To John Adams from John Paul Jones, 20 December 1789
From John Paul Jones
Amsterdam Decr. 20. 1789.
Dear Sir,
The within documents, from my Friend the Count de Segur Minister Plenipotentiary of France at St. Petersburg, will shew you in some degree my Reasons for leaving Russia, and the danger to which I have been exposed by the mean subterfuges and dark Intrigues of Asiatic Jealousy and Malice.—1 Your former Friendship for me, which I remember with particular pleasure and have always been ambitious to merit, will I am certain be exerted in the Use you will make of the three Peices I now send you, for my justification in the Eyes of my Friends in America, whose good opinion is dearer to me than any thing else.— I wrote to the Empress from Warsaw in the beginning of October, and sent her Majesty a Copy of my Journal; which will shew her how much she has been deceived by the Account she had of our Maritime Operations last Campagne. I can prove to the World at large that I have been treated Unjustly, but I shall remain silent at least till I know the fate of my Journal.
It has long been my intention to offer you my Bust, as a mark of the respect and attachement I naturally feel for your Virtues and Talents. If you do me the honor to accept it, I will order it to be immediately forwarded to you from Paris.2
I intend to remain in Europe till after the opening of the next Campagne, and perhaps longer, before I return to America. From the troubles in Brabant, the preparations now making in Prussia and in this Country &c. I conclude that Peace is yet a distant object, and that the Baltic will witness warmer work than it has yet done.3 On the death of Admiral Greig,4 I was last Year call’d from the Black Sea, by the Empress, to command a Squadron in the Baltic &c. This set the invention of all my Enemys and Rivals at work, and the event has proved that the Empress cannot always do as she pleases: I do not therefore expect to be call’d again into Action.
Present I pray you my respectful compliments to Mrs. Adams, & beleive me to be, with sincere Attachement, / Dear Sir, / Your most obedient / and most humble Servant
PAUL JONES
My address is under cover “A Messieurs N. & J. Van-Staphorst & Hubbard à Amsterdam.”
NB. Mr. Jefferson will inform you about my Mission to Denmarc. I received there great politeness & fine Words. That business may soon be concluded, when America shall have created a respectable Marine.5
RC and enclosures (Adams Papers); internal address: “[His Ex]cellency John Adams Esquire Vice President of the United-States &c. N. York.” Some loss of text due to a cut manuscript.
1. With this, his last extant letter to JA, Jones enclosed copies of three French-language documents, all summarizing his naval activities in the Russo-Turkish War and defending him from rape allegations brought forward by Katerina Goltzwart (Koltzwarthen) of Germany. The enclosures, held in the Adams Papers, were a 21 July letter of support from Louis Philippe, Comte de Ségur, to Armand Marc, Comte de Montmorin de Saint Herem; a 21 July article in the Gazette de France bolstering Jones’ professional reputation and announcing his impending return from St. Petersburg; and a 26 Aug. letter of recommendation sent from the Comte de Ségur to Jean François, Chevalier de Bourgoing, and Antoine Joseph Philippe Régis, Comte d’Esternon, the French ministers to Hamburg and Prussia, respectively. The scandal, as well as Jones’ friction with leading Russian naval admirals, led to his permanent ouster from Catherine II’s court. In an attempt to repair his public character, Jones drafted his “Narrative of the Campaign of the Liman,” which was not published until 1830. No reply by JA to this letter has been found. Suffering from jaundice and nephritis, Jones died in Paris on 18 July 1792 (vol. 19:332; , 3:119, 131; , p. 382–390, 401).
2. Jean Antoine Houdon sculpted a bust of Jones in 1780, but the naval commander evidently did not send it (, p. 201; , 19:588–591).
3. Jones’ intuition about the state of foreign relations in Europe was largely correct. Both Prussia and the Netherlands encouraged the emergence of an independent Belgian republic, with the intent of weakening Austria. At the same time, the Russo-Swedish War stretched on in the Baltic, ending on 14 Aug. 1790 with the Treaty of Varala. The Russo-Turkish War drew to a close with the Treaty of Jassy, which was signed on 9 Jan. 1792 (vol. 19:42; , p. 199, 205–206, 214; , 6:782).
4. A native of Inverkeithing, Scotland, Sir Samuel Greig (b. 1735) was an admiral in the Russian Navy who played a pivotal role in its victory over the Ottoman fleet at the 1770 Battle of Chesma Bay. He died of fever in late Oct. 1788 (; William Stewart, Admirals of the World: A Biographical Dictionary, 1500 to the Present, Jefferson, N.C., 2009, p. 150).
5. For Jones’ role in the dispute with Denmark over prizes taken by the Continental frigate Alliance during the Revolutionary War, see vol. 15:333–334.