From Wikipedia:
2nd President of the United States
John Adams (October 30, 1735 (
O.S. October 19, 1735) – July 4, 1826) was the
second President of the United States (1797–1801), having earlier served as the
first Vice President of the United States. An American
Founding Father, he was a statesman, diplomat, and a leader of American independence from
Great Britain. Well educated, he was an
Enlightenment political theorist who promoted
republicanism.
Adams came to prominence in the early stages of the
American Revolution. A lawyer and public figure in
Boston, as a delegate from
Massachusetts to the
Continental Congress, he played a leading role in persuading Congress to declare independence. He assisted
Thomas Jefferson in drafting the
Declaration of Independence in 1776, and was its primary advocate in the Congress. Later, as a diplomat in Europe, he helped negotiate the eventual
peace treaty with
Great Britain, and was responsible for obtaining vital governmental loans from
Amsterdam bankers.
A political theorist and historian, Adams largely wrote the
Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which together with his earlier
Thoughts on Government, influenced American political thought. One of his greatest roles was as a judge of character: in 1775, he nominated
George Washington to be
commander-in-chief, and 25 years later nominated
John Marshall to be
Chief Justice of the United States.
Adams' revolutionary credentials secured him two terms as
George Washington's
vice president and his own election in 1796 as the second president.
During his one term, he encountered ferocious attacks by the
Jeffersonian Republicans, as well as the dominant faction in his own
Federalist Party led by his bitter enemy
Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial
Alien and Sedition Acts, and built up the army and navy especially in the face of an undeclared naval war (called the "
Quasi-War") with
France,
1798–1800. The major accomplishment of his presidency was his peaceful
resolution of the conflict in the face of Hamilton's opposition.
In 1800, Adams was defeated for re-election by Thomas Jefferson and
retired to Massachusetts. He later resumed his friendship with
Jefferson. He and his wife,
Abigail Adams, founded an accomplished family line of politicians, diplomats, and historians now referred to as the
Adams political family. Adams was the father of
John Quincy Adams, the
sixth President of the United States. His achievements have received
greater recognition in modern times, though his contributions were not initially as celebrated as those of other Founders.
Early life
John Adams, the eldest of three sons was born on October 30, 1735 (October 19, 1735 Old Style,
Julian calendar), in what is now
Quincy, Massachusetts (then called the "north precinct" of
Braintree, Massachusetts), to
John Adams, Sr., and
Susanna Boylston Adams.
While he did not speak much of his mother later in life, he commonly praised his father and was very close to him as a child.
Adams' birthplace is now part of
Adams National Historical Park. His father (1691–1761) was a fifth-generation descendant of Henry Adams, who emigrated from
Somerset in England to
Massachusetts Bay Colony in about 1638. The elder Adams was a farmer, a
Congregationalist (that is,
Puritan)
deacon, a lieutenant in the militia and a
selectman,
or town councilman, who supervised schools and roads; Susanna Boylston
Adams was a member of one of the colony's leading medical family, the
Boylstons of
Brookline.
Adams was born to a modest family, but he felt acutely the
responsibility of living up to his family heritage: the founding
generation of Puritans, who came to the American wilderness in the 1630s
and established colonial presence in America. The Puritans of the great
migration "believed they lived in the Bible. England under the
Stuarts was Egypt; they were Israel fleeing ... to establish a refuge for godliness, a city upon a hill."
By the time of John Adams' birth in 1735, Puritan tenets such as
predestination were no longer as widely accepted, and many of their
stricter practices had mellowed with time, but John Adams "considered
them bearers of freedom, a cause that still had a holy urgency." It was a
value system he believed in, and a heroic model he wished to live up
to.
Young Adams went to
Harvard College at age sixteen in 1751. His father expected him to become a minister, but Adams had doubts. After graduating in 1755 with an
A.B., he taught school for a few years in
Worcester,
allowing himself time to think about his career choice. After much
reflection, he decided to become a lawyer, writing his father that he
found among lawyers “noble and gallant achievements" but among the
clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces." He later
became a Unitarian, and dropped belief in predestination, eternal
damnation, the divinity of Christ, and most other Calvinist beliefs of
his Puritan ancestors. Adams then studied law in the office of John
Putnam, the leading lawyer in Worcester.
In 1758, after earning an
A.M. from Harvard,
Adams was admitted to the bar. From an early age, he developed the
habit of writing descriptions of events and impressions of men which are
scattered through his diary. He put the skill to good use as a lawyer,
often recording cases he observed so that he could study and reflect
upon them. His report of the 1761 argument of
James Otis in the
Massachusetts Superior Court as to the legality of
Writs of Assistance is a good example. Otis's argument inspired Adams with zeal for the cause of the American colonies.
On October 25, 1764, five days before his 29th birthday, Adams married
Abigail Smith (1744–1818), his third cousin and the daughter of a
Congregational minister, Rev. William Smith, at
Weymouth, Massachusetts. Their children were
Abigail (1765–1813); future president
John Quincy (1767–1848); Susanna (1768–1770);
Charles (1770–1800);
Thomas Boylston (1772–1832); and Elizabeth (1777).
Adams was not a popular leader like his second cousin,
Samuel Adams. Instead, his influence emerged through his work as a constitutional lawyer and his intense analysis of historical examples, together with his thorough knowledge of the law and his dedication to the principles of
republicanism. Adams often found his inborn contentiousness to be a constraint in his political career.
Career before the Revolution
Opponent of Stamp Act 1765
Adams first rose to prominence as an opponent of the
Stamp Act 1765,
which was imposed by the British Parliament without consulting the
American legislatures. Americans protested vehemently that it violated
their traditional rights as Englishmen. Popular resistance, he later
observed, was sparked by an oft-reprinted sermon of the Boston minister,
Jonathan Mayhew, interpreting
Romans 13 to elucidate the principle of just insurrection.
In 1765, Adams drafted the instructions which were sent by the inhabitants of
Braintree
to its representatives in the Massachusetts legislature, and which
served as a model for other towns to draw up instructions to their
representatives. In August 1765, he anonymously contributed four notable
articles to the
Boston Gazette (republished in
The London Chronicle in 1768 as
True Sentiments of America, also known as
A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law).
In the letter he suggested that there was a connection between the
Protestant ideas that Adams' Puritan ancestors brought to New England
and the ideas behind their resistance to the Stamp Act. In the former he
explained that the opposition of the colonies to the
Stamp Act
was because the Stamp Act deprived the American colonists of two basic
rights guaranteed to all Englishmen, and which all free men deserved:
rights to be taxed only by consent and to be tried only by a jury of
one's peers.
The "
Braintree Instructions"
were a succinct and forthright defense of colonial rights and
liberties, while the Dissertation was an essay in political education.
In December 1765, he delivered a speech before the governor and
council in which he pronounced the Stamp Act invalid on the ground that
Massachusetts, being without representation in Parliament, had not
assented to it.
Boston Massacre
In 1770, a street confrontation resulted in
British soldiers killing five civilians in what became known as the
Boston Massacre.The soldiers involved were arrested on criminal charges. Not
surprisingly, they had trouble finding legal counsel to represent them.
Finally, they asked Adams to defend. He accepted, though he feared it
would hurt his reputation. In their defense, Adams made his now famous
quote regarding making decisions based on the evidence: "Facts are
stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or
the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and
evidence."
Six of the soldiers were acquitted. Two who had fired directly into the
crowd were charged with murder but were convicted only of manslaughter.
Adams was paid eighteen guineas by the British soldiers, or about the
cost of a pair of shoes.
Despite his previous misgivings, Adams was elected to the
Massachusetts General Court (the colonial legislature) in June 1770, while still in preparation for the trial.
Dispute concerning Parliament's authority
In 1772, Massachusetts Governor
Thomas Hutchinson
announced that he and his judges would no longer need their salaries
paid by the Massachusetts legislature, because the Crown would
henceforth assume payment drawn from customs revenues. Boston radicals
protested and asked Adams to explain their objections. In "Two Replies
of the Massachusetts House of Representatives to Governor Hutchinson"
Adams argued that the colonists had never been under the sovereignty of
Parliament. Their original charter was with the person of the king and
their allegiance was only to him. If a workable line could not be drawn
between parliamentary sovereignty and the total independence of the
colonies, he continued, the colonies would have no other choice but to
choose independence.
In
Novanglus; or, A History of the Dispute with America, From Its Origin, in 1754, to the Present Time Adams attacked some essays by
Daniel Leonard that defended Hutchinson's arguments for the absolute authority of Parliament over the colonies. In
Novanglus
Adams gave a point-by-point refutation of Leonard's essays, and then
provided one of the most extensive and learned arguments made by the
colonists against British imperial policy.
It was a systematic attempt by Adams to describe the origins, nature,
and jurisdiction of the unwritten British constitution. Adams used his
wide knowledge of English and colonial legal history to argue that the
provincial legislatures were fully sovereign over their own internal
affairs, and that the colonies were connected to Great Britain only
through the King.
Continental Congress
Massachusetts sent Adams to the first and second
Continental Congresses in 1774 and from 1775 to 1777. In June 1775, with a view of promoting union among the colonies, he nominated
George Washington of Virginia as commander-in-chief of the
army
then assembled around Boston. His influence in Congress was great, and
almost from the beginning, he sought permanent separation from Britain.
Over the next decade, Americans from every state gathered and
deliberated on new governing documents. As radical as it was to write
constitutions (prior tradition suggested that a society's form of
government need not be codified, nor its organic law written down in a
single document), what was equally radical was the revolutionary nature
of American political thought as the summer of 1776 dawned.
Thoughts on Government
Several representatives turned to Adams for advice about framing new
governments. To relieve Adams of the burden of repeatedly writing out
his thoughts,
Richard Henry Lee published one Adams' version, as the pamphlet "
Thoughts on Government" (April 1776), which was subsequently influential in the writing of state constitutions.
Using the conceptual framework of
Republicanism in the United States, the patriots believed it was the corrupt and nefarious aristocrats, in the
British Parliament, and their minions stationed in America, who were guilty of the British assault on American liberty.
Adams advised that the form of government should be chosen to attain
the desired ends, which are the happiness and virtue of the greatest
number of people. With this goal in mind, he wrote in "
Thoughts on Government",
There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the
British constitution is so; because the very definition of a republic is an empire of laws, and not of men.
The treatise also defended
bicameralism, for "
a single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual." He also suggested that there should be a
separation of powers between the
executive, the
judicial, and the
legislative branches, and further recommended that if a continental government were to be formed then it "
should sacredly be confined" to certain
enumerated powers. "
Thoughts on Government" was enormously influential and was referenced as an authority in every state-constitution writing hall.
Declaration of Independence
On May 10, 1776 Adams seconded
Richard Henry Lee's resolution calling on the colonies to adopt new (presumably independent) governments.
Adams then drafted a preamble to this resolution which elaborated on
it, and which congress approved on May 15. The full document was, as
Adams put it, "independence itself" and set the stage for the formal passage of the
Declaration of Independence.
Once the combined document passed in May, independence became
inevitable, though it still had to be declared formally. On June 7,
1776, Adams seconded the
resolution of independence introduced by
Richard Henry Lee
which stated, "These colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and
independent states," and championed the resolution until it was adopted
by Congress on July 2, 1776.
He was appointed to a
committee with
Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin,
Robert R. Livingston and
Roger Sherman,
to draft the Declaration of Independence, which was to be ready when
congress voted on independence. Because the committee left no minutes,
there is some uncertainty about how the drafting process
proceeded—accounts written many years later by Jefferson and Adams,
although frequently cited, are contradictory and not entirely reliable.
What is certain is that the committee, after discussing the general
outline that the document should follow, decided that Jefferson would
write the first draft.
The committee in general, and Jefferson in particular, thought Adams
should write the document, but Adams persuaded the committee to choose
Jefferson and promised to consult with Jefferson personally.
Although the first draft was written primarily by Jefferson, Adams
continued to occupy the foremost place in the debate on its adoption.
After editing the document further, congress approved it on July 4. Many
years later, Jefferson hailed Adams as "the pillar of [the
Declaration's] support on the floor of Congress, its ablest advocate and
defender against the multifarious assaults it encountered."
After the defeat of the
Continental Army at the
Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, Admiral
Lord Richard Howe
requested the Second Continental Congress send representatives in an
attempt to negotiate peace. A delegation including Adams and
Benjamin Franklin met with Howe on
Staten Island on September 11.Both Howe's authority and that of the delegation were limited, and they were unable to find common ground.
When Lord Howe unhappily stated he could only view the American
delegates as British subjects, Adams replied, "Your lordship may
consider me in what light you please, [...] except that of a British
subject."
Lord Howe then addressed the other delegates, stating, "Mr. Adams
appears to be a decided character." Adams learned many years later that
his name was on a list of people specifically excluded from Howe's
pardon-granting authority.
In 1777, Adams began serving as the head of the
Board of War and Ordnance, as well as serving on many other important committees.
In Europe
Congress twice dispatched Adams to represent the fledgling union in
Europe, first in 1777, and again in 1779. He was accompanied, on both
occasions, by his eldest son, John Quincy (who was ten years old at the time of the first voyage).
France
Adams sailed for France aboard the
Continental Navy frigate Boston
on February 15, 1778. The trip through winter storms was treacherous,
with lightning injuring 19 sailors and killing one. Adams' ship was then
pursued by but successfully evaded several British frigates in the
mid-Atlantic. Toward the coast of Spain, Adams himself took up arms to
help capture a heavily armed British merchantman ship, the
Martha. Later, a cannon malfunction killed one and injured five more of Adams' crew before the ship finally arrived in France.
Adams was in some regards an unlikely choice inasmuch as he did not
speak French, the international language of diplomacy at the time.
His first stay in Europe, between April 1, 1778, and June 17, 1779, was
largely unproductive, and he returned to his home in Braintree in early
August 1779.
Between September 1 and October 30, 1779, he drafted the
Massachusetts Constitution together with
Samuel Adams and
James Bowdoin.
He was selected in September 1779 to return to France and, following
the conclusion of the Massachusetts constitutional convention, left on
November 14 aboard the French frigate
Sensible.
On the second trip to Paris, Adams was appointed as
Minister Plenipotentiary
charged with the mission of negotiating a treaty of peace, amity and
commerce with peace commissioners from Britain. The French government,
however, did not approve of Adams' appointment and subsequently, on the
insistence of the French foreign minister, the
Comte de Vergennes,
Benjamin Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson,
John Jay and
Henry Laurens were appointed to cooperate with Adams, although Jefferson did not go to Europe and Laurens was posted to the
Dutch Republic.
In the event Jay, Adams, and Franklin played the major part in the
negotiations. Overruling Franklin and distrustful of Vergennes, Jay and
Adams decided not to consult with France. Instead, they dealt directly
with the British commissioners.
Throughout the negotiations, Adams was especially determined that the
right of the United States to the fisheries along the Atlantic coast
should be recognized. The American negotiators were able to secure a
favorable treaty, which gave Americans ownership of all lands east of
the Mississippi, except
East and
West Florida, which were transferred to Spain. The treaty was signed on November 30, 1782.
Holland
After the peace negotiations began, Adams had spent some time as the
ambassador in the Dutch Republic, then one of the few other Republics in the world (the
Republic of Venice and the
Old Swiss Confederacy
being the other notable ones). In July 1780, he had been authorized to
execute the duties previously assigned to Laurens. With the aid of the
Dutch
Patriot leader
Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol, Adams secured the recognition of the United States as an independent government at
The Hague on April 19, 1782. During this visit, he also negotiated a loan of five million guilders financed by
Nicolaas van Staphorst and
Wilhelm Willink.
In October 1782, he negotiated with the Dutch a treaty of amity and
commerce, the first such treaty between the United States and a foreign
power following the 1778 treaty with France. The house that Adams bought
during this stay in
The Netherlands became the first American-owned embassy on foreign soil anywhere in the world. For two months during 1783, Adams lodged in London with radical publisher
John Stockdale.
In 1784 and 1785, he was one of the architects of far-going trade relations between the
United States and
Prussia. The Prussian ambassador in The Hague,
Friedrich Wilhelm von Thulemeyer, was involved, as were Jefferson and Franklin, who were in Paris.
Britain
In 1785, John Adams was appointed the first American minister to the
Court of St. James's (ambassador to
Great Britain).
In his diary he mentions an exchange between himself and another
ambassador who asked if he had often been in England and if he had
English relations to which Adams explained he had only been to England
once for a two month visit back in 1783 and that he had no relations in
the country. The ambassador asked "None, how can that be? you are of
English extraction?" to which Adams replied "Neither my father or
mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great
grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing
for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you
see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American".
When he was presented to his former sovereign,
George III,
the King intimated that he was aware of Adams' lack of confidence in
the French government. Adams admitted this, stating: "I must avow to
your Majesty that I have no attachment but to my own country."
Queen Elizabeth II of the
United Kingdom referred to this episode on July 7, 1976, at the
White House. She said:
John Adams, America's first ambassador, said to my ancestor, King
George III, that it was his desire to help with the restoration of "the
old good nature and the old good humor between our peoples." That
restoration has long been made, and the links of language, tradition,
and personal contact have maintained it.
While in London, John and Abigail had to suffer the stares and
hostility of the Court, and chose to escape it when they could by
seeking out
Richard Price, minister of
Newington Green Unitarian Church and instigator of the
Revolution Controversy. Both admired Price very much, and Abigail took to heart the teachings of the man and his protegee
Mary Wollstonecraft, author of
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Adams' home in England, a house off London's
Grosvenor Square,
still stands and is commemorated by a plaque. He returned to the United
States in 1788 to continue his domestic political life.
Constitutional ideas
Massachusetts's new constitution,
ratified in 1780 and written largely by Adams himself, structured its
government most closely on his views of politics and society.
It was the first constitution written by a special committee and
ratified by the people. It was also the first to feature a bicameral
legislature, a clear and distinct executive with a partial (two-thirds)
veto (although he was restrained by an executive council), and a
distinct judicial branch.
While in London, Adams published a work entitled
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (1787).In it he repudiated the views of
Turgot
and other European writers as to the viciousness of the framework of
state governments. Turgot argued that countries that lacked
aristocracies needn't have bicameral legislatures. He thought that
republican governments feature "all authorities into one center, that of
the nation."
In the book, Adams suggested that "the rich, the well-born and the
able" should be set apart from other men in a senate—that would prevent
them from dominating the lower house. Wood (2006) has maintained that
Adams had become intellectually irrelevant by the time the Federal
Constitution was ratified. By then, American political thought,
transformed by more than a decade of vigorous and searching debate as
well as shaping experiential pressures, had abandoned the classical
conception of politics which understood government as a mirror of social
estates.
Americans' new conception of
popular sovereignty
now saw the people-at-large as the sole possessors of power in the
realm. All agents of the government enjoyed mere portions of the
people's power and only for a limited time. Adams had completely missed
this concept and revealed his continued attachment to the older version
of politics.Yet Wood overlooks Adams' peculiar definition of the term "republic,"
and his support for a constitution ratified by the people.
He also underplays Adams' belief in checks and balances. "Power must be
opposed to power, and interest to interest," Adams wrote; this
sentiment would later be echoed by
James Madison's famous statement that "[a]mbition must be made to counteract ambition" in
The Federalist No. 51, in explaining the powers of the branches of the
United States federal government under the new
Constitution. Adams did as much as anyone to put the idea of "checks and balances" on the intellectual map.
Adams'
Defence can be read as an articulation of the
classical republican theory of
mixed government.
Adams contended that social classes exist in every political society,
and that a good government must accept that reality. For centuries,
dating back to Aristotle, a mixed regime balancing monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy—that is, the king, the nobles, and the
people—was required to preserve order and liberty.
Adams never bought a slave and declined on principle to employ slave labor.
Abigail Adams opposed slavery and employed free blacks in preference to
her father's two domestic slaves. John Adams spoke out in 1777 against a
bill to emancipate slaves in Massachusetts, saying that the issue was
presently too divisive, and so the legislation should "sleep for a
time." He also was against use of black soldiers in the Revolution, due to opposition from southerners.
Adams generally tried to keep the issue out of national politics, because of the anticipated southern response.Though it is difficult to pinpoint the exact date on which slavery was
abolished in Massachusetts, a common view is that it was abolished no
later than 1780, when it was forbidden by implication in the Declaration
of Rights that John Adams wrote into the Massachusetts Constitution.
Vice Presidency
While Washington won the
presidential election of 1789 with 69 votes in the
electoral college, Adams came in second with 34 votes and became Vice President. According to
David McCullough, what he really might have wanted was to be the first
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
He presided over the Senate but otherwise played a minor role in the
politics of the early 1790s; he was reelected Vice President in
1792. Washington seldom asked Adams for input on policy and legal issues during his tenure as vice president.
In the first year of Washington's administration, Adams became deeply
involved in a month-long Senate controversy over the official title of
the President. Adams favored grandiose titles such as "His Majesty the
President" or "His High Mightiness" over the simple "President of the
United States" that eventually won the debate. The pomposity of his
stance, along with his being overweight, led to Adams earning the
nickname "His Rotundity."
As
president of the Senate, Adams cast 29
tie-breaking votes—a record that only
John C. Calhoun came close to tying, with 28.
His votes protected the president's sole authority over the removal of
appointees and influenced the location of the national capital. On at
least one occasion, he persuaded senators to vote against legislation
that he opposed, and he frequently lectured the Senate on procedural and
policy matters. Adams' political views and his active role in the
Senate made him a natural target for critics of the
Washington
administration. Toward the end of his first term, as a result of a
threatened resolution that would have silenced him except for procedural
and policy matters, he began to exercise more restraint. When the two
political parties formed, he joined the
Federalist Party, but never got on well with its dominant leader
Alexander Hamilton. Because of Adams' seniority and the need for a northern president, he was elected as the Federalist nominee for president in
1796, over
Thomas Jefferson, the leader of the opposition
Democratic-Republican Party. His success was due to peace and prosperity; Washington and Hamilton had averted war with Britain with the
Jay Treaty of 1795.
Adams' two terms as Vice President were frustrating experiences for a
man of his vigor, intellect, and vanity. He complained to his wife
Abigail, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most
insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his
imagination conceived."
Election of 1796
The 1796 election was the first contested election under the
First Party System. Adams was the presidential candidate of the
Federalist Party and
Thomas Pinckney, the
Governor of
South Carolina,
was also running as a Federalist (at this point, the vice president was
whoever came in second, so no running mates existed in the modern
sense). The Federalists wanted Adams as their presidential candidate to
crush Thomas Jefferson's bid. Most Federalists would have preferred
Hamilton to be a candidate. Although Hamilton and his followers
supported Adams, they also held a grudge against him. They did consider
him to be the lesser of the two evils. However, they thought Adams
lacked the seriousness and popularity that had caused Washington to be
successful and feared that Adams was too vain, opinionated,
unpredictable, and stubborn to follow their directions.
Adams' opponents were former
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson of
Virginia, who was joined by
Senator Aaron Burr of
New York on the
Democratic-Republican ticket.
As was customary, Adams stayed in his home town of
Quincy rather than actively campaign for the Presidency. He wanted to stay out of what he called the silly and wicked game. His
party, however, campaigned for him, while the
Democratic-Republicans campaigned for Jefferson.
It was expected that Adams would dominate the votes in New England,
while Jefferson was expected to win in the Southern states. In the end,
Adams won the election by a narrow margin of 71 electoral votes to 68
for Jefferson (who became the vice president).
Presidency: 1797–1801
As President, Adams followed Washington's lead in making the presidency the example of republican values, and stressing
civic virtue;
he was never implicated in any scandal. Adams continued not just the
Washington cabinet but all the major programs of the Washington
Administration as well. Adams continued to strengthen the central
government, in particular by expanding the navy and army. His economic
programs were a continuation of those of Hamilton, who regularly
consulted with key cabinet members, especially the powerful Secretary of
the Treasury,
Oliver Wolcott, Jr.
Historians debate his decision to keep the Washington cabinet. Though
they were very close to Hamilton, their retention ensured a smoother
succession.
He remained quite independent of his cabinet throughout his term, often
making decisions despite strong opposition from it. It was out of this
management style that he avoided war with France, despite a strong
desire among his cabinet secretaries for war. The
Quasi-War with France resulted in the
disentanglement with European affairs that Washington had sought. It also, like
other conflicts, had enormous psychological benefits, as America saw itself as holding its own against a European power.
Historian George Herring argues that Adams was the most independent-minded of all the founders.
Though he aligned with the Federalists, he was more his own party,
disagreeing with the Federalists almost as much as he did the
Democratic-Republican opposition.
Though often described as "prickly", his independence meant that he had
a talent for making good decisions in the face of almost universal
hostility. Indeed, it was Adams' decision to push for peace with France, rather than to continue hostilities, that hurt his popularity.
Though this decision played an important role in his reelection defeat,
he was ultimately thrilled with that decision, so much so that he had
it engraved on his tombstone.
Adams spent much of his term at his home in Massachusetts, ignoring the
details of political patronage that were not ignored by others. Adams'
combative spirit did not always lend itself to presidential decorum, as
Adams himself admitted in his old age: "[As president] I refused to
suffer in silence. I sighed, sobbed, and groaned, and sometimes
screeched and screamed. And I must confess to my shame and sorrow that I
sometimes swore."
Quasi-War and peace with France
John Adams said, in a letter to James Lloyd, January 1815, of peace:
"I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: Here lies
John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with
France in the year 1800."
Adams' term was marked by intense disputes over foreign policy, in particular a desire to stay out of the
expanding conflict in Europe.
Britain and France were at war; Hamilton and the Federalists favored Britain, while Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans favored France.
The French wanted Jefferson to be elected president, and when he wasn't, they became even more belligerent. When Adams
entered office,
he realized that he needed to continue Washington's policy of staying
out of the European war. Indeed, the intense battle over the
Jay Treaty in 1795 permanently polarized politics up and down the nation, marking the start of the
First Party System.
The French saw America as Britain's junior partner and began seizing
American merchant ships that were trading with the British. Americans
remained pro-French, due to France's assistance during the
Revolutionary War. Because of this, Americans wouldn't rally behind Adams, nor anyone else, to stop France.
That problem ended with the
XYZ Affair,
in which the French demanded huge bribes before any discussions could
begin. Before this event, Americans mostly supported France, but after
the event, most opposed France. The Jeffersonians, who were friends to
France, were embarrassed and quickly became the minority as Americans
began to demand full scale war. Adams and his advisers knew that America
would be unable to win such a conflict, as France at the time was
successfully fighting much of Europe. Instead, Adams pursued a strategy
whereby American ships would harass French ships in an effort to stop
the French assaults on American interests. This was the undeclared naval
war between the U.S. and France, called the
Quasi-War,
which broke out in 1798.
There was danger of invasion from the much
larger and more powerful French forces, so Adams and the Federalist
congress built up the
army,
bringing back Washington at its head. Washington wanted Hamilton to be
his second-in-command and, given Washington's fame, Adams reluctantly
gave in. Given Washington's age, as everyone knew, Hamilton was truly in charge. Adams rebuilt the Navy, adding
six fast, powerful frigates, most notably the
USS Constitution. To pay for the new Army and Navy, Congress imposed new taxes on property: the Direct Tax of 1798.
It was the first (and last) such federal tax. Taxpayers were angry,
nowhere more so than in southeast Pennsylvania, where the bloodless
Fries's Rebellion
broke out among rural German-speaking farmers who protested what they
saw as a threat to their republican liberties and to their churches.
Hamilton assumed a high degree of control over the War department,
and the rift between Adams and Hamilton's supporters grew wider. They
acted as though Hamilton were president by demanding that he control the
army. They also refused to recognize the necessity of giving prominent
Democratic-Republicans positions in the army, which Adams wanted to do
in order to gain Democratic-Republican support. By building a large
standing army,
Hamilton's supporters raised popular alarms and played into the hands
of the Democratic-Republicans. They also alienated Adams and his large
personal following. They shortsightedly viewed the Federalist party as
their own tool and ignored the need to pull together the entire nation
in the face of war with France.
Overall, however, due to patriotism and a series of naval victories,
the war remained popular and Adams' popularity remained high.
Adams knew victory in an all out war against imperial France would be
impossible, so despite the threats to his popularity, he sought peace.
In February 1799, he stunned the country by sending diplomat
William Vans Murray on a peace mission to France.
Napoleon, realizing that the conflict was pointless, signaled his readiness for friendly relations. At the
Convention of 1800 the
Treaty of Alliance of 1778
was superseded and the United States could now be free of foreign
entanglements, as Washington advised in his farewell address. He brought
in
John Marshall as Secretary of State and demobilized the emergency army.
Adams avoided war, but deeply split his own party in the process. As he
suspected would happen, peace hurt his popularity. Nevertheless, Adams
was extremely proud of having kept the nation out of war; later in life
he even asked that his tombstone read "Here lies John Adams, who took
upon himself the responsibility of Peace with France in the year 1800."
Alien and Sedition Acts
Though the Democratic-Republicans were discredited by the
XYZ Affair, their opposition to the Federalists remained high. In an environment of war, and with recent memories of the
reign of terror during the
French Revolution,
nerves remained explosive. Democratic-Republicans had supported France,
and some even seemed to want an event similar to the French Revolution
to come to America to overthrow the Federalists.
When Democratic-Republicans in some states refused to enforce federal
laws, and even threatened possible rebellion, some Federalists
threatened to send in an army and force them to capitulate.
As the paranoia sweeping Europe was bleeding over into America, calls
for secession reached unparalleled heights, and America seemed ready to
rip itself apart.
Some of this was seen by Federalists as having been caused by French
and French-sympathizing immigrants. Federalists in Congress therefore
passed the
Alien and Sedition Acts, which were signed by Adams in 1798.
There were four separate acts, the
Naturalization Act,
the Alien Act, the Alien Enemies Act, and the Sedition Act. These four
acts were passed to cool down the opposition by stopping their most
extreme firebrands. The Naturalization Act changed the period of
residence required before an immigrant could attain American citizenship
to 14 years (naturalized citizens tended to vote for the
Democratic-Republicans). The Alien Friends Act and the Alien Enemies Act
allowed the president to deport any foreigner he thought dangerous to
the country. The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish "false,
scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its
officials. Punishments included 2–5 years in prison and fines of up to
$5,000. Although Adams had not originated or promoted any of these acts,
he nevertheless signed them into law.
Those acts, and the high-profile prosecution of a number of newspaper
editors and one member of Congress by the Federalists, became highly
controversial. Some historians have noted that the Alien and Sedition
Acts were relatively rarely enforced, as only 10 convictions under the
Sedition Act have been identified and as Adams never signed a
deportation order, and that the furor over the Alien and Sedition Acts
was mainly stirred up by the Democratic-Republicans. However, other
historians emphasize that the Acts were highly controversial from the
outset, resulting in many aliens leaving the country voluntarily, and
created an atmosphere where opposing the Federalists, even on the floor
of Congress, could and did result in prosecution. The election of 1800
became a bitter and volatile battle, with each side expressing
extraordinary fear of the other party and its policies. After Democratic-Republicans won in 1800, they used the acts against Federalists before the acts finally expired.
Reelection campaign 1800
The death of Washington, in 1799, weakened the Federalists, as they
lost the one man who symbolized and united the party. In the
presidential election of 1800, Adams and his fellow Federalist candidate,
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,
went against the Republican duo of Jefferson and Burr. Hamilton tried
his hardest to sabotage Adams' campaign in the hope of boosting
Pinckney's chances of winning the presidency. In the end, Adams lost
narrowly to Jefferson by 65 to 73 electoral votes, with New York casting
the decisive vote.
Adams was defeated because of better organization by the Republicans
and Federalist disunity; by the controversy of the Alien and Sedition
Acts, the popularity of Jefferson in the south, and the effective
politicking of
Aaron Burr in
New York State,
where the legislature (which selected the electoral college) shifted
from Federalist to Democratic-Republican on the basis of a few wards in
New York City controlled by Burr's machine.
Ultimately, however, Jefferson owed his election victory to the South's
inflated number of Electors, which counted slaves under the
three-fifths compromise.
In the closing months of his term Adams became the first president to occupy the new, but unfinished
President's Mansion (later known as the White House), beginning November 1, 1800.
Midnight Judges
The lame-duck session of Congress enacted the Judiciary Act of 1801,
which created a set of federal appeals courts between the district
courts and the Supreme Court. The purpose of the statute was
twofold—first, to remedy the defects in the federal judicial system
inherent in the
Judiciary Act of 1789,
and, second, to enable the defeated Federalists to staff the new
judicial offices with loyal Federalists in the face of the party's
defeat in presidential and congressional elections in 1800.
As his term was expiring, Adams filled the vacancies created by this
statute by appointing a series of judges, whom his opponents called the "
Midnight Judges"
because most of them were formally appointed days before the
presidential term expired. Most of these judges lost their posts when
the Jeffersonian Republicans enacted the Judiciary Act of 1802,
abolishing the courts created by the Judiciary Act of 1801 and returning
the structure of the federal courts to its original structure as
specified in the 1789 statute.
One of Adams' greatest legacies was his
naming of
John Marshall as the fourth
Chief Justice of the United States to succeed
Oliver Ellsworth,
who had retired due to ill health. Marshall's long tenure represents
the most lasting influence of the Federalists, as Marshall infused the
Constitution with a judicious and carefully reasoned nationalistic
interpretation and established the Judicial Branch as the equal of the
Executive and Legislative branches.
After his presidency
Following his 1800 defeat, Adams retired into private life. Depressed
when he left office, he did not attend Jefferson's inauguration, making
him one of only four surviving presidents (i.e., those who did not die
in office) not to attend his successor's inauguration. Interestingly,
one of the other three was his son,
John Quincy Adams.
Adams' correspondence with Jefferson at the time of the transition
suggests that he did not feel the animosity or resentment that later
scholars have attributed to him. He left Washington before Jefferson's
inauguration as much out of sorrow at the death of his son Charles Adams
(due in part to the younger man's alcoholism) and his desire to rejoin
his wife Abigail, who had left for Massachusetts months before the
inauguration. Adams resumed farming at his home,
Peacefield,
in the town of Quincy (formerly a part of the town of Braintree, as it
was earlier in his life).
He began to work on an autobiography (which he
never finished), and resumed correspondence with such old friends as
Benjamin Waterhouse and
Benjamin Rush. He also began a bitter and resentful correspondence with an old family friend,
Mercy Otis Warren,
protesting how in her 1805 history of the American Revolution she had,
in his view, caricatured his political beliefs and misrepresented his
services to the country. Primarily, this revolved around a dispute about
whether Adams was sufficiently republican in Warren's view, instead of
monarchical, and was related to the Federalist/Republican political
divide.
After Jefferson's retirement from public life in 1809 after two terms
as President, Adams became more vocal. For three years he published a
stream of letters in the
Boston Patriot newspaper,
presenting a long and almost line-by-line refutation of an 1800
pamphlet by Hamilton attacking his conduct and character. Though
Hamilton had died in 1804 from a mortal wound sustained in his notorious
duel with
Aaron Burr, Adams felt the need to vindicate his character against the New Yorker's vehement attacks.
Correspondence with Jefferson
In early 1812, Adams reconciled with Jefferson. Their mutual friend
Benjamin Rush, a fellow signer of the
Declaration of Independence
who had been corresponding with both, encouraged each man to reach out
to the other. On New Year's Day 1812, Adams sent a brief, friendly note
to Jefferson to accompany the delivery of "two pieces of homespun," a
two-volume collection of lectures on rhetoric by
John Quincy Adams.
Jefferson replied immediately with a warm, friendly letter, and the two
men revived their friendship, which they conducted by mail. The
correspondence that they resumed in 1812 lasted the rest of their lives,
and thereafter has been hailed as one of their greatest legacies and a
monument of American literature.
John Adams was nearly 89 when, at the request of his son, John Quincy Adams, he posed a final time for
Gilbert Stuart (1823).
Their letters are rich in insight into both the period and the minds
of the two Presidents and revolutionary leaders. Their correspondence
lasted fourteen years, and consisted of 158 letters.
It was in these years that the two men discussed "natural aristocracy."
Jefferson said, "The natural aristocracy I consider as the most
precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government
of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to
have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue
and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of society. May we not even say
that the form of government is best which provides most effectually for
a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of
government?"
Adams wondered if it ever would be so clear who these people were,
"Your distinction between natural and artificial aristocracy does not
appear to me well founded. Birth and wealth are conferred on some men as
imperiously by nature, as genius, strength, or beauty. . . . When
aristocracies are established by human laws and honour, wealth, and
power are made hereditary by municipal laws and political institutions,
then I acknowledge artificial aristocracy to commence."
It would always be true, Adams argued, that fate would bestow influence
on some men for reasons other than true wisdom and virtue. That being
the way of nature, he thought such "talents" were natural. A good
government, therefore, had to account for that reality.
Family life
Sixteen months before John Adams' death, his son,
John Quincy Adams, became the sixth President of the United States (1825–1829), the only son of a former President to hold the office until
George W. Bush in 2001.
Adams' daughter
Abigail ("Nabby") was married to
Representative William Stephens Smith,
but she returned to her parents' home after the failure of her
marriage. She died of breast cancer in 1813. His son Charles died as an
alcoholic in 1800. Abigail, his wife, died of
typhoid
on October 28, 1818. His son Thomas and his family lived with Adams and
Louisa Smith (Abigail's niece by her brother William) to the end of
Adams' life.
[99]
Death
Less than a month before his death, John Adams issued a statement
about the destiny of the United States, which historians such as
Joy Hakim have characterized as a "warning" for his fellow citizens. Adams said:
My best wishes, in the joys, and festivities, and the solemn services
of that day on which will be completed the fiftieth year from its
birth, of the independence of the United States: a memorable epoch in
the annals of the human race, destined in future history to form the
brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or the abuse of
those political institutions by which they shall, in time to come, be
shaped by the human mind.
On July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the
Declaration of Independence, Adams died at his home in Quincy. Told that
it was the Fourth, he answered clearly, "It is a great day. It is a
good
day." His last words have been reported as "Thomas Jefferson survives"
(Jefferson himself, however, had died hours before he did). His death
left
Charles Carroll of Carrollton as the last surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams died while his son
John Quincy Adams was president.
His crypt lies at
United First Parish Church (also known as the
Church of the Presidents) in Quincy. Originally, he was buried in
Hancock Cemetery, across the road from the Church. Until his record was broken by
Ronald Reagan in 2001, he was the nation's longest-living President (90 years, 247 days) maintaining that record for 175 years.
Religious views
Adams was raised a
Congregationalist,
since his ancestors were puritans. According to his biographer David
McCullough, "as his family and friends knew, Adams was both a devout
Christian, and an independent thinker".
In a letter to Benjamin Rush, Adams credited religion with the success
of his ancestors since their migration to the New World in the 1630s. Adams was educated at Harvard when the influence of
deism was growing there, and sometimes used deistic terms in his speeches and writing.
He also believed that regular church service was beneficial to man's
moral sense. Everett (1966) concludes that "Adams strove for a religion
based on a common sense sort of reasonableness" and maintained that
religion must change and evolve toward perfection.
Fielding (1940) argues that Adams' beliefs synthesized Puritan, deist, and
humanist concepts. Adams at one point said that Christianity had originally been
revelatory, but was being misinterpreted and misused in the service of superstition, fraud, and unscrupulous power.
Goff (1993) acknowledges Fielding's "persuasive argument that Adams
never was a deist because he allowed the suspension of the laws of
nature and believed that evil was internal, not the result of external
institutions."
Frazer (2004) notes that, while Adams shared many perspectives with
deists, "Adams clearly was not a deist. Deism rejected any and all
supernatural activity and intervention by God; consequently, deists did
not believe in miracles or God's providence....Adams, however, did
believe in miracles, providence, and, to a certain extent, the Bible as
revelation."
Fraser argues that Adams' "theistic rationalism, like that of the other
Founders, was a sort of middle ground between Protestantism and deism."
By contrast, David L. Holmes has argued that John Adams, beginning as a
Congregationalist, ended his days as a Christian Unitarian, accepting
central tenets of the Unitarian creed but also accepting Jesus as the
redeemer of humanity and the biblical account of his miracles as true.
In common with many of his Protestant contemporaries, Adams criticized
the claims to universal authority made by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1796, Adams denounced political opponent
Thomas Paine's criticisms of Christianity in his Deist book
The Age of Reason,
saying, "The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever
prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom,
virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard Paine say what he
will."
Biographies
The first notable biography of John Adams appeared as the first two volumes of
The Works of John Adams, Esq., Second President of the United States,
edited by Charles Francis Adams and published between 1850 and 1856 by
Charles C. Little and James Brown in Boston. This biography's first
seven chapters were the work of
John Quincy Adams, but the rest of the biography was the work of
Charles Francis Adams.
The first modern biography was
Honest John Adams, a 1933
biography by the noted French specialist in American history Gilbert
Chinard, who came to Adams after writing his acclaimed 1929 biography of
Thomas Jefferson.
For a generation, Chinard's work was regarded as the best life of
Adams, and it is still a key factor in determining the themes of Adams
biographical and historical scholarship. Following the opening of the
Adams family papers in the 1950s,
Page Smith published the first major biography to use these previously inaccessible primary sources; his biography won a 1962
Bancroft Prize but was criticized for its scanting of Adams' intellectual life and its diffuseness. In 1975,
Peter Shaw published
The Character of John Adams, a thematic biography noted for its graceful prose and its psychological insight into Adams' life. The 1992 character study by
Joseph J. Ellis,
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams,
was Ellis's first major publishing success and remains one of the most
useful and insightful studies of Adams' personality. In 1993, the
Revolutionary War historian and biographer
John E. Ferling published his acclaimed
John Adams, also noted for its psychological sensitivity; many scholars regard it as the best biography to date.
In 2001, the popular historian
David McCullough
published a large biography of John Adams that won various awards and
general acclaim. McCullough's biography was developed into a 2008
TV miniseries, in which
Paul Giamatti portrayed John Adams. Finance writer
James Grant published
John Adams, Party of One in 2005.
