Diary of John Quincy Adams, volume 2
1787-02-23
About one half the Class are here at present: they have been coming in, quite slowly; and they will be chiefly here, I suppose, before the end of the Quarter. Yesterday afternoon, I met with Mr. Ware, and Bridge, upon the subject of the letter to New Haven; we thought it would be best for each of us to write, and to select from the three. Accordingly I wrote this evening.1 I made tea this evening, and at the same time quitted the club, for a number of substantial reasons.
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JQA's draft letter has not been found. The letter sent to New Haven was dated 8 March and is printed in the Catalogue of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa..., Cambridge, 1912, p. 111–113. The RC at Yale indicates that it went out in Ware's hand and over his signature, as senior officer of the Harvard chapter. Yet, as JQA reports in the next entry, it was he, not Ware, who decided which of three letters was sent to Yale; thus he undoubtedly shaped the reply.
The committee's letter presented the case for granting the charter to Dartmouth. Because the William and Mary chapter was so distant and “by this unavoidable delay a number of worthy characters now at Dartmouth College would be deprived of the benefit resulting from the institution,'' the Harvard chapter deemed it advisable to draw up a charter, provided such a move received Yale's approbation. Yale agreed, and the charter was signed on 21 June at Cambridge. Two months later it received Yale's ratification (Catalogue of the Harvard Chapter, p. 114–115).
1787-02-24
Committee met again at Mr. Ware's chamber; after reading all the letters, I was requested to select from them. White went to Boston, and spoke to Mr. Dingley, who sent back my volumes of Gibbon's roman history.1 Drank tea and passed the evening in Mead's chamber, and retired very early. The weather has grown quite moderate.
The only extant copy of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the Adams' libraries is a broken six-volume set of at least two editions, London, 1727–1788, containing the autograph of JA and bookplates of JQA (
Catalogue of JA's Library
).
1787-02-25
I was absent from meeting all this day. Bridge dined with me, at my chamber. I begun, and read 100 pages in Gibbon's history; with the stile of which I am extremely pleased. The author is not only an historian but a philosopher. The only fault with which I think he may be charged, is, an endeavour sometimes at the point of an epigram, when a serious reflection, would be more proper.
1787-02-26
We recite again in Ferguson. Mr. Pearson gave a lecture this afternoon; it was still upon the article, very dry, and abstract, by no means the most entertaining that I ever attended. From six this morning when I arose till near twelve which was the time when I retired to bed, I have been as busily employ'd as I have any day these two years.