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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow TWENTY-SIX LETTERS UPON INTERESTING SUBJECTS RESPECTING THE REVOLUTION OF AMERICA, WRITTEN IN HOLLAND, IN THE YEAR MDCCLXXX - The Works of John Adams, vol. 7 (Letters and State Papers 1777-1782)

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TWENTY-SIX LETTERS UPON INTERESTING SUBJECTS RESPECTING THE REVOLUTION OF AMERICA, WRITTEN IN HOLLAND, IN THE YEAR MDCCLXXX - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 7 (Letters and State Papers 1777-1782) [1852]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 7.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TWENTY-SIX LETTERS UPON INTERESTING SUBJECTS RESPECTING THE REVOLUTION OF AMERICA, WRITTEN IN HOLLAND, IN THE YEAR MDCCLXXX

The following is the account of the composition of these letters, as given by Mr. Adams.

“At dinner one day, with a large company, at the house of a great capitalist, I met the giant of the law in Amsterdam, Mr. Calkoen. He was very inquisitive concerning the affairs of America, and asked me many ingenious questions. But he had spent his life in such ardent study of his institutes, codes, novelles, and pandects, with his immensely voluminous comments upon them, that he had neglected entirely the English language, and was very inexpert in the French. Interpreters were, therefore, necessary; but conversation that requires interpreters on both sides, is a very dull amusement. Though his questions were always ready, and my answers not less so, yet the interpretation was very slow and confused. After some time, one of the gentlemen asked me if I had any objection to answering Mr. Calkoen’s questions in writing. I answered, none at all. It was soon agreed, that the questions and answers should be written. Accordingly, in a few days, Mr. Calkoen sent me his questions in Dutch, Mr. Le Roy, now of New York, was obliging enough to translate them for me into English, and I wrote an answer to each question in a separate letter. They gave so much satisfaction to Mr. Calkoen, that he composed, from the information contained in them, a comparison between the revolt of the low countries from Spain, and the Revolution of the United States of America, in which his conclusion was, that as it was a kind of miracle that the former succeeded, it would be a greater miracle still if the latter should not. This composition was read by him to a society of gentlemen of letters, about forty in number, who met at stated times in Amsterdam; and by that means, just sentiments of American affairs began to spread, and prevail over the continual misrepresentations of English and Stadtholderian gazettes, pamphlets, and newspapers.

“The publications of General Howe and General Burgoyne, in vindication of themselves, were procured to be translated into French, and propagated, together with many other pamphlets, which assisted in the same design, and contributed to excite the citizens to those applications, by petition to the regencies of the several cities, which finally procured the acknowledgment of American independency, the treaty of commerce, and a loan of money.”

These letters were collected and printed in London, in 1786, by Mr. Adams, but not published. They were reprinted in 1789, in New York, and published with the title here prefixed, by John Fenno, and they also make a part of the volume published in Boston, in 1809, under the title, Correspondence of the late President Adams.