Adams Family Correspondence, volume 12
th1797
Mr otis will tell you all the News in this quarter of the Earth, where Wickedness abounds of all kinds. I hope however there may be found Rightous sufficient to save the city. we have a senator—you see by his Letter what he is capable of. the Government is not found sufficently strong to punish him according to his Demerrits, or he would not have been permitted to have escaped, nor do I think he would, if too great lenity had not lessned his Bonds—
Congress are up— before they come again together, I think they will repent of not having left some powers in the hands of the executive of laying on an Embargo if it, was thought necessary. it certainly would not have been wantonly used.1 it may before, the meeting of congress, be found necessary to have past the Law Regulating the Armanent of private Merchantmen. many will Arm now contrary to Law, and without regulation. an Indiaman captured two Days since belonging to this place, and within the capes is a proof of our Embicility, and I hope of our Love of Peace, for some good ought to flow from so much evil as a counter balance.—2
We have had some very Hot weather which makes me anxious to get away. I was calld sudenly out of my bed this morning to John Brisler, who was taken in the night with the Cholori Morbus.3 he was fainted intirely away, and every appearence of death for half an hour— the child went well to Bed. he is come too, but I think him very dangerous
We must get away from this Hot city—
I inclose to you a post Note of three Hundred Dollors, with which I will thank you to take up a Note of Hand of mine to Genll Lincoln. mr Wells may give it to you if the Genll is not there.4 you will destroy the Note and write me only these Words—“I have tranacted the buisness you desired in the Way you directed,” as we may be absent When the Letter arrives. I do not desire any more should be said than that.
My best Regards to mrs smith and Children Love to cousin Betsy—from your sincere Friend / and affectionate
I wrote you last saturday concerning the carriage You will let me hear Soon.5 I put dr Tufts Letter in your care there is a post note in it
RC (MHi:Smith-Carter Family Papers); addressed by Louisa Catharine Smith: “Mr William Smith, Merchant / Boston”; endorsed: “Philaa. 11. July. 97 / A. Adams.”; notation: “24 July. wrote Mrs. A. that I had transacted the / Business she requested as directed.”
On 24 June Jacob Read introduced a bill in the Senate “to authorize the President of the United States to lay, regulate, and revoke embargoes,” but it was voted down 15 to 12 on 27 June. A similar measure was also introduced in the House on 24 June, when William Loughton Smith proposed a resolution appointing a committee “to prepare and report a bill empowering the President of the United States to lay and revoke embargoes during the recess of Congress.” The resolution was tabled and was not taken up again before Congress adjourned (U.S. Senate, Jour.
, 5th Cong., 1st sess., p. 376, 379;
Annals of Congress
, 5th Cong., 1st sess., p. 386).
The ship Asia, Capt. Edward Yard, en route to Philadelphia after a five-month voyage from Bengal, India, was captured near Cape May, N.J., on 7 July by the privateer Julia, Capt. Baptista Mahon, and sailed for Cap-Français, St. Domingue. On 2 Aug. the British privateer Ranger intercepted the Asia, seized the vessel, and sent it to New Providence, N.J., where it was libeled for salvage (Philadelphia Gazette, 10 July; Williams, French Assault on American Shipping
, p. 68).
Cholera morbus was a gastrointestinal complaint characterized by “violent purging and vomiting” and diarrhea and thought to be caused by rancid food (Buchan, Domestic Medicine
, p. 235–237).
Possibly Arnold Welles (or Wells) Jr. (1761–1827), Harvard 1780, who represented Boston in the Mass. house of representatives along with William Smith (Albert Welles, History of the Welles Family in England and Normandy, Welles, N.Y., 1876, p. 122; Mass., Acts and Laws
, 1796–1797, p. 490).
For a summary of AA’s 1 July letter to William Smith regarding the carriage, see AA to William Smith, 10 June, note 1, above.
Your kind Letter of June 8th gave great pleasure to the President, as well as to your Friend. We were happy to learn so good an arrangement of our Domestick concerns. I then hoped to have come to Quincy for a Month or two. some difficulties arise from the procecution of that plan, tho it is the place of all others which the President seems most desirious of visiting
We could not be accommodated at [ho]me for want of sufficient stable Room— we want more Chamber Room— an other thing I thought we should quite put out Porter & Family, as I did not suppose the Room which I proposed having done could be finishd in time; I think it will be best to go on and compleat it, and put up a wood House in some other place. the stables must be got in readiness for an other season, & the more which can be done about them this; the better, as I hope if it please God to spair our Lives to 199 come on early next spring. it will be best to get the stone for underpinning in the common pasture which is Let to Field & curtis;
all these obsticales would not have been sufficient to have prevented our return if our publick affairs had wore a less dissagreeable Face, but we are so critically situated, that the very next vessel which arrives may bring us a Formal declaration of War. our Commerce is all sacrificing. if we had been without any intelligence from abroad during the whole session of Congress, it would have been much shorter and much more decicive. the Mutiny on Board the English Fleet, the fall of English Credit, the troubles in Ireland1 the Peace of the Emperor with France, but above all the victories of Buonaparta, all these Events had their influence and their opperation in various ways, and retarded those measures which in the opinion of the Executive were necessary for the preservation Security and honour of the Nation.
We must wait the event. Mr Marshall will sail from hence in a few days, and mr Gerry who has accepted the appointment with many Family difficultis to encounter; will not delay his departure.2
My kind Regards to mrs Tufts and miss suky. I have had an ill turn similar to that which I had at Quincy, but got much sooner over it, and I sustain the Heat much better than I expected, but we came very near losing little John Brisler last night. he was taken with a Cholera Morbus which followd him with such voilence that he fainted and was as if dead for half an hour. he appears some what better now and the disorder has abated—
inclosed is a Post Note for 100 dollors 30 cents which you will be kind enough to lay out in a certificate. it is a little balance which was found due to the President on a settlement as vice President.
I am dear sir / Your affectionate
RC (Adams Papers); addressed by Louisa Catharine Smith: “The Honorable / Cotton Tufts Esqr / Weymouth—”; endorsed: “Mrs. Adam’s Lett July 12 / 97 / recd. 2d Aug”; notation: “5.” Some loss of text where the seal was removed.
Influenced in part by the ideals of the French Revolution, the predominantly Catholic United Irishmen was founded in Belfast in 1791 with the twin goals of universal suffrage and parliamentary reform. In 1796 the organization formed a military wing and ordered its members to procure arms and await a French invasion in which they were to serve as auxiliaries. The same year Parliament passed the Insurrection Act authorizing the search for arms, and in the spring of 1797 Gen. Gerard Lake, under orders from the lord lieutenant of Ireland, proclaimed martial law in Ulster, where the most formidable threat from the United Irishmen existed. Intended to disarm the population, Lake’s strategy included punitive measures such as house burning, flogging, and mass arrests (Marianne Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France, New Haven, 1982, p. 26;
Cambridge Modern Hist.
, 9:694, 700;
DNB
; Tommy Graham, “The
200
Shift in United Irish Leadership from Belfast to Dublin, 1796–1798,” in Jim Smyth, ed., Revolution, Counter-Revolution, and Union: Ireland in the 1790s, Cambridge, Eng., 2000, p. 62).
John Marshall sailed from Philadelphia to Amsterdam on the brig Grace, Capt. Thomas Wills, leaving on 18 July and arriving on 29 August. Marshall traveled to The Hague on 3 Sept. where he met Charles Cotesworth Pinckney; they delayed their trip to France, hoping for the arrival of Elbridge Gerry, but finally left The Hague on 18 Sept. and arrived in Paris on the 27th (Philadelphia Porcupine’s Gazette, 24 July; Marshall, Papers
, 3:123, 130, 152; Marvin R. Zahniser, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney: Founding Father, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967, p. 162–163). For Gerry’s travel, see his letter to AA, 14 July, and note 4, below.