FOUR
The Die Is Cast
“I dare not trust myself with the thought of how long you may, perhaps, be absent,” Abigail wrote John on September 16. A blue vein of pathos marked her letters; a hunger for reassurance—“I had rather give a dollar for a letter by the post, tho the consequence should be that I Eat but one meal a day for these 3 weeks to come”—spelled fear of the unknown. “Rocks and quick Sands” appeared to her on every side; anxiety for her country, her husband, and her family had changed her life, making her days “tedious” and her nights “unpleasant.” As she acknowledged to John: “What course you can or will take is all wrapt in the Bosom of futurity. Uncertainty and expectation leave the mind great Scope. Did ever any Kingdom or State regain their Liberty, when once it was invaded without Blood shed? I cannot think of it without horror.”1
Abigail’s letters, in the next weeks, months, and up to ten years, might vary in information, views, tenderness, but never in thoughtfulness. She might be distraught emotionally, but she was always intellectually keen, turning to other examples and histories to reason out the proliferating drama of her own era. She was eclectic in her research, combing Greek and French as well as English and American references, ancient and contemporary, as though, by examining every leaf in the maze, she might comprehend its ultimate design.
America’s cause was affirmed, in her judgment, by the Greek historian Polybius’s ancient premise that peace, however desirable when founded in justice and honor, was shameful when attained by “bad” measures, and purchased at the price of liberty. The reprint in Boston of the Bishop of St. Asaph’s speech, declaring North America “as the only great nursery of freemen now left upon the face of the earth,” was additional reinforcement at this crucial political hour. The bishop, an Englishman born Jonathan Shipley, had voted in the House of the Lords against the bill to alter the Massachusetts Charter; his opinion, said Abigail, “meets, and most certainly merits the greatest encomiums.”2
Still another insight into contemporary problems was afforded by reading Charles Rollin’s Ancient History. In her new “recluse” life, Abigail found pleasure, entertainment, and relevance in the work of the eighteenth-century French historian, former Professor of Eloquence and Rector of the University of Paris. Rollin wrote of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Persians, and Greeks; a page or two of the seven-volume series, read aloud to her by Johnny, not only afforded her the pleasure of her son’s company, she said, but a chance to examine the methods by which empires were founded, by what steps they rose to an “exalted” pitch of grandeur and true glory, and the cause for their decline and fall. John, immensely pleased to learn of this practice, though casual in his evaluation of its significance, wrote back directly that he was “charmed” by her amusement with their little Johnny: “Tell him I am glad to hear he is so good a boy as to read to his Mamma, for her Entertainment, and to keep himself out of the Company of rude Children.”3
Abigail’s portrait of reclusive domesticity is relieved by occasional visits to her parents’ house in Weymouth, or from her mother-in-law or John’s brothers. Uncle Norton Quincy appears frequently on a special mission—to enjoy an hour of “sweet communion” with his niece on the specific subject of politics. She was admittedly less lonely, too, because of the company of the two young clerks who had settled over John’s office. One was Nathan Rice, the other her cousin John Thaxter, both recent graduates of Harvard College. At mealtimes they made a “table full”; otherwise the two spent their time in the office. There were never two people, Abigail said, who gave a family less trouble, and apart from enjoying their company, she found it especially helpful to send Johnny to be tutored by Mr. Thaxter. Abigail’s comment to John on the law clerk, who would play a substantial role in their lives in a short while, is of somewhat shaded enthusiasm, but reveals her demanding standards. She intended to consult with John on his return concerning their son’s education. Meanwhile, she was certain that if Johnny “does not get so much good, he gets less harm.” As she explained to her husband:
I have always thought it of very great importance that children should, in the early part of life, be unaccustomed to such examples as would tend to corrupt the purity of their words and actions that they may chill with horror at the sound of an oath and blush with indignation at an obscene expression. These first principal[s] which grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength neither time or custom can totally eradicate.4
In the very first letter John wrote to Abigail on his way to Philadelphia he outlined precisely the primary areas of responsibility in their partnership, which he would constantly redefine during his absences. Essentially, these were the supervision of their farm and of the education of their children, duties she accepted without hesitation, doubting only her ability to discharge them. From time to time Abigail would speak of herself as the directress of husbandry and farming, of her hopes to build a reputation of being as good a farmeress as her partner was a statesman.5
Warned by John about checking the proper time to get the freights of marsh mud or creek mud to lay by the wall to ferment as they were mixed with dust and dung, she was also instructed to see that her tenants and farm hands performed. “You must take Care my Dear, to get as much Work out of our Tenants as possible,” John would insist. Specifically, Abigail was to note that “Belcher is in Arrears. He must work. Hayden must work. Harry Field must work, and Jo. Curtis too must be made to settle. He owes something.” Others were not to be forgotten: “Jo. Tirrell too, must do something—and Isaac. I can’t loose such Sums as they owe me—and I will not,” John added firmly.6
Drilled as she was in the need for “Frugality, Industry and economy” (the alternative was to see their “small Boat” suffer shipwreck), Abigail’s inspired management of their expanding property was relayed to John by James Warren, who predicted that “Mrs. Adams Native Genius will Excel us all in Husbandry.” Very likely, Abigail was spurred on in her duties by John’s vision of a larger vessel than their own small boat: “Our Expences, in this Journey, will be very great—our only Reward will be the consolatory Reflection that We toil, spend our Time, and tempt Dangers for the public Good.” Sustaining their plural involvement, the dual nature of their mutual enterprise, John assured Abigail it would be “happy indeed, if we do any good.”7
* * *
When John did permit himself to wander from politics or farming, in the early years of their separate lives, he would land full strength on the subject of his children’s education, which, he said bluntly, was “never” out of his mind. The role of “school mistress” was one that he assured Abigail she was well qualified to fill. His affectionate respect for her intelligence and adequacy to the task, considering his elaborate curriculum and nagging regard for learning, and Abigail’s totally homemade education, was exceedingly complimentary. “No doubt you are well qualified,” he flattered her. He wrote her that an English gentleman who had visited in Braintree pronounced her the most accomplished lady he had seen since he left England. “You see,” he wrote from Philadelphia, “a Quaker can flatter, but dont you be proud.”8
John must have been impressed, though he tried to make light of the compliment to Abigail, for he dealt with it more than once. Two days before writing to Abigail, he had already recorded it in his journal, which he fully expected her to read as her “Entertainment” in lieu of the “Particulars” he either had no time to relay or feared to commit to paper for security’s sake. Possibly the letter was unplanned when he wrote in his diary:
One Thing he [Stephen Collins] told me, for my Wife, who will be peeping here, sometime or other, and come across it. He says when he call’d at my House, an English Gentleman was with him, a Man of Penetration, tho of few Words. And this silent, penetrating Gentleman was pleased with Mrs. Adams, and thought her, the most accomplished Lady he had seen since he came out of England.—Down Vanity, for you don’t know who this Englishman is.9
John was nothing if not imposing in his demands of Abigail. The grandeur of his pronouncements on education was nearly as intimidating as his “conferences” on the subject were interminable. Education made greater differences between man and man than nature made between man and brute, he thought. And further, the virtues and powers to which men might be trained by early education and constant discipline were truly sublime and astonishing, he said, citing Newton and Locke as examples of the deep sagacity to be acquired by long habits of thinking and study. It should be Abigail’s care and his, therefore, to
elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.10
He had not finished. A significant facet of his program was left to be fulfilled. Nourishing the children’s minds was mandatory, but their bodies must be hardened, and their souls exalted: “Without strength and activity and vigor of body, the brightest mental excellencies will be eclipsed and obscured.11
* * *
Theories on learning, behaving, thinking—commandments to live by—were issued by John from York, Maine, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as from Holland, England, and France. Concerns with “great and solid objects,” with ambition and decency, grace and honesty, industry and virtue, as opposed to uselessness, frivolity, and vice that was “shameful and unmanly,” did not, however, exclude a pragmatic interest in writing and French, subjects on which he was obsessive.12
With regard to French, John was convinced that learning the language was a necessary accomplishment of American gentlemen and ladies. And also of politicians. He would blame the lack of this facility as the reason he was not chosen to join Benjamin Franklin in a committee to journey to Canada, where troops were led by General Benedict Arnold. John insisted it was well within Abigail’s power to teach their children French, and he prayed she would not suffer them to feel a pain of inferiority similar to his. He even requested the name of the author of her thin French grammar, which gave her the pronunciation of the French words in English transliteration. As a result of efforts to master the language during his first ocean crossing, he would leave behind long sheets of strenuously tabulated French verbs in all their myriad tenses.13
In contrast to his need for a textbook for his French studies, John virtually wrote his own on the subject of writing. Referring to Cicero and Pliny, Pope and Swift, considering the varieties of expression, John informed Abigail that the epistolary style was essentially different from the oratorical and historical style. Oratory abounded with figures; history was simple but grave, majestic, and formal; letters, like conversation, should be free, easy, and familiar, a concept both he and Abigail mastered with exhilaration. John’s need to define Abigail’s teaching program so scrupulously might be thought arrogant, except that he took care to explain his peering over Abigail’s shoulder. His advice was not only one way of compensating for his feelings of “banishment” from the family, but also of avoiding the pitfalls of his own education. As he reasoned: “I never had a regular Tutor, I never studied any Thing methodically, and consequently never was compleatly accomplished in any Thing. But as I am conscious of my own Deficiency, in these Respects, I should be the less pardonable, if I neglected the Education of my Children.”14
Timing was also a factor in John’s approach to learning; early youth was the period to form taste and judgment, before any unchaste sounds had fastened on children’s ears, and before any affectation or vanity was settled on their minds. Music, he added, was a great advantage, for style depended in part on a delicate ear. Discipline was still another essential factor, the taskmaster insisted: “The Faculty of Writing is attainable, by Art, Practice, and Habit only. The sooner, therefore the Practice begins, the more likely it will be to succeed. Have no Mercy upon an affected Phrase, any more than an affected Air, Gate [gait], Dress, or Manners.”15
* * *
Consistent with John’s striving nature, it never occurred to him that any one of their four children would be less than equal to or surpassing the others in ability. He assured Abigail that “your Children have Capacities equal to any Thing. There is a Vigor in the Understanding, and a Spirit and Fire in the Temper of every one of them, which is capable of ascending the Heights of Art, Science, Trade, War, or Politicks.”16
John was hardly casual in his conclusions about their children. He had, in his opinion, studied them carefully. He had decided that John had genius, and so had Charles. It was up to their mother to safeguard these two, to cultivate their minds, inspire their hearts, raise their wishes. “Fix their Attention upon great and glorious Objects, root out every little Thing, weed out every meanness, make them great and manly,” he instructed Abigail. But her duties hardly ended there. “Teach them to scorn Injustice, Ingratitude, Cowardice, and Falsehood.” Speaking as a perfect puritan and patriot, he added, “Let them revere nothing but Religion, Morality and Liberty.”17
Nor were Nabby and Tommy forgotten by their father. The first, by reason of her sex, required a different education from the boys, he said, but he left its components to Abigail. However their schedules might vary, if they did at all, the four understood the gravity of their father’s concern for learning. When Abigail, at John’s request, made separate inquiries as to the present each might like, a book was the answer of all. Only Tom wanted a picture book; Charles, the histories of kings and queens. It was natural for the children to think of books; as one of them observed, they were the only presents their papa ever gave them.18
* * *
That Abigail’s aspirations and standards for her children were nearly indivisible from John’s would account, of course, for their extraordinary collaboration, which willed greatness on their descendants. When Abigail returned from an early visit to Mercy Warren, in Plymouth, she wrote to tell her friend that she so admired Mercy’s little offspring that she must beg her to communicate the happy art of “rearing the tender thought, teaching the young Idea how to shoot, and pouring fresh instruction o’er the Mind.” And while on the subject of children, she mentioned her interest in a series of letters by the English writer Juliana Seymour, the pseudonym of John Hill, On the Management and Education of Children. She was forwarding these to Mercy, not because Mercy stood in need of any assistance, but because Abigail wished to know her sentiments on this book and whether it corresponded with Mercy’s own system in which she had “so happily” succeeded. “I am sensible I have an important trust committed to me,” she wrote, “and tho I feel myself uneaquel to it, tis still incombent upon me to discharge it in the best manner I am capable of.”19
To Mercy, Abigail expressed the longings and goals of a “young and almost inexperienced Mother in this Arduous Business,” that the tender twigs allotted to her care might be so cultivated as to do honor to their parents and prove blessings to the rising generation. Abigail concluded her letter—a glossary of her conception of parental duties—with a poem declaring her wish to imitate the
Parent who vast pleasure finds
In forming of her children’s minds
In midst of whom with vast delight
She passes many a winters Night
Mingels in every play to find
What Bias Nature gave the mind
Resolving thence to take her aim
To Guide them to the realms of fame
And wisely make those realms the way
To those of everlasting day.
Each Boisterous passion to controul
And early Humanize the Soul
In simple tales beside the fire,
The noblest Notions to inspire.
Her offspring conscious of her care
Transported hang around her chair.20
A crusty Mercy dismissed Mrs. Seymour’s treatise as “of very little Consequence,” but empathized with Abigail’s sense of purposeful parenthood and feelings of inadequacy to the task, touching lightly on the daring subject of feminism in the latter regard. As one “yet looking for Every foreign aid to Enable her to the discharge of a duty that is of the utmost importance to society,” Mercy bemoaned the fact that the education of children should, for such a number of years, be left almost wholly to their “uninstructed sex.” She also confirmed Abigail’s sense of momentous challenge in her parental role by espousing an equally ambitious credo. She would esteem it a happiness indeed if she could acquit herself of the “important Charge (by providence devolved on Every Mother.)” Continuing, Mercy said it would be a “noble pleasure” if she and Abigail had the conscious satisfaction of having exerted their utmost efforts to “rear the tender plant and Early impress the youthful mind” so that, when out of their hands, it might be useful on the present theater of action and “happy forever when … introduced into more Enlarged and Glorious scenes.”21
* * *
John’s main reason for moving Abigail and the children back to Braintree in June of 1774 was to spare them anxiety, to prepare the family for the “Storm that was coming on.” Toward the end of a parched September, it was certain their anxieties were dismally justified but also far too narrowly gauged. It was terribly true that Boston was now a place of unceasingly warlike preparations, with the governor mounting cannon, digging entrenchments, throwing up breastworks, and encamping regiments in increasing numbers. But it was naïve to think that what happened in Boston did not affect citizens outside the “Metropolis.” As a pebble dropped in a pond induces ripples to its outer edge, so a letter found on a Boston Street on August 27 shattered any hopes that Abigail, in Braintree, would be able to fulfill John’s wishes that she make herself “as easy and quiet as possible,” while concentrating on the farm and the children.22
When the colony’s brigadier general, William Brattle, of Cambridge, wrote to Britain’s General Thomas Gage to warn him that orders were out for men “to meet at one Minute’s Warning, equipt with Arms and Ammunition,” and that stocks of powder were being withdrawn from the provincial arsenal in Quarry Hill, his letter was intercepted and Brattle had to run for his life. The governor’s reaction to Brattle’s information was swift: on September 1, his men seized both powder and weapons from Quarry Hill. The colonists’ response was not to resort to bloodshed and bombardment, as was sensationally rumored, but to play the governor’s game. Abigail was sure that John would receive “a more particular account” from the public papers, she wrote him, but she did think she could fill in what he might not learn from any other person concerning details of the events of the night of September 11.
In consequence of the powders being taken from Charlestown, a general alarm spread thro many Towns and was caught pretty soon here. The report took here a fryday, and a Sunday a Soldier was seen lurking about the common. Supposed to be a Spy, but most likely a Deserter. However inteligence of it was communicated to other parishes, and about 8 o’clock a Sunday Evening there passed by here about 200 Men, preceded by a horse cart, and marched down to the powder house from whence they took the powder and carried [it] into the other parishes and there secreted it. I opened the window upon there return. They pass’d without any Noise, not a word among them till they came against this house, when some of them perceiveing me, asked me if I wanted any powder. I replied not since it was in so good hands. The reason they gave for taking it, was that we had so many Tories here they dare not trust us with it.23
Judging by Abigail’s reaction to Sunday evening’s “errand,” it is possible she was more fearful of the underlying question of loyalty triggered by Brattle’s deceit than by the seizure of the powder and arms. The awareness that a people “all in flames” in a town as “high” as one could imagine, might soon be in arms was a probability she faced with pain. Choices had to be made; the incident of the powder illuminated the personal tragedies of a people divided against one another, of parents and children, husbands and wives, cousins and friends, parted over political incompatibility. In this fearful time one could not trust one’s general or even one’s parson. “Not a Tory but hides his head,” Abigail noted. When the church parson had thought the colony’s soldiers were after him, he had run up to his garret; another had jumped out of his window and hidden in the corn; gossip had the third crouching below his wooden fence, telling his beads.24
The question of loyalty was of vibrant concern when Abigail dined with the brothers Samuel and Josiah Quincy and their families. “A little clashing of parties you may be sure,” Abigail reported to John. “Mr. Sam’s wife said she thought it high time for her Husband to turn about, he had not done half so clever since he left her advice.” It had apparently gone unheeded, for, the following year, when her husband sailed for England, Hannah Quincy, the former Miss Hill, sister-in-law of John Adams’s early love of the identical name (who married Bela Lincoln and then Ebenez Storer), chose to remain at home in Massachusetts. Though “defections” were noted and agonized over repeatedly by Abigail, one above all, that of her cousin Isaac Smith, was a source of greatest disillusionment and concern to Abigail and her family.25
* * *
It was Abigail’s sister, Mary Cranch, who chose to delve into rumors concerning the young minister Smith’s allegiances. This tense, opinionated woman did not mince words: “Tho you should preach like an angel if the People suppose you unfriendly to the country and constitution and a difender of the unjust, cruil and arbitrary measures that have been taken by the ministry against us, you will be like to do very little good.”26
It was Mary’s hope that Cousin Isaac did not deserve this criticism, but such was the opinion of many who twelve months ago had applauded him in admiration and who now left the meeting house the moment he entered it.
Isaac Smith’s answer was thoughtful and honest. On October 20 he wrote to explain that he was not indifferent to the good opinion of those around him, but that he could not in complaisance to others, even to those for whose understanding he had a much higher veneration than for his own, give up the independence of his own mind. He politely told his cousin that he thought her opinions were founded on misinformation. He tried to explain that he had, admittedly, not exclaimed so loudly against the cruelty, the injustice, the arbitrary nature of the late acts of Parliament as others, but that his age, his particular profession in life, and his connections with a seminary of learning, the seat of liberal inquiry, had forbidden him to do so. He ended his letter with an eloquent if flawed summation of his position, not unlike that of many other Tory sympathizers:
I must freely own, that I had rather calmly acquiesce in these, and an hundred other acts, proceeding from a British Legislature (tho’ we need not even do this), than be subject to the capricious, unlimited despotism of a few of my own countrymen, or behold the soil, which gave me birth, made a scene of mutual carnage and desolation.27
Had Cousin Isaac been called to name the “few” he was accusing of unlimited despotism, of caprice, he would have had to list Abigail’s name with the radical handful. Her commitment was now complete. She was ready to sacrifice for the cause of her “much injured Country.” If she could not have her wish to be a “fellow Traveller” to Congress, she could support, proudly, John’s work in Congress, as of Friday, October 14, helping to adopt a Declaration that twelve of the colonies (Georgia had not joined) might explore the proper means to pursue the restoration of their rights. Abigail could also derive satisfaction from a friend who described the minds of the colonists as being “firm as Rocks,” who spoke rousingly of their anticipation of a “glorious Restoration of American Liberty.” As far as she could see, and judging from all she heard, Boston to her was “Boston Garrison,” a place of such misery that she found herself at a loss to picture adequately the complex miseries and distresses she was witness to. “Suffice it to say,” she wrote in one of her rare letters to Catharine Macauley,
we are invaded with fleets and armies, our commerce not only obstructed, but totally ruined, the courts of Justice shut, many driven out from the Metropolis, thousands reduced to want, or dependent upon the charity of their neighbors for a daily supply of food, all the Horreurs of a civil war threatening us on one hand, and the chains of Slavery ready forged for us on the other.28
Yet, for all the chains that were choking colonial liberties, Abigail was heartened by signs of colonial muscle, of willingness to break traditional links and to fight back—with words, at least. For every chain forged, a new committee seemed to be formed, a resolution made, a protest registered, a petition drafted. Abigail had witnessed all the steps along the way that propelled county meetings into provincial meetings, and a convention into the First Continental Congress, which John was now attending.
* * *
Abigail was back in Braintree for only two months before she learned that, given the mood of the times, in city and country, everywhere, people waited in “longing expectation.” In Cambridge, on September 3, four thousand men had met, “composed as if they were at a funeral,” demanding, among other things, that the sheriff, David Phips, ask pardon for his role in removing the powder, and that he swear to take no hand in executing the tyrannical Parliamentary edicts.29
At Dedham, on September 6, Braintree’s representatives to the Suffolk Convention were empowered to act on all such matters as they might judge of “public utility” in this time of general stress. In an attempt, perhaps, to soften the burden of her news, but also indicative of her preoccupation with the gravity of the issues, Abigail took to equating this strangely arid time of waiting, guessing, and formulating strategy with the harsh Indian-summer drought that was so punishing to her livestock. The cows would certainly be proferring a petition, she warned John in her third letter to him since his departure for Philadelphia. They would be setting forth their grievances to inform him that they had been deprived of their ancient privileges. They desired these privileges restored, she said, especially as their living, by reason of the drought, was taken from them, and their property caused to decay.30
Lightly or severely couched, stealthily or boldly executed, the terms used to plead the cause for independence by no means warranted Cousin Isaac’s use of the word capricious. Ingrained allegiances lingered; Sam Adams spoke for John and Abigail as well when he said: “Nothing is more foreign to our hearts than a spirit of rebellion. Would to God they all, even our enemies, knew the warm attachment we have for Great Britain, notwithstanding we have been contending these ten years with them for our rights.”31
Dr. Joseph Warren, statesman and Adams family physician, who served as a kind of director-general of the Suffolk meeting during Sam Adams’s absence in Philadelphia, was equally cautious about separation proceedings with the Mother Country. He denounced routs, riots, or “licentious” attacks upon the properties of any person as being subversive of all order and government. Instead, he sought “a steady, manly, uniform and persevering opposition to convince our enemies, that, in a contest so important, in a cause so solemn, our conduct shall be such as to merit the approbation of the wise, and the admiration of the brave and free of every age and of every country.”32
Abigail could only have welcomed Warren’s temperate approach equally as much as she must have despaired over Isaac’s demeaning description of her involvement. “Capricious” was an insulting way to describe the thoughtful agony of her political choice, and equally inappropriate in relation to her private loss of John’s company. “I find I am obliged to summon all my patriotism to feel willing to part with him again,” she wrote Mercy Warren in August of 1775. “You will readily believe me when I say that I make no small sacrifice to the public.”33
In most times of crisis in Abigail’s life, even the ones she tended to play down—as in her description of John’s absences as “tedious”—she adapted to any reasonable solution to her problems with relative grace. With regard to her sacrifice, she soon discovered that John’s letters afforded her at least some approximation of their devoted relationship, revealing, in her appreciation of the “frequent tokens of remembrance,” both the heartwarming and heartbreaking aspects of their dependent love. Letters from John made her heart “as light as a feather,” set her spirits “dancing,” stirred her to tears:
How they rouse every tender sensation of my Soul, which sometimes find vent at my Eyes nor dare I discribe how earnestly I long to fold to my fluttering Heart the dear object of my warmest affections. The Idea sooths me, I feast upon it with a pleasure known only to those whose Hearts and hopes are one.34
Abigail, whose pen was frequently, by her own admission, her “only pleasure,” and writing to John “the composure of my mind,” might very well have had to put up with a husband too preoccupied with pressing affairs of the day to find the time to sustain a correspondence. But, on the contrary, John seemed to accept his share as his duty and he was thoroughly apologetic when he did not keep up his end of the bargain fully. He recognized also that health, children, farm, and affirmation of affection were desirable subject matter, but that he owed Abigail more. He must write her as husband, lover, father of her children, farmer, and lawyer, but also as informant. He respected this role as he respected their partnership. He was willing to recognize his wife as his equal, and said as much. He paid her the compliment of telling her that her “Sentiments of the Duties We owe to our Country, are such as become the best of Women, and the best of Men.” They were collegial patriots, and though he sometimes teased her about how she loved “to pick a political bone,” he seriously reviewed his observations and opinions for her benefit (“under the rose” at times)—surprisingly so, considering the hazards of spies and the pressure of his duties. Nor did he refute her reference to Elizabeth Adams, Sam’s wife, as a “Sister Delegate,” suggesting that the two women had formal roles in governmental proceedings.35
Remarkably, the life-sustaining properties of their correspondence were to be a two-sided affair. John, who virtually dictated Abigail’s roles as educator and farmer, viewed with selfless admiration what probably was the third major aspect of their partnership, her role as a writer and reporter. From the very beginning, her display of extraordinary gifts for portraying her personal life and public times would evoke his grandest compliment. “I really think that your Letters are much better worth preserving than mine,” he would tell her, treating her literary output as an unexpected windfall, an inexhaustible dowry that enriched his life.36
Abigail’s written words, for the next ten years especially, would be his primary link with family and farm, as well as home-front politics. Her shrewd gifts of perception, observation and curiosity molded the modest housewife into a respected historian. Able to convey her thoughts with candor, tenderness, and wit—“my pen is always freer than my tongue,” she recognized—her worth was immediately appreciated by John. A “delicious” letter from you, he told Abigail, is “worth a dozen of mine.”37
Until John’s departure for Philadelphia, Abigail’s letters to him during his circuit-riding days were primarily love letters and family letters. Still, they were tinged with concern and the desire for any news apart from that available to her in the newspapers and journals she read during John’s absence. Once he was on the road to Philadelphia, she was very firm about her expectations of being informed in all matters, personal or otherwise. There was a precedent, she pointed out; as John had “indulged her so much in that Way” during his previous absences, especially during the July days in Falmouth, she made the outright claim that she had a “right” to hear as often from him as he had leisure and opportunity to write.38
By her own admission, Abigail was hard-pressed to explain her greedy appetite for news of the “doings” of the Congress via Paul Revere or William Tudor or any other courier-friends or the “title Tattle” of neighbors and relatives. She knew she ought not to grumble when John’s writing was scant, considering that his labors must be great and his mouth closed, yet she could not restrain herself from pleading: “All you may communicate, I beg you would.… There is a pleasure I know not whence it arises nor can I stop now to find it out, but I say there is a degree of pleasure in being able to tell new’s—especially any which so nearly concerns us as all your proceedings do.”39
* * *
John’s first words from Philadelphia arrived on the evening of September 16, 1774. Abigail was so affected she did not fall asleep until one o’clock in the morning. On the whole, his trip to Philadelphia (he was forty-two miles short of the city in this first letter, dated August 28, from Prince Town, New Jersey) had been most agreeable, affording him opportunities to see the world and to form acquaintances with the most eminent and famous men in the colonies he had passed through, where he reported that he was treated with unbounded “Civility, Complaisance and Respect.” He observed that in New York, for all the opulence and splendor of the city, very little good breeding was evident; though he and his party were treated with assiduous respect, he did not see one real gentleman, one well-bred man, during his visit. At the entertainments, he found no conversation that was agreeable, no modesty, no attention to one another. The men talked very loud, very fast, and all at once. If they asked a question, before one could utter three words in answer, they would break upon one again, and talk away. He did, however, find his visit to Princeton to his liking, and was politely treated at Nassau Hall College by the scholars, tutors, professors, and president. He had expected to reach the theater of action, Philadelphia, the next day. The people, wherever he had been, he reported further, seemed to be of very favorable spirit and universally considered the colonies’ cause as their own, expressing the firmest resolution to abide by the determination of the Congress.40
Abigail might complain from letter to letter—in truth, none of John’s would ever be full enough, particular enough—but she was always made to comprehend the gravity and splendor of his mission. The scene was almost too tender for his “State of Nerves”; he was dazzled by the prospect ahead:
The Art and Address, of Ambassadors from a dozen belligerant Powers of Europe, nay of a Conclave of Cardinals at the Election of a Pope, or of the Princes in Germany at the Choice of an Emperor, would not exceed the Speciments We have seen.—Yet the Congress all profess the same political Principles.… They all profess to consider our Province as suffering in the common Cause, and indeed they seem to feel for Us, as if for themselves. We have had as great Questions to discuss as ever engaged the Attention of Men, and an infinite Multitude of them.41
At one early point, so much was happening so fast that John wished he had the time to write Abigail a dozen letters every day. But his business was arduous: he had the characters and tempers, the principles and views of fifty gentlemen, total strangers, to study, and the trade, policy, and whole interest of a dozen provinces to learn. And there were pamphlets, newspapers, private letters to read. Happily, he could report a “great Spirit” in the Congress; he added grimly, however, in the very next sentence: “But our People must be peaceable.” It was all right for their people to exercise every day of the week—the more the better. Let them furnish themselves with artillery, arms and ammunition. Let them follow the maxim that Abigail had already said they had adopted: “In Times of Peace, prepare for War.” Above all, “Let them avoid War, if possible, if possible I say.”42
In a short time, John, having studied their tempers, views, characters, and designs, was alternately impressed and impatient with his colleagues. John Dickinson, the author of fourteen essays in the form of “Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania to the British Colonies,” was troubled with hectic* complaints. John found him “shadow tall, slender as a Reed, pale as ashes.” At first sight he did not suppose he would live a month; “Yet upon a more attentive Inspection,” John concluded, “he looks as if the Springs of Life were strong enough to last many Years.” John described the Virginian, Peyton Randolph, president of the Congress, as “a large, well looking man,” and found Richard Henry Lee a tall, spare man. He thought the struggling Patrick Henry a man of “high Notions” who was impatient with many, including the Rutledge brothers, lawyers from Charleston, South Carolina, whom Henry categorized as “horrid.” John was only slightly more pleasant about these gentlemen. Edward Rutledge, he reported, was “sprightly but not deep” and had the most indistinct, inarticulate way of speaking—through his nose. How he would shine in public, John could not conceive, though he seemed good-natured but conceited. The older brother, John Rutledge, with his “Air of Reserve, Design and Cunning,” was coupled with other undesirables such as James Duane and Joseph Galloway.43
Taken altogether, this was an assembly like no other that ever existed, John reported to Abigail on October 9.
Every Man in it is a great Man—an orator, a Critick, a statesman, and therefore every Man upon every Question must shew his oratory, his Criticism and his Political Abilities.… The Consequence of this is, that Business is drawn and spun out to an immeasurable Length. I believe if it was moved and seconded that We should come to a Resolution that Three and two make five We should be entertained with Logick and Rhetorick, Law, History, Politicks and Mathematicks, concerning the Subject for two whole Days, and then We should pass the Resolution unanimously in the Affirmative.
Besides, he added, his patience was further tried by the perpetual round of feasting on the likes of whipped syllabubs, flummery, jellies, trifles, melons “fine beyond description,” and excellent pears and peaches. Also, nothing less than the very best of burgundy, claret, and Madeira. He admitted to drinking the latter “at a great Rate and found no Inconvenience in it.”44
* * *
By way of impressing Abigail with the diverse character of the members of the new Congress, despite its theoretically unified purpose, John chose to elaborate on the difficulty of their settling on an opening ceremony. When the Congress first met, he explained, the motion that it should be opened with prayer was opposed by some on the grounds that the division in religious sentiments—some members being Episcopalians, some Quakers, some Anabaptists, some Presbyterians, some Congregationalists—precluded joint worship. Then Sam Adams rose and said he was no bigot and that he could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue who was at the same time a friend to his country. He said, further, that he had heard that Mr. Jacob Duché, assistant rector of Christ Church and St. Peter’s in Philadelphia, deserved that character, and therefore he moved that the Episcopal clergyman be “desired” to read prayers to the Congress the next morning.45
The motion was seconded and passed; Mr. Duché read several prayers and the Thirty-fifth Psalm and John said that, Episcopalian though he was, he had never heard a better prayer, or one so well pronounced. By comparison, he had to admit Boston’s Dr. Samuel Cooper, the Episcopalian minister of the Brattle Street Church, a renowned orator, had not prayed “with such fervor, such Ardor, such Earnestness and Pathos, and in Language so elegant and sublime—for America, for the Congress, for The Province of Massachusetts Bay, and especially the Town of Boston.” John concluded with satisfaction: “It has had an excellent effect upon every body here.”46
In a sense, John’s impartiality lasted a mere three weeks. By October 9 he confided to Abigail that he was not fond of the Presbyterian meetings in Philadelphia, and that he preferred his own church.
We have better Sermons, better Prayers, better Speakers, softer, sweeter Musick, and genteeler Company. And I must confess, that the Episcopal Church is quite as agreeable to my Taste as the Presbyterian. They are both Slaves to the Domination of the Priesthood. I like the Congregational Way best—next to that the Independant.
Still exploring the kinds and places of worship, John, led by curiosity and good company, strolled over, one early autumn afternoon, to what he called the “Mother Church, or rather Grandmother Church, I mean the Romish Chappell,” which was St. Mary’s Church on Fourth Street, in Philadelphia. There he heard a solid, moral essay on the duty of parents to their children to take care of their interests, temporal and spiritual. The afternoon’s “Entertainment,” as he described it to Abigail, was, however, “most awfull and affecting”:
The poor Wretches, fingering their Beads, chanting Latin, not a Word of which they understood, their Pater Nosters and Ave Maria’s. Their holy Water—their Crossing themselves perpetually—their Bowing to the Name of Jesus, where ever they hear it—their Bowings, and Kneelings, and Genuflections before the Altar. The Dress of the Priest was rich with Lace—his Pulpit was Velvet and Gold. The Altar Piece was very rich—little Images and Crucifixes about—Wax Candles lighted up. But how shall I describe the Picture of our Saviour in a Frame of Marble over the Altar at full Length upon the Cross, in the Agonies, and the Blood dropping and streaming from his Wounds.47
Given the setting—adding organ music, the nearly constant chanting and singing, “most sweetly and exquisitely,” except at sermon time—in which there is everything to lay hold of the “Eye, Ear, and Imagination,” everything to “charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant”—John could not help but wonder how Luther ever broke the spell. John sounded almost seduced, but, of course, was not. Nor was he irreligious—only puritanical. He, and Abigail as well, were uncomfortable with, though not unadmiring of, tangible signs of opulence, whether in church or in a friend’s house.48
For both, who cherished a “primitive Simplicity” of manners, who were skeptical of too many “high sounding words,” religion was to be adorned only by the splendor of perfect faith. Faith made their sacrifice possible, even plausible. Resignation to the will of Heaven was their only resource in dangerous times, as prudence and caution should be their guides, Abigail said. At the very start of the Revolution, Abigail made her pact in these words: “If the Sword be drawn I bid adieu to all domestick felicity, and look forward to that Country where there is neither wars nor rumors of War in a firm belief that thro the mercy of its King we shall both rejoice there together.” Furthermore, patriotism and religion were inextricably allied; the one without the other was “as an honest Man without the fear of God.” The Scriptures, as she interpreted them, told her “righteousness exalteth a Nation.”49
* * *
It was pouring rain when John Adams left “polite” Philadelphia on Friday, October 28, 1774. He left in an affable mood, grateful for the “Civilities” accorded him, and with some sense of accomplishment; despite the tiresome “nibbling and quibbling” of Congress, some decisions had been made. On October 20, the nonimportation, nonconsumption, nonexportation agreement, called the Continental Association, had been adopted by the first Continental Congress. Two days later, arrangements had been made for the printing of a congressional journal. A resolution was passed that same day that another Congress would meet on the tenth day of May, unless redress of grievances was made before that date. Philadelphia was recommended again as the best meeting place. John reached home the second week in November; on December 2 the Provincial Congress, sitting in Cambridge, reelected him and his three colleagues to the next Congress, substituting John Hancock for James Bowdoin, who had never been able to attend in the first place.50
By January 1775, Abigail was beginning to sound resigned to a more strenuous position regarding Great Britain. As she had written Catharine Macaulay: “Tender plants must bend, but when a Government is grown to strength like some old oak rough with its armed bark it yealds not to the tug, but only nods and turns to sullen state.” Abigail spoke also of the “pandoraen Box,” and its fatal ingredients, wantonly and cruelly scattered by the British. In another impassioned letter she called her friend Mercy Warren’s attention to the “cunning and chicanery” of the writing of the execrable “Massachusettensis,” (the pen name of the loyalist lawyer Daniel Leonard), in Margaret Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter.* In answer to this “Sly undermining Tool,” John had published in the Boston Gazette, over a period of twelve weeks, under the signature “Novanglus,” a fervent rebuttal.51
Point by point, John had fenced with Draper’s writer, restating his belief that the destruction of the tea had been just, that the Committees of Correspondence were intended by Providence for great events, that Britain could restore harmony by desisting from taxing the colonies and interfering with their internal concerns. Fundamental to the patriots, he continued, was the principle that all men were by nature equal, and that kings were but the ministers of the people, holding delegated power. As forcefully as he stated his position, John sounded better-humored than his wife: Abigail said she would not think it “unlikely” that “Massachusettensis” received a share of the money sent, according to rumor, to bribe the leaders of the pro-British faction.52
By early February, Abigail had committed herself yet again to separation. “The die is cast,” she wrote to Mercy Warren the day after she read George III’s speech at the opening of Parliament on November 20, published in the Massachusetts Spy on February 2, 1775. The King, Abigail ascertained, was determined to execute “the acts passed by the late Parliament, and to Maintain the authority of the Legislature over all his dominions.” The reply of the Houses of Commons and Lords showed, as far as she could determine, that the most “wicked and hostile” measures would be pursued against the Americans, without permitting them the opportunity for self-defense. George’s speech had left one option to “Friends of Liberty”:
to die [the] last British freemen, than bear to live the first of British Slaves, and this now seems to be all that is left to americans with unfeigned and penitant suplications to that Being who delights in the welfare of his creatures, and who we humbly hope will engage on our side, and who if we must go forth in defence of our injured and oppressed Country will we hope deliver us from the hands of our enemies and those that persecute us.
Heaven only knew what was to take place next, but as far as Abigail was concerned, “The Sword is now our only, yet dreadful alternative, and the fate of Rome will be renued in Brittain.” With prayerful thought she added that if “the war should rise against us, in this will we be confident, that the Lord reigneth. Let thy Mercy o Lord be upon us according as we hope in thee.”53
Abigail was alone at the time she read the King’s speech. With heart “tremblingly anxious” she indulged herself in the wisp of a hope that John might bring different news with him from Boston. On the other hand, she did not want anyone to think she would give up “one Iota” of their rights and privileges to have the situation alleviated, for with “maturest deliberation” she could say that “dreadful as the day would be,” she would rather see the sword drawn. She refused to be entirely pessimistic, and seemed buoyed by her decision, saying, “We know too well the blessings of freedom, to tamely resign it—and there really seems to be a ray of light breaking thro the palpable darkness which has for so long a time darkened our hemisphere and threatened to overwhelm us in one common ruin.” She could not help but hope, with her friend Mercy Warren, for “more favorable Scenes, and brighter Days.”54
* * *
On April 5, three weeks before John’s scheduled departure for Philadelphia, General Gage had given orders to seize any cannon, small arms, or military stores secreted by the patriots. Two weeks elapsed before details were known as to how the British planned to execute Gage’s orders. Then, at 10:00 P.M. the night of April 18, Joseph Warren charged Paul Revere with the crucial duty of warning both John Hancock and Sam Adams that eight hundred grenadiers and light infantry had embarked in long boats on the Charles River at the foot of the Boston Common, crossed, and were heading toward Concord on a secret expedition to destroy their stores and capture both men.55
By noon the next day, on the sloping countryside, with its secret curves and silent thickets, 4,000 worn Americans confronted 1,800 British regulars and triumphed: 73 redcoats were dead, 174 wounded, 26 missing. The Americans counted 49 dead, 39 wounded, 4 missing. The events begun in Lexington and decided a few miles beyond, in Concord, and heralded on that damp spring night by ringing church bells and roaring cannons, would be judged crucial by John Adams. The battle of Lexington, on the nineteenth of April, he said, had changed, with doomful finality, “the Instruments of Warfare from Penn to the Sword.”56
Abigail, too, sensed “Great Events are most certainly in the womb of futurity.” She prayed for the deliverance of the people of Boston as for the children of Israel—not by miracles but by the interposition of heaven in their favor. John had already reached New York City on his way to Philadelphia when she wrote of the desperate plight of family and friends:
There are but very few who are permitted to come out in a day. They delay giving passes, make them wait from hour to hour, and their counsels are not two hours together alike. One day they shall come out with their Effects, the next Day merchandise are not Effects. One day their household furniture is to come out, the next only wearing apparel, and the next Pharaohs heart is hardned, and he refuseth to hearken unto them and will not let the people go.
Everything was so uncertain; rumors flew about those on the “black list,” those implicated in dumping the tea and therefore judged “obnoxious.” One such was Benjamin Edes, who was said to have escaped from Boston on May 6 in a small boat, and to have been fired upon, but turned up safe in Braintree, twenty-four hours later.57
On May 22, Abigail wrote to Edward Dilly, the London bookseller, regarding some transactions that John had not had time to complete before leaving town. She did not spare him the details of the plight of the Bostonians, or shade her disdain for his countrymen:
So brutal are they as to take away even to a Bisquit if they find it by their inhumane searches, or a little chocolate does not escape even tho in the pockets of the distressed women. Those who receive the mighty boon of bringing out a little household furniture must turn it down in the Street, Exposed to the inclemancy of the weather.
But words only faintly described the woes, Abigail continued, especially of men and women with their little ones in tow, following their property as though they were in funeral procession.58
* * *
As Abigail sat at her writing desk on Sunday, May 21, it was no longer a question of imagining danger; she could hear it, see it, had only to lean out of her window to touch it. The colony’s soldiers were thumping the warm spring earth (the meadow was almost fit to mow), responding to drumming, bells, and actual gunfire. She had risen at six that morning; in answer to her worried message she learned that the British troops, about three hundred men, arriving in three sloops and one cutter, had dropped anchor just four miles from her house, just below the Great Hill, and that all was confusion and terror. People from the ironworks had run in terror, and Parson Smith’s house had emptied in moments. Aunt Tufts was so distressed that she threw herself into a cart and summoned a boy to drive her off to Bridgewater. Once the colonists, about two thousand strong and crowding the water’s edge, realized that the British were in search of hay and bound for Grape Island, not for Germantown or Weymouth, a small band of them jumped on board a sloop and beat the British to the quarry, setting fire to nearly the entire cache, which some thought amounted to eighty tons’ worth.59
After the Grape Island episode, Abigail seemed resigned; she could only be certain of the uncertainty of the future. “We know not what a day will bring forth, nor what distress one hour may throw us into,” she warned John. Until then, in late May, she felt she had been able to maintain a calmness and presence of mind, but now she knew change was imminent. A farmhand, Isaac, was talking of going into the army. Nathan Rice, who she did not believe would be a very hardy soldier, had military prospects in mind, and Mr. Thaxter had already gone; both young lawyers were discouraged by the lean prospects of ever being able to practice. As for the house, ever since the alarms, she could only describe it as a “Scene of confusion,” milling with soldiers coming in for lodging, breakfast, supper, and drink, and with weary refugees from Boston hunting asylum for a day or a night or a week. She could only think that John would find it hard to imagine how she was existing:
Yet to the Houseless child of want
our doors are open still.
And tho our portions are but scant
We give them with good will.60
“We must Expect continual allarms, and prepair ourselves for them,” was Abigail’s stance from here on. How long it would be before she was driven from her “yet quiet cottage” was a guessing matter. It was a strange time. Abigail’s mood was a match for the weather, which was very dry—not a rainy day in more than five weeks—with the English grass not expected to yield half as much as the previous year. Yet the fruit was promising, though the caterpillars were innumerable—a nettlesome situation Abigail understood perfectly: “Courage I know we have in abundance, conduct I hope we shall not want, but powder—where shall we get a sufficient supply?”61
* * *
On June 17, at three o’clock on Saturday morning, cannonfire announced “the day,—perhaps, the decisive day” Abigail had anticipated for weeks. Of Boston’s many hills—Copp’s Hill, Breed’s Hill, Dorchester Hill, Penn’s Hill—the British warships chose to fire on the imperfect breastwork thrown up the previous night on the crest of Bunker’s Hill. On Sunday, thirty-six hours later, at three in the afternoon, Abigail wrote to John that her “bursting heart must find vent at my pen.” She had just heard that their dear friend Dr. Warren had died. A dreadful battle was expected that night; how many had already fallen was unknown. If she found herself unsafe, she had the option of going to her brother-in-law Elihu, who had offered her family part of his house. She could hardly compose herself as she prayed: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Trust in him at all times, ye people pour out your hearts before him. God is a refuge for us.”62
By Tuesday, despite ten thousand rumors “vague and uncertain as the wind,” she could not contradict the report on Dr. Warren, the remarkable man whose courage, John said, would have been rash absurdity, had it not been tempered by self-control. The losses on that hottest of summer nights were comparatively few, but this one in particular was almost too much to bear. It was the “lamentable Truth,” that the beloved physician, who had once saved young Johnny’s fractured forefinger from amputation, had died at the age of thirty-four, his fine clothes soaked with blood, beheaded, according to whispered accounts. A widower, he was the father of four.63
With Johnny, on that clear June day of intense heat, Abigail had made the sorrowful climb up the giant slabs of rock to the top of Penn’s Hill to stare in horror across the blue bay and into the black, smoking mass that was all that was left of Charlestown. Tears blurred her eyes, but not her memory of the poem by William Collins that she had been teaching Johnny that spring and early summer, as though keeping herself, and her child, in readiness for the tragedy of Warren’s death:
How sleep the Brave who sink to rest,
by all their Country’s wishes blest?
When Spring with dew ’ey fingers cold
Returns to deck their Hallowed mould
She their [there] shall dress a sweeter Sod
Than fancy’s feet has ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung
By forms unseen their Dirge is sung
Their [there] Honour comes a pilgrim grey
To Bless the turf that wraps their Clay
And freedom shall a while repair
To dwell a weeping Hermit there.64
It was months before Abigail could even resign herself to Warren’s death. “We wanted him in the Senate, we want him in his Profession, we want him in the field. We mourn for the citizen, the senator, the physician and the Warriour,” she wrote to John on July 5, still brooding over the report, that seemed to confirm that the doctor had been beheaded and savagely dumped into a hole on the battlefield. It was only a year later that Abigail found some peace regarding the “Worthy General Warren,” when his body was dug up and carried into Boston, attended by a procession of Masons, prayed over by Dr. Cooper, and praised by the orator Perez Morton. At last, people were reminded of Warren’s heroism and the noble cause for which he was martyred, as well as their own sufferings and injuries. The proceedings made Abigail think of a passage in Julius Caesar:
Woe to the Hands that shed this costly blood;
A curse shall light upon their line;
Domestick fury, and firce [fierce] civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Britton.65
At a time of devastating apprehension and loss, Abigail thought herself “very brave upon the whole,” though if danger touched her dwelling, she supposed she would “shuder.” Somewhat ambivalent, however, about recognition of her plight, she insisted she would not have John distressed about her, yet bothered to drill him about how much Congress knew about Boston and its sufferings. “Does every Member feel for us? Can they realize what we suffer? And can they believe with what patience and fortitude we endure the conflict—nor,” she added, “do we even tremble at the frowns of power.”66
Abigail had need of support and sympathy. Her problems were multiple, both with and without solutions. She and John both suffered from minor complaints about their health. John’s eyes were worrisome; the middle finger of Abigail’s right hand was so sore she could not hold her pen for three weeks. Nor was there comfort to be found at Weymouth; her father’s hurt expression told the sad story of his family birthplace, Charlestown, consumed by fire. Housing was another problem. Abigail’s lone tenant would not give up his quarters, though she asked him to do so “handsomely,” that she might move a dispossessed friend and his family in with her. She faced a grain shortage and the possible disappearance of coffee, sugar, and pepper. Pins and needles were in pressing demand but short supply, and were essential if stocking weaving was to continue.67
Only when Abigail referred to the children did she seem able, at this time, to lighten the burden of her news. Abigail assured John that the children wished to see their father, and that Charles asked, whenever she received mail from Philadelphia, “Mar, what is it any good news?” And “Who is for us and who against us?” was the habitual inquiry. John would laugh, she said, to see the children run at the sight of his letters—“like chickens for a crumb, when the Hen clucks.”68
John, keenly aware of the trials of Boston, could not have been surprised by his children’s involvement. They lived from hour to suspenseful hour; their household was thick with strangers, plans and plots, hearsay and heresies, their bodies tense from the din of cannonfire ripping the neighboring sky. Besides, their mother was like a beacon in her self-appointed role of co-delegate, and they had no choice but to bask in the light that radiated from her and attracted news of the cause of the colonists.69
In his letter of June 10, John had explained that “in Congress We are bound to secrecy: But, under the Rose, I believe, that ten thousand Men will be maintained in the Massachusetts, and five thousand in New York at the Continental Expence.”70
The day after receiving this news, Abigail wrote two letters. One, to James Bowdoin, was a general roundup of several of John’s past letters, in which she informed Bowdoin
that the Congress are determined to support the Massachusetts—that there is a good Spirit among them, and that they have an amazing Field of Business before them—that it is extensive, complicated and hazardous, but their Unanimity is as great as before—that they have a Number of new and ingenious Members—that the military Spirit which runs thro’ the Continent is truly amazing. The City of Philadelphia turns out 2000 Men every Day. Mr. Dickinson is a Coll., Mr. Reed a Lt. Coll., Mr. Mifflin a Major.71
The same day Abigail wrote to Mr. Bowdoin, she also sent off a letter to John. She did not specifically mention passing on the critical information gathered “under the Rose,” but took care to note Mr. Bowdoin’s being “very inquisitive of every person with regard to the times,” and how he begged her to let him know “of the first intelligence” she received from John. Perhaps she justified her confidences to Bowdoin with the thought the poor gentleman was so low that she was sure he was “hastning to an house not made with Hands.”72
* * *
One other public responsibility shouldered by Abigail—this one not assumed but rather imposed in recognition of John’s official position—was that of semiofficial hostess. In this role, Abigail said she was dedicated to “receive and entertain in the best Maner I am capable of” gentlemen who had generously proferred their service to the army, or to the government in general. One who fit this description admirably, and who had intrigued her for some time, was an army officer, Colonel George Washington. His “Experience and Abilities in military Matters” John had mentioned to her in late May, and he believed Washington would be of “much use” to Congress.73
Not quite a month later he had written again to tell her that Congress had made the choice on June 15, 1775, of the “modest and virtuous, the amiable, generous and brave” George Washington to be the General of the American Army, and that he was to repair as soon as possible to the camp in Boston. John was impressed by Washington’s “reticence,” and the humility with which he had accepted his nomination as Commander-in-Chief, allowing that he thought himself launched into a wide and extensive field “too boundless” for his abilities and “far, very far” beyond his experience.74
Subsequently, Abigail assured John that both Washington’s promotion to commanding general and that of Charles Lee to major general gave “universal satisfaction.” Soon after the pair’s arrival in Boston she was able to tell John that she was nothing less than “struck with General Washington. You had prepaired me to entertain a favorable opinion of him, but I thought the one half was not told me. Dignity with ease, and complacency, the Gentleman and Soldier look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feture of his face.” Lines of John Dryden “instantly” occurred to her on meeting the stately forty-three-year-old Virginian:
Mark his Majestick fabrick! he’s a temple
Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine
His Souls the Deity that lodges there.
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God.75
General Lee’s fate, at Abigail’s hands, was less splendid. Like a “careless hardy Veteran,” his appearance brought to her mind his namesake Charles XII, King of Sweden: “The Elegance of his pen far exceeds that of his person.”76
On the subject of pens, and in answer to John’s regrets over their disuse by friends, Abigail asked, “May not I in my turn make complaints?” Without stopping for an answer, she proceeded to tell him just where his letters fell short.
All the Letters I receive from you seem to be wrote in so much haste, that they scarcely leave room for a social feeling. They let me know that you exist, but some of them contain scarcely six lines. I want some sentimental Effusions of the Heart. I am sure you are not destitute of them or are they all absorbed in the great publick. Much is due to that I know, but being part of the whole I lay claim to a Larger Share than I have had. You used to be more communicative a Sundays. I always loved a Sabeth days letter, for then you had a greater command of your time—but hush to all complaints.77
Abigail was as good as her admonition. It was mid-July, and possibly because of plentiful showers, the prospect of Indian corn and English grain gave cause for optimism. “Be not afraid,” Abigail wrote, “ye beasts of the field, for the pastures of the Wilderness do spring, the Tree beareth her fruit, the vine and the olive yeald their increase.” Everything might yet be perfect; “Every thing at present looks blooming,” she promised John. Everything depended on the answer to a prayer: “O that peace would once more extend her olive Branch.”78
Intellectually, Abigail puzzled over the fact that she had little reason to sound as hopeful as she did, except perhaps that she was hopeful by instinct. As she explained to Mercy Warren, who kindly inquired about her health:
I sometimes wonder at my-self, and fear least a degree of stupidity or insensibility should possess my mind in these calamitous times or I could not feel so tranquil amidst such scenes, and yet I cannot charge myself with an unfealing Heart. I pitty, commisirate and as far as my ability reaches feel ready and desirous to releave my fellow creatures under their distresses. But I am not naturally (tis no virtue acquired in me) of that rastless anxious disposition.79
If she was completely honest with herself, Abigail might have attributed her “good flow of spirits” to “the most Leasurely and therefore the most Sentimental” letter Abigail had received in a while, In return, Abigail promised on July 25 to take back her complaints if only John would continue his “obliging favours” whenever time would allow. Among other things, John had called her a “Heroine” and described her soul “as pure, as benevolent, as virtuous and pious,” He had also said he hoped it would not be more than a month before he was able to return to Braintree.80