Reluctant Philosophe: John Adams and Republican Government

Abstract

John Adams was the first United States ambassador to be accredited to the Court of St James. In an historic audience with George III on 1 June 1785, Adams explained that he wished to recommend his country ‘more and more to Your Majesty’s royal benevolence’. The King graciously replied: ‘I must say that I not only receive with pleasure the assurance of the friendly dispositions of the United States, but that I am very glad the choice has fallen on you to be their minister.’ This was perhaps to exceed the normal hyperbole of diplomatic courtesy, for it was John Adams whose determined resistance to the British crown led Jefferson to dub him ‘the Colossus of Independence’. When in less formal vein, George III asked the new ambassador whether he had just come from France, Adams answered simply, ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ He could hardly have admitted that when the French foreign minister, Vergennes, congratulated him on his appointment to the London post, Adams had obligingly dismissed the honour as ‘a species of degradation in the eyes of Europe, after having been accredited to the King of France’.¹