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

TO JAMES WARREN. - 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 JAMES WARREN.

I have but a few moments to write, and those it is my duty to improve, and faithfully to tell you, that unless you exert yourselves and send forward your troops, it is my firm opinion that Howe will recruit his army as fast as Washington, and that from Americans. The people of New York and New Jersey have been so scandalously neglected this winter, that they are flying over to Howe in considerable numbers. Nay, our army under Washington is so dispirited by conscious weakness, that the spirit of desertion prevails among them, and there are more go over to Howe from our army than come from his to ours, two to one.

Every man of the Massachusetts quota ought to have been ready last December. And not one man has yet arrived in the field, and not three hundred men at Ticonderoga. It is our weakness, and want of power to protect the people, that makes tories and deserters. I have been abominably deceived about the troops. If Ticonderoga is not lost, it will be because it is not attacked; and if it should be, New England will bear all the shame and all the blame of it. In plain English, I beg to be supported or recalled. The torment of hearing eternally reflections upon my constituents, that they are all dead, all turned tories, that they are smallbeer, which froths and foams for a few moments while it is new, and then flattens down to worse than water, without being able to contradict or answer them, is what I will not endure.

By a letter from A. Lee, 20th February, Burgoyne is coming with ten thousand Germans and three thousand British to Boston. They will go first to Rhode Island, I suppose. From thence they will join Howe, or go to Boston, according to circumstances. If you make up a decent force under Washington in the Jerseys, Howe must order them all to him, or he will be demolished, for he has but a small force at present. If you leave Washington weak, they will march to Boston.