Adams Family Correspondence, volume 2
1776-07-11
You seem to be situated in the Place of greatest Tranquility and Security, of any upon the Continent. . . .1 I may be mistaken in this particular, and an Armament may have invaded your Neighbourhood before now. But We have no Intelligence of any such Design and all that We now know of the Motions, Plans, Operations, and Designs of the Enemy, indicates the Contrary.—It is but just that you should have a little Rest, and take a little Breath.
I wish I knew whether your Brother and mine have inlisted in the Army, and what Spirit is manifested by our Militia, for marching to New York and Crown Point. . . . The Militia of Maryland, New Jersey, Pensilvania, and the lower Counties, are marching with much Alacrity, and a laudable Zeal, to take Care of Howe and his Army at Staten Island. The Army in New York is in high Spirits, and seems determined to give the Enemy a serious Reception.
The unprincipled, and unfeeling, and unnatural Inhabitants of Staten Island, are cordially receiving the Enemy, and Deserters say have engaged to take Arms.—They are an ignorant, cowardly, Pack of Scoundrells. Their Numbers are small, and their Spirit less.
It is some Time, since I received any Letter from you; the Plymouth one was the last. You must write me, every Week by the Post. If it is but a few Lines, it gives me many Spirits.
44I design to write to the General Court, requesting a Dismission, or at least a Furlow. I think to propose that they choose four more Members or at least two more, that so We may attend here in Rotation. Two or three or four may be at home at a Time, and the Colony properly represented notwithstanding.—Indeed, while the Congress were employed in political Regulations, forming the Sentiments of the People of the Colonies into some consistent System, extinguishing the Remainders of Authority under the Crown, and gradually erecting and strengthening Governments, under the Authority of the People, turning their Thoughts upon the Principles of Polity and the Forms of Government, framing Constitutions for the Colonies seperately, and a limited and defined Confederacy, for the united Colonies, and in some other Measures, which I do not choose to mention particularly, but which are now determined, or near the Point of Determination,2 I flattered myself that I might have been of some little Use here. But, now, these Matters will be soon compleated, and very little Business will be to be done here, but what will be either military or Commercial, Branches of Knowledge and Business, for which hundreds of others in our Province, are much better qualified than I am. I shall therefore request my Masters to relieve me.3
I am not a little concerned about my Health which seems to have been providentially preserved to me, much beyond my Expectations. But I begin to feel the disagreable Effects, of unremitting Attention to Business for so long a Time, and a Want of Exercise, and the bracing Quality of my Native Air: so that I have the Utmost Reason to fear an irreparable Injury to my Constitution, if I do not obtain a little Relaxation.
The Fatigues of War, are much less destructive to Health, than the painfull laborious Attention, to Debates, and to Writing, which drinks up the Spirits and consumes the Strength.—I am &c.
Here and below, suspension points are in MS.
This undoubtedly alludes to the work of the committee, which had been appointed on 12 June and of which JA was a member, “to prepare a plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers,” meaning (at this time) specifically France (
JCC
, 5:433). JA was himself the draftsman of the famous and influential “Plan” and instructions which resulted; see his
Diary and Autobiography
, 3:337–338, 393, 400, 412, 413, 414, 432–433, 435, with notes and references there. The committee submitted its report on 18 July, and debates on it followed intermittently for two months. JA considered the matter of such consequence that he would not ask for leave to visit his family even after hearing, on the 16th, that all of them were undergoing inoculation.
JA's proposal to the General Court for “an Alteration in their Plan of Dele-45gation,” urging that nine delegates be chosen annually so that part of them could always be on leave, is in a letter he apparently drafted on 17 July to John Avery, deputy secretary of state, but did not send until the 25th (M-Ar: vol. 195; printed in JA, Works
, 9:426–427). See also the editorial note in JA's Diary and Autobiography
, 2:251.
1776-07-13
I must begin with apoligising to you for not writing since the 17 of June. I have really had so many cares upon my Hands and Mind, with a bad inflamation in my Eyes that I have not been able to write. I now date from Boston where I yesterday arrived and was with all 4 of our Little ones innoculated for the small pox. My unkle and Aunt were so kind as to send me an invitation with my family. Mr. Cranch and wife and family, My Sister Betsy and her Little Neice,1 Cotton Tufts2 and Mr. Thaxter, a maid who has had the Distemper and my old Nurse compose our family. A Boy too I should have added. 17 in all.3 My unkles maid with his Little daughter and a Negro Man are here. We had our Bedding &c. to bring. A Cow we have driven down from B
I received some Letters from you last Saturday Night 26 of June.6 You mention a Letter of the 16 which I have never received, and I suppose must relate something to private affairs which I wrote about in May and sent by Harry.
46As to News we have taken several fine prizes since I wrote you as you will see by the news papers. The present Report is of Lord Hows comeing with unlimited powers. However suppose it is so, I believe he little thinks of treating with us as independant States. How can any person yet dreem of a settlement, accommodations &c. They have neither the spirit nor feeling of Men, yet I see some who never were call'd Tories, gratified with the Idea of Lord Hows being upon his passage with such powers.
By yesterdays post I received two Letters dated 3 and 4 of July7 and tho your Letters never fail to give me pleasure, be the subject what it will, yet it was greatly heightned by the prospect of the future happiness and glory of our Country; nor am I a little Gratified when I reflect that a person so nearly connected with me has had the Honour of being a principal actor, in laying a foundation for its future Greatness. May the foundation of our new constitution, be justice, Truth and Righteousness. Like the wise Mans house may it be founded upon those Rocks and then neither storms or temptests will overthrow it.
I cannot but feel sorry that some of the most Manly Sentiments in the Declaration are Expunged from the printed coppy. Perhaps wise reasons induced it.8
Poor Canady I lament Canady but we ought to be in some measure sufferers for the past folly of our conduct. The fatal effects of the small pox there, has led almost every person to consent to Hospitals in every Town. In many Towns, already arround Boston the Selectmen have granted Liberty for innoculation. I hope the necessity is now fully seen.
I had many dissagreable Sensations at the Thoughts of comeing myself, but to see my children thro it I thought my duty, and all those feelings vanished as soon as I was innoculated and I trust a kind providence will carry me safely thro. Our Friends from Plymouth came into Town yesterday. We have enough upon our hands in the morning. The Little folks are very sick then and puke every morning but after that they are comfortable. I shall write you now very often. Pray inform me constantly of every important transaction. Every expression of tenderness is a cordial to my Heart. Unimportant as they are to the rest of the world, to me they are every Thing.
We have had during all the month of June a most severe Drougth which cut of all our promising hopes of english Grain and the first crop of Grass, but since july came in we have had a plenty of rain and 47now every thing looks well. There is one Misfortune in our family which I have never mentiond in hopes it would have been in my power to have remedied9 it, but all hopes of that kind are at an end. It is the loss of your Grey Horse. About 2 months ago, I had occasion to send Jonathan of an errant to my unkle Quincys (the other Horse being a plowing). Upon his return a little below the church she trod upon a rolling stone and lamed herself to that degree that it was with great difficulty that she could be got home. I immediately sent for Tirrel and every thing was done for her by Baths, ointments, polticeing, Bleeding &c. that could be done. Still she continued extreem lame tho not so bad as at first. I then got her carried to Domet but he pronounces her incurable, as a callous is grown upon her footlock joint. You can hardly tell, not even by your own feelings how much I lament her. She was not with foal, as you immagined, but I hope she is now as care has been taken in that Respect.
I suppose you have heard of a fleet which came up pretty near the Light and kept us all with our mouths open ready to catch them, but after staying near a week and makeing what observations they could set sail and went of to our great mortification who were
I hope the Multiplicity of cares and avocations which invellope you will not be too powerfull for you. I have many anxietyes upon that account. Nabby and Johnny send duty and desire Mamma to say that an inflamation in their Eyes which has been as much of a distemper as the small pox, has prevented their writing, but they hope soon to be able to acquaint Pappa of their happy recovery from the Distemper.—Mr. C
PS A little India herb would have been mighty agreable now.
Presumably
AA's listing and total are confusing at best. It is impossible to arrive at 17 as the total number of patients, whether or not the persons mentioned in the next sentence are included. (The “Little daughter” in the next sentence was Elizabeth [b. 1770], daughter of Isaac and Elizabeth [Storer] Smith; she later married John P. Hale. See Adams Genealogy.)
First digit uncertain; possibly AA meant “50.”
“Miss Betsy and Nancy” were Elizabeth (later Mrs. Benjamin Guild) and Ann (later Mrs. Asa Packard), daughters of Col. Josiah Quincy by his 2d and 3d wives respectively. Mrs. Lincoln was doubtless Hannah, also a daughter of Col. Quincy but by his first wife; before her marriage to
That is, a letter so dated; it is printed above, and so is JA's letter to AA of 16 June, evidently delayed in transit.
No letter written by JA on 4 July 1776 is known to the editors. The possibility that he wrote a letter of that date to AA, enclosing in it the copy he had made of Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence (see the following note), and commenting on the revisions made by Congress in the text of that paper—this possibility cannot be ruled out. But it seems to the editors an exceedingly doubtful one. If one supposes that such a letter was written and received, then one must at once explain why no entry for it can be found in JA's letterbooks, which he was keeping with great fidelity at this time, and how the recipient's copy of a letter of such moment could have disappeared without a trace from the family archives. This supposition, in short, raises more unanswerable questions than it resolves. Since AA mentions “two Letters” rather than three, she is almost certainly referring to the two separate letters JA wrote her during the morning and the evening of 3 July, both printed above; otherwise we must suppose that she failed to acknowledge one of those letters, which are extant.
This remarkable paragraph raises questions to which only conjectural answers can be given. JA sent a copy of the Dunlap broadside of the Declaration of Independence to Mary Palmer on 5 July, the day it was printed (see his letter of that date, above), and he may have sent AA a copy in one of the packets of printed matter that he frequently forwarded from Philadelphia without covering letters. His earliest (surviving) reference to a text sent to her is in his first letter of 7 July (above), enclosing a Pennsylvania Evening Post of the 6th, which contained the first printing of the Declaration in a newspaper. AA had not received JA's letter of the 7th when she wrote the present letter. But printed copies of the Dunlap broadside had certainly reached Boston by 13 July from some source, and probably from several sources, for on that day Ezekiel Price visited his children, who were under inoculation in Boston, and wrote in his Diary: “The mail from New York brings the declaration of the Continental Congress for Independence” (MHS, Procs., 1st ser., 7 [1863–1864]:260). The same mail probably brought JA's letter to Mary Palmer of 5 July and Elbridge Gerry's letter to James Warren of the same date, which enclosed two broadside copies of the Declaration, one for Warren and one for Joseph Hawley (Austin, Gerry
, 1:202–203).
But what of AA's regret that “some of the most Manly Sentiments in the Declaration” as submitted by the drafting committee had been “Expunged” by Congress? How could she know, from the evidence in her hands, that any such thing had happened? Possibly JA had told her so in a letter now missing (see preceding note). Possibly letters (now lost) from other delegates in Philadel-49phia made observations to that effect, and the word spread rapidly in Boston. Neither of these explanations seems at all likely to the editors. The only other explanation is that AA received, most likely on the 13th, with JA's Warren-Adams Letters
, 1:261.) Since, so far as we know, JA had said nothing to AA about the actual authorship of the Declaration, and since the copy of the draft that he had evidently sent on is in his hand, AA would very naturally have inferred that he was the author, and would, characteristically, have resented alterations by Congress in her husband's work. The Adamses' minister in Boston, Rev. Samuel Cooper, made the same inference and a similar comment in a letter he wrote JA on 14 Aug. (Adams Papers): “That Masterly Performance cannot fail of it's deserved Weight upon the Minds of the People. I could wish, however, that some great Strokes I saw in a Manuscript Draught had not been omitted.” Cooper's letter makes clear beyond all question that JA had sent on his copy of Jefferson's “original Rough draught” during the summer of 1776, that it circulated in Boston, and that, since JA said nothing to the contrary (indeed apparently said nothing whatever about his handwritten copy when he sent it on), his friends in Boston assumed at this time that he was the author of the Declaration.
This is not the place to discuss the importance of the JA copy as a guide to the changes in the text of the Declaration while it was still in committee. It has remained ever since 1776 among the Adams Papers, except for a brief interval in 1943 when it was loaned to the Library of Congress for the purpose of making the first facsimile reproduction of it, which was published as plate 4 in Julian P. Boyd, The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text, Washington, 1943; see same, p. 6, 22–28; Jefferson, Papers, ed. Boyd, 1:416; and John H. Hazelton, The Declaration of Independence: Its History, N.Y., 1906, p. 306 ff., 348–349.
MS: “remided.”
Here and below, MS is torn by seal.