Abigail Adams and Her Times

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ABIGAIL ADAMS AND HER TIMES

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Books By Laura E. Richards

Abigail Adams and Her Times Pippin Elizabeth Fry Florence Nightingale Mrs. Tree Mrs. Tree's Will Miss Jimmy The Wooing of Calvin Parks Journals and Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe Two Noble Lives Captain January A Happy Little Time When I Was Your Age Five Minute Stories In My Nursery The Golden Windows The Silver Crown The Joyous Story of Toto The Life of Julia Ward Howe With Maud Howe Elliott, etc., etc.

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[Illustration: ABIGAIL ADAMS

From an original painting by Gilbert Stuart]

ABIGAIL ADAMS AND HER TIMES

by

LAURA E. RICHARDS

Author of "Elizabeth Fry, the Angel of the Prisons," "Florence Nightingale, the Angel of the Crimea," etc.

[Illustration]

Illustrated

D. Appleton and Company New York London 1917

Copyright, 1917, by D. Appleton and Company

Printed in the United States of America

TO THE HONORED MEMORY OF FRANKLIN BENJAMIN SANBORN THE FRIEND OF MY PARENTS AND OF MY CHILDREN; TO THREE GENERATIONS A FAITHFUL, AFFECTIONATE, AND BELOVED COUNSELLOR.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I. BEGINS AT THE BEGINNING 1 II. GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE 24 III. THE BOSTON MASSACRE 40 IV. THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 60 V. AFTER LEXINGTON 88 VI. BOSTON BLOCKADE 112 VII. IN HAPPY BRAINTREE 124 VIII. INDEPENDENCE AT LAST 142 IX. MR. ADAMS ABROAD 181 X. THE COURT OF ST. JAMES 197 XI. VEXATIOUS HONORS 231 XII. AFTERNOON AND EVENING 260

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Abigail Adams Frontispiece

FACING PAGE Abigail Adams 36 John Adams 188 South Elevation of the President's House 252

For much of the local and contemporary color in this little book, the author is indebted to the admirable works of the late Mrs. Alice Morse Earle.

ABIGAIL ADAMS AND HER TIMES

CHAPTER I

BEGINS AT THE BEGINNING

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR! George the Second on the throne of England, "snuffy old drone from the German hive"; Charles Edward Stuart ("bonnie Prince Charlie") making ready for his great coup which, the next year, was to cast down said George from the throne and set Charles Edward thereupon as "rightful, lawful prince--for wha'll be king but Charlie?", and which ended in Culloden and the final downfall and dispersion of the Scottish Stuarts.

In France, Louis XV., Lord of Misrule, shepherding his people toward the Abyss with what skill was in him; at war with England, at war with Hungary; Frederick of Prussia alone standing by him. In Europe, generally, a seething condition which is not our immediate concern. In America, seething also: discontent, indignation, rising higher and higher under British imposition (not British either, being the work of Britain's German ruler, not of her people!), yet quelled for the moment by war with France.

I am not writing a history; far from it. I am merely throwing on the screen, in the fashion of today, a few scenes to make a background for my little pen-picture-play. What is really our immediate concern is that on November eleventh of this same year, 1744, was born to the wife of the Reverend William Smith of Weymouth, Massachusetts, a daughter, baptized Abigail.

Parson Smith was a notable figure of the times; not a great man, but one of character, intelligence and cultivation. He married a daughter of Colonel John Quincy, so my heroine was a cousin--I cannot tell in what precise degree--to Dorothy Q. of poetic-pictorial fame; cousin, too, (her grandmother having been a Norton) to half Boston, the cultivated and scholarly half.