Historic Shrines of America Part 3

But the estate really became public property three years before this, when a regiment, under the command of Colonel Glover, pitched its tents in the park. In July, 1775, Washington made the house his headquarters, remaining until April 4, 1776.

During these months the house was a busy place. Officers gathered here both for business and for pleasure. Military conferences and court-martials were held in the large room in the second story which was later used by Longfellow as a study. Dinners and entertainments were frequent; these provided a needed safety valve during the weeks of anxious waiting near the British line. Mrs. Washington was a visitor here, thus giving to her husband the taste of home life which he was unwilling to take during the Revolution by making a visit to his estate at Mt. Vernon.

On one of the early days of the Commander-in-Chief's occupancy of the house, he wrote this entry in his carefully-kept account book:

"July 15, 1775, Paid for cleaning the House which was provided for my Quarters, and which had been occupied by the Marblehead regiment, 2 10s. 9d."

The day before this entry was made General Green wrote to Samuel Ward:

"His Excellency, General Washington, has arrived amongst us, universally admired. Joy was visible in every countenance, and it seemed as if the spirit of conquest breathed through the whole army. I hope I shall be taught, to copy his example, and to prefer the love of liberty, in this time of public danger to all the soft pleasures of domestic life, and support ourselves with manly fort.i.tude amidst all the dangers and hardships that attend a state of war. And I doubt not, under the General's wise direction, we shall establish such excellent order and strictness of discipline as to invite victory to attend him wherever he goes."

A council of war was held in the upstairs room on August 3, 1775.

After this council General Sullivan wrote to the New Hampshire Committee of Safety:

"To our great surprise, discovered that we had not powder enough to furnish half a pound a man, exclusive of what the people have in their homes and cartridge boxes. The General was so struck that he did not utter a word for half an hour."

Further hints of the serious straits caused by the lack of ammunition were contained in a letter of Elias Boudinot. He said that at the time there were fourteen miles of line to guard, so that Washington did not dare fire an Evening or Morning Gun. "In this situation one of the Committee of Safety for Ma.s.sachusetts ... deserted and went over to General Gage, and discovered our poverty to him. The fact was so incredible, that General Gage treated it as a stratagem of war, and the informant as a Spy, or coming with the express purpose of deceiving him & drawing his Army into a Snare, by which means we were saved from having our Quarters beaten up...."

The strange inactivity of the British in the face of the unpreparedness of the Continental troops was remarked in a letter written to Congress on January 4, from Headquarters:

"It is not in the pages of history, perhaps, to furnish a case like ours. To maintain a post within musket shot of the enemy, for six months together, without [powder], and at the same time to disband one army, and recruit another, within that distance of twenty odd British regiments, is more, probably, than was ever attempted."

To-day visitors are free to roam through the rooms that echoed to the tread of Washington and his generals, in which the children played in Longfellow's day, and where the poet wrote so many of his messages that have gone straight to the hearts of millions.

VII

THE ADAMS HOUSES, QUINCY, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS

WHERE TWO PRESIDENTS WERE BORN

John Adams was born and spent his boyhood in a simple farmhouse near Braintree (now Quincy), Ma.s.sachusetts. It has been described as a "plain, square, honest block of a house, widened by a lean-to, and scarcely two stories high." This house, built in 1681, Daniel Munro Wilson says was "the veritable roof-tree, under which was ushered into being the earliest and strongest advocate of independence, the leader whose clear intelligence was paramount in shaping our free inst.i.tutions, the founder of a line of statesmen, legislators, diplomats, historians, whose patriotism is a pa.s.sion, and whose integrity is like the granite of their native hills."

It is a remarkable fact that John Adams and John Hanc.o.c.k, who stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight for American independence, were born within a mile of each other, on days only a little more than a year apart. The baptismal records show that October 19, 1735, was the birthday of John Adams, while John Hanc.o.c.k was born on January 12, 1737.

From the modest home in Braintree John Adams went to college. Later he taught school and studied law. Soon after he returned home in 1758 he wrote in his diary:

"Rose at sunrise, unpitched a load of hay, and translated two more leaves of Justinian."

After the death of his father, in 1761, the burden of the home fell on his shoulders, and in the same year he was called to serve the country. His diary tells of the call:

"In March, when I had no suspicion, I heard my name p.r.o.nounced (at town meeting) in a nomination of surveyor of highways. I was very wroth, because I knew better, but said nothing. My friend, Dr. Savil, came to me and told me that he had nominated me to prevent me from being nominated as a constable. 'For,' said the doctor, 'they make it a rule to compel every man to serve either as constable or surveyor, or to pay a fine.' Accordingly, I went to ploughing and ditching."

Thus John Adams showed the spirit of service that later animated his son, John Quincy Adams, who, after he had been President, became a representative in Congress, and made answer to those who thought such an office beneath his dignity, "An ex-President would not be degraded by serving as a selectman in his town if elected thereto by the people."

During those early years the young lawyer had other occupations than ditch-digging. The records of the family show that he was a.s.siduously courting Abigail Smith, daughter of Rev. William Smith, minister in Weymouth, near by. Probably he first met her in the historic house, for she was a frequent visitor there.

The marriage of the young people on October 25, 1764, excited much comment. In Puritan New England the profession of the law was not a popular calling, and many of the people thought Abigail Smith was "throwing herself away." Parson Smith was equal to the occasion; as he had helped his eldest daughter out of a similar difficulty by preaching on the text, "And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her," so, on the Sunday after Abigail's marriage, he announced the text, "For John ... came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil."

The year of the marriage witnessed the beginning of John Adams' fight for independence. For it was the year of the iniquitous Stamp Act. In his diary he wrote:

"I drew up a pet.i.tion to the selectmen of Braintree, and procured it to be signed by a number of the respectable inhabitants, to call a meeting of the town to instruct their representatives in relation to the stamps."

The following year, when a meeting was held in Braintree to take action in consequence of the failure of Great Britain to heed the protest against the Stamp Act, he wrote:

"I prepared a draught of instruction at home, and carried them with me. The cause of the meeting was explained at some length, and the state and danger of the country pointed out.

A committee was appointed to prepare instructions, of which I was nominated as one. My draught was unanimously adopted without amendment, reported to the town, and accepted without a dissenting voice.... They rang through the state and were adopted in so many words ... by forty towns, as instructions to their representatives."

Less than two years later, on July 11, 1767, in the town close by his own birthplace, to which John Adams had taken his bride, John Quincy Adams was born. The delights of the new home have been pictured in a pleasing manner by Daniel Munro Wilson:

"Elevated was life in this 'little hut,' but it was real, genuine, beautifully domestic. The scene of it, visible there now to any pious pilgrim, and reverently preserved in many of its antique appointments by the Quincy Historical Society, a.s.sists the imagination to realize its n.o.ble simplicity. The dining-room or general living room, with its wide open fireplace, is where the young couple would most often pa.s.s their evenings, and in winter would very likely occupy in measureless content a single settle, roasting on one side and freezing on the other. The kitchen, full of cheerful bustle, and fragrant as the spice isles, how it would draw the children as they grew up, the little John Quincy among them!

Here they could be near mother, and watch her with absorbing attention as she superintended the cooking, now hanging pots of savory meats on the crane, and now drawing from the cavernous depths of the brick oven the pies and baked beans and Indian puddings and other delicacies of those days. We can more easily imagine the home scene when we read these words written by Mrs. Adams to her husband: 'Our son is much better than when you left home, and our daughter rocks him to sleep with the song of "Come papa, come home to brother Johnnie."' 'Johnnie' is the dignified President and 'old man eloquent' that is to be."

When it became evident that there must be Revolution, the patriot Adams was compelled to leave his family and go into the thick of the fight. He did not want to go. "I should have thought myself the happiest man in the world if I could have returned to my little hut and forty acres, which my father left me in Braintree, and lived on potatoes and sea-weed the rest of my life. But I had taken a part, I had adopted a system, I had encouraged my fellow citizens, and I could not abandon them in conscience and in honor."

From the old home Abigail Adams wrote him letters that moved him to renewed efforts for his struggling countrymen. In one of them she said, "You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator; but if the sword be drawn, I bid adieu to all domestic felicity, and look forward to that country where there are neither wars nor rumors of war, in a firm belief, that through the mercy of its King we shall both rejoice there together."

The wife rejoiced when her husband's ringing words helped to carry the Declaration of Independence; she urged him to make the trips to France which Congress asked him to undertake; she encouraged him when he was Vice-President and, later, President, and she made home more than ever an abode of peace when, in 1801, he returned to Braintree, to a house of Leonard Va.s.sall, built in 1731, which he bought in 1785.

In this house husband and wife celebrated their golden wedding, as John Quincy Adams was to celebrate his golden wedding many years later. Here, for many years, the son enjoyed being with the mother of whom he once wrote:

"My mother was an angel upon earth. She was a minister of blessings to all human beings within her sphere of action....

She has been to me more than a mother. She has been a spirit from above watching over me for good, and contributing by my mere consciousness of her existence to the comfort of my life.... There is not a virtue that can abide in the female heart but it was the ornament of hers."

And in this house the mother died, on October 28, 1818. John Quincy Adams lived there until his death, on July 4, 1826.

VIII

THE QUINCY MANSION, QUINCY, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS

THE HOME OF THREE DOROTHY QUINCYS

Among the settlers to whom Boston granted large allotments of outlying lands were William Coddington and Edmund Quincy. In 1635 they went, in company with their a.s.sociate settlers, to "the mount," which became Braintree, now Quincy.

By the side of a pleasant brook, under the shade of spreading trees, Coddington built in 1636 his house of four rooms. Downstairs was the kitchen and the living room, while upstairs were two bedrooms. The upper story overhung the lower in the old manner, and a generous chimney, which afforded room for a large open fireplace, dominated the whole.

This house became the meeting place for a group of seekers after religious liberty who were looked upon with suspicion in Boston--Rev.

John Wheelwright, Sir Harry Vane, Atherton Hough, Ann Hutchinson, and others. In consequence of their views the company was soon broken up.

Ann Hutchinson and Wheelwright were banished, while Coddington would have been banished if he had not gone hastily to Rhode Island.

Edmund Quincy, who succeeded to Coddington's house, probably would have been banished if he had not died before the decree could be p.r.o.nounced. For a season his widow, Judith, lived in the house, which, from that time, became known as the Quincy Mansion. With her were the children, Edmund and Judith. Judith, who married at twenty, and became the mother of Hannah (Betsy) Hull, whose dowry, when she became the bride of Judge Samuel Sewell, was her weight in pine-tree shillings, the gift of her father, the master of the colony's mint. Florence Royce Davis has written of the wedding:

"Then the great scales were brought, amid laughter and jest, And Betsy was called to step in and be weighed; But a silence fell over each wondering guest When the mint-master opened a ponderous chest And a fortune of shillings displayed.

"By handfuls the silver was poured in one side Till it weighed from the floor blushing Betsy, the bride; And the mint-master called: 'Prithee, Sewell, my son, The horses are saddled, the wedding is done; Behold the bride's portion; and know all your days Your wife is well worth every shilling she weighs.'"

Edmund Quincy married at twenty-one, and became the next occupant of the mansion. During his long life there were welcomed to the hospitable roof many of those whose words and deeds prepared the way for the liberty that was to come to the country within a century.