American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  In the early spring of 1759, Josiah Quincy’s home, the old parsonage, caught on fire. Although no one was hurt, Josiah Quincy was devastated by the loss of furnishings, books, and other treasures. John Adams, who had known Josiah his whole life, wrote in his diary, “That house and furniture clung and twined around his heart, and could not be torn away without tearing to the quick.”9 When just a few months later, Josiah’s second wife, Elizabeth Waldron Quincy, died, despair descended upon Josiah and his household.

  Josiah found a new home for his diminished family, and Hannah once more was left in charge of setting up the household and caring for all its inhabitants; her father, her younger brother Josiah, and the baby Elizabeth depended upon her. A few years later, this house too would burn down, and once again, the family would have to move. But in the meantime, Hannah would do her best to create a warm and attractive home for her father, her younger siblings, and the brothers who often came to Braintree to stay.

  Ned, Hannah’s oldest brother, was a merchant in Boston, and Samuel was now a lawyer, having apprenticed law with Benjamin Pratt, a one-legged, opinionated, but esteemed practitioner who taught his protégé well. Ned and Sam came to Braintree frequently and often brought along friends to enjoy a long weekend in the country. The gathered young people stayed up late, playing cards or backgammon, talking and laughing, and partaking of ample selections of wine or punch. Come Sunday, all drinking and playing were suspended; Sabbath was reserved for sermons, contemplation, and a large midday meal.

  As a vivacious and smart young woman, Hannah held court among her brothers and their friends, along with her cousins Esther, Katy, and Sarah, daughters of Edmund Quincy (little Dolly, still a child, was not invited to these evening get-togethers). The young men and women paired off, stealing away to a side room, “and there laughed and screamed and kissed and hussled,” then returning to the gathered company of friends, “glowing like furnaces.”10 When the weather was fine, the couples ventured outdoors, to a “sylvan spot” called “Cupid’s Grove,” where all sorts of romancing went on.11

  Even John Hancock occasionally ventured out from Boston and its swirl of social events to join in the parties in Braintree. The House of Hancock had grown ever more prosperous with every passing year, and now John was in the thick of it, working side by side with his uncle. Still, he made time for his old playmates from childhood, especially fun-loving Sam and the still stodgy John Adams.

  John Adams had first moved to Worcester following graduation from Harvard, working as a schoolteacher but then switching to law and studying under James Putnam, a Worcester lawyer. Through the law John hoped to finally rise to the social and economic position he felt he deserved: “What are the Motives, that ought to urge me to hard study? The Desire of Fame, Fortune and personal Pleasure.”12

  Ever ambitious, John had a habit of castigating himself for lost opportunities, and then rededicating himself to all work and no play. While he was still in Worcester studying law, he wrote to Sam Quincy, “I shudder … when the thought comes into my mind how many million hours I have squandered.” He resolved to do better: “I every Day determine to begin a new Course of Life tomorrow.”13

  John moved back to Braintree in the fall of 1758, and in November, he and Samuel Quincy traveled to Boston together to be sworn in as lawyers. John was certain that his time had finally come to join with the ranks of the Quincys in both economic and social status: “to be plain, I am beginning Life anew. I have new Friendships to make, new Employments to follow, new Concerns, Prospects and Studies, opening before me.”14 He opened up his first law office in his father’s home and began to seek out clients.

  And yet there were distractions. John was “very fond of the society of females.”15 As eager as he was to succeed at the study of law, he wrote in his diary that “my mind is liable to be called off from Law, by a girl, a pipe, a poem, a love letter.”16

  Samuel Quincy welcomed John Adams into the evening get-togethers held at either the home of Josiah, his father, or of Edmund, his uncle. Sam had been well liked by his fellow students at Harvard, and now that he was starting out on a legal career, the lawyers and businessmen he met day-to-day liked him just as much. He was easygoing, witty, and kind.

  As a child, Sam had suffered a terrible injury from a gunshot gone wrong and never picked up a gun again; he stayed away from sports, horseback riding, and other outdoor pursuits. Instead, he spent his free time, when he wasn’t socializing with friends, reading volumes of classical poetry and writing his own verses on a variety of topics (including love, death, and Harvard), verses he freely and frequently shared with others.

  Sam could talk for hours about anything, from the purpose of faith to a thorny legal issue, from the beauty of a summer evening to the terrors of an earthquake; he sprinkled all conversations with lines he’d memorized from poetry or ones he’d written himself, and often with more than a joke or two. He was happiest when talking late into the night or playing cards or listening to music, with a glass of punch at hand and in the company of as many lively men and women as he could bring together.

  Sam’s wide-ranging interests afforded him much pleasure but, in the eyes of John Adams, little achievement. What was the use of all this scribbling of verse, this chattering and laughing with friends, these hours spent at leisure, when there was work to be done? After returning home from an evening with the Quincys, Adams complained of all that time spent “playing cards, drinking punch and wine, smoking tobacco … while a hundred of the best books lie on the shelves.… What pleasure can a young man who is capable of thinking, take in playing cards?”17 He wrote that “Cards, Fiddles, and Girls are the objects of Sam [Quincy]. Cards, Fiddles, and Girls. Kissing, Fiddling and gaming. A flute, a Girl, and a Pack of Cards.”18

  * * *

  By the summer of 1759, Hannah Quincy knew the time had come to find a husband. She suspected that her father had begun looking for a new wife, and she didn’t relish the idea of once again having to accustom herself to a stepmother or becoming nursemaid to more half-sibling babies. Although in public she claimed that “she would not be married by any means, these 4 or 5 years,” she began to dream of having a home of her own—and for that she needed a husband.19

  Anthony Wibird, the newly installed minister of the North Parish Church, was one candidate; he was intelligent and seemed kind, but he was also gawky and walked strangely, and his wig was always crooked upon his head. The friends of her brothers provided other likely suitors, and she toyed with each of them, not sure which young man was the best choice.

  Bela Lincoln was tall, dark, and stern, a medical doctor with a good career ahead of him. As the son of an old friend of Hannah’s father, he was a favorite of her family. Jonathan Sewall, a classmate of Sam’s from Harvard, was poor but handsome and fun-loving; he was also a rising star in the legal world and had plenty of potential.

  John Adams, with his chipmunk cheeks and beady eyes, was the sturdy and serious local boy Hannah had known for years; he was eager to spend any time he could with Hannah, and she basked in his attentions. And John, in turn, was infatuated with Hannah. Not only was she pretty and witty and gracious, but she was a Quincy, with all that name implied.

  John craved the respect of others and worried that his own hard work wasn’t enough to earn him what he wanted. He had been jealous of Sam’s prestigious apprenticeship under Benjamin Pratt and was heartily insulted when, upon meeting Pratt, the old lawyer had dismissed him as unimportant, stating simply, “no Body in this County knows any Thing about you.”20 Now Sam Quincy had a position in Boston, where he enjoyed working “in the most busy office, in the Center of one of the best Libraries, and under the Instructions and Advice of One of the Ablest Masters in America,” while he, John, worked out of a corner in his father’s home.21

  Nevertheless, despite both his disapproval and his envy, John grudgingly admired Sam for being an “easy, social, and benevolent companion, not without Genius, Elegance, and Taste.”22 He would later des
cribe both Sam Quincy and Jonathan Sewall, whom he met through Sam, as two “of the most intimate Friends I ever had in my life.”23

  The young men stood beside one another during the at times frustrating practice of law and provided support during each other’s romantic adventures. John Adams described his group as nourishing “the Wound [of love] in their Hearts … [consumed] with a hidden internal flame.”24

  Samuel, for all his flirtations, had begun seriously courting Hannah Hill, daughter of a wealthy Boston brewer, while Jonathan Sewall was falling for Esther Quincy. The two met on a boating party, and within just a few weeks, Sewall was sure she possessed every good quality, including “utmost pleasantness and good-Humour,” “real Good Sense,” “Delicacy of Manners and such becoming Modesty,” as well having “as musical a Voice as Nature ever gave.”25

  While John Adams agreed with his friend Jonathan that Esther was “pert, sprightly, and gay,”26 it was Hannah Quincy whom he adored: “that Face, those Eyes, that Shape, that familiar friendly look … I go to bed and lie ruminating … then fall asleep and dream … till morning Wakes me, and robs me of my Bliss.”27 And as cute as Esther might be, she “thinks and reads much less” than her cousin Hannah; to John, a woman who could both read and think was a treasure.28

  Hannah teased John Adams but also invigorated him. She would offer hypotheticals to him—“Suppose you was in your Study, engaged in the Investigation of some Point of Law, or Philosophy, and your Wife should interrupt you accidentally and break the Thread of your Thoughts, so that you never could recover it?”—and then wait for his response, as if auditioning him for the role of husband.

  John answered as best he could—“No man, but a crooked Richard, would blame his Wife, for such an accidental Interruption”—and waited for the next question.

  “Should you like to spend your Evenings, at Home in reading and conversing with your Wife, rather than to spend them abroad in Taverns or with other Company?” Hannah demanded.

  John answered, “Should prefer the Company of an agreable Wife, to any other Company for the most Part.”

  And finally, Hannah asked, “Suppose you had been abroad, and came home fatigued and perplexed, with Business, or came out of your Study, wearied and perplexed with Study, and your Wife should meet you with an unpleasant, or an inattentive face, how should you feel?”

  “I would flee my Country, or she should.”29

  Deacon Adams warned John about his public pursuit of Hannah Quincy and the gossip that would result. John wrote in his diary, “the story has spread so wide that if I don’t marry her, she will be said to have Jockied me.… A story will be spread, that she repelled me.”30 But Hannah would make a good partner, of that Adams was certain: “Good nature is H’s universal character. She will be a fond, tender Wife and a fond indulgent mother.”31

  One evening in the summer of 1759, on a day when Bela Lincoln, another of Hannah’s suitors, was away attending his patients in Hingham, John Adams almost proposed to Hannah. The two of them were alone in a quiet corner of the Quincy home, and the moment seemed to be right; as John wrote later, they were having the “conversation that would have terminated in a courtship … [and then] terminated in a Marriage.”32

  But just as he was about to speak, Esther Quincy and Jonathan Sewall burst through the door from the outside, where they had been walking together in the moonlit gardens. Their arms entwined, they announced their own happy engagement. John wrote later, “the Accident [interruption] separated us, and gave room to Lincoln’s addresses.… and left me at liberty, if I will but mind my studies, of making a Character and a fortune.”33 Bela Lincoln asked Hannah to marry him just days after, and Hannah agreed.

  John Adams wrote later (but never explained his statement) that marriage with Hannah would “have depressed me to absolute poverty and obscurity to the end of my life.”34 Perhaps he thought that operating under the shadow of her brothers, Ned, Sam, and the younger Josiah, he would have never emerged as his own man.

  Having lost his Hannah, John once again resolved that he would make goals and stick to them; he vowed to dedicate himself to “the Prosecution of my studies. Now Let me form the great Habits of Thinking, Writing, Speaking.… Let Love and Vanity be extinguished and the great passions of Ambition, Patriotism, break out and burn.”35

  For all his new resolutions, however, another young woman intruded on John Adams’ plans. John met Abigail Smith through his new friend, Richard Cranch, an acquaintance of Sam Quincy’s who happened to be courting Abigail’s older sister, Mary. Cranch had come to Massachusetts in 1746 at the age of twenty, well-schooled in the classics but ill-prepared to make a living. He was currently on his fourth business venture, this one in watchmaking, and failing just as miserably as he had failed in his previous attempts: making metal combs for wool carding; glassmaking; and creating candles from whale oil.

  Despite his poor business acumen, Richard was one of the most intelligent men John had ever met, and one of the kindest. They would be lifelong friends.

  Richard Cranch was a great favorite of Reverend William Smith of Weymouth and his children, and he thought highly of them in return. He’d fallen in love with Mary, but he also admired Mary’s younger sister, Abigail, for her capacious wit, her intelligence, and her common sense. John Adams saw how much Richard liked the Smith daughters, and he had heard good things about Abigail through her older cousin, Hannah Quincy.

  But John’s first impressions of Abigail and Mary were not favorable: “Parson Smith’s Girls have not … fondness, nor … Tenderness … [nor are they] candid.”36 Adams defined “candid” to be “a Disposition to palliate faults and Mistakes, to put the best Construction upon Words and Actions, and to forgive Injuries.”37 Being a man woefully concerned with being both understood and esteemed, the ability to make generous and forgiving assessments of character was a quality John sought in a potential mate.

  As John spent more and more time with Richard and the Smith girls, however, he began to appreciate Abigail. She was still the feisty—John termed her “saucy”—girl favored by her grandmother, but John came to value her forthright and honest assessments.38 She might not be “candid” under his definition, but she was honest, and a compliment from her meant more for being both sincere and, in John’s eyes, well founded. Finally, a woman who understood him!

  Not only was she smart but she was also cheerful, optimistic, and seemingly unflappable. Compared to his own moody and overwrought mother, and to Hannah, who had veered from suitor to suitor with her favors week to week, Abigail was the epitome of stability and grace.

  “Ballast is what I want. I totter with every breeze,” John wrote in his diary a year before meeting Abigail.39 Continuing the boat metaphor, a few months later he added, “The only Thing I fear is, that all my Passions which … are the Gales of Life … will go down into an everlasting Calm. And what will [I do] if there is no Wind?”40

  Abigail could provide the ballast for his boat, and the wind for his sails as well. John became smitten with her. Soon enough, Abigail would return the sentiment.

  5

  Changing Fortunes

  Chimerical Happy World …

  —EDMUND QUINCY V

  Edmund Quincy declared bankruptcy in 1757. All the wealth he had gained by the capture of the Spanish treasure ship in 1748 was gone. The money had been spent through prodigious consumption and lost with what seemed to be a complete lack of business sense. Homes had been splendidly furnished, gardens made gorgeous, libraries filled with all sorts of books and manuscripts. But while money went out the door, none came back in.

  After Quincy, Quincy, and Jackson closed its doors, the firm that Edmund ran with his two sons, Edmund V and Henry, never flourished. They bought items no one wanted, and the goods they supplied were often subpar. Jonathan Belcher, governor of New Jersey, complained that the supposedly “odorless” candles he bought from the Quincy firm had “as nauseous a Stink as any other Whale Oil”—and he no longer did any business
with Edmund and his sons, nor did anyone who listened to Belcher’s counsel.1

  By the time Edmund declared bankruptcy, his house in Braintree had been mortgaged to Edward Jackson, his brother-in-law and former business partner. Jackson generously allowed Edmund and his family to continue living there, but when Jackson died, the house was put up for sale and the family had to move. Edmund still owned a house in Boston, but that property was on the market, to be sold to pay off debts, along with the family slaves and most of the household goods. An auction was scheduled and catalogs for the sale were drawn up. Edmund’s libraries were so extensive that a separate auction catalog was created for all of the books he owned—and now needed to sell.

  To all appearances, Edmund IV seemed largely unperturbed by the loss of his wealth. As John Adams wrote, “Quincy took his ‘complete reduction’ quite calmly. That the event was impending [for some time] was one reason, and that Edmund was an unusually religious man, another.”2 Edmund continued to rely on his faith in God: “nothing happens in these transient moments but what is destined to prepare us for an everlasting life. What can discourage a soul professed with this noble idea?”3

  He simply went on with his life, making plans for future business endeavors, including the growing of grapes for wine, running a cider press, and managing his own shop selling beer and liquors in the city. From his good friend Ben Franklin, he received encouragement and advice. Ben had endured his own money troubles, as well as pitfalls in the growing of grapes for wine, and he wrote to Edmund, “I heartily wish you Success in your attempts to make Wine from American Grapes.”4