Adams Family Correspondence, volume 13
d1799
I have received your letter of the 16th
& the bundle of papers inclosed with a great deal of pain. The thing has not a good
appearance. Mr. Shieflin had better have addressed his letter & papers to 474 me than to you who are not the Secretary of War.
You are suspected & have been accused of improper speculations in the neighborhood
of Detroit & in connection with characters whose friendship does you no honor. These
Indian pretensions are suspected to have been excited by you and your associates.1
I send you back all the papers. If you will take upon yourself to send them to the Secretary at War, you may, I will not. If you desire the command of Detroit you must sollicit it of the Secretary at War, the commander in chief of the army or Major Gen. Hamilton. I will not interfere with the discipline & order of the army because you are my son in law
I am with usual affection yours.
LbC in William Smith Shaw’s hand (Adams Papers); internal address: “Col Smith.”; APM Reel 119.
In his letter to JA of 16 May (Adams Papers), WSS enclosed a packet
of documents relating to JA’s Dec. 1798 meetings with representatives of
several Native American tribes, for which see William Smith Shaw to AA, 20 Dec., and note 1,
above. WSS claimed that, contrary to what James McHenry told Shaw, the
chiefs left Philadelphia “highly irritated” and no longer bearing a “friendly aspect”
toward the United States. WSS reported that Jonathan Schieffelin
(1762–1837), a land speculator and the agent of Indian affairs at Detroit, was
“apprehensive” about future diplomacy unless he was “authorised to say, that
Commissioners will be appointed, to hear and report fully, to Goverment the subjects
of their uneasiness.” WSS informed JA, “I seriously believe,
that there is an absolute necessity of holding a conference, with them or immediately
reinforcing the frontier posts.” He further noted the possibility of French or Spanish
interference along the Mississippi River “to take the advantage of the present
dissatisfied state of the Indian mind,” which WSS alleged could be
“tranquilized, by pursuing that system of benevolence, and expanded Justice, which is
due from the Civilized to the savage Man” (Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 8 May 1799; Immigrant
Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present,
eds. Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann, www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org).
I received some time ago your favour of 29 January which I did not immediately answer, from an apprehension that a letter from me without one at the same time from my Louisa, or at least without some satisfactory information concerning the state of her health would give you more concern than pleasure—1 She was then unwell, and a few days after, met again with a misfortune which had already twice befallen us.— She has at present recovered, and will write you by this opportunity.
It has given me infinite pain to perceive by several of your
letters to her, that a construction far different from my intention was put 475 upon a letter which I wrote from London to Mr:
Johnson.2 My respect and affection for
you, and for him, have never abated, nor are those sentiments in my heart susceptible of
being diminished by misfortune. I am well aware of the precarious tenure by which all
earthly possessions are held, and have reason to know that prudence, discretion and
integrity are not always sufficient to preserve them. I have likewise been too long a
witness to aspersions of calumny upon those who are dear to me, and tasted too much of
its venom myself not to know that the purest virtue affords no complete shelter against
its malice.— There is for every individual in this world only one testimony which
neither malice nor fortune can disguise or conceal; this testimony is however worth more
than every other that can be produced or imagined; it is the testimony of one’s own
conscience.
This self-approbation, so far as relates to all the important concerns of life, as you will certainly always possess it yourself, so I hope you will always have the comfort of knowing your children and their nearest connections to possess.
It was not untill we received your last letters, that we heard of
Nancy’s marriage; my dear mother had mentioned it before in a letter to me which however
I did not so soon receive.4 I offer my
sincere congratulations to you and to her upon that event, and ardently pray that she
may live to have great grand-children witnesses of her happiness— For Mr: Hellen to whom I beg to be presented with regard, and with
whom I hope to have one day the pleasure of a personal acquaintance I can only wish,
that she may prove as good and affectionate a wife as her sister.
I have likewise great joy in congratulating you upon the restoration of your son’s health, which I hope will henceforth grow stronger and stronger, as a recovery from his complaint during the winter season, gives reasonable cause to expect. I beg to be remembered affectionately to him, as also to all the girls.
I am with great and true respect and affection, Dear Madam, your
very / humble and obedt: Servt:
FC-Pr (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs: Johnson.”;
APM Reel 131.
Not found.
JQA was referring to his 11 Oct. 1797 letter to Joshua Johnson regarding Joshua’s financial affairs, for which see vol. 12:259–260. In a letter of 27 May 1799, JQA offered further explanation to his father-in-law, writing, 476 “It was very far from my design either to wound your feelings by unjust suspicions, or even to express a belief that the complaints” of Joshua’s creditors “were substantially founded” (FC-Pr, APM Reel 131).
Milton, Comus, lines 381–382.
AA to JQA, 15 Nov. 1798, above.