As new American and British negotiators were converging on Paris, Franklin’s isolation in Passy posed certain inconveniences. John Adams arrived on October 26 but, as he initially refused to call on Franklin, the latter was evidently unaware of his arrival until Matthew Ridley mentioned it to him three days later. Surprised at Franklin’s ignorance, Ridley returned to Paris from Passy and persuaded Adams to call on his colleague that evening, October 29. Although Ridley believed that Adams did so only because of his insistence, Adams must have recognized that he could no longer delay a conversation.1 Henry Strachey had just arrived from London, and a new round of negotiations was already under way.

Strachey arrived in Paris on the afternoon of October 28, bearing new instructions for Oswald. The two men spent that evening conferring. The following morning, October 29, Oswald called on Jay and proposed as a western boundary a longitude line east of the Mississippi. Jay flatly refused. Oswald then brought Strachey to meet Jay, and Adams joined them. The British negotiators laid out their government’s objections to the first draft treaty, and engaged in general discussions about the points to be included in a revised version.2 Oswald then took Strachey to Passy, where they had a similar conversation with Franklin. All three American commissioners arranged to meet the following morning at eleven o’clock at Oswald’s quarters “to examine Maps & papers.” They would then dine together at Jay’s.3 From the morning of October 30 through the evening of November 4 the commissioners met steadily, rotating the location of their meetings and dining at one another’s residences.4

Oswald’s new instructions were accompanied by stern rebukes from Shelburne for having been too accommodating in the previous discussions. He was to insist on extending the Nova Scotia boundary as far as possible, preferably to include the province of Maine; to assert Britain’s right to “the Back Country,” receding from that position only if the United States made “a just provision for the Refugees”; to argue against the Americans’ right to dry fish on Newfoundland; to omit all of the fourth article of the first draft treaty except for the freedom of navigation, referring the rest to a treaty of commerce; and to strongly urge “the Discharge of Debts due to British Merchants before the War.”5 Although Oswald was told that Strachey’s role was to help him negotiate boundaries, Strachey’s oral and written instructions actually authorized him to negotiate all the issues that Oswald had been apprised of. He was to press for as much land as possible, in order to bargain for compensation for the Loyalists. He was to argue for all the back lands accorded by the Proclamation of 1763, for the Canadian boundary established by the Quebec Act, and for a boundary of Nova Scotia that included, if possible, the entire province of Maine, or at the “very least” up to Penobscot. If the Americans refused, he could accept the boundaries proposed in the first draft treaty. The Loyalists were “of great importance,” he was told, “but the Debts require the Most Serious Attention.” Above all, it “must appear authentically” that he had fought for those two constituencies, the Loyalists and the merchants. Beyond that, he was authorized to accept, if necessary, the terms of the first draft treaty except for two items that were “totally inadmissible”: the right to dry fish on Newfoundland, and the section of the fourth article regarding free trade. He was also instructed to “urge just boundaries of West Florida.”6

Joining the initial phase of the negotiations was William Roberts, whom Adams later described as “the oldest clerk in the board of trade and plantations.” Roberts had been entrusted with huge volumes of the board’s manuscript records, intended to support the British claim to the province of Maine. Adams was able to counter these claims with an arsenal of records and documents that he had brought from America, all of which proved that the legislature of Massachusetts Bay had “laid out counties, incorporated towns, granted lands, and regulated every thing from the date of the charter in the Province of Maine.” Before Adams finished reading his evidence, he saw the opposition melt. “Although they did not expressly acknowledge their error,” he wrote, “the subject subsided and we heard little more concerning it. The clerk, with his records, soon returned to England.”7

The boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia was finally clarified, at least theoretically, after prolonged discussions over whether Britain could push as far as the Penobscot River. In the previous round of negotiations Jay and Franklin had postulated (without conviction) that Maine extended as far north as the St. John River. When Oswald objected, Franklin recommended that they leave the question to a future commission, a suggestion that Oswald incorporated in a postscript to the first draft treaty. The commissioners’ uncertainty was due to both a lack of documentation and the variety of conflicting maps available to them, all of which were inaccurate.8 One of the maps they rejected in this second round of negotiations, sent from England at Shelburne’s request on October 28, was accompanied by a cover letter explaining that it had been made by the “well accredited” geographer Herman Moll and “published at a time when … there were no immediate disputes concerning limits.”9 In fact, this wildly inaccurate map of North America, made circa 1715, showed no delineation at all between “New Scotland” and “New England,” gave a confused picture of the rivers in question, and, incidentally, still showed California as an island. The arrival of Adams, and the decision to be guided exclusively by the 1755 Mitchell map,1 helped the Americans solidify their stance.

The Mitchell map showed Nova Scotia bounded by a river west of the St. John, labeled the “St. Croix.” This name conformed to the documentation Adams had brought with him.2 Even though none of the commissioners was sure which river was meant by “St. Croix,” they wrote the name into the second draft treaty.

Adams also took the lead on another issue that had been problematic in the first treaty negotiations. This time he did not clarify an uncertainty but suggested a concession that Jay and Franklin had not yielded. He expressed his views to Oswald and Strachey during their first meeting on the morning of October 29, even before he had met with Franklin. His idea, which greatly pleased the British, was that compensation for the Loyalists and America’s repayment of debts incurred before the war were two separate issues and had to be considered independent of each other. He discussed this with Franklin on the evening of October 29, and Franklin explained his and Jay’s position: that neither they nor the Congress had the authority to make such decisions. According to Adams’ account, he persuaded his colleagues to agree that Congress should recommend to the States “to open their Courts of Justice for the Recovery of all just Debts.” Jay drafted the article, and the commissioners and Strachey agreed to it on November 3.3

Franklin was not present on November 4, when Adams, Jay, Oswald, and Strachey finalized the article about the fisheries and completed a version of the second draft treaty. They worked from 11 A.M. to 11 P.M., breaking for dinner at 3 P.M. with a group of Frenchmen and Americans including Temple Franklin. Adams and Jay finally conceded the right to dry fish on Newfoundland, but obtained drying rights on a group of uninhabited islands and unsettled bays of Nova Scotia. According to Oswald, Franklin had pushed for specifying that fishing rights would extend to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, pointing out that the Americans would spend their profits from the fishery in buying British manufactures. He also, undoubtedly after realizing that drying rights on Newfoundland would never be granted, allowed that it might not be proper “to have a mixture of their people with ours for Drying on Newfoundland,” but “Supposed there would be no Inconveniency in throwing onshore their Fish for a few days on an Unsettled Beach, Bay or Harbor, on the Coast of Nova Scotia.” Moreover, he said, drying rights would be exercised only occasionally, and even then the fish would be only partially dried and salted, leaving the women and children to complete the curing when the fishermen returned.4 The Americans also retained the right to fish wherever they had previously done so. Adams drafted the fisheries article.5

Having failed to secure compensation for the Loyalists, Oswald and Strachey both wrote letters to the American commissioners insisting on how strenuously they had argued the point. These letters, both drafted by Strachey, are below, November 4 and 5. Strachey told Townshend that they had been written “in the view of having an authentic Proof that every Effort had been used, agreeably to my Instructions from Lord Shelburne, upon a Point wherein the national Honor is so deeply concerned.”6

Strachey left Paris on November 5, carrying the new draft treaty and a copy of the Mitchell map, on which the American commissioners had drawn two different proposed boundary lines, either one of which they would accept. The boundary described in the text of the draft treaty was the commissioners’ second proposal; according to Strachey, it was copied into the draft because it was shorter. The first proposal, which was sent to Townshend on a separate sheet,7 was the option selected by the British, and it appears verbatim in the final draft treaty.

Two days after Strachey’s departure, Jay reviewed the draft treaties with Oswald and entered several changes on both their versions. These changes are noted below, and Oswald sent an account of them to Strachey. Hoping that this draft would be approved and a fair copy sent back for signatures, Oswald advised Strachey that based on Jay’s “precision,” he “would advise that there should not be the least Alteration, not a single Word, different from the Drafts.”8

When the process was finished, each set of negotiators expressed surprise at the intransigence of the other. Oswald “did not expect to find Mr. Jay so uncommonly Stiff and particular about these matters.” Strachey commented that “these Americans are the greatest Quibblers I ever knew.” Adams characterized Strachey as “artfull and insinuating. … He pushes and presses every Point as far as it can possibly go.” He was more positive about Oswald, “a wise & good man” who, “if untrammeled, would soon settle all.”9

As this round of negotiations progressed, the Americans’ sense of inevitable triumph was expressed by a fable Franklin told of the Eagle and the Cat. The day before the present draft was settled, Adams inscribed the fable in his diary thus:

An Eagle scaling over a Farmers Yard espied a Creature, that he thought an Hair [a hare]. He pounced upon him and took him up. In the Air the Cat seized him by the Neck with her Teeth and round the Body with her fore and hind Claws. The Eagle finding Herself scratched and pressed, bids the Cat let go and fall down. No says the Cat: I won’t let go and fall, you shall stoop and set me down.

This fable delighted the French. Jean-Louis Aubert, signing himself “L. A.,” gave Franklin a French verse translation. He added a final couplet containing something akin to a moral: the British Eagle never touched the American Cat again in her life.1