Adams Family Correspondence, volume 13
th1798.
O how happy should I be, were I to sit down to write you of my
dear sisters better health, but alas I cannot. She fails every day & has now grown
so weak that she is not able to wride out or even to come below stairs. She still
keeps her usual flow of spirits, & sits “like patience on a monument, smiling”
even tho in the arms of death.1 How
miserable should I be, my aunt, in seeing my dear sister thus mouldering away, did I
believe with the boasting modern philosophers, that after
death, she would be consigned, like beasts, to eternal sleep
and putrefaction. No, I firmly believe & have the strongest grounds for my
belief, which afford consolations, neither few nor small, that she dies but to live
forever—“that christianity will seat herself by her dying pillow, draw aside the
curtains of eternity, point her closing eyes to the opening gates of everlasting life
& convey her departing spirit in peace & transport to a state of perfect
evergrowing knowledge, virtue, enjoyment, usefulness & glory:”2
I wrote to you in a letter which I hope you have received, that I should not be at commencement I found no difficulty in being excused. The president was so sick that his life was despaired of for more than a week Dr. Howard presided in his place com. day.3
The resolute conduct of the Americans, will I hope, prove to France & the world, what we ought to blush & be ashamed ever to 200 have had doubted, that we are resolve’d on a continuance of our independance or death—that rather than be slaves to a foreign nation, we will all die, like Hanibal, by our hands. As for myself, I verily swear—I speak it with reverence, as being in the presence of my God— I solemnly swear, that the “impression of keen whips, I will wear as rubies, & strip myself to death as to a bed that longing I have been sick for,” ere I will writhe under the scourge of any foreign tyrant on earth.4
The excellent patriotick songs, from various parts of the US, serve to enkindle a glorious enthusiasm in every soul, in which there is a single spark of fire.5 Let me compose your songs & ballads (said a celebrated English patriot, I forget his name) & I dont care who makes your laws.6 Washingtons appointment, for I have no doubt but he will except, must electrify every bosom in his countrys cause. Under his banners, who can fight otherwise than valiantly? May the French have cause to say of our soldiers, as Tigranes the Persian exclaim’d of the Athenians, soon after the invasion of Xerxes Heavens! against whom have we come to contend? insensible to their own interest, they fight only for glory.7
I most ardently wished & fondly anticipated
8 to have seen you long before this. I felt
afraid that the extreme warm weather would make it sickly in P— that you may soon
arrive at Q with health & happiness is the fond wish of your nephew / In great
haste,
mS Shaw
your little grandsons are well
RC (Adams Papers); endorsed: “W s shaw August July / 20 1798.”
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act II,
scene iv, lines 117–118.
Timothy Dwight, The Nature, and Danger,
of Infidel Philosophy, Exhibited in Two Discourses, Addressed to the Candidates for
the Baccalaureate, in Yale College, New Haven, 1798, p. 91, Evans, No. 33657.
Shaw’s letter has not been found. Rev. Joseph Willard remained
dangerously ill for the rest of the summer. In his place, the Harvard College
commencement was led by the senior clergyman of the Harvard Corporation and Willard’s
close friend, Rev. Simeon Howard (1733–1804), for whom see vol. 7:466. The governor and lieutenant governor
were escorted by cavalry to Cambridge for the ceremonies, which “were marked by that
true spirit of federalism.” After dinner, “Adams and Liberty” and “Hail Columbia” were
sung with enthusiasm (Boston Gazette, 23 July; Sidney
Willard, Memories of Youth and Manhood, 2 vols.,
Cambridge, 1855, 2:4–5, 67–68;
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates
, 14:279, 286, 288; New
York Commercial Advertiser, 23 July).
Shakespeare, Measure for Measure,
Act II, scene iv, lines 101–103.
In addition to “Hail Columbia” and “Adams and Liberty,” in the
patriotic fervor of the spring and summer of 1798 a large number of songs were written
that encouraged Americans to assert their rights against the French. These songs
included “Washington and the Constitution,” a “Harvard Patriotic Ode,” “Washington and
Independence,” “Portsmouth Federal Song,” and rewrites of “Yankee Doodle”
(Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 14 June;
Boston Columbian Centinel, 30 June; New York Spectator, 28 201 July; Massachusetts Mercury, 31 July; Newport, R.I., Weekly Companion, 7 July; Alexandria Times, 10 July).
Andrew Fletcher, An Account of a
Conversation Concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of
Mankind, Edinburgh, 1704, p. 10.
John Gillies, The History of Ancient
Greece, Its Colonies, and Conquests, 2 vols., London, 1786, 1:356.
Shaw initially wrote the two italicized phrases in the reverse order but then numbered them “2” and “1” to identify his intended order.