Adams, John, second President

Autograph letter signed ("J. Adams"), 1  1/2 pages (8 7/8 x 7 1/4 in.; 225 x 182 mm), Quincy, 7 June 1809, to Benjamin Rush, sending congratulations on the success of Rush's sons rise in the professions of medicine and law; in an excellent state of preservation. Red cloth folding case, brown morocco spine, red morocco lettering pieces.

 

 

Effusive praise and congratulations from Adams to Rush on the success of Rush's two sons in the professions of medicine and law. Of James, the physician, and Richard, the attorney,  Adams writes: "Thanks too for your son's inaugural Dissertation. ... May he become as eminent as skilful as humane as virtuous and as successful as his father. I rejoice that your son Richard is becoming eminent in his profession. May he become as renound in Law and State as his father is and I hope his Brother will be in Medicine."

Adams then responds to Rush's condemnation of certain citizens who still yearn for the restoration of the British monarchy in America: "It would divert you, if I were to amuse myself with writing an answer to the Tory ennemy ..." The "ennemy" he alludes to was John Lowell Jr. (1769–1840). He then drifts into reminiscences about his political and legal career and grouses about how others have profited at his expense: "That wretched father stepped into my Practice in Boston, when I was sent to Congress and by my Business made a fortune of two or three hundred thousand dollars. Left him a splendid fortune a Palace in Boston a Superb Country Seat ... a fortune accumulating now every day whereas I have not added a shilling to my property these eight years." John Lowell Jr.'s father, known as the Old Judge, was the patriarch of the dynastic Boston Lowell family.  Adams's disgust for Lowell stemmed more from  professional jealousy than from political enmity. When Adams left in 1774 to join the first Continental Congress, his thriving law practice boasted of  the biggest caseload in Boston. Although Lowell signed addresses complimenting royal governors Thomas Hutchinson and Thomas Gage in the spring of 1774, he made a public apology for doing so at the end of the year. Thereafter, Lowell was an enthusiastic patriot and served for a time as a lieutenant of the Massachusetts militia. In 1776, he was elected Representative to the General Court from Newburyport and, in 1778,  to the same post from Boston where he had moved his law practice (and presumably absorbed a good many of Adams's clients).  He was chosen to be a member of the convention that was tasked with framing the Massachusetts Constitution in 1779. He is best remembered for authoring Article I and his insistence upon its adoption into the Bill of Rights.

Adams continues his diatribe: "  ... His uncle by my appointment made as Navy Agent in three or four years more than I am worth. If I was allowed two and a half Per Cent on a Million Sterling that I borrowed and passed through my hands in Holland as he was for 4 or 500 thousand dollars he spent as Navy Agent it would amount to twice the Sum I am worth." The agent was Stephen Higginson (1743–1828). He was a successful shipmaster (1765–1776), served in the Massachusetts legislature (1782) and in the Continental Congress (1783), and was appointed naval officer of the port of Boston in 1797 in the first year of Adams's presidency.    

His venting complete, Adams targets another nemesis, William Duane, who published the Jeffersonian journal The Aurora in Philadelphia. "I suspect Mr. Duane will be weary before he fulfills his Promise of republishing all my letters. I fear I shall be too voluminous for him."  When Washington appointed Thomas Pinckney ambassador to the Court of St. James in 1792, Adams privately criticized the move in a letter to Tench Coxe. The letter hints that the Pinckneys from South Carolina were enlisting help from the British to obtain federal appointments. Moreover, Adams also suggested that the Pinckneys had him removed as minister in London in the 1780s to open the post to one of their own. During the presidential election campaign in 1800, Tench Coxe, now a defector to the Republican Party, turned Adam's letter over to William Duane who printed it in The Aurora. The president responded with a public letter in which he acknowedged corresponding with Coxe but claimed to have no recollection of having written the letter published by Duane. Moreover, if he had written the letter, he explained, he would never have implied that Great Britain exerted any influence over the Washington administration.

Should Duane fulfill his threat, Adams would welcome the challenge. He concludes: "I should be glad to know how the British Subjects, the American oligarchs and the Democratical Republicans judge of my Revelations."  He adds in a postscript: "I wish I were in Situation to see the Aurora."

Sotheby's is grateful to Robert Karachuk, Associate Editor of the Papers of John Adams, for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.