Browsing: Papers of John Adams, Volume 9

1. Although set off by quotation marks (closing supplied), the passage is an accurate paraphrase of a portion of JA's commission of 29 Sept. 1779 to negotiate a peace treaty (calendar entry, vol. 8:185; JA, Diary and Autobiography , 4:178–179). With minor stylistic changes and the addition of some introductory material, this passage formed the basis for the announcements of JA's mission that appeared in various London newspapers, including the General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer and The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser of 12 April and the London Chronicle of 11–13 April. The notice appearing in the General Advertiser was copied by John Thaxter and forms one entry in a twelve page document that JA endorsed: “Paragraphs <in> Public Prints”; and which contains items from various British and continental newspapers for the period from 5 April to 4 July. Immediately following the piece from the General Advertiser of 12 April, Thaxter copied another that appeared on 13 April in the same paper. “We can venture to assure the Public from respectable Authority, that Mr. Adams, the Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France, is not arrived in Europe for the purpose of offering Terms to Great Britain; and that he has only recieved Instructions to listen, conjunctively with France, to the Overtures of the King of England and his Ministers for Peace.” On 18 April the General Advertiser again commented on JA's mission in an article copied by Thaxter and of which a clipping is in the Adams Papers (Microfilms, Reel No. 604). There, after noting that the declining position of Great Britain vis-à-vis the European powers made peace a necessity, the author stated that “we have the fullest authority to declare, that the paragraph in the public prints, mentioning the powers with which Mr. Adams, the Minister from the United States to the Court of France, is absolutely invested, ought to be relied on as a certain fact. Time will soon discover, whether it be the inclination of those who govern us to put a period to the national calamities, or to increase them beyond the hope of remedy.” For a possible explanation for these additional statements regarding JA's status, see Edmund Jenings' letter of 24 April, note 3 (below).