Papers of John Adams, volume 1
1755-09-02
I promised to write you an account of the scituation of my mind. The natural strength of my facultys is quite insufficient for the task. Attend therefore to the invocation. Oh! thou goddess, Muse, or Whatever is thy name who inspired immortal Miltons pen with a confusion ten thousand times confounded, when describing Satan's Voyage thro' Chaos, help me in the same cragged strains, to sing things unattempted yet in prose or Rhime. When the nimble Hours have tack'led Apollo's Coursers, and the gay Deity mounts the eastern sky, the gloomy Paedagogue arises, frowning and lowring, like a black Cloud begrimm'd with uncommon wrath to blast a devoted Land. When the destin'd time arrives, he enters upon action and as a haughty Monarch, ascends his Throne, The Paedagogue mounts his awful great Chair and dispenses right and Justice thro' his whole empire. His obsequious subjects execute the imperial Mandates with chearfullness, and think it their high happiness to be employ'd in the service of the Emperor. Sometimes Paper, sometimes his penknife, now Birch, now Arithmetick, now a ferril, then A.B.C., then scolding, then flattering, then thwacking, calls for the Paedagogues attention. At length, his spirits all exhausted, down comes Paedagogue from his Throne and walks out in awful solemnity, thro' a cringing multitude. In the afternoon he passes thro' the same dreadful scenes, smokes his Pipe and goes to bed.
Exit Muse.
The scituation of the Town is quite pleasant, and the inhabitants (as far as I have had opportunity to know their Character) are a sociable, generous and hospitable people. But the school is indeed a school of affliction, a large number of little runtlings, just capable of lisping A.B.C. and troubling the Master. But Dr. Savil tells me for my comfort, “by Cultivating and pruning these tender Plants in the garden of Worcester, I shall make some of them, Plants of Renown and Cedars of Lebanon.” However this be, I am certain that keeping this school any length of Time would make a base weed and ignoble shrub of me.
Pray write me, the first time you are at Leisure. A Letter from you sir would ballance the inquietude of schoolkeeping. Dr. Savil will packet it with his and convey it to me. When you see Friend Quincy,2 Conjure him by all the Muses to write me a Letter. Tell 4him that all the Conversation, I have had since I left Braintree, is dry disputes upon Politicks, and rural obscene witt. That therefore a Letter wrote with that Elegance of style, and delicacy of Humour, which Characterize all his performances, would come recommended with the additional Charms of Rarity and contribute more than any thing (except one from you) towards making a happy Being of me once more.—To tell you a secret, I dont know how to conclude neatly without invoking assistance but as truth has an higher place in your esteem than any ingenious conceit, I shall please you, as well as my self, most by subscribing myself your affectionate Friend,
On the provenance of RC, see JQA's Diary, 30 Aug. 1829, when JQA, retired from the presidency, was at Quincy putting together materials for his (never-completed) memoir of JA: “I spent the Evening at Mr. Daniel Greenleaf's. . . . Mr. Greenleaf gave me three Original Letters from my father, written to my Uncle Cranch; the first dated 2. September 1755—The earliest of my fathers writing that I have yet found—the two others in 1756.... Mr. Greenleaf came in possession... as Administrator upon the Estate of my uncle Cranch.”
Adams Family Correspondence
(Series II of
The Adams Papers
).
Diary and Autobiography
and
Legal Papers
(sketch at 1:cvii–cviii) and in
Adams Family Correspondence
; see also Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates
, 13:478–488.
1755-10-12
1807-04-22
All that part of Creation that lies within our observation is liable to Change. Even mighty States and kingdoms, are not exempted. If we look into History we shall find some nations rising from contemp-5tible beginnings, and spreading their influence, 'till the whole Globe is subjected to their sway. When they have reach'd the summit of Grandeur, some minute and unsuspected Cause commonly effects their Ruin, and the Empire of the world is transferr'd to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant Village, inhabited only by a few abandoned Ruffins, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous Height, and excell'd in Arts and Arms all the Nations that praeceeded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think would have establish'd it in supream dominion) by removing all danger, suffer'd it to sink into debauchery, and made it att length an easy prey to Barbarians.—England Immediately, upon this began to increase (the particular, and minute causes of which I am not Historian enough to trace) in Power and magnificence, and is now the greatest Nation upon the globe.—Soon after the Reformation a few people came over into this new world for Concience sake. Perhaps this (apparently) trivial incident, may transfer the great seat of Empire into America. It looks likely to me. For if we can remove the turbulent Gallicks, our People according to the exactest Computations, will in another Century, become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the Case, since we have (I may say) all the naval Stores of the Nation in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas, and then the united force of all Europe, will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves, is to disunite Us. Divide et impera. Keep us in distinct Colonies, and then, some great men, in each Colony, desiring the Monarchy of the Whole, they will destroy each others influence and keep the Country in Equilibrio.1
Be not surprised that I am turn'd Politician. This whole town is immers'd in Politicks. The interests of Nations, and all the dira of War, make the subject of every Conversation. I set and hear, and after having been led thro' a maze of sage observations, I some times retire, and by laying things together, form some reflections pleasing to myself. The produce of one of these reveries, You have read above. Different employment and different objects may have drawn your thoughts other ways. I shall think myself happy if in your turn, you communicate your Lucubrations to me. I wrote you, some time since, and have waited, with impatience, for an answer, but have been disappointed. I hope that Lady at Barnstable, has not made you forget your Friends. Friendship, I take it, is one of the distinguishing Glorys of man. And the Creature that is insensible of its Charms, tho he may wear the shape, of Man, is unworthy of the Character. In 6this, perhaps, we bear a nearer resemblance of unbodied intelligences than any thing else. From this I expect to receive the Cheif happiness of my future life, and am sorry that fortune has thrown me at such a distance from those of my Friends who have the highest place in my affections. But thus it is; and I must submit. But I hope e'er long to return and live in that happy familiarity, that has from earliest infancy subsisted between yourself, and affectionate Friend,
Quincy
Old Family Letters
, p. 133–138, 5–8). He also made the text available to the editors of the Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, where it was printed at 4:256–257 (May 1807), with a brief editorial headnote that remarks, among other things, that “Some of the sentiments, which it contains, were prophetick, and are gradually fulfilling.” Thereafter it was quoted and 7published elsewhere from time to time and was widely known by the time JQA drafted his fragmentary biography of JA in 1829; see note 2.
The characteristic reflections in this early, but later celebrated, letter had at least two identifiable sources. One was the course of the current French and Indian War, in which the British had recently suffered serious reverses, notably in Braddock's defeat near Fort Duquesne and in other actions on and around the lakes above the Hudson. Thus, JA mentions just below, the “dira The Spur of Fame. . . , San Marino, Calif., 1966, p. 81, note) that JA had been reading Benjamin Franklin's remarkable essay “Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c.” (written 1751, published 1755; Franklin, Papers
, 4:225–234). Here Franklin predicted that America would rapidly overtake England in population. The prospect of America's succeeding England as the seat of empire, or becoming itself a powerful independent empire, was a natural inference for JA to draw.
When, in preparing his memoir of his father, JQA came upon this letter to Webb, he was so struck by it that he not only quoted the text in full but added two full pages of laudatory commentary; see JA, Works
, 1:23–26. In his Diary, JQA was equally laudatory but briefer, and concentrated on one aspect of the letter—the closing passage on friendship—which he felt had been overlooked by others but was the best of all the good things in it. It is “A Letter,” he wrote, “in the Analysis of which I find so much matter for commentary that a sober judgment must be called in to curb enthusiastic admiration. I propose to give the Letter entire, for it is the foot of Hercules. Nothing that my father ever wrote in the subsequent course of his life, bears in more indelible characters the stamp of his genius and of his heart. Webster and Wirt have both spoken of this Letter, with high commendation, but neither of them has noticed the part of it which is most deeply affecting to me—its encomium, tender and sublime, upon friendship. If I should say that the annals of epistolary correspondence cannot furnish a Letter more replete at once with intellect and heart, I should commit no excess.” (Entry of 15 Sept. 1829.)
Deacon John Adams' sister Harvard Graduates
, 7:617–619; see also index to JA, Diary and Autobiography
).