1To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 25 March 1826 (Adams Papers)
My grandson Th: Jefferson Randolph, being on a visit to Boston, would think he had seen nothing were he to leave it without having seen you. altho’ I truly sympathise with you in the trouble these interruptions give, yet I must ask for him permission to pay to you his personal respects. like other young people, he wishes to be able, in the winter nights of old age, to recount to those around...
2To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 18 December 1825 (Adams Papers)
Your letters are always welcome, the last more than all others, it’s subject being one of the dearest to my heart. to my granddaughter your commendations cannot fail to be an object of high ambition, as a certain passport to the good opinion of the world. if she does not cultivate them with assiduity and affection, she will illy fulfill my parting injunctions. I trust she will merit a...
3To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 15 February 1825 (Adams Papers)
The people of Europe seem still to think that America is a mere garden plat, and that whatever is sent to one place is close for at home as to every other. the volume I now forward to you by this mail was found on Majr. Cartwright’s death, was found to have in his own handwriting an address for you altho’ mistaking your Christian name. his friends having occn to write to me on another subject,...
4To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 8 January 1825 (Adams Papers)
It is long since I have written to you. this proceeds from the difficulty of writing with my crippled wrists, and from an unwillingness to add to your inconveniences of either reading by the eyes, or writing by the hands of others. the account I recieve of your physical situation afflicts me sincerely. but if body or mind was one of them to give way, it is a great comfort that it is the mind...
5From Thomas Jefferson to George Washington Adams, 9 August 1824 (Adams Papers)
Th: Jefferson returns his thanks to mr George Washington Adams for the eloquent oration on the late 4th. of July which he has been so kind as to send him. he deems it a subject of worthy congratulations to his fellow citizens that a young character of so much promise, and descended thro’ a lineage so meritorious, is now entering on the stage of life, with so much personal, as well as...
6To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 11 July 1824 (Adams Papers)
My friend and correspondent of Richmond, Colo. Bernard Peyton will have the honor of delivering you this letter. he was a worthy officer of the late war, and now an equally worthy member of the mercantile body. proposing to visit Boston, he has the natural ambition of being presented to the first of the revolutionary characters now living. I ask, of your friendship to give him a few moments of...
7To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 12 October 1823 (Adams Papers)
I do not write with the ease which your letter of Sep. 18. supposes. crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and laborious. but, while writing to you, I lose the sense of these things, in the recollection of antient times, when youth and health made happiness out of every thing. I forget for a while the hoary winter of age, when we can when we can think of nothing but how to keep...
8To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 4 September 1823 (Adams Papers)
Your letter of Aug. 15. was recieved in due time, and with the welcome of every thing which comes from you. with it’s opinions on the difficulties of revolutions, from despotism to freedom, I very much concur. the generation which commences a revolution can rarely compleat it. habituated from their infancy to passive submission of body and mind to their kings and priests, they are not...
9From Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 11 April 1823 (Adams Papers)
The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of “ mon Dieu ! jusque à quand”! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god . he was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Dæmonism. if ever man worshipped a false god, he did. the being described in...
10To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 25 February 1823 (Adams Papers)
I recieved in due time your two favors of Dec. 2. & Feb. 10. and have to acknolege for the ladies of my native state their obligations to you for the encomiums which you are so kind as to bestow on them. they certainly claim no advantages over those of their sister states, and are sensible of more favorable circumstances existing with many of them, & happily availed of, which our situation...