The 51st volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, this book tells the story of the unusual man sent to perform a vexing, but largely forgotten diplomatic mission at the height of the War of 1812. As war with Britain intensified in the summer of 1813, President James Madison secretly dispatched an envoy to the Regency government of Spain with the urgent goal of thwarting a feared British bid to use Spanish Florida as a base for attack against the United States, and with the further hope of acquiring that territory for America. The man Madison sent to pursue those challenging tasks was Anthony Morris, a friend of Dolley’s from their youth in Philadelphia and a devout Quaker lawyer who had never before journeyed abroad. Morris, a widower, willingly accepted the president’s call, despite the separation it would impose upon him and his four teenage children.

Developments in Spain conspired to alter the Morris mission’s scope and prolong its duration, compelling Morris to persevere at his post long after the war had ended as the only American link to an unfriendly Spanish monarchy. As he dutifully did so, ill-founded accusations by two other frustrated American diplomats slurred his reputation. Meanwhile, he thirsted to rejoin his maturing children, whose lives were taking paths unlikely had he never left them.

No one has ever before recounted the full story of this distinctive but little-remembered diplomatic endeavor. Woolfley’s account reveals much about the frustration and confusion endemic to American diplomacy in the age of sail, when events often moved faster than the mails. Interwoven with that historical account is a poignant revelation of the spiritual and cultural growth that the steadfastly philosophical Anthony Morris reaped from his odyssey, as displayed in a stream of intimate, charming letters to the daughters he had left at home.