He grew warm in an instant, and said with a vehemence he had not used towards me before, “Sir, the event of the election is within your own power. You have only to say you will do justice to the public creditors, maintain the navy, and not disturb those holding office, and the government will instantly be put into your hands. We know it is the wish of the people it should be so.”
“Mr. Adams,” said I, “I know not what part of my conduct, in either public or private life, can have authorized a doubt of my fidelity to the public engagements. I say, however, I will not come into the government by capitulation. I will not enter on it, but in perfect freedom to follow the dictates of my own judgment.”
“Then,” said he, “things must take their course.” I turned the conversation to something else, and soon took my leave. It was the first time in our lives we had ever parted with anything like dissatisfaction.
There is nothing to contradict Jefferson’s account, or anything to verify it. Neither Adams nor his secretary Billy Shaw made note of a visit by Jefferson, or said anything of such an exchange in later years. Nor is there evidence that Adams ever discussed such terms with the Federalists in the House or took an interest in Federalist strategy. But it was also understandable that the Federalists wanted some assurance on where Jefferson stood, since he had made no statements on public issues.
The suspense ended on Tuesday, February 17, when, on the thirty-sixth ballot in the House, Jefferson was chosen President. One Federalist representative, James A. Bayard of Delaware, decided at last to switch his vote.
Later, Bayard would say Jefferson had agreed to the three Federalist terms, but this Jefferson vehemently denied. The question of what actually happened would remain unresolved.
“The Revolution of 1776 is now, and for the first time, arrived at its completion,” proclaimed the Aurora.
Till now the Republicans have indeed beaten the slaves of monarchy in the field of battle, and driven the troops of the King of Great Britain from the shores of our country; but the secret enemies of the American Revolution — her internal, insidious, and indefatigable foes, have never till now been completely discomfitted. This is the true period of the triumph of Republican principle.
IN THE LAME-DUCK Federalist Senate, meanwhile, an act expanding the Federal judiciary, something that Adams had proposed more than a year earlier, was passed into law. The number of circuit courts was doubled to six. Twenty-three new judges were added. For Adams, who had so long championed a strong, independent judiciary as proper balance to the other two branches, it was a major improvement and he proceeded at once to fill the new positions.
For weeks Adams had been exercising his presidential prerogative to fill government positions of all kinds, including some for friends and needy relatives. Scruples of the kind he had once preached to Mercy Warren concerning such appointments were considered no more. Colonel Smith was named surveyor of the Port of New York. Joshua Johnson, the father-in-law of John Quincy, who had fled England to avoid his creditors, after his reputed wealth turned out to be a fiction, was made postmaster of the District of Columbia.
But Adams’s court appointments particularly were given careful consideration. There was no frenzied rush to name “midnight judges,” as portrayed by Jefferson and the Republican press. Most of the nominations for judges were made on February 20, the rest completed by February 24, more than a week in advance of the inauguration. That nearly all those selected were Federalists was no more surprising than the indignation of the President-elect. In fact, most all of the nominees were perfectly good choices and the Republicans opposed hardly any of them. Abigail’s nephew, William Cranch, who was nominated and approved for the circuit court of the District of Columbia, went on to have a distinguished fifty-year career, both as a judge and a court reporter.
Without any prompting or pressure, Adams also named Oliver Wolcott for the Second Circuit Court. Incredibly, Adams still trusted and liked Wolcott, never suspecting him of the treachery of others in the cabinet. (Wolcott, for his part, often privately ridiculed the President for being abnormally suspicious.) “I wish you much pleasure and more honor . . . and I doubt not you will contribute your full share to make justice run down our streets as a stream,” Adams wrote. “My family joins in friendly regards to you and yours.” Wolcott, for all he had done secretly to destroy Adams, was happy to accept the appointment.
Abigail was not to expect much in the way of correspondence from him, Adams told her. “My time will be all taken up. I pray you to continue to write me.” He would be entertaining a delegation of Indians that evening, February 16, 1801, his last official dinner — and was glad to say he was sleeping better “for having the shutters open.”
Among Adams’s final acts as President, and undoubtedly with strong encouragement from Abigail, was to recall John Quincy from his diplomatic service abroad.
Among the last letters he wrote as time ran out was a considerate reminder to Jefferson that he need not purchase horses or carriages, since those in the stable at the President’s House were the property of the United States and would therefore remain behind.
ON INAUGURATION DAY, Wednesday, March 4, John Adams made his exit from the President’s House and the capital at four in the morning, traveling by public stage under clear skies lit by a quarter moon. He departed eight hours before Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office at the Capitol, and even more inconspicuously than he had arrived, rolling through empty streets past darkened houses, and again with Billy Shaw and John Briesler as his companions.
To his political rivals and enemies Adams’s predawn departure was another ill-advised act of a petulant old man. But admirers, too, expressed disappointment. A correspondent for the Massachusetts Spy observed in a letter from Washington that numbers of Adams’s friends wished he had not departed so abruptly. “Sensible, moderate men of both parties would have been pleased had he tarried until after the installation of his successor. It certainly would have had good effect.”
By his presence at the ceremony Adams could have set an example of grace in defeat, while at the same time paying homage to a system whereby power, according to a written constitution, is transferred peacefully. After so vicious a contest for the highest office, with party hatreds so near to igniting in violence, a peaceful transfer of power seemed little short of a miracle. If ever a system was proven to work under extremely adverse circumstances, it was at this inauguration of 1801, and it is regrettable that Adams was not present.
It would also have been more politic to have expressed confidence in his successor, but, such expressions were not Adams’s way if he did not mean them.
No President having ever been defeated for reelection until then, there was no tradition of a defeated president appearing at the installation of the winner. It is also quite possible that Adams was not invited to attend, or made to feel he would be welcome. When it was rumored, for example, that Adams might deliver a valedictory to Congress, the Aurora had questioned how possibly the “Duke of Braintree” could ever consider appearing before “a body in which his former friends are his enemies, and his former opponents the only persons who pity him.” Adams, said the Aurora, was a man who had been cast out by God like “polluted water out at the back door.” “May he return in safety to Braintree, that Mrs. Adams may wash his befuddled brains clear.”
Perhaps, given what Adams had been through at the hands of the Republicans and a number of Federalists still in Congress, those who had done all they could to overthrow him, he simply could not face being made a spectacle of their triumph.
Also, Adams’s departure was no sudden, dark-of-the-night impulse. It had been planned more than a week in advance, as is clear from the correspondence of Billy Shaw, and there was no secret about it. To get to Baltimore in a day, one had to take the early stage, and the early stage departed at four in the morning.
Adams himself never explained why he did not stay for Jefferson’s inauguration, but then it seems he was never asked.
> “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” Jefferson said famously in his inaugural address before a full Senate Chamber, his voice so soft many had difficulty hearing him. A passing tribute to Washington was made before he finished, but of Adams he said nothing.
To the victorious Republicans, and to generations of historians, the thought of the tall Jefferson, with his air of youth at fifty-seven, assuming the presidency in the new Capitol at the start of a new century, his eye on the future, would stand in vivid contrast to a downcast, bitter John Adams, old and “toothless” at sixty-five, on his “morning flight” to Baltimore.
Downcast, bitter, Adams may have been, but there is no evidence to support such a description. Adams loved the start of a new day, loved being on the move. Conceivably he felt immense relief to be homeward-bound, free finally of his burdens, his conscience “neat and easy,” as he would say. No one will ever know, but it is perfectly possible that as the sun rose higher that cloudless morning, Adams felt contentment of a kind he had not known for years — once he got over the fact that traveling with him on the same stage, as chance would have it, was Theodore Sedgwick. Like two warring boys who are made to sit in the same room until they get along, they would ride together all the way to Massachusetts.
VII
WHATEVER ADAMS’S state of mind, he was leaving his successor a nation “with its coffers full,” as he wrote, and with “fair prospects of peace with all the world smiling in its face, its commerce flourishing, its navy glorious, its agriculture uncommonly productive and lucrative.”
In turbulent, dangerous times he had held to a remarkably steady course. He had shown that a strong defense and a desire for peace were not mutually exclusive, but compatible and greatly in the national interest. The new navy was an outstanding achievement. In less than two years, it had grown from almost nothing to 50 ships, including the frigates United States, Constitution, and Constellation, and over 5,000 officers and seamen, and this bore heavily on the outcome of the negotiations with France. Indeed, Adams’s insistence on American naval strength proved decisive in achieving peace with France in 1800. Further, by undercutting Hamilton and making his army useless, he may have saved the country from militarism.
In his four years as President, there had been no scandal or corruption. If he was less than outstanding as an administrator, if he had too readily gone along with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and was slow to see deceit within his own cabinet, he had managed nonetheless to cope with a divided country and a divided party, and in the end achieved a rare level of statesmanship. To his everlasting credit, at the risk of his career, reputation, and his hold on the presidency, he chose not to go to war when that would have been highly popular and politically advantageous in the short run. As a result, the country was spared what would almost certainly have been a disastrous mistake.
In much the way he had rushed out in the night to help fight fires in Philadelphia and Washington, he had done his all to put out the fire of war — to the immeasurable benefit of the American people, and with no loss of honor or prestige to the nation. It was a brave, heroic performance.
Adams understood clearly the importance of what he had accomplished. To his dying day he would be proudest of all of having achieved peace. As he would write to a friend, “I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: ‘Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800.’”
In the brief spell of goodwill that followed Adams’s inaugural address in 1797, Benjamin Bache had reminded the country that the new President was a “man of incorruptible integrity,” “dignity,” exceptional “resources of mind,” and high purpose. “He declares himself the friend of France and of peace, the admirer of republicanism, the enemy of party. . . . How characteristic of a patriot.” The same could have been said at the conclusion of Adams’s presidency no less than at the beginning.
Subjected to some of the most malicious attacks ever endured by a president, beset by personal disloyalty and political betrayal, suffering the loss of his mother, the near death of his wife, the death of a son, tormented by physical ailments, he had more than weathered the storm. His bedrock integrity, his spirit of independence, his devotion to country, his marriage, his humor, and a great underlying love of life were all still very much intact.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
REJOICE EVER MORE
This phrase “rejoice ever more” shall never be out of my heart, memory, or mouth again as long as I live, if I can help it.
~John Adams
* * *
I
“THE ONLY QUESTION remaining with me is what shall I do with myself?” Adams had written earlier to Cotton Tufts. “Something I must do, or ennui will rain upon me in buckets.”
He could go each morning and evening to fodder his cattle, he supposed. Or take noontime walks to Penn’s Hill. Or “potter” among his fruit trees and cucumbers. But what then? If he had money enough to spend on his farms, he might keep busier. But where was the money to come from? Talk of himself as Farmer John of Stoneyfield came easily. The reality would require adjustments.
He worried about the effect on mind and body of slowing to a standstill. His constitution, he was sure, would be put to a severe test after “a life of journeys and distant voyages.” Stillness “may shake my old frame,” he observed to another friend. “Rapid motion ought not be succeeded by sudden rest.”
He sensed he had little time left. “The day is far spent with us all,” he would tell Mercy Warren. “It cannot be long before we must exchange this theater for some other.” He only hoped it would be one with no politics. He and Abigail both had had enough of politics. “No more elective office for me,” she had written with absolute certainty. But neither would ever lose interest in politics.
For Abigail it was not just that the long journey of public life was ended, but that their capacity to “do good” was to be “so greatly curtailed,” as she had written before leaving Washington.
As it was, she and Adams had ten days of forced seclusion in which to ponder such concerns, starting almost the moment Adams arrived at Quincy on the evening of March 18, 1801. He was no sooner in the door than a wild northeaster struck, a storm of a kind such as they had not seen in years. Black skies, violent winds, and a flood of rain kept on day after day, no one budging from the house.
Somehow the mail got through, bringing a pointedly formal note of one sentence from the President dated March 8:
Th. Jefferson presents his respects to Mr. Adams and incloses him a letter which came to his hands last night; on reading what is written within the cover, he concluded it to be a private letter, and without opening a single paper within it, folded it up and now has the honor to inclose it to Mr. Adams, with the homage of his high consideration and respect.
Adams’s reply, written on March 24, the fifth day of the storm, was one of the few times he ever acknowledged his suffering over the death of Charles, but suggests also that Jefferson may never have offered a word of sympathy to him.
Had you read the papers inclosed [Adams wrote] they might have given you a moment of melancholy or at least of sympathy with a mourning father. They relate wholly to the funeral of a son who was once the delight of my eyes and a darling of my heart, cut off in the flower of his days, amidst very flattering prospects by causes which have been the greatest grief of my heart and the deepest affliction of my life.
In closing, Adams said he saw “nothing to obscure your prospect of a quiet and prosperous administration, which I heartily wish you.”
Jefferson did not respond, however. Adams’s letter was the last there would be between them for eleven years.
The violence and duration of the storm appears to have left Adams in better spirits once it passed. It was, he wrote to Benjamin Stoddert, “so old fashioned a storm that I begin to hope that nature is returning to her old good nature and good humor, and is substituting fermentations in the elements for revolutions in the mora
l, intellectual, and political world.”
Complaining was not the Adamses’ mode. The adjustments were more difficult than they would concede. The humiliation that defeat and popular rejection had inflicted on them, the death of Charles, and now sudden, total seclusion took a heavy toll. In some circles, they knew, they were openly despised. In others they were now considered irrelevant. Worst perhaps was the sense that no one any longer cared about them one way or the other.
In the year prior to March 4, letters to President Adams numbered in the thousands; in the year that followed, citizen Adams received fewer than a hundred. Once, while president, he had written to Abigail, “We cannot go back. We must stand our ground as long as we can.” In the years following the presidency, it was resolve of a kind they had to summon more often than they admitted.
When members of the Massachusetts legislature came to Quincy to present Adams with a tribute to his devoted service to his country, he was moved to tears.
Feelings of dejection and bitterness would come and go for a long time. Nearly six months after the return to Quincy, in a letter to Billy Shaw, Adams would allow that if he had it to do over again he would have been a shoemaker. His own father, the man he admired above all, had been a shoemaker. Joseph Bass, the young neighbor who had ridden with Adams to Philadelphia the winter of 1776, was a shoemaker and a familiar figure still in Quincy, as well liked and respected as ever.
Long before, on his rounds of Boston as a young lawyer, Adams had often heard a man with a fine voice singing behind the door of an obscure house. One day, curious to know who “this cheerful mortal” might be, he had knocked at the door, to find a poor shoemaker with a large family living in a single room. Did he find it hard getting by, Adams had asked. “Sometimes,” the man said. Adams ordered a pair of shoes. “I had scarcely got out the door before he began to sing again like a nightingale,” Adams remembered. “Which was the greatest philosopher? Epictetus or this shoemaker?” he would ask when telling the story.
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