The other member of his party of two professed total admiration for the president’s peace initiative. In a fervent letter, Abigail told John his decision was a “master stroke” that had “electrified the country.” She dismissed the Federalist senators and congressmen who questioned John as “dupes of intrigue.” The president had exercised the power given him by the Constitution. “Time will discover who is right and who is wrong,” she wrote.
Portia particularly enjoyed hearing that several people had declared that if “Mrs. Adams” had been in Philadelphia, she would have stopped the president from making such an awful mistake. “That ought to gratify your vanity enough to cure you,” John wrote. When he reached home and added intimate details of the uproar, Abigail became even more enthusiastic.19
Her support was not enough to prevent John from slipping into a black depression as he pondered his wounded presidency. One hot July day, three old friends, led by General Henry Knox, rode out from Boston to see him. John sat in the parlor reading a newspaper while they tried to converse with him. He did not offer them so much as a sip of cold water before they stalked out, wondering if the president was more than a little crazy. A few days later, a group of young men from Boston and some officers from the newly commissioned frigate USS Constitution paid him an unannounced visit. Adams gave them a snarling, raging lecture about their bad manners, while Abigail watched, appalled. He was almost as irritable with the house servants and farmhands.
Even Abigail was the target of John’s barbed remarks. But she forgave him and gently coaxed him out of his gloom. She persuaded him to attend the Harvard Commencement and a Fourth of July celebration in Boston. She monitored his mail, withholding letters that warned him of chicanery in his cabinet and elsewhere because, in his present condition, they would upset him to no purpose. Her loving concern slowly restored the president’s emotional balance. The visible evidence of how desperately he needed her help inspired Abigail to banish her own nervous tremors. Soon, John was taking an interest in the political scene again. When the tax rebel Fries was captured and sentenced to death for treason, Adams demanded to see all the papers related to the trial and verdict, and decided to pardon him.20
VIII
Not until November 1799 did President Adams respond to worried letters urging him to take charge of the government again. The Hamiltonians in his cabinet were doing everything in their power to sabotage his peace initiative. Before he left Philadelphia, Adams had agreed to appoint two older Federalist politicians to bolster the youthful Murray in the negotiations. Secretary of State Pickering repeatedly delayed their departure for Europe. Adams grimly resolved that he would see to it that these envoys sailed as soon as possible.
En route to Philadelphia, John stopped at Nabby’s house in Westchester County. He found his daughter and her children surprisingly contented. The president had managed to wangle William Stephens Smith a colonel’s commission in Hamilton’s army. For once there was some money in the family exchequer. But there were unexpected guests—Charles Adams’s wife, Sally, and her two children. With tears on her cheeks, Sally told the president that Charles had become a hopeless alcoholic. His law practice had collapsed and he had vanished into New York’s back streets, running up ruinous bills in taverns and consorting with prostitutes.
Frantic with grief and rage, John turned to the only person who could share his anguish. He told Abigail how much he “pitied…grieved…mourned” for Sally and her children. Charles was “a madman possessed of the devil…I renounce him.” The president made no attempt to see his son. He had urgent business awaiting him in Philadelphia. He resumed his journey, “loaded with sorrow,” begging Abigail to “write me every day.21
The nation’s capital was in the grip of another yellow fever epidemic. The government had moved across the Delaware to the capital of New Jersey, Trenton. There, Adams confronted his cabinet, who told him the latest news from France: the Directory had been overthrown by a young French general, Napoleon Bonaparte. Secretary of State Pickering argued that there was no point in sending a peace mission now. Adams was unconvinced and no one was able to change his mind, not even Major General Hamilton, who rushed to Trenton to add his arguments to the contretemps. The president ordered the peace commissioners to sail for France as soon as possible. A disgusted General Hamilton fired off a deploring letter to General Washington, obviously hoping to bring his influence into play.
IX
Stunning news from Mount Vernon distracted everyone: George Washington was dead. President Adams expressed his genuine grief in his message to Congress. “I feel myself alone, bereaved of my last brother,” he wrote. Black bunting shrouded the door of the presidential mansion and the entrance to Congress Hall. Abigail told her sister Mary Cranch that “no man ever lived who was more deservedly beloved and respected.”22
On December 26, John and Abigail joined a host of distinguished mourners at Philadelphia’s Christ Church to hear Congressman Henry Lee of Virginia extol Washington as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” The Episcopal service lasted almost five hours, and the Adamses followed it with a presidential dinner for thirty guests. Over the next weeks, more and more extravagant eulogies of the dead hero appeared in the newspapers, and Abigail began to grow impatient with their rhetoric. When a New England clergyman called Washington “Liberty’s spotless high priest,” and hoped President Adams had the ability to become “Columbia’s second savior,” she called it “a mad rant of bombast.” It was time for someone to declare that “no one man” was or ever could be the country’s savior. These idolaters did not seem to realize that by exalting one character, they “degrade that of their country.”23
Without the fear of Washington’s disapproval, President Adams and Abigail became outspokenly critical of the Hamilton loyalists in the president’s cabinet. Abigail was especially hostile to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering. His manners, she told one correspondent, were “forbidding,” his temper was “sour,” and his resentments were “implacable.” He fancied himself having the power to “dictate every measure,” thanks to Hamilton’s backing. The party of two concluded that this situation was intolerable. But the president did nothing about it for months.24
The weakest member of the cabinet was Secretary of War James McHenry, an affable former Revolutionary War aide to Washington who strove to be agreeable to everyone. On the night of May 5, 1800, President Adams summoned him from a dinner party to discuss a routine matter. He suddenly asked what McHenry knew about General Hamilton’s activities in New York, where Adams had heard he was constantly criticizing the administration. McHenry claimed to know nothing about Hamilton’s hostile words or actions. The president exploded into vituperative rage: “You are subservient to him. It was you who biased General Washington’s mind…and induced him to place Hamilton on the list of major generals!”
Stamping up and down his study, Adams called Hamilton “the greatest intriguant in the world, a man devoid of moral principle—a bastard and…a foreigner.” He would rather be a vice president under Jefferson than be indebted “to such a being as Hamilton for the presidency.” Moreover, McHenry was a total failure as secretary of war. The army was a mess! The soldiers lacked decent uniforms! “You cannot, sir, remain any longer in office!” Adams bellowed.
The overwhelmed McHenry said he would resign at once. Regaining a semblance of self-control, Adams apologized. He admitted McHenry was a man of integrity. McHenry returned to his office and wrote a vivid account of his dismissal, which he sent to Hamilton. The secretary of war was soon describing the scene to other people, telling them that he thought Adams was “actually insane.”25
A week later, the president fired Secretary of State Pickering. Abigail reported the dismissals in a letter to a cousin: “You will learn that great changes have taken place in the cabinet—some will mourn, some will rejoice, some will blame, others will confuse, all this was foreseen.” In fact the firings were foreseen by no one. The p
resident had given nobody a hint of what he was thinking of doing—except his fellow member of their party of two.26
X
By this time the presidential election of 1800 had begun. President Adams was seeking reelection; Thomas Jefferson was his opponent. The Republicans’ chief hit man was Scottish journalist James Thomson Callender. In a blazing pamphlet, The Prospect Before Us, “the wretch,” as Abigail called Callender, described John Adams as “that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness.” He said the voters’ choice lay “between Adams, war and beggary, and Jefferson, peace and competency.” As usual, Abigail read every word of these clotted pages of invective, shuddering with each blow.
The party of two returned to Quincy for the summer, and the newspapers told them of even more damage inflicted on John’s hopes for reelection. In a series of trials, hot-tempered Judge Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court jailed numerous editors for criticizing, among other things, the president’s supposed “thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation and selfish avarice.” Chase inflicted heavy fines on those found guilty, along with jail sentences. One of the prime victims was Callender, whom Judge Chase excoriated with special savagery. The Republicans denounced these trials as a violation of the first amendment, and many people agreed with them. Abigail became so distressed that she wondered whether American elections ought to be less frequent. She began to think an excess of democracy would destabilize the country.
The party of two’s only hope was the peace mission to France. But no news of this divisive venture emerged from the vast Atlantic Ocean. For reasons that remain obscure, the three envoys did not begin negotiating until March 1800. Meanwhile more bad news reached John and Abigail. The president had disbanded Hamilton’s provisional army, turning their political differences into a personal vendetta. The former general was passing the word that “Mr. Adams must be sacrificed.” The party’s vice presidential nominee, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina (older brother of Thomas Pinckney), had to be elected president if the party were to survive.
To guarantee this outcome, General Hamilton decided to write a A Letter from Alexander Hamilton Concerning The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams Esq, president of the United States. Fifty-four pages long, it was as thick with abuse as Callender’s Republican screed. Hamilton denounced Adams’s “ungovernable temper” and “paroxysms of anger.” At least as bad was the president’s “disgusting egotism” and his “bitter animosity” toward his own cabinet. These “great intrinsic defects of character” made him a menace to stability and order.
Hamilton originally planned to circulate this interminable missive only to a select group of Federalist leaders to persuade them to choose Pinckney over Adams. But several Republican operatives obtained copies and published excerpts in the Aurora and other newspapers. Blinded by his rage at Adams, Hamilton decided to publish the entire letter as a pamphlet, which soon circulated throughout the nation. The general’s intemperate blast split the Federalist Party and all but guaranteed Jefferson’s election. A heartbroken Abigail told her sister Mary Cranch that Hamilton had defeated himself—and John.27
XI
Heartbreak of another kind awaited the party of two as they departed from Quincy for the final months of John’s presidency. John left first, and on his journey through New York he again refused to see his son Charles. He had declared that he renounced him, and he grimly kept his word. Abigail could not be so hardhearted. “My journey is a mountain before me but I must climb it,” she told her son Thomas, who was now practicing law in Philadelphia. She found Charles unmistakably dying. His wife, Sally, was with him in a furnished room paid for by a generous friend. He was bloated and incoherent, in the final stages of alcoholism. His doctor told her there was no hope.28
Bearing this terrible burden, Abigail struggled on to Philadelphia, where she was consoled by her son Thomas. From there she journeyed to the new capital of the country, Washington, D.C., and joined her husband in the huge unfinished mansion the government had constructed for the president. Abigail was fascinated by the even more unfinished capital city, which she described as “romantic but wild.” John gave his final State of the Union address to Congress, and Abigail tried to cope with heating the gigantic house, which was being called the president’s “palace.” The term White House was more than a decade in the future.
In December the results from the last states to vote trickled into Washington. (There was, as yet, no single election day.) The contest was surprisingly close. But by December 16, it became apparent that Jefferson had won by eight electoral votes. By that time, crushing personal news had reached John and Abigail from New York: Charles was dead. Abigail wrote a touching letter to his widow, Sally, recalling how lovable Charles had been as a boy. She assured her that the president mourned for his lost son, “as he has for a long time.”29
As for the lost election, Abigail confessed that her first reaction was relief. “I shall be happier at Quincy,” she told Thomas Adams. But to a cousin she admitted, “I lose my sleep often and I find my spirits flag. My mind and heart have been severely tried.”30 She worried about how the president would react to this abrupt loss of power and prestige. She feared that returning to his farm, “a world so limited and circumscribed,” would plunge him into permanent gloom.31
But Portia’s dearest friend found consolation in the peace treaty with France, the chief accomplishment of his administration. A copy of the treaty did not reach Washington, D.C., until after the election was lost. The terms were so unsatisfactory that the Senate at first refused to ratify it. The envoys had ignored instructions to seek millions of dollars to repay American merchants and ship owners for the vessels the French had seized in the Quasi-War. But the agreement ended the shooting war, enabling John to claim a victory over his enemies in his own party, if not over the Jeffersonian Republicans. He found special satisfaction in thinking of the treaty as a triumph over Alexander Hamilton. The president vowed he would go home and write his autobiography, answering the ex-general’s slanders. Above all, he looked forward to years and years in the company of his beloved Portia, the only person in the world who appreciated him.
REMEMBERING SOME OTHER LADIES
John Adams never completed his autobiography. But he enjoyed seventeen happy years of Abigail’s companionship. They remained partners in mind and heart, deeply involved in the lives of their children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. At various times, many of the grandchildren lived with them. As the years advanced, Abigail’s health became fragile. But she refused to slow down. Her “uncontrollable attachment to the superintendence of every part of her household,” John told John Quincy, worried him. “She must always be writing to you and all her grandchildren…she takes upon herself the duties of her granddaughter…maids, husband.” He might have added that she was also managing the life and career of her youngest son, Thomas. Acknowledging that he had no hope of restraining her, John could only grumble, “I say…she must, because she will.”1
During these years, several other women became part of John Adams’s life. One drove him almost berserk, another broke his heart, and a third brought him love and consolation when he needed them most. Mercy Otis Warren was the disrupter of his peace. This remarkable woman, the sister of James Otis, the early agitator against British rule, was an old friend who attracted John’s attention with her trenchant prose style even before the Revolution. He praised her satires and hard-hitting criticism of loyalists and conservatives. We have seen how their friendship collapsed when John refused to help her husband, James Warren, get a federal appointment in 1789.
In 1805, Mercy Warren published what she and many others considered her masterpiece—three formidable volumes, titled History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, Interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations. President Thomas Jefferson bought copies and urged his friends to do likewise. Inevitably, John and Abigail read these long and remarkably we
ll-researched books—and were dismayed and enraged. Although Mrs. Warren praised John’s domestic life for its “morality, decency and religion,” she made it clear that she took a dim view of John Adams as a revolutionary leader. She contended that he was a failure as a diplomat—he was “ridiculed by the fashionable and polite society of France” because he was deficient in the “je ne sais quoi so necessary in polite society.”
In England, merciless Mercy claimed Adams had been “corrupted” by his close contact with monarchy and came home enamored of aristocracy, replete with “all the insignia of arbitrary sway.” A “large proportion of his countrymen” thought he had “forgotten the principles of the American Revolution.” As president he was a virtual betrayer of the Revolution, leader of an anti-republican administration. Even worse were her comments on John’s character: he was driven by “pride of talents and much ambition.” Too often “his passions and prejudices were…too strong for his sagacity and judgment.”2
An enraged Adams fired off ten blazing letters to Mrs. Warren, condemning her habit of presenting him “in an odious light…to lessen and degrade” him. Where did she get this disposition to “wink him out of sight?” he virtually bellowed. Why was he deficient in je ne sais quoi but not Franklin, Jefferson, and a host of others? How dare she call him “corrupted”? He challenged her to produce a single fact justifying this insult, “from my cradle to this hour!” He reminded her that her brother, James Otis, had predicted in the 1760s that “John Adams would one day be the greatest man in America!”
The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers Page 23