Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/102

74 speech on that occasion was probably the finest he ever delivered. Jefferson called him "the colossus of that debate"; and indeed his labors in bringing about the declaration of independence must be considered as the third signal event of his career.

On June 12 congress established a board of war and ordnance, with Mr. Adams for its chairman, and he discharged the arduous duties of this office until after the surrender of Burgoyne. After the battle of Long Island, Lord Howe sent the captured Gen. Sullivan to Philadelphia, soliciting a conference with some of the members of the congress. Adams opposed the conference, and with characteristic petulance alluded to the unfortunate Sullivan as a decoy duck who had much better have been shot in the battle than sent on such a business. Congress, however, consented to the conference, and Adams was chosen as a commissioner, along with Franklin and Rutledge. Toward the end of the year 1777 Mr. Adams was appointed to supersede Silas Deane as commissioner to France. He sailed February 12, 1778, in the frigate "Boston," and after a stormy passage, in which he ran no little risk of capture by British cruisers, he landed at Bordeaux, and reached Paris on April 8. Long before his arrival the alliance with France had been consummated. He found a wretched state of things in Paris, our three commissioners there at loggerheads, one of them dabbling in the