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LS signed “John Adams,” one page, 8 x 10, November 20, 1819. Letter to Boston journalist William Tudor, the co-founder of the North American Review and the Boston Athenæum. Adams forcefully expresses his unequivocal opposition to the extension of slavery into the Missouri Territory during the most divisive political debate of the era.
In full: "I shall not pause to consider whether my opinion will be popular or unpopular with the Slave Holders, or Slave Traders, in the Northern the Middle, the Southern, or the Western States—I respect all those who are necessarily subjected to this Evil.—But Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude.—Mr. Walsh in his late Scourge of the British Reviewers, has given such a picture of the Guilt, and Hypocrisy, of the People of Europe, especially in England that little or nothing is to be expected from that side of the Water in relation to this Traffic.
The United States therefore ought to persevere in the example they have begun, and hitherto continued to discountenance, and totally abolish it—it is a gangrene which threatens Mortality—ense recidendum est ne pars sincera trahatur [it must be cut out by the sword, lest the sound part be drawn down with it]—I am therefore utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territory, and heartily wish that every Constitutional measure may be adopted for the preservation of it.—The unbounded speculations in Land, as well as in Banks, must be restrained by some means or other—or we shall all be ruined." Addressed on the integral leaf in another hand, and franked in the lower left, "J. Adams." In very good to fine condition, with seal-related paper loss to the integral address leaf, and two areas of other paper loss affecting several words of text. Accompanied by a custom-made quarter-morocco presentation folder.
This powerful 1819 letter captures John Adams at the center of the national crisis over Missouri’s admission to the Union, a debate that would culminate in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Although Adams had long lived with the contradictions of the founding generation—opposing slavery in principle while accepting constitutional limits on federal power—his language here is unusually forceful, calling “Negro Slavery” an “evil of Colossal magnitude” and likening its spread to a “gangrene.” In doing so he quotes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, expressing that an 'incurable wound must be cut away with the sword, lest the healthy part be infected,' demonstrating his classical education and strengthening the gangrene metaphor.
Written to William Tudor as Congress debated whether Missouri should enter as a slave state, the letter shows Adams aligning himself against the extension of slavery into the western territories and urging “every Constitutional measure” to prevent it. His position anticipated the central sectional conflict that the Missouri Compromise only temporarily contained: Missouri was admitted as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and slavery was barred north of latitude 36°30′ in the remaining Louisiana Purchase territory. Adams’s stark warning underscores how clearly he recognized slavery’s expansion as a mortal threat to the republic.
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