Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 5
1833-10-24
Very lovely day. I went to the Office and was engaged much of my time in Accounts. Settled up all my books and found myself likely to be pretty hard pressed for Money for two months to ensue. My father also is likely to make severe draughts upon his Account so as to leave little or nothing. I called at Mrs. Procter’s to receive her rent, which is nearly the last at present due. My clearance has been pretty thorough.
My father and Mother came in. I went up to see the latter about the christening of my Child before they went away. But accidentally striking some wrong chord, we were unable to come to any decision. I talked on the subject also with my father, and settled upon having it done here in Boston on Sunday next.1
In the afternoon I had a call from Josiah Quincy about his Letter; he publishes tomorrow, but I think the probability to be rather harm than good from it.2 I read a little of Bacon’s Novum Organum. Copied a paper for my father and wrote a draught for the Memorial to the Legislature. In the evening, I finished the first book of Virgil’s Aeneis and read the Lounger.
From LCA’s letter written the following day and received by CFA on the 26th (Adams Papers), it would appear that LCA had voiced strong objection to the idea that the christening of JQA’s namesake take place other than at the First Church in Boston and at a Sunday service, feeling that the suggestion reflected an unworthy sensitivity to the public controversy then raging around JQA.
The Columbian Centinel (26 Oct., p. 2, col. 1) reprinted Col. Josiah Quincy’s letter to the editor of the Daily Advertiser, in which Quincy detailed the circumstances that had caused him to become convinced since he wrote his earlier letter that the letter from JQA to J. B. Davis was genuine, was written at the time asserted, and had come into JQA’s possession through the agency of Stephen Bates in the way alleged earlier. He reiterated, however, that existence of the letter had not been known to him or to Davis’ family earlier. In the Centinel’s editorial comment following, the accusation was repeated that JQA, in publishing a private letter not his property for political profit, was guilty of an impropriety.