The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution

Editor's Notes

95 Introduction 1. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man (Providence and Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1993). German original: Die Europäischen Revolutionen und der Charakter der Nationen (1931) (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 3rd ed., 1961). Preface 1. It is a rare, if not a unique, event that a book by a European author is translated by a man of erudition who will later become the president of the United States of America. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, from March 4, 1825 to March 4, 1829, had met Gentz in Berlin around the year 1800 while he was ambassador of the United States of America to Prussia. George Washington appointed Adams minister to the Netherlands (at the age of twenty-six) Editor’s Notes 96 Editor’s Notes in 1794 and to Portugal in 1796. Adams then was promoted to the Berlin Legation. When John Adams became president, he appointed his son in 1797 as minister to Prussia at Washington’s urging. There Adams signed the renewal of the very liberal Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, after negotiations with Prussian foreign minister Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein. He served at that post until 1801. Adams’s respect for Gentz and his judgment about the importance of Gentz’s text are confirmed by a letter to Gentz preceding the translation. The letter is reproduced here in full. (John Quincy Adams, “Letter to Friedrich Gentz dated Berlin, June 16, 1800,” in The Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford [New York: Macmillan, 1913], vol. 2, 1796–1801, 463–64.) “Sir: I had already perused with great pleasure the comparison between the origin and principles of the French and American revolutions contained in the Historical Journal for the two last months, before receiving the copies which you had the goodness to send me yesterday. It cannot but afford a gratification to every American attached to the honor of his country to see its revolution so ably vindicated from the imputation of having originated, or been conducted upon the same principles as that of France, and I feel myself as an American Citizen highly obliged to you for the consideration you have bestowed upon the subject, as well as for the honorable manner in which you have borne testimony to the purity of principle upon which the revolution of my country was founded. I beg you, sir, to accept my best thanks for your very acceptable present and to be assured that I shall take much satisfaction in transmitting and making Editor’s Notes 97 known the treatise to persons in the United States capable of estimating its merits.” Adams’s letter to Gentz is from June 1800. In that same year, his translation was published in Philadelphia. Adams must have produced and finished the translation at great speed during the summer of 1800. To his brother Thomas Boylston Adams, Adams writes about the translation: “My Dear Brother: The translation of Gentz’s essay is published with a neatness and accuracy with which I ought to be more than satisfied . The type and paper are such as we can present without blushing to any foreigner’s eye. The only circumstance of regret to me was that by your absence at the time of publication you were prevented from expunging those Germanisms , and other blunders of uncorrected taste, which a number of circumstances that I will not now trouble you with had prevented me from removing. All the passages which you had marked on the corrected copy and many others, I altered myself in a copy which I sent to England with view of having it published there.” ( John Quincy Adams, “Letter to Thomas Boylston Adams, Dated Berlin, 21 March, 1801,” in The Writings of John Quincy Adams, loc. cit., 520.) 2. To Adams’s regret, the English booksellers did not find the book so interesting for an English public, which comes as no surprise, since nations do not like to be reminded of their defeats. The first American reactions, however, proved to be favorable. The quotation of Adams’s letter to his brother continues: “But the booksellers, though of opinion that it was a work of considerable merit, thought the subject not sufficiently interest- 98 Editor’s Notes ing to please an English public. There are, indeed, obvious reasons why the language and sentiments of that pamphlet should not be very...