Adams, John | The original nepo baby?

Adams, John

Document signed ("John Adams") as President, appointing his twenty-nine-year-old son John Quincy Adams as Minister Plenipotentiary to Prussia

Manuscript broadside on vellum (274 x 343 mm), written in a neat clerical hand, Philadelphia, 1 June 1797, countersigned by the Secretary of State ("Timothy Pickering"), embossed paper seal of the United States; some very light surface soiling, some abrasion and repair at lower left corner margin. Floated on a mat and framed with engraved portraits of the two Adamses.

"John Adams- President of the United States of America To John Quincy Adams—Greeting

"Reposing especial Trust and Confidence in your Integrity, Prudence and Ability I have nominated and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate do appoint you the said John Quincy Adams Minister Plenipotentiary for the United States of America at the Court of His Majesty the King of Prussia, authorizing you hereby to do and perform all such Matters and Things as to the said Place or Office doth appertain, or as may be duly given you in charge hereafter, and the said Office to hold and exercise during the pleasure of the President of the United States for the time being." 

Before he became the nation's sixth president, John Quincy Adams was one of the most significant diplomats of the early republic. His first appointment abroad came from George Washington, who in 1794 made Adams ambassador to the Netherlands. Adams, who would have preferred a career in law and academia, was encouraged to accept the position by his father. Although he discussed the Jay Treaty with its eponymous American negotiator and participated in the exchange of ratifications during this posting, Adams did not much enjoy his time in the Hague, where his principal responsibility was overseeing the repayment of U.S. loans from Dutch bankers.

Two years later, Washington reassigned Adams to Portugal, but before he could make his way to Lisbon, his father succeeded to the presidency and appointed him to the more significant office of minister to Prussia (the Portuguese portfolio was given instead to William Loughton Smith). The younger Adams was keenly sensitive to charges of nepotism, and he had determined not to accept any office in his father's administration; in his diary, he characterized the posting to Berlin as Because he had resolved never to hold public office under his father’s nomination, he recorded the news as "some very unpleasant intelligence, personally concerning myself."

Adams was recalled as a result of Thomas Jefferson's election to the presidency in 1800, but after a period as a Senator from Massachusetts—during which he taught at both Brown and Harvard—he returned to the diplomatic corps in 1809 when President Madison named him minister to Russia. (Adams had been to St. Petersburg before, however; in 1781, just fifteen years old, he acted as secretary and French translator for Francis Dana, the Confederation minister to Russia.) While in Russia Adams seemed finally to accept that his place was to found in diplomacy and politics, even declining an appointment to the Supreme Court. He helped to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, before moving from St. Petersburg to London as ambassador to Great Britain. Adams then served as Secretary of State for the entirety of James Monroe's presidency, before succeeding himself to the White House in 1825.

It was the posting to Berlin, commemorated in the present document, that likely determined Adams's future. Prussia allowed for close observation of revolutionary France, in addition to his regular duties, which included signing a new Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce.

PROVENANCE:

Bonhams New York, 10 December 2014, lot 171 (undesignated consignor)