Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
y:1804.
I received last Evening yours of the 11th: instt:—1 You cannot employ your leisure more charitably, than in writing me these long letters— They give
me some of the sweetest of my enjoyments, and comfort me amidst the thorns and briars of
the path I am travelling.
I shall endeavour to complete your set of the journals; but I am
not sure that I can get spare sheets of all the numbers you want. I now enclose with the
last and current numbers, three immediately preceeding the first you have received— So that now you will have from N: 25.
inclusive— But you do not tell me what sheets you want of the Senate’s Journals— These are mark’d with letters,
at the bottom of the first page of each sheet.
I am still so much engaged, at once in attendance upon the public
business, and upon the Supreme Court, that I have not even found time to enclose you
these journals, the very day they came out— So that you will now receive at once N’s 55
and 56. of the House’s Journals—2 I wrote
you that I argued last week a question, on a cause of Insurance— We had a Judgment of
the Circuit Court of Rhode-Island (Judges Lowell and Bourne) […] This morning the
opinion of the Court was delivered— Unanimous to reverse the ju[dgment.] Mr: J. T. Mason of Georgetown was with me and argued the Cause
admirably well— [. . . .] against us a Mr: Hunter of
Rhode-Island, a young man of very handsome talents, and […] L. Martin of Baltimore— I
mention all these circumstances, for the fire-side only;
because there they will be interesting— And it will give pleasure to learn that my first
opening at the Supreme Court of the 348 United States has
been successful, as to its issue.—3 With
my own argument I was very far from being satisfied— And it completed my conviction that
the seven years chasm in my attention to legal practise and legal studies can never be
repaired.— I have now another cause to argue, in the course of a few days.— Here we have
a Judgment of the Circuit Court in Boston, (Cushing and Davis) in our favour— But the
papers are so irregular and informal, that the Judgment will be reversed in all
probability, on this account.— The merits however are
clearly with us.4
I have subscribed for the Washington Federalist, and ordered it to
be sent to Quincy, from this time— So tell Shaw, not to stop it at the Post-Office in Boston— I wish you to receive it, at the Post-Office in Quincy; and keep the
file for me till I come home.
We are to adjourn 12th. next month—5 I hope to see you by the last of it.— You
say nothing in your last of my dear mother’s health— I hope she has recovered— My wife
& children are well— Mrs: Cranch much better—
The bills to protect foreign Seamen,
have not yet been acted upon— Some suppose they will be abandoned; at least in their
most obnoxious principles— I wait patiently and calmly, to see whether we are to have
another deb[at]e upon them.6
RC (private owner, 1961); addressed: “John Adams
Esqr / Quincy. / Massachusetts.”; endorsed by
TBA: “J Q Adams Esqr: / 25th: Feby 1804 / 10th: March Recd: / 13 acknd.” Some loss of text where the seal was removed.
Not found.
Enclosures not found.
On 7 Feb. JQA was sworn in as a counselor of the
U.S. Supreme Court, and on 16 Feb. he argued his first case, joining John Thomson
Mason in representing Boston merchants Joseph Head and Jonathan Amory in the case of
Head & Amory v. Providence Insurance Company, an
appeal of a ruling by U.S. Circuit Court judges John Lowell and Benjamin Bourne
(1755–1808). The case arose after Head & Amory insured cargo aboard the Spanish
brig Nueva Empresa, then subsequently sent the Providence
Insurance Company letters in order to cancel the insurance. While the cancellation was
pending in Aug. 1800, the brig was captured by the British ship Pluto and condemned at St. John’s, Newfoundland. Head &
Amory then attempted to claim $16,000, but the insurance company declared the policy
canceled and refused to pay. JQA argued that mere correspondence did not
constitute a cancellation and that his clients were entitled to payment “upon
principles of law, of justice, of equity and of honour.” Furthermore, he claimed, if the justices accepted the arguments of
opposition attorneys William Hunter (1774–1849) of Providence, R.I., and Luther Martin
of Maryland, they must conclude that through “egregious mistake” or “dilatory
proceedings” the insurance company failed to carry out the orders in the
correspondence. Impressed by the work of the other lawyers, JQA noted, “I
never have witness’d a collection of such powerful legal orators.” He also said that
his dual duties were exhausting, writing that the work “almost overpowers me. I cannot
stand it long.” On 25 Feb. 1804 the court overturned the lower court decision and
ordered the insurance company to pay (D/JQA/27, 13, 17 Feb.,
APM Reel 30; Glen Atkinson and Stephen
P. Paschall, Law and Economics from an 349 Evolutionary Perspective, Northampton,
Mass., 2016, p. 56–57; Cranch, Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court
, 2:128–129,
136, 141–142, 155; Joseph Breed Berry, History of the Diocese
of Massachusetts, 1810–1872, Boston, 1959, p. 68; Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar, Boston, 1911, p. 261;
Biog. Dir.
Cong.
).
JQA was not successful in his second case, Church
v. Hubbart, failing to convince the Supreme Court to
uphold an earlier U.S. Circuit Court decision by judges William Cushing and John
Davis. The lower court ruled that JQA’s client, Boston insurance
underwriter Tuthill Hubbart, did not have to pay John B. Church Jr., the supercargo
for the brig Aurora, for cargo seized by Portuguese
warships during a voyage to Brazil because Church had engaged in illicit trade as
expressly prohibited by a clause in the insurance contract. On 29 Feb. and 1 March,
JQA laid out circumstantial evidence against Church and claimed that
the case had “all the material characteristics of a legal
condemnation for illicit trade.” The Supreme Court ruled on 5 March that
Hubbart failed to adequately document illegal activity and reversed the lower court
ruling (Louis B. Sohn and others, eds., Cases and Materials on
the Law of the Sea, 2d edn., Boston, 2014, p. 422–426; Cranch, Reports of Cases in the Supreme
Court
, 2:224–225; Hamilton,
Papers
, 25:481; JA, Legal Papers
, 3:317;
D/JQA/27, APM
Reel 30).
JQA in a letter to William Smith Shaw on 9 March
(MHi:Misc. Bound Coll.) reported that
the adjournment had been pushed back to 19 March. Congress remained in session until
27 March (U.S. Senate, Jour.
, 8th Cong., 1st sess., p. 404).
See JQA to TBA, 22 Jan., and note 2, above.