Among the many powerful forces that drove American liberty
stands the union of John and Abigail Adams, America’s best known and perhaps most
powerful marriage. Their union paralleled the rise of American independence.
The long separations they endured in their sacrifice for American freedom produced
voluminous correspondence totaling 1200 letters between two people who were
best friends, intellectual equals, and stalwart patriots.
Abigail, 9 years John’s junior, stood barely 5 feet tall. John,
balding and tending to roundness, stood five feet six inches—near average for colonial
America. They married in her family parlor in 1774, the year America’s move for
independence began. Abigail’s independent, well-formed opinions made her John’s
perfect match to become deeply committed friends and marriage partners. She and
John forged a partnership so united that she said of him, “When he is wounded,
I bleed”, and he said of her, “I can do nothing without you.”
John was an ambitious country lawyer seeking to invest his
erratic, excitable passions in the affairs of history. Abigail was his greatest
asset; steady and supportive—an anchor for his aspirations; his ballast in the
storm.
As the children came, John accepted ever-increasing
responsibilities as a leading colonial activist. Their home in Braintree, Massachusetts
was near Boston, epicenter of the American revolutionary movement. They were apart
for years at a time in the cause of freedom. Geography and a lumbering mail
system became boundaries to their communication.
Abigail managed their four children (a fifth died in
infancy) and the family farm, shepherding them through the horrendous smallpox
epidemic of 1775, which ravaged the nearby British and Continental armies during
the siege of Boston. Busy mothers can feel her need for privacy during those harried
years, as she said, ”I always had a fancy for a closet with a window which I
could peculiarly call my own.” She wanted John at home, but accepted and shared
the patriotic sympathies that trumped her pleas.
John and Abigail spent only four months together in a six
year period, as John moved the American Revolution forward. They loved and
conversed through letters—rich treasures, which open a window to their marriage
and the emerging nation to which they gave themselves. During their four months
together, Abigail became pregnant. She gave birth to a stillborn daughter, and
bore the grief alone as the news travelled slowly to John, three hundred miles
away in Philadelphia.
John’s role in history took its toll on their family. In
1778 he was appointed an American diplomat to Paris, leaving 10 days after
accepting the appointment. He took their two oldest sons, 10 year old Charles
and 13 year old John Quincy, but left Abigail, their youngest son and only
daughter at home. Abigail was melancholy. She poured out her pain at his
leaving in a letter to him the day he left, “My habitation, how disconsolate it
looks! My table, I set down to it but I cannot swallow my food.” John and John
Quincy would be gone 5 long years; Charles would return to his mother, sailing across
the Atlantic alone at age 11, less than two years later. When Abigail next saw
her firstborn she could recognize him only by looking into his eyes.
Letters sometimes took six months to reach their
destination. Often they were lost at sea, as mail pouches containing sensitive
diplomatic contents were thrown overboard if an American ship risked capture.
John’s skilled diplomatic efforts produced advantageous treaties with the Dutch
and the British, to end the war. Harried, he seldom wrote home, and Abigail
went for over a year with no news whatever from John.
When John’s diplomatic skills carried him directly from
France to Britain as ambassador, Abigail could bear the separation no longer. She
trusted John implicitly, but knew their extended separations would inevitably
weaken their deep commitment to each other. They had had enough separation.
Sending her two youngest children to live with her sister, she brushed aside
her chilling fears of the long ocean voyage and sailed for Paris, then London,
with their daughter, Nabby (and the family cow, which died on the sea voyage).
It would be four years before she saw her younger sons again. She played the
diplomatic role so foreign to her personal tastes, re-knit the fabric of their committed
relationship despite John’s distractedness, and rejoiced when they finally
sailed for home.
John’s embattled four years as the second U.S. president,
pummeled by the press and undermined by ambitious, previously trusted
associates hungry for power, took their toll on both John and Abigail. They
retired to Braintree for their last years together. While their somber son,
John Quincy, established a solid political career and became our sixth
president, the remaining Adams children had not fared well. Nabby married
poorly and came to live with her children at her parents’ home before she died
of breast cancer. Charles and Tommy became alcoholics; charismatic, charming Charles
drank himself to death as a young man. Modern research on the extra burdens of
children in fatherless homes raises the inevitable question: what were the
effects of John’s protracted absences on his children? History provides no
answer.
Abigail died in the 54th year of their marriage,
leaving John alone for the last 8 years of his life. She had been the “ guiding
planet around which all revolved”. In the dearth created by Abigail’s absence,
John Quincy’s wife, Louisa Catherine, began a correspondence satisfying to them
both. Commiserating with his old friend,
Thomas Jefferson, they mused about the life to come after death. Each believed
in a certain reunion with loved ones gone beyond, and John waited for the day
when he and Abigail could be together again.
John Adams died on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the
signing of the Declaration of Independence, the birth certificate of the United
States of America. He and Abigail left a legacy of sacrifice for the national
good and perseverance in the face of opposition that is woven into our national
character.
- Pam
No comments:
Post a Comment