20. VI: Breakfasted with P. P.
F. de Grand, at his lodgings, and he discoursed with me
much about the politics, and the state of parties in this Commonwealth.
He wishes me to take some part or interest in them: but I see no object
of public usefulness to be answered by it. He told me that Mr Monroe
just before he made the appointment of Secretary of State, wrote a note
to Judge Story, requesting to see
him; 400and when Story went to him, he said it had
been his intention to appoint me Secretary of State; but Mr Clay had
objected to the appointment, on the allegation that I was not a
republican, and that Mr Crowninshield and Jonathan Russell had assured the
President that it was so— I was not a republican. So it would seem that
Story undertook to answer for my republicanism— Whether my appointment
was for my own good or for that of my Country is known only to God. As
yet I have far more reason to lament than to rejoice at the Event. Yet I
feel not the less the obligation of Mr
Monroe’s confidence in me, and the duty of personal devotion to the
success of his administration which it imposes upon me— That Clay should
have taken pains to prevent my appointment, is as natural as that he
should have coveted it himself. Mr
Crowninshield’s opposition to me arose no doubt from party, and
Russell’s from personal motives. That Clay, should, have had the talent
of making tools of those men for his purposes, is no mean proof of his
address. His mind is of a very superior cast to their’s, but in his
management of his opposition to me, there is a total disregard, not only
of generosity, but of fairness. So painful however is the situation in
which I am placed, that I wish every hour of my life, he had succeeded
in keeping me from it— No more of this— George Blake came and took me to hear Mr
Channing, who delivered a very good discourse upon the
dangers of populous places to the purity of morals. We dined at our
lodgings, and after dinner attended Mr Greenwood at Mr
Parkman’s, a North-end Meeting House— Immediately after
Meeting we proceeded to Salem, and took lodgings soon after Sunset, at
the Essex Coffee-House, the house in which Mr W. Gray resided when
he was an inhabitant of Salem, and which was built by him— We walked out
in the Evening, and found the house of Mr Felt, who married Abigail Shaw; but they were not at
home. We came over the Turnpike road— It was the first time I had been
at Salem, since that road was constructed; or since the year 1791.
