American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  But Parliament was not done with the colonies. The Stamp Act had been repealed with full notice given, in the accompanying Declaratory Act, of “the absolute right of Parliament to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever.”33 In the months to come, not only would taxes and duties once again be levied on the colonies, but this time, Parliament would ensure the physical means to enforce their implementation. Troops were on their way.

  9

  A Watchful Spirit

  The spirit of liberty is and ought to be

  a jealous, a watchful spirit.

  —JOHN ADAMS

  “What care I for News Paper Politicks?” John Adams wrote in a letter to his good friend and brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, in January 1767. “Since last May, my Heart has been at Ease … and the Governor and all his Friends and Enemies together cant trouble it.”1 While repeal of the Stamp Act had barely been celebrated in Braintree—the villagers are “insensible to the Common Joy!”—for John, the news had induced both elation and relief.2 Now he could get back to work as a lawyer, putting politics, boycotts, and protests behind him. He needed to build up his legal practice and get his family back on sound financial footing.

  John began riding the law circuit, going from court to court throughout Massachusetts and taking on new clients for all sorts of cases. His work took him away from home for days at a time, but traveling the circuit was the only way to build his reputation and the family fortunes. Abigail missed him terribly—“it seems lonesome here,” she wrote to her sister; in another letter, she lamented that her husband was “such an Itinerant … that I have but little of his company.”3

  It was not only John’s company that Abigail missed; in 1766, her sister Mary had moved to far-off Salem with her family. “O my Dear Sister I mourn every day more and more the great distance between us. I [wish] I could come as often again as I used to … I long to see you all,” Abigail wrote in a letter; she then added that she wished their children might play together: “what would I give to … see them put their little arms round one an others necks, and hug each other, it would really be a very pleasing Sight, to me.”4

  By the start of 1767, Abigail was pregnant again, with her second child; a welcomed addition to the Adams family and another cousin for the Cranches. But would the baby ever see his faraway cousins? And would John be home long enough to enjoy the new child? He was forever away on the court circuit, traveling for law cases.

  John did make time in his busy court schedule to answer a series of letters that had been published in the Tory-leaning Boston Evening Post. The letters had been written by his old friend Jonathan Sewall. Writing under the pen name “Philanthrop,” Sewall defended Parliament’s colonial policies and argued that the strength and purity of the British Constitution was such that Parliament would never be able to “impose chains and shackles on the people, nor even attempt it.”5

  John’s countering essays to Sewall’s letters were published in the Whig Boston Gazette in early 1767 under the pen name “Governor Winthrop” (claiming direct connection to Massachusetts’ first leader). John warned that “Liberty, instead of resting within the … constitution of government … has always been surrounded with dangers, exposed to perils.” Paraphrasing from Tacitus, a favorite philosopher of his, John Adams wrote, “the first advances of tyranny are steep and perilous, but, when once you are entered, parties and instruments are ready to espouse you.”

  Stand always vigilant, Adams warned his fellow colonists, or we shall suffer, with “no hope of a remedy without recourse to nature, violence, and war.”6

  * * *

  Late in the night of February 3, 1767, a fire broke out in the bakehouse building of one of John Hancock’s tenants near Mill Creek in Boston. The fire quickly spread, razing more than twenty buildings by the time it succumbed to the efforts of firefighters. Fifty families lost their homes, and Hancock lost several buildings in addition to the bakehouse. When the General Court failed to provide funds adequate, in Hancock’s opinion, to assist those who had lost not only their homes but everything they owned, he contributed his own funds, hundreds of guineas, to help them out.

  The prince on the hill had deep pockets, and an open heart, and the people of Boston loved him for it. He would be elected to the House of Representatives in May by a large margin, reelected as town selectman, and also named fire warden for Boston.

  * * *

  John Quincy of Mount Wollaston, Abigail Adams’ beloved grandfather, fell ill in the spring of 1767. By early summer, as the end of Abigail’s pregnancy drew near, it became clear to all the family that he was dying. Although she dearly wanted to see her grandfather before he died, Abigail was warned away by both her husband and her uncle, Norton Quincy, for fear of potential risks to her or her unborn child. Abigail instead wrote her grandfather long notes of devotion, which she had delivered to Mount Wollaston, along with posies of lavender and buttercup culled from her garden. Abigail’s mother, Elizabeth Quincy Smith, arrived from Weymouth and settled in the Adams farmhouse, traveling back and forth between the homes of her dying father and her pregnant daughter and serving as nursemaid in both.

  On July 11, 1767, Abigail’s first son was born. Abigail and John sent a message up the hill the following morning: their baby boy would be named John Quincy Adams. The next day, Abigail’s grandfather died. Norton Quincy, the new master of Mount Wollaston, walked slowly down to his niece’s home to deliver the news and see for himself this child who would bear his father’s name.

  * * *

  After months of rumors, in August 1767 news arrived in Massachusetts that Parliament had passed a new series of measures to be enacted in the colonies. Called the Townshend Acts (named for the chief treasurer of Great Britain, Charles Townshend, nicknamed “Champagne Charley” for his spendthrift ways),7 the new measures far exceeded the hated provisions of the Stamp Act. Duties were imposed on a large number of goods coming into the colony, including necessities like lead, glass, tea, paint, and paper. In addition, strong legal procedures were set in place to ensure those duties were paid immediately at the port of entry.

  The measures enacted to combat smuggling were especially harsh. Any importers attempting to smuggle goods listed in the acts would have their vessels seized, as well as be subjected to fines, arrest, trial without a jury, and sentences of imprisonment. In order to enforce the measures listed, more British troops were to be brought to Boston and stationed within the town.

  Abigail Adams heard the news of the Townshend Acts while John was again away on the law circuit. He was traveling with Samuel Quincy and Josiah Quincy Jr., the men sharing meals and beds as they made the rounds of New England courts. Abigail had no doubt that the new acts would have an impact on her life. John would get further drawn into politics, like a bee to honey—or like a moth to flame—and she would see even less of her husband.

  Abigail wrote to John that she wished he would just come home; “Sunday seems a more Lonesome Day to me than any other when you are absent.… I hope soon to receive the Dearest of Friends and the tenderest of Husbands, with that unabated affection which has for Years past, and will whilst the vital Spark lasts, burns in [my] Bosom.”8

  Their son, little Johnny Adams, was growing quickly and had become “fat as a porpouse”9—much to his mother’s relief, who believed plump children could better fight off the illnesses that left so many parents bereft. As babies and then toddlers, sturdy Johnny and chubby Nabby took after their father, “so very fat,” while Abigail herself was “lean as a rale.”10

  She was most likely skinny from working so hard, as it was her duty to keep the farm going while John rode the law circuits; even when he was home, he was so busy with local politics that much of the burden of managing the household and the farm fell on Abigail. She was proud of the work that she did for her family; her desire to have John at home with her had more to do with the company he provided than the help he gave her. Now she feared that her husband would seek a wider arena than Braintree for his �
��politicking”—and that she would have even less of his attention and company than she had presently.

  * * *

  Resistance to the Townshend Acts was largely nonviolent for the first year after news of its enactment reached the colonies. Even Sam Adams advised his previously rowdy followers that there be “NO MOBS—NO CONFUSIONS—NO TUMULTS.… We know WHO have abus’d us … but let not a hair of their scalps be touched: The time is coming, when they shall lick the dust and melt away.”11

  Instead, resistance focused on causing as much economic harm to England as possible. By the fall of 1767, John Hancock, together with Edmund Quincy and other Boston merchants, began working on long-term plans for boycotting English goods, including tea, lace, and cloth, and implementing programs for colony-based production of goods.

  Planning for the Boston boycott was shared with other towns and villages in Massachusetts, as well as with other colonies. The hope was that support for nonimportation would spread widely and the resulting economic strain inflicted on British trade would force a repeal of the Townshend Acts in England, in the same way that economic pressures had ended the burdens of the Stamp Act.

  Tradesmen, manufacturers, and distillers willingly joined in the nonimportation plans. Thomas Hill, father of Sam Quincy’s wife, Hannah, along with her grandfather, Henry Hill, were longtime advocates of the rights of colonists; they had joined in the Stamp Act economic embargoes and would do so again to protest the Townshend Acts. Thomas offered his services to the selectmen in enforcing nonimportation and fostering local production of goods; his expertise as a distiller and a businessman served the committee well, along with his dedication to the rights of the colonists.

  What Thomas Hill thought of his son-in-law, Sam Quincy, who had thus far managed to support the rights of colonists without denying the powers of the Crown, Thomas Hill kept to himself; his daughter Hannah loved the man, and that was good enough for him. Sam was a Quincy, and that counted for something; he was also a Mason, and a member of the St. Andrew’s Lodge, along with John Hancock, Paul Revere, Joseph Warren, and James Otis Jr., with whom he attended meetings at the Green Dragon Tavern. Thomas Hill admired all those men, and so, he reasoned, Sam Quincy must also have some good in him.

  * * *

  In Braintree, John Adams made sure the local selectmen followed the lead of Boston in drawing up their own plan for a boycott of British goods, and for improving production of local goods to replace British imports. He then did what he could to circulate the Braintree plan widely throughout the colony, with notices in the papers and letters sent from the selectmen of Braintree to committees from other towns. Communication was the key to ensuring widespread support of the boycott, and the boycott would succeed only if it were widespread.

  * * *

  Sam Adams encouraged Josiah Quincy Jr. to write publicly against the Townshend Acts. He had heard the young man speak with flourish and bravado, and he was sure Quincy could write in the same persuasive manner, thereby garnering more support for the economic boycott; even better, Josiah could bring in the diversity of supporters that Sam Adams was looking for.

  While the Sons of Liberty could always count on their longtime followers of working men, Sam Adams wanted to expand membership in the group with the more prosperous classes of Boston. Josiah Quincy Jr., well-off himself, as well as erudite and intellectual, could bring those classes of men—and those who opposed Crown policies but were frightened by mob actions—into the fold.

  Ned Quincy joined Sam Adams in encouraging his younger brother to follow in the footsteps of Oxenbridge Thacher, with whom Josiah had apprenticed, and become a great pamphleteer, that is, an essayist on political topics of the day. Eleven years separated the oldest and youngest sons of Josiah and Hannah Quincy, but the two were close, joined not only because of their Whig leanings but also because of their shared state of health: both were consumptives, their disease having been diagnosed at an early age.

  Consumption was a harrowing condition; symptoms included weight loss, night sweats, daytime fevers, long periods of fatigue, and intermittent bouts of coughing up phlegm and blood. Ned and Josiah Jr. could go for weeks without any manifestations of the disease but then suddenly fall ill; during those times they remained at home, secluded and resting, hoping for new strength and another remission.

  Desperate for relief from their condition but unwilling to undergo the painful treatments of bleeding and purging (vomiting brought on by emetics), the brothers sought the advice and care of Dr. Joseph Warren. Dr. Warren was a young man, just three years older than Josiah Jr. Having trained with the esteemed physician James Lloyd (uncle of Ned’s beloved Rebecca Lloyd), he already enjoyed an excellent reputation as a doctor. Warren was warm and kind, generous to a fault; he was also a committed Whig. Whatever Dr. Warren could do for Ned and Josiah, he would do, he promised them.

  Rest definitely helped, Dr. Warren told the brothers, but there were other things they could do as well. He advised Josiah and Ned to take in plenty of fresh air night and day and to avoid late nights out at crowded taverns or coffeehouses. They should try to eat frequent meals to stave off the “wasting away” associated with the disease and spend their evenings quietly but with ample refreshments taken. The two brothers thus spent many evenings at home together—often in the company of their new friend, Dr. Warren—partaking of cheese, bread, and ale and calmly talking politics.

  By the end of the year, essays written by Josiah Quincy Jr. under the byline “Hyperion” began to appear in the Boston Gazette. In his essays, Josiah spoke directly to those men of law and business whom Thomas Hutchinson and Francis Bernard were trying to bring over to the side of the Crown, and whom Sam Adams was vying to recruit to the Sons of Liberty. He warned men of influence against falling prey to British flattery and bribes and advised them to remain resolute in defending the liberty of the colony: “Be not deceived my countrymen. Believe not those venal hirelings when they would cajole you by their subtleties into submission.… When they strive to flatter you by the terms of ‘moderation and prudence,’ tell them, that calmness and deliberation are to guide the judgment; courage and intrepidity command the action.”12

  The law was on the side of the colonists, Josiah insisted, and “the Genius of Liberty” still counted for something.13 Using dramatic imagery—“A rank adulterer riots in thy incestuous bed, a brutal ravisher deflowers thy only daughter, a barbarous villain now lifts the murderous hand and stabs thy tender infant to the heart”—Josiah sought to equate the illegal measures taken by Britain to control the colonies with every colonist’s worst nightmare of assault.14 He then urged “my much-respected countrymen” to reject “the threats and vaunting of your sworn foes” and defend the liberty of the colony against all usurpers.15

  The stir caused by the writings of Hyperion were immediate, causing consternation to Hutchinson and joy to Sam Adams. As Sam Quincy would describe it, in toasting his brother at a Sons of Liberty celebration, “We admire You … for your spirited introductions & not only because you have adopted The Sentiments of Liberty and Freedom with manhood, but because it is done at a Time when most wanted.… [You are a man] of Spirit and Abilities, equal to the Government.”16

  Sam Quincy especially appreciated his younger brother’s devotion to pamphleteering as a way to bring about change; both brothers were wary of mobs and mob actions as a way to counter parliamentary actions. But while Sam Quincy still trusted Hutchinson and the other Crown officials to lead the colony, Josiah suspected that the interests of the people of Massachusetts clashed with the interests of those who governed them and that the rights of colonists were not being protected by government officials, either at home or in England.

  In his essays, Josiah argued that the colonists must commit themselves to fight for their liberty: “In defence of our civil and religious rights, we dare oppose the world … if this be enthusiasm, we live and die enthusiasts. Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats … intimidate. For under God, we are d
etermined, that wheresoever, whensoever, and howsoever, we shall be called to make our exit, we shall die freemen.”17

  Consumptive that he was, Josiah knew his own death would come sooner rather than later—and while he still lived, there was only one fight worth making: the one to keep the colonies at liberty to command their own futures. Only after securing liberty for his fellow men, vowed Quincy, and “with the plaudits of his conscience,” would he be ready to die. “A crown of joy and immortality shall be his reward,” he wrote. “The history of his life his children will venerate. The virtues of their sire shall excite their emulation.”18

  Josiah might well be on his way to “a crown of joy and immortality,” but as both his brothers advised him, he would first need to have “children” to “venerate” him—and children required a wife. Sam Quincy had his Hannah, and just this past spring, Rebecca Lloyd and Ned Quincy had become engaged. Josiah was already acquainted with Abigail Phillips, daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant, “an early attachment” having been formed between the two.19 The Quincy brothers did what they could to foster the attachment and cozy the natural affinity along. They arranged evening carriage rides for the couple, where they could sit side by side under warm blankets, chatting away while the skies overhead turned from blue to navy to black, lit only by faraway stars and a rising moon. When the snow came, the carriage was exchanged for a sleigh and the drives continued.

  Fresh air was what Dr. Warren had ordered, and the Quincy brothers took the prescription a step further: fresh air for the lungs and intimate conversations to strengthen the heart. Josiah Jr. must get healthy and stay healthy: the colony, and the family, needed him.