Adams Family Correspondence, volume 12
When I have written to your Brother I feel as if I had exhausted
all the subjects which it is proper for me to write upon, but as your Hand writing
allways gives me pleasure tho I see it only upon the superscription of a Letter, or in a
few Promissory lines in the cover, I judge you will allways be gratified with a few
words from me tho they contain no more than a Bullitin of our Health and that of your
Friends. I find in this city many of your old acquaintance who profess Friendship for
you, and speak of you with affection. there are several of your
sisters yet unmarried, the Miss Brecks miss Westcot & miss Wilson— Miss Breck
I have been told is engaged, and has 453 been so for a long
time to a French Gentleman. miss Lucy to your old Friend Wycoff. Miss Betsy stael is
lately married, and I am told by mrs Judge Cushing who lodges there, when she is in this
city, that she is well married.1 dr Rush
also frequently inquires after you. he is lately appointed treasurer, of the Mint.2 your master Ingersol goes on getting Money
in his Profession.
It is a long time since I received a Letter from you. so many new scenes must open before you that I should receive much entertainment if a free communication was proper. there will be many things which I should like to hear and know, which will have no connection politicks and of which you are very able to detail. The customs and Manners of the people, the fashions of the Ladies all of which you can draw, in an agreable point of view
I can tell you a peice of News— Mrs Law formerly Miss custos, has been to make a visit here this Winter. she says that Nelly is unmarried, and that she thinks few young men of the present day are Worth having She Said that, She should have been very happy to have had her marry one of my sons— now as two of them are married, who could she mean? I have had Some hints as tho your Heart was some where near the city of Washington. as yet it is not fixed at Mount Vernon
You are a freeman. fix where you like. I shall never controul you. all I require is the means of supporting a Family before a young Man engages in so important a transaction.
write to Hamburgh & commit your Letters to the care of mr Pitcarn. if these French men, who have never recoverd the stroke of the Hammer, will but come to reason, and grow quiet and calm, we shall be a very happy people, but I know not when they will cease to torment and afflict. I am my dear Thomas / most affectionatly / Your Mother
RC (MQHi); addressed by Louisa Catharine Smith: “Thomas B. Adams Esqr: / Berlin”; endorsed: “Mrs: A
Adams / 18 March 1798 / 17 May Recd: / 16 June acknd”; notation by ECA: “To my / Father / from his
/ Mother / one hundred / & 2 years / old.”
Hannah Breck, for whom see vol. 9:237, did not marry until 1809;
her sister Lucy (b. 1777) died of yellow fever in Sept. 1798 at the same time as her
friend Elizabeth Wescott. Mary (Polly) Wilson (1772–1832) was the daughter of Judge
James Wilson and his first wife, Rachel Bird. Henry Wikoff (1770–1826) was the son of
Philadelphia merchant Peter Wikoff; when TBA returned to Philadelphia in
1799, the two resumed their friendship. Elizabeth Stall (1779–1821) was the daughter
of John Stall, in whose boardinghouse TBA had stayed in 1793; she married
William Lytle of Kentucky on 28 Feb. 1798 (vol. 9:436, 10:346; Samuel Breck, Genealogy of the Breck Family
Descended from Edward
454
of Dorchester and His Brothers in America, Omaha, Neb.,
1889, p. 41; Philadelphia Gazette of the United States,
12 Sept.; Charles Page Smith, James Wilson: Founding Father,
1742–1798, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1956, p. 42, 49; C. S. Williams, Descendants of John Cox, N.Y., 1909, p. 44–46;
TBA, Diary, 1798–1799, 2 May, 9
June 1799; For Honor, Glory, and Union: The Mexican and Civil
War Letters of Brig. Gen. William Haines Lytle, ed. Ruth C. Carter, Lexington,
Ky., 1999, p. 4, plates following 114; Byron Williams, History
of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, 2 vols., Milford, Ohio, 1913, 1:300;
Penna.
Archives
, 2d ser., 9:580 [1880]).
JA nominated Benjamin Rush to be the treasurer of
the U.S. Mint on 24 Nov. 1797, and the Senate confirmed the appointment three days
later. His duties amounted to little more than bookkeeping, but the appointment kept
Rush’s finances afloat after the backlash against his use of bloodletting to treat
yellow fever harmed his medical practice. Rush retained the position until his death
in 1813 (U.S. Senate, Exec. Jour.
, 5th Cong., 2d sess., p. 251; Rush, Letters
, 2:797, 1209–1212;
ANB
).
I write you a few Lines this mor’g just to inclose to you the News
paper of yesterday which contains an important Message from the President;1 it is a very painfull thing to him that he
cannot communicate to the publick dispatches in which they are so much interested, but
we have not any assurance that the Envoys have left Paris and who can say that in this
critical state of things their dispatches ought to be publick? our foreign ministers can
never be safe, or they will cease to be useful to us abroad, if their communications are
all to be communicated. this was not the case during our revolution. under the old
Congress, dispatches were never made publick. I expect the President will be represented
as declaring War, by taking off the restriction which prevented Merchantment from
Arming. it was always doubtfull in his mind, whether he had a Right to prevent them, but
the former President had issued such a prohibition, and he thought it best at that time
to continue it. you see by the papers that Bache has begun his old bilingsgate again,
because mr J Q Adams is directed to renew the treaty with sweeden which is now just
expiring, and for which not a single sixpence will be allowd him as the King of sweeden
will empower his Minister at Berlin to renew it there.2 Dr Franklin made the treaty in Paris with the
sweedish minister, and the President made the Treaty with Prussia in Holland.3 yet this lying wretch of Baches asserts that no
treaties were ever made without going to the courts to negotiate them, unless the power
where they were made, were concernd in them, and says it is all a job in order to give
mr Adams a new outfit & additional sallery at every Court. but there is no end to
their audaciousness, and you will see that French emissaries are in every corner of 455 the union sowing and spreading their Sedition. we
have renewed information that their system is, to
calumniate the President, his family his administration untill they oblige him to
resign, and then they will Reign triumphant, headed by the Man
of the People.
4 it behoves every
Pen and press to counteract them, but our Countrymen in general are not awake to their
danger— we are come now to a crissis too important to be languid, too Dangerous to
slumber— unless we are determind to submit to the fraternal embrace, which is sure and
certain destruction as the Poisoned shirt of Danarius—5 adieu my dear sister. I intended only a line but
I have run to a great length. we have had snow and rain for three days. what has been
your Weather?
Love and a kind remembrance to all Friends / from your ever affectionate / Sister
RC (MWA:Abigail Adams Letters); addressed: “Mrs Mary Cranch / Quincy.”
The enclosure has not been found but was likely the Philadelphia
Gazette of the United States, 19 March, which printed
that day’s message from JA to Congress, in which JA
explained that after examining the dispatches from the commissioners to France he saw
“no ground of expectation, that the objects of their mission, can be accomplished, on
terms compatible, with the safety, honor, or the essential interests of the nation.”
He urged Congress to provide for the nation’s defense by replenishing arsenals and
establishing foundries, and he informed them that he was removing the restriction on
merchant vessels’ arming themselves before sailing.
Baron Carl Gustav Shultz von Ascheraden served as the Swedish
minister to Prusia until his death on 22 March; he was succeeded by Baron Lars von
Engeström, whom JQA described as being pro-French and unlikely to
negotiate. It was not until 1816 that a new Swedish-American treaty was signed (LCA, D&A
, 1:73, 91; TBA, Journal, 1798
, p. 13;
D/JQA/24, 3 May 1798, APM Reel 27; Miller, Treaties
, 2:601–616).
The Swedish-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed by
Benjamin Franklin and Count Gustav Philip Creutz at Paris on 3 April 1783. The
Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce was negotiated between 10 Nov. 1784 and
14 March 1785 by Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Thulemeier, based at The Hague, and the
American commissioners—Benjamin Franklin, JA, and Thomas Jefferson—based
in Paris (JA, Papers
, 14:12,
16:373–420).
The Philadelphia Aurora General
Advertiser, 20 March 1798, attacked JA’s 19 March message to
Congress as making war even though the legislature had not declared war on France. One
article called on “the PEOPLE to step forward and
by an expression of their sentiments secure the preponderance of those counsels on
which the Peace, Union, and Prosperity of this country depend.” On 21 March the Aurora further called on JA “to do a most acceptable service to
his country, by retiring from the cares of public life, and giving up the helm … to a
more fortunate pilot.”
AA might also have been quietly alluding to
information gleaned from the recently deciphered dispatches, in which the
commissioners reported a threat made by one French agent: “You ought to know that the
diplomatic skill of France, and the means she possesses in your country, are
sufficient to enable her, with the French party in America, to throw the blame which
will attend the rupture of the negotiations on the federalists, as you term
yourselves, but on the British party, as France terms you; and you may assure
yourselves this will be done” (
Amer. State Papers, Foreign Relations
, 2:164).
Written above this word, in Richard Cranch’s hand, is “Deianira.” For the Greek myth of Deianira and Hercules, see Mary Smith Cranch to AA, 1 April, and note 1, below.