RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “John Quincy Adams Esq.” Tr (Adams Papers).

JQA’s nomination as U.S. minister resident to the Netherlands, replacing William Short, had apparently been under discussion well before this time. On the same day as this letter, JA received word from Edmund Randolph: “You will be so good, as to let it be understood between us, that the mention, which some time ago was made to you by me, of the nomination of your son, was purely confidential between us; and that on any occasion, which you may have to speak of the time, when it was first known to you, you will refer to the communication of this day only” (Adams Papers). JQA’s actual appointment was held up for a few days until the Senate could deal with the appointment of Short to Spain; see JA to JQA, 30 May, 2d letter, and note 1, below.

On 3 June, upon receiving this letter, JQA commented at length about it in his Diary: “When I returned to my lodgings at the close of the Evening; upon opening a Letter from my father which I had just before taken from the post-office, I found it contained information that Edmund Randolph, Secretary of State of the United States had on the morning of the day, when the Letter was dated called on the writer and told him that the President of the United States had determined to nominate me to go to the Hague as Resident Minister from the United States. This intelligence was to me very unexpected and indeed surprizing. I had laid down as a principle that I never would solicit for any public office whatever, and from this determination no necessity has hitherto compelled me to swerve. From the principles of the same nature which my father has always rigidly observed, I knew that no influence nor even a request of any kind from him could have occasioned this intention of the President. And yet I was very sensible, that neither my years, my experience, my reputation nor my talents could entitle me to an office of so much respectability. It is however of no service to indulge conjecture upon the subject.”

A week later, on 10 June, he met with JA, 193 who by that time had returned to Quincy. JQA wrote in his Diary, “I found that my nomination had been as unexepcted to him [ JA ] as to myself, and that he had never uttered a word upon which a wish on his part could be presumed, that a public office should be conferred upon me. His opinion upon the subject agrees with my own; but his satisfaction at the appointment is much greater than mine. I wish I could have been consulted before it was irrevocably made. I rather wish it had not been made at-all. My friends on the other hand appear to be very much pleased with it, and seem to consider it as a subject of pure and simple congratulation” (D/JQA/20, APM Reel 23).

RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “J. Q. A.”

The people of the Netherlands had long been divided loosely into two political parties: the Patriot Party and the Orangist, or Stadholder, Party. Although there were many divisions within each of these broad groups, the Patriots generally favored political reform, including the abolition of the hereditary position of stadholder, while the Orangists supported retaining the existing government and the rule of the stadholder (currently William V of the House of Orange). In 1786–1787, revolution in the Netherlands had led to the temporary expulsion of William V and the arrest of his wife, Wilhelmina, but an invasion by the Prussian Army restored the stadholder and overthrew the Patriot leaders, who were pushed into exile in France. By 1794, the French Army was prepared to invade the Netherlands, and by 1795, Patriots, in conjunction with the 194 French, had formally established the Batavian Republic as a client state of the French Republic and permanently exiled William V (Schama, Patriots and Liberators, p. xix, 14–15). See also TBA to JA, 19 Oct., and note 2, below.