More than a month would pass before Adams felt reasonably well again, and some symptoms of the fever would drag on, or recur long afterward, another characteristic of malaria. Six months later he would write of his “fever” and “feeble knees”; a year and a half later, he would tell Abigail the consequences of “Amsterdam fever” were still plaguing him.
In addition, others in the house—Thaxter, Stephens, and another of the servants—were stricken in the same way, which did little to improve the atmosphere. Adams would describe Stephens, a robust man who had never been ill, as “almost shaken to pieces” by fever, “reduced almost to a shadow.” In all, it was as low a time as Adams ever knew.
His first letter to anyone, even before his letter to Abigail, was to Franklin on October 4, and in John Thaxter's hand. Only Adams's signature was his own. Having explained his long silence, he again stressed his acceptance of the new five-man peace commission, claiming he had actually been consoled by the change during the weeks when it appeared he might have nothing more ever to do with commissions of any sort. Particularly, he had been thinking about Jefferson and was eager to know if Franklin had any further word.
Have you any information concerning Mr. Jefferson, whether he had accepted the trust? Whether he has embarked, or proposes to embark? I saw a paragraph in a Maryland paper which expressed apprehension that he was taken prisoner by a party of horse [cavalry] in Virginia?
In reply, Franklin expressed sincere concern for Adams's health, and said that while he had no further information on Jefferson, he very much doubted the truth of the story of his having been taken prisoner.
In mid-October, so low he could see no hope or purpose in anything, Adams wrote as downhearted a letter as any he ever sent to Congress. His efforts to raise money were “useless,” his health wretched, his life in Europe so “gloomy and melancholy” and of such little use to the public “that I cannot but wish it may suit with the views of Congress to recall me.” It was, as he doubtless knew, a request Congress would ignore.
Gradually his strength returned, his outlook improved. If nothing else, he could take his new reduced status as peace commissioner gallantly, put a good face on the matter, show no anger or disappointment, no animosity toward Congress or toward Franklin, and he urged Abigail to do the same. “Don't distress yourself... about any malicious attempts to injure me in the estimation of my countrymen. Let them take their course and go the length of their tether,” he wrote. “The contemptible essays made by you-know-whom will only tend to their own confusion.... Say as little about it as I do.”
He longed for his “dearest friend.” “What a fine affair it would be if we could flit across the Atlantic as they say the angels do from planet to planet. I would dart to Penn's Hill and bring you over on my wings.”
“Ah my dear John, where are you?” she was writing at home at almost the same time. “Two years, my dearest friend, have passed away since you left your native land.” She was buying land in the new state of Vermont, she told him, a retreat in the woods where they could retire from the vexations and hazards of public life. In fact, she was well on the way to accumulating more than 1,000 acres in Vermont. “Do you not sometimes sigh for such a seclusion?” she asked.
There was talk of a future role for him in Massachusetts politics, but she had no such ambition. “I know the voice of fame to be a mere weathercock, unstable as water and fleeting as a shadow.” Yet she did have pride, she conceded. “I know I have a large portion of it.”
Her Vermont plans interested him not at all. “God willing I will not go to Vermont,” he would write. “I must be within the scent of the sea.”
• • •
AT THE END OF NOVEMBER came sensational news. On Friday, October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, by Chesapeake Bay, the British General Cornwallis had surrendered his army to a combined American and French force under Washington and Rochambeau.
It was as decisive a defeat of the British as Saratoga and made possible by the arrival of Admiral de Grasse with the French West Indies fleet of twenty-eight ships of the line at exactly the right place at exactly the right time. The British had been trapped, just as Washington would have been on Long Island early in the war had the British fleet been able to close off the East River. More than 7,000 British troops had put down their arms, more even than at Saratoga.
To many on both sides of the Atlantic, it presaged a quick end to the war. In America, in the first flush of victory, Washington was hailed as “the deliverer” of his country; in London the British Prime Minister, Lord North, exclaimed, “Oh, God! It's all over.”
Adams received “the glorious news” at Amsterdam the night of November 23. He was elated and took untold satisfaction from the knowledge that French sea power after all had proved decisive. It had been nearly three years since he told Vergennes that nothing would so guarantee a “speedy conclusion” to the war as a powerful French fleet in American waters, and now it had come to pass exactly as he had said.
Adams did not see Yorktown as the end of the struggle, however. The British still occupied major ports, including New York, and there would be no peace, he was sure, as long as a single company of British soldiers were at liberty anywhere in the United States. But if Yorktown did not mean an end to the war, it changed everything in Holland, as Adams saw at once. The chance to achieve his goal of Dutch recognition and financial support would never be better—Dutch merchants had no wish to be on the losing side.
Still “feebled” in health, he immediately met with the Duc de La Vauguyon and by mid-December could happily report to Congress that the French ambassador himself had said it was time Adams “demanded” an answer to his memorial of April, and do all in his power to secure a Dutch loan. “He thinks that I may now assume a higher tone, which the late Cornwallization will well warrant.”
As the new year commenced, Adams was at The Hague audaciously demanding a “categorical answer.” The president of the week, Bartholomeus van den Santheuvel, reported Adams's inquiry to Their High Mightinesses, the States-General, and so the question of American independence and Dutch-American relations became a matter of political debate throughout the country.
Adams then, in effect, took his case to the people of the Netherlands, calling for citizen petitions to the government for the recognition of the United States, and at the moment when popular sentiment against Britain was strongly on the rise. He went personally to the individual residences at The Hague for the delegations of eighteen cities in the province of Holland, each of which, as he explained to Congress, could be considered an independent republic. At every house, the reception was the same—approval, affection, esteem for the United States. Clearly, the campaign that he and his collaborators—Luzac, Dumas, van der Capellen—had launched to educate the Dutch people about the United States and its cause had not been in vain.
Nor did the collaborators cease to press for action. Van der Capellen in particular warned that alienating the Americans could damage trade with them and that it would be quite unwise to offend any further someone of such rectitude and importance as John Adams. “I know the unflinching character of Mr. Adams,” he wrote. “I know that it has been a sore point, and I shudder for the consequences if we embitter a man of his influence, one of the principal founders of American freedom.”
With the outlook brighter than it had ever been, Adams began receiving communications from Robert R. Livingston, who had been newly elected by Congress as the first Foreign Secretary—a choice the French ambassador, La Luzerne, boasted with some exaggeration to the Comte de Vergennes that he himself had arranged. Strongly allied with those in Congress who were well disposed toward the French, Livingston regarded Adams as imprudent and considered his April 19 memorial to the Dutch Court “a ridiculous display.” In November he demanded that Adams explain his actions, and in a tone bound to infuriate Adams.
We learned from Mr. Dumas that you have presented your credentials to the States-General. We are astonished that you have
not written on so important a subject and developed the principles that induced you to declare your public character before the States were disposed to acknowledge it.
In a vigorous response, dated February 26, Adams recounted and explained his conduct in detail. The memorial had been exactly what the situation called for. The opposition of the Duc de La Vauguyon at the time had only confirmed the necessity of it. As for criticism of his own vanity or of his “militia diplomacy,” he wrote: “The charge of vanity is the last resort of little wits and mercenary quacks, the vainest men alive, against me and measures that they can find no other objection to... I have long since learned that a man may give offense and yet succeed.”
It was a remarkable letter—lucid, knowledgeable, and candid, if flagrantly self-congratulatory. Warming to the subject of his memorial, he portrayed it as the great catalyst for turning the entire point of view of the Dutch and thus affecting all Europe. But then he recovered himself, and with appealing self-deprecation evoked a favorite image from Aesop:
“What dust we raise,” said the fly upon the chariot wheel. It is impossible not to prove that this whole letter is not a similar delusion to that of the fly.
On February 26, 1782, the northern province of Friesland voted to instruct its delegates in the States-General to move formally to receive John Adams as minister from the United States. “Friesland is said to be a sure index of national sense,” Adams reported to Robert Livingston. “I am told that the Friesians never undertake anything but they carry it through.”
Certain that full Dutch recognition was at hand, Adams and Charles Dumas purchased what they anticipated would be the American embassy at The Hague, a “large elegant” house on the Fluwelen Burgwal—Street of the Velvet Makers—beside one of the city's most beautiful canals.
“Your humble servant has lately grown much into fashion in this country,” Adams reported to Abigail, having at last genuinely good news for her. “Some folks will think your husband a negotiator, but it is not to be, it is General Washington at Yorktown who did the substance of the work, the form only belongs to me.”
• • •
ON MARCH 20 IN LONDON, in a dramatic appearance in the House of Commons, Lord North resigned, to be succeeded by Lord Rockingham, a friend of America whose earlier Ministry had repealed the Stamp Act. In a great shift of government, Charles James Fox, who was known to favor immediate recognition of American independence, became Foreign Secretary and to the post of Secretary of Colonial Affairs was named Lord William Shelburne, who, though he opposed American independence, sent a retired Scottish merchant named Richard Oswald to Paris to sound out Benjamin Franklin on the prospect of negotiations.
In the Netherlands the tide turned on March 28, when the Province of Holland recognized American independence. In rapid order the other provinces followed suit.
On Friday, April 19, a year to the day since Adams presented his memorial, the States-General resolved that “Mr. Adams shall be admitted and acknowledged in the quality of ambassador of the United States to Their High Mightinesses.” When, the following day, Adams came to the assembly to present his letter of credence, it was as sweet a moment of triumph and vindication as he had ever known.
On Monday, April 22, at the Huis ten Bosch Palace at The Hague, Adams was received by His Most Serene Highness the Prince of Orange, William V, and his wife Princess Wilhelmina in a ceremony of formal recognition. The day after, as Adams took particular pleasure in informing Robert Livingston, the French ambassador “made an entertainment for the corps diplomatique in honor of the United States, at which he introduced their minister to all the foreign ministers of this Court... and the Duc de La Vauguyon more than compensated for the stiffness of some of the others by paying more attention to the new brother than to the old fraternity.”
All but speechless with pleasure, Adams heard the Spanish ambassador praise him for his determination and spirit, saying he had “struck the greatest blow that has been struck in the American cause, and the most decisive. It is you who have filled this nation with enthusiasm. It is you who have turned all on their heads.” The tribute was one Adams would quote repeatedly in letters, and understandably, given his elation and the spirit of the moment.
The American minister became the toast of the Dutch Republic. Poems and songs were written in celebration of American independence; engraved portraits were published of the American heroes Washington and Adams. La Vauguyon, in a letter to Vergennes, reported that everywhere the recognition of America and the reception of Adams as envoy “arouses the liveliest transports of joy.”
In May, Adams took up residence and put out a flag at the United States House, as he called it, the first American embassy anywhere in the world.
Yet for all this, his efforts to obtain Dutch financial help became no easier; and for all his own abundant self-satisfaction in the part he had played, he appreciated how much else had influenced the outcome. “The resolution which has taken place in this nation,” he told Edmund Jenings, “is the result of a vast number and variety of events, comprising the great scheme of Providence.... When I recollect the circumstances, I am amazed, and feel that it is no work of mine.”
• • •
AT LAST, on June 11, 1782, Adams negotiated with a syndicate of three Amsterdam banking houses—Willink, Van Staphorst, and De la Lande & Fynje—a loan of 5 million guilders, or $2 million at 5 percent interest.
It was not the $10 million Congress had expected Henry Laurens to secure, but it was an all-important beginning. It was money desperately needed at home and a foundation for American credit in Europe.
“If this had been the only action of my life, it would have been well spent,” Adams wrote to Abigail, hoping she would “Pardon the vanity.”
He was writing to her again and at length. He thought it unlikely that anyone would understand or appreciate the struggle and aggravation he had been through, the doubts, timidity, and hostilities he had had to contend with. “I have rendered a most important and essential service to my country here, which I verily believe no other man in the world would have done,” he confided. “I don't mean by this that I have exerted any abilities here, or any action, that are not very common, but I don't believe that any other man in the world would have had the patience and perseverance to do and to suffer what was absolutely necessary.”
Untrained in diplomacy and by temperament seemingly so unsuited for it, he had indeed succeeded brilliantly, as others and history would attest. He thought it no life for him—“I must be an independent man,” he reminded her—and possibly he was as ready to give it up as he claimed. (“A child was never more weary of a whistle than I am of embassies.”) But nothing he had done in the service of his country had given such satisfaction. No matter that the Dutch Republic was one of the “lesser theaters” of Europe, or that other events in which he had played a decisive part would rank higher in the balance. It had been his own path that he had taken, alone and in his own way. He had been ignored, ridiculed; he had very nearly died in the process. Yet he had persisted and succeeded.
Sometimes it was necessary to be “assuming,” he observed in a letter to Edmund Jenings. Had he followed the advice and exhortations he was subjected to, and suspended operations to request instructions, he would have been forbidden to proceed as he had and most likely Holland would have signed a separate peace with England. “Thanks to God that he gave me stubbornness when I know I am right.”
Ironically, a letter was en route that June from Robert Livingston demanding to know why in his reports to Congress Adams had included nothing about the dockyards and arsenals of Holland, or the ships preparing for sea, or anything about the leading members of the Dutch government. “You have not repeated your private conversations with them, from which infinitely more is to be collected than from all the pamphlets scattered about the streets,” lectured Livingston, who had never set foot in Europe or served in a diplomatic role.
If they avoid your company and conversation it
is a more unfavorable symptom than any you have mentioned, and shows clearly that your public character should have been concealed 'til your address had paved the way for its being acknowledged.... None of your letters take the least notice of the French ambassador at The Hague. Is there no intercourse between you? If not, to what is it to be attributed?
The news that the Dutch Republic had recognized the United States did not reach Philadelphia until September, arriving by a Dutch ship named Heer Adams.
At noon, Tuesday, October 8, 1782, Adams arrived at the State House at The Hague to sign a treaty of commerce with the Dutch Republic. Deputies from the provinces of Holland and Zeeland stood waiting at the top of the stairs to escort him to the gilded Trèveszaal, or Truce Hall. With its elaborate frescoed ceiling and tall French doors overlooking a small lake and fountain, it could have been a chamber at Versailles, and as the ceremony proceeded ever so slowly, Adams had ample time to look about.
Finally, it was his turn, the treaty was signed and sealed, his work accomplished.
• • •
IN LATE SEPTEMBER, John Jay dispatched an urgent note to John Adams from Paris to report that the British emissary Richard Oswald had received a formal commission to treat with the United States on the matter of peace. Jay pressed Adams to come to Paris as soon as possible and cautioned that he “say nothing of this 'til you see me.”
It was only with his treaty of commerce with the Dutch completed that Adams felt free to leave, but even then he seems to have been in no hurry to get to Paris. He hardly knew what to think about the prospect of making peace, he told Abigail. It could be “troublesome business,” “another furnace of affliction,” yet his spirits were high. “Yet I am very gay, more so than usual. I fear nothing. Why should I?”