BIB_ID
102514
Accession number
MA 157.17a
Creator
Adams, John, 1735-1826.
Display Date
1813 Apr. 14.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1907.
Description
1 item (2 p., with address) ; 24.8 cm
Notes
Address panel with traces of a seal to "Elbridge Gerry Esquire / J. Adams / Vice President of U.S. / Cambridge / Mass /
Docketed on verso.
Part of a collection of autograph letters signed of Elbridge Gerry and others relating to the French Commission and the XYZ Affair. Items in the collection have been described individually in separate catalog records; see collection-level record for more information.
The published letter includes the sentence "The Declaration of Independence is a brimborion in comparison of it." That sentence has been crossed through in this letter. It is possible this letter is an autograph draft of the letter sent to Gerry.
Docketed on verso.
Part of a collection of autograph letters signed of Elbridge Gerry and others relating to the French Commission and the XYZ Affair. Items in the collection have been described individually in separate catalog records; see collection-level record for more information.
The published letter includes the sentence "The Declaration of Independence is a brimborion in comparison of it." That sentence has been crossed through in this letter. It is possible this letter is an autograph draft of the letter sent to Gerry.
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from J.F. Sabin in 1907.
Summary
Thanking him for his letters and for the "volume of Benjamin Edes's gazettes printed at Watertown between the 5th of June 1775 and the 9th of December 1776; saying he has been reading [Sir Walter] Scott's [The] Lay [of the Last Minstrel], Marmion, and [The] Lady [of the Lake] "with much interest and amusement; but his Volume of Gazettes and the Journals of Congress for the same period which I have lately run over, have given me much more heart felt delight. If these volumes appear to you as they do to me, how can we wonder at the total Ignorance and Oblivion of the Revolution, which appears every where in the present Generation. All the Boston Orations on the 4th of July that I have ever read or heard contain not so much of 'the Manners and Feelings and Principles which lead to the Revolution as these two Volumes of Gazettes and Journals. The Act printed in the Gazette of the 13 of November 1775 'In the Sixteenth year of the Reign of George the third King &c, an Act for encouraging the fixing out of armed Vessels to defend the Sea Coast of America,and for erecting a Court to try and condemn all Vessels that shall be found infesting the same' is one of the most important Documents in History;" saying that he sees no reason why this Law might not be reprinted.
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