Papers of John Adams, volume 19
th1787
By this time I suppose that the fame or rather the infamy of our new instalment law has reached you.1 I wish that it may not embarrass your hands in negotiating with the British ministry. I can only say that it was forced on the legislature by polical necessity. Our necessities were great at the close of the war. Our negroes were carried away & our plantations laid waste. 700,000 sterling of our present debt has been contracted since the peace to replace the negroes destroyed or taken away during the war. This caused a necessity of our contracting debts. Such a succession of bad crops has never before been known in South Carolina. From the absolute impossibility of paying our private foreign debt & of supporting Government in the execution of the laws our best ablest & most unembarrassed citizens
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consented to the instalment law as the least of several probable evils. The nonimportation of negroes also recommended that measure by being made a part of the same act. It is most undoubtedly a violation of the treaty but on the other hand it only postpones the payment of debts contracted before Novr. 1782 for one year longer than they were already postponed. The operation of the present law is chiefly designed to alleviate the pressure of debts contracted since the treaty of peace. I do not pretend to justify I only aim at palliation. Perhaps these transactions may be the means of exciting the commercial interest of both countries to a greater abhorrence of war.
The inclosed statement of our debts & resources was made by a very intelligent British merchant for my use as a groundwork of argument to prevent the extension of the instalment law to an unnecessary period.2 I mention this to give it weight as being not partial to the landed interest of South Carolina. Indeed the merchants are pretty well satisfied & are generally disposed to say that the legislature could not have done better than they have done.
I long to see Dr Gordons history. I wish him to take precedence of me. I am nearly ready for publishing the first volume but I chuse to delay it for many reasons.3
I esteem your correspondence an honor & shall think every line from you to be a great favor. With the most exalted sentiments of respect & esteem I have the honor to be your most obedient & humble st.
RC (Adams Papers); notation by CFA: “D. Ramsay / April 7th 1787.”
Historian David Ramsay of South Carolina, acting president of Congress, had opened a correspondence with JA in late 1785 (vol. 18:index). On 28 March 1787 the S.C. General Assembly passed “An Act To regulate the recovery and payment of debts, and for prohibiting the importation of negroes for the time herein mentioned.” Debts contracted before 1 Jan. were to be paid in three installments, beginning 1 March 1788, and no slaves were to be imported or brought into the state for three years, or they would be forfeited. On the same day, the assembly also passed “An ordinance To impose a penalty on any person who shall import into this state any negroes contrary to the instalment act,” which amounted to a fine of £100 (Acts, Ordinances, and Resolves, of the General Assembly of the State of South-Carolina, Passed in March, 1787, Charleston, S.C., 1787, p. 14, 16–17, Evans, No. 20715).
Not found. Ramsay enclosed a general abstract of South Carolina’s state debt, likely that composed by merchant Edward Penman of Charleston, which was printed in the Charleston Morning Post on 28 Feb. 1787 (Laurens, Papers
, 16:703).
Rev. William Gordon’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America appeared in London in 1788 (vol. 18:241). A year later, Ramsay published his two-volume History of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. Both works, with annotations, are in JA’s library at MB (
Catalogue of JA’s Library
).