John Adams Fears the Release of His Statement of Slavery as “An evil of Colossal magnitude” and His Opposition to Its Expansion into U.S. Territories Could Be Used “to irritate and injure the Cause.”

"…They are words of Party, and although I have used them myself, both formerly, and laterally too freely, and too vulgarly; yet I should not approve them in any sober History or serious Biography."

 

"I pray you not to publish this letter any more than the other."

James Otis was an attorney and member of the Massachusetts provincial assembly, and the earliest important public advocate of what became the Patriot views against British policy. His 1761 speech against "writs of assistance", which enabled British authorities to enter any colonist's home with no advance notice and no probable cause or reason given, is considered by many the first shot of the American Revolution. John Adams attended the writs of assistance speech, and he later said that it galvanized feelings against British usurpations and created a desire to oppose them. Adams was a young attorney at the time, ten years junior to Otis, and was greatly influenced by him. It is fair to say that Adams became a protégé of Otis. During the Stamp Act and Townsend Act tax crisis, Otis wrote four popular pamphlets against the actions of Parliament, and these greatly influenced his friend Thomas Paine to later write "Common Sense." Otis' catchphrase "Taxation without representation is tyranny" became the Patriot rallying cry. Adams credited Otis as being a major factor in the Revolution, stating, "I solemnly say I have never known a man…whose service for any 10 years of his life were so important and essential to the cause of his country as those of Mr. Otis from 1760 to 1770." Otis' sister, Mercy Otis Warren, was famously a close friend of both John and Abigail Adams.

William Tudor studied law in the office of John Adams and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1772. He was active in the Revolution, becoming Judge Advocate General of the Continental Army. After the war, he served in the state legislature and founded the Massachusetts Historical Society. His son William was one of the leading literary figures in Boston and cofounder of the North American Review and the Boston Athenaeum. It was Tudor who christened Boston The Athens of America, a great tribute that its many outstanding 19th century literary luminaries brightly burnished. In fact, Tudor's friend Rev. William Emerson had a small son during their acquaintanceship, by the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who would play no small part in that very undertaking. The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts, published in 1823, is generally considered Tudor's best work.

As a family friend of Adams embarking on a major biography of Otis, the younger Tudor opened a correspondence with Adams. In 1819 Adams assisted by providing Tudor with much information, including transcriptions of important letters in Adams' possession. This was the time during the run-up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the questions of slavery in the territories and the admission of Missouri as a slave state much interested Tudor, and in fact many in Massachusetts. Tudor wrote Adams on this subject on and elicited an important and now-famous response on November 20, 1819, with Adams writing unambiguously: "Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories."

Just a week later, on November 27, 1819, Tudor wrote Adams again, first to congratulate him for his anti-slavery stand, saying "I was very highly gratified by your opinion on the subject of slavery in the new states. Its tenor was what I anticipated from the principles and actions of your whole life. A meeting is advertised for the next week of gentlemen of this town and vicinity who are enemies of the trade and further extension of slavery in the United States." Tudor continued that he had thought of addressing the meeting, "introducing the letter with which you honored me", and disclosing its contents. However, he was loath to do so without having Adams permission, because of a concern that Adams' words could be used by the slaveholders as a means to attack John Quincy Adams and the antislavery cause.
Tudor then asked Adams some questions about his book, and compared the ethos of the Revolutionary age to the one in which they were then living. "I wish, sir, to ask your opinion as to the expediency of introducing any sketches or particular mention of the Tories as well as the Whigs in my work. It will be difficult to avoid some notice of Massachusetts after what you have said, but should I also introduce Hutchinson, Brig. Ruggles, et cetera. It is punishment enough perhaps as things have turned out for honest men that they were on the wrong side, and I am not so free from all bias as to hope to be perfectly impartial, and it would exhibit great want of magnanimity to be otherwise. If 40 years ago debelleare superbos [vanquish the proud] was a part of the motto of you & your coadjutors, at this time parcere subjectis [spare the lowly] ought certainly to be ours." Tudor referred to Massachusetts Loyalist Governor Thomas Hutchinson and his ally, state house speaker Timothy Ruggles, and indicated that whereas during the Revolution the spirit was bring down the haughty, in the current day and age it was overlook the faults of the lower classes. Tudor's letter to Adams is in the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society; a copy is included.

Adams responded to both points in this Letter Signed, December 1, 1819, two pages, Quincy, Mass. (which he labels in deference to Thomas Jefferson's estate "Montezillo"), to Tudor. He started by asking Tudor not to disclose his letter, saying  that his opinion might do more harm than good. "Why should my little twine worn out as it is to a single thread, be woven into all these political hanks and snarls? Is not fair, and therefore I hope you will by no means publish my letter – besides, it would only irritate and injure the Cause."

Adams next turned to Tudor's queries about his book. His was still a time when the idea of a nation divided by parties was anathema to many survivors of his generation, as it had been to George Washington. So although Adams had been involved in party politics, the thought of accepting it as a norm rankled him. "As to the Life of Otis, I would not advise you to use the words Whig and Tory – they are words of Party, and although I have used them myself, both formerly, and laterally too freely, and too vulgarly; yet I should not approve them in any sober History or serious Biography." Later in the letter, on the subject of the book, Adams added, "It is impossible to write the life of Otis without introducing Hutchinson, Ruggles and many others of that stamp; and painting their portraits which you will find very delicate and dangerous to attempt."

Adams then differed with Tudor's claim that the superbi had been vanquished in the Revolution, and the lowly unjustly exalted in their day, asserting that the powers who ruled Massachusetts in Otis's day still held sway over its intellectual life (and did whatever they could to damage the reputations of those who had led the Revolution). "You have very ill applied the words superbos and subjectes – the superbi are superbi  still, and the subject are subject still – the former are now the noble Lords who hold the advowson of the Commonwealth of all of our Universities, Academies, and Literary and Scientific Corporations, and Institutions – all the honors and all the emoluments are exclusively monopolized – and the character of every man dead or alive who was active and conspicuous in the Revolution, lies under an oppressive weight – and is chilled with a deadly damp." By advowson, Adams referred to undeserved sinecures given incompetent or biased parties. Adams finished by urging Tudor, "I pray you not to publish this letter any more than the other." The text of the letter is in the hand of Adams' granddaughter, Susanna Boylston Adams.

The opinion Adams expresses here about Massachusetts' cultural institutions parallel his view of its politics. In his retirement years, he had moved steadily away from the Federalist Party which, as John Ferling wrote in his biography "John Adams: A Life," Adams believed to have become an aristocracy of wealth, a "coalition of financiers, speculators, and merchants, as well as an old guard whom he called 'Tories' because they have been lukewarm at best about separating from Great Britain." Although largely defunct at the national level by the date of this letter, the Federalists remained a force in Massachusetts, where they had wide support among the political, clerical and economic elite of the commonwealth. Adams had come to consider this aristocratic coalition as a threat to the American Republic. Here he contends that this conservative old guard, with its Tory sympathies and its influence over Massachusetts' intellectual life, also posed a threat to the true history of the American Revolution.