Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 6
1835-09-02
At home all day. The Neponset Company were fortunate on the whole, for this day was one of the most rainy I remember. It was my intention to have gone to town, but I fortunately saved a drenching by giving up the idea.
My first number on the State of the Nation was published today, so that I sat down and composed another which strikes me as bittersweet.1 I also read a part of the seventh satire of Juvenal which I liked. Also assorted more Papers. The alternations of my feelings with re-208gard to these are curious. Hope and fear. My father seemed much pleased with my new essay. He gives me much encouragement for the first time in his life.
Afternoon. I read La Fontaine’s Theodor, a pleasant story. I have rarely read books of more interest, and wonder a little that they so soon appear to have lost their currency. Evening quietly at home.
The series called “On the State of the Nation” and signed “A Calm Observer” consisted ultimately of five numbers in the Daily Advocate. The first four appeared on 2, 5, 8, and 12 Sept. (p. 2, cols. 3, 3–4, 1, and 1 respectively); the final number on 30 Oct., p. 2, cols. 1–2. The focus of the series was again upon the presidential election, but less concerned with Webster’s part in it than earlier. No. 2 was a consideration and rejection of William Henry Harrison as a candidate. In Nos. 3 and 4, CFA gave a first statement to his views on the unfortunate consequences upon the election stemming from the excessive Southern demands being made upon candidates living in the Free States and from related antiabolitionist excesses in Boston and elsewhere. These views he would develop more fully and positively in his “The Slavery Question Truly Stated”; see note to entry for 9 June 1836, below.