John Adams

by David McCullough

“Facts are stubborn things,” he told the jury, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Business was good in Massachusetts in the calm of 1772 and Adams prospered once again.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

IN 1774, Adams was chosen by the legislature as one of five delegates to the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia, and with all Massachusetts on the verge of rebellion, he removed Abigail and the children again to Braintree, where they would remain.

Now Sewall pleaded with Adams not to attend the Congress. The power of Great Britain was “irresistible” and would destroy all who stood in the way, Sewall warned.

As long as they lived, neither man would forget the moment.

Less than a year later, after the battle of Bunker Hill, Sewall would choose to “quit America.” With his wife and family he sailed for London, never to return.

America, Adams warned, could face subjugation of the kind inflicted on Ireland.

a dozen or more sachems and warriors of the Caughnawaga Indians in full regalia who had been invited to dine, together with their wives and children.

Yet finding himself now unexpectedly in the actual presence of Indians was another matter, and he had a very different reaction.

ADAMS AND HIS TWO COMPANIONS arrived at Philadelphia on Thursday, February 8, 1776, fifteen days after leaving Braintree.

The American bombardment of Boston had begun March 2 and 3.

That such had come to pass, wrote Abigail, was surely the work of the Lord and “marvelous in our eyes.”

PHILADELPHIA, the provincial capital of Pennsylvania on the western bank of the Delaware River, was a true eighteenth-century metropolis, the largest, wealthiest city in British America, and the most beautiful.

Public-spirited Philadelphians inspired by Benjamin Franklin had established the first volunteer fire company in the colonies, the first medical school, and a library.

With twenty-three printing establishments and, by 1776, seven newspapers—more newspapers even than in London—Philadelphia was the publishing capital of the colonies.

It was there, at the City Tavern, a few days later, that Adams had first met George Washington.

He felt pity for “the poor wretches fingering their beads, chanting Latin, not a word of which they understood,” he told Abigail.

By the time he returned for the Second Continental Congress, in late spring 1775, a month after Lexington and Concord, Philadelphia had become the capital of a revolution.

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.

drew up a list of what he was determined to see accomplished.

And, on the second of the two small opposing pages in the diary, he wrote, a “Declaration of Independency.”

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.

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.

“We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.”

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.

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.

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.

John Dickinson

Congress’s humble petition of July 8, 1775, the so-called Olive Branch Petition,

The petition was agreed to—only to be summarily dismissed by George III, who refused even to look at it and proclaimed the colonies in a state of rebellion.

WHAT NEITHER JOHN DICKINSON nor John Adams nor anyone could have anticipated was the stunning effect of Common Sense.

“Why is it that we hesitate? . . . The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth . . . for God’s sake, let us come to a final separation. . . . The birthday of a new world is at hand.”

What was more, as he confided to Abigail’s uncle, Isaac Smith, he thought “this American contest will light up a general war” in Europe.

But it was Paine’s “feeble” understanding of constitutional government, his outline of a unicameral legislature to be established once independence was achieved, that disturbed Adams most.

In the hope that the Canadians could be persuaded to join the American cause as “the 14th colony,” Congress organized a diplomatic expedition to Montreal with Benjamin Franklin at its head, and despite his age and poor health, Franklin departed on what was to be an exceedingly arduous and futile mission.

No one ever had trouble hearing what Adams had to say, nor was there ever the least ambiguity about what he meant.

Foreign powers can not be expected to acknowledge us, till we have acknowledged ourselves and taken our station among them as a sovereign power [tap], an independent nation [tap].

and it was Adams who drafted the first set of rules and regulations for the new navy, a point of pride with him for as long as he lived.

There was more to be done by sea and land than anyone knew, Adams kept saying.

On April 6, in another decisive step, Congress opened American ports to the trade of all nations except Britain.

“It has been the will of Heaven,” the essay began, “that we should be thrown into existence at a period when the greatest philosophers and lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live. . . .

How few of the human race have ever had an opportunity of choosing a system of government for themselves and their children?

The happiness of the people was the purpose of government,

that form of government with virtue as its foundation was more likely than any other to promote the general happiness.

all good government was republican,

“I have,” she wrote, “sometimes been ready to think that the passion for liberty cannot be equally strong in the breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow creature of theirs.”

“Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.