For Honour's Sake (28 page)

Yet two weeks after the great slaughter, the Russian foreign minister, Count Nikolai Rumyantsev, acting on Alexander's instructions, summoned America's minister to Russia, John Quincy Adams, to an evening meeting. With rumours swirling through the emperor's court that Moscow, the heart of Russia, had fallen to Napoleon just that day, Adams could scarcely imagine the cause of the unexpected summons as he entered Rumyantsev's drawing room at seven o'clock. Tall and courtly but also virtually deaf since suffering a stroke upon hearing the news that France had invaded Russia, the count was the chancellor Adams most often had dealings with. In the three years he had been posted to Russia,
Rumyantsev had also become a valued friend. Theirs was a relationship of comfortable confidants, who valued each other's opinion and discretion. This night Rumyantsev was unusually formal, stating that he saw Adams “by the Emperor's command.” The war between America and Great Britain, Rumyantsev said, adversely affected Russia's commerce with both combatants and so Alexander proposed to mediate indirect negotiations. Would the Americans agree to such a course?

Adams quickly became intrigued. He believed that President Madison had been forced into the war by Britain's insistence that America accept intrusions to its sovereignty that would require “a dishonourable abandonment of all the unquestionable rights … and even the essential characteristics of an independent nation. The blame of the war was therefore entirely on the English side.” But at the same time he “so deeply lamented the very existence of the war, that I should welcome any facility for bringing it to a just and honourable termination.” Adams believed his government would welcome any attempt to negotiate a settlement, but he reminded Rumyantsev that there was “a third party to be consulted as to the proposal—the British Government.”

The count assured Adams the idea had already been presented to the new British ambassador, Lord Cathcart, who had sent it on to London for consideration. Adams agreed to advance the idea to his own government while the count would instruct André Daschkoff, his minister in Washington, to also raise the proposition with President Madison. As the meeting was ending, a messenger delivered a note from Cathcart that Rumyantsev read to Adams. Wellington, the message said, had taken Madrid. The war on the Iberian Peninsula had turned decisively in Britain's favour.
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Adams had yet to get the measure of the new British ambassador. On the one hand, Cathcart professed sympathy for the United States because his wife had been born there. But he had also commanded the irregular British Legion during the inconclusive 1778 Battle of Monmouth and afterward served as the quartermaster general for the British army fighting to put down the American Revolution. “The English talk much about their honor and national morality—sometimes without meaning, but generally with a mixture of hypocrisy and self-delusion in about equal portions,”
Adams wrote after meeting Cathcart.
²
He suspected the ambassador fitted the normal English mould.

When Cathcart proposed the two men meet, however, Adams agreed even though they represented nations at war. Surprised that Cathcart would make the offer, he justified accepting on the grounds that he had not yet received a copy of the declaration of war from Washington. Cathcart reiterated, as he was prone to do whenever he and Adams crossed paths, his “particular attachment to America, and to cherish a wish that the political differences between that country and England might yet be settled amicably.”
³
Adams could only echo the last desire. If the British would just be reasonable, he believed peace could be easily agreed.

To John Quincy Adams reasonableness was a virtue, one of many that he aspired to while at the same time fearing the incapacity of their attainment. Eldest son of America's second president, from his birth on July 11, 1767, in Braintree, Massachusetts, Adams had been set on a course that his father believed would lead to greatness, not for personal aggrandizement, but rather to fully serve the United States and the greater good of humanity. Although he was formally educated at private schools abroad and at Harvard, his fuller education came direct from John Adams—an education relentlessly tended to whether the father was at home, on a diplomatic mission abroad (with young Johnny at his side), or sitting in the Senate and later the president's chair. Conversation more resembled that between tutor and student than father and son. Wherever young Adams went, his father's presence remained subliminally close to his shoulder, urging him to excel.

Not that John Quincy Adams became a mirror reflection of his father. Soon after his acceptance to the bar, Adams established a reputation for independence of mind. Where his father was a stout Federalist, Adams flirted with Republican views. But he remained too much of an individualist to be comfortable with warping personal beliefs to conform to any party line.

Of one thing there could be no doubt. Like his father, he was an unhesitating patriot, a loyal American to the core. In 1797, while in London en route to a posting in Berlin, Adams had married Louisa Catherine
Johnson, daughter of the United States consul to Great Britain, whom he had fallen in love with three years earlier. His devotion to Louisa was total. When apart he wrote great streams of letters, each running on for many pages—not love letters, for that would have been disgracefully self-indulgent, but rather lengthy reports full of thoughts and observations.

Writing was his true passion. Never did he take to bed of an evening without first recording the events of the day just passed and many other observations. Only his deepest emotions were absent from the pages of the massive journals amassed. He rose before six each morning, often beating the dawn, to ensure five hours of unbroken time for self-improvement. Adams devoured books and reflected deeply on all he read, commented in his journal about their worth, occasionally published pamphlets refuting an author's thesis. The classics, science, philosophy, history, the Bible, all methodically analyzed. While trying to work his way through Milton's
Paradise Lost
—a favourite of his father's and thus mandatory reading—for a second unsuccessful time, Adams had taken up smoking in hopes of focusing his concentration so as to get beyond the first half. His pipe was now always close by, the habit impossible to give up. That failing was chalked up alongside the other character lapses for which Adams privately berated himself. A man who stood in such harsh self-judgment found it difficult not to be deeply critical of others.

While in Russia, where initially there was little for an American diplomat to do in the emperor's court, he had undertaken a study of weights and measures. Adams recorded his height as “five feet seven inches,” his stride covered “two feet six inches and eighty-eight one-hundredths of an inch at a rate of thirteen hundred and sixty-six paces” every eleven minutes. He reported to Louisa the precise distance that lay between St. Petersburg's various bridges.
⁴
It was a matter of pride that he could name and locate all the stars of the heavens. One evening he saw a constellation that seemed new, and upon carefully looking it up in Joseph-Jérôme Lalande's
Bibliographie astronomique,
which listed the positions of 47,000 stars, was mortified to discover he had observed common Orion.
⁵

This obvious lapse of memory only further fuelled his pessimism about the ability of humankind to improve. With each passing year Adams became increasingly pessimistic, his outward countenance emanating a
joyless, cold personality. At forty-six, Adams had become stout. His hair had recededbeyond his pate and what remained hung thin and lank down the back of his neck. Arched eyebrows furthered the impression of a judgmental, unforgiving nature. Always awkward in society, Adams compensated by being domineeringly intense. He seldom participated in the witty repartee so common to the parlour-room discussion of society's upper crust and could be sharply impatient with its irrelevance. Afterward, Adams would berate himself for his lack of manners and pray to find a patience and understanding seemingly beyond his grasp.

At home Adams was another man; a sensitive and reflective husband, a caring father. One of his great pleasures during the long years in St. Petersburg was to take long walks in the parks with Louisa and their children. Occasionally on such outings they encountered a young, tall Russian. Alexander I cheerfully offered advice on the upbringing of the children.
⁶
These encounters helped cement a friendship uncommon in the Russian court.

While personally doubting the emperor's mediation offer would bear fruit, Adams thought if anyone could bring the British to the table it was Alexander. He longed to have the discussions begin, but until instructions arrived from Washington he could do nothing.

So Adams busied himself meeting various representatives of the Russian government and the ministers to the court from other countries, always seeking what various attitudes each held toward the United States. There was also the invasion of Russia, the “dreadful accounts of the burning of Moscow since the French entered it.” Rather than being dispirited by the worsening news, Adams noticed that Alexander's “spirit stiffens with adversity.”
⁷
When Napoleon sought an armistice, Alexander sharply declared “that he would not make peace while an armed enemy should remain on the Russian territory.”
⁸
The emperor's resolve was soon rewarded, for on October 19 Napoleon ordered Moscow abandoned and turned his army homeward in a futile race against winter. Pursued by the Russians, ill clothed for the plunging winter temperatures, famished, running out of ammunition and powder, the Grande Armée straggled west. On December 13 the last French troops crossed the frozen Niemen River. Half a million men had followed
Napoleon into Russia; only 20,000 staggered out. The Russians counted more than 200,000 of their own soldiers dead. Yet by enduring, by refusing to negotiate or bend to Napoleon's will, by conducting a scorched-earth policy that denied the conqueror any resort to local food sources, the Russians handed France a stunning defeat—one from which Napoleon could not recover. The Grande Armée could not be rebuilt to its former glory, and Adams thought the sun was perhaps setting on Napoleon's great empire. If France were defeated, Britain would be free to turn its full might against America.

During a long discussion with Count Rumyantsev on February 1, Adams expressed this gloomy outlook. He feared the war was “too popular with all parties” in Britain, while in the United States opinion was divided. The only outstanding reason for the war was impressment of American sailors, but on “this point the whole English nation, or at least all the political parties, were unreasonable.” The losses the Royal Navy had suffered at the hands of the U.S. Navy “had mortified their national pride, and touched their point of honor in its tenderest part … and would make them think they must now fight not only for their honor, but for revenge.”

Rumyantsev wondered about the potential for American successes in the forthcoming campaign against Canada. “I [expect] for the present little or nothing from it,” Adams answered. “We [are] all too raw and unskilled in war to make much progress in Canada.” He believed that Lord Liverpool's government was stronger now than when first constituted the previous summer, so its ministers would be even more intransigent in any peace negotiations.
⁹

His minister to Russia's pessimism would have disturbed President James Madison, who informed the Russian minister to America, André Daschkoff, that Adams would be one of a special delegation to conduct the forthcoming negotiation. The speed of the president's acceptance of the offer surprised Daschkoff, for in the past Madison had been cool and his sympathies seemed to lie more with France and Napoleon even after the Grande Armée invaded Russia. In January, the two had lingered one evening at Madison's dinner table after the other guests had
departed. Daschkoff had suggested that it might be time for the United States to make peace with Britain and floated the idea that the emperor might mediate. “I acknowledge your offer is very liberal and the moment very favourable,” Madison replied, “but will you or can you guarantee to us all the rights we claim?” When Daschkoff replied that obviously the outcome of such negotiations could not be foreseen, Madison seemed to lose interest in the subject.
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But by March international circumstances had changed dramatically as it became increasingly clear that France would inevitably be defeated by the growing coalition of nations taking arms against it. Any subjugation of France would leave Russia as the most powerful nation on the European continent.

It was also inescapable that Madison had gone to war with Britain expecting France to either triumph or at least remain strong enough to ensure the war in Europe continued to be waged fiercely. War in Europe meant the British could never direct their full military attention against the United States. If the war in Europe ended, American prospects for victory dimmed dramatically. He had to acknowledge that to date the army had demonstrated no capacity to achieve victories against British forces they outnumbered, so there would be no likelihood of success if Britain transferred a significant portion of its standing army from Europe to Canada. And eventually the British would go over to the offensive, carrying the war into the United States.

Ironically, if Britain's war with France ended before its war with the United States, the only remaining
casus belli
of the conflict would be lost, for impressment of American sailors would cease. Peace always brought a reduction in British warships and a resultant discharge of surplus sailors.

There was also the grave financial cost of the war. The day after his inauguration on March 4, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin had informed the president, “We have hardly enough money to last till the end of the month.” Gallatin advised “cutting by the root militia expenses, and … reducing the Western expenditure to what is necessary for defensive operations, relying exclusively on the possession of the Lakes for anything of an offensive nature.”
¹¹
Although by month's
end he had managed through a series of frantic meetings with bankers—word of the Russian mediation offer slightly lifting the spirits of the financiers—to raise sufficient capital through loans repayable at 7.5 percent interest, the treasury was by no means on solid footing.