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Lot 1
Adams, John (1735-1826) Second President of the United States (1797-1801). Autograph Letter Signed "John Adams," 3 pages, 8¾ x 7¼ in., Quincy (Mass.), April 20, 1809. To Joseph Lyman, a well-known Massachusetts clergyman, regarding the independence of the nation, war with England or France, and Alexander Hamilton’s "treachery."
Adams delivers a stinging rebuttal to accusations that he has betrayed his Federalist principles, He stoutly defends his Administration, recalling with anger the "Machiavellian Intrigues" of Hamilton and his colleagues during the 1800 election, and expresses his support for war against Britain or France should either country "render [it] necessary."
By April of 1809, "the late President John Adams" had begun an attempt to rehabilitate his sullied political reputation. In a three-year series of letters to the Boston Patriot newspaper, Adams vehemently rebutted Alexander Hamilton’s earlier calumnies and presented his side of the story regarding the "quasi-war" with France in 1799-1800 and the divisive presidential election of 1800. Especially rankling to Adams had been the 1806 publication of a history of the American Revolution, written by former friend Mercy Warren, that accused him of abandoning the ideals of that uprising. Now, with Hamilton dead (killed by Aaron Burr in the legendary 1804 duel), Jefferson out of office, and his own son, John Quincy Adams, split from the Federalist party, Adams at last felt free to defend himself publicly and to voice his long-festering anger at his betrayal by fellow Federalists.
Adams opens this reply to Joseph Lyman by vigorously countering the argument that he has "forsaken the Persons and Interests" of his friends. Lyman had written to Adams in March in response to a published handbill attributed to the former president. In an alternately obsequious and reproving letter, Lyman tried to convince Adams that by criticizing Federalists before an upcoming state election, he was abandoning his true friends. He further argued that Adams himself must surely oppose a war against England, having supported the British and avoided war with France during his own administration.
Adams minces no words: "…The Leaders to whom the Federal Party has now blindly abandoned itself were never my Friends. I have departed from no Principle. My invariable Principle for five and thirty years has been to promote preserve and secure the Integrity of the Union and the Independence of the Nation, against the Policy of England as well as France." His success in resolving the 1799-1800 crisis with France, he adds, was met with "no thanks from the Republicans" and "nothing but Insolence…from the Federalists." Adams further insists that if Lyman’s namesake, the late Massachusetts congressman Samuel Lyman, were alive today, he would also expose "the treachery of my pretended federal Friends" during the election of 1800. It had been widely rumored that Alexander Hamilton had schemed to deprive Adams of the presidency by trying to ensure that Adams’s running mate, Charles C. Pinckney, receive "equal" support from the electors. (At that time, president and vice president were not voted for together; had Pinckney received the greatest number of electoral votes, he would have been named president.) Adams notes additional evidence of the conspiracy: at a May 1800 meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati, a secretive organization of former Revolutionary War officers, the group had elected Hamilton its new leader and agreed to "sacrifice Adams" in favor of Pinckney. Other Federalist leaders were in on the plot, Adams says, as were elements of the British press under the influence of George Canning, the current British foreign minister. "I know the French influence drove me into banishment: but it would not have had the power if it had not been essentially assisted by the Pharisaical Jesuitical Machiavellian Intrigues and Influence of the leading Federalists."
As Adams wrote, the United States found itself at the brink of war once again. In 1804, Britain had decided to put an end to neutral trade with its enemies by enforcing an extensive blockade of West Indian and European ports. In retaliation, Napoleon issued the "Berlin Decree," banning all trade with Britain. American merchant ships that ignored these edicts were subject to capture; their crews risked impressment. The situation came to a head in 1807, when a British warship just outside American territorial waters fired on the U.S.S. Chesapeake, killing three crewmen and wounding eighteen others. Jefferson’s solution to the crisis, an embargo on American shipping, proved both economically and politically disastrous. Federalists strenuously opposed the embargo and took a pro-British stance. In New England, there was even talk of open rebellion against the federal government. Here, with mounting anger, Adams refutes Lyman’s assumption that he agrees with the Federalist position: "I assure you Sir, A War with England will not meet my 'Hearty Reprobation' if England makes it necessary. England and France have both given us just cause of war. But neither has yet made it necessary. The first of the two that shall render war necessary shall have my vote for it….Great Britain is the first Sinner, and the original Guilt of our present Calamities lies at her door: though France in point of actual Transgression is not much behind her. "
In a conclusion fairly dripping with sarcasm, Adams, once a devoted Federalist, questions how the party can get along with "their new Friends the old English. If they Succeed I shall wish them Joy: but I cannot expect to live to enjoy that felicity." Anglo-American relations continued to deteriorate, and the current president, James Madison, was unable to avoid war. Before emerging from the War of 1812 with a last-minute victory at the Battle of New Orleans, America would suffer thousands of casualties and the British would burn much of Washington, D.C. to the ground, including the White House.
Remarkable for its display of controlled fury, this letter shows a retired John Adams still nursing political wounds almost a decade old and, at the same time, displaying his unswerving devotion to the "Integrity of the Union and the Independence of the Nation," no matter what the cost. One of the finest Adams Autograph Letters Signed in private hands.
Estimated Value $100,000-UP.
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