Comments on John Temple, [1 August] 1782
Comments on John Temple
Printed copy (Charles Thomson’s “Debates in the Congress of the Confederation, from July 22d to September 20th, 1782,” Collections of the New-York Historical Society, XI [1878], 81). This edition was made from a transcript rather than from Thomson’s manuscript (ibid., p. xi) and will be referred to hereafter as Thomson, “Debates.” Both the manuscript and the transcript are lost.
Editorial Note
John Temple (1732–1798; baronet, 1786), a native of Boston and son-in-law of the influential patriot James Bowdoin, went to Great Britain in 1771 after serving as surveyor general of customs for the northern district of America, a commissioner of the Board of Customs for North America, and lieutenant governor of New Hampshire. Between 1771 and 1774 he was surveyor general of customs in Great Britain. From 1785 until his death he was British consul general in the United States (The Bowdoin and Temple Papers, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 6th ser., IX [Boston, 1897], xv–xvii; , XXIX, 897–98).
Professing friendliness toward the American cause, Temple returned to the United States with his family in August 1778 and asked Congress for a passport permitting him to stay. Congress accompanied its refusal with the suggestion that he seek the approbation of “the State in which he means to reside” (, XI, 858–60). In December of that year, although he had secured endorsements from the executives of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey, he found Congress still unwilling to grant his request (, XII, 1186, 1201). Temple thereupon returned to Great Britain (Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Letters of William Lee, Sheriff and Alderman of London; Commercial Agent of the Continental Congress in France; and Minister to the Courts of Vienna and Berlin, 1766–1783 [3 vols.; Brooklyn, N. Y., 1891], III, 713).
In the London Courant of 6 December 1780, Temple published a statement affirming that although he was “an American by birth and in principle,” he had never been an enemy of the British. He emphatically denied that his visit to the United States in 1778 had had any connection with the peace commission headed by Frederick Howard, Earl of Carlisle, or with the secret service of Frederick North, Lord North and Earl of Guilford (, III, 272, n. 2; 304, n. 8; Bowdoin and Temple Papers, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 6th ser., IX, 445–47). Not until the twentieth century would the falseness of Temple’s protestations be conclusively demonstrated (Carl Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution [New York, 1941], pp. 79–80).
Before returning to the United States in October 1781, Temple talked in Amsterdam with John Adams, a peace commissioner of the United States and its minister plenipotentiary-designate to the Netherlands. The issue in the present debate, as in another early in 1782, was whether a copy of the letter of 16 August 1781 to the president of Congress from Adams, telling of this conversation and cautiously expressing the opinion that his caller had no “secret and bad designs,” should be given to Temple (, IV, 638–39; , XXII, 1–2, 101–2). On both occasions the response of Congress was negative. These refusals accorded with warnings from Anne César, Chevalier de La Luzerne, minister of Louis XVI to the United States, that the British government was employing Temple in an effort to draw Congress into separate peace negotiations and away from the alliance with France (William Emmett O’Donnell, The Chevalier de La Luzerne, French Minister to the United States, 1779–1784 [Bruges, 1938], pp. 209–10).
Viewed from the political standpoint, the John Temple issue in 1778, and again in 1781–1782, illustrates the long-continued effort by many delegates in Congress to prevent foreign and domestic policies from being shaped by Richard Henry Lee and Arthur Lee of Virginia in alliance with Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and most of the other delegates from that state. Among these latter was John Lowell, whose motion on 1 August to furnish Temple with a copy of John Adams’ dispatch of 16 August 1781 occasioned the debate summarized by Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress.
[1 August 1782]
Mr Madison denied that Congress had drawn any conclusions from that letter prejudicial to the character of Mr Temple.1 The jealousies and suspicions respecting him were grounded on his conduct which was notorious to an American. His coming from England in 1778 by the way of New York at the same time the Commissioners were sent.2 The person accompanying him, Doct Berkenhout, a known agent and emissary of the British ministry.3 His4 return to England without permission or notice given of his intention. The rumours and publications respecting his intercourse with the British ministry. His coming again to America at a very critical time. These were the circumstances on which the suspicions were grounded. And as it was understood that he sheltered himself under the cover of being the bearer of public dispatches from Mr Adams & appealed to a letter written in his favour by Mr Adams, Congress related only simple facts; namely that the subject of the letters with which he was entrusted & those which Mr Adams sent at the same time by another conveyance evinced that he had not the full confidence of the minister & that Mr Adams Letter did not account for his past conduct and explain his future views. He appealed to the records of Congress5 and to the letter just read whether these were not facts truly stated. Mr T’s conduct was at least mysterious. Congress acted properly. He was against granting him a copy of the letter, but had no objection to sending it to the Executive of Massachusetts.6
1. JM’s denial was in rebuttal to Arthur Lee’s assertion that Temple, “a warm friend to America” who “had suffered much for his attachment to it,” merited having a copy of the dispatch “for his justification,” since members of Congress “had insinuated suspicions and drawn conclusions which that letter did not warrant” ( pp. 80–81).
2. JM’s statement is inaccurate. The Carlisle commission arrived in Philadelphia on 8 June. Temple and “Doct Berkenhout” (n. 3, below) reached New York City on 3 August 1778 (Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution, ed. by John Richard Alden [2 vols.; New York, 1952], II, 568; , XI, 858–59).
3. Dr. John Berkenhout (ca. 1730–1791), of Dutch ancestry and British nativity, was an accomplished scholar and linguist who published books or articles on botany, medicine, natural history, finance, and biography. Although his degree in medicine was from the University of Leyden, he and his friend Arthur Lee had been fellow students of that subject at the University of Edinburgh. At the suggestion of the Earl of Carlisle, General Sir Henry Clinton, commander-in-chief of the British armies in North America, enabled Berkenhout to reach Philadelphia on 27 August 1778 under a flag of truce. Pretending to wish “to practice physick” in “a land of liberty,” he asked Richard Henry Lee to intercede with Congress on his behalf. The Virginian evidently was friendly but noncommittal, and Congress seems to have concluded that whether Berkenhout should be permitted to engage in his profession was for Pennsylvania to decide. The Supreme Executive Council of that commonwealth, suspecting Berkenhout of being an enemy agent, committed him to jail on 3 September. Unable to find enough evidence to warrant bringing him to trial, the Council released him eleven days later with the proviso that he return immediately within the enemy lines.
Soon after reaching New York, Berkenhout sailed for home, where King George III granted him a pension for his services. Judging from the journal which Berkenhout kept on his visit to Philadelphia, his “services” were of more value to the Americans than to the British. Unlike John Temple, the doctor ridiculed the manners and abilities of the patriot leaders, underestimated their will to resist and the size of their army, and exaggerated the number of Loyalists (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXV [1941], 79–84; , I, 655, and n., 656; III, 8, 15–16; , III, 388, and n., 398, 399, 401, 505, 544; , XII, 883; Bowdoin and Temple Papers, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 6th ser., IX, 458). See also Randolph to JM, 20 December 1782, and n. 7.
4. John Temple’s.
5. JM’s remarks prior to this sentence are largely a paraphrase of “the records of Congress” for 27 February 1782 (, XXII, 101–2).
6. John Hancock was governor of Massachusetts from 1780 to 1785. Following Madison’s remarks, Charles Thomson noted only, “An adjournment was called for and no question taken.” This fact, as well as John Lowell’s motion, is not mentioned in the published journal of Congress (, XXII, 427–28).