SIGNED BY THE ARCHITECTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. JEFFERSON, THOMAS. 1743-1826; JOHN ...

SIGNED BY THE ARCHITECTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. JEFFERSON, THOMAS. 1743-1826; JOHN ADAMS. 1735-1826; AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 1706-1790. Letter signed ('John Adams,' 'Benjamin Franklin,' and 'Thomas Jefferson'), to the Envoy Extraordinary of the King of the Two Sicilies seeking negotiations for a Treaty of Amity and Commerce, 2 pp recto and verso, bifolium, folio (315 x 197 mm), Passy, France, September 22, 1784, with some inked cancellations on the signature page, fold creases, a few small smudges, minor darkening to edges. AN IMPORTANT EXPRESSION OF THE EMERGING AMERICAN POLICY OF FREE TRADE, LIKELY THE ONLY AVAILABLE EXAMPLE OF ANY LETTER SIGNED BY ALL THREE OF THESE FOUNDING FATHERS, THE MEN MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris, America had achieved its independence. However, their success in the war did not ensure by any means the success of the 'American experiment.' As a new, and militarily rather weak nation, a conglomeration of individual states whose interests and needs did not always align, the Continental Congress understood that older European notions of war and polity were not helpful. As one of their first international acts, on May 12, 1784, Congress commissioned Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson to treat with twenty separate countries in order to establish treaties of Amity and Commerce. The new treaty was based largely on concepts developed by John Adams, in conjunction with Franklin, John Dickinson, Benjamin Harrison, and Robert Morris, for the original 1776 Model Treaty which was used as the basis for the Franco-American alliance in 1778. The Model Treaty represented a new system of international relations, influenced by the French physiocrats, as well as other French and English economic thinkers, whose ideas would find expression in Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations. Thomas Paine's Common Sense, published that same year, noted that America's 'plan is commerce, and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all Europe, because it is the interest of all Europe to have America as a free port.' The Physiocrats has asserted that the unrestricted flow of goods among the nations would replace power politics and war, and the early American foreign policy was an expression of these ideas. From its inception, the foreign policy of the United States was a departure from traditional European policies. Essentially, isolationist in nature, the newly formed government had no wish to be entangled in old European wars, and recognized a free trade between nations as essential to American growth and development. These treaties of 'Amity and Commerce' authorized by Congress just after Independence, and well before the enactment of a Federal Constitution, were essentially the establishment of a new and heavily trade-based system that would remake the face of international politics. This new expression was further developed by Alexander Hamilton, with John Jay and James Madison, in the Federalist in 1787, as the new nation negotiated its way to a strong National government under the United States Constitution empowered to make and enforce these arrangements. The negotiating committee for these 1784 treaties consisted of the three men most effective and responsible for American revolutionary diplomacy: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. They were also the three men who played the largest role in creating the vision of America as the central contributors within the committee of five appointed by Congress in 1776 to draft the Declaration of Independence. While Jefferson is acknowledged as the primary author, the edits and changes in Jefferson's initial draft reflect the contributions of Franklin and Adams to the final document. The present letter sent September 22, 1784, to Mr. de Pio, Chargé des Affairs from His Sicilian Majesty at the Court of Versailles, represents one of the earliest efforts of the Continental Congress and the architects of the emerging democracy of the United States to fulfill the vision of Adams's Model Treaty. As a practical application of the new American ideal, and the enlightenment idea that a free trade amongst nations would offer the greatest good for all mankind, this request to treat is an important rarity. We trace no similar letters signed by the three commissioners Adams, Franklin and Jefferson, arguably the three men most responsible for the philosophical underpinnings of American democracy and policy, at auction or in the trade. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing