A website from the Massachusetts Historical Society; founded 1791.

Diary of Charles Francis Adams, 1861

Saturday 13th

13 April 1861

Monday 15th

15 April 1861
14 April 1861
116
Sunday 14th
Boston
CFA

1861-04-14

AM

Spring like day. The verdure is just beginning to show itself, It is not so fresh as it was at Washington a week before we left on the 13th of last month. Indeed the grass at that place never dies out through the winter as ours does. Its relative decline is more in the summer, when the sun burns it up. I attended Divine service. Mr Ellis preached in the morning, with an incidental reference to the death of Mr Buckingham, who has outlived his generation and enjoyed a species of regard which is the consequence of the decline of the passions that stimulate enmity in active life. As a writer in a newspaper no man was more bitter in his day. He pursued my father for twenty years with a malignity exceeding even that of the rest of his kind. But after a time he took a fit of repentance and made advances of a peculiar character which were so unassumingly met as to elicit a promise, which was faithfully kept, never to excite another unkind word of him. Thus it happened that he went about making peace with his objects of dislike, and for eight to ten years he has been in profound retirement, so that he is now buried with roses. In the afternoon Mr Bartol preached one of his musical, imaginative discourses which I listen to with pleasure and do not remember. In the interval between the service I walked to Charleston with my son Brooks, to pay a visit ot his old muse, Rebecca Blanchard117 who is living quite comfortably, having left us in November last went we went to Washington. She is infirm but looks in better health than when she was with us. I can never forget her fidelity to two of my children in their critical hours of illness, She may not survive until my return, but she has in any event a sufficiency to keep her comfortable so far as the outer world is concerned during the rest of her life. I read today a sermon of H W Becker printed in the Independent. It was delivered at Easter and is upon the subject of a future life. It is suggestive as his productions always are. visits in the evening from Dr Hall of Providence and old Mr James Savage.

Cite web page as:

Charles Francis Adams, Sr., [date of entry], diary, in Charles Francis Adams, Sr.: The Civil War Diaries (Unverified Transcriptions). Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2015. http://www.masshist.org/publications/cfa-civil-war/view?id=DCA61d104