John Adams - SA (32 page)

In the last week of August, Adams had attended a dinner at Harvard in honor of the new French minister, the Chevalier de La Luzerne. The setting was the Philosophy Room of Harvard Hall, the old laboratory of Adams's favorite professor, Winthrop. There, among the “philosophical apparatus,” Adams had offered to some of his dinner companions his dream of establishing a Society of Arts and Sciences at Boston, as a counterpart to the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia. The idea was to be enthusiastically taken up; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences would be founded in less than a year. But the dinner and the conversation were also an inspiration for what he wrote in the paragraph on education, and particularly the inclusion of natural history.

Because wisdom and education were not sufficient of themselves, he had added the further “duty” of government to “countenance and inculcate” the principles of humanity, charity, industry, frugality, honesty, sincerity—virtue, in sum. And amiability as well—“good humor,” as he called it—counted for the common good, the Constitution of Massachusetts was to proclaim, suggesting that such delight in life as Adams had found in the amiable outlook of the French had had a decided influence.

He had written Section II of Chapter 6, in a burst of inspiration, the words “flowing” from his pen, but expected the convention to “show it no mercy,” as he later said. “I was somewhat apprehensive that criticism and objections would be made to the section, and particularly that the ‘natural history’ and ‘good humor’ would be stricken out.” To his surprise and delight, the whole of the paragraph passed intact, and, as he also noted, “unanimously without amendment!”

In the end, the convention approved nearly all of his draft, with only a few notable changes. Preferring what Jefferson had written in the Declaration of Independence, the convention revised the first article of the Declaration of Rights, that all men were “born equally free and independent,” to read that all men were “born free and equal,” a change Adams did not like and would like even less as time went on. He did not believe all men were created equal, except in the eyes of God, but that all men, for all their many obvious differences, were born to equal rights.

The reference to freedom of speech was removed, not to be reinstated until much later, and the worship of God was declared a right of all men, as well as a duty. The legislature was also given power to override the governor's veto, another change Adams regretted, as it was contrary to his belief in a strong, popularly elected executive.

None of the alterations, however, diminished his overall pride in what he and the convention had achieved, and the acclaim it brought. “I take vast satisfaction in the general approbation of the Massachusetts Constitution,” he would tell a friend. “If the people are as wise and honest in the choice of their rulers, as they have been in framing a government, they will be happy, and I shall die content with the prospect for my children.”

As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.

*   *   *

ADAMS HAD PICKED UP on other business in the meantime, attending to some of his old law practice, and responding to those friends in Congress who wrote to welcome him home. Still wounded by the way Congress had treated him, he imagined that in the rancorous atmosphere of Philadelphia, with controversy swirling about the Deane affair and the hatred between Franklin and Arthur Lee, his own reputation was suffering. To his credit he had not rushed off to Philadelphia to see for himself, as someone less wise and less proud might have. If he had cause for complaint in such times of stress and uncertainty, so too, he knew, did others. “None of us have anything to boast of in these times, in respect to the happiness of life,” he observed in one letter.

“We stand in greater need than ever of men of your principles,” wrote his ever-devoted friend Benjamin Rush, who, like many, assumed that Adams would soon be reelected to Congress.

“Be assured you have not an enemy among us,” declared James Lovell, who also made light of his prior “scrawls” to “lovely Portia.” How much, if anything, Adams ever learned of Lovell's letters to Abigail is unknown.

Then, in October, out of the blue, came word from Philadelphia that Adams had been chosen by Congress to return to France as minister plenipotentiary to negotiate treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain, a position he had neither solicited nor expected. The decision had been virtually unanimous. “Upon the whole I am of the opinion that in the esteem of Congress, your character is as high as any gentleman's in America,” wrote Elbridge Gerry, knowing nothing would please Adams more.

Congress had voted him a salary of 2,500 pounds sterling. In addition, he was to have his own official secretary, Francis Dana, a Boston lawyer and member of Congress whom Adams knew and respected.

Henry Laurens, in a letter of congratulations, went out of his way to apologize for the fact that Adams had been so shabbily treated by Congress in his recent assignment, “dismissed without censure or applause,” as Laurens said, but implored him, for the sake of the country, to accept the appointment.

From the Chevalier de La Luzerne came an offer of return passage on the Sensible, which was being refitted in Boston Harbor and soon to sail.

*   *   *

ADAMS DECIDED TO GO after even less discussion with Abigail than in 1779. That the same perils pertained went without saying.

Again Abigail was to remain behind, but this time nine-year-old Charles would also accompany his father, along with John Quincy. At first, John Quincy objected, saying he preferred to remain at home and prepare for Harvard, but his mother convinced him of the great opportunity inherent in such an experience.

In a heartfelt letter of farewell, she would liken the judicious traveler to a river that increases its volume the farther it flows from its source. “It will be expected of you, my son, that as you are favored with superior advantages under the instructive eye of a tender parent, that your improvements should bear some proportion to your advantages.

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

In addition to Francis Dana, John Thaxter would go as Adams's own private secretary and tutor for the boys. So including two servants, Stephens and another for Francis Dana, they made a company of seven.

There was no part he would rather play than that of peacemaker, Adams wrote to La Luzerne, but with a cautionary note: “Alas! When I reflect upon the importance, delicacy, intricacy and danger of the service, I feel a great deal of diffidence in myself.”

Adams had no illusions of peace near at hand or of an easy path for himself. As he wrote forthrightly to Samuel Huntington, the new president of Congress, with so much at stake, his distress now was greater even than when he had last sailed for France.

Thus, a little more than three months after he had arrived home Adams was again on his way across the ocean. The wind was favorable he noted aboard the Sensible, November 15, under way past Cape Ann.

“My habitation, how disconsolate it looks!” Abigail wrote. “My table I sit down to it. But I cannot swallow my food.... My hopes and fears rise alternately. I cannot resign more than I do, unless life is called for.”

[His]
obstinacy will cause him to foment a thousand unfortunate incidents.

—The Comte de Vergennes

Thanks to God that he gave me stubbornness when I know I am right.

—John Adams

TWO DAYS OUT FROM BOSTON, in a stiff northeast wind, the
Sensible
, with 350 people on board, sprang a leak. A pump was put immediately in service, yet the leak grew worse day by day.

There was no sign of British cruisers, which to Adams were the worst of evils; but then the second week, off the Grand Banks, the wind began blowing from the northwest, the sea to run high. For one endless, miserable day, in howling winds, the old frigate labored under foresail only. A “very violent gale,” recorded Adams, who, in order to write, had to get down on his cabin floor on hands and knees.

By the time the storm passed, the ship was leaking so badly that two pumps had to be manned day and night, unrelenting work in which all hands took part, passengers as well, including John Quincy. The situation was alarming. In the event of another storm or an encounter with the enemy, the captain explained, they would have no chance. The only choice was to make for the nearest friendly port, for Spain, “with all the sail the ship could prudently bear.”

The
Sensible
labored slowly across the ocean, until finally, on the morning of December 8, 1779, running with the wind, she reached El Ferrol, on Spain's rocky northwestern tip. It had been a closer call than anyone liked to think. In less than an hour at anchor at El Ferrol, with the pumps stopped, there were seven feet of water in the hold.

“We have had an escape again,” Adams began in a letter to Abigail from shore. “One more storm would very probably
[have]
carried us to the bottom of the sea,” added John Quincy in his report to his mother.

Faced with the prospect of being marooned for weeks while repairs were made, Adams inquired about proceeding overland. The distance to Paris was 1,000 miles. The journey, east across Spain and over the Pyrenees to the French border, was one of extreme difficulty, he was warned, and never more so than in winter. But to sit still and wait again as he had in France, to let circumstance rule, or the whims or priorities of others, were not in his nature. He was determined to go, and talk of difficulties had little effect. Indeed, for a man so constituted as Adams, such talk could well have been the deciding factor. “The season, the roads, the accommodations for traveling are so unfavorable that it is not expected I can get to Paris in less than thirty days,” he wrote in explanation to the president of Congress, Samuel Huntington. “But if I were to wait for the frigate, it would probably be much longer. I am determined, therefore, to make the best of way by land.”

At first light, December 15, Adams, his sons, Francis Dana, John Thaxter, servants, Spanish guides and muleteers, and two additional Americans who had been aboard the Sensible, set off mounted on scrawny mules and looking, as John Thaxter noted, very like a scene from Don Quixote, and quixotic the whole undertaking turned out to be. Adams was exhausted before the journey began. In the week since landing he had hardly slept a night, so horrific was the torment of fleas and bedbugs, Spain's “enemies of all repose,” as he said.

At the old city of La Coruña provisions were gathered. Three ancient calashes—clumsy, brightly painted two-wheeled carriages—were also added to the caravan, these remarkable for their cracked leather seats and broken harness patched together with rope and twine and pulled by mules with tiny, tinkling bells tied about their necks. As the calashes proved more uncomfortable than the mules, Adams, Dana, and Thaxter chose to go by mule most of the way.

We carried bread and cheese, meat, knives and forks, spoons, apples and nuts
[Adams would write]
. Indeed, we were obliged to carry... our own beds, blankets... everything that we wanted.... We got nothing at the taverns but fire, water... and sometimes the wine of the country.

From La Coruña, their route passed through Betanzos, once the capital of the kingdom of Galicia, then Lugo, Astorga, Burgos, and Bilbao. “There is the grandest profusion of wild irregular mountains I ever saw,” Adams wrote. But the roads proved worse even than he.had imagined, so rocky and treacherous it was necessary to go by foot a great part of the journey.

“We had nothing worth remarking today except we kept ascending,” wrote John Quincy on December 31. Another day's journey was “almost perpendicular.” With encouragement from his father, the boy had started a diary, the beginning of what was to be a lifelong enterprise lasting sixty-eight years.

To the Americans the wretchedness of the Spanish people, the squalor of the wayside taverns, were appalling. “Smoke filled every part of the kitchen, stable, and other part
[s]
of the house, as thick as possible so that it was... very difficult to see and breathe,” Adams recorded at one tavern. “The mules, hogs, fowls and human inhabitants live ... all together,” he wrote of another overnight accommodation. Everywhere he saw poverty and misery, people in rags. “Nothing appeared rich but the churches, nobody fat but the clergy,” he noted sadly.

There were days of rain, fog, and snow, mountains that went endlessly on and on, mountains like “a tumbling sea.” The boys were sick with colds. Francis Dana became so ill there was a question whether he could continue. “We go along barking and sneezing and coughing as if we were fitter for a hospital than for travelers on the road,” wrote Adams, whose own strength and spirits began to give out. He had never known a worse undertaking, he fumed in his diary. Given the choice of his first crossing on the
Boston
, or this, he would prefer the former with all its horrors. But only to Abigail, in a letter written at Bilbao, did he concede that he had made a mistake coming overland.

The one compensation of the journey was the warmth of the welcome they received along the route. Spain by now had entered the war, but as an ally of France only. John Jay of New York, the American minister to Spain, had been in Madrid for a year, and his mission had proven hopeless, as the Spanish Court had no interest in recognizing the independence of the United States. Still, no representative of any government would have been treated with more courtesy and friendship than were Adams and his party in town after town, as he was to report proudly.