John Adams

by David McCullough

To the victorious Republicans, and to generations of historians, the thought of the tall Jefferson, with his air of youth at fifty-seven, assuming the presidency in the new Capitol at the start of a new century, his eye on the future, would stand in vivid contrast to a downcast, bitter John Adams, old and “toothless” at sixty-five, on his “morning flight” to Baltimore.

Theodore Sedgwick.

WHATEVER ADAMS’S state of mind, he was leaving his successor a nation “with its coffers full,” as he wrote, and with “fair prospects of peace with all the world smiling in its face, its commerce flourishing, its navy glorious, its agriculture uncommonly productive and lucrative.”

Indeed, Adams’s insistence on American naval strength proved decisive in achieving peace with France in 1800.

Further, by undercutting Hamilton and making his army useless, he may have saved the country from militarism.

In much the way he had rushed out in the night to help fight fires in Philadelphia and Washington, he had done his all to put out the fire of war—to the immeasurable benefit of the American people, and with no loss of honor or prestige to the nation. It was a brave, heroic performance.

Subjected to some of the most malicious attacks ever endured by a president, beset by personal disloyalty and political betrayal, suffering the loss of his mother, the near death of his wife, the death of a son, tormented by physical ailments, he had more than weathered the storm.

Jefferson did not respond, however. Adams’s letter was the last there would be between them for eleven years.

In some circles, they knew, they were openly despised. In others they were now considered irrelevant. Worst perhaps was the sense that no one any longer cared about them one way or the other.

Long before, on his rounds of Boston as a young lawyer, Adams had often heard a man with a fine voice singing behind the door of an obscure house. One day, curious to know who “this cheerful mortal” might be, he had knocked at the door, to find a poor shoemaker with a large family living in a single room.

Did he find it hard getting by, Adams had asked. “Sometimes,” the man said. Adams ordered a pair of shoes. “I had scarcely got out the door before he began to sing again like a nightingale,” Adams remembered. “Which was the greatest philosopher? Epictetus or this shoemaker?” he would ask when telling the story. Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, had said, among other things, “It is difficulties that show what men are.”

“Everything I read only serves to confirm me in the opinion of the absolute necessity of our keeping aloof from all European powers and influences, and that a navy is the only arm by which it can be accomplished.”

So long as the Republicans were in power, “the post of honor” would be in private pursuits.

Raised in France and London, well read, well mannered, and well spoken with an English accent, she found herself being “gazed” at as a curiosity, “a fine lady.”

But he was less ardent, less spontaneous than his father. He had little of Adams’s passion for life or his humor.

That neither of them was the least prepared or suited for such a venture seems not to have occurred to them.

Partly on his advice, most of what John and Abigail had managed to save over the years—some $13,000—had been invested with the London banking house of Bird, Savage & Bird, bankers for the United States Treasury. It had seemed an entirely prudent step. But in 1803, the house of Bird, Savage & Bird collapsed, leaving the Adamses on the brink of ruin.

At once, John Quincy stepped in to save them. “The error of judgment was mine,” he wrote, “and therefore I shall not refuse to share in the suffering.”

By selling his house in Boston, drawing on his own savings, and borrowing, he was able to proceed slowly to buy up his parents’ property, ultimately paying them what they had lost...

As Abigail would later tell Jefferson bluntly, it was as though the serpent he had “cherished and warmed” had turned and “bit the hand that nourished him.”

Callender, having served his sentence for violating the Sedition Act, was out of jail by the time Jefferson took office. But unable to pay the fine imposed by the court, he had appealed to Jefferson for help, asking also that he be made postmaster in Richmond. Feeling that Jefferson owed him as much and more, Callender went to Washington to see Madison and in the course of the meeting implied that if denied his requests he might have things to say. Madison warned Jefferson, who immediately, on May 28, 1801, had his secretary, Meriwether Lewis, give Callender $50.

Furious at Jefferson’s parsimony, Callender switched sides to become the editor of a new Federalist paper, in Richmond, the Recorder.

The AFRICAN VENUS is said to officiate as housekeeper at Monticello.

Jefferson, who made it a “rule of life” not to respond to newspaper attacks, neither denounced Callender nor denied or admitted a connection with Sally Hemings.

Considering all that Adams had suffered at the hand of Callender, it would have been quite understandable had he lashed out at Jefferson for his hypocrisy and immorality. Adams could well have gloated over the spectacle of Jefferson under fire. But he did not.

Callender and Sally will be remembered as long as Jefferson as blots on his character. The story of the latter is a natural and almost unavoidable consequence of that foul contagion in the human character, Negro slavery.

The serpent you cherished and warmed, bit the hand that nourished him, and gave you sufficient specimens of his talents, his gratitude, his justice, and his truth. When such vipers are let loose upon society, all distinction between virtue and vice are leveled, all respect for character is lost.

John Quincy took his seat in the Senate in time to give Jefferson support in the biggest accomplishment of his presidency, the purchase of the Louisiana Territory.

But when the army he sent to crush the slave revolt in San Domingo was wiped out by war and yellow fever, Bonaparte abandoned his plans and suddenly, in 1803, offered to sell the United States all of the vast, unexplored territory of Louisiana.

It was an astounding turn of events and one that probably would not have come to pass had the Quasi-War burst into something larger. Were it not for John Adams making peace with France, there might never have been a Louisiana Purchase.

In the summer of 1804, on the banks of the Hudson River at Weehawken, New Jersey, Alexander Hamilton was fatally wounded in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr. Carried back across the river to New York, Hamilton died the next day, July 12.

IN EARLY 1805,

Each was lonely except for friends and family.

THE RESUMPTION of correspondence with Benjamin Rush was one of the happiest events of Adams’s life in retirement.

Mercy Otis Warren,

The letters appeared almost weekly for three years, until Adams, too, it appears, realized how tiresome he had become and called a halt.

The embargo proved a colossal mistake for the country, and a catastrophe for New England.

It was Jefferson’s successor, James Madison, who after taking office as President, rescued John Quincy from practicing law in Boston by appointing him minister to Russia.

TWO MONTHS LATER, feeling the time was ripe, Rush sent Adams a memorable letter, dated October 17, 1809.

With Jefferson also in retirement now, Rush thought it time for a renewal of the old friendship between Adams and Jefferson, and that he, Rush, as the friend of both, could help bring it about. He had been corresponding with Jefferson all along, and thus felt he knew the hearts of both men.

He had a dream of reading a history of America written at some point in the future, and of a particular page saying that among the “most extraordinary events” of the year 1809 was the renewal of friendship and correspondence between the two former presidents, Mr. John Adams and Mr. Thomas Jefferson.

The horror of Nabby’s ordeal brought a marked change in Adams. The old shows of temper were not to be seen again. He became more mellow, more accepting of life, and forgiving. He had felt during Nabby’s agony, he said, as if he were living in the Book of Job.

I rejoice in the correspondence which has taken place between you and your old friend Mr. Jefferson. I consider you and him as the North and South Poles of the American Revolution.

Within months a half dozen letters had traveled the roads between Quincy and Monticello, and one of the most extraordinary correspondences in American history—indeed, in the English language—was under way.

“Who shall write the history of the American Revolution?” Adams asked. “Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it?” “Nobody,” Jefferson answered, “except perhaps its external facts.”

They were two of the leading statesmen of their time, but also two of the finest writers, and they were showing what they could do.

By late spring of 1812, the year the correspondence began, the country was again at war with Great Britain, twenty-nine years after the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783.

But Jefferson, who must have wondered what he had gotten himself into, refused to engage in wrangling or dispute. “The summum bonum with me is now truly Epicurean, ease of body and tranquility of mind,” he wrote, “and to these I wish to consign my remaining days.”

Jefferson refused to be drawn out, refused to explain himself, and Adams, accepting this, shifted his focus to other matters much on his mind or dear to his heart.

I had rather you should be worthy possessors of one thousand pounds honestly acquired by your own labor and industry, than of ten millions by banks and tricks.