rst named, in
1779, he was to be sole commissioner to negotiate peace; and it was the
influential French Minister to the United States who was responsible for
others being added to the commission. Adams was a sturdy New Englander
of British stock and of a distinctly English type--medium height, a
stout figure, and a ruddy face. No one questioned his honesty, his
straightforwardness, or his lack of tact. Being a man of strong mind,
of wide reading and even great learning, and having serene confidence in
the purity of his motives as well as in the soundness of his judgment,
Adams was little inclined to surrender his own views, and was ready
to carry out his ideas against every obstacle. By nature as well as by
training he seems to have been incapable of understanding the French; he
was suspicious of them and he disapproved of Franklin's popularity even
as he did of his personality.

Five Commissioners in all were named, but Thomas Jefferson and Henry
Laurens did not take part in the negotiations, so that the only other
active member was John Jay, then thirty-seven years old and already a
man of prominence in his own country. Of French Huguenot stock and type,
he was tall and slender, with somewhat of a scholar's stoop, and was
usually dressed in black. His manners were gentle and unassuming, but
his face, with its penetrating black eyes, its aquiline nose and pointed
chin, revealed a proud and sensitive disposition. He had been sent to
the court of Spain in 1780, and there he had learned enough to arouse
his suspicious, if nothing more, of Spain's designs as well as of the
French intention to support them.

In the spring of 1782 Adams felt obliged to remain at The Hague in order
to complete the negotiations already successfully begun for a commercial
treaty with the Netherlands. Franklin, thus the only Commissioner on the
ground in Paris, began informal negotiations alone but sent an urgent
call to Jay in Spain, who was convinced of the fruitlessness of his
mission there and promptly responded. Jay's experience in Spain and his
knowledge of Spanish hopes had led him to believe that the French were
not especially concerned about American interests but were in fact
willing to sacrifice them if necessary to placate Spain. He accordingly
insisted that the American Commissioners should disregard their
instructions and, without the knowledge of France, should deal directly
with Great Britain. In this contention he was supporte