John Adams

by David McCullough

  Adams asked whether, “in the present circumstances of things,” the British should be made aware of the purpose of his mission, and suggested that an official announcement be published such as had already appeared in the Journals of Congress.

  His letter was written on February 12. In reply, February 15, Vergennes insisted that nothing be said of the matter until Conrad Gerard, the French minister to America who had been replaced by La Luzerne, arrived back in Paris, and explained Adams's instructions from Congress. In the meantime, Adams was told, “It is the part of prudence to conceal your eventual character [as peacemaker] and, above all, to take the necessary precautions that the object of your commission remain unknown to the Court of London.”

  Adams was astonished and deeply insulted. It was no affair of Gerard's to explain his instructions. It was also inconceivable that the British did not already know the nature of his business. The London papers had already carried news of his arrival in Europe and that he had come to “hear and receive any proposals of peace” from Great Britain. And as Vergennes was known to employ a veritable army of spies, he was hardly groping in the dark on such matters.

  The proud, immensely shrewd French Foreign Minister had become one of the great figures of eighteenth-century Europe by dint of exceedingly hard work and by making himself a consummate man of the world. French support for the American war was his policy and he its champion from the start, despite the fearful drain it imposed on the treasury of France. There was thus no one more deserving of American gratitude. But it was because of no abiding fervor for American liberty that he had persuaded his young king to come to America's aid. France was an absolute monarchy and Vergennes as stout a monarchist as could be found. His purpose, first, last, and always, was to weaken and humble Britain and, at the same time, expand French trade in America.

  “Always keep in mind,” Vergennes would tell the Minister of Finance, “that in separating the United States from Great Britain, it was above all their commerce we wanted.”

  Adams had no illusions about what determined the actions of nations. “It is interest alone which does it,” he had once told Congress, “and it is interest alone which can be trusted.” For Vergennes's American policy he had a vivid image: “He means ... to keep his hand under our chin to prevent us from drowning, but not to lift our heads out of water.”

  As polite as Adams remained, Vergennes neither liked nor trusted him. He found Adams's manifest integrity unsettling; Adams's emphatic patriotism appealed not at all. The Foreign Minister was a man accustomed to deference, and exceedingly fond of having his way. Preferring to deal only with the ever obliging Franklin, he dreaded the prospect of Adams meddling in what he, Vergennes, regarded as his exclusive domain, the power politics of Europe. While all Paris might see Franklin as the authentic, homespun “natural” American, Vergennes knew better. It was precisely Franklin's subtlety, his worldliness, that made him invaluable as a diplomat. Adams, on the other hand, was truly a provincial. Worse, he was a novice; and there was no telling the damage such a man might do.

  Vergennes's professed need to see the instructions Gerard was bringing was disingenuous, since Gerard had long since sent Vergennes a summary of Adams's instructions, in a dispatch from Philadelphia the very day they were adopted by Congress.

  “The delicacies of the Comte de Vergennes about communicating my powers [to Britain] are not perfectly consonant to my manner of thinking,” Adams wrote to Congress. Were he free to follow his own judgment, he would pursue a “bolder plan.” But in the face of the Foreign Minister's directive there seemed little he could do. Franklin volunteered no support, nor did Adams ask for it.

  At loose ends once again in Europe, and with no word from Congress, Adams was nonetheless determined to make himself useful. If nothing else, he could write—Adams would always write. Another man might have relaxed and bided his time, just as another man might have waited at El Ferrol for his ship to be repaired, rather than striking out over the mountains of Spain.

  Through that spring in Paris and on into summer, with able assistance from Francis Dana and John Thaxter, Adams produced letters by the score, reports, newspaper articles—a great outpouring of “intelligence” surpassing in quantity even his most ambitious literary efforts of other years. Determined to improve European understanding of the American cause, he became, with Vergennes's sanction, his own office of information and propaganda, supplying anonymous articles to the Mercure de France, a weekly journal edited by Edme-Jacques Genet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “I can assure you of his [Vergennes's] pleasure in giving his approval to publish in the Mercure everything that shall come from such a good pen,” wrote Genet, who tried tactfully to convince Adams he would do better with his French readers if he were not quite so long-winded.

  In addition, Adams turned out articles tailored for publication in the British press, these to be placed by an American in London named Edmund Jenings. Another American agent in London, Thomas Digges, was recruited to keep Adams supplied with items gleaned from the London papers. Jenings and Digges were somewhat shadowy figures who may have been double agents like Edward Bancroft, but Adams trusted both, relied heavily on them, and the system worked with great efficiency. Digges's reporting especially was fast and accurate. His dispatches, sent to C. F. Hoochera, a favorite bookseller of Adams's on the Pont Neuf, were addressed to Ferdinando Ramon San, a name Adams borrowed from one of the muleteers on the trek across Spain.

  Adams and Dana got along well. In accepting the appointment as secretary, Dana had insisted that he be considered Adams's equal, a colleague, not an employee, and Adams, who had agreed, proved as good as his word. No less the New Englander than Adams, Dana was equally ill suited to trifling away his time. They were of like mind on most matters, including the underlying motives of the Comte de Vergennes.

  Between times, on his own, Adams maintained correspondence with James Warren, James Lovell, Elbridge Gerry, Samuel Adams, and Benjamin Rush. And he wrote periodically to Vergennes, affirming his faith in the French-American alliance and passing along what little news from America came his way.

  But much the greatest part of the outpouring was to Congress. From his rooms on the Rue de Richelieu, Adams issued almost daily correspondence, writing at times two and three letters a day, these addressed to President Samuel Huntington and filled with reports on British politics, British and French naval activities, or his own considered views on European affairs. In a letter dated April 18, he gave as clear-headed an appraisal as Congress was to receive from anyone in Europe.

  Although I am convinced by everything I see, and read and hear, that all the powers of Europe... rejoice in the American Revolution and consider the independence of America in their interest and happiness... yet I have many reasons to think that not one of them, not even Spain or France, wishes to see America rise very fast to power. We ought therefore to be cautious how we magnify our ideas and exaggerate our expressions of the generosity and magnanimity of any of these powers. Let us treat them with gratitude, but with dignity. Let us remember what is due to ourselves and our posterity as well as to them. Let us above all things avoid as much as possible entangling ourselves with their wars and politics... America has been the sport of European wars and politics long enough.

  With still no response from Congress, after some forty-six letters, he kept steadily on. “I have written more to Congress since my arrival in Paris than they ever received from Europe put it all together since the revolution [began],” he told Elbridge Gerry without exaggeration. Franklin by contrast rarely wrote a word to Congress. By late July, Adams had produced no less than ninety-five letters—more than Congress wanted, he imagined—and never knowing whether anything had been received.

  “I am so taken up with writing to Phil[adelphia] that I don't write to you as often as I wish,” he told Abigail, to whom he had already written twenty times or more.

  He saw his sons as often as he could and tried to keep watch on their progress at
school. “Can't you keep a steadier hand?” he admonished John Quincy in response to a hurried scrawl from the boy listing his course of study. It was essential to learn to write well, Adams lectured. When another letter from John Quincy arrived, this beautifully executed on lightly penciled guide lines, Adams wrote at once to praise him and say how pleased he was. But unable to resist giving further advice, he told him to waste no time learning to do flourishes with his pen. “Ornaments of this kind, if not done with great skill, are worse than none,” declared Adams in his notably plain hand.

  Living at the center of Paris, he was able to see more of the city than ever before. The busy Rue de Richelieu was one of the most fashionable streets and the Hôtel de Valois, at 17 Rue de Richelieu, a premier residence. John Quincy would remember it as “magnificent.” Close by were the gardens of the Palais Royal and the Tuileries, which, with their statuary, Adams thought beautiful beyond compare. On days when the boys could be with him, they walked the gardens and much of the city. He took them on his rounds of the bookshops on the Left Bank. They toured the Jardin du Roi, with its celebrated natural history displays. How long would it be, Adams wondered, before America had such collections.

  “There is everything here that can inform understanding, or refine the taste, and indeed one would think that could purify the heart,” he wrote of Paris to Abigail. Yet there were temptations. “Yet it must be remembered there is everything here, too, which can seduce, betray, deceive, corrupt and debauch,” and in order to see to his duties, he must steel himself.

  The conflict between the appeal of the arts and the sense that they were the product of a luxury-loving (and thus corrupt) foreign society played heavily on his mind. Delightful as it was to stroll the gardens of Paris, enticing as were science and the arts, he, John Adams, had work to do, a public trust to uphold. The science of government was his duty; the art of negotiation must take precedence.

  Then, in a prophetic paragraph that would be quoted for generations within the Adams family and beyond, he wrote:

  I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

  How Americans deported themselves in Europe was a serious matter, Adams's convictions stemming more from patriotism than prudishness. So much more was at stake than one's own pleasure.

  When a young New England merchant named Elkanah Watson, the son of a friend, wrote to inquire what sort of manners he should cultivate in anticipation of touring Europe, Adams's answer went far to explain his own conduct under the circumstances and the kind of guidance he was giving his sons.

  You tell me, sir, you wish to cultivate your manners before you begin your travels... permit me to take the liberty of advising you to cultivate the manners of your own country, not those of Europe. I don't mean by this that you should put on a long face, never dance with the ladies, go to a play, or take a game of cards. But you may depend upon this, that the more decisively you adhere to a manly simplicity in your dress, equipage, and behavior, the more you devote yourself to business and study, and the less to dissipation and pleasure, the more you will recommend yourself to every man and woman in this country whose friendship or acquaintance is worth your having or wishing. There is an urbanity without ostentation or extravagance which will succeed everywhere and at all times. You will excuse this freedom, on account of my friendship for your father and consequently for you, and because I know that some young gentlemen have come to Europe with different sentiments and have consequently injured the character of their country as well as their own both here [and at home].

  The boys were getting on splendidly, he assured their mother. Her “delicate” Charles was “hardy as flint,” “speaks French like a hero.” “He is a delightful little fellow. I love him too much.”

  Yet as before, Adams remained reluctant to profess his love for her, though it was from the heart that he wrote:

  May Heaven permit you and me to enjoy the cool of the evening of life in tranquility, undisturbed by the cares of politics and war—and above all with the sweetest of all reflections that neither ambition, nor vanity, nor any base motive, or sordid passion through the whole course of great and terrible events that have attended it, have drawn us aside from the line of duty and the dictates of our consciences. Let us have ambition enough to keep our simplicity, our frugality, and our integrity, and transmit these virtues as the fairest of inheritance to our children.

  Peace was his dearest wish. But when ever would they see it? “The events of politics are not less uncertain than those of war.”

  • • •

  JOHN ADAMS WAS NOT UNSYMPATHETIC to the concerns of the Comte de Vergennes and the Foreign Ministry. Nor was he ever so obtuse about French sensibilities and the importance of maintaining good relations with France as his detractors would later charge. “The Court here have many differences to manage as well as we,” he wrote understandingly to Samuel Adams, “and it is a delicate thing to push things in this country.” While he believed candor essential in dealing with the French, “harshness,” he knew, was sure to ruin even the fairest negotiations with them.

  His great worry, as he reported to Congress, was that the French were growing tired of the war. In fact, as Adams was unaware, Vergennes had privately informed his king of a “need” for peace, while to a friend he expressed but “feeble confidence” in the Americans. Further, Adams correctly suspected it was the French intention, once the war was ended, to keep America poor and dependent—“Keep us weak. Make us feel our obligations. Impress our minds with a sense of gratitude.” He saw acutely and painfully the dilemma of the French Alliance. Without French help, the United States could not win the war, yet it was purely for their own purposes that the French were involved.

  Still, he felt no difficulty in dealing with Vergennes. Nor, interestingly, was he distressed with Franklin. In voluminous correspondence with members of Congress and in his private writings, Adams had not a complaining or disrespectful word to say about Franklin, nothing of the bitter disdain expressed in letters the year before.

  But there now followed a chain of events that were to culminate in a serious rift with both Vergennes and Franklin. Probably it was inevitable.

  On June 16, as had become routine, Adams sent Vergennes some latest items of news from America, these concerning the American currency. Three months before, on March 18, 1780, desperate to curb rampant inflation, Congress had resolved to devalue the dollar. It was a matter about which Vergennes already knew and, in passing along the information, Adams volunteered no opinion of Congress's policy. A few days later, however, Adams was summoned to Versailles for a discussion of the issue, during which he candidly voiced his approval of what Congress had done. Vergennes was as polite as always. “The conversation was long... very decent and civil on both sides,” Adams would recall. But again Adams was telling the Foreign Minister what he already knew, since Adams had earlier expressed his views to Chaumont, who lost no time reporting the conversation to Vergennes.

  Vergennes's situation was more complicated than Adams knew. There was dissension within the Foreign Ministry. The aged Prime Minister, Maurepas, was secretly making peace gestures to the British, and implying that the French might give way on support for American independence.

  The easiest, most prudent step for Vergennes would have been to let the matter of the dollar cool for a while. Normally he would have taken it up with Franklin, the properly accredited minister to the Court, with whom he had never known the least discord. But it appears that he saw his chance. Having found no way to control Adams, he could now at last be rid of him.

  In an official letter of June 21, Vergennes informed Adams that France opposed any revaluation of the American currency unless an exception were made for French me
rchants. He portrayed the measure as an act of bad faith on the part of America, implying it could have serious consequences to the alliance, and he called on Adams to request Congress to “retrace its steps and do justice to the subjects of the King.”

  If Vergennes was setting a trap—as it seems he was—Adams obliged by stepping into it, and perhaps knowingly. In a characteristically spirited, unambiguous letter, Adams made the case for revaluation and for no preferred treatment for French merchants, his purpose being to make clear his own views and those, he was sure, of Congress and the American people. “I thought it my indispensable duty to my country and to Congress, to France and the Count himself, to be explicit,” he would say.

  Revaluation was a necessity, he wrote. Congress had no other choice. And since most French merchants who dealt in armaments and military supplies had been paid in European currencies, they had little cause for complaint. Besides, their profits had been substantial. But the crux of the matter was that, in justice, no foreign merchant could possibly be granted better treatment than American merchants. It was that simple. “Foreigners, when they come to trade with a nation, make themselves temporary citizens, and tacitly consent to be bound by the same laws.”

  The letter was undoubtedly what Vergennes expected from Adams, and all that he needed—a written statement from Adams showing him to be in direct opposition to French policy and thus a threat to relations between France and America.

  Adams, however, took this first real exchange of views with the aloof Foreign Minister as a long-awaited opportunity to broaden discussions on matters of more importance. The prospect of greater French military involvement in the war in America that had looked so promising earlier, appeared to have faded. While the army of Rochambeau had been sent to aid Washington, French warships had sailed not for the United States, as expected, but for the West Indies. Whatever the size of the armies of Washington and Rochambeau, Adams wrote emphatically, victory in America and an end to the war there would never come so long as the British were masters of the sea. The critical need was for a grand strategy whereby a French fleet would be deployed along the coast of the United States, to bottle up the British armies in the port cities where they were concentrated. Further, Adams argued, to keep a superior naval force on the coast of North America was “the best policy” for France, even were France to consider her own interests alone.