RC (ICHi); in Adams' hand.

For Arthur Lee's letters here mentioned, see James Lovell to AA, 16 July, above, and notes there.

It is not known whether this visit took place, for on this day the Sensible “Found Bottom . . . on St. Georges Banc” 100 miles east of Cape Cod, and two or (possibly) three days later JA reached home.

The evidence furnished by JA himself respecting the exact time and place of his disembarkation with JQA is contradictory and confusing. But in all probability on Monday, 2 Aug., they left the vessel in Nantasket Roads and were rowed with their baggage to the Braintree shore, whence they had departed in mid-February 1778. It is certain that La Luzerne and his party proceeded into the inner harbor and landed with due ceremony on Tuesday the 3d. (See JA, Diary and Autobiography , 2:342, 344, 400.) It is also certain that on the 3d JA sat down at home and addressed a letter to John Jay, president of Congress, reporting and explaining his movements since learning in February that he had been relieved of his duties as a commissioner in Europe (RC in PCC, No. 84, I, printed in Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev. , 3:276–278; LbC, Adams Papers, printed in JA, Works , 7:97–99, with CFA's silent correction of JA's probable error in giving the 3d rather than the 2d as the date of his actual arrival home). On the 4th, JA wrote (or at least began) a much longer letter to Jay submitting for the consideration of Congress his “Reflections . . . on the general State of Affairs in Europe, so far as they relate to the Interests of the united States” (RC in PCC, No. 84, I, printed in Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev. , 3:278–286; LbC, Adams Papers, printed in JA, Works , 7:99–110). This, which JA then viewed as his final dispatch and testament, was a major effort and was recognized as such; it was read in Congress on 20 Aug. ( JCC , 14:981), and the numerous contemporary copies of it recorded in the Adams Papers Editorial Files show that it circulated widely.