Adams Family Correspondence, volume 10
Upon the receipt of your excellent Letter of the fifth of this month I Yesterday sent for our son Thomas and desired him to remit to his Brother at Boston for your Use two hundred Dollars.1 I have been at Expence to Purchase a Horse Saddle Bridle and Saddlebags to fix out Thomas to ride the Circuit with his Master Mr Ingersol. He begins his Journey on the 28th of this Month. This has left me without Money to pay my Board and my Journey home. If the Money you have is not Sufficient ask my Friend the General whose kindness has so often obliged Us to lend you what you want and I will repay him in June.
The House Yesterday passed a Resolution in Committee of the whole, whose Depth is to me unfathomable. The Senate will now be called upon to show their Independence, and perhaps your Friend to shew his Weakness or his Strength.2 The Majority of the House is certainly for Mischief, and there is no doubt they represent the People in the southern States and a large Number in the Northern. Vox Populi Vox Dei, they Say: and so it is sometimes, but it is sometimes the Voice of Mohamet of Cæsar of Cataline the Pope and the Devil. Britain however has done much amiss and deserves all that will fall thereon. Her Insolence which you and I have known and felt more than any other Americans, will lead her to ruin, and Us half Way. We indeed are in point of Insolence her very Image and superscription. As true a Game Cock as she and I warrant you shall become as great a scourge to Mankind.
Our Furniture has had its last removal. Your Distress and Distraction at its landing is very strongly described— Whatever Crashes have happened shall be the last from Removals.
My Countrymen are going into a Career, that I shall not long follow. I dont expect another Election If I should peradventure ride out the storm for the Remainder of my Term.
I long to see you, but I fear it will be late in May if not the beginning of June
I am with ardent Gratitude and Affection / your
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs A”; endorsed: “April 15th / 1794.”
Neither AA’s letter to JA of 5 April nor TBA’s to JQA has been found, but JQA noted the receipt of a letter from TBA in his Diary on 22 April (D/JQA/22, APM Reel 25).
The House of Representatives passed a resolution on 15 April, “That, until the Government of Great Britain shall cause compensation for all losses and damages sustained by the citizens of the United States, from armed vessels, or from any person or persons acting under commission or authority of the British King, contrary to the laws of nations, and in violation of the rights of neutrality; … all commercial intercourse between the citizens of the United States and the subjects of the King of Great Britain … shall be prohibited.” The vote was 53 to 44 (
Annals of Congress,
3d Cong., 1st sess., p. 595–596). The Senate took no action on this resolution as they considered instead the House’s proposed action to extend the general embargo, for which see
JA to AA, 22 April, and note 3, below.
This same day AA wrote a short letter to JA complaining of the unseasonably hot weather and asking that TBA be attentive to Leonard White, the bearer of the letter, during White’s visit to Philadelphia (Adams Papers).
th1794
Your Letter of April 5th an 7th reachd me last Evening, and they fill me with more apprehensions of a War than any thing I have before hear’d. the body of the people are decidedly against War, and if a War is madly or foolishly precipitated upon us, without the union of the people, we shall neither find Men or Money to prosecute it, and the Government will be Cursed and abused for all the concequences which must follow I have many disputes with your Brother upon this Subject, whose passions are up, upon the insults, and abuses offerd us by Britain, and who is for fighting them instantly with out Seeing one difficulty in our way. in order to put a stop to too rash measures, Congress must rise. the people without are willing to wait the result of Negotiation as far as I can learn, and in the mean time we ought to prepare for the worst. Several vessels arrived here last Week from Jamaca, where they were only carried for examination of their Papers—and immediatly dismist.1
I most devoutly pray that we may be preserved from the horrours of War, and the Machinations of Man.
You judg’d right of your Countrymen. the vote for mr Adams, notwithstanding all the Electionering was much more unanimous than I expected. in Quincy they were nearly divided between mr Cushing & him. in Braintree & Randolph they were nearly all for him.— I am glad that we shall have a Govenour Elected by the people—and you will see by a Letter received from me before this time, how nearly we agree in sentiment upon this Subject, and I may adopt the words 145 of mr Blount in a Letter to Pope, “that I have a good opinion of my politics, since they agree with a Man who always thinks so justly”2 I wish it were in our power to persuade all the Nations into a calm and steady disposition of mind, while seeking particularly the quiet of our own Country and wishing for a total end of all the unhappy divisions of Mankind by party-spirit, which at best, is but the Madness of many for the Gain of a few— I shall with pleasure upon this day particularly set Apart by our Rulers, as a day of Humiliation and prayer,3 unite with them in wishing the temporal and eternal welfare of all mankind. how much more affectionatly then shall I do it for You to whom I am bound by the Strongest bonds of duty and / affection ever yours
RC (Adams Papers); endorsed: “Mrs A. Ap. 18 / ansd. 29 1794.”
Two American schooners had recently arrived in Boston from Jamaica, according to the Boston Columbian Centinel, 16 April, “where they had been carried in for legal adjudication, tried and acquitted, as no proofs of their being French property could be found.” The newspaper also reported “that many others, it was expected, would be immediately released” and provided a lengthy list of additional ships still at Jamaica.
Edward Blount to Alexander Pope in The Works of Alexander Pope, 4 vols., London, 1778, 4:97. Blount (d. 1726) was a member of the British Catholic gentry and a friend of Pope’s (Pat Rogers, The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia, Westport, Conn., 2004).
Samuel Adams proclaimed 18 April a “Day of Public Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer” for the state of Massachusetts, as was customary in the spring of each year. He declared it “a day publicly to acknowledge an entire dependence on the Father of all Mercies for every needful blessing, and to express sorrow and repentance for the manifold transgressions of his Holy Laws.” Adams particularly sought prayers for a successful planting season and harvest, prosperous trade, the well-being of the federal government, the “deliverance to our fellow-citizens in cruel captivity in a land of Barbarians,” and the success of the French republic, “founded on the just and equal rights of man.” Other New England states, including Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, held similar days in March and April (Salem Gazette, 11 March; Boston Columbian Centinel, 5 March; Windham [Conn.] Herald, 5 April; Providence, R.I., United States Chronicle, 10 April).