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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO SAMUEL CHASE. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811) [1854]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 9.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO SAMUEL CHASE.

Philadelphia, 24 June, 1776.

I received your obliging favor of the 21st this morning, and I thank you for it. Do not be angry with me.1 I hope I shall atone for past sins of omission soon.

The express, which you mention, brought me such contradictory accounts that I did not think it worth while to write to you upon it. In general, Sullivan writes that he was intrenching at the Sorel; that the Canadians expressed a great deal of joy at his appearance; that they assisted him with teams and with wheat; that he had ordered General Thompson with two thousand men to attack the enemy, consisting of about two hundred, according to his intelligence, at the Three Rivers, where they were fortifying, and from the character of Thompson and the goodness of his troops, he had much confidence of his success; that he hoped to drive away the enemy’s ships, which had passed the rapids of Richelieu. This narration of Sullivan’s was animating. But a letter from Arnold of the same date, or the next day rather, was wholly in the dismals.

Gates is gone to Canada, and we have done every thing that you recommended, and more, to support him. But for my own part, I confess my mind is impressed with other objects, the neglect of which appears to me to have been the source of all our misfortunes in Canada and everywhere else. Make the tree good, and the fruit will be good. A declaration of independence, confederation, and foreign alliances, in season, would have put a stop to that embarrassing opposition in Congress, which has occasioned us to do the work of the Lord deceitfully in Canada and elsewhere.

A resolution of your Convention was read in Congress this morning,1 and the question was put whether your delegates should have leave to go home, and whether those great questions should be postponed beyond the 1st of July. The determination was in the negative. We should have been happy to have obliged your Convention and your delegates. But it is now become public in the colonies that those questions are to be brought on the 1st of July. The lower counties have instructed their members, as the Assembly of Pennsylvania have. Jersey has chosen five new members, all independent souls, and instructed them to vote on the 1st of July for independence.

There is a conference of committees from every county in Pennsylvania now sitting in this city, who yesterday voted that the delegates for this colony ought on the 1st of July to vote for independence. This vote was not only unanimous, but I am told by one of them, that all the members declared seriatim that this was their opinion, and the opinion of the several counties and towns they represented, and many of them produced instructions from their constituents to vote for that measure. You see, therefore, that there is such a universal expectation that the great question will be decided the 1st of July, and it has been already so often postponed, that to postpone it again would hazard convulsions and dangerous conspiracies. It must then come on and be decided. I hope that before Monday morning next we shall receive from Maryland instructions to do right.

Pray send me your circular letter, and believe me, &c.

[1 ]“I am almost resolved not to inform you, that a general dissatisfaction prevails here with our Convention. Read the papers, and be assured Frederick speaks the sense of many counties. I have not been idle. I have appealed in writing to the people. County after county is instructing.

“Remember me to Mrs. Adams, and all independent souls. Shall I send you my circular letter? Adieu.

“Your friend,

“S. Chase.”

[1 ]This resolution is found in the American Archives, 4th series, vol. vi. c. 1845. But no trace of it is to be seen in the Journal of Congress for this day.