Beschreibung:

Adams, JohnAutograph letter signed ("John Adams"), to printer and publisher Mathew Carey
One page (250 x 198 mm) one a leaf of wove paper (watermarked Ames), Quincy, 3 February 1814, misdirected to Mathew "Cary," docketed on verso "John Adams"; lightly browned from earlier framing, some minor marginal chipping, tears, and repair.
A fine letter to Mathew Carey, the Philadelphia patriot printer, touching on matters both political and personal. Adams begins by thanking Carey for having sent copies of one of his recent publications, the second edition of Thomas Clark's Sketches of the Naval History of the United States. Carey and Adams had been corresponding about the work during the previous year, and the former president has supplied original documents for the author's use:
"Your favour of Jan. 26 is received, and a Shower of Obligations with it before it and after it which demand my best Thanks. Mr. Marstons Copy I sent to him by his Son the Midshipman, to whom I gave one of my Copies." A specially bound copy, however, Adams put aside for a grandson (the infant son of Thomas Boylston and Ann Harrod Adams, named for the former commander of the U.S.S. Constitution): "The elegant Copy you sent me Shall be placed upon my choicest shelf to be used only by me and my little Embryo Midshipman, Isaac Hull, after me, who is yet 8 months old." (Isaac Hull Adams did not, in fact, choose a maritime career.)
Adams turns next to the ongoing political and regional divisions that had been intensified by the continuance of the War of 1812. The effects of the British blockade and Madison's embargo had a much greater impact on the New England and Middle Atlantic states, which were still smarting about James Madison's reelection over New York's DeWitt Clinton in the 1812 presidential election. Agitators called for New England to stop cooperating with the Federal government and even called for the secession of the region from the Union—which would culminate later in the year in the Hartford Convention. Adams had little patience for such posturing, which he scornfully dismisses, with an allusion to the death of Benjamin Rush the previous year:
"Comfort yourself 'respecting the Probability of a Separation of "The States."['] I feel no febrile Ictus in the public Pulse, that indicates the approach of any such delirium. The War and the Embargo presses harder upon Us than upon some other Places, and our Anglomanes are taking advantage of this to inflame the People enough to secure their State Elections. But all will end there. Mr. Holmes’s Speech, inclosed [not present], will convince you that Old Massachusetts, is not yet so far insane as to require to be Sett in Rushes tranquilizing Chair."
REFERENCE:https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6248 (Early Access document from The Adams Papers; original not located; text taken from the letterbook, with many variations in capitalization and punctuation and a few in wording)
PROVENANCE:Christie's New York, 5 December 2008, lot 230 ("Property from a Private Collection")