Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia
HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENN SYLVANIA
Congress
1774–75
SAMUEL ADAMS may have helped to reconcile Bostonians to their own deprivations, but his speech at the Town Meeting also reminded them that if he was going to represent them properly in Philadelphia he needed some polish. About a week before he was due to leave for the Congress, Adams and his family were eating their evening meal when someone knocked at the door. Their visitor turned out to be one of Boston’s most popular tailors, and he asked permission to measure Mr. Adams for a suit of clothes. Adams’ wife and daughter tried to pry from him the name of the person who had sent him, but he said he was not at liberty to tell. The tailor took the measurements and left. The family had barely returned to the table when there was another knock. This time Boston’s leading hatter wanted to establish the size of Mr. Adams’ head. He was soon followed by a shoemaker and then by other craftsmen, all taking measurements, all refusing to say who had sent them.
A few days later, a large trunk addressed to Mr. Samuel Adams appeared at the family’s front door. Inside were a full suit of clothes, two pairs of fine shoes, a set of silver shoe buckles, sets of gold knee buckles and gold sleeve buttons, six pairs of silk hose and the same number of good cotton ones, a goldheaded cane, a cocked hat and a new red cloak. Cane and buttons were stamped with the insignia of the Sons of Liberty.
Other friends were coming forward more openly. They put up a barn in place of Adams’ old and decayed structure and made repairs on his house. One sympathizer asked diffidently whether it might not be said that Mr. Adams’ finances were rather low.
Adams answered that it was true. But he said being poor was a matter of indifference to him so long as his poor abilities were of any service to the public.
At that the other man pressed on him a purse with fifteen or twenty Johannes, a Portuguese gold coin that was worth more than three pounds sterling. Virginia had voted to pay its delegates half of one for each day’s service.
When the day came for the Massachusetts delegates to leave, James Bowdoin could not go because of sickness in his family. Samuel Adams, John Adams and Robert Treat Paine met at Thomas Cushing’s house and rode together to a dinner in their honor at Watertown. There the delegates said goodbye to fifty of their allies, including Samuel Adams, Jr., who had recently become a doctor. They left Watertown after the meal, but because the day was very hot they pushed on only as far as Framingham. Boston had sent them out in a lavish style that matched Samuel Adams’ new wardrobe—a coach and four, preceded by two white servants, armed and on horseback, and four blacks behind them, all in livery, two riding horses and two as footmen.
As the party passed through Connecticut over the next days, every town rang its bells and shot off its cannon. Cheering men, women and children crowded the doorways, and John Adams, who was not entirely averse to pomp, reflected that no governor, no general of any army, had ever been treated to such ceremony. At Hartford they met Silas Deane, one of Connecticut’s delegates, who gave the Massachusetts delegates a briefing on the New Yorkers they would be meeting: which were merchants and which were lawyers, who was the most popular—that was Philip Livingston—and how they were related by marriage. At each stop along their route to Philadelphia, the Massachusetts group were meeting patriots who were new to them and ready to debate all over again the arguments in James Otis’ pamphlets of ten years ago.
This was John Adams’ first trip out of his own colony, and he was flooded with impressions. In New Haven he saw a watermelon so red it looked painted. In New York the colonists had erected a solid lead statue of King George III on horseback, gilded and mounted on a towering marble pedestal. Adams had to admit that New York’s streets were more elegant, its houses grander, than those he had left behind. Everything seemed to have been decorated, even the red brick buildings that Bostonians left unpainted.
Reaching New York had taken five days, and the Massachusetts party rested there. On Sunday the church services seemed old-fashioned to them, too much drawling and quavering from the clergymen. But they were treated to the most sumptuous breakfast John Adams had ever seen—richly designed plates, large silver coffee urns and teapots, luxurious napkins, perfect toast and butter and, afterward, luscious peaches and pears and plums and musk-melon.
At each stop, the Massachusetts representatives were hearing more speculation about this delegate or that. It was indispensable gossip for men who would be meeting fifty strangers on whom their lives depended. John Alsop of the New York delegation was said to be goodhearted but not very able. James Duane was probably sensible, but to John Adams his squinting eye made him look a bit sly. Talking with Philip Livingston was impossible, since he was all rough bluster. Livingston was sure that if there was a breach with England the colonies would immediately make war among themselves. And besides, he demanded, what about the fact that Massachusetts had once hanged Quakers? John Adams found reasoning with him as futile as talking logic to an avalanche.
After four days in New York, the town’s luxuries were beginning to cloy. All this dining and drinking coffee in houses around the city might be pleasant enough, John Adams told his diary, but it was keeping the Bostonians from seeing the worthy things—the college, the churches, the printers and the bookshops. As for the people: “With all the opulence and splendor of this city, there is very little good breeding to be found. We have been treated with an assiduous respect. But I have not seen one real gentleman, one well-bred man, since I came to town.” Adams concluded that New Yorkers had no modesty, no interest in another person’s opinion. They talked very loud, very fast and all at the same time. “If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again—and talk away.”
The Massachusetts delegates reached Philadelphia on Friday, August 29. Although they rode into town dusty and weary, they couldn’t resist heading for the City Tavern, which had been open for only a few months but already had the reputation of being the best public house in America, as good as anything London had to offer. They mingled there with a host of Philadelphians and met Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina. Delegates from the other colonies were also making their first judgments of the Bostonians, and some of the wealthier saw through Samuel Adams’ new finery and pronounced him a dangerous man with nothing to lose. Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia shared a coach with John Adams and found him cold and reserved.
Joseph Galloway, who was also from Pennsylvania, was dubious about the ulterior aims of the Bostonians. He sounded them out over dinner and reported his impressions to the governor of New Jersey, William Franklin. William was the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, and he had received his post at the age of twenty-seven, before his father’s influence at court had dropped so precipitously. As governor, William seemed to favor the loyalists. Now from Galloway he heard that while the Boston delegates might appear moderate, they were throwing out hints that suggested otherwise.
The author of the “Pennsylvania Farmer” letters, John Dickinson, called on the Bostonians and complained of his gout. He would not be joining the Congress just yet. Dickinson first seemed a shadow to John Adams, as pale as ashes, but, looking more closely, Adams decided that Dickinson would last many more years. Thomas Lynch, Jr., of South Carolina invited the Massachusetts party to dine at his lodgings with his wife and daughter, and although the heat was oppressive the afternoon was a great success.
At one point, Lynch praised a brief speech that Colonel George Washington had made before the Virginia convention. John Adams asked, “Who is Colonel Washington and what was his speech?”
Lynch explained that Washington had become famous during the French and Indian War and had fought in the battle at which General Braddock fell. As for his speech, the Virginians had been arguing over what to do if the Bostonians began to fight the British. As the arguments raged, Washington had risen to say, “I will raise a thousand men, subsis
t them at my own expense and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston.” It was the most eloquent speech that Lynch had ever heard.
That sort of anecdote—touched up or even fabricated as Lynch’s story had been—was lending a celebrity to certain delegates even before the first session. And yet, John Adams had been brooding for weeks over how few outstanding leaders the colonies seemed likely to produce. “We have not men fit for the times,” he complained to his diary. “We are deficient in genius, in education, in travel, in fortune—in everything.” All the same, Peyton Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s cousin, was being admired for the way he could be open and cordial. Patrick Henry’s reputation as a modern Demosthenes had preceded him. And when a man seemed to show special strength and persistence in the cause—Gadsden of South Carolina or Charles Thomson of Philadelphia—he was likely to be introduced as the Samuel Adams of his colony.
By September 1, 1774, not enough members had arrived in Philadelphia, and the opening was held over until the following Monday. As they waited, Silas Deane wrote home to ask his wife to assure their friends that the delegates were in high spirits, sobered only when they remembered that millions of eyes—and all of posterity—were watching their conduct.
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When Monday came, the delegates first assembled at their informal headquarters, the City Tavern. As speaker of the Pennsylvania House, Joseph Galloway had offered the House chamber to the Congress and was quite insistent that it meet there. But within his own delegation Galloway was suspected of being too moderate, and others opposed his suggestion and led the delegates instead to Carpenters’ Hall. There they found a white-paneled room, not large but beautifully proportioned, together with a library and a long hall where delegates might stroll and caucus, all overlooking a quiet square. In the first vote of the Continental Congress, a great majority decided to make the tradesmen’s building their home.
Here in Philadelphia, the political labels of the past decade suddenly seemed inadequate and even misleading. Presumably all of the delegates were Whigs and patriots. Why else would they be here? But men like Galloway were clearly less impassioned than Patrick Henry or the two Adamses. Such tepid delegates sounded like “halfway patriots” or conservatives. The new division didn’t show up in the selection of a chairman, since no one opposed the nomination of Peyton Randolph. He had presided over the Virginia Burgesses, and here the delegates decided to call him their president.
After having lost on where the Congress should meet, the conservatives suffered a second setback when it was time to choose a secretary.
During the selection of delegates for Pennsylvania, Charles Thomson’s reputation as his colony’s Samuel Adams had ruined his chances. A cheerful businessman in his midforties, Thomson struck some hesitant men as too popular among the poor and ill-educated, and he had used debating tricks that even Samuel Adams might have questioned. After the Port Act, Thomson had been speaking on behalf of Boston when he was drowned out by shouts from the conservatives. He had retaliated by seeming to faint and being carried from the hall. But just before the Congress was due to meet in Philadelphia, Thomson, a widower, had married John Dickinson’s wealthy cousin. Even that connection hadn’t reassured the halfway patriots, and they had passed him over as a delegate. Now his friends rallied and got Thomson elected as the Congress’s secretary, and he was called back from his honeymoon to take up his duties.
Although twenty-two of the fifty-six delegates were lawyers, there hadn’t yet been any of the quibbling that John Adams considered the bane of his profession. One crucial question to resolve, however, did not turn on personalities, and the Congress had to confront it early. Should each of the twelve colonies—Georgia had declined to send delegates—have one vote or should votes be allotted to colonies on the basis of their population or wealth?
The delegates expected the governor of Rhode Island to argue that each colony, whatever its size, was taking the same risk in opposing Britain and each should have the same vote. John Jay of New York would probably counter that a colony with twice the population of many others shouldn’t have its vote cut in half. But a rancorous debate might end the Congress before it began, and no one wanted to be the first to speak. Finally a delegate did arise, and Charles Thomson felt sorry for him. He was probably a Presbyterian minister, dressed in drab gray with an unpowdered and unfashionable wig, and clearly out of his depth.
“We are here met in a time of great difficulty and distress,” the man began.
Delegates were only starting to recognize one another, and they were asking their neighbors, “Who is speaking?” It was Patrick Henry of Virginia. Henry was arguing that it would be a great injustice for a small colony to have the same weight as a large one. He was in the middle of his speech when the first day of the Continental Congress came to an end.
The next day, Henry resumed his argument. Overnight, John Adams had also been fretting that five small colonies, each with one hundred thousand people, might outvote four colonies with five hundred thousand each. On the other hand, how could they possibly get accurate figures about either population or a colony’s volume of trade on such short notice? Charles Thomson had decided that as secretary he should record only the final vote, not the discussion that led up to it. He simply listened as Patrick Henry spoke. But writing was as natural as breathing for John Adams, who set down Henry’s flowing argument in a burst of notes:
“Government is dissolved. Fleets and armies and the present state of things show that Government is dissolved. Where are your landmarks? Your boundaries of colonies? We are in a state of nature, sir.”
Henry urged that ten thousand Virginians must outweigh a thousand residents in another colony. But if he was overruled, he said, he was willing to submit to the majority. Mostly, he wanted the delegates to appreciate their new circumstances. “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more.
“I am not a Virginian but an American.”
Henry’s declaration was appealing and visionary, but it didn’t carry the day. Two fellow delegates from Virginia, Richard Henry Lee and Richard Bland, made the same point that had worried John Adams: the delegates lacked the data to weight the votes. The Congress, deciding that this first decision would not be irrevocably binding, agreed to give each colony one vote. The first debate had reminded the delegates of the staying power of some speakers, and they also voted that from then on no man could speak twice on the same subject without express permission.
The next obstacle they faced was religious and potentially even more divisive. On Monday, Thomas Cushing had moved that each session open with a prayer. Jay of New York and Rutledge of South Carolina had opposed the idea. The delegates came from so many faiths—Episcopalians, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Quakers—that there was no way they could all worship together.
Samuel Adams was known to be as pious as any man in the hall and more strict, and he impressed the delegates by announcing that he was no bigot, that he could hear a prayer from any virtuous gentleman so long as he was also a friend to his country. He himself was a stranger in Philadelphia, but he had heard that Mr. Duché was such a man. Adams moved that he read prayers to the Congress the next morning.
When the session ended, Peyton Randolph went to see Jacob Duché, the assistant rector at an Episcopal church. The clergyman said that if his health permitted he would be there. Overnight, reports reached Philadelphia that General Gage had bombarded Boston and several people had been killed. When the Reverend Duché arrived the next morning, he read the Thirty-fifth Psalm, “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me . . .” and the delegates felt they were hearing a message from Heaven. Duché then prayed extemporaneously for ten minutes on behalf of Boston. Even Quakers wept, and Congregationalists declared that they had never heard better preaching.
On Wednesday the delegates learned that Boston had not been shelled. General Gage had merely sent troops to the armory at Cambridge
to seize the gunpowder stored there. That action was provocative, but no blood had been spilled, and the Congress could settle down to its business.
A committee had been formed to spell out the grievances with Britain and suggestions for resolving them. Nothing that was said was new to John Adams. It was the old debate over natural rights, constitutional rights, laws at the pleasure of a king or by the power of an elected Parliament. For years, every patriot in Boston had read and heard them. But as Adams took down each argument, he was reassured about the quality of the delegates. They were better than he had first thought. Richard Lee wanted to rest their case on its broadest defense—natural law. Joseph Galloway said he had looked for laws in nature and had never found any there. “Power,” said Galloway, “results from the real property of the society.” John Adams couldn’t endorse that argument, and yet Galloway was buttressing it with allusions to Greece and Rome and Macedonia. Writing at night to his wife in Braintree, Adams praised the delegates in Philadelphia as the greatest men upon the continent. They made him blush, he said, for the sordid, venal herd of public officials in Massachusetts.
The Congress was now meeting in committees rather than in general session. Delegates worked from nine each morning until three in the afternoon, adjourned for a lavish dinner at four and sat again until six or seven, drinking claret or burgundy and going over the day’s debates one last time. John Adams was eating and drinking as never before—jellies, sweetmeats, trifles, curds and creams, whipped sillabubs, Parmesan cheese, almonds and raisins, and washed down with strong punch and rich red wines. He did vow, however, that he would drink only beer and porter in Philadelphia. New Englanders found the local cider far inferior to what they enjoyed at home.
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