John Adams

by David McCullough

famous stutter of George III.)

Abigail described the atmosphere as “not the pleasantest in the world.” In truth, the American minister and his family were being pointedly ignored.

In London

“venom” spread by American Loyalists in London.

The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.

A scholar is always made alone.

Very involved parents

Support for a stronger central government was gaining ground—and

There must be three parts to government—executive, legislative, and judicial—and to achieve balance it was essential that it be a strong executive, a bicameral legislature, and an independent judiciary. On the role of the executive Adams was emphatic:

there must, in a just and enduring government, be a balance of forces.

Alexander Hamilton that he “deemed [it] an essential point of caution” to see that John Adams did not wind up with such a strong showing in the electoral count as to embarrass Washington.

1789, Washington was chosen President unanimously with 69 votes, while Adams, though well ahead of ten others, had 34 votes, or less than half.

Became VP

no standard American coinage or currency.

1776

Travel was slow and arduous everywhere, the roads appallingly bad

no army to speak of—about

the westernmost town of any consequence in the country and had fewer than 500 souls.

Pittsburgh

Federalists, who wanted a strong federal government, and the Anti-Federalists, who held to the sentiment of Thomas Paine, “That government is best which governs least.”

Adams was a Federalist

slave population, too, had burgeoned to nearly 700,000

500,000 or more, centered in Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas,

was his thought that Washington should be called “His Majesty the President,” or something of the sort.

no popular support

He was the first, but by no means the last, Vice President to take abuse in the President’s place, though much of it, to be sure, he brought on himself.

Adams had little contact with the President and no influence,

1789, announced, A COMPLETE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.

Adams foresaw the French Revolution leading to chaos, horror, and ultimate tyranny.

he had known what was happening and approved,

Jefferson

Between Jefferson and Adams there was no discussion of their diverging views.

An immigrant of illegitimate birth, Hamilton had arrived in New York from the West Indies at age fifteen.

Treasury

relocate the capital in Philadelphia for ten years—until

Jefferson had tagged Adams with being both mentally unsound and a monarchist, the two charges most commonly and unjustly made against him for the rest of his life.

Jefferson, Madison, Freneau, and others allied with them had begun calling themselves Republicans,

Jacobins

Extreme political radical

Washington was again the unanimous choice for President, and that Adams, for all that had been said against him, had won a clear second place,

Second election

people were dying in Philadelphia at a rate of more than twenty a day. In September, as the death toll rose rapidly, Benjamin Rush and other physicians, helpless to stop the plague, advised all who could leave the city to do so without delay. The federal government and most businesses shut down. Bush Hill, where the Adamses had lived, was converted to an emergency hospital. To avoid contamination people stopped shaking hands and walked in the middle of the streets.

Yellow Fever

a time when party politics were becoming increasingly potent and pervasive, he would not, could not, be a party man.

On his walks he generally covered three to five miles,

John Quincy to be minister to the Netherlands.

Charles and Sally had been married in New York, his parents were devastated.

Too young and unsettled

pledged himself to a spirit of “equity and humanity” toward the American Indian, “to meliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them.”

Inaugural address

the nation that now—with the additions of Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee—numbered sixteen states.

Jefferson’s abiding flaw, Adams had concluded, was “want of sincerity.”

the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 must be seen in the context of the time, and the context was tumult and fear.

There was rampant fear of the enemy within.

Alien Acts

Adams never invoked the law

Of greater consequence was the Sedition Act, which made any “False, scandalous, and malicious” writing

Impinged upon free speech

Federalist proponents in Congress insisted, like Adams, that it was a war measure,

both the Secretary of War and the Secretary of State were secretly campaigning for Hamilton, supplying him with inside information, and undermining the intentions of their President,

yellow fever spread in Boston, New York, Baltimore, and worst of all in Philadelphia.

1798

in Philadelphia, more than 3,000 lost their lives,

Abigail was bedridden at Quincy altogether for eleven weeks.

Yellow fever or malaria

was not just that the work was unending, but that it was so tiresome. “A peck of troubles in a large bundle of papers often in a handwriting almost illegible comes every day . . . thousands of sea letters . . . commissions and patents to sign. No company.

Adams on the presidency