First Family

by Joseph J. Ellis

  Context is also crucial. The national government was still too new to have developed clear criteria for what constituted treason, the press had yet to work out standards to distinguish responsible journalism from scandal sheets, and our modern conception of First Amendment guarantees of civil liberties and freedom of the press remained blurry hopes for the future. Abigail was doing her best to negotiate this hothouse environment and, like everybody else, making it up as she went along.

  Finally, her judgment was a victim of her love for John. Ever the lioness protecting her lair, she was watching the pressures of the presidency and the incessant salvos from the Republican press age John beyond his years: “I never saw Mr. Adams look so pale,” she reported to her sister, “and he falls away [loses weight?] but I dare not tell him so,” adding in a motherly vein that “he smoaks more sigars then I wish he did.” He was the love of her life, father of her children, accomplice in negotiating midlife, political mentor, intimate confidant, and best friend. She also so wanted him to succeed that she was thrilled rather than shocked at a Fourth of July toast: “Mr. Adams. May he, like Samson, slay thousands of Frenchmen with the jawbone of Jefferson.”30

  Her strong endorsement of the major misstep of John’s public career is, then, both poignant and paradoxical: poignant because it was motivated by the purest and strongest human affection possible; paradoxical because the very intensity of her love blinded her to the damage she was doing to his political legacy.

  THUNDERSTRUCK

  John’s signature on the Sedition Act—eventually the most regretted signature of his life—was barely dry when he drafted an urgent request to his retired predecessor at Mount Vernon. Congress had recently seen fit to order the creation of a ten-thousand-man Provisional Army. It was “provisional” because it was contingent upon the appearance of the French fleet off the American coast. The previous day John had ordered Secretary of War McHenry to visit Washington at Mount Vernon and ask him to head that army. The letter was designed to alert Washington to the looming request, which John was at pains to describe as a last resort: “If it had been in my power to nominate you to be President of the United States,” he somewhat strangely claimed, “I should have done it with less hesitation and more pleasure.”31

  Even more curious than his purported willingness to step aside for Washington, John’s endorsement of the Provisional Army to oppose a putative French invasion seems strange, because his central assumption until then had been that any war with France would be fought on the high seas. He was an advocate of what he called “wooden walls,” an American fleet fully capable of contesting French naval power in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, where the undeclared war was already going on. He was also on record as opposing “standing armies,” which in English and European history had served as the vehicles for tyrannical takeovers of republican governments—witness Caesar, Cromwell, and now Napoleon—a pattern that John Quincy had noted in his forecast of Napoleon’s likely course. Moreover, even if all the diplomatic initiatives failed and war with France proved inevitable, the likelihood of a French invasion of the United States was remote in the extreme. As John put it to McHenry: “Where is it possible for her [France] to get ships to send thirty thousand men here? At present there is no more prospect of seeing a French army here than there is in Heaven.” Why, then, was the greatest hero of the age being asked to recruit and then lead an army that John regarded as both dangerous and unnecessary?32

  The short answer is that the ultra-Federalists in Congress had approved the creation of the Provisional Army in the same session that also produced the Alien and Sedition Acts. Both measures were justified as guarantees of American security in response to the looming war with France. John’s posture toward both initiatives was some combination of indifference, passivity, and dazed acquiescence. To say that he had lost control of the Federalist agenda would be misleading, since he had made no effort to exercise control of it in the first place. But it was one thing to embrace an elevated, float-above-partisanship conception of the presidency, quite another to watch helplessly from the heights as both the foreign and domestic policy of the government marched forward in a direction he neither supported nor opposed.

  The most concise version of a longer answer required only two words: Alexander Hamilton. In the immediate aftermath of the XYZ revelations, when popular opinion was shifting decisively against France, Hamilton charged into print as the anonymous author of a seven-part series entitled The Stand, in which he effectively set the Federalist agenda for the following year. The humiliating treatment of the American envoys constituted a de facto declaration of war, he argued, and from now on “the frenchified faction” of the Republican Party, to include Bache and his followers, needed to realize that apologies for the despicable French behavior would not be tolerated. Moreover, reliable reports that a massive French fleet was gathering at Brest meant that the Directory was preparing to mount an invasion of either England or America. (As it turned out, Napoleon sailed the fleet into the Mediterranean, bound for Egypt.) Any prudent American response, Hamilton argued, must assume that the nation was the next target of French imperialism, so a substantial American army—Hamilton suggested fifty thousand troops—should be raised to meet the threat. In effect, the legislation promoted and passed by Congress in June and July 1798—the Alien and Sedition Acts and the creation of the Provisional Army—were efforts to implement Hamilton’s vision.33

  Moreover, the decision to recruit Washington to command the army was also Hamilton’s, passed along as an order to Pickering and McHenry, who complied like the loyal soldiers they were. McHenry was instructed to insist that Washington be given complete autonomy in selecting the officers to serve under his command and be discreetly informed that Hamilton was prepared to serve as inspector general, or second-in-command. It was safe to assume that Washington would remain a symbolic presence who never took the field, thereby placing the Provisional Army under Hamilton’s control.

  Coded letters from Hamilton to Pickering and McHenry then revealed a truly Napoleonic plan of breathtaking grandeur. Hamilton intended to march his army through Virginia, declare martial law in the Republican homeland, then arrest and jail those Jefferson disciples who refused to renounce their French sympathies. He would proceed south to seize Florida and the Gulf Coast, justifiable acquisitions because Spain was a French ally, then head west to occupy New Orleans and claim the vast Louisiana tract. If the campaigns went as well as he hoped, Hamilton thought he might decide to head south again and invade Mexico. All this should be accomplished in less than a year.34

  How Hamilton could have seriously contemplated such a preposterous scheme, and how he could so cavalierly manage its implementation in defiance of all legal and constitutional considerations, challenges rational explanation. His most recent biographer acknowledges that this moment constituted “one of the most flagrant instances of poor judgment in Hamilton’s career.” He had become an American version of Talleyrand and Napoleon rolled into one, who was putting the entire American experiment with republican government at risk.35

  As long as he had functioned within the orbit of Washington’s authority, first as a trusted aide-de-camp and then as a cabinet officer, Hamilton’s matchless powers of mind and energy had followed a disciplined course. Once Washington retired from the scene, however, Hamilton’s unleashed and unchecked ambitions became wildly erratic, wholly imperious, and eventually self-destructive. He was setting a course that would soon carry the Federalist Party over the abyss and then place him before the fatal gaze of Aaron Burr on the plains of Weehawken.

  John remained blissfully oblivious to Hamilton’s brazen machinations throughout the summer of 1798. Abigail had always been more suspicious of Hamilton’s motives than her husband, apprising a friend (with more accuracy than she realized) that “the man would in any mind become a Second Buonaparty if he was possessed of equal power.” Over the ensuing months, however, as Hamilton focused his peerless energies on the creation of twelve n
ew regiments—no detail escaped his attention, from the decorative stitching on the officers’ uniforms to the location of latrines in the training camps—John began to grasp the outline of Hamilton’s incredible scheme and the extent to which he had become a blind accomplice in its implementation.36

  He spent two months back in Quincy that fall, digesting the growing realization that he had allowed Hamilton to wrest control of his presidency from him, but also tending to Abigail, who was bedridden with a serious attack of rheumatism and an equally debilitating “bilious disorder” that kept her awake most nights. For diversion, he began reading the collected works of Frederick the Great. At a deeper level he was processing his political options, fully aware, as Abigail apprised him, that Congress was expecting “a recommendation from the president of a declaration of war with France” upon his return to Philadelphia.37

  His mind was moving in precisely the opposite direction. It would have been characteristic for him to share his thoughts with Abigail, but there is no evidence that he did, and in this instance her mind had been made up for months that war was unavoidable. Given her weak condition, he might have decided to keep his own counsel rather than risk an argument. At any rate, when the time came to leave for Philadelphia, he supported her decision to remain behind in Quincy. Writing from the road, he claimed to “miss my talkative wife” but agreed that she was in no condition to make the trip. He would have to make the defining decision of his presidency without her at his side.38

  Even before he arrived in Philadelphia, the stunning news reached America that the French fleet, which was supposedly preparing for an invasion of the United States, had in fact sailed east rather than west and, more dramatic, had suffered a devastating defeat off the Egyptian coast at the hands of Horatio Nelson, the British naval hero who had thereby destroyed the myth of Napoleon’s invincibility. It was now clear that the prospect of a French invasion was, and probably always had been, a mirage.

  An interview with Elbridge Gerry, just back from France, also buttressed John’s diplomatic instincts. Gerry had come under criticism for lingering in Paris after being ordered home, but he reported that his recalcitrance had paid dividends, permitting several conversations with Talleyrand in which the French minister expressed profuse regret about the XYZ fiasco and a strong desire to resume negotiations.

  John Quincy also reported from his listening post in Berlin that the diplomatic corridors of Europe were filled with rumors about a major shift in French policy: “They are spreading abroad the idea that they wish reconciliation with the United States, and are extremely desirous of a new negotiation.” The French were not to be trusted, John Quincy was quick to warn, and the words of both Talleyrand and Napoleon were inherently worthless. Nevertheless, it made realistic sense for Napoleon to end the undeclared war with America in order to consolidate his overextended military forces in Europe.39

  With all these considerations in mind, John decided that a new American peace initiative had at least a decent chance of succeeding. On February 19, 1799, he apprised Congress that he intended to send William Vans Murray, currently American minister at The Hague, to reopen negotiations with the French government. Secretary of State Pickering, along with the Federalist leadership in Congress, claimed that they were “thunderstruck” by the decision, and began suggesting that John had lost his mind. Several commentators speculated that this apparent fit of temporary insanity was a function of Abigail’s absence, an explanation that John relished and immediately reported to her as evidence of her reputation as the only sound mind in the family.40

  Abigail responded in kind. She, too, had seen the stories from critics who thought that “if the old woman had been there … they did not believe it would have taken place.” This was, as she put it, “pretty saucy, but the old woman can tell them they are mistaken, for she considers the measure a master stroke of policy, knowing as she did that the pulse had been feeling through that minister for a long time.” This meant that the decision, instead of an impulsive act, as so many commentators claimed, was a highly deliberative judgment that John had been mulling over for several months.41

  Abigail’s unconditional support also signaled her realignment with his preference for peace at any cost, after arguing for over a year that another peace initiative was futile. John never doubted that Abigail’s loyalty to their partnership would easily overwhelm her anti-French convictions. These were the kind of elemental presumptions on both their parts that required no conversation at this seasoned stage of their partnership. But John promised her a full recounting of his motives when they were next together. The mails could not be trusted, and “the Reasons which determined me are too long to be written.”42

  Pickering guessed at the reasons for both the decision and the apparently sudden manner in which it was made: “It was done without any consultation with any member of the government and for a reason truly remarkable—because he knew we should all be opposed to the measure.” This was an ironically shrewd assessment. John did not consult his cabinet because he had finally come to the realization that most of them were loyal to Hamilton. They would attempt to change his mind because they were co-conspirators in Hamilton’s scheme to manipulate popular fear of the French threat into a national security crisis. But John’s diplomatic initiative altered the political chemistry. It made the Provisional Army superfluous and Hamilton’s grandiose plans irrelevant. And that was precisely the reason that John made the decision. He was not only avoiding war, a major achievement in its own right, he was also avoiding a prospective military dictatorship.43

  BROODING TIME

  Having delivered the decisive blow, John then proceeded to leave town, ensconce himself in Quincy with an ailing Abigail, and remain sequestered there for the next seven months. This behavior struck observers then, and most historians since, as bizarre. While Washington had periodically retreated to Mount Vernon, he had never remained away for that long, and he had never absented himself in the midst of an ongoing political crisis. John’s decision had, in fact, provoked just such a crisis, because it caught Federalists and Republicans alike by surprise. As Abigail described the scene, his decision was “so unexpected that the whole community was like a flock of frightened pigeons; nobody had their story ready.” A country that was eager to declare war was now being led in a different direction that raised a host of unresolved questions: What were the minimum terms the American peace delegation should demand from the French? Should planning for the Provisional Army, which was still only a skeleton force, go forward or stop? Was the buildup of an American navy, now at twenty-two frigates, still a priority? John had dropped a bombshell into the center of American politics and was walking away without even looking back at the debris.44

  His explanation was Abigail. Her letters to family and friends had come to resemble medical reports: excruciating pain in her joints that kept her confined for eleven weeks and unable to sleep at night; chronic fevers, what she called “the ague,” sufficiently severe to resemble malaria; mounting fear that her health would never recover, that she was either dying (“I hourly expect my own dissolution”) or, worse, would become a permanent invalid. When informed that her youngest son, Thomas, was coming home after serving as John Quincy’s secretary at The Hague and Berlin, she asked John to alert him about her appearance: “He must prepare to see his mother ten years older than when he left her; time and sickness have greatly altered her.” At fifty-five, she felt seventy.45

  John’s stated motives for moving his presidency to Quincy, then, were not fabrications. He had always regretted his absence more than thirty years earlier, when Abigail delivered their stillborn daughter while he remained preoccupied with his wartime duties in the Continental Congress. He did not want to make that mistake again now that her physical condition, perhaps her very survival, appeared at risk. She had so often sacrificed her own personal agenda to the imperatives of his public career. It was now her turn to become his priority.

  Over the ensuing months,
as critics in Philadelphia continued to question his absence, he claimed that his administrative duties could be responsibly handled by letter. And he was, in fact, assiduous about responding to all cabinet requests—Pickering on American policy toward the slave insurrections in Santo Domingo; McHenry on rank squabbles in the army; requests for guidance from the newly appointed secretary of the navy, Benjamin Stoddert, on the deployment of recently commissioned frigates. All this routine business, he insisted, could be done from Abigail’s bedside.46

  Although he was unwilling to acknowledge it, perhaps even to himself, there were other motives for his extended absence. Once he finally realized that his cabinet, most especially Pickering and McHenry, were loyal disciples of Hamilton, he should have fired them and appointed his own subordinates. And once he rejected a declaration of war in favor of a new diplomatic initiative, he should have ordered all planning for the Provisional Army to stop. He did neither, which allowed Pickering and McHenry to resume their behind-the-scenes maneuvering, this time to scuttle additional appointments to the peace delegation, and Hamilton to proceed with planning for the Provisional Army as if nothing had really changed. John’s hibernation in Quincy was part of a larger pattern of avoidance and procrastination whenever he was faced with the challenge of assuming direct control of the Federalist Party. On this score, instead of being impulsive—the major criticism directed at him—he was indecisive.

  We are on treacherous ground here, since we are attempting to plumb the deeper recesses of John’s mind and soul, where the historical evidence is at best circumstantial and more often nonexistent. But the best guess is that his elevated conception of the presidency, as an office that transcended party (and therefore partisan) interests, produced an acute case of paralysis when the office required a party leader. There was no longer any room for his preferred version of nonpartisan executive leadership, so his response was to escape. Being a president-above-party was no longer possible, and in the new context he did not know what to do.