Feb. CHAP. went to his task, bright, and cheery, and brave; he LX. was the hammer and not the anvil; and it was for 1776. others to fear his prowess and to shrink under his blows. His courage was unflinching in debate, and everywhere else; he never knew what fear is; and had he gone into the army as he once longed to do, he would have taken there the virtues of temperance, decision, and intrepidity. To his latest old age his spirit was robust, buoyant, and joyous; he saw ten times as much pleasure as pain in the world; and after his arm quivered and his eye grew dim, he was ready to begin life anew and fight its battle over again. In his youth he fell among skeptics, read Bolingbroke's works five times through, and accustomed himself to reason freely and think boldly; he esteemed himself a profound metaphysician, but only skimmed the speculations of others; though at first destined to be a minister, he became a rebel to Calvinism, and never had any very fixed religious creed; but for all that, he was a stanch man of New England, and his fond partiality to its people, its institutions, its social condition, and its laws, followed him into congress and its committees, and social life, tinctured his judgment, and clinched his prepossessions; but the elements in New England that he loved most, were those which were eminently friendly to universal culture and republican equality. A poor farmer's son, bent on making his way in the world, at twenty years old beginning to earn his own bread, pinched and starved as master of a stingy country school, he formed early habits of order and frugality, and steadily advanced to fortune; but though exact in his accounts, there was nothing niggardly in his thrift, LX. Feb. and his modest hospitality was prompt and hearty. CHAP. He loved homage, and it made him blind; to those who flattered him he gave his confidence freely, 1776 and often unwisely; and while he watched the general movement of affairs with comprehensive sagacity, he was never a calm observer of individual men. He was of the choleric temperament: though his frame was compact and large, yet from physical organization he was singularly sensitive; could break out into uncontrollable rage, and with all his acquisitions, never learned to rule his own spirit; but his anger did not so much drive him to do wrong, as to do right ungraciously. No man was less fitted to gain his end by arts of indirection; he knew not how to intrigue, was indiscreetly talkative, and almost thought aloud; whenever he sought to win an uncertain person to his support, his ways of courtship were uncouth, so that he made few friends except by his weight of character, ability, public spirit, and integrity, was unapt as the leader of a party, and never appeared so well as when he acted from inspirations of his own. Hating intolerance in all its forms, an impassioned lover of civil liberty, as the glory of man and the best evidence and the best result of civilization, he, of all men in congress, was incomparable as a dogmatist; essentially right-minded; loving to teach with authority; pressing onward unsparingly with his ar gument; impatient of contradiction; unequalled as a positive champion of the right. He was the Martin Luther of the American revolution, borne on to utter his convictions fearlessly by an impulse which for bade his acting otherwise. He was now too much in Feb. CHAP earnest, and too much elevated by the greatness of LX. his work, to think of himself; too anxiously desiring 1776. aid, to disparage those who gave it. In the fervor of his activity, his faults disappeared. His intellect and public spirit, all the noblest parts of his nature, were called into the fullest exercise, and strained to the uttermost of their healthful power. Combining more than any other, farness of sight and fixedness of belief with courage and power of utterance, he was looked up to as the ablest debater in congress. Preserving some of the habits of the lawyer, he was redundant in words and cumulative in argument; but his warmth and sincerity kept him from the affectations of a pedant or a rhetorician. Forbearance was no longer in season; the irrepressible talent of persevering, peremptory assertion was wanted; the more he was hurried along by his own vehement will the better; now his country, humanity, the age, the hour, demanded that the right should be spoken out; his high excitement had not the air of passion, but appeared, as it was, the clear perception of the sublimity of his task. When, in the life of a statesman, were six months of more importance to the race, than these six months in the career of John Adams? On resuming his seat, he found a change in the delegation of South Carolina. That province had sent to Philadelphia a vessel not larger than a pilot boat, for Gadsden, who held the highest rank in their army at the risk of capture, the patriot embarked in January; fought his way through the ice in the Delaware, and against headwinds at sea; escaped the British cruisers only by running the small craft in IX. Feb. which he sailed upon the sands of North Carolina, CHAP. and continuing his journey through Georgetown to Charleston by land, encouraged all who came round 1776 him on the way to demand independence. To aid in forming a new government, the elder Rutledge had preceded him, leaving the delegation from their colony to suffer from the absence of its strongest will and its clearest mind. Chase of Maryland kept always in zeal and decision far ahead of the moderate among his friends; but that province had, for the time, like Pennsylvania, yielded to proprietary influences; and its convention looked with distrust upon John Adams, as biassed in favor of revolution by the office of chief justice of Massachusetts, to which he had unexpectedly been chosen. Yet while the members of congress stammered in their utterance, they listened with disgust to Wilson, when, on the thirteenth of February, he presented a very long, ill written draught of an address to their constituents, in which they were made to disclaim the idea of renouncing their allegiance; and its author, perceiving that the majority relished neither its style nor its doctrine, thought fit to allow it to subside without a vote. On the sixteenth, the great measure of enfran chising American commerce was seriously considered. Open your ports," said a member; "your trade will then become of so much consequence that foreigners will protect you." "In war," argued Wilson, "trade should be carried on with greater vigor than ever, after the manner of the United Provinces in their struggle against Spain. The merchants themselves must judge of the risks. Our vessels and our seamen are all abroad; and unless we open our ports, will LX. 1776. Feb. CHAP. not return." Sherman wished first to secure a pro~~tective treaty with a foreign power. Harrison said more explicitly: "We have hobbled on under a fatal attachment to Great Britain; I felt that attachment as much as any man, but I feel a stronger one to my country." Wythe now took the lead. In him a vigorous intellect was obedient to duty; a learned and able lawyer, he also cultivated poetry and letters; not rich, he was above want; in his habits he was as abstemious as an ascetic; his manners had the frolic mirthfulness of innocence. Genial and loving, overflowing with charity and benevolence, he blended the gentleness of human kindness with sincerity in his conduct, and indomitable firmness in his convictions of right. From 1774 his views coincided with those of Jefferson, and his artless simplicity of character, his legal erudition and acuteness, added persuasion to his words, as he drew attention to the real point at issue: "It is too true our ships may be taken unless we provide a remedy; but we may authorize vessels to arm, and we may give letters of marque and reprisal. We may also invite foreign powers to make treaties of commerce with us; but before this measure is adopted, it is to be considered in what character we shall treat? As subjects of Great Britain? As rebels? No: we must declare ourselves a free people." With this explanation he moved a resolution, "That the colonies have a right to contract alliances with foreign powers." "This is independence," said an objector. The question whether the resolution should be considered, was decided in the affirmative by seven colonies |