“I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof,” John wrote to Abigail in November 1800, offering a hopeful vision for the new President’s House in Washington, D.C. Abigail soon joined her husband, declaring Washington “a beautiful spot, capable of every improvement.” She found the presidential mansion “upon a grand and superb scale” but uncomfortable to inhabit in its unfinished state. Walls lacked plaster, furniture was sparse, and only one staircase was in place. Abigail made do, fulfilling the demands of her public role despite the condition of the building. The move to the new federal capital was the xx final chapter in John and Abigail’s public careers, and it came at the close of a long, fierce election campaign.3

The election of 1800 pitted John Adams and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney for the Federalists against Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr for the Democratic-Republicans. Political maneuverings leading up to the election had already begun when John and Abigail returned to Philadelphia at the end of 1799. Efforts were underway in several states to influence the selection of presidential electors, most notably in Pennsylvania, New York, and South Carolina. Thomas Boylston told of a bruising battle for electoral control of Pennsylvania—one he played a small role in fomenting on behalf of the Federalists—that ultimately ended in a draw. Burr organized an effective operation for Democratic-Republicans in New York, bringing to bear external forces that contributed to John’s defeat. South Carolina’s choice remained murky throughout 1800, but in the end all of the state’s electoral votes went to Jefferson and Burr. “The probable result of the South Carolina election, seems to be considered here as deciding the great political contest,” Thomas Boylston wrote to John as the president’s fate became clearer.4

Although electioneering by Democratic-Republicans corroded John’s reelection chances, a more serious challenge came from within the fractured ranks of the Federalist Party. The primary instigator was Alexander Hamilton, who supported Pinckney in a direct challenge to John’s reelection bid. Hamilton’s antagonism stemmed from a personal enmity exacerbated by differences between him and John on Franco-American relations and John’s refusal to further Hamilton’s military career. Abigail believed that Hamilton was driven by ambition and an inability to exert influence over the president. “Thus has this intriguer been endeavouring to divide the federal party,” Abigail wrote, “to create Divisions and Heart burnings against the President merely because he knows that he cannot Sway him.” The first public manifestation of the split came in May 1800 with the resignation of Secretary of War James McHenry and John’s dismissal of Secretary of State Timothy Pickering. John, perhaps emboldened by being out of the shadow of the late George Washington, confronted these two cabinet members over their association with the Hamiltonian wing of the Federalist Party. The rift deepened when Hamilton lobbied for Pinckney during a tour of New England. xxi Tensions further escalated with Hamilton’s October publication of a pamphlet in which he attacked John with a ferocity that stunned members of both parties. John’s foreign policy, especially his emphasis on ending the Quasi-War, alienated him from voters and was a catalyst for criticism from within his own administration. In public and private, the family rallied to John’s aid. Abigail denounced Hamiltonian Federalists as “half feds,” lumping them together with the “Swineish Herd” that she believed swayed the election. Thomas Boylston called the political opposition “a detestable & vile gang of ruffians.” John Quincy managed a more measured tone, counseling his father to accept the decision of the people and to take solace in knowing that “in your administration, you were the man, not of any party, but of the whole nation.”5

Ensnared in administrative politics and embattled in the press, John Adams awaited the election results. Presidential electors met on 3 December in their respective states to cast ballots, each elector voting for two candidates. On 11 February 1801, the tally of electoral votes was read by Jefferson in the Capitol and revealed that he and Burr were tied with 73 apiece, while John received 65 and Pinckney 64. The vote signaled the end of the Adams administration and the first transfer of power between political parties in the nation’s history. The Federalist Party also lost control of both houses of Congress, bringing to a close the era of Federalist ascendancy in the United States. The deadlock between Jefferson and Burr was sent to the House of Representatives and required 36 ballots to break, with Jefferson finally elected president on 17 February.6

Family letters provide a portrait of the man who succeeded John Adams in the President’s House. John remained circumspect, but the rest of the family weighed in on Jefferson. “With such Counsellors, with such a starving, needy, unprincipled gang about him, gasping for a sop, what can the patron do but yield to their importunities,” Thomas Boylston wrote, believing Jefferson would be subject to influence. Though Abigail preferred Jefferson to Burr, she predicted that the new administration would lack discipline. “Mr J—— will be too lax, too wild and levelling,” she wrote to Thomas Boylston, enclosing a transcript of a “curious conversation” she had with xxii Jefferson at table early in 1801. Sent to her youngest son to demonstrate that “there are certain persons, who carry every thing they hear, and I dare say many things they make, to the Ear of mr J——n if only what is said by the Party be told,” Abigail’s transcript allows readers to listen in on spontaneous banter between the Adams matriarch and the family’s political rival. There is an air of affection that transcends politics as the two engaged in a verbal joust with warmth and humor. Abigail showed her command of the political landscape, as the two compared notes on attending sessions of Congress and discussed the foibles of various members. Pointed comments about the depth of partisanship in the capital segued to Jefferson’s broaching the subject of the presidential election. Here, Abigail broke off the exchange, claiming the election was “a subject which I do not chuse to converse upon” but ending with a witticism that left Jefferson laughing.7

The end of John’s presidency prompted an assessment of his accomplishments in office. “Popularity is as unjust a tyrant as Despotism,” John lamented to Thomas Boylston. “If my administration cannot be defended by the intrinsic merit of my measures & by my own authority, may it be damned.” Peace with France was foremost on the minds of the letter writers. The Convention of 1800 was the culmination of John’s commitment to a diplomatic solution to Franco-American discord. His first attempt, in 1797, disintegrated into the XYZ Affair. The second attempt, undertaken in 1799, succeeded, resulting in the agreement that formally ended the Quasi-War. The convention changed the Franco-American relationship from an ideological alliance to an economic partnership and freed the United States from entanglement in the ongoing European war, though critics complained that it did not address compensation for American merchants who lost ships to French privateers. Abigail lauded the initiative, believing that it demonstrated that the president refused to draw the nation into the orbit of either France or Britain: “He will not quarrel with either, if they are willing to be Friends.” John Quincy likewise endorsed John’s overtures to France, crediting his father with averting a war that could have destroyed the fledgling American republic.8

John’s commitment to assuring American neutrality extended to xxiii his domestic policy and his support of the Alien and Sedition Acts as a means of limiting foreign influence at home. The acts withstood a repeal attempt in early 1800, imprinting a controversial legacy on his administration and fostering subsequent debates on immigration and free speech. John also drew on his executive powers to transform the federal judiciary for the next generation. A lasting contribution was the 20 January 1801 nomination of John Marshall as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, launching the tenure of the jurist whose decisions shaped the early court and established its role in governance. John’s long-held goal of judicial reform was realized with the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1801, which overhauled the federal courts and created sixteen new judicial posts. John nominated candidates to the new seats during the closing weeks of his administration, prompting critics to later deride them as “midnight appointments.” The president pressed ahead despite his imminent retirement, reflecting a view echoed by William Smith Shaw in a letter to Thomas Boylston: “The judges ought to be immediately appointed, before there is any change in the administration It is absolutely requisite to peace, good order and happiness that our judges be wise decided and impartial men, of incorruptible integrity and whose decisions should be founded in law and equity alone.” Abigail had already left the city when the final selections were made. “I want to see the list of judges,” she wrote to John, revealing much about her immersion in the political process.9

Abigail left Washington, D.C., for Quincy on 13 February, bringing to an end twelve years of service to the nation. Despite the “Ringing Bells & fireing cannon” that heralded a new president as she passed through Philadelphia, a stream of well-wishers came to pay their respects. “Rainy as it was, they began to come and have continued it by throngs ever since,” she reported to John. “I thank them for their attention & politeness, tho I shall never see them again.” The last letter in the volume is a report to Abigail from Shaw in Washington that conveyed the news, “We leave this city very early on Wednesday morning.” The import of that simple statement was anything but routine. John and Abigail were heading home—permanently—their public service at an end and a new era at Peacefield before them.10

Episodes of public and private grief bookend volume 14, with the death of George Washington marking its opening pages and the loss of Charles Adams setting the mood of its close. As the fall of 1799 turned to winter in Philadelphia, news arrived that Washington had died on 14 December after a brief illness, plunging the country into national mourning for the first time. “Death, thou art no Respecter of Persons,” Abigail wrote to Mary Smith Cranch. “A Great Man has fallen, and his End is peace.” The death thrust the Adamses into lead roles in the public grieving of an eminent national figure. John issued orders for military honors and proclaimed 22 February 1800 a national day of remembrance. Abigail’s drawing rooms were crowded with visitors who looked to her for guidance on bereavement etiquette, although she demurred when asked to “fix the Time for wearing mourning” and instead left it to women “to govern themselves by the periods prescribed by the Gentlemen.” In letters to friends and family, the Adamses remembered a personal friend and a national founder. John Quincy called “the death of our truly great and illustrious Washington” an event “of a nature distressing to every American heart.” The nation’s grief was expressed in dozens of addresses delivered across the country. Abigail praised those that spoke of Washington’s humanity and patriotism but criticized tributes that veered into glorification. “The Orator and Eulogists have forgotten that he was a Man!” she declared to Elizabeth Smith Shaw Peabody.11

Public mourning was followed a year later by private grief. The physical decline of Charles Adams and his death on 30 November, the first passing of an adult in the family at the heart of the series, shrouded the Adamses’ letters in sadness. After a conversation with Charles’ wife, Sarah Smith Adams, in October 1799, John reported that his daughter-in-law “opened her Mind” to him. “I grieved, I mourned but could do no more,” John lamented to Abigail. “A Madman possessed of the Devil can alone express or represent.— I renounce him.” Abigail was equally troubled by Charles’ struggle with alcoholism, confiding to William Stephens Smith that she considered Charles “a misirable Man, whom I can no longer consider as My Son.” She visited him for the last time when she passed through xxv New York in the fall of 1800. “I shall carry a Melancholy report to the President,” she wrote to her sister Mary. Tears all but stained Abigail’s letters after Charles’ death. “With what a weight of Sorrow is my bosom opprest,” she wrote to John Quincy. “It becomes me in Silence to mourn; Mourn over him living, I have for a long time, and now he is gone.”12

Charles’ death drew his parents closer to their remaining children. “We have been a scatterd family,” Abigail wrote. “If some of my Children could now be collected round the parent Hive it appears to me, that it would add Much to the happiness of our declining Years.” She took comfort in Nabby’s visits to Quincy and Philadelphia, even as she worried about her daughter’s financial security. Thomas Boylston, the child most physically and intellectually engaged in his parents’ world, drew effusive praise from John: “Every Letter I receive from you increases my Esteem for your Character, for Understanding Discretion and benevolence.” John had long expressed a desire to trade his public role for the agricultural pursuits of his New England ancestors. His pending retirement made that possible, prompting him to sign one letter “The Farmer of Stony Field.” Abigail, too, looked forward to going home to stay. “I shall be happier at Quincy,” she wrote to her youngest son. “Neither my habits, or My Education or inclinations, have led Me to an expensive stile of living; So on that score I have little to mourn over.”13

An ongoing renovation and expansion of Peacefield was largely completed in early 1801, well timed to provide John and Abigail a comfortable homestead for retirement. Abigail remained overseer of the Adams properties in Quincy during the period covered here, with Cotton Tufts and Mary Smith Cranch serving as her deputies. The letters between them illuminate the lives of servants, tradespeople, tenants, and neighbors, providing insight on class and social structure in the early republic. Abigail’s discussion of women’s fashions is of particular interest, including her occasional interpretation of them as a manifestation of evolving social mores. She sent friends and family gifts of clothing, along with model garments specially made to illustrate new styles. “The Ladies caps are an exact coppy of the Baby caps,” an amused Abigail noted about one model item. She told her younger cousin Hannah Carter Smith that she saw herself as a xxvi trendsetter: “I shall bring in the use of silks— at my Age I think I am priviledged to Sit a fashion.” At the same time she was critical of trends set by others, advising Smith to shun the most extravagant styles in clothing and cosmetics, advising that “you have too much good sense to imitate every Change.”14

The “parent Hive” of the founding couple once again centered on Quincy in retirement. Abigail continued to urge John Quincy to return to the United States. With his successful negotiation of the Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1799, accomplishing the primary objective of his diplomatic mission, the eldest Adams son shifted his focus from Berlin. A year with little official business between the end of the negotiations in July 1799 and the exchange of ratifications in June 1800 prompted John Quincy to propose his recall to the United States, an order that was ultimately issued by his father in February 1801. In the meantime the minister to Prussia continued to serve as a shrewd observer of a transformative period in Europe. Many of the subjects in John Quincy’s dispatches to the State Department were also discussed in letters to family members, providing deeper understanding of cultural and political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic.15

The most notable of the events in Europe covered in John Quincy’s letters was the rise of Napoleon. The closing chapter of the French general’s campaign in Egypt was to John Quincy “a new sprig to the laurels of the Corsican ruffian” that consolidated his standing as a military leader, even as the venture failed to achieve its aim of French control of Mediterranean trade. After Napoleon seized power in France in the coup d’etat of 9 November 1799 (An. VIII, 18 brumaire), effectively ending the French Revolution, John Quincy criticized the takeover as a betrayal of revolutionary ideals: “Bonaparte like Caesar, used their principles as the steps of his ladder for ascending to supreme power, and the moment he was mounted kicked the ladder away.”16

John Quincy’s exchange of public and private correspondence also put him in a position to comment on events in the United States. The presidential election and the increasing likelihood of his father’s defeat elicited opinions from him about the schism within the Federalist Party and “that very pimping to the popular passions” practiced by Democratic-Republicans. Despite the partisanship pervading American politics, he favorably compared the wrangling in the United States to the continuing upheaval in France. He also provided perhaps the most tender response from among the Adamses’ children regarding his father’s impending election loss. “I hope and confidently believe, that you will be prepar’d to bear this event with calmness and composure,” he wrote, displaying an equanimity not achieved by other family members. To Thomas Boylston he proffered a belief that their father would accept the will of the voters: “He was prepar’d for it and will bear it as a natural evil, without resentment, and I hope without complaint.”17

Free time in Berlin allowed John Quincy to indulge passions that had lain fallow as his diplomatic career advanced: the study of literature, and travel for pleasure. From the fall of 1799 to the spring of 1800 he translated Christoph Martin Wieland’s epic German poem Oberon, becoming so immersed in the process that he neglected his regular correspondence.18 The project fit his temperament in its exacting and solitary nature, and he was motivated by a desire to improve the language skills required of a diplomat.

After Louisa Catherine suffered a fourth miscarriage, she and John Quincy decided to trade the summer air of Berlin for a tour of Silesia. The trip resulted in a series of letters from John Quincy to Thomas Boylston, a selection of which are grouped together at the middle of the volume with the only extant letter that Louisa Catherine sent to her family during the excursion. The letters provide a portrait of the Adamses at leisure and depict Silesia as a region poised to move from a feudal past into modernity. The journey seemed to also satisfy John Quincy’s desire for a grand tour of sorts before he departed Europe and to give him an opportunity to write a travel narrative, which was a popular genre at the time. The letters reveal a different aspect of John Quincy as a writer. He drew on the language of the sublime and picturesque to describe the natural landscape as he and Louisa Catherine climbed mountains, visited waterfalls, and viewed sunrises. Instead of the analysis of global political xxviii events that usually filled John Quincy’s writings, the Silesia letters contained intricate accounts of regional manufacturing, as well as portraits of artisans, soldiers, and beggars. Thomas Boylston gave the letters to Joseph Dennie Jr. for anonymous publication in Dennie’s new literary magazine, the Port Folio. Although John Quincy worried that personal asides in the Silesia letters might make it into print, he approved of their publication after the fact and seemed gratified that they made a good impression.19

Thomas Boylston not only fostered his brother’s literary career but also embarked on literary endeavors of his own, with forays into political writing as he developed friendships with Dennie and political commentator Charles Willing Hare. Thomas Boylston wrote essays for Philadelphia newspapers under the pseudonyms Plutarch, Mutius Scævola, “A Friend to His Country,” and Fabius. The aim of the writings was to defend his father’s policies from attacks in opposition newspapers, most notably the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, which Thomas Boylston disdained as “the vile Aurora.” A staunch defense of the second mission to France was followed by an endorsement of the Convention of 1800. “Peace with all nations, is the true policy of the United States,” Thomas Boylston declared as “A Friend to His Country.” He was curious about his parents’ assessment of his efforts, casually suggesting they read the essays before revealing that he was the author. Their responses were encouraging if not always effusive.20

As Thomas Boylston refined his political voice, he also settled into a legal career in Philadelphia. Efforts to lease an office conducive to the demands of the profession, tentative attempts to find a legal mentor among the prominent attorneys of the city, and limited success in the courtroom occupied his days. Despite the demands of the presidency, John Adams made extra efforts to counsel his youngest son, offering advice on strategies for breaking into the Philadelphia legal fraternity. In a series of letters written in January 1801, the president responded to Thomas Boylston’s queries about points of law raised in the negotiation of the Convention of 1800, questions that, xxix unbeknownst to him, were background research for his son’s upcoming Fabius series. The dialogue, which continued into John’s retirement, harkens back to a correspondence between John and Charles in 1794, suggesting a father attempting to nurture a relationship with one son after losing another. The letters between John and Thomas Boylston give voice to what makes the unguarded exchanges in the Adams Family Correspondence such a treasure: “Since you are desirous of a Confidence, in the Breast of your Father,” John wrote to Thomas Boylston, “and he is not less anxious to possess one in yours, I will open myself to you.”21

For a complete statement of Adams Papers editorial policy as revised in 2007, see Adams Family Correspondence, 8:xxxv–xliii. Readers may also wish to consult the descriptions of the editorial standards established at the beginning of the project in Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 1:lii–lxii, and Adams Family Correspondence, 1:xli–xlviii. These statements document the original conception of the Adams Papers project, though significant parts of them have now been superseded.

The only major addition to the 2007 policy regards the selection for publication in the Adams Family Correspondence series of John Quincy Adams’ letters from his diplomatic posts to his father. In general, we will include those letters only when they focus substantially on family matters. If their contents revolve largely or entirely around diplomatic and political affairs, they will be reserved for consideration and likely inclusion in the Papers of John Adams or the Papers of John Quincy Adams. John Quincy’s letters to other family members—especially Abigail, to whom he often wrote at the same time as he did to his father—will continue to be published routinely in the Adams Family Correspondence books.

The Massachusetts Historical Society is committed to making Adams family materials available to scholars and the public online. Four digital resources in particular complement the Adams Family xxx Correspondence volumes: The Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive; The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection; the Adams Papers Digital Edition; and the Online Adams Catalog, all of which are available through the Historical Society’s website at www.masshist.org.

The Adams Family Papers Electronic Archive contains manuscript images and text files of all of the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society as well as John Adams’ Diaries and Autobiography. The text is fully searchable and can also be browsed by date.

The Diaries of John Quincy Adams Digital Collection provides digital images of John Quincy Adams’ entire 51-volume Diary, which he composed over nearly seventy years. The manuscript images can be searched by date or browsed by diary volume. Access to the diaries is being expanded through the ongoing John Quincy Adams Diary Digital Project, the goal of which is to provide online verified and searchable transcriptions alongside the digital images of the Diary. The project is supported by the Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund and other private donors.

The Adams Papers Digital Edition, a project cosponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University Press, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, offers searchable text for 46 of the Adams Papers volumes published prior to 2014 (excluding the Portraits volumes). There is a single consolidated index for volumes published through 2006, while the indexes for more recent volumes appear separately. This digital edition is designed as a complement to the letterpress edition by providing greater access to a wealth of Adams material.

The Online Adams Catalog represents a fully searchable electronic database of all known Adams documents, dating primarily from the 1760s to 1889, at the Massachusetts Historical Society and other public and private repositories. The digital conversion—based on the original Adams Papers control file begun in the 1950s and steadily updated since that time—was supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and was initiated with Packard Humanities Institute funds in 2009. The catalog allows public online access to a database of nearly 110,000 records, with some 30,000 cross-reference links to online, printed, and microfilm editions of the items, or to websites of the holding repositories. Each record contains information on a xxxi document’s author, recipient, and date and on the location of the original, if known.

The letters printed here may be supplemented with material from the same time period included in John Quincy Adams’ Diary available online (as described above) and in the letters of John Adams and John Quincy Adams published, respectively, in The Works of John Adams, edited by Charles Francis Adams, 9:37–99, and Writings of John Quincy Adams, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford, 2:438–508. Also of interest may be the Diary and Autobiographical Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams, edited by Judith S. Graham and Beth Luey, 1:124–151. Future volumes of the Papers of John Adams will provide considerably more coverage of John’s public activities during these years.

Letters in volume 14 of the Adams Family Correspondence tell of defeat at the ballot box, mourning in public and private, and the ascendancy of France in Europe. They communicate the resiliency of an American family in the retirement of a first generation and the rising of a second, the restoration of their home in Quincy, an interlude in Silesia, and literary attainment in Philadelphia. In chronicling the setbacks and successes of a leading family of the early republic, the words of the correspondents provide unparalleled insight into a past world, bringing to life in vivid detail a nation in transition.