John Adams

by David McCullough

Elbridge Gerry, however, was unacceptable to Pickering and the cabinet, who thought him too independent and unreliable. “It is ten to one against his agreeing with his colleagues,” Secretary of War McHenry warned the President. Even Abigail questioned the choice. But Adams insisted. He needed someone on the commission whose friendship and loyalty were beyond doubt. He knew Gerry—“I knew Gerry infinitely better than any of them,” he later said. The old bond of 1776 was still a tie that held Adams to Rush and even to Jefferson, for all the strains of politics.

After years of seclusion at Monticello, Jefferson had, with amazing agility, stepped back into the kind of party politics he professed to abhor, and in no time emerged as leader of the opposition. With Madison in retirement, and the vice presidency providing ample free time, Jefferson kept extremely busy as a “closet politician,” in one man’s expression, writing letters and lending support—ideas, information, and money—to the Republican press, including such “gladiators of the quill” as a dissolute Scottish pamphleteer and scandalmonger named James T. Callender, who wrote for the Aurora and specialized in attacks on John Adams.

IN EUROPE, French armies had been sweeping across Italy and Austria, in a campaign of French aggrandizement led by young General Napoleon Bonaparte, who appeared invincible. Now, with the start of a new year, 1798, Bonaparte had been given command of all forces on land and sea to carry the war across the Channel to Britain, and as John Quincy reported to his father, the expedition was “in great forwardness.” Bonaparte shortly was to change his mind and lead his forces to Egypt instead, as John Quincy would also report. The French had become formidable as never before.

“We are yet all in the dark respecting our envoys,” Abigail wrote on February 16; and again in another week: “Our envoys have been near six months in Paris but to this hour not a line has been received.” In the meanwhile, as the President was unaware, his cabinet—Wolcott and McHenry in particular—were receiving continued advice and directions from Alexander Hamilton, who had supposedly retired from public life. Hamilton was still opposed to war with France. “It is an undoubted fact that there is a very general and strong aversion to war in the minds of the people of the country,” he wrote to McHenry. “It is an undoubted fact that there is a very general indisposition toward the war in the minds of the people of the United States,” McHenry dutifully advised the President four days later. But should the present attempt to negotiate fail, then the President must address the Congress in a style “cautious, solemn, grave, and void of asperity,” declared McHenry—Hamilton also having told him this was what he was to say.

Hamilton, supposedly retired, influencing the subsequent cabinet.

At last, late the evening of March 4, a year to the day since Adams became President, official dispatches arrived in Philadelphia and were delivered immediately to Timothy Pickering’s desk at the Department of State at Fifth and Chestnut Streets. Four of the dispatches were in cipher and it would be several days before they were decoded. But the message of the fifth dispatch was clear. Seething with indignation, Pickering pulled on a coat and hurried three blocks to the President’s House. What Adams read was extremely unsettling. The government of France had refused to see the envoys. The mission had failed. Furthermore, the Directory had decreed all French ports closed to neutral shipping and declared that any ship carrying anything produced in England was subject to French capture.

In the House, Gallatin had urged that the dispatches not be published, certain that they would dash any surviving hope of a settlement with France—which, it appears, was exactly the fear that troubled the President. And, indeed, High Federalists were claiming it was too late for preaching peace any longer. The Federalist press protested the “damnable outrages” of the French, and a wave of patriotic anti-French anger swept the city and the country with unexpected passion. As Abigail reported to Mary Cranch and John Quincy, public opinion in the capital changed overnight. The tricolor cockade of France that Republicans had been wearing in their hats all but disappeared from sight. No one was heard singing French patriotic songs in public as before, or espousing the cause of France.

XYZ Affair

THE COUNTRY BEGAN to prepare for war. On April 8, 1798, Representative Samuel Sewall, a Federalist from Marblehead, Massachusetts, called on Congress to give the President all he had asked for and slowly, somewhat reluctantly, Congress swung into action. Measures were passed for arming merchant ships. Substantial funds—nearly $1 million—were voted for harbor fortifications and cannon foundries. In May a bill passed empowering United States warships to capture any French privateer or cruiser found in American waters.

XYZ Affair

A bill for a “provisional army” was passed, but not before it was cut from 25,000 men to 10,000, which was still more than Adams had asked for or wanted. For though he was the greatest advocate of the navy of any American statesman of his generation, Adams deplored the idea of a standing army. The rebirth of the navy—the “wooden walls” he wanted above all for defense of the country—and a new Department of the Navy, separate from the War Department, were his pride and joy. Little that he achieved as President would give him greater satisfaction,

the Federalist majority in Congress passed into law extreme measures that Adams had not asked for or encouraged. But then neither did he oppose them, and their passage and his signature on them were to be rightly judged by history as the most reprehensible acts of his presidency. Still, the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 must be seen in the context of the time, and the context was tumult and fear.

The Alien Acts included a Naturalization Act, which increased the required period of residence to qualify for citizenship from five to fourteen years, and the Alien Act, which granted the President the legal right to expel any foreigner he considered “dangerous.” In the view of the Vice President, the Alien Act was something worthy of the ninth century. Jefferson and others imagined a tempestuous John Adams expelling foreigners by the shipload. As it was, they need not have worried. Adams never invoked the law and this despite the urging of Secretary of State Pickering, who did indeed favor massive deportations.

Of greater consequence was the Sedition Act, which made any “False, scandalous, and malicious” writing against the government, Congress, or the President, or any attempt “to excite against them . . . the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition,” crimes punishable by fine and imprisonment. Though it was clearly a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, its Federalist proponents in Congress insisted, like Adams, that it was a war measure, and an improvement on the existing common law in that proof of the truth of the libel could be used as a legitimate defense. Still, the real and obvious intent was to stifle the Republican press, and of those arrested and convicted under the law, nearly all were Republican editors.

Written on September 25, it did not reach Adams until October 8. Were he to be denied the deciding voice in the selection of his general staff, Washington informed the President, he would resign his commission. Adams sent off an immediate reply, agreeing to Washington’s wishes. As he had accepted Washington’s cabinet in the interest of unanimity, so he now accepted Washington’s choice of Hamilton. But he also had reason to believe now that Hamilton and the army might not be needed at all. As a matter of form, he reminded Washington a bit lamely that by the Constitution it was the President who had the authority to determine the rank of officers. Washington promoted Hamilton to be inspector general. In the contest of who was in charge, Adams, it seemed, had been put in his place, outflanked not so much by Washington as by his own cabinet, and ultimately Hamilton, which left Adams feeling bruised and resentful. But at the same time, it gave Hamilton, and those in Adams’s cabinet whose first loyalty was to Hamilton, an inflated sense of their own importance and authority.

“The man is stark mad or I am,” he would remember thinking of Hamilton. But at the time, he kept his own counsel, waiting to make his move. He wanted all “to be still and calm,” and told his department heads no more than they needed to know. For he understood now that their first loyalty was not to him.

Jefferson had been absent for six months, during which he had raised no voice as head of the Republican party, but had kept extremely busy, writing letters and secretly drafting a set of resolutions to be introduced in the legislature of Kentucky. Written in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions declared that each state had a “natural right” to nullify federal actions it deemed unconstitutional. The states were thus to be the arbiters of federal authority. At the same time, James Madison undertook a version of his own resolutions for Virginia. The Kentucky Resolutions, which had passed in November, were an open challenge to the authority of the central government and a measure both of Jefferson’s revulsion over the Alien and Sedition Acts and the seriousness with which he regarded states’ rights. Possibly he failed to see the dire threat to the union embodied in what he had written, but a letter he wrote to Madison strongly suggests otherwise. He was confident, Jefferson said, that the American people with their “good sense” would “rally with us round the true principles of the federal compact,” but, he wrote in chilling conclusion, he was “determined, were we to be disappointed in this, to sever ourselves from the union we so much value, rather than give up the rights of self-government.”

Christmas 1798 - Kentucky Resolutions - Jefferson asserting states' rights and contravening his President.

It had been more than a year since the President and Vice President had spoken to each other. Except for passing pleasantries at a few ceremonial occasions, conversation and correspondence between them had ceased. Had they been able to compare notes, they would have discovered how much more they shared in common than met the eye or than either had any idea.

ON MONDAY, February 18, 1799, Adams made his move. Having consulted no one, and without advice from Abigail, he took the most decisive action of his presidency. Indeed, of all the brave acts of his career—his defense of the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre trials, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, his crossing the Atlantic on the Boston in the winter of 1778, the high risks of his mission to Holland—one brief message sent to the United States Senate was perhaps the bravest. It was carried by a courier to the second-floor Senate Chamber, where an astonished Vice President interrupted the business on the floor to read it aloud: Always disposed and ready to embrace every plausible appearance of probability of preserving or restoring tranquility, I nominate William Vans Murray, our minister resident at The Hague, to be minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the French Republic.

By the second week of March, as Adams was preparing to leave for Quincy, word reached Philadelphia that the American frigate Constellation, under Captain Thomas Truxtun, had captured the French frigate L’Insurgent, after a battle near the island of Nevis in the Leewards, the first major engagement of the undeclared war at sea. Where would it all end, people were asking in Philadelphia. But Adams was anything but alarmed or displeased. Of Captain Truxtun he wrote, “I wish all other officers had as much zeal.”

While his entire political standing, his reputation as President, were riding on his willingness to make peace, Adams was no less ardent for defense. In fact, he was convinced that peace was attainable only as a consequence of America’s growing naval strength. To Secretary Stoddert he even proposed that some of the fast new ships might be used to cruise the coast of France.

On December 14, 1799, as if to give period to the passing of the century and the Federal era, George Washington died at Mount Vernon.

In February came the news from France of a coup on November 9—18 Brumaire, by the French revolutionary calendar. General Bonaparte had taken power as First Consul, which made him, at age thirty-three, sovereign ruler of France and much of Europe. The French Revolution was over, as declared Bonaparte himself.

Washington’s death had seemed to mark the close of one era; the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte ushered in another. Adams, who like Edmund Burke had predicted dictatorship as the inevitable outcome for the revolution, wisely kept silent.

Acutely conscious of the mistakes Adams had made as Vice President, Jefferson, when presiding in the Senate, never talked out of turn, or tried to impose his own opinion from the chair, conduct all in keeping with his nature. Moreover, he saw no necessity to be constantly present, as Adams had. There were better ways to spend his time, Jefferson felt. Seeing the need for a manual of parliamentary rules for the Senate, he wrote one, distinguished by its clarity, emphasis on decorum, and the degree to which he had drawn on the British model. Had it been Adams paying such tribute to English foundations and traditions, the uproar would have been immediate; he would have been denounced still again as “tainted” by his years in London and love for all things British. But among Jefferson’s many contributions to the new republic, his Senate Manual would stand as one of the most useful and enduring.

If Adams found any relief or pleasure in his duties, it was approving, on April 24, legislation that appropriated $5,900 to “purchase such books as may be necessary” for a new Library of Congress.

But never until now was he known to have berated a subordinate, and his regret over the outburst was considerable. Still, nothing he had said was untrue, nor was his anger without justification. In firing McHenry he had done what he should have done well before this. After a pause of a few days—possibly to cool down—he fired Pickering. This time there was no unpleasant confrontation. On May 10, in customary fashion, Adams asked for Pickering’s resignation by letter. Almost inconceivably, Pickering refused to comply. In a written response of May 12, he said he did not feel it his duty to resign, and implied that he needed the government salary to subsist. Adams discharged him at once and the same day named as his new Secretary of War, Senator Samuel Dexter of Massachusetts, and as Secretary of State, John Marshall, who was now a member of the House of Representatives.

Fired McHenry and Pickering in run up to election of 1800 for loyalty to Hamilton

But most amplified were charges of atheism. Not only was Jefferson a godless man, but one who mocked the Christian faith. In New England word went out that family Bibles would have to be hidden away for safekeeping, were he elected.

To judge by what he said privately in a letter to a friend, he took the blow with notable equanimity. Like others, he thought Hamilton had succeeded mainly in damaging himself. He was not Hamilton’s enemy, Adams wrote, and Hamilton was not without talent. “There is more burnish, however, on the outside than sterling silver in substance.” But this was as much as he would say, at least while President.

AT THE END of the first week in November, Adams’s long wait for news from France ended. The mission had succeeded. A treaty with France, the Convention of Mortefontaine, had been signed on October 3, 1800, at a château north of Paris. At a grand fete celebrating the event, Bonaparte declared that the differences between France and the United States had been no more than a family quarrel. Gifts were presented to the American envoys, toasts raised to perpetual peace between the two nations. The first report appeared in a Baltimore paper on November 7. Another month would pass before the official copy of the Convention arrived in Washington, at which point it would be submitted to the Senate for approval. The news had come too late to affect the election, but peace had truly been achieved. Though Adams could say nothing of it yet, the Quasi-War was over, and for Adams it was an immense victory.

In the final electoral count of all sixteen states, Jefferson had 73 votes to Adams’s 65; Pinckney had 63. But Burr had also wound up with 73 votes, and so was tied with Jefferson. The outcome, according to the Constitution, would have to be decided in the House of Representatives.

Events were moving fast. On April 11, after further defeat on the battlefield, Napoleon abdicated his throne and went into exile on the island of Elba. The French monarchy was restored under the Comte de Provence, Louis XVIII. In America, on August 24, British troops made a successful assault on Washington, scattered the government, and set fire to the Capitol and the President’s House. American warships had been driven from the sea. The Treasury was empty, the outlook grim. In December, Federalists from the five New England States, led by Timothy Pickering, met at Hartford to denounce the “ruinous war.” There was even talk of New England seceding from the union. At Ghent the same month, the American commissioners led by John Quincy Adams signed a peace treaty with Britain, news that would not reach the United States until February, by which time Americans under General Andrew Jackson had won a decisive victory, on January 15, at the battle of New Orleans.

on March 1, 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba, landed at Cannes, and with 1,500 men marched on Paris, thus beginning the fateful “100 days” that ended with Napoleon’s ultimate defeat at Waterloo on June 18. Within days he was on his way to the British island of St. Helena for the remainder of his life.

IN LATE 1820, at age eighty-five, Adams found himself chosen as a delegate to a state convention called to revise the Massachusetts constitution that he had drafted some forty years before. “The town of Quincy has been pleased to elect me a member of the Convention—and wonderful to relate—the election is said to be unanimous. . . . I am sufficiently advanced in my dotage to have accepted the choice,” he reported to Louisa Catherine. “I feel not much like a maker or mender of constitutions, in my present state of imbecility. . . . But I presume we shall not be obliged to carry windmills by assault.” But in what was to be his last public effort, in a speech considered “very remarkable” for its energy and conviction, Adams boldly offered an amendment guaranteeing complete religious freedom in the commonwealth. As he believed that all were equal before God, so he believed that all should be free to worship God as they pleased. In particular, he wanted religious freedom for Jews,

neither did Adams write of his own increasing worry and sorrow over his son Thomas, who, having failed in the law, was drinking heavily and employed now primarily as a caretaker for his father and the farm. John Quincy’s son Charles Francis, writing of his uncle Thomas, described him as “one of the most unpleasant characters in this world . . . a brute in manners and a bully in his family.” The question of how two of his sons, Charles and Thomas, could have so sadly fallen by the wayside, while John Quincy so conspicuously excelled could only have weighed heavily on Adams’s mind. But of this, for all that he wrote on nearly everything else, he wrote nothing. The closest he seems to have come in blaming himself was in a letter to John Quincy admonishing him that “children must not be wholly forgotten in the midst of public duties.”

WITH 1826 marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it was not long into the new year when Adams and Jefferson were being asked to attend a variety of celebrations planned to commemorate the historic event on the Fourth of July. Invitations poured into Quincy and Charlottesville from Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The two former presidents were, with eighty-eight-year-old Charles Carroll of Maryland, the last signers of the Declaration still alive. Further, as everyone knew, Jefferson was its author and Adams had been its chief advocate on the floor of Congress. One was “the pen,” the other “the voice,” of independence, and the presence of either at any Independence Day celebration, large or small, would give it significance as nothing else could. But the time was past when either Adams or Jefferson could leave home. Adams was ninety, Jefferson would be eighty-three in April, and each grew steadily more feeble. After calling on Adams that spring, Benjamin Waterhouse wrote to John Quincy, “To the eyes of a physician your father appeared to me much nearer to the bottom of the hill.”