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

TO WILLIAM S. SMITH. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 8 (Letters and State Papers 1782-1799) [1853]

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. 8.

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

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO WILLIAM S. SMITH.

Philadelphia, 16 February, 1798.

Sir,—

I have received the letter you wrote me on the 7th of this month, and I shall give all the attention to the subject of it which may be necessary. It is not new to me.

You are too precipitate, in my opinion, in pronouncing an opinion, that the General1 has been guilty of high crimes, &c.

There have not been wanting critics upon your conduct as severe as you have been upon his. It is reported, not much to the advantage of your reputation or mine, that you have been to Detroit, for Brockholst Livingston and company, to speculate in lands and claims of those who mean to remain British subjects and to remove to Canada; and that, to cloak your real purposes, you gave out that you had been sent by me for ends of government of some sort or other. I can scarcely believe that you could countenance a report so totally unfounded.1

I am, &c.

John Adams.

[1 ]Wilkinson.

[1 ]Colonel Smith had served in the army during the war. He received, from the Congress of the Confederation, the appointment of secretary of legation to the mission to Great Britain. He there married the only daughter of Mr. Adams. His tastes were all for military life; but, after the failure of the expedition under General Miranda, in which he was engaged, he retired to the interior of New York, from whence he was sent as a representative to Congress in 1813. He died in 1816.