John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

12. V:30. Morning bath in the Potowmack with George— This is the last week of the Season, that I shall be able to enjoy for this mode of exercise, against which there are here very strong and I believe very unjust prejudices— I swam this morning a full half hour, without touching ground. The two great advantages of the swimming bath are cleanliness and muscular exercise, without being heated— I have never suffered any inconvenience from it, but have always found it conducive to my health— Edward Wyer came, and renewed with great earnestness, the promise he had made me on the 2d. of this month, to see me again on or before the 15th. He told me this day that a person not friendly to me, had told him that he had examined with the strictest Scrutiny my accounts at the Treasury, with the expectation of finding in them something against me; but he had been disappointed— They were perfectly correct, and he was very sorry for it. I asked him who it was, but he declined telling me. I have long believed that this was one of the machines intended to be used against me for electioneering purposes, and that Mr Crawford has had it among the ways and means of his Presidential Canvas.— The person who made this confession to Wyer, I have no doubt was one of Crawford’s subalterns; probably a Treasury Clerk; and Wyer, after telling it to me, to shew how much secret information he could give, was afraid to tell me the name of the person; least he should make enemies to himself— This is one of many incidents shewing the system of Espionage, which Crawford keeps on foot over his Colleagues; and the means, which he is willing to use to depress them— My Accounts were kept five years unsettled upon a cavil without foundation in Law or Justice— I was all but entrapped last winter, into a Report to Congress 371which would have given a handle against me; which was prepared at the Treasury and of which it was with the utmost difficulty that I obtained the rectification; and now I have it in proof that there is a person having access to all the Treasury documents, mousing for errors in my accounts upon which to raise a popular clamour against me. Wyer said he would ask the person’s consent to tell me his name; but that is a mere evasion. At the Office the heat of the weather again kept me almost idle. Evening at the Play. Cooper’s last appearance and benefit. Virginius and the Highland Reel. I sat in the Pit. The house was overflowing and the heat suffocating. The Tragedy, is a contrast to Bertram. The Plot well adapted to the Roman History. The characters well drawn with perhaps too much imitation of Shakespear’s Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. The language nervous and unaffected, and the Sentiments, properly Roman— The worst part of the Play is the Catastrophe, by which Virginius strangles the ex-Decemvir Claudius, in the prison, with his own hands, which is revolting. The whole fifth act seems to be superfluous. The Highland Reel is an amusing Comic opera, which I had seen once before, this Season.