Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams During the Revolution Part 66

Your letters are always valuable to me, but more particularly so when they close with an affectionate a.s.surance of regard, which, though I do not doubt, is never repeated without exciting the tenderest sentiments; and never omitted without pain to the affectionate bosom of your

PORTIA.

268. JOHN ADAMS.

Amsterdam, 15 September, 1780.

My dear Portia,--I wish you to write me by every opportunity to this place as well as to France. It seems as if I never should get any more letters from America. I have sent you some things by Captain Davis, but he has no arms, and I fear they will be lost by capture. I sent things by the _Alliance_.

The country where I am is the greatest curiosity in the world. This nation is not known anywhere, not even by its neighbors. The Dutch language is spoken by none but themselves. Therefore they converse with n.o.body, and n.o.body converses with them. The English are a great nation, and they despise the Dutch because they are smaller. The French are a greater nation still, and therefore they despise the Dutch because they are still smaller in comparison to them. But I doubt much whether there is any nation of Europe more estimable than the Dutch in proportion.

Their industry and economy ought to be examples to the world. They have less ambition, I mean that of conquest and military glory, than their neighbors, but I don't perceive that they have more avarice. And they carry learning and arts, I think, to greater extent. The collections of curiosities, public and private, are innumerable.

I am told that Mr. Searle is arrived at Brest; but I have learned nothing from him as yet, nor do I know his destination. The French and Spanish fleets have made a sweep of sixty upon the English East India and West India fleets. This must have great effects. We are all well.

Don't expect peace. The English have not yet forgotten the acquisition of Charleston, for which they are making the most childish exultations.

The new Parliament will give ministry a run. Mark my words, you will have no peace but what you give yourselves by destroying, root and branch, all the British force in America. The English cannot bear the thought that France should dictate the terms of peace, as they call it.

They say they must make a dishonorable peace now, a shameful peace, a degrading peace. This is worse than death to them, and thus they will go on, until they are forced to sue for a peace still more shameful and humiliating.

269. ABIGAIL ADAMS.

15 October, 1780.

My dearest Friend,--I closed a long letter to you only two days ago, but as no opportunity is omitted by me, I embrace this, as Colonel Fleury was kind enough to write me on purpose, from Newport, to inform me of it, and to promise a careful attention to it. Yet I feel doubtful of its safety. The enemy seems to be collecting a prodigious force into these seas, and is bent upon the destruction of our allies. We are not a little anxious for them, and cannot but wonder that they are not yet reinforced. Graves's fleet, Arbuthnot's, and Rodney's, all here; with such a superiority, can it be matter of surprise if M. de Ternay should fall a sacrifice? My own mind, I own, is full of apprehension; yet I trust we shall not be delivered over to the vengeance of a nation more wicked and perverse than our own. We daily experience the correcting and the defending arm. The inclosed papers will give you the particulars of an infernal plot, and the providential discovery of it. For, however the belief of a particular Providence may be exploded by the modern wits, and the infidelity of too many of the rising generation deride the idea, yet the virtuous mind will look up and acknowledge the great First Cause, without whose notice not even a sparrow falls to the ground.

I am anxious to hear from you. Your last letter, which I have received, was dated June 17th. I have written you repeatedly, that my trunk was not put on board the _Alliance_; that poor vessel was the sport of more than winds and waves. The conduct with regard to her is considered as very extraordinary. She came to Boston, as you have no doubt heard.

Landais is suspended. The man must be new-made before he can be ent.i.tled to command. I hope Captain Sampson arrived safe. He carried the resolve of Congress which you wanted.

You tell me to send you prices current. I will aim at it. Corn is now thirty pounds, rye twenty-seven, per bushel. Flour from a hundred and forty to a hundred and thirty per hundred. Beef, eight dollars per pound; mutton, nine; lamb, six, seven, and eight. b.u.t.ter, twelve dollars per pound; cheese, ten. Sheep's wool, thirty dollars per pound; flax, twenty. West India articles: sugar, from a hundred and seventy to two hundred pounds per hundred; mola.s.ses, forty-eight dollars per gallon; tea, ninety; coffee, twelve; cotton-wool, thirty per pound. Exchange from seventy to seventy-five for hard money. Bills at fifty. Money scarce; plenty of goods; _enormous_ taxes. Our State affairs are thus.

Hanc.o.c.k will be Governor, by a _very great_ majority; the Senate will have to choose the Lieutenant-governor. Our const.i.tution is read with great admiration in New York, and p.r.o.nounced by the Royal Governor the best republican form he ever saw, but with sincere hopes that it might not be accepted. How will it be administered? is now the important question.

The report of the day is that three thousand troops are arrived at New York from England.

Adieu!

Most affectionately yours.

270. JOHN ADAMS.

Amsterdam, 18 December, 1780.

My dearest Portia,--I have this morning sent Mr. Thaxter with my two sons to Leyden, there to take up their residence for some time, and there to pursue their studies of Latin and Greek under the excellent masters, and there to attend lectures of the celebrated professors in that university. It is much cheaper there than here. The air is infinitely purer, and the company and conversation are better. It is perhaps as learned a University as any in Europe.

I should not wish to have children educated in the common schools in this country, where a littleness of soul is notorious. The masters are mean-spirited wretches, pinching, kicking, and boxing the children upon every turn. There is besides a general littleness arising from the incessant contemplation of stivers and duits, which pervades the whole people. Frugality and industry are virtues everywhere, but avarice and stinginess are not frugality. The Dutch say that without a habit of thinking of every duit before you spend it, no man can be a good merchant, or conduct trade with success. This I believe is a just maxim in general, but I would never wish to see a son of mine govern himself by it. It is the sure and certain way for an industrious man to be rich.

It is the only possible way for a merchant to become the first merchant or the richest man in the place. But this, is an object that I hope none of my children will ever aim at. It is indeed true, everywhere, that those who attend to small expenses are always rich.

I would have my children attend to duits and farthings as devoutly as the merest Dutchman upon earth, if such attention was necessary to support their independence. A man who discovers a disposition and a design to be independent seldom succeeds. A jealousy arises against him.

The tyrants are alarmed on one side lest he should oppose them. The slaves are alarmed on the other lest he should expose their servility.

The cry from all quarters is, "He is the proudest man in the world. He cannot bear to be under obligation." I never in my life observed any one endeavoring to lay me under particular obligations to him, but I suspected he had a design to make me his dependent, and to have claims upon my grat.i.tude. This I should have no objection to, because grat.i.tude is always in one's power. But the danger is that men will expect and require more of us than honor and innocence and rect.i.tude will permit us to perform.

In our country, however, any man, with common industry and prudence, may be independent. But to put an end to this stuff, adieu--most affectionately adieu.

271. ABIGAIL ADAMS.

28 January, 1781.

My dearest Friend,--Last evening General Lincoln called here, introducing to me a gentleman by the name of Colonel Laurens, the son, as I suppose, of your much esteemed friend, the late President of Congress; who informed me that he expected to sail for France in a few days, and would take dispatches from me. Although I closed letters to you, by way of Holland, a few days ago, I would not omit so good an opportunity as the present. 'T is a long time since the date of your last letters, the 25th of September. I wait with much anxiety, listening to the sound of every gun, but none announce the arrival of the _Fame_, from Holland, which we greatly fear is taken or lost, or the _Mars_, from France. Colonel Laurens is enabled, I suppose, to give you every kind of intelligence respecting the army, which you may wish to learn.

Mr. Cranch has written you upon the same subject by way of Holland. Your friends here complain that you do not write to them. I suppose Davis threw over half a hundred letters. If you are unfortunate in that way, it is not to be helped.

I have the pleasure to inform you that a repeal of the obnoxious tender act has pa.s.sed the House and Senate. The Governor, as has been heretofore predicted, when anything not quite popular is in agitation, has the gout, and is confined to his bed. A false weight and a false balance are an abomination, and in that light this tender act must be viewed by every impartial person. Who, but an idiot, would believe that forty were equal to seventy-five? But the repeal gives us reason to hope that justice and righteousness will again exalt our nation; that public faith will be restored; that individuals will lend to the public; and that the heavy taxes, which now distress all orders, will be lessened.

A late committee, who have been sitting upon ways and means for raising money, tell us that a tax for two years more, equal to what we have paid in the last; would clear this State of debt. You may judge of the weight of them; yet our State taxes are but as a grain of mustard seed, when compared with our town taxes. Clinton, I hear, has sent out a proclamation upon Germain's plan, inviting the people to make a separate peace, which will only be a new proof of the ignorance and folly of our enemies, without making a single proselyte. Even the revolted Pennsylvania troops gave up to justice the spies whom Clinton sent to them, offering them clothing and pay, letting him know that it was justice from their State, not favors from their enemies, which they wanted.

It is reported that Arnold, with a body of troops, is gone to Virginia, where it is hoped he and his Myrmidons will meet their fate. Had Clinton been a generous enemy, or known human nature, he would, like Aurelian, upon a like occasion, have given up the traitor to the hands of justice; knowing that it was in vain to expect fidelity in a man who had betrayed his own country, which, from his defection, may learn to place a higher value upon integrity and virtue than upon a savage ferocity, so often mistaken for courage. He who, as an individual, is cruel, unjust, and immoral, will not be likely to possess the virtues necessary in a general or statesman. Yet in our infant country, infidelity and debauchery are so fas.h.i.+onably prevalent that less attention is paid to the characters of those who fill important offices, than a love of virtue and zeal for public liberty can warrant; which, we are told by wise legislators of old, are the surest preservatives of public happiness.

You observe in a late letter that your absence from your native State will deprive you of an opportunity of being a man of importance in it. I hope you are doing your country more extensive service abroad than you could have done had you been confined to one State only; and whilst you continue in the same estimation among your fellow-citizens in which you are now held, you will not fail of being of importance to them at home or abroad.

Heaven preserve the life and health of my dear absent friend, and, in its own time, return him to his country and to the arms of his ever affectionate

PORTIA.

P. S. Love to my dear boys. I have sent you a present by Colonel Laurens.

272. ABIGAIL ADAMS.

25 May, 1781.

In this beautiful month, when nature wears her gayest garb, and animal and vegetable life is diffused on every side, when the cheerful hand of industry is laying a foundation for a plentiful harvest, who can forbear to rejoice in the season, or refrain from looking "through nature up to nature's G.o.d;"

"To feel the present Deity, and taste The joy of G.o.d, to see a happy world."