danger, the certainty of earning the contempt of his fellows, and the reproval of his own conscience. All these prospects and possibilities he recognized, but, in his journals and correspondence, we look in vain for any symptom of wavering or timidity. The vital moment had come, and he

did not hesitate to cast his all into the scale of liberty.

When met at Salem the last general court of Massachusetts which pretended, even in form, to recognize the authority of the governor, having been banished to that place as a punishment of the recalcitrant citizens of Boston, every patriot in the colonies looked for some signal action from that body, in the direction of uniting the colonies in opposition to the high-handed outrages of the administration. It was not long in coming. On the 17th day of June, the secretary was sent to the general court with a message of dissolution. That body was even then discussing the proposal to send a delegation to meet committees of other colonies at Philadelphia; this was to be the first Continental Congress, but it had not yet found a name. The doors were closed in the face of the honorable secretary, and he was kept, vainly clamoring without, until the matter was concluded, and five gentlemen-Mr. Bowdoin, Mr. Cushing, Mr. Samuel Adams, Mr. John Adams, and Mr. Robert Treat Paine-had been appointed, and instructed to attend the meeting. Then the doors were opened, and the empty form of dissolution was suffered to proceed.

From the time of this choice, Mr. Adams' service was for many years almost continuous, yet it was wider and more important, mingling more with affairs of commonly recorded and familiar history, neither demanding nor permitting so minute and particular account as has been given of his earlier life, and the services which he gave to the cause of liberty within his own colony, in the days of the inception and growth of the spirit which led to the great Revolution. Adams usually saw farther than his neighbors and he now recognized the certainty of complications more serious than any the colonies had ever known, and the probability of bloodshed. He removed his family to Braintree to prepare, as he said, for the coming storm. He placed his affairs in the best condition possible, so that in his absence, longer or shorter, his family might be provided for, then was ready to join his fellows in their pilgrimage to Philadelphia, and to dedicate his prosperity, his time, even life itself, to the cause in which his heart was so earnestly engaged.

THE

CHAPTER VII.

SERVICE IN CONGRESS.

'HE duties of that first Continental Congress, and the responsibilities placed upon its members, were most peculiar and delicate. The path before them had never been trodden; they were without precedent or authority to guide them. Appointed by the people represented in the various colonial legislatures, as a result of the impulse to do something, which always arises in the face of a dangerous emergency, the majority of those whom they went to represent had no idea as to what that something should be, and, among those who had formulated a policy in their own minds, there was the widest diversity of opinion. The colonies were as different in the spirit and tendencies of their people, as in their origin; nothing but a common peril, of the greatest moment, could ever have brought them together in council, and they looked upon each other with no small measure of distrust. The situation of Massachusetts was more doubtful than that of any other colony. While the principle upon which the contest with the crown arose was one of common significance, the specific acts of oppression which had aroused the colonies were almost. entirely confined to that province. It had been the sufferer, and its delegates to Philadelphia went from a people without courts of law, without recognized chartered rights, without a legal existence, from the standpoint of the crown. They went, then, rather to appeal for support and protection, than to consult with their neighbors upon a common footing for the common welfare. This was, of course, a false view, and it did not ultimately prevail to such a degree as to prevent hearty co-operation, but it presented a possibility which caused much anxiety to Adams and his colleagues, and to the tact, caution, and sagacity, which they displayed, was due the substantial unanimity of the Congress. There was still another weight upon the delegation. There existed among the inhabitants of other provinces a prejudice against New Englanders in general and especially against the

citizens of Massachusetts.

Hawley, a warm friend and admirer of Adams, writes to the latter warning him against falling into the error attributed to "the Massachusetts gentlemen, and especially of the town of Boston," of assuming to dictate and take the lead in continental matters. This report had been industriously circulated, in advance, by certain tories, in the hope of injuring the Massachusetts delegation, and marring the harmony of the Congress.

How little foundation there was for such a charge, in the case of Mr. Adams, is clearly shown in a letter written by him to his wife, in which he bewails his unavoidable absence from Boston during the weeks immediately preceding the setting out of the delegation. He says: "If I was there I could converse with the gentlemen who are bound with me to Philadelphia. I could turn the course of my reading and studies to such subjects of law, and politics, and commerce as may come in play at the Congress. I might be polishing up my old reading in law and history, that I might appear with less indecency before a variety of gentlemen, whose education, travels, experience, family, fortune, and everything, will give them a vast superiority to me, and, I fear, even to some of my companions." His own feelings and apprehensions were acutely excited by the situation of his country and the prospect of the doubtful and important service before him. His diary is full of passages like the following, expressive of his hopes and anxieties: "I wander alone and ponder; I muse, I mope, I ruminate; I am often in reveries and brown studies. The objects before me are too grand and multifarious for my comprehension. We have not men fit for the times. We are deficient in genius, in education, in travel, in fortune, in everything. I feel unutterable anxiety. I feel unutterable anxiety. God grant us wisdom and fortitude! Should the opposition be suppressed, should this country submit, what infamy and ruin! God forbid! Death in any form is less. terrible."

On the 10th of August the delegation, less Mr. Bowdoin, who had asked to be relieved from serving, set out from Boston for Philadelphia. Their journey was an ovation. Throughout Connecticut they were met by successive delegations and escorted from town to town. At Hartford and New Haven they were formally entertained. Arrived at New York the principal citizens vied with each other in extending courtesies. In New Jersey there was almost equal cordiality—especially at Princeton. Five miles from Philadelphia they were met by a committee of citizens and escorted to their quarters in that town. Much of this interest was, in fact, spontaneous and sincere, but, aside from such patriotic manifestation, there existed curiosity, fear, doubt, and distrust. In Connecticut there was less of all this than in the more southerly provinces. New York was one of the most aristocratic of the provinces; the prevailing religion was of the Episcopal form, and fear of what were termed the "leveling tendencies of New England"

was generally entertained, and some persons did not hesitate to express as much to the delegates. The clergy of the dominant church, necessarily in close sympathy with the home establishment, formed a royalist propaganda, which had drawn with it many prominent among the laity. Friends in New Jersey warned the delegates to be discreet in their utterances as they drew near Philadelphia, and after arriving in that city; and the committee which met them without its limits, though ostensibly come merely to extend the civility of an escort, in fact desired to warn them against any display of radical sentiment, saying that, by some, they were actually suspected of a desire to compass the independence of the colonies! Even Washington was disquieted by this fear, although there was assuredly small warrant for it at that time. It will be readily seen from all this, that the mission of the delegates for Massachusetts was one of the greatest delicacy. Mr. Adams wrote, in one of those invaluable confidential letters to his wife, "We have a delicate course to steer between too much activity and too much insensibility in our critical, interested situation. I flatter myself, however, that we shall conduct our embassy in such manner as to merit the approbation of our country. It has taken much time to get acquainted with the tempers, views, characters, and designs of persons, and let them into the circumstances of our province."

Early in the session of the Congress-before it had committed itself to a policy, before its members had thrown off their natural timidity and distrust, and become sure of their ground-in some way there arose and came to Philadelphia a false report that Gage had turned his cannon upon the town of Boston, and had cruelly murdered a large number of its people. If ever the Lord was served by a lie, it was then. The excitement produced by the report, acted like the agitation of the reagents in a chemist's test tube, to produce crystallization. Another letter to Mrs. Adams tells of its effect: "When the horrid news was brought here of the bombardment of Boston, which made us completely miserable, for two days, we saw proofs of the sympathy and the resolution of the continent. War! war! war! was the cry, and it was pronounced in a tone that would have done honor to the oratory of a Briton or a Roman. If it had proved true, you would have heard the thunder of an American Congress."

The contradiction, which came later, was not in time to undo the work. Massachusetts was recognized; its cause was declared to be that of the colonies, and the united support of all was pledged. Money was also promised to sustain the crippled city of Boston, until the common representations of the American provinces should avail to change for the better the policy of Great Britain. Yet, after all this was done, events moved too slowly to please the Massachusetts delegates; they were placed in the difficult position of men vitally interested in a common cause, yet compelled by prudence to dissimulate their eagerness "The art and address

of ambassadors from a dozen belligerent powers of Europe," says Adams, "nay, of a conclave of cardinals at the election of a pope, or of the princes in Germany, at the choice of an emperor, would not exceed the specimens we have seen. Yet the Congress all profess the same political principles! They all profess to consider our province as suffering in a common cause; and, indeed, they seem to feel for us as if for themselves.

We have had numberless prejudices to remove here. We have been obliged to act with great delicacy and caution. We have been obliged to keep ourselves out of sight, and to feel pulses and to sound the depths; to insinuate our sentiments, designs, and desires, by means of other persons; sometimes of one province, sometimes of another."

Such was the care with which this discreet and modest course was maintained, that the Massachusetts delegation, instead of being regarded as radicals, almost as incendiaries, came to be considered, when compared with the delegates of Virginia, as conservative, almost timid; yet they were then, as was their colony, later, only less demonstrative, not less brave and devoted than were their southern brethren. Throughout the Congress, Massachusetts preferred, and was permitted, to remain in the background. It seemed that she, as the colony more vitally interested than any other in the adoption of stringent measures, should be least active in concerting the policy of the colonies. The delegates from that province, too, instinctively felt that the surest way to enlist the sympathy and, more important, the active support of the sister colonies, was to surrender to their representatives the leading places in the legislative and committee work of the session. The most important work of the Congress was the preparation and adoption of a bill of rights. To this end was appointed a committee consisting of nearly half the members, and including both the Adamses from Massachusetts. John Adams was also a member of the smaller committee appointed to prepare a petition to the king; but it is chiefly in the drawing of the bill of rights that his handiwork may be seen. From the inception of the contest in Massachusetts, when he drew his instructions to the member for Braintree, he had been constantly laboring to induce his fellow-citizens to base their arguments upon natural rights, and to deny any authority of parliament to legislate for the colonies, and any right of the king himself not literally and strictly included in the compact implied in the charter. When arose in committee the important question as to how much should be conceded to Great Britain, he again appeared as the champion of his opinion, which all must now be convinced was the only true one. He could not carry with him even his own delegation entire, yet the resolution finally adopted was his own, modified to a degree, to meet the views and the prejudices of other members of the committee. It will well repay quotation here:

"Resolved, That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free gov