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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. Abigail expressed what most Americans felt when, quoting Shakespeare, she wrote of Washington, “Take his character all together, and we shall not look upon his like again.”
On November 23, Adams bid her goodbye and started for Philadelphia, and again by public conveyance, John Briesler his sole companion. “Fear takes no hold of me,” he assured Abigail, as if to boost both their spirits. He reached Philadelphia on December 4, and the night of December 7, struggling with the prospect of defeat, he wrote again:
I laugh at myself twenty times a day, for my feelings, and [the] meditations and speculations in which I find myself engaged: Vanity suffers. Cold feelings of unpopularity. Humble reflections. Mortifications. Humiliation. Plans of future life. Economy. Retrenching expenses: Farming. Returning to the bar, drawing writs, arguing causes, taking clerks.
I can pronounce Thomas Jefferson to be chosen P[resident] of [the] U[nited] S[tates] with firmness and a good grace that I don't fear. But here alone abed, by my fireside, nobody to speak to, pouring upon my disgrace and future prospects—this is ugly.
But in a week or so, in an entirely different mood, he was writing to tell her it appeared he would be elected President. Though the final count would not be known until February, when the electors met, it was being said openly in and out of Congress that he had won, and that Jefferson was to be Vice President.
Overnight, Adams was being treated as though suddenly he had become a different man, and this he found most remarkable. Even Bache's Aurora seemed to experience a miraculous change of heart. John Adams, the paper now declared, was clearly preferable to Washington.
There can be no doubt that Adams would not be a puppet—that having an opinion and judgment of his own, he would act from his own impulses rather than the impulses of others—that possessing great integrity he would not sacrifice his country's interests at the shrine of party... In addition ... it is well known that Adams is an aristocrat only in theory, but that Washington is one in practice—that Adams has the simplicity of a republican but that Washington has the ostentation of an eastern bashaw—that Adams holds none of his fellow men in slavery, but Washington does.... The difference is immense.
To Adams's particular delight, one of the most partisan of all the young Republicans, Representative William Branch Giles of Virginia, had been heard to say of him, “The old man will make a good President, too.”
• • •
AT MONTICELLO, Jefferson received word from Madison that he should be prepared for the likelihood of finishing second, and that for the good of the country and the “valuable effect” of his influence on Adams, he must accept the vice presidency. In reply, Jefferson expressed no reluctance to serve under Adams, since “he had always been my senior, from the commencement of my public life.” Then, three days after Christmas, Jefferson took up his pen to write an extraordinary letter to Adams.
From his latest information, Jefferson said, it appeared Adams's election to the “first magistracy” was an established tact. But to Jefferson this had never been in doubt. “I have never one single moment expected a different issue.” And though he knew he would not be believed, it was true nonetheless that he never wished it otherwise. He warned that Hamilton had been up to some of his usual schemes, but doubted it would change the outcome.
I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep and a warm berth below, with the society of neighbors, friends and fellow laborers of the earth, than of spies and sycophants. No one then will congratulate you with purer disinterestedness than myself... I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office... I devoutly wish you may be able to shun for us this war by which our agriculture, commerce, and credit will be destroyed. If you are, the glory will be all your own; and that your administration may be filled with glory and happiness to yourself and advantage to us is the sincere wish of one who though, in the course of our voyage through life, various little incidents have happened or been contrived to separate us, retains still for you the solid esteem of the moments when we were working for our independence, and sentiments of respect and affectionate attachment.
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. But after finishing the letter, Jefferson had second thoughts and sent it on to Madison in Philadelphia—“open for your perusal”—so that if anything he had written “should render the delivery of it ineligible in your opinion, you may return it to me.”
Madison was appalled. He saw the letter as a dreadful mistake, and decided it must go no further. As he explained delicately to Jefferson, friendship was one thing, politics another. Adams already knew of his friendship, Madison advised, and were Adams to prove a failure as President, such compliments and confidence in him as Jefferson had put in writing could prove politically embarrassing.
The letter was never sent. It remained in Madison's possession, in a file only a few blocks from where Adams resided.
For Adams it could have been one of the most important letters he ever received. Jefferson's praise, his implicit confidence in him, his rededication to their old friendship would have meant the world to Adams, and never more than now, affecting his entire outlook and possibly with consequent effect on the course of events to follow.
Not long after, however, Adams did receive a letter from Abigail, written at Quincy on January 15, 1797:
The cold has been more severe than I can ever before recollect. It has frozen the ink in my pen, and chilled the blood in my veins, but not the warmth of my affection for him for whom my heart beats with unabated ardor through all the changes and vicissitudes of life, in the still calm of Peacefield, and the turbulent scenes in which he is about to engage.
Chapter Nine
Old Oak
The task of the President is very arduous, very perplexing, and very hazardous. I do not wonder Washington wished to retire from it, or rejoiced in seeing an old oak in his place.
—Abigail Adams
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.
The room was filled to overflowing, every seat taken by members of the House and Senate, justices of the Supreme Court, heads of departments, the diplomatic corps, and many ladies said to have added a welcome note of “brilliancy” to the otherwise solemn occasion.
There was a burst of applause when George Washington entered and walked to the dais. More applause followed on the appearance of Thomas Jefferson, who had been inaugurated Vice President upstairs in the Senate earlier that morning, and “like marks of approbation” greeted John Adams, who on his entrance in the wake of the two tall Virginians seemed shorter and more bulky even than usual.
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. Adams felt as he had when he first appeared before George III—as if he were on stage playing a part. It was, he later told Abigail, “the most affecting and overpowering scene I ever acted in.”
Jefferson's height was accentuated by a long blue frock coat. Washington was in a dress suit of black velvet. Adams, the plainest of the three, wore a suit of grey broadcloth intentionally devoid of fancy buttons and knee buckles.
Resolved to keep things as understated as possible, he had ridden to Congress Hall from his lodgings at the Francis Hotel in a “simple but elegant enough” carriage drawn by just two horses. The grand carriage and six white horses of Washington's first inauguration had been dispensed with. Nor wou
ld Adams allow an official retinue to march in procession with him. As he confided to Abigail, he wanted few if any of the “court” trappings of his predecessor. On learning that she had had the Quincy coat-of-arms painted on her carriage at home, he told her to have it painted out. “They shall have a republican President in earnest,” he wrote.
Overcast skies had cleared by noon. The day turned bright and cloudless. But for Adams there was little cheer. With none of his family present, he felt miserably alone. He had been unable to sleep the night before, sick with worry that he might not make it through the ceremony without fainting. But he succeeded with flying colors, delivering an address that left little doubt as to where he stood on the Constitution, partisan politics, domestic concerns, France, and the pressing issue of peace or war.
Though in print the speech would seem a bit stilted, it was delivered with great force and effect. Stirred by emotion, and in a strong voice, Adams recalled the old ardor of the American Revolution and spoke of the “present happy Constitution” as the creation of “good heads prompted by good hearts.” In answer to concerns about his political creed, he expressed total attachment to and veneration for the present system of a free republican government. “What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?” He spoke of his respect for the rights of all states, and of his belief in expanded education for all the people, both to enlarge the happiness of life and as essential to the preservation of freedom. The great threats to the nation, Adams warned, were sophistry, the spirit of party, and “the pestilence of foreign influence.”
He paid gracious tribute to Washington's leadership. He lauded American agriculture and manufacturing, 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.”
To Abigail he would later write, “I have been so strangely used in this country, so belied and so undefended that I was determined to say some things as an appeal to posterity.” But the strongest lines, those underscoring his determination to maintain American neutrality, were delivered directly for the benefit of Congress and the foreign diplomats present, not to say the opposition press. It was his “inflexible determination” to maintain peace with all nations, Adams declared, then expressed a personal esteem for France, stemming from a residence of nearly seven years there. Finally he affirmed an “unshaken confidence” in the spirit of the American people, “on which I have often hazarded my all.”
Then, having issued a solemn invocation of the Supreme Being, he stepped down from the platform to a table at the front of the chamber, where Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth administered the oath of office, Adams energetically repeating the words.
And so Adams became President of the nation that now—with the additions of Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee—numbered sixteen states. Having never in his public life held an administrative position, having never played any but a marginal role in the previous administration, having never served in the military, or campaigned for a single vote, or claimed anything like a political bent, he was now chief executive and commander-in-chief.
Many in the chamber were weeping, moved by his words, but still more, it seems, by the prospect of Washington's exit from the national stage. “A solemn scene it was indeed,” Adams wrote, noting that Washington's face remained as serene and unclouded as the day. “Me thought I heard him think, ‘Ay! I am fairly out and you are fairly in! See which of us will be the happiest!’ ”
Approval came from all sides. Federalist Senator Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts called it “the most august and sublime” occasion he ever attended. Praise in the Federalist press, too, was not so much for Adams as for the occasion—“Thus ended a scene the parallel of which was never before witnessed in any country.” But Republicans openly extolled what the new President had said. In the pages of the Aurora, Benjamin Franklin Bache proclaimed John Adams a hero in a way inconceivable before, lauding the “Republican plainness” of Adams's appearance, his “true dignity,” his “incorruptible integrity.” In all, it was one of the handsomest tributes ever paid to Adams.
It is universally admitted that Mr. Adams is a man of incorruptible integrity, and that the resources of his own mind are equal to the duties of his station; we may flatter ourselves that his measures will be taken with prudence, that he will not become the head of a party, and that he will not be the tool of any man or set of men. His speech on the inauguration augers well to our country.... He declares himself the friend of France and of peace, the admirer of republicanism, the enemy of party, and he vows his determination to let no political creed interfere in his appointments. How honorable are these sentiments; how characteristic of a patriot!
It was praise Adams took with a large grain of salt, suspecting Bache of wanting only to create a “coolness between me and Mr. Washington.” More to his liking was an item in a Baltimore paper describing him as “an old fielder,” which as he explained to Abigail, “is a tough, hardy, laborious little horse that works very hard and lives upon very little, very useful to his master at small expense.”
• • •
BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER his inauguration dozens of old friends, including some like Benjamin Rush who had supported Jefferson in the election, made a point of expressing confidence in Adams. Elbridge Gerry likened him to a ship ballasted with iron, capable of riding out any storm. Cotton Tufts, in a letter lamenting the “vexation” Adams was bound to encounter, wrote, “I will not, however, admit this to be of weight sufficient to deter or prevent a great and good man.” A letter from Samuel Adams, then in his seventy-fifth year, may have meant the most of all. “I congratulate you as the first citizen of the United States—I may add the world. I am, my dear sir, notwithstanding I have been otherwise represented in party papers, your old and unvaried friend.”
Except for his siege of anxiety the night before the inauguration, Adams's state of mind had remained quite steady. He had never felt “easier,” he assured Abigail, and a diary entry of the wife of the British ambassador seems to bear him out. At a dinner given by Washington in mid-January, Henrietta Liston found herself seated between the President and the Vice President—“between the rising and setting suns”—and though she found Washington as noble as expected, Adams proved surprisingly entertaining. “There is a good deal of amusement in the conversation of Adams, a considerable degree of wit and humor,” she recorded happily.
While he knew much patience would be called for in time to come, Adams reminded Abigail that he had had a “good education” in patience in his years in public life, and could “look at a storm with some composure.” Constituted as he was, he may even have welcomed a storm. When in the predawn hours of January 27, a terrible fire ripped through the home and shop of the Philadelphia printer and publisher of the Federal Gazette, Andrew Brown, taking the lives of his wife and children, Adams was conspicuous among the men handing up buckets to fight the blaze. Brown, as all knew, had for some time been excoriating the Vice President at every chance.
In February, when the outcome of the election became official, it had been Adams's role, as president of the Senate, to open and read the final votes in the electoral college. He had won by only a narrow margin, with 71 votes to Jefferson's 68. (Pinckney had 59, Burr, 30, Samuel Adams, 11.) As Adams himself observed, he was President by three votes. Yet he appears to have taken it in stride. “I am not alarmed,” he told Nabby, who had written to express her concern. “If the way to do good to my country were to render myself popular, I could easily do it. But extravagant popularity is not the road to public advantage.” To Abigail he wrote simply, “The die is cast.”
With the inauguration still to come, he had taken one of the most fateful steps of his presidency. Rather than choosing a new cabinet of his own, Adams asked Washington's four department heads to stay on, convinced this was the surest way to preserve Federalist harmony. “Washington had appointe
d them and I knew it would turn the world upside down if I removed any one of them,” he later wrote. “I had then no particular objection to any of them.” Also, there was no tradition of cabinet members resigning their positions at the end of a President's term. Washington himself had encouraged them to remain; nor did any express a wish to leave.
They were Secretary of State Timothy Pickering of Salem, Massachusetts; Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr., of Connecticut; Secretary of War James McHenry of Maryland; and Charles Lee of Virginia, the Attorney General. All were younger men than Adams. Wolcott, the youngest at thirty-seven, was the son of the Oliver Wolcott with whom Adams had served in the Continental Congress. A plump, rather pleasant-looking lawyer who had been educated at Yale, he was thought trustworthy and affable. McHenry, an even friendlier and more likable man, had been born and raised in County Antrim, Ireland, and spoke with a trace of an Irish accent. Charles Lee, like Wolcott, was still in his thirties, a graduate of the College of New Jersey at Princeton and, while perfectly competent, was distinguished primarily for being a Lee of Virginia.
None were of oustanding ability, but all were Federalists, and Wolcott and McHenry, like Secretary of State Pickering, were extreme Federalists, or High Federalists. They belonged to the ardently anti-French, pro-British wing of the party who considered Alexander Hamilton their leader, and because of this, and the fact that they had served in the Washington cabinet, they were inclined to look down on John Adams.
But of the four it was Timothy Pickering who held the strongest views and, as Secretary of State, was the most important, given the precarious nature of a world at war, as well as his own obdurate personality. Pickering was not an easy man to like or get along with even under normal circumstances, as Adams knew. In many ways Pickering might have served as the model New Englander for those who disliked the type. Tall, lean, and severe-looking, with a lantern jaw and hard blue eyes, he was Salem-born-and-bred, a Harvard graduate, proud, opinionated, self-righteous, and utterly humorless. After brief service on Washington's staff during the war, he had been promoted to adjutant general. Later he became the first Postmaster General, and from there moved over to replace Henry Knox as Secretary of War. When Secretary of State Edmund Randolph was forced to resign under a cloud of suspicion—a cloud largely of Pickering's making—Pickering was named to succeed him, but only after Washington had been turned down by five others to whom he offered the position.
