Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 5
1834-04-14
Fine day. I went to the Office and was occupied in Accounts to some extent. Conversation with Mr. Walsh and lounging at Insurance Offices. The interest taken in political affairs is now much greater here than usual and the result of the New York election though not decisive is sufficiently so to inspire confidence into the opposition forming against the Government.
Walk. P. C. Brooks Jr. dined with me and in the afternoon I went down to the Boylston Market to a Meeting of Directors but none was held. Returned home and finished the fifth Tusculan of Cicero. Evening, Mr. Davis passed an hour or two.
I received from Washington my father’s speech which he did not deliver upon the subject of the Bank of the United States and Mr. Taneys reasons. He has published it nevertheless. It eclipses all other Speeches yet made, and breathes the same tone of fearless invective which has always distinguished his writings.1
The National Intelligencer for 12 April printed in eighteen columns a speech which JQA had intended to deliver in the House on 4 April but had been prevented from doing by a parliamentary maneuver. It bore the title, “Speech <Suppressed by the Previous Question> ... on the Removal of the Public Deposites ...” and was prefaced by a statement recounting the circumstances of JQA’s unsuccessful efforts to gain recognition to speak to the Resolution of the Massachusetts Legislature on the state of the currency, the removal of public monies from the Bank of the United States, and the reasons alleged in justification by Secretary of the Treasury Taney. Having been “compelled to resort to the Press, to make Public the remarks,” JQA was quick to arrange for pamphlet publication as well. On the 13th he revised the text and was notified by Joseph Gales of the Intelligencer that an order to print 50,000 copies of the pamphlet had been received (JQA, Memoirs
, 9:127). It was widely reprinted. The corrected printer’s copy, 63 pages of text in JQA’s hand and 23 pages of supplementary material partly in the hands of amanuenses, is in the Adams Papers.