Editor John J. Rumbarger Margaret B. Buerschinger Editorial Aide Shelley C. Bailey News and Notices Alice P. Lucas Publications Helen A. Lewis Subscriptions Dennis A. Burton Prologue is a scholarly journal published quarterly by the National Archives and Records Service of the General Services Administration. Its primary purpose is to bring to public attention the resources and programs of the National Archives, the regional archives, and the presidential libraries. Accordingly, Prologue in the main publishes material based, in whole or in part, on the holdings and programs of these institutions. In keeping with the nonpartisan character of the National Archives, Prologue will not accept articles that are politically partisan or that deal with contemporary political issues. Articles are selected for publication by the editors in consultation with experts. However, final responsibility for the decision to publish an article rests with the archivist of the United States. 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Notice of nonreceipt of an issue must be sent within six months of issue publication date. Back issues are available from Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, NY 10546. The Enigmatic Alvey A. Adee and American Foreign Relations, 1870-1924 JOHN A. DE NOVO A knowledgeable resident of Washington, taking notice of a wiry little old man bicycling down a street of the nation's capital, shortly before World War I, remarked to his companion, "There goes our State Department now." The gnome-like cyclist who evoked this hyperbole was Alvey Augustus Adee, second assistant secretary of state. This veteran of more than forty years of diplomatic and departmental service had already passed the zenith of his career, but he was to serve another decade as the closest approximation to a permanent under secretary of state the United States has known. Adee represented tradition -respect for precedent, both in policy and procedure-from Grant to Coolidge. Though unknown to most of his countrymen, year in and year out he performed the gyroscopic function of keeping the Department of State on an even keel. Adee earned enormous respect from those who knew his work best-his close associates, both superiors and subordinates-and from 1975 by John A. DeNovo 'Quoted in George S. Hunsberger, "The Diplomatic Career of Alvey Augustus Adee With Special Reference to the Boxer Rebellion" (Master's thesis, American Univ., 1953), p. 49 (hereafter cited as Hunsberger). This is the fullest account available of Adee's life and public career. scholars whose searches in archival records have uncovered scattered evidence of his contributions to American diplomacy. But the Adee portrait thus far is shadowy and sketchy, lacking in sharply etched detail which might reveal whether he was simply an efficient clerk or perhaps a major influence on American foreign policy. A detailed study of his career with precise evaluation of his role in policymaking is probably beyond achievement, for an indispensable source-Adee's private papers - is missing; he left orders that they should all be burned after his death. Any attempt, therefore, to reconstruct Adee's contribution to American diplomacy is a task not unlike that of the archaeologist trying to reconstruct a segment of the past from a few potsherds. The difficulties have discouraged those who have thought of writing a full-fledged biography of Adee.2 Adee did not plan a career in diplomacy; he stumbled into it. For this career he had notable assets, as well as liabilities so formidable that 2 Capt. Graham M. Adee, USN, ret. (Alvey's nephew who executed the order to burn the papers) to John A. DeNovo, Aug. 7, 1946; Under Secretary Joseph C. Grew, memo of conversation with John F. Carter concerning "Biography of Honorable Alvey A. Adee," June 25, 1925, File 116.3/929, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives (hereafter cited as RG 59, NA); memo, ALVEY A. ADEE 69 Alvey Augustus Adee, 1842-1924. From an oil painting courtesy || © Donartment of State they would have disqualified an ordinary man from active public life. Severe deafness resulting from scarlet fever in early childhood prevented his undertaking the usual academic studies, but the home training he received from his mother and later from tutors sharpened his native talents and provided him with a large fund of useful information.3 His unusual aptitude for languages-English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German-was an asset which was to figure prominently in his career. Until he was twenty-seven, he studied civil engineering with an uncle, Maj. Gen. Charles K. Graham, surveyor of the port of New York. A turning point in his life came in 1869, when another uncle, John Graham, introduced him to the newly appointed American minister to Spain, Gen. Daniel E. Sickles. Sickles invited young Adee to become his private secretary in Madrid, where he fortuitously began a long and intimate friendship with John Hay, then serving as secretary of legation. When Hay resigned in 1870, Adee succeeded him, serving as right-hand man first to Sickles and then to his successor, Caleb Cushing.4 Adee had a personal stake in the outcome of the 1876 election, for he expected that a Democratic victory would mean the end of his affiliation with the State Department. Instead, the new Republican administration of Rutherford B. Hayes found a clerkship in the department for Adee. Within a year he was promoted to chief of the Diplomatic Bureau, a post he held from 1878 until 1882, when President Chester A. Arthur and Secretary Frederick T. Frelinghuysen selected him to be third assistant secretary of state. The latter move has been called Frelinghuysen's "most important apTyler Dennett (chief of the Division of Publications) to Grew, June 29, 1925, File 111.12 Adee/73, ibid. Wilbur Carr began to assemble material for an Adee memoir, but he never completed the task; see his Diary, Nov. 17 and 18, 1935, Wilbur J. Carr Papers, Library of Congress. 3 For biographical details, see Dictionary of American Biography and obituaries in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 13, 1924, and Liberty (Aug. 16, 1924), pp. 46-47. See also R. Gordon Arneson, "Anchor Man of the Department: Alvey Augustus Adee," Foreign Service Journal (Aug. 1971):26-28. 4 The most extended and illuminating account of Adee's career in Spain is in Hunsberger, pp. 5-38. See also Graham H. Stuart, The Department of State: A History of Its Organization, Procedure, and Personnel (New York, 1949), pp. 150, 160, 194-195. Sickles was grateful to John Graham for successfully defending him in a murder trial. John Bassett Moore, typescript autobiography, chapter entitled "Personnel of the Department of State, 1885," Moore Papers, Library of Congress. (Note courtesy of Richard H. Werking.) pointment." Normally, Adee would have been displaced after the Democratic victory in 1884, but President Grover Cleveland and Secretary Thomas Bayard chose to override objections from office-hungry Democrats. In 1886 Cleveland elevated him a notch to the second assistant secretaryship, the position he held until the week before his death in 1924. Through sheer talent and industry, Adee had established himself as the exception who could weather the vagaries of party politics. Presidents came and went "and secretaries of state disappear like embarrassed phantoms" while Adee withstood six party changes in the White House.5 5 Stuart, Department of State, p. 160; Hunsberger, pp. 31-33, 36-38, 41-42, 47-48; Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (New York, 1934), p. 251; editorial, New York Times, July 6, 1924. In a letter dated Oct. 25, 1901 (but not sent), President Roosevelt wrote Sen. Thomas C. Platt that Secretary of State John Hay regarded "Mr. Adee, who you think could be displaced, as the most useful man he has under him." Elting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1951-54), 3:183. After passage of the Rogers Act in 1924, the designation of assistant secretaries by numbers was abandoned. On July 1, Adee's official title became simply "assistant secretary." |