subjunctive mood - I wish there was?



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?




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