Hamilton bet on the wrong horse, a mistake that would haunt the rest of his career. As treasury secretary, he had only limited contact with John Adams, who was excluded from the inner policy circle. The two men had maintained a wary distance. Hamilton later said that by the time Washington left office, “men of principal influence in the Federal party” began to “entertain serious doubts about [Adams’s] fitness” for the presidency because of his temperament. Yet Adams’s “pretensions in several respects were so strong that, after mature reflection, they thought it better to indulge their hopes
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