SOME UNPUBLISHED CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN ADAMS AND RICHARD RUSH, i8iI-I8i6 II. Washington October 24. 1813. Dear Sir. As soon as I received your acceptable and instructing letter of the 8th of this month, I wrote to a friend in Philadelphia, who is much in the literary and political way, to beg he would inform me, if he knew, who had been writing or preparing to write a commentary upon the ^Defence of the American constitutions,' for that I had understood there was such a work on hand, if not published. As to myself, I knew not. In his answer, which I received yesterday he answers, i6go quoque non sum injormatus? I infer, most probably, it has not had its birth in our part of the country; or to the south; but in New England, where, I fancy, the most of our writers are to be found. I venture, Sir, to infer another thing also, from the ignorance of my correspondent, from your ignorance, and from my not being able to learn any thing from my associates in this capital, as to the author;—and that is, that he is not likely to be any body very prominent, and that the "Defence" will continue to be complimented by statesmen as it has already been, and to supply the constructors of human governments with many great ideas of political and historical truth, long after the 630 pages have had their day. That he has written in the candid spirit of a gentleman, I am happy, however, to hear. All such books deserve to be read with candour when they treat of such important subjects. I have had the pleasure to receive your letter of the 12th. instant relative to Mr H. W. Gordon. It ought to be sufficient to obtain him the appointment, and I trust it will. Mr Madison has not yet returned, but is expected tomorrow or next day. I offer you my respectful congratulations on Harrisons victory, about which I would add a word or two, but that my wife invites me to a walk with her, the afternoon being very fine. On telling her how I was engaged, she says, by all means go on and finish your letter j 26 1937 ADAMS-RUSH LETTERS, l8ll~l8l6 2J but I reply no, not now. So this, Sir, makes me rise from my writing desk sooner than my wishes would otherwise dictate, offering you, before I rise, the assurances of my respectful and devoted attachment. Richard Rush. The Hon: President Adams. Washington November 8th. 1813. Dear Sir. According to the intimation contained in one of the letters I have had the pleasure to write to you, I took the liberty of enclosing to Mr S* George Tucker, though entirely unknown to him, not the copy, but the original, of your favor to me of the 13th of August. It was the one in which you acknowledged the receipt of his beautiful little poem, and I was sure the original, in your own hand writing, would be a great additional gratification to him. Moreover, without expressly asking your permission to send it to him, I had, with some little management, waited long enough, after apprising you of my inten- tion, to receive your objection had it been thought worth while to make any. And truly glad I was that none came; for the letter was calculated to give too much pleasure to have been withheld from him, and so it has turned out. I have the pleasure to send you herewith, a letter I have just re- ceived from Mr Tucker. You will perceive he has given a much better and more correct account of himself than it was in my power to give. If he has been full, he at least develops amiable feelings, and has shown the price he sets upon your praise, and his sensibility to a request moving from you. What he writes of himself corresponds with what I have always heard of the purity of his life. The three little works he mentions in his letter, viz the Bermudian, the Anchoret, and the pamphlet upon slavery, I will have the pleasure to send you by three successive mails. The first goes today. Of all three it is my agreeable task to ask your acceptance, from him thus conveyed through me. The letter I send I will ask the favor of being sent back to me when next I have the pleasure to hear from you. I am, Sir, at all times, your gratified correspondent and respectfully devoted friend. Richard Rush. Hon: John Adams. 28 J. H. POWELL January Washington, November 30. 1813 Dear Sir. I had hoped that this letter would have shaped itself by some of the agreeable topicks touched in your two most agreeable favors of the 5th and 20th, the former of which my better half has put into one of her own drawers claiming it as her own property and desiring her most dutiful compliments and acknowledgements for the hand- some things said of her; and the latter of which I received yesterday, with Judge Tuckers letter enclosed. But, since yesterday, the news of the abortions in the north, to give them no worse term, have filled me with nothing but disappointment, regret, chagrin, and vexation, so that I can scarcely think of any thing else. The belief here was decided and universal that Wilkinson would succeed. His army was known to be overloaded with supplies or at least with the means of obtaining them, anxious for battle, very well off for discipline, and to this moment is still believed to be largely superior in numbers to any forces of like quality that could have been brought to oppose it. Government has not yet, that I know of, received a word of intelligence to account for the failure, and can do nothing more than express its surprise, its regrets, and its conjectures. In the meantime, Sir, you who have lived so much longer than I, and than most of us in our country, and observed and reflected so much more widely, and are always so ready with your recollections of history, philosophy and politicks as applicable to all that is going on in the world below you, must favor me with a line of consolation. The cause is certainly as just as ever although Montreal is not ours. We have achieved wonders already, to be sure, in the present autumn j but the excitement for Montreal was so prodigious that I fear the effect of disappointment upon the publick sentiment, particularly in New England. It is, indeed, a horrible disappointment. I think more and more of what you told me in one of your letters of Marlborough's speech to Tallard, about the hundred, and hundred and one, blunders. Even this, Sir, is some consolation to me. A colonel in the imperial service once told Count Strahenburgh that the em- peror had made him a general. He has nominated you a general said the count, but I defy him to make you one. After all, how difficult a thing does it seem to find a general? Frederick was perhaps the only one in his army. The French brought not one that I recol- lect in the field against him, though they have lately made them 1937 ADAMS-RUSH LETTERS, l8ll-l8l6 29 fast enough. In running through our revolutionary history, which I have lately been doing, it seems to me as if the whole seven years contest produced but two or three commanders of genius to our armies. The English for twenty years, though fighting all the while, have had nobody but Wellington; and their blunders and discom- fitures in trying to reduce Canada in the old French war were at least equal to any thing ours have been lately, if not greater. They lasted four years; ours only two as yet. Count Saxe said the first of all military qualifications was valor; the second ambition; and the third health. Wilkinson, to say nothing further, has, by all accounts, been deficient in the third this campaign; and it remains for us to hear how far this may have prevented his giv- ing activity to the other two, both of which he is generally imagined to possess. But I more than all fear, though nothing is now known, that the failure has grown out of other causes; and that a fine army, full of zeal, full of courage, with plenty of powder and ball, and a legion of boats at its beck, has been suddenly sneaked into quarters through some miserable sqabbles [sic] between the two generals, in which perhaps Hampton will turn out to be most in fault. But how this, should it prove the case, will incense, and justly incense the nation. I cannot conclude without desiring to offer my own, and my rib's, most respectful compliments to Mrs Adams. In refering again to the letter of the fifth and Lady Hamilton, it contains, undoubtedly, the best explanation and defence of the fact of aristocracy I have ever seen, or than could possibly be put, into the same compass. I have room to add nothing but my respectful and constant attach- ment. Richard Rush. Hon: John Adams. Quincy Decr. 12. 13 Dear Rush I have nothing to say at present to that enchanting Lady who so easily drew my Correspondent from his Letter: but that if I should ever see her, I shall not be contented with the Vandallik Custom so fashionable in these degenerate days, of shaking Hands; but shall claim the Privilege granted by the civilized Ladies of France, 30 30 J.