Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 7
1838-02-10
Fine clear and mild day. Office where I finished the draft of my Report to the Middlesex Canal in a brief form, and occupied in Accounts. Call from W. Spear of Quincy and N. Curtis, both of business.
Athenaeum to look after a notice of my lecture running the rounds of the Southern papers. Horribly inaccurate, but it matters not. Who seeks precise knowledge in Newspapers? A little singular that the Baltimore American should take it up.1
Home. Sophocles. After dinner, Aristotle and his commentator Gillies, a Greek Scholar and English tory. Evening Horatio Brooks and T. K. Davis, the latter spent all the evening.
A call from a man who represented himself to be one of the insurgents at St. Denis in Lower Canada. Crawled here entirely out of money and directed to me only by my name. I gave him as much as I could well afford and more than I was clear he deserved. He said his name was Amiot or Amott.2
“Charles Francis Adams Esq. is lecturing before the Historical Society at Boston. The subject of his last lecture was ‘Materials for History,’ in the treatment of which he is said to have furnished some admirable revolutionary anecdotes in relation to the wife of the first [sic] President of the United States. It is to be regretted that the ‘materials for history’ which may be found in all sections of our country are not made more familiar to the public. The American Revolution was an occurrence fraught with the noblest daring and the most touching self-sacrifice, not only on the part of those who bore arms, but of their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. ... They have been treasured up in the sanctity of the domestic fireside, and will, we trust, be drawn forth and exhibited as bright examples” (Baltimore American, 2 Feb., p. 2, col. 3).
The latent hostility felt by the French population of Lower Canada to British rule, inflamed by orators, agitators in the “Sons of Liberty,” and adventurers from New England, became an open revolt in Nov. 1837. Crown troops responded with successive military actions north and east of Montreal at St. Denis, St. Charles, and St. Eustache before the rebellion was crushed in early December. The rebel forces, including American elements led by Thomas Storrow Brown, were beaten and dispersed (Frank B. Tracy, Tercentenary History of Canada, 3 vols., N.Y., 1908, 3:800–816; Andrew Bell, History of Canada, 2 vols., Montreal, 1866, 2:449–455).