Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 2
1828-12-23
Arose this morning to see a little snow. But it lasted only a moment, and the day was clear and mild. Read some of the Massachusetts Reports, but was principally engaged all day in considering the propriety of answering in some measure the words of the Solicitor General in the late Trial.1 I could come to no conclusion. In the evening, read Dr. Johnson’s Life of Brown. This evening, Mr. Ignatius Sargent was married to Miss Charlotte Gray.
Daniel Davis, the solicitor general, concluded his speech in the libel trial of Theodore Lyman with a fling against JQA for defaming “the good and the patriotic and the pious” Federalist leaders now dead. JQA’s charge that the New England Federalists had plotted for the disruption of the Union, Davis declared, “exhibits every abandonment of principle—of unutterable depravity. It is an infamous falsehood” (Benton, A Notable Libel Case, p. 93–94).