John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

18. VII. Easter day. I attended the morning service at the Capitol, and heard Mr Obadiah Brown the Baptist Clergyman, preach from 1. Thessalonians 4:14. “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” The text appeared to promise a discourse analogous to the festival, as celebrated by other sects than the Baptists; but the sermon was upon the atonement; and was logical, and not ineloquent— After Church I called at Queen’s Hotel, and saw Mr Jennings of Indiana, who is ill in bed, with a rhumatic fever— I found Mr Mallary of Vermont with him— I spoke to him of the recommendatory Letters in the case of the last appointment of the District Attorney in Indiana; which having been sent to a Committee of the Senate when the nomination was before that body have been retained, and are now upon their files; the Vice-President declining to give an order for sending them back to the Department of State unless upon a formal Resolution of the Senate— Jennings wishes for copies of these papers, and I promised to write and ask for their return from the Senate. I called at Mr James Lloyd’s lodgings to see him, but he was abroad. In the afternoon we attended at Mr Baker’s, and heard him from Ezekiel 9.4 “And the Lord said unto him, go through the midst of the City, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.” The preacher indulged himself in invectives, against parties, and dissipation, and Sunday Politics, without reference he said to any individual. Between the Services Coll. Dwight, a member of the House from Massachusetts called on me; and at my invitation came and dined with us— He came to say that he had seen Letters from North-Carolina, speaking of certain persons there who were disposed to support me at the ensuing election, but that prejudices were entertained there against me on account of the part I had taken in the case of Coll. Burr’s expedition and trial— Dwight did not know what it referred to— I told him it was certainly to the Report and proceedings in the case of John Smith of Ohio; the whole history of which I related to him— Adding that the prejudices to which he referred, were such as it would certainly not be in my power to remove— They must have been taken up, at the time of those Events, now sixteen years gone by— They were at that Time shared by great numbers of persons; and in truth by almost the whole federal party— The Coll. spoke to me of H. Storrs one of the members from the State of New-York, a fellow lodger with him, and who is now unwell— Storrs has been heretofore very unfriendly to me; but Dwight says he is now quite otherwise— I asked him how Storrs would be to-morrow?— Yet he is one of the ablest men in the house, and a man of pleasant manners and conversation— R. S. Garnett called and spent with us an hour of the Evening.