1842.] The Patriots of the Revolution. 17 lution, not to follow in its path-of pure morality, on whom no stain of private reproach can rest-religious men, according to their differing and honest convictions, whose hearts were in the work which Providence had allotted them, who aroused the popular mind by their eloquence, and would have been on the field of battle had their duty called them there. Such were Samuel Adams, and Otis, and Quincy, the Rutledges, the Lees, John Jay, and Patrick Henry, to whose high moral powers, as great as the endowments of his genius, justice has not been done. To this order of true chivalry John Adams entirely belonged. There were men of brilliant genius, but undisciplined and irregular passion, the impress of whose intellect is left upon our institutions, and yet who struggled through life, without reaching the highest honors to which their talents entitled them to aspire. Such were Hamilton, the great genius of his country, his prototype Robert Morris, and at a long, very long interval, Gouverneur Morris. There were others who were distinguished by mere power of intellect, worldly-minded shrewdness, far-reaching sagacity, which enabled them safely to steer themselves, and with wisdom scarcely human to direct the perplexed councils of the nation. They were patriots, too, but shrewd, farseeing patriots. In this category we would place Dr. Franklin, for no one can study his correspondence and biography without being amazed at his predominant prudence, and the discipline, by discretion, of his mighty intellect. There is another class of revolutionary men, (we are now on the descending scale,) of consummate prudence, too, of intellect and of patriotism, but of prudence and patriotism which looked first within and then without; a chastened and subdued, not a headlong, romantic patriotism, which was * Mr. Wirt, in his showy and florid memoir of Patrick Henry, has not done justice to the calm philosophy and sagacious patriotism of his later days, when, almost alone in Virginia, he stood by the side of Washington and Marshall, and opposed the nullifying metaphysics of the resolutions of 1798. Mr. Wirt even laments what he considers his " apostacy" in offering himself as the federal candidate for the house of delegates in 1799. The scene on that occasion at Charlotte Court House, is, to our minds, as glorious as any of his early triumphs. He was elected, but died before he took his seat. Any one who desires to know what in his old age Patrick Henry was, must read General Washington's private letter to him of the fifteenth of January, 1799, imploring him to re-enter public life, and Mr. Henry's letter to Archibald Blair, eighth January, 1799, on the X. Y. Z. mission. They are to be found in the eleventh volume of Sparks's Washington. exercised to save them from danger in times of trial, and secure to them honors when the times of trial were over, who in the Revolution proper made no figure, but in the conflict of peaceful politics were the heroes of new revolutions on a small scale. In this class we are constrained to place Mr. Jefferson, and his bosom friend Mr. Dickinson, the author and the adversary of the declaration of independence, the fugitive Governor of Virginia on the retreat to Charlottesville, and the patriot who, at the darkest period of the war, on the fourteenth December, 1776, when Congress had not a silver dollar to give its poor soldiers, could write to his brother "Receive no more continental money on your bonds and mortgages. The British troops having conquered the Jerseys, and your being in camp, are sufficient reasons. Be sure you remember this. It will end better for you." There were others of a still lower grade who mingled in revolutionary scenes, men of cunning and poor intrigue, the heroes of cabals, Conway conspirators, writers of anonymous letters vilifying Washington, eavesdroppers, and journalizers of gossip, fetchers and carriers of poor slanders for the depraved appetite of a political patron. The student of our history will know to whom this character belongs. It was the predominance of such men as Adams, and his proper compeers, that controlled and neutralized the mischievous activity of such men. The public is much indebted to the intelligent and accomplished editor of the Adams correspondence, for having undertaken and so well executed his filial duty. These volumes have high interest for us. They contain the familiar correspondence of John Adams and his wife throughout the trying scenes which they passed together, the first letter being that of Mrs. Adams to her affianced husband in April, 1764, the last to her granddaughter in November, 1812, comprising a period of nearly half a century. The volumes of Mrs. Adams's letters were first published, and those of her husband appeared afterwards, in consequence, as we are glad to learn, of the encouragement given to the first series. The motives of the original publication are thus stated by the editor: "If it were possible to get at the expression of feelings by women in the heart of a community, at a moment of extraordinary trial, recorded in a shape evidently designed to be secret and confiden 1842.] This Correspondence not a Subject of Criticism. 19 tial, this would seem to present the surest and most unfailing index to the general character. Hitherto we have not gathered much of this material in the United States. The dispersion of families, so common in America, the consequent destruction of private papers, the defective nature of female education before the Revolution; the difficulty and danger of free communication, and the engrossing character to the men, to the public, and to the women of domestic cares, have all contributed to cut short, if not completely destroy the sources of information. It is truly remarked in the present volume that instances of patience, perseverance, fortitude, magnanimity, courage, humanity and tenderness, which would have graced the Roman character, were known only to those who were themselves the actors, and whose modesty could not suffer them to blazon abroad their own fame.' The heroism of the females of the Revolution has gone from memory with the generation that witnessed it, and nothing, absolutely nothing, remains upon the ear of the young of the present day but the faint echo of an expiring general tradition. Neither is there much remembrance of the domestic manners of the last century, when, with more of admitted distinctions than at present, there was more of general equality; nor of the state of social feeling, or of that simplicity of intercourse, which, in colonial times, constituted in New England as near an approach to the successful exemplification of the democratic theory, as the irregularity in the natural gifts of man will, in all probability, ever practically allow. "It is the purpose of these volumes to contribute something to the supply of this deficiency, by giving to tradition a form partially palpable. The present is believed to be the first attempt in the United States to lay before the public a series of private letters, written, without the remotest idea of publication, by a woman to her husband, and others of her nearest and dearest relations. Their greatest value consists in the fact, susceptible of no misconception, that they furnish an exact transcript of the feelings of the writer in times of no ordinary trial. Independent of this, the variety of scenes in which she wrote, and the opportunities furnished for observation in the situations in which she was placed by the elevation of her husband to high official positions in the country, may contribute to sustain the interest with which they will be read. The undertaking is, nevertheless, too novel not to inspire the editor with some doubt of its success, particularly as it brings forward to public notice a person who has now been long removed from the scene of action, and of whom it is not unreasonable to suppose the present generation of readers have neither personal knowledge nor recollection."Memoir, p. 19. On the literary merits of such a correspondence it is idle to comment. It is not the fit subject of criticism. As a familiar correspondence," written without the remotest idea of publication," it is not, and it ought not to be expected to be, more than the faithful and homely transcript of domestic incidents which can have interest but for those to whom the incidents are interesting. To contrast Mrs. Adams, the daughter of an humble Congregational minister in Massachusetts a woman who had never been to school-whose whole library consisted at the utmost of the Bible, the Spectator, Shakspeare, and the Pilgrim's Progress, with Madame de Sevigné, or Lady Mary Wortley Montague, is as absurd as it would be to place old Samuel Adams, or Roger Sherman, by the side of Horace Walpole or Lord Chesterfield. She was a primitive daughter of New England, a tenderhearted, intellectual woman, without the grace or accomplishment which education and highly cultivated association gives, the wife who could counsel and sustain her husband in his hours of trial, and could without a murmur sustain herself when in sorrow or separation from her husband — a mother who could rear up children worthy of their parents, and by her counsel and example lead them onward to distinction. The record of such a woman's feelings and opinions, however homely, is worthy of preservation, and we have it in the volumes before us. There is a character embalmed in history to which Mrs. Adams might be compared and not suffer in the comparison. Like her, a Puritan woman, the wife of a revolutionary leader, his counsellor and friend, the heroine of romantic story, and one who, without the sternness that makes Volumnia awful, or the timidity which renders Virgilia a cipher, was the Portia of her time, her husband's best friend and surest counsellor, and yet who was feminine enough to be the type of that other Portia, from whose lips has fallen the most beautiful character which poet ever gave to woman; "The full sum of me Is an unlessoned girl, unschool'd, unpractised, Such was Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, a matron of the first and greatest English revolution. Such, too, these volumes show 1842.] Heroites and Anti-heroites. 21 us, was Abigail Adams, a matron of a happier land and age. The letters, as we have said, extend over a period of half a century, comprising the whole of the active life of the writers, and to the course of those lives, thus illustrated, we propose to point the attention of our readers, incidentally renewing the expression of the hope which the preface to the second series of letters suggests, that at some day, not, we trust, very distant, such a memoir of the life and public services of Mr. Adams will be given to the world, as his venerable and illustrious son is so well qualified to prepare. John Adams, the son of New England puritan parents, was born at Braintree, in Massachusetts, on the thirtieth of October, 1735. He died within his paternal walls on the fourth of July, 1826, ninety-one years of age. Mrs. Adams was born in 1744, and died in 1818. Mr. Adams's public life may be said to commence about the time of his marriage, and hence it is that these letters, beside the personal interest in the writers themselves, have throughout a high and general historical interest. We shall refer to them in both aspects. It is, if we mistake not, one of Mr. Carlyle's odd notions, that great men make the great events of history, and it is the counter dogma of the economists, that great men are of inappreciably little moment in the results of history, and that all Mr. Carlyle's "heroes," the Luthers, and Mahomets, and Cromwells, and Bonapartes, are but insignificant shining particles heaved up from the bottom, and glittering on the surges of historical progress. A theorist of either class must be sorely puzzled as he meditates on the history of the visible causes and means of the American Revolution, especially in the New England colonies. Take Massachusetts for example. There is a discernible progress here. There were great causes, dating as far back as the settlement, and growing with New England's growth, which led to the Revolution. There were combinations of events at home and abroad affecting them. On all these, and they are most palpable, the anti-heroite has a right to insist. But, on the other hand, let us suppose for an instant that when what now seems to have been the fullness of time had come, the men who led the Revolution had not been there, and instead of Otis, and Quincy, and Thatcher, the Warrens and the Adams' and the rest of the peculiar brotherhood of that time and place, there had been found doubting, cautious, moderate |