Papers of John Adams, volume 20
With great pleasure, I received your kind letter of the twenty
fifth of last month,1 give me leave to
congratulate you on your marriage, the increase of your family, and your happy
settlement on your plantation.2 I have
known by repeated experience enough of the pleasure of returning from the life of a
traveller in Europe, to the pleasures of domestic life, in a calm retreat in the
country, to be very sensible of your situation’s being enviable. I thank you Sir, for
the friendly and respectful confidence in me, with which you have communicated your
desires in favour of Mr Joseph Fenwick to be Consul at
Bourdeaux. Your recommendation has weight with me: but you know very well that the duty
of looking out for the fittest men for all employments, is by the constitution imposed
on the President, who I am well persuaded will discharge it with all that fidelity which
is due to his Country, and all the impartiality which becomes a father of his people. As
Mr Jefferson is expected from France, perhaps no
appointment will be made in that country untill his arrival.3 Mr Fenwick is
probably known to the President: if not, it will be very natural that information and
Judgment will be asked of the Gent: from Virginia and Maryland, whose knowledge of the
person is personal, and should therefore be taken in preference to mine, which can only
be at second hand. The candidates for such appointments will in most instances be
numerous, and their services, merits and qualifications various. The great Magistrate,
whose right it is will I doubt not, determine among them all in a manner that will give
satisfaction to the publick.
Your congratulations on my late appointments are very obliging. The Duties, of my office require a constant and laborious attention: but there is so much information, candor and dignity in the characters with whom I am associated, that application to business in concert with them is pleasure.
I am & &
LbC in CA’s hand (Adams Papers); internal address: “George Mason
Junr: Esqr / Colchester,
Virginia—”; APM Reel 115.
Mason’s letter of 25 June (Adams Papers) recommended Maryland-born merchant
Joseph Fenwick (1762–1849) to serve as the U.S. consul at Bordeaux. For the past year,
Fenwick had operated, with Mason’s brother John, a trading firm in the French port,
which supplied wine to JA, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.
Fenwick’s main 53 rival for the position was John Bondfield, who
had acted as the American commercial agent for Bordeaux, Bayonne, Rochefort, and La
Rochelle since March 1778. When Washington nominated Fenwick on 4 June 1790, he
mistakenly wrote “James Fenwick” but sent a note of correction to the Senate on 23
June. Fenwick was confirmed by the Senate on 7 June, and he served as U.S. consul to
France until 1801 (vols. 6:10,
9:103; Richard C. Allen,
“Nantucket Quakers and Negotiating the Politics of the Atlantic World,” in Marie
Jeanne Rossignol and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, eds., The Atlantic
World of Anthony Benezet (1713–1784): From French Reformation to North American
Quaker Antislavery Activism, Leyden, 2017, p. 123; Washington, Papers, Presidential
Series
, 3:53, 54; 5:474–476; Jefferson, Papers
,
8:158).
Elizabeth Mary Anne Barnes Hooe (b. 1768), of Barnesfield, Va.,
married Mason on 22 April 1784. They lived on the Doegs’ Neck, Va., plantation of
Lexington, named in 1775 to commemorate the Revolutionary War battle, and at this time
they had three children: Elizabeth, George, and William (“Notes and Queries,”
VMHB
, 52:276 [Oct. 1944]; Pamela C. Copeland and Richard K. MacMaster,
The Five George Masons: Patriots and Planters of Virginia
and Maryland, 2d edn., Fairfax, Va., 2016, p. 250).
On 23 Aug. 1789 Jefferson received John Jay’s 19 June letter,
enclosing a Senate resolution of 18 June that approved his return and named William
Short as the American chargé d’affaires. Fleeing the French Revolution’s upheaval,
Jefferson sailed from Le Havre to Cowes, England, on 7 Oct., making a turbulent
crossing via the Clermont, Capt. Nathaniel Colley. He
arrived in Norfolk, Va., on 23 Nov., where he was greeted by citizens who thanked him
for his diplomatic work, to which Jefferson replied: “That my country should be served
is the first wish of my heart: I should be doubly happy indeed were I to render it a
service” (Jefferson, Papers
, 15:202–203, 496, 521, 546, 553,
556–557).