Independence (54 page)

Intermingled with these thoughts was one other idea. Most colonists had always believed that they could “safely venture our strength … against that of Great Britain only.” But on learning of the hiring of the Germans, many an American quickly concluded that “we are … unequal to a Contest with her and her Allies without any assistance from without.” And substantial assistance from without—from France, in other words—might be had only if America declared independence.
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By early May Congress had been in session without a break since September 13. During that time some delegates had relinquished their seats and others had been recalled and replaced, as when Gerry took Cushing’s place in the Massachusetts delegation. Among those who stayed on in Congress, most had managed to squeeze in a trip home, and some who did not live far from Philadelphia had visited their families two or three times. For those confronted with a long journey, to New England or the lower South for instance, a trip home inevitably meant a lengthy absence from Congress. John Adams was away from Philadelphia from December 8 until February 8, spending almost half that time on the road. Some congressmen never went home. Connecticut’s Oliver Wolcott told his wife, Laura, that he could not leave while Congress was considering matters that would “decide the Fate of this Country” for generations to come. Samuel Adams wrote to Elizabeth that he badly wanted to be with her, but “I thought my self indispensably obligd … to deny my self.” He added soothingly: “Whenever I shall have the pleasure of seeing you, to me it will be inexpressible.”
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Long before May 1776 most congressmen were exhausted, “worn down with long and uninterrupted Labour,” as one put it, or “almost wore down … owing to the multiplicity of business,” according to another. Lawyers, businessmen, or planters, for the most part, many congressmen wrung their hands over the personal cost of public service. “My private affairs … are hurrying fast into Ruin [and] really require some Attention,” one despaired. It was worrisome enough that his business affairs at home were left to the “discretion of [inadequately superintended] workmen,” said one congressman, but the cost of living in Philadelphia was an additional burden. The city was at least six times more expensive to live in than a small New England town, one Yankee congressman despaired. But nothing worried the congressmen more than their health, and with good reason. During the first weeks of 1776 one member of Congress, Thomas Lynch of South Carolina, suffered a stroke. Though he was “better than he has been” within two weeks, his congressional service was at an end. Rhode Island’s Samuel Ward, who said in January that he was “not like to get time to be Inoculated” against smallpox, was stricken with the disease in March. He perished after a brief illness. Ward was the second congressman to die since the opening of Congress eighteen months earlier; Virginia’s Peyton Randolph had died suddenly the previous autumn. Delegates wrote home complaining of frequent headaches, coughs, fevers, irritated eyes, and gout. Many thought their maladies attributable to “being So long Confined [indoors] without any Bodily Exercise.” Given their daily regimen of up to six hours at a desk while Congress was in session, and often still more time in committee meetings, some delegates sought to compensate with long early-morning walks or horseback rides. At least one congressman attempted greater “discipline in living.” He curtailed his diet from three meals to two each day and ate “a pretty light Breakfast of Sweetened Water and Milk with some Toast.”
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Harmony prevailed in many delegations, but in others, bitter differences separated the deputies, sometimes causing open ruptures between old friends and adding to the strains attendant to congressional service. The Massachusetts delegation was one of the most deeply divided. Hancock and Robert Treat Paine opposed much that John and Samuel Adams supported, and in the end their wrangles led to resentments and downright hostility. Paine especially complained of “the cold, haughty, disrespectful behaviour of the two Adams towards me,” and he found John Adams’s perceived superciliousness to be especially galling. “I flatter my self I deserve [such treatment] from no body,” Paine raged, adding that “I am sure I dont from him.” Paine’s indignation in part rose from jealousy of his colleague’s rising stature. Paine was mortified that Adams, who had been his junior as a lawyer in Massachusetts, had been “ranked above” him by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and was convinced that a conspiracy among “a Junto of 2, 3, or 4 men”—doubtless Samuel Adams and some of his Virginia friends, including Richard Henry Lee—had raised John Adams to great prominence in Congress. John Adams was aware of Paine’s enmity, but shrugged it off. “[W]hat cant be cured must be endured,” he remarked.
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No strain equaled that of the anxiety caused by separation from wives, children, and loved ones. “I have been waiting impatiently for a Letter from you.… [Y]ou cannot do me a greater Pleasure than by writing to me often,” one delegate told his spouse, a sentiment echoed by most of his colleagues. One congressman, a widower, was courting a woman at home—you should have seen them “
Cheese
together,” said a colleague who had observed them during a trip home at Christmas—and missed her company. Sometimes the tidings from home were gloomy and unwelcome. New York’s Robert R. Livingston lost both parents while he attended this lengthy session of Congress. John Adams learned of his brother’s death while on military duty. One of Samuel Ward’s sons was captured during the attack on Quebec and was confined in a smallpox-riddled prison. Even when the news from home was not bad, many congressmen agonized over the “unhappy situation” of family and friends who lived close to the British army or in an area likely to see fighting during the campaign of 1776. Brooding over their family’s fate at the hands of British or Hessian regulars occasioned more “gloomy Ideas in my mind” than all the wrangles on the floor of Congress, said one delegate. Many grieved at not being home to “be an Instrument in forming the Minds & Manners of my dear Children,” and not a few purchased toys and clothing to send to them.
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Those left at home were no less anxious for their spouses. They were also eager to know what was occurring in Congress. “Pray write me every opportunity every thing that transpires,” Abigail Adams begged her husband, and she told him that she prayed that whatever he did in Congress “may be directed into the wisest and best measures for our Safety.”
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The Adamses were accustomed to prolonged separations. While practicing law, John had been apart from Abigail for up to a third of each year since 1764 as he rode the legal circuit throughout Massachusetts and what today is Maine. But aware of her husband’s fragile health, Abigail was beside herself with worry when John departed for Philadelphia a few days after Lexington and Concord. When almost three weeks passed without hearing from him, she grew frantic. When his first letter finally arrived and she learned that he had gotten there safely, Abigail admonished him to be as careful in his work habits “as you can consistent with the Duty you owe your Country.”
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Concern for her husband’s well-being was merely one of Abigail’s worries. With Boston Harbor shut and the city besieged, she and her neighbors were afflicted with scarcities and soaring prices. From time to time she sent her husband a shopping list in the hope that he could find certain items in Philadelphia, including pins, black pepper, fabrics, rhubarb, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and handkerchiefs. She was frustrated too by her lack of free time. As managing the farm had been added to her customary responsibilities with the children, Abigail said that her life was akin to that of “a nun in a cloister.”
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Those aggravations paled in comparison to the fear triggered by the outbreak of dysentery that swept the region in the summer and fall of 1775, a scourge that in some measure was spread to civilians by the two armies in and around Boston. In some towns more women and children died that year from the unfurling camp disease than did the males from the village who were away soldiering.
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This “Distemper,” this “pestilence,” this “general putrefaction,” this “voilent Dysentery,” as Abigail variously called the affliction, soon enough struck her household. Two servants, a child—Thomas Boylston—and Abigail herself fell ill “in a violent manner.… Our House is an hospital in every part,” she told John. Patty, one of the servants, perished, as did others in town, including Abigail’s mother, who succumbed to the stubborn malady on October 1. “Woe follows Woe and one affliction treads upon the heel of an other,” Abigail grieved, every bit as much a victim of war as a soldier who faced dangers on the front lines. “I sit down with a heavy Heart to write to you,” she told her husband in one letter. “Have pitty upon me, have pitty upon me o! thou my beloved,” she continued. Inconsolable, Abigail ranted at Britain’s leaders for the devastation they had unleashed. “O [Lord] North! may the Groans and cryes … Harrow up thy Soul,” she lashed out. By November she favored independence. Great Britain was no longer America’s parent state, she said. It was America’s “tyrant State.… Let us separate, they are unworthy to be our Breathren.”
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Though John was writing home about twice each week, his letters miscarried at this critical juncture, leaving Abigail to worry yet again about his fate while she was ensconced in her sorrow. “[T]is only in my Night visions that I know any thing about you,” she lamented. His letters finally arrived—five in one day—and she drew sustenance from them, exclaiming that they “administer comfort to my wounded Heart.”
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John and his fellow congressmen were hundreds of miles from the front lines, but Abigail lived only a stone’s throw from the British army in occupied Boston. Every conceivable sort of rumor about impending British or Continental actions swirled through her neighborhood. Some were not that fanciful. Hearsay had it that the Royal Navy might sail into Quincy Bay and shell Braintree, laying waste to it as it had destroyed Falmouth. The story circulated too that Howe might land an invasion force near Braintree in an attempt to outflank Washington’s Continentals. In that event, Abigail knew that the battlefield would be very “near my dwelling.” During the first days of the siege of Boston, she had lived “in continual Expectation of Hostilities.” She moved her husband’s library to his brother’s house, which she thought might be in a safer location in the event of an attack, and she tried to be brave. “Danger they say makes people valiant,” she remarked. As it turned out, the closest thing to a battle in her locality was brought on by Washington’s Dorchester Heights operation. The army was but a short distance from Braintree, and the heavy Continental bombardment shook her house. “No sleep for me to Night.… [M]y Heart Beat pace with [the cannonade] all night,” she wrote John. She said she had hurried up nearby Penn’s Hill, “whence I could see every shell which was thrown.…’Tis now an incessant Roar.… My Hand and heart … tremble, at this domestick fury.”
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Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blyth. The wife of John Adams, she remained at home near Boston and was close to early fighting during the war. She was a proponent of independence and encouraged her husband to seek greater rights for American women following the break with the mother country. (Massachusetts Historical Society)

Though absorbed with the challenge of daily sessions of Congress, John responded with concern and sensitivity to Abigail’s travails. “I long to know, how you fare, and whether you are often discomposed” by the war’s dangers and disruptions, he said. He tried to be reassuring: “I think you are in no Danger—dont let the … fruitful Imaginations of others affect you.” He gently reminded her from time to time that American liberty was at stake and the struggle required sacrifice, to which he added his praise of how she was bearing up: “It gives … Pleasure … that you sustain with so much Fortitude, the Shocks and Terrors of the Times. You are really brave, my dear, you are an Heroine.” But John’s letters were devoid of romantic sentiments, and it irritated his wife. After he had been absent for months, Abigail bluntly told him: “I want some sentimental Effusions of the Heart. I am sure you are not destitute of them.” The letters she received in return must have been disappointing. Perhaps fearing that his correspondence would be intercepted once again and published by some delighted Tory editor, John scrupulously avoided all evidence of amorous feelings.
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