John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

3. VI. Friday.

The child Fanny, is recovering from her severe intermittent fever, but her mother and grandmother are much indisposed with heavy colds— I called at Mrs Wolfendens for a settlement of her rent and she gave me a bill of half her quarters rent for putting up a coal grate— Walking round the Capitol, Franklin E. Plummer, a member of the late House of Representatives from Mississippi was starting from Mrs Dunn’s in a Carryall, and asked me to take a seat with him which I did; he was driving to the War Department, where I left him— He said he thought Poindexter had been imprudent, in his great dinner Speech at Philadelphia.— The whigs of Philadelphia have made a magnificent Banquet at the Arch-Street Theatre; in honour of Mr Poindexter; against whom, the basest conspiracy ever witnessed in this Country has been defeated and exposed—growing out of the attempt of Richard Lawrence to assassinate the President, at the Capitol, on the 29th. of January, the day of Warren R Davis’s funeral. Immediately after Lawrence’s two pistols missed fire the President said it was a Poindexter affair— Soon after a man named Coltman a member of the Common Council, suborned two men named Foy and Stewart to make affidavit’s that they had seen Lawrence go to Poindexter’s house, and talking with him, a day or two before the attempted Assassination— The President was treasuring up these Affidavits, when they were communicated to D. J. Pearce, when visiting at the House, and by him to Southworth, a newspaper correspondent and Reporter— The facts got thus into the newspapers— Poindexter, wrote to the President demanding an explanation but received no answer— Poindexter demanded an investigating Committee of the Senate; and there was one appointed who detected and exposed the conspiracy, so far at least as to fasten the Subornation by Coltman; and the falsehood of the two affidavits— They reported a triumphant vindication of Poindexter’s innocence, and the report was unanimously accepted by the Senate— The public indignation is thus transformed, from the Assassin of the person to the Assassin of character, and Jackson himself bears no small portion of the public odium. The Philadelphia whigs turn it to political account; and give a great festival to Poindexter, to celebrate his escape from the conspiracy— Poindexter avails himself of the occasion to make a flaming opposition Speech, which may be excusable in him but which seems to me not well judged— The whole affair is sickening to me, and looks too much as if we were running into the manners of the Italian Republics.