Gerry, Elbridge, Signer, as Vice President

Estimate

5,000 - 7,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

paper

Autograph letter signed ("EGerry"), 2 pages (10 x 7 3/4 in.; 255 x 198 mm), Washington, D.C., 8 April 1814, to Richard Rush; lightly browned, silked on verso mending a few edge tears.

Provenance

Elsie O. & Philip D. Sang Foundation (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 26 April 1978, part of lot 101)

Literature

Old Family Letters copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle (1892), p. 4; the Adams letter appears in Warren-Adams Letters (1917), vol. 2, pp. 381-2

Catalogue Note

"How few remain. Three in Massachusetts I believe are a majority of the surviving signers of a Declaration which has had much credit in the world."

Writing seven months before his death in office, Gerry sends condolences to Richard Rush (1780–1859), who just become Attorney General of the United States, on the death of his illustrious father Benjamin (1745–1813), by providing an extract from a letter he received of John Adams, which "expresses an opinion in unison with my own".

[Quoting Adams:] "A few facts, I wish to put upon paper, & an awful warning to do it soon, has been given me by the sudden death of our friend Rush. Livingston & Clymer had preceeded him in the same year, the same spring. How few remain. ... As a man of science, letters, taste, sense, philosophy, patriotism, religion, morality, merit, usefulness, taken all together, Rush has not left his equal in America; nor that I know in the world. In him is taken away, & in a manner most sudden & unexpected, a main prop of my life."