Adams Family Correspondence, volume 12
d1798
I write now because I know how it feels to be disappointed not because I have any thing to communicate of importance. I receiv’d your kind Letter of the 13th of this month1 what related to my dear
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Son has given me great pain tis no more than I have fear’d. but his Father Says if he can get over these difficulties he will be as cunning as the ——— he does not speak wicked words you know. my fear is that they will hang like a milstone about his neck for a long time. tis cruil to involve a young man Struggling to get his living in Such a manner he had money enough passing thro his hands to have Secur’d himself many a time but it was always appropriated & he possessd too much integrety to touch it. I know he Sustains a good character & I trust he deserv’s a better fate than has yet befallen him. perseverence & prudence never yet fail’d of geting a decent living in the world & I believe never will I hope he will not be discourag’d & dispirit’d. if he has his health he will do well eer long. but he must rub hard at present. I am glad you have seen him tho I could not— I wish mr Greenleaf may be Set at liberty & mr morris poor old man I grieve for him & his Family.— they have too many companions in their troubles. every week produces Some instance of Such direful changes
Mr Little one of the Representatives of Boston Shut up last week, & many more must Soon Mr Black says.3 Lucy writes me “mama, don’t be concern’d about us we do not owe a farthing but what we can pay when call’d upon & we feel in good Spirits[”] people are fitter to their circumstances I think that is all I can say. but I can easily believe She is happier than many others whose affairs are all in a State of Suspence. She would run the risk she has & will never complan let her Suffer what she will but I feel the more for her dear Girl for this very reason. I think the Society at Doctor clark church do not give mr Greenleaf what they ought as orginest it is not more than half what Doctor Thatchers people give theirs as it is all mr Greenleaf can do I think tis hard upon him circumstanc’d as he is—4 I wish Mrs Smith was as happy as Lucy Seems to be, & yet when we compair their Situations it Seems as if mrs Smith had many resources to rely upon for future Support that mrs Greenleaf is destitute of— but why am I troubling you with my perplexities & cares. you have enough of your own. you have your private ones & that of our country besides. I feel for the President I feel for you both my dear sister & hope you will have all the Support from the People you can wish if not from their Representatives
I have seen a long address in the Chronicle to mr Sewall against the merchants arming their vessels I wish I knew who writ it. tis Said to be Judge Sullivan— I hardly believe it—5
I hope mrs Cushing will call & see me I am always glad to see her & Shall be double So if she brings me intelegence of the welfair of my Sister
I have Spoken to Stutson about your Strawbarry Beds he says he will attend to it as soon as the frost is out of the Ground. I will see that your garden is in order & seeds got in season
Sucky warner lives yet but grows weaker. She is in a happy State of mind & Suffers but little distress of Body—
The roads are So bad I have not seen mr or Mrs Norton for a month. they have had bad colds I hear Cousen Betsy has spent the day with mrs Black mr Black came here this morning & told me his Wife had sent him out to pick up some Girls he carried nancy Ordian & mrs Blacks Niece who had been upon a visit of a day or two at Capt. Brackits first.6 they will not return to night. we have spent our winter much pleasanter than I expected we should. I hardly thought I should go out of the house except to meeting a Sundays. but I have lived as neighbourly as possb[le] with mrs Black & mrs Bracket & have had ma[ny] rides & in general we have had very good hea[lth] mr Cranch is get much better & his cough is go[ne.]
you are very kind my Sister to endeavour to reconcile me to myself— I have as many good wishes for my Friends & as hearty a desire to do good in the world perhaps as most people—but my ability to manifest it is small
mr whitman will be requested to preach for us the year to come but not to keep the Schoole he would not have been long respected if he had keept the Town Schoole. respected I mean as a minister I wonder he should think of it. it was Capt Beals proposal
I have whiten’d your Stocking & they look as well as english ones Sister Smith is well for her Love as due— / from your ever affectionate Sister
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “Mrs / Abigail Adams / Philadelphia”; endorsed: “Mrs Cranch / 1798 March / 22—” Some loss of text where the seal was removed.
In her 13 March letter to Cranch, AA commented on the financial situations of Robert Morris, John Nicholson, and James Greenleaf, and the toll they were taking on William Cranch. She also mentioned that the “dispatches are but just decypherd” and remarked about JA’s views toward France, “knowing what he thinks ought to be done,
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yet not certain whether the people are sufficiently determined to second the Government, is a situation very painfull” (MWA: Abigail Adams Letters).
Alexander Pope, “The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace,” lines 248–249.
William Little (d. 1803), who had represented Boston in the Mass. General Court since 1795, was a merchant with a store at 46 State Street (Boston New-England Palladium, 9 Dec. 1803; Mass., Acts and Laws
, 1794–1795, p. 460; 1796–1797, p. 204, 490; Massachusetts Mercury, 23 March 1798).
John Greenleaf, who had been blind since youth, served as the organist of the First Church of Boston for more than two decades, from the mid-1780s until at least July 1807. In July 1796 his yearly salary was approved at $100 with an additional $40 granted “on account of the high price of the articles of living.” This amount remained essentially unchanged through 1807. Hans Gram (1754–1804), originally from Copenhagen, was likely the organist at Boston’s Brattle Street Church at this time (vol. 10:402; Arthur B. Ellis, History of the First Church in Boston, 1630–1880, Boston, 1881, p. 337; Richard D. Pierce, ed., “The Records of the First Church in Boston, 1630–1868,” Col. Soc. Mass., Pubns.
, 40:587–588, 615 [1961]; Don Michael Randel, ed., The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, Cambridge, 1996; Boston Columbian Centinel, 23 Oct. 1793, 7 May 1796).
An article printed in the Boston Independent Chronicle, 19–22 March 1798, declared that “expenditures on the Frigates, were extravagant and unnecessary” and argued that an 8 March report to Congress on fortifications by Samuel Sewall “justifies these assertions” because in it Sewall noted that naval armament had been “enormously expensive” and plagued by “unaccountable delays.” The article then blasted Sewall for proposing that an officer superintend the American Navy and predicted that within six months of allowing merchants to arm, “the United States will be at war with France Spain and Holland” and that Federalists “will as universally reprobate Arming, as the republicans do the Treaty.” Mary Smith Cranch later reported to AA that James Sullivan “was undoubtedly the author of the peice I mention’d being in the chronicle” (
Amer. State Papers, Military Affairs
, 1:119; Cranch to AA, 26 March, Adams Papers).
Nancy Odiorne (1772–1814), the daughter of Nathaniel and Mary Grindall Odiorne of Unity, N.H., was a cousin of Quincy resident Elizabeth (Betsey) Odiorne Brackett, the wife of Capt. James Brackett. Moses Black’s niece was likely Rosanna Black Blake (ca. 1772–1848), the wife of Joseph Blake Jr., whom she had married on 6 Jan. 1793 (James Creighton Odiorne, Genealogy of the Odiorne Family, Boston, 1875, p. 62, 63, 92, 98; Sprague, Braintree Families; Catalogue of the Collections of the Bostonian Society in the Old State House, Boston, Boston, 1895, p. 35; Daniel Munro Wilson, Where American Independence Began: Quincy, Its Famous Group of Patriots; Their Deeds, Homes, and Descendants, Boston, 1902, p. 187).
I received yesterday your kind Letter of March 19th.1 I expect a Letter every week if you have nothing else to say, but as Sterns observes, “how the Shadows Lengthen, as the sun declines” and this may be applied to the well as the natural System.2 as we descend the Hill of Life, our gay and vissonary prospect vanish, and what gilded our meridian days, our Zenith of Life, as the Shadows lengthen, we see through a different medium and may justly estimate many of our persuits, as vanity and vexation of spirit.
“But theres a Brighter world on high” which opens to us prospects more permanant, and pleasures more durable.3 to that let us 467 aspire in the sure and certain hope, that by a patient Continuence in the path of Religion and Virtue, we shall assuredly reap, if we faint not, the happy fruits of a glorious immortality
when I took my pen this morning, with the rising Sun, I did not think of moralizing thus, but the visions of the Night had left an impression upon my mind, and those visions were occasiond by reflections upon the Dangerous and Hazardous situation in to which our Country is brought, by that Demoralizing wicked and abandoned Nation, or Government of France. when no Sacrifice on their part was required, when justice and Equity is all we wanted, when two repeated offers of accommodation have been generously offerd to them, they turn a Deaf Ear and refuse to listen eitheir to the voice of Reason, or the call of Honor; but answer only by renewed insults and more audacious plunder. in this situation our Country is calld upon to put themselves in a state of defence, and to take measures to protect themselves by sea. this is calld a declaration of War on the part of the President, by those who would gladly see their Government prostrate, Religion banishd and I do not know if I should judge too hardly if I said our Country, shared by France— That war will not be the concequence of the conduct of France towards us is more than I can say; it certainly leads to it, as the most probable Event, but the President did not make our difficulties, nor has the Government. no Nation has more strictly adhered to nutrality, none sufferd so much—none bourn with more patience the spoiling of their Property.
union is what we Want, but that will not be easily obtaind. it is difficult to make the people see their Danger, untill it is at their doors, or rouse untill their country is invaded. the senate are strong. they are much more united in their measures than the House. there is an attempt in this city to get a petition Signed to congress declaring their determination not to go to War with France—and they hope to sit this measure in opperation through the different states.4 is it possible that any person can suppose this Country wish for War by which nothing is to be obtaind, much to be expended and hazarded, in Preference to Peace? but in self defence we may be involved in War; and for that we ought to be prepared, and that is what the President means. What benifit can War be to him? he has no ambition for military Glory— he cannot add by war, to his Peace comfort or happiness. it must accumulate upon him an additional load of care toil trouble, malice hatred, and I dare say Revenge, but for all this he will not Sacrifice the honor and independance of his
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Country to any Nation, and if in support of that, we are involved in War, we must & we ought to meet it, with firmness with Resolution & with union of sentiment.
I shall sigh for my retirement at Peace Feild, before I shall reach it. if I can leave here in May, I shall be content, but I cannot say positively. the Roads will not be tolerable untill then; I should like to have what I proposed done as soon in the season as it can be with advantage.
The President says you may keep a Cow at the Farm through the season.
I had a Letter from your Son two days after he got home.5 he found little William had been dangerously sick with a fever, but he was on the recovery, and he mournd the loss of a very valuable Friend a mr Deakins who dyed in his absence, a Man possessd of a most Estimable Character in whom he says he had found an other Father. mr & Mrs Law returnd last week. I really think she is a truly worthy Woman
I inclose to you a News paper because it contains a speech of mr Reads upon the foreign intercourse Bill. it contains as much good sense and is more to the point than the three & four hours Harangues of Some others. mr Read very seldom Speaks—6
what have I got so near the End of my paper before I was aware. I have more to say Yet, but Louissa warns me to Breakfast, and I bid you adieu for the Present— affectionatly your
RC (MWA:Abigail Adams Letters).
In her letter of 19 March, Cranch thanked AA for her attentions to her son during his visit to Philadelphia, commented on the number of local bankruptcy claims, and asked whether Congress would consider a bankruptcy act. She also teased AA for her “local prejudices” and speculated that the slave trade was the reason for southerners’ poor manners (Adams Papers).
Laurence Sterne, “The Levite and His Concubine,” The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, 4 vols., London, 1766, 3:35.
Isaac Watts, The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, Psalm XXIV, line 5.
On 20 March a motion was introduced in the Penn. house of representatives declaring “their disapprobation of seeking redress by arms” and that its members were “against war in any shape … especially against a people with whom their hearts and hands have been so lately united in friendship.” The motion failed 37 to 33. However, on 3 April Albert Gallatin presented an unofficial memorial to the House of Representatives signed by forty Pennsylvania legislators calling on Congress “to avert the horrors of the war which threatens” and “not merely to deprecate a public annunciation of hostilities, but firmly to discountenance every measure which tends to inflame the spirit of animosity, and to dissolve the bond of amity with that Republic” (Journal of the First Session of the Eighth House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which Commenced at Philadelphia, on Tuesday, the Fifth Day of December, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-Seven, Phila., 1797, p. 306–307, Evans, No. 34326;
Annals of Congress
, 5th Cong., 2d sess., p. 1373–1374).
William Cranch to AA, 12 March, above.
The enclosure has not been found, although the Philadelphia American Daily Advertiser, 27 March, printed John Reed’s 5 March speech in the House of Representatives. Reed argued that John Nicholas’ proposed amendment to the foreign intercourse bill was based on “a fear, or apprehension of abuse in future” by the president, “which in my estimation, is very far from being a reason, sufficient to justify the measure in contemplation.” Reed stated that the amendment was “not only unnecessary, but improper, and accordingly contrary to the intention and spirit of the Constitution. We find no violation of constitutional trust, in the executive— no flagrant abuse of power is pretended—no instance of improper conduct, which can, in the least degree justify the measure in contemplation.”