There were, as well, striking ironies. Jefferson, the Virginia aristocrat and slave master who lived in a style fit for a prince, as removed from his fellow citizens and their lives as it was possible to be, was hailed as the apostle of liberty, the “Man of the People.” Adams, the farmer’s son who despised slavery and practiced the kind of personal economy and plain living commonly upheld as the American way, was scorned as an aristocrat who, if he could, would enslave the common people. “My countrymen!” exclaimed William Duane in the Aurora in his crusade for Jefferson, “If you have not virtue enough to stem the current, determine to be slaves at once.”
For Adams, abuse from the Jefferson Republicans was an old story. It was to be expected. Far more hurtful were the personal attacks from the Hamilton Federalists.
When Oliver Wolcott wrote from his office in Washington to tell Fisher Ames of Massachusetts that he would work to defeat Adams and that between Adams and Jefferson there was scarcely a difference, that one would be as disastrous as the other, he was only expressing what many Hamilton Federalists had concluded, taking their cue from their leader. For again as in 1788 and 1796, Hamilton was throwing his weight into the contest to tip the balance against Adams, except this time there was no pretense of secrecy.
As early as May, Hamilton had launched a letter campaign to his High Federalist coterie declaring Adams unfit and incapable as President, a man whose defects of character were guaranteed to bring certain ruin to the party. “If we must have an enemy at the head of the government, let it be one whom we can oppose . . . who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures.”
On a tour of New England, ostensibly to bid farewell to his army before it disbanded, Hamilton spent as much time as possible among local Federalist leaders to whom he spread the same charge against Adams. Hamilton’s scheme was to make Charles Cotesworth Pinckney President.
Reports of Hamilton’s activities inevitably reached Quincy. “It was soon understood that . . . his visit was merely an electioneering business, to feel the pulse of the New England states, and impress those upon whom he could have any influence to vote for Pinckney,” Abigail wrote. But by such intrigues, she was sure, “the little cock sparrow general” would lose more votes for Pinckney than he would gain.
When such an old friend as Francis Dana turned his back on Adams, it was extremely painful for him. Yet he himself and his efforts for peace were widely approved in New England, as Hamilton discovered to his dismay. While “strong-minded men” stood ready to support Pinckney, Hamilton wrote in his analysis of the political climate, there was still “in the body of that people . . . a strong attachment” to Adams.
As Abigail observed in mid-August, not a public event or levee took place “without being attended by many persons who never before came and never were they so full, and so crowded as they have been this season.” Meanwhile, local Republicans were noticeably uncritical.
As handsome a tribute as any to Adams appeared in the Washington Federalist. In answer to “late attempts to undervalue” the President, readers were reminded that Adams stood “among the few surviving, steady, tried patriots” whose services to the country were of a kind almost beyond compare:
Bred in the old school of politics, his principles are founded on the experience of ages, and bid defiance to French flippancies and modern crudities. . . . Always great, and though sometimes alone, all weak and personal motives were forgotten in public energy and the security of the sacred liberties of his country. . . . Deeply versed in legal lore, profoundly skilled in political science; joined to the advantage of forty years’ unceasing engagement in the turbulent and triumphant scenes, both at home and in Europe, which have marked our history; learned in the language and arts of diplomacy; more conversant with the views, jealousies, resources, and intrigues of Great Britain, France and Holland than any other American; alike aloof to flattery and vulgar ambition, as above all undue control [he has as] . . . his sole object . . . the present freedom and independence of his country and its future glory. On this solid basis he has attempted to raise a monument of his honest fame.
With reports from the peace commission maddeningly thin and long delayed, the issue of peace and war remained foremost, almost to the end. What the Aurora would proclaim at the close of the campaign was no different from what James Callender had written in early spring. “With Jefferson we shall have peace . . . the friends of war will vote for Adams.”
The two candidates conveyed the customary air of indifference, neither saying anything publicly or appearing to lift a finger in his own behalf. Jefferson remained at Monticello, Adams at his farm, which he had lately taken to calling Stoneyfield, instead of Peacefield, perhaps feeling the new name was more in keeping with New England candor, or that it better defined the look of the political landscape at the moment.
He devoted himself almost entirely to official duties, maintaining steady correspondence with Secretary Marshall in particular. Nothing mattered more — over nothing did Adams fret more — than the state of negotiations in France. And still there was no word.
The great imponderable was Napoleon Bonaparte. “I cannot account for the long delay of our envoys,” wrote Marshall, who had begun to have doubts and reminded the President that there must be no sacrifice of American honor to please the First Consul. “We ought not be surprised if we see our envoys without a treaty,” he warned, and this could produce “a critical state of things.”
But Adams needed no reminding. In reply, he advised prudent preparations for war, in the event of another rebuff. “I am much of your opinion that we ought not to be surprised,” he told Marshall on September 4.
. . . the government ought to be prepared to take a decided part. Questions of consequence will arise, and among others, whether the President ought not at the opening session to recommend an immediate and general declaration of war against the French Republic. . . . We have had wonderful proofs that the public mind cannot be held in a state of suspense. The public opinion, it seems, must always be a decided one, whether in the right or not. . . . I wish the heads of departments to turn their thoughts to the subject, and view it in all its lights.
For his part, Jefferson appeared to be devoting his time at Monticello to rural interests only.
BOTH ABIGAIL and John enjoyed comparatively good health, and Adams’s love of home, his everyday delight in his farm, were as constant as ever — no less than what Washington had felt for Mount Vernon or Jefferson for Monticello.
But as Abigail confided in family correspondence, her own and the President’s private days and frequent sleepless nights were deeply troubled by the sad fate of their alcoholic son. On her way home from Philadelphia in early November, Abigail had stopped again at East Chester, where this time she saw Charles himself. “The whole man [is] so changed that ruin and destruction have swallowed him up,” Abigail confided to John Quincy. “Poor, poor unhappy, wretched man,” she wrote, her heart breaking. Charles’s wife had gone with her younger child to stay with her mother, while Abigail had brought the other child, four-year-old Susanna, home to Quincy. So with Nabby and her daughter Caroline again spending the summer, it was a full house.
Nothing she had been able to say to Charles had had any effect, Abigail wrote. She had tried “remonstrances.” She had reminded him of all that was dear in life — honor, reputation, family, friends. “But all is lost on him.”
She and the President would provide for his family. “Yet I am wounded to the soul by the consideration of what is to become of him. What will be his fate embitters every moment of my life.” At age thirty, Charles seemed beyond saving.
ON MONDAY, October 13, Adams set off by coach from Quincy on the journey back to Washington. His own heartbreak over Charles was no less than what Abigail suffered, as his later writings disclose, but he had not softened in his decision to renounce his son. Passing through East Chester, Adams did not stop to see him, as Abigail would, he knew, when she followed later, resolv
ed to be with John in Washington whatever lay in store.
The greetings he received along the way were of a kind to help his sagging spirits. Clearly he stood well with the large majority of the Federalist party and a great many more besides who saw him as a staunch, old patriot carrying on in the tradition of Washington. John Adams, it was said, was “a good husband, a good father, a good citizen, and a good man.” He was a peacemaker, whatever the Hamiltonians might say, and the American people did not hold that against him.
Republicans, too, were expressing new regard, even affection for Adams. “The Jacobins profess to admire and respect the independence of Mr. Adams’s character,” Thomas reported from Philadelphia to his mother, “and several of them have told me that next to their idol Jefferson they would definitely prefer him to any man in the country.” But this did not mean they would vote for him, and Thomas was pessimistic. “I am glad you are to be with my father this winter,” he told her. “The prospect is dreary enough, not for him, but for the country.”
Then, without warning, while Adams was on the road to Washington, a “thunderbolt” struck.
Since summer Alexander Hamilton had been working on a “letter” intended initially for a select few Federalists in several states. Timothy Pickering, James McHenry, and Oliver Wolcott had all been recruited to help. Pickering and McHenry had supplied what confidential information they could from past experience in Adams’s cabinet, while Wolcott, still a member of the cabinet, continued to have access to confidential files. But when asked for their views on Hamilton’s initial draft of the letter, most of them were astonished, and urged Hamilton not to put his name on it. Wolcott suggested that it not be released at all, because, he wrote, “the poor old man” was quite capable of doing himself in without help from anyone else. But Hamilton paid no attention.
Not long past, Abigail had warned Adams to “beware of that spare Cassius.” Now, in the eleventh hour of the election, Hamilton lashed out in a desperate effort to destroy Adams, the leading candidate of his own party.
A Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States, a fifty-four-page pamphlet, was published in New York at the end of October. Nothing that Hamilton ever wrote about Jefferson was half so contemptuous. He berated Adams in nearly every way possible — for his “great intrinsic defects of character,” his “disgusting egotism,” weaknesses, vacillation, his “eccentric tendencies,” his “bitter animosity” toward his own cabinet. He deplored Adams’s handling of relations with France, the “precipitate nomination” of William Vans Murray, the firing of Timothy Pickering, the pardoning of John Fries. Though Hamilton did not go so far as to call Adams insane, he cited his “ungovernable temper” as evidence of a man out of control. “It is a fact that he is often liable to paroxisms of anger which deprive him of self-command and produce very outrageous behavior.”
Yet Hamilton made no charges of corruption or misconduct on Adams’s part. He even acknowledged Adams’s patriotism and integrity, and conceded, without getting specific, that Adams had “talents of a certain kind.” And finally, most strangely, having spent fifty pages tearing Adams to pieces, Hamilton concluded by saying Adams must be supported equally with General Pinckney in the election.
Republicans were euphoric. Whatever crazed notions had taken hold of Hamilton, he had surely dealt Adams a blow and “rent the Federal party in twain.” In a high-spirited letter to Jefferson, James Madison said Hamilton’s “thunderbolt” meant certain victory for Jefferson. “I rejoice with you that Republicanism is likely to be so completely triumphant.”
Federalists everywhere were aghast, disbelieving, or seething with anger. In Connecticut, Noah Webster produced a pamphlet accusing Hamilton of extreme disloyalty and ambition to become the American Caesar. By contrast to Hamilton, Webster wrote, Adams was “a man of pure morals, of firm attachment to republican government, of sound and inflexible patriotism.” Were Jefferson to be elected, Webster wrote to Hamilton, “the fault will lie at your door and . . . your conduct on this occasion will be discerned little short of insanity.”
In fact, Hamilton had amply demonstrated that it was he who had become a burden to the party, he, if anyone, who seemed to have departed from his senses.
Speculation as to why he had done it, what possible purpose he might have had, would go on for years. Possibly, as John Quincy surmised, it was because Adams had denied him his chance for military glory, humiliated him at Trenton, and made his army superfluous. Perhaps he believed he was improving Pinckney’s chances. Or he wanted to bring down the Federalist party, so that in the aftermath of a Jefferson victory he could raise it up again as his own creation.
Probably not even Hamilton knew the answer. But by his own hand he had ruined whatever chance he ever had for the power and glory he so desperately desired.
FOR SEVERAL DAYS toward the end of October, plasterers and painters at work on the President’s House in Washington, as well as the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, had been keeping an eye out for the President, not knowing just when he might appear. With the imponderables of travel, no one’s arrival could be predetermined or planned for precisely, not even a President’s.
The immense house was still unfinished. It reeked of wet plaster and wet paint. Fires had to be kept blazing in every fireplace on the main floor to speed up the drying process. Only a twisting back stair had been built between floors. Closet doors were missing. There were no bells to ring for service. And though the furniture had arrived from Philadelphia, it looked lost in such enormous rooms. Just one painting had been hung, a full-length portrait of Washington in his black velvet suit, by Gilbert Stuart, which had also been sent from Philadelphia.
The house stood in a weedy, wagon-rutted field with piles of stone and rubble about. It all looked very raw and unkempt. Yet the great whitewashed stone building, the largest house in America — as large as the half of the Capitol that had been erected — was truly a grand edifice, noble even in its present state.
At midday, Saturday, November 1, Commissioners William Thornton and Alexander White were inspecting the main floor, when, at one o’clock, the President was seen rolling up to the south entrance in his coach-and-four. He was accompanied still by Billy Shaw and Briesler following on horseback. There was no one else, no honor guard, no band playing, no entourage of any kind.
The two commissioners and a few workers at hand comprised the welcoming committee for the arrival of John Adams, the first President to occupy what only much later would become known as the White House.
An office was made ready in an ample room with a southern exposure on the second floor, next door to what was to be Adams’s bedroom. Secretaries Marshall and Stoddert, the two in the cabinet Adams counted on, came to pay their respects. Later, supper finished, he climbed the back stairs candle in hand and retired for the night.
At his desk the next morning, on a plain sheet of paper, which he headed, “President’s House, Washington City, Nov. 2, 1800,” he wrote to Abigail a letter in which he offered a simple benediction:
I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.
But for Adams the house was to be the setting of great disappointment and much sorrow. By the time he wrote to Abigail again, he had seen the Hamilton pamphlet and concluded as Madison had that it meant his certain defeat. “The ancients thought a great book a great evil,” he told her. “Mr. H. will find a little book an evil great enough for him . . . for [it] will insure the choice of the man he dreads or pretends to dread more than me.”
To judge by what he said privately in a letter to a friend, he took the blow with notable equanimity. Like others, he thought Hamilton had succeeded mainly in damaging himself. He was not Hamilton’s enemy, Adams wrote, and Hamilton was not without talent. “There is more burnish, however, on the outside than sterling silver in substance
.” But this was as much as he would say, at least while President.
AT THE END of the first week in November, Adams’s long wait for news from France ended. The mission had succeeded. A treaty with France, the Convention of Mortefontaine, had been signed on October 3, 1800, at a château north of Paris. At a grand fete celebrating the event, Bonaparte declared that the differences between France and the United States had been no more than a family quarrel. Gifts were presented to the American envoys, toasts raised to perpetual peace between the two nations.
The first report appeared in a Baltimore paper on November 7. Another month would pass before the official copy of the Convention arrived in Washington, at which point it would be submitted to the Senate for approval.
The news had come too late to affect the election, but peace had truly been achieved. Though Adams could say nothing of it yet, the Quasi-War was over, and for Adams it was an immense victory.
ABIGAIL REACHED Washington on November 16, at the end of an extremely arduous journey. Stopping to see Charles at East Chester, she was stunned to find him desperately ill in the care of Nabby. Abigail had had no forewarning; no one had been told, because his condition had come on so rapidly. Sitting by his bedside, she sensed she was seeing him for the last time. When she left, she again took Susanna with her for the rest of the journey.
In Maryland, as she later described it to Mary Cranch, there was only forest, the roads so rough and uncertain that she and her party were lost for two hours. “But woods are all you see from Baltimore until you reach the city, which is only so in name.” She thought the President’s House beautifully situated by the Potomac, the country around “romantic but wild.” Nearby Georgetown, however, was “the very dirtiest hole I ever saw.”
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