John Adams

by David McCullough

Adams and Jefferson were the leading candidates in what was the first presidential election with two parties in opposition, an entirely new experience for the country. Jefferson remained at Monticello, Adams at Peacefield, neither taking any part in what quickly became a vicious, all-out battle. Adams was pilloried in the Republican press as a gross and shameless monarchist—“His Rotundity,” whose majestic appearance was so much “sesquipedality of belly,” as said Bache’s Aurora. Adams, declared the widely read paper, was unfit to lead the country, and beneath a headline declaring AN ALARM, Bache warned that unless by their votes the people were to call forth Thomas Jefferson, “the friend of the people,” Adams, the “champion of kings, ranks, and titles,” would be their President. Were Adams to be elected, warned the Boston Chronicle, the principle of hereditary succession would be imposed on America, to make way for John Quincy. With Jefferson, said the paper, no one need worry since Jefferson had only daughters. To add further fuel to the fire, Thomas Paine, in a fury over the Jay Treaty, unleashed an unprecedented attack on George Washington in the pages of the Aurora. Writing from Paris, Paine called Washington a creature of “grossest adulation,” a man incapable of friendship, “a hypocrite in public life,” apostate and impostor. For their part, the Federalists were hardly less abusive. Jefferson was decried as a Jacobin, an atheist, and charged with cowardice for having f...