On 11 October 1788, several months after John Adams’ American homecoming, he wrote to John Jay, above, “to Solicit the final Settlement of my Accounts.” With congressional activity on hiatus and the states busy debating ratification of the United States Constitution, it was not clear to Adams whether he should submit his accounts to Thomas Barclay, Congress’ agent to settle accounts, as he had done in 1784, or elsewhere. Since Adams’ salary and provisions had largely been covered by the Dutch loans that he negotiated and had been disbursed by the Amsterdam consortium, his request was one of clarity rather than compensation. Jay replied on 7 November 1788 describing the lack of a congressional quorum, adding that he would “take the earliest opportunity of laying your Letter before them, & of transmitting to You whatever orders they may think proper to give” (Adams Papers). There is no evidence that Congress ever read Adams’ letter or took the matter any further.

Seeking to provide transparency for the expenditure of American funds abroad, John Adams prepared a detailed account of his diplomatic activities between May 1785 and April 1788. This account exists in the Adams Family Papers in three manuscripts, with most of the entries made in Adams’ hand. The first document printed here comprises four pages in the Adams Papers. The second document contains sixteen loose pages filed with Letterbook 36, Adams Papers Microfilms, Reel 124. John Adams used separate columns to indicate the date, description, and amount of each expense. He recorded the bulk of his accounts in Europe in guineas or pounds sterling, but he listed a few expenses in florins, guilders, and livres tournois. Additionally, there are two pages of entries in Letterbook 19, Adams Papers Microfilms, Reel 107, which have a handful of entries from 31 May to 8 October 1785.

This account furnishes a capsule overview of Adams’ diplomatic activities. Nearly every month, he claimed 200 guineas for his salary, which totaled slightly more than the yearly sum of £2,500 permitted for United States diplomats. Sometimes, he drew his salary in florins to ease the agio, or exchange rate. He claimed expenses for moving from The Hague to London, for twice traveling to the Netherlands to finalize the third and fourth Dutch loans, and for traveling to Portsmouth, England, in April 1787 to investigate an alleged counterfeiter. Adams listed payments to William Short for expenses incurred in exchanging ratifications of the 1785 Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce; to John Lamb, Thomas Barclay, and David Franks for their missions to Algiers and Morocco; and to secretary William Stephens Smith for his 1787 goodwill mission to Portugal. John Adams noted purchasing stationery, presents for the Court of St. James, and a ceremonial sword commissioned for Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin, Baron von Steuben. He recorded buying books and renting a church pew. He calculated postage fees and the bill for a Grosvenor Square dinner party hosted for fellow ministers, which he listed as “one Extraordinary Diplomatick Entertainment.” To John Adams’ mind, it was critical to document how he spent public funds, in order to establish good American credit abroad. “If the American Minister in London and the secretary of his Legation should be obliged to leave Europe without paying their debts, there is malice enough in this Country, to make all Europe, resound with it, and more to the injury of our Credit,” Adams wrote to the loan consortium on 22 January 1788, above.

John Adams’ European ledger reveals him to be a fairly frugal administrator. He kept careful records of every “necessary Expence,” while serving in a triple diplomatic role. Adams was able to pay his own way (and that of other diplomats) mainly from the four Dutch loans he arranged between 1782 and 1788. This account, therefore, is a valuable record of what it cost for America’s fledgling diplomatic corps to operate abroad. For Adams’ previous, related accounts of 1778 to 1779, submitted for his expenses and those of fellow American peace commissioner Benjamin Franklin, see vol. 7:210–214. Since these accounts cover events in volumes 16 to 19, the editors have chosen to print it here.