Diplomacy of John Adams

John Adams

John Adams (1735-1826) was an American Founding Father and member of the Second Continental Congress who served as one of the most important diplomats on behalf of the new United States of America during the American Revolution. He served as minister to the Kingdom of France and the Dutch Republic before being sent to help negotiate the Treaty of Paris to end the war. He then served as the First Ambassador to Great Britain before returning home. Relations with France). dominated his presidency (1797-1801). American anger at French insults in the XYZ Affair of 1797-98 escalated into an undeclared naval war (called the Quasi-War. One wing of his Federaliost Party led by his rival Alexander Hamilton demanded an all-out war. He rejected those demands and secured peace with France.

Revolution: early stages

In the spring of 1776, Adams advocated on the floor of the Second Continental Congress that independence was necessary in order to establish trade, and conversely trade was essential for the attainment of independence; he specifically urged negotiation of a commercial treaty with France. He was then appointed, along with Franklin, Dickinson, Benjamin Harrison V of Virginia and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, "to prepare a plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers." While Jefferson was laboring over the Declaration of Independence, Adams worked on the Model Treaty. The Model Treaty authorized a commercial agreement with France but contained no provisions for formal recognition or military assistance. There were provisions for what constituted French territory. The treaty adhered to the provision that "free ships make free goods," allowing neutral nations to trade reciprocally while exempting an agreed upon list of contraband. By late 1777, America's finances were in tatters, and that September a British army had defeated General Washington and captured Philadelphia. A growing number of Americans came to determine that mere commercial ties between the U.S. and France would not be enough, and that military assistance would be needed in order to defeat Great Britain and bring about an end to the war. The defeat of a British army at Saratoga was expected to help induce France to agree to an alliance.

Commissioner to France

Adams frequently clashed with Benjamin Franklin over how to manage French relations.

On November 27, 1777 Adams was named as commissioner to France, replacing Silas Deane. He accepted at once. He was to join Franklin and Arthur Lee in Paris to negotiate an alliance with the French, who were debating whether or not to recognize and aid the United States. Abigail was left in Massachusetts to manage their home. It was agreed that his 10-year-old son John Quincy would go, for the experience was "of inestimable value" to his maturation. On February 17, Adams set sail aboard the frigate Boston, commanded by Captain Samuel Tucker. The stormy trip was treacherous, with lightning injuring 19 sailors and killing one. Adams's ship was later pursued by several British frigates in the mid-Atlantic, but evaded them. Near the coast of Spain, Adams himself took up arms to help capture a heavily armed British merchantman ship, the Martha. Later, a cannon malfunction killed one and injured five more of the crew. On April 1, the men arrived in Spain, where Adams learned that France had already agreed to an alliance with the United States on February 6. Shortly after, they arrived in France. Adams was annoyed by the other two commissioners: Lee, whom he thought paranoid and cynical, and the popular and influential Franklin, whom he found irritating, lethargic, and overly deferential and accommodating to the French. He took a disliking to Dr. Edward Bancroft, Franklin's aid, who, unbeknownst to him, was a British spy. Adams did not speak French, the international language of diplomacy at the time. He therefore assumed a less visible role, but emerged as the commission's chief administrator, imposing order and methods lacking in his delegation's finances and record-keeping affairs. He was frustrated by the lack of commitment on the part of the French to helping the United States. In December, Adams wrote a letter to French foreign minister, the comte de Vergennes arguing for French naval support in North America. Franklin toned down the letter, but Vergennes ignored it. In September 1778, Congress increased Franklin's powers by naming him minister plenipotentiary to France while Lee was sent to serve in Spain. Adams received no instructions on where to go or what to do next. Disgusted by the apparent slight, he departed France with John Quincy on March 8, 1779. On August 2, they arrived back in Braintree.

In the fall of 1779, Adams was appointed sole minister charged with negotiating peace and a postwar commercial treaty with Britain. Following the conclusion of the Massachusetts constitutional convention, at which he drafted the state constitution, he departed for Europe in November aboard the French frigate Sensible – accompanied by John Quincy and 9-year-old son Charles. In France, constant disagreement between Lee and Franklin eventually resulted in Adams assuming the role of tie-breaker in almost all votes on commission business; Adams also increased his usefulness by mastering the French language. Lee was eventually recalled. He closely supervised his sons' education but wrote to his wife Abigail relatively infrequently, only about once every ten days.

Compared to Franklin, Adams held a distinctly pessimistic view of the Franco-American alliance. The French, he believed, were involved only for their own self-interest, and he grew frustrated by what he perceived to be lethargy in providing substantial aid to the Revolution. "It is interest alone which does it," he said, "and it is interest alone which can be trusted." The French, Adams wrote, mean to keep their hands "above our chin to prevent us from drowning, but not to lift our heads out of water." His straightforward manner eventually led to a collision with Vergennes. In March 1780, Congress, trying to curb inflation, voted to devalue the dollar. In June, Vergennes summoned Adams for a meeting. In a letter sent that same month, he insisted that any fluctuation of the dollar value without an exception for French merchants was unacceptable and requested that Adams write to Congress asking it to "retrace its steps." Adams wrote back in defense of the decision, claiming that the French merchants were doing better than Vergennes implied. Adams did not stop there, deciding to use the letter to sound off on some of his grievances with the French. The alliance had been made over two years before. During that time, an army under the comte de Rochambeau had been sent to assist Washington but had yet to do anything of significance. America was expecting French warships. These were needed, Adams wrote, to contain the British armies in the port cities and contend with the powerful British Navy. However, the French Navy had been sent not to the United States but to the West Indies in order to protect French interests there. France, Adams believed, needed to commit itself more fully to the alliance. Vergennes responded that he would deal only with Franklin, who sent a letter back to Congress critical of Adams. According to Franklin, Adams:

having nothing else wherewith to employ himself, he seems to have endeavored to supply what he may suppose my negotiations defective in. He thinks, as he tells himself, that America has been to free in her expressions of gratitude to France; for that she is more obliged to us than we to her and that we should show spirit in our applications. I apprehend that he mistakes his ground, and that this court is to be treated with decency and delicacy.

Before a response could be sent, Adams left France on his own.

Minister to the Dutch Republic

In the summer of 1780, Adams decided to go to the Dutch Republic, one of the few other republics then existing in the world. The Dutch, he thought, might be sympathetic to the American cause. Securing a loan from them could increase American independence from France and pressure Britain into peace. At first, Adams had no official status, but in July he was named ambassador and took up residence in Amsterdam in August. Adams at first thought the chances of success quite good, and greatly enjoyed the city. But soon, he found himself disappointed. The Dutch, fearing British retaliation, refused to meet Adams. Meanwhile, word reached Europe of American defeats at Charleston and Camden, as well as the betrayal of Benedict Arnold. After the discovery of secret aid already sent by the Dutch to the Americans, the British authorized reprisals against Dutch ships, which only increased their apprehension. After five months of not meeting with a single Dutch official, Adams in early 1781 pronounced Amsterdam "the capital of the reign of Mammon." He was finally invited to present his credentials to the Dutch on April 19, 1781, but no assistance was promised. In the meantime, Adams thwarted an attempt by neutral European powers to mediate the war without consulting the United States. In July 1781, Adams consented to the departure of both of his sons. Francis Dana, Adams's secretary, was assigned to go to Saint Petersburg to seek recognition from Russia. Knowing little French, he received Adams's permission to bring with him John Quincy, who was fluent in the language. Charles, who had grown homesick, was allowed to return home with Adams's friend Benjamin Waterhouse. In August, shortly after he was removed as the sole negotiator of the treaty to end the war, he fell seriously ill in what scholars call "a major nervous breakdown." That November, he learned that American and British troops had won the decisive victory over British troops at Yorktown. The victory was won with the assistance of the French Navy, which vindicated Adams's stand for increased naval assistance from France.

News of the American triumph at Yorktown convulsed Europe. In January 1781, after recovering, Adams arrived at The Hague to demand the States General of the Netherlands answer his petitions. His efforts stalled, and he took his cause to the people, successfully capitalizing on popular pro-American sentiment to push the States General towards recognizing the U.S. Several provinces began recognizing American independence. On April 19, 1782, the States General in The Hague formally recognized American independence and acknowledged Adams as ambassador. Ferling, however, downplays Adams's efforts, arguing that it was the success of Yorktown, combined with pressure put on the Dutch by the French, which was chiefly responsible for the recognition of the United States. With the aid of the Dutch Patriot leader Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol, Adams negotiated a loan of five million guilders financed by Nicolaas van Staphorst and Wilhelm Willink on June 11. In October 1782, he negotiated with the Dutch a treaty of amity and commerce. The house that Adams bought during this stay in the Netherlands became the first American-owned embassy on foreign soil.

Peace treaty negotiations

After negotiating the loan with the Dutch, Adams was appointed as one of the American commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Paris to end the war. The comte de Vergennes still disapproved of Adams, so Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and Henry Laurens were appointed to collaborate with Adams; nevertheless, Jefferson did not go to Europe and Laurens was posted to the Dutch Republic.

Jay, Adams, and Franklin played the major part in the final negotiations. One of the most important goals for the Americans, and one which became surprisingly difficult and which Adams played an important role in resolving, was the securing of fishing rights off Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. The British ministers proposed strict limitations on how close American fishermen could be to the Canadian shore. Adams insisted that not only could American fishermen be allowed to travel as close to the shore as they wished, but that they should be allowed to cure their ships on the shores off Newfoundland. Referring to this and others, Vergennes, through an emissary, secretly informed the British that France did not feel compelled to "sustain [these] pretentious ambitions." Overruling Franklin and distrustful of Vergennes, Jay and Adams decided not to consult with France; instead, they dealt directly with the British commissioners. During the negotiations in November 1782, Adams mentioned that the fishing terms proposed to England were more generous than those proposed by France in 1778, which would create good will towards Britain in the United States and put pressure on France. Britain agreed to this and the two sides worked out a number of other provisions. Vergennes angrily expressed his disappointment when he learned from Franklin of the American duplicity but did not demand renegotiation. Supposedly, he was surprised at how much the American ministers had been able to extract from the British. The independent negotiations also allowed the French to plead innocence to their Spanish allies, who were angry that Britain still held Gibraltar and worried that it might attempt to retake Florida. Attempting to incorporate Spanish demands might have caused significant problems in the negotiations. On September 3, 1783, the treaty was signed and American independence was recognized.

In 1784 and 1785, Adams was one of the architects of extensive trade relations between the United States and Prussia. The Prussian ambassador in The Hague, Friedrich Wilhelm von Thulemeyer, was involved, as were Jefferson and Franklin, who were in Paris.

Minister to Great Britain

Adams – 1785 Mather Brown Portrait

Adams was appointed in 1785 the first American minister to the Court of St James's (ambassador to Great Britain), and he prepared to travel from Paris to London to begin his new assignment. When a counterpart seemed to assume that Adams had some family members in England, Adams replied, "Neither my father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American."

Adams had his first audience with King George III on June 1, and recorded the event as he saw it in great detail in a letter to Foreign Minister Jay on June 2. Adams approached the King, telling him that he felt greatly honored by his appointment, and promised to do all that he could to restore friendship and cordiality "between People who, tho Seperated [sic] by an Ocean and under different Governments have the Same Language, a Similar Religion and kindred Blood." After hearing this, King George, promised to "receive with Pleasure, the Assurances of the friendly Dispositions of the United States." He added that "while he had been the last to consent" to American independence, he wished Adams to know that he had always done what he thought right and proper. Towards the end of the interview, the King said, which to Adams appeared very sudden, "There is an Opinion, among Some People, that you are not the most attached of all Your Countrymen, to the manners of France." Adams replied, "That Opinion sir, is not mistaken, I must avow to your Majesty, I have no Attachments but to my own Country." To this King George responded, "An honest Man will never have any other."

During her visit to Washington, D.C., to mark the bicentennial of American independence in 1976, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom gave historical perspective to Adams's service: "John Adams, America's first ambassador, said to my ancestor, King George III, that it was his desire to help with the restoration of 'the old good nature and the old good humour between our peoples.' That restoration has long been made, and the links of language, tradition, and personal contact have maintained it."

Adams was joined by his wife while in London; suffering the hostility of the King's courtiers, they chose to escape when they could by seeking out Richard Price, minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church and instigator of the Revolution Controversy. Jefferson visited Britain for a time in 1786 while serving as Minister to France. He and Adams toured the countryside and saw many of Britain's most important historical sites. During his time in London, Adams briefly met his old friend Jonathan Sewall. The two discovered that they had grown too far apart to renew their friendship. Adams considered Sewall one of the war's casualties. Sewall in turn offered a critique of Adams as an ambassador:

His abilities are undoubtedly equal to the mechanical parts of his business as ambassador; but this is not enough. He cannot dance, drink, game, flatter, promise, dress, swear with the gentlemen, and small talk and flirt with the ladies; in short, he has none of those essential arts or ornaments which constitute a courtier. There are thousands who, with a tenth of his understanding and without a spark of his honesty, would distance him infinitely in any court in Europe.

Adams's tenure in Britain was complicated by the failure of both countries to follow their treaty obligations. The states had been delinquent in paying debts owed to British merchants. As security for these payments, the British refused to evacuate forts in the northwest as prescribed the Treaty of Paris. Adams's attempts to resolve this dispute failed, and he was often frustrated by a lack of news from home. He corresponded with his sons John Quincy and Charles, both of whom were at Harvard, cautioning the former against the "smell of the midnight lamp" while admonishing the latter to devote sufficient time to study. Adams grew frustrated with the situation in Great Britain, and letters detailing tumult at home such as in Shays' Rebellion heightened his anxiety. He wrote to Jay asking to be relieved. In 1788, Adams took his leave of George III, who engaged Adams in polite and formal conversation, promising to uphold his end of the treaty once America did the same. He then went to The Hague to take formal leave of his ambassadorship there and to secure refinancing, allowing the United States to meet obligations on earlier Dutch loans.

Presidency

XYZ Affair

The XYZ Affair was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the Adams administration. It was a confrontation between the United States and Republican France that led to an undeclared war called the Quasi-War. The name derives from the substitution of the letters X, Y and Z for the names of French diplomats Hottinguer (X), Bellamy (Y), and Hauteval (Z) in documents released by the Adams administration.

An American diplomatic commission was sent to France in July 1797 to negotiate problems that were threatening to break out into war. The diplomats, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, were approached through informal channels by agents of the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand, who demanded bribes and a loan before formal negotiations could begin. Although such demands were not uncommon in mainland European diplomacy of the time, the Americans were offended by them, and eventually left France without ever engaging in formal negotiations. Gerry, seeking to avoid all-out war, remained for several months after the other two commissioners left. His exchanges with Talleyrand laid groundwork for the eventual end to diplomatic and military hostilities.

Quasi War

The failure of the American commission caused a political firestorm in the United States when its commission's dispatches were published. It led to the undeclared Quasi-war (1798 to 1800). Federalists linked to Hamilton who controlled the government took advantage of the national anger to build up the nation's military. They also attacked the Jeffersonian Republicans for their pro-French stance, and Elbridge Gerry (a nonpartisan at the time) for what they saw as his role in the commission's failure.

Bibliography

Secondary sources

• Anderson, William G. "John Adams, the Navy, and the Quasi-War with France." American Neptune 30 (1970): 117-132.
• Bauer, Jean. "With Friends Like These: John Adams and the Comte de Vergennes on Franco-American Relations." Diplomatic History 37.4 (2013): 664-692.
• Bemis, Samuel Flagg. The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (1935) online free to borrow
• DeConde, Alexander. The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797-1801 (1966).
• Dull, Jonathan R. "Franklin the diplomat: The French mission." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 72.1 (1982): 1-76. online
• Dull, Jonathan R. A Diplomatic History of American Revolution (1985)
• Ferling, John E. (1992). John Adams: A Life. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-08704-9730-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Graebner, Norman A., Richard Dean Burns, and Joseph M. Siracusa. Foreign Affairs and the Founding Fathers: From Confederation to Constitution, 1776–1787 (Praeger, 2011) 199 pp.
• Greenstein, Fred I. "Presidential difference in the early republic: The highly disparate leadership styles of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson." Presidential Studies Quarterly 36#3 (2006): 373-390.
• Hill, Peter P. William Vans Murray, Federalist diplomat: the shaping of peace with France, 1797-1801 (1971).
• Johnson, Ronald. Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance (2014)
• Kaplan, Lawrence S. "The treaty of Paris, 1783: A historiographical challenge." International History Review 5#3 (1983): 431-442.
• Kurtz, Stephen G. The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800 (1957)
• Kurtz, Stephen G. "The French Mission of 1799-1800: Concluding Chapter in the Statecraft of John Adams." Political Science Quarterly 80#4 (1965): 543-557.
• Lyon, E. Wilson. "The Franco-American Convention of 1800". Journal of Modern History (1940). 12#3 (1940) pp 305-33. online
• McCullough, David (2001). John Adams. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-14165-7588-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Morris, Richard B. The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (1983)
• Murphy, William J. "John Adams: The Politics of the Additional Army, 1798-1800." New England Quarterly (1979): 234-249. online
• Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan. "Private letters and public diplomacy: The Adams network and the quasi-War, 1797–1798." Journal of the Early Republic 31.2 (2011): 283-311. online
• Smith, Page (1962a). John Adams. Vol. Volume I, 1735–1784. New York, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc. OCLC 852986601. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Smith, Page (1962b). John Adams. Vol. Volume II, 1784–1826. New York, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc. OCLC 852986620. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stinchcombe, William. "The Diplomacy of the WXYZ Affair." William and Mary Quarterly (1977) 34#4: 590-617. online
• Varg, Paul A. Foreign Policies Of The Founding Fathers (1964) online free
• Waldstreicher, David , ed. A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams (2013)

Primary sources

• Adams, John; Adams, Charles Francis (1851). The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography, continued. Diary. Essays and controversial papers of the Revolution. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States. Vol. 3. Little, Brown. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)