Chapter Forty
QUINCY
Massachusetts
My triumphs in Philadelphia soon gave way to mortal peril. For on the journey home for the summer, I was overcome with the
sensation that my entire body was afire.
“Stop the horses,” I said. “I need a bed.”
Twice in four hours I pleaded with John to stop at any house where I could undress completely and lie down. I thought it was
the sun that oppressed me. But not all the water in the world could make me cool.
And now, back in Quincy, delirious with fever, I knew it was not the sun. At my bedside, Dr. Tufts said, “It may be yellow
fever.”
“Dear God,” someone said. Was it Nabby? We must’ve taken her home with us—but I couldn’t remember. “Philadelphia is raging
with it again, but I was sure they’d left in time.”
Hadn’t we left in time?
My mind was a whirl of heat and confusion. My head throbbed and my gums ached whilst a strange taste of iron coated my tongue.
Was it blood?
In the painful days that followed, I didn’t understand much but fully apprehended that I’d never been so sick. Not even with
dysentery.
Nabby helped to feed and wash me during the day. John sat up with me at night, talking incessantly.
What I said to him I’m not entirely sure, though I remember pleading for him to leave and spare himself contagion. I told him I’d rather perish than suffer the guilt of my loved ones sacrificing their lives for me the way my mother did.
But my loved ones refused to go.
While I tossed and turned in a stupor, I sometimes overheard Phoebe and my sister Mary praying over me. I heard Dr. Tufts
talking low and serious. And I overheard John, utterly distraught, say my destiny was precarious. “And mine in consequence
of it.”
While I lay tangled in the veil that separated life from death, the business of the country went on. My husband asked Washington
to come out of retirement to lead the army, though everyone knew he was too old to take the field. And the former president
agreed on one condition—he wanted Alexander Hamilton for his right-hand man with the rank of Inspector General.
Say no, I tried to say. Washington is no longer the president, John. You are. You must have your own men.
But I only managed a groan whilst John raged about it. “If I consent to the appointment of Hamilton, I should consider it
the most irresponsible action of my life and the most difficult to justify. His talents I respect; his character—I leave—”
“A man who has broken the most solemn private vow will betray the public trust,” I murmured, but my words came out slurred.
“Let Mama sleep,” Nabby insisted, settling beside my head a sachet of lavender.
In the end, John’s cabinet prevailed upon him to let Washington have his way. Hamilton would be second in command by rank
but leader of the army in reality. And one of the first ways Hamilton used his influence was to ensure that our son-in-law
could have no important role.
On a rare day when I felt well enough to sit up and take tea, Nabby explained that Colonel Smith would command a brigade—no
more—and would suffer the indignity of reporting to men who had been his equals or inferiors.
“Papa thinks he’d do better to preserve his pride and refuse the appointment, but my husband cannot, for he is able-bodied
and feels he cannot refuse to serve the country in a time of war and still call himself a patriot.”
How she still defended him, despite his long, shameful absence!
Still, why Hamilton insisted on humiliating Colonel Smith this way was a mystery. Perhaps it really was because my son-in-law ruled him out of order all those years ago during the debates over the Jay Treaty. Or perhaps it was
that Hamilton didn’t wish for the president of the United States to have his own son-in-law as eyes and ears in the military.
Of course, the official excuse was that our son-in-law could not be trusted in a significant leadership role because he’d
gone bankrupt and had yet to repay all his creditors. But Hamilton was fast friends with many men who’d been ruined in the
speculation bubble, so I doubted that could be true.
But I could advise very little from my dying bed as my illness lingered, week after week. Thousands were dying in Philadelphia,
from whence we came. Among the victims, several of our servants at the president’s house and the publisher of the Aurora, who perished whilst out on bail before his trial under the Sedition Act. Which caused us as much opprobrium throughout the
country as it saved us.
When Dr. Tufts next came to care for me, I choked out, “I want to write letters of farewell to my children.”
“Don’t surrender, Abigail,” he said, dosing me with willow bark and quinine.
I noticed that the years had been relatively kind to Cotton Tufts. Or perhaps because he’d always cut an odd appearance, the
years did him no harm. At sixty-four years, his mouth was an even more grim gash, but I’d known him so long that I saw nothing
but benevolence on his visage.
He’d been not only my business partner, and our financial manager, but a kindly uncle watching over my sisters and me. I realized
now how long I’d taken him for granted and reached for his hand.
With my throat painfully dry from misuse, I said, “You once teased that I called you Cousin Cotton when vexed, and Uncle Tufts
when not. But in truth, I flatter myself to call you uncle as I would be honored to be the niece of so kind and generous a
man. And though I can never adequately thank you for your many kindnesses to me, I hope you will accept my heartfelt gratitude
and esteem.”
“I should thank you,” he said, smiling as if touched by my words. “For you’ve made my life infinitely more interesting than it would’ve been
without you. But I wish you were not now presenting me with such a curious medical challenge.”
“I fear it is my time,” I whispered.
“I don’t think so. We’re of good Puritan stock. We die hard.” With that, he produced a candied orange from his pocket and
offered it to me as if I were still a girl. “Sit up now, take a tiny bite. You’ll feel better.”
I didn’t want to sit up. Nor did I want to take a bite. Yet, with great difficulty, I did as I was bid.
“You mustn’t sink under this,” the good doctor said. “For one thing, you must recover to see all the renovations I made to
the house on your behalf—including that beautiful yellow paint you wanted.”
Realizing that I must’ve been carried up the stairway with its new yellow paint without remembering it, I murmured, “I meant
to surprise John. Was he well pleased?”
“Someone had already spoiled the surprise for him, don’t you remember? In any case, the president is delighted and wondered
how you afforded it.”
“Did you tell him?” I asked.
“I told him only enough to satisfy his curiosity without revealing the growth of your pin money. It’s still our secret, my
dear. Now drink this dose of Peruvian bark or we’ll both end up taking that secret to the grave.”
It wasn’t until early November that I was able to leave my bed. Even then, I needed help down the stairs. More than ten weeks
I’d lain at death’s doorstep with friends and family ministering to me.
Meanwhile, John had refused to leave, despite being needed in Philadelphia. On the morning I was finally strong enough to
breakfast with him, I said, “If I’d died and you’d lost the war to France because you refused to leave my side, I’d have haunted
you from the next world.”
“There’s my Portia returned to me,” John said, helping to ease me into an armchair. “But as it happens, there may be no war.”
John explained that circumstances in Europe had changed. France now wanted peace. The evidence was convincingly laid before us from abroad by our own son Minister John Quincy Adams.
“Hamilton and his High Federalists itch for war,” John said. “But I wish to take this chance at peace. Great would be the
guilt of an unnecessary war.”
I was, myself, more of the same mind with the so-called High Federalists, but said, “Then you must go swiftly to Philadelphia. Take Nabby with you to serve as hostess in my place if she’ll go. And
I’ll follow when I’m strong enough.”
I was still his Portia indeed.
It was now lonely at Peacefield. Thanksgiving was usually a day of festivity when the family circle met together, even though
apart the rest of the year. But this year, no husband dignified my board. No children added gladness to it. No grandchildren
to smile, eyes all a-sparkle for minced pie. Not even my sisters or Uncle Tufts could join me. But I perceived many public
and private causes to give thanks for, so I hoped my heart was not ungrateful.
Especially since I could spend the day with Phoebe, the only surviving parent I had.
We shared in the bounties of providence together with Mr. Abdee and my servants. And after we supped, Phoebe clapped her hands
together and insisted on a sleigh ride. “Fresh air dispels gloom.”
I agreed, so I let Mr. Abdee help us both into the sleigh. He drove it while Phoebe and I sat together, enlivened by talk
of Reverend Wibird’s most recent sermon, thanking God that New York was soon to abolish slavery.
“The first good news in a while,” I said.
“May it not be the last,” Phoebe said, offering a brief prayer for the deliverance of all those in bondage.
At length, she asked, “I thought your boy Tommy was coming home? I’m mighty eager to hear his tales from Europe.”
Like me, Phoebe had a fascination with places she’d never seen. Perhaps that’s where I’d come by my own wanderlust—though
by now, I considered it quite quenched. “His not coming yet has depressed me, and reflections respecting our other children
pain me daily.”
Phoebe nodded knowingly. “Your poor Nabby.”
I sighed. “Yes. For Nabby I feel most keenly; because she’s innocent of the cause of her misfortunes. I hope better days are
reserved for her, though at present the prospect is dark and I wonder what I could’ve done to avoid it.”
“If you did everything intending for the best,” Phoebe said, “then I think you’ve no cause for regret. What remains to us
of life, we must expect to have checkered with good and evil. It’s God’s will, so let us rejoice in one and patiently endure
the other as becomes those who have a better hope and brighter prospects beyond the grave.”
There was a great deal of wisdom in her words. So much so that I’d repeat them to others. But I pointed out, “President Adams
disputes that God takes an active hand in the world, you know. He says it is superstition. And he vexes me by keeping his
religion and politics separate, in these times, of all times.”
“Perhaps that accounts for his irritable nature,” Phoebe offered.
I couldn’t argue. Shaking my head, I admitted, “He’s wroth with our married children. He thinks even John Quincy is foolish
and blind because our eldest son thought he was marrying an heiress when he took an Englishwoman for his bride. But on the
morning of the wedding feast, he was informed the dowry he was promised was forfeit and that his father-in-law had lost his
entire fortune. Too late for Johnny to change his mind about the wedding even if he wanted to.”
Phoebe winced. “Did he want to?”
“My son is too much a gentleman to admit it if he did. Now he’s in financial straits thanks to that mistake and to his brother’s
mismanagement of his money.”
Phoebe seemed less troubled by this news than expected. “You needn’t worry about John Quincy. That boy will always make it
out right. It’s Charlie you need to worry for. His shame of losing his brother’s money will sink him.”
She’d seen the note I received from Charles in which he said, “I’ve not enjoyed one moment’s comfort for upwards of two years,
my sleep has been disturbed, and my waking hours embittered.”
Now Phoebe said, “You raised good-hearted children in a wicked world.”
Well, I didn’t know how to fight against the wickedness of the world. But there was something I could do to guard against the slings and arrows that threatened my family. I could create a fortress, right here
in Quincy. So that winter, as I recovered from the ailment that nearly killed me, I oversaw additions to our farm: a carriage
house and a barn. I also built onto the house a larger salon, and an even bigger library upstairs for my husband and his sons,
who might one day find it necessary to return home to practice law.
With my investments, I’d make of our home a place that could shield our family. I’d make Peacefield live up to its name as
our sanctuary against what may come.