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

J. McHENRY, SECRETARY OF WAR, TO JOHN ADAMS. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811) [1854]

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. 9.

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

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


J. McHENRY, SECRETARY OF WAR, TO JOHN ADAMS.

War Department, 6 May, 1800.

Sir,—

I have the honor to request that I may be permitted to resign the office of secretary of the department of war, and that my resignation be accepted, to take place on the first day of June next.

Explanations may be desired of some parts of the business of the war department, while under my direction, which I shall be very ready to give, and can more conveniently do so by continuing in an official situation until the period mentioned. I shall esteem myself particularly favored by your inquiries relative to any subject connected with my official duties, because I shall then have an opportunity to lay before you full information of what I have done or directed, together with the reasons and motives, known best to myself, which induced particular measures.

Having discharged the duties of Secretary of War for upwards of four years with fidelity, unremitting assiduity, and to the utmost of my abilities, I leave behind me all the records of the department, exhibiting the principles and manner of my official conduct, together with not a few difficulties I have had to encounter. To these written documents I cheerfully refer my reputation as an officer and a man.1

I have the honor to be, &c.

James McHenry.

[1 ]Much has been said respecting the causes of Mr. McHenry’s involuntary resignation. That he expected a dismission six months sooner, is tolerably clear from his own letter printed in Mr. Gibbs’s work, vol. ii. p. 282. That he had merited it much earlier, is now proved by the concurring testimony of those who cried out the most loudly against it, when it happened. So early as July, 1798, Mr. Hamilton described him as “wholly insufficient for his place, with the additional misfortune of not having the least suspicion of the fact.” Hamilton’s Works, vol. vi. p. 333. In April preceding, Mr. R. G. Harper had prevailed upon the President to consent to invite Mr. Hamilton himself to occupy the post. “The army, under proper direction, will put arms into the hands of all our friends.” Hamilton’s Works, vol. vi. p. 282. Mr. Hamilton’s answer is not given, but, in the letter to General Washington already quoted, he admits that Mr. McHenry owed his place to Mr. Adams’s forbearance.

“The insufficiency is so great as to leave no probability that the business of the war department can make any tolerable progress in his hands. This has been long observed, and has been more than mentioned to the President by members of Congress. He is not insensible, I believe, that the execution of the department does not produce the expected results; but the case is of course delicate and embarrassing.”

General Washington in reply says:

“Your opinion respecting the unfitness of a certain gentleman for the office he holds, accords with mine; and it is to be regretted, sorely, at this time, that these opinions are so well founded. I early discovered, after he entered upon the duties of his office, that his talents were unequal to great exertions or deep resources. In truth they were not expected; for the fact is, it was a Hobson’s choice.” Hamilton’s Works, vol. vi. p. 337.

This letter is not found in Mr. Sparks’s collection, for the reason given in a note to vol. xi. p. 285.

Mr. Wolcott is not a whit more equivocal in his opinion. See two letters in Gibbs’s Memoirs of the Federal Administrations, vol. ii. pp. 101, 315, and another more decided still, not printed by Mr. Gibbs, in Hamilton’s Works, vol. vi. p. 406.

The propriety of the removal being thus established by the evidence of those claiming to be Mr. McHenry’s best friends, and independently of a still more serious question touching his abuse of his confidential relation with the President, the only matter remaining to be considered is the secondary one of the mode in which it was done. Mr. Hamilton has already explained the difficulty attending Mr. McHenry’s utter unconsciousness of his insufficiency; an unconsciousness strikingly visible in his letters after his dismission. It is clear that he was a man who could not take a hint. In all probability this it was, that gradually brought on the personal harshness which terminated his career. It must be admitted that Mr. Adams was neither so considerate nor so dignified in his case as he was in that of Mr. Pickering. But the object once effected, he seems to have been the first to regret that it had not been more gently done. To this Mr. Wolcott, with all his secret malevolence to Mr. Adams, unequivocally testifies. Whilst, in a secret letter to Mr. McHenry, he instigates him to disclose to Mr. Hamilton, for use in his projected pamphlet against Mr. Adams, the details of the private conversation during the conference that led to the dismissal, in another letter to him of the same day, designed for public use, to protect him in case he was attacked on the score of incompetency, he says:—

“Soon after your intended retirement from the department of war was made known to me, I waited on the President of the United States on business relating to the treasury, when the subject of your resignation was voluntarily mentioned by him.

“The President said that he considered you a gentleman of agreeable manners, of extensive information, and great industry; that he verily believed your hands were pure, meaning thereby, as I understood him, that he reposed entire confidence in your integrity; that he was happy in understanding that your circumstances were affluent, and that the loss of your late office would not distress your family; and that if any suitable office should become vacant, he should with pleasure confer it on you.” Gibbs’s Federal Administrations, vol. ii. p. 410.

Recent disclosures clearly prove that Mr. McHenry had not merited this generosity. He certainly was one, though the least important, of the three cabinet ministers who were untrue to him, and who betrayed his confidence. Neither does this testimony of Mr. Wolcott seem to have softened his rancor. He furnished Mr. Hamilton with a part of the confidential matter used by him in his pamphlet, and he entered warmly into the cabal to defeat Mr. Adams’s reëlection. It is, however, no more than due to him to add that, of all the parties to it, his letters betray the most profound sense of the degrading measures they resorted to. He designates their conduct as “tremulous, timid, feeble, deceptive, and cowardly. They write private letters. To whom? To each other.” . . . . . “They meditate in private. Can good come out of such a system? If the party recovers its pristine energy and splendor, shall I ascribe it to such cunning, paltry, indecisive, back-door conduct?”

For the evidence to sustain all these views, drawn exclusively from the parties implicated, see O. Wolcott’s private letter to J. McHenry, 26 August, 1800, in Mr. Gibbs’s work, vol. ii. p. 409. Also his public letter of the same date, inclosed in the other, p. 410, which must also be compared with the letter to Hamilton, p. 416. Also McHenry to Wolcott, in the same work, vol. ii. pp. 384-385, 413.