John Adams' Fight against Innovation in the New England Constitution: 1776

Abstract

D URING the fall of 1775 the work of the Continental Congress engaged most of John Adams' time. On October 29, however, Adams broke from his congressional duties long enough to write a few paragraphs to his wife, Abigail, who had remained in Braintree. Adams seldom employed the sentimental prose of the absent husband; this occasion was no exception. He explained to his patient wife that among his fellow delegates his overweening Prejudice in favour of New England ... leads me to expose myself to just Ridicule.' The representative from Massachusetts realized that his outspoken provincial manners clashed with the ways of his more cosmopolitan associates in Philadelphia. But Adams had no intention of changing his attitudes for anyone, especially for anyone from outside Massachusetts. Experience had impressed a love of New England deeply on his character. In the remainder of his letter he justified his local Attachment by lecturing Abigail about the superior virtues of New England institutions. He wrote nothing that she had not heard him say many times before. Indeed, the traditions of New England were a central passion throughout Adams' life and the key to understanding the continuity of his political thought. Few things awakened Adams' enthusiasm as quickly as a discussion about the meaning of the New England heritage. He told his friends that the founding of America was the greatest single event in world history. In 1765, for example, he declared in his diary that I always consider the settlement of America with Reverence and Wonder-as the Opening of a grand scene and Design in Providence, for the Illumination of the Ignorant and the Emancipation of the slavish Part of Mankind all over the Earth.2 When Adams spoke about the founding of the