Abigail Adams and Her Times

Moral: Don't send "surprises" unless you are sure of the hand by which they are sent.

There are no letters between October, 1776, and January, 1777, which means that John Adams had a happy visit at home with his dear ones. A winter, too, of tremendous excitement, of breathless waiting for mails and despatches. We can see Mr. Adams in his arm chair, one January day, trying to read – let us say Xenophon! he would be good reading in those days – one eye on the book, the other out of window: Madam Abigail opposite, with Abby beside her, both at their tambour work.

"Isn't it time he was here?" says Mr. Adams for the tenth time; and he gets up and starts on parasangs of his own up and down the room. Madam Abigail probably suggests patience, after the manner of women, but she looks out of window just as often as he does.

At last! at last comes the clatter of hoofs. The post-rider (only nine years old, and he has ridden all the way from Boston!) is here. The gate clicks, and Master Johnny's legs come flying up the path. He is waving a paper over his head; I don't know who gets to the door first, but I seem to see the Head of the Family tearing the despatch open in unstatesmanlike haste.

On Christmas night, he reads, General Washington crossed the Delaware above Trenton, amid ice and snow, storm and tempest. He surprised the British camp, captured a thousand Hessians and carried them off with him to Pennsylvania.

Glory! glory! Stay! there is more. On the second of January, he was once more face to face with the British at Trenton, surrounded by them; they had him fast. "I have the old fox penned!" chuckles Cornwallis; "I'll bag him in the morning!"

But morning showed a row of empty earthworks, and the fox and his cubs well on their way to Princeton, where they fell upon another body of British, routed them in twenty minutes, and carried off three hundred of them, with much ammunition and arms, whereof they, to wit, fox and cubs, stood grievously in need.

This was the gist of the despatch; I do not pretend to give its wording. But fancy the effect of it, however worded, on the quiet Braintree household! John and Charles and even little Tommy, dancing up and down in their flapped waistcoats, shouting and huzzaing; Abby, very likely, shedding tears of happiness over her tambour frame; Father John striding up and down the room again, but now in different mood, probably declaiming lines from Horace in a voice that will not allow itself to tremble; Mother Abigail trying still to be Portia, and to pretend that she knows one end of the needle from the other. A pleasant picture indeed; and – who knows? Possibly not so far from the truth.

All the harder was it, amid all these great happenings, for Mr. Adams to mount and ride, leaving his dear ones to face the winter without him; but mount he must, and did.

He writes on his way back to Philadelphia:

"Present my affection in the tenderest manner to my little deserving daughter and my amiable sons. It was cruel parting this morning. My heart was most deeply affected, although I had the presence of mind to appear composed. May God Almighty's providence protect you, my dear, and all our little ones. My good genius, my guardian angel, whispers me that we shall see happier days, and that I shall live to enjoy the felicities of domestic life with her whom my heart esteems above all earthly blessings."

The war began to press heavily on New England housekeepers. Prices went steadily up, and the necessaries of life became hard to procure. Abigail writes in April, of 1777: "Indian corn at five shillings; rye, eleven and twelve shillings, but scarcely any to be had even at that price; beef, eight pence; veal, sixpence and eightpence; butter, one and sixpence; mutton, none; lamb, none; pork, none; cotton-wool, none; mean sugar, four pounds per hundred; molasses, none; New England rum, eight shillings per gallon; coffee, two and sixpence per pound; chocolate, three shillings."

She tells at the same time a curious story, of five Tories being carted out of town under the direction of "Joice junior," for refusing to take the paper money of the new Republic. "Joice junior" was a name which might be assumed by any patriot who wished to redress a grievance. He wore a horrible mask, and in this case "was mounted on horseback, with a red coat, a white wig, and a drawn sword, with drum and fife following. A concourse of people to the amount of five hundred followed. They proceeded as far as Roxbury, when he ordered the cart to be tipped up, then told them if they were ever caught in town again it should be at the expense of their lives. He then ordered his gang to return, which they did immediately without any disturbance."

In July, it is the women who take matters into their own hands.

"You must know," writes Abigail, "that there is a great scarcity of sugar and coffee, articles which the female part of the State is very loath to give up, especially whilst they consider the scarcity occasioned by the merchants having secreted a large quantity. There had been much rout and noise in the town for several weeks. Some stores had been opened by a number of people, and the coffee and sugar carried into the market and dealt out by pounds. It was rumored that an eminent, wealthy, stingy merchant (who is a bachelor) had a hogshead of coffee in his store, which he refused to sell to the committee under six shillings per pound. A number of females, some say a hundred, some say more, assembled with a cart and trucks, marched down to the warehouse, and demanded the keys, which he refused to deliver. Upon which one of them seized him by his neck, and tossed him into the cart. Upon his finding no quarter, he delivered the keys, when they tipped up the cart and discharged him; then opened the warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put it into the trucks, and drove off.

"It was reported that he had personal chastisement among them; but this, I believe, was not true. A large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction."

This delighted John. "You have made me merry," he writes, "with the female frolic with the miser. But I hope the females will leave off their attachment to coffee. I assure you the best families in this place have left off, in a great measure, the use of West India goods. We must bring ourselves to live upon the produce of our own country. What would I give for some of your cider? Milk has become the breakfast of many of the wealthiest and genteelest families here."

In August a report was spread that Howe's fleet was off Cape Ann. Boston took the alarm, and all was confusion, people packing up and carting out of town their household goods, military stores, in fact everything that was portable. Abigail writes:

"Not less than a thousand teams were employed on Friday and Saturday; and, to their shame be it told, not a small trunk would they carry under eight dollars, and many of them, I am told, asked a hundred dollars a load; for carting a hogshead of molasses eight miles, thirty dollars. O human nature! or rather O inhuman nature! what art thou? The report of the fleet's being seen off Cape Ann Friday night gave me the alarm and though pretty weak, I set about packing up my things, and on Saturday removed a load.

"When I looked around me and beheld the bounties of Heaven so liberally bestowed, in fine fields of corn, grass, flax, and English grain, and thought it might soon become a prey to these merciless ravagers, our habitations laid waste, and if our flight preserved our lives, we must return to barren fields, empty barns, and desolate habitations, if any we find (perhaps not where to lay our heads), my heart was too full to bear the weight of affliction which I thought just ready to overtake us, and my body too weak almost to bear the shock, unsupported by my better half.

"But, thanks be to Heaven, we are at present relieved from our fears respecting ourselves. I now feel anxious for your safety, but hope prudence will direct to a proper care and attention to yourselves. May this second attempt of Howe's prove his utter ruin. May destruction overtake him as a whirlwind."

John's reply to this letter is characteristic.

"I think I have sometimes observed to you in conversation, that upon examining the biography of illustrious men, you will generally find some female about them, in the relation of mother or wife or sister, to whose instigation a great part of their merit is to be ascribed. You will find a curious example of this in the case of Aspasia, the wife of Pericles. She was a woman of the greatest beauty and the first genius. She taught him, it is said, his refined maxims of policy, his lofty imperial eloquence, nay, even composed the speeches on which so great a share of his reputation was founded..

"I wish some of our great men had such wives. By the account in your last letter, it seems the women in Boston begin to think themselves able to serve their country. What a pity it is that our Generals in the northern districts had not Aspasias to their wives!

"I believe the two Howes have not very great women for wives. If they had, we should suffer more from their exertions than we do. This is our good fortune. A woman of good sense would not let her husband spend five weeks at sea in such a season of the year. A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of Philadelphia a long time ago."

A week later he writes:

"If Howe is gone to Charleston, you will have a little quiet, and enjoy your corn, and rye, and flax, and hay and other good things, until another summer. But what shall we do for sugar and wine and rum? Why truly, I believe we must leave them off. Loaf sugar is only four dollars a pound here, and brown only a dollar for the meanest sort, and ten shillings for that a little better. Everybody here is leaving off loaf sugar, and most are laying aside brown."

Still the prices rose and rose. On August 29th, John quotes:

"Prices current. Four pounds a week for board, besides finding your own washing, shaving, candles, liquors, pipes, tobacco, wood, etc. Thirty shillings a week for a servant. It ought to be thirty shillings for a gentleman and four pounds for the servant, because he generally eats twice as much and makes twice as much trouble. Shoes, five dollars a pair. Salt, twenty-seven dollars a bushel. Butter, ten shillings a pound. Punch, twenty shillings a bowl. All the old women and young children are gone down to the Jersey shore to make salt. Salt water is boiling all round the coast, and I hope it will increase. For it is nothing but heedlessness and shiftlessness that prevents us from making salt enough for a supply. But necessity will bring us to it. As to sugar, molasses, rum, etc., we must leave them off. Whiskey is used here instead of rum, and I don't see but it is just as good. Of this the wheat and rye countries can easily distill enough for the use of the country. If I could get cider I would be content."

In September he describes at length the making of molasses out of corn-stalks. "Scarcely a town or parish within forty miles of us but what has several mills at work; and had the experiment been made a month sooner many thousand barrels would have been made. No less than eighty have been made in the small town of Manchester. It answers very well to distill, and may be boiled down to sugar. Thus you see," he adds, "we go from step to step in our improvements. We can live much better than we deserve within ourselves. Why should we borrow foreign luxuries? Why should we wish to bring ruin upon ourselves? I feel as contented when I have breakfasted upon milk as ever I did with Hyson or Souchong. Coffee and sugar I use only as a rarity. There are none of these things but I could totally renounce. My dear friend knows that I could always conform to times and circumstances. As yet I know nothing of hardships. My children have never cried for bread nor been destitute of clothing. Nor have the poor and needy gone empty from my door, whenever it was in my power to assist them."

Though the patriot ladies were ready enough to do without Hyson or Souchong they none the less greatly desired a cheering cup of something, and managed to get it without tax or expense. We read of tea made from ribwort, from sage, from thoroughwort, from strawberry and currant leaves. "Hyperion tea," called by a good patriot, "very delicate and most excellent," was made from raspberry leaves; "Liberty tea" from the four-leaved loose-strife. So there was great boiling and steeping going on, and every housewife who had a garden patch, or who was near enough the woods and fields to go out "yarb-gathering," could be sure of a "dish of tay," without thought of King George or his myrmidons.

There was a great harvest, in this year 1777; once more Mother Nature proclaimed herself on the side of Independence. The valleys lay so thick with corn that they did laugh and sing. Most of the able-bodied men being in the field (for the war was now in full swing) there were not enough hands to gather in the crops. Abigail fears that "if it is necessary to make any more drafts upon us, the women must reap the harvests"; and adds, "I am willing to do my part. I believe I could gather corn, and husk it; but I should make a poor figure at digging potatoes."

Indeed, most of the harvesting that autumn was done by women, aided by old men and young boys. Delicate ladies, sturdy farmers' wives and daughters, they worked side by side: and we read that "towards the end of August, at the Forks of Brandywine, girls were harnessing the ploughs, and preparing fallows for the seed, on the very fields where, a twelvemonth from that date, a costly crop of human life was reaped."

The reader of this little book, holding it in his right hand, should hold in his left a history of the United States and should have an atlas "handy by."

Far and wide the war spread: campaign followed campaign: New York, White Plains, Crown Point: our affair is not with them, but with our faithful married lovers, still separated by the long leagues that lie between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. I must, however, describe briefly what happened in and near Philadelphia, where John Adams and his brother Congressmen were sitting. All through the spring and summer Washington had been harrying the British with varying fortunes. On August 24th, he entered Philadelphia with his army: four regiments of light horse, writes John Adams, four grand divisions of infantry, and the artillery with the matrosses. "They marched twelve deep, and yet took up above two hours in passing by." Washington led the march, and beside him rode the young Marquis de Lafayette, newly arrived; a lad of nineteen, who had left his young wife and his brilliant circle, to lay his sword at the feet of the American Republic.

This "dress-parade" was not a magnificent one. The soldiers' boots were worn through; their clothes were ragged, and of every hue and style. The least badly dressed among them, we are told, were those who wore the hunting shirt of brown linen. But the brown faces above the shirts were strong and keen, and alight with purpose and resolve; their horses were in prime condition: the green boughs they wore lent a touch of color; there was even a hint of splendor where the Stars and Stripes, newly assembled, fluttered on the breeze. "Fine and warlike troops," Lafayette pronounced them, "commanded by officers of zeal and courage." John Adams writes in sober exultation to Portia:

"The army, upon an accurate inspection of it, I find to be extremely well armed, pretty well clothed, and tolerably disciplined… There is such a mixture of the sublime and the beautiful together with the useful in military discipline, that I wonder every officer we have is not charmed with it." Mr. Adams, after watching the parade, is convinced that he, in military life, should be a decisive disciplinarian. "I am convinced there is no other effective way of indulging benevolence, humanity, and the tender social passions in the army. There is no other way of preserving the health and spirits of the men. There is no other way of making them active and skilful in war; no other way of guarding an army against destruction by surprises; and no other method of giving them confidence in one another, of making them stand by one another in the hour of battle. Discipline in an army is like the laws of civil society."

Dark days followed. Howe had landed with fresh troops of highly trained soldiers, bent on taking Philadelphia and driving out the Rebel Congress. On September eleventh, Mr. Adams writes:

"The moments are critical here. We know not but the next will bring us an account of a general engagement begun, and when once begun, we know not how it will end, for the battle is not always to the strong… But if it should be the will of Heaven that our army should be defeated, our artillery lost, our best generals killed, and Philadelphia fall in Mr. Howe's hands, still America is not conquered."

Three days later Brandywine was lost and won; then came the fatal night of Paoli, when Anthony Wayne first measured swords with Cornwallis, and found his own the shorter: and on September 26th, the British army entered Philadelphia.

"Don't be anxious about me," John Adams had written on the 14th, "nor about our great and sacred cause. It is the cause of truth and will prevail."

On the 19th, Congress, yielding to the inevitable, removed to Yorktown and there continued its work. Mr. Adams, describing the removal briefly, says, "I shall avoid everything like history, and make no reflections." I hasten to follow his example and return to Braintree.

On October 25th, 1777, Abigail writes:

"The joyful news of the surrender (at Saratoga) of General Burgoyne and all his army, to our victorious troops, prompted me to take a ride this afternoon with my daughter to town, to join, tomorrow, with my friends in thanksgiving and praise to the Supreme Being who hath so remarkably delivered our enemies into our hands. And, hearing that an express is to go off tomorrow morning, I have retired to write you a few lines. I have received no letters from you since you left Philadelphia, by the post, and but one by any private hand. I have written you once before this. Do not fail of writing by the return of this express, and direct your letters to the care of my uncle, who has been a kind and faithful hand to me through the whole season, and a constant attendant upon the post-office."

The leagues were to stretch yet farther between Portia and her dearest friend. A month after this, Mr. Adams asked and obtained leave of Congress to visit his family, mounted his horse, and rode joyfully home to Braintree. We can well imagine the rejoicings that greeted his return; but they were short-lived. He had barely reached home when word came that he was appointed ambassador to France, and that the frigate Boston was being prepared to carry him thither as soon as possible.

Here was a thunderbolt indeed! Weary and worn after four years of incessant labor, John Adams had longed almost passionately for the joys and comforts of home life and family affection. He weighed the matter well: the probability of capture on the high seas, of imprisonment or execution in England: the needs of his family, which he had been forced to neglect these four years past. "My children were growing up without my care in their education, and all my emoluments as a member of Congress for four years had not been sufficient to pay a laboring man upon my farm… On the other hand, my country was in deep distress and in great danger. Her dearest interests would be involved in the relations she might form with foreign nations. My own plan of these relations had been deliberately formed and fully communicated to Congress nearly two years before. The confidence of my country was committed to me without my solicitation. My wife, who had always encouraged and animated me in all antecedent dangers and perplexities, did not fail me on this occasion. But she discovered an inclination to bear me company, with all our children. This proposal, however, she was soon convinced, was too hazardous and imprudent."

Help from France was imperative. Franklin was already there, but greatly needing stronger support.

There was no real question of John Adams' decision: it was soon made, his faithful Portia acquiescing without a murmur. She even agreed to Johnny's going with his father – or proposed it, we know not which; and preparations were made for the departure. Fortunately, the frigate took longer to prepare than the trunks; it was not till February that all was ready, and the final parting came. Had it been known that even while he was embarking a treaty was being signed in Paris between France and America, this parting might have been delayed.

Mr. Adams' diary gives us glimpses of the voyage, which was a stormy one and threatened other dangers beside. They fell in with some British ships, and one of them gave chase.

"When the night approached, the wind died away, and we were left rolling and pitching in a calm, with our guns all out, our courses drawn up and every way prepared for battle; the officers and men appeared in good spirits and Captain Tucker said his orders were to carry me to France, and to take any prizes that might fall in his way; he thought it his duty, therefore, to avoid fighting, especially with an unequal force, if he could, but if he could not avoid an engagement he would give them something that should make them remember him. I said, and did all in my power, to encourage the officers and men to fight them to the last extremity. My motives were more urgent than theirs; for it will easily be believed that it would have been more eligible for me to be killed on board the Boston, or sunk to the bottom in her, than to be taken prisoner. I sat in the cabin, at the windows in the stern, and saw the enemy gaining upon us very fast, she appearing to have a breeze of wind, while we had none. Our powder, cartridges, and balls, were placed by the guns, and everything ready to begin the action. Although it was calm on the surface of the sea, where we lay, the heavens had been gradually overspread with black clouds, and the wind began to spring up. Our ship began to move. The night came on, and it was soon dark. We lost sight of our enemy, who did not appear to me very ardent to overtake us. But the wind increased to a hurricane."

The hurricane proved a terrible one. The diary tells us:

"It would be fruitless to attempt a description of what I saw, heard, and felt, during these three days and nights. To describe the ocean, the waves, the winds; the ship, her motions, rollings, wringings, and agonies; the sailors, their countenances, language, and behavior, is impossible. No man could keep upon his legs and nothing could be kept in its place; an universal wreck of everything in all parts of the ship, chests, casks, bottles, etc. No place or person was dry. On one of these nights, a thunderbolt struck three men upon deck, and wounded one of them a little by a scorch upon his shoulder; it also struck our maintop-mast..

"It is a great satisfaction to me, however, to recollect that I was myself perfectly calm, during the whole. I found, by the opinion of the people aboard, and of the captain himself, that we were in danger, and of this I was certain also, from my own observation: but I thought myself in the way of my duty, and I did not repent of my voyage. I confess I often regretted that I had brought my son. I was not so clear that it was my duty to expose him as myself, but I had been led to it by the child's inclination, and by the advice of all my friends. My Johnny's behavior gave me a satisfaction that I cannot express; fully sensible of our danger, he was constantly endeavoring to bear it with a manly patience, very attentive to me, and his thoughts constantly running in a serious strain."

A few days later came a yet more thrilling event. The log of the Boston says:

"Saw a ship to the south-east standing to the westward. Asked the favor of the Hon. John Adams to chase, which was immediately granted. Made sail and gave chase. At 3 p. m. came up with the chase, gave her a gun and she returned me three, one shot of which carried away my mizzen yard. She immediately struck. Out boat. Got the prisoners on board. She proved the ship Martha from London, bound to New York. I ordered a prize-master on board, intending to send her to France, but on consulting Mr. Adams, he thought most advisable to send her to America."

Thus Commodore Tucker, commander of the Boston, brief and business-like. Mr. Adams notes that "she was a letter of marque, with fourteen guns. She fired upon us, and one of her shot went through our mizzen yard. I happened to be upon the quarter deck, and in the direction from the ship to the yard, so that the ball went directly over my head. We, upon this, turned our broadside, which the instant she saw she struck. Captain Tucker very prudently ordered his officers not to fire."