Independence (47 page)

Nothing else that Adams ever wrote rivaled the impact of
Thoughts on Government
. Many of his previous publications had been overly long and dense. This one was crafted with a lovely clarity. Perhaps the literary quality was improved because Adams did not realize that what he wrote would be published. Or he may have been inspired to try to match Paine's felicitous style. Neither he nor anyone else was Paine's equal as a writer, yet Adams reached a large audience of articulate citizens and succeeded in easing many fears about America's ability to govern itself. Some concerns remained. An independent America would be a huge nation—the settled portions of the thirteen provinces were several times larger than most European nations—and it was certain to be frayed by wildly dissimilar interests. But Adams's essay was pivotal because it offered a rational formula for constructing a government that would be insulated from those “ambitious innovators” that so worried the most conservative colonists. Adams succeeded in convincing many Americans that they could live in an independent nation and still preserve what they chose to keep from their treasured colonial past.

On May 5, ten days before the Virginia Convention called on Congress to declare independence, a vessel docked in Philadelphia loaded with thirteen tons of gunpowder and other war-related materials that had been taken aboard in Port l'Orient, France. The cargo was welcome, but the ship also brought a two-month-old issue of a Dublin newspaper that was filled with unwanted news. The North ministry, it disclosed, was dispatching forty-five thousand troops to America, among them German mercenaries.
67

Congress had known for months that the mother country might utilize mercenaries. The king had cryptically alluded to offers of foreign assistance in his October address to Parliament. Even before that, Americans had learned from accounts in the British press, including debates in Parliament, that North's government was attempting to negotiate a treaty with Catherine the Great to obtain Russian soldiers. Rumors buzzed in Philadelphia just after Christmas that “a great Number of Foreign Troops are coming over.” One report claimed that thirty thousand Russians were already crossing the Atlantic. As Great Britain had frequently employed mercenaries to augment its own army during its wars with France and Spain, few were surprised that London would once again turn to this expedient. The ministers “must Certainly have recourse to Foreigners as they cannot meet success in” raising adequate numbers within Great Britain, Robert Morris responded rather matter-of-factly.
68

Americans learned in midwinter 1776 that North's Russian diplomacy had failed. The csarina had declined to sell her soldiers to the British. No one in Congress thought that was the end of the story. Most believed the Crown would next try to hire German soldiers. That was precisely what it did. In February the British government concluded treaties with the rulers of four German principalities to lease twenty thousand soldiers. The opposition in Parliament had fought hiring foreign troops, calling such a step “disgraceful and dangerous.” When the government submitted the treaties for ratification in February, Isaac Barré charged that this was fresh proof that North and Germain were “not fit to conduct the affairs of a great nation.” David Hartley called it a “fatal measure,” for “when foreign powers are once introduced in this dispute, all possibility of reconciliation is totally cut off.” The treaties passed in the Commons by a three-to-one margin.
69

Congress may not have been surprised to learn in May that thousands of German troops had been hired, but nothing since word of the American Prohibitory Act so riled the delegates. For some, the news that the king planned to use foreigners to kill his American subjects was the final confirmation of the corruption and despotism that stalked the mother country. The “Tyrant of Britain and his Parliament,” said John Hancock, “have proceeded to the last Extremity.” Several congressmen described the use of mercenaries as “infamous,” but to hire German soldiers, who had a reputation as cruel and barbarous warriors, was unthinkable. Great Britain has “added near half of Germany” to its army, a North Carolina delegate raged, while a Yankee said that it meant London intended “to push the war with the utmost fury.” James Duane of New York, who had steadfastly been aligned with the reconciliationists, worried that the Germans would not leave even if they subdued the rebellion. “[L]ike all other Barbarians,” he fumed, they would remain to “set up their own Empire on the Ruins of Americans.” His compatriot from Pennsylvania, Robert Morris, was no longer so blasé. The “Dogs of Warr are now fairly set loose upon us,” he said, adding that the Germans “are coming to Slaughter us.” No one better captured the temper in Congress than New Hampshire's Josiah Bartlett. George III, he charged, planned to use “Britons, Hessians, Hanoverians, Indians, negroes and every other butcher [he] can hire against us.”
70

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.
71

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.”
72

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.”
73

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.
74

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.
75

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.”
76

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.”
77

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.”
78

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.
79
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.”
80