“Our difference of sentiment
in great as well as (sometimes) in little politics”:
A Letter from American Patriot Timothy Pickering to
His Father, 1778
In February 1778, Timothy Pickering Jr. received word
from Massachusetts that his father was dying. An adjutant
general in George Washington’s Continental Army,
Pickering wrote his father this moving letter of farewell
from his post in Yorktown, Virginia.
Born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, a graduate
of Harvard, and a successful lawyer, Timothy Pickering
Jr. revered and respected his father, but disagreed
with him on one critical issue: colonial independence
from Great Britain. As a writer and military officer,
Timothy Jr. supported resistance to British rule, while
Timothy Sr., who had a reputation for being argumentative,
outspoken, and self-righteous, remained a staunch Tory.
The Revolution frequently divided families, sometimes
turning brother against brother or father against son,
but, as this letter indicates, the bonds of affection
between Timothy Jr. and Sr. were never broken. “When
I look back on past time, I regret our difference of
sentiment in great as well as (sometimes) in little
politics; as it was a deduction from the happiness otherwise
to have been enjoyed,” Timothy wrote his father.
“Yet you had always too much regard to freedom
in thinking & the rights of conscience to lay upon
me any injunctions which could interfere with my own
opinion of what was [inserted: my] duty…Often
have I thanked my Maker for the greatest blessing of
my life-your example & instructions in all the duties
I owe to God, and my neighbour.”
Timothy Pickering Sr. died in June 1778. Two years
later, General Washington promoted Timothy Jr. to quartermaster
general. He would later serve as secretary of state
under Presidents Washington and Adams. Having perhaps
adopted his father’s habit of outspokenness, Pickering
prominently opposed US neutrality in European wars—a
policy favored by Washington and Adams—which led
to his dismissal from the Cabinet in 1800. Later elected
to Congress, he became the first U.S. Senator censured
by the Senate, for publically sharing a classified document
in an effort to prove that James Madison had acted unconstitutionally
in claiming part of Florida for the US. He and his wife,
Rebecca White Pickering, had ten children, one of whom
wrote his father’s biography in 1867. Timothy
Pickering Jr. died in 1829 in Salem.
GLC 02325: “Our difference of sentiment
in great as well as (sometimes) in little politics”:
A Letter from American Patriot Timothy Pickering to
His Father, 1778
For a transcript of the letter, click here
(pdf download)
For more information, contact Alyson Barrett at reference@gilderlehrman.com
or call (212) 787-6616 ext. 209.
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Websites:
For a portrait of Timothy Pickering Jr. by Charles
Willson Peale, visit: http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/revwar/image_gal/indeimg/pickering.html
For more information on his tenure as Secretary of
State visit the website of the Office of the Historian,
US Department of State:
http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/pickering-timothy
Books:
Clarfield, Gerard H. Timothy Pickering and American
Diplomacy, 1795-1800. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1969.
Clarfield, Gerard. Timothy Pickering and the American
Republic. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1980.
McLean, David. Timothy Pickering and the Age of
the American Revolution. New York: Arno Press,
1982.
Pickering, Octavius, and Charles W. Upham. The
Life of Timothy Pickering. 4 vols. Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1867-1873.
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