Remembering John Adams' Words by Perrie Halpern
On the 2nd of July 1776, John Adams faced a terrible dilemma. With John Hancock decision that all 13 colonies must vote for "Yea" for independence, Adams would either have to remove the heavily debated anti-slavery clause from the yet unsigned Declaration of Independence, or forfeit his dream of an independent United States. The southern colonies would stand firm on this issue. They noted the northern colonies hypocrisy, as many of those colonies were the ports were where the slaves arrived and were sold to the south. Adams, an abolitionist, found the practice an abomination to his faith and to god, but his fellow abolitionist Benjamin Franklin, was far more pragmatic and pressed Adams to remain focused on what they were all there to accomplish, independence. He pleaded with Adams to drop the anti-slavery clause from the Declaration and eventually, Adams conceded. The resolution for independence passed on July 2nd. On the morning of July 3rd, Adams wrote his beloved wife, Abigail, the following letter:
Yesterday the greatest question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, and as such they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce, and to do all the other acts and things which other states may rightfully do. You will see in a few days a declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God and man. A plan of confederation will be taken up in a few days.
When I look back to the year of 1761 and recollect the argument concerning writs of assistance in the superior 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 surprised at the suddenness as well as greatness of this revolution. Britain has been filld 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 distressing yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect, at least: it will inspire us will many virtues, which we have not, and correct many errors, follies, and vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonor, 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 extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great. I am not without apprehensions from this quarter, but I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.
Later that evening, he wrote Abigail a second letter:
The second day of July, 1776, will be memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever.
You will think me transported with enthusiasm; but I am not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph, although you and I may rue, which I hope we shall not.
The actual Declaration was ratified on the 4th of July, the day we recognize as our independence day. But one can not read Adams prophetic words above and not be amazed at his vision for his beloved country.
In the play "1776", these words were not forgotten. In a very moving moment in the play, as Adams decides on the slavery question, he sings:
I see fireworks! I see the pagaent and
Pomp and parade
I hear the bells ringing out
I hear the cannons roar
I see Americans - all Americans
Free forever more
Happy Birthday America. No matter what, may we always be the United States and fulfill Adams' prophecy.
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I did not realize that an earlier union existed in which each state had the power to wage war and conclude peace . Clearly such actions did not have the power of such a decision by the union of the several states .
Yes, this is true. This is pre-Constitution and pre-US. The Declaration was a formality so that they as a unit, make their grievances known to the King, and also secure money from other European nations, mainly France, through Lafayette.
The Declaration of Independence and the Debate Over Slavery (1776)
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Sources:
Source: Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and other Writings, Official and Private (Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Maury, 1853-1854).
~Link~
An excellent and timely seed. Adams was a great leader of the revolution and the continental congress. His prediction of what would happen ultimately on July 4th each year was remarkable.
This statement...
We all have to accept, for as we grow older we no longer effect the ideals of the nation. All we can do is hunker down and pray to the great maker that we have done enough...
So while we celebrate such a wondrous achievement, lets not forget what such costs.
When that passage when into debate, it was the like pouring gasoline onto a fire. The south was shocked that Jefferson wrote that. Furthermore, Jefferson has told his fellow southerners that he had committed to letting his slaves become free, (it ended up that he didn't. A good book to read about Jefferson is "American Sphinx"). Never the less, in order to create this country, the clause was struck from the Declaration, and the south signed.
Very true.
I agree-- we must never forget!
XX,
Adams was indeed a unique person in history. Probably one of the most misunderstood men of his time.
I have to disagree Perrie, "American Sphinx" to me is just a boldfaced rewrite of history based upon some seriously stilted opinion.
But then that is what most want to read today, commentary and opinion, even horribly stilted opinion.
You are aware that most serious historians laugh at that book and consider it one of the worst biographies of Jefferson ever written for it's inaccuracies...
I am going to disagree NWM.
Here are some reviews of the book:
Book reviews,
Right.
Historians, even amateur ones like me, tend to think along terms that we just might, after long study, have a basis on the subject to form our on opinions.
We don't rely on book reviews, amazon rankings or the NY times best seller lists. Neither do we rely on PBS to do shows on books to gain the knowledge we have assembled over decades.
I have read it, and also his books on Adams and Washington, and his general history on the "Boys" the brothers of the revolution.
I've found them all wanting, based upon opinions that frankly I don't hold to.
His book have received criticism from many other sources. You don't see the American historical society or any other group of historians lauding his books like the media does...
Mr Ellis tells a story, with a political bias which I cannot accept.
But alas, it seems the world wants to be told stories, rather than know the truth.
But that is what happens when one chooses one single source (media) for their knowledge.
Not trying to argue, just put Mr Ellis's works in proper context. which clearly is in the realm of opinion, cause we have all three of the major participants own works to find out their positions on. Much of which runs counter to Mr Ellis's opinion of what they meant.
Why do we need a Mr Ellis to interpret what they meant when we have their actual writings on all the issues in hand?
Form the founder's own hands isn't good enough.
Just like the priests of the temple, from gods own mouth isn't good enough, we need a man to explain it to us. Or, for us to worship here on earth.
I have a hard time with fools like Mr Ellis who places himself and his opinions over the actual words of the founders. Just as I have a hard time with the media fools that are educated enough to know the pablum they are serving up, and then the politicians that allow them to do such and the educators that buy into it and serve the same pablum up to our students.
Like I've said, I'm glad that I won't be around to see the result.
And I pray to the great maker that we (this nation) can survive.
Very nice post Perrie. As conflicted as they all were, they left the seeds of change in their work. However, Dr. King could be applied to the colonial 'social transition' and your point of the slavery issue.
I don't disagree in with Dr.King's comment. Yet everyone has 20/20 hindsight. There was very little choice about the slavery clause. Without the south, at best, we would have been two separate nations, at worst, no nation at all. We needed the south to beat England, and this was not beyond the thoughts of Benjamin Franklin and Richard Henry Lee, the irony here being that the proposal for independence was brought by Lee, and less than 100 years later, his great grandson would lead in the war for the Confederacy. I guess you could say, we came full circle.
Again, Adams may have been right, but there probably would have been no nation then and probably for many years later. It took both the north and the south to fight the British in the War of 1812, and we barely made it. Sometimes, history is just a moment in time, and that was their time.
John is not interested in practicality , only "moral purity" ... in hindsight .
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton
You see here is the problem I have with people considering issues from back then and applying societal mores of 200 some odd years later.
That they decided to declare in the DOI was compromised, but they needed ALL 13 colonies to sign. so not everything that needed doing got done. The same issue existed with almost the same people writing the Constitution 20 years later the 3/5th compromise was to keep the southern states from refusing to sign.
It's nice to hold the founders as hypocrites or inconsistent when applying today's mores where such decisions wouldn't even be contemplated much less voted on.
You plain CANNOT do it.
You have to judge their actions and consider their positi0ns based upon the morality and societal situation that existed back then. If we don't we risk in a paroxysm of guilt, throwing the baby (freedom) out with the bathwater (old societal mores)
None of us were around during the work that was done to create and secure this great nation. Why are we second guessing them and their motives today?
Is there anyone superior to them in existence today? no in fact there are a lot of people that haven't a clue about what they did much less who they were.
President Kennedy famously said at a whitehouse dinner for the nobel prize winners and laureats from all over the world that numbered over 200, "there has never before been such a great assemblage of genius in the white house since Thomas Jefferson was a resident"
When your discussing the founders, one must take into account that they were the best and brightest of their day. Nobody of today even begins to compare to their level of intelligence.
At least not to the point of explaining what they were doing.
So true.
Nowhere man, we can transpose that to other things as well. If we could go back and change a couple of things such as this: If every Northerner was a Southerner instead and vice versa it is very conceivable everything would have been the same with the exception of birthplace and where they spent their lives. The Northerners wouldn't have the South to blame, because whether they realize it or not they would not have done anything different. In other words it was the environment and geography not the morality of the people.
The USA only received about 2% of the slaves from Africa, the Biblical Hebrews, and they were brought to this country by some of the same people who rule this world today as always. They were carried to the parts of the country by the same wealth that controlled the other parts of the world.
Almost all northerners and southerners were dirt poor as we like to say it down here. The same wealthy who run the country and the commerce today were doing it at that time as well.
Dear Friend Perrie Halpern:If only we could value the freedom of those we enslave as much as our freedom when taken form us this world world would surely be a better place.
Thanks for a great article.
E.
Most if not all of the West Africans who later became slaves in the rest of the world including the United States were Hebrew.
You are aware that Jefferson proposed and rewrote the rules of aristocratic inheritance. Ending the practice of inheritance perpetuity? He did it in both the Virginia House of Burgesses AND the US Congress.
He was the father of of the ideal that eliminating and preventing perpetual wealth in this nation by direct inheritance would break the stranglehold of wealth controlling the government.
He was also the man that came up with the ideal of burying the wealthy in a senate that was controlled by the states governments, which served two purposes.
1. To keep the wealthy out of direct influence in national government by forcing them to go through their states governors/legislatures to get a seat.
2. Forcing the money men/influence peddlers into a much smaller venue and keeping them in the state legislatures.
These two ideas left the federal government solidly in the hands of the people, the purse strings in the hands of the house of representatives.
How many people decry the effect of the lobbyists on the government with direct access to the senate and senators that once elected take up residence in DC and never go back to their state except in time of election?
Jefferson's ideals was all over the separation of wealth and government we no longer have.
I know john that your ideology will prevent you from seeing or understanding anything that controverts your ideals. So we understand that you don't like most of the founders cause most of them held slaves at one point or another.
Absolutist thinking works like that at times.
I'll agree that he couldn't let go of the tiger's tail, all the founders were hamstrung by the society they lived in.
Show me in any of his works (the online library of liberty) where he claimed or stated the negro was "Inferior"
I'll lay money on you can't...
Perrie-I'm not sure MLK was was speaking to hindsight. He was calls out those who see injustice and say or do nothing.
The Methodist church split over this issue ca. 1844. A bishop in that denomination acquired slaves though marriage and was suspended. The issue ended in the formation of a second Methodist denomination, "The Methodist Episcopal Church, South". People dared to make a moral choice. It didn't break the hold on slavery, but they were silent about it.
Wasn't the 'posterity' quote about the pains it took to preserve freedom.
And, remember, the "Founding Fathers" also referred to Native people as merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Loose translation: Indians are savages who kill everyone in their path, and they do not stop, or at least this is what the founding fathers wanted you to believe.
So much for intelligence.
Yeah so much for intelligence, yet those same founders readily and easily made peace and negotiated with the tribes just like the english and french did before them.
Geopolitics wasn't limited to the white man, the Indians played their role in it as well. AND had their own version of geopolitics to boot.
White men are savages who destroy everything they touch, taking it for their own and they will never stop, or at least this is what the Indians of today want you to believe no matter how much they wish to ignore their own history and how they helped in their own destruction.
1st, you and I agree on most things, except history.
edit:
..but they were not silent about it.
I was gonna ask you about that, I'm glad you fixed it... {Chuckle}
That was Adams intent with that passage.
Allowing slavery to remain was one of those "Pains"