Link to Wikipedia page for the Battles of Lexington and Concord
Link to Wikipedia page for Paul Revere's Midnight Ride
[Transcript]
Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.
Episode 2.3 The Road to War
When we left off last week, John Adams had just been selected by the Massachusetts legislature as a delegate to the Continental Congress being held in Philadelphia in September 1774. The other three delegates were John’s second cousin, Samuel Adams; Robert Treat Paine, a lawyer; and Thomas Cushing, a wealthy merchant.
Before he was due to set off for Philadelphia, John traveled north to handle some cases and make some money. He was seriously considering giving up the law, or at least scaling back, and turning full time to farming. He had recently purchased the house and land next-door to his own house in Braintree. This was the house he grew up in, and where his brother Peter had been living. But Peter had recently married and moved to his new wife’s house, so John bought him out of the family home, more than doubling his Braintree property.
The Adams family had left Boston and returned to Braintree over the summer of 1774. Abigail had been very ill in the spring, and between the unhealthy city air and the coming unrest and potential for violence in the city, she and John thought it was better for everyone to be in the countryside.
With John away, first on the circuit and then heading to Philadelphia, it became Abigail’s responsibility to oversee their farm and property in Braintree, now much more extensive thanks to John’s recent purchase, and some other land purchases he had made over the years. She also had to help him prepare to be away from home in Philadelphia for an extended period of time.
He asked her to sew him “a Couple of Pieces of new Linnen. I am told, they wash miserably, at N. York, the Jerseys and Philadelphia too in Comparison of Boston, and am advised to carry a great deal of Linnen.” Abigail made him the requested items, along with a light brown silk vest so he could dress nicely in his role as Continental Congressional Delegate.
John sent many instructions for Abigail while he was riding the circuit. They had tenants doing the actual farming of the land, but Abigail would need to oversee the tenants. John wrote, “You must take Care my Dear, to get as much Work out of our Tenants as possible. Belcher is in Arrears. He must work. Hayden must work. Harry Field must work. … I can’t loose such Sums as they owe me—and I will not. … I must intreat you to rouse your whole Attention to the Family, the stock, the Farm, the Dairy. Let every Article of Expence which can possibly be spared be retrench’d.”
In addition to cutting back on expenses and overseeing the farm and tenants, Abigail was also going to be responsible for the children’s education. John wrote, “For God Sake, make your Children, hardy, active and industrious, for Strength, Activity and Industry will be their only Resource and Dependance. … I am very thoughtfull and anxious about our Johnny. What School to send him to.”
You’ll note that John refers to the money owed by the tenants as “such sums as they owe me” and he refers to the children as “your children.” Even though parents were theoretically supposed to be jointly responsible for the education of their children, John was basically abdicating his part in all of it so he could go serve his country in the Continental Congress. But the money that was supposed to support his wife and family and the farm they lived on was not joint money. It was his money. Wives didn’t have money. But we’ll see in later years that Abigail starts making a lot of money decisions on her own, and blurs the line between what was legally allowed and what was happening in actual reality.
John left for the Continental Congress on August 10, 1774. He and Abigail had traveled to Boston the day before so he could meet up with the other delegates. When they set off on their 300-mile journey to Philadelphia, Abigail joined the large crowd that gathered in the street to cheer them on and wish them well.
Abigail then returned to Braintree. Within a few days she already missed John. She wrote him a letter dated August 19 in which she said, “The great anxiety I feel for my Country, for you and for our family renders the day tedious, and the night unpleasant.” On September 2, having still not heard from John, she wrote that several other delegates’ wives had received letters from their husbands.
On September 14 she wrote, “Five Weeks have past and not one line have I received.” She worried that John was waiting until he could find a traveler to convey his letters, rather than sending them by the post. At that time, postage was paid by the recipient of a letter, rather than the sender. She wrote, “I had rather give a dollar for a letter by the post, tho the consequence should be that I Eat but one meal a day for these 3 weeks to come.”
In another letter, she addressed the reason he was away from her in the first place, writing, “I will not despair, but will believe that, our cause being good, we shall finally prevail. The maxim ‘In time of peace prepare for war’... resounds through the country. Next Tuesday they are warned at Braintree, all above fifteen and under sixty, to attend with their arms; and to train once a fortnight from that time.”
As the colony was preparing for potential war, Abigail was dealing with the more commonplace issue of educating her children. Nabby was 9 at this point, and Johnny was 7. The two younger boys were only 4 and 2, so it was too early to think about school for them. Braintree had an elementary school where it would have made sense to send Johnny, but Abigail was worried that some of the other children would be a bad influence on him. So instead, she hired John Thaxter, Jr., one of John’s previous law clerks, who also happened to be a cousin of hers, to tutor Johnny. She wrote to John to let him know what she had decided.
John did finally write to Abigail while he was away in Philadelphia. His days were filled “from the Moment I get out of Bed, untill I return to it. Visits, Ceremonies, Company, Business, … etc. etc. etc.” Factions developed among the delegates. The most radical, including Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and Patrick Henry of Virginia, argued for independence from Britain. Others were more moderate, and still others would eventually side with Britain in the dispute. John tried to create harmony and propose compromise so that they could present a united front.
It won’t surprise you at all to hear that the Continental Congress was full of men who liked to hear themselves talk. John wrote, “This Assembly is like no other that ever existed. Every Man in it is a great Man—an orator, a Critick, a statesman, and there fore every Man upon every Question must shew his oratory, his Criticism and his Political Abilities. … I believe if it was moved and seconded that We should come to a Resolution that Three and two make five We should be entertained with Logick and Rhetorick, Law, History, Politics and Mathematicks, concerning the Subject for two whole Days, and then We should pass the Resolution unanimously in the Affirmative.”
It’s amazing that this gathering produced anything at all, but it did. The major result of the Continental Congress of 1774 was a petition to King George III titled Declaration of Rights and Grievances. This document laid out the colonies’ complaints and requested remedies. The Congress also called for a boycott of trade with the British and established a Committee of Safety to enforce the boycott. Congress adjourned on October 26, after having agreed to meet again the following May for a Second Continental Congress.
By November 9, John was back in Braintree, but he had missed his and Abigail’s tenth wedding anniversary in the meantime. The first 10 years of their marriage had been eventful—five children born, one child dying as a baby, two moves to Boston and back to Braintree, John’s development into a statesman, and Abigail’s development into something of an independent woman. The next 10 years of their marriage would be even more eventful, but they would be apart for the majority of it.
John wasn’t sure whether he would be named a delegate for the Second Continental Congress, but he spent the winter of 1774-75 writing a series of newspaper essays arguing the colonists’ case. Many political essays at this time were published under pseudonyms. A series of essays arguing for loyalty to the British Crown and Parliament had been published under the really horrible name “Massachusettensis.” John’s series was a response to this, published under the not-much-better name “Novanglus,” as in “New England.”
Abigail also wrote on political subjects, but her writings were private correspondence, rather than public newspaper essays. In one letter to Mercy Otis Warren, she wrote, “Let these truths … be indelibly impressed on our Minds that we cannot be happy without being free, that we cannot be free without being secure in our property, that we cannot be secure in our property if without our consent others may by right take it away.” If women could have served as delegates to the Continental Congress, Abigail Adams would have made a good one.
As Charles Akers writes in Abigail Adams: A Revolutionary American Woman, “Abigail Adams’s husband considered her an intellectual equal and enjoyed discussing politics freely with her in the confines of their home. Without asking him to yield any of his male prerogative, she presented herself as the whetstone on which to sharpen his ideas. Her opinions were not merely a mirror image of his; she was often the more incisive and unwavering of the two. She became skilled in striking a fine balance between deference to his male superiority and the persuasive presentation of her views. Denied a public voice, she helped shape the political views of her husband and sons. Her aptitude was so great that she gradually enlarged her private political influence through a wide circle of correspondents and acquaintances. She became in time the nation’s best informed woman on public affairs, while never overstepping, she thought, the line nature had drawn between the sexes.”
In December 1774, John was once again selected as a delegate to the Continental Congress. He would be joined by the same delegates as before, with the addition of John Hancock. People seemed to sense that war was imminent. Abigail certainly did, writing, “Is it not better to die the last of British freemen than live the first of British Slaves. … The die is cast. … Heaven only knows what is next to take place but it seems to me the Sword is now our only, yet dreadful alternative.”
One of the things the British troops in America were doing to undermine the colonists was seizing the gunpowder stores that the colonists had been stockpiling in various towns and cities. In April 1775, British General Thomas Gage, who was also serving as the governor of Massachusetts, had been secretly ordered to dispatch troops to seize the gunpowder held in Concord and to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Adams and Hancock received word of this in advance and fled to the home of one of Hancock’s relatives.
The British troops were amassed in Boston, and the Patriots got word that the troops were setting out for Cambridge in boats, and would then be taking the road toward Lexington and Concord. On the night of April 18, Paul Revere, Joseph Warren, and William Dawes sent the “two if by sea” lantern signal to compatriots across the water in Charlestown. Revere and Dawes then set out on their famous Midnight Ride to alert the towns that quote unquote the British were coming.
They didn’t actually use the phrase “the British are coming” because at that time, they were all technically still British. What they actually said was “the Regulars are coming,” meaning the British Army Regular troops. And they didn’t shout it from their horses as they streamed through towns. They were trying to be stealthy, so they rode to fellow Patriots to let them know, and then some of those people also mounted horses and started spreading the word. There may have been as many as 40 riders that night, getting the word out that the British army was on the move and headed for Concord.
The town of Lexington was on the route to Concord, and the local militiamen had gathered on Lexington Green by the time the British Regulars arrived near sunrise on April 19. The militia was not there to start a fight. Their intention was to keep an eye on the Brits and to fire back if fired upon. The orders of their commander, Captain John Parker, are actually engraved on his tombstone: “Stand your ground, don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
To this day, there’s no clear answer as to who actually fired the first shot at Lexington. It might have been a British soldier, it might have been a militiaman, or it might have been an onlooker hiding behind a hedge, which is what some of the British Regulars later claimed. We’ll never know, but the fact is that a shot was fired, and then, much like the Boston Massacre, more shots rang out in the confusion. In the end, 8 militiamen were killed and 10 were wounded. The British Regulars sustained only one injury, a captain who was wounded in the thigh.
After restoring order among the British Regulars, their leader, Colonel Smith, marched them out of town to resume their march to Concord. The Concord militia was already gathering, and had received word of the shots exchanged in Lexington. Colonel James Barrett led the Concord militia, and he gave them the same order not to fire unless fired upon.
I won’t go into all the particulars of what happened at Concord, but I will put a link to the Wikipedia entry for Lexington and Concord on the website. You can find the link in the show notes. Fans of military history will appreciate the minute detail contained in the Wikipedia account.
The short version is that the British Regulars conducted searches throughout the town, destroying any weapons or supplies they found. The militia advanced on a corps of Regulars guarding a bridge, and the Regulars were ordered to retreat, which they did. As the militia advanced and the Regulars retreated, once again, a shot was fired, despite no order to fire having been given. It’s a little alarming how many major moments leading up to the Revolutionary War happened because some dummy accidentally fired his gun. Shots were exchanged between the two sides, and the British retreated.
The Regulars continued their search under the watchful eyes of the militia, but without any further shots being fired. After having lunch in the town, the Regulars began to march back to Boston, by way of Lexington, Menotomy, and Charlestown. Heavy companies of militia had gathered all along the route and in all the towns. Fighting took place between the two sides all the way back to Boston. By the time the Regulars were back to the relative safety of Boston, the militia tailing them had reached nearly 15,000 men, growing larger all the way from Concord to Boston.
The militia formed a siege line encompassing Boston on three sides, with the waters of the Charles River and Boston Harbor comprising the fourth side. This was the beginning of the siege of Boston, and these 15,000 militiamen were the seeds of the Continental Army. Within a couple of months, a certain General George Washington would arrive to take command, an event we covered in episode 1.5 and will cover again shortly.
War had officially broken out between the colonies and Great Britain, and there was no going back. Abigail wrote to Mercy Warren, “What a scene has opened upon us! Such a scene as we never before Experienced, and could scarcely form an Idea of. O Britain Britain, how is thy glory vanished—how are thy Annals stained with the Blood of thy children.”
A week later, on April 26, John set out to ride to Philadelphia again for the Second Continental Congress. He stopped to survey the militia at Cambridge and to view the battle sites in Lexington and Concord. He wrote that the militia was in confusion and distress. “Artillery, Arms, Clothing were wanting and a sufficient Supply of Provisions not easily obtained.” As we know from season 1, these deficiencies would continue throughout the war. After meeting with some of the men who described the skirmishes, he wrote, “the Die was cast, the Rubicon passed, and … if We did not defend ourselves they would kill Us.”
John was fully aware that he had just left his family within half an hour’s ride of the danger in Boston. He wrote Abigail that she should flee to the woods with the children if real harm seemed imminent. Abigail was busy providing temporary refuge for people fleeing from Boston. She wrote John, “You can hardly imagine how we live.” She also housed militiamen on their way to join the siege.
The Continental Congress was more than a year away from declaring independence, but Abigail was already there. She wrote to one correspondent, “I glory in calling my self a daughter of America. … The Spirit that prevails among Men of all degrees, all ages and sex’es is the Spirit of Liberty. … Tis Thought we must now bid a final adieu to Britain, nothing will now appease the Exasperated Americans but the heads of those trators who have subverted the constitution, for the blood of our Breathren crys to us from the Ground.”
Seriously though, if Abigail had been in Congress, they might have declared independence sooner!
In actuality, Congress was still divided. But at least all 13 colonies were represented this time. Georgia had declined to send any delegates to the First Continental Congress, but they had joined the Second. The factions from the First Congress were still arguing over whether confrontation with Britain or continued negotiation was better. At this point, technically only Massachusetts was at war with Britain. All the fighting had taken place within Massachusetts, and Britain had declared it to be in a state of rebellion.
Besides being divided over how to deal with Britain, a division was forming between northern colonies and southern. As Edith Gelles writes in Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage, “While lesser issues such as patterns of trade divided the sections, the issue of southern slavery became the subtle subtext on the convention floor and would continue for the duration of the revolution and afterward. So sensitive was this issue that the delegates avoided it, suppressing the one topic that would become the deal breaker for their unification. It was the elephant in the State House.”
Ignoring this elephant paid off. At the end of May John informed Abigail, “The Congress will support Massachusetts.” The other colonies would send military aid and mobilize their militias.
John is actually the delegate who nominated George Washington to be commander in chief of the Continental Army. He informed Abigail in a letter that “Congress have made the Choice of the modest and virtuous, the amiable, generous and brave George Washington Esqr., to be the General of the American Army…to cement and secure the Union of these Colonies.”
Congress was meeting nearly around the clock. The entire Congress met from 10 am until 5 or 6 pm every day except Sunday. Small committees with specific assignments met in the mornings before convening with the whole Congress, and various groups met for dinner and discussion after the Congress adjourned each day. John kept Abigail informed to the extent that he could. The discussions of Congress were confidential because Loyalists and British spies were everywhere in Philadelphia, plus there was always the danger that his letters would fall into the wrong hands while they were in transit.
Ironically, Abigail was more informed than John about what was happening on the war front, because she was so much closer to it than John was. The same day that Congress named George Washington commander in chief, the Battle of Bunker Hill took place on June 17, 1775.
Abigail was woken up at 3 am by cannon fire. It continued all morning. After sunrise, Abigail and Johnny walked to the top of nearby Penn’s Hill, one of the highest hills in Braintree. From there they actually watched the battle, although at a distance of 10 miles, they were too far away to know exactly what was happening.
Seventy-five years later, John Quincy would write about viewing the battle. “The year 1775 was the eighth year of my age. I saw with my own eyes those fires, and heard Britannia’s thunders in the Battle of Bunker’s hill and witnessed the tears of my mother and mingled with them my own.” As I mentioned in episode 1.5, this battle was actually fought on Breed’s Hill, but early battlefield reports misidentified it as Bunker Hill, which was the next hill over. Somehow the battle has gone down in history with the wrong name attached to it.
Abigail and John lost friends in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and they were both aware that the danger could spread beyond Boston at any moment. Abigail wrote to John, “I shall tarry here till tis thought unsafe by my Friends, & then I have secured myself a retreat at your Brothers who has kindly offered me part of his house.” In the end, she never had to evacuate Braintree.
Boston was essentially cut off from all trade, and Abigail was having difficulty acquiring necessities. They were running out of coffee, sugar, pepper, as well as necessary non-food items like pins and needles. She asked John to acquire pins for her in Philadelphia, writing, “Not one pin is to be purchased for love nor money. I wish you could convey me a thousand by any Friend travelling this way.” Within a few days, John managed to find someone to carry the pins to Abigail.
Interestingly, although every single biographer mentions this episode with the pins, not one of them bothers to tell us what on earth Abigail was doing with all those pins. Obviously pins are necessary when sewing clothes to hold everything together before it could be stitched. But the pins don’t disintegrate when the clothes are finished! They are reusable. I’m endlessly curious about why the need for pins was so great. I personally would rather have had some sugar and pepper.
When news of the Battle of Bunker Hill finally reached Philadelphia a week after taking place, John wrote to Abigail, “God Almightys Providence preserve, sustain, and comfort you. Courage, my dear! We shall be supported in Life or comforted in Death.”
The closest Abigail and the children came to being in harm’s way was an engagement at Grape Island, which wasn’t far from their home. Abigail took the precaution of sending John’s library of books to safety at John’s brother’s house, but apparently she wasn’t worried enough to evacuate with the children.
Sometime shortly after George Washington arrived in Cambridge in early July, he and Abigail met for the first time. Sources are conflicted about whether he visited her in Braintree or whether she visited him in Cambridge. Either way, George made a good impression on Abigail. She later wrote to John, “You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of him, but I thought the one half was not told me. Dignity with ease, and complacency, the Gentleman and Soldier look agreably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feature of his face.”
She was less impressed with General Charles Lee, who traveled everywhere with a pack of dogs. John Adams had inadvertently made the dogs somewhat famous in a letter that had been intercepted by the British and published in the Tory press. John had written that “you must love his Dogs if you love him.” General Lee insisted on introducing his favorite dog to Abigail, and she even shook the dog’s paw.
August and September 1774 were eventful. Congress took a brief recess in August, and John returned home briefly before immediately leaving again for Watertown, where the Massachusetts provincial government sat. He stopped in Cambridge to meet with Generals Washington, Lee, and Gates, then spent three weeks in Watertown. He returned home to Braintree on weekends, and at the end of August, Abigail traveled to Watertown to spend three days with him there, before he left once again for Philadelphia.
The timing was good for him, bad for Abigail, because all hell was about to break loose in Boston and surrounding areas. The threat wasn’t the British, it was dysentery. Dysentery was prevalent in military encampments because of the lack of sanitation and close quarters shared by the men. Unfortunately it was also common in the towns and cities that were near military encampments because it spread easily and quickly.
One of John’s brothers had died of dysentery in early August, not long after enlisting with the Continental Army. He left behind a widow and two young children, one of whom came to live with Abigail and the children for a short time. The other child would also eventually die of dysentery.
By early September, dysentery had reached the Adams household. Abigail wrote to John about it. “Since you left me I have passed thro great distress both of Body and Mind. You may remember Isaac was unwell when you went from home. His Disorder increasd till a voilent Dysentery was the consequence of his complaints. There was no resting place in the House for his terrible Groans. Two days after he was sick, I was seaz’d with the same disorder in a voilent manner. The next person in the same week was Suszy [the servant girl]. Our Little Tommy was the next, and he lies very ill now. Our House is an hospital in every part, and what with my own weakness and distress of mind for my family I have been unhappy enough.”
Abigail's mother Elizabeth came to help take care of Abigail while she was sick, and to help Abigail with the children and servants who were sick after Abigail recovered. But then Elizabeth herself came down with the disease. Abigail tended to her mother 12 hours a day for two weeks before her mother died on October 1. Abigail wrote, “I rose and went into my Mothers room with a cup of tea in my hand, raised her head to give it to her, she swallowed a few drops, gaspd and fell back upon her pillow, opened her Eyes with a look that pirced my Heart and which I never shall forget. It was the eagerness of a last look.”
The rest of the Adams household recovered from dysentery except the servant girl Patty, who was in misery for a month before finally dying. Nearly every family in the area lost someone in the epidemic. Some families lost multiple children.
Through it all, Abigail never asked John to return home to help her, and he never offered to return home. They both seemed to know that what he was doing in Philadelphia was important enough to supersede all his responsibilities as a husband, father, and town leader. Abigail was reluctantly willing to make this sacrifice, not knowing that in the near future, her sacrifice would grow even larger.
Next week, we’ll reach the pivotal year of 1776, and Abigail will develop even further into a political thinker, writing to John what is probably her most famous letter of all.
Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matthew Dull. Please share the podcast with a friend you think would enjoy it!
