John Adams

by David McCullough

“tranquility becomes daily more and more the object of my life,

Reasoning has been all lost.

I am convinced our own happiness requires that we should continue to mix with the world, and to keep pace with it. . . . I can speak from experience on the subject.

Adams’s supposition that Jefferson was cutting back on his extravagant ways was, however, mistaken.

The existing eight-room Palladian country house was to become a great domed villa with twenty-one rooms. It was designed to accommodate lavish hospitality and to answer all his own private needs and comforts.

but of the larger project he said nothing, knowing what the frugal New Englander would think of it.

Exercise was indispensable, he explained to Charles, who had complained of feeling lethargic.

“Move or die is the language of our Maker in the constitution of our bodies.”

In keeping with the changes of fashion, he had given up wearing a wig and was by now quite grey and bald. He was overweight; his eyes were often red and watery from too much reading.

“An erect figure, a steady countenance, a neat dress, a genteel air, an oratorical period, a resolute, determined spirit, often do more than deep erudition or indefatigable application.”

Ordered home to Paris, to face charges of misconduct, which meant almost certain death by guillotine, Genêt chose to stay on in New York, where eventually he married the daughter of George Clinton and settled down to the life of a country gentleman on the Hudson.

the spring of 1794,

At last, on May 26, Adams sent off a confidential letter to John Quincy with the biggest news he had been able to report in years. He had been informed that day that the President would nominate John Quincy to be minister to the Netherlands.

He was also more widely traveled and more conversant with French and Dutch than any American diplomat yet dispatched across the Atlantic.

Conspicuously absent was any guaranteed protection of American seamen from British seizure.

But Jay had gained peace with Britain—“To do more was impossible,” he told the President—and Washington, though disappointed, concluded it was enough.

Adams, who knew from experience—knew better than anyone—what Jay had been up against in dealing with the British, never doubted that a flawed treaty was far preferable to war with Britain.

he considered the British as insolent as ever, and the unfortunate “mad” George III (by now the victim of porphyria), a hopeless blunderer.

With the departure of Randolph the brilliant cabinet that Washington had started with was entirely gone, replaced by men who were by and large mediocrities.

“I AM HEIR APPARENT, you know,” Adams reminded Abigail after arriving in Philadelphia for the opening of the Fourth Congress.

Still, the presidency would be a “glorious reward” for all his service to the country, should Providence allot him the task.

the summer of 1796

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.

For all the clamor over politics, the country was still at peace and more prosperous than ever.

If there was a prevailing sentiment overall concerning national politics, it was one of regret, even sadness, that Washington would soon be stepping down.

Overnight, Adams was being treated as though suddenly he had become a different man, and this he found most remarkable.

In reply, Jefferson expressed no reluctance to serve under Adams, since “he had always been my senior, from the commencement of my public life.”

It was a fine show of magnanimity in defeat, as well as one of the warmest expressions of friendship Jefferson ever wrote or that anyone had ever addressed to Adams.

As he explained delicately to Jefferson, friendship was one thing, politics another.

The letter was never sent. It remained in Madison’s possession, in a file only a few blocks from where Adams resided.

THE INAUGURATION of the second President of the United States commenced in the first-floor House Chamber of Congress Hall in Philadelphia just before noon, Saturday, March 4, 1797.

It was a scene few who were present would ever forget. Here were the three who, more than any others, had made the Revolution, and as many in the audience supposed, it was to be the last time they would ever appear on the same platform.

And so Adams became President of the nation that now—with the additions of Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee—numbered sixteen states.

It was there on Market Street, according to Jefferson, that he and Adams reached the breaking point.

On the evening of March 13, or possibly the next morning, Adams was hit with stunning news. The French Directory had refused to receive General Pinckney. Forced to leave Paris as though he were an undesirable alien, Pinckney had withdrawn to Amsterdam and was awaiting instructions.

To make matters worse, Adams learned of further French seizures of American ships in the Caribbean and that by decrees issued in Paris, the Directory had, in effect, launched an undeclared war on American shipping everywhere. The crisis had come to a head. Adams faced the threat of all-out war.

This house has been a scene of the most scandalous drinking and disorder among the servants that I ever heard of.

Stopping to see Nabby at East Chester, she was stunned to find that Colonel Smith was off again on another of his uncertain ventures, and Nabby too upset even to talk about it, except to say she had no idea where he was.

Further, there was the looming reality that America at the moment had no military strength on land or sea.

In a calm, steady voice, Adams said the French had “inflicted a wound in the American breast,” but that it was his sincere desire to see it healed, and to preserve peace and friendship with all nations. He was therefore calling for both “a fresh attempt” at negotiation with France, and a buildup of American military strength.

Elbridge Gerry.

new French Foreign Minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.

THE UNDECLARED WAR at sea continued.

When Adams named John Quincy to be minister to Prussia, more Republican protest erupted.

But the Vice President all the while did nothing whatever to help his former friend the President. Further, he made no secret of his belief that Adams was leading the nation straight to war.

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.

The Francis Hotel, where Jefferson continued to lodge, became headquarters for the Republican inner circle. Any pretense of harmony between the President and Vice President was dispensed with.

“Mr. Adams is vain, irritable, stubborn, endowed with excessive self-love, and still suffering pique at the preference accorded Franklin over him in Paris.” But Adams’s term of office was only four years, Jefferson reminded Letombe. Besides, Adams did not have popular support. “He only became President by three votes, and the system of the United States will change along with him.”

The truth, it happens, was that Adams and Jefferson both wanted peace with France and each was working to attain that objective, though in their decidedly different ways.

John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Johnson had been married,