Adams Family Correspondence, volume 12
t[
h1797]1
Blessed are the Peace makers, says [a Good] Book, for which you and I, entertain the highest respect and reverence. I quote this benidiction to reconcile you to the appointment of your Best Ffriend, as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the French Republick.2
An appointment which all true Friends to their Country, and real Americans will rejoice in out of 28 Senators, there were 22 approving voices, as the Yeas and Nays were taken. I commit no transgression in Communicating this to you. Two Senators were absent, & two have not been here this Session. amongst the Six, Massachusetts has the Misfortune to have one. my Situation forbids my expressions of indignation! The French Faction are not less insolent or less sparing of their abuse upon the President, than they were upon his Predcessor; but I can read Bache every morning with Cool contempt. I think this a Proof of Phylosphy. you too my dear Madam, 145 must arm yourself with the same shield for you will find occation for the full exercise of it. But the Curse Causeless, shall not hurt us—3
You know well, that I can sympathize with you in all those trials which have call’d our dearest Friends, to the Post of Danger and difficulties;4 they have heretofore been fellow Laboures together in the arduous, and Perilious Conflict for Freedom and danger independance, having thrown of the Shackles, and shivered the fetters as of one dominering power,5 we must not now permit them to be forced upon us, by a more insolent and assuming Hands with pretentions less founded, aiming not only to wrest from us our Freedom and Independance, But our Religion also—6
The Prospect is truly allarming, and threatens but our Country [with] nothing less than the Subversion of all, which our [Friends] have Mutually aided each other in obtaining, and [whic]h we had good reason to Expect would be transmitted [a] fair inheritance to our Children.
As your Friend is again Calld upon by his Country to take an active part, in a Mission of a highly interesting and very important Nature, on the isssue of which is involved the Peace of our Country, I cannot permit a doubt to arrise respecting his acceptance of it. Mr Marshall who is joind with him supports a very fair and Honorable Character, and is sayd to be truly American, and to this Opinion, the Six Votes against both the Gentlemen, will be a standing Record.
Having been Whitness to your fortitude and Patriotism upon a more trying occation than the Present, as the Circumstances of our Country were then more distressing I flatter myself you will persevere in the sane line of Conduct, which led you then to Sacrifice, every personal Consideration to the Welfare of our Country—7
FC in Louisa Catharine Smith’s hand (Adams Papers). Dft (2, both Adams Papers). Text lost due to a torn manuscript has been supplied from the Dft dated 5 June.
AA drafted this letter twice after Francis Dana’s 31 May nomination as special envoy to France but before his appointment on 5 June. An undated Dft, presumably the first of the two, is four pages in length and comprises a complete draft on the first and second pages and then a partial redrafting that begins on the fourth page and concludes on the third page. The second Dft, dated 5 June, is a single page. Meticulous at the start of the letter, AA paid close attention to her penmanship, clearly intending this to serve as the final copy. Halfway down the page, however, she began to cancel text. The FC, printed here, includes additional details regarding Dana’s appointment.
The complete, undated Dft reads from this point forward: “I do not expect you will give him your thanks for this nomination, but My Dear Madam You will recollect that my Husband and yours have been fellow labourers in the Great Cause of Building up the goodly Fabrick which has become the envy of Nations, but which still requires able
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and skillfull Artist to shield and protect it from being sapped at Home, and overturned from abroad. he will not, he must not refuse his aid to the pilot when the Ship is threatned with a storm. it is in full confidence of his known, tried and long experienced attachment to his Country, and his pure American Sentiments that he is now calld to this important embassy and however painfull it may be to you to be again seperated, I hope you will reassume your former magnininity which supported you in times more perilious than the present, and under circumstances still more distressing to you as your Children were then all young.
“To the judge taking for granted that he will not refuse I have only to request that he will consider this house as his Home when he comes on here and if you would accompany him it would be an additional pleasure and satisfaction / to Your Friend / and Humble Servant / Abigail Adams.”
A paraphrase of Proverbs, 26:2.
In the undated Dft, AA redrafted the start of this paragraph, “As it personally respects you, I can sympathize in all your feelings, having had My full share of those trials” and referred to Elizabeth Ellery Dana and herself as “sister Sufferers” in the nation-building process.
In the redrafted portion of the undated Dft, AA concluded this paragraph, “We must not submit to the Iron Rod of a more Insolent and assuming Hand.” The balance of this version mirrors the contents of the final three paragraphs of the FC. AA initially closed this version, “Be so good as to present both the Presidents and my Regards to the Judge With our request that he would consider this House as his Home,” but she emended it to read, “I presume the judge will lose no time in making his arrangments and that we shall have the pleasure of seeing him here previous to his Departure. if you would accompany him & consider this House as your Home during your stay it would give great pleasure to Your old and constant / Friend / A Adams.”
In the Dft of 5 June this paragraph reads: “I know very well as it personally affects you, that You will feel much pain and anxiety at the prospect of being again seperated from Your Friend, having past through one tempestuous Season as fellow Laboures, and Friends, having weatherd the storm, it might have been expected that my Friend and yours might have enjoyd the Evening of Life in a calm, but no Man liveth for himself. the prospect now opening to us, requires the abilities, & firmness of the ablest and firmest Patriots, and most experienced Patriots, it was natural for the executive to turn his Thoughts to a Gentleman personally known to him and whose truly American Sentiments and Principls would bear the Strickest Scrutiny.”
Elizabeth Ellery Dana’s reply, dated 19 June, states that her husband could not accept the appointment owing to “his nervous complaints.” She worried that the rigors of negotiation might “incapacitate” him “from aiding the Mission” and could possibly “render him useless to the public and his family” (Adams Papers). In a letter to Francis Dana dated [June], AA offered assurances that the president was not upset with his refusal of the appointment, as JA “had his doubts with respect to your acceptance … knowing Your suffrings at sea & the present delicate State of your Health” (Dft, Adams Papers).
th1797
We yesterday received the Centinal. I thank you for the vindication which I found in it.1 I well knew how watchfull the Faction would be to lie in wait & catch at every Straw, misrepresenting and abusing every measure which was intended to secure us from foreign influence. the President waited a reasonable time for the answer of the House to his Speech, before he made his nominations to the senate of envoys extraordianary to the French republick. the 147 Jacobins Seazd this interval to propogate a report that he was not Sincere in his professions to treat. when he sent in his Nominations to the senate, they were obliged to Change their ground. the next attack was upon the persons Nominated judge dana was declared to be an open & avowed Enemy to France. this opinion was propagated by Varnum & confirmd by Freeman. I tell you Names, you will however keep your informant out of sight. they however advanced this at Francis’s Hotel at the publick table at which they Dine; there are others who will transmit the same account I doubt not. the senate however confirmed the Nominations Yesterday 28 senators being present 22 voted in favour Virginna senators, Langdon Cokce of Tenassee, & two others against them.2 You will also see that the Nomination of JQA 19 to 9. No one ventured to utter a syllable against the person, but undertook to judge of the propriety of having a mission there.
We yesterday had Letters from both our sons dated in March 18 I will transcribe a passage from JQAs.
“The french Government at present evidently design to go to War with the united states, unless the Americans will submit to sacrifice their interest their honour and their independance. to Effect this design their great expectation is founded upon the hope of our internal disunion, a hope which is very much encouraged by the Americans who are conversent with the ruling Men in France
[“]The determination for the present is to take and perhaps to condemn all American vessels and merchandize bound to or from any Ports under the dominion of Great Britain. this system has long been discernable but is now openly avowd. upon this Principle they have already taken and condemnd several vessels going from England. the Privateers which took them have generally been fitted out by Americans, and it is from Such Specimins that the Directory judge of the dispositions and Character of the American people.” [“]one of the objects to which this system is destined in plunder they consider the american commerce as a benificial prey, and they are desirious of a pretext to refuse the payment of about 40 millions of livers which I understand they owe to the citizens of the united stats.3 that they are seeking pretexts for a quarrel is plain from every circumstance that has happened Since the note of mr Adet, in october of the last year. but they gradually proceed from one step to an other because the Directory have not by the constitution the right of declaring War and they do not think the Nation or the Legislative
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assembly Yet sufficiently exasperated to make a proposal to declare war for the present pass. in order to produce such an animosity they are daily useing every means of misrepresentation and falshood against the American Government. at the same time they are offering every provocation of insult indignity and injury in there power, depending either that no power exists on our part to resent them, or if they are resented that our measures will furnish them pretext for further insolence, and perhaps for proposing to the Legislature a Declaration of War.”4
You are at Liberty to communicate this to such Friends as may be relied on.
I inclose You Bache impudenc of this day. I say with the Member from Conneticut, I hope if the Chronical retails it, there will be found American Blood enough in Boston and American ink enough to punish him.5 we now have a Govenour who will give a different Tone to the sentiments of many and will aid the Federal Government. we wait for his Speech with raised expectations.6 I must close or the post will leave me
a kind remembrance to all Friends / from your affectionate Friend / &c &c
RC (Adams Papers); endorsed: “June 5th ’97 / Mrs. Adams.”
See Welsh to AA, 2 June, and note 2, above.
William Cocke (1748–1828) served in the Va. House of Burgesses before moving to Tennessee in 1776, where he was elected one of the state’s first senators in 1796. He joined Timothy Bloodworth, Stevens Thomson Mason, and Henry Tazewell in voting against Charles Cotesworth Pinckney’s nomination. The votes opposing Francis Dana were cast by Cocke, Mason, Tazewell, as well as John Brown, John Langdon, and Alexander Martin, and it was Bloodworth, Brown, Cocke, Langdon, Martin, and Mason who opposed the nomination of John Marshall (
Biog. Dir. Cong.
; U.S. Senate, Exec. Jour.
, 5th Cong., 1st sess., p. 243–244). For more on these votes, see
JA to TBA, 2 June 1797, and note 5, above.
On 10 March Joseph Pitcairn wrote to JQA that France planned to demand a loan of 60 million livres from the United States, but he noted that “if our Gouvernment should pay any attention at it, I hope it will only be to obtain the payment of Debts due to their Citizens which I am told amount to 40,000,000. a sum exceeding by 8 Millions the advances made by France during our Revolution” (Adams Papers). JQA repeated the amount in a 27 March letter to Timothy Pickering, where he noted that France was “indebted to a great number of Americans either for supplies or for indemnities of captures and depredations, which they themselves acknowledge to be due. The amount of these debts is said to be nearly or quite forty millions of livres” (LbC, APM Reel 129). For a summary of JQA’s 27 March letter to Pickering, see AA to JQA, 15 June, note 4, below.
See TBA to JA, 17 March, above. In addition to the extract AA quoted here, JQA also discussed in his letter to JA of 18 March France’s influence in the Batavian Republic and his hope that harmony would be the common goal of the Adams-Jefferson executive. He also reported the death of Marie Dumas (Adams Papers).
During the 2 June House debate of its response to JA’s 16 May address, Albert Gallatin objected to a sentence stating that the House “did not hesitate to declare, that they would give their most cordial support to
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principles so deliberately and uprightly established.” John Allen of Connecticut challenged the foreign-born member of Congress: “There was American blood enough in the House to approve of this clause, and American accent enought to pronounce it,” after which a vote was taken and the sentence retained. The following day Allen’s words were twisted by Matthew Lyon, who in attempting to excuse himself from attending the delivery of the response to JA, claimed that “he had no objection to gentlemen of high blood carrying this Address. He had no pretensions to high blood, though he thought he had as good blood as any.” In reporting on these events, the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 6 June, perverted Lyon’s discussion: “A gentleman from Connecticut rose yesterday for the purpose of telling this house that there was American blood enough in it to carry the answer. … I never heard any one before yesterday, boasting of his blood, that I thought had any pretensions to good sense, or good manners” (
Annals of Congress
, 5th Cong., 1st sess., p. 232–233, 235).
Increase Sumner’s 2 June address was printed in the Philadelphia Gazette, 9 June.