Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-10-21
Morning clear again after the showery weather which came on last Evening. I went to the Office as usual, but passed a large portion of my morning at an Auction Room. The sale of the library of Edward J. Lowell took place today.1 I could not help moralizing when I thought of the difference which had taken place between the views this young man had held out to himself and the actual state of things. It is melancholy to think that all our hopes and wishes, our ambition, our useful exertions hang upon so frail a tenure as human life. Lowell was a young man of great promise, few in this Community stood as high as he. He is now a fit subject to point a moral and adorn a tale.2 I bought little or nothing as his books sold high.
Completed the purchase and transfer of the Fire and Marine Stock and settled several demands against my father and myself. After din-344ner, finished the second book de Inventione and resumed the same to review. My aim is to master the subject in all its forms.
Evening, went to Faneuil Hall to see and take part in a primary Meeting of the People.3 It was large and respectable. Mr. J. B. Davis, A. H. Everett, Austin,4 Gorham and Sullivan addressed the Meeting, and generally with more power than I had expected. On the whole, it was a favourable specimen of a Caucus, better than any I had seen.5 Mr. Webster was received with great acclamation. He adjourned the Meeting, and I returned home to find my Wife suffering severely from one of her remedies.
The library of a “professional gentleman deceased” consisting of about 400 volumes on the civil and common law and 600 other books was auctioned beginning at 9:30 a.m. at Cunningham’s Auction Rooms, corner of Milk and Federal streets (Boston Daily Advertiser, 21 Oct., p. 3, col. 4).
Edward Jackson Lowell (1805–1830), Harvard 1822, regarded in Boston as one of the most cultivated and promising young men of his generation, died at the home of his brother in Waltham during the preceding month (Boston Patriot, 11 Sept., p. 2, col. 5; 16 Sept., p. 2, col. 3; Ferris Greenslet, The Lowells and their Seven Worlds, Boston, 1946, p. 191–196).
The National Republican caucus held at 6:30 p.m. announced its sponsors as “Friends of American Industry, Liberal National Policy, Internal Improvement, the Rail Roads, and the preservation of the Public Faith toward the Indian Tribes” (Boston Daily Advertiser, 21 Oct., p. 2, col. 3; 22 Oct., p. 2, col. 2).
James T. Austin, Commonwealth attorney (
Boston Directory, 1830–1831).
The speeches of A. H. Everett, Jeremiah Evarts, and William Sullivan were printed in the Advertiser, 25 Oct., p. 1, cols. 3–6; 27 Oct., p. 2, cols. 4–6.