Young John Adams: On the Road to Philadelphia

by CATHERINE DRINKER BOWEN

1

ON a hot, dry morning of August, 1774, a coachand-four swung around a corner east of Beacon Hill. With a great clatter of horses, a squeal of brakes, a thunder of iron-shod wheels against cobblestones, it drew up before the handsome mansion of Thomas Cushing, Speaker of the Massachusetts House and delegate to the Grand Congress at Philadelphia. This was Wednesday the tenth. Today the great departure was to take place: the deputies were even now assembling in Cushing’s hallway. The neighborhood was in a holiday mood. Cook, mistress, shopkeeper, apprentice boy, all Bromfield Street turned out to watch the coach roll by.

The coach itself was a splendid affair, newly painted and polished, the wheels outlined in red and yellow. Ignoring the threats of the driver the crowd pressed forward, peered inside, exclaiming at the red silk curtains that framed the windows, the red cushions on the seats, the leather hand loops conveniently placed for the delegates when the coach lurched. The four chestnut horses were fresh and sleek, a groom sat beside the driver. Behind perched two black footmen in livery, their arms folded stylishly, a pleased grin on their faces.

Four mounted servants, well armed, rode alongside. As they pulled up, one of the horses reared, wheeling. The crowd, delighted, joshed the rider, demanding where he got his white gaiters and if he could load and aim those flintlock pistols without getting down first and tying his horse to a post.

Cushing’s house was filled with people. All the delegates were there except Sam Adams, who was never late and always leisurely. John Adams with Robert Paine, John Hancock, Josiah Quincy, and a dozen Sons of Liberty stood in the dining room, looking out the windows at the crowd. On the table behind them were pitchers of ale, platters of bread and cheese, melons, plums, dried currants. The gathering was noisy, excited; there was laughter, hearty greeting of friend and colleague.

Abigail Adams waited with the other women in the parlor across the hall. She had on her best dress of white summer chintz, printed gaily with little red and blue flowers. Her bonnet was white too, tied with a blue ribbon under her chin. Already the taffeta bow had begun to darken with moisture in the heat, but Abby did nol care. She was very quiet. Early this morning, she and John had said their farewells in their chamber; since then it seemed to Abby that all speech was gone from her. She sat numb as the women chattered, smiled politely when she was addressed, turned her head mechanically. But her gray eyes were dark, and when she raised a hand to smooth her brown hair under the bonnet, her fingers trembled. . . . “ They will be gone two months at the most,” someone said.

Two months? That was not long. John had often been away three weeks at a time on circuit, it was not the solitude that Abby dreaded. She was used to solitude; she liked her quiet country life with the four children. She was to live in Braintree while he was gone. “You will be safer there,” John had said. “Boston will be an armed camp by September.” . . . Safer . . . they would be safer. . . .

John would not be safe in Philadelphia, no matter what he tried to tell her. Suppose Governor Gage should seize the four delegates today, on the outskirts of town? Sam Adams’s head was forfeit, so was Cushing’s. There was no telling when they might all be taken, sent to England, and tried for treason. Five British regiments were encamped on Boston Common. Abby prayed that the coach, on its way to Cambridge Ferry, would avoid Tremont Street, not drive right, by the troops. She had seen a letter John had written lately to Joseph Hawley: “Sydney died on the scaffold, Harrington in jail. Politics are an ordeal path among red hot ploughshares. Who then would be a politician for the sake of running about bare foot among them? Yet somebody must.”

Sydney died on the scaffold. . . . The words went through Abby’s head, shutting out the talk, the laughter around her. If John died, she would not wish to live a day, an hour. She had told him so two nights ago in desperation, and he had replied gravely that it was wrong to think such thoughts. They were not young lovers, blind to the world and to duty. She was nearly thirty, he would be thirtynine in October. She must remember the children.

Abby clutched her handkerchief tighter. It would not do to let her fears be seen. When the final moment came and the coach clattered off, she must, not weep or give a sign. All summer she had borne up wonderfully. To break down now would be the worst thing she could do for her husband. Since his election as delegate last June, John had been terribly depressed, fearful lest he should not be equal to the task before him, and as usual, perfectly frank about his fears. He had written gloomy letters — to James Warren at Plymouth, to Hawley out beyond Worcester. If only he had more time to study, before the Congress met, John had said repeatedly. Time to learn something about the great men around the Court of the British King, time to study the character and feeling of the English people themselves. New England education had told him none of these things, so necessary in the larger political world where he was going.

For two long months, Abigail had summoned all her resources, all her energy and love, to comfort her husband, give him back his belief in himself. If the four delegates knew little about London and the island of England — surely, she had said stoutly, they were not more ignorant than England was about America. Let them be bold and stand up for what was right! . . . And the more she said it, the more Abby’s heart quailed within her. She was in fact exhausted with her role. Of all husbands upon earth, John Adams, she told herself, could descend deepest into the slough of self-doubt. She longed to snatch off her brave mask, sit down and cry, cling to her husband, beg him not to go.

Looking up, Abby saw a woman come through the hall door. It was Mrs. Sam Adams; she walked straight to Abigail, took her hand. “My dear,” she said with her kind, easy manner. “My husband said I was to find you and stay with you until the coach left.”

In the street they were cheering. “Sam Adams!” they said. “There he is . . . Sam Adams! Huzzah for the Congress! Huzzah! Huzzah!” There was a general movement toward the front door. Abby rose, made her way to the hall; Mrs. Sam Adams followed. Abby saw John come toward her through the crowd, felt his hands strong around her wrists, his breath on her cheek, heard him speak briefly and managed to reply. John left her, walked to the street door. There was a roar from the crowd outside. “Come this way,”Mrs. Sam Adams said. “Look, they are getting in the coach! There goes your husband. They are cheering his name. Do you hear?”

“John Adams!” the crowd shouted happily. “Cushing! John Adams . . . Sam Adams! Huzzah for the Congress! Huzzah!”

Horses hoofs struck against stone; heavy wheels rolled, a door slammed. The crowd roared again. . . . “They could have taken the north ferry to Cambridge,” a woman’s voice said, high, excited. “But they didn’t. They will drive straight down Tremont Street, not twenty feet from the soldiers. Isn’t it glorious? Mrs. Adams, are you not proud of your brave husband?”

Abby looked at the speaker and nodded gravely, her eyes quite dry.

2

BY FOUR that afternoon the coach had left Watertown and was headed southwest ward on the highway to Connecticut. For the deputies, this departure from Boston had been an experience almost overwhelming. At least a hundred friends and wellwishers, in carriages or on horseback, had escorted them over the ferry and down ihe road.

At Watertown a banquet awaited them, out under the trees. There were speeches, toasts, cheers, and at the end a solemn prayer by Dr. Cooper. John had not dreamed the Province contained so much concentrated good will. If only, he thought fervently—if only Abby could see and hear this evidence of strong support for their venture and their cause!

When the last toast was drunk and the coach door slammed upon the last farewell, the four delegates threw themselves back in their narrow cushioned seats, dazed and numb. All, that is, but Sam Adams, who seemed composed as ever. He took off his wig, wiped his face and neck with a handkerchief. What had pleased him most, he said, was the drive this morning down the Mall through lines of cheering citizens in full view of the British regiments on the Common. Did not the gentlemen agree that had been a pretty touch, prettily arranged by the Committee?

John nodded. Then he looked hard at his cousin, gave an exclamation. “You are the most gorgeous apparition in New England,”he said. “Claretcolored coat! Ruffles! John Hancock himself was never so magnificent. You put us all to shame. May I be so bold as to ask where you acquired that gold-headed cane? All day I have been consumed to put the question.”

Sam flicked dust off the sleeve of a brand-new broadcloth coat, looked complacently at his shining silver shoe buckles. Surely his brother Adams had heard about this costume? The whole of it had been presented anonymously. Hatters, tailors, shoemakers, had been knocking at his door for weeks past. New wig, new cocked hat, red cloak (it was in his trunk, strapped outside). Two pairs of shoes, six pairs of silk hose, these silver buckles, a pair of gold knee buckles.

Sam reached out. an arm. His sleeve buttons, like the gold-headed cane, were stamped with the emblem of the Sons of Liberty. Then it was obvious, John said at once, where the gift came from. He was not sure, Sam replied. The tailor had revealed nothing beyond a hint that the “gentlemen” had desired Mr. Sam Adams not to appear shabby in Philadelphia. Whoever sent the wardrobe, Sam added, looking very pleased, had also begun to put a new roof on his barn and repair the steps from his private wharf down to the water.

John offered congratulations. Privately, he marveled at the simplicity with which his cousin received these gifts. Sam thrust a hand in his breeches pocket, produced a gold Johannes. Someone had presented him with fifteen of these, he said — or was it twenty? “For my needs on the journey,” he finished. “Was it not kind? Does it not show a good faith in what we are about to accomplish?”

John almost laughed aloud. The gold pieces would have burned his own pocket like so many slivers of hot steel. He fell silent, thinking. There was more to this than met the eye. Sam was quite right in assuming the gift had been directed not so much to him personally as toward the honor of Massachusetts. John had heard their delegation described by a Tory as “men of desperate fortunes with nothing to lose.” This gift to Sam proved that even the Sons of Liberty realized the importance of a respectable representation at Philadelphia. The New York delegation had men of large fortune and estates. One of the Maryland men, Mr. Carroll of Carrollton, was said to possess a hundred thousand pounds sterling and would come into more. Among the Virginians were gentlemen of property. It was a great pity their own fifth delegate, James Bowdoin, had refused to come along. His wife was ill of a fever and he would not leave Boston. Bowdoin’s estate was larger even than Hancock’s. These things mattered; they influenced unthinking people.

3

JOHN’S fears, his doubts of the summer, returned casting a shadow over the triumph of the day. He glanced narrowly at his companions. Which of them, including himself, had so much as seen a British minister of state, or even a member of Parliament? Sam Adams had never been outside Massachusetts in his life. Bob Paine, it was true, had traveled in his youth — to Spain and England for his health and to the Carolines, not to mention a trip to Greenland aboard a whaler. He had brought home a fine fund of information about rice plantations, Spanish vineyards, how to imbed a harpoon in a whale’s right eye, and the strange marital customs of the Esquimaux. But it was hardly information to help the Congress win disputes with the Lords North and Dartmouth. Would God they had a Franklin to guide them! But that man of wisdom and worldly experience was still in London, with no prospect of immediate return.

True, the four delegates knew the problems of Massachusetts intimately, thoroughly. They knew how to run the Province from town meeting outward, they were familiar with the constitutional phases of this great quarrel. All were graduates of Harvard. But they lacked — there was no doubt of it — extensive knowledges of “ the realm. ” They were ignorant of the ramifications of West Indian commerce; they had no broad picture of trade laws and policy throughout the empire. . . . Suppose this Grand Congress should fail in the eyes of the whole continent — fizzle out with nothing to show beyond the usual humble petitions to Parliament? It was not the contempt of America John dreaded, he confessed to himself; it was the despair and disappointment of his own country of Massachusetts.

The coach gave a lurch. John’s shoulder hit the wall. Paine fell over him, apologized briefly, and resumed his seat. . . . John’s thoughts went on. In Maine this summer, where he had ridden on his last circuit to finish up some cases, the country had swarmed with Tories and lukewarm liberty men. It was the latter John found hardest to bear. They had baited him continually about “the Boston mob and Sam Adams’s Mohawks,” until John, who hated mobbing as he hated the devil, found himself defending Captain Mackintosh like a brother. There was no getting away from it, the notion still prevailed among all parties that the crown side drew the persons of gentility and distinction. “ The better sort, the wiser fete,” John had written home, “are considered to be on one side: the multitude, the vulgar, the herd, the rabble, the mob only, are on the other. So difficult it is for the frail, feeble mind of man to shake itself loose from prejudice and habit.”

A scene came back to John as the coach rolled on. . . . In Falmouth lived Jonathan Sewall, still John’s oldest, closest, friend. Nothing had ever really come between them — neither the offer of the admiralty post for John nor Sewall’s Tory articles in the Gazette. Wherever they met, the two drew together naturally, bound by ties of their youth, their days of struggle and study. Sewall was the most congenial companion John had ever known. (“He always called me John and I him Jonathan; and I often said to him, I wish my name were David.”)

After court one July day at Falmouth, bewail had taken John aside, invited him to walk on the hills above the sea. They had climbed high, sat at the summit on a warm rock, smoking their pipes. Even up here among the rocks and bayberry, Sewall, immaculate as always, had the look of belonging to the scene — something John admired infinitely and could never emulate.

“John,” Sewall had said, “I want to talk to you about Philadelphia. About this Congress, this grand gesture, this venture you are about to embark on. . . . I wish you would not go. I wish it deeply, sincerely, and I hope you will listen to me, for old friendship’s sake. I won’t repeat that you will ruin your career, nor that men ot property and standing are not on your side. I am aware such argument carries no weight with you. . . . What I desire you to see, to look at clearly, with no rosy Lockian mist before your eyes — is the actual situation. Britain’s power is secure, irresistible. She will never alter her system. For ten years and longer, you and your friends have been trying to make her alter it. She has not moved an inch. Your faction will drive this country to a civil war. And where will your Sons of Liberty be then, before the fleets and armies of an empire? I don’t speak ol your personal safety, the safety of your wife and children. But your country — what will happen to it? Think of this, my friend. Think of it well. You will tear your country apart, rend it in two, set brother against brother.”

He had turned to John, looked directly at him. “I use large words — war . . . duty . . . patriotism. But it is your own welfare I have at heart today, my old friend. James Bowdoin has withdrawal from the delegation. You can withdraw too, without shame or apology. There is still time.

John had been profoundly moved. There was no questioning his friend’s sincerity, the disinterestedness of his motive. The two men sat silent. Words struggled upward in John, words born of long and bitterest thought, of painful doubt and indecision. Yet he could not speak. Sewall would not understand. . . . From far below, the sound of surf came faintly. A gull swooped, his wings flashed against the afternoon sky. . . . War, their country’s peril, the setting of brother against brother. Not one of these questions but John had put to his Maker again and again, alone on his knees m his chamber. Did Jonathan not know, could he not sense, how awful had been the struggle that brought him to decision?

Around the northern headland a sail appeared, and another. The fishing fleet was coming home. John got up, took a few steps, and halted before his friend. He felt no anger, only a deep sadness, the sense of loss. “Jonathan,” he said. “You make it very hard. You strive for my salvation in your own way, and I thank you. But between your way and mine there is a gulf as wide as” — John flung out an arm — “an ocean. I am going to the Congress with my friends.” He repeated it — “With my friends.”

John stared out to sea. “Much that you say is true,” he continued. “Britain will never alter her system. And by that same token we shall not alter ours. I have crossed over my river. I have passed my Rubicon. I will never change. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I am with my country from this day on.”

Sewall rose instantly. Both men knew it was the end, yet neither held out his hand. As though by agreement they parted, going separate ways down the hill to the town.

Thinking of it now in the coach, John felt pain rise once more in his breast, quick and bitter.

Outside, the driver cursed; the off fore horse had stumbled. Brakes screamed as the great wheels lumbered downhill.

4

HARTFORD, Middletown, Wallingford, New Haven. . . Crowds met the coach outside of town, escorted it in, banqueted the “Boston Committee,”toasted them, informed them on particulars of local commerce that would prove useful at the Congress.

The business of the Congress was to center largely on matters of trade. Short ot war, the only effectual protest against Britain’s system of empire would be boycott. It was not going to be easy to persuade the colonies to relinquish their various export businesses. Each province would hold out for its especial product. It was important for the delegates to tabulate these interests, learn them, acquire an over-all perspective. Here in Connecticut it was perfectly understood that no New England delegate would urge independence. Massachusetts had been careful, in her June Resolves declaring for a Congress, to include a paragraph praying for “the Restoration of that Union and Harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies most ardently desired by all good Men.”

As the delegation entered New Haven, church bells were set ringing; cannon boomed. Men, women, and children crowded to doors and windows, “as if to see a coronation,” John wrote. Even Mr. Jared Ingersoll, Tory Judge of Admiralty, came to call. He was the famous defiant Stamp Master of ‘65, and by way of being a great, swell. His politeness to the Massachusetts men astonished John, who put it down as indication of the strong leveling trend in Connecticut. Someone hinted that the great parade, the bells, the salute of cannon at their arrival, had been engineered by Mr. Ingersoll and his friends, to divert the people from putting up a liberty pole hung with the usual images.

It was not easy, these days, to distinguish friend from enemy. Driving out of New Haven, John remarked on the fact. Yes, Cushing replied instantly; they were going into strange country, they must be exceedingly cautious. Cushing was known as the sharpest intelligence man in the liberty party, with a marked talent for securing advance information about Britain’s next move. Concerning policy in Philadelphia and their own part in shaping it, no advice could be better, Cushing reminded his colleagues now, than Hawley’s letter to John Adams. It contained messages for each of the four men, advice pointed and characteristically frank. Sam Adams, indeed, said they ought to read it aloud every morning before breakfast.

“There is an opinion which does in some degree obtain in the other colonies,” Hawley had written, “that the Massachusetts gentlemen, and especially of the town of Boston, do affect to dictate and take the lead in continental measures; that we are apt, from an inward vanity and self-conceit, to assume big and haughty airs. Now I pray that everything in the conduct and behavior of our gentlemen which might tend to beget or strengthen such an opinion, might be carefully avoided. It is highly probable that you will meet gentlemen from several of the other colonies, fully equal to any of you, in their knowledge of Great Britain, the colonies, law, history, government, commerce, etc. I know there are very able men there. And by what we from time to time see in the public papers, and what our assemblies and committees have received from the assemblies and committees of the more southern colonies, we must be satisfied that they have men of as much sense and literature as any we can or ever could boast of.”

Sam Adams quoted the last sentence now in the coach. “It is meant for you, of course, John,” he said solemnly. “‘Sense and literature!' What possible foundation is there for the notion that I, for instance, could desire Massachusetts to ’dictate and take the lead in continental measures’?”

The three men roared with laughter. Sam laughed softly with them, shaking his head in mock disagreement. Yet Hawley, of course, was right and Sam knew it. It was of primary importance that the deputies, both northern and southern, assume the larger viewpoint, pool the private in the public interest, the provincial in the continental. Such indeed was the purpose of this Congress, which was in no sense a legislative body. It had no power to raise money, conscript an army, declare either war or “independence,”even if it had a will to do so. This was merely a congress of ambassadors, a meeting of twelve collective minds (thirteen, if Georgia decided to sent! deputies) — to sound out and publish the common opinion and the common purpose.

In such a gathering, tact would be of utmost importance. Daring, innovation were to be avoided. The New England colonies had a reputation for radicalism, republicanism, the leveling spirit. Rumor had it that the Boston faction actually desired independence — a notion abhorrent to every colony except perhaps Virginia. How abhorrent, the Massachusetts men would very soon learn.

Milford, Stratford, and the wobbly plank bridge over the Housatonic. . . . The coach rolled on. John was coated with dust — “inside as well as out,” he told Bob Paine. The taste of dust was in his mouth, the smell of it in his nostrils. He was surprised at his own lack of fatigue. He felt wonderful. “If Camden, Chatham, Richmond and St. Asaph had travelled through the country,” he recorded, “they could not have been entertained with greater demonstrations of respect than Cushing, Paine and the brace of Adamses have been.”

On Saturday morning, August 20, the travelers drove into the town of New York, just ten days out of Boston.

5

THE Massachusetts men stayed a week in New York, with scarcely a moment to themselves. They were dined, breakfasted, wined, argued with, denounced, and praised. This was a city about the size of Boston, with eighteen thousand inhabitants. But the Province of New York had only two hundred thousand, half as many as Massachusetts.

Everywhere, talk was of the Congress. On the night of their arrival, John stayed till midnight at the tavern, discussing politics. . . . New York was overwhelmingly conservative. It was only lately that the Committee of Fifty-one had managed by skillful, patient maneuver to put through some resolutions on the liberty side. The two great families in the Province were the Livingstons and De Lanceys; nothing could be done without the support of one or the other. A young Mr. John Jay, just twenty-nine, delegate to the Congress, was married to a Livingston. Jay was a lawyer — a serious student and a good speaker, John was told.

The Massachusetts men were lodged near the Battery, at a private house. Four of the New York delegates called to pay their respects, William Livingston, Duane, Low, and Alsop. John looked hard at them, seeking to read their characters for future reference. Livingston was a “downright, straight-forward man,” Alsop a “soft, sweet, man.” Duane had a “sly, surveying eye” and was “between forty and forty-live, very sensible and artful.” He had been in correspondence with London, and told John with much assurance that it was idle to count upon winning friends in England.

So it went, day by day — and day by day John’s diary grew more caustic. . . . The Livingstons were supported entirely by income from their estates. They were all rich. Some were “very sensible.” The Congress was to have two of this family as delegates. The second one, Philip, nearly twenty years older than John, was a “great, rough, rapid mortal,” who was fond of saying that if England should turn the colonies adrift, they would instantly go to civil war among themselves to determine which colony should govern the rest.

On Friday morning they were to leave. John, recovering from the first bcdazzlement of the traveler, set down his impressions as became a Massachusetts man. “For all the opulence and splendor of this city,”he wrote in the diary, “there is very little good breeding to be found. We have been treated with an assiduous respect. But I have not seen one real gentleman, one well-bred man since I came to town. At their entertainments there is no conversation that is agreeable. There is no modesty, no attention one to another. They talk very loud, very fast, and all together. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again and talk away.”

Friday dawned hot and still, with a haze over the river. The delegates crossed at Peulus Hook; then Hackensack Ferry, Newark Ferry, and midday dinner at Elizabethtown. That afternoon they drove twenty miles, slepl the night at Brunswick. It was noon on Saturday before they reached Princetown . . . Nassau Hall College, wrote John, was a stone building standing on a hill, with a fine prospect around it.

On Monday the four men drove to the river, boarded a barge, and drifted pleasantly down the Delaware, the coach following by road. At Trenton they breakfasted and went on by the highway. The day was lovely. Rain had mercifully settled the dust; the wide fields lay fresh and green. At Frankford the delegates were met by a large escort of carriages and genllemen on horseback. John was particular to learn their names . . . Mr. Thomas Mifflin of Philadelphia, Mr. McKean “of the lower counties” (Delaware). The two New Hampshire delegates were with them and a Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina — “a young, smart, spirited body, very high for liberty.” They had scarcely been introduced when Rulledge announced in a loud voice that he did not trust the king’s word for an instant. Startled, John looked at his colleagues. Was this the cautious attitude they had been led to expect outside of New England? In Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern, one could not hear worse!

There was a general rearrangement of carriages and occupants, and ihe parade drove in to Philadelphia, coming to a stop before the London Coffee House at Front and Market Streets. “The most genteel tavern in America,”John called it. The supper was superb, and as the evening progressed, more and more gentlemen poured in to greet the Massachusetts men. Mr. McKean told John they looked for fifty-six delegates at the Congress. Of these, twenty-two were lawyers— which would, John decided a trifle grimly, make their business both easier and harder. He knew how to deal with lawyers, yet they were talking men, apt, when action was needed, to waste their energies in detailed discussion.

By ten o’clock John, already dizzy with travel, the motion of the coach still ringing in his head, found himself blinded with smoke, half deafened with talk, noise, the shifting of the crowd from table to table. At the shank of the evening the door swung open and Charles Thomson walked in. “The Sam Adams of Philadelphia,” John called him. A striking-looking man, thin, with piercing, deep-set eyes, wearing his own hair cut short above the ears. He was about to marry a lady with five thousand pounds sterling and he was, it seemed, the very life of the cause of liberty in Pennsylvania. Toward midnight the Massachusetts men were escorted to their lodgings on Arch Street near the river.

6

A WEEK remained before the Congress would hold its first session. John set out to learn the town and its ways. He liked Philadelphia, fell immediately drawn to it although the heat was violent beyond any heat John had ever experienced. Even in the morning the air lay heavy, breathless, and the mosquitoes were nothing short of infernal.

This was the largest city on the continent, with thirty thousand inhabitants. It was paved and lighted; you walked on brick. The citizens complained because there were no bridges. But the ferries ran constantly. Horse boats, the people called them. Horses walked in a circle, turning a capstan which made t he wheels move. John thought It very ingenious. A mail coach, justly called the Flying Machine, made the trip to New York in only two days. The coastwise shipping was tremendous; Philadelphia was a great shipbuilding center; its annual tonnage far exceeded Boston’s.

People lived well, dined at three or four in the afternoon, had evening supper at seven and sometimes tea at six besides. It seemed to John the Philadelphians were always eating. And they did not begin dinner with a thrifty plate of yellow New England mush to dull the edge of appetite. Even the plain Friends ate like princes. At Mr. Miers Fisher’s one day, John had for dinner “ducks, hams, chickens, beef, pig, tarls, creams, custards, jellies, fools, trifles, floating islands, beer, porter, punch, wine — and a long etc.” After dark the guests hurried home to avoid the night air, which was dangerous hereabout. With sundown a miasma arose, an effluvium that caused bilious fevers — due, John learned, to the great numbers of millponds round the city.

The days passed quickly. On Sunday morning John went to the Presbyterian Church — the nearesf approach to his own Congregational Meeting House. Looking round, if appeared to him a trifle grubby; the sermon was dull and long. “Neither a very numerous nor a very polite assembly,” John confessed. Strolling into Christ Church later, he found it a “more noble building, a genteeler congregation,” with a fine organ, a choir that sang most sweetly, with no Calvinist intoning through the nose. No doubt about it, these Episcopalians could ravish a man’s spirit. John ventured further, to the Romish Chapel itself. “Grandmother church,” he called it, half repelled, half tranced by the color, the music, the rich dress of the priest, the wax candles, and the images. “I wonder,” he wrote earnestly in the diary, ”how Luther ever broke the spell.”

Here in these southern colonies was no homogeneity of religion as in New England. Quakers, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, German Lutherans, and a half-dozen other seels rubbed shoulders. It might prove a serious stumbling block to the Congress.

In Boston it was taken for granted that all Church of England men were Tories; Sam Adams’s Black Regiment of Congregational ministers had been the backbone of the liberty party for years. Here in Pennsylvania, however, the Dissenting faiths — Quakers, Presbyterians, German Lutherans, Moravians — by no means stood as a solid block in support of the liberty side. Old Israel Pemberton, known as the King of the Quakers (the Indians called him King of Wampum), was dead set against a stoppage of trade with Britain, or indeed any move that threatened to break communication with the mother country. On the other hand, the genteel Episcopal congregation of Christ Church that John had permitted himself to admire included in its number many true and outspoken friends to liberty. It was an important matter, something to be studied now and after the Congress should meet.

Joseph Galloway led the conservatives at the moment. He was a man of large fortune, an old hand at politics, Aerv popular with what remained of the Quaker political machine. John met him and mistrusted instantly his “air of reserve, design and cunning.” With Dr. Franklin still in London, the Philadelphian best known to New England was, of course, the Farmer, Mr. John Dickinson. He called on the Massachusetts men one afternoon, driving up in his own coach with four beautiful horses. He had been laid up with gout, he said, or he would have come sooner to pay his respects; he was subject to hectic complaints. “He is but a shadow,”John wrote. “ Tall, slender as a reed, pale as ashes. One would think at first sight he could not live a month. Yet upon more attentive inspection he looks as if the springs of life were strong enough to last many years.”

It was a little difficult to ascertain just where Dickinson stood. In local Pennsylvania politics he had always been rabidly conservative, against breaking up the old proprietary government of the Penn family. Yet in the year ‘68 his famous Letters from a Farmer had had deep and widespread influence against Britain’s iniquitous “system.”But he greatly desired reconciliation with England, and after the Boston Port Bill he had refused to go further than friendly expressions of sympathy.

It was most important to know these men, sift grain from chaff, discover which in the Congress were to be merely loud talkers and which wielded real influence with their constituents at home. The numbers of people represented at this Congress, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia told the Massachusetts men, he computed at about “two millions two hundred thousand.”Britain’s revenue from them was at least eighty thousand pounds sterling. It was something to bear in mind, Lee said, if the Congress should commence discussing a commercial blockade.

To the New England men, discussing the situation late at night in their rooms when the company had gone, it Avas plain that Virginia and Massachusetts were to lead the liberty party, while Pennsylvania and New York Avorked their hardest for accommodation with Britain and for business as usual on land and sea.

But what a noble quantity of Burgundy these southern gentlemen could consume in an evening! John was amazed and admiring, his diary thick with convivial entries. “Went with Mr. Burrell to his store, drank punch and eat dried smoked sprats. . . . Spent the evening at Mr. Mifflin’s, drank sentiments till eleven o’clock. . . . At Mr. Powel’s, a most sinful feast again. Curds and creams, jellies, sweetmeats, twenty sorts of tarts, fools, trifles, floating island, whipped sillabubs. Parmesan cheese, punch, wine, porter, beer. . . . Later, at evening, climbed the steeple of Christ’s Church from which we had a clear and full view of the whole city, and of Delaware River.”

Christ Church steeple was tall, the stone steps high and rough. Up in the gathering summer dusk went the Parmesan cheese, the punch, the wine, the porter, the sillabubs. This Congress, John told himself, puffing audibly, possessed gentlemen of firm constitutions, not lightly dismayed.

(To be continued)