American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  Adams narrowed his eyes for a moment but then let his anxiety go. He took a deep breath, refilling his lungs. The important thing was that independence had been approved. Unanimously, with just one abstention—and that accord would be coming soon, the New York delegation promised.

  The crowd of delegates broke out in hurrahs, until Hancock called their attention back with a smack of the gavel. There was more work to do; the resolution they had just agreed to needed to be backed up with a statement of their reasons why all connections with Britain were being severed.

  With only a few hours left in the afternoon, debate on Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence began. But it soon became clear to Hancock and everyone else that the debate would have to be continued the next day. Again, a night would pass in which deals were made, disagreements ironed out, and, hopefully, accord found.

  Again, the delegates filed out, leaving Hancock alone at his desk. There was no going back on independence: votes had been taken. The delegates who had voted today would no longer be representing colonies but instead would be representing states. Now it was Hancock’s duty to sign their resolution to separate from England and execute history.

  A gift had recently arrived at the rooms Hancock shared with Dorothy, a token of remembrance sent after the death of Aunt Lydia. The gift consisted of a packet of pamphlets containing sermons of Reverend Hancock, John’s father. One of the sermons had been given on September 16, 1739, on the hundredth anniversary of their Parish Church in Braintree. John himself would have been just two years old at the time, a babe on his mother’s knee.

  The anniversary sermon was a lengthy one, and touched on the role of each individual in his community, not only the community of God but the community of man: “I am sensible of the Darkness and Difficulty with which some of the Affairs of Government are perplexed at this Time; the Province is in great Affliction, but yet we are not in Despair, so long as our wise Men that are among us are our Pilots, and rule with GOD.”

  How clearly his father’s voice still resonated: “public charitable Spirit would greatly contribute to extricate us from all our Difficulties and Dangers … prove your selves good and useful Members of the State.”4

  John bent to the paper before him and signed the Resolution of Independence with a flourish.

  * * *

  Back in his rooms on Arch Street, John Adams wrote to Abigail in a flurry of excitement, excited to finally tell her that all political connections between the colonies and Britain had been dissolved: “the greatest Question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men.”5

  He predicted that the “Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”6

  But he tempered his joy at passage of the Resolution for Independence with an edge of wary pragmatism: “the new Governments we are assuming, in every Part, will require a Purification from our Vices, and an Augmentation of our Virtues or they will be no Blessings. The People will have unbounded Power. And the People are extremely addicted to Corruption and Venality.… I am not without Apprehensions from this Quarter.”7

  * * *

  Adams’ fears would be realized in the morning, when debate over Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence started up again. But first, there was other congressional business to attend to: letters had to be sent out to the assemblies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland requesting that more troops be supplied for Washington’s defense of New York; money had to be found to pay for a fleet to protect the northern border, particularly along Lake Champlain; and reports from committees had to be heard, including on relations with Native Americans and the making of an American seal (which would appropriate Native American imagery).8

  Finally, the Declaration of Independence was taken up for discussion, and once again the editing began. Over the next two days, delegates took apart Jefferson’s work, everyone wanting their say on matters as insignificant as inserting the word “certain” before “inherent and inalienable” and then taking out “inherent;” while other delegates demanded the deletion of entire paragraphs.9

  As painful as the editing of the declaration was for Adams, for Jefferson it was pure agony. Ben Franklin, seated beside Jefferson in the council chamber, sought to console the young man by telling him an amusing story of a hat seller whose sign is edited down from “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money” to just Thompson’s name and a picture of a hat.10

  Jefferson appreciated the attempt at humor, but it was John Adams who earned Jefferson’s deep gratitude during those two long days. Adams fought “fearlessly for every word” that Jefferson had written; he was “the pillar of [the declaration’s] support on the floor of Congress, its ablest advocate and defender against the multifarious assaults encountered.”11

  But there was no standing against the demands made by the southern delegates; Jefferson wrote later that the paragraph “reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina & Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it.”

  Jefferson placed the blame for removing the antislavery provisions from the declaration not only on the Southerners but on New Englanders as well: “Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”12

  Nothing Adams or Jefferson could do would save the clause, and both acknowledged that compromise was the only way to ensure passage of the declaration as a whole. Adams understood “the haste” with which they were working; “Congress was impatient … [and] cut off about a quarter of it, as I expected they would; but they obliterated some of the best of it.”13

  For Adams, the most important aspect of the Declaration of Independence was that it “will cement the union.”14 He simply could not foresee the effect slavery would ultimately have on such union. Jefferson, however, having grown up in the South, had a stronger understanding of the severe impact slavery had on democratic institutions.

  As Josiah Quincy Jr. had observed, during his two-month sojourn through the South, slavery poisoned every person and place it touched: “The brutality used towards slaves … and the laws [controlling them] … will stand as eternal records of the depravity and contradiction of the human character.… These are but a small part of the mischief of slavery—new ones are every day arising—futurity will produce more and more greater.”15

  But there was little Jefferson could do to save his antislavery provisions. Left with no recourse but to remove the offending clause, Jefferson nevertheless made sure his efforts to prohibit slavery, and the actions of others to prevent him from success, would be recorded for posterity: “As the sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the declaration as originally reported,” he wrote in his notes on the proceedings.16

  By the afternoon of July 4, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was finally ready to be voted upon by Congress. Charles Thomson stood to read the document in its entirety—it had been pared down to just about fourteen hundred words—and then a symbolic roll call was taken. Every state voted “Yea,” and the Declaration of Independence was approved.

  The windows to the chamber were thrown wide open, now that the debates had ended, and fresh air streamed in. The delegates in the chamber, according to Thomas Jefferson, walked one by one to the desk on the dais and affixed their signature to the handwritten copy, the a
greed-upon changes marked clearly across the pages.17 This was the final step in the process of disunion with England, and the moment must have weighed heavily upon them all. With their vote of affirmation, and now their signature, they had committed themselves entirely to the independence of the thirteen states of America.

  The sanctity of that commitment was underscored by the declaration’s final sentence: “for support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes & our sacred honour.”18

  John Adams had supported the addition of “Divine providence” to the oath, knowing the hold such a vow would have over both the men who signed the declaration and the public who would read it. As Josiah Quincy Jr. had always asserted, “the God of armies on our side, even the God who fought our fathers’ battles” would lead the Americans to victory: “While we have equity, justice, and God on our side, Tyranny, spiritual or temporal, shall never ride triumphant.”19

  All the men of Congress knew that their signature was akin to signing “our own death warrants.”20 On August 2, when they were asked to sign again (this time the document they signed had been beautifully printed on a sheet of stiff parchment), John Hancock was heard to say, as he began the flourish of his large signature, “There must be no pulling different ways; we must all hang together.” Franklin retorted, “Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”21

  Benjamin Harrison from Virginia turned to Elbridge Gerry and noted that he would have an advantage over Gerry “when we are all hung.… From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or so.”22

  But it was John Hancock who was in the most danger of hanging. Within days of the signing on July 4, copies of the Declaration of Independence were making their way across the city, then the colony, and farther out, to every colony in America, and then to the world. This version of the signed Declaration of Independence had only one signature on it. Underneath the words “signed by order and on behalf of the Congress,” writ large across the bottom of the page, was John Hancock.23

  * * *

  In Massachusetts, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud from the balcony of the State House in Boston on July 18. William Greenleaf, the husband of Dolly’s sister Sarah and the new sheriff of Boston (replacing his brother, Stephen Greenleaf, a Loyalist), was charged with reading the document aloud.

  Abigail Adams had come to Boston days earlier, together with “not less than 30 people from Braintree,” in order to undergo inoculation for smallpox.24 The effects of the smallpox dosage had left her feeling queasy, but when hearing that the Declaration of Independence was to be read aloud from the balcony of the State House, Abigail vowed she would attend, even if she had to be carried there.

  As it turned out, on the morning of July 18 she felt strong enough to walk out on her own. Accompanied by Hannah Quincy Lincoln, who was also undergoing smallpox inoculation, Abigail made her way to King Street to hear the reading. Joining the “multitude” that had gathered there, Abigail and Hannah listened with “great attention … to every word.”25

  Because William Greenleaf’s voice was too weak to carry over the crowd that had gathered, he asked his friend Colonel Thomas Craft to “be his herald.” Standing together on the balcony of the State House, Greenleaf murmured the sentences of the declaration, one by one, and then Craft repeated each sentence with his mighty elocution. When Greenleaf offered the final words, Craft echoed them down the streets and alleyways: “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”26

  A rousing cry rang out: “God Save our American States!” A torrent of cheers, and then “the bells rang, the privateers fired, the forts and Batteries, the cannon were discharged, the platoons followed and every face appeared joyful.” A bonfire was built on King Street, and all of “the king’s arms were taken down from the State House and every vestige of him from every place in which it appeared” was thrown into the blazing fire, to be burned down to ashes and coal.27

  Decades earlier, standing in his pulpit in the Third Parish Church of Braintree, the Reverend John Hancock spoke of the “solemn covenant” laid by his ancestors, a covenant which promised “Liberty” in the new world.28 The sons and daughters of his congregation strove, each in their own way, to secure that promise of liberty. Now the promise was written into the Declaration of Independence.

  “Thus ends royal Authority in this State,” Abigail wrote to John; “and all the people shall say Amen.”29

  Epilogue: Friends to Mankind

  Every man died a hater of tyrants,

  an abhorrer of oppression,

  a lover of his country,

  and a friend to mankind.

  —JOSIAH QUINCY JR.

  In the fall of 1776, Dorothy Hancock gave birth to a baby girl. She was named Lydia Henchman Hancock, in honor of John’s aunt. The child died in the summer of 1777 and was buried in Philadelphia, in a “Mohogany Coffin 2 feet six inches long.”1 The couple had another child, in 1778, a boy they named John George Washington Hancock. He died eight years later when he fell through an iced-over pond and drowned.

  John Hancock remained president of the Continental Congress until 1777; he served as president again during the Confederation Congress but had to resign due to ill health. He was elected first governor of the state of Massachusetts in 1780 and was elected again in 1787; he served as governor until his death in 1793, at the age of fifty-six.

  In 1796, Dolly married James Scott, Hancock’s longtime confidant and captain of many of Hancock’s vessels. Dolly and James were married in the Brattle Square Church; as they left the church, the bell that John Hancock had paid for decades before pealed in celebration. Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott died on February 3, 1830, at the age of eighty-two.

  John and Abigail Adams continued to spend many years of their married life apart, when John served as commissioner to France, minister to the Netherlands, and then minister to Great Britain. Abigail finally joined John in Paris in 1784 and traveled with him to England. John served as the first vice president under President George Washington and was elected the second president of the United States in 1796.

  During his presidency, Abigail took such a public and active role in advising her husband and supporting him that she was called Mrs. President.2 After Adams lost his bid for a second term, the couple returned to the large estate they had purchased in Braintree, which they called Peacefield.

  Abigail Adams died at Peacefield on October 28, 1818, at the age of seventy-three. In the days preceding her death, John Adams wanted only “to lie down beside her and die, too.”3 John lived another eight years and died in Braintree on July 4, 1826, the date of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson died on the same day at his estate, Monticello. Adams was ninety years old, and Jefferson was eighty-three. Two years earlier, John and Abigail’s son, John Quincy Adams, had been elected sixth president of the United States.

  Esther Quincy Sewall remained in England with her husband until 1787; just before they left, they enjoyed a brief reunion with John and Abigail Adams in London. “Our conversation was just as might be expected at the meeting of two old sincere friends after a long separation,” Sewall wrote in a letter.4 Jonathan Sewall died in 1796, from what John Adams called “a broken-heart.”5 He never felt welcomed in England or in Canada, and had been banished from America. After his death, Esther returned to Cambridge, settling back into her old house. She later returned to Canada to be with her children (her oldest son, Jonathan, was chief justice of Canada, and Stephen was solicitor general). She died in Montreal in 1810 at the age of seventy-two.

  Hannah Quincy Lincoln married Ebenezer Storer in 1777. This marriage was a happy one, and they lived together until his death in 1807, at the age of seventy-seven. After she was widowed, Hannah and John Adams met
again, sometime in the 1820s. Hannah, visiting Peacefield, was seated in a room when John Adams entered and exclaimed, “What! Madam, shall we not go walk in Cupid’s Grove together?” Hannah took but a moment to reply, “Ah, sir, it would not be the first time we have walked there!”6 Hannah died in 1826 at the age of ninety.

  Edmund Quincy never returned to Braintree to live but stayed in Lancaster with his daughter Sarah for the rest of his life, spending his time writing very long letters full of advice and offering praise to God to the very end for every good thing that had ever happened to him. Edmund died in 1788, at the age of eighty-five.

  Samuel Quincy was never able to return to America, having been placed on the banishment list in 1778. A review of the archives indicates that he never received a single letter from his father after he left Boston in 1775, but he corresponded regularly with his sister, his brother-in-law Henry Hill, and his wife and children—“I frequently make you vivid, especially when … I compose myself to Sleep, perhaps to Dream.”7

  In 1779, Sam was commissioned comptroller of customs in Antigua, West Indies. There, he was finally reunited with his wife, Hannah. He would never, however, see any of his children again. According to a letter he wrote to Hannah’s brother, Henry Hill, his wife died in his arms in November 1782. She was forty-eight years old.

  Samuel married Mrs. M. A. Chadwell in St. Croix, West Indies, in 1785. By the fall of 1789 he had grown so ill with gout (his second wife claimed it was caused by too much dancing) that he traveled to England in search of a cure. He died while en route and was buried in Bristol. He was sixty-four. The second Mrs. Quincy returned to St. Croix but, in despair over Samuel’s death, killed herself in 1790.