John Quincy Adams

by Harlow Unger

  Despite the presence of friends and companions, John Quincy and Louisa missed their boys dreadfully, and John Quincy took to writing all but daily “Letters to My Children,” describing his and their mother’s adventures. He also tried to impart—as his father had imparted to him—his deep sense of obligation to his country for the liberties he enjoyed and his passion for public service. “Take it, then, as a general principle to be observed as one of the directing impulses of life,” he wrote to his boys, “that you must have some one great purpose of existence . . . to make your talents and your knowledge most beneficial to your country and most useful to mankind.”9

  John Quincy lightened the tone of some letters, noting in one that he had passed a night on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland “catching cod, of which in the interval of a six-hour calm, we have caught upwards of sixty.” He then posed a conundrum that he left unanswered, asking for the “links . . . in the association of ideas” between “cod fishing on the Grand Bank and the history of the United States.”10

  After a pleasant Atlantic crossing, they approached a line of storms as they neared the Danish coast and put into port, where John Quincy “had the mortification to find there upwards of four hundred of my countrymen, the masters and crews of the greater part of thirty-six American vessels, belonging with their cargoes to citizens of the United States captured and detained by privateers under Danish colors, and arrested for many months.”11 Without diplomatic credentials to show the Danish government, John Quincy had no authority to lodge a formal protest, but he displayed “a memorial” that he drew up, addressed “to the President of the United States,” hoping to intimidate Danish officials into releasing the Americans. He thrust it under the nose of every official he could find, before admitting in his report to the secretary of state, “My good offices may probably be of no avail to them.”12

  On October 13, 1809, eighty days after they had left Boston, John Quincy’s ship reached Kronstadt, on Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland opposite St. Petersburg. A Russian admiral greeted them and sailed John Quincy and his entourage across to the Russian capital—only days before the Arctic winds surged in from the North Pole and wrapped the gulf—and all Russia—in an impenetrable deep freeze for the winter.

  The map and political fortunes of Europe had changed radically in the eight years since John Quincy Adams had last set foot in the Old World. Napoléon had seemed on the run in 1801, having suffered humiliating defeats by a powerful English fleet in Egypt and raging mobs of hungry slaves in Haiti. After selling Louisiana and abandoning his territorial ambitions in the New World, he turned to consolidating his power at home—first, by restoring troop morale, then by ensuring the superiority of their arms and artillery, and finally, by setting them loose to assault the fragile defenses of Europe’s tiny, divided nations. By the time John Quincy returned to Europe, Napoléon’s armies ruled—directly or by proxy—the lands stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and from the Straits of Gibraltar to Russia’s western borders. Napoléon’s boot had trampled over Portugal, Spain, Italy, Naples, the Vatican, Switzerland, western Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, the German states, Prussia, and Poland. Although French troops had stopped short of Vienna, they encamped so near that Austrian officials feared shifting a leaf of official paper without a nod of approval by a French officer.

  Emperor Napoléon I brought the Pope from Rome to crown him and his wife, Josephine, emperor and empress. (RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX)

  Determined to outdo even Charlemagne, Napoléon ordered a religiously based coronation that would exceed in grandeur the coronation ceremonies of all previous French kings. Charlemagne at least had traveled to Rome to force the Pope to crown him; Napoléon abducted Pope Pius VII and brought him to Paris for the coronation. Like Charlemagne, Napoléon took a crown from the Pope, placed it on his own head, and anointed himself “Emperor for Life.” He then took a second crown and put it on the head of his wife, Josephine. 13

  By the time John Quincy arrived in St. Petersburg, Britain stood alone with her powerful navy as the only western deterrent to French territorial ambitions. With French troops massed along the channel coast for an invasion of Britain, British warships attacked and sank any and all ships bound to or from continental Europe in an effort to starve Napoléon’s Grande Empire. British attacks had destroyed almost as many neutral Russian ships on the Baltic and North Seas as they had American ships on the Atlantic. Both Russia and the United States saw establishment of diplomatic relations as a possible way of solving their common problems with England. President Madison, therefore, purposely flattered the Russians by appointing the son of a former American President as U.S. minister plenipotentiary. His gesture did not go unnoticed.

  Besides the United States, only Napoléon’s France and the Kingdom of Sweden had ministers plenipotentiary at the czar’s court, while ten other nations maintained diplomatic ties through ordinary ministers. The Russian chancellor, or prime minister, therefore invited John Quincy to a private audience the day after his arrival and to be guest of honor at an elaborate banquet for the diplomatic corps. A week later, the czar summoned John Quincy to the breathtakingly beautiful Imperial Palace where, to John Quincy’s enormous surprise and relief, the Russian ruler awaited him in his private office—alone. When John Quincy entered, Czar Alexander I—about ten years younger than the American—stepped forward, hand outstretched to greet Adams, saying, “Je suis très content de vous recevoir”—“I’m very happy to see you here.”14 John Quincy reported that the czar took him by the arm—an astonishing gesture of familiarity in a world where divinely appointed royals never touched commoners.

  Alexander I had acceded to the throne after a band of noblemen assassinated his father, the harsh despot Paul I. Unlike his father, Alexander had studied under a liberal Swiss educator, and after becoming czar, he granted amnesty to political prisoners and repealed many of his father’s harshest laws and edicts. Foreign wars, however, erupted along Russia’s borders, and Alexander found himself in a vise, first joining Britain in the war against Napoléon and, when the French army defeated Russian forces at the Battle of Friedland in 1806, agreeing to join the French coalition against Britain. Russia was still a nominal French ally when John Quincy arrived in St. Petersburg in 1810, although Alexander refused to restrict overseas trade to the French sphere of influence as Napoléon had demanded. Like the United States, Russia championed freedom of the seas as a basic tenet of international law.

  John Quincy, of course, spoke French as well as or better than the czar. He also understood enough Russian to allow the czar to digress into occasional anecdotes in his native tongue. At their first meeting, the czar walked John Quincy to a window overlooking the Neva River, then confided that he considered the American foreign policy of neutrality to be “wise and just” and that “they may rely on me not to do anything to withdraw them from it.”15 John Quincy was ready with a reply:

  The political duty of the United States towards the powers of Europe is to forbear interference in their dissensions. . . . The United States, by all the means in their power, consistent with their peace and their separation from the political system of Europe, will contribute to the support of the liberal principles to which your majesty has expressed so strong and so just an attachment. 16

  John Quincy’s first meeting with the czar quickly grew into an unprecedented relationship between a monarch and a commoner, with the czar inviting John Quincy to join him in morning walks on the quay along the Neva. The two men discussed international news, and the czar continually peppered John Quincy with questions about life in America. Nor was the friendship limited to the two men, although Louisa’s friendship with the czarina had started somewhat differently.

  “I went with a fluttered pulse,” Louisa recalled, “dressed in a hoop with a silver tissue skirt with a train, a heavy crimson velvet robe with a very long train . . . white satin shoes, gloves, fan, etc. and over all this luggage my fur cloak . . . and thus accoutered
I appeared before the gentlemen of our party who could not refrain from laughter at my appearance.” A countess greeted her, escorted her to the reception room where the empress was to enter, and instructed her “that I must stand unmoved until her Imperial Majesty walked up to me; that when she came up I must affect to kiss her hand which her Majesty would not permit and that I must take my glove off so as to be ready and take care in raising my head not to touch her majesty.”17

  It was two-year-old Charles Francis Adams, however, who inadvertently shattered imperial protocol, catching the Russian royal couple by surprise and winning their hearts. When John Quincy and Louisa brought him to the palace for his first visit, the childless czar and czarina fell to their hands and knees with joy, laughing at the antics of the little American boy, whom they subsequently invited regularly to attend balls and banquets for children at the Imperial Palace.

  Clearly favorites of the czar and his court, the Adamses became the centerpieces of social events in the Russian capital. Invited to every diplomatic function, large and small, John Quincy sent more intelligence about European affairs to the State Department than any other U.S. minister in Europe. With easy access to the czar, John Quincy persuaded the Russian leader to intervene with the Danish government to free American ships and their seamen. The czar then ordered the release of American ships held for ransom by local satraps in Russian ports and opened Russian waters to free trade with the United States. Within weeks, American ships were sailing in and out of Russian ports, developing profitable new trade routes for both the United States and Russia.

  As in Berlin, most of John Quincy’s work in Russia was to listen to other diplomats and gather intelligence for the State Department. Trapped by Russia’s bitterly cold winter, the diplomatic community warmed itself with free-flowing vodka and champagne at lavish banquets and balls that routinely lasted until 3 or 4 a.m. and left most participants drunk, talkative, and exhausted.

  “I went in a chariot and four,” John Quincy wrote to his brother Thomas to describe the Russian chancellor’s hospitality, “attended by two footmen and driven by a coachman on the carriage box and a postilion . . . on the right-side horse of the leading pair.” Upon his entering the chancellor’s palace, a row of twenty footmen stood “like so many statues” on either side of a broad marble staircase. A dinner of innumerable courses of fish, poultry, and meats climaxed with multiple desserts of fruits and ice creams, accompanied by a choice of liquors and frozen champagne. “The attention of the servants to the guests at the table is so vigilant,” John Quincy told Thomas, “that you scarcely have occasion to ask for anything. The instant you have emptied your plate or that you lay down your knife and fork or spoon, your plate is taken away and a clean one is given you in its stead.” He said the footmen “see your need for fresh bread as soon as you do yourself. . . . Everything moves like a piece of clockwork.”18

  Louisa was equally astonished, calling the chancellor’s banquet “like a fairy tale,” with the emperor’s table “served on solid gold. That of the corps diplomatique with silver. The chancellor was said to have 300 servants of different grades, 150 at least wearing magnificent liveries according to their grades.”19

  The evenings of luxury, however, contrasted sharply with the Adamses’ own living conditions. With a salary of only $9,000 a year and another $9,000 in annual living expenses, John Quincy could hardly compete with the French ambassador’s expense allowance of $350,000 a year or even the Dutch minister’s modest $17,500-a-year allowance.o It took months, but John Quincy finally found an affordable house to rent for about $2,100 a year, but he had to spend nearly $6,000 on furnishings. “The firewood,” he explained, “is, luckily, included as a part of the rent,” as were salaries for more than a dozen servants—a steward, a cook and two assistant cooks, a servant to tend the fires, a coachman and postilion, two footmen, a porter, valet, lady’s maid, housemaid, and laundry maid. “The porter, the cook, and one of the footmen are married,” John Quincy complained in a letter to his mother,

  and their wives live in the house. The steward has two children, and the washerwoman a daughter, all of whom are kept in the house. I have baker’s, milkman’s, butcher’s, greengrocer’s, poulterer’s, fishmonger’s and grocer’s bills to pay monthly, besides tea, coffee, sugar, wax and tallow candles. On all these articles of consumption, the cook and steward first make their profits on the purchase and next make free pillage of the articles themselves. The steward takes the same liberty with my wines.20

  One evening, John Quincy stepped into his cellar and found 373 bottles missing—272 of them “the choicest and most costly wines I had.”21

  Their expenses left the Adamses unable to reciprocate the many invitations they received from the czar and members of the diplomatic corps, but no one seemed to care. The Adamses—John Quincy, Louisa, and her attractive younger sister Catherine—all spoke French beautifully and made up in social skills what they lacked in their ability to entertain. John Quincy did such a good job explaining the Puritan American ethos to the czar that the Russian ruler gave his staff instructions to exempt the Adamses from the many dress requirements, including the costly and elaborate wigs worn by men and women and the exorbitantly expensive, bejeweled gowns of noble ladies—a different one each night through the season.

  After the Adamses arrived at an Imperial Palace ball with Louisa’s sister Catherine—“Kitty,” as her family called her—the thirty-two-year-old czar made the twenty-four-year-old the target of amorous advances. Day after day, he appeared magically at one turning or another as the two American ladies took their daily walks. Louisa recalled that, at a ball at the French embassy, “he sought [Kitty] out himself to dance, and she, not knowing the etiquette, began laughing and talking to him as she would have done to an American partner . . . and produced a buzz of astonishment”—especially as he danced into the dinner hour and forced hungry guests to delay their meal until he took a seat.

  Her dance floor tryst with Czar Alexander provoked a spate of invitations for Kitty and her family to attend theater presentations, receptions, and other events that the czar attended. Each invitation included instructions for the Adamses to use the czar’s private entrance. Soon, his attentions broadened, with the czar appearing wherever Kitty and her sister happened to be—in the park, at the museum, at the concert hall or theater . . . anywhere and everywhere. Although unnerved by the frequency of their encounters, Louisa dared not interfere with the czar’s attentions. Although he acted like a smitten schoolboy, he was nonetheless a schoolboy with absolute power over the life and death of every living being in the land.

  As the Adamses continued dining and dancing in St. Petersburg, Abigail Adams had taken her son’s complaints about his low wage and high living costs straight to the President. Even the President hesitated tangling with Abigail Adams, and in September 1810, when Supreme Court Associate Justice William Cushing died, Madison submitted John Quincy’s name to the Senate, which immediately approved the appointment. Born and raised in Massachusetts and educated at Harvard, Cushing had been the first justice appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington twenty-one years earlier.

  To the astonishment of all, John Quincy turned down the appointment, using as his excuse the pregnancy of his wife and the impossibility, given her history of miscarriages, of her traveling without endangering her own life and that of her unborn child. His refusal devastated his parents, with his mother saying the Supreme Court appointment would have ensured “the preservation of your family from ruin.” John Adams feared his son’s refusal would provoke “national disgust and resentment.”22 As he had when his son had resigned from the Senate, John Adams again predicted an end to John Quincy’s career in public service and to his hopes for assuming national leadership.

  CHAPTER 9

  Restoring Peace to the World

  John Quincy and Louisa Adams were enjoying life in Russia too much to leave, and he still hated the thought of devoting his entire life to the law
. As he told his brother Thomas, “I am conscious of too little law even for practice at the bar, still less should I feel myself qualified for the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

  I am also and always shall be too much of a political partisan to be a judge. . . . If the servile drudgery of caucuses, the savage buffeting of elections, the filth and venom of newspaper and pulpit calumny, and the dastardly desertion of . . . friends . . . are to be my lot as it has been in time past, I shall with the blessing of God live through it again as I have done before.1

  After John Quincy turned down the Supreme Court nomination, two of his law students decided to return home to America, freeing the Adamses of two responsibilities. On July 11, John Quincy celebrated his forty-fourth birthday; two weeks later, he and Louisa celebrated their fourteenth wedding anniversary; and two weeks after that, on August 11, Louisa gave birth to a baby girl.

  “My child!” Louisa cried joyfully “A daughter! The first I was ever blessed with. . . . My sister went and announced her birth to her father and he soon came in to bless and kiss the babe.”2

  The birth of a girl enthralled John Quincy as much as it did Louisa. “I think this will convince you,” he wrote playfully to his mother, “that the climate of St. Petersburg is not too cold to produce an American.”

  In an Anglican service on September 11, “my little babe was christened,” Louisa wrote, “and she was named after me by her father’s special desire contrary to my wish.” Although the czar offered to be the little girl’s godfather, John Quincy declined discreetly for a myriad of religious, political, and logistical reasons.

  In the ecstasy of watching her baby grow, Louisa wrote, “O she grows lovely. Such a pair of eyes!! I fear I love her too well.”3