DEAR SIR,--Correspondences! The letters of Bernard and Hutchinson, and Oliver and Paxton, &c., were detected and exposed before the Revolution. There are, I doubt not, thousands of letters now in being, (but still concealed from their party,) to their friends, which will, one day, see the light. I have wondered for more than thirty years, that so few have appeared; and have constantly expected that a Tory History of the rise and progress of the Revolution would appear; and wished it. I would give more for it than for Marshall, Gordon, Ramsay, and all the rest. Private letters of all parties will be found analogous to the newspapers, pamphlets, and historians of the times. Gordon's and Marshall's histories were written to make money; and fashioned and finished to sell high in the London market. I should expect to find more truth in a history written by Hutchinson, Oliver, or Sewall; and I doubt not, such histories will one day appear. Marshall's is a Mausolæum, 100 feet square at the base, and 200 feet high. It will be as durable as the monuments of the Washington benevolent societies. Your character in history may easily be foreseen. Your administration will be quoted by philosophers as a model of profound wisdom; by politicians, as weak, superficial, and short sighted. Mine, like Pope's woman, will have no character at all. The impious idolatry to Washington destroyed all character. His legacy of ministers was not the worst part of the tragedy; though by his own express confession to me, and by Pickering's confession to the world, in his letters to Sullivan, two of them, at least, were fastened upon him by necessity, because he could get no other. The truth is, Hamilton's influence over him was so well known, that no man fit for the office of State or War would accept either. He was driven to the necessity of appointing such as would accept; and this necessity was, in my opinion, the real cause of his retirement from office; for you may depend upon it, that retirement was not voluntary. My friend, you and I have passed our lives in serious times. I know not whether we have ever seen any moments more serious than the present. The Northern States are now retaliating upon the Southern States their conduct from 1797 to 1800. It is a mortification to me to see what servile mimics they are. Their newspapers, pamphlets, hand-bills, and their legislative proceedings, are copied from the examples set them, especially by Virginia and Kentucky. I know not which party has the most unblushing front, the most lying tongue, or the most impudent and insolent, not to say the most seditious and rebellious pen. If you desire explanation on any of the points in this letter, you shall have them. This correspondence, I hope, will be concealed as long as Hutchinson's and Oliver's; but I should have no personal objection to the publication of it in the National Intelligencer. I am, and shall be for life, your friend. JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.