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ALS as a congressman-elect, signed "J. Q. Adams," one page, 7.75 x 9.75, February 1, 1831. Addressed from Washington, a handwritten letter to his nephew, Lieutenant Thomas B. Adams, stationed at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina, in which encloses a blank power of attorney to be executed by Adams to enable JQA's son, Charles, to receive dividends on stock in the Suffolk Insurance Company of Boston held in Adams’s name; instructs that once executed, Adams should give Charles directions for disposal of the interest accruing on his Boston funds.
The letter then turns to a more pressing matter: "There is a Resolution before the House of Representatives, the object of which is to discharge from the Army all the Supernumerary Officers, who after passing through the Academy at West Point, have received Commissions by Brevet — In This number I think you are still included, and although it is doubtful whether the measure will be adopted at the present Session of Congress, you will do well to be thinking of what course of life you may find it expedient to adopt, in the event of your being disbanded. Should this event, contrary to my expectation take place the ensuing Spring, I invite you to come and Spend it, and the Succeeding Summer, with me, at Quincy, and in that time you will have Leisure to look out for such other occupation as may be suitable to your interest and inclination." JQA closes with a note on the unusually rigorous Washington winter, observing that the heavy snowstorms ranging from North Carolina to Maine have apparently not reached Fort Moultrie, "perhaps owing to an extra portion of Caloric in South Carolina." In fine condition, with some light staining at the left edge.
John Quincy Adams wrote this letter from Washington at the opening of the Twenty-Second Congress, having just won election in the fall of 1830 as a representative from Massachusetts — the only former president to serve in the House after leaving the White House. He was fifty-three days from taking his seat when he wrote to his nephew. The recipient, Thomas Boylston Adams Jr. (1809–1837), was a grandson of President John Adams and a son of JQA's younger brother, Thomas Boylston Adams, Sr. He had graduated twelfth in the West Point Class of 1828 and was serving as a Second Lieutenant in the 2nd Artillery at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. The congressional resolution JQA describes reflects the Jacksonian-era effort to reduce the officer corps by eliminating brevet commissions, a politically charged measure that targeted the professional military class closely associated with West Point. Thomas was not in fact discharged; he was promoted to First Lieutenant in 1834, served in the Second Seminole War in Florida, and died of typhoid fever at Fort Dade on December 14, 1837, at the age of twenty-eight. "Charles" is Charles Francis Adams (1807–1886), JQA's youngest surviving son, later minister to Great Britain during the Civil War.
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