Authors: John Ferling
24
. Morris to Samuel Inglis, January 30, 1776,
LDC
3:170; Morris to Charles Lee, February 17, 1776, ibid., 3:270; Morris to Herries, February 15, 1776, ibid., 3:258–59.
25
. Morris to [?], December 9, 1775,
LDC
2:470.
26
. Morris to Deane, June 5, 1776,
LDC
4:147.
27
. Morris to Horatio Gates, April 6, 1776,
LDC
3:495; Morris to Herries, February 15, 1776, ibid., 3:258; Morris to Deane, March 10, 1776, ibid., 3:366.
28
. Alan Valentine,
Lord North
(Norman, Okla., 1967), 1:407.
29
. The foregoing draws on Ira D. Gruber,
The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution
(New York, 1972), 31–67.
30
.
PH
18:991.
31
. William Knox is quoted in Valentine,
Lord North
, 1:408.
32
. Walpole is quoted in Gerald Saxon Brown,
The American Secretary: The Colonial Policy of Lord George Germain, 1775–1778
(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1963), 64.
33
.
PH
18:1248–50, 1253, 1255, 1284, 1286.
34
.
PH
18:1144–45, 1154–55, 1156.
35
. Brown,
American Secretary
, 66–72.
36
. Gruber,
Howe Brothers and the American Revolution
, 72–77; Peter D. G. Thomas,
Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773–1776
(Oxford, 1991), 303–17; Weldon A. Brown,
Empire or Independence: A Study in the Failure of Reconciliation, 1774–1783
(reprint, Port Washington, N.Y., 1966), 82–85.
37
. Burke to Richard Champion, May 30, 1776, George H. Guttridge, ed.,
The Correspondence of Edmund Burke
(Chicago, Ill., 1958–78), 3:268–69.
38
. Hooper to Trumbull, March 13, 1776,
LDC
3:372.
39
. Wolcott to Andrew Adams, March 22, 1776,
LDC
3:428.
40
. JA to AA, April 15, 1776,
AFC
1:383.
41
. SA to Hawley, April 15, 1776,
LDC
3:528.
CHAPTER 10: “THE FATAL STAB”: ABIGAIL ADAMS AND THE REALITIES OF THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
1
. Richard Henry Lee to Landon Carter, April 1, 1776,
LDC
3:470; Gerry to James Warren, March 26, 1776, ibid., 3:441; JA to Horatio Gates, March 23, 1776,
PJA
4:59.
2
.
DAJA
2:231–33. Emphasis added by the author.
3
. Robert Alexander to the Maryland Council of Safety, February 27, 1776,
LDC
3:307; Richard Smith, Diary, February 27, 1776, ibid., 3:310.
4
. Whipple to Joshua Brackett, March 17, 1776,
LDC
3:395.
5
. Gerry to Warren, March 26, 1776,
LDC
3:442; Hancock to Certain Colonies, April 12, 1776, ibid., 3:514.
6
. Ronald Hoffman,
A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland
(Baltimore, Md., 1973), 157–58; Germain to Robert Eden, December 23, 1775,
Am Archives
4th series, 4:439–40; Pauline Maier,
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
(New York, 1997), 80–81.
7
. Whipple to Brackett, April 11, 1776,
LDC
3:509; Joseph Hewes to Samuel Johnston, March 20, 1776, ibid., 3:416.
8
. SA to Joseph Hawley, April 15, 1776,
LDC
3:528; Whipple to Brackett, April 11, 1776, ibid., 3:509; Hewes to Johnston, March 20, 1776, ibid., 3:416; Gerry to Warren, March 26, 1776, ibid., 3:442.
9
. JA to Horatio Gates, March 23, 1776,
PJA
4:59; JA to AA, April 6, 1776, ibid., 3:492; JA to AA, April 12, 1776,
AFC
1:377.
10
.
JCC
4:214, 229–32. See also James Morgan, “American Privateering in America’s War for Independence, 1775–1783,”
American Neptune
36 (April 1976): 80–85, and H. James Henderson,
Party Politics in the Continental Congress
(New York, 1974), 61. Thousands of letters of marquee were issued during the conflict, and according to the best estimate, more than three thousand prizes were captured by American privateers.
11
. Eliphalet Dyer to Joseph Trumbull, January 1, 1776,
LDC
3:5.
12
. Committee of Secret Correspondence Minutes of Proceedings, March 2, 1776,
LDC
3:320–23. See also, Robert Morris to Deane, March 30, 1776, ibid., 3:466–68.
13
. Gage to Dartmouth, August 20, 1775, Clarence E. Carter, ed.,
The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775
(reprint, New York, 1969), 1:413–14; Ira Gruber,
The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972), 26, 31, 37; Howe to Dartmouth, November 26, 1775,
DAR
11:191, 193.
14
. GW, Circular to the General Officers, September 8, 1775,
PGWR
1:432–34; Council of War, September 11, 1775, ibid., 1:450–51.
15
. GW to Joseph Reed, January 14, 1776,
PGWR
3:89–90; GW, Instructions to Colonel Henry Knox, November 16, 1775, ibid., 2:384–85; Knox to GW, November 27, December 5, 17, 1775, January 5, 1776, ibid., 2:434, 495–96, 563–66; North Callahan,
Henry Knox: George Washington’s General
(New York, 1958), 16–56; John Ferling,
Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence
(New York, 2007), 102–4.
16
. Council of War, February 16, 1776,
PGWR
3:320–22, 323–24n; GW to Reed, February 26[–March 9], 1776, ibid., 3:373.
17
. Ferling,
Almost a Miracle
, 105.
18
. AA to JA, March 16, 1776,
AFC
1:358; Christopher Ward,
The War of the Revolution
(New York, 1952), 1:128; Archibald Robinson,
His Diary and Sketches in America, August 1775–April 1776
, in Harry M. Lyndenberg, ed.,
New York Public Library Bulletin
(New York, 1933), 73–74. Howe’s quote, which Abigail Adams heard and passed on ten days after the event, is likely apocryphal.
19
. Hugh Earl Percy to General Harvey, July 28, 1775, in Charles K. Bolton, ed.,
Letters of Hugh Earl Percy from Boston and New York, 1774–1776
(Boston, 1902), 58.
20
. James Grant to Richard Rigby, October 5, 1775, Papers of James Grant of Ballindaloch, reel 29, Library of Congress.
21
.
PGWR
3:377–78n; GW to Read, February 26[–March 9], 1776, ibid., 3:376.
22
.
Am Archives
4th series, 5:422–23;
PGWR
4:2n.
23
. Francis Lightfoot Lee to Landon Carter, April 9, 1776,
LDC
3:500.
24
.
Am Archives
4th series, 3:644, 794–95.
25
. James Duane, Notes for a Speech in Congress, [May 23–25, 1775],
LDC
1:392.
26
. Quoted in T. H. Breen,
American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People
(New York, 2010), 10.
27
. David Hackett Fischer,
Paul Revere’s Ride
(New York, 1994), 320–21; Joyce Lee Malcolm,
Peter’s War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution
(New Haven, Conn., 2009), 75.
28
. BF to Anthony Todd, March 29, 1776,
PBF
22:393.
29
. GW, General Orders, October 26, 31, November 14, 20, 1775,
PGWR
2:235–36, 269, 369, 443.
30
. See David Ammerman,
In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774
(Charlottesville, Va., 1974), 103–24.
31
.
Am Archives
4th series, 3:141–42.
32
.
Am Archives
4th series, 4:858, 1050–51.
33
.
Am Archives
4th series, 4:719.
34
.
Am Archives
4th series, 3:319.
35
.
Am Archives
4th series, 4:713.
36
. Breen,
American Insurgents, American Patriots
, 233–34. Breen chronicles the work of these committees in detail and shows how restrained many were in practice. See pages 207–40.
37
.
Am Archives
4th series, 3:218, 692, 462–63, 955, 1072; 4:288; 5:547.
38
.
Am Archives
4th series, 3:133, 322, 682, 692.
39
.
Am Archives
4th series, 3:141–42.
40
. Brendan McConville,
The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776
(Chapel Hill., N.C., 2006), 63–64, 74, 87, 107, 126, 129–31, 138, 202. The quotations can be found on pages 74 and 202.
41
. McConville,
King’s Three Faces
, 292, 296–97.
42
. Quoted in Merrill Jensen,
The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776
(New York, 1968), 669.
43
. The literature on republicanism and the American Revolution is voluminous. Good places to start—and on which the foregoing draws—are Bernard Bailyn,
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
(Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 48–52, 281–84; Gordon S. Wood,
The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 46–124; Gordon S. Wood,
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
(New York, 1992), 11–189; Robert E. Shalhope, “Republicanism, Liberalism, and Democracy: Political Culture in the Early Republic,” in Milton M. Klein et al., eds.,
The Republican Synthesis Revisited: Essays in Honor of George Athan Billias
(Worcester, Mass., 1992), 37–90; Robert E. Shalhope, “Republicanism and Early American Historiography,”
William and Mary Quarterly
39 (1982): 334–56; Robert E. Shalhope, “Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography,” ibid., 29 (1972): 49–80; Joyce Appleby, “Republicanism and Ideology,”
American Quarterly
37 (1985): 461–83; Linda K. Kerber, “The Republican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation,” ibid., 37:474–95.