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The diary has little more to say than Trevelyan. We read "Twenty-eight chests of tea arrived yesterday, which are to make an infusion in water at seven o'clock this evening." And the next day: "Last night twenty-eight chests and a half of tea were drowned."
It is clear that Mr. Adams knew what was to be done; he never knew the names of the doers, steadfastly refusing to be told. "You may depend upon it," he says, writing to a friend in 1819, "that they were no ordinary Mohawks. The profound secrecy in which they have held their names, and the total abstinence from plunder, are proofs of the characters of the men. I believe they would have tarred and feathered anyone of their number who should have been detected in pocketing a pound of Hyson."
The following year, 1774, was a momentous one. The destruction of the tea had roused George III and his ministers to frenzy; they bent all their energies to punish the rebellious town of Boston. Edict followed edict. The Five Intolerable Acts, they were called. This is not the place to name them; be it merely said that one of them amounted practically to a repeal of the Charter of Massachusetts. Early in May General Gage arrived, with full powers as Civil Governor of the Colony, and as Commander-in-Chief for the whole continent, to see that the edicts were carried out. First came the Boston Port Bill, which closed the harbor of Massachusetts and transferred the business of the custom-house to Salem.
On May 26th, 1774, Governor Gage informed the General Court that its sessions would be held at Salem from June first till further orders. The court obeyed, met at Salem, under the leadership of Samuel Adams, and proceeded to make arrangements for a general congress at Philadelphia. Gage, hearing of this, sent a messenger post haste to Salem to dissolve the meeting. The messenger found the door locked, nor was it opened till the congress had been determined upon, and the Massachusetts committee appointed: James Bowdoin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Thomas Cushing, Robert Treat Paine. This was on June 17th, 1774. On the same day, a great meeting was held at Faneuil Hall, with John Adams as moderator to protest against the iniquitous Port Bill.
Jonathan Sewall, John Adams' bosom friend, was a strong Royalist. On hearing of Adams' nomination to the projected Congress, he hastened to protest against his accepting it, with all the eloquence of which he was master. Every school child knows the answer by heart.
"I know," said John Adams, "that Great Britain has determined on her system, and that very fact determines me on mine. You know I have been constant and uniform in opposition to her measures; the die is now cast; I have passed the Rubicon; to swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country, is my unalterable determination."
Meantime, on June 1st, the blockade of Boston Harbor was proclaimed, and the ruin and starvation of the city zealously undertaken. "I'll put Boston seventeen miles from the sea!" Lord North had vowed, and he was better than his word.
"The law was executed with a rigour that went beyond the intentions of its authors. Not a scow could be manned by oars to bring an ox, or a sheep, or a bundle of hay, from the islands. All water carriage from pier to pier, though but of lumber, or bricks, or kine, was forbidden. The boats that plied between Boston and Charlestown could not ferry a parcel of goods across Charles River. The fishermen of Marblehead, when they bestowed quintals of dried fish on the poor of Boston, were obliged to transport their offerings in wagons by a circuit of thirty miles."
The British troops, which had been removed after the "Massacre," came back into the town, "sore and surly," and encamped on Boston Common. The evil days had begun. Small wonder that under such conditions as these, John Adams' heart was heavy at leaving his home, even on so high an errand as that which called him to Philadelphia.