Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams During the Revolution.
by John Adams and Abigail Adams and Charles Francis Adams.
PREFACE.
Thirty-five years ago a collection of letters written during the period of the Revolution and later, by John Adams and his wife, Abigail Adams, came into my hands. They interested me so much that I thought they might possibly interest others also, especially the growing generations not familiar with the history of the persons and events connected with the great struggle. The result was an experiment in publication, first, of a selection from the letters of Mrs. Adams addressed to her husband; and, at a later moment, of a selection from his replies. The first series proved so acceptable to the public that it ran through four large editions in eight years. The second, though slower of sale, has likewise been long since exhausted. Applications have been made to me from time to time for information where copies of either might be had, to which I could give no satisfactory answer. I purchased one copy, whilst residing in London several years ago, which I found by chance advertised in a sale catalogue of old books in that city. I know not now where I could get another.
Reflecting on these circ.u.mstances, in connection with the approaching celebration of the Centenary year of the national existence, it occurred to me that a reproduction of some portion of the papers, with such additions as could be made from letters not then included, might not prove unacceptable now. To that end I have ventured to embrace, in a single volume, so much of the correspondence that took place between these persons as was written during the period of the Revolutionary struggle, and terminating with the signature of the preliminary articles of the great Treaty which insured pacification and independence to the people of the United States.
The chief alteration made in the mode of publication will be perceived at once. Instead of printing the letters of the respective parties in separate volumes, it has now been deemed more judicious to collect them together and arrange them in the precise order of their respective dates, to the end that the references to events or sentiments constantly made on the one side or the other may be more readily gathered and understood. This will show more distinctly the true shape of familiar letters which properly belongs to them. It is not likely that either correspondent, in writing them, ever dreamed that they might ultimately be shown to the world, and perhaps transmitted to the latest posterity.
May I be permitted to add an humble opinion that it is this feature in them which const.i.tutes their chief attraction?
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.
MEMOIR.
The memorials of that generation by whose efforts the independence of the United States was achieved are in great abundance. There is hardly an event of importance, from the year 1765 to the date of the definitive treaty of peace with Great Britain, in September, 1783, which has not been recorded, either by the industry of actors upon the scene or by the indefatigable labors of a succeeding cla.s.s of students. These persons have devoted themselves, with a highly commendable zeal, to the investigation of all particulars, even the most minute, that relate to this interesting period. The individuals called to appear most conspicuously in the Revolution have many of them left voluminous collections of papers, which, as time pa.s.ses, find their way to the light by publication, and furnish important ill.u.s.trations of the feelings and motives under which the contest was carried on. The actors are thus made to stand in bold relief before us. We not only see the public record, but the private commentary also; and these, taken in connection with the contemporaneous histories, all of which, however defective in philosophical a.n.a.lysis, are invaluable depositories of facts related by living witnesses, will serve to transmit to posterity the details for a narration in as complete a form as will in all probability ever be attained by the imperfect faculties of man.
Admitting these observations to be true, there is, nevertheless, a distinction to be drawn between the materials for a history of action and those for one of feeling; between the labors of men aiming at distinction among their fellow-beings, and the private, familiar sentiments that run into the texture of the social system, without remark or the hope of observation. Here it is that something like a void in our annals appears still to exist. Our history is for the most part wrapped up in the forms of office. The great men of the Revolution, in the eyes of posterity, are many of them like heroes of a mythological age. They are seen, chiefly, when conscious that they are upon a theatre, where individual sentiment must be sometimes disguised, and often sacrificed, for the public good. Statesmen and Generals rarely say all they think or feel. The consequence is that, in the papers which come from them, they are made to a.s.sume a uniform of grave hue, which, though it doubtless exalts the opinion entertained of their perfections, somewhat diminishes the interest with which later generations scan their character. Students of human nature seek for examples of man under circ.u.mstances of difficulty and trial; man as he is, not as he would appear; but there are many reasons why they may be often baffled in the search. We look for the workings of the heart, when those of the head alone are presented to us. We watch the emotions of the spirit, and yet find clear traces only of the working of the intellect. The solitary meditation, the confidential whisper to a friend, never meant to reach the ear of the mult.i.tude, the secret wishes, not blazoned forth to catch applause, the fluctuations between fear and hope that most betray the springs of action,--these are the guides to character, which most frequently vanish with the moment that called them forth, and leave nothing to posterity but those coa.r.s.er elements for judgment that are found in elaborated results.
There is, however, still another element which is not infrequently lost sight of. It is of great importance, not only to understand the nature of the superiority of the individuals who have made themselves a name above their fellow-beings, but to estimate the degree in which the excellence for which they were distinguished was shared by those among whom they lived. Inattention to this duty might present Patrick Henry and James Otis, Washington, Jefferson, and Samuel Adams, as the causes of the American Revolution, which they were not. There was a moral principle in the field, to the power of which a great majority of the whole population of the colonies, whether male or female, old or young, had been long and habitually trained to do homage. The individuals named, with the rest of their celebrated a.s.sociates, who best represented that moral principle before the world, were not the originators, but the spokesmen, of the general opinion, and instruments for its adaptation to existing events. Whether fighting in the field or deliberating in the Senate, their strength as against Great Britain was not that of numbers, nor of wealth, nor of genius; but it drew its nourishment from the sentiment that pervaded the dwellings of the entire population.
How much this home sentiment did then, and does ever, depend upon the character of the female portion of the people, will be too readily understood by all to require explanation. The domestic hearth is the first of schools, and the best of lecture-rooms; for there the heart will cooperate with the mind, the affections with the reasoning power.
And this is the scene for the almost exclusive sway of the weaker s.e.x.
Yet, great as the influence thus exercised undoubtedly is, it escapes observation in such a manner that history rarely takes much account of it. The maxims of religion, faith, hope, and charity, are not pa.s.sed through the alembic of logical proof before they are admitted into the daily practice of women. They go at once into the teachings of infancy, and thus form the only high and pure motives of which matured manhood can, in its subsequent action, ever boast. Neither, when the stamp of duty is to be struck in the young mind, is there commonly so much of alloy in the female heart as with men, with which the genuine metal may be fused, and the face of the coin made dim. There is not so much room for the doctrines of expediency, and the promptings of private interest, to compromise the force of public example. In every instance of domestic convulsions, and when the pruning-hook is deserted for the sword and musket, the sacrifice of feelings made by the female s.e.x is unmixed with a hope of worldly compensation. With them there is no ambition to gratify, no fame to be gained by the simply negative virtue of privations suffered in silence. There is no action to drown in its noise and bustle a full sense of the pain that must inevitably attend it. The lot of woman, in times of trouble, is to be a pa.s.sive spectator of events which she can scarcely hope to make subservient to her own fame, or indeed to control in any way.
If it were possible to get at the expression of feelings by women in the heart of a community, at a moment of extraordinary trial, recorded in a shape evidently designed to be secret and confidential, this would seem to present the surest and most unfailing index to its general character.
Hitherto we have not gathered much of this material in the United States. The dispersion of families, so common in America, the consequent destruction of private papers, the defective nature of female education before the Revolution, the difficulty and danger of free communication, and the engrossing character, to the men, of public, and to the women, of domestic cares, have all contributed to cut short, if not completely to destroy, the sources of information. It has been truly remarked that "instances of patience, perseverance, fort.i.tude, magnanimity, courage, humanity, and tenderness, which would have graced the Roman character, were known only to those who were themselves the actors, and whose modesty could not suffer them to blazon abroad their own fame." The heroism of the females of the Revolution has gone from memory with the generation that witnessed it, and nothing, absolutely nothing, remains upon the ear of the young of the present day but the faint echo of an expiring general tradition. There is, moreover, very little knowledge remaining to us of the domestic manners of the last century, when, with more of admitted distinctions than at present, there was more of general equality; very little of the state of social feeling, or of that simplicity of intercourse, which, in colonial times, const.i.tuted in New England as near an approach to the successful exemplification of the democratic theory as the irregularity in the natural gifts of men will, in all probability, ever practically allow.
It is the purpose of the present volume to contribute something to the supply of this deficiency, by giving to tradition a form partially palpable. The present is believed to be the first attempt, in the United States, to lay before the public a series of private letters, written without the remotest idea of publication, by a woman, to her husband.
Their greatest value consists in the fact, susceptible of no misconception, that they furnish an exact transcript of the feelings of the writer, in times of no ordinary trial. Independently of this, the variety of scenes in which she wrote, and the opportunities furnished for observation in the situations in which she was placed by the elevation of her husband to high official positions in the country, may contribute to sustain the interest with which they will be read. The undertaking is, nevertheless, too novel not to inspire the editor with some doubt of its success, particularly as it brings forward to public notice a person who has now been long removed from the scene of action, and of whom, it is not unreasonable to suppose, the present generation of readers have neither personal knowledge nor recollection. For the sake of facilitating their progress, and explaining the allusions to persons and objects very frequently occurring, it may not be deemed improper here to premise some account of her life.
There were few persons of her day and generation who derived their origin, or imbibed their character, more exclusively from the genuine stock of the Ma.s.sachusetts Puritan settlers than Abigail Smith. Her father, the Reverend William Smith, was the settled minister of the Congregational Church at Weymouth, for more than forty years, and until his death. Her mother, Elizabeth Quincy, was the granddaughter of the Reverend John Norton, long the pastor of a church of the same denomination in the neighboring town of Hingham, and the nephew of John Norton, well known in the annals of the colony.[1] Her maternal grandfather, John Quincy, was the grandson of Thomas Shepard, minister of Charlestown, distinguished in his day, and the son of the more distinguished Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, whose name still lives in one of the Churches of that town. These are persons whose merits may be found fully recorded in the pages of Mather and of Neal. They were among the most noted of the most reputed cla.s.s of their day. In a colony founded so exclusively upon motives of religious zeal as Ma.s.sachusetts was, it necessarily followed that the ordinary distinctions of society were in a great degree subverted, and that the leaders of the church, though without worldly possessions to boast of, were the most in honor everywhere. Education was promoted only as it was subsidiary to the great end of studying or expounding the Scriptures; and whatever of advance made in the intellectual pursuits of society, was rather the incidental than the direct result of studies necessary to fit men for a holy calling. Hence it was that the higher departments of knowledge were entered almost exclusively by the clergy. Cla.s.sical learning was a natural though indirect consequence of the acquisition of those languages in which the New Testament and the Fathers were to be studied; and dialectics formed the armor of which men were compelled to learn the use, as a preparation for the wars of religious controversy. The mastery of these gave power and authority to their possessors. They, by a very natural transition, pa.s.sed from being the guides of religious faith to their fellow-men, to be guardians of education. To them, as the fountains of knowledge, and possessing the gifts most prized in the community, all other ranks in society cheerfully gave place. If a festive entertainment was meditated, the minister was sure to be first on the list of those to be invited, and to be placed at table. If any a.s.sembly of citizens was held, he must be there to open the business with prayer. If a political measure was in agitation, he was among the first whose opinion was to be consulted. Even the civil rights of the other citizens for a long time depended, in some degree, upon his good word; and after this rigid rule was laid aside, he yet continued, in the absence of technical law and lawyers, to be the arbiter and the judge in the differences between his fellow-men. He was not infrequently the family physician. The great object of instruction being religious, the care of the young was also in his hands. The records of Harvard University, the child and darling of Puritan affections, show that of all the presiding officers, during the century and a half of colonial days, but two were laymen, and not ministers of the prevailing denomination; and that of all who in the early times availed themselves of such advantages as this inst.i.tution could then offer, nearly half the number did so for the sake of devoting themselves to the service of the gospel.
But the prevailing notion of the purpose of education was attended with one remarkable consequence. The cultivation of the female mind was regarded with utter indifference. It is not impossible that the early example of Mrs. Hutchinson, and the difficulties in which the public exercise of her gifts involved the colony, had established in the public mind a conviction of the danger that may attend the meddling of women with abstruse points of doctrine; and these, however they might confound the strongest intellect, were nevertheless the favorite topics of thought and discussion in that generation. Waiving a decision upon this, it may very safely be a.s.sumed, not only that there was very little attention given to the education of women, but that, as Mrs. Adams, in one of her letters, says, "it was fashionable to ridicule female learning." The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female s.e.x was to be found in the families of that which was the educated cla.s.s, and in occasional intercourse with the learned of their day. Whatever of useful instruction was received in the practical conduct of life came from maternal lips; and what of further mental development, depended more upon the eagerness with which the casual teachings of daily conversation were treasured up, than upon any labor expended purposely to promote it.
Abigail Smith was the second of three daughters. Her father, as has been already mentioned, was the minister of a small Congregational Church in the town of Weymouth, during the middle of the last century. She was born in that town, on the 11th of November, 1744, O. S. In her neighborhood there were not many advantages of instruction to be found; and even in Boston, the small metropolis nearest at hand, for reasons already stated, the list of accomplishments within the reach of females was probably very short. She did not enjoy an opportunity to acquire even such as there might have been, for the delicate state of her health forbade the idea of sending her away from home to obtain them. In a letter written in 1817, the year before her death, speaking of her own deficiencies, she says, "My early education did not partake of the abundant opportunities which the present days offer, and which even our common country schools now afford. _I never was sent to any school._ I was always sick. Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." Hence it is not unreasonable to suppose that the knowledge gained by her was rather the result of the society into which she was thrown, than of any elaborate instruction.
This fact, that the author of the letters in the present volume never went to any school, is a very important one to a proper estimate of her character. For, whatever may be the decision of the long-vexed question between the advantages of public and those of private education, few persons will deny that they produce marked differences in the formation of character. Seclusion from companions of the same age, at any time of life, is calculated to develop the imaginative faculty at the expense of the judgment; but especially in youth, when the most durable impressions are making. The ordinary consequence, in females of a meditative turn of mind, is the indulgence of romantic and exaggerated sentiments drawn from books, which, if subjected to the ordinary routine of schools, are worn out by the attrition of social intercourse. These ideas, formed in solitude, in early life, often, though not always, remain in the mind, even after the realities of the world surround those who hold them, and counteract the tendency of their conclusions. They are constantly visible in the letters of this volume, even in the midst of the severest trials. They form what may be considered the romantic turn of the author"s mind; but in her case they were so far modified by a great admixture of religious principle and by natural good sense, as to be of eminent service in sustaining her through the painful situations in which she was placed, instead of nursing that species of sickly sensibility which too frequently, in similar circ.u.mstances, impairs, if it does not destroy, the power of practical usefulness.
At Mount Wollaston, a part of Braintree, the town next adjoining Weymouth, lived Colonel John Quincy, her grandfather on her mother"s side, and a gentleman who for very many years enjoyed, in various official situations, much of the confidence of the Province. At his house, and under the instruction of his wife, her grandmother, she appears to have imbibed most of the lessons which made the deepest impression upon her mind. Of this lady, the daughter of the Reverend John Norton, nothing is now known but what the frequent and cheerful acknowledgment of her merit, by her disciple, tells us. "I have not forgotten," says the latter to her own daughter, in the year 1795, "the excellent lessons which I received from my grandmother, at a very early period of life. I frequently think they made a more durable impression upon my mind than those which I received from my own parents. Whether it was owing to the happy method of mixing instruction and amus.e.m.e.nt together, or from an inflexible adherence to certain principles, the utility of which I could not but see and approve when a child, I know not; but maturer years have rendered them oracles of wisdom to me. I love and revere her memory; her lively, cheerful disposition animated all around her, whilst she edified all by her unaffected piety. This tribute is due to the memory of those virtues the sweet remembrance of which will flourish, though she has long slept with her ancestors."
Again, in another letter to the same person, in 1808, she says, "I cherish her memory with holy veneration, whose maxims I have treasured up, whose virtues live in my remembrance; happy if I could say they have been transplanted into my life."
But though her early years were spent in a spot of so great seclusion as her grandfather"s house must then have been, it does not appear that she remained wholly unacquainted with young persons of her own s.e.x and age.
She had relations and connections, both on the father"s and the mother"s side; and with these she was upon as intimate terms as circ.u.mstances would allow. The distance between the homes of the young people was, however, too great, and the means of their parents too narrow, to admit of very frequent personal intercourse; the subst.i.tute for which was a rapid interchange of written communications. The letter-writing propensity manifested itself early in this youthful circle. A considerable number of the epistles of her correspondents have been preserved among the papers of Mrs. Adams. They are deserving of notice only as they furnish a general idea of the tastes and pursuits of the young women of that day. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about them is the evident influence upon the writers which the study of "The Spectator" and of the poets appears to have had. This is perceptible in the more important train of thought and structure of language, as well as in the lesser trifles of the taste for quotation and for fict.i.tious signatures. Calliope and Myra, Aspasia and Aurelia, have effectually succeeded in disguising their true names from the eyes of younger generations. The signature of Miss Smith appears to have been _Diana_, a name which she dropped after her marriage, without losing the fancy that prompted its selection. Her letters during the Revolution show clearly enough the tendency of her own thoughts and feelings, in the subst.i.tute she then adopted, of _Portia_. Her fondness for quotations, the fashion of that day, it will be seen, was maintained through life.
Perhaps there is no species of exercise, in early life, more productive of results useful to the mind, than that of writing letters. Over and above the mechanical facility of constructing sentences, which no teaching will afford so well, the interest with which the object is commonly pursued gives an extraordinary impulse to the intellect. This is promoted in a degree proportionate to the scarcity of temporary and local subjects for discussion. Where there is little gossip, the want of it must be supplied from books. The love of literature springs up where the weeds of scandal take no root. The young ladies of Ma.s.sachusetts, in the last century, were certainly readers, even though only self-taught; and their taste was not for the feeble and nerveless sentiment, or the frantic pa.s.sion, which comes from the novels and romances in the circulating library of our day, but was derived from the deepest wells of English literature. The poets and moralists of the mother country furnished to these inquiring minds their ample stores, and they were used to an extent which it is at least doubtful if the more pretending and elaborate instruction of the present generation would equal.
The father of Mrs. Adams was a pious man, with something of that vein of humor not uncommon among the clergy of New England, which ordinarily found such a field for exercise as is displayed in the pages of Cotton Mather. He was the father of three daughters, all of them women of uncommon force of intellect, though the fortunes of two of them confined its influence to a sphere much more limited than that which fell to the lot of Mrs. Adams. Mary, the eldest, was married in 1792 to Richard Cranch, an English emigrant, who had settled at Germantown, a part of Braintree, and who subsequently became a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Ma.s.sachusetts, and died, highly respected, in the early part of the present century. The late William Cranch, of Washington, who presided so long, and with so much dignity and fidelity, over the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, was the son of this marriage.
Elizabeth, the youngest, was twice married; first to the Reverend John Shaw, minister of Haverhill, in Ma.s.sachusetts, and, after his death, to the Reverend Mr. Peabody, of Atkinson, New Hampshire. Thus much is necessary to be stated in order to explain the relations, which the parties mentioned in many of the letters bore to each other. It is an anecdote told of Mr. Smith, that upon the marriage of his eldest daughter he preached to his people from the text in the forty-second verse of the tenth chapter of Luke, "And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Two years elapsed, and his second daughter, the subject of this notice, was about to marry John Adams, then a lawyer in good practice, when some disapprobation of the match appears to have manifested itself among a portion of his parishioners. The profession of law was, for a long period in the colonial history of Ma.s.sachusetts, unknown; and after circ.u.mstances called it forth, the prejudices of the inhabitants, who thought it a calling hardly honest, were arrayed against those who adopted it. There are many still living who can remember how strong they remained, even down to the time of the adoption of the present Federal Const.i.tution; and the records of the General Court will show that they had not quite disappeared even much later. Besides this, the family of Mr. Adams, the son of a small farmer of the middle cla.s.s in Braintree, was thought scarcely good enough to match with the minister"s daughter, descended from so many of the shining lights of the Colony. It is probable that Mr. Smith was made aware of the opinions expressed among his people, for he is said, immediately after the marriage took place, to have replied to them by a sermon, the text of which, in evident allusion to the objection against lawyers, was drawn from Luke vii. 33: "For John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say, _He hath a devil_."[2]
Mrs. Adams was married on the 25th of October, 1764, having then nearly completed her twentieth year. The ten years immediately following present little that is worthy of recording. She appears to have pa.s.sed a quiet, and very happy life, having her residence in Braintree or in Boston, according as the state of her husband"s health, then rather impaired, or that of his professional practice, made the change advisable. Within this period she became the mother of a daughter and of three sons, whose names will frequently appear in her letters; and her domestic cares were relieved by the presence of her husband, absent from home only upon those occasions when he, with the other lawyers of his time, was compelled to follow the circuits. During these times he used regularly to write to his wife, giving her an account of his adventures and of his professional success. These letters remain, and furnish a somewhat curious record of the manners and customs of the provincial times. Several of them will be found in this collection. She does not appear to have often replied.
It is said by Governor Hutchinson, in the third volume of his History, that neither the health of Mr. Adams, nor his business, admitted of his constant application to public affairs in the manner that distinguished his kinsman, Samuel Adams, during the years preceding the breaking out of the Revolution. If the sum of that application is to be measured by the frequency of his appearance before the public as an actor in an official character upon the scene, the remark is true; for up to the year 1774 he had served but once or twice as a representative in the General Court, and in no other situation. But this would furnish a very unfair standard by which to try the extent of his labors for the public.
Very often, as much is done by beforehand preparing the public mind for action, as by the conduct of that action after it has been commenced; although the visible amount of exertion, by which alone the world forms its judgments, is in the two cases widely different. From the time of his marriage, in 1764, perhaps still earlier, when he, as a young lawyer, in 1761, took notes of the argument in the celebrated cause of the Writs of a.s.sistants, there is evidence constantly presented of his active interest in the Revolutionary struggle. There is hardly a year in the interval between the earliest of these dates and 1774, that the traces of his hand are not visible in the newspapers of Boston, elaborately discussing the momentous questions which preceded the crisis. It was during this period that the "Essay on Canon and Feudal Law" was written. A long controversy with Major Brattle, upon the payment of the Judges, and the papers of "Novanglus," were other, though by no means all, the results of his labors. He drafted several of the papers of Instructions to the Representatives to the General Court, both in Boston and in his native town, and also some of the most elaborate legal portions of the celebrated controversy between that body and Governor Hutchinson. The tendency, which all these papers show, to seek for political truth in its fundamental principles and most abstract forms, whilst it takes off much from the interest with which the merely general reader would now consider them, is yet of historical importance, as establishing the fact, how little of mere impulse there was in his mode of action against the mother country. They also show the extent of the studies to which his mind applied itself, and the depth of the foundation laid by him for his subsequent career. Yet, during all this time, his professional labors were never intermitted, and ceased only with the catastrophe which shut up the courts of justice and rendered exertion upon a different theatre absolutely necessary to the maintenance of the fabric of society.
Perhaps the preceding detail belongs more properly to a memoir of Mr.
Adams than that of his wife. Yet it would be impossible to furnish any accurate idea of her character without explaining the precise nature of the influences acting upon her, whilst still young, and when that character was taking its permanent form. There was no one who witnessed his studies with greater interest, or who sympathized with him in the conclusions to which his mind was forcing him, more deeply, than Mrs.
Adams. And hence it was, that, as the day of trial came, and the hour for action drew near, she was found not unprepared to submit to the lot appointed her. Mr. Adams was elected one of the delegates on the part of Ma.s.sachusetts, instructed to meet persons chosen in the same manner from the other colonies, for the purpose of consulting in common upon the course most advisable to be adopted by them. In the month of August, 1774, he left home, in company with Samuel Adams, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine, to go to Philadelphia, at which place the proposed a.s.sembly was to be held. It is from this period that the correspondence between these parties, now submitted, becomes interesting. The letter of the 19th of August of this year[3] portrays her own feelings upon this, the first separation of importance from her husband, and the anxiety with which she was watching the course of events. Yet there is in it not a syllable of regret for the past or of fear for the future; but, on the contrary, an acute perception of the obstacles in the way of an immediate return to peaceful times, and a deliberate preparation, by reading and reflection, for the worst. The Congress confined itself, in its first sessions, to consultation and remonstrance. It therefore adjourned after the lapse of only two months. It is during this time that the letters in the present volume which bear date in 1774 were written. They furnish a lively exhibition of the state of public feeling in Ma.s.sachusetts. That dated on the 14th of September is particularly interesting, as it gives an account of the securing the gunpowder from the British, in her own town of Braintree, as well as a highly characteristic trait of New England, in the refusal to cheer on a Sunday. The last of this series, dated on the 16th of October, shows that all remaining hopes of peace and reconciliation were fast vanishing from her mind; and in an affecting manner she "bids adieu to domestic felicity perhaps until the meeting with her husband in another world, since she looks forward to nothing further in this than sacrifices, as the result of the impending contest."[4]
The second meeting of the Congress, which took place in May, 1775, was marked by events which wholly changed the nature of its deliberations.
Up to that period, the struggle had been only a dispute. It then took the more fearful shape of a war. Mr. Adams left his house and family at Braintree on the 14th of April, only five days before the memorable incident at Lexington, which was a signal for the final appeal to arms.
The news of the affair reached him at Hartford, on his way to Philadelphia. General Gage had planned his attack upon Lexington with the knowledge that John Hanc.o.c.k and Samuel Adams, two of the delegates to the general Congress, were in that place at the time; and it was probably one of his objects to seize them, if they could be found.
Gordon, the historian, attributes their escape only to a friendly warning given them by a woman residing in Boston, but "unequally yoked in politics." There was nearly the same reason for apprehension on the part of John Adams. His house was situated still nearer to Boston, could be more easily approached by water, and his family, if not he himself, was known to be residing there. Under these circ.u.mstances, what the feelings of Mrs. Adams, left with the care of four small children, the eldest not ten years of age, must have been, may readily be conceived.
But the letters in which she describes them bring the idea home to the mind with still greater force. She tells us that upon the separation from her husband "her heart had felt like a heart of lead," and that "she never trusts herself long with the terrors that sometimes intrude themselves upon her;" that "since the never-to-be-forgotten day of his departure, the 14th of April, nothing had agitated her so much as the news of the arrival of recruits;" and that "she lives in continual expectation of alarms." Neither were these apprehensions altogether groundless. The letter of the 4th of May mentions that Colonel Quincy"s family, whose residence was nearer to the water-side than hers, had taken refuge for one night with her. That of the 24th gives a highly vivid picture of the consternation into which the whole town was thrown by a party of British, foraging upon an island in the harbor, close upon the town. Then follows the account of the battle on Bunker"s Hill and the burning of Charlestown, dreadful events to those in the immediate vicinity of Boston and to herself; yet, in the midst of them, the writer adds that she is "distressed, but not dismayed," and that "she has been able to maintain a calmness and presence of mind, and hopes she shall, let the exigency of the time be what it will."[5]
But it is superfluous to endeavor to heighten the picture given in the letters with so much distinctness. Mr. Adams seems to have been startled on the arrival of the intelligence at Hartford. Conscious, however, that his return would rather tend to add to, than diminish, the hazard to which his family was exposed, he contented himself with writing encouragement, and, at the same time, his directions in case of positive danger. "In a cause which interests the whole globe," he says, "at a time when my friends and country are in such keen distress, I am scarcely ever interrupted in the least degree by apprehensions for my personal safety. I am often concerned for you and our dear babes, surrounded as you are by people who are too timorous and too much susceptible of alarms. Many fears and jealousies and imaginary evils will be suggested to you, but I hope you will not be impressed by them.
In case of real danger, of which you cannot fail to have previous intimations, fly to the woods with our children."
Mr. Adams very well knew to whom he was recommending such an appalling alternative, the very idea of which would have been intolerable to many women. The trial Mrs. Adams was called to undergo from the fears of those immediately around her was one in addition to that caused by her own apprehensions; a trial, it may be remarked, of no ordinary nature, since it demands the exercise of a presence of mind and accuracy of judgment in distinguishing the false from the true, that falls to the lot of few even of the stronger s.e.x. It is the tendency of women in general to suffer quite as much from anxiety occasioned by the activity of the imagination, as if it was, in every instance, founded upon reasonable cause.
But the sufferings of this remarkable year were not limited to the mind alone. The terrors of war were accompanied with the ravages of pestilence. Mr. Adams was at home during the period of adjournment of the Congress, which was only for the month of August; but scarcely had he crossed his threshold, when the dysentery, a disease which had already signified its approach in scattering instances about the neighborhood of the besieged town of Boston, where it had commenced, a.s.sumed a highly epidemic character, and marked its victims in every family. A younger brother of Mr. Adams had fallen among the earliest in the town; but it was not till his departure for Philadelphia that almost every member of his own household was seized. The letters written during the month of September, 1775, of which only extracts were printed in the early editions of these papers, for reasons then thought satisfactory, it is now deemed not unsuitable to produce in full. They tell their own tale much more forcibly than any abridgment could do. They present distinctly to the imagination the acuteness of trials of which female history seldom takes much note, and yet in which female fort.i.tude gains its most heroic triumphs.
Without designing to detract from the unquestioned merit of that instrument, it must nevertheless be admitted that the Declaration of Independence, called by the celebrated John Randolph "a fanfaronade of abstractions," might very naturally be expected to reward the efforts of its signers with a crown of immortality; whilst the very large share of the cost of maintaining it, wrung from the bleeding hearts of the women of the Revolution, was paid without any hope or expectation of a similar compensation.
Mr. Adams was again at home in the month of December, during the sessions of the Congress, which were now continued without intermission.
It was upon his departure for the third time that the long and very remarkable letter bearing date March 2d, 1776,[6] and continued through several days, was written; a letter composed in the midst of the din of war, and describing hopes and fears in a manner deeply interesting. With this the description of active scenes in the war terminates. The British force soon afterwards evacuated Boston and Ma.s.sachusetts, which did not again become the field of military action. The correspondence now changes its character. From containing accounts of stirring events directly under the writer"s eye, Mrs. Adams"s letters a.s.sume a more private form, and princ.i.p.ally relate to the management of the farm and the household. Few of these would be likely to amuse the general reader, yet some are necessary to show a portion of her character. Mr. Adams was never a man of large fortune. His profession, which had been a source of emolument, was now entirely taken away from him; and his only dependence for the support of his family was in the careful husbanding of the means in actual possession. It is not giving to his wife too much credit to affirm that by her prudence through the years of the Revolution, and indeed during the whole period when the attention of her husband was engrossed by public affairs, she saved him from the mortification in his last days, which some of those who have been, like him, elevated to the highest posts in the country, have, for want of such care, not altogether escaped.
In the month of November, 1777, Mr. Adams again visited his home, and never afterwards rejoined Congress; for that body in his absence had elected him to perform a duty in a distant land. This was destined to furnish a severe trial to the fort.i.tude of Mrs. Adams. On the 25th of October, she had written a letter to him, it being the anniversary of their wedding-day, in which she notices the fact that "out of thirteen years of their married life, three had been pa.s.sed in a state of separation." Yet in these years the distance between them had never been very great, and the means of communication almost always reasonably speedy and certain. She appears little to have antic.i.p.ated that in a few short weeks she was to be deprived of even these compensations, and to send her husband to a foreign country, over seas covered with the enemy"s ships. "I very well remember," she says, in an earlier letter, "when the eastern circuits of the courts, which lasted a month, were thought an age, and an absence of three months, intolerable; but we are carried from step to step, and from one degree to another, to endure that which first we think insupportable." It was in exact accordance with this process, that the separations of half a year or more were to be followed by those which lasted many years, and the distance from Boston to Philadelphia or Baltimore was extended to Paris and a different quarter of the globe. Upon the reception of the news of his appointment as Joint Commissioner at the Court of France, in the place of Silas Deane, Mr. Adams lost no time in making his arrangements for the voyage. But it was impossible for him to think of risking his wife and children all at once with him in so perilous an enterprise. The frigate _Boston_, a small and not very good vessel, mounting twenty-eight guns, had been ordered to transport him to his destination.
The British fleet, stationed at Newport, perfectly well knew the circ.u.mstances under which she was going, and was on the watch to favor the new Commissioner with a fate similar to that afterwards experienced by Mr. Laurens. The political att.i.tude of France still remained equivocal. Hence, on every account it seemed advisable that Mr. Adams should go upon his mission alone. He left the sh.o.r.es of his native town to embark in the frigate in February, 1778, accompanied only by his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, then a boy not quite eleven years of age.
It is not often that even upon that boisterous ocean a voyage combines greater perils of war and of the elements than did this of the _Boston_.
Yet it is by no means unlikely that the lightning which struck the frigate, and the winds that nearly sent it to the bottom, were effective instruments to deter the enemy from a pursuit which threatened to end in capture. This is not, however, the place to enlarge upon this story. It is alluded to only as connected with the uneasiness experienced by Mrs.
Adams, who was left alone to meditate upon the hazard to which her husband was exposed. Her letter written not long after the sailing of the frigate distinctly shows her feelings.[7] But we find by it that to all the causes for anxiety which would naturally have occurred to her mind, there was superadded one growing out of a rumor then in circulation, that some British emissary had made an attempt upon the life of Dr. Franklin whilst acting at Paris in the very Commission of which her husband had been made a part. This was a kind of apprehension as new as it was distressing; one too, the vague nature of which tended indefinitely to multiply those terrors that had a better foundation in reality.
The news of the surrender of General Burgoyne had done more to hasten the desired acknowledgment, by France, of the independence of the United States, than all the efforts which Commissioners could have made. Upon his arrival in that country, Mr. Adams found the great object of his mission accomplished, and himself, consequently, left with little or no occupation. He did not wait in Europe to know the further wishes of Congress, but returned home in August, 1779. Only a brief enjoyment of his society by his family was the result, inasmuch as in October he was again ordered by Congress to go to Europe, and there to wait until Great Britain should manifest an inclination to treat with him, and terminate the war. In obedience to these directions, he sailed in November, on board of the French frigate _Sensible_, taking with him upon this occasion his two eldest sons. The day of his embarkation is marked by a letter in the present collection, quite touching in its character.[8]
The ordinary occupations of the female s.e.x are necessarily of a kind which must ever prevent it from partaking largely of the action of life.
However keenly women may think or feel, there is seldom an occasion when the sphere of their exertions can with propriety be extended much beyond the domestic hearth or the social circle. Exactly here are they to be seen most in their glory. Three or four years pa.s.sed whilst Mrs. Adams was living in the utmost seclusion of country life, during which, on account of the increasing vigilance of British cruisers, she very seldom heard from her husband. The material for interesting letters was proportionately small, and yet there was no time when she was more usefully occupied. It is impossible to omit all notice of this period, however deficient it may prove in variety. The depreciation of the Continental paper money, the difficulties in the way of managing the property of her husband, her own isolation, and the course of public events in distant parts of the country, form her constant topics. Only a small number of the letters which discuss them, yet enough to show her situation at this period, have been admitted into this volume. They are remarkable, because they display the readiness with which she could devote herself to the most opposite duties, and the cheerful manner in which she could accommodate herself to the difficulties of the times.
She is a farmer cultivating the land, and discussing the weather and the crops; a merchant reporting prices-current and the rates of exchange, and directing the making up of invoices; a politician speculating upon the probabilities of peace or war; and a mother writing the most exalted sentiments to her son. All of these pursuits she adopts together; some from choice, the rest from the necessity of the case; and in all she appears equally well. Yet, among the letters of this period there will be found two or three which rise in their tone very far above the rest, and which can scarcely fail to awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.[9]
The signature of the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, which fully established the independence of the United States, did not terminate the residence of Mr. Adams in Europe. He was ordered by Congress to remain there, and, in conjunction with Dr. Franklin and Mr. Jefferson, to establish by treaty commercial relations with foreign powers. And not long afterwards a new commission was sent him as the first representative of the nation to him who had been their King. The duties prescribed seemed likely to require a residence sufficiently long to authorize him in a request that Mrs. Adams should join him in Europe.