8722. UNITED STATES, Troubles and triumphs.—
A letter from you calls up recollections
very dear to my mind. It carries
me back to the times when, beset with difficulties
and dangers, we were fellow-laborers in
the same cause, struggling for what is most
valuable to man, his right of self-government.
Laboring always at the same oar, with some
wave ever ahead, threatening to overwhelm
us, and yet passing harmless under our bark,
we knew not how we rode through the strom
with heart and hand, and made a happy port.
Still we did not expect to be without rubs
and difficulties; and we have had them,
First, the detention of the Western posts,
then the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our
commerce with France, and the British enforcement
of the outlawry. In your day,
French depredations; in mine, English, and
the Berlin and Milan decrees: now the English
orders of Council, and the piracies they
authorize. When these shall be over, it will
be the impressment of our seamen or something
else; and so we have gone on, and so
we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond
example in the history of man.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vi, 36.
Ford ed., ix, 333.
(M.
Jan. 1812)
