Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-10-04
Boston
The morning fine and clear again. After breakfast we made ready to return to Boston. My father did not seem in very good humour, probably from the course which I felt it my duty to take about the election. This matter is not an agreeable one to him nor is it so to me, but I feel as if he ought not to take any course without having the whole ground laid out before him. The precedent is important to the whole nation.1
Returned to town, and from thence directly to the Office. After arranging and looking over my papers here, I went down to the Meeting of the Stockholders of the State Bank, for the annual election of Directors. The excitement was very considerable as there was a design to overturn the President. Mr. Degrand figured away upon that occasion a little too much for the success of his cause. Our people are never over fond of foreigners and the moneyed men are wary of Brokers. The mass of the property of the Bank went in favour of the old system, while the young men and small Proprietors advocated a change; among the latter I may be classed. The excitement was notwithstanding very considerable.
I returned to the Office and passed the rest of the morning in reading, writing and Accounts. Mr. Frothingham dined with us. And I read Cicero afterwards, although I cannot make much of the Books de Inventione. They are a mere skeleton of a very intricate and subdivided system. Evening, Corinne, Mason’s Life of Gray, and the Diversions of Purley.
333JQA makes no reference to the conversation with CFA, only to a miserable night caused by a return of his lumbago (Diary, 4 Oct.). His decision to accept a nomination if offered with a strong show of support had apparently been made. Despite efforts made by the Jacksonians to block the nomination, JQA was nominated by the Republican convention at Halifax on 12 Oct., as well as by the National Republican convention the next day (see JQA, Diary, 13, 14 Oct.; Boston Patriot, 16 Oct., p. 2, cols. 1–2). On 15 Oct. JQA responded to notice of the nomination: “If my fellow-citizens of the District should think proper to call for such services as it may be in my power to render them by representing them in the twenty-second Congress, I am not aware of any sound principle which would justify me in withholding them. To the manifestations of confidence on the part of those portions of the people, who, at two several meetings, have seen fit to present my name for the suffrages of the District, I am duly and deeply sensible” (Boston Daily Advertiser, 25 Oct., p. 2, col. 3). For a fuller account of the movement to make JQA a candidate and of the arguments advanced against his giving his consent, see Bemis, JQA
, 2:206–211, in which account CFA’s comments here and in the preceding entry are quoted and CFA’s opposition presented in an unfavorable light. LCA’s more intense and more sustained opposition is not mentioned by Bemis; on that see below, entry for 27 Oct. and note.