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Abigail Adams wrote to John Adams when he was at Philadelphia for Second Continental Congress in 1776. "I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in the province. It always seemed a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we’re daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have."

It caught my attention with the sentence "I wish ... there was not..?" Shouldn't it have been "there were not a slave?" Maybe it was a simple typo or maybe that's how they wrote back then.

By the way, I am in no way trying to belittle her English ability here. She was one of the greatest New Englanders in her generation I know.

Any comment?

tchrist
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OnlyReWrite
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  • All forms of be have been regularizing for centuries, and the counterfactual use of plural past forms of auxiliary be in cases where the actual subject is a dummy there and the displaced subject is a negative -- neither one providing any natural number to agree with -- seems way overformal, especially in personal correspondence, and had already become optional. Just another milestone in the ongoing death of English inflections. Of course, they didn't realize their words were going to used to instruct children to practice zombie English rules. – John Lawler Feb 02 '15 at 19:47
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    It may seem "way over-formal" *now. It wasn't then, and the question is valid. What is interesting is that where were* might be expected in 1776, the writer has was. I wonder why that is. – Andrew Leach Feb 02 '15 at 21:25
  • That's the way I'd write it now. It may make more sense to you if you read "I wish ... there was not a single slave in the province." – Hot Licks Feb 03 '15 at 00:15

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Wishing usually suggests a subjunctive mood. Something may or may not happen. So, for example, I wish I were a millionaire.

The example we are given here

"I wish most sincerely there was not a slave..."

is a (hopeless) wish for something that is NOT the case - there are, in fact, many slaves in the province. Therefore the wishing has no possibility of being true and the reality - there are slaves - means that the speaker needs must acknowledge this and use the indicative ('was') rather than the subjunctive ('were') mood.

Dan
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