Adams Family Correspondence, volume 10
I had just Sent off to the Poet office, my Letter in which I requested a Diary of Husbandry when I went to The Senate Chamber where I found your Letter of the 10th, which contained the very Thing I had asked for, very accurate & pleasing. I hope for a continuance of it, for nothing refreshes me like it, in the dull Solitude to which I am destined for four months.
A Senate was made to Day, by the Arrival of Col Burr, as fat as a Duck and as ruddy as a roost Cock. An hundred Thousand Pounds is a very wholesome Thing I believe, and I Suppose my manifold Infirmities are owing to my Poverty. I know not whether fame lies, on this occasion, but she begins to whisper that Burr has been very fortunate and Successful as well as Several others of Govr Clintons friends, by means that I will not explain till fame explains them more in detail.
These Simple Republicans are rewarded in this World for their Virtues, as well as admired for their Talents.
Tomorrow We shall have the Speech, which is to be delivered in the House of Representatives as there is some doubt of the Solidity of the Building to hold a Crowd in the Senate Chamber.1
They have built us no Gallery, from which neglect, Some conclude that the Soi-disant friends of the People are afraid that the Senate will appear to the People better friends than them Selves. The Debate on Mr Gallatin’s Election Seems to have abated the public Curiosity.
Mrs Cabot comes here, without Handmaiden or female Companion, in Six Days by the Stage Coach and is as alert as if she had done nothing.
I am glad you went to Haverhil to see our unfortunate afflicted Sister, but am anxious about that paltry River, lest it should bring again your intermittent.
Adieu
RC (Adams Papers); endorsed: “Novbr / 18 1794.”
George Washington’s speech to both houses of Congress on 19 Nov. contained a detailed description of the Whiskey Rebellion and the government’s response. According to Washington, “In the four western counties of Pennsylvania, a prejudice, fostered and embittered by the artifice of men, who labored for an ascendancy over the will of others, by the guidance of their passions, produced symptoms of riot and violence.” Washington deemed these actions threats to “the very existence of social order” and a
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violation of “the fundamental principles of our Constitution.” Still, he emphasized, he did not make the decision to use force to put down the rebellion lightly: “to array citizen against citizen, to publish the dishonor of such excesses, to encounter the expense, and other embarrassments, of so distant an expedition, were steps too delicate, too closely interwoven with many affecting considerations, to be lightly adopted.” Still, Washington used the rebellion as an opportunity to press Congress to pass laws regarding “the power of organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia; and thus providing, in the language of the Constitution, for calling them forth to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrection, and repel invasions” (
Annals of Congress,
3d Cong., 2d sess., p. 787–792).
Both houses of Congress met in Congress Hall, formerly the county courthouse, at the corner of Sixth and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia. The House of Representatives gathered on the first floor, and the Senate met on the second (Edward M. Riley, “The Independence Hall Group,” in Historic Philadelphia: From the Founding until the Early Nineteenth Century, Phila., 1953, p. 27–29).
After a journey without any accident, I arrived here, in good health, the Friday night after I left you, and went into lodgings, which I did not find convenient, and the next morning removed to Francis’s hotel, where I have good accommodations, with company enough.
I forgot to thank you for your kind present of patriotic manufacture; but I own I am not, at my age, so great an enthusiast, as to wear with much pride, these coarse homely fabrics. I was once proud of an homespun camblet cloak, and used to go to meeting in it, at Dr. Cooper’s tasty Society; but I own I was not sorry when a thief, by stealing it, furnished me with an excuse for wearing it no more.1 Those times were very different from these. My Hartford present of Connecticut broadcloth, I could not long endure;2 and the New-York cotton is not yet made up. I am not the less obliged to you, however.
I have not yet heard whether your brother has returned from his visit to Steuben.
Colonel Smith is well. My love to William and John—give them a kiss for me, and present them with the blessing of their / Affectionate grandfather,
Your mamma, on the 10th of November, went to Haverhill, on a visit to your unfortunate and afflicted aunt.
MS not found. Printed from AA2, Jour. and Corr.,
2:135–136; internal address: “To Mrs. Smith.”
That is, when the Adamses attended Rev. Samuel Cooper’s Brattle Street Church in the early 1770s (vol. 1:157).
For JA’s gift of broadcloth from the merchants of Hartford, Conn., see vol. 8:332–333.