Beschreibung:

ADAMS, John Quincy (1767-1848). Autograph Letter Signed ("John Quincy Adams") as Massachusetts Congressman, to J.A. Grace in Havana, Cuba; Quincy, [Mass.], 26 October 1841, integral address leaf with panel partially in his hand. 8 full pages, 4 o (252 x 200 mm), early-nineteenth-century morocco boards, upper cover gilt-lettered: "Autograph of John Quincy Adams. -- [ With: ] Two engraved armorial bookplates: one of John Adams (1735-1801), one of John Quincy Adams, each with note by the latter on verso. On the back of his father's he has added the date 1786 and a quotation in Latin from Tacitus -- [ With: ] GRACE, John A. Letter signed to J.Q. Adams, Havana, 8 December 1841. 3 pages, 4 o, with an additional 9-page manuscript on the genealogy of the Adams-Quincy families. Provenance : John A. Grace (the recipient, engraved bookplate). A FINE LETTER: ADAMS PONDERS THE PLACE OF HERALDRY IN A REPUBLICAN NATION "FOUNDED UPON THE NATIONAL EQUALITY OF MANKIND." Responding to an inquiry from Grace, Adams offers a lengthy, very thoughtful examination of the Adams and Quincy family descent. He observes, though, that "In a republican country, heraldry, one would think, can never be a subject of other than idle inquiry," but, he adds, "there is a period of life when under every form of government, genealogy becomes to most men and women a subject of interesting inquiry." "Religion and perhaps Philosophy teach us that we are all of one family, descended from one common stock, the children of one couple of human beings created male and female. But as everyone is conversant only with his own contemporaries and finds them through life divided into classes above or below himself, all are ambitious of tracing their origin to an ancestry powerful, wealthy and distinguished in their day and generations from the common herd of the species..." Adams provides a finely detailed history of the Adams and Quincy families, settled in Massachusetts from about 1633: "the discontent which banished the settlers of the New England Colonies, was occasioned by religious persecution, encountered in the pursuit of moral reform." He returns to the question of the right place of heraldry and genealogy in a republican society where all men are, philosophically, created equal: "The North American Revolution of Independence introduced into the world a Nation in the bond of whose social union was the republican principle founded upon the National equality of mankind. We acknowledge within our own country no gradation of honors derived from birth; no hereditary titles. There is no strong prejudice against any person for being descended from an illustrious ancestry, but it is...far from being a recommendation to popular favour....Whoever aspires to a high and transcendent destiny may be sure of approving auditors, if he can boast of having risen from obscurity and the artificer of his own fortunes. This...is congenial to the democratic spirit of our institutions..." He adds in closing that "The Seal upon this letter is of that family of Adams from which the first President Adams believed himself descended," and he explains the symbolism of his own arms, which include "a pine tree, a deer passant and a fish nageant surrounded by the thirteen stars...The allusions are to the definitive Treaty of Peace and Independence with Great Britain by which were secured...the fishing rights of the Grand Bank...and the boundary of the Mississippi..."