"The Heart of My Friend"

IN SEPTEMBER 1776, the Continental Congress sent John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to Staten Island to negotiate with Lord Howe. On their journey to Philadelphia the two stopped for the night in Brunswick, where at a crowded inn they were forced to share not only a small room but the same bed. Trouble started immediately, as Adams--a self-proclaimed invalid--wanted the window shut and Franklin, claiming it would be healthier, insisted it stay open. Franklin won out, and the two Americans faced the cold together in bed. But years later, in his Autobiography, Adams was to have the final say: "The Doctor then began a harangue upon the air and the cold, and respiration and perspiration, with which I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep, and left him and his philosophy together, but I believe they were equally sound and insensible within a few minutes after me for the last words I heard were pronounced as if he was more than half-asleep."

Adams had a well-developed, if dry, sense of humor as his rendition of this incident with Franklin indicates. And The Book of Abigail and John, a Bicentennial offering from the Harvard University Press, offers more of this side of history. It is a vital living collection of the correspondence between John Adams and his wife Abigail Smith Adams from the days of their early Weymouth courtship until their reunification in post-war Britain in 1784. It is a story of real people and their concerns, fears and accomplishments in a world turned upside down.

The editors--L.H. Butterfield, who edited John Adams's diary and autobiography, Marc Friedlander and Mary-Jo Kline--make it clear from the outset that they want a book that will be read and not studied. They succeed. They select what they consider to be the best of the Adams correspondence and add letters to outsiders, diary entries and autobiographical selections. The result is a smooth reading narrative that carries the reader from the first faint glimmerings of trouble with England into the frantic months of Independence and beyond.

JOHN AND ABIGAIL ADAMS were separated for long periods during the 22-year period the book spans. During their courtship and the early years of their marriage, Adams was often away practicing law in different towns. Then, the First and Second Continental Congresses drew the Braintree lawyer to Pennsylvania until 1777 when an appointment to diplomatic duties in France and Holland splintered his family for years. Out of these years apart come the letters.

The John Adams that emerges from The Book of Abigail and John contradicts the staid, dignified New England face he presented to the public. Deeply concerned with the welfare of his family, unsure whether his sacrifices are appreciated by his compatriots at home, the complex Adams unburdens himself to his "Portia." His romantic feelings never fade. Trapped in Boston while recovering from a smallpox innoculation, he complains to Abigail in 1764:

Oh my dear Girl, I thank Heaven that another Fortnight will restore you to me--after so long a separation. My soul and Body have both been thrown into disorder by your Absence, and a Month of two more would make me the most insufferable Cynick in the World.

The tone of his letters 18 years later, although he is preoccupied with the European diplomatic scene now instead of smallpox, often display the same emotion. He writes to his mate from Amsterdam, where he is trying to persuade the Netherlands to aid the newly created American nation:

I am keeping House, but I want a Housekeeper. What fine Affair it would be if We could flit across the Atlantic as they say the Angles do from Planet to Planet. I would dart the Penn Hills and bring you over on my Wings. But alass We must keep house separately from some time.

The woman he addresses is a remarkable and unique person: Abigail Smith Adams. Her strength pervades the letters--she is left to raise four children, manage a farm, deal with tenants, cope with inflation and keep her husband informed of military and political affairs. She handles these challenges capably. The parson's daughter is also not afraid to advise her husband on politics, constantly drawing on the Classics or English poetry to underscore her points. In one letter she attacks the institution of slavery and then enjoins her husband to "remember the Ladies" when drawing up plans for the new government. "If perticular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment Revolution," she threatens her husband. The male Adams responds playfully, observing that men are in power only in theory, since "you know we are the subjects."

Their marriage is subject to constant strain. John Adams feels bound to comply with the orders of the new government, even though it means putting thousands of miles between him and his beloved Abigail. She complains he doesn't write enough, presses him to return and often seems close to despair. Months pass before letters cross the Atlantic: some are lost and some are destroyed. And there is her husband's constant fear that one will fall into the hands of the British and be used as propaganda, which leads him to caution her to censor what she writes. Yet throughout, the respect the two hold for each other never diminishes.

The Book of Abigail and John offers an unusual historical perspective: both Adams are canny observers of the society around them. They comment to each other on the events and characters of Revolutionary America. Whether it is Abigail discussing the post-Yorktown morale in Massachusetts, or John recounting the lackadaisical diplomatic adminstration of Franklin in Paris, little misses their critical eyes. Adams is anxious to share his thoughts on politics with his wife. In a passage of overblown prose (often quoted with relish by Harvard colonial historian Bernard Bailyn), Adams salutes the Declaration of Independence:

The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the Great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commerated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to the Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to the God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this time forward forever more.

It is one of the few awkward passages in The Book of Abigail and John. Butterfield, Friedlander and Kline, with a few exceptions--such as when they excuse an outlandish lie Adams makes to his wife as "an exaggeration made under momentary stress"--edit and introduce the 226 letters with good sense, restoring the parts that Charles Francis Adams bowdlerized in the 19th century, and leaving the grammar and spelling of the originals uncorrected.

WHAT REMAINS is best captured in a letter Abigail wrote two days after Christmas in 1778: "How insupportable the Idea that 3000 leigues, and the vast ocean now devide us--but devide only our persons for the Heart of my Friend is in the Bosom of his partner. More than half a score years has so rivetted it there, that the Fabrick which contains it must crumble into Dust, e'er the particles can be separated."