Adams Family Correspondence, volume 13
th1798 [
1799] Sunday Eve.
I have seldom known it to be colder at the Eastward than it is here at present. Although I have a very large fire & my desk almost into it, still my fingers ache & the ink scarcely runs from the pen.
I sent you a few days since Logans address, attempting, like his brother traitors, to vindicate his conduct.1 Thus did Arnold, Munroe & Randolph and thus do all traitors,
Logans says in his address that he offered not only to answer any question
3 Mr Pickering should ask him but to give up all his papers. This is a lye Mr Pickering
told me himself that he made no such offer.
The president received your favor of Dec 21st yesterday morning.4 I was
sorry to perceive that you were not in good spirits, I always know & judge of your
health by the style of your letters.
Brisler wrote yesterday to Mr Black informing him of his brothers death. The president has ordered him to be buried with decency at his expence. If Mr B wishes any thing done, I will do it with pleasure. I most cordially sympathise with Mr Black, not so much for his brothers death as for his past life.
I spent last Eve very agreeably at the Secy at War’s. I admire Mrs Mc. Henry. She is I believe very sensible, & has
a very pretty neice. 346 Mr & Mrs Otis are very friendly to me. I
hardly know what I should have done without them. I like Mr. O much better than I
expected. He has shown every possible attention to me. I find Mr. Briler to be one of
the vainest men in the world, but of all men I ever knew has the most reason to be
vain. His geese are all swans. He scolds & says that he rather prepare a dinner
for five hundred genn. & ladies than for 26 gentlemen
alone.
Mr B——t was here the other Eve—gave Mrs B’s compliments to the
president & told him that the first pleasant Eve. she intended comeing to see him.
The prest. gave his compliments in return & told him
to tell Mrs B. not come without her husband.
I have sent out Cards for a very large party the foreign ministers & their ladies &c to dine here thursday. O how happy should I be if Aunt was here to receive them.
Your affectionate
mS S
I have sent you three or four letters which you have never mentioned receiveing I dont know what can have become of them.
RC (Adams Papers); endorsed: “W S Shaw Janry / 6 /
1799.”
On 2 Jan. Dr. George Logan penned a defense of his actions in
France, asserting that he went on his own volition, did not represent himself as
acting in any official capacity, and did not meet with any French official in an
official capacity. He argued that his only purpose was to express the views of his
country in the hopes of aiding reconciliation between the two nations, but he also
implied that his conversations with French director Philippe Antoine Merlin
facilitated the lifting of the French embargo (Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 3 Jan.).
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act I,
scene iii, lines 54–56.
Shaw wrote the word “true” under the word “answer.”
In her letter to JA of 21 Dec. 1798, AA updated
JA on the health of the family and commented on the continued acrimony
in Congress. She also enclosed the Boston Russell’s
Gazette, 20 Dec., which contained “a foolish Elogium” on Robert Goodloe Harper
(Adams Papers).
1799]
We have the Pleasure of your Letters to the 3d.1 I think it is not worth while
to bid for Mrs Veseys four Acres. The Price will be twice or
thrice the Worth and I have no desire to enlarge my Borders by purchasing Such scraps.
Indeed I have land enough and too much, unless I could attend to its cultivation.— In
that Situation Land is an Object of Envy. And I am willing that some Tradesman should
have it, who may build an house upon it.— If Mrs Veseys
Place was to be sold all together, I would give a good Price for it: but not such a
Price Pr Acre. But to buy it in scraps is what I dont incline to do. 347 My Intention is to lay out something in manuring what I have: but I am not anxious
for more. Besides We have an expensive Project of building before Us in the Spring and I
dont choose to Streighten my self.
To Day We have a large Company of foreign & Domestic Ministers
&c &c &c to the No. of 35. What We shall do with
them all, and they all have accepted I know not.
Judge Cushing dined with me yesterday. Mrs Cushing as well— They have had a Campain in Virginia and have returned in
good health. I have not seen the Judge look better.
The Judge had a Visit in Delaware from Mr John Dickinson, the old Farmer of Pennsylvania.2
We must wait with Patience for the ship Alexander Hamilton Capt. Clark to arrive at New York, with her Passenger.
But an important Question arrises. Ought he to visit Father or Mother first?— I believe he must come here before he goes to Quincy.— But I shall leave it to him, to decide.
Cracky Logan has answered his own End by obtaining an Election. But
Talleyrand Seems ashamed of him. In the Dict. Historique, Article Bayle is a Case in
Point. Mr Halwein Burgomaster of Dort, without the Knowledge
of the State entered into a kind of Negotiation with Amelot, Ambassador of France in
Switzerland, to make Peace. He was arrested for this Misdemeanor and condemned to
Imprisonment for Life and the Confiscation of all his Estate. And Bayle the Pyrrhonian
Dictionary Man was expelled from his Professors Chair at Rotterdam & deprived of his
Pension because he was Suspected of perswading many Persons to fall in with the Views of
the Pseudo Peacemaking Burgomaster.3 In
our Day John De Neuville and Mr Pensionary Vanberckell, were
terribly threatned, for a similar Folly with William Lee. And nothing but the War with
England probably Saved them.4
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs A”; endorsed: “J A Janry 10th / 1799.”
JA was referring to AA to William Smith Shaw, 3 Jan., above.
For John Dickinson, whom JA famously called a
“piddling Genius,” see JA, D&A
, 2:173–175, and JA, Papers
, 3:89–90, 92–93. While Dickinson had been out of public
office since 1793, he continued to write on public affairs, recently defending the
Democratic-Republican position on Franco-American relations (
ANB
).
In the 1690s Simon van Halewijn (1654–1733), the burgomaster of
Dordrecht, Netherlands, went to Switzerland to engage in secret negotiations with the
French ambassador there, Michel Amelot, Marquis de Gournay (1655–1724), to end the
Franco-Dutch war. Halewijn made the trip without the knowledge of William III, who was
both the king of England and Dutch stadholder. As JA noted, Pierre Bayle
(1647–1706), who was a professor in Rotterdam, was accused of supporting Halewijn’s
efforts, and William III 348 imprisoned
Halewijn and ordered Bayle’s removal. JA referenced this story from the
entry on Bayle in Louis Mayeul Chaudon’s Nouveau dictionnaire
historique, 4th edn., 6 vols., Caen, 1779, a copy of which is in his library at
MB. Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique, 2 vols., Rotterdam, 1697, is at MQA (Biografisch Portaal van Nederland; Linda Frey and
Marsha Frey, eds., The Treaties of the War of the Spanish
Succession: An Historical and Critical Dictionary, Westport, Conn., 1995;
Catalogue of
JA’s Library
; Catalog of
the Stone Library).
JA was referring to the unauthorized negotiation of
the draft Lee-Neufville treaty in 1778, for which see JA, Papers
, 7:5–6.