Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 5
1834-01-09
I was again engrossed the whole morning in correcting proof. Mr. Davis was this day elected Governor,1 and the Address will appear tomorrow. I finished at about one o’clock. My Accounts, Diary and every thing else have gone backward in the mean time. I hope this will put an end to my share in political affairs for this year. I have had some moments of trial and have got through them pretty well.
Walk. In the Afternoon, read Bacon and Virgil. Finished and sent my letter to my father and felt as if I might now begin anew.2 My own prospects however are mortified. My article in the North American has sunk without a struggle, and I am to make no literary or any other sort of reputation.3 Well, if it must be so, it must. Evening, Miss Edgeworth’s Ormond, and Sir James Mackintosh.
In the Senate Davis received thirty votes, Morton four, and there were three abstentions (Columbian Centinel, 10 Jan., p. 2, col. 3).
To JQA, 6–9 Jan. (Adams Papers). CFA’s sense that his political antimasonry had come to its end was echoed by his father: “I have now taken my leave of them as a party. There is perhaps nothing that makes it desirable that they should continue to exist as a party excepting to prevail upon the Legislature” (to CFA, 18 Jan., Adams Papers).
Such discouragement was recurrent following the publication of each of CFA’s articles, irrespective of manifestations of reader interest of some sort that were almost always forthcoming. In this instance, appreciative notice was to come from his father: “I have been reading your review ... with great satisfaction.... Your severity consists in your moderation. I should have handled him more roughly and perhaps not have done him so much justice” (to CFA, 31 Jan., Adams Papers).