RC (Adams Papers).

The enclosed address has not been found but was likely a response to the 1 April attack on James Warren by “Veritas” in the Massachusetts Centinel. The anonymous writer, likely a supporter of Warren’s longtime adversary John Hancock, criticized his inconstant service record and queried Warren’s appropriation of public funds. “Veritas” concluded that Warren’s fleet of propagandists accomplished much of his electioneering in the press, with the result that Warren remained “in the shades, where your avarice and ill-nature placed you.” The reply, either by Warren or one of his supporters, appeared in the Boston American Herald on 3 April. There “A Lover of Truth” refuted the “gross falsities” of financial misconduct and explained to the “dirty scribbler” that only ill health had prevented Warren, a “faithful servant” operating among “old patriots,” from fulfilling his elected posts.

AA’s interpretation of James Warren’s “thwarted” political career—in view of his three refusals to serve when elected, successively, to each of Massachusetts’ three branches of government—differed from that of Mercy. To her sister Mary Smith Cranch, AA observed on 25 May that the Warrens must not complain if disappointed voters withdrew their support. “Had Genll W——n been appointed commissioner at the Court of France, instead of mr A——s would she, think you, have consented that he should have hazarded the Dangers of the sea in the midst of winter, and all the horrors of British Men of war to have served his Country, leaving her with a Young family, without even the means of giving them an Education, had any misfortune befallen him, at the same time relinquishing a profittable profession. If I may judge by what has taken place, I think she would not. … I have ever considerd him as a Gentleman of a good Heart, estimateing himself however higher than the World are willing to allow, and his good Lady has as much family pride as the first dutchess in England” ( AFC , 7:199).

Capt. John Callahan sailed from Boston on 16 April and reached London on 23 May. He carried letters to AA from Mary Smith Cranch of 22 March and Richard Cranch and Cotton Tufts of 13 April ( AFC , 7:103–113, 138–140, 142–144, 197; Boston American Herald, 17 April; Massachusetts Centinel, 12 July). For the letters to JA carried by Rev. William Gordon, a passenger on the Neptune, see Charles Storer’s 7 April letter, and note 1, above, and JA’s 26 May letter to Storer, and note 1, below.

AA2 last wrote to Mercy Warren on 5 Sept. 1784, and AA’s most recent letter was of 10 May 1785 ( AFC , 5:453–454; 6:138–141).

Traveling home to Milton after a brief reunion with brother Winslow at Lisbon, Charles Warren died of tuberculosis in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, near Cádiz, Spain, on 30 Nov. 1785 ( AFC , 7:111; A Study in Dissent: The Warren-Gerry Correspondence, 1776–1792, ed. C. Harvey Gardiner, Carbondale, Ill., 1968, p. 196, 199). An obituary appeared in the 23 March 1786 Boston Independent Chronicle.

Not found.

RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “His Excellency J. Adams Esqr.”

Samuel Williams, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural and Experimental Philosophy, was on the panel that examined and admitted JQA to Harvard College on 15 March, with junior standing ( AFC , 7:33; JQA, Diary , 2:1). Presumably, Williams enclosed meteorological observations for the Palatine Academy of Science, founded in Mannheim, Germany, in 1763. Members of the Palatine Academy led the first international observing network (Roger Daley, Atmospheric Data Analysis, Cambridge, 1991, p. 9; Christian Bode, Werner Becker, and Rainer Klofat, eds., Universities in Germany, Munich, Germany, 1995, p. 185).

JQA joined CA, who began his studies at Harvard in Aug. 1785. TBA followed his brothers to Cambridge in Aug. 1786. In a [3 June] letter to JQA, JA reported that “Dr Williams writes me, handsomely of You” ( AFC , 7:212).

In London, where Rev. William Gordon and his wife, Elizabeth Field Gordon, ventured in April, the author met with better success, at least insofar as publication was concerned. Gordon’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America finally appeared there in 1788, and although it earned him only £300, the work remained a basic text on the Revolution for the next century. The first American edition was published in New York City in 1789. After brief stints preaching in St. Neots in Huntingdonshire and Ipswich, England, Gordon died in poverty in 1807; his wife, Elizabeth, died nine years later ( DNB ).