Adams Family Correspondence, volume 2
1776-10-03
Mr. Samuel Adams sends his affectionate Regards to Mrs. Adams (in which his own Mrs. Adams heartily joyns) and acquaints her that he shall sett off next Week or Monday see'night at the farthest for Philadelphia and is desirous of rendering his best Services to Mrs. A. He wishes to know the State of her Family with Respect to their Health; is very sorry that he has not had the Opportunity of making her a Visit at Braintree, a Pleasure which he has missed of by Reason of constant Avocations, which he begs may excuse him.
He had the pleasure of receiving a Letter from his Friend and Colleague Mr. JA of the 14th of September,1 and supposes he has written to his Lady since that Date. He only adds that the Conduct 137of his Friend at Staten Island affords an additional Reason why his Country should still covet and even demand his further publick Services.
LbC (Adams Papers); printed under the wrong date of 17 Sept. in JA's Works
, 9:443–446.
1776-10-04
I send you, all the News. When I do not write I suffer more Pain than you do, when you dont receive a Line. I have no greater Pleasure than in Writing to you, but I have not Time.
When I shall come home I dont know. But this you may depend on, I can come when I will. The Communication is open and will remain so. It cannot be cutt off.
The General Court have not appointed any one in my stead. I expected they would—but whether they do or not I shall come home, before long.
1776-10-04
I am seated, in a large Library Room, with Eight Gentlemen round about me, all engaged in Conversation. Amidst these Interruptions, how shall I make it out to write a Letter?
The first day of October, the day appointed by the Charter of Pensilvania for the annual Election of Representatives, has passed away, and two Counties only have chosen Members, Bucks and Chester.
The Assembly is therefore dead, and the Convention is dissolved. A new Convention is to be chosen, the Beginning of November.
The Proceedings of the late Convention are not well liked, by the best of the Whiggs.—Their Constitution is reprobated and the Oath with which they have endeavoured to prop it, by obliging every Man to swear that he will not add to, or diminish from or any Way alter that Constitution, before he can vote, is execrated.
We live in the Age of political Experiments. Among many that will 138fail some, I hope will succeed.—But Pensilvania will be divided and weakend, and rendered much less vigorous in the Cause, by the wretched Ideas of Government, which prevail, in the Minds of many People in it.1
This proved a true prophecy. The Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, the work of a convention dominated by political radicals, was adopted on 28 Sept. after only a token submission of its articles to the citizens and with a substantial minority of “moderates” in the convention opposed to it. Worse, the Convention adopted a provision for an oath exacting from every elector a promise that he would, in effect, neither oppose nor criticize anything whatever in the form of government now established. One result was that it took six months to organize a new government in Pennsylvania, and another was that for fourteen years, until a new constitution was adopted in 1790, the state was torn and distracted by political factionalism probably bitterer than that in any other state. See J. Paul Selsam, The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, Phila., 1936, chs. 4–6; Robert L. Brunhouse, The Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 1776–1790, Harrisburg, 1942, passim.
Among the most vocal critics of the constitution of 1776, both at home and abroad, in public and in private, for many years, was JA, who considered it an epitome of all that was bad in constitution-making and an unadulterated specimen of democratic tyranny. It is not too much to say that his close observation of what happened in Pennsylvania politics in 1776–1777 was one of the principal influences on his mature political thought.