John Adams - SA (12 page)

A sweltering, fly-infested summer of 1775 was followed by an autumn of almost unceasing rains. Dysentery broke out in the military camps. Adams, though suffering from rheumatism and a violent cold, worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, in committee meetings from seven to ten in the morning, then to the full Congress till late afternoon, then back to committees from six to ten at night.

Politics were no less perplexing than ever. “Politics are a labyrinth without a clue,” he wrote, but he had come to understand the makeup of Congress. He knew the delegates now as he had not before, and they had come to know him. That he was repeatedly chosen for the most important committees was a measure of his influence and of the respect others had for his integrity, his intellect, and exceptional capacity for hard work. He was the leading committeeman of the Massachusetts delegation perhaps indeed of the whole Congress.

By October, at the time of Abigail's shattering ordeal with sickness and death at home, Adams was writing to say they must prepare themselves, “minds and hearts for every event, even the worst.” Since his first involvement in the “Cause of America,” he had known the crisis would never be settled peaceably and this, he told her in confidence, had been a source of much “disquietude.”

The thought that we might be driven to the sad necessity of breaking our connection with G
[reat]
B
[ritain]
, exclusive of the carnage and destruction which it was easy to see must attend the separation, always gave me a great deal of grief.

*   *   *

POSSIBLY IT WAS HIS FIRST or second day back in Philadelphia, in early February 1776, after the long wintry journey from home, that Adams, in his room at Mrs. Yard's, drew up a list of what he was determined to see accomplished. Or as appears more likely, from its placement in his diary, the list had been composed earlier, somewhere en route. Undated, it included, “An alliance to be formed with France and Spain”; “Government to be assumed by every colony”; “Powder mills to be built in every colony and fresh efforts to make saltpetre
[for the making of gunpowder]
.” And, on the second of the two small opposing pages in the diary, he wrote, a “Declaration of Independency.”

Independence had been talked about privately and alluded to in correspondence, but rarely spoken of directly in public declamation, or in print. To Adams independence was the only guarantee of American liberty, and he was determined that the great step be taken. The only question was when to make the move. If a decision were forced on Congress too soon, the result could be disastrous; independence would be voted down. But every day that independence was put off would mean added difficulties in the course of the larger struggle. Abigail, in one of her letters, aptly offered some favorite lines from Shakespeare:

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in the shallows and in miseries... And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.

But just when to catch the tide was the question. By Adams's estimate, Congress was about equally divided three ways—those opposed to independence who were Tories at heart if not openly, those too cautious or timid to take a position one way or the other, and the “true blue,” as he said, who wanted to declare independence with all possible speed. So as yet the voices for independence were decidedly in the minority. Indeed, the delegates of six colonies—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina—were under specific instructions not to vote for independence.

The opposing argument hung on the lingering possibility of a last-minute reconciliation with Britain. Were not the likes of Edmund Burke speaking out in Parliament for American rights, it was said. Supposedly a peace commission was on the way from London. To Adams such talk was a phantom. “The Ministry,” he wrote, “have caught the colonies as I have often caught a horse, by holding an empty hat, as if it was full of corn....” But throughout the middle colonies, as in parts of the South, great numbers of people had no wish to separate from the mother country. In Philadelphia such sentiment ran strong, and not just among the city's numerous Tories. “The plot thickens.... Thinking people uneasy,” observed a local attorney. “The Congress in equilibria on the question of independence or no.... I love the cause of liberty, but cannot heartily join in the presentation of measures totally foreign to the original plan of resistance.”

To many staunchly pacifist Quakers any step that led nearer to all-out war was anathema. To them George III was “the best of kings,” and they spoke of those who called themselves patriots as “the violent people.”

The mood of the city had become extremely contentious. “The malignant air of calumny has taken possession of almost all ranks and societies of people in this place,” wrote Christopher Marshall, an apothecary and committed patriot (though a Quaker) who had become one of Adams's circle of Philadelphia friends.

The rich, the poor, the high professor and the prophane, seem all to be infected with this grievous disorder, so that the love of our neighbor seems to be quite banished, the love of self and opinions so far prevails.... The
[Tory]
enemies of our present struggle... are grown even scurrilous to individuals, and treat all characters who differ from them with the most opprobrious language.

In Congress the strain was showing. From Virginia had come word that the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, having escaped to the safety of a British man-of-war, had called on all slaves to rebel, promising them their freedom if they joined the King's forces. On New Year's Day he had ordered the bombardment of Norfolk. Southern delegates were outraged. At the same time the bad news from Canada had had much the same effect witnessed by Adams in the wayside taverns en route from Massachusetts. “There is a deep anxiety, a kind of thoughtful melancholy,” he reported to Abigail. Writing again, he stressed that the events of war were always uncertain. Then, paraphrasing a favorite line from the popular play Cato by Joseph Addison—a line that General Washington, too, would often call upon—Adams told her, “We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.”

With sickness widespread in Philadelphia there was much hacking and coughing in Congress and many a long, sallow look. When some of the delegates protested that smoke from the wood stoves in the chamber was the cause of such poor health, the stoves were removed. Other ailments struck. Thomas Lynch of South Carolina suffered a stroke, from which he would not recover. Smallpox reappeared in the city, putting everyone further on edge. In March one of New England's most prominent delegates, Samuel Ward of Rhode Island, would die of the disease.

On February 27, word arrived that Parliament, in December, had prohibited all trade with the colonies and denounced as traitors all Americans who did not make an unconditional submission. The punishment for treason, as every member of Congress knew, was death by hanging.

A vast British armada was reported under way across the Atlantic and there were ominous rumors of the King hiring an army of German mercenaries. It was the New Englanders who held firm for independence, though two of the Massachusetts delegation, John Hancock and Robert Treat Paine, exhibited nothing like the zeal of either Samuel Adams or Elbridge Gerry. There were many, too, among the other delegations, who could be counted on, though unfortunately several of the most important were absent. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia would not appear at Philadelphia until the middle of March. Caesar Rodney of Delaware would be away until April. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia would not arrive for another three months, not until the middle of May. Meanwhile, time was wasting and a great deal needed doing.

Present nearly every day, notwithstanding his years and infirmities, was Benjamin Franklin, who, at age seventy, was popularly perceived to be the oldest, wisest head in the Congress, which he was, and the most influential, which he was not. Franklin wanted independence and considered Congress lamentably irresolute on the matter, as he told Adams. Franklin had no expectation of new terms from Britain and from long experience in London, as an agent for Pennsylvania, he knew the King and the Foreign Ministry as did no one else in Congress. But Franklin had no liking for floor debate. He was patient, imperturbable, and at times sound asleep in his chair. Never would he argue a point. Indeed, it was rare that he spoke at all or ventured an opinion except in private conversation, which to Adams, who was almost incapable of staying out of an argument, was extremely difficult to comprehend. “He has not assumed anything,” Adams wrote in frustration, “nor affected to take the lead; but has seemed to choose that the Congress pursue their own sentiments, and adopt their own plans.” That Franklin was quietly proposing to equip the Continental Army with bows and arrows must have left Adams still more puzzled.

For Adams any sustained equivalent of Franklin's benign calm would have been impossible. Knowing his hour had come and that he must rise to the occasion and play a leading part, he would play it with all that was in him.

Among the opposition there were only two whom he disliked, Benjamin Harrison and Edward Rutledge. Harrison, an outspoken Virginia planter, six feet four inches tall and immensely fat, was a fervent champion of American rights who liked to say he would have come to Philadelphia on foot had it been necessary. To Adams, nonetheless, he was a profane and impious fool. Rutledge, the youngest member, was dandified, twenty-six years old, and overflowing with self-confidence. At first, Adams judged him “smart” if not “deep,” but the more Rutledge talked, the more he expressed disagreement with Adams, the more scathing Adams's assessment became, to the point where, in his diary, he appeared nearly to run out of words. “Young Ned Rutledge is a perfect Bob o' Lincoln, a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock, excessively vain, excessively weak, and excessively variable and unsteady—jejune, inane, and puerile.”

Yet Adams remained pointedly courteous to both men, as to others of the anti-independence faction. Among the surprises of the unfolding drama, as tensions increased, was the extent to which the ardent, disputatious John Adams held himself in rein, proving when need be a model of civility and self-restraint, even of patience.

In later years Adams would recall the warning advice given the Massachusetts delegation the day of their arrival for the First Congress. Benjamin Rush, Thomas Mifflin, and two or three other Philadelphia patriots had ridden out to welcome the Massachusetts men, and at a tavern in the village of Frankford, in the seclusion of a private room, they told the New Englanders they were “suspected of having independence in view.” They were perceived to be “too zealous” and must not presume to take the lead. Virginia, they were reminded, was the largest, richest, and most populous of the colonies, and the “very proud” Virginians felt they had the right to lead.

According to Adams, the advice made a deep impression, and among the consequences was the choice of George Washington to head the army. But Adams also wrote that he had “not in my nature prudence and caution enough” always to stand back. Years before, at age twenty, he had set down in his diary that men ought to “avow their opinions and defend them with boldness,” and he was of the same mettle still.

*   *   *

THE BULWARK OF THE OPPOSITION of the “cool faction,” was the Pennsylvania delegation, and the greatly respected John Dickinson was its eloquent floor leader. Cautious, conservative by nature, Dickinson was, as Adams had noted, a distinctive figure, tall and exceptionally slender, with almost no color in his face. Because of his Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer, an early pamphlet on the evils of British policy, Dickinson had become a hero. He was “the Farmer,” his name spoken everywhere, though he was hardly the plain man of the soil many imagined. Born to wealth and raised on an estate in Delaware, he had trained in the law at London and made his career in Philadelphia, where he had risen rapidly to the top of his profession. Married to a Quaker heiress, he lived in grand style, riding through the city in a magnificent coach-and-four attended by liveried black slaves. His town house, catercornered to the State House on Chestnut Street, was then undergoing extensive alterations and thought to be too large and showy even by his wife, who preferred their nearby country seat, Fairhill.

Dickinson had wished to make a good first impression on Adams, and he succeeded. As a dinner guest at Fairhill during the First Congress, Adams was charmed. Dickinson “has an excellent heart, and the cause of his country lies near it,” Adams had written. As for his initial concern that the rigors of Congress might be too much for someone of such delicate appearance, Adams had learned better. Though afflicted with the gout, Dickinson had since assumed command of a Philadelphia battalion with the rank of colonel. He had become the politician-soldier of the sort Adams so often imagined himself, yet it was with a determination no less than Adams's own that Dickinson kept telling Congress that peaceful methods for resolving the current crisis were still possible and greatly preferable. He was not a Tory. He was not opposed to independence in principle. Rather, he insisted, now was not the time for so dangerous and irrevocable a decision.

Adams had come to believe that Dickinson's real struggle was with his mother and his wife, both devout Quakers who bedeviled him with their pacifist views. “If I had such a mother and such a wife,” Adams would reflect years later, recalling Dickinson's predicament, “I believe I should have shot myself.”

Outraged by Dickinson's insistence on petitions to the King as essential to restoring peace, even after Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, Adams had strongly denounced any such step. Like many other delegates, he had been infuriated by Congress's humble petition of July 8, 1775, the so-called Olive Branch Petition, that had been Dickinson's major contribution. From the day he saw with his own eyes what the British had done at Lexington and Concord, Adams failed to understand how anyone could have any misconception or naive hope about what to expect from the British. “Powder and artillery are the most efficacious, sure and infallible conciliatory measures we can adopt,” Adams wrote privately.