John Adams: [after John Dickinson proposes the Continental Congress open negotations with Great Britain] The time for negotiation is past. The actions of the British army at Lexington and Concord speak plainly enough. If we wish to regain our natural-born rights as Englishmen, then we must fight for them.
John Dickinson: I have looked for our rights in the laws of nature and can find them only in the laws of political society. I have looked for our rights in the constitution of the English government and found them there! Our rights have been violated, Mr. Adams; that is beyond dispute. We must provide a plan to convince Parliament to restore those rights! Do we wish to become aliens to the mother country? No! No, gentlemen, we must come to terms with the mother country. No doubt the same ship which carries forth our list of grievances will bring back their redress.
John Adams: Mr. Dickinson, my wife and young children live on the main road to Boston, fewer than five miles from the full might of the British Empire. Should they sit and wait for Gage and his savages to rob them of their home, their possessions, their very lives? No, sir! Powder and artillery are the surest and most infallible conciliatory measures we can adopt!
John Dickinson: If you exclude the possibility of peace, Mr. Adams, then I tell you now, you will have blood on your hands!
John Adams: And I tell you, Mr. Dickinson, that to hold out an olive branch to Britain is a measure of gross imbecility.
John Dickinson: If you New England men continue to oppose our measures of reconciliation, you will leave us no choice but to break off from you entirely and carry on the opposition in our own way.
John Adams: I sit in judgment of no man's religion, Mr. Dickinson, but your Quaker sensibilities do us a gross disservice, sir. It is one thing to turn the other cheek. But to lie down in the ground like a snake and crawl toward the seat of power in abject surrender, well, that is quite another thing, sir. And I have no stomach for it, sir! No stomach at all!
John Dickinson: We will exhaust all peaceful approaches, Mr. Adams. And we will do it with or without the approbation of you and your Boston insurrectionists!
John Adams: It is not a question of men and women. It is a matter of politics.
Abigail Adams: Politics? Politics? And do women not live politics, John Adams? When I go to the cupboard and I find no coffee, no sugar, no pins, no meat, am I not living politics? This war touches people that your Congress treats with the same contempt King George deserves for the people of Boston. I mean women, yes, and slaves, too, for that matter. Though I am sure you wish I would not mention that subject, as it might upset your southern friends.
John Adams: You're harsh, madam.
Abigail Adams: I am cold. And frightened. I am afraid this war will never end or begin.
John Adams: And however much I talk and talk, I will never carry the Congress.
John Adams: Objects of the most stupendous magnitude. Measures which will affect the lives of millions, born and unborn are now before us. We must expect a great expense of blood to obtain them but we must always remember that a free constitution of civil government cannot be purchased a too dear a rate as there is nothing on this side of Jerusalem of greater importance to mankind. My worthy colleague from Pennsylvania has spoken with great ingenuity and eloquence. He's given you a grim prognostication of our national future, but where he foresees apocalypse, I see hope. I see a new nation ready to take its place in the world. Not an empire but a republic. And a republic of laws, not men. Gentlemen, we are in the very midst of revolution. The most complete unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of the world. How few of the human race have ever had an opportunity of choosing a system of government for themselves and their children? I am not without apprehensions, gentlemen. But the end that we have in sight is more than worth all the means. My belief says that the hour has come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, all that I am and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready to stake upon it. While I'll live, let me have a country. A free country.
John Adams: [writing a letter to Abigail] My dearest friend, the break is made and now our work begins. You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these states. It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever. It may be the will of Heaven that America shall suffer calamities still more wasting and distresses yet more dreadful. Yet through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory and that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction.
