John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

30. VI: Floyd’s Letter was published this morning in the National Intelligencer. I wrote a very short answer to it, for publication in the same paper to-morrow Morning— Among the absurdities with which Floyd’s Letter abounds is his attacking me in the Newspapers with a charge that I am seeking Newspaper Controversy— I have confined my answers to a direct denial of having made the assertion which he imputes to me, and declares false, and have fixed the falsehood unanswerably upon himself— The City Gazette of this afternoon has another insulting paragraph, of high panegyrick upon Floyd’s character, purity of motives and veracity, and asserting that his Letter puts the dispute between Russell and me upon an entire new footing— This is followed by a paragraph hoping that I have not employed Seth Hunt (as my enemies insinuate) to plot the destruction of Mr. Russell’s character, for a reward in case of success. This alludes to a charge published in the New York Statesman under the signature of Ariel, charging Russell with having speculated for pecuniary profit upon information which he gave to commercial houses at the Negotiation of Ghent— Russell having called upon the publishers for the name of the author of Ariel, Hunt wrote to him and avowed himself as the author, upon which Russell prosecuted him both by action and by Indictment, and prosecuted also the publishers of the Statesman— Of all these transactions I have no knowledge but by the newspapers.— There are other paragraphs in this days Gazette equally insidious and base, interspersed with encomiums and defences of Crawford, written as I have reason to suppose by a man named Richards of spotted character, whom Crawford knowing him as such has this Summer taken as a Clerk into the Treasury Department— I note these things as they pass to indicate for memory hereafter, the situation in which I am placed, the means used to ruin my character, the agents by whom the machinery is wielded, and the persons for whom the dirty work is performed— The thing itself is not new— From the nature of our Institutions the competitors for public favour, and their respective partizans seek success by Slander upon each other as you add to the weight of one Scale, by taking from that of the other. I disdain this ignoble mode of warfare, and neither wage it myself nor countenance it in my friends. But from present appearances it will decide the succession to the Presidency— I was idle at the Office, and received a Letter from Joseph R. Ingersoll, intimating an apprehension that it might be necessary to take over again my deposition in the case of Harris vs Lewis— I spent the Evening at Mr Frye’s.