“Wise and in the Best Interests of the Country”
Abigail received a harrowing account of John Quincy’s journey:
We reached Berlin on the 7 [of November 1797], and three days after began my severest affliction. My wife and brother one after the other were seized with violent and dangerous illnesses. At a tavern—in a strange country—unacquainted with any human being in it, and ignorant of the language in a great measure, you can judge what we all suffered. Mrs. Adams was so ill for ten days that I could scarcely leave her bedside for a moment, and Thomas seized with an alarming inflammatory sore throat & high fever.1
He had first seen Berlin when he was 14, traveling with Francis Dana on his way to St. Petersburg, and he had thought the capital of the King of Prussia’s dominion, with its immense green square, baroque-frosted palaces and fabled Tiergarten, more impressive than London or Paris.
This time, he seemed bemused by the dapper lieutenant at the Brandenburg Gate who was mystified by their citizenship until one of his comrades explained what the United States of America was. As his country’s first minister to Prussia, John Quincy was obliged “to grope my way as I could” through the maze of diplomatic protocol of a polyglot kingdom whose present monarch, King Frederick William II, was said to be dying. If caught in limbo without credentials for the successor king, John Quincy might not be officially recognized for eight months or more.2
He met at five in the afternoon of November 9 with the 80-year-old Count Finck zu Finckenstein, who had served half a century as one of three ministers of state in the department of foreign affairs. The count, whose head was “full of forms and precedence’s and titles, and all the trash of diplomatic ceremony,” was polite but firm. The king was pleased by this mark of attention from the United States, but regretted that his extreme illness prevented him from receiving John Quincy’s credentials.3
The second minister, the blunt but not unpleasant Count d’Alvensleben, tried consoling John Quincy with a similar tale—he had arrived in England at the time King George had gone mad, which left him from November till May without being able to deliver his credentials.
On November 16, John Quincy noted: “The King of Prussia, Frederick William II died this morning at nine o’clock, and was succeeded by his son, third of the same name.” That same day, private disaster overwhelmed diplomatic challenges. Sadly, he wrote in his diary: “Mrs. Adams appeared to be recovering well all this day, and we had some hopes of escaping the misfortune which we have dreaded, and which threatened. . . . [But] this evening her complaint returned with a violence which no longer leaves a doubt, and reduces us to . . . misery.”4
The next day, Monsieur le Commandeur de Maisonneuve, the minister representing Malta, recommended Dr. Robert Brown, a physician to the royal family. Brown, an Englishman with three daughters, would prove to be a trusted personal friend of John Quincy and Louisa. In later years, Louisa remembered Dr. Brown as a “very handsome courtly gentlemanly man, highly aristocratic . . . showy in his manners, proud of his daughters and fond of distinction.” She thought him “attentive and amiable to his patients and generally esteemed and beloved.”5
Dr. Brown’s consultation did little to ease Louisa’s suffering. Two days later she was extremely ill again, and on November 30 John Quincy marked the month “as one of the most unfortunate that have occurred to me in the course of my life” and, tragically, by far not the last. Louisa had miscarried her first pregnancy.6
John Quincy’s unceasing diplomatic efforts resulted in a note from Count Finckenstein on December 4: King Frederick William III would treat him as designated minister at a private audience the next day. From the antechamber, the count escorted John Quincy into the new king’s apartment, made his bow and withdrew. John Quincy told the king of his arrival with credentials to his father with the full power to renew the Treaty of Commerce, and of his assurance that the government of the United States, upon being informed of his majesty’s accession, would immediately send new credentials addressed to him. The king, in response, was very happy to maintain friendly relations with the United States, and their shared commercial interests might lead to renewal of the treaty. After further civilities, a query as to how long his father had been president, and another on whether George Washington had retained any involvement in government affairs, John Quincy withdrew.
On the whole, he was impressed with the 28-year-old king and the simplicity of his dress, a plain uniform and boots. Tall and thin, grave almost to the point of severity, his face often lit up with a very pleasing smile. His subsequent royal introductions included the 70-ish Princess Henry of Hesse-Casell, who asked him about General Washington and whether there were any living descendants of Mr. Franklin. The princess obviously made a more vivid impression on John Quincy’s brother Tom who, after his presentation at her court, pronounced her “a very antique piece of furniture as are most of the female courtiers whom I saw there . . . the palsied head & hand, the tottering knee & the trembling voice bespeak age & infirmity, which all the glare of rouge or the luster of jewels cannot conceal.” A number of royals not only asked about Washington, Franklin, and John Quincy’s father, but also read American newspapers and were current about the epidemic of yellow fever raging in Philadelphia.7
It was Prince Henry whose vision of America’s future proved most interesting to John Quincy. A resident at Rheinsberg, in Berlin only because of the king’s death, Prince Henry predicted that America was a rising part of the world while Europe was a declining one, and that in the course of two or three centuries the seat of art and sciences and empire would be with the United States. Civilization’s progress had been westward, beginning in Asia, Prince Henry said, and it was natural that America should have her turn. His one reservation, John Quincy remembered, was, “whether we should have a center of union sufficiently strong to keep us together and to stand the trials of the inconveniences incident to republican, and especially to federative governments.” Prince Henry, too, had asked after General Washington, speaking of him with great respect. He also mentioned Franklin, whose bust he said he kept, and asked after John Quincy’s father.8
By mid-January 1798, John Quincy was tired of his demanding social life: The Grand Maréchal’s ball on January 16 was “not very bright,” the same as former balls, with the same company. Nor to his mind was “the charm of conviviality” to be found among the company he was keeping. Given the Prussians’ “stiffness, coldness, formality, politeness, labored affability, studied attention and everything exact,” he treasured his rare evenings at home with Louisa.9
She was now well enough to be presented at court. Of this novel experience, Catherine Johnson received rewarding letters from both daughter and son-in-law, Louisa’s beguiling for its candor and modesty:
You know, Mamma, my partiality for great companies therefore readily conceive what I felt at the thought of going into a society so entirely strange to me. . . . However, I got ready and went & considering all things, got through this disagreeable business pretty well. But from that day to this . . . we have not been permitted to spend an evening at home, which is so extremely unpleasant to me, that I am obliged to pretend sickness to avoid it. The King and Queen are both young, and I think the Queen one of the most beautiful women I ever saw. She is now pregnant with her fourth child, and is but just 21 years old. She goes into company, and dances from 6 in the evening until 6 in the morning, notwithstanding her situation. The courts are twice a week one of which is a ball & the other a card party. The etiquette and usage of the court require all ministers & their ladies to attend, so that I am obliged to make one in this elegant mob. On every Monday evening I am obliged to pay my respects to the Princess Henry, a great-aunt of the king, where I am necessitated to sit 2 or 3 hours at whist. Once a fortnight we are obligated to visit Prince Ferdinand, who is great-uncle to the King. The Princess is an old lady who has been very handsome. She is remarkably kind to me, and has interested . . . herself very much about my health. Her sister, some years younger than herself, is the most elegant woman I ever beheld. She has been pleased to take such a fancy to me, as to make me sit down with her, at her work table, and talks whole evenings with me. . . .
Yet after all this, my dear Mamma, I do not think I am calculated for a court. To a child educated like yours, for domestic society, such a round of constant dissipation makes me wish I was once more among my beloved friends.10
John Quincy’s letter of February 7, 1798 to Mrs. Johnson, while concise, brims with pride in his wife’s success:
Since the recovery of Mrs. Adams, she has been presented at court, and to the several princesses belonging to it. Her personal appearance, as well as her manners & deportment, which are such unequivocal indications of her character and disposition, have been everywhere pleasing.11
John Quincy’s diary during this time offers sharp contrast between outward triumph and intimate grief. Louisa was again pregnant and ill that February, and John Quincy wrote about “hopes raised to be dashed to the ground.” And on March 21: “My prophetic heart! I have no doubt of the cause—The cup of bitterness must be filled to the brim and drank to the dregs.”12
Louisa’s fond brother-in-law Thomas fully understood and grieved over his sister-in-law’s difficulties. “Mrs. Adams,” he wrote on July 17, “extremely ill last night—sent for Dr. Brown. He thinks she must miscarry—poor little woman; how she suffers! Matrimony these are the fruits! Bitter Bitter. . . .”13
In public, the model of an accomplished diplomat, John Quincy was privately wounded—so distracted by Louisa’s illness that he couldn’t think, he said at one point, and found that keeping his diary, that is, “minuting down the transaction of every day,” was excessively painful at times when there was nothing but distress to record. He walked not only for exercise but to relieve his mind. He was an omnivorous reader and collector of books, not only for their literary value but for the promise of escape between their covers. Possibly, he persisted in his study of German for similar reasons.14
These stratagems were of limited use, and when he could bear no more he abandoned German and became “extremely careless about every other study,” asking, “of what good is it all?” At one period, he was so deeply affected by Louisa’s violent bouts of illness that left him wholly sleepless, he resorted to relief with the opiates prescribed by Dr. Brown.15
Yet for all his problems, John Quincy would tell his mother that he was “as happy as a virtuous, modest, discreet and amiable woman” could make him. After seven months, he found their “mutual affection increasing” and described marriage to one friend as “the state of the greatest happiness that this world can bestow.” On his “First anniversary of my marriage day,” he wrote on July 26, 1798: “The external occurrences of the year have not been fortunate. But from the loveliness of temper and excellence of character of my wife I account the happiest day of my life.”16
Miraculously, despite private heartbreak, John Quincy managed with steely discipline to tend his ministerial duties in Berlin. His father’s words, written on June 2, 1797, were seemingly enshrined on his conscience: “You have wisely taken all Europe for your theatre. . . . Send us all the information you can collect. I wish you to continue the practice of writing freely to me, and cautiously to the office of state.”17
Officially, according to instructions from Secretary of State Timothy Pickering dated July 15, 1797, John Quincy’s commission was to renew the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States and the late Frederick William II, King of Prussia, concluded in the year 1785, for another ten years. In fact, several articles were in need of change. The treaty needed to be renegotiated, not merely renewed, along with a second treaty between the United States and Sweden dating back to 1784 (which had originated with Benjamin Franklin).18
But beyond reworking the two treaties, Pickering told John Quincy, the president had another object in mind in placing in Berlin “a minister of your abilities and knowledge in diplomatic affairs.” He was seeking correct intelligence and information on “the future system of Europe and how we can preserve friendship with them all, and be most useful to them all.”19
On December 16, five weeks after his arrival, John Quincy issued his first “intelligence report.” On the new king, he wrote:
though quite a young man, [he] was not without some experience, and was said to have a very military turn. This indeed can hardly be otherwise here, in a country the only basis of whose power is military and which is little more than a nation of soldiery. His habits of life are domestic, distinguished by great simplicity, and a laborious activity. There is in his manner . . . nothing that betokens weakness, indolence or dissipation, the most dangerous of all qualities to a sovereign, and especially at the present time.20
And in appraisal of complex European relationships, John Quincy wrote: “There was an apparent coolness between this Prussian court and those of Vienna and of London; the House of Austria seemed indeed the perpetual rival of that of Brandenburg; the English alliance seemed to have been barely temporary and to be altogether dissolved. With Russia, there seemed to be a better understanding than there was before the late Empress.” With France, there was “a distant and suspicious amity without cordiality, but without the least probability of renewed hostility,” which he could hardly say about his own country’s relationship with France.21
Given the shocking “misunderstandings and disputes that had been festering to a rupture for some time,” he feared that war with France “must be one of the most unfortunate events” that could befall his country. Looking ahead, John Quincy warned that France would soon be under a military government by turns anarchical and despotic, a country ruined and incapable of supporting a large part of its population. With an immense army inured to every danger—its generals, of first-rate talents, unrestrained by any principle human or divine—“It is a grapple for life and death between all the ancient establishments.”22
Two years later, John Quincy would not mention Napoleon by name in connection with the Battle of Marengo, “the most decisive engagement perhaps fought within a century.” But he did concede that “the Corsican ruffian is beyond all doubt a hero in the common acceptation of the word,” and supposed in other respects “as good a man as the rest of his class.” John Quincy predicted, when Napoleon had elevated himself to First Consul “with a power greater than that of any limited monarch in Europe,” that his fate would always depend on the outcome of warfare. “Impossible to consider him as a principled man, his ambition, like that of other conquerors, scruples little what means it uses. . . .”23
John Quincy reported to Pickering on January 15 the French proposal that a neutral flag would no longer protect enemy’s property, and that every vessel laden wholly or in part with British goods would be lawful to seize. “This measure requires no comment, its character in reference to the laws of nations cannot be mistaken. Its effect must place us at least in a state of passive war with France—but of war unproclaimed.”24
Nevertheless John Adams, determined to strive for peace, sent a diplomatic mission abroad intended to heal crippled relations between America and France. John Quincy’s soulmate in his grave concern over developments in France was his friend William Vans Murray, his successor at The Hague. Probably there was no one besides his brother Thomas and his cousin William Cranch of whom he spoke more warmly, trusted and regarded with greater admiration than Murray.25
Murray took pleasure and consolation from confiding in John Quincy over “this monstrous undigested scene of general decadence in European affairs—the times which seem to call for some Mahomet.” A militia of two, they had bonded together in a desperate fight against the “infernal French disease.” Though aware that it was a very hazardous thing to write as freely as they did—Murray sincerely hoped that his letters might “sleep in quiet in the books”—both men were openly riveted by what would be known as the XYZ Affair. Murray referred to it as “The Envoy Extraordinary’s extraordinary situation at present in Paris” in April 1798.26
The American peace commission was composed of three members. John Marshall, the lawyer from Virginia, reputed to be a “very fair and honorable man, and truly American,” along with Elbridge Gerry, a “friendly-hearted and worthy man” who was substituted for Francis Dana, who had turned down the appointment for health reasons. The third member, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina—a graduate of Oxford University, a general in the Continental Army, a lawyer, who had helped secure South Carolina’s ratification of the Federal constitution—was already in Europe. After he had been refused recognition as America’s minister to France, the president had asked him to stay on as part of his peace delegation.27
The Americans conferred with three agents of the minister of foreign relations, the wily Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, on October 18, 1797. These men “doing the filthy business of French democracy” were Jean-Conrad Hottinguer, Lucien Hauteval (rumored to be Talleyrand’s natural son) and Pierre Bellamy. These agents were the X, Y and Z of the Americans’ dispatches. The one that reached President Adams on March 4, 1798 related France’s outrageous price for peace: a $10 million loan plus a fee—actually a bribe—of $250,000. On March 19 John Adams informed Congress of the mission’s failure to reach terms “compatible with the safety, honor, or the essential interests of the nation.”28
Puzzling news followed. According to General Pinckney, the three American peace commission members had unanimously agreed not to accede to such an insulting, unethical offer. In response, the French would negotiate with only one of the three “whose presumed disposition promises the most confidence” in their government.29
Murray’s letter of April 13 confirmed Pinckney’s tale. “Yes, sir, thus it is going. gerry is to stay.” Gerry “who sees not very far into a millstone,” was persuaded, Murray supposed, “that he will save his country.” Incredulous, Murray saw nothing, he told John Quincy, “but improper things in Gerry’s determination to separate and assume to himself in this way.”30
John Quincy was in complete agreement about this “strange and unaccountable abandonment” of his colleagues by Gerry. It was a miserable justification for Gerry to claim that he had stayed because Talleyrand had threatened him “‘that if he did not stay, a rupture would be the immediate consequence.’” Apparently, the French were now sure of having a man to deal with “who dreaded rupture more than dishonor, disgrace, and vile indignity.”31
A “goblin story” Abigail Adams would call it. John Quincy had expected from the beginning that the mission’s aim at conciliation would fail, but he did not foresee an outcome worse than failure through fracturing the envoys’ solidarity. It was apparent to him that the French preferred “this mongrel condition between peace and war” in which they “plunder us as enemies and we continue defenseless as friends. . . .” One thing was as clear as the midday sun: There could be no honorable and safe settlement with the French.32
Yet, angered as he was by the French, war was never a solution in his mind. “Let us put on the shield and the helmet, and even draw the sword, but never cease to hold out the olive branch.” For his own part, he believed that in America the government could never declare war unless the strong, unequivocal voice of the people led them into it. He saw no such inclination.33
Internal political hostilities were, however, enormously challenging to John Quincy, ever protective of his father. By voting to print 1,200 copies of the envoys’ dispatches from Paris, the House of Representatives created diplomatic chaos. John Quincy wrote Murray on May 25 that, sensitive to the critical state of things and the safety of the envoys, President Adams had not wished to share the dispatches with the public. Now, “the whole scene of corruption will be unfolded, and why,” John Quincy wondered, “should the commissioners be exposed to the unbridled fury of the worst of mankind?”34
As he had feared, the Paris newspaper Le Moniteur deliberately chose to distort John Adams’s statement on March 19 that “the powers of the envoys were extensive, as liberal and pacific policy required.” By reprinting the word liberal in italics, the French insinuated that the envoys had themselves powers to use bribery.35
But John Quincy did not need the French newspapers to alert him to his parents’ difficulties with the press. Partisan American newspapers taunted his father as “his Serene Highness,” referred sarcastically to Abigail as the “excellent wife of the excellent President” and assured readers that the country was “under the way of the Great Mogul or a Delia Lama.” Most punishing was the press’s treatment of the president’s position on France. Nothing but destruction, his mother feared, was the price America would surely pay for those “contemptible hirelings” who would deliberately misrepresent relations with the French.36
If journalists like the venomously anti-Adams Benjamin Franklin Bache and papers like the Chronicle were not suppressed, “we shall come to civil war.” She was convinced that some sort of penalty needed to be paid by these enemies of America and of the president.37
Abigail was not alone in her quest. Alexander Hamilton asked why “renegade aliens connected with some of these presses” weren’t sent away. And on June 16, Harrison Otis told Congress that there was greater danger to America from French infiltration than from any other source.38
In response, the Alien and Sedition Acts—actually four separate acts—were passed in different stages. The fourth act, the Sedition Act, served as a legal weapon against the press. A fine of no more than 2,000 dollars and imprisonment not exceeding two years were to be imposed:
if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States . . . with intent to defame . . . or to bring . . . into contempt or disrepute . . . or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States. . . .39
Though easily overlooked, a single sentence in Section 4 stating that this act “shall continue to be in force until March 3, 1801, and no longer” raised powerful arguments from deeply partisan quarters over the validity as well as the constitutionality of the act. Thomas Jefferson, for example, along with James Madison, were in complete disagreement. Together, they argued against a central government usurping the powers of individual states. Jefferson resolved that “whensoever the general government assumes undefined powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” Madison protested that in case of a “deliberate, palpable and dangerous” exercise of powers not granted by the Constitution, the states had the right and the duty to interpose their power.40
Jefferson crystallized his opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts in a letter to Elbridge Gerry describing his stance, “for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.” As president, Jefferson would pardon James Thomas Callender, the Scottish-born journalist fined and imprisoned under the Sedition Law for his Anti-Federalist activities. Now, he enflamed the most provocative issue of John Adams’s administration—freedom of the press.41
Thirty-eight years later, to refresh his memory of those controversies, John Quincy read over the portion of Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence during that period, which his grandson had published. In doing so, old wounds seemed to fester painfully, confirming Jefferson’s “craft and duplicity.” John Quincy wrote in his diary, “His success through a long life, and especially from his entrance upon the office of Secretary of State under Washington until he reached the Presidential chair, seems, to my imperfect vision, a slur upon the moral government of the world. His rivalry with Hamilton was unprincipled on both sides. His treatment of my father was double-dealing, treacherous, and false beyond all toleration.”42
The more John Quincy read of Jefferson’s papers dating from 1793 till August 1803, the “deeper and deeper” Jefferson sunk in his opinion. Jefferson’s hatred of Hamilton was unbounded; of John Marshall, most intense; of his father, driven by ambition tempered with occasional compunction. Perhaps at the heart of John Quincy’s disillusionment was the fact of the former friendship of the two founders. They had been colleagues in the great cause of independence, as joint commissioners abroad after the Peace of 1783. There had been a warm and confidential intimacy between them that, John Quincy allowed, Jefferson never entirely shook off, but that he sacrificed always to his self-interest, and, at the end of his life, to envy and poverty. Here John Quincy was pitiless: “Jefferson had died insolvent, on the very day of his death receiving donations from the charity of some of those whom he had most deeply injured. The circumstance was not creditable to his country.”43
Given the steep passage of time, the wounds of partisanship remained open and shockingly raw. In time John Quincy would compare the effect of the Sedition Acts “to the falling of a spark into a powder magazine.” An ineffectual attempt to extinguish the fire of defamation, it had instead “operated like oil upon the flames.”44
In the matter of France, however, publication of the correspondence between Elbridge Gerry and Talleyrand was helpful. By August, 1798, the French, Murray told John Quincy, “have lowered their tone.” John Quincy also saw progress. After two years of frustrating negotiations, he reported to Abigail on September 14, 1798, he was hopeful for the first time in months. The published letters of the American commissioners had resounded through every part of Europe to America’s favor; in this contest “we are right and France is wrong.” The cry of the Americans, attributed to General Pinckney, was “Millions for defense but not a sixpence for tribute.” Pinckney’s message left no doubt “that France dreads a rupture with the United States.”45
Victor-Marie du Pont, a 32-year-old French diplomat, left no doubt of the radical change in sentiment among Americans in his report to Talleyrand. Du Pont—whose brother Eleuthère Irénée du Pont would found the Delaware munitions company that became the giant chemical concern—had been refused recognition on his appointment as consul general of the French Republic at Philadelphia. Returning to France, Du Pont’s 41-paragraph report of July 21 was in essence a warning that grave differences between the two countries might result in consequences “fatale,” that a rupture would only strengthen the English party and English influence in America, and that the true patriots, both French and American, wished rather for conciliatory measures on the part of France.46
Both French and American diplomats chimed in on the intense discussions that followed. The American Richard Codman’s report home that Du Pont’s memo “had opened the eyes of the Directory” was significant enough to influence John Adams to write, seeking peace with France. Meanwhile, a mysterious American, recently arrived from the United States, was also trying to exert diplomatic influence.47
A deeply suspicious Murray informed John Quincy that a Mr. Droghan had landed in Hamburg and was on his way to Paris with letters to Lafayette; to Merlin de Douai, then president of the Directory; and to Talleyrand from Jefferson and others with the hope of averting war between France and the United States as the only means of salvation of their party. Murray had never heard of Mr. Droghan, but if the intelligence was correct, he was a clandestine deputy from the Jeffersonians. If it cost Murray 100 guineas, he was determined to know what this envoy brought with him, and what his plans were. He had set a friend on the case and would have a little more to tell shortly.48
Just four days later, on August 6, 1798, Murray could tell John Quincy that this envoy extraordinaire had reached Amsterdam—but not as Droghan, though so spelled in the letter shown to him, but as Doctor Logan of Philadelphia. His passport, issued by Jefferson and Judge McKean, attorney general of Pennsylvania, was “guardedly worded, as a friend of science and humanity—the gibberish of hypocrisy.”49
By December 11 the Senate raised questions about the French who were dealing with “individuals without public character or authority” who were “neglecting and passing by the constitutional and authorized agents of the government.”50
Impassioned debates followed on the usurpation of executive authority. The bill to be known as the Logan Act was signed into law on January 30, 1799. Unlike the fate of the Alien and Sedition Acts, its message regarding the rights and responsibilities of America’s citizens would prove timeless:
any person, being a citizen of the United States . . . [who] shall without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commence or carry on any verbal or written correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government, or any officer or agent thereof . . . with an intent to influence the measures or conduct of the government having disputes or controversies with the United States . . . shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor. . . .51
By early May 1799, things of “no small importance” were beginning to happen. The capture of the French frigate l’Insurgente by America’s frigate Constellation had boosted morale at home immeasurably. The seizure convinced the French, John Quincy told his mother, that America’s naval power was not as contemptible as they had represented to the world and to themselves. Also, remaining halfway between peace and war was untenable. He saw no reason to reject new negotiations with the French government.52
John Adams, “always disposed and ready to embrace every plausible appearance of probability of preserving or restoring tranquility,” had in fact announced to the Senate the past February 18 his nomination of John Quincy’s friend William Vans Murray to be minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the French Republic. The appointment was as daring as it was initially unpopular.53
Personally, Murray was profoundly grateful for the appointment as the sole envoy, but readily accepting of additional envoys. He imagined correctly that his commission had caused “a great stir.” In truth, as Timothy Pickering wrote, “every man who had steadily and faithfully supported his and his predecessor’s administration was thunderstruck, it was done without any consultation with any member of the government, and for a reason truly remarkable—because he knew we should all be opposed to the measure!”54
John Quincy, acutely aware now of the rabid criticism of the new commission by both Congress and the press, was wary. The envoys would find an almost total change of men at the head of the French government since former negotiations, as they tried to repair all the mischief done by their predecessors and, as he told his mother, “bring forth golden days fruitful of golden deeds.” John Quincy was satisfied that the bold stroke was proper and “wise and in the best interests of the country.”55
Regrettably, he could not say the same about a ludicrous incident that had taken place in Congress, filling the English newspapers of the past spring. Headlined in bold type “American Manners,” one of many articles reported the scandalous behavior of two members of the House of Representatives: Matthew Lyon of Vermont had spat in the face of Connecticut’s Roger Griswold, who then defended himself with fire tongs against his foe’s cane.56
John Quincy was also distressed to learn about John Fries, who had led hundreds of men in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, in rebellion against a federal property tax. “Such things as these insurrections,” he wrote his mother, “injure very much the estimation of our country with the rest of the world.”57
By March 1799 he was busily writing out the last copy—he made a rule of doing three—of his notes on the treaty on which he had been working steadily for transmission to the Prussian cabinet ministry. On July 11, the day John Quincy turned 32, he met with Count Finckenstein and his colleagues to sign the new Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States and Prussia.
Six days later, John Quincy and Louisa, with Epps, Whitcomb and Andrew, left Berlin for Dresden and Toplitz. Murray thought the idea of his friend enjoying better air, away from the smoke, din and dirt of Berlin, with exhilarating scenery was “delicious.” Then too, Murray wrote on August 8, “I believe that like myself you occasionally require that sort of toying and caressing of the mind which it seems always . . . to enjoy on these occasions, alone with one’s wife, which were indeed, extremely sweet.”58
Only it wasn’t like that. On better days, Louisa visited with friends, most often with Dr. Brown’s family, walked and played whist with John Quincy. More often, she was “unwell,” or “very unwell.”59
The past April, John Quincy had written of having had “a bad night more from concern for my wife who is unwell than from any illness of my own.” This entry was just one of many bad days and nights, growing worse in warm weather. As John Quincy explained to his father-in-law, “the residence of Berlin during the summer months is not healthy for any one, and appear’d peculiarly unpropitious to her,” so they spent three months away from Berlin, the warm baths of Toplitz in Bohemia having been recommended to Louisa as frequently beneficial in cases similar to hers.60
They had enjoyed walks, operas, museums, tea parties with friends, even shopped for bed and table linens, but failed in their main mission, to improve Louisa’s health. They returned to their Berlin home on October 12. In his bleak summary of the past months, on the last day of December, John Quincy wrote, “This year would in general have been a pleasant one, but for the state of my wife’s health which has been almost continually bad, and concerning which I am even now deeply concerned. The subject preys upon my spirits more than I can express.”61