When John Adams Took a Long Walk in Ipswich

(Featured image: cyanotype by Arthur Wesley Dow)

John Adams visited Ipswich frequently in his capacity as a lawyer and as the Boston representative to the colonial legislature from 1770 to 1774. In June 1774, Adams was on his way back to Ipswich, pondering the movement to establish a Continental Congress in response to the British government’s overbearance. On the afternoon of June 25, 1774, Adams made an entry in his diary about his walk through Ipswich, with forebodings about the future:

June 19. “Tuesday morning. Rambled with Kent around Landlord Treadwell’s pastures, to see how our horses fared. We found them in the grass up to their eyes; excellent pastures. This hill, on which stand the meetinghouse and courthouse, is a fine elevation, and we have here a fine air, and the pleasant prospect of the winding river at the foot of the hill.”

June 25, Saturday. “Since the Court adjourned, this afternoon I have taken a long walk through the Neck, as they call it, a fine tract of land in a general field. Corn, rye, grass, interspersed in great perfection, this fine season. I wander alone and ponder. I muse, I mope, I ruminate. I am often in reveries and brown studies. The objects before me are too grand and multifarious for my comprehension. We have not men fit for the times. We are deficient in genius, in education, in travel, in fortune, in everything. I feel unutterable anxiety. God grant us wisdom and fortitude! Should the opposition be suppressed, should this country submit, then what infamy and ruin! God forbid. Death in any form is less terrible!”