Papers of John Adams, volume 19

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Descriptive List of Illustrations

1. TWENTY-SHILLING BILL OF CREDIT, 1785	51[unavailable]
On 24 April 1787, John Adams traveled from London to Portsmouth, England, to meet with alleged counterfeiter Robert Muir, “an Artful, Shrewd Fellow but with a mean, hungry desperate Appearance, Suitable to any kind of Attrocious Villainy.” Acting swiftly, Adams alerted American and British authorities to Muir’s attempt to forge currency of North and South Carolina. When he was arrested, Muir possessed authentic shilling notes, woodcuts of the borders, cast metal flowers, types, and die stamps: everything that a counterfeiter needed to begin work. But since Muir had not passed any fraudulent notes, he could not be tried in court. Adams recommended that he be released and his tools destroyed (to John Jay, 30 April, below).
This North Carolina twenty-shilling note is typical of the bills of credit that Muir planned to counterfeit. Embedded in the note’s decorative border are the words “COUNTERFEITERS BEWARE.” The angel Gabriel faces a banner embossed with the Latin phrase “Tantae molis condere,” an allusion to Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 1, line 33: “It was such a massive task to establish the Roman people.” Extra space is provided for a handwritten serial number and the signatures of John Hunt and Absalom Tatum, the two state officials commissioned to sign notes.
Late eighteenth-century American currency was mainly produced by newspaper printers, who also produced popular pamphlets and experienced the plentiful circulation of high-quality counterfeit money. Slight variations in the placement of the punctuation, the size of the text, or the angle of vertical lines all help to establish authenticity (from Thomas Wren, 22 April, 22 June; to Wren, 25 June, all below; William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979–1996; Biog. Dir. Cong. ; Philip L. Mossman, From Crime to Punishment: Counterfeit and Debased Currencies in Colonial and Pre-Federal North America, ed. Louis E. Jordan, N.Y., 2013, p. 203–209, 224).
Courtesy of North Carolina Collection Numismatic Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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2. “ASSEMBLÉE DES NOTABLES LE 22 FEVRIER 1787,” 1787	139[unavailable]
By early 1787, France’s treasury was in dire straits, following several decades of mismanagement, corruption, and unresolved debt. King Louis XVI’s embattled finance minister, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, estimated a deficit of 80 million livres, but the real figure was likely closer to 112 million. Calonne drafted several reforms to end the crisis, including new land and stamp taxes, the removal of internal customs barriers, greater regulation of the corn trade, and the creation of elective provincial assemblies. To garner support for his plan, the king and Calonne took the rare step of calling a meeting of the Assembly of Notables, which had not been done since 1626. The 144-member convention met from 22 February to 25 May 1787 in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs at Versailles.
From London, John Adams watched the Assembly’s proceedings unfold with keen interest. The Marquis de Lafayette, a royal critic who spoke often during the Assembly, supplied Adams with updates. Writing to Lafayette on 12 January, Adams expressed “equal surprize & satisfaction” at the convention, calling it “one of the most important events of this age” (vol. 18:542). In his speeches, Lafayette pressed his peers to increase free trade, revise France’s criminal law, and broaden toleration toward Protestants. Sometimes seen as the “aristocrats’ revolution,” the Assembly bolstered new support for constitutional monarchy while briefly empowering provincial assemblies.
Public attitudes toward the meeting were suspicious and derisive. As in this engraving, the Assembly drew satirists’ jeers. Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. minister in Paris, repeatedly put off his continental travels in order to monitor the debates. He wrote to Abigail Adams in late February, sensing in the people’s mockery some of the fiercer revolutionary sentiment yet to come: “The most remarkable effect of this convention as yet is the number of puns and bon mots it has generated. … Indeed, Madam, they are gone. When a measure so capable of doing good as the calling the Notables is treated with so much ridicule, we may conclude the nation desperete” ( AFC , 7:468).
In conversation and caricature, the French finance minister became a favorite target for ridicule. Calonne, the royal minister who collected artworks by Titian and traveled in fur-lined coaches attended by liveried servants, seemed to embody a court in love with luxury. This caricature by an unknown artist depicts the Assembly as the “Court’s Buffet,” with Calonne presiding as chef. The caption reads, “My dear ministers, I have assembled you to find out with which sauce you would like to be eaten.” The chorus of fowls, representing the notables, reply, “But we do not want to be eaten at all!” Calonne, shown as a wizened monkey in a mobcap, responds, “You are avoiding the question.” On 8 April, with the Assembly still in full swing, the king dismissed Calonne, and he later exiled him from Paris (vol. 18:530–531; Gottschalk, Lafayette , p. 279–319; Schama, Citizens , p. 237–246; from Jefferson, 20 Feb., below).
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Courtesy of Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France. Photo © Tallandier/Bridgeman Images.
3. COLUMBIA AND WASHINGTON MEDAL, 1787	221[unavailable]
Throughout the 1780s, American merchants explored wider trade networks, eager to generate revenue and procure goods without British aid. Rather than vie with long-established British, French, and Dutch businesses in the Baltic and the Indies, Americans looked to Africa and China for profit. John Adams and others tracked the historic voyage of the Empress of China in 1787–1789, Capt. John Green, which sailed from New York City to Canton, China, and was the first vessel flying the U.S. flag to enter the lucrative China trade. Writing to his brother-in-law Richard Cranch, Adams encouraged Boston merchants to venture across the Pacific: “I am informed that the Trade of Boston to the Cape of Good Hope & to Africa succeeds very Well, why has no attempt been made to China” (vol. 18:29). Americans sought to offer a commodity, such as furs, that their foreign competitors could not easily procure. On 30 September 1787 the Columbia Rediviva and the Lady Washington left Boston for a nearly 50,000-mile trek around Cape Horn to the Pacific Northwest, pausing to stock up on furs before sailing to China. Capt. John Kendrick’s Washington stayed in the Pacific to carry on trade. The Columbia, now led by Capt. Robert Gray, continued on to China and then made a dramatic return to Boston Harbor on 9 August 1790.
The Columbia’s voyage marked the first circumnavigation of the globe by an American crew. Boston merchant and Columbia investor Joseph Barrell ordered 300 medals to be struck and “distributed amongst the Natives on the North West Coast of America, and to commemorate the first American Adventure to the Pacific Ocean” (from Barrell, 24 Nov. 1787, below). Barrell’s commission was the first medal struck in the United States. The designer may have been Joseph Callender, who apprenticed with Paul Revere and served as die engraver of the Massachusetts mint.
Barrell presented medals to prominent statesmen including Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Adams’ medal has not been found. In 1791 Barrell presented several artifacts from the expedition, including this copper medal, to the Massachusetts Historical Society. On the foreground of the obverse is depicted the Columbia and, in the background, the sloop Washington. The investors are listed on the reverse: Barrell, Samuel Brown, Charles Bulfinch, John Derby, Capt. Crowell Hatch, and John Marsden Pintard. Echoing the design of the obverse is another border inscribed: “FITTED AT BOSTON N. AMERICA FOR THE PACIFIC OCEAN” (vol. 17:127; Samuel Eliot Morison, Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783–1860, Boston, 1921, p. 41, 43–47; AFC , 9:91–92; Anne E. Bentley, “The Columbia-Washington Medal,” MHS, Procs. , 101:120–27 [1989]).
Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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4. “PLUNDERING VAN HET HUIS VAN LUCAS VAN STEVENINCK,” ENGRAVING AFTER JAN ARENDS, 1787	245[unavailable]
“The Attack upon Mr Dumas, is but a Part of that system of Intimidation, that the present Tryumphant Party in Holland is pursuing,” John Adams wrote to John Jay on 15 November 1787, below, fearing for the fate of Patriot C. W. F. Dumas, U.S. agent at The Hague. In the ongoing struggle between the republican Patriots and the monarchist Orangists, Adams hoped his longtime friends in the Patriot Party would prevail. During the September 1787 Prussian invasion of the Netherlands, part of the residual effort to restore William V, stadholderian forces swept past the Patriots’ stronghold in Utrecht and focused on securing Amsterdam along with the unfortified Hague. “We are at the constant mercy of the people and the soldiers,” Dumas wrote to Adams on 25 September (below). Two weeks later, he wrote again, describing the city’s unrest: “Two homes next to ours were stoned last night. At least forty more, in the past two days alone, have been as well.” Dumas enclosed his will, asking Adams to forward it to Jay (from Dumas, 9 Oct., below).
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1787, episodes of street violence plagued the city centers of Amsterdam and Middelburg. Mobs set fire to and looted Patriot homes, including that of Lucas van Steveninck (1742–1800), a doctor and shipowner in Middelburg, Zeeland. Dutch artist Jan Arends (1738–1805), known for tranquil landscapes and seashore views, lived in Middelburg from 1771 to 1787 and likely witnessed the brutality of what became known as the “Orange Terror.” Arends made two drawings of the 1 July assault on Steveninck’s house. In the first image, a cannon blasted the buildings. In Arends’ second image, shown here, a crowd armed with sticks, pitchforks, and swords loots the wealthy doctor’s household. Steveninck tried to defend his home but soon joined the many Dutch Patriots who fled to exile in France. Banished from Zeeland, he returned to Amsterdam in 1788 (Schama, Patriots and Liberators , p. 119, 130–131; Biografisch Portaal van Nederland; M. F. Lantsheer and Frederik Nagtglas, Zelandia Illustrata: Verzameling van kaarten, portretten, platen, enz., betreffende de oudheid en geschiedenis van Zeeland, Netherlands, 2 vols., Middelburg, Netherlands, 1866–1880, 1:221–222, 364–365).
Courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
5. JOHN ADAMS, BY MATHER BROWN, 1788	283[unavailable]
With John Adams’ diplomatic tenure in Europe waning, Thomas Jefferson sought to commemorate his friendship with the family. In their last European exchanges, printed in this volume, both statesmen weighed America’s prospects. “In short my dear Friend,” Adams wrote on 9 October 1787, “you and I have been indefatigable Labourers, through our whole Lives for a Cause which will be thrown away in the next Generation, upon the Vanity and Foppery of Persons of whom We do not now know the Names perhaps” (below).
Turning to American artist Mather Brown, who had recently painted John, Abigail, and Abigail 2d in the London studio of xv Benjamin West, Jefferson commissioned a fresh portrait of his London counterpart in late 1787. William Stephens Smith, Adams’ secretary and son-in-law, facilitated the order, relying on the aid and expertise of Col. John Trumbull, who was then studying art in Paris. “I must remind you also of Mr. Adams’s picture, as I should be much mortified should I not get it done before he leaves Europe,” Jefferson wrote to Smith on 31 December, when his last-minute art commission lagged (Jefferson, Papers , 12:484).
Jefferson’s request to stop and sit for a portrait came at a busy time for Adams, as he took his leave from the Court of St. James and The Hague, negotiated a fourth Dutch loan, and packed up his family for a long-awaited return to the United States. By the end of March 1788, Adams had completed his sittings with Brown, and in April he departed for Boston with Abigail. In the painting, Adams sits next to a leather-bound volume labeled “Jefferson’s Hist. of Virginia,” a reference to Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, [Paris, 1785]. On 2 July, Trumbull paid the agreed-upon sum of £10 for the finished oil painting, which was kept at Monticello until 1826. After a series of exhibits and auctions, it was bequeathed to the Boston Athenaum in 1908 (Oliver, Portraits of JA and AA , p. 46–49, 52; AFC , 7:xiii).
Courtesy of the Boston Athenæum.
6. “THE FEDERAL PILLARS,” 2 AUGUST 1788	319[unavailable]
On 18 July 1788 John Adams wrote to Arthur Lee regarding the “great Event” of the “Accession of Virginia, to the New Constitution.” Adams knew that Lee did not share his sentiments, writing: “You and I Should not materially differ, I fancy, if We were to compare Notes of a perfect Commonwealth. But I consider the present Project, as a commencement of a national Government, to be a valuable Acquisition.” Lee’s 10 August reply to Adams included his thoughts on the new form of government in the United States: “tho’ I never coud approve of the Constitution, nor ever wishd to see it adopted—yet since our Countrymen have chosen it, my wish is, that It may have a fair trial.” Lee closely tracked the ratification debates. He anticipated that since eleven states, including his home state of Virginia, had voted in favor of it, then “this Constitution has become the great Law under which we must live” (both below).
This woodcut image, printed in the Massachusetts Centinel, 2 August, reimagines the thirteen states as individual Doric columns. The first eleven pillars, shown in the order in which the states voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution, are connected. North Carolina, which did not ratify until 21 November 1789, is tilted to join the others, possibly by divine will. The final column symbolizes Rhode Island, which refused to ratify until 29 May 1790.
Massachusetts Centinel editor Benjamin Russell’s ode, “The Federal Edifice,” rounds out the piece. Russell, a Boston leader of the emergent Federalist press, provided extensive coverage of the ratification debates following the Constitution’s adoption on 17 September 1787. His poem praises the states that had ratified it thus far xvi (Robert L. Alexander, “The Grand Federal Edifice,” Documentary Editing, 9:13–15 [June 1987]; ANB ; Maier, Ratification , p. 459, 555; AFC , 9:256).
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
7. “S.E. PROSPECT, FROM AN EMINENCE NEAR THE COMMON, BOSTON,” BY SAMUEL HILL, 1790	353[unavailable]
On 2 December 1788 John Adams wrote to Jean Luzac, editor of the Gazette de Leyde, eager to share his thoughts on returning to his native Massachusetts in mid-June: “I assure you it was a very pleasing Event. and the few Months that have passed since I have been at home, have been the happiest portion of my Life. The Agriculture, the Manufactures and the commerce of this Country, I found in a much more flourishing Condition than I expected” (below).
By 1788 Boston and Braintree looked very different than when Adams last enjoyed them nearly a decade earlier. This copperplate engraving, published in The Massachusetts Magazine in November 1790, depicts a bird’s-eye view of southeast Boston and is similar to what Adams saw as he reentered the city. Taken from near Massachusetts governor John Hancock’s mansion (later the site of the statehouse), the viewer looks south toward Dorchester Heights and Braintree, with Boston splayed across the middle ground. The magazine described the lush image: “The busy din of the town, and the quiet stillness of the rural hamlet, appear in striking contrast, and furnish a luxuriant feast, to the contemplative and philosophick mind.”
Samuel Hill (ca. 1766–1804), an engraver and copperplate printer who had a shop at No. 2 Cornhill in Boston, sketched and engraved this print. From its inception in 1789, Hill was the chief engraver for The Massachusetts Magazine, for which he drew portraits and views of late eighteenth-century America. Hill also produced book illustrations and engravings for the New York publisher William Durell (“Description of the Plate,” The Massachusetts Magazine, 2:643 [Nov. 1790]; AFC , 2:51; Boston Commercial Gazette, 30 April 1804; David McNeely Stauffer, American Engravers upon Copper and Steel, 3 vols., N.Y., 1907–1917, 1:128; Peter J. Parker and Stefanie Munsing Winkelbauer, “Embellishments for Practical Repositories: Eighteenth-Century American Magazine Illustration,” in Joan D. Dolmetsch, ed., Eighteenth-Century Prints in Colonial America: To Educate and Decorate, Williamsburg, Va., 1979, p. 85–86).
Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.
8. “WASHINGTON DELIVERING HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS,” BY TOMPKINS HARRISON MATTESON, 1849	455[unavailable]
On 30 April 1789, in New York City’s Federal Hall, George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States and delivered his inaugural address, which he considered to be his “first official Act.” He observed that “the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of xvii Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” Washington ended with an invocation “to the benign Parent of the human race … since he has been pleased to favour the American people, with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquility, and dispositions for deciding with unparellelled unanimity on a form of Government, for the security of their Union, and the advancement of their happiness” (Washington, Papers, Presidential Series , 2:174–177).
John Adams, in his new role as vice president, first presided over the U.S. Senate on 21 April, though he was not formally sworn in until 3 June. On 16 May, below, as president of the Senate, he wrote to Washington that “among the great events, which have led to the formation and establishment of a Federal Government, we esteem your acceptance of the Office of President as one of the most propitious and important.” Shortly afterward, replying to the president’s list of queries on etiquette, Adams included an “Observation” that “the Provision for the President and his Household, ought to be large and ample.— The Office, by its legal Authority, defined in the Constitution, has no equal in the World … neither Dignity, nor Authority, can be Supported in human Minds collected into nations or any great numbers without a Splendor and Majisty, in Some degree, proportioned to them” (Reply to George Washington’s Queries Regarding Presidential Conduct, [17 May], below).
This nineteenth-century mezzotint print was painted by Tompkins Harrison Matteson, engraved on steel by Henry S. Sadd, and printed by John Neale. It shows Washington on a raised dais delivering his inaugural address before Congress. Robert R. Livingston, who administered the oath of office, sits on Washington’s left, with his hand under his chin. Adams is the first standing figure on Washington’s right, positioned behind the seated John Jay and partially turned toward New York governor George Clinton (Washington, Papers, Presidential Series , 2:154–155; John Adams’ Address to the Senate, [21 April], below).
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.