Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 3 Jan. 1800: TO HENRY GUEST. - The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811)

Return to Title Page for The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811)

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

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

3 Jan. 1800: TO HENRY GUEST. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811) [1854]

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. 9.

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 HENRY GUEST.

Philadelphia, 3 January, 1799.

I have just received your favor of the 1st of this month, and am much pleased that you think my answers to addresses patient, fatherly, and patriotic. I believe with you in the profound patriotism at the bottom of the hearts of our countrymen very universally. Clitus, I think, describes the ship in more danger than she is.

I received the panegyric on General Anchoret, and a political speech, and read them with pleasure.

The coat of mail, if it answers your description, must be a useful invention. Do you think the French will come here with their bayonets to pierce it?

I care very little what shall be written on my gravestone, only I hope it will tell no untruth. I like your epitaph as well as any.

  • “Who British, French, and Moorish bribes withstood,
  • Not for his own but for his country’s good.”

As I do not choose to correspond with any one who is ashamed of his correspondent, I shall certainly frank this letter, for to you it will not be worth the postage.

TO DR. OGDEN.

Washington, 3 December, 1800.

I have received, this evening, your favor of the 26th November, with the pamphlet inclosed.1 I have run it over in more haste than it was written in, but am so far possessed of its purport as to be better pleased that it was written in thirty hours, than if it had been the elaborate production of a week, because it shows the first impressions of the writer upon reading the pamphlet it is an answer to. This last pamphlet I regret more on account of its author than on my own, because I am confident it will do him more harm than me. I am not his enemy, and never was. I have not adored him, like his idolaters, and have had great cause to disapprove of some of his politics. He has talents, if he would correct himself, which might be useful. There is more burnish, however, on the outside, than sterling silver in the substance. He threatened his master, Washington, sometimes with pamphlets upon his character and conduct, and Washington, who had more regard to his reputation than I have, I say it with humility and mortification, might be restrained by his threats, but I dread neither his menaces of pamphlets nor the execution of them. It would take a large volume to answer him completely. I have not time, and, if I had, I would not employ it in such a work, while I am in public office. The public indignation he has excited is punishment enough. I thank you, Sir, for this valuable present. I shall preserve it for my children.

TO F. A. VANDERKEMP.

Washington, 28 December, 1800.

I had last night your letter of the 12th, the friendly sentiments of which have tenderly affected me. The affliction in my family from the melancholy death of a once beloved son, has been very great, and has required the consolation of religion, as well as philosophy, to enable us to support it. The prospects of that unfortunate youth were very pleasing and promising, but have been cut off, and a wife and two very young children are left with their grandparents to bewail a fate, which neither could avert, and to which all ought in patience to submit. I have two sons left, whose conduct is worthy of their education and connections. I pray that their lives may be spared and their characters respected.

Before this reaches you, the news will be familiar to you, that after the 3d of March I am to be a private citizen and your brother farmer. I shall leave the State with its coffers full, and the fair prospects of a peace with all the world smiling in its face, its commerce flourishing, its navy glorious, its agriculture uncommonly productive and lucrative. O, my country! May peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

Washington, 30 December, 1800.

I have received your favor of the 18th. It has been an invariable usage these twelve years for the President to answer no letters of solicitation or recommendation to office; but with you, in full confidence, I will say, that it is uncertain whether I shall appoint any consuls to France. Mr. Lee is represented to me as a Jacobin, who was very busy in a late election in the town of Roxbury, on the wrong side. His pretensions, however, shall be considered with all others impartially, if I should make any appointments.

Your anxiety for the issue of the election is, by this time, allayed. How mighty a power is the spirit of party! How decisive and unanimous it is! Seventy-three for Mr. Jefferson and seventy-three for Mr. Burr. May the peace and welfare of the country be promoted by this result! But I see not the way as yet. In the case of Mr. Jefferson, there is nothing wonderful; but Mr. Burr’s good fortune surpasses all ordinary rules, and exceeds that of Bonaparte. All the old patriots, all the splendid talents, the long experience, both of federalists and antifederalists, must be subjected to the humiliation of seeing this dexterous gentleman rise, like a balloon, filled with inflammable air, over their heads. And this is not the worst. What a discouragement to all virtuous exertion, and what an encouragement to party intrigue, and corruption! What course is it we steer, and to what harbor are we bound? Say, man of wisdom and experience, for I am wholly at a loss.

I thank you, Sir, and Mrs. Gerry, for your kind condolence with us in our affliction, under a very melancholy and distressing bereavement. I thank the Supreme that I have yet two sons, who will give me some consolation by a perseverance in those habits of virtue and industry which they have hitherto preserved. There is nothing more to be said, but let the Eternal will be done!

[1 ]“A letter to Major-General Hamilton, by a Citizen.”