Independence (32 page)

John had not expected to play a major role in the First Congress, and indeed, like his three colleagues from Massachusetts, he remained in the background, saying little and taking pains to be circumspect on the rare occasions when he spoke. Furthermore, John had come to Philadelphia in September 1774 very much aware that he was a political novice. He had expected to be overshadowed—overawed, in fact—by the bevy of “wise Statesmen” in attendance.
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Adams was additionally convinced that he had not been graced with the qualities exhibited by most political standouts. Leaders, he thought, were almost always tall and graceful men who readily filled every room with their commanding presence. But he stood only five feet seven, the average height of American-born males in the late eighteenth century, leading him to sadly acknowledge that “By my Physical Constitution I am but an ordinary man.” In addition, Adams was awkward, portly, balding, and, by his own admission, a rather careless dresser. Nor was he especially warm and engaging. He admitted that he did not possess a knack for telling jokes. When it came to what he thought were men’s three favorites subjects—women, horses, and dogs—Adams could barely join in a conversation. Instead, he was a cantankerous sort given to arguing. That led others, including Jefferson, to describe him as “irritable.” Adams characterized himself as “irascible.”
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Adams had sat on the First Congress’s Grand Committee, and it had turned to him to draft the section on Parliament’s authority over colonial commerce, the great roadblock to completing its statement on American rights. Otherwise, he had watched and listened, and what he had seen and heard boosted his self-confidence. By the time Congress adjourned, Adams had come to see himself as intellectually superior to nearly all of his colleagues and the equal of most as a public speaker. He eagerly looked forward to playing a greater role in the Second Congress.

But Adams, who had collapsed following his tension-laced visit to Lexington soon after the war’s first battle, was still ill when he reached Philadelphia two weeks later. In letter after letter to Abigail that spring, he complained that he was “completely miserable,” “not well,” “quite infirm,” “wasted and exhausted,” and “weak in health.” “I am always unwell,” he despaired in the early weeks of Congress. He suffered with “smarting Eyes” and dim vision. He was afflicted with a skin disorder, night sweats, insomnia, weakness, fatigue, tremors, arrhythmia, depression, and acute anxiety.
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These were the same symptoms he had experienced during his illness four years earlier, and they would haunt him again in 1781. Each of Adams’s illnesses occurred in times when he endured great stress. Today, stress is thought to be one possible trigger of hyperthyroidism, and the cluster of symptoms Adams displayed is symptomatic of an overactive thyroid, or thyrotoxicosis. Physicians in Adams’s time were unaware of the thyroid, much less its maladies, but medical records from the next century—prior to the discovery of modern therapies—demonstrate that while the disease was usually fatal, some patients lived for years, because in some instances hyperthyroidism lapsed into remission and, on occasion, never reappeared.
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The cause of Adams’s poor health is uncertain, but the source of the tension that gripped him is not difficult to find. At the height of his illness, Adams remarked that “a vast Variety of great objects were crowding upon my Mind,” including worries over the safety of his family in a colony that was “suffering all the Calamities of
Famine
,
Pestilence
,
Fire
, and
Sword
at once.”
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Furthermore, Adams knew that he was part of a body in rebellion against king and Parliament. If the war was lost, every congressman would be liable to arrest and prosecution for the capital crime of treason, a grim fact that allegedly led Franklin to quip that the members of Congress must hang together or they would hang separately. Adams was not a coward, and from the start he believed the war was necessary and just. He also believed America would win the war. However, he was profoundly troubled by the knowledge that he had helped bring on a war in which others would be compelled to face hazards on the battlefield that he had never confronted. He was uneasy over the fact that he was the first male in the Adams family who had never served in the military. His burden of guilt only grew when one of his brothers, Elihu, died that summer of a camp disease while soldiering in the siege of Boston. When not writing home about the alarming symptoms of his illness, Adams filled his letters with remorseful pledges to fight for his country. “Oh that I was a Soldier!—I will be,” he exclaimed. “We must all be soldiers,” he said, adding: “Every body must and will and shall be a soldier.” But deep down he knew that he would never bear arms or come under fire, and it gnawed at him, feeding his anxieties and perhaps fueling his illness.
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In May 1775 Adams was too ill to mount a strenuous opposition to Dickinson’s campaign to petition the king. Even had he been well, he may not have fought too hard. Massachusetts’s fundamental priority at that stage was to preserve unity, at least until Congress created a national army that would displace the sectional Grand American Army.

By mid-June Adams felt better. He told Abigail that his eyes were improving and some of his other ills had abated. His health seemed to get better—and his spirits soared—on learning of America’s “astonishing” military spirit and Congress’s unanimous support of the war.
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The action that he had taken to break the logjam in Congress by urging the creation of a national army, and Washington’s subsequent appointment as its commander, were signals that Adams was ready to play a greater role. As the summer heat and humidity settled over Philadelphia, one observer remarked that Adams had emerged as “the first man in the House,” the leader of those who favored taking a firmer line toward Great Britain than did Dickinson’s faction.
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Adams’s ascent was breathtaking. Virtually devoid of political experience prior to the First Continental Congress, he had come to be a leader in the Second Congress after only a few weeks.

The legendary determination and industry that led Adams to flourish as a lawyer served him again in Congress. Pursuing what his colleagues might have thought was a sleepless pace, Adams tended to congressional business from early morning until well past dark, six days a week. He sat through the daily sessions of Congress and served on at least thirty-five committees during the year that began in June 1775. The committees often met before Congress convened or following its late-afternoon adjournment, and many required long hours of intense work in order to meet the pressing deadlines set by Congress.
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Characteristically, Adams also sought to become the best-informed congressman on a wide variety of subjects. He brought to Philadelphia several books from his considerable library and from time to time asked Abigail to send down others. He rose early and stayed up late reading and studying, straining to see the pages by the dim light of a flickering candle. His hard work paid dividends. In time, his colleagues came to see him as Congress’s foremost expert on political theory, diplomacy, and even military ordnance.

Nor was his diligence all that he had going for him. Adams’s years in the courtroom had made him both a talented debater and an able orator. He lacked Henry’s flair for the dramatic, but his speeches were eloquent and rational, prompting one congressman to remark that Adams was unequaled in his ability to grasp “the whole of a subject at a single glance.” Jefferson described Adams as “profound in his views … and accurate in his judgment.” Finally, while Adams’s penchant for argumentation was irritating, once the other congressmen got to know him, most grew to like him. Adams had “a heart formed for friendship,” as one of his fellow Boston lawyers remarked, and he so badly wanted to succeed that he overcame his naturally reserved habits.
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Adams never conquered his prickly manner, but he grew to be more outgoing and a good conversationalist. He had the ability to talk about numerous subjects, and he was blessed with the rare virtue of being a good listener. It may not be an exaggeration to say that John Adams made more lasting friendships with deputies from throughout America than any other member of Congress. Curiously, too, while John was no less radical than Samuel Adams by the summer of 1775, he was from first to last seen by most of his colleagues as something of a moderate, at least as far as Yankees went. Their perception only gave greater credibility to the tough and unsentimental line that he advocated.

By fits and starts that summer, Adams saw hopeful evidence that things were falling in place for those of his persuasion. He remained vexed that many in Congress, probably most, believed that North’s ministry and Parliament would come to their senses when they learned of what happened at Lexington and Concord. Adams predicted with certainty that Britain’s government would give America nothing “but Deceit and Hostility.” He was displeased too that the selection of the general officers who were to serve beneath Washington had been shot through with politics, leading to the appointment of some men who he feared were strikingly incompetent. Nothing that Congress had ever done gave “me more Torment,” he raged, although he knew that some good men had been chosen and was delighted that the top two officers were General Washington and Major General Lee, just as Massachusetts had wished. He may even have shared Samuel Adams’s belief that Washington and Lee jointly exhibited so many wonderful qualities that they would “make good all Deficiencies” of the other general officers. Adams was additionally thrilled that Congress had voted to raise soldiers from several colonies south of New England, a step that would make the Continental army a truly national force while giving the siege army at least a two-to-one superiority over Gage’s regulars. Among those raised were ten companies of riflemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Adams exclaimed that these men, armed with rifles rather than the notoriously inaccurate muskets that most eighteenth-century soldiers carried, could “kill with great Exactness at 200 yards Distance.” He was unruffled by their vow to hone in on the officers in the British army. Indeed, he hoped “they perform their oath.”
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Adams’s confidence grew as Congress redoubled its efforts that summer to find powder and weapons and to create an American currency. What truly made him happy, however, was evidence that the country was firmly behind the war. In some instances the people appeared to be out in front of their congressmen. Pennsylvanians were a case in point. Whereas Adams believed that many of that colony’s leaders were “timid” and only “lukewarm” in their support of the necessary military preparations, Pennsylvanians were rallying to arms. Philadelphia had rapidly raised three battalions—nearly two thousand men—“all in Uniforms, and very expert” in their “Wheelings and Firings.” There were riflemen in backcountry garb, gaudily clad cavalry, Highlanders in kilts, and “German Hussars,” who sported “a deaths Head” emblem on their waistbands. The latter, said Adams, were the “most formidable” men he had ever seen. As General Washington prepared to leave Philadelphia for the front in Boston, Adams rejoiced that the “Spirit of the People is such as you would wish” and that every colony had embraced the “Cause of America.”
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After his selection as commander, Washington remained in Philadelphia for a week to wrap up his personal affairs—among other things, he had a will drawn—and also probably to listen to Congress’s discussion surrounding the general officers, virtually all of whom were strangers to him. In addition, he served as a consultant on the drafting of the Articles of War, the judicial code governing army conduct. Washington also awaited his orders from Congress, much of which limited, or at least restrained, his authority. Though given “full power” to repel “hostile invasion[s]” and defend American liberties, he was directed to seek the advice of his general officers in councils of war before making substantive decisions. He was made responsible for the appointment of lower-grade field officers but was forbidden to name general officers. Fearful of wayward and disorderly soldiers, Congress told its new commander that it expected him to keep “strict discipline” in the Continental army.
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At sunrise on Friday, June 23, every member of Congress gathered outside the Pennsylvania State House to bid farewell to General Washington, who at last was ready to ride north to take command of the army. In the gathering dawn, while scores of spectators watched, Washington bowed gravely, said good-bye, and easily sprang aboard his great white charger. The congressmen who would escort him to the edge of the city climbed into carriages. The city’s militia units and a spirited martial band took their places at the head of the column. When all were in line, the procession set off, clattering over Philadelphia’s cobblestone streets. It had been the simplest of ceremonies. But it was an epochal moment. America’s commander in chief, tasked with compelling Great Britain to reconcile with the colonies on Congress’s terms, was on his way to a most uncertain future.
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