Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
th:April 1801.
Your letter of the 29th: ulto: is just received. with the papers enclosed, for which I
thank you— The address of the Legislature is friendly— Answer proper— The letter, which is published in the Commercial Gazette, as from the
Washington federalist, I had read with great satisfaction, in manuscript—1 I hope to grasp the hand that wrote it in a few
months— The gentleman will find it more difficult than I did, to recommence at the Bar,
but he must do it, and then perhaps the good people, will, some time or other, chuse
him, a Representative. If he understand his interest, he
will never accept a public employment, that depends on election; so think I—
The plan, which you have adopted, for yourself, I think judicious, and I wish you much delight in the pursuit of it. While you are reading law, there may occur some vacancy, into which you may step from the Office of your patron, but, upon this you cannot calculate. 41 It matters little however, whether there be few, or many lawyers, in the same place; for business will always be done by a few. I am not much in the habit of expressing the anxiety, which perplexes my mind, on the subject of my own professional success, but I cannot help feeling gloomy, at times, under the conviction, that my business will not be sufficient to support me, for two or three years to come— Will this be enough to satisfy me? Do I not wish for something beyond this? Perhaps I do— What then? Why wait two or three year’s more until the best part of your life is spent, and there is a chance that you may gain a livelihood by your profession— Very consolatory upon my word— But of this, somewhat too much—
I send you herewith the farmer’s boy, for which I paid 50/100 on account— The Oration spoken by Beckley is not printed in pamphlet, as I know of.2
We are to pass sentence, this evening, on a new historical play,
written by Charles Ingersoll. It is called “Edwy &
Elgiva,” the story you will remember is to be found in the first vol: of Hume, to which
I refer you to refresh your memory— The cast of characters, you have enclosed, and on
Monday you shall hear the fate of it. Unfortunately the Author could not keep his
secret—3 All the town are long since
informed, who wrote the piece & it now stands upon its deliverance under less
favorable circumstances than if the author had been invisible— I believe it will go down
once—perhaps more—
I return best regards to Boylston— His story tells pretty straight;
just enough so, to make me think, he made it himself. The conditions he imposed, were
quite as rigid, as I should expect from any Quaker, with an only daughter; for if the
same measure of fortune be required to be paid down, by a young lawyer, as he may expect to receive as for a marriage portion, if he marry for money, very few rich Quakers, with
only daughter’s, would ever be connected with young lawyers. Cousin B. & I have laid
a wager, if I remember well, that one of us will be married sooner than the other, &
he who marries first is to lose the bet. I hold him to the bargain, in full expectation
of winning—4
I am, for the present / Your’s
g7
th:April.
The Tragedy was performed, on Saturday Evening, to a very full & respectable house, and received with applause enough to ensure it a repetition, this evening— I think it less faulty & exceptionable, than I expected— Some alterations might be suggested, for the better, and 42 in expressing an opinion of its merits, it is necessary to add, “it is well, for such a youth.” I will say more after a second hearing of it. The audience were so intent upon carrying the piece through, that they bewildered sober criticism, with their clamor.
Your’s
RC (MWA:Adams Family Letters); addressed: “William. S. Shaw / Boston”; internal
address: “W S Shaw”; endorsed: “Ans 17 April” and “T B Adams Esqr / rec 17 April”;
docketed: “1801 / Apl 5.”
Shaw’s letter to TBA of 29 March has not been found.
One of the enclosures was probably the Boston Columbian
Centinel, 28 March, which reported that a committee of the Mass. General Court
accompanied by an “extensive cavalcade” of well-wishers visited JA in
Quincy on 26 March to present him with a 3 March address marking his retirement. The
legislature’s address declared, “The period of the administration of our general
Government, under the auspices of Washington and Adams, will be considered as among the happiest eras of
time.” In his reply of the same day, JA thanked the legislature: “This
final applause of the Legislature so generously given after the close of the last
scene of the last act of my political drama is more prescious than any which preceded
it.— There is no greater felicity remaining to me to hope or to desire, than to pass
the remainder of my days in repose, in an undisturbed participation of the common
privileges of our fellow citizens under your protection.”
Shaw also enclosed the Boston Commercial Gazette, 26
March, which reprinted an extract of JQA’s 25 Nov. 1800 letter to
JA from the Washington Federalist, for
which see
AA to
TBA, 22 March 1801, and note 6, above (Mass., Acts and Laws
,
1800–1801, p. 210–211, 575).
TBA was referring to Robert Bloomfield, The Farmer’s Boy; A Rural Poem, Phila., 1801, Shaw-Shoemaker, No. 206. The second work
was John Beckley’s address on Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration, delivered by the former
clerk of the House of Representatives on 4 March at Philadelphia’s German Reformed
Church. The oration, which spoke of “America, rising with gigantic strength, as
Hercules from his cradle,” was published in broadside as An
Oration, Delivered by John Beckley, Esq., on the 4th of March, 1801, Phila.,
1801, Shaw-Shoemaker, No. 149 (New
York Commercial Advertiser, 27 Jan.; Boston Constitutional Telegraphe, 18 March).
Charles Jared Ingersoll (1782–1862), son of TBA’s
legal mentor Jared Ingersoll, was still a teenager when his play Edwy and Elgiva debuted at Philadephia’s New Theatre on 4
April. The author was called a “rising genius” in the Philadelphia Repository, 11 April, and a review of the play
in Port Folio, 1:126–127 (18 April), reported that
prolonged applause “loudly expressed the good humour and approbation of the house.”
Advertisements identified the author only as “a young gentleman of rank in this city”
until the play was published in May as Charles Jared Ingersoll, Edwy and Elgiva: A Tragedy, Phila., 1801. The story of the
courtship of the tenth-century English king was told in David Hume, History of England from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the
Accession of Henry VII, 2 vols., London, 1762, 1:80–82, a work that was later
incorporated into Hume’s monumental six-volume history of England (William M. Meigs,
The Life of Charles Jared Ingersoll, Phila., 1897, p.
26, 334; Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 30
March, 2 April, 7 May).
For Boylston Adams’ Jan. 1802 marriage, see JQA to TBA, 9 Jan., and note 10, below.
I know not how it has happened that I have not found time to write you Since my return to my long home. The angry North East 43 Wind, which has prevailed with little Interruption has pinched my faculties, I believe. We have been all, pretty well.
This is the Day of our Election of Governor Lt Govr. & senators. The Democrats are very Sanguine and the
others are not So. The former Say that Mr Strong is a good
man, as good as Mr Gerry but that he does not come in at the
right gate.1 The Result may be of Some
importance, but I have not Sufficient Information to form a probable Conjecture. There
is So much malice among a certain Sett in every State, and Such a bitter Zeal to turn
out and run down every Man, who was conspicuous in the
revolution that I should find derive some
consolation in their humiliation, from the Election of Mr
Gerry: though I could not give him my Vote in opposition to Mr Strong.
Your Federalists in Pennsylvania are playing the Same artfull Game,
by Setting up Peter Muhlenburg as their Governor. Cunning Sometimes Succeeds and
Sometimes fails. In the long run it will do no good to either Party. Mr Shaw left Us,
last night and is Settled in Mr Otis’s office as a student
at Law— Write me as often as you can and always rely upon me as your affectionate /
Father
RC (ICN:Herbert R. Strauss Coll.); internal address: “T. B. Adams”; endorsed:
“Mr: Adams / 6 April 1801. / 13th: Recd: / Do Ansd:.” LbC (Adams Papers); APM Reel 118.
“This Day will make our triumph
complete, unless we are found sleeping at our posts,” declared the Boston Independent Chronicle, 6 April, predicting that a
Democratic-Republican win in the race for Massachusetts governor would follow Thomas
Jefferson’s victory as president. Despite a strong urban vote for
Democratic-Republican challenger Elbridge Gerry, however, Federalist governor Caleb
Strong won reelection by a vote of 25,693 to 20,423. For lieutenant governor,
Democratic-Republican William Heath won a plurality of the popular vote, but because
he did not win a majority the selection was sent to the Mass. General Court, which
chose Federalist Samuel Phillips. JA received 28 votes for governor, all
of which came in a unanimous tally of the town meeting of Eden (now Bar Harbor),
Maine. An epigram in the Boston Columbian Centinel, 6
May, made light of the support for JA: “While reptile Faction writhing
grieves, / Still Virtue triumphs over Vice:— / Lo! Quincy’s patriot
sage receives / The suffrages of Paradise!” (A New Nation Votes).