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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 8 (Letters and State Papers 1782-1799) [1853]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 8.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

Philadelphia, 6 April, 1797.

Dear Sir,—

Your favor of the 27th ultimo gave me great pleasure. The proposal of appointing the Vice-President to go as envoy extraordinary to Paris, has arrived from so many quarters, that I presume the thought is a natural one. I will tell you a secret, but I wish you to keep it a secret in your own breast. I was so impressed with the idea myself, that on the 3d of March I had a conversation with Mr. Jefferson, in which I proposed it to him, and frankly declared to him, that if he would accept it, I would nominate him the next day, as soon as I should be qualified to do it. He as frankly refused, as I expected he would.1 Indeed, I made a great stretch in proposing it, to accommodate to the feelings, views, and prejudices of a party. I would not do it again, because, upon more mature reflection, I am decidedly convinced of the impropriety of it. The reasons you give are unanswerable, but there are others. It would be a degradation of our government in the eyes of our own people, as well as of all Europe. The Vice-President, in our Constitution, is too high a personage to be sent on diplomatic errands, even in the character of an ambassador. We cannot work miracles. We cannot make nations respect our nation, or its government, if we place before their eyes the persons answering to the first princes of the government, in the low and subordinate character of a foreign minister. It must be a pitiful country indeed, in which the second man in the nation will accept of a place upon a footing with the corps diplomatique, especially envoy such a one, ambassador such a one, or plenipotentiary such a one. The nation must hold itself very cheap, that can choose a man one day to hold its second office, and the next send him to Europe, to dance attendance at levees and drawing rooms, among the common major-generals, simple bishops, earls, and barons, but especially among the common trash of ambassadors, envoys, and ministers plenipotentiary.

The nation has chosen Jefferson, and commanded him to a certain station. The President, therefore, has no right to command him to another, or to take him off from that. A nation, to be consistent, must highly resent it. It appeared to me in this light, when the mission to England was talked of; two or three persons proposed to me to go, but I positively refused to have any thing said about it, and gave the reasons above, among many others.1 Indeed, I thought it wrong to send the chief justice; he was too high to go, even as an ambassador; but to send him as envoy, was unpardonable; it must mark us with contempt in all Europe. But we studiously degrade our government, by every ingenious invention, and then wonder that our nation and government are despised.

The satisfaction you express with my little harangue, before taking the oath, gives me great pleasure. I had been so abused, belied, and misrepresented, for seven years together, without uttering one syllable in my own vindication, and almost without one word in my favor from anybody else, that I was determined to give the lie direct to whole volumes at once, be the consequence what it would.

I am, my dear Sir, with great respect,

John Adams.

[1 ]Mr. Jefferson has given his account of this conference in his Ana. It seems to have been drawn up in 1818, from recollections associated with a memorandum made at the time. But no means are furnished by which to distinguish the original from the additions. He mentions Madison, Gerry, and Pinckney, as the three persons named for the mission.

Mr. Adams gave, in 1809, his version of the same conference, formed much in the same way, excepting that his original memoranda date in 1801, four years later. He mentions Madison or Jefferson as one of the three, though he speaks of other characters having been considered in the course of the conversation; and this exactly conforms to the earlier record.

[1 ]The date of this letter relieves the statement here made from all suspicion of especial motive. It thus forms a complete answer to a charge made three years later by Mr. Hamilton in his well known attack upon Mr. Adams. In that pamphlet is an attempt to connect with a private letter, made public by a violation of confidence on the part of Tench Coxe, an imputation of unworthy motives in writing it, which is the only circumstance that gives the affair any importance. It now clearly appears that Mr. Hamilton was mistaken. Yet, inasmuch as an impression seems to have prevailed elsewhere than with Mr. Hamilton, that Mr. Adams, against the uniform tenor of his preceding life, and contrary to all probabilities, had solicited the mission to England at the time here spoken of, it will not be out of place to add to this letter to Mr. Gerry, bearing date three years before the charge was thought of, an extract from a fragment written in 1801, originally intended as an answer to Mr. Hamilton, touching the same point.

“It is scarcely conceivable in what this assertion originated. There has been no moment since Mr. Adams’s return to America, that he would have accepted an appointment to England on any terms. He returned weary and satiated with the diplomatic course. He returned voluntarily. There is little doubt his commission would have been renewed to the court of London, if he had desired it. But so far from wishing it, he resigned all his commissions in Europe, and instead of asking leave to return home, he wrote the then Secretary of State, Mr. Jay, that he was determined to return.” . . . .

“Mr. Adams had also other reasons against any appointment abroad, and these were the same that President Washington suggested, according to Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Adams, however, never knew till he read it in this pamphlet, that the thought had ever occurred or been proposed to President Washington.”

[The letter to Mr. Jay, above referred to, is found in this volume, p. 424.]

“The only circumstance which Mr. Adams can recollect, connected with this subject, is this. A gentleman once came to him and said, that he had come to propose to him a thing that appeared to him in a very serious light. A negotiation was in contemplation with England. The people and Congress were anxious. Some gentlemen of the Senate, one in particular, had desired him to see the Vice-President and propose to him to accept an appointment, and by way of inducement said that Mr. Adams would have an unanimous vote in the Senate. Mr. A. laughed at the idea of an unanimous vote, and said that he knew his own station in society so well as to know that unanimous votes were luxuries which were never to fall to his lot. That, in some former parts of his life, he had tasted the delicious flavor; but it was never to gratify his palate again. But he said to the gentleman, that he absolutely forbid his name to be mentioned on the occasion, for that he would refuse it, if he should be nominated, even if the miracle should be wrought in the Senate of an unanimous vote in his favor; and he assigned the same reasons which are hinted at above.”