Papers of John Adams, volume 19
th:1788
The public papers anounce your return with your family to your native land, and I cannot refrain my congratulations particularly as to the season in which so favorable a revolution has mervelously taken place without the direful concomitants universally attendant on such Events in profund peace. The experience I have had since I had the honor of seeing you in Europe1 furnishes the most irrefragable proof that our earlier Ideas of Government were very foreign from the truth, as they were grounded (at least mine) upon an unwarrantable opinion of the virtue of mankind. This delusion was
316
created by the coertion of war, which produced assimilating effects, which inclined to a mode of government congenial with the ostensable brotherly love that then abounded, more than to energetic means. The rueful fall of man and his degenerate state too soon glared in full evidence “That man is to man the surest sorest Evil.”2 The contrast so shocking to a benevolent mind must occasion much rejoicing to every honest man, that the new System of government will take place to restrain the vile and encourage the virtuous.
I hope your Country will not forget your services and that she will be benefited by marking a line for you under the new system that will be more productive of usefulness, than all your former labours, and in the line of your professional Character.
I have the promise of Mr. John Lowell Lawyer of a reply to a letter written to him some time ago, you’ll oblige me by interesting yourself in the answer, which, with my Compliments you’ll be pleased to inform him I rely upon.3 I desire to salute Mrs: Adams as well as yourself on this grand annaversary, with most cordial Congratulations, for all the blessing with which the day abounds which are neither few or small I am with affectionate regard / Dear Sir / Yr. obedt. friend and very / humble. servant
RC (Adams Papers).
Gen. Daniel Roberdeau, a Philadelphia merchant, represented Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1779. Between sessions, JA stayed with the Roberdeau family, observing to AA, “We are highly favoured. No other Delegates are so well off.” After the Revolutionary War, Roberdeau relocated to Alexandria, Va. Roberdeau reunited briefly with JA in late 1783, when he visited London to enroll his son, Isaac, in engineering school. He likely saw the news of JA’s 18 June 1788 return in the 3 July edition of The Maryland Gazette (vol. 4:197;
AFC
, 2:350, 352;
ANB
; Roberdeau Buchanan, Genealogy of the Roberdeau Family, Washington, D.C., 1876, p. 89).
Edward Young, The Complaint; or, Night Thoughts, Night III, line 217.
Roberdeau referred to JA’s longtime friend, federal judge John Lowell (1743–1802), of Newburyport, who moved to Boston in 1777. Roberdeau likely met him in Philadelphia during one of Lowell’s visits there, between 1778 and 1782 (vols. 4:246, 18:25;
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates
, 14:655–656).
4 July1788
Be it remembered that the within Contract or Engagement, entered into by the Honorable John Adams Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to their High Mightinesses the Lords the States General of the United Netherlands, in Behalf of the said States, with sundry Money Lenders, for a Loan of one Million of 317 Guilders dutch current Money, dated at Amsterdam the thirteenth Day of March one thousand seven hundred and eighty eight, hath been read in Congress, approved and ratified, and declared obligatory on the United States of America.
Done in the City Hall in the City of New York by the United States in Congress assembled this fourth Day of July in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty eight, and in the thirteenth Year of our Sovereignty and Independence.—
y
Cyrus Griffin
President
Dupl (DLC:U.S. Continental Congress Records).