British form of government. But he scouted
with curt contempt the charge that he had any
" design or desire " to introduce a " king, lords,
and commons, or in other words an hereditary
executive or an hereditary senate, either into the
government of the United States or that of any
individual state." He was therefore no aristo
crat in the common sense of the phrase. The
charge of a predilection for kings and lords was
rank absurdity in his case, as in the cases of

1 See, for example, his remarks on equality in a letter of
February 4, 1794 ; C. F. Adamfc s Life of Adams, oct. ed., p. 462.



248 JOHN ADAMS

most of the other Americans against whom it
was brought ; but it was so serviceable and pop
ular a shape of abuse that it was liberally em
ployed by the anti-Federalists for many years,
and Adams suffered from it as much or more
than any other public man of the times. There
was, however, that certain semblance or very
slight foundation of truth in this allegation of
aristocratic tendencies which is usually to be
found in those general beliefs which neverthe
less are substantially false. In 1770, in the
simple provincial days, when he was only thirty-
four years old, he said : " Formalities and cere
monies are an abomination in my sight, I hate
them in religion, government, science, life." But
there was in him an instinct which he little sus
pected when he wrote these words in the days
of youthful ardor and simplicity. As he grew
older, saw more of the world, and found himself
among the men happily entitled to receive the
trappings of authority, he grew fond of such
ornamentation. He conceived that high office
should have appropriate surroundings ; undoubt
edly he carried this notion to excess upon some
occasions. But it was the office and not the
man which he wished to exalt. The trouble was
that people could not draw the distinction, which
seemed fine but was essential. Nor could he
assist them to do so by discretion in his own



THE VICE-PRESIDENCY 249

conduct. For example, his behavior provoked
criticism along a considerable portion of his route
from home upon his journey to be inaugurated
as vice-president, upon which occasion he rode
amid what his detractors chose to call an " escort
of horse." The question of titles coming up im
mediately after the Organization of Congress, he
was well understood, in spite of his disclaimers,
to favor some fine phraseology of this kind. His
advice to Washington concerning the proper eti
quette to be established by the President savored
largely of the same feeling. He talked of dress
and undress, of attendants, gen tlemen-in- waiting,
chamberlains, etc., as if he were arranging the
household of a European monarch. But he had
seen much of this sort of thing, and had ob
served that it exerted a real power, whether it
ought to or not. The office of president, he said,
" has no equal in the world, excepting those only
which are held by crowned heads ; nor is the
royal authority in all cases to be compared with
it. ... If the state and pomp essential to this
great department are not, in a good degree, pre
served, it will be in vain for America to hope for
consideration with foreign powers."

Such a matter as this seems of small conse
quence, but it meant very much in those days.
Moreover, the opposition wanted some one to
abuse, a fact which Adams would have done



250 JOHN ADAMS

well to make food for reflection, but did not.
For a long while they had to hold Washington
sacred ; they stood in some awe of Hamilton,
whose political principles they could impugn,
but whom they could not and indeed dared not
try to make ridiculous ; Adams alone served
their turn as a target for personal vituperation.
He had not the art of conciliation ; he was
growing extravagantly vain ; he was dogmatic ;
without being quarrelsome, yet he had no skill
in avoiding quarrels. He was a prominent
man, yet had no personal following, no prseto-
rian guard of devoted personal admirers to fight
defensive battles in his behalf. Neither was
he popular with the principal men of his own
party, who cared little how vehemently or even
how unjustly he was assaulted by his opponents.
He was therefore constantly pricked by many
small arrows of malice, none carrying mortal
wounds, but all keeping up a constant irritation
of the moral system. All this was very hard
to bear ; yet it did not really mean very much.
This was apparent when it came to the time of
the second presidential election, when Adams
had the pleasure of receiving the full and fair
support of his party. He owed this, however,
more than he was pleased to acknowledge, to the
aid of one whom he did not love. Hamilton,
propitiated by the uniform and very valuable



THE VICE-PRESIDENCY 251

support accorded by him, as vice-president, to
the Federal measures, now favored his reelec
tion, and the word of Hamilton was law. But,
besides this, parties had at last become well-
defined. The anti-Federalists were agreed upon
George Clinton as their candidate, and the Fed
eralists were compelled to unite in good earnest.
The electoral votes stood, for Adams, 77 ; for
Clinton, 50. He had reason to be pleased ; yet
he could not be wholly pleased, since he had
to see that Washington was the choice of the
nation, while he was only the choice of a party.
Moreover, in the French Revolution and the
excitement which it was creating in the United
States he scented coming scenes of trouble.
The restlessness of the times was upon him ; he
longed to take an active part. " My country,"
he said with impatient vexation, "has in its wis
dom contrived for me the most insignificant
office that ever the invention of man contrived
or his imagination conceived. And as I can do
neither good nor evil, I must be borne away
by others, and meet the common fate." To be
borne away by others never much comported
with the character of John Adams.

During the troubled years of his second term
little is heard of Adams. The Federalists had
gained such a preponderance in the Senate that
he had fewer opportunities than before to cast



252 JOHN ADAMS

a deciding vote. Public attention was absorbed
for the time by the men who could influence
the course of the United States towards France
and England in that epoch of hate and fury.
Adams, in his "insignificant office," enjoying
comparative shelter, saw with honest admira
tion the steadfastness of Washington s character
amid extreme trial, and witnessed with profound
sympathy the suffering so cruelly inflicted upon
the President by the base calumnies of those
enemies who now at last dared to indulge aloud
in low detraction. For a time he felt a gener
ous appreciation of that sublime greatness, and
forgot to make envious comparisons.

Monsieur Genet, as every one knows, came
to the United States with the definite purpose
of uniting them with France in the struggle
against England. The one step essential to
this end was to make the Democratic party
dominant in the national councils, and nothing
seemed to be needed to accomplish this save a
little discretion on the part of the French gov
ernment, a little tact on the part of the minister.
Fortunately, however, for the young country,
discretion and tact were never more conspicu
ously absent. The consequence was that to
France and Monsieur Genet Mr. Adams owed a
gratitude, which it must be acknowledged that
he never showed, for the continued ascendency



THE VICE-PRESIDENCY 253

of his party and his own accession to the presi
dency. But the measure of thanks which he
might be inclined to return is not to be esti
mated with confidence. For the distinction
came to him in such shape that it brought at
best as much irritation as pleasure ; and again
it was the hand of Hamilton which poured the
bitter ingredients into the cup.

When it became necessary for the people a
third time to choose a president and vice-presi
dent of the United States, it seemed moderately
certain that the Federalists would control the
election ; but they had no such reserve of su
perfluous votes that they could afford to run any
risks or to make any blunders. The first mat
ter to be determined was the selection of candi
dates. Hamilton was the. leader of the party,
inasmuch as he led the men to whom the bulk
of the party looked for guidance. In its upper
stratum he was obeyed with the loyalty of hero-
worship ; but he was not popular enough with
the mass of voters to be an eligible nominee.
Eliminating him, there was no one else to com
pete with Adams, whose public services had
been of the first order both in quantity and
quality, who seemed officially to stand next in
the order of succession, and who was not more
unpopular than all the prominent Federalists,
none of whom had the art of winning the affec-



254 JOHN ADAMS

tion of the multitude. Adams accordingly was
agreed upon as one candidate, and then geo
graphical wisdom indicated that the other
should be a Southerner. The choice fell upon
Thomas Pinckney, an excellent gentleman, of
the best character, of high ability, and suffi
ciently distinguished in the public service. In
no department of fitness, however, could any
comparison be drawn between Adams and
Pinckney which would not show Adams to be
unquestionably entitled to the higher position.
The matter was not open to a doubt ; it was
generally understood that Adams was the Fed
eralist candidate for the presidency, and that
Pinckney was candidate for the vice-presidency.
But, as the Constitution yet stood, the electors
could not thus designate them in voting; and
whoever should get the highest number of votes
would be President.

Hamilton saw in this the opportunity, through
his personal influence, to give effect to his per
sonal predilection. He had a deep, instinctive
dislike for Mr. Adams ; it was very well for
him to assert in self - justification that the
grounds of his prejudice lay in doubts as to
Mr. Adams s fitness for high official position.
Possibly he tried really to believe this ; yet he
certainly did not oppose Mr. Adams with that
openness or by those methods which would



THE VICE-PRESIDENCY 255

have naturally resulted from a sense of pos
sessing strong and sound objections to him.
The plain truth was, that as matter of fact it
was sheer nonsense to deny Adams s fitness.
His disqualification was solely his unsubmis
sive temperament. There was no question that
Hamilton was leader of the party ; and if it
could be fairly agreed that his leadership in
volved of necessity his right to dictate the gen
eral policy, then Adams was not the man for
the presidency. But such logic could not be
openly proclaimed. Hamilton, if he had worked
openly, must have impugned Adams s fitness
on some other ground than that he would not
fall prone beneath Hamiltonian influence. Such
other grounds were not easily discoverable;
hence Hamilton had to work in covert personal
ways. By private advice and letters he urged
strenuously upon the Federalist electors, espe
cially those of New England, to cast all their
votes for Adams and Pinckney. There was
much danger, he said, that the deflection of
a very few Federalist votes from either one,
caused by some local or personal predilection,
might give the victory to the Democrats, who
were a perfectly united body. Every Federal
ist must vote for Adams and Pinckney, and
not a vote must be thrown away. The perfect
carrying out of this scheme would give the



256 JOHN ADAMS

same number of votes to both these candidates,
and practically would only throw into a Feder
alist Congress the question of ranking them.
This was plausible arguing, and the figures of
the subsequent election seemed to corrobo
rate it. When the counting showed that Mr.
Adams had only one more vote than was neces
sary to an election, and only three more votes
than Mr. Jefferson, who actually secured the
vice-presidency to the exclusion of Pinckney,
it seemed that Hamilton had been very wise
in his monitions.

But the whole story was not apparent in
these simple facts. From the beginning it had
been almost certain that some Southern Feder
alists would not vote for Mr. Adams, in order
that thus they might give the presidency to
Pinckney, provided they could trust the New
Englanders to vote equally for both candidates.
It was well understood that Hamilton s influ
ence would not be seriously used against a de
sign with which he was more than suspected
of sympathizing ; and it was apparent that his
advice to the New Englanders was not alto
gether so ingenuous as it seemed. Hence the
Federalists went into the colleges in the worst
possible condition of mutual suspicion and dis
trust, with divided purposes, and much too
deeply interested in secondary objects. This led



THE VICE-PRESIDENCY 257

to the throwing away of votes. Some South
erners, who voted for Mr. Pinckney, voted also
for Mr. Jefferson instead of Mr. Adams, and
eighteen New Englanders voted for Mr. Adams
and not for Mr. Pinckney. It was highly im
probable that the voting would have gone thus
had it not been known that Hamilton was con
cerning himself in the election, and that he
preferred Pinckney to Adams. Abstractly con
sidered, his advice was sound, but he well knew
that, if those whom alone he could hope to con
trol should follow it, then others less subject to
him would neglect it, and would bring about
a result which may fairly be called wrong. He
had in fact, though not in form, done what he
could to make Mr. Adams a third time Vice-
President, when the Federalist party intended
to make him President. Mr. Adams did not
at first understand all this. He said that Ham
ilton and " his connections did not, I believe,
meditate by surprise to bring in Pinckney. I
believe they honestly meant to bring in me;
but they were frightened into a belief that I
should fail, and they in their agony thought it
better to bring in Pinckney than Jefferson. . . .
I believe there were no very dishonest intrigues
in this business. The zeal of some was not
very ardent for me, but I believe none opposed
me." But not many days had elapsed after



258 JOHN ADAMS

these words were written before the whole
truth was set before Mr. Adams. Thereupon
his feelings underwent a sudden and violent
change, and from that time forth he cherished
towards Hamilton a resentment and distrust
which under all the circumstances were entirely
natural and pardonable. He was a good enemy,
whole-souled and hearty in his hatreds. Upon
the other side Hamilton, generally not so bit
ter and unforgiving, indulged an exceptional
vindictiveness in this quarrel; so that this
animosity speedily attained such intensity as
to become a potent, almost an omnipotent in
fluence with each of these powerful men, and
through them bore powerfully upon the course
of national events for many years to come.

It was perhaps a little amusing to see how
incensed Mr. Adams was, when he discovered
that there had really been a design to deprive
him of a place which he seems to have looked
upon much as if it were substantially his own
property. There is such an opportunity to learn
some of his traits from a nai ve passage in a
letter written by him on March 30, 1797, to
Henry Knox, that, though not otherwise valu
able, it must be quoted. He says : " But to see
such a character as Jefferson, and much more
such an unknown being as Pinckney, brought
over my head, and trampling on the bellies of



THE VICE-PRESIDENCY 259

hundreds of other men infinitely his superiors in
talents, services, and reputation, filled me with
apprehensions for the safety of us all. It de
monstrated to me that, if the project succeeded,
our Constitution could not have lasted four
years. We should have been set afloat and
landed the Lord knows where. That must be
a sordid people indeed a people destitute of a
sense of honor, equity, and character, that could
submit to be governed, and see hundreds of its
most meritorious public men governed, by a
Pinckney, under an elective government. . . .
I mean by this no disrespect to Mr. Pinckney.
I believe him to be a worthy man. I speak
only in comparison with others." Volumes of
comment could not tell more than these sen
tences. The vehemence and extravagance of
expression, the notion that his defeat would
have destroyed the national existence, the gross
depreciation of Pinckney so soon as he became
a rival, the vanity involved in the tranquil as
sumption that in his own hands at least the
great republic is perfectly and unquestionably
safe, show Mr. Adams s weaknesses in strong
relief. His own utter unconsciousness, too, is
delightful ; he thinks that he is perfectly lib
eral and just when he frankly says that Pinck
ney is a " worthy man." In fact Pinckney was
very much more, and the interests of the people



260 JOHN ADAMS

have more than once since that day been in
trusted to presidents much his inferiors in char
acter and ability, and have come safely through
the jeopardy.



CHAPTER XI

THE PRESIDENCY

ADAMS S victory was none the less a victory
because it was narrow. Though he had only
seventy-one votes against Jefferson s sixty-eight,
he was President of the United States. Vexed
as he was, hurt in his vanity, incensed with
Hamilton, yet his heart swelled with a not ig
noble triumph. If the recognition of his long
public service had not come in precisely the
shape it should have come, at least he could say
to himself that this imperfection was due to
the jealous antipathy of an individual. It was
Hamilton, rather than his countrymen, who
had attenuated his triumph. But the inaugu
ral ceremonies further disturbed his self-satis
faction. Certainly every President may fairly
expect to be the grand central point of obser
vation and interest during the hours of his own
inauguration. It was exceptionally hard luck
for Adams that he undeniably was not so.
Washington was present, of course, and toward
him all faces seemed to be turned ; all were
silent, and numbers wept as they gazed at the



262 JOHN ADAMS

great national hero now leaving the public ser
vice ; when he left the hall the spectators, ab
sorbed only in him, rushed after him in throngs.
A man less sensitive and egotistical than Adams
might have felt that he was unfortunately situ
ated under the peculiar circumstances. He felt
it keenly. He was reminded of the " represen
tation of a tragedy ; " he said that he was the
"unbeloved one;" he was surprised, actually
bewildered, at the distance which he saw that
the people had established between himself and
Washington. No one would furnish him any
other solution of the " enigma " of the " stream
ing eyes," he said, and so he had perforce to
suppose that it was "all grief for the loss of
their beloved." If all this had been designed
by a thoughtful Providence as moral discipline
for an excessively vain man, it could be objected
to solely on the ground that the victim was no
longer young enough to be susceptible of im
provement ; so the only effect on Mr. Adams
was to exasperate and embitter him.

In this condition of things the Democrats
made an effort to capture Mr. Adams. They
took good care to let him know all that had
been done against him. Pickering, they said,
in his official reports had maliciously kept in
the background his services in connection with
the treaty of 1783 ; Hamilton and Jay had



THE PRESIDENCY 263

meant to keep him only a vice-president, be
cause, fortunately, he was not the man to ap
pear only as the head of a party, and to be led
by Hamilton. Jefferson wrote a letter to him,
rejoicing that he had not been " cheated out of
his succession by a trick worthy the subtlety
of his arch-friend of New York, who had been
able to make of his real friends tools for defeat
ing their and his just wishes." This letter was
indeed never delivered to Mr. Adams ; for Jef
ferson sent it open to Madison with instructions
to deliver it or not, as he should see fit, and,
for some reasons not known, Madison did not
see fit. But it explained Jefferson s plans. In
the letter to Madison he said : " If Mr. Adams
could be induced to administer the government
on its true principles, quitting his bias for an
English constitution, it would be worthy of con
sideration whether it would not be for the public
good to come to a good understanding with him
as to his future elections." In pursuance of the
same policy the Yice-President, on arriving in
Philadelphia, promptly called upon Adams, and
also paid him a handsome compliment upon
taking the chair of the Senate, and was cor
dially zealous to establish a friendly relation
ship. Mrs. Adams, triumphing in the defeat of
Hamilton s " Machiavelian policy," expressed
pleasure at Jefferson s success, between whom



264 JOHN ADAMS

and her husband, she said, there had never been
41 any public or private animosity." Hamilton
had made a mistake, great enough in its real
outcome, but which might have borne such fruits
as would have seemed to him nothing less than
fatal, had they occurred. With many men the
anticipations of Jefferson and the Democrats
would have proved well-founded. But it was
not so with Adams ; no one by any subtlety or
under any cover could introduce a policy into
his brain. He had his own ideas, and did his
own thinking. Neither through his wounded
self-love, nor his hot resentment, could he be
beguiled by Jefferson into the ranks of Demo
cracy. For good or for ill he had no master,
open or unsuspected, either in Hamilton or in
Jefferson. No writer has ever denied that he
was at least an independent President.

To sketch the administration of John Adams
with correct lines and in truthful colors is a
task of extreme difficulty. The general effect
of an accurate picture must be singularly pain
ful and depressing ; it must show us great men
appearing small, true patriots forgetting their
country in anxiety for their party, honest men
made purblind by prejudice, and straying peril
ously near the line of dishonor. The story of
these four years, though in them the national
emergency was of the gravest, is largely a tale




<7/V\



THE PRESIDENCY 265

of the most bitter feud in American history.
Even the one great act of patriotism which
Mr. Adams performed stands like a lighthouse
bedimmed in a dense distorting fog of odious
personal considerations. The quarrel between
him and Hamilton constitutes a chapter which
one who admires either of them would like to
omit. Each has to stand on the defensive, and
the defense is not easy to be made. It was a
wretched affair in which heroes became petty,
and noble men ceased to inspire respect. The
student finds the political literature of the period
to be a mass of crimination and recrimination ;
amid such acrimony it is not easy for him to
hold himself uncontaminated by the temper of
the combatants ; nor can he think it pleasant
to have as his chief duty the allotment of
censure among men at all other times praise
worthy. We have to show Adams pursuing
a course substantially of sound statesmanship,
but, through hot-headedness, pugnacity, an ego
tism almost criminal in a republic, and a lack
of tact great enough to be accounted a sin,
stumbling perpetually and hurting himself sorely
upon many obstacles which he ought to have
avoided, until finally he emerges from his stony
path doing the smallest and most foolish act
into which a magnanimous man was ever be
trayed; we have to show Hamilton following



266 JOHN ADAMS

an object of personal ambition by unworthy
machinations, allowing his former prejudice
against Mr. Adams to become degraded into a
fierce personal resentment, and in pursuance
thereof losing sight of patriotism in the effort
to destroy his enemy by methods so mean and
so unwise that we cannot read of them without
a sense of humiliation, which he unfortunately
never felt. Neither is it pleasant to see the
lesser reputation of Pickering, that brave, faith
ful, and upright Puritan, and the good name
of Wolcott, who always meant to be an honest
man, smirched with the blemish of unfairness.
Such animosities live forever, even sometimes
gaining increased bitterness from the loyalty of
the descendants of the original combatants.
Thus it has been with these quarrels ; the story
has been told many times, never with an ap
proach towards impartiality, till it requires no
small courage to tread again upon the " dark
and bloody ground."

The wars between England and France, be
tween monarchism and democracy or Jacobin
ism, or whatever the political principle of the
French revolutionists is to be called, were fought