Adams Family Correspondence, volume 2

John Adams to Abigail Adams, 20 July 1776 JA AA

1776-07-20

John Adams to Abigail Adams, 20 July 1776 Adams, John Adams, Abigail

John Adams to Abigail Adams

Philadelphia July 20. 1776

This has been a dull day to me: I waited the Arrival of the Post with much Solicitude and Impatience, but his Arrival made me more solicitous still.—“To be left at the Post Office” in your Hand Writing, on the back of a few Lines from the Dr. were all that I could learn of you, and my little Folks.1 If you was too busy to write, I hoped that some kind Hand would have been found to let me know something about you.

Do my Friends think that I have been a Politician so long as to have lost all feeling? Do they suppose I have forgotten my Wife and Children? Or are they so panic struck with the Loss of Canada, as to 54be afraid to correspond with me? Or have they forgotten that you have an Husband and your Children a Father? What have I done, or omitted to do, that I should be thus forgotten and neglected in the most tender and affecting scaene of my Life! Dont mistake me, I dont blame you. Your Time and Thoughts must have been wholly taken up, with your own and your Families situation and Necessities.—But twenty other Persons might have informed me.

I suspect, that you intended to have run slyly, through the small Pox with the family, without letting me know it, and then have sent me an Account that you were all well. This might be a kind Intention, and if the design had succeeded, would have made me very joyous. But the secret is out, and I am left to conjecture. But as the Faculty2 have this distemper so much under Command I will flatter myself with the Hope and Expectation of soon hearing of your Recovery.

RC and LbC (Adams Papers).

See Cotton Tufts to JA, 5 July, above, descriptive note and note 2 and notes there.

The medical profession.

John Adams to Cotton Tufts, 20 July 1776 JA Tufts, Cotton

1776-07-20

John Adams to Cotton Tufts, 20 July 1776 Adams, John Tufts, Cotton

John Adams to Cotton Tufts

Dear Sir Philadelphia July 20. 1776. Saturday

Yours of July 5th. never reached me, till this Morning. I greatly regret its delay. But that it might answer its End, without further Loss of Time, I waited on my Friend Dr. Rush, an eminent Phisician of this City, and a worthy Friend of mine, who with a Politeness and Benevolence, becoming his Character, promised to furnish me with his Sentiments, concerning Inocculation, so that I may forward them to you by the next Post, and I have obtained his Leave for you to publish them, in Print, if you please. He practices with great Success. Several of our Members, have been under his Hands and come out, almost without an Alteration of Countenance.1

You say you got leave to lodge yours in Mrs. Adams's Letter. But no Letter from her accompanied it, which has distressed me much, both because I was very impatient for a Letter from her, and because it creates a Jealousy of some unfair Practice in the Post Office. . . .2 I observe however upon the back of your Letter the Words “to be left at the Post office” in her Hand Writing, which makes it not improbable that she might send it without a Line from herself.

It is a long Time, since I heard from her or indeed any Thing concerning her only that she was determined to have the Distemper, with 55all my Children. How do you think I feel? supposing that my Wife and Children are all sick of the small Pox, myself unable to see them, or hear from them. And all this in Addition to several other Cares, public and private, which alone would be rather troublesome?

However, I will not be dejected. Hope springs eternal in my Breast, and keeps me up, above all Difficulties, hitherto.

I am, sincerely Yours.

LbC (Adams Papers).

JA had first met Benjamin Rush (1746–1813), College of New Jersey 1760, M.D., Edinburgh 1768, in Aug. 1774, Rush being one of the party of Philadelphia gentlemen who rode out to Frankford to welcome the Massachusetts delegation to the first Continental Congress. JA characterized Rush in his Diary in 1775 as “an elegant, ingenious Body, a Sprightly, pretty fellow” and at first had some doubts about his substance. But they were soon warm friends. Rush served the Adamses as family physician in the 1790's, and despite their marked political differences the liking and respect of the two men for each other never diminished. During JA's years of political retirement they conducted an active and distinguished correspondence, their letters to each other being among the longest and best that either one of them ever wrote. It was Rush who, after long and pertinacious effort, brought about the reconciliation between ex-Presidents Adams and Jefferson in 1812, with remarkable results. See JA, Diary and Autobiography , 2:115, 182; Benjamin Rush, Letters , 1:153–154 and passim; L. H. Butterfield, “The Dream of Benjamin Rush,” Yale Review, 40:297–319 (Winter 1951).

Rush had learned the new or “Suttonian” method of inoculation in England during the 1760's and later published a tract on the subject that went through several editions ( Letters , 1:66–67). See, further, AA to JA, 21–22 July, 1 Aug.; JA to AA, 23 July; Tufts to JA, 6 Aug.; all below.

Suspension points in MS.