Part 3

The news of the surrender of General Burgoyne had done more to hasten the desired acknowledgment, by France, of the independence of the United States, than all the efforts which Commissioners could have made. Upon his arrival in that country, Mr. Adams found the great object of his mission accomplished, and himself, consequently, left with little or no occupation. He did not wait in Europe to know the further wishes of Congress, but returned home in August, 1779. Only a brief enjoyment of his society by his family was the result, inasmuch as in October he was again ordered by Congress to go to Europe, and there to wait until Great Britain should manifest an inclination to treat with him, and terminate the war. In obedience to these directions, he sailed in November, on board of the French frigate _Sensible_, taking with him upon this occasion his two eldest sons. The day of his embarkation is marked by a letter in the present collection, quite touching in its character.[8]

The ordinary occupations of the female sex are necessarily of a kind which must ever prevent it from partaking largely of the action of life. However keenly women may think or feel, there is seldom an occasion when the sphere of their exertions can with propriety be extended much beyond the domestic hearth or the social circle. Exactly here are they to be seen most in their glory. Three or four years passed whilst Mrs. Adams was living in the utmost seclusion of country life, during which, on account of the increasing vigilance of British cruisers, she very seldom heard from her husband. The material for interesting letters was proportionately small, and yet there was no time when she was more usefully occupied. It is impossible to omit all notice of this period, however deficient it may prove in variety. The depreciation of the Continental paper money, the difficulties in the way of managing the property of her husband, her own isolation, and the course of public events in distant parts of the country, form her constant topics. Only a small number of the letters which discuss them, yet enough to show her situation at this period, have been admitted into this volume. They are remarkable, because they display the readiness with which she could devote herself to the most opposite duties, and the cheerful manner in which she could accommodate herself to the difficulties of the times. She is a farmer cultivating the land, and discussing the weather and the crops; a merchant reporting prices-current and the rates of exchange, and directing the making up of invoices; a politician speculating upon the probabilities of peace or war; and a mother writing the most exalted sentiments to her son. All of these pursuits she adopts together; some from choice, the rest from the necessity of the case; and in all she appears equally well. Yet, among the letters of this period there will be found two or three which rise in their tone very far above the rest, and which can scarcely fail to awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.[9]

The signature of the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, which fully established the independence of the United States, did not terminate the residence of Mr. Adams in Europe. He was ordered by Congress to remain there, and, in conjunction with Dr. Franklin and Mr. Jefferson, to establish by treaty commercial relations with foreign powers. And not long afterwards a new commission was sent him as the first representative of the nation to him who had been their King. The duties prescribed seemed likely to require a residence sufficiently long to authorize him in a request that Mrs. Adams should join him in Europe. After some hesitation, she finally consented; and, in June, 1784, she sailed from Boston in a merchant vessel bound to London. Mrs. Adams found herself, at the age of forty, suddenly transplanted into a scene wholly new. From a life of the utmost retirement, in a small and quiet country town of New England, she was at once transferred to the busy and bustling scenes of the populous and wealthy cities of Europe. Not only was her position novel to herself, but there had been nothing like it among her countrywomen. She was the first representative of her sex from the United States at the Court of Great Britain. The impressions made upon her mind were therefore received when it was uncommonly open, and free from the ordinary restraints which an established routine of precedents is apt to create. Her residence in France during the first year of her European experience appears to have been much enjoyed, notwithstanding the embarrassment felt by her from not speaking the language. That in England, which lasted three years, was somewhat affected by the temper of the sovereign. George and his Queen could not get over the mortification attending the loss of the American Colonies, nor at all times suppress the manifestation of it, when the presence of their Minister forced the subject on their recollection. Mrs. Adams went through the ordinary form of presentation at Court. She was not more than civilly met on the part of the Queen, whose subsequent conduct was hardly so good as on that occasion. Mrs. Adams appears never to have forgotten it; for at a much later period, when, in consequence of the French Revolution, the throne of England was thought to be in danger, she writes to her daughter with regret at the prospect for the country, but without sympathy for the Queen. "Humiliation for Charlotte," she says, "is no sorrow for me. She richly deserves her full portion for the contempt and scorn which she took pains to discover." Of course the courtiers followed the lead thus given to them, and the impression made against America at the very outset of its national career has hardly been effaced down to this day. It is to be observed, however, that one circumstance contributed to operate against the situation of the first American Minister to Great Britain, which has affected none of his successors. This was the conduct of the States whilst yet under the Confederation, justifying the general impression that they were incapable of the self-government the right to which they had so zealously fought to obtain.

Yet, notwithstanding these drawbacks, she seems to have enjoyed much her residence in the mother country. The period was not without its peculiar character to Americans. Their country, exhausted by her efforts in the war of Independence, had not yet put herself in the way of restoration by adopting a good form of government. It was even a matter of doubt whether her liberty was likely to prove a blessing, or to degenerate into a curse. On the other hand, France, Holland, and Great Britain respectively presented an outward spectacle of wealth and prosperity not perceptibly impaired by the violent struggle between them, that had just terminated. This contrast is frequently marked in the letters of Mrs. Adams; but the perception of it does not appear to have in any degree qualified the earnestness of her attachment to her own very modest home. "Whatever is to be the fate of our country," she wrote to her sister at home, "we have determined to come home and share it with you." She had very little of that susceptibility of transfer which is a characteristic, not less of the cultivated and wealthy class of our countrymen, who cling to the luxury of the Old World, than of the adventurous and hardy sons of labor, who carve out for themselves a new home in the forests of the West.

The return of Mr. Adams, with his family, to the United States, the liberty for which was granted by Congress at his own request, was simultaneous with the adoption of the present Constitution by the decision of the ratifying Conventions. Upon the organization of the government under the new form, he was elected to fill the office of Vice-President, that of President being, by a more general consent, awarded to General Washington. By this arrangement, a residence at the seat of government during the sessions of the Senate was made necessary; and, as that was fixed first at New York and then at Philadelphia, Mrs. Adams enjoyed an opportunity to mix freely with the society of both places.

The voluntary retirement of General Washington, at the end of eight years, from the Presidency, was the signal for the great struggle between the two political parties which had been rapidly maturing their organization during his term of administration. Mr. Adams was elected as his successor by a bare majority of the electoral colleges, and against the inclinations of one section even of that party which supported him. The open defection of that section, at the following election, turned the scale against him, and brought Mr. Jefferson into his place. From early life she had learnt to take a deep interest in the course of political affairs, and it is not to be supposed that this would decline whilst her husband was a chief actor in the scene and a butt for the most malignant shafts which party animosity could throw. Her letters of that period, of course, cannot be comprised within the period embraced in this volume. A single exception may, perhaps, be permitted to be introduced here. It is the letter of the 8th of February, 1797, the day upon which the votes for President were counted, and Mr. Adams, as Vice-President, was required by law to announce himself the President elect for the ensuing term. This, though extremely short, appears to the Editor to be the gem of the collection; for the exalted feeling of the moment shines out with all the lustre of ancient patriotism. Perhaps there is not, among the whole number, one which, in its spirit, brings so strongly to mind, as this does, the celebrated Roman lady whose signature she at one time assumed; whilst it is chastened by a sentiment of Christian humility of which ancient history furnishes no example.

"Quincy, 8 February, 1797.

"'The sun is dressed in brightest beams, To give thy honors to the day.'

"And may it prove an auspicious prelude to each ensuing season. You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. 'And now, O Lord, my God, Thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this thy so great a people?' were the words of a royal Sovereign; and not less applicable to him who is invested with the Chief Magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a crown, nor the robes of royalty.

"My thoughts and my meditations are with you, though personally absent; and my petitions to Heaven are that 'the things which make for peace may not be hidden from your eyes.' My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation upon the occasion. They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with it. That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to this great people, shall be the daily prayer of your

A. A."

At this time the health of Mrs. Adams, which had never been very firm, began decidedly to fail. Her residence at Philadelphia had not been favorable, as it had subjected her to the attack of an intermittent fever, from the effects of which she was never afterwards perfectly free. The desire to enjoy the bracing air of her native climate, as well as to keep together the private property of her husband, upon which she early foresaw that he would be obliged to rely for their support in their last years, prompted her to reside, much of the time, at Quincy. Such was the name now given to that part of the ancient town of Braintree in which she had always lived. Yet when at the seat of government, whether in Philadelphia or Washington, the influence of her kindly feelings and cheerful temper did much to soften the asperities of the time. Of her early sentiments of Mr. Jefferson she has given many proofs in her later correspondence; sentiments which she did everything in her power to maintain up to the last minute of their intercourse, and which she qualified only for reasons given very frankly to himself at a later period, when he requested to know them. In the midst of public or private troubles, the buoyant spirit of Mrs. Adams never forsook her. "I am a mortal enemy," she writes upon one occasion to her husband, "to anything but a cheerful countenance and a merry heart, which, Solomon tells us, does good like a medicine." This spirit contributed greatly to lift up his heart, when surrounded by difficulties and danger, exposed to open hostility and secret detraction, and resisting a torrent of invective such as it may well be doubted whether any other individual in public station in the United States has ever tried to stem. It was this spirit which soothed his wounded feelings, when the country which he had served in the full consciousness of the perfect honesty of his motives threw him off, and signified its preference for other statesmen. There often are, even in this life, more compensations for the severest of the troubles that afflict mankind, than we are apt to think. It may be questioned whether Mr. Adams's more successful rival, who, in the day of his power, wielded popular masses with far greater skill and success than he, ever realized, in the hours of his subsequent retirement, any consolation for his pecuniary embarrassments like that which Mr. Adams enjoyed from the faithful devotedness of his wife, and, it may be added, the successful labors of his son.

There were many persons, in the lifetime of the parties, who ascribed to Mrs. Adams a degree of influence over the public conduct of her husband, far greater than there was any foundation for in truth. Perhaps it is giving more than its due importance to this idea to take any notice at all of it in this place. But the design of this Memoir is to set forth, in as clear a light as possible, the character of its subject; and this cannot well be done without a full explanation of her personal relations to those about her. That her opinions, even upon public affairs, had at all times great weight with her husband, is unquestionably true, for he frequently marked upon her letters his testimony to their solidity; but there is no evidence that they either originated or materially altered any part of the course he had laid out for himself. Whenever she differed in sentiment from him, which was sometimes the case, she perfectly well understood her own position, and that the best way of recommending her views was by entire concession. The character of Mr. Adams is clearly visible in his own papers. Ardent, vehement in support of what he believed to be right, easily roused to anger by opposition, but sincere, placable, and generous, when made conscious of having committed the slightest wrong, there is no individual of his time about whom there are so few concealments of either faults or virtues. She was certain that a word said, not at the moment of irritation, but immediately after it had passed, would receive great consideration from him. She therefore waited the favorable time, and thus, by the calmness of her judgment, exercised a species of negative influence, which often prevented evil consequences from momentary indiscretion. But her power extended no further, nor did she seek to make it do so, and in this consisted her principal merit. Perhaps it may be added, that to men of ardent and excitable temperament no virtue is more necessary in a wife, and none more essential to the happiness and prosperity of both the parties, than that which has been now described.

From the year 1801 down to the day of her death, which happened on the 28th of October, 1818, she remained uninterruptedly at home in Quincy. This period furnishes abundance of familiar letters. Her interest in public affairs did not cease with the retirement of her husband. She continued to write to her friends her free opinions, both of men and measures, perhaps with a more sustained hand on account of the share her son was then taking in politics. But these letters bring us down to times so recent that they carry us beyond the limits contemplated in the present publication. On some accounts, this is perhaps to be regretted. None of her letters present a more agreeable picture of life, or a more characteristic idea of their author, than these. The old age of Mrs. Adams was not one of grief and repining, of clouds and darkness. Her cheerfulness continued, with the full possession of her faculties, to the last; and her sunny spirit enlivened the small social circle around her, brightened the solitary hours of her husband, and spread the influence of its example over the town where she lived. "Yesterday," she writes to a granddaughter on the 26th of October, 1814, "yesterday completes half a century since I entered the married state, then just your age. I have great cause of thankfulness, that I have lived so long and enjoyed so large a portion of happiness as has been my lot. The greatest source of unhappiness I have known in that period has arisen from the long and cruel separations which I was called, in a time of war and with a young family around me, to submit to." Yet she had not been without her domestic afflictions. A daughter lost in infancy; a son, grown up to manhood, who died in 1800; and, thirteen years afterwards, the death of her only remaining daughter, the wife of Colonel W. S. Smith, furnished causes of deep and severe grief, which threw a shadow of sadness over the evening of her life. But they produced no permanent gloom, nor did they prevent her from enjoying the consolations to be found in gratitude to the Divine Being for the blessings that still remained to her. She was rewarded for the painful separation from her eldest son, when he went abroad in the public service under circumstances which threatened a long absence, by surviving the whole period of eight years that it lasted, and witnessing his return to receive from the Chief Magistrate elect, Mr. Monroe, the highest testimony he could give him of his confidence. This was the fulfillment of the wish nearest to her heart. His nomination as Secretary of State was the crowning mercy of her life. Had she survived the attack of the fever which proved fatal, it is true that she might have seen him exalted still higher, to that station which her husband and his father had held before him; but it is very doubtful whether her satisfaction would have been at all enhanced. The commencement of Mr. Monroe's administration was marked by a unanimity of the popular voice, the more gratifying to her because it was something so new. Later times have only carried us back to party divisions, of the bitterness of which she had during her lifetime tasted too largely to relish even the little of sweet which they might have to give.

The obsequies of Mrs. Adams were attended by a great concourse of people, who voluntarily came to pay this last tribute to her memory. Several brief but beautiful notices of her appeared in the newspapers of the day, and a sermon was preached by the late Reverend Dr. Kirkland, then President of Harvard University, which closed with a delicate and affecting testimony to her worth. "Ye will seek to mourn, bereaved friends," it says, "as becomes Christians, in a manner worthy of the person you lament. You do, then, bless the Giver of life, that the course of your endeared and honored friend was so long and so bright; that she entered so fully into the spirit of those injunctions which we have explained, and was a minister of blessings to all within her influence. You are soothed to reflect that she was sensible of the many tokens of divine goodness which marked her lot; that she received the good of her existence with a cheerful and grateful heart; that, when called to weep, she bore adversity with an equal mind; that she used the world as not abusing it to excess, improving well her time, talents, and opportunities, and, though desired longer in this world, was fitted for a better happiness than this world can give."

It often happens that when the life of a woman is the topic of discussion, men think it necessary either to fall into a tone of affected gallantry and unmeaning compliment or to assume the extreme of unnatural and extravagant eulogy. Yet there seems no reason, in the nature of things, why the same laws of composition should not be made to apply to the one sex as to the other. It has been the wish of the Editor to avoid whatever might be considered as mere empty praise of his subject, in which, if he has not altogether succeeded, some allowance may, it is hoped, be made for the natural bias under which he writes. It has been his purpose to keep far within the line marked out by the great master of composition, who, in allusion to the first instance in Rome when a woman, Popilia, was publicly praised by her son Catulus, defines the topics which may be treated with propriety upon any similar occasion.[10] He does not claim for the letters now published to the world that they are models of style, though in behalf of some of them such a claim might, perhaps, be reasonably urged; nor yet that they contain much novel or important historical information. What merit they may have will be found in the pictures of social life which they present, during a period daily becoming more interesting as it recedes from us, and in the high moral and religious tone which uniformly pervades them. They are here given to the public exactly as they were written, with only those corrections or omissions which were absolutely necessary either to perfect the sense or to avoid subjects exclusively personal. It was the habit of the writer to make first a rough draft of what she intended to say, and from this to form a fair copy for her correspondent; but in the process she altered so much of the original that, in every instance where the two have been compared, they are by no means the same thing. Only in one or two cases, and for particular reasons, has the loss of the real letter been supplied by the first draft. The principal difference between them ordinarily is that the former is much the most full. Frequently, it will be seen that she did not copy, the task being, as she testifies in the postscript, extremely irksome to her.

The value attached to her letters by some of her correspondents, even during her lifetime, was so considerable that it produced from one of them, the late Judge Vanderkemp, of New York, a request that a collection should then be made for publication. In allusion to this, Mrs. Adams writes in a note to a female friend,--

"The President has a letter from Vanderkemp, in which he proposes to have him send a collection of my letters to publish! A pretty figure I should make. No. No. I have not any ambition to appear in print. Heedless and inaccurate as I am, I have too much vanity to risk my reputation before the public."

And on the same day she replies to Judge Vanderkemp as follows:--

"Quincy, 24 January, 1818.

"My dear sir,--When President Monroe was in Boston, upon his late tour, encompassed by citizens, surrounded by the military, harassed by invitations to parties and applications innumerable for office, some gentleman asked him if he was not completely worn out? To which he replied, 'Oh no. A little flattery will support a man through great fatigue.' I may apply the observation to myself, and say that the flattery in your letter leads me to break through the aversion, which is daily increasing upon me, to writing.