“A Civil War Was Expected”
JEFFERSON DESCRIBED THE release of the “XYZ dispatches” as “such a shock on the republican mind, as has never been seen since our independence.”1 The immediate consequence to the Republicans of the revelations from France was a general disillusionment. “Many of their boldest leaders left for home; others went over openly to the Federalists,”2 Jefferson observed to Madison.
The Republicans had dangerously miscalculated; in light of the dispatches from the American diplomats in Paris, whose contents were so unfavorable to France, some of the defenders of the Revolution in America began to doubt their support for the French Republic. Recognizing the likely impact of the XYZ documents, former President Washington correctly predicted that the French government would soon see “the spirit and policy of this country rising with resistance and that they have falsely calculated upon support from a large part of the country thereof.”3
Talleyrand, for all his blustering and demands made on the American ministers, must have then realized that the winds of public opinion in the United States had just then radically shifted, and were no longer blowing favorably for the ship of France. The French foreign minister quickly shifted from aggressive brinksmanship to damage control. One of his first responses was to publish (unsigned) “an elaborate refutation of the envoys’ letters.”4 In a letter to Barras, the senior member of the Directory, Talleyrand defended his actions.
They seem to me to be within the bounds of the moderation we should display; they are not too offensive to Mr. Gerry of whom we are desirous of making use, but severe enough against his colleagues … They are very nettling to Mr. Adams, whose liberticide policy they unmask, as a whole encouraging for our friends in America. I believe that this was required. Moreover, the refutation is complete.5
The French Foreign Minister’s absurd and arrogant emphasis on sparing offense to Gerry, while heaping it upon his two federalist colleagues, fulfilled little purpose due to Gerry’s refusal to cooperate. Talleyrand realized, despite his self-defenses, that he had overstepped—he quickly began investigating alternative paths to a resolution of the crisis that he himself had created. Before Talleyrand could find other avenues of approach to President Adams, however, the political situation in the United States had dramatically changed.
Deeply offended at the treatment of the American ministers by Talleyrand and his surrogates, the American polity forgot their differences and united against France, and behind President Adams. “For the first time since the beginning of the French Revolution, a majority of Americans now seriously questioned the political motives of their Gallic ally,” one historian wrote of the American reaction. “Many Americans’ former love for revolutionary France had turned to disbelief, disgust, and revulsion as a result of the XYZ Affair.”6 Meetings whose purpose was to express approval of Adams and anger at France were held across the country. Many of these political rallies occurred in Virginia, which had long been a bastion of republicanism and support for the French Republic.7 Calls for unity, a strong American response, and enthusiasm for President Adams were often heard at these patriotic gatherings which occurred in every state of the Union.
Adams soon found himself overwhelmed with petitions of support from across the young republic. All of these addresses to the president received a personal response from Adams, either in the form of a stump speech to those delivering them, or via a letter.8 Hundreds of addresses arrived at the capital.9 “The hostile and disrespectful behavior of France was all the more disturbing because until recently she had been America’s closest friend and ally. Those sending resolutions frequently emphasized this point, and mentioned the bonds of friendship that had existed between the two republics,” one historian wrote of the addresses.10
Most Americans had (until the release of the dispatches) thought of France and the United States as natural friends and allies. Many addresses expressed strong feelings of betrayal. “She once fought for liberty—she now contends for dominion” was the opinion communicated by the Massachusetts legislature regarding France in its address to Adams.11 Adams’s observation that the French “ought to have known us better”12 is certainly pertinent as Talleyrand and his senior staff had had more than enough direct knowledge of the culture and political situation in America. However, the French government was not entirely without friends in the United States, the vice president himself being one of the most dedicated.
Several days after the release of the XYZ dispatches, Jefferson proclaimed to Madison that the French had misread the motives of American Republicans, “whom they so far mistake, as to presume an attachment to France and hatred to the federal party, and not the love of their country, to be their first passion.”13 Jefferson’s harsh confidential criticism of Adams and the policies of the Federalists had been understood by Létombe and his colleagues as indicative of a “hatred to the federal party” as a “first passion” on Jefferson’s part. As Jefferson was the recognized leader of the republican opposition, it seems not an unreasonable assumption on the part of Létombe, and then Talleyrand himself, to consider Jefferson’s personal views as representative of those of his party and followers. Jefferson’s dual role of vice president and partisan leader of the opposition confused many, including, apparently, officials of the French Foreign Ministry.
Jefferson described the release of the XYZ dispatches as causing “a state of astonishment” in the “public mind;” his own reaction must certainly have been similar.14 A general shift of support across the country toward the anti-France, federalist position, and President Adams swiftly occured. This result was in direct opposition to the goals of Jefferson and his Francophile followers who viewed England as the greatest enemy of the United States, and of republicanism. There would be consequences for Adams, too, and for relations between the two countries. An opportunity for redemption of a sort, however, soon presented itself to Jefferson, despite the extensive political damage that his party had suffered.
Regardless of the overwhelming and enthusiastic bipartisan support for Adams personally, and general calls for strong retaliation against France, the president remained hopeful that a diplomatic solution to the ongoing crisis could still be found. Adams was walking a fine line between peace and war as the population, reinvigorated and angry, united behind him. “In the spring of 1798 he took precautionary measures, and he sought to strengthen American forces by augmenting the fleet and by creating a new national army. Yet he did not want war,” one noted historian wrote of the crisis.
For the first time he even spoke of soldiers in less than complimentary terms, and he advised some college students against enlisting in the new army. He also warned the citizenry not to be ‘dazzled’ by martial splendors. Adams additionally denigrated those who clamored for war. He called them the ‘worst Enemies’ of the Republic.15
While the anger of the American people continued to grow, and the political divisions between Federalist and Republican were, at least, temporarily minimized, Talleyrand sent a new consul to represent France in the United States.
“During the month of May 1798, Victor Du Pont, formerly French consul at Charleston, was sent as Consul General to the United States. President Adams refused him an exequatur, and after an interview with Jefferson he returned to France.”16 There should be little surprise that Jefferson granted Du Pont “an interview” as the rejected French consul was the son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, a noted French Republican whom Jefferson had known since his service as American minister to France. In fact, “the ripe friendship between these two notable liberals ended only with the death of the elder in 1817.”17 If Talleyrand had hoped to leverage Jefferson’s friendship with the new consul general’s father, his plans were swiftly quashed. Worse still for Talleyrand was that on his return to France the younger Du Pont submitted a report to the foreign minister in which “he demonstrated that it would be to the interest of France by all means within its power to avoid war with the United States,” a noted historian wrote. “Talleyrand had asked for facts and Du Pont replied that there were so many it was hard to make a choice, since the acts of violence, brigandage, and piracy committed by French cruisers or under the French flag in American seas would fill many volumes.”18 Likely influenced by his meeting with Jefferson at the end of his abbreviated diplomatic posting in the United States, Du Pont informed Talleyrand that the consequence of an American alliance with Great Britain against France would certainly be the loss to France of American commerce.19 Perhaps even worse than that however for revolutionary France was that America would be lost to the international anti-monarchy, republican movement which the leaders of France believed they were then leading.
Du Pont also informed Talleyrand “that a war between the two republics would cause the United States to sacrifice their liberty through an alliance with Great Britain and would enhance the maritime strength of the latter power.”20 Neither wishing to provide advantages to France’s most bitter enemy (Great Britain) nor of losing access to American commerce, Talleryrand began to be convinced that the days of French brinksmanship with the United States must end. Doubtless impressed by Adams’s angry reaction to the XYZ dispatches, and the overwhelming anti-French sentiment that had arose in the United States, and likely moved by Du Pont’s report and recommendations, Talleyrand finally embarked on a plan to reach a peaceful resolution of the crisis with Adams. Accomplishing such a denouement however, to a crisis that he had recklessly and needlessly prolonged and escalated, would prove to be more difficult than Talleyrand had likely expected.
French responsibility for the crisis was clear to Victor Du Pont, to Otto, and to other French diplomats, and certainly was a viewpoint not foreign to the three American ministers to Paris. The majority of Americans who had read or were familiar with the contents of the XYZ dispatches concurred with Otto and Du Pont. Immune to the rising anti-French feeling that swept the country in the aftermath of the release of the American diplomats’ decrypted reports, Jefferson’s support for the Revolution in France remained solid. In a letter to his longtime friend, Pierre Du Pont de Nemours, Victor Du Pont’s father, written four years later during his first presidential term, Jefferson wrote,
I am told that Talleyrand is personally hostile to us. This I suppose, has been occasioned by the XYZ history. But he should consider that that was the artifice of a party, willing to sacrifice him to the consolidation of their power: That this nation has done him justice by dismissing them; that those in power [now], are precisely those who disbelieved that story, and saw in it nothing but an attempt to deceive our country …21
Jefferson’s self-serving explanation to Du Pont de Nemours posited that the XYZ affair was the result of partisan anti-French machinations by Adams and the Federalist Party, and that those “who disbelieved the story” (as if to suggest that the dispatches themselves contained falsehoods or were fraudulent) were rewarded with political power and that Adams, who had not “disbelieved the story” had rightfully been rejected by the American people.
Though the disrespectful treatment of the American diplomats by their French hosts could have been used as a cassus belli by Adams to go to war with France, he continued to pursue peace. He was fully aware (as was Jefferson) that a war with France would be to no advantage to the United States and was likely unwinnable. If indeed he was a good (or better) and able leader; it was a war he had to avoid, if at all possible. Once the popular clamor for war had reached a fever pitch after the release of the XYZ dispatches, avoiding war became all the more difficult, and would likely carry a serious political cost for Adams.
Abjuring an emotional reaction to the crisis he continued his dual pursuit of peace and reluctant preparations for war; a legitimate and reasonable dual path. Jefferson’s characterization, in his letter to Du Pont, of Adams’s actions as entirely political—to “sacrifice” Talleyrand to consolidate his and his party’s power and to “deceive” the country (perhaps then to gain advantage over those opposing the Federalists)—is an unfair and unrealistic “spin” on Jefferson’s part. Jefferson’s is a cynical and disingenuous view not supported by documentation or events.
The XYZ dispatches confirmed for most of the country, including many Republicans, but not for Jefferson, that France’s belligerence and intransigence were at the heart of the conflict between the two countries. The mistreatment of the American diplomats was only the most recent, and potentially most dangerous, phase.
Jefferson believed that the success of the French Revolution, regardless of its brutality and violence, was essential for the future of the entire world. People who believe that they have the fate of the world in their hands will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure the attainment of their goals. Though he had gone to extreme lengths to assist the Revolution in France, they were all for naught as Napoleon Bonaparte’s 18–19 Brumaire, 1799 coup finally destroyed the French republican dream.
Throughout the crisis with France during Adams’s presidency, Jefferson’s self-assurance that only his pro-France/anti-Great Britain view was the correct one, and that those who disagreed were therefore dangerous to the country, made Adams’s situation all the more difficult. The vagueries and confusions of European conflicts and shifting international alliances that would see Britain and the United States linked by a treaty of amity and trade (an agreement that further alienated France from the United States) during Adams’s administration would, little more than a decade later, see a British invasion. Though the War of 1812, during the presidency of his friend and fellow Republican James Madison, may appear to validate Jefferson’s anti-British views of 1798, they ought not to suggest prescience on his part. That monarchical Britain was inherently opposed to American republicanism (and vice-versa), a view strongly held by Jefferson and many others, it does not necessarily follow as an absolute consequence that war between Britain and the United States must then be inevitable or unavoidable.
Supported by a massive surge of popular indignation against France in the wake of the XYZ revelations and a sense of national support for him personally, Adams would take the conflict to a new level. His three ministers to France having been harassed, disrespected, abused, and obstructed, the diplomatic path to resolve the crisis with France appeared closed. With French intransigence and belligerence the two most powerful forces in the crisis, Adams had no option remaining to him but to refocus his energies on the other half of his dual policy: prepare for war.
On June 13, 1798, Congress approved the “Act to Suspend the Commercial Intercourse between the United States and France, and the Dependencies Thereof.” In addition to severing trade relations between the two countries, it also barred French vessels from American waters “unless driven there by distress of weather or in want of provisions.”22 Though Adams was piloting the country toward a new, stronger, and more belligerent course with France, the harsh language of the new policy also included a path for France to end the difficulties without war.
That if, before the next session of Congress, the government of France, and all persons acting by or under their authority, shall clearly disavow, and shall be found to refrain from the aggressions, depredations and hostilities which have been, and are by them encouraged and maintained against the vessels and other property of the citizens of the United States, and against their national rights and sovereignty, in violation of the faith of treaties, and the laws of nations, and shall thereby acknowledge the just claims of the United States to be considered as in all respects neutral, and unconnected in the present European war, if the same shall be continued, then and thereupon it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, being well ascertained of the premises, to remit and discontinue the prohibitions and restraints hereby enacted and declared.23
As if to reiterate the new emphasis on military preparations, additional Amendments were added to this measure by the president over the following several months. Though the door to peace and normalization was always held open by Adams, the ongoing aggressions and “depredations” of France necessitated the building of a legitimate military capability.
The publication of the XYZ documents resulted not only in a national swell of support for Adams and disgust and anger at France, it also brought about an extraordinarily swift warship construction effort. “Outraged by this affront to national honor, on 27 April 1798 Congress authorized the President to acquire, arm, and man no more than twelve vessels, of up to twenty-two guns each. Under the terms of this act several vessels were purchased and converted into ships of war.”24 Less than a week later Congress established the Department of the Navy. The following month, Adams authorized American merchant ships to defend themselves
… against any search, restraint or seizure, which shall be attempted upon such vessel, or upon any other vessel, owned, as aforesaid, by the commander or crew of any armed vessel sailing under French colours, or acting, or pretending to act, by, or under the authority of the French republic; and may repel by force any assault or hostility which shall be made or committed, on the part of such French, or pretended French vessel, pursuing such attempt, and may subdue and capture the same; and may also retake any vessel owned, as aforesaid, which may have been captured by any vessel sailing under French colours, or acting, or pretending to act, by or under authority from the French republic.25
In early May 1798, former President Washington was offered, and accepted, command of a new provisional army “of ten thousand men,”26 which was expected to deter any potential invasion by France.27 Washington accepted command of the new army only with the proviso that Alexander Hamilton would be named as his senior general—likely disgusting both Adams and Jefferson.28 In June, “only one American naval vessel was deployed,” though before the conclusion of hostilities in 1800, “the force available to the navy approached thirty vessels, with some 700 officers and 5,000 seamen.”29
Late in June 1798, Adams sent another Message to Congress about the American diplomatic mission to France. In supporting Gerry’s refusal to treat with France in any fashion other than as a private citizen (and no longer as an empowered American minister to France), Adams informed Congress that Gerry’s new instructions were “to consent to no loans, and therefore the negotiation may be considered at an end.”30 As Gerry was the only member of the triple delegation then remaining at the French capital, there were no opportunities remaining for Talleyrand to officially respond to Adams’s Message or to continue even the pretence of negotiations.
Adams concluded his short Message with a promise “to never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.”31 The June twenty-first Message to Congress was meant to be a clear signal from Adams to the French that their refusal to receive the three American ministers had exhausted the diplomatic component of the ongoing conflict. With diplomacy no longer a viable option, actual warfare became a serious possibility. A war was approaching rapidly which leaders in both Paris and Philadelphia, at least in private, claimed that they did not want.
During this period of frustrations, fear, and rising tensions, the Federalist-controlled Congress passed the Alien and Sedition acts. Mainly targeted against French agitation in the United States, the Sedition Act also was used against republican critics of the government. According to the biography of Adams on the White House’s website, the intent of the two acts was two-fold: “to frighten foreign agents out of the country and to stifle the attacks of Republican editors.”32 Adams was noncommittal on the acts, and signed them into law with little fanfare. Jefferson, though vigorously opposed, also signed. Regardless of affixing his signature, Jefferson, with significant assistance from Madison, attempted to defeat the new laws by “planting resolutions in legislatures” of several states that were fiery denunciations of the new legislation.33
Jefferson wrote a strongly worded Resolution (but kept his authorship a secret) that passed in the Kentucky legislature. Jefferson’s Resolution asserted that the states had the right to nullify, under certain circumstances, Federal law. Employing language that was extraordinarily heated, even when compared with Jefferson’s highly charged rhetorical flourishes seen elsewhere, the Kentucky Resolution described the Alien and Sedition acts as likely to result in the dissolution of the Union.
That these and successive acts of the same character, unless arrested at the threshold, necessarily drive these States into revolution and blood, and will furnish new calumnies against republican government, and new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed that man cannot be governed but by a rod of iron.34
Jefferson’s hyperbole was too much for Madison however, who found the rhetoric of his party’s leader “inflammatory and tried to get the words for nullification withdrawn.”35 Madison submitted his own somewhat less controversial Resolution against the Acts in the Virginia legislature.
Extremely unpopular with Democratic-Republicans, some Federalists including Hamilton believed that the new acts were not quite strong enough. These laws later significantly affected Adams’s reelection bid, with many critics a suggesting that the Adams Administration had demonstrated an excessive zeal in dealing with its political opponents and those it viewed as enemies of the nation. Jefferson, constantly walking the razor’s edge between his role of vice president and that of the president’s greatest political opponent, both signed the law and then did his utmost to oppose it. In a letter to Jefferson written many years later, Adams referenced a letter that Jefferson had written to theologian, scientist, and noted Republican Dr. Joseph Priestley. In his letter to Dr. Priestley, Jefferson had described the Alien Act as “that libel on legislation,” prompting Adams to reasonably inquire of Jefferson—
As your name is subscribed to that law, as Vice President, and mine as President, I know not why you are not as responsible for it as I am … Neither of Us were concerned in the formation of it. We were then at War with France: French Spies then swarmed in our Cities and in the Country. Some of them were, intolerably, turbulent, impudent and seditious. To check these was the design of this law.36
Fears of French invasion, attacks on American commerce, and widespread anger at French insults had created an environment in which federalist leaders believed that they were obligated to take extraordinary measures to ensure the survival of the new country. Many in both parties believed that the country was under an existential threat from France and its revolutionary agents agitating within the United States. In the opposing camp, led by the vice president, these laws were viewed as existential threats to the Constitution and to republicanism.
The view from France of these American protectionist laws could only have been a confirmation of the obvious—that Americans saw France as a clear and present danger. With American public opinion rising swiftly against France in the wake of the XYZ scandal, and Adams’s announcement that the diplomatic component had failed, Talleyrand had no choice but to take a more circuitous route toward a denouement of the conflict.
Talleyrand found his solution in a convenient back channel to President Adams via a close friend of the president’s son, John Quincy. The French foreign minister sent Louis Andre Pichon, a former secretary in the Foreign Office and one-time colleague of Fouchet in the United States, to The Hague to “cultivate the acquaintance of William Vans Murray.”37 Murray was a friend of John Quincy Adams, and had succeeded him as American minister to The Hague. Pichon was successful in building a relationship with Murray who at first was “indignant at the Directory” but soon warmed to the French diplomat.38 In keeping with Talleyrand’s desire for personal control over the French diplomatic relationship with the United States, the Pichon-Murray discussions were not divulged to the French minister then serving at The Hague.39 With the expectation that Murray would relay details of these conversations to his friend John Quincy Adams, who then, in turn, would send them along to his father, Talleyrand sent instructions to Pichon on August fifteenth to “continue unostentatiously to see Mr. Murray,” and “to make some impression on the men devoted to the administration of Mr. Adams and to make them doubt at least the justice of the measures he continues to enact in the Legislative Body of the United States.”40 Though he had found a means of communicating with Adams, Talleyrand was not yet ready to abandon efforts to undermine the federalist American president for the sake of peace. It would not be long however before this approach was abandoned and replaced with an altogether different diplomatic tone.
At the end of August 1798, Talleyrand used the Pichon-Murray back channel to reply to Adams’s June twenty-first Message to Congress. Talleyrand wrote to Adams, via Pichon-Murray, “the government of the United States believed that France wished to revolutionize it; France believed that the government of the United States wished to throw itself into the arms of England. Let us substitute calm for passion, confidence for suspicion and soon we will be in accord.”41 Disingenuously inquiring as to the source of the conflict, Talleyrand rhetorically (and with a touch of threatening arrogance, too) asked Adams, “What, therefore, is the cause of the misunderstanding, which, if France did not manifest herself more wise, would henceforth induce a violent rupture between the two republics?”42 The French foreign minister asserted that “neither incompatible interests, nor projects of aggrandizement, divide them,” and that “France, in fine, has a double motive, as a nation, and as a republic, not to expose to any hazard the present existence of the United States. Therefore, it never thought of making war against them, nor exciting civil commotions among them.”43 Talleyrand understood that his previous tactics had failed. In a follow-up letter to Adams via Pichon-Murray, he made his intentions to defuse the crisis perfectly clear. Adams had laid out specific conditions in his short June Message to the Congress to which Talleyrand, by August, was prepared to concede. Talleyrand wrote to Adams,
You were right to assert … that, whatever plenipotentiary the government of the United States might send to France, in order to terminate the existing differences between the two countries, would be, and undoubtedly received with the respect due to the representative of a free, independent and powerful nation.44
Talleyrand’s favorable acknowledgment of Adams’s June speech—in which the president had promised Congress that without specific assurances, no American diplomat would ever again be sent to France—was the strongest signal yet that France had no interest in war with America. Though there was reason to believe that peace was in the offing, French and American warships continued to occasionally meet in naval combat—with American commanders more often the victor. These combats could only serve to reiterate to the French that further attacks on American commercial vessels would no longer be without cost.
In early February 1799, Adams sent another Message to the Senate in which he included Talleyrand’s conciliatory letter. The president accepted Talleyrand’s offer to reopen negotiations with France by sending William Vans Murray from The Hague to Paris as “minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the French Republic.”45 The reaction in the United States to the appointment of Murray was not entirely favorable. This prompted a slight change of plan and another Message to the Senate from Adams in which he explained “that a new modification of the embassy will give more general satisfaction to the Legislature and to the nation; and perhaps better answer the purposes we have in view.”46 A new triple diplomatic mission was therefore announced by Adams, “I now nominate Oliver Ellsworth, esq., chief justice of the United States; Patrick Henry, esq., late governor of Virginia, and William Vans Murray, esq., our minister resident at The Hague.”47 Patrick Henry, the famous Virginia patriot, orator, and politician, declined the honor due to ill health, and was replaced by William Davie, governor of the state of North Carolina and a former officer in the revolutionary army. The inconsistency of the French revolutionary government which had caused considerable confusion among American diplomats since 1789, most recently seen in Directory decrees promulgated then repealed time and again, was revisited fivefold when the Directory itself ceased to exist.48
By the time the newly appointed triple commission arrived in Paris, the Directory had been overthrown. “First Consul” Napoleon Bonaparte was the new ruler of France. The Revolution in France had imploded, just as Adams had said that it would. Talleyrand by then had already resigned and been reinstated as foreign minister under Bonaparte. The conciliatory and cooperative tone that Talleyrand had begun to foster toward America during the latter part of the Directory period continued under Napoleon. “The envoys were received by the French government with suitable respect, and three commissioners immediately appointed to treat with them,” one historian explained.49 A Convention between the French Republic and the United States that was submitted to the Senate on December 16, 1800, during the final months of Adams’s first and only term, officially ended the “Quasi-War” between France and the United States. The timing of the 18 Brumaire Coup (November 19, 1799) in France, which brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power, was more than favorable to the cause of peace.50 The Convention, signed formally as the Treaty of Mortefontaine, stated in Article 1:
There shall be a firm, inviolable, and universal peace, and a true and sincere Friendship between the French Republic, and the United States of America; and between their respective countries, territories, cities, towns and people without exception of persons or places.51
Though their mutual goal to avoid a war with France was finally realized, Jefferson and Adams had not been brought closer by the period of distrust, fear, and conflict just then concluded. Adams considered his management of the crisis with France and its final result as his greatest political and diplomatic triumph; in fact, he believed that it was the greatest accomplishment of his life. His success at avoiding war with France however did not help him to get reelected.
His defeat to Jefferson in the acrimonious election of 1800 created a deep bitterness in Adams. His once-greatest friend, and now most strident political rival, had beaten him; but, even more cruel and unfair, in his view, was that his successful avoidance of war with France had brought him political banishment rather than glory. Adams was resentful at what he considered a lack of appreciation for having successfully done what he believed had been his duty as president—keeping the country out of an almost certainly costly and unwinnable war.
Years later, Adams wrote a lengthy defense of his approach to France to his friend James Lloyd, a federalist Senator from Massachusetts. Prompted by a published correspondence in the Boston Daily Advertiser in January 1815 between Lloyd and Virginia Republican Congressman John Randolph, Adams was keen to explain and justify his past actions. Randolph had mentioned Adams in his original letter, and Lloyd did the same in his response to Randolph. Almost completely incapable of avoiding a good rhetorical battle, even one to which he hadn’t been invited, or of steering clear of those that involved his historical reputation, Adams indulged that special brand of “vanity” in his letters to Lloyd.
The vanity of Adams, clearly on display in his letters to Lloyd, was much less that of hubris or conceit than a neurotic preoccupation with others’ views of him. Adams’s excessive (and sometimes self-destructive) concern for his historical reputation, combined with his famous garrulousness that had too often affected his personal and professional relationships, resulted in a misunderstanding of Adams’s character, which has yet to be fully corrected.
Just as the contradictions in Jefferson’s character and actions continue to confound students of American history and of human behavior, Adams’s personality was equally complex. Fully aware that his argumentativeness and strong opinions had created difficulties with others, Adams warned Lloyd that he could not “repent of my ‘strong character’.”52 Adams’s assertiveness and self-assuredness in his several letters to Lloyd, though he had met him only once, is typical of Adams in that, when given the opportunity to defend his record—or when he created one—he spared no ink. When it came to matters of his administration, and particularly regarding his efforts to avert war with France, Adams’s surety was much more than a kind of monomania; it was rather an unsteady and contrary definitiveness. Adams’s greatest personality flaw was his need for validation from others. Later in life this need became something of an obsession.
Adams’s desire for personal validation, appreciation, and recognition was not simply a kind of weakness of character, but was rather, over the course of time, an unfortunate expression of the essential human need for meaningfulness. The correspondence with Cunningham, for example, had turned out so very badly, mainly due to Adams’s overly heated criticisms of others. For many seeking the recognition that they believe rightfully their due, a common strategy includes the diminishment of others. By contrasting their own accomplishments with the lesser actions of those they criticize, the validation seeker believes that he/she has, through sometimes forced comparisons, proven his/her worth. This approach is frought with danger, most notably the alienation of those who are not involved (a correspondent or newspaper reader, for example) and the enmity of those who are. Adams discovered on a number of occasions the hazards that this approach involved.
With Lloyd, Adams successfully kept himself in check in so far as criticism of others was concerned. His effusive descriptions of the successes of his administration to Lloyd appear excessively self-congratulatory, and thus might be seen to close the circle once again around Adams’s “vanity.” A thoughtful correspondent would perhaps have overlooked these lapses on the retired president’s part, and forgiven him for his abiding frustration that so few seemed to hold a positive view of his presidential accomplishments of which he was so proud. Adams did not know Lloyd well. In his introductory flourish, Adams explained,
The want of familiarity between us, I regret, not only because I have known, esteemed, and I may say, loved your family, from an early age, but, especially, because whatever I have heard or read of your character in life, has given me a respect for your talents and a high esteem for your character.53
Such courtesies, and elegant constructions, once so common in early American correspondence, reached a zenith with the second and third presidents.
Lloyd’s public criticism of Adams’s diplomatic missions to France, particularly in view of the fact that peace had been the result rather than war, was particularly irksome to Adams. In several letters to Lloyd, Adams defended his diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict with France without war and explained that, even with American anger at France running high at that time, there was little support for actual war. Adams explained to Lloyd that his foremost concern during his presidency was the preservation of the Union.
You say, Sir, that my missions to France, “the great shade in my Presidential escutcheon paralyzed the public feeling and weakened the foundations of the goodly edifice.” I agree, Sir, that they did with that third part of the people who had been averse to the revolution, and who were then, and always, before and since, governed by English prejudices; and who then, and always, before and since, constantly sighed for a war with France and an alliance with Great Britain; but with none others …The house would have fallen with a much more violent explosion, if those missions to France had not been instituted.54
Adams noted the slim majority in the Electoral College by which he had been elected, “a majority of one, or at most two votes,” then followed up with a rhetorical question to Lloyd. “And was this a majority strong enough to support a war, especially against France?”55 Citing President Madison’s difficulties in the then-current war against the British, regardless of the large electoral majority that had brought him to office, Adams made a strong case that, for many reasons, avoiding war with France had been the best course fifteen years previously. “Mr. Madison can now scarcely support a war against England, a much more atrocious offender, elected as he was, and supported as he is, by two thirds of the votes.”56
Adams believed that his leading the country to peace with France, despite popular clamor to fight, had been an extraordinary accomplishment. That few others appeared to see the situation in the same way was a source of deep frustration. “I wish not to fatigue you with too long a letter at once; but, Sir, I will defend my missions to France, as long as I have an eye to direct my hand, or a finger to hold my pen. They were the most disinterested and meritorious actions of my life,” Adams declared to Lloyd. “I reflect upon them with so much satisfaction, that I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: ‘Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France in the year 1800.’”57
“To despatch [sic] all in a few words, a civil war was expected,” Adams wrote in his next letter to Lloyd.58 Adams had done his utmost to avoid war with France, not only because of the expected high costs involved but also due to fears that the stresses of such a war could have resulted in a disruption of the Union itself. In his first letter to Lloyd, Adams mentioned a list of reasons why open war with France would have put the future of the federalist administration and the existence of the Union itself at risk. Adams specifically cited the two state legislatures where Jefferson had opposed the Alien and Sedition acts to illustrate his very dramatic point.
In this critical state of things, when Virginia and Kentucky, too nearly in unison with the other Southern and Western States, were menacing a separation; when insurrection was flaming in Pennsylvania … had the administration persevered in the war against France, it would have been turned out at the election of 1800 by two votes to one.59
Reiterating the correctness of his actions and tipping his hat to the accusations of “monarchism” which had haunted him for so long, Adams again strongly defended his French diplomacy. Adams wrote in his second letter to Lloyd, dated February 6, 1815:
My own “missions to France,” which you call the “great shade in my Presidential escutcheon,” I esteem the most splendid diamond in my crown; or, if any one thinks this expression too monarchical, I will say the most brilliant feather in my cap. To such an extent do we differ in opinion. I have always known that my missions to France were my error, heresy, and great offence in the judgment, prejudices, predilections, and passions of a small party in every State; but no gentleman in the fifteen years past has ever publicly assailed those missions till your letter to Mr. Randolph.60
Such a discussion, and defense, of course merited further instructional letters from the former president. Adams next wrote Lloyd on February seventeenth. Perhaps realizing that his strong language might be misconstrued as personal hostility, Adams reminded Lloyd of his friendly regard, and closed with, “It is not my design nor desire to excite you to a controversy. Be assured, I considered what you said of me, exactly as you intended it, and that in a very friendly light. My wish is equally friendly to give you information of some facts, of which, from your age, I presume you were not aware.”61 Adams viewed the peaceful resolution of the conflict with France as the most important of a string of successes for which he had never received recognition and appreciation.
In another letter to Lloyd written at the close of March 1815, Adams detailed the “happy conclusion of the peace with France in 1801, and its fortunate effects and consequences.”62 In citing the year 1801, Adams acknowledged, without comment, that though the peace with France was arranged through his efforts and under his administration, it was not finalized until Jefferson’s administration was in office. “I did not humble France,” Adams triumphantly explained, “nor have the combined efforts of emperors and kings humbled her, and, I hope, she never will be humbled below Austria, Russia, or England. But I humbled the French Directory as much as all Europe has humbled Bonaparte.”63 Adams’s frustration at what he perceived to be a lack of appreciation for the successes of his administration became a recurring theme in his retirement years. The reiteration of his victories, and complaints about their not being appreciated, did little to raise the former president’s reputation with his countrymen. Adams’s summation for Lloyd is characteristic of this unfortunate approach.
These sometimes lengthy and heated defenses by Adams are best seen as the consequences of a frustrated patriotism whose decades of loyalty, sacrifice, and labor, in the end, brought unexpected political defeat and endless criticism rather than esteem and honors. Adams declared to Lloyd,
My labors were indefatigable to compose all difficulties and settle all controversies with all nations, civilized and savage … And I had complete and perfect success, and left my country at peace with all the world, upon terms consistent with the honor and interest of the United States, and with all our relations with other nations, and all our obligations by the law of nations or by treaties. This is so true, that no nation or individual ever uttered a complaint of injury, insult, or offence.64
And then, amid all the frustration that resulted from what he saw as a universal lack of understanding and acknowledgement of his efforts and successes as president, there was the memory of his long and turbulent friendship with Jefferson. “As I had been intimately connected with Mr. Jefferson in friendship and affection for five-and-twenty years, I well knew his crude and visionary notions of government as well as his learning, taste, and talent in other arts and sciences,”65 Adams wrote to Lloyd. When this letter was written, the renewed relationship between Jefferson and Adams had already been underway for several years. His use of the terms “crude and visionary” to Lloyd are not necessarily backstabbing or insulting to Jefferson, though they do show that despite their renewed friendship, Adams and Jefferson certainly did not see eye to eye on issues of government and politics.
The first real indication that Adams gave to the country that the conflict with France was receding had been his Message to the Senate of February 18, 1799, which included Talleyrand’s conciliatory letter. Jefferson, as leader of the opposition, was in no way deaf to the fact that Adams had been successful, and that the new French tone of conciliation was a signal that the crisis could be resolved without recourse to war. Though Jefferson desired peace with France he was likely not particularly pleased that the Federalists would get the credit.
In an early 1799 letter to Edmund Pendleton, a Virginia politician and jurist, written the day after Adams’s Message to the Senate of the eighteenth of February, Jefferson wrote, “a great event was presented yesterday.” In Jefferson’s view the conciliatory nature of the French communiqué had undermined the Federalists’ desires and machinations for war with France. Describing the gist of Adams’s Message for Pendleton, Jefferson criticized the federalist administration, and embraced the self-deluding, inherently oppositional and bizarre view that Talleyrand’s new peaceful tone “renders their efforts for war desperate, & silences all further denials of the sincerity of the French government.”66
After the XYZ dispatches were released, supporters of both parties demanded retaliatory action against France; at that point, pressure on Adams to prepare for war had grown significantly. The success of Adams and the Federalists in avoiding war brought private criticism however from Jefferson instead of rejoicing. In the postscript to his letter to Pendleton, Jefferson wrote,
The face they will put on this business is, that they have frightened France into a respectful treatment … Whereas, in truth, France has been sensible that her measures to prevent the scandalous spectacle of war between the two republics, from the known impossibility of our injuring her, would not be imputed to her as a humiliation.67
In his letters to Lloyd, Adams asserted that he hadn’t “humbled France,” only her aggressive, arrogant, and corrupt leaders. Jefferson’s view on these events was completely different, of course. Rather than seeing the aggressions of France as a fundamental cause of the crisis and its continuance, Jefferson saw instead the rhetoric of the federalist “war party” as the key element in the conflict. This view of the federalist administrations of Washington and Adams as the aggressors, and France as the aggrieved “sensible” party whose desire to avoid war was coupled with her wish to avoid “humiliation,” is not however supported by the diplomatic records of the time, by the previously belligerent statements and actions of Talleyrand, nor by unprovoked French attacks against American shipping (particularly those that had occurred prior to the ratification of the Jay Treaty).
For the moment, Adams had had a great success in bringing France to a more reasonable posture with the United States. A formal peace with France finally arrived after Jefferson’s election a year later. Much later, Jefferson would see the facts in a different light and comingle the parsing of such things with his friendship with Adams, a renewed friendship that would become critically important to both. Jefferson wrote to Adams in 1813,
About facts, you and I cannot differ; because truth is our mutual guide … And if any opinions you may express should be different from mine, I shall receive them with the liberality and indulgence which I ask for my own, and still cherish with warmth the sentiments of affectionate respect of which I can with so much truth render you the assurance.68
Deliberate confusion and denial of facts for political purposes, that is, for political leverage, is an old strategy; the mischaracterization of facts is a tool also used to lever out of power those who currently hold it. The facts of the French depredations on American shipping made less impact on Jefferson than the fact that France was a revolutionary Republic, and that the United States had arranged the Jay Treaty with England, a monarchy. Jefferson’s central political concern was the advancement of republicanism.
Jefferson later acknowledged that Adams had been both prescient and correct about the course of the French revolution, a movement which Jefferson had never stopped supporting. Jefferson’s goal to oust the Federalists from power was fulfilled, though the Revolution in France would, by then, be dead and replaced with a dictatorship just as Adams had long before predicted. The political sacrifices that Adams had made in treating with France in the midst of a massive swell of anti-French feeling following the XYZ scandal resulted not in his elevation as a national hero and re-election, but instead brought his defeat.
In his First Inaugural Address Jefferson ironically acknowledged the dangers of the very same partisanship that had brought him to office knowing, from his own success with it, that it was an inherent danger to the continuing stability and existence of the Union. His opposition to Adams and federalism had been motivated partly by their profoundly different views on the nature and future of the Revolution in France. When the heat of their political fights, and the rise and fall of the Revolution in France, had receded into the past, only then could Jefferson finally assert to Adams that they were bound together not by partisanship, but by facts.
Years later Jefferson acknowledged that Adams’s predictions of the eventual failure of the French Revolution had been accurate. “Your prophecies to Dr. Price proved truer than mine; and yet fell short of the fact, for instead of a million, the destruction of eight or ten millions of human beings has probably been the effect of these convulsions,” Jefferson wrote to Adams in early 1816. “I did not, in ’89, believe they would have lasted so long, nor have cost so much blood. But altho’ your prophecy has proved true so far, I hope it does not preclude a better final result.”69 After all, if the idea of popular government were to fail, what then could be the consequence but a return to the tyranny of monarchy, or something even worse?