That letter is most often quoted for John’s prediction that the country would celebrate the anniversary of the preceding day, when the Continental Congress voted for independence.
While predicting the type of celebration, John Adams was wrong about the date, not foreseeing that the date placed on top of the public Declaration the Congress was still working on would determine what anniversary Americans thought was significant.
In fact, as I’ve already noted, by 4 July 1777 the Congress and Adams were publicly celebrating the Fourth.
The conclusion of John Adams’s letter doesn’t get quoted so often. It looked both backward and forward, and its predictions were pretty dire:
When I look back to the Year 1761, and recollect the Argument concerning Writs of Assistance, in the Superiour Court, which I have hitherto considered as the Commencement of the Controversy, between Great Britain and America, and run through the whole Period from that Time to this, and recollect the series of political Events, the Chain of Causes and Effects, I am surprized at the Suddenness, as well as Greatness of this Revolution.In the copy of this letter he kept for himself, Adams also included the sentence “I am not without Apprehensions from this Quarter” in the last paragraph after the word “Great.”
Britain has been fill’d with Folly, and America with Wisdom, at least this is my judgment.—Time must determine. It is the Will of Heaven, that the two Countries should be sundered forever.
It may be the Will of Heaven that America shall suffer Calamities still more wasting and Distresses yet more dreadfull. If this is to be the Case, it will have this good Effect, at least: it will inspire Us with many Virtues, which We have not, and correct many Errors, Follies, and Vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy Us.—The Furnace of Affliction produces Refinement, in States as well as Individuals. And 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 extreamly addicted to Corruption and Venality, as well as the Great. But I must submit all my Hopes and Fears, to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable [as] the Faith may be, I firmly believe.
Even as Adams was achieving his goal of a united independence, Adams’s deep-seated pessimism and mistrust was surfacing. And since royal officials like Thomas Hutchinson no longer held authority, he directed those feelings at the new American people as a whole.
Some portrait!
ReplyDeleteJA is not exactly in his Braintree farmer mode, but rather springing forth as a full-blown Ancien Regime statesman!
I followed your link to the Harvard Art Museums catalog listing for the portrait and was interested to read that JA later dismissed it as a "Piece of Vanity."
And so questions abound! What was JA's role in the project? Did he commission it? Was the grandiloquent staging his idea--or Copley's?
And was JA's later disparaging comment one in which he was condemning the "Vanity" of his younger self, or Copley's pictorial conception?
I think you could probably get another interesting blog post or two exploring those questions, John!
A very minor point of correction, John: According to the Massachusetts Historical Society online database, John Adams wrote two letters to Abigail, both dated July 3, 1776.
ReplyDeleteThe comment about how the "Second Day of July 1776" would be celebrated in future years appears in one letter, which begins with the phrase "Had a Declaration of Independency been made seven Months ago...."
The comment you cite today, about "When I look back to the Year 1761," appears in the other letter, which begins with "Your Favour [i.e., Abigail's letter to John] of June 17".
To my untrained eye, the date at the top of the "Your Favour" letter appears to read "Philadelphia July 2, 1776"; but the Mass. Historical cataloguers say that letter was dated on July 3.
The other letter, starting with "Had a Declaration of Independency", is unequivocally dated "Philadelphia July 3d, 1776".
Thanks for all your hard work, this text was a very interesting find for me!
You’re right, Charlie, that John Adams wrote two letters to Abigail on 3 July 1776. He later said they came out “one in the morning, and the other in the evening of…the day after the vote of Independence.” I treated them as one since I don’t seen evidence they were mailed separately, but I guess he viewed them as two.
ReplyDeleteI think the date on the “Your Favour” letter is as close to a 3 as to a 2, but it’s definitely not as clear as on the second letter. Perhaps the letterbook copy sways the balance.
The Adams portrait, Don, was painted when he was the U.S. of A.’s minister to the Court of St. James. It’s no doubt the fanciest he ever posed for, and I suspect that’s why. The year of 1776 was about halfway between Blyth’s pastel portrait of Adams as a young lawyer and this one, and I thought this was more appropriate for the grand commentary in the quoted letter.
ReplyDelete