by John Ferling
26. Venable to AH, July 9, 10, 1797, PAH 21:153–54, 159. Wolcott to AH, July 3, 1797, ibid., 21:145. Venable’s quotation is in ibid., 21:159.
27. Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (New York, 1971), 81–156. The “monarchy party” quote is on page 103.
28. David Gelsen’s Account of an Interview between Alexander Hamilton and James Monroe, July 11, 1797, PAH 21:159–62.
29. James Monroe and Muhlenberg to AH, July 17, 1797, PAH 21:168–70. Venable was out of town and played no part in the response to AH.
30. AH to Monroe and Muhlenberg, July 17, 1797, PAH 21:170–72; AH to Monroe, July 17, 18, 20, 22, 28, August 4, 9, January [?], 1798, ibid., 21:172–73, 174–75, 176–77, 180–81, 186, 200, 208, 346; Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 164–66.
31. JA to his cabinet, January 24, 1798, PAH 21:339–40; McHenry to AH, January 26, 1798, ibid., 21:339; AH to McHenry, [January 27–February 11], 1798, ibid., 21:341–46.
32. AH to Pickering, March 17, 1798, PAH 21:364–66.
33. JA, Message, Adams Papers, 1639–1889, microfilm edition, 608 reels (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954–1959), reel 387; JA to McHenry, October 22, 1798, ibid., reel 391; JA, “Message to Congress,” March 19, 1798, in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York, 1897–1917), 1:264–65.
34. TJ to JM, March 21, April 5, 1798, PTJ 30:189–90, 191–92, 244–45. TJ penned two letters to JM on March 21. The quotations can be found on pages 189, 191, and 245.
35. TJ to JM, April 6, 1798, PTJ 30:250–51. On TJ’s fears for the survival of Republicanism, see Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York, 2009), 241. On TJ’s belief that John Marshall fabricated some of his reports on the French government’s behavior, see TJ to Edmund Pendleton, January 29, April 22, 1799, PTJ 30:661; 31:97.
36. Quoted in Alexander DeConde, The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801 (New York, 1966), 328.
37. John C. Miller, Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (Boston, 1951), 22.
38. AH, “The Stand,” nos. 1–7 [March 30–April 21, 1798], PAH 21:381–87, 390–96, 402–8, 412–18, 418–32, 434–440, 441–47. The quotations are on pages 383–84 and 446. The “satellites of France” quotation is from a separate essay by AH titled “A French Faction.” It, too, appeared in April 1798 and is in ibid., 21:452–53. That quote can be found on page 452.
39. John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (New York, 2003), 424–25. The Abigail Adams quote is on page 425.
40. Wood, Empire of Liberty, 245–46, 263–64. On the army from 1789 through the creation of the New Army, a succinct overview is available in PAH 22:384–85n, though the best account of its creation, and the Federalists’ motives in bringing it into being, can be found in Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (New York, 1975), 224–29. See also TJ to JM, February 5, 1799, PTJ 31:9. The term “frontier constabulary” is that of Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 244.
41. James Roger Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (New Haven, Conn., 1993), 176.
42. Quoted in John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1789–1801 (New York, 1960), 228.
43. Chernow, AH, 570.
44. The quotations can be found in Wood, Empire of Liberty, 249, 250.
45. TJ to JM, April 26, 1798, PTJ 30:300; TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., May 9, 1798, ibid., 30:341.
46. Quoted in James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca, N.Y., 1956), 120. The texts of the four laws can be found in ibid., 435–42.
47. TJ to John Taylor, November 26, 1798, PTJ 30:589.
48. AH to Pickering, June 7, 1798, PAH 21:495; AH to GW, May 19, 1798, ibid., 21:467; AH to Wolcott, June 29, 1798, ibid., 21:522; TJ to JM, June 7, 1798, PTJ 30:393.
49. JA to GW, June 22, 1798, PGW: Ret. Ser. 2:351–52; GW to JA, July 4, 1798, ibid., 2:368–71.
50. GW to JA, July 13, 1798, PGW: Ret. Ser. 2:402–4; GW, Suggestions for Military Appointments, July 14, 1798, ibid., 2:414–15.
51. JA to McHenry, August 29, September 30, 1798, PAH 22:8n, 16; GW to JA, September 25, 1798, PGW: Ret. Ser. 3:36–43.
52. GW to AH, August 21, October 8, 1797, PAH 21:214–15, 298–99.
53. AH to GW, May 19, June 2, 1798, PAH 21:466–68, 479–80; GW to AH, May 27, 1798, ibid., 21:470–74.
54. AH to McHenry, February 6, 1799, PAH 22:467.
55. TJ to John Taylor, June 4, 1798, PTJ 30:388, 389; TJ to William Strickland, March 23, 1798, ibid., 30:212–13.
56. Manning J. Dauer, The Adams Federalists (Baltimore, 1953), 233.
57. For an example of TJ’s intelligence system, see Notes on Conversations with Abraham Baldwin, John Brown, and John Hunter, [March 11, 1798], PTJ 30:172–73.
58. TJ to Samuel Smith, August 22, 1798, PTJ 30:484–85; TJ to Stevens Thomson Mason, October 11, 1798, ibid., 30:560; TJ to Taylor, November 26, 1798, ibid., 30:589; TJ to Tadeusz Kosciuszko, June 18, 1798, ibid., 30:416.
59. Quoted in Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999), 229.
60. TJ to John Wise, February 12, 1798, PTJ 30:98.
61. TJ to JM, February 5, 1799, PTJ 31:9; Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 225.
62. John Taylor to TJ, May 13, 1798, PTJ 30:348.
63. Quoted in Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 225.
64. Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic, 203–5.
65. TJ to JM, November 17, 1798, January 30, 1799, PTJ 30: 580, 666; TJ to Gerry, January 26, 1799, ibid., 30:646.
66. TJ to Hugh Williamson, February 11, 1798, PTJ 30:94; TJ to Kosciuszko, February 21, 1799, ibid., 31:52; TJ to Page, January 24, 1799, ibid., 30:641; TJ to Taylor, November 26, 1798, ibid., 30:589. When John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia, advocated secession rather than remain in a Union in which the South was subordinate to an anti-republican northern majority, TJ urged “a little patience” as “the body of our countrymen is substantially republican through every part of the union.” See Taylor to TJ, May 15, 1798, ibid., 30:348; TJ to Taylor, June 4, 1798, ibid., 30:388–89.
67. TJ’s Fair Copy of the Kentucky Resolution, [before October 4, 1798], PTJ 30:543–49; Resolutions Adopted by the Kentucky General Assembly, November 10, 1798, ibid., 30:551–55; JM to TJ, December 29, 1798, December 29, 1799, ibid., 30:606; 31:278; editor’s notes, ibid., 30:529–35; 31:279–80n; Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic, 188–200.
68. Ferling, A Leap in the Dark, 442; TJ to JM, January 3, 1799, PTJ 30:610.
69. Quoted in Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 230.
70. JA to McHenry, August 29, September 13, 1798, Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President … (Boston, 1850–1856), 8:588, 594; JA to John Trumbull, July 23, November [?], 1805, Adams Papers, microfilm edition, reel 118; JA to F. A. Vanderkemp, August 23, 1806, April 3, 1815, Simon Gratz Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; JA to Rush, August 23, September 30, December 4, 1805, January 25, 1806, September 2, November 11, 1807, April 18, 1808, August 28, 1811, in John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (San Marino, Cal., 1966), 35, 42, 45, 47–48, 94–95, 98–99, 113, 192; JA to Benjamin Waterhouse, July 12, 1811, in Worthington C. Ford, ed., Statesman and Friend: Correspondence of John Adams and Benjamin Waterhouse, 1784–1822 (Boston, 1927), 65; JA to William Cunningham, October 15, 1808, in Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams … and the Late William Cunningham (Boston, 1823), 44.
71. Abigail Adams’s “second Buonaparty” quote is in DeConde, Quasi-War, 97. See also TJ to Thomas M. Randolph, February 2, 1800, PTJ 31:358; the additional comments by the First Lady can be found in Edith B. Gelles, Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriag
e (New York, 2009), 240.
72. AH to McHenry, [January 27–February 11], 1798, PAH 21:345. The McHenry quote can be found in Page Smith, John Adams (Garden City, N.Y., 1962), 2:989.
73. AH to James Gunn, December 22, 1798, PAH 22:389.
74. AH to Harrison Gray Otis, January 26, 1799, PAH 22:440–41.
75. AH to Francisco de Miranda, August 22, 1798, PAH 22:156.
76. GW to McHenry, December 13, 1798, PGW: Ret. Ser. 3:253.
77. Quoted in Chernow, AH, 567–68.
78. Quoted in DeConde, Quasi-War, 119.
79. Quoted in Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 617.
80. Quoted in David McCullough, John Adams (New York, 2001), 518.
81. Kohn, Eagle and Sword, 246–48. The AH quotation can be found in William B. Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861 (Lawrence, Kans., 1992), 24.
82. On AH and hats, see AH to McHenry, May 18, 1799, PAH 23:122; Skelton, An American Profession of Arms, 96–98. The PAH, vols. 22 and 23, are filled with similar instances of micromanagement. For the lists ranking the officers, see ibid., 22:89–146, 270–312, and 317–39. On the army, and JA taking no steps to recruit it, see ibid., 22:387–88n.
83. AH to Otis, December 28, 1798, PAH 22:394.
84. William Heth to AH, January 14, 18, 1799, PAH 22:413–15, 422–24, The quotations are on pages 415 and 423.
85. AH to King, February 6, 1799, PAH 22:465.
86. AH to Theodore Sedgwick, February 1, 1799, PAH 22:452–53.
87. JA, Second Annual Address, December 8, 1798, Richardson, Messages of the Presidents, 1:261–65; TJ to Randolph, December 20, 1798, PTJ 30:604; AH to Otis, December 27, 1798, PAH 22:393–04; AH to Gunn, December 22, 1798, ibid., 22:388–89; DeConde, Quasi-War, 168–69.
88. JA to GW, February 19, 1799, PGW: Ret. Ser. 3:388; Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 615–41; Ferling, John Adams, 372–85; DeConde, Quasi-War, 142–22.
89. TJ to Randolph, February 19, 1799, PTJ 31:50; Henry Remsen, March 4, 1800, ibid., 31:415; TJ to Everard Meade, April 8, 1800, ibid., 31:489.
90. DeConde, Quasi-War, 221–22.
91. Elkins and McKitrick, Age of Federalism, 639–40; DeConde, Quasi-War, 220.
92. TJ to Remsen, October 14, 1799, PAH 31:212.
93. Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams … and the Late William Cunningham, 29–30. The “impertinent ignoramus” quote can be found in John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (New York, 2004), 124. A nearly identical version of AH’s meeting with the president was provided by Abigail Adams, who was relating what her husband told her soon after the episode. See Abigail Adams to Mary Cranch, December 30, 1799, in Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1801 (Boston, 1947), 224–25. Both JA’s and the First Lady’s versions can also be found in PAH 23:546–47n.
94. TJ to Monroe, January 12, 1800, PTJ 31:301.
95. John Trumbull to GW, June 22, August 10, 1799, PGW: Ret. Ser. 4:144, 236; Gouverneur Morris to GW, December 9, 1799, ibid., 4:452–53. Morris’s letter arrived at Mount Vernon after GW’s death.
96. AH to Tobias Lear, January 2, 1800, PAH 24:155; AH to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, December 22, 1799, ibid., 24:116; AH to Martha Washington, January 12, 1800, ibid., 24:184–85. AH marched in the state funeral ceremony in Philadelphia on December 26. After a sojourn at home, TJ was unable to reach the capital in time to participate in the funeral.
97. PAH 22:386–88n.
98. AH to Jonathan Dayton, [October–November, 1799], PAH 23:599–604.
CHAPTER 14: “THE GIGG IS UP”: THE ELECTION OF 1800
1. TJ to Benjamin Rush, September 12, 1799, PTJ 31:183.
2. TJ to Joseph Priestley, January 27, 1800, PTJ 31:341.
3. Ibid.; TJ to JM, May 12, 1800, ibid., 31:579; TJ to Charles Pinckney, November 4, 1800, ibid., 32:243.
4. For a good example of TJ’s analysis of the likely outcome of the 1800 presidential election, see TJ to JM, March 4, 1800, PTJ 31:408–9.
5. TJ to James Monroe, January 12, 1800, PTJ 31:300–301.
6. TJ to Robert R. Livingston, April 30, 1800, PTJ 31:550; Joseph Barnes to TJ, October 25, 1799, March 4, 10, 1800, ibid., 31:330, 405, 226, 427; TJ to Mary Jefferson Eppes, February 15, 1801, ibid., 32:593; TJ to Monroe, January 12, 1800, ibid., 31:301.
7. TJ to Mary Jefferson Eppes, February 15, 1801, PTJ 32:593; TJ to Elbridge Gerry, May 13, 1797, ibid., 29:362.
8. AH to Rufus King, January 5, 1800, PAH 24:167; AH to Henry Lee, March 7, 1800, ibid., 24:299.
9. AH to Theodore Sedgwick, May 10, 1800, PAH 24:475.
10. AH to King, May 4, 1796, PAH 20:158.
11. Burr to TJ, May 5, 1800, PTJ 31:557. The foregoing paragraphs on the New York contest draws on Alfred Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York, The Origins: 1763–1797 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967), 474–76; William Merrill and Sean Wilentz, eds., The Key of Liberty: The Life and Democratic Writings of William Manning, “A Laborer,” 1774–1814 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 59, 63–64, 73–74, 112, 126; Linda Kerber, “The Federalist Party,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., ed., History of U.S. Political Parties (New York, 1973), 1:3–29; Gordon S. Wood, “The Enemy Is Us: Democratic Capitalism in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 16 (1996): 293–308; David Waldstreicher, “Federalism, the Style of Politics, and the Politics of Style,” in Doran Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., Federalists Reconsidered Charlottesville, Va., 1998), 99–117; Steven Watts, “Ministers, Misanthropes, and Mandarins: The Federalists and the Culture of Capitalism,” ibid., 157–75; Alan Taylor, “From Fathers to Friends of the People: Political Personae in the Early Republic,” ibid., 225–45; John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (New York, 2004), 128–31; Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 196–200; David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York, 1965); 9, 52, 95–96, 161, 308. Fischer deals with the election of 1800 throughout his book, including in the appendix.
12. TJ to Tadeusz Kosciuszko, May 7, 1800, PTJ 31:560.
13. AH to Sedgwick, May 4, 1800, PAH 24:453.
14. AH to Jay, May 7, 1800, PAH 24:464–66, 467n.
15. TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., May 7, 1800, PTJ 31:561.
16. Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 132; Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 201–2.
17. McHenry to AH, June 2, 1800 [with McHenry to JA, May 31, 1800, enclosed], PAH 24:550–65. The quotations are on pages 555 and 557.
18. JA to Thomas Boylston Adams, July 14, 1800, PAH 24:574n; Abigail Adams to Thomas B. Adams, July 16, 1800, ibid., 24:575–76n.
19. AH to King, January 5, 1800, PAH 24:168; AH to Sedgwick, May 10, 1800, ibid., 24:475; AH to McHenry, June 6, 1800, ibid., 24:573.
20. Joseph Hale to King, July 9, 1800, PAH 24:577n; John Rutledge Jr. to AH, July 17, 1800, ibid., 25:30.
21. Sedgwick to King, September 26, 1800, PAH 24:451; AH to Charles Carroll of Carrollton, July 1, 1800, ibid., 25:1–2.
22. AH to JA, August 1, October 1, 1800, PAH 25:51, 125–26.
23. Thomas N. Baker, “ ‘An Attack Well Directed’: Aaron Burr Intrigues for the Presidency,” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (2011): 560.
24. William Shaw to Abigail Adams, June 8, 1800, in Adams Family Papers, 1639–1889, microfilm edition, 608 reels (Boston, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954–1959), reel 398; JA to James Lloyd, March 31, 1815, ibid., reel 122; Stephen G. Kurtz, The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800 (Philadelphia, 1957), 398; John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (reprint, New York, 2010), 402–3; Noble E. Cunningham Jr., “Election of 1800,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968 (New York, 1971), 1:115–16.
25. JMB 2:1019.
26. TJ, Summary of Public Service, [after September 2, 1800], PTJ 32:122–24.
27. TJ to Elbridge Gerry, Januar
y 26, 1799, PTJ 30:645–50; TJ to Amos Alexander, June 13, 1800, ibid., 32:6; TJ to Gideon Granger, August 13, 1800, ibid., 32:95–97; TJ to Jeremiah Moore, August 14, 1800, ibid., 32:102–3; TJ to Caesar A. Rodney, December 21, 1800, ibid., 32:336–37; TJ to John Vanmetre, September 4, 1800, ibid., 32:136; TJ to Samuel Smith, October 17, 1800, ibid., 32:227; Cunningham, “Election of 1800,” in Schlesinger, History of American Presidential Elections, 1:114, 118–19. TJ’s quote about disentangling from other nations can be found in PTJ 32:96.
28. Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2001), 157; Noble E. Cunningham, The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1957), 153–60.
29. For an expanded treatment of the campaign rhetoric in 1800, and the sources for the quotations in the foregoing paragraphs, see Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson, 144–56. For the AH quotation regarding “Mazzeian Babel,” see the editors’ note, PTJ 29:79. Bernard Weisberger, America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800 (New York, 2000); and Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800: America’s First Presidential Campaign (New York, 2007), also treat the campaign in considerable detail. For the allegation about TJ and Sally Hemings, and the charge that he was a “libertine,” see Brodie, TJ, 427.
30. AH to Wolcott, July 1, 1800, PAH 25:4–5; George Cabot to AH, August 21, 1800, ibid., 25:74–75. See also the editors’ note in ibid., 25:169–85.
31. AH, Letter from Alexander Hamilton, PAH 25:186–234. The quotations are on pages 190, 192, 196, 210, 214, 226, 222, and 233. Historian Joanne Freeman, who has written extensively on dueling and its code, has suggested that when JA did not respond to AH’s intemperate August letters regarding his alleged leadership of a British faction—which she said “contemporaries well recognized” as nothing less than the “ritualistic opening of an affair of honor”—AH believed the “code of honor entitled [him] to “post the president, condemning him before the world.” See Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven, Conn., 2001), 149.