John Quincy Adams

by Harlow Unger

  As foreign trade resumed with its attendant prosperity, Americans hailed “Old Hickory”—Andrew Jackson—for his victory at New Orleans, Secretary of War and of State James Monroe for his military strategy, and John Quincy Adams for his successful peace negotiations.

  On February 12, 1815, Louisa Catherine Adams left St. Petersburg with young Charles Francis to rejoin her husband in Paris, where, he had written, “I shall be impatiently waiting for you.”1 Like her husband, she was eager to cast off the pall that confined her with memories of their dead infant daughter. She left St. Petersburg “without a sign, except that which was wafted to the tomb of my lovely babe.”2 In accordance with John Quincy’s instructions, she set out in a large carriage temporarily set on runners to negotiate the snows until they reached roadbeds that permitted normal travel on wheels. Charles Francis and a French nurse rode with her, while two manservants followed in a second carriage on runners, and the two vehicles traveled uneventfully across the Russian snows into Latvia. After an innkeeper warned that “last night a dreadful murder had been committed on the very road I was about to take,” they immediately got lost. She and her son endured a terrifying evening “jolted over hills, through swamps, and holes and into valleys into which no carriage had surely ever passed before, and my whole heart was filled with unspeakable terrors for the safety of my child.”3 A local farmer led them back safely to the road toward Konigsberg, Prussia.

  Many more frights followed—a broken wheel and a night at an inn that Louisa described as “little more than a hovel,” with a “dirty, ugly, and ill-natured” innkeeper and “surly, ill-looking men” as clients.4 The worst horrors of war confronted them as they crossed a battlefield covered with “an immense quantity of bones.” Adding to their terror was the refusal of her two manservants to continue past Frankfurt. Napoléon had escaped from Elbe and was leading a growing army to Paris to reclaim his crown. The two men feared being drafted into his army if they entered France.

  Louisa decided to gamble that the confusion created by Napoléon’s return would leave government officials uncertain whether to close any borders, and she ordered her driver to speed to the French frontier. After crossing safely into France, her Russian carriage reached the outskirts of Épernay in the heart of Champagne, where a company of French troops, on their way from the Russian campaign to join the emperor, stopped and surrounded them, shouting, “They are Russians! Tear them out of the carriage! . . . Kill them!” Fortunately, a general rode up and examined Louisa’s papers, then “called out that I was an American lady going to meet her husband in Paris. At which the soldiers shouted, ‘Vive les Améri-cains’ and desired that I should cry ‘Vive Napoléon,’ which I did waving my handkerchief. They repeated their first cry, adding, ‘Ils sont nos amis’ [They are our friends] and a number of soldiers were ordered to march before the horses.”

  My poor boy seemed to be absolutely petrified and sat by my side like a marble statue. . . . The general warned that my situation was a very precarious one; the army was totally undisciplined; that I must appear perfectly easy and unconcerned. . . . In this way we journeyed, the soldiers presenting their bayonets at us with loud and brutal threats every half hour. The road lined each side for miles with intoxicated men, ripe for every species of villainy, shouting and vociferating “À bas Louis dix-huit! Vive Napoléon! [Down with Louis XVIII! Long live Napoléon!]” till the whole welkin [firmament] rang with the screech, worse than the midnight owls’ most dire alarm to the startled ear.5

  After two more days of travel and one night at an inn, where “soldiers were crowding into the house all night, drinking, and making the most inappropriate noises,” Louisa and Charles Francis reached Paris unharmed on the morning of March 20, forty days after they had left St. Petersburg. At 11 a.m., she and her seven-year-old and his French nurse entered the Hotel du Nord on the rue de Richelieu and reunited with John Quincy Adams for the first time in eleven months. That evening, as John Quincy held “my best friend” in his arms, huge crowds surged through the Paris streets cheering the arrival of Napoléon I and his army of tens of thousands in the capital and at the gates of the Tuileries Palace near the Adamses’ hotel.

  Napoléon had left Elbe on March 1 with seven hundred armed followers and sailed to the Gulf of Juan, between Cannes and Antibes. He led his men northward, planning to cross the Maritime Alps to Grenoble, but a regiment of troops intercepted them. Instead of attacking, however, they rallied around him, then led his way northward across the mountains, with the number of his followers swelling at each village, town, and city. The people of Grenoble turned out to cheer his return. Lyon followed suit. Marshal Michel Ney, the commander of the French army who had promised Louis XVIII to present his majesty with Napoléon in an iron cage, delivered his sword to Napoléon, welcomed him back to France, and turned over command of his regiments. On the night of March 20, Napoléon, surrounded, it seemed, by the entire French population, marched into Paris and seized power—and the palace—from the king, who had fled with his court.

  With Paris in a state of riotous flux, John Quincy packed up his family and prepared to travel to his new assignment in England. Before leaving they drove out to La Grange, east of Paris, to say farewell to the Lafayettes, then headed for the channel port of Le Havre, where thousands of royalists milled about in panic seeking passage to England. Just after the boat carrying John Quincy and his family passed out of French waters, authorities imposed martial law and prevented all other boats from leaving port.

  The Adamses arrived in London on May 25 and went to the American government’s Harley Street house to find their sons, fourteen-year-old George Washington Adams and John Adams II, nearly twelve, waiting for them. It had been six years since their parents had seen them, and Louisa burst into uncontrollable sobs, clasping her two boys in her arms. Eight-year-old Charles Francis was just turning two when he had last seen his brothers and, of course, had no recollection of either of them. Neither parent recognized George. Without a word about his own feelings, John Quincy confided to his diary that Louisa had been “so much overcome by . . . the agitation of meeting so unexpectedly her long absent children that she . . . twice fainted. She was relieved by a warm bath.”6

  Also waiting for John Quincy in London were his old friends from Ghent, Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin. Both were there to join him in negotiating a new Anglo-American treaty of commerce and maritime law—a logical outcome of peace. The United States had been Britain’s largest source of raw materials for two centuries, and Britain had been the largest supplier of finished and manufactured goods to settlers. With the economies of the two lands so interdependent, both governments were eager to resume trade relations.

  Treaty negotiations had only just gotten under way when the Duke of Wellington triumphed at Waterloo in mid-June, ending Napoléon’s one-hundred-day reign and provoking a stiffer British attitude toward the Americans at the negotiating table—until news arrived of American Captain Stephen Decatur’s spectacular naval victories over the Algerines in the Mediterranean. During the Anglo-American War of 1812, the dey of Algiers had declared war against the United States, demanding tribute for the right to sail the Mediterranean, seizing American ships, enslaving their seamen and passengers, and selling most of the ships to the British. When American hostilities with Britain ended, Congress authorized Decatur to lead a ten-vessel fleet to attack the Algerines. In mid-June, over the course of two days, Decatur’s fleet captured two Algerine frigates, one with forty-four guns, the other with twenty-two; he then sailed into Algiers Harbor and forced the dey to release U.S. prisoners, end his depredations against American ships, and withdraw his demands for tribute. Decatur would go on to similar successes against Tunis and Tripoli, which, together with Algiers, agreed to pay the U.S. compensation for the vessels they had seized.

  Decatur’s impressive display of American naval power surprised the British government, which immediately softened its tone at the talks with John Quincy and his colleagues. British for
eign secretary Viscount Castlereagh even went out of his way to send a warm personal note to notify John Quincy of Wellington’s victory. Instead of locking horns over terms of a formal treaty, Castlereagh and John Quincy worked out a less formal, but far broader, four-year, renewable commercial “convention.” It allowed reciprocal establishment of consuls and free commerce by the ships of both nations between the United States and Britain and all British territories, with all products, ships, citizens, and subjects of both nations granted equal status in all ports of both nations. The convention also banned discriminatory duties and port fees and allowed Americans to trade directly in British East Indies ports—Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and so forth—as a most favored nation, thus eliminating costly markups by British intermediaries in England. The convention, with its nondiscrimination provision, would serve as a framework for U.S. trade with all other nations for decades thereafter.

  When the time came to approve the finished convention, however, John Quincy balked suddenly, saying the documents had not provided for the alternat—a French diplomatic term defining the order of appearance of participating parties in the texts of international agreements and of the signatures at the bottom of such agreements. Under the alternat protocol, the order of participating nations and their signatories alternates with each copy of the treaty, with, for example, “Great Britain and the United States” in the British copy appearing as “the United States and Great Britain” in the American copy. Until that moment, the name of U.S. signatories had always appeared after “His Most Christian Majesty,” in the case of U.S. agreements with France, or “His Most Britannic Majesty,” in the case of the peace treaty with Britain in 1783. When time came to approve the new convention with Britain, however, John Quincy found that the document “named the British government and plenipotentiaries first, which was right for their copy.”

  But at the close they had put “done in duplicate,” which was improper. . . . I . . . directed that our copy should be made out, taking the alternative throughout the whole treaty, always naming the American government and plenipotentiaries first, but without any change either in substance or in the words.7

  Fearing John Quincy’s demand might scuttle the entire agreement, Gallatin called the alternat protocol “a matter of no importance,” and Clay agreed, but America’s July 4 Independence Day was just days away, and John Quincy refused to yield. He reiterated his father’s furious demand to the arrogant French prime minister Talleyrand seventeen years earlier that the United States be treated with “the respect due to . . . a free, independent, and powerful nation.”8

  “It will throw the business into confusion,” Gallatin insisted.

  “Mr. Gallatin,” John Quincy replied angrily, “you and Mr. Clay may do as you please, but I will not sign the treaty without the alternative [alternat ] observed throughout.”

  “Now don’t fly off in this manner,” Gallatin countered.

  “Indeed, sir,” John Quincy continued growling, “I will not sign the treaty in any other form.”

  I am so far from thinking with Mr. Clay that it is of no importance that I think it by much the most important thing that we shall obtain by this treaty. The treaty itself I very much dislike, and it is only out of deference to you and Mr. Clay that I consent to sign it at all. I should infinitely prefer to sign no treaty at all, being perfectly convinced that we obtain nothing by it but what we should obtain by the regulations of this government without it.9

  On July 3, 1815, the signatories penned their names on the final documents, and John Quincy Adams savored the joy of having ensured the appearance of his nation’s name first on one of the copies of an international document as a full equal with Great Britain for the first time in history. He then went to celebrate his nation’s Independence Day with his wife and children.

  As minister plenipotentiary, John Quincy next turned to the task of improving his nation’s relations with Britain. To everyone’s surprise in London’s diplomatic circles, John Quincy established a solid working relationship with Britain’s brilliant, politically powerful foreign secretary Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. Castlereagh had organized the grand alliance of European nations that defeated Napoléon, then organized the Congress of Vienna, where he effectively dictated terms of a common peace settlement. In organizing the so-called Concert of Europe, he established a precedent that presaged the intra-European ties of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Two years younger than John Quincy, he was too young to harbor any of the deep antagonisms born of the Anglo-American disputes of the previous century. Raised in wealth and educated at Cambridge, he commanded the same erudition as John Quincy and was an equally skilled diplomat.

  Wellington’s army had been the dominant force at Waterloo, and Castlereagh again dictated terms of peace to ensure Europe’s return to pre-Napoleonic borders, thus preventing Russia from swallowing Poland and Prussia from seizing Saxony. In an expansive mood after his diplomatic triumphs in Europe, Castlereagh showed great respect for John Quincy—not only because of the latter’s position in the American political world and his experience in international diplomacy but because of John Quincy’s breathtaking erudition. As Czar Alexander I had learned, few Western diplomats could match John Quincy’s mastery of classical literature, history, and modern languages. And unlike most diplomats, John Quincy never felt the need to equivocate. From the first, he made it clear that his primary goal was to ensure his nation’s territorial integrity and the safety of her ships and men at sea. He could not have arrived in London at a better time to do just that. With Waterloo and the exile of Napoléon to a volcanic island in the Atlantic where he could bother no one, Europe settled into an unearthly peace after centuries of constant war. “The world of Europe is in a glassy calm,” John Quincy wrote to his father. “Not a breath of wind or a ripple of water is moving.”10

  Like John Quincy, Lord Castlereagh embraced the concept of Anglo-American reconciliation, and at John Quincy’s suggestion, he agreed in principle to total disarmament on the Great Lakes, pledging, “I will propose it to the government for consideration.”11 While the government considered, both men agreed to freeze armaments at then-current levels. A year later, both nations agreed to reduce naval armaments on the Great Lakes to four ships each, armed only enough to enforce customs regulations—a landmark voluntary agreement for reciprocal naval disarmament that would become the longest-lasting and most successful agreement of its kind in the world.

  With the Great Lakes eliminated as a danger zone, John Quincy addressed other issues that had soured Anglo-American relations in the years after the Revolutionary War: impressment, American access to fisheries off the Canadian Atlantic coast, and the return of slaves who had fled to the British West Indies with the British after the war. Castlereagh brushed each of them aside, however, saying they were best postponed until reconciliation between the two countries had progressed and each could address emotional issues more objectively. In the matter of impressment, for example, Castlereagh pointed out the difficulties of determining the true citizenship of seamen not born in one country or the other. As for returning slaves to their owners, he deferred to Prime Minister Charles Jenkinson, the Earl of Liverpool, who asserted as diplomatically as he knew how, “I do not think they can be considered precisely under the general denomination of private property. A table or a chair, for instance, might be taken and restored without changing its condition; but a living human being is entitled to other considerations.”

  Although he insisted that the treaty ending the Revolutionary War had made no such distinction, John Quincy relented, admitting the validity of Liverpool’s point. “Most certainly a living, sentient being, and still more a human being, was to be regarded in a different light from the inanimate matter of which other private property might consist.”12

  Convinced by the arguments of Castlereagh and Liverpool, John Quincy stopped discussing unresolved issues that had no evident solutions and turned his attention to reconciliation be
tween the two governments and the two peoples. “My social duty at present,” John Quincy explained to his father, “is to preach peace. And from the bottom of my soul I do preach it as well to those to whom as to those from whom I am sent. I am deeply convinced that peace is the state best adapted to the interest and the happiness of both nations.”13

  Becoming the consummate ambassador of goodwill, he and, when appropriate, Louisa attended every public function and accepted every invitation they could, including the dinner of London’s lord mayor in the spring of 1816 to honor the Duke of Wellington. After presenting Wellington to John Quincy, the lord mayor toasted “the President of the United States.” John Quincy responded, “My lord, I pray your lordship to accept my hearty thanks for the honor you have done my country. . . . To promote peace, harmony, and friendship between Great Britain and the United States is the first duty of my station. It is the first wish of my heart. It is my first prayer to God.”14

  The all-pervasive peace in the Western world left John Quincy and other diplomats with few, if any, formal negotiations. They and he spent much of their time creating and improving personal ties to each other at receptions, dinners, and balls, and John Quincy established warm—and, as it turned out, lasting—relationships with both Lord Liverpool and Viscount Castlereagh and many others of note. “The Duke of Wellington called in person,” John Quincy enthused in his diary, “and invited me and Mrs. Adams to the wedding in his house. . . . The duchess afterwards called and left her card.”15 John Quincy sought out and befriended as many academic leaders, jurists, and thinkers as possible and established a close friendship with jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who pioneered penal reform in England and with whom John Quincy often walked and talked for hours.