SEVENTEEN
A Prospect of Calamities
Filled with misgivings over her move to Philadelphia, Abigail nevertheless claimed to be neither “disappointed nor discomfited” on her arrival during the second week in November 1790. Her desertion of the drafty, unfinished house, still occupied by tardy painters, to spend that dismal Friday evening at the City Tavern, belied her equivocation. The next morning, however, Abigail took possession of the Bush Hill with a vengeance, and within twenty-four hours a seemingly infinite accumulation of boxes, barrels, chairs, tables, and trunks were partially ordered, once-sullen fireplaces radiated light and warmth, and beds stood sturdy and hospitable. Within a week Abigail would nurse Thomas, downed with rheumatism on Sunday, administer an emetic to Louisa on Monday, and tend Mrs. Briesler for one of her chronic stomach pains on Tuesday; “to complete the whole,” on Thursday a violent, feverish pleurisy gripped another member of the household. Conscientiously upholding her social duties, however, Abigail managed to receive callers in her own chamber, the only “decent” one, from 11:00 A.M. until 3:00 P.M., stormy days excepted.1
Whatever the difficulties she encountered in the arduous process of settling her family, friends assured Abigail that others were even less fortunate. Mrs. Washington’s house, for example, was not likely to be ready before the new year (“And, when all is done, it will not be Broadway”); the boat carrying Mrs. Knox’s furniture had not been heard from. But news of others’ trials did not alleviate Abigail’s own. Her best trunk of clothes was damaged during its leaky voyage, which meant several of her dresses were spoiled, including a favorite black satin and another that Mrs. Smith had worked on most diligently. It was all “the blessed effects of tumbling about the world,” Abigail said, in a lame attempt to put events in perspective.2
Comparisons were inevitable. The Schuylkill River, from where she viewed it, bore no more resemblance to the Hudson, she said, than she to Hercules. Furthermore, while Richmond Hill had been “sublime,” its architecture “Grand,” its tree-shaded entrance “perfectly Romantick,” Bush Hill could boast not a bush, a shrub, nor barely a tree; the British had left the property naked but for the pine grove in back, where a row of statuary guarded a graveled walk. Nevertheless, Abigail allowed that it was “a very beautiful place” in its own way, poised elegantly in a meadow in which a shepherd pastured his sheep.3
Quickly settled, Abigail was to make another surprising concession. She soon discovered to her unreserved delight that the women of Philadelphia were well educated, well bred, and well dressed, and that she was received in their “brilliant” drawing rooms with every “mark of politeness and civility.” So much so that she soon worried she would spend a “very dissipated winter” if she accepted one half of the invitations she received. Furthermore, she pronounced the dancing in Philadelphia “very good,” was only faintly patronizing about the theater being equal to “most” outside of France—“very neat, and prettily fitted up”—and said that the actors “did their best” in The School for Scandal. She also enjoyed “Ministers of State” and their “Madams,” as she insisted on calling the wives, as “company of the best kind.” Her weekday plans included going to dance at Mr. Chew’s on Tuesday and to “sup” at Mr. Clymer’s on Friday. “So you see I am likely to be amused,” she wrote Mrs. Smith on January 8, 1791.4
Two months later, Abigail’s timorously rising expectations were blunted by the most extreme cold she had experienced since her return from England. As for the broad plane of blinding snow—it “puts out my eyes,” she complained. Her evaluation of life in Philadelphia, though still flattering, was a good deal more realistic. She had come to think of the surrounding countryside as too level for her style; its uniformity “wearies the eye, and confines the imagination,” she told Mrs. Shaw. She also tended to think of herself as a kind of prisoner, more than ever before in her life. Though the house was only two miles from the city, after each rain she had to “wallow” through “mortar,” horses sinking to their knees, three-quarters of the way to Philadelphia, before reaching any paved road. Sheer cold made the prospect of travel even less pleasant; holes and roughness along the way were equally harrowing. Yet there were compensations. Philadelphia was as verdant in March as Massachusetts in May, the house was airy and comfortable, and there was so much more “society” in Philadelphia than in New York, even if she could not always participate, that Abigail had to admit she was “much better pleased and satisfied” than she had expected to be.5
She was also pleased on another count: she was planning her return to Braintree in May, roads permitting, where she hoped to stay for five months. She apologized to Dr. Tufts, “Friend, Guardian and parent,” for troubling him with arrangements, but his “many kind offices, and long habit of doing good,” had led her and the whole family to look to him for advice and assistance. Would he ready the house with candles, soap, flour, sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, and cider? She would need a half-dozen barrels of the last. Not anxious to stock any “superfluous” articles, she did order two kitchen tables, one six feet long and four feet wide, as well as a couple of washtubs. Then there was the garden to think of; arrangements must be made to have it manured and turned. And, as always, no letter to Tufts was complete without some comment of a political nature.6
The present session of Congress, Abigail wrote the doctor on March 11, 1791, was “marked with great dispatch of Business, much good humour, & the varying in Sentiment upon some very important Subjects.” She enclosed a copy of the bill, signed February 25, chartering the Bank of the United States. Opposed by many Southern members of Congress on the grounds that it was financially hazardous as well as unconstitutional—Congress hadn’t the power to incorporate a bank—Abigail assured Tufts that it was thought in Philadelphia, “by those who are esteemed the best judges,” that the bill would not have any of “those concequences” that some of its detractors imagined. Though she worried about this divided stand and speculated that if she lived ten years longer she would see “a division of the Southern & Northern States, unless more candour & less intrigue” should prevail, she was optimistic on the whole:
The Accession of the State of Vermont during this Session to the Union, and the Uninimnity [unanimity] with which they were received is a most happy and important event in our Annals and will add weight to the Northern Scale. Kentucky is also agreed to be received but her Government is not yet organized. Thus Sir one pillar rises after another and adds strength I hope to the Union.7
It was hardly news to Abigail that “No station in life was ever designed by Providence to be free from trouble and anxiety,” and neither the blessings of three sons having graduated from Harvard “with so much reputation,” nor the pleasures of Philadelphia numbed the pain of family problems. Thomas’s rheumatic condition was a nagging preoccupation for her, every damp day a warning of his future, a reminder of his past. Abigail did not think he looked well or would fare well in Philadelphia’s summer heat. Further, the urgent question of how he was to earn his living compounded his difficulties. He definitely preferred merchandizing, but since he lacked capital, it seemed that law was the logical alternative—one, however, that Abigail realized would be a “force” to his inclinations.8
An alternative to either merchandising or law was banking, and Abigail considered a possibility that Thomas might go to Holland to work with the banking house of the Willinks, with whom his father had negotiated a loan for the United States. This appeared, in some ways, to be the most satisfactory solution, considering Thomas’s interests. Still, Abigail told John Quincy, she hesitated to give advice. It wasn’t that she doubted that Thomas would be “steady industerous and indefatiable” in his pursuits, but that, with less than wholehearted commitment, the possibility of failure was greater, and the adviser was therefore more liable to bear the blame for an unfortunate outcome.9
Ostensibly wary, professing neutrality, yet blithely ignoring her own presentiment on the subject, Abigail was, in fact, hardly cowed by the hazards of taking a position on this or almost any issue. Only the approach was problematical. “I have sometimes found great address necessary to carry a point,” she confided to John Quincy, “and much prudent caution to effect my scheme.” Very likely, Abigail was unaware that she had just described with critical accuracy her pivotal involvement in all her children’s lives.10
On July 15, 1790, John Quincy was “regularly admitted and sworn to the office of an attorney,” ending a peripatetic apprenticeship to Theophilus Parsons of Newburyport, begun after his graduation from Harvard College in 1787. The prospects of his practicing law, an overcrowded profession in Massachusetts, presented a “dismal proposition” for this impecunious young man. On the morning of August 9, John Quincy established his office in the front room of the family house on Court Street in Boston, wishing all the while that he had been bred a farmer, a merchant, or “any thing” by which he could earn his bread.11
At a comparable age, his father had despaired over his expectations for “Happiness, and a solid undisturbed Contentment amidst all the Disorders, and the continual Rotations of worldly Affairs.” The son, heir to the father’s ambitions and frustrations, searched for less cosmic answers. In a sense, his parents were his universe: their standards of morality, education, and purpose embraced him, goading, inhibiting, and luring him. He was full of gratitude for the “innumerable favours” he had received from the “best of Parents,” but, by his own bitter admission, gratitude was the only return he could make for all their trouble and expense, their labors and cares on his behalf.12
Repeatedly, in the letters he wrote during this precarious period of his life, John Quincy was “all too apprehensive” that he might never cease to be “burthensome” to his parents and hoped that “application, honour and integrity,” combined with whatever faculties he possessed, would make him worthy of their sacrifice and demonstrate that their labors had not been in vain. Increasingly obsessed by his perceived shortcomings, he wrote that his only reason for remaining in Boston was that he knew of no more advantageous situation, and therefore, if “Fortune should be disposed” to befriend him, “she will have a larger scope here, than she could have in the woods.” On another occasion he repeated the major theme of his despair: “At my time of life it is a grievous mortification to be dependant for a subsistence even though it be upon a Parent.”13
Both of “the best of Parents” sought to help their troubled son. John’s “Solemn advise” was improbably intellectual; he suggested that John Quincy could best help himself by “Mastering the Roman learning.” Beginning with Livy, father advised son to “take your Book, your Dictionary, your Grammer, your Sheet of Paper and Pen and put down in Writing every Word with its meaning as you find it in Ainsworth. You will find it the most delightful Employment you ever engaged in.” John added kindly: “Above all Things Keep up your Spirit and take Care of your Health.” He also hinted that he would give John Quincy the “Whole” management of his estate if he would take it, but wondered if such a responsibility might interrupt his studies too much.14
Abigail’s solution was more pragmatic; brisk, motherly admonitions were her medicine. She congratulated John on being “so well accomodated,” on having a good office and library, and on boarding with an agreeable family, her cousins, Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Welsh. Furthermore, she promised, “You will get Business in time and when you feel disposed to find fault with your Stars, bethink yourself how preferable your Situation to that of many others.” Though she understood that “a style of dependence must never be urksome to a generous mind,” she stressed that there was no “kind” parent who would not “freely” contribute to the support and assistance of a child “in proportion to their ability,” provided that dependence was not the result of “idleness or dissapation.”15
But John Quincy remained unpersuaded by his mother’s beseechings, punishingly aware of his own inadequacies. He reminded his mother that while he was grateful for her concern, appreciation was currency of negligible value, “Thanks being however the exchequer of the poor.”16
* * *
As late as August 20, 1790, Abigail appears to have been oblivious of the fact that her son’s loss of “sprightliness and vivacity” was rooted in romantic as well as economic deprivation, the one undoubtedly inseparable from the other. John Quincy was in love—seriously enough, apparently, to be considering marriage to Mary Frazier, whom he had met in Newburyport. His law-school classmate and “steady friend,” James Bridges, knew of his “attachment,” as did his sister and confidante, Mrs. Smith, as well his Cranch cousins. According to his brother Charles’s account to their sister of “the Lady” who had the honor to inspire John Quincy with a favorable opinion of the fair sex, “nothing so like perfection in Human shape, appeared since the World began.”17
Initially, John Quincy’s conduct of his romance must have been awkwardly discreet, if not desperately secretive, as Bridges eventually explained, “This I used to impute to the want of passion on your side—which you would by no means allow, you may remember.” John Quincy was far more open with his sister about his feelings for Mary Frazier—worrisomely so, judging from Nabby’s reaction. She hoped he would “excuse” her if she did not believe his “confession of the existance of an attachment to which reason and Providence would oppose their influence.” Her mother’s daughter, certainly, Mrs. Smith refused to think that her brother had “given his mind up uninfluenced by reason and Prudence.” Nor could she advise him to become, at this stage, “speedily engaged in an attachment upon which must devolve your future happiness, prosperity, and success.”18
If it was not too late, Mrs. Smith would favor his “first settling in business and taking time to form a more extensive acquaintance with the World.” Though already “sensible” that his “knowledge of Mankind is more enlarged and Extensive than perhaps any young Man of your age Possesses,” as one who felt interested in his prosperity and welfare, she thought it was possible that he might yet be deficient in practical knowledge. Speaking from daunting experience, Mrs. Smith contended that “when the Heart is so deeply interested it sometimes blinds the eyes of reason, and judgement.” However protective she felt, Mrs. Smith was also yielding. If John Quincy’s mind was “already engaged,” she would not hesitate, she said, to believe that the “object” was in every respect worthy of his partiality.19
Thomas was the first to tell his mother of John Quincy’s love, and this news was confirmed by both of her sisters. Elizabeth Shaw rather coyly commented that Abigail’s eldest son had been “vastly attentive to the Ladies of late—& that one happy fair” was distinguished. “Aye my Sister,” she inquired, “what will you say, should your Hercules be conquered” by a young woman passing through the “dangerous age of Sixteen.” Certainly, in her opinion, the “celebrated beauty had everything to gain from her relationship with a “faithful Friend” who could point out the path of duty, sustain her emotionally, “make the fair field of Science, & Literature still more pleasing.” Mary Cranch chimed in at this particular stage of her nephew’s romance to reassure Abigail that she could trust in her son’s prudence, and note that Mary Frazier “is young but has had a very good education.”20
Elizabeth Shaw’s speculation about Abigail’s reaction to the conquest of John Quincy was soon resolved. Abigail was firm in her position. Little of her advice to her son was surprising in light of a recent exchange. John Quincy had taunted her, fully aware of the type of young woman who would have met with his mother’s approval. Not without affection, he had commented on the engagement of one presumably affluent Nancy Quincy, a distant cousin, to the Reverend Asa Packard. How this step must have “blasted” his mother’s “darling project” for his own advancement, “even before the bud,” he had written. He had continued that he hoped his mother would not think the worse of him if he assured her that he never would be indebted to his wife for his property. Though he had once seriously thought that he should “easily be enabled to make matrimony an instrument” of his advancement or his ambition, such, he concluded almost wistfully, “really” was not so.21
Abigail’s position regarding John Quincy’s romantic prospects was admittedly influenced by the interminable vicissitudes of her daughter’s fortune, and she did not hesitate to say so. Mrs. Smith had just given birth to her third child, and it was Abigail’s hope, confided to John Quincy, that his sister would not add to her stock further until her future brightened. Recognition of the Smiths’ bleak prospects resulted in “one piece of advice” gravely imparted: “Never form connextions untill you see a prospect of supporting a Family, never take a woman from an eligible situation and place her below it. Remember that marriage is chargeable, also that misfortunes surround even the finest prospects.”22
As for John Quincy’s current relationship, Abigail was willing to make some concessions, if he would bear in mind that it was best to make himself “easy and keep free from entanglements.” She allowed that some good might come of her son’s love affair:
So far it will serve to make you attentive to your person, for you are a little inclined to be negligent, as far it may be of service to you, besides it may keep your Head from rambling after other objects, but if it makes you anxious & uneasy and when you are reading, Slides in between your subject and you then you have cause to be allarmed, so take heed.
And then, with all the maternal inspiration at her command, she assured her son:
I do not doubt you will do very well only have patience, and I will prophesy for you, that you will be able by the close of one year to pay your own Board, and if you do that tis as much as you ought to expect, and if you do not why dont worry your face into wrinkles about it. We will help you all we can, and when you are better off than those who assist you, you shall help them again if they want it, so make yourself easy.…23
The resolution of John Quincy’s romance was more logically advised than accomplished. He, above all, had the clearest insight into his confused state. His mind teemed with questions; the “suspense” about his own prospects depressed his spirits, admittedly “not naturally very lively.” The “impression of fear is strong, and that of hope but weakly supported,” he told his mother. And, he might have added, confusion reigned. Nevertheless, late in August he informed Abigail that “some apprehension” on his account might be safely quieted. “You may rest assured, my dear Madam, that I am as resolutely determined never to connect a woman to desperate Fortune, as I am never to be indebted to a woman for wealth. The same Spirit,” he presumed, “will operate equally to prevent either of these cases.” He further guaranteed that he would never request his mother’s consent to any “connection” of his until he was able “to support that connection with honour and Independence.”24
John Quincy’s determination, though it was everything his mother could hope for, was closer to a hope than to the truth about his circumstances. Only recently, John Quincy had written his concerned friend, James Bridges, “You may know (though it is known to very few) that all my hopes of future happiness in this life centre in the possession of that girl.” The bewildered Bridges responded to his “dear Adams” that he had “scarce ever been more surprised” than by his friend’s disclosure of the nature of his connection with “Miss F.” Bridges’s respect for his friend’s sense of purpose led him to assume that John Quincy’s fate was “fixed with respect to the important article of matrimony.” Indeed, Bridges added, “the solemnity of the style would not admit suspicion that you were trifling with my curiosity.”25
Abigail was ill the entire month of October, suffering from recurring fever and tremors that left her sleepless. Her fragile health was further undermined by her concern for Mrs. Smith’s baby, a victim of smallpox. John Quincy’s recent letter, a detailed lament of his inadequacies—“alone in the world, without a soul to share the few joys I have, or to participate in my anxieties and suspense”—which he realized “must be as disagreeable to my friends who read, as it is to me who write”—did not improve his mother’s spirits. He was feeling not only lonely but unsuccessful. He was deeply disappointed with his maiden address before the jury in the Court of Common Pleas. Lack of time and experience, and the diffidence he had always felt about his own talent at “extemporary speechifying,” had robbed him of proper presence of mind; worse, it had drained him of all self-esteem.26
Besides John Quincy’s ravaged mental state, Abigail was also anxious about persistent reports of his attachment to a young lady. Whether or not such rumors had a basis in fact, their very existence was worrisome. Abigail reminded her son that such “Common Fame” might injure the future prospects of the lady in question, and his own were not such “as can warrent you in entering into any engagements.” Once again, she warned that a “too early marriage will involve you in troubles that may render you & yours unhappy the remainder of your life.” Then, as though anticipating yet another vain promise, Abigail was pleasant if blunt: “You will say that you have no idea of connecting yourself at present & I believe you.” But if this was the case, “Why gain the affections of a woman, why give her cause to think you attached to her?” Didn’t he realize that the cruelest situation for a young lady was to feel herself attached to a gentleman when he can “testify” it in no other way than through his actions? “I mean when his situation will not permit him to do otherwise,” she clarified.27
Abigail shrewdly echoed her husband’s suggestion about seeking their son’s help in making the farm more productive. Having thus assuaged his pride, she offered him title to some modest rental fees and arranged to supply him with hay and wood. To her immense relief, John Quincy responded by apologizing for having been a “child to complain,” and vowed that as long as it was convenient for his parents to favor him with a “continuance of their support,” he would remain in Boston anticipating “some favourable chance.” He made her “very easy” upon the subject and she trusted he would be convinced that all her anxiety was for his benefit, and that his happiness would ultimately be the result of “wisely adopted” resolution.28
John Quincy sought to appease his mother on another troubling subject. He insisted that there would “never more” be any cause on his part for further reports of his attachment to a “young Lady,” as they were “henceforth” separated—she in Newburyport, he in Boston, forty miles apart. Distance, Abigail was assured, would allow “no further opportunities to indulge a weakness” which she might perhaps censure, though she would excuse it, he concluded defensively, if she knew the “object.” For Abigail’s part, anxious to be done with this worrisome episode, she promised John Quincy that he would “hear no more from me upon that topick.” One of the many good rules and maxims learned from her “worthy Grandmother” was to reprimand “with justice, with dignity,” but never to lessen her authority by reproaches. “The concequence was that Love towards her and respect for her opinion prevented a repition [repetition] of the offense.”29
John Quincy visited his parents in Philadelphia in the winter of 1791, in hopes that a change of air, exercise, and the “novelty” of Philadelphia might have a favorable effect on his health and attitude. Furthermore, in spite of all his disclaimers, he hoped to “converse, with more freedom than I can write,” on the subject of the presumably renounced Mary Frazier. Abigail’s reasoned arguments about age and financial position were convincing, presumably, for by springtime John Quincy was in wholehearted pursuit of other priorities. Amid diverse stories persisting of a break between the two young people, inaccurately supposed “groundless” by Bridges, John Quincy informed his brother Thomas of his momentous decision. “I must bid a long and lasting farewell to the juvenile Misses. It is to the severer toils of the Historic Matron that I must henceforth direct all the attention that I can allow to that lovely company,” he wrote on April 2, 1791. Signing himself “Publicola,” he had decided to follow his inclination to record his political views for newspaper publication. Behind this decision lay a desire to defend his father’s ideas, dubbed “political heresies” by Thomas Jefferson. Pledging “devotions to the eyeless dame who holds the balance and the sword,” he asked his brother Thomas to bring along in his trunk—if he had room—a set of the past sessions’ laws and journals of both Houses, and to fill in for him missing numbers, specifically enumerated, of the Gazette of the United States.30
John Quincy’s newly determined course was bolstered later that same month by news that his mother had spoken to his father, and together they had agreed that he should be given an annual allowance of twenty-five pounds quarterly, under Dr. Tufts’s aegis, the first payment to commence in July. June brought further means of support. He became an attorney for his father, empowered “to ask, demand, sue for, and recover and receive” all rents and arrears of rent due now or in the future. His father’s show of faith was precisely noted, not once but twice, on this document: “Power, from my father,” was inscribed horizontally across the top, and proudly repeated in the top corner, in two determined vertical lines: “Powers from my father to let his house.”31
If Bridges’s appraisal of Mary Frazier was accurate, John Quincy had been persuaded by family and circumstances to make the propitious choice. When he supposed that John Quincy was about to marry “Miss. F.,” Bridges apologized for doing “injustice to your Goddess, by supposing her heart to be cold and unfeeling.” Wretched that his critique might disrupt their friendship, he sought to qualify his remarks. After all, he supposed, his acquaintance with Miss Frazier was too general to give him opportunities “of sifting the qualities of heart which might therefore have contained the seeds of the most engaging sympathy.” Still endeavoring to strike a more positive note, Bridges clumsily proceeded with his tangled analysis, writing optimistically in one sentence about “seeds” that lay “dormant,” and in the next sentence about seeds that never shoot forth “where the chilling damps of vanity reside.” Considering how young and beautiful she was, “’tis no discredit to her to imagine her under the baneful influence of that Passion,” Bridges reasoned.32
By the fall of 1791, John Quincy, seemingly free of Mary Frazier, had found new confidence, and said as much to Thomas. He was “growing much stronger,” and even allowed that he had acquitted himself in court “more to my satisfaction than I ever had ever done before.” He was still disturbed by having to subsist upon paternal bounty, but had achieved some perspective on his situation. At least he would endeavor to deserve this support, and, in the long winter ahead, intended to pursue with “much ardour the studies connected with his profession and with science in general.”33
This marked change was duly noted and sensitively appraised by his “steadfast friend and earnest well-wisher,” Bridges. He was sure that “Dear Publicola” must have struggled with his conscience before he “clasped his sickle to reap in the field of politics.” Furthermore, Bridges bade “adieu” for both of them to “Private life [and] domestic tranquillity, with all their blissfull appendages.” On January 23, 1792, Bridges would congratulate John Quincy on his appointment “to be one of a very respectable committee to instruct and reform the politics of the town of Boston.” He evaluated his friend’s new responsibility, with calculated accuracy, as “more an auspicious omen of futurity” than having “any present intrinsic value discoverable.…”34
Abigail was justified, at least to her own satisfaction, in her hopes that “Patience and Time” (she failed to mention money) would smooth the rites of John Quincy’s passage to maturity. So much of what she had tried to teach him, she had learned at her daughter’s expense. In the same breath that she could wholeheartedly “prophesy” her son’s well-being, she despaired of any prospect that “bids fair” for the support of Mrs. Smith and her family. The “poor Girl” was called “to quite a different trial” from any in her mother’s experience, and Abigail’s sense of inadequacy was magnified by physical separation. The colonel, compulsively entrepreneurial and lacking in scruples, a speculator in land on a monumental scale, had left his wife alone with three children, the youngest, Thomas Hollis Smith, just four months old. The colonel had resigned his appointment by Washington, September 1789, as marshal of the District of New York, and departed for England on December 8, just before Christmas—an awkward time, in Abigail’s opinion. His going was a mysterious puzzle, sudden and unexpected, initiated for the purpose of collecting debts owed his father’s estate, and also of “assisting” his family—or so she had been told. A letter Smith wrote from London on June 22, 1792, reveals his calamitous financial status. Regretful of the “inexpressible pain” that he had caused a colleague who endorsed notes on his behalf, Smith told him that his own return to the United States depended “entirely” on him. “I cannot leave this until I see my bills paid.”35
While Abigail assumed intermittent care of her grandchildren, what really disturbed her was her inability to afford to send for the whole family, as she had managed to do in the past. “It is vain to say what we ought to have been able to do. I feel what I cannot do,” Abigail wrote Mrs. Cranch. Though the colonel’s family was very kind, a father’s house was the “desirable” place for her daughter. Thanks to Mrs. Smith’s weekly letters, her mother’s worries were confirmed and even exacerbated.36
In return, Abigail’s letters to her despondent daughter, a young woman never in the best of times known for “vivacity and sprightlyness,” were, during the colonel’s absence, openly and stridently supportive. Filled with a kind of stern compassion, they did not absolutely mute Abigail’s tenderness, or veil her frantic concerns. “We know not what we can do or bear, till called to the trial,” the mother advised; she also observed that the equanimity of Nabby’s disposition would lead her to a “patient submission to the allotments of Providence.”37
Abigail tried to amuse her daughter; Mrs. Smith’s son Johnny was an “enlivener” of her household, spending an hour at a time chasing his grandfather about the room with a willow stick. Conversely, and to his entertainment as well as the “derangement” of the carpet, “grandpapa” was inveigled into the after-dinner sport of driving Johnny, enthroned in a chair, about the room for half an hour. She also tried to instruct, telling Mrs. Smith that the children’s education would occupy much of her time; and, she added, “you will always keep in mind the great importance of first principles, and the necessity of instilling the precepts of morality very early into their minds.” To this end, Abigail recommended Divine and Moral Songs for Children by Isaac Watts, which stressed the role of the Supreme Being as creator, benefactor, and preserver, teaching brotherly love, sisterly affection, filial respect, and reverence. She frankly hoped these would mitigate her grandson’s addiction to a hundred little stories such as “Jack and Jill” and “Little Jack Horner” with “neither a rule of life, nor a sentiment worth retaining.” As a memory exercise and practice in speaking, the latter might be useful, “but in no other way,” she stated firmly.38
She was equally adamant about the limitations of the social life of a married woman living alone—precisely her daughter’s position; Mrs. Smith was “perfectly right” in refusing to go out in public during Colonel Smith’s absence. Under her parent’s wing, her situation would be different, with no notice taken of her comings and goings. As she lived now, however, she could not be too circumspect—the eyes of the world always focused on those whose situation might possibly be subject to censure. Even the friendly attentions of one’s acquaintances were liable to be misconstrued. Abigail anxiously reiterated that she did not offer her opinion through any apprehension of Mrs. Smith’s “erring,” but only as “approving” her determination.39
As weeks passed without news from the colonel, Abigail was made desperately aware of Mrs. Smith’s deepening depression. In her loving efforts to rouse her daughter, Abigail probed her own life for common truths:
Why do you say that you feel alone on the world? I used to think that I felt so too; but, when I lost my mother, and afterwards my father, that “alone” appeared to me in a much more formidable light. It was like cutting away the main pillars of a building; and, though no friend can supply the absence of a good husband, yet, whilst our parents live, we cannot feel unprotected. To them we can apply for advice and direction, sure that it will be given with affection and tenderness.40
Given Mrs. Smith’s bleak situation, the news of the President’s appointment of the colonel in March 1791 as supervisor of New York State was, understandably, viewed as a miraculous rainbow on an obscure horizon. Both parents—John was no less wary or solicitous than Abigail—grasped its significance, and the hope it held. Within thirty-six hours each wrote to the colonel, still abroad, expected home by May, who had very much hoped that the President would provide for their son-in-law, their letters remarkably alike, at once circuitous and direct. John prefaced his message of March 14 with news of the addition of Vermont and Kentucky to the nation, and the rapid rise of stocks and credit. He then continued:
I took my pen, however, merely to mention your appointment to the office of Supervisor for the State of New-York, which will necessarily require your personal presence before the first of July. This place, I presume, is well worth your acceptance, as it will be a decent and comfortable provision for yourself and family, while it will be an honourable and useful employment. I am therefore anxious that you should have the earliest notice of it, and return without loss of time.41
Abigail’s letter elaborated only slightly on John’s. She wrote on March 16, partly, she said, to inform the colonel that his son was in perfect health, and full of “mirth and glee,” as fine a boy as he could wish, and partly to congratulate him on his appointment; Mrs. Smith would be forwarding the official document. There was no mistaking her sense of urgency, however:
You will see by the bill the necessity there is of your returning with all possible dispatch. The Secretary of the Treasury told Mr. Adams that he would write to you, and it is probable that he will by this opportunity. He informed Mr. Adams, that it was the President’s intention to unite the office of Supervisor and Inspector for the State of New-York, and not to divide the state, as he will be obliged to do, in some states where there are many ports of entry, consequently the salary will be something handsome, and well worth your acceptance, though the duties of the office will be proportionably arduous. I thought it would be of importance to you to get sight of the bill as soon as possible.42
Though the problem of the Smiths was solved, temporarily at least, Abigail and John faced a far from serene summer at home in Braintree. When Abigail’s “enjoyments” were “damped, curtailed or molested,” she was apt to blame “folly” in herself or others, “or the hand of Providence.” In one instance, however, the source of unhappiness was far less abstract. Thomas Paine, that “Star of Disaster,” was all too clearly accountable for the heartrending collapse of the already eroded friendship of the Adamses with Thomas Jefferson.43
In May 1791, Paine’s latest work was available in Philadelphia. Called The Rights of Man, published first in London that February, the searing document was dedicated to George Washington “in defence of those Principles of Freedom” the President had “so eminently” established. The two-part work was a rebuttal of Edmund Burke’s scathing Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings of Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. Paine pronounced the English Constitution the bulwark of reactionary government, insisting that there “never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the end of time, or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it.” Furthermore, he wrote, all such clauses, acts, or declarations by which the makers of them attempted to do what they had neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, were, in themselves, “null and void.” As far as Paine was concerned, “the vanity and presumption of government beyond the grave” was “the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”44
Paine’s wishful annihilation of the assumptions of the English Parliament of 1688, and of the English Constitution that John believed was the only workable form of government, was difficult enough to stomach; but to have Thomas Jefferson in the adversary’s corner was a bitter blow. With stunned disbelief John Adams read Jefferson’s endorsement incorporated at the start of Paine’s document: “I am extremely pleased to find it [Rights of Man] will be reprinted, and that something is at length to be publicly said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us. I have no doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard Common Sense.”45
Neither John nor Abigail failed to understand Jefferson’s reference to “heresies.” These were the serialized installments of John’s own Discourses on Davila, which he stopped writing because of “the rage and fury” of readers. The “political heresies” for which Jefferson and Paine attacked John involved his condoning government “beyond the grave.” John’s approval of the monarchical rule of Great Britain was construed by Paine to be a shameless endorsement of the tyranny and arrogance inextricably linked with a monarchy. In fact, the usurpation of government by personality was the single element in the history of politics most feared by John. It was with profound unease that he, with Abigail, watched the French Revolution nurture lawlessness and repression, discarding all tenets of balance and discipline.46
* * *
“Student of Government” was a “title” John claimed during his days at Harvard, as a young man with a sense of mission concerning political ideas. As such, he keenly appreciated his unique position as one of the few members of the human race to enjoy the opportunity to select and elect their government in form and purpose. Neither naïve nor inexperienced in matters of political innovation, John was now made to seem foolish, pompous, and almost treasonous in the unpopularity of his support for Great Britain’s government. However, in his opinion, the British political system provided a government that was “well-ordered, mixed and counterpoised” to a degree surpassed only in the fledgling United States. Unfortunately, this remarkably dispassionate analysis of government was offset by the complex, diffuse manner in which it was registered in Discourses on Davila. John’s classical education made him abhore the revolutionary French concept of freedom—a submission to “Control by the uncontrolled”—and at the same time provided the tools to analyze and comprehend the philosophical and political ramifications of the British Constitution.47
Popular support of France, and the fluency of Jefferson and Paine as rhetoricians, made Adams’s published articles an obvious and vulnerable target for misinterpretation. He had perhaps expressed himself most clearly and simply on the subject of his beliefs in a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette nine years before, on May 21, 1782:
I have the honor and consolation to be a republican on principle; that is to say, I esteem that form of government the best of which human nature is capable. Almost everything that is estimable in civil life has originated under such governments. Two republican powers, Athens and Rome, have done more honour to our species than all the rest of it.
As one who tried always to achieve the balance he preached, he had added, “I am not, however, an enthusiast who wishes to overturn empires and monarchies for the sake of introducing republican forms of government, and therefore, I am no King-killer, King-hater, or King-despiser.”48
Abigail, though her tone was less frenetic, held similar opinions on the French and their “moral earthquake.” “The Devouring capacity of the Galick nation increases with their power and ability of ratification,” she wrote to Cotton Tufts. The “Beneficial effects” of three branches “in lieu of one” were exemplified, she said, in the governing of Pennsylvania. In contrast with Abigail’s homely but forthright chronicle of political philosophy, John’s habit of analysis of all facets of a question seemed always to lead him into convoluted and pretentious forms of expression. His letter to Lafayette continued:
If the common people are advised to aim at collecting the whole sovereignty in a single national assembly, as they are by the Duke de la Rochefoucault and the Marquis of Condorcet; or at the abolition of the regal executive authority; or at a division of the executive power, as they are by a posthumous publication of the Abbé de Mably, they will fail of their desired liberty, as certainly as emulation and rivalry are founded in human nature, and inseparable from civil affairs.…
Still hammering away on the dangers of the single assembly, he continued:
It is not to flatter the passions of the people, to be sure, nor is it the way to obtain a present enthusiastic popularity, to tell them that in a single assembly they will act as arbitrarily and tyrannically as any despot, but it is a sacred truth, and as demonstrable as any proposition whatever, that a sovereignty in a single assembly must necessarily and will certainly be exercised by a majority, as tyranically as any sovereignty was ever exercised by kings or nobles. And if a balance of passions and interests is not scientifically concerted, the present struggle in Europe will be little beneficial to mankind, and produce nothing but another thousand years of feudal fanaticism, under new and strange names.49
Immediately on publication of the first installment of the Discourses, John knew he was in trouble. He defended himself to his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush with exacting argument, denying his attachment to monarchy, or that he had changed his principles since 1776. On April 18, 1790, he wrote:
I am a mortal and irreconcilable enemy to monarchy. I am no friend to hereditary limited monarchy in America. This I know can never be admitted without an hereditary Senate to control it, and a hereditary nobility or Senate in America I know to be unattainable and impracticable. I should scarcely be for it, if it were.50
He had written in January 1776, recommending a legislature in three independent branches. To such a legislature, he assured Rush, he was “still attached.” Once more he explained himself:
I am for a balance between the legislative and executive powers, and I am for enabling the executive to be at all times capable of maintaining the balance between the Senate and House, or in other words, between the aristocratical and democratical interests. Yet I am for having all three branches elected at stated periods, and these elections, I hope, will continue until the people shall be convinced that fortune, providence, or chance, call it which you will, is better than election.51
John was feeling “ill-used”; he begged Rush for help: “Do not, therefore, my friend, misunderstand me and misrepresent me to posterity.” He also felt quite alone. Though he had “acted in public with immense multitudes,” he had “few friends,” and those few were “certainly not interested ones.” He was mistaken, luckily. He was befriended by the writer who called himself “Publicola,” and who attacked Jefferson’s inscription in Paine’s Rights of Man with caustic precision. Many, including Jefferson, who sent a copy on to Paine, assumed that Publicola was John Adams’s pseudonym. Publicola, however, was none other than John Quincy Adams, whose lengthy, lawyerly reply, in a series published in the Columbian Centinel, beginning June 8, 1791, might be considered official notice that Jefferson’s seemingly imperishable relationship with the Adams family was forever frayed.52
With shrewd deliberation, Publicola pleaded his case. The late revolution in France, an event “so astonishing and unexpected in its nature, and so important in its consequences,” had arrested the “peculiar” attention of the whole civilized world, including philosophers and politicians who speculated on what foundation this newly acquired liberty would be rooted in. Two among these were Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, whose separate publications, “founded upon very different principles,” were received with “the greatest avidity.” Publicola termed Burke’s work “one continued invective upon almost all the proceedings of the National Assembly since the Revolution, a severe and indiscriminating censure upon almost all their transactions.” Paine fared no better. Publicola considered his applause of everything the French wrought as “undistinguishing” as Mr. Burke’s censure.53
At no point in his implacable denunciation did Publicola mention Jefferson by name. But there was no mistaking the identity of the “very respectable gentleman” to whom Publicola addressed himself:
I confess, Sir I am somewhat at a loss to determine what this very respectable gentleman means by political heresies. Does he consider this pamphlet of Mr. Paine’s as the canonical book of political scripture? As containing the true doctrine of popular infallibility, from which it would be heretical to depart in one single point?… compel all countrymen to cry out, “There is but one Goddess of Liberty, and Common Sense is her prophet.”54
Publicola’s remarks were reprinted in New York and Philadelphia, and eventually in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. They added “fuel to the funeral pile of liberty,” in Jefferson’s opinion. The Adamses, on the other hand, believed Jefferson’s support of Paine bordered too closely on social disintegration, as favoring “a mere popular tyranny.” Though the signs were not clear, crossroads were reached; from that time on, “general types” known as conservatives and democrats would marshal the people of the United States “in opposition to each other, when not affected by disturbing influences from without.” But this last conclusion was hindsight on John Quincy’s part; for the moment, raw personal wounds required immediate attention. Their perpetrator, Thomas Jefferson, after weeks of deliberation, offered medicine that, in many ways, was more irritating than soothing.55
Jefferson took up his pen a dozen times, and laid it down as many again, “suspended between opposing considerations.” He was determined finally, on July 17, 1791, to write “from a conviction that truth, between candid minds,” could never do harm. And also that the “friendship and confidence” that had so long existed between them “required” his explanation. To begin with, it was James Madison who had lent him Paine’s pamphlet. When he had finished reading it, he was to send it to a Mr. Jonathan B. Smith, whose brother meant to reprint it. Continuing his explanation, Jefferson said that he thought it proper, as a stranger, to enclose a note, and “accordingly” he had done just that. Because he wanted “to take off a little of the dryness of the note,” he added that he was glad the pamphlet was to be reprinted, that something was “to be publicly said against the political heresies which had sprung up among” them. Subsequently, he had been “thunderstruck” upon seeing his note reprinted at the beginning of the pamphlet, and had hoped it would not attract notice.56
Unfortunately, this was not to be; the writer named Publicola had come forth, attacking not only the author and principles of the pamphlet, but Jefferson himself as its sponsor. Champions of Paine’s Rights of Man surmised that Publicola was none other than John Adams, and “thus were our names thrown on the public stage as public antagonists,” Jefferson concluded. “That you and I differ in our ideas of the best form of government is well known to us both; but we have differed as friends should do, respecting the purity of each other’s motives, and confining our differences of opinion to private conversation.”57
Sadly, for someone who pledged privacy and protested as much “in the presence of the almighty,” Jefferson had not kept his word; he had analyzed his differences with John in discussions with a number of others. On May 8, 1791, he had written to Washington, mentioning Adams’s “apostacy to hereditary monarchy and ability.” On May 9, 1791, he had confided to James Madison that he had had Adams in mind when he mentioned “political heresies.” As late as July 3, to his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, he had elaborated on the problem of his so-called “note” of endorsement and how he “knew immediately that it would give displeasure to some gentlemen just by the chair of government who were in sentiment with Burke and as much opposed to the sentiments of Paine.” Even as he avowed his silence, he was full of detailed explanation:
I could not disavow my note, because I had written it. I could not disavow my approbation of the pamphlet, because I was fully in sentiment with it, and it would have been trifling to have disavowed merely the publication of the note approving at the same time of the pamphlet. I determined, therefore, to be utterly silent except so far as verbal explanations could be made.58
John answered Jefferson the day after he received his letter. On July 29, 1791, at great length, Adams gave Jefferson “full Credit” for his “relation” of the manner in which his note was written and prefixed to the Philadelphia edition of Paine’s pamphlet. However, the person who had committed the breach of his confidence, by making it public, “whatever were his intentions,” had sown the seeds of more evils than he could ever atone for. The pamphlet, with Jefferson’s name affixed to so “striking” a recommendation of it, had done the damage. Industriously propagated in New York and Boston, reprinted in many newspapers, the pamphlet was “generally considered” as a direct and open personal attack on John. Thanks to the pamphlet and its renown, his writings were deliberately misinterpreted. Thanks to Jefferson, John was held up to the ridicule of the world for his “meanness,” for wishing to subjugate the people to a few nobles, for favoring the introduction of hereditary monarchy and aristocracy in America. Further, old friends and colleagues snubbed him now; even Sam Adams, in his role as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, warned the public against hereditary powers, as if the danger of their enforcement were imminent.59
John rose swiftly to his own defense, pleading with Jefferson for a fair assessment:
If you suppose that I have or ever had a design or desire, of attempting to introduce a Government of Kings, Lords and Commons, or in other Words an hereditary Executive, or an hereditary Senate, either into the Government of the United States or that of any Individual State, in this Country, you are wholly mistaken. There is not such a Thought expressed or intimated in any public writing or private Letter of mine, and I may safely challenge all Mankind to produce such a passage and quote the Chapter and Verse.
He believed that he asked no more of his friend than he ought, considering their relationship: “If you have ever put such a Construction on any Thing of mine, I beg you would mention it to me, and I will undertake to convince you, that it has no such meaning.”60
John knew the worth and the drawbacks of his “unpolished writings.” On the positive side, he could claim that they had helped to crush the “late Insurgents,” participants of Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts, to form the new state constitutions of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and South Carolina, and to inspire the assent of all states to the new national Constitution. Proud as this record might be, the negative aspects were almost shattering. He had paid dearly, and would continue to do so, for his honest contention of the unpopular truth that God and nature had created inequalities that no human legislator could ever eradicate. He had had the daring to question, in effect, the qualities of equality, to search out whether citizens of a republic were equal as to “age, sex, size, strength, stature, activity, courage, hardiness, industry, patience, ingenuity, wealth, knowledge, fame, wit, temperance, constancy, and wisdom,” and to conclude that the “answer of all mankind must be in the negative.”61
There was no question in John’s mind that his writings had cost him readers and believers, though he might not have understood the reasons for the unpopularity of his gnawing analyses and painstaking (and sometimes repetitive) exhumation of political ideologies. But an agonizing sense of failed justice, whatever the explanations, permeated a ringing passage of his letter to Jefferson:
Of the few who have taken the pains to read them, some have misunderstood them and others have willfully misrepresented them, and these misunderstandings and misrepresentations have been made the pretence for overwhelming me with floods and Whirlwinds of tempestuous Abuse, unexampled in the History of this Country.62
The conclusion of this remarkable letter to Jefferson contained John’s warm pledge that their fifteen years of friendship “without the smallest interruption” and “without the slightest Suspicion” until Jefferson’s endorsement of the Paine pamphlet was still “very dear” to his heart. There was no office John would not resign rather than give a “just” occasion to one friend to forsake him. And, he added, he had no doubt that Jefferson’s motives for writing him “were the most pure and the most friendly.” Nor had he any suspicion that Jefferson would not receive his explanation “in the same candid Light.”63
Jefferson responded at length on August 30, happy to find that John saw the “true point of view” of the way he had been drawn into the “scene.” He embroidered further on his explanation and on how John’s antagonists, “very criminally,” in his opinion, had presumed him to be Publicola, and on that presumption had “hazarded” a personal attack on him. No person saw this “unjustifiable assault” with “more uneasiness” than he himself. Magnanimously affirming his clear conscience, he continued:
You will perceive from all this, my dear Sir, that my note contributed nothing to the production of these disagreeable pieces. As long as Paine’s pamphlet stood on its own feet, and on my note, it was unnoticed. As soon as Publicola attacked Paine, swarms appeared in his defence. To Publicola then and not in the least degree to my note, this whole contest is to be ascribed and all its consequences.64
It was Jefferson’s hope that he had proved himself as innocent “in effect” as he was in intention. And with the business and its effects now over, it was Jefferson’s hope that their friendship would never be “suffered to be committed,” whatever use others might think proper to make of their names. Jefferson concluded his letter by asking that John present “Mrs. Adams with all the affections I feel for her,” a gesture totally lost on Abigail. Her silent condemnation would be revoked only momentarily, and in tragedy, thirteen years later, long after she had stopped believing that there could be “any event in this life which could call forth, feelings of mutual sympathy” between herself and Jefferson.65
* * *
Though hardly a premeditated plan, her visit in October of 1791 would be Abigail’s last to Philadelphia for five years. It was not so much that the capital was less sparkling, but that she was increasingly weary. The “Bustle of Removal” from Bush Hill to a house in the heart of town, the revamping of her staff, and the scheduling of receptions and dinners left her with only a few hours to herself. A “happy” day was the rare one in which she had no engagements; a frequent ambition, about which she confessed she no longer suffered any “reflections,” was to live in retirement.66
Abigail’s serious complaints about her health began in mid-December and, by April, had increased to the point where she worried about how she would manage the journey home at all. Her body was worn with rheumatic pains and fevers that, at times, left her wrists lame and her eyes so sensitive that she could not read, write, or sew by candlelight, let alone leave her bed. Faithfully nursed by one or more of her nieces, Louisa most frequently, she was only weaker for the bloodlettings and emetics she was subjected to in the name of a cure. She also recognized that a “critical period” in midlife augmented her problems. Further, even she, who was always first to regret any “increase” in her figure, was concerned now about her immense loss of weight.67
Another loss, however, was far more hurtful. In one of her rare instances of self-pity, Abigail admitted that February’s news of Colonel Smith’s intention of carrying off his entire family to England for two years was “a heavy stroke” to her. She felt deprived of the tender care of an only daughter. Rather pathetically, Abigail tried to present the positive side of this wrenching news. The colonel, she wrote Mrs. Cranch, had made “a very advantageous contract with some Gentlemen,” which she could not wish him to decline as he was going “upon sure footing.”68
It was, however, extremely doubtful that Abigail knew the details of the colonel’s livelihood. Smith, whose apparent appetite for acquiring a great fortune could never be satiated in the government post he had held for less than a year, was involved in buying and selling immense land grants in New York State, recently released by treaty with the Indians. At one point he was said to have bought five townships; it would be the eastern portion of the Van Zandt farm, in New York City, including twenty-three acres between the East River and the Boston Post Road that he would own and forfeit. Presently one of his clients was reputed to be the English peer Lord Pulteney, and another the King of Hanover. At the time of the Smith’s actual leavetaking, scheduled for the end of March, Abigail mentioned again how “hard” it was to part with her only daughter, and how the thought of their separation “depressed” her spirits “very much” during her sickness, however keenly she realized “we must all have our trials, some of one kind & some of an other.”69
Abigail’s inability to accompany John back to Philadelphia in the fall of 1792, because of her failing health, was considered a temporary measure. Recognition of the more permanent arrangement came two years later, when John finally packed up all the furniture left behind in Philadelphia. His acknowledgment of Abigail’s “distress and distraction” over its condition on arrival (“very strongly described”) was countered with his promise, sincerely but rashly made, that “whatever crashes have happened shall be the last from removals.”70
Actually, John’s role as a “commuter” was not an unfamiliar one. At least in broad outlines, and with some improvements, it echoed earlier times. John went to work in Philadelphia, remaining for two months or six months, however long Congress sat, or as long as he felt obligated to stay. But Abigail was alone for shorter periods than before, and the mails were also remarkably steady. Expert in her role, she was to cope with the farm and her aged mother-in-law, to supervise a building program she had secretly initiated with Dr. Tufts’s assistance, and, perhaps most significant of all, to hear John out and see him through this period of waiting on his ultimate destiny. He counted on Abigail’s “delicious” letters, receiving at least one a week, valuing each one’s importance: “To a heart that loves praise so well, and receives so little of it, your letter is like laudanum,” which someone had told him was “the Divinity itself.”71
As self-centered as John might seem, he never failed to praise Abigail’s contributions and her handling of her many duties, and to acknowledge gallantly that others were not unaware of her capabilities. Clearly, Abigail bolstered not only his ego but his purse; with regard to their farm, John said he was “charmed” with her “bravery and activity.” Because she was “so valorous and noble” a farmer, he was “little anxious” about their agricultural endeavors. The decisions were hers to make, though he could not resist slipping in advice to manure their barley field and “harrow it well.” And with affectionate recognition of her independent spirit he called her a “Disciple of Wolstoncraft!” and was proud to repeat a friend’s recommendation that Mrs. Adams be made “Autocratix” of the United States. “This, however, must be secret,” he added solemnly, “because it is a sort of treason.”72
Beyond affection, admiration, and respect, it was trust, above all, that was the crowning and eternal glory of their relationship. “What I write to you must be in sacred confidence and strict discretion,” John confided in Abigail. As before, he concealed little from her, epic or petty, in wisdom or outrage. She responded just as intimately and movingly and, on occasions when she felt protective of him (disappointed in friendship, robbed of recognition), with like volatility.73
* * *
As of January 1793, when their correspondence was resumed after a hiatus of nearly ten years, the specter of France—revulsion at its “King-Killing,” fear of its “fire, impetuosity and vehemence,” conviction that “anarchy, chaos, murder, atheism, blasphemy” were not liberty—haunted their thoughts and crowded their pages to one another. The personality of the French Republic’s minister, Edmond Charles Edouard Genêt, only intensified their dismay. Citizen Genêt, with his brazen recruitment of Americans to help despoil Spanish and British territories and vessels, was thought to be “enamoured to distraction with republican liberty,” both “very crude and inaccurate in his ideas of a republic, and “totally uniformed” of the operations of the human heart. His Jacobin successor, Joseph Fauchet, seemed “not quite so unreserved” but nevertheless appeared to be in “great distress.” According to his brother-in-law, Louis Marie, Viscount de Noailles, who visited John, the Marquis de Lafayette was alive but in poor health, and Abigail’s “old friend,” the Marquise, was buried in obscurity in France. Horrified by Marie Antoinette’s demise, Abigail was inclined to wish, she said, that every arm extended against the “unhappy” country of France be withdrawn so that the country might be left alone to form the constitution of its choice. Whether this was to be republican or monarchical was inconsequential, in her opinion, provided it was a regular government “of some form or other which may secure the faith of treaties, and due subordination to the laws.”74
At a time of “wild projections and notions” in their own republic, “discussions” between Abigail and John ranged from the purpose of taxes to the practicality of a banking system to the scourge of a two-party political system, a concept encouraged by those hated “hell-hounds” of rival newspapers who promoted Federalist versus Anti-Federalist views. And speaking of the press, Abigail was outraged at its treatment of Washington. “Take his character all together,” Abigail said, “and we shall not look upon his like again.”75
If the press could mistreat Washington, who was not used to such “threshing,” and whose skin was “thinner” than John’s, Abigail could only wonder what was to be expected of his successor. John, too, was in a mood for speculation, but his concern was more immediate. The question of whether he would be elected to serve a second term as Vice-President led him back to his ancient dilemma: the choice between public and private life, if indeed he would have a choice, and the choice “between great cares and small cares.” As before, his correspondence with Abigail was the forum for exhaustive exploration. He had looked into himself, he told her, and seen “no meanness nor dishonesty there” and “no timidity.” Still, he saw “weakness enough.”76
* * *
The veteran political figure was, in many ways, the youthful, yearning bridegroom, though there were indications of significant and revealing changes. John had mellowed; he was also more realistic. At times he wished himself a “private man,” yet, on a little further thought, he knew privacy was not the answer. Life on his “sweet little farm” would not “relieve” him; his thoughts would be “at the Hague and at New York,” he admitted, not without apology, “if I was at Quincy.”77*
As elections loomed, John was his usual self, the master experimentalist, probing formulas of success and, more often, failure. Always confident of Abigail’s discretion (“A woman can be silent, when she will”), and allowing that he was most “impatient and distressed” when his mind was in suspense, he plunged forth on his miserable analyses of his prospects.78
On the one hand, he warned Abigail on January 9, 1793, when he had heard that the votes from Kentucky were said to be all for Thomas Jefferson, that it would be best to prepare their minds and, as well as they could, their circumstances, to get out of “this miserable scramble.” He complained that his country had, “in its wisdom,” elected him to “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” Then again, once he won his second term—he was reelected with seventy-seven votes—he still found no peace, but speculated even more frantically about whether Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, or he himself would be voted into the top two offices once Washington announced his retirement. Furthermore, he hated the politics of election and regretted fervently that the Constitution had helped to “create, excite and support perpetual parties in the States, mixing and crossing alternately with parties in the Federal government.” That their country would be “deformed with divisions, contests, dissensions and civil wars as well as others” was one of his sharp grievances.79
A letter to Abigail written three years later, on January 7, 1796, when he realized Washington’s retirement was at hand, showed John to be as tormented as ever about his future. Though the words of his self-debate were slightly changed, the content was all too familiar. He was not able to see what “duty” would demand of him, yet he did admit that Washington’s future plans were of “very serious” concern to him. Launched on murky waters, John spoke again of how it was “no light thing” to think about retirement; of how his country, his children, and his own character had claims that forbade him to serve the public in disgrace. For the first time John seemed to be openly examining the possibility that he might serve his country in the top post and, typically, he explored the negative possibilities first. If he had reason to think either “want of abilities or of public confidence” would follow him in a “high station,” he ought to decline. That being the case, however, he could not serve under another. Undoubtedly, thinking he might end up subordinate to Jefferson, he said it would be a “dangerous crisis in public affairs if the President and Vice-President should be in opposite boxes.”80
As usual, John warned Abigail that these “lucubrations” must be confined to her own bosom. As the weeks wore on, he wavered first one way and then another, alternately yearning for the presidency and backing away from it, pleased to be regarded as “heir apparent,” and suffering over the probability of having to make a voluntary retreat to spend the rest of his days “in a very humble style.” If Jefferson and Jay were to be President and Vice-President, as was not improbable in his judgment in mid-February, he promised Abigail he would retire “without noise, or cries, or tears.” And even if either one was elected President and he Vice-President, he would take the same course, and retire “without murmur and complaint to his farm forever.”81
As election day drew closer, John was nearly pathetic in his dilemma. “I am weary of the game,” he wrote Abigail on February 10, 1796, “yet I don’t know how I could live out of it.” He assured her that he didn’t enjoy “slight, neglect, contempt, disgrace, nor insult more than others,” yet he was begging to fulfill a mission and he was sincere in his belief that he had “firmness of mind enough” to bear high office “like a man, a hero, and a philosopher.” He might groan like Achilles, he warned Abigail, and “roll from side to side abed sometimes, at the ignorance, folly, injustice and ingratitude of the world,” but there would be compensations. Savoring these, John admitted the possibility of his being elected President, and Jefferson or Jay Vice-President, for four years or even, “by reason of strength and fortitude,” for eight years. He seemed suddenly cheered by this last thought and remembered to urge Abigail to “be of good courage therefore, and tremble not.” He saw nothing to “appal” him, and he felt “no ill forebodings or faint misgivings,” or “smallest dread” of private or public life. If private life was to be his portion, his farm and his pen would “employ” him the rest of his days. If public life was to be his fate, he had already hinted to Abigail at a new era in their relationship: “I should be resigned, and become more easy and cheerful, and enjoy myself and my friend better than ever I did.”82