Letter from John Adams to Mrs. Adams

v2:1717

Philadelphia, July 24, 1775.

MY DEAR: It is now almost three months since I left you, in every part of which my anxiety about you and the children, as well as our country, has been extreme.

The business I have had upon my mind has been as great and important as can be intrusted to one man, and the difficulty and intricacy of it is prodigious. When fifty or sixty men have a constitution to form for a great empire, at the same time that they have a country of fifteen hundred miles extent to fortify; millions to arm and train; a naval power to an extensive commerce to regulate; numerous tribes of Indians to negotiate with; a. standing army of twenty-seven thousand men to raise, pay, victual, and officer; I really shall pity those fifty and sixty men.

I must see you ere long. Rice has wrote me a very good letter, so has Thatcher, for which I thank them both. Love to the children.

J˙ A.

P˙ S. I wish I had given you a complete history, from the beginning to the end of the journey, of the behaviour of my compatriots. No mortal tale could equal it. I will tell you in future, but you shall keep it a secret — the fidgets, the whims, the caprice, the vanity, the superstition, the irritability of some of us is —

Mrs˙ Abigail Adams, Brain-tree; to the care of Colonel Warren; favoured by Mr˙ Hitchborne.