Adams Family Correspondence, volume 13
th1799
Such extreem cold Weather I do not recollect to have felt in March, as it has been this week, and it has laid Thomas up with one of his Soar Throats & Rhumatism I hope however tho very threatning, that it will not be lasting; I am so well as to ride out, when the weather will permit, and able to look after my poor Lad, who I regreet has so much of his Mothers constitution & infirmities—
Captain Brooks dyed yesterday of a Lung fever, with which he had been sick about ten days; the loss to his Family will be heavily felt.1
I am anxious to hear from Philadelphia the result of a nomination,
which has agitated the public, much more than a declaration 434 of War could have done. the Report of the senates having negatived the Nomination
which gave me so much pain & anxiety, was I find, not founded. I presume much of the
Clamour has arrisen from the mortification of a certain Gentlemans not being intrusted
with the secreet. it was hardly fair, or in Character to write upon the first day of the
nomination, to S—— H——n such a Letter as I have heard was written; it may however be
misrepresented—but of one thing we are certain, no Man has been so high, and so
Clamourous against the measure, as mr Higgisson.2 some persons say he ought to be indited upon the
sedition act. he is much blamed for his conduct, I was told, but I do not vouch for the
truth, that he went to Ben Russel to get him to insert the peices from Porcupines paper,
which has drawn upon Porcupine the Philipic you will see in the same paper— the peices
were however rejected with disdain—and not any peice censuring the Measure, has appeard
in any Boston paper, but several in justification. you will see one in J Russels under
the signature of Consistancy.—3 the measure no doubt dissapoints, the views of
many persons; nor does [it] in the least flatter my vanity, to have the public Imagine
that I am not equally pacific with my Husband, or that the same Reasons and motives,
which led him to take upon his own shoulders the weight, of a measure, which he knew
must excite a Clamour, would not have equally opperated upon my mind, if I had been
admitted a partner in the Counsel. I never pretended to the weight they asscribe to
me:
The additional nomination will tend perhaps to give more general satisfaction—
I congratulate you upon the Capture of the Insurgent, and wish all insurgents, might share the same fate.—
I hope to learn when I may expect you home by your next Letter.
I am most affectionatly / your
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “President of the united / states / Philadelphia”; docketed: “AA to IA” and “1799.” Some loss of text due to a torn manuscript.
Thomas Brooks of Medford, Mass., died on 7 March (vol. 5:195; Charles Brooks and James
M. Usher, History of the Town of Medford, Middlesex County,
Massachusetts, rev. edn., Boston, 1886, p. 528).
AA was probably referring to the same letter that
TBA mentioned in his
letter to JA on 1 March, and note 4, above. Stephen Higginson adamantly
opposed JA’s nomination of William Vans Murray as minister to France,
writing to Timothy Pickering on 3 March that Boston Federalists approved the Senate’s
opposition to the appointment. Higginson declared, “Never were a people more surprised
or grieved than we in this quarter were to hear of that nomination … it must have been
an Act of feeling, of passion, and not of judgement.” He also believed the choice
would “ruin” JAs “reputation in Europe, and destroy all confidence in him here” (Letters of Stephen Higginson, 1783–1804, Washington, D.C.,
1897, p. 819–820).
The Boston Russell’s Gazette, 4
March, printed an essay by Consistency defending JA’s nomination of
Murray as “the first step towards peace” but recognizing that the nomination was
politically divisive, noting that some “were hurt” while others “seized hold of it as
if their Messiah had come in the shape of this new
Envoy.”