John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

179 Quincy Saturday 28 June 1845.

28. IV:15 Saturday—

Leavitt Joshua Barrett. Lunt Revd. William P. Loring Thomas Mrs Thomas Loring Mrs Louisa C. Adams Mrs Mary C. Adams Mary Louisa Adams Mary E. E. Cutts Hellen Walter Adams Charles F

I rose this morning relieved from all severe pain of the complaint which has oppressed and disabled me, from the 4th. of the present month. I had no return of it this day [symbols]— I might have resumed my labours of duty, but did not— Mr Joshua Leavitt came out from Boston, with a young Englishman named Barrett, who has been about two months travelling in this country, and came to see me as a curiosity.— They came in the 12. O’Clock Stage, with my grandson John Quincy from school and returned by the 3. O’Clock stage to Boston. They dined with us in the interval, upon a tough Beef-steak and a plain flour pudding, materials perhaps hereafter for a chapter in Mr Barrett’s travels— He had a small album, and asked me for an autograph which I gave him— I wasted hours in my Nursery, Garden and Seminary, studying the progress of vegetation in my seedling trees, in vain— Mr Lunt came in and spent a silent half-hour with me— Mr and Mrs Loring of Hingham returning from Boston stop’d and he spoke about one or more fishing parties this summer.— I received this morning a Letter from my grand-daughter Louisa-Catherine at Lenox, and at Sunset I took it up the hill to her mother— There was a gentle sprinkling of rain all the evening, and at the stroke of the evening bell at 9. the family from Washington with my Son, arrived in a Hack from Boston— My wife, Mrs John Adams and her daughter Mary Louisa, Miss Cutts, and Walter Hellen; and a French femme de chambre.— They came in one day—Wednesday, from Washington to New-York—and this day from New-York by the Long-Island Railway to Boston, and thence here— The accidents in Steamers and on Railroads are so frequent and so fatal, that a load of apprehension always weighs upon my spirits whenever I know that persons dear to me are travelling upon them, and I speed a blessing on the moment when the journey’s end is reached in safety. I am drawing to the conclusion of the Correspondence between President Wayland, and Dr Richard Fuller upon the sinfulness of Domestic Slavery— The ingenuity and intense anxiety of Dr Fuller to escape from this principle indicates the last resort of the Slave-holder to evade the wrath to come— There is one remark in the last Letter of President Wayland, at the simplicity of which I could not choose but smile— After lavishing upon his correspondent all the language of endearment, and all the vocabulary of admiration on the temper and talent of his correspondent’s defence of Slavery, he tells him there is one thing which throughout the whole discussion he has entirely forgotten or overlooked—namely the distinction between right and wrong. It is so.