American Phoenix

by Jane Cook

  Fortunately John had no knowledge of this false report that summer of 1810 and would not receive his mother’s letter for months. If he had, he might have moved on from his attempts to develop some rapport with the French. Instead he changed his mind about avoiding Caulaincourt and Laval. He was now determined to keep a closer eye on both of them, especially after several countries had suddenly closed their ports to American cargo.

  It was time for Adams to fight.

  26

  Fencing Pirates

  PIRATES. THAT WAS HOW LOUISA DESCRIBED THE DANES IN AUGUST 1810.

  “I have written by every opportunity but we have heard of the capture of almost every vessel which contained our letters,” Louisa wrote in a letter to Mrs. Cranch, Abigail’s sister, who was housing John and George. “It is shocking to think of the immense property which these pirates have taken from the Americans.”

  Louisa was referring to reports that John had received of Danish privateers capturing at least eleven US ships along the Danish straits. Because of this she realized that her letters might not reach her boys. How would they believe that she longed to give them a thousand kisses if they did not receive her letters? The global circumstances facing US trade affected her personal world.

  Danish privateers were not the only obstacles facing US vessels leaving St. Petersburg. Other nations under Bonaparte’s thumb plagued American ships with increasing pirate-like cruelty.

  Up first was Portugal. Even though Portugal hosted a US minister, as an ally of Great Britain, Portugal was a potential fencing partner against America.

  Local officials at the faraway Russian port of Archangel recently kept two US ships from unloading their cargo because they had first docked in Portugal. In May the Russian government issued a new ordinance prohibiting ships with licenses from Portuguese ports to sell their goods in Russia. The unfairness to American ships was sheer madness to John.

  Like children vying for their father’s attention, diplomats swarmed Chancellor Romanzoff’s house, coming in and out with regularity. Adams would not be outdone. Suspecting France was behind Russia’s new Portuguese prohibition, he took the matter to Romanzoff on August 8, 1810.

  “These vessels sailed from Lisbon at a time when this ordinance could not have been known there,” John reasoned.

  Rather than directly accusing Romanzoff of French influence, this skilled attorney stuck to the obvious issue and launched his best argument: fairness. The timing alone made it impossible for the American captains to have known about Russia’s new ordinance banning ships that first docked in Portugal. The count responded predictably. The measure arose from Russia’s conflict with Portugal and alliance with England. His government could not allow for unfortunate consequences.

  Suspecting that Caulaincourt had convinced Romanzoff otherwise, John pleaded by appealing to benefits to the Russian economy. Allowing these American ships to unload their cargo would fill the pocketbooks of many Russian merchants and shop owners.

  “They have cargoes which would sell at very high prices if admitted, and which in part, must perish if sent away.”

  The count fired back with cool inflexibility. No exceptions. Individual hardships unfortunately resulted from such necessary policies. “There was no way to prevent them,” Romanzoff countered.

  “I then stated the particular circumstances of the Three Sisters, one of the two vessels, which sprung a leak, and must be repaired before she can go away,” John said, trying sympathy.

  At the very least, the captains should be able to sell enough cargo to pay for the repairs. Softened but not relenting, Romanzoff asked John to put the problem in writing. The count quickly changed the conversation. He asked John if he could set aside his official character and talk freely as an individual, not as a Russian government official.

  Delighted, Adams agreed to do the same. The gesture was as comforting as it was freeing. Because he competed with his diplomatic colleagues for Romanzoff’s good favor, John seized any opportunity to share an off-the-record conversation with the count.

  What did Adams think of Prussia’s sudden decision to close its ports to American vessels? Romanzoff wanted to know. Was it Napoleon’s attempt to keep his brother Louis, who had been miserable as Holland’s king, from fleeing from Prussia to America?

  Adams believed the decision was more sinister that that. Prussia had also suddenly stalled US trade in its ports. French tax collectors relished the bribes that they were receiving from ship captains in Prussia. “As long as American vessels were openly admitted they could not be laid under this contribution.”

  Napoleon had turned Prussia against America. When he learned that English ships were falsely raising American flags at Prussia’s ports, he encouraged Prussia to ban the red, white, and blue too. He falsely assumed that their cargo was British even if the sailors were US citizens. Americans had no way to fight forgeries of their commerce. The problems with piratical Prussia increased Adams’s fear that the French would end American commerce in Russia.

  The next pirate was Holland, whose authorities had recently seized all US cargo at their ports. This really worried Adams. Seeing Romanzoff at ease, he took the opportunity to request that Russia would not be next in closing its doors to US trade.

  “I added that I hoped that we had nothing of the same kind to apprehend here.”

  The count assured his American friend. “They [the Russians] should be glad to give every possible facility to direct commerce between the United States and this country,” Romanzoff promised.

  “It was the direct trade alone for which I was solicitous, a trade, I flattered myself, as useful and advantageous to Russia as to the United States.” Adams paused. Should he dare ask the count about the rumors he had heard concerning Denmark’s attempt to influence Russia’s ports? Yes, he decided the time was now or never.

  “I had heard that the Danes,” Adams proposed, “. . . were endeavoring to obtain the exclusion of our vessels here [St. Petersburg].”

  Once again the count reassured John. He had not heard those rumors. Adams clarified. Had any diplomat tried to convince him to close Russia’s ports to US trade?

  Romanzoff denied any diplomatic influence to cut off US trade ships from selling cargo to Russian merchants. Adams left relieved. At least the count agreed to consider the Archangel problem in writing. More important, he denied rumors of other nations trying to convince him to close Russia’s ports to American ships. By denying any diplomatic pressure whatsoever, he was also refuting direct French influence to prohibit US trade there. That pleased Adams more than a hundred days of good weather ever could.

  Almost immediately, however, he had every reason to doubt the count’s assurances.

  The next day Harris came to him with new intelligence. He had recently spoken with another count, who chattered as freely as a gossiping gypsy. The emperor’s council, a group of elite influential Russians, wanted the emperor to do everything he could to maintain good relations with France, “at all events.” The news did not end there.

  “The French ambassador transacts business personally with the emperor, of which neither the council nor Count Romanzoff himself are informed,” Adams recorded of Harris’s intelligence report.

  Ah! John should have known that Caulaincourt did not directly conduct his business with Romanzoff. He should have guessed that the French ambassador would discuss matters only with the emperor. How foolish to think otherwise. Although he was the top foreign affairs minister, Romanzoff was not privy to the conversations between the czar and the French ambassador. What was Caulaincourt whispering in Alexander’s ear? Was he suggesting that Russia close its ports to US ships? Is that why the Archangel authorities refused to let the American captains sell their cargo, even to cover the cost of repairs?

  With this equation, how could Adams possibly strengthen US relations in Europe? The factors for failure multiplied with each fencing pirate, whether Danish, Dutch, Prussian, Portuguese, or French.

  In the mid
st of his anguish over the vessels held hostage at Archangel, John received correspondence from home. Mail arrives so regularly in the modern world that it is hard to fathom a time when the arrival of letters interrupted one’s daily routine. One particular package unleashed John’s insecurity, forcing him to think about his reputation back home and the conditions that sent him abroad in the first place.

  After resigning his Senate seat in 1808, John took refuge at Harvard as a professor. There he buried his disappointment by giving weekly lectures on the subject of rhetoric. Before he left, he organized his speeches for publication. Mr. Gray had received several packages from a ship captain who had recently arrived in St. Petersburg. Among the newspapers and correspondence was a bound copy of John’s lectures—the first time he saw them in print. He was now a published author.

  “I was from dinner-time until past two in the morning absorbed in the perusal of my own lectures without a conception of the lapse of time,” he wrote after poring over the first volume. The title of his book was long: Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, Delivered to the Classes of Senior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University.

  Would his words have the same effect on someone else? Were his lectures engrossing enough to keep someone else up until two in the morning? So he doubted but hoped: “What a portion of my life would I give if they could occasion the same accident to one other human being!”

  Writing is a solitary practice. Publication is a public product. Seeing a bound volume of his work forced him to face the fact that others would be reading—and critiquing—his ideas. “But they are now in their trial upon the world. I pray that I may be duly prepared for resignation to their fate; whether of total neglect; malicious persecution or of deserved condemnation.”

  More than neglect, he feared condemnation from his political opponents, which would “mortify his vanity.” John still had enemies in the US Senate and back home in Boston. Those who rejoiced in his expatriated status would most certainly not praise his publication. He must let his writings go. He could not control how they were received. Because he was in Russia, he could not defend himself quickly among the newspapers of Boston, Washington City, or New York. If the reviews were bad, he would allow them to teach him humility, “a lesson which I sorely want, and which I pray to God to give me the grace to learn.”

  He had done his best then. He must do his best now to advocate for his country in St. Petersburg. It was time to move on to what was ahead.

  Mr. Six stopped by John’s hotel on August 17 to share important news. He was moving to France, at Caulaincourt’s request. Napoleon’s feud with his brother Louis had prompted the change, paving the way for Bonaparte to incorporate all of Holland into the French Empire. Hence, Six was needed in Paris.

  “He could now say with certainty what he had before hinted to me,” Adams recorded of the man’s loose lips, which flapped more freely than ever before. Six decided to share his opinion on the source of the US government’s problems in France.

  “Probably most of the difficulty of our situation with France arose from the dislike, which our minister [General Armstrong] there had incurred, of the French government.”

  Adams had pegged many names as the root of America’s conflicts with France: King George III, his son the prince regent, and Napoleon. It never occurred to him that the French government blamed the American minister to France for its problems with the US government.

  Adams was familiar with the biography of his counterpart to France. John Armstrong was a self-confident Pennsylvanian. Though he had bravely served in the Continental Army and had risen in the ranks as a top aide to a general, many suspected he was the anonymous writer of publications challenging George Washington’s authority and inciting an insurrection by the army against the Continental Congress. After the Revolutionary War, Armstrong served in Pennsylvania’s state government, where he honed his political skills. He later represented New York in the US Senate. When President Jefferson nominated the well-connected Armstrong to France in 1804 as the American minister, Senator Adams voted against him. John believed Armstrong was too aloof and cocky to be a diplomat. Nevertheless, he certainly could not confess his true opinion of Armstrong to the Dutchman.

  Six then gave John a huge surprise. Caulaincourt wanted Adams to represent the United States in France instead of Armstrong. Six explained that Caulaincourt was willing to “freely converse” with Adams about the Armstrong matter and John’s relocation to Paris.

  “He [Caulaincourt] was persuaded if I was there, the difference between the two countries would soon be arranged to our satisfaction,” John recorded with emphasis.

  The suggestion shocked the reserved Adams while intriguing him to learn more.

  27

  French Choice

  MR. SIX WAS SO CONVINCED THAT JOHN WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO could fill Armstrong’s seat in Paris that he begged Adams to immediately write the US secretary of state and request a transfer.

  John’s stoic nature kept him from doing what he probably wanted to do in that moment: laugh heartily out loud. How his father would be amused to know that both Holland’s Mr. Six and France’s Marquis de Caulaincourt thought an Adams could fit into French society and heal America’s wounds with the antirepublican Bonaparte. “I told him I was much obliged to the ambassador’s good opinion of me.”

  The idea of transferring to Paris to escape to his “honorable exile” to Russia had never crossed his mind. The proposition had extraordinary benefits. His sons George and John could voyage with an escort and join them in Paris. There they could, as he had done years earlier, receive a good education.

  The deeper question was more complicated. Could he succeed in France as America’s top diplomat to Napoleon? He doubted it. Could any American succeed there? Perhaps, if that gentleman embraced the free-flowing French high society as Ben Franklin had done years earlier. The science lover in John loved to tinker with weights and measurements, but he knew one thing for sure: he was no Ben Franklin.

  “There was certainly no person in the United States that to whom a failure of such a negotiation would be personally so injurious as to me,” he explained, remembering his political enemies back home. Though he didn’t tell Six explicitly, becoming America’s minister to France was akin to political suicide for an Adams. The move would play into the Federalists’ opinion that he was pro-French. They were pro-British. John was merely pro-American.

  “I had reason besides to suppose that the American government would prefer keeping me here for some time longer, and sending some other minister in case General Armstrong should go home,” he explained with great diplomacy and understatement.

  The Dutch minister pressed the matter, noting that while Armstrong had integrity, the French considered him to be “morose, captious, and petulant.”

  Another question plagued John. Was asking for Armstrong’s recall honorable? No, not unless Armstrong was guilty of dereliction of duty. John could not take a man down without a just cause: “I did not even know what General Armstrong’s offense had been.”

  He could not seek to expel Armstrong, even if doing so meant an escape from his own exile to Russia. “I stood with General Armstrong, I could not in delicacy transmit to the American government any intimation that he was obnoxious to that of France.”

  Adams didn’t fault Six or even Caulaincourt for their opinions of Armstrong. Instead of drawing people to him, the man’s cranky temperament pushed them away. Yet John also knew that if the French government truly understood how much he despised their methods and ideology, they wouldn’t like him very much, either.

  After recording his conversation with Six in his diary, he made a resolution about the Armstrong matter: “My own course upon this occasion is plain—to be silent.”

  His silence lasted only five days. On August 22, John received a summons to a Te Deum at the Winter Palace. The requirement forced him to break from his routine of attending worship services at the English Factory Church. Because the Te Deum cel
ebrated Russia’s recent victory over the Turks, he had no choice but to go.

  He arrived late, but the service had not started. No sooner had he stepped into the long hallway than Caulaincourt cornered him, making him wish that he had left his home even later. Caulaincourt “hoped the differences between his country and mine would be settled.”

  The French ambassador’s tone was unusually reassuring. He told Adams that “it was the desire of the emperor of France and of his ministers to come on the best of terms with the United States; that they knew our interests were the same.”

  Would Adams write the US government and convey France’s sentiments? Caulaincourt pressed as if fencing with a saber.

  If free trade was France’s true interest, then yes, John could agree that their interests were the same. Before he could elaborate, the Frenchman thrust a much more pointed request. Slippery as the snake in the garden of Eden, Caulaincourt dangled an apple of opportunity in front of Adams.

  He was “persuaded that if any other person than General Armstrong was there our business might be settled entirely to our satisfaction.”

  “I told him that as I was very desirous of that, we should come to a good understanding,” John replied diplomatically, avoiding taking a bite. “I regretted very much that anything personal to General Armstrong should be considered by his government as offensive.”

  Although he did not want to defame the general’s character, the question of what Armstrong did to insult the French intrigued him. Even if he wanted the job, he couldn’t risk injuring Armstrong’s character to the US secretary of state without good reason. How could he possibly do something like that, especially remembering how the voting men of Boston treated him after the embargo? He didn’t dare accuse Armstrong of misconduct unless the evidence was overwhelming. What had he done?