From John Adams to George Mason Jr., 4 July 1789
To George Mason Jr.
Richmond hill July 4 1789
Dear Sir
With great pleasure, I received your kind letter of the twenty fifth of last month,1 give me leave to congratulate you on your marriage, the increase of your family, and your happy settlement on your plantation.2 I have known by repeated experience enough of the pleasure of returning from the life of a traveller in Europe, to the pleasures of domestic life, in a calm retreat in the country, to be very sensible of your situation’s being enviable. I thank you Sir, for the friendly and respectful confidence in me, with which you have communicated your desires in favour of Mr Joseph Fenwick to be Consul at Bourdeaux. Your recommendation has weight with me: but you know very well that the duty of looking out for the fittest men for all employments, is by the constitution imposed on the President, who I am well persuaded will discharge it with all that fidelity which is due to his Country, and all the impartiality which becomes a father of his people. As Mr Jefferson is expected from France, perhaps no appointment will be made in that country untill his arrival.3 Mr Fenwick is probably known to the President: if not, it will be very natural that information and Judgment will be asked of the Gent: from Virginia and Maryland, whose knowledge of the person is personal, and should therefore be taken in preference to mine, which can only be at second hand. The candidates for such appointments will in most instances be numerous, and their services, merits and qualifications various. The great Magistrate, whose right it is will I doubt not, determine among them all in a manner that will give satisfaction to the publick.
Your congratulations on my late appointments are very obliging. The Duties, of my office require a constant and laborious attention: but there is so much information, candor and dignity in the characters with whom I am associated, that application to business in concert with them is pleasure.
I am & &
John Adams
LbC in CA’s hand (Adams Papers); internal address: “George Mason Junr: Esqr / Colchester, Virginia—”; APM Reel 115.
1. Mason’s letter of 25 June (Adams Papers) recommended Maryland-born merchant Joseph Fenwick (1762–1849) to serve as the U.S. consul at Bordeaux. For the past year, Fenwick had operated, with Mason’s brother John, a trading firm in the French port, which supplied wine to JA, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Fenwick’s main rival for the position was John Bondfield, who had acted as the American commercial agent for Bordeaux, Bayonne, Rochefort, and La Rochelle since March 1778. When Washington nominated Fenwick on 4 June 1790, he mistakenly wrote “James Fenwick” but sent a note of correction to the Senate on 23 June. Fenwick was confirmed by the Senate on 7 June, and he served as U.S. consul to France until 1801 (vols. 6:10, 9:103; Richard C. Allen, “Nantucket Quakers and Negotiating the Politics of the Atlantic World,” in Marie Jeanne Rossignol and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, eds., The Atlantic World of Anthony Benezet (1713–1784): From French Reformation to North American Quaker Antislavery Activism, Leyden, 2017, p. 123; , 3:53, 54; 5:474–476; , 8:158).
2. Elizabeth Mary Anne Barnes Hooe (b. 1768), of Barnesfield, Va., married Mason on 22 April 1784. They lived on the Doegs’ Neck, Va., plantation of Lexington, named in 1775 to commemorate the Revolutionary War battle, and at this time they had three children: Elizabeth, George, and William (“Notes and Queries,” , 52:276 [Oct. 1944]; Pamela C. Copeland and Richard K. MacMaster, The Five George Masons: Patriots and Planters of Virginia and Maryland, 2d edn., Fairfax, Va., 2016, p. 250).
3. On 23 Aug. 1789 Jefferson received John Jay’s 19 June letter, enclosing a Senate resolution of 18 June that approved his return and named William Short as the American chargé d’affaires. Fleeing the French Revolution’s upheaval, Jefferson sailed from Le Havre to Cowes, England, on 7 Oct., making a turbulent crossing via the Clermont, Capt. Nathaniel Colley. He arrived in Norfolk, Va., on 23 Nov., where he was greeted by citizens who thanked him for his diplomatic work, to which Jefferson replied: “That my country should be served is the first wish of my heart: I should be doubly happy indeed were I to render it a service” (, 15:202–203, 496, 521, 546, 553, 556–557).