ABSTRACT
Novanglus moved effortlessly between political and personal dimensions, and in seeking Sewall’s conversion to the American cause, Adams converted himself to the idea of an American Revolution. In scrutinizing the constitutional histories of Massachusetts, England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, Novanglus dismantled the constitutional apparatus binding Americans, British, and Irish, save allegiance to the King. Adams’s personal knowledge of Sewall blunted Massachusettensis’s counterarguments, formulated by both Sewall and Leonard that also raked over their common personal and political history. Historians have long pondered why Novanglus dallied with seemingly abstruse historical analogies and legal history without appreciating how Adams marshaled his evidence to wrong-foot his known adversaries, as the chapter demonstrates. Sewall and Leonard had been aware of Novanglus’s identity from the outset; their combined efforts to unsettle Adams counted for nothing when in his last essay, published two days before the fighting began, Adams focused attention on Lord Chief Justice Mansfield’s recent pronouncements: British rule followed conquest. Only by force of arms did Adams now think it sustainable-an essential precondition of accepting the logicality and desirability of independence.
