Much as it has been ridiculed since, the “era of good feeling” had some characteristics peculiar to itself. For an instant, sectional animosities relented, the tone of personal denunciation and angry crimination, too generally prevailing in extremes, yielded; and even where the jealous rivalry for political honors still predominated in the hearts of men, the easy polish of general society removed from casual spectators any sense of its roughness, or inconvenience from its impetuosity. Washington may have presented more brilliant spectacles since, but the rancor of party spirit has ever mingled its baleful force too strongly not to be perceptible in the personal relations which have existed between the most distinguished of our political men.
The following letter, not before published, from Mrs. Adams to her father-in-law will be read with interest. She corresponded regularly during her life in Washington, with him, until his death, in 1826:
To John Adams.
“Washington, 16th April, 1819.
“Yes! my dear sir, was my mind sufficiently strong or capacious to understand, or even to comprehend the study of ancient and modern philosophy, I am certain I should derive very great advantage from that study; but you certainly forgot when you recommended it, that you were addressing the weaker sex, to whom stoicism would be both unamiable and unnatural, and who would be very liable in avoiding Scylla, to strike upon Charybdis, or to speak without metaphor, to rush into scepticism. Have you perceived anything like fatalism in my letters? I am unconscious of it, though I fear there may sometimes be a little inclination toward it. The woman you selected for your wife was so highly gifted in mind, with powers so vast, and such quick and clear perception, altogether so superior to the general run of females, you have perhaps formed a too enlarged opinion of the capacities of our sex, and having never witnessed their frailties, are not aware of the dangers to which they are exposed, by acquirements above their strength.
“The systems of the ancients have been quite out of my reach, excepting the Dialogues of Plato, which Mr. A. recommended to me last year, and which I read attentively. I cannot say that I am entirely unacquainted with their different theories, but that acquaintance has been too superficial to make them well understood, and I have been too much inclined to view them, as difficult of practice, and not tending much to the real benefit of mankind. With the modern philosophers I have become more intimate, if I may make use of such a word, speaking of works which I have read, but which I could not understand or digest. Locke has puzzled me, Berkley amused me, Reid astonished me, Hume disgusted me, and Tucker either diverted me or set me to sleep. This is a very limited sort of reading, and you will laugh at my catalogue of names which have at best, I believe, but little title to the rank of philosophers, or at least must come in at the fag end. I have dipped into others and thrown them aside, but I have never seen anything that would satisfy my mind, or that would compare with the chaste and exquisitely simple doctrines of Christianity.
“I fear you will find this letter more extravagant than any you have ever received from me, but I have made it a rule to follow where the current of my ideas carried me, and to give them to you in a perfect undress. My reading has been too general, and too diffuse to be very beneficial. French authors have occupied my attention the largest portion of my life, but their venom was destroyed, by the events which were continually passing almost before my eyes, and which showed how wicked was the practice resulting from such theories. You, my dear sir, have ever possessed a nature too ardent, too full of benevolent feelings to all your race, with a mind too noble, and a capacity too enlarged, to sink into the cold and thankless state of stoicism. Your heart is too full of all the generous and kindly affections for you ever to acquire such a cold and selfish doctrine. No, my dear sir, it was, it is impossible. Look at your past life, retrace all the eminent services you have rendered to your country, and to mankind, and if you, by unforeseen and uncontrollable events, have been prevented from doing all you wished, all you desired, toward promoting their felicity, let their unequalled prosperity (in producing which, you had so large a share) sooth your latest hours, and cheer your heart with the conviction, that to you, in a great measure, they owe it; and this sentiment alone will be sufficient reward. I set out in life with the most elevated notions of honor and principle; ere I had entered it fairly, my hopes were blasted, and my ideas of mankind, that is, all the favorable ones almost, were suddenly chilled, and I was very near forming the horrid and erroneous opinion, that no such thing as virtue existed. This was a dreadful doctrine at the age of little more than twenty, but it taught me to reflect and not to ‘build my house in the sand.’ My life has been a life of changes, and I had early accustomed myself to the idea of retirement. The nature of our institutions, the various turns of policy to which an elective government is ever liable, has long occupied my thoughts, and I trust I may find strength to sustain any of the changes which may be in store for me, with fortitude, dignity, and I trust cheerfulness. To these changes, I can never attach the idea of disgrace. Popular governments are peculiarly liable to factions, to cabals, to intrigue, to the juggling tricks of party, and the people may often be deceived for a time, by some fair speaking demagogue, but they will never be deceived long; and though they may, in a moment of excitement, sanction an injustice toward an old and faithful servant, they appreciate his worth, and hand his name down with honor to posterity, even though that ‘name may not be agreeable to the fashionables.’ It is one which I take a pride in bearing, and one that I hope and pray my children may never dishonor.
“What you say concerning the Floridas is, I believe, universally allowed, and as to the effect upon the name, why, it is of little importance, provided the substance is left, and the act undeniable. There is the lance, let the lance speak—I can safely swear as an individual I never set my heart on what the world calls a great reward. I am too well assured that ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’ and the station is too full of thorns to render it very desirable. I have no relish for being absolutely crucified for the sake of a short pre-eminence. You have, I suppose, seen the correspondence between Gen. Scott and old Hickory? How do you like the epistle of the former? What do you think of De Witt Clinton’s reply to the charge insinuated against him? We hear of nothing but complaints of the times, and our commercial world are in great distress. In Baltimore (that city where the South American privateers are owned and fitted out by native citizens in the very face of the public, and committing depredations on the property of their fellow-citizens) there are failures every day, and it is said the mischief will extend to all parts of the Union. In Virginia, a man who broke out of the jail in this city, has offered himself as a candidate for Congress, telling the electors that he would take only six dollars a day, as he thinks eight too much; because if he found his pay insufficient, he would play, and by this means insure himself a living. That he had often played with their late member, and with many of the most distinguished members of Congress, who used to send for him to play with them. Such things are—
“Adieu, my dear Sir.”
“During the eight years in which Mrs. Adams presided in the house of the Secretary of State,” writes her son, Hon. Charles Francis Adams, in 1839, “no exclusions were made, in her invitations, merely on account of any real or imagined political hostility; nor, though keenly alive to the reputation of her husband, was any disposition manifested to do more than to amuse and enliven society. In this, the success was admitted to be complete, as all will remember who were then in the habit of frequenting her dwelling. But in proportion as the great contest for the Presidency, in which Mr. Adams was involved, approached, the violence of partisan warfare began to manifest its usual bad effects, and Mrs. Adams decided to adopt habits of greater seclusion. When at last the result had placed her in the President’s mansion, her health began to fail her so much, that though she continued to preside upon occasions of public reception, she ceased to appear at any other times, and she began to seek the retirement which since her return to private life she has preferred. Mr. Adams has been, it is true, and still continues, a representative in Congress, from the State of Massachusetts, and this renders necessary an annual migration from that State to Washington and back again, as well as a winter residence within the sound of the gayeties of that place; but while her age and health dispense her from the necessities of attending them, severe domestic afflictions have contributed to remove the disposition. Thus the attractions of great European capitals, and the dissipation consequent upon high official station at home, though continued through that part of her life when habits become most fixed, have done nothing to change the natural elegance of her manners, nor the simplicity of her tastes. In the society of a few friends and near relatives, and in the cultivation of the religious affections without display, she draws all the consolation that can in this world be afforded for her privations. To the world Mrs. Adams presents a fine example of the possibility of retiring from the circles of fashion, and the external fascinations of life, in time still to retain a taste for the more quiet though less showy attractions of the domestic fireside. A strong literary taste which has led her to read much, and a capacity for composition in prose and verse, have been resources for her leisure moments; not with a view to that exhibition which renders such accomplishments too often fatal to the more delicate shades of feminine character, but for her own gratification and that of a few relations and friends. The late President Adams used to draw much amusement, in his latest years at Quincy, from the accurate delineation of Washington manners and character, which was regularly transmitted, for a considerable period, in letters from her pen. And if as time advances, she becomes gradually less able to devote her sense of sight to reading and writing, her practice of the more homely virtues of manual industry, so highly commended in the final chapter of the book of Solomon, still amuses the declining days of her varied career.”