$2,400
Estimate: $5,000 - $8,000
Auction: November 12, 2020 10:00:00 AM EDT
St. Petersburg, (Russia), April 17, 1812. One sheet. 9 7/8 x 7 5/8 in. (250 x 193 mm). Autograph letter, signed by Adams as Minister to Russia, to Secretary of State James Monroe. Creasing from original folds; edges reinforced and slightly toned. Lot includes an engraved portrait of Adams.
Two future presidents correspond on the brink of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. John Quincy Adams, as the first U.S. ambassador to Russia, writes to Secretary of State James Monroe about the financial precarity of his current situation: "I have mentioned in two letters which I have lately had occasion to write to the Secretary of the Treasury, the difficulties which the political situation of affairs has thrown in the way of the channel through which I have hitherto been authorized to draw for my compensation, and the other expenses of this mission. The first was a depression in the exchange, which has occasioned a loss to me, of between twenty and thirty percent upon all the bills that I have drawn for the last six months. Under the expectation that as the winter advanced the Exchange would find its balance again, I have forborn drawings as much and as long as I could make it practicable...At present however in all human probability the Exchange between St. Petersburg and Amsterdam will very shortly be totally suspended and I shall not have it in my power to draw upon that place at all...I have concluded to draw for the balance upon my account and for the amount of the present quarter...In the course of the summer, if the war which everything now forebodes should take place, and all exchange upon Amsterdam should cease, I shall find it necessary to draw directly upon you..."
John Quincy Adams was appointed by President James Madison as the first American Ambassador to Russia, at age 42. Madison chose Adams, already a respected diplomat and politician, to help persuade Czar Alexander I to respect the interests of the United States, as it remained neutral during the conflict between France and England. Two months after this letter was written, on June 24, 1812, Napoleon would invade Russia to well known and disastrous results.