This resolution leaves but little doubt as to the question of the origination of the committees of correspondence, and totally disarms the displeasure of the reviewer of its point. We may remark of this question, as of the former one, that it scarcely presents a ground of criticism of sufficient importance to justify the discussion it has elicited much less the tone of reprimand in which it is treated; for whether the one or the other of these States led the way in this movement, there is nothing in the history of either to show that each did not act precisely as the emergency required. Nor is it pretended that the suggestion of the committees of correspondence by Mr. Carr, was not the original and unprompted action of the Legislature of which he was a member. It will be thought, perhaps, that I have dwelt upon this notice of the Sketches of the Life of Patrick Henry with more emphasis than my subject required. The reader will see the motive of this dissertation in the correspondence which arose, during the present year of our narrative, between Mr. Wirt and Mr. John Adams. The appearance of the Life of Patrick Henry and the correspondence I refer to, furnished occasion for the publication of a most interesting volume, which, in the year 1819, was prepared for the press under the direction of Mr. Adams. Its title will explain its character and contents: "Novanglus and Massachusettensis, or Political Essays, published in the years 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of controversy between Great Britain and her colonies. The former by John Adams, late President of the United States; the latter by Jonathan Sewall, then King's Attorney-General of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. To which are added a number of letters, lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor." The publication of this volume furnished another opportunity to the North American Review to assail the accuracy of Mr. Wirt's statements, in reference to the commencement of the Revolution. In the notice which I have already taken of the review of the Sketches, I have said all that is necessary upon the points in dispute, which are repeated in this latter article, and treated somewhat more in detail than in the first. The re-publication of Novanglus and Massachusettensis, with the recent letters added to the volume, is a most agreeable contribution to the History of the Revolution; and it will always be considered as one of the happy results of Mr. Wirt's labours in the Life of Henry, that they have stimulated the elder sage of Quincy to a task of so much edification and value to the country. It is not too much to say of this rare volume, that no one of the present generation, at least, may be considered to be fully informed in the history of American Independence who has not perused it. Two of the letters contained in this volume belong to the correspondence with Mr. Wirt, and appropriately claim a place in our pages. A third, not published in the work alluded to, will be read with equal interest, as connected with the subject described in the Sketches: SIR: JOHN ADAMS TO WILLIAM WIRT. QUINCY, January 5, 1818. Your Sketches of the Life of Mr. Henry have given me a rich entertainment. I will not compare them to the Sibyl conducting Eneas to the regions below, to see the ghosts of departed sages and heroes; but to an angel conveying me to the abodes of the blessed on high, to converse with the spirits of just men made perfect. The names of Henry, Lee, Bland, Pendleton, Washington, Rutledge, Wythe, Dickinson, &c., will ever thrill through my veins with an agreeable sensation. I am not about to make any critical remarks upon your work at presentbut, sir, "Erant heroes ante Agamemnona multi." If I could go back to the age of thirty-five, I would endeavour to become your rival, not in elegance of composition, but in a simple narration of facts, supported by records, histories, and testimonies of irrefragable authority. I would adopt your title, "Sketches," in all * In the copy of this letter as printed in the volume I have referred to, Mr. Adams made several corrections -one especially upon this passage. adding to the line above quoted, as follows: -"Or, not to garble Horace Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Morte, carent quia vate sacro." I have pursued the manuscript in my possession, of which a fac-simile may be seen in the front of this volume. its modesty, Sketches of the Life and Writings of James Otis, of Boston, and, in imitation of your example, I would introduce portraits of a long catalogue of illustrious men, who were agents in the Revolution. Jeremiah Gridley, the father of the bar in Boston and the preceptor of Pratt, Otis, Thatcher, Cushing and many others; Benjamin Pratt, Chief Justice of New York, James Otis of Boston, Oxenbridge Thatcher, Jonathan Sewall, Attorney General and Judge of Admiralty, Samuel Quincy, Solicitor General,-Daniel Leonard,* Josiah Quincy, Richard Dana, and Francis Dana-his son, Minister to Russia, and afterwards Chief Justice, Jonathan Mayhew D. D., Samuel Cooper D. D., James Warren and Joseph Warren, John Winthrop, Professor at Harvard College and member of Council, Samuel Dexter the father, John Worthington of Springfield, Joseph Hawley of Northampton, Governors Hutchinson, Hancock, Bowdoin, Adams, Sullivan, and Gerry, Lieutenant Governor Oliver, Chief Justice Oliver, Judge Edmund Trowbridge; Judge William Cushing, and Timothy Ruggles ought not to be omitted. The military characters, Ward, Lincoln, Warren, Knox, Brooks, and Heath, &c., must come in, of course. Nor should Benjamin Kent, Samuel Swift, or John Reed, be forgotten.§ I envy none of the well-merited glories of Virginia, or any of her sages or heroes, but I am jealous, very jealous, of the honour of Massachusetts. The resistance to the British system for subjugating the colonies, began in 1760, and in 1761, in the month of February, when James Otis electrified the town of Boston, the Province of Massachusetts Bay and the whole continent, more than Patrick Henry ever did in the whole course of his life. If we must have panegyric and hyperbole, I must say that, if Mr. Henry was Demosthenes and R. H. Lee Cicero, Mr. Otis was Isaiah and Ezekiel united. I hope, sir, that some young gentleman of the family, the ancient and honourable family, of the "Searchers," will hereafter do impartial justice to Virginia and Massachusetts. After all this freedom, I assure you it is no flattery when I congratulate the nation on the acquisition of an Attorney General of such talents and industry as your Sketches demonstrate. With great esteem, I am, sir, Your friend, JOHN ADAMS. * In the printed copy there is added "now Chief Justice of Bermuda." t "The Boston Cicero,"-added in the printed letter. "And his wife," added. § To this list the printed letter adds the names of Charles Chauncey D. D., James Lovel of Boston, and Governors Shirley, Pownal and Bernard. The wish so earnestly expressed in this letter, for the faculty and time to do justice to the character of Otis, the venerable author himself has fully gratified in the letters appended to the re-publication of Novanglus and Massachusettensis. They are twenty-eight in number; and present a vivid and most interesting sketch of the part taken by Mr. Otis in the great drama of which he was so conspicuous an actor. This has been followed by a still more complete and finished work, from the classical pen of Mr. Tudor, on the same subject—and more recently in a Life of Otis in Mr. Sparks' American Biography. SIR: TO JOHN ADAMS. WASHINGTON, January 12, 1818. I am just honoured with your letter of the 5th instant, and am truly gratified to learn that my Sketches of Mr. Henry have afforded you entertainment. If I could have anticipated such an effect, I would have taken the liberty on the first publication of the work, to order you a copy, as a slight proof of that sincere respect, which, in common with my countrymen, I feel towards you as one among the chief of our revolutionary patriots. Even yet, I hope it is not too late, in this point of view, to give the order, which I will immediately do, and to beg your acceptance of the book in consideration of the sentiment from which the offer proceeds. I have not taken this liberty towards any gentleman to whom I was personally unknown, because I thought it would argue a vain confidence in the merit of the work, which, in truth, I do not feel; nor would I now take it in relation to you, but for the favourable light in which you have been pleased to speak of the Sketches. It is possible that I may have been led by the evidence on which my narrative is founded, to assign Mr. Henry too high a rank in the glory of the American Revolution: but if I have done So, I can affirm with the most solemn truth that I have not sinned intentionally; and there is this consolation, that as I have given, all along, the evidence on which my statements are founded, the error may be easily corrected and rendered harmless by a citation of the adverse proofs which show it to be error. It was as far from my inclination, I beg you to be assured, as it was from the scope and object of my work, to institute an invidious comparison between the States of Massachusetts and Virginia, in the revolutionary contest. I had been led by the histories of the times to consider them as twin sisters in this race of glory, and as running pretty fairly abreast through the whole course of it. I have not the honour to boast of my nativity in either of those States, and therefore feel none of that local, and I will add, honourable pride and jealousy which naturally grow out of our attachment to the natale solum : but if the case were otherwise, I should deem a minute comparison of these states better calculated to tarnish the general grandeur of the revolutionary cause, than to do honour to either of them. Whether this sentiment, however, be right or not, the single object which I had in view was to discharge my portion of that debt of national gratitude, which I thought justly due to a great benefactor of his country, to whose merits my attention happened to be peculiarly attracted, by the circumstance of having settled, early in life, in his native statein that state which had been the particular theatre of his exertions, and in which the echoes of his fame were still resounding from every quarter, when I first entered it in the year 1792. Had my destiny led me to commence my professional career in Massachusetts, the names you mention (many of which have been long known and revered by me) would have been rendered, by the same causes, as familiar to my mind and as dear to my affections, as the name of Mr. Henry now is. As to Massachusetts, no man, I believe, can think more highly than I do of the sagacity, the intrepidity, the heroism which marked her whole course throughout the entire period of the revolutionary struggle. It is impossible for any American, at this distance of time, to read of her sufferings, of her magnanimity and invincible bravery in that trying contest, without a burning heart and overflowing eyes; and I, for one, do most devoutly wish that some one could be incited, by any cause, to record, in imperishable characters, the lives of her patriots. Far from considering an act of the most ample justice to them, as detracting, in the smallest degree, from the merits of Mr. Henry, or of any other champion of the revolution, I should hail the appearance of such a work with unaffected gratulation. The present and future generations of our country can never be better employed than in studying the models set before them by the fathers of our revolution; and I cannot forbear the expression of the hope that if no one be now disposed to give us those of Massachusetts, the materials at least for such a work may now be collected and preserved - certain that, with such advantage, same pen of much deeper and far more durable stroke than mine, will hereafter be found to hand down the lives and characters of the illustrious men of Massachusetts to the admiration and gratitude of posterity. I pray you to accept my thanks for the very obliging terms in which you have been pleased to speak of my appointment, and to believe me, with profound respect, Your obedient servant, JOHN ADAMS, Esq., Quincy, Massachusetts. WM. WIRT. |