A Magnificent Catastrophe

by Edward J. Larson

  The threat from France consumed the Adams administration from the outset and mired it in partisanship throughout. By the time Adams took office in March 1797, French naval vessels and privateers had intercepted hundreds of American merchant ships and France had substantially restricted trade by the United States in retaliation for Jay’s Treaty. All this impacted mainly the commercial Northeast, a Federalist bastion, fueling anger at France in that region. Yet, many Americans, especially in the agrarian South, where republicanism held sway, were still most leery of Britain and remained positively disposed toward France and its revolution. Within days after he became President, Adams learned that the revolutionary regime in France had refused to receive the new American ambassador named by Washington, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, an aristocratic former Revolutionary War general from South Carolina with sympathies toward France’s old royalist government and who also was the brother of Federalist leader Thomas Pinckney.

  In a bellicose address to Congress two months later, Adams urged Americans to prepare for war even as he reiterated his determination to send a peace mission to France. Reactions to the President’s policy followed party lines, with the Republican press becoming especially vitriolic in condemning an alleged rush to war. When Adams pushed ahead with efforts to resolve differences with France, he was, as he had told Jefferson he would be, blocked by leaders of his own party from including Republicans in the peace delegation. Ultimately, Adams chose to send back Charles Cotesworth Pinckney along with Virginia Federalist John Marshall and Massachusetts politician Elbridge Gerry, a political independent and close friend of the President. In March 1798, however, Americans heard that French officials refused to receive the delegation without the United States making an advance payment, which amounted to tribute or a bribe simply to begin negotiations. Americans felt humiliated by the stipulation, which was not how respectful adversaries were presumed to act at the time. The demand was made by three French officials, whom Adams diplomatically identified simply as agents X, Y, and Z, and the incident became known in America as the XYZ Affair. In response, war fever gripped the nation.

  Rumors spread of an imminent invasion by France, possibly using freed Blacks from the French West Indies as troops. The threat seemed realistic to some frightened Americans, though not to Adams and never to leading Republicans. By that time, France’s revolutionary armies had overrun much of Europe, dislodging long-established political, economic, and religious institutions as they went. America was next, High Federalists ominously warned.

  To counter the already crippling impact of French attacks on American shipping, Adams proposed building a navy and raising war taxes. Addressing the purported risk of a Jacobin invasion, in July 1798, Federalists in Congress also passed legislation tripling the size of the regular army from about 4,000 soldiers, who were stationed mainly on the western frontier to deal with threats from Native Americans, to nearly 15,000 soldiers, with the new troops to be stationed in the eastern states. Adams considered this so-called Additional Army unnecessary and Republicans viewed it as potentially dangerous. Deeply suspicious of High Federalist intentions to create a strong central government, Republicans saw a domestic standing army as a clear and present threat to states’ rights and individual liberty. Despite his reservations about it, Adams signed the legislation for the Army along with bills for his Navy and the war taxes. These measures steeled the Republicans against him.

  In 1798, after debating a declaration of outright war against France, which was backed by High Federalists but vigorously opposed by Republicans, Congress enacted a lesser measure authorizing U.S. warships to engage French vessels in international waters. The resulting naval battles of 1799 and 1800 between American and French ships became known as the Quasi-War. Hamilton pronounced himself “delighted” with Adams’s performance in the mounting crisis while Jefferson privately denounced it as “insane.” Fearing the worst from France, Americans initially rallied to the President and his party. For the first time in his career, Adams became genuinely popular—and he loved it.

  The partisan clashes over the American policy toward France intensified in 1798, when High Federalists in Congress turned to matters of internal security in wartime. The High Federalists claimed that the French government might actually whip up support among its American sympathizers, especially among Republicans and recent immigrants from Europe. Indeed, the French armies had relied on resident aliens and local republicans for help in conquering European territory. France’s ambassador, Citizen Genêt, once even appealed for public support in the United States to try to overturn Washington’s neutrality proclamation. Some Federalists charged that, in an invasion, France might successfully rally internal opposition to the government, though the Republicans in Congress dismissed this as impossible in America and feared that the Federalists sought simply to clamp down on them. The High Federalists took aim at both foreigners within the country and critics of the government in the ever more partisan and vitriolic press. By this time, a number of openly Republican newspapers had gained popularity, most notably the Aurora in Philadelphia, offering some measure of balance against the traditionally pro-Federalist press.

  In mid-1798, High Federalists pushed through Congress, and Adams signed, the Naturalization, Alien, and Sedition Acts. These laws raised the bar for citizenship, authorized the deportation of foreigners, and outlawed false and malicious criticism of the government in the press or by individuals, including by opposition politicians. A Federalist judge could readily stretch the interpretation of the Sedition Act to reach virtually any form of negative editorial comment in Republican newspapers, and even many Federalists viewed the measure as a blatant move to suppress the freedom of the press and domestic opposition. These acts “were war measures,” Adams later explained, “intended altogether against the advocates of the French and peace with France.” Presiding over the Senate when they passed, Jefferson strenuously opposed the acts in both public and private, as extreme encroachments on liberty, as did Republicans generally. At first, however, these measures proved popular with the frightened public and Federalists rode them and America’s fears of France to victory in the 1798 congressional midterm elections.

  In the last two years of his term, however, Adams’s popularity seemingly waned and the Republican opposition gained traction. The naval war with France, which proved exceedingly costly and further disrupted foreign trade, led to a soaring national debt and the collection of ever more taxes, which many Americans resented. Republican attacks on the Adams administration took their toll as the public began to realize that, despite the ongoing naval clashes, France was not going to mount an invasion of America. Before long, the Sedition Act and Additional Army began to seem unnecessary and unwise. Republicans painted them as calculated steps toward imposing an authoritarian regime in the United States, perhaps even to instituting an American monarchy.

  Rather than help to defuse partisan differences and unite the country, the proximity of Adams and Jefferson in office as President and Vice President served to personalize every clash and to excite the sense that an epic confrontation between them was imminent in the next presidential contest. The stage was set for the election of 1800: America’s first and most transformative presidential campaign.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CROSSING THE BAR

  HE MOUNTED his horse under a lead-gray sky on the morning of Thursday, December 12, 1799, for his daily ride about Mount Vernon, his vast Potomac plantation. Washington may have retired from the presidency nearly three years earlier, but he had not stopped working. He owned thousands of acres in Virginia and over three hundred slaves, many of whom worked as skilled laborers in the plantation’s many mills, distilleries, and other craft enterprises. Overseers managed Mount Vernon during his many years of public service commanding patriot forces during the Revolution, presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and leading the nation as its first President. Washington, however, resumed control of his plantation whenever he returned home. He b
elieved that Mount Vernon required his active management to remain profitable and provide a suitable income for himself and his wife, Martha.

  Mount Vernon’s depleted soils could no longer grow tobacco, which made it a constant challenge to reap a profit from farming. Corn whiskey and wheat flour became the plantation’s main cash crops. Washington regularly inspected various parts of his plantation to keep abreast of its operations. Indeed, three months after stepping down as President at age sixty-five, Washington commented about his labors at Mount Vernon, “I have been occupied from the ‘rising of the sun to the setting of the same’”—and the work had not diminished with the passing of time. On that gray December day in 1799, he remained outside on plantation business in ever worsening weather for over five hours.

  The preceding night, Washington had observed a bright halo around the moon, which he took to forecast an approaching storm. The temperature hovered in the low thirties at dawn and dropped during the day. He donned his greatcoat but not a hat for his ride that morning. Standing nearly six feet three inches tall, with the stature of a stately oak tree, Washington’s commanding physical presence contributed to his already legendary charisma. Mounting a large horse simply added to his luster. At a time when people equated equestrian skills with athleticism, Washington was a superb horseman, and it still showed at age sixty-seven.

  Although his last surviving brother had died three months earlier and none of his close male relatives had reached age seventy, Washington seemed fit. “I was the first and now am the last of my father’s children by the second marriage who remain,” he observed upon learning of his youngest brother’s death in September 1799. “When I shall be called upon to follow them is known only to the giver of life.” Washington did not expect to hear that call anytime soon. Indeed, he had recently reported on his own “good health” to a Federalist supporter and was planning an ambitious trip to inspect his frontier properties in western Virginia during the upcoming spring. Eighteen months earlier, as fears of a French invasion were sweeping the country, Washington had even accepted formal command of the expanded army—a largely titular post that he filled without leaving home. Now, on his rounds that December day, the General carried a four-year plan for enhancing Mount Vernon’s profitability.

  After eight years as the nation’s President, however, Washington could not refrain from being drawn into national political battles after his retirement. He said that he abhorred partisanship, and he probably believed that all elected officials could rise above factional self-interest and unite on fundamental issues. Yet, he readily took sides in partisan clashes, which usually put him in the company of Federalists. Even as President, Washington increasingly let Hamilton set the tone for the administration—especially after Jefferson left the cabinet in despair over the government’s elitist, pro-British tilt. “From the moment…of my retiring from the administration, the Federalists got unchecked hold of General Washington,” Jefferson later observed. “The opposition too of the Republicans to the British Treaty, and the zealous support of the Federalists in that unpopular but favorite measure of theirs, had made him all their own.”

  Following Washington’s retirement, Jefferson came to eye Mount Vernon as a haven for High Federalist intrigue in Republican Virginia. Washington had grown particularly close to Hamilton during his presidency, treating him almost as the son he’d never had, and that relationship continued after Washington left office. “An Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party has sprung up whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance as they have already done the forms of the British government,” Jefferson intemperately wrote to a foreign confidant, Philip Mazzei, in 1796. “It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England.” Jefferson clearly intended to include Washington among the apostates. After the letter became public a year later, Washington grew to distrust Jefferson in kind.

  Washington remained the most popular person in the country as the 1800 election approached. Presumably, he could have regained the presidency if he would accept it. Some High Federalists quietly began pushing for just that. They had become angry with Adams when, earlier in 1799, he had reached out again for peace with France by sending a new team of negotiators to Paris in response to assurances that French officials would receive them honorably. Some leaders within Adams’s party began actively conspiring to draft Washington for a third term. Adams, whose popularity appeared to falter as the nation’s war fever cooled, could not win reelection, they argued, and his politics were too timid.

  The disillusionment with Adams went back further for some High Federalists. Hamilton in particular distrusted Adams as too moderate to lead the nation effectively. He had tried to depress the electoral vote for Adams in 1789, claiming that he did not want anyone to compete with Washington for the presidency. After learning of the effort, Adams suspected that Hamilton may have had more sinister motivations, such as humiliating him in public and perhaps keeping him from becoming Vice President. Later events reinforced Adams’s suspicions.

  In 1796, Hamilton had made a bolder move against Adams, a harbinger of the intraparty conflict that would break out among Federalists in 1800. He tried to manipulate the Electoral College system to deprive Adams of the presidency and get his own favored Federalist, Thomas Pinckney, elected to the position instead. Hamilton’s scheme took advantage of the complex and sometimes seemingly perverse mechanics of the original electoral system.

  In their conception of the Electoral College, the Framers foresaw an elite group of well-qualified electors exercising their collective judgment in picking the best-qualified President and Vice President from an open field of leading figures from across the country. Through this process, the Framers hoped to avoid both the formation of national political parties, which were never mentioned in the Constitution, and the development of coordinated partisan voting.

  As the Framers designed the system, each elector would cast two equal votes, presumably for their top two choices for President. The most highly favored candidate would become President and the second most highly favored candidate would be placed in line for succession as Vice President. Electors were not permitted to designate on their ballots one vote for President and another for Vice President, however, nor could they vote for two candidates from their own state. The Framers included these peculiar stipulations to prevent state loyalties from overwhelming national interests in choosing the President. They worried that so many electors might favor in-state candidates in balloting that, unless they were forced to vote for someone from outside their own state, no truly national candidate could win the election. But they did not want to bar electors from voting for any in-state candidate. Thus, they gave each elector two votes. Even if each elector cast his “first” vote for his home-state favorite, a national candidate could still emerge out of electors’ “second” votes. To further assure that the President would have broad national support, to win the post, a candidate would need to receive votes from a majority of the electors. If none did, the House of Representatives would elect the President by majority vote from among the five candidates with the most electoral votes.

  The Framers’ vision of how the process would work now seems quaint: independent electors meeting in collegiate settings and using their own judgment in casting their ballots for two individuals whom they deemed best qualified to lead the nation. But the process actually operated much as the Framers intended in 1789 and 1792, when Washington was the clear favorite among all the electors. Aside from Franklin, who died in 1790, Washington was America’s only truly national hero: the one indispensable person in forming the new government. No party nominated him for President and he never campaigned for the office. Every elector cast one vote for him on both occasions, and he tried to assemble a nonpartisan administration. In both of those elections, John Adams obtained the second-highest number of e
lectoral votes—despite Hamilton’s efforts to suppress votes for him in 1789—giving him the vice presidency.

  In 1796, Adams and Jefferson continued the tradition of not campaigning for President, but much else changed. The nation’s two ideological factions had been evolving steadily into more organized political parties, and their leaders were working ever more assiduously to induce electors aligned with their party to vote for what amounted to a partisan “ticket” of two candidates designated by the party’s caucus in Congress. Presumably, electors would cast their “first” vote for the party’s preferred presidential candidate and their “second” vote for its suggested vice presidential pick, even though they could not designate their votes as such. In 1796, the Federalists had agreed on Adams for President and South Carolinian Thomas Pinckney for Vice President. In their caucus, the Republicans in Congress, while uniformly for Jefferson as President, apparently discussed four candidates for Vice President without settling on one of them for the post.

  Hamilton saw an opportunity in the rise of party-ticket voting to unseat Adams. He calculated that if there were two leading contenders for President, each with strong support in one party, as with Adams and Jefferson, then the first votes of electors might be nearly evenly divided between them. There then being 139 electors casting a total of 278 votes, this might leave one candidate with anywhere from 70 to 75 “first” votes versus from 65 to 70 “first” votes for the other, with at least one candidate needing a minimum of 70 votes to gain the required majority.