Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
th:May 1802.
Since the receipt of your favor of the 18th: ult: I have been absent from the City, a few days, attending a County Court,
and tomorrow I expect to set out for another excursion of a similar nature. There is but
little immediate benefit, derived from riding the circuit in order to attend the Courts
in this vicinity; for the business is principally engrossed by those who reside in the
shire towns, and if a City lawyer obtain any, it is chiefly accidental. The exercise
however is healthful, and opportunities now & then occur of taking a volunteer part
in some of the criminal trials, which afford at least a chance of displaying
professional talents, where they exist. I was lately concerned, at the instance of the
deputy Atty General, in one of these trials, and it proved
to be an important one.1 The prisoner was
ably defended, & all the affectation of zeal, which lawyers so well know how to
assume on such occasions, was displayed in this instance; but ineffectually as to the
acquittal on the merits of the case, for the jury found the prisoner guilty of the
charge; an exception was taken to the indictment, however, which proved fatal, and the
business must begin again, at the next term. This detail cannot be very amusing to you,
but my apology for it is, that I so seldom have an opportunity of mentioning
professional business, wherein I had a share. I have an excellent friend in one of the
associate judges, of the County, where I am going next week— He lately married one of
Mrs: Rutter’s Sisters, and lives within a few miles of the
County town.2 I have passed several
Sundays at his farm & never was more hospitably entertained in my life. He is a warm
federal, and often talks of my father, though he did not
know him personally. Your father, said he, is a plain farmer, like myself— Yes— “Well, I
like him the better for that— How much wheat or corn does he raise in a year?” I said,
no wheat, for it will not grow so near the sea as his farm lays, but he raises corn
enough for his own consumption. “Does he send 203 anything to market,
as I do,?” I believe not. “Has he got a large barn?” Not more than half so large an one,
as you have. The fact is, that the judges barn is one of the largest & best finished
I ever saw— It is upwards of an hundred feet in front, by 45, or 6, deep, built of
Stone, like the houses at German town.
I will send you by the first opportunity, a copy of the speeches on the bill for repealing the judiciary, delivered in Senate.3 Those of the house are not yet published— Also a book for my father; “Barton on free Commerce,” I have no personal knowledge of its contents, except from the review of it in the Aurora.4 Its doctrines are entirely of the new school; or the modern law of Nations, as advocated by France—
Please inform my father, that the Harleian miscellany, though a single quarto volume, costs fourteen dollars, and I am afraid to venture on the purchase of it, without his direction.
The Books my brother sent me, came safe to hand—
With best love to all friends, I am, dear Mother / Your son
PS. You will see in the Washington federalist, Mr: Stodderts letter, repelling the base & infamous
attack upon his official character, while Secretary of the Navy, by the Committee,
appointed to enquire into the subject of expenditures & appropriations. The Aurora
attempts to answer Mr: S. but I think the precedent will
be followed by others, who have been injured in the same way.5
RC (Adams
Papers); internal address: “Mrs: A Adams—”
In a 4 May letter to William Smith Shaw (MWA:Adams Family Letters), TBA discussed his
participation in a perjury trial in Delaware County, Penn. He also assessed the
differences between practicing law in urban and rural locations and reported on recent
federal and state appointments in Pennsylvania. The deputy attorney general of
Delaware County was Thomas Ross (ca. 1756–1822), who had been admitted to the Delaware
County bar in 1789 and became deputy attorney general in 1799 (The Twentieth Century Bench and Bar of Pennsylvania, 2 vols., Chicago, 1903,
2:632; Inventory of the County Archives of Pennsylvania,
rev. edn., Media, Penn., 1941, p. 242; Philadelphia National
Gazette and Literary Register, 25 Oct. 1822).
Rebecca Jones (b. 1757), a sister of Sarah Jones Rutter, married
John Jones (ca. 1744–1824), an associate judge of Montgomery County, Penn., on 7 Jan.
1802; they lived in Lower Merion (Howard M. Jenkins, Historical Collections Relating to Gwynedd, a Township of Montgomery County,
Pennsylvania, 2d edn., Phila., 1897, p. 143, 158; PHC:Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Births, Deaths, and
Burials, 1688–1826, p. 63; Philadelphia Gazette, 8 Jan.;
Philadelphia American Daily Advertiser, 27 Dec.
1824).
Debates in the Senate of the United
States on the Judiciary, Phila., 1802, Shaw-Shoemaker, No. 3273, a summary of Senate debates on
the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801 (Philadelphia Gazette
of the United States, 12 April 1802).
William Barton’s A Dissertation on the
Freedom of Navigation and Maritime Commerce, Phila., 1802, Shaw-Shoemaker, No. 204 1845, was published on 12 February. The book was
dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, and it was favorably reviewed in the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 1 May (Jefferson, Papers
,
36:611).
On 14 Dec. 1801, prompted by treasury secretary Albert Gallatin,
the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for a committee to
investigate how federal money was appropriated and spent by the State, War, and Navy
Departments. Led by Joseph Hopper Nicholson of Maryland, the committee requested
information from Benjamin Stoddert about his spending as secretary of the navy,
particularly his purchase of naval yards at Portsmouth, N.H.; Charlestown, Mass.; New
York City; Philadelphia; Gosport, Va.; and Washington, D.C. In the report, which
Nicholson delivered to the House on 29 April 1802, the committee found that the
purchases were neither authorized nor legal. Stoddert defended his actions in a letter
printed in the Washington Federalist, 4 May, arguing that
the language of the enabling legislation enacted by Congress was sufficiently clear to
justify the purchases and characterizing the report as a partisan attack: “The
majority of this committee, have gone, to rob me of that, which is dearer than
for[t]une or life—reputation.” The Philadelphia Aurora General
Advertiser, 7 May, responded to Stoddert’s defense, claiming that an analysis
of the language of the acts provided no justification for the purchases (Jefferson, Papers
, 36:211, 212;
Amer. State Papers, Finance
, 1:752, 753, 754,
755–757;
Biog. Dir.
Cong.
).