Hon. Jonathan Russell, II

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From Martha Mitchell’s Encyclopedia Brunoniana:

Jonathan Russell (1771-1832), diplomat, was born in Providence on February 27, 1771, the son of Jonathan and Abigail (Russell) Russell. His father was descended from John Russell, a 1640 resident of Charlestown, Massachusetts, to whom his mother of the same surname was not related. He graduated from Rhode Island College in 1791. He studied law, but did not practice. He married Sylvia Ammidon and entered into European trade with his partner Otis Ammidon. He was known as an orator, and his Fourth of July oration in 1800 in the First Baptist Church in Providence was published in a number of editions. However, William Giles Goddard wrote in a biographical notice in the American Quarterly Register, “Mr. Russell had no skill as a forensic or parliamentary speaker; but, as a writer, he possessed versatile and eminent gifts. He wrote, not only with facility, but with uncommon elegance and force – and, when the subject permitted, with a caustic severity not often surpassed.” His diplomatic career began when President James Madison appointed him chargé d’affaires in Paris in 1810. The next year he was given the same position in London. From 1814 to 1818 he was United States minister to Sweden and Norway. He was one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent, with John Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay, and Albert Gallatin. Only he and Clay voted against the proposal which traded free navigation of the Mississippi River for rights to the Northeast fisheries. This action later brought him into controversy with John Quincy Adams, who felt that Russell sought to discredit him. The Dictionary of American Biography points out that “Jonathan Russell” was adopted as political slang in New England, being used as a verb, as to “Jonathan Russell” an opponent in a dispute. In 1818 he was recalled from Sweden by James Monroe, and the next year he settled in Mendon, Massachusetts. After his one term in the United States House of Representatives, from 1821 to 1823, Russell retired from public life. He died in Boston on February 17, 1832.

& from Wikipedia:

Jonathan Russell (February 27, 1771 – February 17, 1832) was a United States Representative from Massachusetts and diplomat.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Russell graduated from Brown University (then Rhode Island College) in 1791. He studied law and was admitted to the bar, but did not practice. He engaged in mercantile pursuits for a number of years.

He was appointed by President James Madison to the Diplomatic Service in France in 1811. He transferred to England, where he was Chargé d’Affaires when war was declared against the United States in 1812. He was Minister to Sweden and Norway from January 18, 1814 to October 16, 1818.

"Jonathan Russell and the Capture of the Guerriere," by Lawrence S. Kaplan in The William and Mary Quarterly,Third Series, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, discusses the circumstances of Russell's authorship of a patriotic poem about the famous sea battle found in Russell's private papers (now mainly at Brown University's Library). The article quotes the entirety of the poem, dates it to approximately 1812, and speculates that Russell was motivated to write this anti-British work by the humiliation he had suffered while at the Court of St. James.

Russell was one of the five commissioners who negotiated the treaty of peace at Ghent with Great Britain in 1814, ending the War of 1812. He returned to the United States in 1818 and settled in Mendon, Massachusetts.

He became a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1820 and was elected to the Seventeenth Congress (March 4, 1821–March 3, 1823). He was chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (Seventeenth Congress).

In 1822, Russell authored a pamphlet accusing John Quincy Adams, one of Russell's former fellow-negotiators at Ghent in 1814, of having favored British interests in those treaty talks. Russell intended the pamphlet to further Henry Clay's presidential hopes as against Adams. Adams' responsive pamphets were so devastating in impugning Russell's veracity that they engendered the phrase "to Jonathan Russell" someone, meaning to destroy someone's reputation and political career.

Russell died in Milton, Massachusetts and was interred in the family plot on his estate in Milton.