Almost from the time they left America, Jay was dissatisfied with William Carmichael, the man Congress had selected as his secretary.1 There was a significant difference in their personalities. Jay, habitually reserved, prudent, and proper, was probably made uneasy by Carmichael’s gregariousness, informality, and dissolute lifestyle, which the Jays believed had a bad influence on the younger members of their household, Henry Brockholst Livingston and Lewis Littlepage. Furthermore, Carmichael frequently sided with them and Gérard in their disputes with Jay.

Jay might have overlooked Carmichael’s manner and his disloyalty in what were essentially personal quarrels, but he also had serious reservations about his official conduct. He believed Carmichael lacked some of the qualities demanded of a diplomat: he talked more freely than Jay found prudent and tended to assume more authority than was properly his. On at least one occasion he handled funds in a way that appeared improper.2

These patterns were already discernible in his previous work with the American commissioners in France. He had revealed a letter to the Committee of Secret Correspondence entrusted to him by Arthur Lee to Silas Deane, Lee’s rival. He encouraged American privateers to operate flagrantly out of French ports at a time when France was attempting to preserve the appearance of neutrality. He was closely associated with Joseph Hynson, an unemployed Maryland sea captain who purloined dispatches regarding the French alliance and turned them over to the British. Carmichael himself met with representatives of Lord Stormont, Britain’s ambassador to France, to discuss further involvement with the British. His motives for so doing appear more related to his impatience at France’s delay in entering the war with Britain than to disaffection for America. No evidence of British payments to him has been found. He seems to have been among those who hoped to draw France into war with Britain to divert British forces from the conflict in America and to compel Britain to make concessions to the United States.3

Vergennes let it be known that Carmichael was no longer welcome in France. Franklin and Deane planned to rescue him from this awkward situation by sending him home as the bearer of official dispatches. At the last minute, however, the commission instead chose Simeon Deane, Silas’s brother, to convey the news that France had recognized American independence and become the United States’ ally against Britain. Angered by the slight, Carmichael charged Silas Deane with misuse of public funds, but he refused to testify to this charge unequivocally during Congress’s investigation of Deane’s conduct when he returned to America. He reported French distrust of Arthur Lee to Congress, angering Lee’s supporters there. Nevertheless, Carmichael was elected to Congress and remained there until he was chosen as secretary to the mission to Spain on 29 September 1779.4

Congress had recently appointed Franklin, Jay, and Adams as single ministers in charge of a foreign post—a reluctant move away from diplomacy by commission. It was not yet completely comfortable with the new arrangement, especially after the charges of corruption and disloyalty vented in the course of the Deane-Lee affair. Previously, Congress had simply appointed secretaries to a commission without further specifying their status and duties. Carmichael had been given such an appointment as secretary to the American commissioners in Paris in November 1777 but had returned home before he received it. After the ministerial appointments of 1779, Congress redefined the office and duties of secretary. Carmichael’s commission defined his office as “secretary to our minister plenipotentiary.” It deliberately “enlarged” the office by providing the appointee with his own accreditation to the receiving monarch and by specifying that he would serve as chargé d’affaires in the event of the minister’s death or necessary absence. This elevation of the position, along with the assigned salary of £1,000, was intended to attract men of “Influence & abilities” who could serve as either a check to or temporary replacement for the minister.

Jay seems to have approved of Carmichael’s selection as secretary to the Spanish mission but soon changed his mind.5 James Lovell, chairman of the Committee for Foreign Affairs, commented in a letter of 5 September 1780 that Jay “has found himself mistaken in his fondness for C rm l’s [Carmichael’s] being with him.”6 Carmichael’s offenses were not so flagrant that they could be made grounds for dismissal. Since the arrangement was new, there were ambiguities in the definition of ministerial absence and control over correspondence. On 28 May, Carmichael informed the Committee for Foreign Affairs that he had reported directly to the president of Congress about his arrival and reception in Madrid.7 He expressed uncertainty as to whether this was proper or would appear “officious” and expressed the wish that if he had erred, the committee would set him right and instruct him how to conduct himself in the future.

At another time, when the two were again separated, Carmichael expressed surprise that Jay had written to Floridablanca without his knowledge, as he presumed that he would be the channel through which all communications would pass. Detained in Madrid by his wife’s illness, Jay assigned Carmichael to report on what was occurring at the court in Aranjuez. Carmichael presumed that this authorized him to confer with Floridablanca and Montmorin, a presumption Jay did not share. Carmichael had also suggested that he ought to countersign all of Jay’s correspondence. Jay replied pointedly that he alone was responsible for the mission’s operations and had the right to correspond freely.8 He allowed his secretary, however, to write about official business to Franklin and to the Committee for Foreign Affairs, to which he reported with much greater frequency and with much less caution than Jay did to Congress. Carmichael’s communications offered policy recommendations as well as detailed and accurate intelligence on politics, diplomacy, military affairs, and Spain’s financial situation. He did not hesitate to report rumor or speculation. He also seems to have found it easier than Jay did to discover couriers whom he trusted to take his letters to Cádiz, to Bilbao, and to French ports.9 Although Carmichael later made Henry Brockholst Livingston, Jay’s private secretary, his ally, he challenged Jay’s decision to assign the copying of draft conference notes and other official correspondence to the young man rather than himself.10 He also complained that he did not have full access to the records of the mission.11

Carmichael’s efforts to enlarge his role continued. He suggested that neither Jay nor the Committee for Foreign Affairs properly recognized his merit, his services, and the scope of his authority and responsibility.12 He took unwarranted initiatives with regard to Montmorin (as described in Jay’s letter to Carmichael of 27 June 1780, below) and stated that Montmorin respected him and considered him much more open and trusting than Jay.13

Carmichael cultivated an “intimate” relationship with Francisco Cabarrús at the start of the banker’s rise to eminence in Spanish finance. When Cabarrús came to play an increasingly dominant role in raising funds to answer Spain’s financial needs, Carmichael received early and confidential information about his plans and progress in realizing them. Carmichael persuaded Jay to designate Cabarrús to handle the American mission’s financial business in return for a commission on the transactions and “a considerable credit in consequence of the sums supposed to pass through his hands monthly for this purpose.” Jay left day-to-day business with the banker in Carmichael’s hands. When he discovered that Cabarrús’s firm had erroneously recorded public funds placed in his hands as received from Carmichael personally rather than as sent by Jay on public account, however, Jay himself went to the firm’s office to correct the matter. Carmichael believed that this action indicated that Jay held him responsible for the accounting error and suspected him of seeking to profit personally from the arrangement with Cabarrús, and he reacted defensively. Since the firm continued to commingle the mission’s public and personal funds, the episode was a prelude to a later prolonged struggle between the two men over the settlement of accounts.14

Carmichael also cultivated a relationship with Bernardo del Campo, who was expected to be entrusted with treaty negotiations with the United States on the part of Spain. While Jay recommended forgoing an alliance with Spain if it came at the price of conceding territory bordering the Mississippi, Carmichael was “of a contrary opinion.”15 Further tensions arose when Carmichael expressed reluctance to undertake a journey to Coruña to investigate the conduct of Alexander Gillon.16

Secretary for Foreign Affairs Livingston attempted to relieve Jay of his unwanted assistant by complaining about the high salaries Congress had voted to secretaries attached to its missions abroad in a May 1782 report on the annual expenses of his department. He proposed revoking Carmichael’s appointment as secretary to the Spanish mission as a cost-saving measure and suggested that, since Jay had not yet been officially recognized by Spain, he could make do with a private secretary at a lower salary. He then proposed Carmichael for the long vacant and hotly contested position of secretary to Franklin. Livingston and his supporters had hoped that Congress would consider this a simple transfer that would not require a formal nomination and vote, but opposition delegates insisted on treating the Spanish and French appointments as separate issues and blocked the move.17

In accordance with his commission as secretary to the Spanish mission, Carmichael became chargé d’affaires at Madrid when Jay left for Paris. Soon after Jay’s departure, in the capacity of “person of distinction,” Carmichael accepted a dinner invitation from Floridablanca, something Jay had adamantly refused to do without recognition of his official status.18 In March 1783, after the definitive peace treaties had been signed and at the urging of Lafayette and Montmorin, Floridablanca finally agreed to receive Carmichael as an envoy of the United States.19

Neither the Jays nor French and Spanish diplomats wanted Jay to return to Spain, so the more pliant and agreeable Carmichael remained chargé d’affaires at Madrid. Sarah Jay wrote her sister Kitty in July 1783 that Carmichael was the only American capable of enjoying himself there, “for of all my countrymen I know not his equal for duplicity of soul, or one who can so readily smile upon and court the man he hates or despises, or fawn upon the man who treats him with contempt.” Sally added that she rejoiced at his remaining in Europe, as she did not ever want to meet him again in America. “I think it fortunate for the quiet of America that the artful & interested will now aim at appointments in Europe as they can here indulge any of their propensities unobserv’d by their more virtouous Countrymen; for shd. they remain at home their restless ambition would only lead them to excite factions & defame true patriots.”20

Jay undoubtedly shared Sally’s views, for as long as Jay remained in the Department of Foreign Affairs, Carmichael remained in Spain, conducting routine foreign relations there while Jay continued to negotiate the more substantive issues with Diego de Gardoqui in America. Recalled under suspicion in 1794, Carmichael died in Madrid before he could leave for America. Jay’s final assessment of his secretary can be found in an undated note written soon after 9 February 1795 and attached to a bundle of correspondence: “Care should be taken of these Papers. They include Letters to and from Wm. Carmichael—a man who mistook cunning for wisdom; and who in pursuing his Purposes, preferred the Guidance of artifice and Simulation, to that of Truth and Rectitude. He finally yielded to Intemperance, and died a Bankrupt.”21