Papers of John Adams, volume 21
y24 1795
I thank you for your favour of the 16th recd this day It
is a great pleasure to me to find that none of the Gentn of Congress in the years 1779 & 80
remember any such thing as Dr K has asserted.
Our present Govr who was then a delegate says
the same— I shall ask Mr Gerry when I see
him—& shall wait with as much patience as the nature of the subject will
admit for your further communications.
Since I wrote to you on this subject I have been again
wounded by an unmerited reflection on our Country from the pen of the late
Secy of War; & have tho’t it my duty by
the advice of 2 or 3 judicious friends, publickly to detect his mistake. In
the Centinel of this date you may see my address signed with my initials. It
is certainly well intended & I hope will be well received. I mean to be
a fair antagonist & therefore beg you to deliver him the enclosed (if he
should be at Phila) after you have read &
sealed it.1
I thank you for the memoir on weights & measures—one
Copy shall be delivered to the Secy of the
Academy. It is not improbable that some of our dablers in the Apocalype may
set down the new standard of weights & measures as “the mark of the
beast” if “no man is to buy or sell” but by that standard. But how they will
contrive a decimal division of 666 I know not.
I should not think it strange if the French in their rage
for decimals should make a reform in the Zodiac as well as in the Calendar
& reduce the signs to ten, corresponding to their ten months.2 in that case the Lion must be rejected as an emblem of monarchy—
The ram & the bull will be deemed aristocrates—& possibly the Goat
unless he should serve as an emblem of Liberty— The scales will probably be
retained for their equality, & the twins & fishes for the sake of
Fraternity. The virgin I suppose will be united with the Waterer to make her
prolific & the motley figure of the Archer may with some propriety be
called Marat3 or represent
the Jacobins
Will you be so good as to tell me whether the President
when he sent a proclamation for Thanksgiving to one Governor expected that
it would be reinforced by his authority & that of the Council? We have
now 2 proclamations handed to us to be read in public—one is distributed by
the Marshal of the district—the other having the order of Govr & Council
at the top by the Sheriff! the latter is
printed by Adams & Larkin at the Expense (I suppose) of the state!4
I am, Dear Sir, with great Esteem & respect / Your
obliged friend & hble servt
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Hoñ Dr Adams.”
Belknap’s enclosure, not found, was his response to
Secretary of War Henry Knox’s public criticism of the federal policy
toward Native Americans and western expansion in his final report to the
president of 29 Dec. 1794. “The desires of too many frontier white
people to seize by force or fraud upon the neighbouring Indian lands has
been and still continues to be an unceasing cause of Jealousy and hatred
on the part of the Indians,” Knox wrote, adding suggestions to improve
U.S.-Native American relations. Belknap defended the Washington
administration’s efforts, pointing out that Native customs and forms of
subsistence differed from those of American settlers, factors that
complicated 364
the prospect of peace on the frontier. “Husbandmen and Hunters,
civilized and uncivilized people, cannot generally, live within the same
limits; or if there be an attempt to incorporate them into the same
society, the former will always rise superior, and the latter will sink
into a state of dependence,” he wrote (Washington, Papers,
Presidential Series
, 17:328–332; Boston Columbian Centinel, 24 Jan. 1795).
In the autumn of 1793, the French National Convention
abolished the use of regnal years and the Gregorian calendar, declaring
it to be the first year of the French republic. This system divided the
month into three “décades” of ten-day weeks and began in September, or
vendémiaire, when the autumnal equinox was marked in Paris. The final
five days of the year were reserved for festivals. It remained in place
until 1805 (Matthew Shaw, Time and the French
Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV, Woodbridge,
Eng., 2011 p. 3).
French revolutionary Jean Paul Marat, assassinated by
Charlotte Corday in July 1793, attained new heights of cultural
popularity in the United States after his death (
AFC
, 10:74).
On 1 Jan. 1795 George Washington issued a
proclamation calling for Americans to spend 19 Feb. in a national day of
thanksgiving and prayer, which appeared in Boston newspapers beginning
on 8 Jan. Some clergy balked at the president’s timing, since Lent began
on 18 Feb. (
AFC
, 10:330,
350).