That spring of 1800, the notorious James Callender reemerged, determined to defeat “the wretch” Adams, elect his patron Jefferson, and make himself a martyr. Matthew Lyon, after being sentenced to four months in a foul Vermont jail, had become a national hero and was overwhelmingly reelected to Congress.
Callender, who had quit Philadelphia, was now working as a Republican propagandist in Richmond, Virginia, with the encouragement and financial support of Jefferson, who, at the same time, was actively distributing a variety of campaign propaganda throughout the country, always careful to conceal his involvement. “Do not let my name be connected with the business,” he advised James Monroe. That Adams was never known to be involved in such activity struck some as a sign of how naïve and behind the times he was.
In the Richmond Examiner, where he praised Jefferson as “an ornament to human nature,” Callender assaulted Adams in a series of essays that would soon appear as a book titled The Prospect Before Us. It was the first salvo of the election and a clear sign of the sort of contest it would become.
Not satisfied that the old charges of monarchist and warmonger were sufficient, Callender called Adams a “repulsive pedant,” a “gross hypocrite,” and “in his private life, one of the most egregious fools upon the continent.” Adams was “that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness,” a “hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
“The reign of Mr. Adams,” said Callender, “has hitherto been one continued tempest of malignant passions.” Once, according to Callender, Adams had become so enraged, he tore his wig off, threw it to the floor, and stomped on it. By what “species of madness” had America submitted to accept such a man as president?
The historian will search for those occult causes that induced her to exalt an individual who has neither that innocence of sensibility which incites it to love, nor that omnipotence of intellect which commands us to admire. He will ask why the United States degrades themselves to the choice of a wretch whose soul came blasted from the hand of nature, of a wretch that has neither the science of a magistrate, the politeness of a courtier, nor the courage of a man?
Adams’s sole objective was to make war on France, Callender asserted. The choice was clear — Adams and war, or Jefferson and peace.
To all this Jefferson gave his approval. Having seen the proof sheets of the new volume, he assured Callender, “Such papers cannot fail to produce the best effects.”
To no one’s surprise Callender was promptly arrested for inciting the American people against their President. In May he went on trial in a federal court in Richmond where the jury returned a verdict of guilty and he was sentenced to nine months in jail. But as he and Jefferson expected, it was another victory for the Republicans, just as Matthew Lyon’s conviction had been.
Adams’s far greater concern, meanwhile, was his cabinet. Particularly in his dealings with Pickering and McHenry, tension had been building for months, Adams feeling ever more isolated and certain that their first loyalty was to Hamilton, not him. Reports of ill will within the executive departments appeared in the papers. Adams and Pickering were said to “hate each other with the utmost cordiality.”
The long-overdue showdown came after the Republicans defeated the Federalists in the election of the New York legislature, a crucial election in that it would determine New York’s electoral vote for President. It was as if all Adams’s troubles, all the pent-up anger and frustration he had had in his dealings with the cabinet, let go in a furious outburst at James McHenry, an incompetent but affable man whom Adams rather liked.
On the evening of May 5, Adams summoned McHenry to the presidential mansion to discuss the appointment of a minor federal official. The discussion was quickly concluded and McHenry was about to leave when something he said, or the way he said it, started Adams on the subject of Hamilton and the loss of the New York election. Adams charged McHenry with working secretly with Hamilton to undercut the administration. When McHenry protested, Adams cut him off, saying, “I know it, sir, to be so.” Hamilton, said Adams, seething with anger, was an “intrigant . . . a man devoid of every moral principle, a bastard . . . a foreigner.” Then Adams let fly with what to any faithful Hamiltonian was the ultimate insult. Jefferson, Adams declared, was a better man, “a wiser one,” than Hamilton, and, furthermore, Jefferson would make a better president.
How could McHenry and Pickering presume to know what to do in matters of foreign affairs, Adams went on. How dare they try to suspend the mission to France! And why had he been given no warning that Hamilton would turn up at Trenton? Adams charged McHenry with inept management, of failing to clothe the troops adequately. “You cannot, sir, remain longer in office,” Adams declared at last.
But then, when McHenry agreed to resign, Adams, his fury spent, said almost in apology he had always considered McHenry a man of understanding and integrity.
McHenry immediately wrote his own account of the scene, copies of which he sent to both Adams and Hamilton. Writing to explain his dismissal to a nephew, McHenry portrayed Adams as “actually insane.”
While Adams’s outbursts of temper could be explosive, they never happened in public, always in private confrontations. It was then that “he would give to his language the full impress of his vehement will.” But never until now was he known to have berated a subordinate, and his regret over the outburst was considerable.
Still, nothing he had said was untrue, nor was his anger without justification. In firing McHenry he had done what he should have done well before this. After a pause of a few days — possibly to cool down — he fired Pickering.
This time there was no unpleasant confrontation. On May 10, in customary fashion, Adams asked for Pickering’s resignation by letter. Almost inconceivably, Pickering refused to comply. In a written response of May 12, he said he did not feel it his duty to resign, and implied that he needed the government salary to subsist. Adams discharged him at once and the same day named as his new Secretary of War, Senator Samuel Dexter of Massachusetts, and as Secretary of State, John Marshall, who was now a member of the House of Representatives.
Why Adams failed to discharge Oliver Wolcott while cleaning house was never adequately explained. Though Wolcott had been quite as duplicitous and disloyal to Adams as either McHenry or Pickering, he somehow succeeded in winning Adams’s trust and would continue as Secretary of the Treasury.
Hearing of the dismissals, Alexander Hamilton quickly asked Pickering to search the files at the Department of State for “copies of extracts of all such documents as will enable you to explain both Jefferson and Adams.” The time had come, Hamilton said, when “men of real integrity” must unite against all charlatans.
THE REMOVAL of the government from Philadelphia to the new Federal City by the Potomac was scheduled to take place in June. The President was to go there himself for a first look as soon as he could get away. But two critical issues required decisions in the weeks that remained — what to do about the temporary army and what to do about three Pennsylvania German farmers who had been sentenced to hang for treason.
The fate of the now useless and unpopular army was settled with remarkably little fuss, showing how greatly times had changed. Adams declared that were it left to him the army “should not exist a fortnight.” Both Federalists and Republicans in Congress, seeing no reason why Adams should get the credit, voted to disband the army by summer. Had Hamilton been given free reign with the army, Adams would remark, it would have required a second army to disband the first one.
The fate of the condemned men, however, was left to Adams alone.
In southeastern Pennsylvania the previous year there had been an armed uprising by German (Pennsylvania Dutch) farmers angry over the federal tax on land and the high-handed ways of the federal tax collectors. The “rebellion” had died down by the time state and federal troops arrived, but its leader, John Fries, a
nd two others were taken captive and tried in federal court. Found guilty of treason and sentenced to hang, they had appealed to the President for a pardon.
Adams had been initially incensed at the news of the rebellion — it was he who had ordered the federal troops to the scene — but had since insisted on making his own study of the case. “The issue of this investigation,” he wrote, “has opened a train of very serious contemplations to me, which will require the closest attention of my best understanding, and will prove a severe trial to my heart.” Again he asked for the opinions of his cabinet officers, all of whom recommended that, to set an example, the sentence should be carried out.
Capital punishment was part of life. Nor was Adams opposed to it. As President, he had signed death warrants for military deserters. Secretary of State Pickering, in giving his opinion, was, like the others, only expressing what he viewed as a duty of office. “Painful as is the idea of taking the life of a man,” Pickering wrote, “I feel a calm and solid satisfaction that an opportunity is now presented in executing the justice of the law, to crush that spirit, which, if not overthrown and destroyed, may proceed in its career and overturn the government.”
It was what Adams himself might have written earlier. But with his review completed, Adams saw that he had been mistaken. Fries, it was his judgment, had led a riot, not an insurrection, and was therefore not guilty of treason. Rejecting the verdict of the jury and the unanimous opinion of his cabinet, Adams pardoned Fries and the two others, never doubting he had done the right thing. And though the decision aggravated still further the already infuriated Hamiltonians, who saw it as still one more example of Adams’s weakness and capriciousness, much of the electorate approved, and especially in Pennsylvania.
IF THE PRESIDENT and his wife had misgivings about vacating Philadelphia and the great brick mansion on Market Street, if they were at all saddened by the prospect, such feelings went unrecorded. In her last letters to Mary Cranch before leaving, Abigail wrote mainly of the lovely spring weather — “as luxuriant a season as I ever knew” — and the arrangements to be made for a final dinner party.
She started for Quincy on May 19. The President departed for Washington on May 27, heading southwest in his coach-and-four accompanied by Billy Shaw, and escorted by the ever-faithful John Briesler on horseback. For miles through Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, where well-tended farms were burgeoning with crops in the “luxuriant” season, Adams delighted in the scenery. At Lancaster and later at Frederick, Maryland, he spoke before public gatherings, and was warmly received, as he was at other towns along the way, enjoying what, in that day and age, passed for campaigning. Such were the tributes and entertainments in his honor en route, it was not until June 3 that he reached the boundary line of the ten-mile square of the District of Columbia.
GIVEN WHAT there was to see, Adams might have been terribly disappointed by the Federal City. He could rightfully have fumed over the heat, the mosquitoes, the squalid shacks of the work crews; or the projected cost of the project; or the questionable real estate ventures that had failed year after year, despite so many grand promises. Another nephew, William Cranch, had become involved in one such scheme and gone bankrupt. Being that it was his first foray into the South, Adams might have been disturbed by the sight of slaves at work.
For all the talk, there was no city as yet, only a rather shabby village and great stretches of tree stumps, stubble, and swamp. There were no schools, not a single church. Capitol Hill comprised a few stores, a few nondescript hotels and boardinghouses clustered near a half-finished sandstone Capitol. To accommodate the different departments of the government, only one structure had been completed, the Treasury, a plain two-story brick building a mile to the west of the Capitol, next door to the new President’s House, which was still a long way from being ready.
Oliver Wolcott, in a letter to his wife, described the Capitol and the President’s House as “magnificent,” yet was astounded at how much had still to be done.
I cannot but consider our Presidents as very unfortunate men if they must live in this dwelling. It must be cold and damp in winter. . . . It was built to be looked at by visitors and strangers, and will render its occupants an object of ridicule with some and pity with others.
Dr. William Thornton, a commissioner of the District and architect of the Capitol, spoke confidently of a population in Washington of 160,000 people within a few years. To Wolcott, as to many, it seemed no one in Washington knew what he was talking about. In fact, it would be nearly eighty years before the city had such a population.
Adams, with his memories of Paris and London, with his fondness for Philadelphia and his belief that the capital of a great nation ought to be a great city, could have been appalled by the whole place and seen it as a colossal blunder. He could have dismissed it as Jefferson’s city, Jefferson having devoted more time and thought to the project than anyone in government. Everything considered, there was almost no reason for Adams to have liked anything about it.
Yet by all signs he was quite pleased. “I like the seat of government very well,” he wrote Abigail. He stayed ten days, lodging at Tunnicliffe’s City Hotel, near the Capitol. He was joined by his new appointments, Secretary of State Marshall and Secretary of War Dexter, who with the rest of the executive branch had made the move from Philadelphia, along with the complete files of the President and the departments shipped in eight packing cases.
Adams made a brief inspection of the new President’s House. Once, when asked by Washington how he thought a President ought to live — in what manner and style — Adams had said it should be in a fairly grand way. And though he had said nothing specific about the sort of house a President should have, this under construction seems to have met his approval. He imagined himself asleep there, or lying awake, he told Abigail, but referred only to the coming winter, not the next four years.
He enjoyed most of all his visits to Mount Vernon to call on Martha Washington, and to Alexandria, where he was acclaimed by the townspeople and given a dinner in his honor at the home of Attorney General Lee, the net effect of which was to make him extremely homesick.
“Oh! That I could have a home!” He felt he had been forever on the move, on the road. “Rolling, rolling, rolling, till I am very nearly rolling into the bosom of Mother Earth.”
By first light, June 14, he was rolling north to Quincy, leaving John Marshall to manage in his absence.
V
IN THE SUMMER and fall of 1800 the question of who was to lead the nation rapidly became a contest of personal vilification surpassing any presidential election in American history. The spirit of party had taken hold with a vengeance, and whether Adams or Jefferson was the most abused would be hard to say. In Federalist pamphlets and newspapers, Jefferson was decried as a hopeless visionary, a weakling, an intriguer intoxicated with French philosophy, more a Frenchman than an American, and therefore a bad man. He was accused of favoring states’ rights over the Union, charged with infidelity to the Constitution, called a spendthrift and libertine.
One New York paper assured its readers that a Jefferson victory would mean civil war. Hordes of Frenchmen and Irishmen, “the refuse of Europe,” would flood the country and threaten the life of “all who love order, peace, virtue, and religion.” It was said Jefferson had swindled clients as a young lawyer. The old smear of cowardice during his time as governor of Virginia was revived. But most amplified were charges of atheism. Not only was Jefferson a godless man, but one who mocked the Christian faith. In New England word went out that family Bibles would have to be hidden away for safekeeping, were he elected. So widespread and pervasive was such propaganda that even Martha Washington, who may have been smarting still from the “Mazzei Letter,” remarked to a visiting clergyman that she thought Jefferson “one of the most detestable of mankind.”
Stories were spread of personal immorality. It was now that a whispering campaign began to the effect that all southern slave masters were known to coha
bit with slave women and that the Sage of Monticello was no exception.
Adams was inevitably excoriated as a monarchist, more British than American, and therefore a bad man. He was ridiculed as old, addled, and toothless. Timothy Pickering spread the rumor that to secure his reelection Adams had struck a corrupt bargain with the Republicans. According to another story, this secret arrangement was with Jefferson himself — Adams was to throw the election Jefferson’s way and serve as Jefferson’s vice president.
If Jefferson carried on with slave women, Adams, according to one story in circulation, had ordered Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to London to procure four pretty mistresses to divide between them. When the story reached Adams, he was highly amused. “I do declare upon my honor,” he wrote William Tudor, “if this is true General Pinckney has kept them all for himself and cheated me out of my two.”
Most vicious were the charges that Adams was insane. Thus, if Jefferson was a Jacobin, a shameless southern libertine, and a “howling” atheist, Adams was a Tory, a vain Yankee scold, and, if truth be known, “quite mad.”
But the great difference in the attacks on Adams in this election was that they came from Republicans and High Federalists alike. While the Republicans assaulted him as a warmonger, he was berated by the High Federalists as fainthearted in the face of the French. While one side belittled him as a creature of the Hamiltonians, the other scorned him as a friend of Elbridge Gerry.
Jefferson in his four years as Vice President had so effectively separated himself from Adams and the administration that he could be held accountable for nothing that had disappointed, displeased, or infuriated anyone, whereas Adams was held forever accountable for the new taxes, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the standing army, and a host of other “menaces,” as said Philadelphia’s Aurora.
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