Part 12

His law business continued to increase and in 1768 he removed to Boston where he would have a larger field in which to develop his intellect. He served on various committees during the next two years, and in 1770 was chosen a Representative to the general Court, notwithstanding he had just before accepted a retainer to defend Captain Preston and his soldiers for their share in what had passed into history as the Boston massacre. His ability as a practitioner at the bar can be judged from the successful result of their case, as managed by him, against great public prejudice. Adams' duties as a Representative interfered much with his business as a lawyer, on which he depended for support, and which had grown to be larger than that of any other practitioner at the provincial bar.

He entered upon the duties of his new office with his customary energy, becoming the chief legal advisor of the Patriot party, and now for the first time an active and conspicuous leader of the same. Mr. Adams' keen foresight enabled him to wisely judge that it would be a good policy not to push too vigorously to the front as a politician until his private wealth would justify his necessarily great loss of time. Hence, he moved back to Braintree, resigning his seat in the Legislature, but still retaining his law office in Boston. A comparative lull in politics made his presence in that body less needed, but still he was consulted as to all the more difficult points in the controversy with Governor Hutchinson, and freely gave his aid. Indeed, it was not long before he moved back to Boston, but thoroughly resolved to avoid politics, and to devote his undivided attention to his professional work. Soon after his return to Boston he wrote a series of letters on the then mooted question of the independence of the judiciary, and the payment by the Crown of the salaries of the Judges. Soon after this he was elected by the general Court to the Provincial Council, but was rejected by Governor Hutchinson.

The destruction of tea, and the Boston port bill that followed, soon brought matters to a crisis. These events produced the congress of 1774. Mr. Adams was one of the five delegates sent from Massachusetts, and his visit to Philadelphia at this time was the first occasion of his going beyond the limits of New England. In the discussions in the committee on the declaration of colonial rights, he took an active part in resting those rights on the law of nature as well as the law of England; and when the substance of those resolutions had been agreed upon he was chosen to put the matter in shape. In his diary the most trustworthy and graphic descriptions are to be found of the members and doings of that famous but little known body. The session concluded, Mr. Adams left the city of brotherly love with little expectation, at that time, of ever again seeing it.

Immediately after his return home he was chosen by his native town a member of the provincial congress then in session. That congress had already appointed a committee of safety vested with general executive powers; had seized the provincial revenues; had appointed general officers, collected military stores, and had taken steps toward organizing a volunteer army of minute-men. The governor--Gage--had issued a proclamation denouncing these proceedings, but no attention was ever paid to it. Gage had no support except in the five or six regiments that guarded Boston, a few trembling officials and a small following from the people.

Shortly after the adjournment of this congress Adams occupied himself in answering through the press a champion of the mother-country's claim. This party, under the head of 'Massachusettensis,' had commenced a series of able and effective arguments in behalf of the mother-country, which were being published in a Boston journal. To these Adams replied over the signature of 'Novanglus.' These were papers displaying unusual ability on either part. They were afterwards published as "A History of the Dispute with America," and later yet in pamphlet form. Their value consists in the strong, contemporaneous views which they present of the origin of the struggle between the colonies and the mother-country, and the policy of Bernard and Hutchinson as governors of Massachusetts, which did so much to bring on the struggle. Like all the writings of Mr. Adams, they are distinguished by a bold tone of investigation, a resort to first principles, and a pointed style; but, like all his other writings, being produced by piecemeal, and on the spur of the moment, they lack order, system, polish and precision.

In the midst of the excitement produced by the battle of Lexington--which at once brought up the spirit of even the most hesitating patriots to the fighting pitch, and which was speedily followed by the seizure of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and by other similar seizures in other colonies throughout the fast uniting provinces--John Adams once more set out for Philadelphia to attend the Continental Congress of 1775, of which he had been appointed a member. This congress, though made up for the most part of the same men who constituted that of the previous year, was a wholly different body from its predecessor. The congress of 1774 was merely a suggestive convention. The present congress speedily assumed, or rather had thrust upon it by unanimous consent of the patriots, the exercise of a comprehensive authority in which supreme executive, legislative and, in some cases, judicial functions, were united. In this busy scene the active and untiring Adams, one of whose distinguishing characteristics was his CAPACITY AND FONDNESS FOR BUSINESS, found ample employment; while his bold and pugnacious spirit was not a little excited by the hazards and dignity of the great game in which he had come to hold so deep a stake. Unlike many of that body, Adams had made up his mind that any attempt tending toward reconciliation was hopeless.

Under the lead of Dickinson, though against the strenuous opposition of Adams and others, that body voted still another and final petition to the king. However, Adams succeeded in joining with this vote one to put the colonies into a state of defence, though with protestations that the war on their part was for defence only, and without revolutionary intent. Not long after this congress was brought up to the point of assuming the responsibility and control of the military operations which New England had commenced by laying siege to Boston, in which town General Gage and his troops were caged, and before which lay an impromptu New England army of 15,000 men which the battle of Lexington had immediately brought together. Urged by the New England delegates, congress agreed to assume the expense of maintaining this army. John Adams was the first to propose the name of George Washington for the chief commander; his desire being to secure the good-will and co-operation of the southern colonies. The southern colonies also urged General Lee for the second place, but Adams insisted on giving that to Artemas Ward, he, however, supported Lee for the third place. Having assumed the direction of this army, provided for its reorganization, and issued letters of credit for its maintenance, this congress took a recess. Adams returned home, but was not allowed any rest.

People who really have ability are never allowed to remain idle; the fault is not in others, but in us. No sooner had Mr. Adams arrived home than his Massachusetts friends sent him as a member to the State council. This council had, under a clause of the provincial charter intended to meet such cases, assumed the executive authority, declaring the gubernatorial chair vacant. On returning to Philadelphia in September, Adams found himself in hot water. Two confidential letters of his, written during the previous session, had been intercepted by the British in crossing the Hudson river, and had been published in the Boston papers. Not only did those letters evince a zeal for decisive measure which made the writer an object of suspicion to the more conservative of his fellow-members of Congress, but his reference in one of them to 'the whims, the caprice, the vanity, the superstition, and the irritability of some of his colleagues,' and particularly to John Dickinson as 'a certain great fortune but trifling genius,' made him personal enemies by whom he was never forgiven.

But, though for a moment an object of distrust to some of his colleagues, this did not save him from hard work. About this time he wrote: "I am engaged in constant work; from seven to ten in the morning in committee, from ten to four in Congress, and from six to ten again in committee. Our assembly is scarcely numerous enough for the business; everybody is engaged all day in Congress, and all the morning and evening in committee." The committee, which chiefly engaged Mr. Adams' attention at this time, was one on the fitting out of cruisers, and on naval affairs generally. This committee laid the foundation of our first navy; the basis of our naval code being drawn up by Adams.

Governor Wentworth having fled from New Hampshire, the people of that province applied to congress for advice as to how to manage their administrative affairs. Adams, always ahead of his brother legislators, seized the opportunity to urge the necessity of advising all of the provinces to proceed at once to institute governments of their own. The news, soon arriving of the haughty treatment of their petition by the king, added strength to his pleading, and the matter being referred to a committee on which Adams was placed, a report in partial conformity to his ideas was made and adopted. Adams was a worker; this was a recognized fact; and his State having offered him the post of Chief Justice of Massachusetts, Adams, toward the end of the year, returned home to consult on that and other important matters. He took his seat in the council, of which he had been chosen a member, immediately on his arrival. He was consulted by Washington, both as to sending General Lee to New York, and as to the expedition against Canada. It was finally arranged that while Adams should accept the appointment of Chief Justice, he should still remain a delegate in Congress, and till more quiet times should be excused as acting in the capacity of judge. Under this arrangement he returned to Philadelphia. However, he never took his seat as Chief Justice, resigning that office the next year.

Advice similar to that to New Hampshire on the subject of assuming government, as it was called, had shortly afterwards been given upon similar applications to Congress, to South Carolina and Virginia. Adams was much consulted by members of the southern delegation concerning the form of government which they should adopt. He was recognized as being better versed in the subject of Republicanism, both by study and experience, coming as he did from the most thoroughly Republican section of the country. Of several letters which he wrote on this subject, one more elaborate than the others, was printed under the title of "Thoughts on Government applicable to the present state of the American Colonies."

This paper being largely circulated in Virginia as a preliminary to the adoption of a form of government by that State, was to a certain extent a rejoinder to that part of Paine's famous pamphlet of 'Common Sense,' which advocated government by a single assembly. It was also designed to controvert the aristocratic views, somewhat prevalent in Virginia, of those who advocated a governor and senate to be elected for life. Adams' system of policy embraced the adoption of self-government by each of the colonies, a confederation, and treaties with foreign powers. The adoption of this system he continued to urge with zeal and increasing success, until finally, on May 13th, he carried a resolution through Congress by which so much of his plan was endorsed by that body as related to the assumption of self-government by the several colonies. A resolution that the United States 'Are and ought to be free and independent,' introduced by R. H. Lee under instructions from the Virginia convention, was very warmly supported by Adams and carried, seven States to six. Three committees, one on a Declaration of Independence; another on Confederation; and third on Foreign Relations, were shortly formed. Of the first and third of these committees, Adams was a member.

The Declaration of Independence was drawn up by Jefferson, but on Adams devolved the task of battling it through Congress in a three days' debate, during which it underwent some curtailment. The plan of a treaty reported by the third committee, and adopted by Congress, was drawn up by Adams. His views did not extend beyond merely commercial treaties. He was opposed to seeking any political connection with France, or any military or even naval assistance from her or any foreign power. On June 12th Congress had established a board of war and ordinance, to consist of five members, with a secretary, clerk, etc.,--in fact, a war department. As originally constituted, the members of this board were taken from Congress, and the subject of this narrative was chosen its president or chairman. This position was one of great labor and responsibility, as the chief burden of the duties fell upon him, he continued to hold for the next eighteen months, with the exception of a necessary absence at the close of the year 1776, to recruit his health.

The business of preparing articles of war for the government of the army was deputed to a committee composed of Adams and Jefferson; but Jefferson, according to Adams' account, threw upon him the whole burden, not only of drawing up the articles, which he borrowed mostly from Great Britain, but of arguing them through Congress, which was no small task. Adams strongly opposed Lord Howe's invitation to a conference, sent to Congress, through his prisoner, General Sullivan, after the battle of Long Island. He was, however, appointed one of the committee for that purpose, together with Franklin and Rutledge, and his autobiography contains some curious anecdotes concerning the visit. Besides his presidency of the board of war, Adams was also chairman of the committee upon which devolved the decision of appeals in admiralty cases from the State courts. Having thus occupied for nearly two years a position which gained for him the reputation, among at least a few of his colleagues, of having "the clearest head and firmest heart of any man in Congress."

He was appointed near the end of 1777 a commissioner to France, to supercede Deane, whom Congress had concluded to recall. He embarked at Boston, in the Frigate Boston, on February 12th, 1878, reaching Bordeaux after a stormy passage, and arrived on April 8th at Paris. As the alliance with France had been completed before his arrival, his stay was short. He found that a great antagonism of views and feelings had arisen between the three commissioners,--Franklin, Deane, and Arthur Lee, of whom the embassy to France had been originally composed. As the recall of Deane had not reconciled the other two, Adams devised, as the only means of giving unity and energy to the mission, that it should be intrusted to a single person. This suggestion was adopted, and in consequence of it, Franklin having been appointed sole embassador in France, Adams returned home.

He arrived at Boston just as a convention was about to meet to form a State constitution for Massachusetts, and, being at once chosen a member from Braintree, he was enabled to take a leading part in the formation of that important document. Before this convention had finished its business he was appointed by congress as minister to treat with Great Britain for peace, and commerce, under which appointment he again sailed for France in 1779, in the same French frigate in which he previously returned to the United States.

Contrary to his own inclinations, Mr. Adams was prevented by Vergennes, the French minister of foreign affairs, from making any communication of his powers to Great Britain. In fact, Vergennes and Adams already were, and continued to be, objects of distrust to one another, in both cases quite unfounded. Vergennes feared least advances toward treating with England might lead to some sort of reconciliation with her, short of the independence of the colonies, which was contrary to his ideas of the interest of France. The communications made to Vergennes by Gerard, the first French minister in America, and Adams' connection with the Lee's whom Vergennes suspected, though unjustly, of a secret communication through Arthur Lee with the British ministry, led him to regard Mr. Adams as the representative of a party in congress desirous of such a reconciliation; nor did he rest until he had obtained from congress, some two years after, the recall of Mr. Adams' powers to negotiate a treaty of commerce; and, in conjunction with him, of several colleagues to treat for peace, of whom Franklin, who enjoyed his entire confidence, was one.

Adams, on the other hand, not entirely free from hereditary English prejudices against the French, vehemently suspected Vergennes of a design to sacrifice the interests of America, especially the fisheries and the western lands, to the advancement of the Spanish house of Bourbon. While lingering at Paris, with nothing to do except to nurse these suspicions, Adams busied himself in furnishing communications on American affairs to a semi-official gazette conducted by M. Genet, chief secretary in the foreign bureau, and father of the French minister in America, who subsequently rendered that name so notorious.

Finding his position at Paris uncomfortable, he proceeded to Holland in July, 1780, his object being to form an opinion as to the probability of borrowing money there. Just about the same time he was appointed by Congress to negotiate a French loan, the party who had been selected for that purpose previously, Laurens, not yet being ready to leave home. By way of enlightening the Dutch in regard to American affairs, Adams published in the Gazette, of Leyden, a number of papers and extracts, including several which, through a friend, he first had published in a London journal to give to them an English character. To these he added direct publication of his own, afterward many times reprinted, and now to be found in volume VII of his collected works under the title of 'Twenty-six Letters upon Interesting Subjects Respecting the Revolution in America.' He had commenced negotiations for a loan when his labors in that direction were interrupted by the sudden breach between England and Holland, consequent upon the capture of Laurens and the discovery of the secret negotiation carried on between him and Van Berkel, of Amsterdam, which, though it had been entered into without authority of the Dutch States, was made an excuse by the British for a speedy declaration of war.

Adams was soon after appointed minister to Holland in place of the captured Laurens, and at the same time was commissioned to sign the articles of armed neutrality which had just made their appearance on the political scene. Adams presented memorials to the Dutch government setting forth his powers in both respects; but before he could procure any recognition he was recalled in July, 1781, to Paris, by a notice that he was needed there, in his character of minister, to treat for peace.

Adams' suspicion of Vergennes had, meanwhile, been not a little increased by the neglect of France to second his applications to Holland. With Vergennes the great object was peace. The finances of France were sadly embarrassed, and Vergennes wished no further complications to the war. Provided the English colonies should be definitely separated from the mother-country, which he considered indispensable to the interest of France, he was not disposed to insist on anything else. It was for this reason that he had urged upon, and just about this time had succeeded in obtaining from Congress, through the French Minister at Philadelphia--though the information had not yet reached Paris--not only the withdrawal of Adams' commission to treat of commerce, and the enlargement to five of the number of commissioners to treat for peace, but an absolute discretion intrusted to the negotiators as to everything except independence and the additional direction that in the last resort they were to be governed by the advice of Vergennes. The cause for sending for Adams, who still occupied, so far as was known at Paris, the position of sole negotiator for peace; the offer of mediation on the part of Russia and the German empire; but this offer led to nothing.

Great Britain haughtily rejected it on the ground that she would not allow France to stand between her and her colonies. Returning to Holland Mr. Adams, though still unsupported by Vergennes, pushed with great energy his reception as embassador by the States general, which at length, April 19th, 1782, he succeeded in accomplishing. Following up this success with his CUSTOMARY PERSEVERENCE, he succeeded before the end of the year in negotiating a Dutch loan of nearly two millions of dollars, the first of a series which proved a chief financial resource of the continental congress. He also succeeded in negotiating a treaty of amity and commerce. His success in these negotiations, considering the obstacles with which he had to contend, and the want of support from Vergennes, he was accustomed to regard as the greatest triumph of his life.

Before this business was completed, Mr. Adams received urgent calls to come to Paris where Jay and Franklin, two of the new commissioners, were already treating for peace, and where he arrived October 26th. Though Mr. Jay had been put into the diplomatic service by the procurement of the party in congress in the French interest, his diplomatic experience in Spain had led him also to entertain doubts as to the sincere good-will of Vergennes. A confidential dispatch from the French Secretary of Legation in America, intercepted by the British, and which Oswald, the British negotiator at Paris communicated to Franklin and Jay, with a view of making bad feeling between them and the French minister, had, along with other circumstances, induced Franklin and Jay to disregard their instructions, and to proceed to treat with Oswald without communicating that fact to Vergennes, or taking his advice as to terms of the treaty, a procedure in which Adams, after his arrival, fully concurred.

It was chiefly through his energy and persistence that the participation of America in the fisheries was secured by the treaty, not as a favor or a privilege, but as a right--a matter of much more importance then than now, the fisheries then being a much more important branch than now of American maritime industry.

Immediately upon the signature of the preliminary articles of peace, Adams asked leave to resign all his commissions and to return home, to which Congress responded by appointing him a commissioner jointly with Franklin and Jay, to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. His first visit to England was, however, in a private character, to recruit his health, after a violent fever with which he had been attacked, shortly after signing the treaty of peace. He spent some time, first at London, and afterward at Bath; but while still an invalid he was recalled, in the dead of winter, to Holland, which he reached after a stormy and most uncomfortable voyage; there to negotiate a new loan as the means of meeting government bills drawn in America, which were in danger of protest from want of funds--a BUSINESS IN WHICH HE SUCCEEDED.

Adams was included along with Franklin and Jefferson, the latter sent out to take the place of Jay, in a new commission to form treaties with foreign powers; and his being joined by Mrs. Adams and their only daughter and youngest son, his other two sons being already with him, reconciled him to the idea of remaining abroad.

With his family about him he fixed his residence at Auteuil, near Paris, where he had an interval of comparative leisure.

The chief business of the new commission was the negotiation of a treaty with Prussia, advances toward which had first been made to Adams while at the Hague negotiating the Dutch loan, but before that treaty was ready for signature Adams was appointed by congress as Minister to the court of St. James, where he arrived in May, 1785. The English government, the feelings of which were well represented by those of the king, had neither the magnanimity nor policy to treat the new American States with respect, generosity, or justice. Adams was received with civility, but no commercial arrangements could be made. His chief employment was in complaining of the non-execution of the treaty of peace, especially in relation to the non-surrender of the western posts, and in attempting to meet similar complaints urged, not without strong grounds, by the British; more particularly with regard to the obstacles thrown in the way of the collection of British debts, which were made an excuse for the detention of the western posts. Made sensible in many ways of the aggravation of British feelings toward the new republic, whose condition immediately after the peace was somewhat embarrassing, and not so flattering as it might have been to the advocates and promoters of the revolution, the situation of Adams was rather mortifying than agreeable.