The Great Design: Two Lectures on the Smithson Bequest by John Quincy Adams; Delivered at Quincy and Boston in November 1839 now first published together from contemporary printed and manuscript texts

95, [5] pages. Foreword by L. H. Butterfield (Editor-in-Chief of The Adams Papers). Footnotes. Illustrations. Glassine wrapper heavily torn and chipped. Smithsonian Publication No. 4643. Wilcomb E. Washburn (1925-1997) was an American historian. Washburn was born in 1925. He received a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, and the same year received his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University. For three years he taught history at the College of William and Mary. In 1958, he joined the Smithsonian Institution, as curator of Political History at the National Museum of American History. Later, he became chair of the Department of American Studies. From 1968 until 1997, he served as a director for the Smithsonian's American Studies Program. English scientist James Smithson dies after a long illness, leaving behind a will with a peculiar footnote. In the event that his only nephew died without any heirs, Smithson decreed that the whole of his estate would go to "the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Smithson's curious bequest to a country that he had never visited aroused significant attention on both sides of the Atlantic. Smithson had been a fellow of the venerable Royal Society of London from the age of 22, publishing numerous scientific papers on mineral composition, geology, and chemistry. In 1802, he overturned popular scientific opinion by proving that zinc carbonates were true carbonate minerals, and one type of zinc carbonate was later named smithsonite in his honor.…