Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 5
1834-06-28
Pleasant morning but it clouded up afterwards. I went to the Office after carrying Mr. Brooks with me into town. My time much cut up. Attended a sale of stocks to make a purchase but did not succeed. I do not like to appear a dabbler upon so small a scale in competition with men of so much more extensive basis. Read more of Jefferson’s Letters, but during the period for which he was Secretary of State, they are mostly official and uninteresting.
Return to Medford. Edward Brooks and Thomas K. Davis came out here and dined. Pleasant but consumed the afternoon. Evening I amused myself with Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.1 Political news— The battle between the President and the Senate waxing warmer. The latter have rejected the nominations of Mr. Taney and Mr. Stevenson.2
CFA had borrowed a copy of the London, 1796, edition from the Athenaeum.
Although Roger B. Taney had served as Secretary of the Treasury and Benjamin F. Butler as Attorney General for more than six months by appointment of the President, he did not send their names to the Senate for confirmation until 23 June. On that day he also sent the nomination of Andrew Stevenson as Minister to England. On the next day the Senate voted to reject the nominations of Taney and Stevenson and to confirm that of Butler (National Intelligencer, 24 June, p. 3, col. 4; 25 June, p. 3, col. 6).