William Smith Shaw to Abigail Adams, July 20, 1798
Atkinson July 20 th 1798.
My dear aunt
O how happy should I be, were I to sit down to write you of my
dear sisters better health, but alas I cannot. She fails every day & has now grown
so weak that she is not able to wride out or even to come below stairs. She still
keeps her usual flow of spirits, & sits “like patience on a monument, smiling”
even tho in the arms of death. 1 How
miserable should I be, my aunt, in seeing my dear sister thus mouldering away, did I
believe with the boasting modern philosophers , that after
death, she would be consigned, like beasts, to eternal sleep
and putrefaction. No, I firmly believe & have the strongest grounds for my
belief, which afford consolations, neither few nor small, that she dies but to live
forever—“that christianity will seat herself by her dying pillow, draw aside the
curtains of eternity, point her closing eyes to the opening gates of everlasting life
& convey her departing spirit in peace & transport to a state of perfect
evergrowing knowledge, virtue, enjoyment, usefulness & glory:” 2
I wrote to you in a letter which I hope you have received, that I
should not be at commencement I found no difficulty in being excused. The president
was so sick that his life was despaired of for more than a week Dr. Howard presided in
his place com. day. 3
The resolute conduct of the Americans, will I hope, prove to
France & the world, what we ought to blush & be ashamed ever to have had doubted, that we are resolve’d on a
continuance of our independance or death—that rather than be slaves to a foreign
nation, we will all die, like Hanibal, by our hands. As for myself, I verily swear—I
speak it with reverence, as being in the presence of my God— I solemnly swear, that
the “impression of keen whips, I will wear as rubies, & strip myself to death as
to a bed that longing I have been sick for,” ere I will writhe under the scourge of
any foreign tyrant on earth. 4
The excellent patriotick songs, from various parts of the US,
serve to enkindle a glorious enthusiasm in every soul, in which there is a single
spark of fire. 5 Let me compose your
songs & ballads (said a celebrated English patriot, I forget his name) & I
dont care who makes your laws. 6 Washingtons appointment, for I have no doubt but he will except, must electrify every
bosom in his countrys cause. Under his banners, who can fight otherwise than
valiantly? May the French have cause to say of our soldiers, as Tigranes the Persian
exclaim’d of the Athenians, soon after the invasion of Xerxes Heavens! against whom
have we come to contend? insensible to their own interest, they fight only for
glory. 7
I most ardently wished & fondly anticipated 8 to have seen you long before this. I felt
afraid that the extreme warm weather would make it sickly in P— that you may soon
arrive at Q with health & happiness is the fond wish of your nephew / In great
haste,
W m S Shaw
your little grandsons are well