Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 7
1836-08-21
The remarkable coldness of the season continues unabated. It has become a matter of great doubt whether the crop of Corn will ripen. I spent my morning idly, in part because I got up late. Attended divine service and heard Mr. Lunt preach in the morning from Revelation. 5. 1.2. “And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the back side sealed with seven seals, and I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof.” Mr. Lunt took hold of the subject with an attempt to explain the general meaning of the revelation and then applied the opening of the seals to various historical events of ancient times. But this is arbitrary and uncertain. Revelation, I must confess it, never looked to me much beyond the frenzy of an excited imagination.
In the afternoon Psalm 16. 11. “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: 75in thy presence is fulness of joy: at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” I was unable to keep my attention fixed having lost my nap by the presence of Mr. Degrand. He remained all the afternoon. The conversation principally upon a letter of General Jackson to the Governor of Tennessee disavowing the course of General Gaines.1
In the evening, my mother, Mrs. J. Adams,2 my Wife and I went to Mrs. Quincy’s. Found there Mrs. Quincy the elder, and her daughter Anna.3 Nothing interesting, and we returned early. Read a Sermon of Dr. Barrow, upon natural religion. Jeremiah 51. 15. “He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom and hath stretched out the heaven by his understanding.” There was little variation from the topics usually brought forward in the Creation, but they were enforced with more eloquence than I have yet found in Barrow. He seems to rise with his subject.
In response to requisitions from Gen. Edmund Pendleton Gaines forwarded by the secretary of war to Gov. Newton Cannon for a brigade of Tennessee militia for service on the Mexican border, the governor had sent the correspondence to President Jackson. On 6 Aug. the President responded that the requisition was unauthorized and unjustified by the circumstances. The letter was published in the Daily Centinel and Gazette, 22 Aug. 1836, p. 2, col. 3.
Mrs. John Adams 2d, the former Mary Catherine Hellen, who, after the death of her husband in 1834, with their two daughters, Mary Louisa and Georgeanna Frances, regularly summered at the Old House; see vols. 1:xxvi, 32; 6:12, 254.
Josiah Quincy IV and his wife, the former Mary Jane Miller, regularly occupied the family home in Quincy during the summers. His mother, Mrs. Josiah Quincy III, wife of the president of Harvard, and his sister, Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy, were visiting from Cambridge.