Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 8
1838-05-17
I felt so much fatigued that I almost determined upon remaining at home all day, but although warm the day was cloudy with drops of 45rain so as to make the walking less difficult. After writing up the arrears of my Diary, I went in the Carriage with the ladies calling at Mrs. Thornton’s,1 as far as Claggett’s shop where I got out and walked from thence to the Capitol.
The question was upon the passage of the Treasury Note bill which had been squeezed through last night, but was arrested on a reconsideration this morning. It was clear that this was a close party test in a full house and as such excited great interest. The vote turned out 110 in the affirmative and 109 in the negative to which the Speaker added his vote thus producing a tie and defeating the reconsideration. Thus it appears pretty plain that allowing the Administration nearly all the Carolinians, they are still in a minority in the House.
After this was well over, the House went upon some matter connected with the question of Northwest boundary, and Mr. Cushing went upon it2 in so dry a way that I transferred myself to the Senate where they were discussing as drily the District Bank charters.
So I returned and found my father up making an explanatory Speech respecting our boundary titles to the Westward in the course of which he went over much interesting matter as well relating to the history of the discovery, as to certain cabinet proceedings of which he gave a pleasing sketch, and of his own agency therein. It was amusing to observe how he collected his audience from a handful, for the excitement of the preceding days had exhausted the House, to a little collection around him. Shortly afterwards the House adjourned but I left beforehand. Quiet evening at home. A curious notice in the Boston Courier of my letters which is too flattering.3
On Mrs. William Thornton, see vol. 1:36.
While the Oregon boundary question as a national issue was still several years in the future, the numbers involved in the movement westward during the 1830s had already served to bring to general attention the land claims of Great Britain and the United States in that area that remained unresolved. Most recently, the President had addressed the matter of title in a message. When the message was taken up in the House, Caleb Cushing, representative from Mass., spoke, moving to instruct the committee considering the question “to inquire into the expediency of establishing a post on the Columbia river ... and the expediency of making further provision ... to prevent any intermeddling by any foreign power with the Indians there” (
Congressional Globe
, 25th Cong., 2d sess., p. 380).
In the issue of 15 May, p. 2, col. 5, appeared a note with the heading, “A Second Junius”: “We do not believe that our correspondent, ‘A Citizen,’ will thank us for giving him this title, knowing as we do that he has no desire to be called one of the first or best writers of his day, but we have been somewhat amused at the conjectures of many of our friends as to who he is.... We have invariably refused to say yes or no to the questions propounded on the subject. A contemporary has attributed the articles ... to a distinguished politician of the present day, while some others attribute them to two or three gentlemen who have retired from political life, or to young men who may be called, perhaps, unfledged politi-46cians. If our correspondent is to be a second Junius, we intend to be a second Woodfall,” (Henry Sampson Woodfall, printer and publisher of the Public Advertiser in whose columns the Junius letters appeared, disclaimed agreement with their content and steadfastly refused to identify their author [
DNB
].)