Beschreibung:

ADAMS, John (1735-1826) Autograph letter signed ("J. Adams") to Benjamin Rush, Quincy, 23 June 1807. Six pages, 226 x 185mm, bifolia, with integral address leaf (minor glue remnants at extreme left margin of second bifolium). John Adams writes of his political enemies leaving special mentions for Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. "I have often heard Dr Franklin Say that 'one of the Pleasures of old Age was to outlive ones Ennemies.' This Sentiment also never failed to disgust and Shock me. Possibly I might think there was more Inhumanity and Indelicacy in it, than he felt or intended. But I have never allowed myself to rejoice in the Death of Ennemies, and I know not that I ever heard of the death of any Enemy without pain. If this could have been a Source of pleasure to me, I Should have had a Surfeit of it." With those thoughts in mind, Adams delivers a laundry list of journalists who had libeled him during his years as Vice President, and describing, with a certain degree of smug satisfaction, the melancholy fates met by each: "Soon after I took my Seat, in the Chair of the Senate as Vice President of the United States, a certain Edward Church, who made himself my Enemy for no reason that I know of, unless it were because his Brother Benjamin was accused of Treason, published a Scandalous & Scurrilous Libel against me in Verse, for which Washington ought to have punished him: but instead of frowning upon him he appointed him Consul at Lisbon, where his Conduct was So bad that the Government complained against him, and he was removed and became a Vagabond. A certain Loyd was then at New York and was employed as I was informed to write Libells against me in the Newspapers. But he found So little Encouragement that he returned to England where I soon heard that he was imprisoned in the Kings Bench and Sett in the Pillory for Libells against the government. Greenleaf too a Printer of a Jacobin Paper in New York, who filled his Columns for years with libellous Paragraphs against me, was at length carried off by the yellow Fever. In Philadelphia, a certain Peter Marcou, a drunken Poet, discarded by his Father from all the Apartments in his House but his Kitchen, who was frequently Seen drunk and asleep in the Streets, was hired from time to time, with Potts of Strong Beer, by Andrew Brown to Step aside into a Closet in his House and write virulent Libells against me, for the Philadelphia Gazette. It was not long before this insolent Sott, drank himself into his Grave." Adams continues in this vein at some length, until he arrives to the one figure he detested the most — Alexander Hamilton: "Of all the Libellers of me this was the most unprovoked, the most ungrateful and the most unprincipled. Under the most Specious the appearances and Professions, of the most cordial respectful and Affectionate Attachment to me, and after having received a thousand favours and obligations from me, I have, now Evidence enough that he had concealed the most insidious Schemes and plotts to undermine my reputation and deprive me of the favour of the Public. Finding he could not Succeed in this, he took Advantage of a moment of fermentation wickedly excited by himself and his fellow Conspirators, to come out with the most false malicious and revengefull Libell that ever was written. To this he had no Provocation but because I would make Peace with France, and could not in conscience make him Commander in Chief of an Army of fifty thousand Men. But this Caitiff too came to a bad End. Fifteen years of continual Slanders against Burr, great numbers of which I heard myself, provoked a Call to the Field of Honor as they call it, and Sent him, pardoned I hope in his last moments, to his long home by a Pistol Bullet through his Spine." But there was no love lost for Hamilton's killer: "Burr, I never considered as my personal Enemy. He would not have been my political Enemy, if Hamilton would have permitted Washington to allow me to nominate him to th