John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

The night and morning were cloudy, but it cleared away cold, in the course of the day— Mr Duval the Governor of Florida; Mr Baldwin the new judge of the Supreme Court, Mr Torlade the Charge d’Affaires from Don Miguel the Soi disant king of Portugal, with his Secretary of Legation whom he introduced to me, and Mr Fendall paid me morning visits— They absorbed the day from Breakfast till dinner. Mr Duval professed with anxiety friendly and respectful Sentiments for me, I suppose with Sincerity— He obtained partly by my influence the Government of Florida from Mr Monroe— He was reappointed by my nomination, and has been an uniform, and by no means silent partizan of General Jackson; chiefly because Jackson was the enemy of Mr Clay— Duval is conscious of the meanness of his conduct to me, and thinks to delude me, as he perhaps deludes himself by professions of general respect, and by assurances that he never spoke disrespectfully of me. I received perhaps two years since an anonymous Letter asserting that he did speak of me much otherwise— He told me this day that he knew the person who wrote me that Letter— That it was a man whom he had checked at his own table for speaking of me with extreme bitterness himself. He also told me that it was the appointment of Mr Clay as Secretary of State that had lost to my Administration the support of all the Western States— This I do not believe; but it did not gain the support of the Western States. I saw that Mr Duval wished to raise an unfriendly feeling in me against Mr Clay, but I did not incline to let him imagine he had succeeded— I told him I had nominated Mr Clay to the Office of Secretary of State, because he had been a prominent Candidate for the Presidency; for which he had received the vote of his own, and of other Western States; and because I believed him the man of the Union best fitted for the place of Secretary of State; and his Execution of its duties had confirmed me in that opinion— That before that time I had been engaged 350at different periods in public affairs with Mr Clay, and had thought that his treatment of me had not been friendly— I had even believed that he had encouraged the base attacks of Jonathan Russell upon me— I now believed he had not; at least to the extent that I had supposed— I had been so ill treated by every public man whom circumstances had brought into competition with me, that I was in the habit of making allowances for them— That Mr Crawford, Mr Calhoun, General Jackson, and De Witt Clinton had all treated me with gross injustice, and all in return for acts of kindness and services on my part. For I could say in the presence of heaven and earth that I had never done any one of them wrong— He said he was thoroughly convinced that I had never done any man wrong. Judge Baldwin paid me a short visit— This is another politician of equivocal morality; but I hope will make a more impartial judge— I told him that I had been gratified by his appointment; which was true; because I had dreaded the appointment of Gibson, the Chief-Justice of Pennsylvania, precisely the most unfit man for the Office in the Union— Baldwin made as many professions of respect for my character as Duval— Said there had never been any other difference between us but upon politics. That he never should forget a conversation that he had with me one day at Coll. Bomford’s at the time of the Missouri-question; and that he had always done me Justice in relation to that subject, as Mr Clay could inform me— Mr Torlade introduced Mr Freitas to me; as Secretary to Don Miguel’s Legation; and complained that although recognized as the diplomatic Representative of Portugal, he had not yet recovered the Archives of the Legation from Mr Barroso Pereira— He said that he wanted them chiefly for the documents in several cases of vessels captured by Baltimore privateers for which some of his predecessors had improperly advanced absurd claims upon the Government of the United States which could not be responsible for such Acts but he wanted the documents to make claim of restitution by individuals and before the public tribunals. We had much conversation upon other subjects—Sweden, Russia, and former days. Mr Fendall was here to tell me that he had been unable to procure for me Genl Dearborn’s book upon the commerce of the Black Sea—