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Title: Letter from John Adams declining an invitation to the anniversary dinner of the Committee of Arrangement in memory of the landing of the Fathers at Plymouth, accompanying the First Edition of John Quincy Adams' 1802 "Oration Delivered at Plymouth," as delivered at the dinner Author: Adams, John Place: Quincy, Mass. Publisher: Date: December 22, 1802 Description: Autograph note in the hand of John Adams approximately 12.5x19.5 cm (5x7¾") tipped in at the rear of a bound volume also containing: Adams, John Quincy An Oration Delivered at Plymouth, December 22, 1802. At the Anniversary Commemoration of the First Landing of Our Ancestors, at That Place. 31 pp. (8vo) original plain blue paper wrappers. First Edition. Boston: Russell and Cutler, 1802. Bound together in old tan cloth and marbled boards, housed in a custom blue morocco and cloth clamshell box with gilt spine. Autograph note in the hand of John Adams penned by him shortly after his tenure as America’s second President and dated December 22, 1802, expressing regret at being unable to attend “the Anniversary dinner in memory of the landing of the Fathers and Plymouth” at which his son John Quincy was speaking, tipped into a first edition copy in original uncut wrappers of the Oration delivered by John Quincy at the event. Oration: Shaw & Shoemaker 1717; Sabin 293. Pocket tipped-to rear pastedown with a laid-in note (5½x8½") in typescript on the letterhead of the Plymouth, Massachusetts Pilgrim Society. The note reads: “Sometime about 1956, Mr. Lothrop Withington heard a radio broadcast one Sunday morning from the Adams Library in Quincy. The general subject matter was what John Quincy Adams had done during his lifetime to place in proper perspective in American history the contribution of the Pilgrims. He apparently made quite a study with particular reference to the importance of the Compact.” “No family will ever be as famous as the Adamses… Their family history was History.” Founding Father John Adams America’s First Vice-President and Second President, together with Abigail Adams, inspired their son John Quincy and all “their descendants to hold office, but they also required them to work for it. They did not expect fame and power to come to them by virtue of their birth alone.” From his earliest years, John Quincy who would become America’s Secretary of State and its Sixth President, was told “his career should reflect his ‘advantages.” In John Adams’ own tenure as President, he steered the nation “in a remarkably steady course… It was a brave, heroic performance” (McCullough, John Adams 566). On turning over the presidency to Jefferson, Adams returned home to his farm in Quincy in March 1801. “By the standards of the day, he was an old man, and he felt old… He would never exorcise the demons that his defeat summoned up” (Smith, 1067). That June, however, he received welcome news that John Quincy and his family would return home from the court of Berlin that September. “John Quincy wrote of his reunion with his parents as a moment of ‘inexpressible delight.” Shortly after settling in Boston, John Quincy was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in April 1802, yet continued to ride “out to Quincy to be with his parent nearly every weekend. He kept his father supplied with books and encouraged him to undertake an autobiography, which Adams, with some reluctance, began in October 1802, with Part I, titled ‘John Adams” (McCullough, 573-6). This autograph letter by John Adams tipped-to a blank leaf of a first edition of John Quincy Adams’ Oration, Delivered at Plymouth, December 22, 1802, brings together in one volume the legacy of father and son. John Adams’ letter, penned at his farm in Quincy, was dated by him, “December 22, 1802”— a mere two months after he began work on his autobiography at the urging of John Quincy Like his son, John Adams valued the family’s Puritan ancestors as “bearers of freedom, a cause that still had a h