American Aurora

[B]elieve me, it was not to the exertions of America that we owe the Reduction of this modern Hannibal. Nor shall we always have it in our power to Command the aid of 37 [French] sail of the Line and 8,000 [French] Auxiliary veterans—Our Allies have learned that, on this Occasion, our regular troops were not more equal to one half their Land force … [O]ur means & numbers were far inadequate …

Wednesday, August 16, 1780. At two this morning at Camden, South Carolina, Britain’s two-thousand-man Southern Army, led by British General Charles Cornwallis, surprises and completely demolishes America’s four-thousand-man Southern Army, led by American General Horatio Gates (“the hero of Saratoga”). In this disastrous encounter, the American army suffers two thousand casualties, and Gates abandons his reputation, his military career, and America’s Southern Army by ignominiously fleeing in the midst of battle, on the army’s fastest horse and with a personal guard of six, to Hillsborough, North Carolina. As Alexander Hamilton asked,

Was there ever an instance of a General running away, as Gates has done, from his whole army? and was there ever so precipitous a flight? One hundred and eighty miles in three days and a half. It does admirable credit to the activity of a man at his time of life. But it disgraces the General and the soldiers …¹²⁰⁶

At this Battle of Camden, Baron Johann de Kalb of the French army, who accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette to America and volunteered without pay for the American cause, dies of multiple musket balls and a sabre wound to his head.¹²⁰⁷

Thursday, August 17, 1780. The failure in recruitment for the Continental army has jeopardized the possibility of a Franco-American operation this year. Today, George Washington writes the Committee of Co-operation:

We are now arrived at the middle of August … [O]ur operations must commence in less than a month from this, or it will absolutely be too late …

I am sorry to add that we have every reason to apprehend we shall not be in a condition at all to undertake any thing decisive. The completion of our Continental batalions … has been uniformly and justly held up as the basis of offensive operations. How far we have fallen short of this …¹²⁰⁸

Sunday, August 20, 1780. Today, George Washington writes the Continental Congress:

To me it will appear miraculous if our affairs can maintain themselves much longer in their present train. If either the temper or the resources of the Country will not admit of an alteration, we may expect soon to be reduced to the humiliating condition of seeing the cause of America, in America, upheld by foreign Arms. The generosity of our Allies has a claim to all our confidence and all our gratitude, but it is neither for the honor of America, nor for the interest of the common cause, to leave the work entirely to them.¹²⁰⁹

Tuesday, September 12, 1780. Today, George Washington writes the commander of France’s fleet in the West Indies:

The situation of America at this time is critical. The Government without finances; its paper credit sunk, and no expedients it can adopt [are] capable of retrieving it … [British General Sir Henry] Clinton, with an army of ten thousand regular troops … [is] in possession of [New York] one of our capital towns, and a large part of the State to which it belongs … [and] a fleet, superior to that of our allies, not only to protect him against any attempts of ours, but to facilitate those he may project against us. [British General] Lord Cornwallis, with seven or eight thousand men, [is] in complete possession of two States, Georgia and South Carolina; a third, North Carolina, by recent misfortunes at his mercy …

By a Letter lately received from General [Horatio] Gates, we learn that, on the 16th of last month, attempting to penetrate and regain the State of South Carolina, he met with a total defeat near Camden [South Carolina], and the remainder dispersed, with the loss of all their cannon and baggage …

I write to you with that confidence and candor which ought to subsist between allies and between military men … To propose at this time a plan of precise cooperation would be fruitless …¹²¹⁰

Friday, September 15, 1780. Today, George Washington writes the Continental Congress:

I have the honor to inform Congress that to-morrow I set out for Hartford to have an interview on the 20th with the [French General] Count De Rochambeau and the [French Admiral] Chevalier De Ternay.¹²¹¹

Friday, September 22, 1780. Today, George Washington concludes two days of talks at Hartford, Connecticut, with French General Rochambeau and French Admiral de Ternay. The Marquis de Lafayette has acted as interpreter. Washington memorializes his position, including:

1st. That there can be no decisive enterprise … without a constant naval superiority.

2d. That of all the enterprises which may be undertaken, the most important and decisive is the reduction of New York …¹²¹²

Tuesday, September 26, 1780. Another of Washington’s generals has failed him. Today, George Washington reports the bad news from his headquarters, across the North (Hudson) River from West Point:

I arrived here yesterday, on my return from an interview with the French General and Admiral and have been witness to a scene of treason as shocking as it was unexpected. General [Benedict] Arnold, from every circumstance, had entered into a plot for sacrificing West Point. He had an interview with Major André, the British Adjutant-General, last Week … By an extraordinary concurrence of incidents, André was taken on his return with several papers in Arnolds handwriting that proved the treason. The latter unluckily got notice of it before I did, went immediately down the river … and proceeded to [British headquarters in] New York.¹²¹³

Monday, October 2, 1780. Today, from Paris, Benjamin Franklin writes the U.S. Minister to Spain, John Jay:

At length I got over a Reluctance that was almost invincible and made another Application to the [French] Government here for more Money … I have now the Pleasure to acquaint you that my Memorial was received in the kindest and most friendly Manner, & tho’ the Court here is not without its Embarrassments on Account of Money, I was told to make myself easy, for that I should be assisted with what was necessary …

I being much pleased with the generous behavior just experienced, I presented another Paper, proposing … that the Congress might furnish their Army in America with Provisions in Part of Payment for the Sum lent us. This Proposition I was told was well taken; but, it being considered that the States having the Enemy in their Country and obliged to make great expenses for the Present Campaign, the furnishing so much Provisions as the French Army might need might straiten and be inconvenient to the Congress, his Majesty did not at this time think it right to accept the offer. You will not wonder at my loving this good prince. He will win the Hearts of all America.¹²¹⁴

Sunday, October 8, 1780. Today, Benjamin Franklin belatedly breaks the bad news to John Adams:

I ought to acquaint you, a governo, as the merchants say, that M. le Comte de Vergennes, having taken much amiss some passages in your letters to him, sent the whole correspondence to me, requesting that I would transmit it to Congress. I was myself sorry to see those passages. If they were the effects merely of inadvertence and you did not on reflection approve of them, perhaps you may think it proper to write something for effacing the impressions made by them. I do not presume to advise you, but mention it only for your consideration.¹²¹⁵

Monday, October 30, 1780. Today, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette (now commanding six battalions of light infantry in advance of the main army) exchange letters. The Marquis de Lafayette writes Washington:

Any enterprise will please the people of this Country, [and] show them that … we have men who do not Lay still … The French Court have often Complain’d to me of the inactivity of that American Army who Before the Alliance had distinquish’d themselves [at Saratoga] By theyr spirit of enterprise. They have often told me, your friends Leave us now to fight theyr Battles and do no more Risk themselves. It is moreover of the greatest political importance to let them know that on our side we were Ready to Cooperate … [I]f any thing may engage the ministry to give us the ask’d for support, it will be our proving to the nation on our side we had been Ready … I well know the Court of Versailles, and was I to go to them, I would think it very impolitical to go there unless we had done something.¹²¹⁶

Wednesday, November 22, 1780. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

On the report of a committee, Congress agreed to the following letter and representation to his most Christian Majesty [of France] …

[W]e ought not to conceal from your Majesty the embarrassments which have attended our national affairs …

A naval superiority in the American seas having enabled the enemy in the midst of last winter to divide their army and extend the war to the southern states, Charles Town [South Carolina] was subdued …

The acquisition of Charles Town, with the advantages gained in Georgia … encouraged the British commander in that quarter to penetrate through South Carolina into the interiour parts of North Carolina …

To divert the reinforcements destined for those states, they are now executing an enterprise against the seacoast of Virginia …

At a time when we feel ourselves strongly impressed by the weight of past obligations, it is with the utmost reluctance that we yield to the emergency of our affairs in requesting additional favors … From a full investigation of our circumstances, it is manifest that, in aid of our utmost exertions, a foreign loan … will be indispensably necessary …¹²¹⁸

Monday, December 4, 1780. Today, on reports of a complaint lodged against Franklin in Congress, Foreign Minister Vergennes writes French Minister Luzerne in Philadelphia:

I have too good an opinion of the intelligence and wisdom of the members of Congress and of all true patriots to suppose that they will allow themselves to be led astray … As to Dr. Franklin, his conduct leaves nothing for Congress to desire. It is as zealous and patriotic as it is wise and circumspect, and you may affirm with assurance … that the method he pursues is much more efficacious than it would be if he were to assume a tone of importunity in multiplying his demands, and above all in supporting them by menaces, to which we should neither give credence nor value, and which would only tend to render him personally disagreeable …

Furthermore, … upon the first request of their minister, we have promised him a million of livres to put him in a condition to meet the demands made on him from this time till the end of the year …¹²¹⁹

Friday, December 8, 1780. Washington is desperate. Someone must detail his needs to France. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

Resolved, That a minister be appointed to proceed to the Court of Versailles for the special purpose of soliciting the aids requested by Congress, and forwarding them to America without loss of time.

Ordered, That Monday next be assigned for electing the said minister.¹²²⁰

Sunday, December 10, 1780. Today, from his camp at New Windsor, New York (north of West Point along the North [Hudson] River), George Washington writes New York political leader Gouverneur Morris:

[R]elative to an enterprize against the enemy in News York … Where are the men? Where are the provisions? Where the cloaths, the everything necessary to warrant the attempt … ? Our numbers … were diminished in the Field so soon as the weather set in cold; near 2000 Men on account of cloaths which I had not to give … [W]e have neither money nor credit adequate to the purchase of a few boards for Doors to our Log huts … [W]e cannot dispatch an Officer or common Express upon the most urgent occasion for want of the means of support … I have not been able to obtain a farthing of public money for the support of my Table for near two Months …¹²²¹

Monday, December 11, 1780. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

Congress proceeded to the election of a minister agreeably to the order of the 8th, and the ballots being taken, Colonel John Laurens was unanimously elected.¹²²²

Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, an aide-de-camp of General Washington and son of Henry Laurens, the former president of the Continental Congress, will leave for Paris to request additional funds.

Monday, January 1, 1781. New Year’s Day. Today, about 2,400 men (approximately one fourth) of the Continental army turn a New Year’s celebration into a mutiny.¹²²³ From his camp at New Windsor, New York, George Washington reports:

On the night of the Ist instant, a mutiny was excited by the Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of the Pennsylvania Line which soon became so universal as to defy all opposition. In attempting to quell this tumult in the first instance, some Officers were killed, others wounded, and the lives of several common Soldiers lost. Deaf to the arguments, entreaties, and utmost efforts of all their Officers to stop them, the Men moved off from Morris Town, the place of their Cantonment, with their Arms and six pieces of Artillery: and from Accounts just received by Genl. Wayne’s Aid De Camp, they were still in a body on their March to Philadelphia to demand a redress of their grievances. At what point this defection will stop, or how extensive it may prove, God only knows; at present the Troops at the important Posts in this vicinity remain quiet, not being acquainted with this unhappy and alarming affair; but how long they will continue so cannot be ascertained …

The aggravated calamities and distresses that have resulted from the total want of pay for nearly twelve Months, the want of cloathin … and not unfrequently the want of provisions, are beyond description …¹²²⁴

Wednesday, January 10, 1781. Congress does not want John Adams to alienate America’s French ally. Today, President of the Continental Congress Samuel Huntington writes a warning to John Adams:

Congress consider your correspondence with the Count de Vergennes on the subject of communicating your plenipotentiary powers to the ministry of Great Britain as flowing from your zeal and assiduity in the service of your country; but I am directed to inform you that the opinion given to you by that minister [Vergennes], relative to the time and circumstances proper for communicating your powers and entering upon the execution of them, is well founded.¹²²⁵

The British have burned Richmond! Today, Thomas Jefferson, now Governor of Virginia, writes George Washington:

On the 31st. of December, a Letter … came to my hands notifying that in the morning of the preceding day, 27 Sail of vessels had entered the capes … [T]he 2d inst … it was ascertained they were enemies and had advanced up James river … They marched from Westover at 2 o Clock in the afternoon of the 4th. and entered Richmond at 1 o Clock in the afternoon of the 5th. A regiment of infantry and about 30 horse continued on without halting at the Foundery. They burnt that, the boring mill, the magazine, and two other houses … The next morning they burnt some buildings of public and some of private property, with what stores remained in them, destroyed a great quantity of private stores and about 12 o Clock retired to Westover where they encamped within the neck the next day. The loss sustained is not yet accurately known … Their numbers from the best intelligence I have had are about 1500 infantry and as to their cavalry accounts vary from 20 to 120, the whole commanded by the parricide [Benedict] Arnold. Our militia … can be called in slowly. On the day the enemy advanced to this place, 200 only were called in … The whole country in the tide waters and some distance from them is equally open to similar insult.¹²²⁶

Monday, January 15, 1781. Today, George Washington summarizes the nation’s needs to Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, who is preparing to leave for France:

To me it appears evident:

That the efforts we have been compelled to make for carrying on the war have exceeded the natural abilities of this country, and by degrees brought it to a crisis, which renders immediate and efficacious succours from abroad indispensable to its safety … The depreciation of our currency was, in the main, a necessary effect of the want of … funds; and its restoration is impossible for the same reason …

That the patience of the army, from an almost uninterrupted series of complicated distress, is now nearly exhausted, and their discontents matured to an extremity …

That, the people being dissatisfied with the mode of supporting the war … may weaken those sentiments which begun it …

That, from all the foregoing considerations result: 1st, The absolute necessity of an immediate, ample, and efficacious succour of money. 2dly, The vast importance of a decided effort of the allied arms on this Continent [for] the ensuing campaign … Without the first, we may make … the period [end] to our opposition. With it, we should be in a condition to continue the war …

That, next to a loan of money, a constant naval superiority on these coasts is the object most interesting … This superiority, (with an aid in money), would enable us to convert the war into a vigorous offensive …

That an additional succour of troops would be extremely desirable. Besides a reinforcement of numbers, the excellence of the French troops, that perfect discipline and order in the corps already sent, which have so happily tended to improve the respect and confidence of the people for our allies … all these considerations evince the immense utility of an accession of force to the corps now here.¹²²⁷

Today, Washington also writes a letter to Benjamin Franklin, explaining Laurens’ mission:

The present infinitely critical posture of our affairs made it essential, in the opinion of Congress, to send from hence a person who had been eye-witness to their progress and who was capable of placing them before the Court of France in a more full and striking point of light than was proper or even practicable by any written communications …

What I have said to him, I beg leave to repeat to you, that to me nothing appears more evident than that the period [termination] of our opposition will very shortly arrive if our allies cannot afford us that effectual aid, particularly in money and in a naval superiority which are now solicited …¹²²⁸

Today, Washington also writes a letter of thanks to Benny Bache’s mother, Sarah Bache, for organizing Philadelphia’s women to sew 2,500 shirts for the army:

Although the friendship of your Father may oblige him to see some things through too partial a Medium, Yet the indulgent manner in which he is pleased to express himself respecting me is indeed very pleasing … Mrs. Washington requests me to present her Compliments to Mr. Bache and yourself …¹²²⁹

Sunday, January 21, 1781. Today, another mutiny in the Continental army. George Washington reports:

I have received the disagreeable intelligence that a part of the [New] Jersey Line had followed the example of that of Pennsylvania; and when the advices came away, it was expected the revolt would be general. The precise intentions of the Mutineers was not known, but their complaints and demands were similar to those of the Pennsylvanians … I have ordered as large a Detachment as we could spare from these Posts to march under Major General Howe … to compel the Mutineers to unconditional submission …¹²³⁰

Tuesday, February 6, 1781. Today, George Washington writes his representative at the Continental Congress on matters of army reorganization:

You will have heard of the defections of the Pennsylvania line … It has ended in a temporary dissolution of the line. One half has been absolutely discharged and the remainder have been furloughed to reassemble in the beginning of April … [A] part of the Jersey line since followed their example and gave us an opportunity, after compelling all the mutineers to an unconditional surrender, to make examples of two of the most active leaders …¹²³¹

Twelve mutineers were forced to compose the firing squad that executed two of their leaders.

Sunday, February 11, 1781. Today, Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, accompanied by Thomas Paine, sets sail from Boston for France aboard the frigate Alliance, Captain John Barry.¹²³² Tom Paine:

Nothing was done in the campaigns of 1778, 1779, 1780 in the part where George Washington commanded, except the taking of Stony Point by General Wayne. The Southern States in the meantime were overrun by the enemy. They were afterwards recovered …

In all this General Washington had no share. The Fabian system of war, followed by him, began now to unfold itself with all its evils; but what is Fabian war without Fabian means to support it? The finances of Congress, depending wholly on emissions of paper money, were exhausted. Its credit was gone. The Continental Treasury was not able to pay the expense of a brigade of wagons to transport the necessary stores to the army, and yet the sole object, the establishment of the Revolution, was a thing of remote distance. The time I am now speaking of is in the latter end of the year 1780.

In this situation of things, it was found not only expedient, but absolutely necessary for Congress to state the whole case to its ally … Colonel John Laurens was sent to France as an envoy extraordinary on this occasion, and by private agreement between him and me I accompanied him. We sailed from Boston in the Alliance frigate, February 11, 1781.¹²³³

Tuesday, February 13, 1781. Today, in France, Ben Franklin petitions French Foreign Minister Vergennes for additional aid:

[T]he following is a paragraph of a letter from General Washington, which I ought not to keep back from your Excellency, viz. “[O]ur present situation makes one of two things essential to us; a peace or the most vigorous aid of our allies …” [F]or effectual friendship and for the aid so necessary in the present conjuncture, we can rely on France alone and in the continuance of the King’s goodness towards us.

I am grown old. I feel myself much enfeebled by my late long illness, and it is probable I shall not long have any more concern in these affairs. I therefore take this occasion to express my opinion to your Excellency that the present juncture is critical …¹²³⁴

Monday, February 19, 1781. Today, French Foreign Minister Vergennes writes French Minister Luzerne in Philadelphia:

I have no doubt that … [John Adams] is a zealous patriot … but his character and turn of mind are essentially opposed to what is proper in political intercourse; he is, and will be, a negotiator as embarrassing for his superiors as for those who have affairs to negotiate with him. I am so convinced of this as to foresee with a certain pain Mr. Adams taking a part in the negotiations for peace. I have already observed this to you in previous dispatches and repeat it now, so that you may see, if you are not able to have him replaced, have him at least given a colleague capable of restraining him.¹²³⁵

Thursday, March 1, 1781. Today, the United States have finally ratified Articles of Confederation. By the terms of the Articles, the Continental Congress will continue to make national decisions:

Article V … [D]elegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislature of each state shall direct …

In determining questions in the United States in Congress assembled, each state shall have one vote …

Articles IX … The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war … nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof … nor borrow money … nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy unless nine [of the thirteen] states assent to the same …¹²³⁶

These Articles of Confederation do not reflect Ben Franklin’s plan. They do not provide for direct popular election of delegates by small voting districts of equal population size. They don’t provide for state representation in proportion to population. Delegates “appointed … as the legislature of each state shall direct” are those that state senates (the “interests of property”) will allow.

Under these Articles, the national government will continue ineffective, lacking the ability to tax, draft soldiers, or compel state compliance with its legislation. Continental currency is worthless. The Continental Congress will stop printing money this month.¹²³⁷

Friday, March 9, 1781. Today, from France, French Foreign Minister Vergennes writes the French minister in Philadelphia:

I confess to you that, whatever good opinion I may entertain of the patriotism of John Adams, I see him, with regret, entrusted with so difficult and so delicate a duty as that of pacification, on account of his pedantry, stubbornness and self-importance, which will give rise to a thousand vexations to the despair of his co-negotiators.¹²³⁸

Today, on his mission to get more French aid, Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, accompanied by Thomas Paine, arrives at the French port of L’Orient.¹²³⁹

Monday, March 12, 1781. John Laurens will not reach Versailles until later in the month.¹²⁴⁰ In the meantime, Ben Franklin has acted on his own and today reports the results to the president of Congress:

I had the honor or receiving … your Excellency’s letter, together with … a copy of [the instructions] to Colonel Laurens … I immediately drew a memorial, enforcing as strongly as I could the requests that are contained in that letter … Mr. Laurens not arriving, I wrote again and pressed strongly for a decision on the subject …

Upon this, I received a note, appointing [last] Saturday for a meeting with the [French Foreign] minister which I attended punctually. He assured me of the King’s good will to the United States; remarking, however, that, being on the spot, I must be sensible of the great expense France was actually engaged in and the difficulty of providing for it … but that … his Majesty had resolved to grant them the sum of six millions not as a loan but as a free gift …¹²⁴¹

Thursday, March 15, 1781. Today, at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse at Guilford, North Carolina, British General Charles Cornwallis prevails over America’s Southern Army, which General Nathanael Greene has rebuilt, primarily from state militias, following Horatio Gates’ ignominious defeat last August at the battle of Camden, South Carolina. Although, in today’s battle, North Carolina militiamen occupy the front lines only briefly and abandon the field after firing just two volleys, Greene’s men inflict many casualties on the British.¹²⁴² After this battle, Nathanael Greene will lead his army south into South Carolina, and General Cornwallis will lead his British army deeper into North Carolina and then back to Virginia.

Tuesday, March 20, 1781. Today, from Paris, Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens writes the Continental Congress:

Upon my arrival here I found that the letter of Congress to his Most Christian Majesty of the 22nd of November, 1780, had been delivered by our Minister Plenipotentiary [Dr. Franklin]; that he had proceeded to negotiate the succors solicited by Congress …¹²⁴³

Lieutenant Colonel Laurens will, nonetheless, explain America’s plight to the Count de Vergennes. John Laurens:

I endeavored to represent … [t]hat … the immense pecuniary resources of Great Britain and her constant naval superiority were advantages too decisive to be counterbalanced by any interior exertions on the part of the United States … that [America’s] aggravated calamities … began now to produce dangerous uneasinesses and discontents … that … the succor solicited was … indispensable.¹²⁴⁴

Tuesday, March 27, 1781. Today, George Washington writes Virginia that he has no troops to spare:

By the expiration of the times of service of the old troops, by the discharge of the Levies engaged for the Campaign only, and by the unfortunate dissolution of the Pennsylvania line, I was left … with a Garrison barely sufficient for the security of West Point …

In my late tour to the Eastward, I found the accounts I had received of the progress of recruiting … much exaggerated …

You will readily perceive, from the foregoing state, that there is little probability of adding to the force already ordered to the southward …¹²⁴⁵

Monday, April 9, 1781. Today, from his camp at New Windsor, George Washington writes his emissary, Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, in Paris:

[B]e assured, my dear Laurens, that day does not follow night more certainly than it brings with it some additional proof of the impracticability of carrying on the war without the Aids you were directed to sollicit. As an honest and candid man, as a man whose all depends on the final and happy termination of the present contest, I assert this. While I give it decisively as my opinion, that, without a foreign loan, our present force (which is but the remnant of an Army) cannot be kept together this campaign, much less will it be encreased and in readiness for another …

We are at this hour suspended … [W]e cannot transport the provisions from the States in which they are Assessed to the Army, because we cannot pay the Teamsters who will no longer work for Certificates. It is equally certain that our Troops are approaching fast to nakedness, and that we having nothing to cloath them with. That our Hospitals are without medicines … That all our public works are at a stand … [B]ut why need I run into the detail, when it may be declared in a word, that we are at the end of our tether, and that now or never our deliverance must come.¹²⁴⁶

Thursday, April 12, 1781. Today, Benjamin Franklin answers William Carmichael’s report that John Adams and others have disparaged Franklin in Congress:

I thank you very much for your friendly hints of the Operations of my Enemies, and of the means I might use to defeat them. Having in view at present no other Point to gain but that of Rest, I do not take their Malice so much amiss … [Certain enemies] are open, and so far, honourable Enemies; the Adams, if Enemies, are more covered. I never did any of them the least injury and can conceive no other Source of the Malice but Envy … Those who feel Pain at seeing others enjoy Pleasure and unhappy because others are happy, must daily meet with so many Causes of Torment, that I conceive them to be already in a State of Damnation …¹²⁴⁷

Thursday, April 19, 1781. Today, from Paris, French Foreign Minister Vergennes writes his minister in Philadelphia:

The letter that Congress wrote Mr. Adams concerning his correspondence with me only dealt with the issue of when this minister should communicate his commission to the court at London … I would have preferred Congress … to establish a rule for him not to permit himself the smallest departure from the advice of the King; this is the only way to contain Mr. Adams and to make us the masters of his conduct. I beg you to make this point to the president of Congress, to do everything you can to make him see the justice of it, and to have him engage the Congress to send supplementary instructions to Mr. Adams …¹²⁴⁸

Monday, April 23, 1781. Today, the Marquis de Lafayette writes George Washington that the slaves at Mount Vernon are volunteering to fight with the British:

When the enemy came to your house, many negroes were ready to join him … [Y]ou cannot conceive how unhappy I was to learn that M. Lund Washington went on board the enemy battleships and consented to give them provisions.¹²⁴⁹

Monday, April 30, 1781. Today, from his camp at New Windsor, New York, George Washington writes his estate manager Lund Washington (a distant cousin) at Mount Vernon:

[T]hat which gives me the most concern is that you should go on board the enemys Vessels and furnish them with refreshments … You ought to have considered yourself as my representative and should have reflected on the bad example of communicating with the enemy …

I … believe that your desire to preserve my property and rescue the buildings from impending danger were your governing motives. But to go on board their Vessels; carry them refreshments; commune with a parcel of plundering Scoundrels, and request a favor by asking the surrender of my Negroes, was exceedingly ill judged …¹²⁵⁰

British General Charles Cornwallis will have two thousand American Negro slaves on the British side at Yorktown. Many of George Washington’s slaves will join the British to fight George Washington.¹²⁵¹

Friday, May 11, 1781. Today, French Foreign Minister Vergennes writes the French minister in Philadelphia that Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens is tactless and offensive:

We flatter ourselves especially, Monsieur, that Congress will not only not share but will condemn high-handedly the discontent that distinguishes M. Laurens, and that it will seek to inspire in this officer a few of the facts of our customs and some of the considerations which are due to the ministers of a great power; he has made several demands, not only with unfit importunity, but even employing threats.¹²⁵²

Monday, May 14, 1781. Today, from Paris, Ben Franklin writes the Marquis de Lafayette:

I hope that by this time, the ship which has the honor of bearing your name, is safely arrived. She carries clothing for nearly twenty thousand men, with arms, ammunition, &c. which will supply some of your wants, and Colonel Laurens will bring a considerable addition …

This Court continues firm and steady in its friendship, and does everything it can for us. Can we not do a little more for ourselves?¹²⁵³

Tuesday, May 22, 1781. Today, George Washington and French General Rochambeau meet at Wethersfield, Connecticut, to plan the coming campaign. George Washington still favors an attack on New York City. From notes of the meeting:

ROCHAMBEAU—Should the squadron from the West Indies arrive in these seas … what operations will General Washington have in view, after a union of the French army with his own?

WASHINGTON—The Enemy, by several detachments from New York, have reduced their force at that post … [I]t is thought advisable to form a junction of the French and American Armies down to the vicinity of New York to be ready to take advantage of any opportunity which the weakness of the enemy may afford. Should the West Indies Fleet [under Admiral de Grasse] arrive upon the Coast, the force thus combined may either proceed in the operation against New Y[or]k, or may be directed against the enemy in some other quarter …¹²⁵⁴

Monday, May 28, 1781. Today, George Washington writes the French Minister in Philadelphia, the Chevalier de La Luzerne:

[O]ur object is New York. The Season, the difficulty and expense of Land transportation, and the continual waste of men in every attempt to reinforce the Southern States, are almost insuperable objections … ; nor do I see how it is possible to give effectual support to those States and avert the evils which threaten them while we are inferior in naval force in these Seas.¹²⁵⁵

Friday, June 1, 1781. Today, Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, still accompanied by Thomas Paine, departs the French port of Brest for the United States aboard the frigate Résolu. Tom Paine:

The event of Colonel Laurens’s mission, with the aid of the venerable Minister, Franklin, was that France gave in money, as a present, six millions of livres, and ten millions more as a loan, and agreed to send a fleet of not less than thirty sail of the line, at her own expense, as an aid to America. Colonel Laurens and myself returned from Brest the first of June following, taking with us two millions and a half of livres (upwards of one hundred thousand pounds sterling) of the money given, and convoying two ships with stores.¹²⁵⁶

Monday, June 11, 1781. Today, from Rhode Island, French General Rochambeau writes French Admiral de Grasse in the West Indies,

I will not deceive you, Sir; these people are at the end of their resources; Washington will not have half the troops that he counted upon having, and I believe, although he is silent on the subject, that he has not 6,000 men; that Lafayette has not 1,000 men of the regular troops with the militia to defend Virginia; about as many are marching to join him; that General Greene has made an attack upon Camden and has been repulsed; and I am ignorant as to when and how he will rejoin Lafayette … The arrival of M. Le Comte de Grasse can save [this country]; all the means we have at hand avail nothing without his help and the naval superiority that he can secure.¹²⁵⁷

Today, from New York, British Commander in Chief Sir Henry Clinton writes British General Charles Cornwallis in Virginia:

I am threatened with a siege at this post … With respect to … the enemy … it is probable they may amount to at least 20,000, besides reinforcement to the French … Thus circumstanced, I am persuaded … the sooner I concentrate my force the better. Therefore … I beg leave to recommend it to you … to take a defensive station in any healthy situation you choose (be it at Williamburg or York Town). And I would wish … the following corps may be sent to me … Two battalions of Light infantry, 43rd regiment … [&c.]¹²⁵⁸

Tuesday, June 12, 1781. Today, from Virginia, former congressional delegate Richard Henry Lee writes the Continental Congress that cavalry from the British Southern Army, under Charles Cornwallis, have attacked Charlottesville Virginia (seat of government since the fall of Richmond), and that Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson has resigned and fled:

I suppose you have been informed of the junction of the enemies forces on James river and many of their subsequent movements … [T]he enemy halted their main body in the forks of Pomunkey, and detached 500 Cavalry with an Infantryman behind each to Charlottsville where our uniformed Assembly was collected by adjournment from Richmond. The two houses were not compleated, and Mr. Jefferson had resigned his office and retired, as some of our dispersed Delegates report, when the enemy entered Charlottsville this day [and] night and dispersed the whole, taking Mr. Digges the Lieutenant Governor prisoner and some Delegates, Mr. Lyons the Judge and many others … You will then judge of the situation of this country, without either executive or Legislative authority, every thing in the greatest possible confusion … Let the Congress send [Washington] immediately to Virginia …¹²⁵⁹

Jefferson “resigned” (Jefferson also used this word)¹²⁶⁰ and fled eight days ago (June 4th) when the British cavalry attacked Charlottesville, ending plans for a gubernatorial election (Jefferson’s term expired June 1st). Jefferson fled to one of his plantations, Poplar Forest, in Bedford County, where he will remain in hiding six weeks or more. Virginia’s legislature will hold hearings on this conduct.¹²⁶¹

Wednesday, June 13, 1781. Today, George Washington writes French General Rochambeau:

It is to be regretted that the Count [de Grasse]’s stay upon this coast will be limited …

[Y]ou have in your communication to him confined our views to New York alone … [W]ill it not be best to leave him to judge … which will be the most advantageous quarter for him to make his appearance in … Should the British fleet not be there, he could follow them to the Chesapeak which is always accessible to a superior force.¹²⁶²

France (in the person of French Admiral de Grasse), not Washington, will choose to engage the British at Yorktown, Virginia.

Friday, June 15, 1781. Today, the Continental Congress withdraws John Adams’ credentials as America’s sole minister to make peace with Great Britain. The Journals report:

The committee reported the draft of a commission … for negotiating a peace, which being amended, was agreed to as follows: …

That we … have thought proper to renew the powers formerly given to the said John Adams and to join four other persons in commission with him; and … by these presents do nominate, constitute, and appoint … Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and Thomas Jefferson in addition to the said John Adams, giving and granting to them … full power and authority … relating to the establishment of peace.

Having reduced John Adams to one of five peace commissioners, Congress gives Adams and his fellow commissioners clear instructions:

For this purpose [of negotiating peace with Britain] you are to make the most candid and confidential communications upon all subjects to the ministers of our most generous ally, the King of France; to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or truce without their knowledge and concurrence; and ultimately to govern your selves by their advice and opinion, endeavoring in your whole conduct to make them sensible how much we rely upon his majesty’s influence for effectual aid in everything that may be necessary to the peace, security, and future prosperity of the United States of America.¹²⁶³

Saturday, June 16, 1781. Today, French General Rochambeau writes French Admiral de Grasse:

General Washington has but a handful of men, which could possibly reach to about 7,000 or 8,000. The army of Cornwallis is in the heart of Virginia, between Richmond and Fredericksburg … You can well understand that under these conditions how urgent it is that you bring some troops with you; this country is at bay, all its resources are failing at the same time: the continental paper is worth absolutely nothing.¹²⁶⁴

Monday, June 18, 1781. Today, a French army of 4,400 soldiers, under General Rochambeau, starts its march south from Rhode Island to join George Washington’s two-thousand-man Continental army near New York City.¹²⁶⁵

Wednesday, June 20, 1781. Today, France liberates Richmond and the rest of Virginia, as British General Charles Cornwallis withdraws Britain’s Southern Army to a point of possible embarkation for New York (accommodating Sir Henry Clinton’s fear that French reinforcements of Washington may imperil New York). Cornwallis repositions the British army at Yorktown, Virginia, where the York River opens to the Chesapeake and the Atlantic.¹²⁶⁶

Thursday, June 21, 1781. Today, Massachusetts congressional delegate James Lovell writes John Adams why Adams is no longer the only peace commissioner:

France … presses us for an Arrangement … Franklin, Jay, H. Laurens, and Jefferson are added to you [as peace commissioners] … [Y]our other parchments are untouched … I presume you will be at very little Loss to come at the Clue of this Labyrinth. [Vergennes] persuaded [Congress] of the absolute Necessity of the most cordial Intercourse between him … and Suppleness [Franklin] … I must officially convey to you some Papers.¹²⁶⁷

Thursday, July 12, 1781. Today, the Continental Congress withdraws John Adams’ credentials to negotiate a commercial treaty with Britain. The Journals report:

A motion was made by Mr. Madison, seconded by Mr. Mathews, That the [commerce] commission and instructions for negotiating a treaty of commerce between these United States and Great Britain given to the honourable John Adams on the 29 day of September, 1779, be and they are hereby revoked.

On the question to agree to this, the yeas and nays being required … So it was resolved in the affirmative [20 yeas to 6 nays].¹²⁶⁸

Friday, July 13, 1781. Today, Massachusetts congressional delegate James Lovell writes John Adams’ wife, Abigail:

[Y]our all [Mr. Adams] is not servile enough to gain the unbounded affection of the foreign Court at which he resided when he had the Correspondence which produced the two Resolves of Congress … [Y]ou would have found that [the Count de Vergennes] wrote two Letters in a pet against Mr. A[dams] to old F[ran]k-l[i]n and that the latter had also written a most unkind and stabbing one hither which he was under no necessity of doing, as he needed only to have transmitted the Papers given to him for the Purpose by the former.¹²⁶⁹

Sunday, July 15, 1781. Today, George Washington writes Richard Henry Lee of Virginia:

The fatal policy of short enlistmts … is now shedding its baneful influence … [N]ot half the Men which were required to be with the Army as recruits for the Continental Batt[alio]ns by the first day of Jan[uar]y last are yet arrived—and of those asked by me from the Militia, not one is come.¹²⁷⁰

It may be insisted here that Mr. Washington had under him a few and bad troops, and that his situation was always destitute. But were all this true, is it not part of a general to create everything; resources, skill, courage, ardor, and numbers. This was the talent of Henry IV of France …¹²⁷¹

Saturday, July 21, 1781. Today, from Philadelphia, Massachusetts congressional delegate James Lovell writes another letter to John Adams, this time about the loss of Adams’ commerce commission:

The whole of the Proceedings here in regard to y[ou]r two commissions are, I think, ill judged, but I persuade myself no dishonour intended. [T]he business greatly in every View chagrins me. [T]his you will have learnt from my former Letters written in an half-light.¹²⁷²

I have the honor to inform you that the allied Armies have formed a junction and taken a position about Ten miles above the enemy’s posts on the North end of [New] York Island … The French Force consists of 4400 Men. The American is at this time very small …¹²⁷³

Monday, July 30, 1781. George Washington doesn’t want to move south. Today, he writes the Marquis de Lafayette:

[F]rom the change of circumstances with which the removal of part of the Enemy’s force from Virginia to New York will be attended, it is more than probable that we shall intirely change our plan of operations. I think we have already effected … substantial relief to the southern States by obliging the enemy to recall a considerable part of their force from thence. Our views must now be turned towards endeavouring to expel them totally from those States if we find ourselves incompetent to the siege of New York …

I approve your resolution to reinforce General Greene …¹²⁷⁵

It is not George Washington’s army but rather Rochambeau’s that caused the withdrawal of British troops from the south. Likewise, it is not George Washington’s army but General Nathanael Greene’s that has been clearing the British from the Carolinas.¹²⁷⁶ Tom Paine:

Mr. Washington had the nominal rank of Commander in Chief, but he was not so in fact. He had, in reality, only a separate command. He had no controul over, or direction of the army to the northward under Gates that captured Burgoyne [at Saratoga], nor of that to the South, under Green, that recovered the southern States. The nominal rank, however, … makes him appear as the soul and center of all military operations in America.¹²⁷⁷

Thursday, August 2, 1781. Today, George Washington writes the Continental Congress:

Congress will readily conceive the disagreeable situation in which I find myself, when they are informed that I am not stronger at this advanced period of the Campaign than when the Army first moved out of their Winter Quarters … [N]ot a single Man had come in from Massachusetts … [O]nly 176 from Connecticut had arrived at that post yesterday. In short, not a single Militia Man from any State has joined the Army, except the few just mentioned, about 80 Levies of New York, and about 200 State Troops of Connecticut, both of which were upon the Lines previous to my leaving our Winter Cantonments …

The General Return for June, which I have lately sent by Capt. Roberts to the Board of War … exhibits an Army upon paper rather than an operating Force … [T]he Civil departments having been totally destitute of Money, have been unable to hire or pay the Men necessary for their uses …¹²⁷⁸

A commander in chief … should be able to choose decisive positions; he should shine in the arts of subsisting and recruiting an army … in a talent for obtaining information; in the invention of stratagems; in the supply of expedients for the cases (and many are the cases) untouched by the general rules; in inspiring a soul into an army; and in the provoking an enemy to disadvantageous action.

What are the talents however which Mr. Washington has displayed … ? Let us read … his diligent correspondence for three long years and a half and doubtless omitting nothing calculated (according to his maturer judgment) for advancing his reputation.—Did he ever anticipate that experience of which we have been speaking; did he even always keep pace with it; did he detect the impropriety of many professional measures which were imposed on him by Congress and others; does he animate us? What still life for three years and a half! We find that the time passes, but we scarcely perceive that he is at war; and if he ever seems a general, it is because he has to contend with those who were not. He relates, he argues, and sometimes he even projects; but how seldom does he act with success.¹²⁷⁹

Wednesday, August 8, 1781. Today, a French fleet of twenty-eight ships of the line, under French Admiral the Comte de Grasse, bearing a French army of 4,600, under French Major General the Marquis de St. Simon, heads north from the West Indies to join another French fleet of eight ships of the line, under French Admiral the Comte de Barras, which will head south from Newport, Rhode Island. Another French army of four thousand, under French General the Comte de Rochambeau, has already left Newport, Rhode Island, for the march south. These French fleets and French armies all follow orders from France to support George Washington.¹²⁸⁰

Sunday, August 12, 1781. Today, in Geneva, Switzerland, Benny Bache turns twelve years old. He is a bit homesick. This week, he will write his grandfather,

[I] know that it is impossible for you to write me because of your busy schedule, but I would very much like to have news from you, and I beg you to write me some as soon as it will be possible for you and if you have the time …¹²⁸¹

Matters having now come to a crisis and a decisive plan to be determined on, I was obliged, from the shortness of Count de Grasse’s promised stay on this coast, the apparent disinclination in their Naval Officers to force the harbour of New York and the feeble compliance of the States to my requisitions for Men, hitherto, and little prospect of greater exertion in the future, to give up all idea of attacking New York; and instead thereof to remove the French Troops and a detachment from the American Army to the Head of Elk [at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland] to be transported to Virginia for the purpose of co-operating with the [French] force from the West Indies against the [British] Troops in that State.¹²⁸²

Thursday, August 16, 1781. Today, from Paris, Ben Franklin writes John Adams in the Netherlands that Adams is no longer sole commissioner to negotiate peace with Great Britain:

I have the honor to inform your excellency that I yesterday received despatches … ordering me upon an additional service, that of being joined with yourself and Messrs. Jay, H[enry]. Laurens and T. Jefferson in negotiations for peace … I shall be glad to learn from your excellency what steps have already been taken in this important business.¹²⁸³

Sunday, August 19, 1781. Today, French General the Comte de Rochambeau leads his French army south from New York toward Virginia.¹²⁸⁴

Friday, August 24, 1781. Today, the French fleet at Newport, Rhode Island, now commanded by French Admiral the Comte de Barras (French Admiral de Ternay died in December), sets sail for the Chesapeake Bay and Virginia with eight ships of the line, four frigates, and eighteen transports. This fleet carries critical siege artillery and other provisions for the armies of General Rochambeau and Washington which are now marching from New York to Virginia.¹²⁸⁵

Today, in Amsterdam, John Adams receives letters from Massachusetts congressional delegate James Lovell (June 21st) and Ben Franklin (August 16th), informing him that the French Foreign Minister and Ben Franklin have deprived him of his position as sole commissioner to make peace with Great Britain.¹²⁸⁶

Saturday, August 25, 1781. Today, in Amsterdam, in composing an answer to Ben Franklin’s letter of August 16th, John Adams suffers a nervous collapse.¹²⁸⁷ John Adams:

I found myself attacked by a fever, of which at first I made light, but which increased very gradually and slowly until it was found to be nervous fever of a very malignant kind, and so violent as to deprive me of almost all sensibility for four or five days and all those who cared anything about me of the hopes of my life …¹²⁸⁸

I was seized with … a nervous Fever, of a dangerous kind, bordering upon putrid. It seized upon my head, in such a manner that for five or six days I was lost, and so insensible to the Operations of the Physicians and surgeons, as to have lost the memory of them … ¹²⁸⁹

Today, Tom Paine and John Laurens arrive in Boston Harbor aboard the frigate Résolu, bringing money and supplies from France. Tom Paine:

We arrived at Boston the twenty-fifth of August … De Grasse arrived with the French fleet in the Chesapeake at the same time, and was afterward joined by that of Barras, making thirty-one sail of the line. The money was transported in wagons from Boston to the bank at Philadelphia …¹²⁹¹

Monday, August 27, 1781. Today, not knowing that Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens and Tom Paine have arrived in Boston with money from France to pay Washington’s soldiers, George Washington writes Robert Morris, Superintendent of Finance for the Continental Congress:

I must entreat you, if possible, to procure one month’s pay in specie for the detachment which I have under my command. Part of those troops have … upon several occasions shown marks of great discontent. The service [down south in Virginia] they are going upon is disagreeable to the Northern Regiments; but I make no doubt that a douceur [bribe] of a little hard money would put them in proper temper. If the whole sum cannot be obtained, a part of it will be better than none, as it may be distributed in proportion to the respective wants and claims of the Men. The American detachment will assemble in this neighbour-hood today; the French Army to-morrow.¹²⁹²

Monday, September 3, 1781. Today, on their march to Yorktown, Virginia, the French army parades, in dress-white uniforms, through the streets of Philadelphia to the sounds of a military band, the cheers of Americans, and the salutes of General Washington, their commander General Rochambeau, and the American Continental Congress. A French clergyman records the scene:

The arrival of the French army at Philadelphia was more like a triumph than simply a passing through the place; the troops made a halt about a quarter of a league from the city, and in an instant were dressed as elegantly as ever the soldiers of a garrison were on a day of review; they then marched through town, with military music playing before them, which is always particularly pleasing to the Americans; the streets were crowded with people, and the ladies appeared at the windows in their most brilliant attire. All Philadelphia was astonished to see people who had endured the fatigues of a long journey so ruddy and handsome, and even wondered that there could possibly be Frenchmen of so genteel an appearance.

The troops next marched in single file before the Congress and [before] M. Le Chevalier de la Luzerne, minister from the court of France …

The maneuvers of our troops raised the most flattering expectations in the minds of the spectators; and they did not hesitate to declare that such soldiers were invincible.¹²⁹³

Congress was on the route, and we showed it the respect the King had ordered us to show, the thirteen members of the Congress taking off their thirteen hats at each salute of the flag … ¹²⁹⁴

The french troops are the finest & best body of men I ever beheld—their Officers and Gen’l & I will be answerable for their being soldiers; we have the highest Opinion of their Discipline & can not doubt their prowess.¹²⁹⁵

Today, Superintendent of Finance for the Continental Congress Robert Morris writes in his diary:

The Commander in Chief having repeatedly urged, both by letter and in conversation, the necessity of advancing a month’s pay to the detachment of troops marching to the southward … and my funds and resources being at the time totally inadequate to make that advance, … I made application to the Count de Rochambeau …

General Washington was extremely desirous that the troops should receive their month’s pay, as great symptoms of discontent had appeared on their passing through this city without it …

Count de Rochambeau very readily agreed to supply at the head of the Elk twenty thousand hard dollars …¹²⁹⁶

Today, September 5th, at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay off Yorktown, Virginia, the largest and most significant naval battle of the American Revolution begins, as twenty-eight French ships-of-the-line from the West Indies, under French Admiral de Grasse, challenge nineteen British ships-of-the-line (and a fifty-gun British ship) from New York, commanded by British Rear Admiral Thomas Graves. A five-day engagement (the Battle of the Virginia Capes) ensues, in which the French navy is victorious, inflicting 336 casualties on the British force (at the cost of 220 French killed and wounded), damaging a seventy-four-gun British ship so badly that it has to be burned and abandoned, and causing British Rear Admiral Graves to retreat with his fleet to New York. This French victory means that the British will not be able to reinforce Cornwallis in Virginia and, even more important, that Cornwallis cannot escape by water from the Yorktown embankment on which the French and American armies now have him trapped.¹²⁹⁷

Friday, September 7, 1781. British Commander in Chief Sir Henry Clinton knows he faces a calamity. Today, he writes British Colonial Secretary Lord George Germain:

The force of the enemy opposed to his lordship [Lord Cornwallis] will consist of the French troops arrived [from the West Indies] with De Grasse which are reported to be between three and four thousand; those [French troops under General Rochambeau] with Washington 4000; the rebel continentals about 4000; and in all probability a very numerous militia if they can arm them.

This my lord, is a very alarming report … Things appear to be coming fast to a crisis …¹²⁹⁸

NEW YORK, Sept 5. By accounts from the Chesapeake, dating the 31st ult. the arrival of the French fleet or squadrons, consisting of 28 sail, including frigates and inferior vessels, were arrived at Lyn-Haven Bay, in Virginia, from whence a 64–[gun ship of the line] and two frigates were dispatched up York River, and had taken a position off York-Town.

PHILADELPHIA, September 12. By an express which arrived here last Wednesday evening …

Extract of letter from his Excellency General Washington to the President of Congress …

“With great pleasure to transmit to your Excellency … [an announcement of] the late arrival in the Chesapeake of Admiral de Grasse with 28 [French] ships of the line …” …

Note, the above fleet is exclusive of that [French fleet] under the command of Count Barras [which is arrived from Newport].

Upon the above news arriving in the city, the bells of Christ Church were rung, and joy appeared in every countenance. About seven o’clock a large body of citizens waited on the Minister of France to congratulate him upon this important intelligence. They gave him three cheers, and concluded with crying out “Long Live the King of France.”

Today, September 12th, British Commander in Chief Sir Henry Clinton writes British Colonial Secretary Lord George Germain:

Other matters of most serious moment now attract our attention—a French army of at least eight thousand men, a powerful fleet of the same nation cooperating with them—the continental army … —to these may be added a numerous and warlike militia. Your lordship knows that France … [has] made considerable loans and sent them supplies of all sorts. Nothing therefore is wanting but to prevail on those already enlisted to remain.

[I]n this situation of affairs your lordship must be sensible that … I may perhaps be unable to preserve our present possessions. For (as I have often had the honour of suggesting to your lordship) if the enemy retain only a few weeks superiority at sea, we shall certainly be beat …

Lord Cornwallis has good 6000 men with him … I had some intention of moving into Jersey … But the instant I knew of the French actually being there and that Washington had moved decidedly to meet them, I saw no way of relieving his lordship [Lord Cornwallis] but by joining him …¹²⁹⁹

There are approximately 32,000 French soldiers and sailors at Yorktown,¹³⁰⁰ four to six times the number of George Washington’s army, and more than twice, if not three times, the number of all Americans at Yorktown, including militia. Indeed, there are many more French soldiers on the ground than American Continentals. The entire blockading force at sea is French.¹³⁰¹

Sunday, September 16, 1781. Today, from Yorktown, British General Lord Cornwallis writes British Commander in Chief Sir Henry Clinton:

The enemy’s [French] fleet has returned. Two line of battleships and one frigate lie at the mouth of this river, and three or four line of battleships, several frigates, and transports went up the bay …

PS … [T]hey have thirty-six sail of the line. This place is in no state of defence. If you cannot relieve me very soon, you must be prepared to hear the worst.¹³⁰²

By engaging British Admiral Thomas Graves’ fleet in the Battle of the Virginia Capes, the French fleet from the West Indies (under French Admiral de Grasse) has allowed the French fleet from Newport (under Count de Barras) to slip into the Delaware River with vital siege artillery and provisions for the allied armies.¹³⁰³

Wednesday, September 26, 1781. Today, British Commander in Chief Sir Henry Clinton writes British Colonial Secretary Lord George Germain:

I have received a letter from the [British] Admiral [Graves in the Chesapeake] … to inform me that the enemy, being absolute masters of the navigation of the Chesapeake, there was little probability of getting into York River but by night and an infinite risk to any supplies sent by water, at the same time acquainting me that he had on the 5th a partial action with the French fleet of 24 sail of the line and that the two fleets had been in sight of each other ever since …

On the 17th I received another letter from the Admiral [Graves] … saying … that … he determined to shelter in New York …¹³⁰⁴

Of French and American forces which encircle Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, the naval part of this circle consists strictly of French warships (more than thirty) and sailors (nineteen thousand!).¹³⁰⁵ America has no warships in this naval blockade.

Friday, October 12, 1781. The siege of Yorktown is begun. Today, George Washington writes the Continental Congress on its progress:

We … established our first parallel within 600 Yards of the enemy’s Works with the loss of only one Officer of the French artillery wounded and 16 privates killed and wounded, the greater part of which were of the French line …

The 9th at 3 O’Clock in the Afternoon, the French Battery on the left … opened—and at 5 O’Clock the American Battery on the right … opened also …

We were informed that our shells did considerable execution in the Town, and we could perceive that our shot … injured them much. The 10th, two French Batteries … opened, as did two more American Batteries … The fire now became so excessively heavy that the enemy withdrew their Cannon from their embrazures … In the evening, the Charon Frigate of 44 Guns was set on fire by a hot Ball from the French Battery on the left …

We last night advanced our second parallel within 300 yards of the enemy’s Works …

I cannot but acknowledge the infinite obligations I am under to His Excellency, the Count de Rochambeau … and indeed the Officers of every denomination in the French Army for the assistance which they afford me. The experience of many of those Gentlemen, in the business [of siege warfare] before us, is of the utmost advantage … [T]he greatest harmony prevails between the two Armies …¹³⁰⁶

Orchestrating the siege at Yorktown is strictly a matter for the French. Washington has no experience in siege warfare. The French perfected the art.¹³⁰⁷ Rochambeau has taken part in fourteen sieges.¹³⁰⁸ General Lebigne, the Chevalier Du Portail, and other French officers and engineers take charge of siege operations.¹³⁰⁹

Monday, October 15, 1781. Today, finally recovered from his nervous collapse, John Adams writes the Continental Congress:

I have received the new commission for peace [as part of a five-man commission] and the revocation of my [sole peace] commission and instructions of the 29th of September, 1779. To both of these measures of Congress, as to the commands of my sovereign, I shall pay the most exact attention …

[A]ccording to the best judgment I can form, it will not be worth while for Congress to be at the expense of continuing me in Europe with a view to my assistance at any conferences for peace, especially as Dr. Franklin has given me intimations that I can not depend upon him for my subsistence in the future …

In short, my prospects both for the public and for myself are so dull and the life I am likely to lead in Europe is likely to be so gloomy and melancholy and of so little use to the public, that I can not but wish it may suit with the view of Congress to recall me.¹³¹⁰

Tuesday, October 16, 1781. Today, George Washington reports to Congress on Yorktown fighting:

[H]aving deemed the two Redoubts [fortified emplacements] on the left of the enemy’s line sufficiently injured by our shot and shells to make them practicable, it was determined to carry them by assault on the evening of the 14th. The following disposition was accordingly made. The Work on the enemy’s extreme left to be attacked by the American Light Infantry under the command of the Marquis de La Fayette; the other by a detachment of the French Grenadiers and Chasseurs, commanded by Major-General, the Baron Vioménil … [W]e succeeded in both … Nothing could exceed the firmness and bravery of the Troops. They advanced under the fire of the Enemy without returning a shot, and effected the business with the Bayonet only … [A]ttacks on the part of the French and American Columns were Conducted …

The enemy last night made a sortie for the first time. They entered one of the French and one of the American Batteries … They were repulsed … The French had four officers and twelve privates killed and wounded, and we had one serjeant mortally wounded …¹³¹¹

Two French soldiers die for each American death at Yorktown. Two French soldiers are wounded for each American wound at Yorktown. French casualties exceed 250.¹³¹²

A word about Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton at Yorktown … John Adams writes:

You inquire what passed between W.[ashington] and Hamilton at Yorktown? Washington had ordered, or was about to order, another officer to take command of the attack upon the redoubt. Hamilton flew into a violent passion and demanded the command of the party for himself and declared if he had it not, he would expose General Washington’s conduct in a pamphlet.¹³¹³

Hamilton’s scorn of Washington is no surprise to me. Those who trumpeted Washington in the highest strains at some times spoke of him at others in the strongest terms of contempt … Hamilton, Pickering, and many others have been known to indulge themselves in very contemptuous expressions … The history with which Hamilton threatened to destroy the character of Washington might diminish some of that enthusiastic exaggeration which represents him as the greatest general, the greatest legislator, and the most perfect character that ever lived …

I lose all patience when I think of a bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar [Hamilton] daring to threaten to undeceive the world in their judgment of Washington by writing an history of his battles and campaigns. ¹³¹⁴

Friday, October 19, 1781. Today, the British army of Lord Cornwallis surrenders, signaling the end of the American Revolution. The British army files out of the village of York between two lines of French and American soldiers, though the British clearly attribute their loss to the French rather than to the Americans. A French observer:

[T]hey would not raise their eyes to look upon their conquerors … The English officers, in coming out, had the honesty to salute even the lowest French officer, something that they would not do to Americans even of the first grade … In all the time that the British remained at York, one did not see them have any communication with the Americans, while they lived constantly with the French and sought constantly to give them proof of their esteem …¹³¹⁵

British General Charles O’Hara, acting on behalf of General Charles Cornwallis (who has pleaded illness), attempts to surrender Cornwallis’ sword to French Commander in Chief General the Comte de Rochambeau, but Rochambeau magnanimously refuses to accept the surrender weapon and directs the British general to George Washington.¹³¹⁶

I have the Honor to inform Congress that a Reduction of the British army, under the Command of Lord Cornwallis, is most happily effected …

On the 17th instant, a Letter was received from Lord Cornwallis … [T]hat Correspondence was followed by the Definitive Capitulation, which was agreed to and Signed on the 19th …¹³¹⁷

We arrived at Boston the twenty-fifth of August … DeGrasse arrived with the French fleet in the Chesapeake at the same time, and was afterwards joined by that of Barras, making thirty-one sail of the line. The money was transported in wagons from Boston to the bank at Philadelphia … And it was by the aid of this money, and this fleet, and of Rochambeau’s army, that Cornwallis was taken; the laurels of which have been unjustly given to Mr. Washington …

I have had, and still have, as much pride in the American Revolution as any man, or as Mr. Washington has a right to have; but that pride has never made me forgetful whence the great aid came that completed the business. Foreign aid (that of France) was calculated upon at the commencement of the Revolution. It is one of the subjects treated of in the pamphlet “Common Sense,” but as a matter that could not be hoped for unless independence was declared. The aid, however, was greater than could have been expected.¹³¹⁸

Saturday, October 20, 1781. Today, General Charles Cornwallis writes his commander in chief, Sir Henry Clinton:

I have the mortification to inform your Excellency that I have been forced to give up the posts of York and Gloucester and to surrender …

[O]n the morning of the 16th, I ordered a sortie of about 350 men … killing or wounding about 100 of the French troops who had the guard of that part of the trenches and with little loss on our side. This action … proved of little public advantage … I had therefore only to choose between preparing to surrender next day or endeavoring to get off with the greatest part of the troops … [A] diversion by the French ships of war that lay at the mouth of the York River was to be expected … I therefore proposed to capitulate …¹³¹⁹

Friday, October 26, 1781. Today, from Yorktown, American Brigadier General Anthony Wayne writes Robert Morris:

The surrender of Lord Cornwallis with his Fleet &Army … is an event of the utmost consequence & if properly improved may be productive of a Glorious & happy peace; but if we suffer that unworthy torpor & supineness to seize us which but too much pervaded the Councils of America after the Surrender of Gen’l Burgoyne [at Saratoga], we may yet experience great Difficulties,—for believe me, it was not to the exertions of America that we owe the Reduction of this modern Hannibal. Nor shall we always have it in our power to Command the aid of 37 [French] sail of the Line and 8,000 [French] Auxiliary veterans.—Our Allies have learned that, on this Occasion, our regular troops were not more equal to one half their Land force … [O]ur means & numbers were far inadequate …¹³²⁰

As one historian will recall, “At Saratoga, France furnished the guns and ammunition that led to Burgoyne’s surrender; at Yorktown, it was French money, troops, and ships that brought Cornwallis to a like fate.”¹³²¹

Monday, October 29, 1781. Today, on his return voyage to England,¹³²² British Commander in Chief Sir Henry Clinton writes British Colonial Secretary for North America Lord George Germain:

Your lordship will therefore of course suppose my surprise was great when I heard [the French Admiral] de Grasse had brought with him 28 sail of the line and that [our British Admiral] Sir Samuel Hood had only 14 … To this inferiority, then, I may with confidence assert, and to this alone, is our present misfortune to be imputed.¹³²³

Friday, December 14, 1781. Today, in Amsterdam, John Adams writes former Massachusetts congressional delegate Francis Dana:

I have recd a new Commission for Peace in which [five of us] are the ministers. I have recd also a Revocation of my Commission to make a Treaty of Commerce with [Britain].—These last novelties, I suppose, would nettle Some Men’s Feelings; but I am glad of them. They have removed the cause of Envy, I had like to have said, but I fear I must retract that, since 18 [cypher for Adams] still stands before 17 [cypher for Franklin] in the Commissioners.¹³²⁴

Dear Benny,

I received your letter … together with the drawings which please me … But I expect you will improve; and that you will send some to me every half Year that I may see how you improve …

Let me know whether you learn Arithmetick in your School … I am ever, my dear Child,

Your Affectionate Grandfather, B. Franklin¹³²⁵

Saturday, February 16, 1782. Peace negotiations will soon begin. Today, Ben Franklin writes an English friend, David Hartley:

[T]here has been mixed in some of your conversations and letters various reasonings to show that, if France should require something of us that was unreasonable, we should then not be obliged by our treaty to join with her in continuing the war. As there had never been such requisition, what could I think of such discourses … [K]nowing your dislike of France, and your strong desire of recovering America to England, I was impressed with the idea that such an infidelity on our part would not be disagreeable to you; and that you were therefore aiming to lessen in my mind the horror I conceived at the idea of it. But we will finish here by mutually agreeing that neither you were capable of proposing, nor I of acting on, such principles.¹³²⁶

Wednesday, February 27, 1782. Today, the British Parliament votes to end the war with America and to negotiate peace.¹³²⁷

Friday, March 22, 1782. Today, Benjamin Franklin opens peace negotiations with Britain by writing his old friend, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Earl of Shelburne:

I embrace the opportunity of assuring the Continuance of my ancient Respect for your Talents and Virtues, and of congratulating you on the returning good Disposition of your Country in favour of America, which appears in the late Resolutions of the Commons … I hope it will tend to produce a General peace … to which I shall, with infinite Pleasure, contribute every thing in my Power.¹³²⁸

Saturday, April 6, 1782. Today, British Secretary of State Lord Shelburne responds to Benjamin Franklin’s letter:

I have been favoured with your Letter and am much oblig’d by your remembrance … Your letter, discovering the same disposition, has made me send you Mr. Oswold … I have thought him fittest for the purpose. He is a pacifical man, and conversant in those negotiations which are most interesting to mankind …¹³²⁹

Tuesday, May 28, 1782. Today, in the Continental Congress, a committee reports a meeting with the French minister in Philadelphia. The Secret Journals of the Continental Congress report:

[T]he minister [from France] communicated some parts of a despatch which he had received from the Count de Vergennes, dated the 9th of March, 1781 … respecting the conduct of Mr. Adams; and … gave notice to the committee of several circumstances which proved it necessary that Congress should draw a line of conduct to that minister of which he might not be allowed to lose sight …

The minister concluded on this subject that if Congress put any confidence in the king’s friendship … they would be impressed with the necessity of prescribing to their plenipotentiary … a thorough reliance on the king and would direct him to take no step without the approbation of his majesty …¹³³⁰

Wednesday, July 10, 1782. Today, British negotiator Richard Oswold reports to Lord Shelburne, now Britain’s Prime Minister, that, after discussions with Franklin that started in early April, Franklin has set forth, at a meeting this morning, conditions of peace, some “necessary,” some “advisable,” that Great Britain should offer America:

1st. Of the first class necessary to be granted, Independence full and complete in every sense, to the Thirteen States, and all troops to be withdrawn from thence. 2d. A settlement of the boundaries … 3d. A confinement of the boundaries of Canada … on an ancient footing. 4th. A freedom of fishing on the Banks of Newfoundland and elsewhere, as well for fish as whales …

Then, as to advisable articles … 1st. To indemnify many people … 2d. Some sort of acknowledgment … of our error in distressing those countries so much as we have done … 3d. Colony ships and trade to be received … 4th. Giving up every part of Canada … ¹³³¹

Since March, Ben Franklin has had to conduct British peace negotiations on his own. The four other American peace commissioners aren’t available. Commissioner Henry Laurens was captured by the British while crossing the Atlantic. He won’t join the negotiations till just before a treaty signing. Thomas Jefferson won’t cross the Atlantic unless the British assure his safe-conduct. Thus, he won’t come until after a final treaty is ratified and hostilities have ceased.¹³³² John Jay arrived in Paris on June 23rd but has been incapacitated by influenza.¹³³³ John Adams won’t return to Paris from the Netherlands, loathing to be near Franklin or to consult with Vergennes.¹³³⁴

Saturday, July 20, 1782. Today, from the Netherlands, John Adams writes his American friend Edmund Jenings:

[Franklin’s] base Jealousy of me and his Sordid Envy of my Commission for making Peace, and especially of my Commission for making a Treaty of Commerce with Great Britain, have stimulated him to attempt to commit an Assassination upon my Character at Philadelphia, of which the World has not yet heard, and of which it cannot hear untill the Time shall come when many voluminous State Papers may be laid before the Publick, which ought not to be untill we are all dead.—But this I swear, I will affirm when and where I please that he has been actuated and is still by a low Jealousy and a meaner Envy of me, let C.[ount] Vergennes or F.[ranklin] himself complain of it again to Congress if they please, it would be my day to answer there in Person or by Letter.—The anonymous Scribbler charged me with clandestinely hurting Franklin.—I have done nothing clandestine.—I have complained of Franklin’s Behavior in Company with Americans. So have I in Company with the French & Spanish Ambassadors … This is an odd Sort of Clandestinity.—that I have no Friendship for Franklin I avow.—that I am incapable of having any with a Man of his Moral Sentiments, I avow. As Far as such State shall compel me to act with him in publick affairs, I shall treat him with decency & perfect Impartiality. Further than that I can feel for him no other sentiments than Contempt or Abhorrence …¹³³⁵

Saturday, July 27, 1782. Today, British Prime Minister Lord Shelburne writes his peace negotiator, Richard Oswald:

I am to acknowledge receipt of your [letter of the 10th] … [Y]ou are at liberty to communicate to Dr. Franklin … to satisfy his mind, that there never have been two opinions, since you were sent to Paris, upon the most unequivocal Acknowledgment of American Independency … But to put this matter out of all Possibility of Doubt, a Commission will be immediately forwarded to you containing Full Power … to make the Independency of the Colonies the Basis & Preliminary of the Treaty now depending & so far advanc’d that, hoping as I do with you that the Articles call’d advisable will be dropp’d & those call’d necessary alone retained as the ground of Discussion, it may be speedily concluded … I shall consider myself as pledg’d to the Contents of this Letter.¹³³⁶

Monday, August 12, 1782. Today, in Paris, Benjamin Franklin sends U.S. Foreign Affairs Secretary Robert Livingston a tally of monies France has advanced to America:

All the accounts given us … made the debt [to France] to an even sum of eighteen millions, exclusive of the Holland loan [ten millions] for which the king [of France] is guarantee … [Y]ou will discover several fresh marks of the King’s goodness toward us, amounting to the value of near two millions. These added to the free gifts made to us at different times, form an object of at least twelve millions, for which no returns but that of gratitude and friendship are expected. These, I hope may be everlasting.¹³³⁷

Today, in Geneva, Switzerland, Benny Bache turns thirteen years old. For the past several months, he has been witnessing an unsuccessful democratic uprising in Geneva, and this week, he writes in his diary:

I prepared to go to the class for the first time for several months during which the Genevese had had some troubles, which had, so to speak, [shut] the town and which had not ceased until France, Switzerland, and Piedmont were engaged and had sent troops now occupying the town, … [T]he professors were obliged to teach their classes in their own houses, such was the state of Geneva.¹³³⁸

Though Geneva has neither king nor formal nobility, an old aristocracy denies political rights to ordinary burghers and artisans. This year, inspired by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, the “natives” of Geneva have demonstrated for a more democratic government. As Benny can see, a standing army is a formidable response to such claims.¹³³⁹

Sunday, August 18, 1782. Today, in The Hague, John Adams drafts (but decides not to send) a request that Congress replace him as a peace commissioner:

For my own Part, I will be very explicit with Congress. If I were now the sole Minister for treating of Peace, I should decidedly refuse to enter into any Conferences with any one whatsoever without full powers to treat with the United States of America. If I had been alone [as the sole negotiator], when the first messengers were sent over, I mean when … Mr. Oswald came over, my answer would have been clear, that I would never treat with such a Plenipotentiary—If my Opinion had been asked by Dr. Franklin, I should have given him the same … But instead of this, Dr. Franklin … tells them that no express Acknowledgment of our Independence will be insisted on [except as part of a peace treaty]. Thus it is that all American Affairs are conducted by Dr. Franklin—I have not refused to act in the [peace] commission with him [only] because I thought it possible that I might … do some little good in it or prevent some evil. But I despair of doing much to such a degree that I beg Congress would release me from this Tye and appoint another Minister of that commission in my Room. ¹³⁴⁰

Sunday, September 1, 1782. Today, Britain’s Secretary of State, Thomas Townshend, instructs his peace negotiator, Richard Oswold:

I am commanded to signify to You His Majesty’s [King George III’s] Approbation of Your conduct in communicating to the American Commissioners … that the Negotiation for Peace and the Cession of Independence of the Thirteen United Colonies were intended to be carried on and concluded … I am commanded to signify to you His Majesty’s disposition to agree to the Plan of Pacification proposed by Doctor Franklin himself … The Articles specified by Doctor Franklin, and recited in your Letter to the Earl of Shelburne of the 10th of July last, are … stated by you as all that Doctor Franklin thought necessary; and His Majesty … has authorized You to go to the full extent of them …¹³⁴¹

Friday, September 6, 1782. Today, from the Netherlands, John Adams writes U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Robert Livingston:

You require Sir to be furnished with the most minute Details of every Step that Britain may take towards a Negotiation for a General or partial Peace … Dr. Franklin wrote me that he should keep me informed of any thing that passed by. But I have had no advice from him since the Second of June.

[A]lthough it is proper to be open … and confidential with the French Ministers, yet we ought to have opinions, Principles, and Systems of our own … [O]ur Ministers should not be bound to follow their Advice, but when it is consonant with our own … Congress should firmly support their own ministers against all Secret Insinuations … Either Congress shall recall all their ministers from Europe and leave all Negotiations to the French Ministry or they must Support their Ministers against all Insinuations … To send Ministers to Europe who are supposed by the People of America to see for themselves, while in effect they see or pretend to see nothing but what appears thro’ the eyes of a French Minister is to betray the just [Deputations] of that people.¹³⁴²

Friday, September 20, 1782. Today, from Paris, American Matthew Ridley (a European business agent for Maryland) writes John Adams about a conversation with John Jay:

I have had one serious Conversation with J[ay]. He appears to me very desirous of seeing you—were it only for a few hours—he says he has some things to consult you upon that he cannot put to Paper … I find … J.[ay] firm—I wish he was supported … The English have come here for Peace …

I believe very little if any progress is made … I wish sincerely you knew all that is passing here …¹³⁴³

Ben Franklin has been suffering with kidney stones since the third week in August,¹³⁴⁴ so John Jay has taken on a larger role in the British peace negotiations.¹³⁴⁵

Wednesday. October 2, 1782. Today, alluding to French naval losses earlier in the year,¹³⁴⁶ French Foreign Minister Vergennes writes France’s ambassador to Spain:

In a word, our great goal, the goal common to the two crowns [France and Spain] and to all the warring powers, being a prompt and honorable peace … it is by … more trenchant means that we must get there.

When I speak of a prompt peace, I speak from personal knowledge of the need and necessity. We no longer can entertain any disastrous illusions. Our means are no longer the same. Our respective navies, which ought to be stronger in number than at the outset of the war, are, for both of us, below what they were at the beginning. That of England is, however, more consistent today than it was then. As to financial means, I don’t hesitate to say that ours, after six hundred millions in extraordinary expenses, are very weak …¹³⁴⁷

Friday, October 5, 1782. Today, Ben Franklin, John Jay, and Richard Oswold agree to a draft of a preliminary peace agreement to be submitted to the British king.¹³⁴⁸ The treaty, based on Franklin’s four necessary articles (plus freedom to navigate the Mississippi), acknowledges complete American independence, the Mississippi as America’s western boundary, and rights to fish in the waters of Newfoundland.¹³⁴⁹

Tuesday, October 15, 1782. Today, from Geneva, Benny Bache writes Ben Franklin,

Dear Grand Papa …

My life is uniform. I get up at half after 7, I breakfast to 8, from 8 to 11 I am in class, at 11 I have a Latin lesson to 12, from 12 to 1 I dine and learn by heart a lesson that our Regent gives us, from 1 to 3 I go to class, from 3 to 5 I do a task luncheon and do a theme, from 5 to 6 I do another Latin lesson, from 6 to 7 I translate Joseph Andrews and write my journal, from 7 I do my drawing lesson to 8, and then I sup and go to bed.

That is the work I do the Monday, the Tuesday and Friday; the Wednesday and Saturday I have no drawing master. Almost every Thursday and Sunday I go to Mme. Cramer’s …¹³⁵⁰

Thursday, October 17, 1782. Today, three weeks after receiving news (from Matthew Ridley’s September 20th letter) that John Jay needs support against Vergennes,¹³⁵¹ John Adams leaves the Netherlands to join Franklin and Jay. As one historian has observed, “Neither Adams’s good reasons nor his bad ones sufficiently explained his remaining in the Netherlands in the face of British overtures and his misgivings about Franklin.”¹³⁵²

Saturday, October 26, 1782. This afternoon, John Adams arrives in Paris, having toured Utrecht, Breda, and Antwerp en route from Amsterdam.¹³⁵⁴

Sunday, October 27, 1782. Today, anticipating negotiations with the British, John Adams writes in his diary:

R.[idley] is still full of J.[ay]’s Firmness and Independance. [Jay h]as taken upon himself to act without asking Advice or even communicating with the C.[omte] de V[ergennes]—and this even in opposition to an Instruction [from Congress] … W. has … been very desirous of perswading F.[ranklin] to live in the same house with J.[ay].—Between two as subtle Spirits, as any in this World, the one malicious, the other I think honest, I shall have a delicate, a nice, a critical Part to Act. F.[ranklin]’s cunning will be to divide Us. To this End, he will provoke, he will insinuate, he will intrigue, he will maneuvre …¹³⁵⁵

Tuesday, October 29, 1782. Today, Matthew Ridley visits John Adams and writes in his diary:

Called to see Mr. Adams. Dined with him. He is much pleased with Mr. Jay. [I w]ent in the morning to see D[r.] Franklin—[He] did not know of Mr. Adams Arrival. Spoke to Mr. A. [dams] about making a visit to Dr. F[ranklin]. He told me it was time enough—[I] represented to him the necessity of meeting. He replied there was no necessity—that after the usage he had received from [Franklin], he could not bear to go near him … He said the D[r.] might come to him. I told him it was not [his] place– the last comer always paid the first visit. He replied the Dr. was to come to him [since] he was first [in appointment] in the Comm[issio]n. I ask[ed] him how the D[r.] was to know he was here unless he went to him. He replied that was true, he did not think of that, and would go. Afterwards while pulling on his Coat, he said he would not, he could not bear to go where the D[r.] was. With much persuasion, I got him at length to go. ¹³⁵⁶

I told him without reserve, my opinion of the policy of this Court, and of the principles, wisdom, and firmness with which Mr. Jay had conducted the negotiations in his sickness and my absence, and that I was determined to support Mr. Jay to the utmost of my power in the pursuit of the same system. The Doctor heard me patiently, but said nothing. ¹³⁵⁸

Thursday, October 31, 1782. Today, from Paris, John Adams writes U.S. Secretary for Foreign Affairs Robert Livingston:

I set off for Paris, where I arrived on Saturday, the 26th of this month …

I find a construction put upon … our instructions by some persons which I confess I never put upon it myself … obliging us to agree to whatever the French ministers shall advise us to do, and to do nothing without their consent … I cannot think it possible to be the design of congress …¹³⁵⁹

Mr. Jay likes Frenchmen as little as Mr. Lee … He says they are not a Moral People. They know not what [morality] is. He dont like any Frenchman.—The Marquis de la Fayette is clever, but he is a Frenchman.— Our Allies don’t play fair, he told me … They want to place the Western Lands, Mississippi, and whole Gulph of Mexico into the Hands of [their ally] Spain. ¹³⁶⁰

Wednesday, November 6, 1782. Today, John Adams writes American Foreign Affairs Secretary Robert Livingston:

[Y]ou will, I am sure, not take it amiss if I say that it is indispensably necessary for the service of Congress and the honor of the office that [our affairs] be kept impenetrably secret from the French minister in many things …¹³⁶²

Friday, November 8, 1782. Today, John Adams writes Foreign Affairs Secretary Robert Livingston:

In one of your letters you suppose that I have an open, avowed contempt of all rank …

If Mr. Jay and I had … taken the advice of the Count de Vergennes and Dr. Franklin … we should have sunk in the minds of the English …

The injunctions upon us to communicate and to follow the advice that is given us seem to be too strong …¹³⁶³

G.[reat] B.[ritain] has … acknowledged Us a Sovereign State & independent Nation … Jay & I peremptorily refused to Speak or hear before We were put upon an equal Foot [by their first recognizing our independence before a treaty was written]. Franklin as usual would have taken the Advice of the C.[ount] de V.[ergenne] and treated without [formal recognition in advance] but nobody would join him.

As to your coming to Europe … I know not what to say. I am obliged to differ in Opinion so often from Dr. Franklin and the C. de Vergennes … and these Personages are so little disposed to bear Contradiction, and Congress have gone so near enjoining upon me passive Obedience to them, that I do not expect to hold any Place in Europe longer than next Spring … The Artifices of the Devil will be used to get me out of the Commission for Peace. If they succeed, I abandon Europe for ever for the Blue Hills [of Massachusetts] without one Instants Loss of Time or even waiting for Leave to return.¹³⁶⁴

Saturday, November 9, 1782. Today, John Adams receives a visit from the Marquis de Lafayette. John Adams:

M. de la Fayette came in and told me he had been at Versailles … After some time he told me, in a great air of confidence, that he was afraid the Count [de Vergennes] took it amiss that I had not been to Versailles to see him. The Count told him that he had not been officially informed of my arrival, he had only learned of it from the returns of the police … Franklin brought the same message to me from the Count, and said he believed it would be taken kindly if I went. I told both the Marquis and the Doctor I would go to-morrow morning.¹³⁶⁵

Sunday, November 10, 1782. Today, John Adams visits the Comte de Vergennes, receiving compliments for obtaining Dutch recognition of the U.S. as well as a Dutch commercial treaty:

The Comte invited me to dine … We went to dinner … The Comte who sat opposite was constantly calling out to me, to know what I would eat and to offer me petits Gateaux, Claret and Madeira &c. &c … The Compliments that have been made since my Arrival in France upon my Success in Holland would be considered a Curiosity, if committed to Writing … Vous avez fait reconnoitre votre Independence [You have won recognition for your Independence] … Another said Monsieur vous etes le Washington de la Negotiation [You are the Washington of Negotiation] … Compliments are the Study of this People and there is no other so ingenious at them.¹³⁶⁶

Stating this incident, [Adams] … might have added, they have also a very dexterous knack of disguising a sarcasm.¹³⁶⁷

As a historian will later observe, “Adams never learned the true extent of French influence on his Dutch negotiation.”¹³⁶⁸ Vergennes was pulling the strings at every turn.¹³⁶⁹

The Compliment of “Monsieur, vous etes le Washington de la Negotiation” [Sir, you are the Washington of negotiations] was repeated to me by more than one person … A few of these Compliments would kill Franklin if they should come to his ears.¹³⁷⁰

Wednesday, November 20, 1782. Today, John Adams records Franklin’s attitude on New England fishing rights and on America’s western boundary, two important peace issues:

Franklin said … [t]hat the Fisheries and Mississippi could not be given up. That nothing was clearer to him than that the Fisheries were essential to the northern States, and the Mississippi to the Southern and indeed both to all. I told him that [French Ambassador] Mr. Gérard had certainly appeared to America to negotiate to these Ends, vizt. to perswade Congress to give up both … I said … We must be firm and steady and should do very well.—Yes he said he believed We should do very well and carry the points.¹³⁷¹

Franklin, Adams, and Jay will carry these points, but, if France seems less than fully supportive, it must be remembered that France only obligated herself, by the Franco-American Alliance, to achieve America’s Independence—not these greater benefits.¹³⁷²

Saturday, November 23, 1782. Today, French Foreign Minister Vergennes writes his minister at Philadelphia:

There is nothing in our treaties [with the United States] which obliges us to prolong the war to uphold the ambitious pretensions which the United States may make either on fisheries or on boundaries.¹³⁷³

Saturday, November 30, 1782. Today, without first consulting the French Foreign Ministry, John Adams, John Jay, and Ben Franklin sign with Great Britain a “Preliminary Peace Treaty” that grants full American independence, American fishing rights, and the Mississippi as America’s western boundary.¹³⁷⁴

Wednesday, December 4, 1782. Today, John Adams writes American Secretary of Foreign Affairs Robert Livingston:

It is with much pleasure that I transmit [to] you the preliminary treaty between the King of Great Britain and the United States of America …

As the objects for which I ever consented to leave my family and country are thus far accomplished, I now beg leave to resign all my employments in Europe … I should not choose to stay in Europe merely for the honor of affixing my signature to the definitive treaty …¹³⁷⁵

Thursday, December 12, 1782. Today, John Jay writes Secretary of Foreign Affairs Robert Livingston:

You will receive from us a joint letter with a copy of the preliminaries … It gives me great pleasure to inform you that perfect unanimity has hitherto prevailed among your Commissioners here; and I do not recollect that since we began to negotiate with Mr. Oswold there has been the least division or opposition between us …¹³⁷⁶

Sunday, December 15, 1782. Today, the Comte de Vergennes writes Ben Franklin of his displeasure that the commissioners did not consult with France before signing:

I am at a loss, Sir, to explain your conduct and that of your colleagues on this occasion. You have concluded your preliminary articles without any communication between us, although the instructions from Congress prescribes that nothing shall be done without the participation of the King …

You are wise and discreet, Sir; you perfectly understand what is due to propriety; you have all your life performed your duties …¹³⁷⁷

Tuesday, December 17, 1782. Today, Benjamin Franklin formally responds to the Comte de Vergennes:

Nothing has been agreed in the preliminaries contrary to the interest of France … Your observation is, however, apparently just, that in not consulting you before they were signed, we have been guilty of neglecting a point of bienséance. But, as this was not from want of respect for the King whom we all love and honor, we hope it will be excused …

It is not possible for any one to be more sensible than I am, of what I and every American owe to the King, for the many and great benefits and favors he has bestowed upon us … And I believe that no Prince was ever more beloved and respected by his own subjects, than the King is by the people of the United States.¹³⁷⁸

Thursday, December 19, 1782. Today, the Count de Vergennes writes his ambassador in Philadelphia:

I have the liberty to send you a translation of the preliminary articles which the American Plenipotentiaries have agreed to and signed with Great Britain, to be made into a treaty when the terms of peace between France and England shall be settled.

You will surely be gratified, as well as myself, with the very extensive advantages which our allies, the Americans, are to receive from the peace; but you certainly will not be less surprised than I have been at the conduct of the Commissioners. According to the instructions of Congress, they ought to have done nothing without our participation. I have informed you that the King did not seek to influence the negotiation any further than his offices might be necessary to his friends. The American Commissioners will not say that I have interfered and much less that I have wearied them with my curiosity. They have cautiously kept themselves at a distance from me. Mr. Adams, one of them, coming from Holland … had been in Paris nearly three weeks without imagining that he owed me any mark of attention, and probably I should not have seen him till this time if I had not caused him to be reminded of it …

I think it proper that the most influential members of Congress should be informed of the very irregular conduct of their Commissioners in regard to us. You may speak of it not in the tone of complaint. I accuse no person; I blame no one, not even Dr. Franklin. He has yielded too easily to the bias of his colleagues, who do not pretend to recognize the rules of courtesy in regard to us … If we may judge of the future from what has passed here under our eyes, we shall be but poorly paid for all that we have done for the United States and for securing to them a national existence.¹³⁷⁹

Thursday, December 26, 1782. Today, Ben Franklin writes the Rev. Samuel Cooper of Boston:

We have taken some good steps here toward peace. Our independence is acknowledged; our boundaries as good and extensive as we demanded; and our fishery more so than the Congress expected …

I am extremely sorry to hear language from Americans on this side of the water, and to hear of such language from your side, as tends to hurt the good understanding that has so happily subsisted between this court and ours. There seems to be a party with you that wish to destroy it. If they could succeed, they would do us irreparable injury. It is our firm connection with France that gives us weight with England and respect throughout Europe. If we were to break our faith with this nation, on whatever pretense, England would again trample on us … We cannot, therefore, be too much on our guard how we permit private resentments of particular persons to enter into our public councils … In my opinion, the true political interest of America consists in observing and fulfilling, with the greatest exactitude, the engagements of our alliance with France and behaving at the same time towards England so as not to extinguish her hopes of a reconciliation. ¹³⁸⁰

Friday, January 3, 1783. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

The minister plenipotentiary of France transmitted to the secretary for foreign affairs a note …

Philadelphia, December 31, 1782.

The minister plenipotentiary … received orders to express … the satisfaction which the King his master has felt for the conduct [the Congress] have held on the overtures that were made at different periods by the British commissioners commanding at New York to bring about a partial negotiation with the United States [independent of France] …

Resolved, That the [American] Secretary for foreign affairs inform the Minister of France that Congress learn with great pleasure that the steps taken by Congress … in opposition to the attempts of the British court to bring about a partial negotiation has been satisfactory to his Most Christian Majesty: that his Majesty’s conduct … is sufficient to inspire a just abhorrence of every act derogatory to the principles of the alliance …¹³⁸¹

Monday, January 20, 1783. Today, France adds its signature to the Preliminary Peace Treaty between Britain and America. Hostilities will now cease. A “definitive” treaty between all warring parties will be signed in September when France’s allies, Spain and the Netherlands, have agreed to the treaty.¹³⁸²

Thursday, January 30, 1783. Today, from Geneva, Benny Bache writes his grandfather,

I have not received the parcel of Books you mentioned me in your letter that you had sent to me. I shall mention when I receive them. I heard yesterday with a great deal of pleasure that the peace was made Because that gives me hopes of seeing you soon if you have not changed your resolution of coming and Because that takes away a great part of your occupations.¹³⁸³

Wednesday, February 5, 1783. John Adams wants to be the first Minister Plenipotentiary (ambassador) from the United States to Great Britain. Today, he writes the president of Congress:

The Resolution of Congress of the 12 July 1781 “that the Commission and the Instructions … given to the Honourable John Adams … be and they are hereby revoked” was duly received by me in Holland, but no Explanation of the Motives to it or the Reasons on which it was founded was ever transmitted to me …

[It is now time in] my own opinion … to send a Minister directly to St. James’s with a Letter of Credence to the King as a Minister Plenipotentiary and a Commission to treat of a Treaty of Commerce …

[I]f I had to give my vote for a Minister to the Court of Great Britain … I should think of no other object of my Choice than [Mr. Jay] … provided that Injustice must finally be done to him who was the first object of his Country’s choice.¹³⁸⁴

Thursday, February 6, 1783. Today, John Adams pursues the subject of his appointment as Minister to Great Britain in a letter to Thomas McKean, a congressional delegate from Delaware:

The most important mission of all is now opened to the Court of Great Britain.—You know very well that I have been unfairly treated in that Matter, and you must be sensible that it is impossible for me to stay in Europe at any other Court … In the Name of Common Justice, then give me my [quietus] and let me return home, by accepting my Resignation immediately, that I may not be exposed to the further disgrace of waiting in Europe with the Air of a Candidate and an Expectant of that Mission, if foreign Finesse and domestic Faction have determined that I shall not have it …¹³⁸⁵

Tuesday, February 11, 1783. Today, Virginia congressional delegate James Madison writes Thomas Jefferson:

Congress yesterday received from Mr. Adams several letters dated September not remarkable for any thing unless it be a display of his vanity, his prejudice against the French Court & his venom against Doctr. Franklin.¹³⁸⁶

Tuesday, February 25, 1783. Today, the American commissioners in Paris sign an agreement with France on the funding of America’s obligations. Article II of this agreement includes:

[I]t has been found proper to recapitulate here the amount of the preceding aids granted by the King [of France] to the United States, and to distinguish them according to their different classes …

In the third class are comprehended the aids and subsidies furnished to the Congress of the United States, under the title of gratuitous assistance, from the pure generosity of the King, three millions of which were granted before the treaty of February, 1778, and six millions in 1781; which aids and subsidies amount in the whole to nine million livres turnois. His Majesty here confirms, in case of the need, the gratuitous gift to the said Congress of the said thirteen United States.¹³⁸⁷

This recapitulation of French aid may be one of the great understatements of the eighteenth century. France has bankrupted herself in aiding America, expending perhaps two billion livres to send 47,000 officers and men, 3,668 cannon, and sixty-three ships of the line across the Atlantic to wage the Americans’ war.¹³⁸⁸ France had as many as 8,400 soldiers on American soil at one time. Six hundred thirty-seven Frenchmen lost their lives in the effort to liberate Savannah; 186 Frenchmen gave their lives at Yorktown.¹³⁸⁹

Wednesday, March 12, 1783. Today, the Continental Congress receives the Preliminary Peace Treaty as well as a fifty-five-page “Peace Journal,” prepared by John Adams and placed in the packet for Secretary of Foreign Affairs Robert Livingston. The journal includes Adams’ personal diary entries on his success in the Netherlands, his steadfastness in dealing with Britain, and his independence from (contrasted with Franklin’s subservience to) France.¹³⁹⁰ John Adams:

[C]onsidering that, in the Conferences for the Peace, I had been very free which I had Reason to expect would be misrepresented by Franklin, I suddenly determined to throw into the Packet for [Secretary for Foreign Affairs Robert] Livingston, what was intended for another.—Let them make the most and the worst of it.¹³⁹¹

Tuesday, March 18, 1783. Today, James Madison writes fellow Virginian Edmund Randolph:

In this business [of negotiating without consulting the French court], Jay has taken the lead & proceeded to a length of which you can form little idea. Adams has followed with cordiality. Franklin has been dragged into it … The dilemma to which Congress are reduced is infinitely perplexing. If they abet the proceedings of their ministers, all confidence with France is at an end …¹³⁹²

Thursday, March 20, 1783. Today, Benjamin Franklin writes fellow peace commissioner Henry Laurens:

I hear frequently of [Mr. Adams’] Ravings against M. de Vergennes and me, whom he suspects of Plots against him which have no Existence but in his troubled Imagination. I take no Notice and we are civil when we meet …¹³⁹³

Friday, March 21, 1783. Despite all France has done, John Adams is deeply suspicious. Today, he writes a friend, Massachusetts political leader General James Warren:

[I]t is devoutly to be wished that … some other Minister may take the place of Vergennes … He has meant us too much Evil, is too conscious of it, and too sensible that we know it …

It is not easy to assign the Reason for his long continual Rancour against the Rights to our Fisheries and the Western Lands, against our obtaining loans or subsidies from the King … He wished to keep us dependent …

His attack on me in his Letters to Dr. Franklin which the Dr. was left to transmit to Congress without informing me was an attack on the Fishery and Western Country. Franklin’s motive was to get my Commission, and Vergennes’ motive was to get it for him, not that he loved Franklin more than me but because he knew Franklin would be more obsequious—The Pretense that I had given offence was a mere Fiction. Such an invention they knew would be the most likely to intimidate Members of Congress and carry their Point. I repeat it, it was not true that I had given offence. To suppose that I had is to suppose him the most Senseless Despot that ever existed. The Secret was that I was known to be a Man who would neither be deceived, wheedled, flattered, or intimidated into a surrender of them. Franklin he knew would let him do as he pleased and assist him without an excuse for it …

I cannot account for his Enmity to us … He thought by crippling us, he could keep us dependent and oblige us to join France in a future War against England … But he has been vastly disappointed, and the truth is that the American Ministers made the Peace in Spite of him, let his hireling Trumpeters Say what they will.¹³⁹⁴

Tuesday, March 25, 1783. Today, from Philadelphia, American Secretary of Foreign Affairs Robert Livingston writes the American peace commissioners in Paris:

I feel no little pain at the distrust manifested in the management of [the treaty negotiations]; particularly in signing the treaty without communicating it to the court of Versailles till after the signature … The concealment was, in my opinion, absolutely unnecessary …¹³⁹⁵

If I receive the Acceptance of my Resignation, I Shall embark in the first ship …

I am Sometimes half afraid that those Persons who procured the Revocation of my Commission to King George may be afraid I shall do them more harm in America than in England, and therefore of two Evils to choose the least and manoeuvrer to get me sent to London …

Nothing in Life ever cost me so much Sleep, or made me so many grey Hairs, as the Anxiety I have Suffered for these Three Years … No body knows of it. Nobody cares for it.¹³⁹⁶

Wednesday, April 9, 1783. Today, John Adams writes his friend General James Warren:

I hope this will find you in Congress …

It is utterly inconceivable how Congress have been deceived into such Instructions as they gave Us which, without all Controversy, would have ruined our Country, if they had been obeyed …

I am in expectation every hour of receiving your Acceptance of my Resignation, and indeed I stand in need of it. The Scenes of Gloom, Danger, and Perplexity I have gone thro’ … have affected my Health to a great degree and, what is worse, my Spirits.—Firm as Some People have been complaisant enough to suppose my Temper is, I assure you it has been shaken to its foundations … When a Man sees entrusted to him the most essential interests of his Country—sees that they depend essentially upon him, and that he must defend them against the Malice of Enemies, the Finesse of Allies, the Treachery of a Colleague … you may well imagine a Man does not sleep on a Bed of Roses …

The Fever, which I had in Amsterdam, which held me for five days, exhausted me in such a Manner that I never have been able to recover from it entirely … But I am not yet however so weak as to stay in Europe with a Wound upon my Honour—And if I had the Health of Hercules, I would go home Leave or no Leave the Moment another Person is appointed to Great Britain—No fooling in such a Match—I will not be horse jockeyed—at least if I am, De Vergennes and Franklin shall not be the Jockies …

It is not that I am ambitious of the Honour of a Commission to St. James’s … I could be happier I believe at the Hague. But my Enemies, because they are Enemies or Despisers of the Interests of my Country, shall never have such a Triumph over me … Decide my Fate therefore as soon as possible …¹³⁹⁷

Thursday, April 10, 1783. Today, John Adams writes his former co-commissioner Arthur Lee, now a Virginia congressional delegate:

I expect soon to see a proposition to name the 18th Century, the Franklinian Age, le Siecle Franklinnien, & am willing to leave the Question, whether it shall have this epithet or that of Frederick, to the Dr. & the King: tho’ the latter will stand a poor Chance with a certain French Writer who, within a few weeks, has said that the Dr. after a few ages, will be considered as a God, and I think the King has not eno’ of the Caesar in him to dispute …

The title of “Founder of the American Empire” which … the English newspapers give [the Dr.] does not, most certainly belong to him … [T]here is such a prostitution of all Justice, such a Confusion of Right & Wrong, virtue and vice, to accomplish the Apotheosis of Dr. F.[ranklin] as ought to excite the indignation of every honest man.¹³⁹⁸

Sunday, April 13, 1783. Today, John Adams writes his Massachusetts colleague James Warren:

I have in some late Letters opened to You in Confidence the Dangers which our most important Interests have been in … from the vain, ambitious and despotic Character of one Minister, I mean the C.[ount] de Vergennes. But You will form but an imperfect idea after all of the Difficulties We have had to encounter, without taking into Consideration another Character, equally selfish and interested, equally vain and ambitious, more jealous and envious, and more false and deceitful. I mean Dr. Franklin …

His whole Life has been one continued Insult to good Manners and to Decency … [T]he Effrontery with which he has forced [his illegitimate] Offspring up in the World, not less than his Speech of Polly Baker [sympathizing with an unwed mother], are Outrages to Morality and Decorum which would never have been forgiven in any other American. These things, however, are not the worst of his Faults. They shew, however, the Character of the Man; in what Contempt he holds the opinions of the World, and with what Haughtiness he is capable of persevering through Life in a gross and odious System of Falsehood and Imposture …

[S]trict and impartial Justice obliges me to say that, from five Years of Experience of Dr. Franklin which I have now had in Europe, I can have no Dependence on his Word. I never know when he speaks the Truth and when not. If he talked as much as other Men and deviated from the Truth as often in proportion as he does now, he would have been the Scorn of the Universe long ago. But his perpetual Taciturnity has saved him …

[H]is Philosophy and his Politicks have been infinitely exaggerated … until his Reputation has become one of the grossest impostures that has ever been practiced upon Mankind since the Days of Mohamet …

A Reputation so imposing … produces all the Servility … that is produced by the imposing Pomp of a Court and of Imperial Splendour. He had been very sensible of this and has taken Advantage of it.

As if he had been conscious of the Laziness, Inactivity and real Insignificance of his advanced Age, he has considered every American Minister who has come to Europe as his natural enemy … From the same detestable Source came the Insinuations and prejudices against me, and the shameless abandoned Attack upon me … These are my Opinions, tho’ I cannot prove them otherwise than by what I have seen and heard myself … The C.[ount de Vergennes] … has found him so convenient a Minister, ready always to comply with every Desire, never asking for any thing but when ordered and obliged to ask for Money, never proposing any thing, that he has adopted all His Passions, Prejudices, and Jealousies, and has supported him as if his own Office depended upon him. He and his office of interpreters have filled all the Gazettes of Europe with the most senseless Flattery of him, and by means of the Police, set every Spectacle, Society, and every private Club and Circle to clapping him with such Applause as they give to Opera girls. This being the unfortunate Situation of foreign Affairs, what is to be done?

Franklin has, as he gives out, asked Leave to resign … I wish with all my Soul he was out of public Service and in Retirement, repenting of his past Life and preparing, as he ought to be, for another World …

France has suffered as much as America by the unskillful and dishonest Conduct of our foreign affairs. They have no Confidence in any but him … They have not only not confided in any other, but have persecuted every other …

For my own part, I have been made a Sacrifice to such Intrigues in so gross a manner that unless I am restored and supported, I am unalterably determined to retire.¹³⁹⁹

Tuesday, April 15, 1783. Today, at West Point in upstate New York, a new military order, the Society of the Cincinnati, holds its first meeting. George Washington will be its president. From a statement of the society’s purpose:

[T]he officers of the American Army … combine themselves into one SOCIETY OF FRIENDS to endure as long as they shall endure, or any of their eldest male posterity, and, in failure thereof the collateral branches, who may be judged worthy of becoming its supporters and members.¹⁴⁰⁰

Are George Washington and his fellow officers creating a titled and hereditary order of nobility?

I begin to suspect that French and Franklinian Politicks will now endeavor to get me sent to England for two Reasons, one that I may not go to America where I should do them more Mischief as they think than I could in London. 2. That the Mortifications which they and their Tools might give me there might disembarrass them of me sooner than any where.

Is it not Strange and Sad that Simple Integrity should have so many Ennemies? … If I would have given up the [firm positions I took], I might have had [like Franklin] Gold snuff Boxes, Clappings at the Opera, I don’t mean from the Girls, millions of Paragraphs in the Newspapers in praise of me, Visits from the Great, Dinners, Wealth, Power, Splendor, Pictures, Busts, statues, and every Thing which a vain heart, and mine is much too vain, could desire … Liberty and Virtue! When! oh When will your Ennemies cease to exist or to persecute!¹⁴⁰¹

Thursday, May 1, 1783. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

Ordered, That a commission be prepared to Messrs. J. Adams, B. Franklin and J. Jay, authorising them, or either of them in the absence of the others, to enter into a treaty of commerce between the United States of America and Great Britain.¹⁴⁰²

John Adams has recovered his commission to negotiate a commercial treaty with Britain but again must share the commission with Franklin.

I told Mr. Hartley [who replaced Richard Oswold as Britain’s negotiator] the Story of my Negociations with the C. de Vergennes about communicating my [peace and commerce] Mission to [British Colonial Secretary] Ld. G. Germaine 3 Years ago and the subsequent Intrigues and Disputes, &c. It is necessary to let the English Ministers know where their danger lies, and the Arts used to damp the Ardour of returning friendship …

In Truth Congress and their Ministers have been plaid upon like Children, trifled with, imposed upon, deceived. Franklin’s Servility and insidious faithless Selfishness is the true and only Cause why this Game has succeeded. He has aided Vergennes with all his Weight, and his great Reputation, in both Worlds, has supported this ignominious System and blasted every Man and every Effort to shake it off. I only have had a little Success against him.¹⁴⁰³

Sunday, May 25, 1783. Today, from Paris, John Adams drafts a letter to Foreign Affairs Secretary Robert Livingston:

Any one who knows anything of my History may easily suppose that I have gone thro’ many dangerous, anxious & disagreeable Scenes before I ever saw Europe: But all I ever Suffered in public life has been little in Comparison of what I have suffered in Europe, the greatest & worst part of which has been caused by the Dispositions of the C. de Vergennes, aided by the Jealousy, Envy & selfish Servility of Dr. Franklin.¹⁴⁰⁴

Monday, May 26, 1783. Today, the Continental Congress votes to disband the army … The Journals report:

Resolved, That the Commander in Chief be instructed to grant furloughs to the non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the service of the United States, inlisted to serve during the war, who shall be discharged as soon as the definitive treaty of peace is concluded …¹⁴⁰⁵

My dear Child …

I … am pleased to see that you improve in your writing …

I write by this Post to Mr. Marignac, requesting that he would permit you to come and see me and stay with me during the Vacation of the Schools … I hear you have been sick, but … I hope you are … strong enough to undertake the Journey …¹⁴⁰⁶

Wednesday, July 2, 1783. Today, from Geneva, Benny Bache responds to his grandfather,

I received your letter … I was very glad when I read that you desired me to come during the Vacation of the School to see you. I have been sick, but I am now recover’d and Strong enough to undertake the Jorney … I only expect an occasion to undertake the agreeable jorney to see you.¹⁴⁰⁷

Wednesday, July 9, 1783. Today, John Adams writes Secretary of Foreign Affairs Robert Livingston:

Since the dangerous fever I had in Amsterdam two years ago, I have never enjoyed my health. Through the whole of the last winter and spring, I have suffered under weaknesses and pains which have scarcely permitted me to do business. The excessive heats of the last week or two have brought on my fever again, which exhausts me in such a manner as to be very discouraging, and incapacitates one for everything. In short, nothing but a return to America will ever restore me to health …

Your late despatches [of March 25], sir, are not well adapted to give spirits to a melancholy man or to cure one sick with a fever … [H]ow you could conceive it possible for us to treat at all with the English, upon supposition that we had communicated every the minutest thing to this court … I know not … The instructions were found to be absolutely impracticable.¹⁴⁰⁸

Saturday, July 19, 1783. Today, Benny Bache leaves Geneva to resume life with Ben Franklin in Paris.

Tuesday, July 22, 1783. Today, from Paris, Benjamin Franklin answers John Adams’ charges in a letter to Foreign Affairs Secretary Robert Livingston:

[N]either [the evidence] handed us thro’ the British Negotiators (a suspicious Channel) nor the Conversations [with the French] respecting the Fishery, the Boundaries … &c., recommending Moderation in our Demands, are of Weight Sufficient in my Mind to fix an opinion that this Court wished to restrain us in obtaining any Degree of Advantage we could … [T]hose Discourses are fairly resolvable by supposing a very natural [French] Apprehension that we, relying too much on the Ability of France to continue the War in our favour and supply us constantly with Money, might insist on more Advantages than the English would be willing to grant and thereby lose the Opportunity of making Peace, so necessary to our Friends …

I ought not to conceal from you, that one of my colleagues [Mr. Adams] is of a very different Opinion from me in these matters. He thinks the French Minister one of the greatest Enemies of our Country, that he … afforded us, during the War, the assistance we receiv’d only to keep it alive, that we might be so much the more weaken’d by it; that to think of Gratitude to France is the greatest of Follies, and that to be influenc’d by it would ruin us. He makes no secret of having these Opinions, expresses them publicly, sometimes in presence of the English Ministers, and speaks of hundreds of Instances which he could produce in Proof of them. None of which however, have yet appear’d to me …

If I were not convinc’d of the real Inability of this Court to furnish the further Supplys we ask’d, I should suspect these Discourses of a person in his Station might have influenced the refusal; but I think they have gone no farther than to occasion a Suspicion that we have a considerable Party of Antigallicans in America, who are not Tories, and consequently to produce some doubts of the Continuance of our Friendship. As such Doubts may hereafter have a bad Effect, I think we cannot take too much care to remove them; and it is, therefore, I write this to put you on your guard, (believing it my duty tho’ I know that I hazard by it a mortal Enmity) and to caution you respecting the Insinuations of this Gentleman against this Court, and the Instances he supposes of their ill will to us, which I take to be as imaginary as I know his Fancies to be that the Count de V. and myself are continually plotting against him, and employing the News-Writers of Europe to depreciate his Character &. But as Shakespear says, “Trifles light as Air,” &c. I am persuaded, however, that he means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.¹⁴⁰⁹

Tuesday, August 12, 1783. Today, in Paris, Benny Bache turns fourteen years old. He arrived two weeks ago and wrote his mother,

I have left off my Latin and Gr[eek] to learn writing, fencing, dansing, and Drawing.¹⁴¹⁰

Benny Bache will also study printing in his grandfather’s printshop in Passy, under the shop’s master printer, Maurice Meyer.¹⁴¹¹

Wednesday, September 3, 1783. Today, in Paris, American peace commissioners Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens sign, on behalf of the United States, the Definitive Treaty of Peace with Britain. The American War of Independence has ended.

ARTICLE 1st. His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the [sovereign] United States …

ARTICLE 2d. [I]t is hereby agreed and declared that the following are and shall be their Boundaries, viz … from thence on a due west Course to the River Mississippi, Thence by a Line drawn along the Middle of the said River …¹⁴¹²

By this agreement, America’s western boundaries extend to the center of the Mississippi River, far beyond the lands George Washington killed Jumonville to secure, far beyond the 58,000 acres Washington now owns on the “illegal” side of the 1763 proclamation line.¹⁴¹³ The lands of Fort Necessity and Braddock’s massacre are now open for American settlement.

This morning I went out to Passy, and Dr. Franklin put into my hands the following resolution of Congress, which he received last night …

Ordered that a Commission be prepared to Mess[rs]. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, authorizing them … to enter into a Treaty of Commerce between the United States and Great Britain …¹⁴¹⁴

Shortly after learning that Franklin must be part of his reinstated commission to negotiate a commercial treaty with Great Britain, John Adams suffers another nervous collapse. John Adams:

I soon fell down in a fever, not much less violent than I had suffered two years before in Amsterdam … Not all the skill and kind assiduity of my physician, nor all the scrupulous care of my regimen … was found effectual for the restoration of my health. Still remaining feeble, emaciated, languid to a great degree, my physician and all my friends advised me to go to England to drink the waters and to bath[e] in them …¹⁴¹⁵

Wednesday, September 10, 1783. Today, John Adams writes Massachusetts congressional delegate Elbridge Gerry:

I beg you would make a Point of putting Jay and me into the Commission for treating with Denmark, Portugal, [&c.] … Smuggling Treaties into Franklin’s hands alone is continued by Vergennes on purpose to throw slights upon Jay and me …

[Y]ou ought to have some sympathy for the Feelings of your Ministers and more for their Reputations … Our affairs will all [go] extremely well if we are supported.—But if Franklin is suffered to go on with that low Cunning and mean Craft with which he has always worked and by which he has done so much Mischief, the publick will suffer.¹⁴¹⁶

John Adams’ self-touting to Congress has had repercussions. Today, Ben Franklin writes John Adams:

I have received a letter from a very respectable person in America containing the following words, viz:

“It is confidently reported … that the court of France was at the bottom against our obtaining the fishery and [western] territory … secured to us by the treaty; that our minister at that court [meaning Mr. Franklin] favored, or did not oppose this design against us, and that it was entirely owing to the firmness, sagacity and disinterestedness of Mr. Adams with whom Mr. Jay united, that we have obtained these important advantages.”

I therefore think that I ought not to suffer an accusation which falls little short of treason to my country to pass without notice when the means of effectual vindication are at hand … I have no doubt of your readiness to do a brother commissioner justice by certificates that will entirely destroy the effect of that accusation.¹⁴¹⁷

Saturday, September 13, 1783. Today, John Adams responds to Ben Franklin’s letter of the 10th:

I have received the letter … It is unnecessary for me to say anything upon this subject more than to quote the words which I wrote in [my diary on] the evening of the 30th of November, 1782, and which have been received and read in Congress, viz:

“I told [Dr. Franklin] my opinion without reserve of the policy of this court and of the principles, wisdom, and firmness with which Mr. Jay had conducted the negociations in his sickness and my absence, and that I was determined to support Mr. Jay to the utmost of my power in the pursuit of the same system. The Doctor heard me patiently, but said nothing.

“The first conference [with the British] we had afterwards … Dr. Franklin turned to Mr. Jay and said: ‘I am of your opinion and will go on with these gentlemen without consulting this court.’”¹⁴¹⁸

Sunday, December 7, 1783. Today, Massachusetts congressional delegate Samuel Osgood writes John Adams:

I hope it will not be altogether useless to communicate … the Reasons … of several important Decisions of Congress respecting our foreign ministers. The first … respected your Commission for Peace … [W]hat suggested to Congress the Idea of an Alteration … [were] the several Letters that passed between you and the C.[ompte]] de V[ergenne]s respecting the [currency devaluation] Resolutions of Congress of March 1780; and also [your insistence on] the publication of your Commission for a commercial treaty with great Britain … [I]t was expedient that you should [be] pointedly instructed … New Instructions were made out for you alone … “you are ultimately to govern yourself by the advice of the minister of his most Christian Majesty,” etc … But it was not sufficient to let it rest here. [T]here should be more than one Peace Commissioner … Congress having agreed upon five …

[T]he Reasons of the Measure … Doctor Witherspoon has been candid enough on the floor of Congress to hint … was your obstinate Dispute with the C.[ount] de V.[ergenne]s. I have always suppos’d that the object was to clip your Wings …

After the Provisional Treaty arriv’d, some were heartily pleased, and others discovered a Degree of Mortification. It was evident that our Comm’rs acted for themselves … [I]t was said that they had grossly disobeyed their instructions … They had made and signed a Treaty without their Knowledge or Concurrence … It was a Matter of Surprize and Astonishment to the Franklinites that the God of Electricity consented to act with you secretly. However, if I might be allowed to form an opinion, it would be that the electrical Machine discharged itself invisibly … He does not consider his most C[hristian] M[ajesty] as an Ally, but as a Father to the United States … whenever he mentions him it is in this light.

The next act of Congress of Consequence was the recalling your Commission for entering into a commercial Treaty with G.[reat] B.[ritain] … I suppos’d then and am more confirmed in my Opinion now that it was a foreign Manoeuvre, not merely to mortify you …

You will pardon me in candidly mentioning to you the Effects of your long [Peace] Journal, forwarded after the signing of the provisional Treaty. It was read by the Secretary in Congress … Several Gentlemen … appeared overmuch disposed to make it appear as ridiculous as possible; several ungenerous Remarks were made upon it, as being unfit to be read in Congress, and not worth the Time expended in reading it …¹⁴¹⁹

The reading of this journal extremely embarrassed his friends, especially the delegates of Massachusetts, who more than once interrupted it and at last succeeded in putting a stop to it on the suggestion that it bore the marks of a private and confidential paper … The good humor of that body yielded to the suggestion.

The particulars of this Journal; … I recollect one … “Monsieur Adams, vous etes le WASHINGTON de negociation.” Stating the incident, he makes this comment upon it: “These people have a very pretty knack of paying compliments.” He might have added they have also a very dexterous knack of disguising a sarcasm.¹⁴²⁰

Tuesday, December 23, 1783. Today, George Washington submits his resignation as commander in chief:

Happy in the confirmation of our Independence and Sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable Nation, I resign with satisfaction the Appointment I accepted with diffidence.¹⁴²¹

Mr. Washington’s merit consisted in constancy. But constancy was the common virtue of the Revolution. Who was there that was inconstant? I know of but one military defection, that of [Benedict] Arnold; and I know of no political defection among those who made themselves eminent when the Revolution was formed by the Declaration of Independence.¹⁴²²

Wednesday, January 14, 1784. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

Resolved, unanimously, nine states being present, that the said definitive treaty [of peace between the United States of America and his Britannic Majesty signed on the 3d day of September, 1783] be, and the same is hereby ratified by the United States in Congress assembled …¹⁴²³

Monday, January 26, 1784. Today, Benjamin Franklin writes Benny’s mother, Sarah Bache, of Franklin’s fear that, in the new Society of the Cincinnati, George Washington is creating a hereditary order of nobility for the United States:

Your Care in sending me the Newspapers is very agreeable to me. I received by Capt. Barney those relating to the Cincinnati. My Opinion of the Institution cannot be of much Importance; I only wonder that, when the united Wisdom of our Nation had, in the Articles of Confederation, manifested their Dislike of establishing Ranks of Nobility, … persons should think proper to distinguish themselves and their Posterity from their fellow Citizens and form an Order of Hereditary Knights in direct Opposition to the solemnly declared Sense of their Country! …

[T]he descending Honour to Posterity who could have no Share in obtaining it is not only groundless and absurd, but often hurtful to that Posterity, since it is apt to make them proud … and thence falling into … Meannesses, Servility, and Wretchedness … which is the present case with much of what is called the Noblesse in Europe …¹⁴²⁴

Ben Franklin will show a copy of this letter to Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, the Comte de Mirabeau, urging him to write an essay against the evils of hereditary succession. Mirabeau will do so this September, using material from Franklin’s letter in his Considerations on the Order of Cincinnati.¹⁴²⁵ Many will mark Mirabeau’s attack on hereditary succession as the beginning of the French Revolution!¹⁴²⁶

Tuesday, April 6, 1784. Today, back in the Netherlands, where he is still seeking a loan for the United States,¹⁴²⁷ John Adams writes Arthur Lee:

A friend of mine in Massachusetts, in a letter some months ago, gave me a confused hint that Franklin had written to somebody, at me, or towards me, or against me, or about me; but I could make nothing of it and did not know until I received your letter that he had written against me to Congress. What he can have said after allowing me to be sensible and honest, as you say he does, I am curious to know.¹⁴²⁸

Friday, April 9, 1784. Today, John Adams lets anger distend his handwriting as he responds to Massachusetts congressional delegate Samuel Osgood’s letter of December 8th:

It can be no Surprise to any one who knows the real Character of the Man [Franklin], that Mr. Jay and I were joined [in independent negotiations with Britain] by our Colleague.—He never joined nor would join until he found we were United and determined to go through without him. Then he joined, because he knew his Destruction would be the Consequence of his standing out. That he had leave [from France] to join I doubt not, and [that] he communicated all he could [to France] I doubt not. But the business was so constructed that he could not communicate any Thing & could not hurt Us, and the Signature of the Treaty without communicating he could not hinder, and this Secured us from Delays which would have lost Us the [Peace?] …

The Instances for a Minister to Question do not surprise me. Nothing … can surprise me … [Franklin’s] Success, in so many of his Selfish Plans and Hostilities against Others and the Ardor with which he is supported in all of them for his Obsequiousness by Politicians to whom all the Arts and Maxims of Aristotle, his Disciple Machiavelli, and their Disciples, the Jesuits, are familiar in Theory and Practice, have emboldened a mind enfeebled with Age, the Stone & the Gout, and eaten with all the Passions which may prey upon old Age unprincipled, until it is no longer under the restraint even of Hypocrisy. He told me that the United States ought to join France in two future wars against G.[reat] B.[ritain]—the first to pay the Debt we owe her for making war for us and the second to show ourselves as generous as she had been.—it is high time his Resignation was accepted. He has done Mischief enough. He has been possessed of the lowest Cunning and the deepest Hypocrisy I ever met. [T]he latter he every day lays aside more and more, it being now he thinks unnecessary. I am informed he has lately written against me to Congress. What he can have said after allowing me to be desirable and honest I know not. He has heretofore talked to Congress and misrepresented Expressions in private Conversation between him and me alone in anxious Consultation upon our dearest public Interests in the worst of times, without giving me the least hint that he disapproved what I said.

I have been so sensible of danger from Foreigners that I was determined that no danger or fear of Prisons or Death, no Hardships of Voyages … or Perils of … Ministers or Assassins should deter me from attempting all in my power to ward it off.—But I was not aware of the Perils from false Brethren which have been worse than all the rest. Nevertheless, thro all Difficulties & Dangers, I have executed every Thing I have under taken, and all is secured. I am now indifferent about all the laughers, Weepers, Cursers & Flatterers. My first wish of my Soul is to go home. If the People of America have not now sense & spirit enough to put all to rights, they ought not in divine Justice to be free.¹⁴²⁹

Friday, May 7, 1784. With the British peace treaty now ratified, peace commissioner John Jay has asked Congress for permission to return to the United States. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

[B]eing this day informed … that Mr. J. Jay proposed to embark for America in the month of April … Mr. Jay was put in nomination; and the ballots being taken,

Mr. John Jay was elected Secretary for foreign affairs …

Resolved, That a minister plenipotentiary be appointed in addition to Mr. John Adams and Mr. Benjamin Franklin, for the purpose of negotiating treaties of Commerce.

Congress proceeded to the election, and the ballots being taken, Mr. Thomas Jefferson was elected …¹⁴³⁰

Wednesday, May 12, 1784. Today, from Paris, Benjamin Franklin writes the Rev. Samuel Mather of Massachusetts (son of Cotton Mather):

This powerful monarch continues its friendship for the United States. It is a friendship of the utmost importance to our security, and should be carefully cultivated … A breach between us and France would infallibly bring the English again upon our backs; and yet we have some wild heads among our countrymen who are endeavoring to weaken that connexion! Let us preserve our reputation by performing our engagements; our credit by fulfilling our contracts; and friends by gratitude and kindness; for we know not how soon we may again have occasion for all of them.¹⁴³¹

Friday, August 6, 1784. Today, Thomas Jefferson finally arrives in Paris, joining Ben Franklin and John Adams in their commission to negotiate commercial treaties with European powers.¹⁴³²

Thursday, August 12, 1784. Today, in Paris, Benny Bache turns fifteen years old. This summer, Benny spends his time watching hot-air-balloon ascensions, flying kites, swimming in Paris’ Seine River, and meeting the many famous people who visit his grandfather.¹⁴³³

Thursday, August 19, 1784. Today, Benjamin Franklin writes his publisher in England, William Strahan,

[Y]ou do wrong to discourage the Emigration of Englishmen to America … Emigration does not diminish but multiplies a Nation … It is a Fact that the Irish emigrants and their children are now in Possession of the Government of Pennsylvania by their Majority in the Assembly, as well as of a great Part of the Territory; and I remember well the first Ship that brought any of them over.¹⁴³⁴

Sunday, September 19, 1784. Benny Bache and his grandfather continue to enjoy hot-air-balloon ascensions. Today, Benny Bache writes in his diary,

I went with my grandpapa to the Abbé Armons’ to see the balloon of the Messr. Roberts which was about to start; I pointed the telescope; at eleven o’clock everything was ready and the balloon should have been started. My grandfather was playing chess and told me to inform him as soon as I saw it start. Three minutes before 12, I heard a cannon fired and a minute afterwards, I saw the balloon rise. Everybody was looking. The wind was south, a little to the west. I leave the Abbés and come with a telescope to take my place upon the roof of our house … Every one looked through the telescope in turn …

It was in the shape of a cylinder terminated by two hemispheres … The aeronauts tried, with little oars which they had, to drive a little against the wind, but this did not succeed.¹⁴³⁵

Friday, October 8, 1784. Benny Bache will learn the type foundry business. Today, he writes in his diary:

My grandfather has caused a master founder to come to Passy to teach me to cast types. He will come tomorrow to remain all the winter.¹⁴³⁶

Thursday, November 11, 1784. Today, Benjamin Franklin writes Richard Bache, Benny’s father:

Your Family having pass’d well thro’ the Summer gives me great pleasure. I still hope to see them before I die. Benny continues well, and grows amazingly. He is a very sensible and a very good Lad, and I love him much. I had Thoughts of … fitting him for Public Business, thinking he might be of Service hereafter to his Country; but being now convinc’d that Service is no Inheritance, as the Proverb says, I have determin’d to give him a Trade [in printing and letter founding] that he may have something to depend on … He has already begun to learn the business from Masters who come to my House, and is very diligent in working and quick in learning …¹⁴³⁷

With Franklin, there is a youth of sixteen years, bright and intelligent, who looks like him physically and who, having decided to become a printer, is working to that end. There is something very imposing in the sight of the American Legislator’s grandson taking part in so simple a task.¹⁴³⁸

Sunday, December 12, 1784. Today, John Adams writes Massachusetts congressional delegate Elbridge Gerry:

I have never answered particularly your most friendly & instructive letters … I really could not do it without entering into Discussions which related to Gentlemen with whom I have acted. I have received one way or another extracts of two or three Letters of Dr. Franklin which relate to me—the most unprovoked, the most cruel, the most malicious misrepresentations which ever were put upon Paper. I scorned to put my Pen to Paper in my own Vindication—I was determined to rest my Cause upon what was known to Congress …¹⁴³⁹

Thursday, February 24, 1785. This morning, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

Congress proceeded to the election of a Minister Plenipotentiary to represent the United States of America at the court of Great Britain; and the ballots being taken, the hon. John Adams was elected …¹⁴⁴⁰

Later today, Massachusetts congressional delegate Elbridge Gerry writes John Adams:

Attempts have been made to determine the choice [of Minister plenipotentiary to the Court of London] & this Morning it was effected & devolves on yourself. I am happy to give You the Information …

[A]s what were urged by the states opposed to your Choice … One part of your Secret Journal, wherein mention is made of a Compliment paid you as being “the Washington of the Negotiations” and that a paragraph of one of your letters describing the proper Character of Minister for London, that he should be possessed of the “cardinal Virtues,” compared with other letters of yours claiming the appointment, are urged as Traits of a weak passion to which a Minister ought never to be subject …¹⁴⁴¹

Thursday, March 10, 1785. Today, in the Continental Congress, the Journals report:

Congress proceeded to the election of a Minister plenipotentiary to represent the United States at the Court of Versailles; and the ballots being taken, the hon. Thomas Jefferson was unanimously elected …¹⁴⁴²

My grandfather has prevailed upon M. Didot, the best printer of this age and even the best that has ever been, to consent to take me into his house for some time in order to teach me his art. I take my meals at the house of Mrs. Le Roy, a friend of my grandpapa; I went thither to day with my cousin and made acquaintance with his family and something more; he combines in his house engraving, the forge, the foundry and the printing office; it is a very amiable family, it seems to me; the meals are frugal.¹⁴⁴³

Friday, April 8, 1785. Today, John Adams writes Englishman Dr. Richard Price to thank him for his book on the American Revolution:

Some time since I received from Dr. Franklin a copy of the first edition of your Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and lately a copy of the second. I am much obliged to you …¹⁴⁴⁴

Dr. Price’s book¹⁴⁴⁵ includes a letter, dated March 22, 1778, from former French Comptroller General Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot to Dr. Price, in which Turgot states,

Mr. Franklin by your desire has put into my hands the last edition of your “Observations on Civil Liberty,” etc …

The fate of America is already decided. Behold her independence beyond recovery. But will she be free and happy? …

I am not satisfied … I observe that by most of the [state] constitutions the customs of England are imitated without any particular motive. Instead of collecting all authority into one [assembly], that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a body of representatives, a council, and a governor, because there is in England a House of Commons, a House of Lords, and a King. They endeavour to balance these different powers, as if this equilibrium, which in England may be a necessary check to the enormous influence of royalty, could be of any use in republics founded upon the equality of all the citizens …¹⁴⁴⁶

Mr. Turgot, in a letter to Dr. Price, printed in London, censured the American Constitution[s] as adopting three branches, in imitation of the Constitution of Great Britain. The intention was to celebrate Franklin’s Constitution and condemn mine.¹⁴⁴⁷

Monday, May 2, 1785. Today, John Adams answers Elbridge Gerry’s letter of February 24th, which reported that some in Congress viewed Adams’ Peace Journal as displaying “a weak passion,” i.e., vanity:

The Imputation of a weak Passion has made so much Impression on me that it may not be improper to say a little more about it …

If I had given in to … sending Useless Arms to America at great Prices [and] … not disputed with France … I could have obtained a Confidence … infinitely more gratifying to a weak Passion than I shall ever enjoy during my Life …

[I]f I had adopted [as Dr. Franklin] … that “The United States ought to join France in two Future Wars against England …” I could … even now have all the Emissaries thro the World … employed to gratify my weak Passions …¹⁴⁴⁸

I have been to Passy. My grandfather has received permission from Congress to give up his office. Mr. Jefferson will fill his place. My grandpapa has fixed upon the month of June for his departure.¹⁴⁴⁹

Friday, May 6, 1785. Ben Franklin will be moving his Passy printshop to Philadelphia. Today, Benny Bache writes in his diary:

I have taken a press of my grandfather’s to pieces.¹⁴⁵⁰

I had the box for packing up the press made at the carpenter’s.¹⁴⁵¹

Tuesday, May 10, 1785. Today, eighty-year-old Ben Franklin writes Benny Bache’s parents, Sarah and Richard Bache:

Having at length received from Congress Permission to return home, I am now preparing for my departure … [ M]y Friends here are so apprehensive for me that they press me much to remain in France. They tell me I am among a People who universally esteem and love me; that my Friends at home are diminish’d by Death in my Absence; that I may there meet with Envy and its consequent Enmity … The Desire however of spending the little remainder of Life with my Family is so strong … Ben is very well, and growing amazingly. He promises to be a stout as well as a good Man …¹⁴⁵²

Thursday, May 12, 1785. Today, John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, leaves Paris for the United States. He will enter Harvard College as a junior.¹⁴⁵³ In a week, Adams himself will leave for London as U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain.

Tuesday, May 17, 1785. Today, Thomas Jefferson presents himself at Versailles as America’s new Minister Plenipotentiary. Thomas Jefferson:

The succession to Dr. Franklin at the court of France was an excellent school of humility. On being presented to any one as the Minister of America, the common-place question used in such cases was “c’est vous, Monsieur, qui remplace le Docteur Franklin?” “It is you, Sir, who replace Doctor Franklin?” I generally answered “no one can replace him, Sir; I am only his successor.”¹⁴⁵⁴

Wednesday, June 1, 1785. Today, in London, John Adams is presented to Britain’s King George III. John Adams:

The King … asked me whether I came last from France, and upon my answering in the affirmative, he put on an air of familiarity, and, smiling, said, “there is an opinion among some people that you are not the most attached of all your countrymen to the manners of France.” I was surprised at this, because I thought it an indiscretion and a departure from the dignity. I was a little embarrassed, but determined not to deny the truth …¹⁴⁵⁵

To day I begin to have the packing done.¹⁴⁵⁶

Tuesday, July 12, 1785. Today, Ben Franklin and Benny Bache leave their home in Passy to return to the United States. Today, Benny writes in his diary:

[A]fter having dined at Mr. de Chaumont’s, my grandfather ascended his litter in the midst of a very great concourse of the people of Passy; a mournful silence reigned around him and was only interrupted by sobs.¹⁴⁵⁷

I can only … testify in general that there appeared to me more respect and veneration attached to the character of Doctor Franklin in France than to that of any other person in the same country, foreign or native … When he left Passy, it seemed as if the village had lost its Patriarch …¹⁴⁵⁸

Friday, August 12, 1785. Today, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, en route to Philadelphia, Benny Bache turns sixteen years old.

CHAPTER NINE

VICTORY