Louisa (54 page)

“Assassins” went too far
:
For the controversy with JA2, see Samuel Flagg Bemis, “The Scuffle in the Rotunda: A Footnote to the Presidency of John Quincy Adams and to the History of Dueling,”
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
71 (October 1953–May 1957): 156–66; “Concerning an Altercation with John Adams, 1828,” Russell Jarvis Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University. For the attacks on JQA, see, for instance, editorial from the
United States Telegraph,
May 4, 1827, reprinted in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Fred L. Israel, and William P. Hansen, eds.,
History of American Presidential Elections 1789–1968
(New York: Chelsea House, 1985), 449–51.

In February 1827
:
“Biographical Sketch of Mrs. Adams,” Natchez, Mississippi,
Ariel,
April 13, 1827, reprinted from the
Philadelphia Evening Post
;
United States Telegraph
, June 16, 1827.

It is a very strange
:
LCA to John Grahame, July 28, 1828, printed in Thomas John Chew Williams and Folger McKinsey,
History of Frederick County, Maryland
(Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1797), 112–13; “Biographical Sketch of Mrs. Adams.”

The tone of the document
:
United States Telegraph,
June 16, 1826.

Then Jackson's supporters
:
United States Telegraph,
June 18, 20, 1826; Heffron,
Louisa Catherine,
338.

Before the 1824 election
:
The Papers of Andrew Jackson: 1825–1828
, ed. Harold D. Moser and J. Clint Clifft (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 355.

No doubt he was
:
LCA to JQA, July 10, 1828, CFA to Abigail Brooks, June 30, 1827, AFP; Bemis,
John Quincy Adams and the Union,
147.

She wanted to fight
:
Fletcher Webster, ed.,
The Private Correspondence of Daniel Webster
(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1857), 1:469; Parsons,
The Birth of Modern Politics
, 116; Thurlow Weed,
Life of Thurlow Weed Including his Autobiography and a Memoir
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, & Company, 1884), 1:181.

He had trouble sleeping
:
DJQA, July 31, 1827.

It was difficult
:
Wilentz,
The Rise of American Democracy,
262–63, 299–300; Howe,
What Hath God Wrought,
250, 276–81.

John Quincy was actually
:
Quoted in Freehling,
Road to Disunion
, 342, and Bemis,
John Quincy Adams and the Union
, 151.

Perhaps the subject
:
DJQA, January 10, 1832. I am grateful to James Traub for pointing out this line to me; 1830 U.S. Census, “Johnson Hellen,” Washington Ward 2, District of Columbia, accessed through Ancestry.com; DJQA, February 23 and 24, 1828 (Alison Weisgall Robertson helped with the translation); Mann, “Slavery Exacts an Impossible Price,” 131.

John Quincy, though
:
Provine,
Free Negro Registers,
Vol. II, 92.

He never mentioned
:
DJQA, February 25, 1828.

Might Louisa have
:
“Record of a Life,” DLCA 1:25, 19; 1800 U.S. Census, “Joshua Johnson,” Washington, District of Columbia, accessed through Ancestry.com; 1820 and 1830 U.S. Census, “Nathaniel Frye,” Washington Ward 1, District of Columbia, accessed through Ancestry.com.

6

Even more than her husband
:
LCA to CFA, July 16, 1828, AFP; Louisa Catherine Adams, Collection of vocal music in MS, Adams-Clement Collection, Division of Political History, Smithsonian Institution, United States National Museum; LCA to George Washington Adams, June 29, 1828, AFP.

She was more social
:
LCA, “The Metropolitan Kaleidoscope / or / Winter Varieties,” AFP.

Much went unobserved
:
William Seale and Adele Logan Alexander, “Upstairs and Downstairs,”
American Visions
(February 1995): 16; Seale,
The President's House,
194–95; quoted in Mann, “Slavery Exacts an Impossible Price,” 127.

She had that blindness
:
LCA, “The Metropolitan Kaleidoscope,” AFP.

As the 1828 campaign
:
CFA to Abigail Brooks, September 18, 1828, AFP; Wilentz,
The Rise of American Democracy,
309.

John Quincy was
:
DJQA, January 1, 1829; LCA to CFA, November 15, December 25, 1828, AFP.

At one of their last
:
Smith,
First Forty Years of Washington Society,
248–49.

PART
NINE
:
BEGINNING
THE
WORLD
ANEW

1

Winter was stubborn
:
LCA to CFA, March 29, 1829, AFP; LCA to Elizabeth Hopkinson, June 15, 1823, Hopkinson Family Papers (Collection 1978), the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

At the beginning of March
:
Donald H. Mugridge, “The United States Sanitary Commission in Washington,”
Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, DC
60/62 (1960/62), 136.

She heard stories
:
Jon Meacham,
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
(New York: Random House, 2008), 61–62.

She kept all
:
LCA to CFA, March 19, May 3, 1829, AFP; Mona McKindley, e-mail to author, October 7, 2013. For the billiard table controversy, see editorial from the Steubenville, Pennsylvania,
Ledger
, May 17, 1827, reprinted in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Fred L. Israel, and
William P. Hansen, eds.,
History of American Presidential Elections 1789–1968
(New York: Chelsea House, 1985), 452.

Since leaving the glare
:
LCA to CFA, January 18, February 1, April 16, April 3, 1829, LCA to GWA, April 8, 1829, AFP.

A letter arrived
:
LCA to GWA, April 1, 1829, LCA to JA2, July 16, 1827, AFP.

On April 8
:
LCA to GWA, April 8, 1829, LCA to CFA, April 16, 1829, AFP.

She expected him
:
DJQA, May 2, 1829.

Over the next few days
:
DJQA, May 3, 4, 1829.

His corpse would
:
JQA to LCA, June 13, 1829, AFP; DJQA, May 3, 1829; LCA, undated statement after the death of GWA [1829], AFP.

To Charles, she
:
LCA to CFA, May 7, 1829, AFP; DJQA, May 6, May 21, 1829.

What story she constructed
:
LCA to Thomas Hellen, May 17, 1827, LCA to CFA, July 5, 1829, AFP.

Louisa remained alone
:
LCA to CFA, May 19, 1829, LCA to JQA, June 22, 1829, AFP.

Her focus turned
:
LCA to JQA, July 2, 17, 1829, AFP.

She missed her husband
:
LCA to JQA, June 22, July 7, 1829, CFA to LCA, June 28, 1829, AFP.

She had wanted to accompany
:
CFA to LCA, April 18, 1829, JQA to LCA, June 18, 1829, AFP.

He probably also
:
DCFA 2: August 20, 1829.

Whatever John Quincy
:
“Report of a Trial: Miles Farmer, versus Dr. David Humphreys Storer,” Court of Common Pleas (Suffolk County), Massachusetts, Supreme Judicial Court, Miscellaneous Pamphlet Collection, LC; DCFA 2: May 13, 28, July 16, June 18, 1829.

He dreaded telling
:
DCFA 2: August 22, 23, 1829.

Back in Washington
:
LCA to JQA, August 28, September 27, 1829, AFP.

In May 1830
:
DJQA, May 2, 1830; DCFA 3: June 19, 1830.

She had never taken
:
Ibid.; Karen Yourell at the Adams National Historical Park showed me and told me about the yellowwood tree.

2

She may have read
:
JQA to JA2, September 15, 1830, AFP; DJQA, September 18, 1830.

She wanted nothing
:
LCA to JA2, September 27, 1830, JQA to JA2, October 27, 1830, AFP.

The election took place
:
DJQA, November 7, 1830.

His wife made
:
LCA to JA2, November 14, 1830, AFP.

Her rage, though
:
LCA to JA2, August 29, November 14, 1832, AFP.

She reached Washington
:
LCA to CFA, January 5, 1831, AFP.

Her thoughts often
:
LCA to JQA, June 21, 1832, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:693.

Her mood, though
:
LCA to Abigail Brooks Adams, January 29, 1831, AFP; LCA to Anna Maria Thornton, July 23, 1844, William Thornton Papers, LC; Benjamin Waterhouse to LCA, January 14, 1833, AFP.

Her sharp edge
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:691.

As usual, she disclaimed
:
LCA to CFA, February 6, 1835, January 3, 1833, LCA to JA2, August 22, 1832, AFP.

She set herself up
:
LCA to JQA, May 18, 1832, LCA to CFA and Abigail Brooks Adams, January 26, 1848, LCA to CFA, February 21, 1831, AFP.

But family was her
:
LCA to Abigail Brooks Adams, January 29, 1831, LCA to CFA, November 29, 1834, LCA to Abigail Brooks Adams, June 9, 1836, AFP.

No one blinked
:
For the Second Great Awakening, see Gary Dorrien,
The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805–1900
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 1–179.

That atmosphere affected
:
LCA to JQA, August 21, 1826, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:737; LCA to CFA, December 13, 1839, LCA to JQA, May 29, 1837, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:738.

She was sure
:
LCA to Mary Hellen Adams, July 14, 1841, AFP.

She had watched
:
LCA to JQA, June 21, July 14, August 17, 1832, July 22, 1834, [April 21?, 1831], AFP.

3

She had outbursts
:
LCA to JQA, July 19, 1834, JQA to LCA, July 24, 1834, LCA to JQA, July 29, 1834, AFP.

John was only twenty-nine
:
DCFA 5:143.

Living with him
:
LCA to CFA, December 7, 1833, LCA to JQA, July 16, 1834, AFP.

John Quincy listened
:
JQA to JA2, July 23, 26, 1834, AFP.

Faced with few alternatives
:
LCA to JA2, July 31, 1834, LCA to Mary Hellen Adams, August 10, 1834, AFP.

“Then came the”
:
DCFA 5:405.

John Quincy left
:
DJQA, October 18–23, 1834; JQA to LCA, October 23, 1834, AFP.

By the time
:
DCFA 5:409–10.

A year later
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:688–89, 692–93, 696, 694. The alternative translation to the epigram is proposed in the footnote on 689.

It took something heroic
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:705.

It occurred to her
:
“Narrative of a Journey,” DLCA 1:375; William Lee Miller,
Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress
(New York: Knopf, 1996), 206–12.

“Narrative of a Journey”
:
“Narrative of a Journey,” DLCA 1:375, 406.

PART
TEN
:
IN
M
Y
OWN
NAME

1

There was more
:
Due to limited data, estimates of life expectancy before the twentieth century, especially for women, are uncertain and disputed, but best estimates for a white female in the United States between 1830 and 1839 typically have it at around forty. The figure is slightly higher for women who survived childhood. J. David Hacker, “Decennial Life Tables for the White Population of the United States, 1790–1900,”
Historical Methods
43 no. 2 (2010): 45–79.

Louisa had not planned
:
LCA to CFA, February 10, 1837, AFP.