Read Online From This Day Forward by Cokie Roberts - Free Book Online Page B

brief sojourn in Braintree made its mark, however: Abigail was pregnant.
    Returning to an assembly of revolutionaries meant a perilous journey for Adams as he skirted British-occupied territory and made his way to Baltimore, where Congress had convened. He was not a happy man: “When I reflect upon the prospect before me of so long an absence from all that I hold dear in this world, I mean all that contributes to my private personal happiness, it makes me melancholy. When I think on your circumstances I am more so, and yet I rejoice at them in spite of all this melancholy.” Not only were Abigail’s personal “circumstances” of pregnancy difficult, the political circumstances made for hazardous conditions everywhere. British ships blockaded New England, creating a flour shortage. Here’s Abigail in March 1777: “There is such a cry for bread in the town of Boston as I suppose was never before heard, and the bakers deal out but a loaf a day to the largest families.” When a friend of hers died in childbirth in April,Abigail grew apprehensive about her own condition: “Every thing of this kind naturally shocks a person in similar circumstances. How great the mind that can overcome the fear of death!” John, too, regretted his plight. Worried that the war was going badly and frustrated by Congress, he lamented, “Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.” What would he think about posterity now?
    Despite her discomfort, Abigail showed glimpses of her usual feistiness when describing how the currency had become so worthless that only by bartering could she supply the household, telling her lawmaker husband that the government should stop printing money; “I hope in favor you will not emit any more paper, till what we have at least becomes more valuable.” But she had trouble summoning her spirit: “I want a companion at nights, many of them are wakeful and lonesome…. Do you sigh for home? And would you willingly share with me what I have to pass through?…I wish the day past, yet dread its arrival.” Abigail’s foreboding about the day of childbirth only grew worse. In July, when she sat down to write, she thought it might be for the last time: “I was last night taken with a shaking fit, and am very apprehensive that a life was lost. As I have no reason today to think otherways, what may be the consequences to me, heaven only knows.” John, too, was worried sick: “Oh that I could be near, to say a few kind words, or show a few kind looks, or do a few kind actions. Oh that I could take from my dearest a share of her distress, or relieve her of the whole. Before this shall reach you I hope you will be happy in the embraces of a daughter as fair, and good, and wise, and virtuous as the mother, or if it is a son I hope it will still resemble the mother in person, mind and heart.”
    Remarkably, though she was certain she was carrying adead baby, Abigail managed to get off a newsy, chatty letter, apologizing for the somber one of the day before. But the next day, as she suspected, a baby girl was stillborn. A friend sent the news to John Adams. A few days later, Abigail took up her pen, thankful that she was still alive: “Join with me my dearest friend in gratitude to heaven, that a life I know you value, has been spared and carried through distress and danger although the dear infant is numbered with its ancestors…. My heart was much set upon a daughter….[I] feel myself weakened by this exertion, yet I could not refrain from the temptation of writing with my own hand to you.” John was deeply moved: “Never in my whole life was my heart affected with such emotions and sensations…. Devoutly do I return thanks to God, whose kind