deprived of the Company of all the rest of my Family I consider this Arrival as a Choice Blessing and a great Consolation.
You will have recd a Letter from him no
doubt before this will reach you,—think of Us and rejoice with Us.
I dont wonder that Mr Cranch is
disposed to see his Interpretation of the Prophecies confirmed. The twelve hundred and
thirteenth or fourteenth Year of the Hegira approches near the End of the 1260 days—
Less than half a Century has Mahomet to be believed a Prophet, according to Mr
Cranch.3 But I have not time. Yours /
with unabated Affection
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs A”; endorsed: “J A Jan’ry 13 / 1799.”
The New-York Gazette and the New
York Daily Advertiser, 12 Jan., reported
TBA’s arrival; the latter added, “We give him a cordial welcome to his
native shores, and we congratulate our country on the return of one of her most
promising Sons.”
A ball in honor of JA was held on 16 Jan. at the New
Theatre in Philadelphia. The theater was elaborately decorated for the occasion, with
a temporary floor built over the orchestra pit to accommodate several hundred
attendees. Upon JA’s arrival the band played the “President’s March,” and
toasts were offered to “the Government and its supporters,” to the city of
Philadelphia, and to the military, among others (Philadelphia
Gazette, 17 Jan.; Philadelphia Gazette of the United
States, 17 Jan.).
In a 4 Jan. letter to JA (Adams Papers), AA wrote that Richard
Cranch’s “whole system is about to be fullfilld in Spight of Pater Wests predictions.”
Rev. Samuel West believed that biblical prophecies pointed to the end of the pope’s
reign in 1813. However, others calculated that the end of 1,260 years of rule by the
Roman Catholic Church would occur at the end of the eighteenth century, and they
believed that view was vindicated by the French victory over Rome and the exile of
Pope Pius VI in Feb. 1798. JA was also referencing the Islamic year of
1213 and the belief that Islam would also fall in its 1,260th year (Sprague, Annals Amer. Pulpit
, 8:43; Michael Lienesch, “The Role of Political
Millennialism in Early American Nationalism,” Western
Political Quarterly, 36:446–452 [Sept. 1983];
Cambridge Modern
Hist.
, 8:637–638; George Stanley Faber, A
Dissertation on the Prophecies … Relative to the Great Period of 1260 Years, 2
vols., London, 1806, 1:iii–iv).