Tag Archives: 1776

02/14/14

Founding Fathers Friday: A Woman’s Touch

Abigail Adams 1766 Portrait by Benjamin Blythe

Abigail Adams
1766 Portrait by Benjamin Blythe

“If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women.”  Abigail Adams to John Adams, August 14, 1776.

John Adams looked upon his wife as an equal helpmate at every station of his life in an age when such an attitude was not necessarily expected of men.

She deserved it. She was wise, warm, pragmatic and virtuous, advising him in a variety of matters both practical and passionate.

The intimate couple exchanged over 1,100 letters during intermittent separations over the course of forty years.

Abigail’s intellectual prowess often shines through in her letters to her husband, family and friends. These letters are remarkable, especially given the fact that she was never writing for a public audience.

She often quoted maxims by Shakespeare or classical philosophers in between items of gossip in her correspondence, once quoting an observation by the English essayist Sir William Temple on the nature of kairos—“it is an observation of a ‘Statesman that Some periods produce many great Men and few great occasions. On the contrary great occasions and few great Men!’ I believe that great occasions will make great Men, all out of talents which would other ways be dorment”—in a letter to her daughter-in-law. (2)

Her letters reveal her critical influence in the lives of the two great men within her own family. Her husband recognized that he would not have reached the presidency without her, and she wielded similar powers over her son, John Quincy, the sixth president of the United States.

One of the most enduring examples of her influence is found in a letter she wrote to 12-year-old John Quincy while he was accompanying his father on a diplomatic mission to Europe during the American Revolution.

“These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. Would Cicero have shone so distinguished an orator if he had not been roused, kindled, and inflamed by the tyranny of Catiline, Verres, and Mark Anthony? The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities, which would otherwise lie dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman. War, tyranny, and desolation are the scourges of the Almighty, and ought no doubt to be deprecated. Yet it is your lot, my son, to be an eyewitness of these calamities in your own native land, and, at the same time, to owe your existence among a people who have made a glorious defence of their invaded liberties, and who, aided by a generous and powerful ally, with the blessing of Heaven, will transmit this inheritance to ages yet unborn.” (3)

Abigail Adams displayed an incredible knowledge of history long before she realized her own leading role in the founding history of the United States.

It was from this knowledge that she gleaned the value of character in a kairos moment. She instilled these virtues in her husband and son as only a woman could.

It was she who fanned the embers of their ambition in hard times, reminding them when the going got tough that it is kairos character that makes men—and women—great.

 

(1) Abigail Adams to John Adams, Weymouth, June 16, 1775.

(2) Abigail Adams to Catherine Johnson, Quincy, August 18, 1810, as quoted in John P. Kaminski, ed., The Quotable Abigail Adams (Massachusetts Historical Society, 2009), 62.

(3) Abigail Adams to John Quincy Adams, 12 January, 1780.

Additional reading: Adams Family Papers, an electronic archive, http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/

02/7/14

Founding Fathers Friday: The Beehive

Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze 1851Chances are good you have his face in your wallet or purse right now, but when did George Washington really become the father of our country?

America as we know it might not exist today if Washington had made a different decision than he did at 3 a.m. on the morning after Christmas, 1776, while sitting on a beehive stuck in a frozen riverbank in New Jersey.

We might then know of Washington as a mere footnote in history, “a little paltry colonel of a militia of bandits,” known only to scholars and enthusiasts as another obscure leader of a failed resistance movement. (1)

Alternative histories aside, a closer look at Washington that morning, when he led a ragged group of desperate men across the Delaware River in an attack on the British at Trenton, reveals a man at the end of a rope.

Things had never looked bleaker for the American patriots. Washington had even admitted as much in a recent letter to his brother John Augustine Washington, writing “I think the game is pretty near up.” (2)

Even the weather seemed to be conspiring against Washington. He sat brooding on the rotting overturned crate that had once been a local farmer’s beehive as a furious winter storm hampered the crossing.

With almost nine miles still between him and Trenton, any attack now would be hours after sunrise. Despairing, he contemplated calling off the attack.

His kairos moment appeared before him here, now, as he sat on the beehive in the middle of the night. He must make a decision.

And so he did.

Above all else, the most prominent characteristic Washington displayed that morning was a complete sense of resolve to see his idea through, even in the face of ever mounting obstacles.

The passing hours had given Washington time to fall back on the iron willpower that constituted so much of his character. He would later tell John Hancock, “I determined to push on at all events.” (3)

One anonymous eyewitness is said to have noted in his diary, “I have never seen Washington so determined as he is now…He stands on the bank of the stream, wrapped in his cloak, superintending the landing of his troops. He is calm and collected, but very determined.” (4)

To Washington, his determination to follow through on the success or failure of the gamble was very personal. Much of what constituted his iron will that night grew out of who he was as a man. He was truly an exceptional man, but what made him extraordinary was his natural ability to do so many ordinary things so very well, and keep doing these things when it counted.

Washington and his aides, who had worked to compile excellent intelligence on the ground in New Jersey, had earlier realized that the British were momentarily weak. America’s fortunate reversal at Trenton came about because Washington was quick to recognize this seemingly small opportunity in those weeks before Christmas 1776.

But Washington alone could make the most out the available opportunity because his great determination and flexibility also made him the strongest survivor (three other attacks across the river failed that night).

The defeat of the British at Trenton paved the way for Washington’s subsequent victory at Princeton and completely reversed America’s fortunes in the Revolutionary War. The twin victories sent shockwaves reverberating throughout the British Empire and awakened a new respect for Washington and the American cause.

That morning—by sheer determination—Washington summoned enough rebel energy to drive a flying shuttle through the loom of the British defenses when the right opening occurred, and by so doing, created one of the greatest kairos moments in American history.

On the beehive see Richard Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1973), 252.(1) Edward Tatum, Jr., ed., The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, (New York: New York Times/Arno Press, 1969), 35.
(2) GW to John Augustine Washington, Dec. 18, 1776, in The Writings of George Washington 6:396.
(3) GW to John Hancock, Dec. 27, 1776, in WGW 6:442.
(4) The authenticity of the often quoted “Diary of an Officer on Washington’s Staff” is the subject of debate among recent scholars. It is often attributed to Lieutenant Colonel John Fitzgerald, one of Washington’s aides de camp, but no original has ever been found. Regardless, in this case, Washington’s resolve is self-evident and the description rings true. See David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press), 422.