work was sure to be thoroughly done. But
Adams had the higher, constructive faculty.
Many remarks and sentences, scattered through
his contemporaneous writings during the revolu
tionary period, show his quick natural eye for
governmental matters ; he seems to be in a cease
less condition of observation and thought con
cerning them. The influence which he exerted
was so indefinite that it can be estimated hardly
with a valuable approximation to accuracy ; but
it must have been very great.
He was constantly engaged in studying the
forms of government in the middle and in the
southern sections, each differing widely from
those of New England as well as from each
other. He used to speculate upon the varying
influences of these forms, and to consider what
changes must be effected in order to accomplish
unanimity of feeling and of action. From an
early day his eye had ranged forward to the
time when the existing systems must be sue-
138 JOHN ADAMS
ceeded by different ones, and he busied himself
much with thinking what new principles should
be incorporated in the new machinery. He
watched with anxiety all indications of opinion
in this direction, and lost no opportunity to
inculcate his own ideas, which were clear and
decided. Many months prior to the time at
which we are now arrived, Tom Paine published
" Common Sense." Adams, to whom this anon
ymous but famous publication was by many at
tributed, was in fact greatly disgusted at the
lack of the architectural element in it, and was
soon stirred to write and publish another pam
phlet, also anonymous, which was designed to
supply the serious deficiency of Paine s. This
paper profoundly discussed plans and forms of
government in a practical way, for the purpose
of meeting the near wants of the colonies. Its
authorship being shrewdly surmised, it was
widely circulated and read with great interest,
especially by those men in the several provinces
who were soon to be chiefly concerned in fram
ing the new constitutions. Adams modestly
said of it, that it had at least " contributed to
set people thinking on the subject," so that the
" manufacture of governments " became for the
time "as much talked of as that of saltpetre
was before." Of course it is impossible to say
what effect this pamphlet had ; yet that it had
very much is more than probable.
AFTER INDEPENDENCE 139
With his habit of noticing such matters,
Adams had early remarked upon the difference
between the theories of state polity at the
North and at the South, a difference much
wider apparently in the spirit of administration
than in the description of the apparatus. He
himself was saturated, so to speak, with the
doctrines and practice of New England, and
whether in writing or in talk he was never
backward to enforce his faith with the extreme
earnestness of deep conviction. By correspond
ence and conversation with leading men in
every quarter, he efficiently backed his pam
phlet. When, therefore, the innovation of a
more popular and democratic spirit is observ
able in one and another of the new constitu
tions, it is fair to presume that Adams had
done much to bring about the change. In a
letter to Patrick Henry, accompanying his pam
phlet, Adams said : " The dons, the bashaws,
the grandees, the patricians, the sachems, the
nabobs, call them by what name you please, 1
sigh, groan, and fret, and sometimes stamp
and foam and curse ; but all in vain. The
decree is gone forth and it cannot be recalled,
that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in
other parts of the earth must be established in
1 Elsewhere he called them, by a better nomenclature, " the
barons of the south."
140 JOHN ADAMS
America. That exuberance of pride, which has
produced an insolent domination in a few, a
very few, opulent, monopolizing families, will be
brought down nearer to the confines of reason
and moderation than they have been used to."
To Mr. Hughes of New York he writes, depre
cating any scheme " for making your governor
and counselors for life or during good behavior.
I should dread such a constitution in these
perilous times. . . . The people ought to have
frequently the opportunity, especially in these
dangerous times, of considering the conduct of
their leaders, and of approving or disapproving.
You will have no safety without it." He says
that Pennsylvania is " in a good way. . . . The
large body of the people will be possessed of
more power and importance, and a proud junto
of less." In a letter to Richard Henry Lee
he rejoices because there will be "much more
uniformity in the governments than could have
been expected a few months ago," a result
presumably due in large part to his own unre
mitting exertions. His " Thoughts on Govern
ment" had done good work in Virginia, far
beyond his expectations, and generally he was
"amazed to find an inclination so prevalent
throughout all the southern colonies to adopt
plans so nearly resembling that " which he had
enforced in his political sermons.
AFTER INDEPENDENCE 141
Immediately following independence came
also a necessity for the formation of a federa
tion. Some sort of a bond, a league, must be
devised for tying the thirteen nations together
for a few purposes. Nevertheless, the alliance
was not to have the effect of creating a single
nationality, was not to deprive each ally of its
character of absolute sovereignty as an individ
ual state. Mr. Adams recognized that this
could not be done at once in any perfect or
permanent form. Whatever should be arranged
now would necessarily be an experiment, a tem
porary expedient, out of which, by a study of
its defects as they should develop, there might
in time be evolved a satisfactory system. But
none- the less zealously did he enter upon the
task of making the federation as efficient as
possible under the circumstances, and he did
much hard and important work in this depart
ment. No sketch of it can well be given in this
limited space, nor perhaps would such a sketch
be very valuable except to a student of consti
tutional history. Therefore, after July 4, 1776,
the remainder of Adams s congressional career,
though laborious to the point of exhaustion,
gives no salient points for description. It was
in the routine of business that his time was now
consumed, and very largely in work upon the
committees. It would seem that there could
142 JOHN ADAMS
not have been many of these upon which he had
not a place ; for he was a member of upwards
of ninety which were recorded, and of a great
many others which were unrecorded. He says
that he was kept incessantly at work from four
o clock in the morning until ten o clock at night.
Besides the arduous business of forming the
federation, he was also obliged to devote him
self to that subject, with which his previous
efforts had already allied him in the minds of
members, the establishment of connections with
European powers. Independence would not per
mit this important matter to be longer post
poned ; and a committee, of which Adams was
an important working member, was charged to
consider and report a system of foreign policy
for the thirteen colonies, and to suggest forms
of commercial treaties.
But labors more difficult, more vexatious,
more omnivorous of time, were entailed upon
Mr. Adams by his position at the head of the
War Department. The task of organization was
enormous ; the knowledge and arrangement of
details were appalling. Nor was this all. The
power of Congress, if any real power it had, over
the army, was so undefined even in theory, so
vague in its practical bearing upon the officers,
so difficult of enforcement, that the relationship
of the congressional committee, which really
AFTER INDEPENDENCE 143
constituted the War Department, with that body
was excessively delicate. Adams s jealous and
hasty temperament was subjected to some severe
trials. Aggrieved officers would sometimes be
come not only disrespectful but insubordinate.
But in such crises he acquitted himself well.
A sense of weakness in the last resort perhaps
prevented his giving loose to any outburst of
anger, while his high spirit and profound ear
nestness lent to his language an impressive
force and an appearance of firmness almost
imperious. His deep sincerity inspired all his
communications, and gave them a tone which
procured respect and turned aside resentment.
He breathed into others an honesty of purpose,
a vigor, a devotedness akin to his own. Being
also a man of much business ability and un
tiring industry, he made substantially a war
minister admirably adapted to the peculiar and
exacting requirements of that anomalous period.
But it was impossible that a man not enjoy
ing a rugged physique could endure for an in
definite time labors so engrossing and anxieties
so great, away from the comforts of home, and
in a climate which, during many months of the
year, appeared to him extremely hot. His
desire for relief, more and more earnestly ex
pressed, at last took a definite and resolute
shape. He wanted to have the Massachusetts
144 JOHN ADAMS
delegation so increased in numbers that the
members could take turns in attending Con
gress and in staying at home. If this could not
be done, he tendered his resignation. The reply
came in the shape of a permission to take a
long vacation, which he did in the winter of
1776-77. Then he returned to spend the spring,
summer, and autumn of 1777 in a continuance
of the same labors which have just been de
scribed. At last the limit of specific duties
which he had long ago set for himself having
been achieved and even overpast, he definitively
carried out his design of retirement.
CHAPTER VII
FIRST FOREIGN MISSION
IT was on November 11, 1777, that John
Adams, accompanied by his kinsman, Samuel
Adams, set forth from Philadelphia on his
homeward journey. He was at last a private
citizen, rejoiced to be able again to attend to his
own affairs, and to resume the important task of
money-gathering at his old calling. Yet he was
hardly allowed even to get on his professional
harness. He was arguing an admiralty cause in
Portsmouth when a letter reached him, dated
December 3, 1777, from Richard Henry Lee and
James Lovell, announcing his appointment as
commissioner at the court of France, wishing
him a quick and pleasant voyage, and cheerfully
suggesting that he should have his dispatch-bags
sufficiently weighted to be able to sink them
instantly in case of capture. The day after he
received this letter he accepted the trust, though
the duty imposed by it was far from attractive.
Besides the ordinary discomforts and perils of
a winter passage in a sailing vessel, he had to
consider the chances of seizure by British ships,
146 JOHN ADAMS
which covered the ocean and were taking multi
tudes of prizes. If captured, he would be but a
traitor, having in prospect certainly the Tower
of London and possibly all the penalties of the
English statutes against high treason. If he
should arrive safely, he would be only one of
three commissioners at the French court; and
France, though kindly rendering courteous ser
vices, had not yet become the ally of the states,
and was still in nominal friendship with Great
Britain. Moreover, he was to step into an unin
viting scene of dissension and suspicion. The
states were represented by Franklin, Arthur Lee,
and Silas Deane ; Adams was to supersede Deane,
who had been embarrassing Congress by reck
less engagements with French military officers,
and who in many other ways had shown himself,
to say the best of it, eminently unfit for diplo
matic functions. There was much ill-feeling, of
which the new ambassador could not expect to
escape a share. Altogether, it was greatly to his
credit that he promptly agreed to fill the post.
On February 13, 1778, he set sail in the
frigate Boston, accompanied by his young son,
John Quincy Adams. On the 20th an English
ship of war gave them chase. Adams urged the
officers and crew to fig^ht desperately, deeming
it " more eligible " for himself " to be killed on
board the Boston or sunk to the bottom in her,
FIRST FOREIGN MISSION 147
than to be taken prisoner." But a favoring
breeze saved him from the choice between such
melancholy alternatives, and on March 31 he
found himself riding safely at anchor in the
river at Bordeaux.
At the French court he was pleasantly re
ceived. People, he says, at first supposed that he
was " the famous Adams ; " but when somebody
asked him if this were so, he modestly explained
that he was only a cousin of that distinguished
person. Thereafter he received less attention.
It was unfortunate, too, that he knew nothing of
the language; but he got along, sometimes by
the aid of an interpreter, sometimes by " gibber
ing something like French." This deficiency,
however, rather diminished his pleasure than
his usefulness ; for he soon found that his chief
labors were to be with his own countrymen and
colleagues. The affairs of the mission he found
much worse than he had anticipated. The
jealousies and hostilities among the American
representatives there were very great. He wrote
in his diary : " It is with much grief and con
cern that I have learned, from my first landing
in France, the disputes between the Americans
in this kingdom ; the animosities between Mr.
Deane and Mr. Lee ; between Dr. Franklin and
Mr. Lee ; between Mr. Izard and Dr. Franklin ;
between Dr. Bancroft and Mr. Lee; between
148 JOHN ADAMS
Mr. Carmichael and all. It is a rope of sand.
I am at present wholly untainted with these
prejudices, and will endeavor to keep myself so."
He heard that Deane and Bancroft had made
fortunes by "dabbling in the English funds,
and in trade, and in fitting out privateers ; " also
that " the Lees were selfish." " I am sorry for
these things ; but it is no part of my business to
quarrel with anybody without cause." All the
business and affairs of the commission had been
conducted in the most lax manner; no minute-
book, letter-book, or account-book had been kept,
expenditure had been lavish, "prodigious," as
he said, but there was no way to learn how the
money had gone, or how much was still owing.
Utterly inexperienced as he was in such affairs,
he yet showed good sense and energy. He
endeavored to avoid allying himself with any
faction, siding now with Franklin and again
with Lee, according to his views of the merits of
each specific discussion, and seeking at the same
time not to lose the confidence of the Count
de Vergennes, the French minister of foreign
affairs, who was very partial to Franklin and
inimical to Lee. Further, he set himself zeal
ously to bring the business department of the
mission into a proper condition. The commis
sioners had complete control over the fiscal
affairs of the states abroad, and had heretofore
FIRST FOREIGN MISSION 149
managed them in a manner inconceivably loose
and careless. As Mr. Adams wrote home to the
commercial committee of Congress : " Agents of
various sorts are drawing bills upon us, and the
commanders of vessels of war are drawing on
us for expenses and supplies which we never
ordered. . . . We find it so difficult to obtain
accounts from agents of the expenditure of
moneys and of the goods and merchandises
shipped by them that we can never know the
true state of our finances." All this shocked
Mr. Adams, who had the notions and habits of
a man of business, and he at once endeavored
to arrange a system of rigorous accuracy and
accountability in spite of the indifference, and
occasionally the reluctance, of his colleagues.
Henceforth records were kept, letters were
copied, accounts were accurately set down.
But the reforms in matters of detail which he
could accomplish were by no means sufficient
to counteract the clumsy and inefficient way in
which the business of the states was conducted,
and to which he had no mind to be even a silent
party. An entire reorganization was evidently
needed, and on May 21, 1778, he wrote a plain
and bold letter, which he addressed to Samuel
Adams, since, apart from his colleagues, he
could not properly communicate with Congress.
He urged the gross impropriety of leaving the
150 JOHN ADAMS
salaries of the ministers entirely uncertain, so
that they spent what they chose and then sent
their accounts (such as they were) to be allowed
by Congress ; the error of blending the business
of a public minister with that of a commercial
agent ; and, most important of all, the folly of
maintaining three commissioners where a single
envoy would be vastly more serviceable. By
such advice he knowingly advised himself out of
office ; for Dr. Franklin was sure to be retained
at the French court, Lee already had a letter of
credence to Madrid, and no niche was left for
him. But he was too honest a public servant
to consider this, and he repined not at all when
precisely this result came about. Congress lost
no time in following his suggestions, leaving
Franklin in Paris, and ordering Lee to Madrid,
at the same time in a strange perplexity over
looking Mr. Adams so entirely as not even to
order him to return home. He was greatly
vexed and puzzled at this anomalous condition.
Dr. Franklin, who was finding life near the
French court very pleasant, advised him tran
quilly to await instructions. But this counsel
did not accord with his active temperament or
his New England sense of duty. He wrote to
his wife : " I cannot eat pensions and sinecures ;
they would stick in my throat." Rather than
do so, he said that he would again run the
FIRST FOREIGN MISSION 151
gauntlet of the British cruisers and the storms
of the Atlantic. It was no easy matter, how
ever, to get a passage in those days, and his best
endeavors did not bring him back to Boston
until August 2, 1779, after an absence of nearly
a year and a half. In a certain sense his mis
sion had been needless and useless. He had
been away a long while, had undergone great
dangers, and had cost the country money which
could ill be spared ; and for all that he had
accomplished strictly in the way of diplomacy
he might as well have spent the eighteen months
at Braintree. But he had aided to break up an
execrable condition of affairs at Paris, and he
had proved his entire and unselfish devotion to
the public interest. These were two important
facts, worth in their fruits all they had cost to
the nation and to himself.
He had, moreover, gathered some ideas con
cerning Great Britain, France, and Holland.
These ideas were not wholly correct, being col
ored by the atmosphere of the passing day and
stimulated too much by his own wishes ; but
they promoted the temporary advantages of the
states very well. For example, he came back
with a theory of the decadence of Great Britain.
" This power," he said, " loses every day her
consideration, and runs towards her ruin. Her
riches, in which her power consisted, she has
152 JOHN ADAMS
lost with us and never can regain. . . . She
resembles the melancholy spectacle of a great,
wide-spreading tree that has been girdled at the
root." There was no grain of truth in this sort
of talk, but it was nourishment to the American
Congress. Towards France his feelings were
of course most friendly. "The longer I live
in Europe, and the more I consider our affairs,
the more important our alliance with France
appears to me. It is a rock upon which we may
safely build. Narrow and illiberal prejudices,
peculiar to John Bull, with which I might per
haps have been in some degree infected when I
was John Bull, have now no influence over me.
I never was, however, much of John Bull, I was
John Yankee, and such I shall live and die."
A very single-minded John Yankee he certainly
was, for amid all his yearning for a French
alliance, which he valued for its practical useful
ness, he was jealous of too great a subservience
to that power.
"It is a delicate and dangerous connection. . . .
There may be danger that too much will be demanded
of us. There is danger that the people and their
representatives may have too much timidity in their
conduct towards this power, and that your ministers
here may have too much diffidence of themselves
and too much complaisance for the court. There
is danger that French councils and emissaries and
FIRST FOREIGN MISSION 153
correspondents may have too much influence in our
deliberations. I hope that this court may not inter
fere by attaching themselves to persons, parties, or
measures in America."
Again he wrote that it would be desirable to
link the two countries very closely together, "pro
vided always, that we preserve prudence and
resolution enough to receive implicitly no advice
whatever, but to judge always for ourselves, *
etc., etc. Within a few months the need of this
watchful independence was abundantly proved ;
and the early years of the history of the United
States fully justified Adams s cautious dread of
an undue warmth of sentiment towards France.
CHAPTER VIII
SECOND FOREIGN MISSION: IN FRANCE AND
HOLLAND
SCARCELY was Mr. Adams given time to
make his greetings to his friends, after his re
turn through the gauntlet of storms and British
cruisers, ere he was again set at work. A con
vention was summoned to prepare a constitution
for Massachusetts, and he was chosen a dele
gate. It was a congenial task, and he was early
assuming an active and influential part in the
proceedings when, more to his surprise than to
his gratification, he was interrupted by receiving
a second time the honor of a foreign mission.
The history of the establishment of diplomatic
relations between the new states of North Amer
ica and the old countries of Europe, the narra
tive of the reluctant and clumsy approaches by
England towards a negotiation for peace, and
especially the intricate tale of the subtle manoeu
vres of the French foreign office in connection
with its trans-Atlantic allies and supposed dear
friends, together form a remarkably interesting
chapter in American history. All the complex-
SECOND FOREIGN MISSION 155
ities of this web, involved beyond the average of
diplomatic labyrinths, have been unraveled with
admirable clearness by Mr. C. F. Adams in his
life of John Adams. A writer more competent
to the difficult task could not have been desired,
and he has so performed it that no successor can
do more than follow his lucid and generally fair
and dispassionate recital. His account of his
grandfather is naturally tinged with the senti
ment of the plus ^Eneas ; neither, on the other
hajid, can he condone the French minister s self
ishness and duplicity, though really not exces
sive according to the technical code of morals
in European foreign offices of that day. But
otherwise his account of these events is keen,
just, vivid, and exhaustive.
During the period with which we have now
to deal, the Count de Vergennes managed the
foreign affairs of France. He was a diplomate
of that school with which picturesque writers of
historical romance have made us so familiar, a
character as classic as the crusty father of the
British stage ; of great ability, wily, far-sighted,
inscrutable, with no liking for any country save
France, and no hatred for any country except
England, firm in the old-fashioned faith that
honesty had no place in politics, especially in
diplomacy ; apt and graceful in the distinguished
art of professional lying, overbearing and impe-
156 JOHN ADAMS
rious as became the vindicator and the repre
sentative of the power of the French monarchy.
Such was this famous minister, a dangerous and
difficult man with whom to have dealings. From
the beginning to the end of his close connection
with American affairs he played the game wholly
for his own hand, with some animosity towards
his opponent, but with not the slightest idea of
committing the folly of the pettiest self-sacrifice
for the assistance of his nominal partners. They
were really to help him ; he was apparently to
help them. It is now substantially proved that
the unmixed motive of the French cabinet in
secretly encouraging and aiding the revolted col
onies, before open war had broken out between
France and England, had been only to weaken
the power and to sap the permanent resources
of the natural and apparently the eternal enemy
of France. After that war had been declared,
the same purpose constituted the sole induce
ment to the alliance with the American rebels.
To the government of France, therefore, thus
actuated, no gratitude was due from the colo
nists at any time, and in de Yergennes, as the