This undated document, which is without the names of those responsible for its authorship and circulation, must have been distributed in Boston on Monday, 11 November 1833, on which day the election for state offices was held. The event which occasioned it was the departure of John Quincy Adams, the nominee of the antimasonic party for Governor, from Massachusetts for Washington four days before the election. This action was seized upon by the opposition National Republican press as evidence that Adams, entertaining no hope of victory, had abandoned his supporters. On Saturday, 9 November, both the Boston Atlas and the Columbian Centinel made political capital of the departure in the passages quoted on the flier. See below, p. 209. The rebuttal from the Antimasons, evidently prepared over the weekend for circulation among the voters before they entered the polling places, expressed bitter complaint that a man of such stature, with a record of such distinguished public service, should be so vilified; sore vexation that a departure dictated by concern for his Congressional obligations should be misrepresented as an abandonment of the party leadership he had accepted.

With more anger than sagacity, the framers of the handbill, by quoting at length the aspersions of the Atlas, gave added currency to other charges which the enemies of John Quincy Adams had leveled at him during the campaign. The basic charge had been that John Quincy Adams supported the alleged policy of the Antimasons to “proscribe” any candidate for public office of whatever party who was a Freemason or who failed to pledge his opposition to Freemasonry. The principal evidence cited against Adams on the matter was contained in a passage from his letter to Benjamin Cowell, 28 November 1832 (LbC, Adams Papers), which the opposition press had obtained and publicized. In rebutting the charge, Adams chose, somewhat injudiciously, to have published a letter taking a position against “proscription” which he had written to John Brazer Davis (6 April 1832, MB:M. A. De Wolfe Howe Papers) without obtaining the consent of Davis’ executors. In the resulting furor, in which the authenticity of the letter came into question and explanations of its provenance had to be offered, the letter became the object of fierce ridicule as the “washstand letter.” On these matters, see p. 183–184, below; also Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Philadelphia, 1874–1877, 9:16–17.

However much the political effectiveness of the flier may be put in question, there is in its text a statement that goes to a basic understanding of John Quincy Adams’ often puzzling political behavior: “His claims as a candidate for Governor, he leaves with his fellow citizens. His presence was not required at the election, and true to his republican principles, he will not seek to promote his election to any office, by personal influence!” Unstated was a second commitment made by Adams to himself and to his son Charles Francis that he would accept no elected office except one that came as a free expression of the will of a majority of the electorate ( Memoirs , 9:21; to Charles Francis Adams, 26 November 1833, Adams Papers). Acting upon these principles, Adams had concluded, as soon as he xvlearned that the National Republicans would not join with the Antimasons in making him their candidate against the Jacksonian party, that a majority would not likely be obtained by a vote of the people, and that in that event, even if he obtained a plurality, he would withdraw his name from the balloting that would ensue in the legislature. This decision he confided to Charles Francis long before the departure for Washington. When the results of the popular election became known, Adams’ decision would be duly communicated to Benjamin Hallett, the leader of the Massachusetts Antimasons and the editor of the Boston Daily Advocate, and ultimately, before the legislative balloting began, to a surprised Commonwealth. See p. 188, 212, 222–223 and 239, below.