SIXTEEN
In a Flurry with Politics
Truly, every mark of respect was paid to “His Excellency John Adams, Esq. late Ambassador from the United States of America, to the Court of Great Britain—with his Lady,” on their arrival home the lightly windy morning of June 17, 1788. The next day, one could read all about the festive event in the Massachusetts Centinel: about the cannon fired at the lighthouse signal, about the thousands who cheered (three huzzahs worth), about the Secretary of State, who boarded the state barge to congratulate His Excellency, and to invite him, in the name of the Governor, into the waiting carriage at pier’s edge. Then, as church bells began their jaunty, day-long song of welcome, the party rode off to the Governor’s residence, where the ambassador was congratulated on the eminent services rendered his country “in a manner becoming freemen, federalists, and men alive to the sensations of gratitude.”1
Within twenty-four hours, John rushed on to Braintree while Abigail remained at the Governor’s house another day, until John Quincy could call for her and bring her to Peter Boylston Adams’s house. There the family gathered for a week before actually settling in their new dwelling, bought long-distance through Dr. Tufts’s attentive negotiations. Abigail and John now owned the gracious house that Royall Tyler had lived in and Richard Cranch had aspired to, and even without subsequent and commodious additions, the place was an affluent-looking one, in comparison with their “Humble Cottage,” the family home they had formerly occupied. Yet Abigail was noticeably miserable; even Mrs. Smith commented that she could see through her letters that her mother’s spirits were “hurried” and her mind was in “continual agitation.” Nabby warned her mother, “You must overcome this, or you will certainly be sick.”2
There were many reasons for Abigail’s “bewildered” state. She was home almost one month before she could write, her hand was so swollen (probably due to arthritis). She was also extremely irritated by the “shocking” state of the house, which was only half-repaired; she had little patience for the “swarm” of carpenters, masons, and farmers buzzing about as she tried to place her furniture, much of it damaged aboard ship, or too cumbersome to move about in the first place. She did not mean to seem humorous when she said that she looked forward to embracing both Mrs. Smith and the colonel, but alerted one to “wear no feathers” and the other to come without heels on his shoes, or he would not be able to walk upright.3
Of the two of them, John was initially in better spirits. He harbored no illusions about their new home. He described it rather modestly: “It is but the farm of a patriot,” he wrote to a friend living in England. The view, however, was another story: standing in two or three spots, one could see “some of the most beautiful prospects in the world.” And though he was critically concerned about his future, he was convinced that he was “much better accommodated” in America, that his compensation for loss of access to London bookshops and to his few friends abroad was handsome. Reunion with his three sons was a moving experience. With regret he spoke of time sacrificed to public service that he might have shared with his children.4
John could boast now of two sons at Harvard and a third, John Quincy, clerking for the eminent lawyer Theophilus Parsons, in Newburyport. They were “regular” in their manners and studies, and were admired in “all quarters” for their good character. The three pleased him enormously: John Quincy, with his “decided” proofs of great talent; Charles, the most winning, the “most of a gentleman of all”; and Thomas, as fine a youth as either of the others, if a “spice” of fun in his personality did not lead him astray. The single omission in John’s review of his children was a conscious one. Mrs. Smith’s present state was nebulous; she wrote to her parents from Jamaica, Long Island, of living in the country in a “land of strangers,” of visiting New York only occasionally, of not being disposed to acquire new friendships or acquaintances, of having as much “society” as she could wish in her own family. She failed to mention her husband’s plans, a void in her letters that made her parents extremely uneasy. By November, John had written his daughter that his anxiety for her prevailed on him to make a “great sacrifice,” to consent to her mother’s visiting her on Long Island.5
The exchange of letters, starting in July 1788, that culminated in Abigail’s troubled journey to her daughter was marked with tender concern on all sides. Gingerly, John approached Nabby, hopeful that his anxiety for the couple’s welfare had not “betrayed” him into “any improper expressions, or unbecoming curiosity.” He wished, however, to be informed, “as fully as may be with propriety,” of Colonel Smith’s views regarding his future. In the very next sentence, however, the initiative was reversed; the father passionately informed the daughter of his views of her husband’s career. John spoke with deep love, and from tortured experience, as he explained how he would rather see his son-in-law at the bar than in public service; the bar was the most “independent place on earth,” while a “seeker of public employments” was, to his thinking, “one of the most unhappy of all men.” Without realizing its inverted relevance to his own career, he pleaded the course he so admired; one that eluded him throughout his public life: “I had rather dig my subsistence out of the earth with my own hands, than be dependent on any favour, public or private; and this has been the invariable maxim of my whole life.” John spoke sensitively of Smith’s merit, and the public employment he was entitled to, but also of his being a man of “too much spirit as well as honour” to solicit, if it entailed the smallest degree of “meanness,” for any office. For these reasons, John reiterated the desirability of independence; the colonel must have a “resource,” of which none was better than the bar.6
The sad honesty of Nabby’s response, her appreciation of her father’s concern, which, despite all his attempts at delicacy, was blatantly forthright, told much about their relationship. The two had grown close in their time abroad; Mrs. Smith, as her father’s confidante, was able to give as well as to take advice.7
“Thank you, sir, for your solicitude,” Nabby replied on July 27. She, too, confessed an attachment to the law, and thought its study the “most conducive to the expansion of the mind of any of the learned professions.” Also, she was well aware that the most eminent men on the continent were lawyers; she hoped that one day all her brothers would pursue the law, and that her son might sometime be his grandfather’s pupil. It was at this point, however, that the note of optimism faded. Though her husband had not yet settled on his future career, the law was not a practical consideration for the colonel, to Mrs. Smith’s way of thinking. So many were already established that there was little encouragement for someone “lost in public view” to enter into its practice. She allowed that a “few combining accidental circumstances” might bring a man, “without any extraordinary exertions on his own part,” to public attention, but that in her own experience, such cases were rare.8
Her father’s prospects were another tale. In his letters to his daughter, John spoke not only of his son-in-law’s future, but of the perils of his own. Mrs. Smith, vigorously ambitious and affectionately supportive in answer, insisted that in contrast to her husband’s predicament, it would not take long to renew “remembrances” of her father’s reputation. And, yes, John’s suggestion that he might return to the bar seemed plausible, presuming, of course, that the lesser parts of the practice would be left to young practitioners. Mrs. Smith had higher aspirations for her father. Though he might grumble that public judgment and public voice bestowed on others every public office he might accept or consider an honor, she was not taken in. Though he might grieve, “in strict confidence,” that he hadn’t more of the “esteem, admiration, or respect of his country,” Nabby’s belief in her father was consummate:
It is my opinion that you will either be elected to the second place upon the continent, or first in your own State. The general voice has assigned the presidentship to General Washington, and it has been the opinion of many persons whom I have heard mention the subject, that the vice-presidentship would be at your option. I confess I wish it, and that you may accept it.9
In a sense, Nabby’s vision was clearer than her parents’. John, as ever, was torn between public and private life; his habit of self-analysis was almost as intense and merciless as in his youth. Only the multiplicity of years benefited him with a more incisive view of alternatives. “We are all in a flurry with politics,” he wrote to Abigail on December 2, 1788, during her visit to the Smiths, and none were more so than he himself. What share he was to have in the new government was the salient question, and he was at a loss to guess the answer. In a suspended state, he brooded all that autumn on the matter: on September 12, Congress had designated January 7, 1789, as the day for appointing presidential electors, and on February 4 as the day for casting ballots. For a man in the habit of balancing everything, as John claimed he did, he faced up to the choice between two related “articles”: public and private life, vanity and comfort. “I have the alternative in my power,” he assured Abigail. “If they mortify my vanity, they give me comfort. They cannot deprive me of comfort without gratifying my vanity.”10
To the best of his ability, John strained for objectivity during this trying time. As a “traveller,” an outsider in any country, he was determined not to fault anything—his carping these days concerned his own failings, mostly—for to do so would betray a “littleness” of mind. In his attempt to balance things and to locate his own niche in a dazzling landscape, however, it was impossible for him to abstain from making judgments.11
As he looked around, he thought America’s increased population was “wonderful,” the plenitude of provisions of all kinds “amazing” and cheap in proportion to their abundance and the scarcity of money. Agriculture, the fisheries, manufactures, and commerce were “well,” exceeding his expectations. He was less complimentary about politics: the “old, stanch, firm patriots” who had conducted the Revolution were being displaced by “pilots more selfish and much less skilful.” Four months later this criticism would be forgotten, John’s self-debate quieted. On April 6, 1789, the Senate, with nine of its twenty-two members present, witnessed the counting of sixty-nine ballots unanimously electing George Washington as President, and thirty-four electing John Adams Vice-President. Six months later, Thomas Jefferson would be appointed Secretary of State; Henry Knox, Secretary of War; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; Samuel Osgood, Postmaster General of the month-old national Post Office Department; and John Jay, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.12
Abigail’s approval of the new government fairly beamed from the pages of her letter to Mrs. Cranch. In spite of her acute awareness of her “delicate situation,” by virtue of her husband’s high office, she was undaunted. Her excuse for commenting on political affairs was disarmingly straightforward: “Perhaps, there is no person who feels more interested in them.” She proceeded also because her pleasure was irrepressible, as she congratulated her country on recent judicial appointments “in which an assemblage of the greatest talents and abilities are united which any country can boast of; gentlemen in whom the public have great confidence, and who will prove durable pillars in support of our government.” It was as though all problems were solved, or capable of solution with a little forbearance, by virtue of the new government:
Thus have we the fairest prospect of sitting down under our own vine in peace, provided the restless spirit of certain characters, who foam and fret, is permitted only its hour upon the stage, and then shall no more be heard of, nor permitted to sow the seeds of discord among the real defenders of the faith.13
Abigail began the vice-presidential years with unprecedented optimism; she had never been in more buoyant spirits in her entire life. As New York was the capital of the new nation, she set out to join John in his new post on June 19, 1789, a year and a day after her return from England. Her present voyage, via Providence and Newport, where she boarded the Hancock packet, commanded by a trustworthy Captain Brown, was again, in a sense, as tumultuous as her first had been. Five days of winds and thunderstorms and sickness landed her in New York safely, but in wry despair that her vow to stay away from the sea had been “kept as my former ones have been.” But any resemblance to her first voyage was purely physical. The once “mere American” had bloomed into a commanding presence who would expect deference from others. She traveled with her niece Louisa, her brother William’s daughter, as companion, and with two maids, and felt the “want” of Mrs. Briesler as her hairdresser.14
Whatever initial reservations Abigail had regarding her journey—making it, affording it, arranging it—had been dispelled by John’s loving letter. He, too, was in great spirits. He insisted that she come, and overwhelmed her with ways to arrange her life so that she might leave home in easy mind. She could leave Thomas at college, but bring Charles; she could bring John Briesler (who would join them on July 4); she could let their brother plow and plant as he wished, as much as he wished, sharing half the butter and cheese with his family. As for money—she was to borrow from some friend. And if she could not borrow enough, she must sell horses, oxen, sheep, cows, or whatever she could, at any rate, rather than stay home. Anything went, anything was possible; John was prepared for the ultimate sacrifice: “If no one will take the place, leave it to the birds of the air and beasts of the field, but at all events break up that establishment and that household.…” John had taken a house a mile outside of the town of New York, where there was room of all sorts, though no furniture, and he was waiting for her “tenderly.” Abigail’s vivid, elated letters, written over the next few months, attest to her belief that she had chosen the right and only course, and she was almost apologetic, as well as apprehensive, about her thriving state.15
* * *
Richmond Hill caught Abigail’s fancy immediately. The tall, tiered, columned house, with its eleven-foot ceilings, its gardens, and its majestic view of the Hudson and the farms of New Jersey beyond, now covered with a golden harvest, was precisely in keeping with the houses Abigail had lived in and visited abroad. A winding, tree-lined road led to the house. On one side the fields were green, the pastures full of cattle; on the other, the city rose in the distance. The large flower garden in the back was enclosed with a hawthorn hedge; its adjacent grove of pines and oaks was happily “fit for contemplation.” There was order to Richmond Hill, and there was wilderness, as well. Partridges, woodcocks, and pigeons were plentiful, and birds of great variety, to Abigail’s delight, serenaded her morning and night.16
Not only was the prospect all around “Beautiful” (a word Abigail used repeatedly) in the “highest degree,” but all was “sublime” and “delicious,” except perhaps for the local hams, which she pronounced “miserable.” And for once the house was, though not in good repair, in decent order, with not only John, but the Smiths and their one-year-old son John, ready to greet her. With beds and a few other minor details to attend to, Abigail was almost instantly ready to assume a responsible social life, as rigorous and organized as any she had known (and criticized) abroad. As there were no public walks, no public amusements, and one dinner for every six given in Boston, the system of rotating receptions or levees assumed emphatic significance. Once Martha Washington settled on Fridays at eight o’clock, the pattern was set. Abigail then chose to receive on Mondays, her rooms lighted and put in order for those who cared to come to make their bow and curtsy, to take coffee and tea, to chat for half an hour or longer. The same “ceremony” was performed on Tuesdays at Mrs. John Temple’s house—“Lady” Temple, as Abigail insisted on calling the former Elizabeth Bowdoin* ; Wednesday was Mrs. Knox’s turn, and Thursday, Mrs. Jay’s.17
Abigail managed her Monday evenings, as well as her weekly dinners for twenty-four that were certain to include government officials, with an uncertain staff that did not fare well in comparison with its London counterpart. In the best of domestic times she could claim a “pretty good Housekeeper, a tolerable footman, a middling cook, an indifferent steward and a vixen of a House maid.” She fretted about help who drank; she was “sincerely” sick of the Negroes she encountered, and could no more do without Mr. Briesler, she said, “than a coach would go without wheels or Horse to draw it.”18
Not only had Abigail to cope with problems of help in running her home, but also of health; housing a family of eighteen under her roof meant nursing the two Smith children through a round of whooping cough, and Charles, Louisa, and the maid Polly through bouts of dysentery, apart from overcoming her own chronic frailties. But even as the fall colors mellowed, and she realized that Richmond Hill would be bleak in November and inaccessible in severe winter, and that it would take forty or fifty cords of wood to keep six fireplaces warming (at seven dollars a cord for walnut, five dollars for oak), the house did not lose its appeal. It was “more to my mind than any place I ever lived in,” Abigail wrote Mrs. Cranch.19
“The Beautiful prospect” before her, wherever she looked, from whatever vantage point, was inspiration for Abigail; for the only time in her life, by her own admission, she could not spare a moment’s mourning for having left Braintree behind. She was in brilliant spirits; the season was plentiful and she urged her loved ones to “rejoice and be glad.” So unusual was her state of mind that she had barely settled at Richmond Hill when she began to worry about being “too happy in the situation of it to have it lasting.” She felt humbled by her own good fortune, guilty that she could not share her noble house, views, and garden with sisters, nieces, and friends. Though her own strain of self-analysis was neither as virulent as John’s nor as capriciously indulgent, it was persistent. This and her fierce Puritan birthright transcended all as Abigail wrote to Mrs. Cranch on July 12, 1789, requesting a favor of her “near and intimate Friends”:
It is to desire them to watch over my conduct and if at any time they perceive any alteration in me with respect to them, arising as they may suppose from my situation in Life, I beg they would with the utmost freedom acquaint me with it. I do not feel within myself the least disposition of the kind, but I know mankind are prone to deceive themselves, and some are disposed to misconstrue the conduct of those whom they conceive placed above them.20
The truth was, of course, that Abigail’s “situation in Life” had measurably altered her manner and expectations. Her fears were as readily borne out as they were understandable. Only to study her references to herself as her “Ladyship,” to friends such as “Lady” Temple, and especially to the Washingtons illuminates her own new, sharply defined sense of social position and expectations of homage. Abigail was pleased to claim to live “upon terms of much Friendship” with the President and his wife. She wrote about both of them with sensitivity and affection, but also with a more formal dimension, that of deference. Inadvertently, Abigail treated the Washingtons as uncrowned royalty, as “court” subjects, eligible successors to the monarchical figures of her recent past.21
* * *
The day after Abigail’s arrival at Richmond Hill, she took Nabby with her to pay her respects to Martha Washington. She could not have been more pleased to be received with “great ease & politeness,” and reported as much about the President’s wife to Mrs. Cranch:
She is plain in her dress, but that plainness is the best of every article. She is in mourning. Her Hair is white, her Teeth beautifull, her person rather short than otherways, hardly so large as my Ladyship, and if I was to speak sincerly, I think she is a much better figure. Her manners are modest and unassuming, dignified and femenine, not the Tincture of ha’ture about her. His Majesty was ill & confined to his Room. I had not the pleasure of a presentation to him, but the satisfaction of hearing that he regreted it equally with myself.22
Martha Washington was three months younger than her husband, and twelve years older than Abigail. She had aged gracefully since the time of John Wollaston’s portrait of a young woman with a round, pleasant face, calm eyes, a restful mouth, and a good figure. Perhaps, because most of her correspondence was destroyed, she has been (except for her wealth) underrated by history. It has even been suggested that she was incapable of writing her own condolence notes at her husband’s death. The content of one of her rare surviving letters dramatically explains her appeal for Abigail. Her sentiments, in fact, echo Abigail’s; they also underline their mutual sense of sacrifice.23
Martha Washington was eloquent about her goals and her wishes for herself and her family; her “first and dearest wish” was to grow old with her husband “in solitude and tranquillity,” to be with her grandchildren and her “domestic connexions.” There was something “not quite as it ought to have been” that she, “who had much rather be at home, should occupy a place, with which a great many younger and gayer women would be extremely pleased.” Yet she could not blame her husband for acting according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country. But unlike Abigail, Martha Washington was not an introspective woman, nor had she suffered such intense loneliness or financial harassment. Her solution to her state was less tortured and more direct; no parson’s daughter, she looked to herself rather than to the heavens for her answers. She was determined to be cheerful and happy whatever her situation; she believed “the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the needs of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.” Given this sort of wise companionship, it was no wonder that Abigail thought of Mrs. Washington as a “most friendly good Lady, always pleasant and easy.” She also commented on Mrs. Washington’s lack of affectation as well as her being “one of those unassuming characters which create Love & Esteem.” Furthermore, she was “quite a Grandmamma.”24
George Washington was equally impressive. Abigail found the “August President” a “singular example of modesty and diffidence.” The exemplary soldier, the self-educated surveyor, the blue-eyed, sinewy, superlative horseman who loved to dance, was recovering from a fever when Abigail paid her second visit to Mrs. Washington. The President was unable to sit up; Abigail was therefore invited to meet him in his own room.
He was laying upon a settee and half raising himself up, begged me to excuse his receiving me in that posture, congratulated me upon my arrival in New York and asked me how I could Relish the simple manners of America after having been accustomed to those of Europe. I replied to him that where I found simple manners I esteemed them, but that I thought we approached much nearer to the Luxury and manners of Europe according to our ability, than most persons were sensible of and that we had our full share of taste and fondness for them.25
The next day, Washington, accompanied by Martha, showed admirable ingenuity; he rode out to return Abigail’s call (at her invitation) by placing his bed in his carriage, drawn by six horses and attended by four servants. With all her “feelings and Sensations” of respect, admiration, and affection, Abigail found herself, she told Mrs. Cranch, “much more deeply impressed than I ever did before their Majesties of Britain.”26
The style in which the Washingtons chose to celebrate the new year of 1790 again earned Abigail’s unqualified approval, even in comparison with palace festivities. To Abigail’s delight, their drawing room “was as much crowded as a Birth Night at St. James, and with company as Brilliantly drest, diamonds & great hoops excepted.” Abigail, as always, stood at Mrs. Washington’s right hand, though sometimes, “through want of knowing what is right,” others usurped her position. This was when Washington unfailingly came to Abigail’s rescue, a gesture so meaningful it was scrupulously called to Mrs. Cranch’s attention: “On such an occasion the President never fails of seeing that it is relinquished for me, and having removed Ladies several times, they have now learned to rise & give it me, but this between our selves, as all distinction you know is unpopular.”27
In truth, Abigail exulted in Washington’s admirable grace, his having “so happy a faculty of appearing to accommodate & yet carrying his point.” So much so, in fact, that she truly believed that if Washington was “not really one of the best intentioned men in the world he might be a very dangerous one.” Abigail’s concept of Washington went far beyond niceties. Above all, Washington was a figure of grandeur, “peculiarly fit” for his exalted station. No other man, she claimed adamantly, could “rule over this great people and consolidate them into one mighty Empire but He who is set over us.” Having virtually crowned Washington head of state by her unequivocal confidence—“He is polite with dignity, affable without familiarity, distant without Haughtyness, Grave without Austerity, Modest, wise & Good”—she was dismayed by his bout of illness in May 1790.28
During the several days that Washington lay perilously ill with influenza, which was epidemic at that time, Abigail confronted the possibility of his death. Shocked into the realization that John would be Washington’s successor, she admitted to fears of “a thousand things” that she prayed she would never be called to experience. She dreaded the thought of Washington’s death for a reason that few people would believe, and only those who knew her best, she said. “Most assuredly” she did not wish for the highest post; Washington alone was the key to the future: “It appears to me that the union of the states, and consequently the permanancy of the Government depend under Providence upon his Life. At this early day when neither our Finances are arranged nor our Government sufficiently cemented to promise duration, His death would I fear have had most disasterous concequences.” On May 30, Abigail wrote with extreme relief to inform Mrs. Cranch that, “thanks to Providence,” Washington was again restored to health. Fortunately, thoughts of what she might have been “called to” had therefore been of only momentary concern.29
* * *
Abigail’s mood of flourishing contentment with her lot as the Vice-President’s wife was sustained throughout the winter of 1790. Not that she wasn’t painfully aware of its fragile composition. She might be moving at any time, since Philadelphia had been chosen as the next capital. She suffered over the Cranches’ needy state and lent them money. She was anxious about Sister Shaw’s pregnancy, and said overtly that she thought it a “foolish Business to begin after so many years, a second crop.” Of the “great national objects” coming before Congress, none was of greater magnitude, in her opinion, than the national debt. This was a subject of such vast weight, she claimed, that it required the wisest heads and “honestest” hearts to “adjust” it with any degree of satisfaction. “I hope to see an adoption of all the State Debts, and ways and means devised to pay them,” she wrote Uncle Tufts. “Whether there will be sufficient courage in the Legislature to take so decisive a step,” only time would tell. Repeatedly, however, she expressed the opinion that this issue was for her “one of the main pillars upon which the duration of the government rests.”30
Problems of finance, of government and its “Herculean Labour,” challenged Abigail’s practical wisdom and intelligence. Opinions flowered judiciously, remarkably so, for one so passionately enthralled by every nuance in the growth of her developing country. “What one member esteems the pillar, the bulwark of the constitution an other considers as the ruin of his state,” she conceded readily. Her magnanimous perspective, however long-ranging, blurred pathetically the more closely she, John, or their family were involved. Just as she appreciated the extraordinary efforts of others to evolve fresh sets of laws and patterns of protocol, so she sincerely expected reciprocal understanding of her own role and, more crucially, John’s. To be rewarded instead with derision was incomprehensible to her; to be abused by the press about their judgment and conduct was intolerable. Fragile egos were wounded; all too quickly, Abigail was on the defensive, tormented, and made to sound petty.31
She had managed to “smile,” or so she claimed, when the “Boston puffs” criticized the “dissipations” of New York, meaning the official entertainments. The newspaper editors had gone about absolving the President of responsibility for or participation in these affairs, implying, to Abigail, that the Adamses were the catalysts for these infamous indulgences. Abigail felt aggrieved. She objecting to reading that the President was “perfectly averse to all marks of distinction” when anyone could see that on special occasions he wore his regimental uniform adorned with an eagle “most richly set” with diamonds sparkling from his buttonhole. Abigail certainly did not call this being averse to distinction. Not that she begrudged the President these luxuries—his coach and six horses, his ten thousand dollars worth of furnishings, his diamonds. In fact, she was quite positive that “he ought to have still more state, & [that] time will convince our Country of the necessity, of it.” What irked Abigail was the editors’ inconsistency; for the past year she had noticed they were as “liberal” as one could hope to the President; their attitude toward the Vice-President, however, was entirely another matter.32
Abigail thought she knew the reason. Twice John had cast the tie-breaking vote, with the Senate divided nine to nine, in favor of the President having the exclusive power to remove his appointees from office. This vote aroused suspicion and criticism and was misconstrued as a vote of power into his own hands, or as having such potential in time. Unfair treatment, Abigail protested. “All was silence” when John had voted to reduce the duty on molasses, but everyone had chosen to pounce on him because of his controversial position on this other issue. Furthermore, even darker motives were attributed to John’s insistence on bolstering presidential powers; it was another manifestation of his monarchist tendencies, his critics whined.33
In many ways, John had plummeted into this morass by his own ardent pursuits. Some might find the study of government “dry,” he said, but for him, “no romance is more entertaining.” John was tantalized by the possibilities of the “experiment” of the Constitution of the United States, of the “fresh essay at imperium in imperio.”34
A lifelong student of other theories, John had defined his own in his Thoughts, and refined them in his Defense: a government ought to be “well ordered, mixed, and counterpoised” in order to achieve a “balance between the legislative and executive powers,” or (in what seemed a harmless analogy) a balance between “aristocratical and democratical interests.” Busy as he was in the year 1790, John was once again at his desk, still burnishing his theory that balance was the mainstay of government. Beginning in April 1790, and continuing for twelve months, the Gazette of the United States would publish thirty installments of John’s Discourses on Davila. By exploring the Italian-born historian Enrico Caterino Davila’s History of the French Civil Wars, translated into English in 1647, it was his intention to relate the lessons of that convulsive period to the present. Balance was the mainstay of government and was urgently needed to remedy the sorrows of bloodied, revolutionary France.35
Unlike John’s other works, Discourses confused rather than clarified. He had long cautioned against the fraudulent use of words such as monarchy, and had openly written of the problematic nature of equality and natural aristocracy. But words like monarchy, aristocracy, and hereditary, tumbling about the pages of this exhaustive effort to synthesize his own theories, repulsed many. All too quickly he would be forced to justify their use, to assure the skeptical that mention of these concepts did not equate with espousal of them, that he was a “moral and irreconcilable enemy to monarchy.” What John was trying to communicate was a deeply held belief that a balanced government was best able to fill its eventual goal: the happiness of society. This type of government, in its highest expression, was most sublimely one of “laws and not men.”36
Eventually, John would regard the Discourses as a “dull, heavy volume” that did not add to his popularity—a breathtaking understatement, considering the criticism it sparked, and the tormenting test of friendship it provoked almost immediately on publication. Fortunately, Abigail, for the time being, chose to think of John’s critics as unknown, somewhat distant beings, “uneasy wrestless spirits” to be found in all quarters of the world, rather than nesting on their very doorstep.37
* * *
One of the “uneasy spirits” haunting both Abigail and John was a man named Edward Church, brother of the infamous Benjamin Church, physician, poet, and traitor. Abigail thought the Massachusetts Centinel had gone too far in displaying favoritism when it had printed, this past August, Church’s scathing poem, refused initially by New York printers and signed “A Republican.” Neither John nor Abigail could understand the attack; vaguely, they were given to believe that Church was retaliating for an unanswered letter, for an unacknowledged blow. In any case, the author’s aim was deadly:
Resign your awkward pomp, parade and pride,
And lay that useless etiquette aside;
Th’ unthinking laugh, but all the thinking hate
Such vile, abortive mimickry of State.…
YE WOU’D BE TITLED! whom, in evil hour—
The rash, unthinking people cloth’d with pow’r,
Who, drunk, with pride, of foreign baubles dream,
And rave of a COLUMBIAN DIADEM—
Be prudent, modest, mod’rate, grateful, wise,
Nor on your Country’s ruin strive to rise,
Lest great COLUMBIA’s AWFUL GOD shou’d frown,
And to your native dunghills hurl you down.
Church continued, ignoring the Adams name, but pouncing on his title:
Resist the VICE—and that contagious pride
To that o’erweening VICE—so near ally’d.…
With unlick’d Lordlings sully not your fame,
Nor daub our PATRIOT with a LACKER’D name.
And finally the ultimate blow was dealt:
O WASHINGTON! thy Country’s hope and trust!
Alas! perhaps her last, as thou wert first;
Successors we can find—but tell us where
Of ALL thy virtues we shall find THE HEIR?38
Church had also written about “idle lackeys” sauntering at the door, and about “floods of wine.” Abigail tried at first to meet adversity with dignity, but in private she despaired: “The Vice President ten times to one goes to Senate in a one Horse chaise, and Levee’s we have had none,” she wrote to Mrs. Cranch. “The Pressident only, has his powderd Lackies waiting at the door. So that under a Hipo-critical mask [Church] attacks one & hold[s] the other impiously up & stiles him a Saviour & God. How inconsistant, railing at Titles & giving those which belong to the Deity.” Weary and resigned, Abigail added, “Thus it is to be seated high. I pray Heaven to give me a conscience void of offence, and then the curse causeless shall not come.”39
* * *
With March’s piercing winds tamed, Abigail was able, the first week in April, to tend to her garden and to extol the early-spring attributes of Richmond Hill. The Smiths, who had been living with her that winter, were planning, on the first of May, to go into housekeeping on their own once more. Their temporary absence at this moment reminded Abigail of how lost she would be without them, especially the children. Though partial to William, whose “mild and sweet temper” she mentioned frequently, she loved John, born in 1788, and named for Grandfather John Adams, as well. Both were sources of amusement and diversion, and she consoled herself that they would spend at least half their time with her in the future, even when they lived under separate roofs. Abigail was an abundantly affectionate grandmother who considered the youngsters almost as “near” to her heart as her own children. She was also a traditionally possessive grandmother; without a qualm she boasted to Mrs. Cranch that William had come from his Grandmamma Smith’s “an almost ruined child, but I have brought him to be a fine Boy now.”40
By the end of the month, however, Abigail’s somber preoccupation with her depleted household was abruptly diverted by rampaging illness. An unseasonable April snow, more than had fallen the entire winter, and consequent cold, wet weather turned her house into what she accurately described as a “mere Hospital.” Colonel Smith suffered one of his severe bilious attacks; Charles and several of the servants were felled by violent fevers; the housekeeper lay helpless with St. Anthony’s disease, a wretched inflammation of the skin. Four weeks later, influenza had invaded the household, prostrating all but John, with Abigail suffering what she called a “double share.” Now the housekeeper would be leaving, infirm and also at odds with another quarrelsome servant, and Abigail was pressed to rearrange her staff. She needed someone who understood pastry, someone to supervise the cooking and make tea for public evenings, someone to clean and to iron; Abigail wrote to Boston for help with her search. More than once she was reminded what a prize her English servants were; if she did not have Briesler to help her now, she thought she might be tempted to give up public life.41
As always, the economics of supporting her household compounded Abigail’s other problems. Word that her tenants in Braintree might be leaving made her wish she could substitute cash for land, or that her property was as “moveable an article as a carriage” which she could bring to New York. In this city she would have no difficulty renting one house for four hundred dollars, a price she could hardly eke out for their five houses and farmland combined, in Braintree. By mid-June she was thoroughly distracted, torn with the cares of Braintree and the confusion of rumors of a southbound capital. Perhaps she was “too short sighted, or too much blinded,” or too fatigued, or too impecunious, but she could honestly see no real advantage to leaving Richmond Hill and what she thought a “very delightfull situation,” unless, of course, the powers involved could make a permanent choice. Mention had been made of Baltimore as a possible capital, a city where one would not be comfortable, she had heard. Furthermore, if she could see that the public would benefit from the move, she would, she promised, “submit with more satisfaction.” But to know that “sowerd” members of Congress wasted time in every session disputing the subject was, at the least, “a very unpleasant thing.”42
On July 16, 1790, Philadelphia was named the capital of the United States until 1800, at which time a federal city was to be founded on the Potomac River. The machinations behind this plan troubled Abigail, aware as she was of the purported bargain made between Virginia and New England. Hamilton’s plan for federal assumption of state debts was supported by Jefferson and Virginia; in turn, New Englanders, encouraged by Hamilton, would vote for the Potomac capital. Still, Abigail saw no “essential benefit” for the public in the new location; personally, she was terrified of the prospect of “violent Heats.”43
On August 29, Abigail called on Martha Washington, who would be leaving for Mount Vernon the next day. Abigail gravely expressed her cordial wish that they would be parted for only a short time; having lived close to Martha “in habits of intimacy and friendship,” Abigail believed that no lady could be “more deservedly beloved and esteemed” than the President’s good wife. She wrote of other neighbors with equal generosity and charm. Though she had once blamed her “bad” writing on the lack of new subjects or objects, and fretted that if she did meet up with a “curious” character she would be reticent about mentioning the same, she need not have apologized. She rallied admirably when it came to telling Mrs. Cranch of her association with the Upper Creek Indians:
I have nothing new to entertain you with unless it is my Neighbours the Creek savages who visit us daily. They are lodgd at an Inn at a little distance from us. They are very fond of visiting us as we entertain them kindly, and they behave with much civility. Yesterday they signed the Treaty, and last Night they had a great Bondfire dancing round it like so many spirits hooping, singing, yelling, and expressing their pleasure and satisfaction in the true savage stile. These are the first savages I ever saw. Mico Maco, one of their kings dinned her yesterday and after dinner he confered a Name upon me, the meaning of which I do not know: Mammea. He took me by the Hand, bowd his Head and bent his knee, calling me Mammea, Mammea. They are very fine looking Men, placid countenances & fine shape.44
In the fall of 1790, as she faced the inevitability of moving to Philadelphia, Abigail increasingly acknowledged her fears in the same breath as she tried to temper them. “No one is without their difficulties, whether in High, or low Life”—this she positively knew. And in a certain way, one’s troubles were private matters: “Every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.” But she could no longer contain her sighs; “low spirited and heartless,” Abigail was on the edge of grief. Did they not pity her? she asked her sisters and her dear Dr. Tufts. Here she was again, as in Europe, boxing and casing her possessions, spending money she could not afford. Here she was, once more facing the prospect of having to move in new circles, form new acquaintances, make and receive a hundred ceremonious visits, not one out of ten of which would give her any pleasure or satisfaction. Moreover, and most relevant to her sense of deprivation, was her irretrievable loss of Mrs. Smith, who had given birth to a third son, Thomas Hollis, on August 8, and William and John, to whom she was openly “much attached.” Even so, she could not express everything that burdened her heart; there were “many other things I have upon my mind and spirits which I cannot communicate by letter,” she told Mrs. Cranch. One week later she was less reticent, though she still omitted reference to the colonel. She wrote on October 10: “My separation from Mrs. Smith is painful to me on many accounts. There is at present no prospect of their going with us, and if their prospects here were as fair as they ought to be, I should be less solicitious for them.”45
Inevitably, financial matters were an additional gnawing issue. Abigail faced soaring expenses with exasperation; it would cost $160 to ship their belongings, and $400 for a house located two miles out of the city of Philadelphia that had “not a garden spot upon it.” And if Philadelphia real estate tried her patience, her Braintree rentals drove her that October to rare, if not singular, criticism of her husband:
I have the vanity however to think that if Dr. Tufts and my Ladyship had been left to the sole management of our affairs, they would have been upon a more profitable footing. In the first place I never desired so much Land unless we could have lived upon it. The money paid for useless land I would have purchase[d] publick securities with. The interest of which, poorly as it is funded, would have been less troublesome to take charge of then Land and much more productive. But in these Ideas I have always been so unfortunate as to differ from my partner, who thinks he never saved any thing but what he vested in Land.46
The squall was over as suddenly as it had begun—a lone, bitter signal of Abigail’s inner turbulence. A sense of isolation prevailed; she mourned what she termed her “destiny,” to have her family scattered, scarcely to be able to keep one member nearby. Outwardly, she tended the necessary chores, arranging to have her furniture on shipboard by October 20, to have St. Germain pears and the best russet apples sent from Braintree to Philadelphia, to spend the first stage of her journey to the nation’s newest capital in New York with the Smiths. She even took time to recommend the use of flannels next to the skin to ward off colds suffered by her sickly brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, and his wife. “Make little waistcoats & put them on the first comeing of cold weather,” she said; had she as much spare room in her stays as Mrs. Cranch did, Abigail assured her sister, “I would not be without them.” Abigail herself was taken ill while visiting Mrs. Smith; delirious with fever, she was confined to her room till early November. In her threadbare state of mind and health, the trek from New York to Philadelphia hovered ominously. As though she anticipated the trials of the next episode of her life, Abigail referred to the journey before her being “like a mountain & three ferries to cross.”47