1From Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Smith Adams, 15 May 1817 (Adams Papers)
Your letters, dear Madam, are always welcome, and your requests are commands to me. I only regret that I can do so little towards obeying them. but eight and twenty years since I left France would, in the ordinary course of mortality, have swept off seven eighths of my acquaintances, and when to this lapse of time are added the knife of the Guillotine & scythe of constant and sanguinary wars,...
2From 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...
3To 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...
4To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 1 June 1822 (Adams Papers)
It is very long, my dear Sir, since I have written to you. my dislocated wrist is now become so stiff that I write slowly and with pain, and therefore write as little as I can. yet it is due to mutual friendship to ask once in a while how we do? the papers tell us that Genl. Starke is off at the age of 93. Charles Thomson still lives at about the same age, chearful, slender as a grasshopper,...
5To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 13 November 1818 (Adams Papers)
The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal event of which your letter of Oct. 20. had given me ominous foreboding. tried myself, in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. the same trials have taught me that, for ills so...
6To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 15 August 1820 (Adams Papers)
I am a great defaulter, my dear Sir, in our correspondence, but prostrate health rarely permits me to write; and, when it does, matters of business imperiously press their claims. I am getting better however, slowly, swelled legs being now the only serious symptom, and these, I believe, proceed from extreme debility. I can walk but little; but I ride 6. or 8. miles a day without fatigue; &...
7To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 15 May 1819 (Adams Papers)
your letter of Apr. 2. was recieved in due time, and I have used the permission it gave me of sending a copy of that of Mar. 2. to the editor of Tracy’s Political economy. Mr. S. A. Wells of Boston, grandson of our old friend Saml. Adams, and who proposes to write the life of his grandfather, has made some enquiries of me relative to revolutionary antiquities which are within your knolege as...
8To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 10 December 1819 (Adams Papers)
I have to acknolege the reciept of your favor of Nov. 23. the banks, bankrupt law, manufactures, Spanish Treaty are nothing. these are occurrences which like waves in a storm will pass under the ship. but the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, & what more, God only knows. from the battle of Bunker’s hill to the treaty of Paris we never had so...
9To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 8 September 1817 (Adams Papers)
A month’s absence from Monticello has added to the delay of acknoleging your last letters; and indeed for a month before I left it our projected College gave me constant employment; for being the only Visitor in it’s immediate neighborhood, all it’s administrative business falls on me, and that, where building is going on, is not a little. in yours of July 15, you express a wish to see our...
10To 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...