John Adams, Part 3: Holland, the Presidency, and Jefferson

Charles Thomson

Welcome back to Founding Fathers: Interviews from 1776. I'm Charles Thomson, and I kept the minutes for the Continental Congress, so I like to get things right. This is the last of three conversations with John Adams. Last time, we covered the stormy July 1776 debate where he carried independence on his back against the cautious men in the room. We also covered the night he shared a bed with Benjamin Franklin at a New Jersey tavern and lost the argument over the window. Mr. Adams, you're in your ninetieth year, sitting at Peacefield in Quincy. Do you still lose that argument in your sleep?

John Adams

Every night, Charles. Franklin said the night air was harmless. I said it would kill us both. I'm ninety, and I'm still here, so perhaps the old fox had a point. I'll never tell him that, of course. Now, you want the part I'm proudest of, and I'll warn you, it isn't the part that gets the statues. It's Holland.

Charles Thomson

Holland. Most people picture you in Paris with Franklin. Why did you leave?

John Adams

Because Paris was a closed room, and I wasn't invited into it. Franklin was beloved there, and I say that without bitterness, mostly. But he and Count Vergennes, the French foreign minister, did everything quietly and politely, and America was always the grateful little cousin. I suspected the French wanted us independent, but not too independent. They wanted us manageable after the war. I was not made to be manageable. So in July 1780 I went to the Dutch Republic on my own initiative. Nobody had sent me to do what I did.

Charles Thomson

And what did you find when you got there?

John Adams

A country that did not believe we existed. No court would receive me, because no court had recognized us. The Dutch Republic had no single king to charm. It had city councils, merchants, banking houses, and seven provinces that each wanted a say. So I did it town by town and province by province. I talked to regents, bankers and pamphleteers. I wrote memorials. In April 1781 I sent one to the States General, in effect demanding that they recognize us. The French ambassador warned me off it. Secretary Livingston at home thought I was rash. I got sick too, a bad fever in Amsterdam. I still say the fever was the Dutch climate's way of answering my arguments.

Charles Thomson

And yet it worked.

John Adams

It worked. After Yorktown the mood turned, and on April 19, 1782, the States General recognized the United States. The Dutch were only the second nation to do it, after France. And here's the part nobody tells at dinner. Recognition changed everything about money. Before that, Amsterdam bankers wouldn't lend to a country that didn't officially exist. Afterward, they were competing for my favor. I wrote that I felt like a man in the middle of the ocean negotiating for his life among a school of sharks. In June 1782 I signed a loan for five million guilders at five percent, with three Amsterdam houses. That was higher than Britain paid and lower than France. Then in October came the treaty of amity and commerce. And I bought a house at The Hague for our legation, the first diplomatic building America ever owned abroad.

Charles Thomson

I'll note for the record, since you've told me many times that vanity is your besetting sin, that the loan paid real bills while Congress was nearly empty. You aren't exaggerating.

John Adams

I'm allowed one proud subject in a long life. I called it a signal triumph then, and I'd call it the happiest work of my whole diplomatic career now. Franklin got the glamour. I got the guilders. Then came the peace of 1783, and in 1785 they sent me to London as our first minister. Imagine it, Charles. Nine years after I voted to call that man a tyrant, I'm walking into St. James's Palace to stand before George the Third.

Charles Thomson

Were you nervous?

John Adams

Terrified, if you want the truth, and you always do. I bought a new coat. I wrote my speech, rehearsed it, and memorized it. I said that I wished to restore the old good nature and the old good humor between two peoples who share a language, a religion and kindred blood. The King was moved, and he spoke with more of a tremor than I had. He told me, quite frankly, that he'd been the last to consent to the separation, but now that it was done, he would be the first to meet our friendship as an independent power. Then he turned playful. He said he'd heard I wasn't the greatest admirer of French manners.

Charles Thomson

That's gossip traveling fast. What did you say?

John Adams

I told him he'd heard right, and that I had no attachment but to my own country. And he answered as quick as lightning that an honest man will never have any other. I wrote the whole scene to John Jay that night, and I told Jefferson too, because he was in Paris and I knew he'd want the story. I did not mention that I was rather pleased with myself.

Charles Thomson

Let's move to your presidency. You inherit a crisis with France. American ships are being seized, and then comes the XYZ affair. Hamilton and his friends want war.

John Adams

They wanted a big war, and they wanted it loudly. French agents had demanded a bribe from our envoys in Paris, and the country was furious, rightly. But I wouldn't be pushed into a full war with a country I had no army to fight. I chose the middle road. We built up our defenses at sea. In 1798 we created the Department of the Navy, and we launched great frigates, the Constitution among them. People call me the father of the Navy now, and I won't argue. At the time, half my own party called me a coward and the other half called me a warmonger. When both sides are angry at you, you may be near the truth.

Charles Thomson

But then you did something that split your party in two.

John Adams

In February 1799 I sent a peace mission to France, led by William Vans Murray, with Oliver Ellsworth and William Davie. The High Federalists were stunned, and some never forgave me. It led to the Convention of 1800, which ended the old alliance and ended the fighting at sea. I know perfectly well it cost me the election. I don't care. If you ever carve anything over my grave, let it say that here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France in the year 1800. That's the one I'd defend before any court.

Charles Thomson

And then you moved into the new capital. What was the President's House like?

John Adams

Raw, damp and unfinished. It was November 1800, plaster still wet, stairs not done, workmen everywhere, and Washington was hardly a city at all, just mud and woods. Abigail arrived a few weeks later and hung the family laundry in the great East Room, because there was nowhere else to dry it. But I wrote to her on my second night that I prayed Heaven would bless that house and everyone who lives under its roof hereafter, and that only honest and wise men would ever rule there. They carved that into the dining room mantel later. I'm told it's still there.

Charles Thomson

I'd like to ask about Jefferson. You lost that election to him. You'd been such close friends.

John Adams

Close friends. We sat on committees together, and we served in Europe at the same time. Then the 1790s turned us into party men. His friends called me a monarchist, and my friends called him a dangerous radical, and the 1800 campaign was ugly on both sides. I made some judicial appointments before I left, and he took it hard. I left Washington before his inauguration. And then we said nothing to each other for about eleven years. Eleven years, Charles. For two men who'd made a country together.

Charles Thomson

Who broke it?

John Adams

Dr. Benjamin Rush, bless his meddling heart. He was a signer, a physician, and a stubborn matchmaker. He called Jefferson and me the north and south poles of the Revolution, and he wouldn't leave either of us alone. In 1811 he told Jefferson, and I'm paraphrasing but not by much, that I had said I always loved Jefferson and still loved him. And Jefferson welcomed it. So on New Year's Day 1812, I sent him a short note with two pieces of homespun. That was my joke about two lectures on rhetoric my son John Quincy had published. A bit of homemade cloth, to see if he'd answer.

Charles Thomson

He answered.

John Adams

He answered, and we didn't stop. About a hundred and fifty eight letters over fourteen years. Philosophy, religion, grief, the French Revolution, history, whether nature or birth or wealth makes an aristocracy. We argued, and we still disagreed on a great deal, but we did it as friends. I told him once that you and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other. And we did. Mostly. I think of him warmly now. Jefferson has the finest pen in America, and I told him so, though not often enough.

Charles Thomson

You've mentioned the fiftieth anniversary coming up this summer.

John Adams

The Jubilee. July the Fourth. I'm tired, Charles, and I can feel the end drawing near. I'd like to see that day if the Lord allows it. I've been invited to speak at the celebration in Quincy, but I'm too frail for that. I'll send a toast. I'd say, independence forever.

Charles Thomson

Then let the record show what I, as your clerk, am obliged to set down. You and Jefferson both died on July the Fourth, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary, only hours apart. He went around midday at Monticello, and you went that evening in Quincy. Your family recalled that your last words were that Thomas Jefferson survives.

John Adams

Did we, now. Well. If that's true, then Providence has a sense of humor and a sense of timing, and I'd say I was wrong about the arguing. He survived for a few hours, and he still got the last word on me. I can't think of a better way to go.

Charles Thomson

John Adams, thank you for these three conversations. Next time on Founding Fathers: Interviews from 1776, we sit down with the man who wrote the Declaration himself, that eloquent Virginian whose letters so charmed his old friend in Quincy. Our next guest is Thomas Jefferson.