Had the news of the peace agreement at Mortefontaine arrived a few weeks sooner, it, too, could very well have been decisive for Adams. Also, were it not for the fact that in the South three-fifths of the slaves were counted in apportioning the electoral votes, Adams would have been reelected.
To Adams the outcome was proof of how potent party spirit and party organization had become, and the most prominent was Burr's campaign in New York. Washington, in his Farewell Address, had warned against disunion, permanent alliances with other nations, and “the baneful effects of the spirit of party.” Adams could rightly claim to have held to the ideals of union and neutrality, but his unrelenting independence—his desire to be a President above party—had cost him dearly.
“How mighty is the spirit of party,” he wrote to Elbridge Gerry. There was nothing unexpected about Jefferson's success, Adams thought, but Burr's good fortunes surpassed “all ordinary rules.” All too plainly, times had changed:
All the old patriots, all the splendid talents, the long experience, both Federalists and Anti-Federalists must be subjected to the humiliation of seeing this dextrous gentleman [Burr] rise like a balloon, filled with uninflammable air over the heads.... What an encouragement to party intrigue and corruption!
In the last analysis, however, it was not Jefferson or the “dextrous” Burr who defeated Adams so much as the Federalist war faction and the rampaging Hamilton. And none of this would have happened but for Adams's decision to send the second peace mission to France. It was his determination to find peace and check Hamilton that cost him the full support of the party and thus the election.
• • •
TENSION AND UNCERTAINTY over the Jefferson-Burr deadlock increased by the day. Burr refused to step aside in deference to Jefferson and was said to be secretly bargaining with the Federalists in return for support when the issue went to the House. Hamilton, in an effort to play kingmaker at the last, was again in the thick of things. Given his intense dislike and distrust of both men, the choice was painful, but after consideration he had decided on Jefferson.
Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his notions, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly government [Hamilton wrote in explanation]. Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself; thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement... In the choice of evils, let them [the Federalists in Congress] take the least. Jefferson is in my view less dangerous than Burr.
Adams, who could have applied influence behind the scenes, refused to say or do anything. Firm in his belief in the separation of powers, he saw it as a question for the legislature in which he, as President, had no business and he would stay far from it.
It was said Adams so bitterly resented that Jefferson had bested him in the election that he refused to come to his aid, and that if the truth were known he preferred Burr. But Adams expressed no enmity toward Jefferson; and in private correspondence, he and Abigail both said they preferred—and expected—Jefferson to be the one chosen. It was not that they had recovered their former affection for Jefferson, but they knew his ability, “all the splendid talents, the long experience,” in Adams's words. Like Hamilton, they saw Jefferson as the less “dangerous” man. To Abigail, Burr was a figure “risen upon stilts,” with no thought to the good of the country.
If there was a gleam of justice to the crisis, it was the dreadful pass Hamilton had come to. “Mr. Hamilton has carried his eggs to a fine market,” Adams told William Tudor, using the old farmer's expression. “The very man—the very two men of all [in] the world that he was most jealous of are now placed above him.”
On January 1, 1801, the Adamses held the first New Year's Day reception at the President's House. Several days later, they invited Jefferson to dine, one of several events that belie claims made then and later that Adams and Jefferson refused to speak. “Mr. Jefferson dines with us and in a card reply to the President's invitation, he begs him to be assured of his homage and his high consideration,” Abigail wrote Thomas in a letter dated January 3, 1801. Adams having made the overture, Jefferson had responded graciously. Whatever private feelings either harbored, civility prevailed.
Other guests were included and Abigail left an undated account of a conversation with Jefferson, who was seated beside her and professed not to know several members of Congress at the table. She said she knew them all. When he asked what she thought “they mean to do” about the election in the House, she said she did not know, that it was a subject she did not “choose to converse upon,” and then demonstrated that she could make him laugh.
I replied ... I have heard of a clergyman who upon some difficulty amongst his people, took a text from these words: “And they knew not what to do,” from whence he drew this inference, that when a people were in such a situation, they do not know what to do, they should take great care that they do not do they know not what. At this he laughed out, and here ended the conversation.
A month later, shortly before she planned to leave for Quincy ahead of the President, Jefferson would come to tea. He “made me a visit... in order to take leave and wish me a good journey. It was more than I expected,” she wrote. Were it ever in his power to serve her or her family, he said, nothing would give him more pleasure.
Abigail had come to Washington with a “heavy heart,” as she told John Quincy in a long letter, and events since had provided little relief. “My residence in this city has not served to endear the world to me. To private and domestic sorrow is added a prospect of public calamity for our country.... What is before us Heaven only knows.”
“The President,” she was pleased to report, “retains his health and his spirits beyond what you could imagine.”
They had no plans for the future, except to return to Quincy and take up the life they had both professed so often to want more than anything else, except that this time it would be to stay. To a suggestion from William Tudor that he and Tudor reunite as law partners, Adams replied in a letter of January 20, “I must be farmer John of Stoneyfield and nothing more (I hope nothing less) for the rest of my life.”
That evening, when fire broke out next door in the Treasury Building, Adams was immediately out the door and across the way to lend a hand. A newspaper described the event the next day: “The fire for some time threatened the most destructive effects—but through the exertions of the citizens, animated by the example of the President of the United States (who on this occasion fell into the ranks and aided in passing the buckets) was at length subdued.”
• • •
WITH LITTLE MORE than a month left to his term in office, Adams made one of the most important decisions of his presidency. Oliver Ellsworth had resigned as Chief Justice. To replace him Adams first turned to his old friend John Jay, but when Jay declined, he chose John Marshall.
According to Marshall's account, Adams and he were conversing in Adams's office at the President's House. “Who shall I nominate now?” Adams asked. When Marshall said he did not know, Adams turned and declared, “I believe I must nominate you.”
But it is probable that Adams knew exactly whom he would choose before Marshall ever entered the room. In many ways the nomination was inevitable. Few men had so impressed Adams as Marshall, with his good sense and ability. Nor had anyone shown greater loyalty. He was Adams's kind of Federalist and one who at forty-five—“in the full vigor of middle age,” as Adams said—could be expected to serve on the Court for years to come. On January 31, 1801, at the President's House, Adams signed Marshall's commission as Chief Justice, which the Senate confirmed without delay. In its far-reaching importance to the country, Adams's appointment of Marshall was second only to his nomination of George Washington to command the Continental Army twenty-five years before. Possibly the greatest Chief Justice in history, Marshall would serve on the Court for another thirty-four years.
As time ticked away in the “castle house,” as he called it, Adams kept steadily at work, awaiting decisions in Congress on a judiciary bill that mattered
greatly to him, the fate of the peace treaty, which mattered above all, and ultimately February 11, when the electoral vote would be officially declared and the House would go into special session to resolve the Jefferson-Burr tie.
On February 3, the Senate at last approved the Convention of Mortefontaine. No one was overly enthusiastic. As was once said of the Jay Treaty, it was thought to be about as good as could be expected under the circumstances. What was not known, or even suspected, was that Bonaparte, at the very time he had been dealing with the American commission, was secretly negotiating a transfer of Louisiana from Spain to France.
Dreading her long trip home, with “so many horrid rivers to cross and such roads to traverse,” Abigail put off her departure until after February 11. “Today,” she recorded on February 7, “the judges and many others with the heads of departments dine with me for the last time.”
At the Capitol, Wednesday, February 11, the Congress met in joint session. The certificates of the electors were duly opened by the Vice President, who declared the result, and the House went immediately into session to start balloting. But days passed with the House deadlocked, unable to reach a decision. As crowds gathered outside the Capitol, the tension grew extreme. “The crisis is momentous,” reported the Washington Federalist. There was talk of desperate schemes to prevent the election, talk of civil war.
Abigail decided she should wait no longer. Early in the morning of Friday, February 13, she bid Adams goodbye and with her granddaughter, Susanna, set off by public stage through the “wilderness” to Baltimore, the first leg of the journey home. Her stay in the President's House was over, and she was to have little to say about it ever again.
• • •
YEARS LATER, recalling the suspense of waiting for the House decision on the election, Jefferson would describe meeting with Adams on or about February 12 or 14.
“When the election between Burr and myself was kept in suspense by the Federalists,” Jefferson would write to Benjamin Rush, “and they were mediating to place the President [pro tempore] of the Senate at the head of government, I called on Mr. Adams with a view to have this desperate measure prevented by his negative.” According to Jefferson, Adams acted extremely displeased.
He grew warm in an instant, and said with a vehemence he had not used towards me before, “Sir, the event of the election is within your own power. You have only to say you will do justice to the public creditors, maintain the navy, and not disturb those holding office, and the government will instantly be put into your hands. We know it is the wish of the people it should be so.”
“Mr. Adams,” said I, “I know not what part of my conduct, in either public or private life, can have authorized a doubt of my fidelity to the public engagements. I say, however, I will not come into the government by capitulation. I will not enter on it, but in perfect freedom to follow the dictates of my own judgment.”
“Then,” said he, “things must take their course.” I turned the conversation to something else, and soon took my leave. It was the first time in our lives we had ever parted with anything like dissatisfaction.
There is nothing to contradict Jefferson's account, or anything to verify it. Neither Adams nor his secretary Billy Shaw made note of a visit by Jefferson, or said anything of such an exchange in later years. Nor is there evidence that Adams ever discussed such terms with the Federalists in the House or took an interest in Federalist strategy. But it was also understandable that the Federalists wanted some assurance on where Jefferson stood, since he had made no statements on public issues.
The suspense ended on Tuesday, February 17, when, on the thirty-sixth ballot in the House, Jefferson was chosen President. One Federalist representative, James A. Bayard of Delaware, decided at last to switch his vote.
Later, Bayard would say Jefferson had agreed to the three Federalist terms, but this Jefferson vehemently denied. The question of what actually happened would remain unresolved.
“The Revolution of 1776 is now, and for the first time, arrived at its completion,” proclaimed the Aurora.
Till now the Republicans have indeed beaten the slaves of monarchy in the field of battle, and driven the troops of the King of Great Britain from the shores of our country; but the secret enemies of the American Revolution—her internal, insidious, and indefatigable foes, have never till now been completely discomfitted. This is the true period of the triumph of Republican principle.
• • •
IN THE LAME-DUCK Federalist Senate, meanwhile, an act expanding the Federal judiciary, something that Adams had proposed more than a year earlier, was passed into law. The number of circuit courts was doubled to six. Twenty-three new judges were added. For Adams, who had so long championed a strong, independent judiciary as proper balance to the other two branches, it was a major improvement and he proceeded at once to fill the new positions.
For weeks Adams had been exercising his presidential prerogative to fill government positions of all kinds, including some for friends and needy relatives. Scruples of the kind he had once preached to Mercy Warren concerning such appointments were considered no more. Colonel Smith was named surveyor of the Port of New York. Joshua Johnson, the father-in-law of John Quincy, who had fled England to avoid his creditors, after his reputed wealth turned out to be a fiction, was made postmaster of the District of Columbia.
But Adams's court appointments particularly were given careful consideration. There was no frenzied rush to name “midnight judges,” as portrayed by Jefferson and the Republican press. Most of the nominations for judges were made on February 20, the rest completed by February 24, more than a week in advance of the inauguration. That nearly all those selected were Federalists was no more surprising than the indignation of the President-elect. In fact, most all of the nominees were perfectly good choices and the Republicans opposed hardly any of them. Abigail's nephew, William Cranch, who was nominated and approved for the circuit court of the District of Columbia, went on to have a distinguished fifty-year career, both as a judge and a court reporter.
Without any prompting or pressure, Adams also named Oliver Wolcott for the Second Circuit Court. Incredibly, Adams still trusted and liked Wolcott, never suspecting him of the treachery of others in the cabinet. (Wolcott, for his part, often privately ridiculed the President for being abnormally suspicious.) “I wish you much pleasure and more honor... and I doubt not you will contribute your full share to make justice run down our streets as a stream,” Adams wrote. “My family joins in friendly regards to you and yours.” Wolcott, for all he had done secretly to destroy Adams, was happy to accept the appointment.
Abigail was not to expect much in the way of correspondence from him, Adams told her. “My time will be all taken up. I pray you to continue to write me.” He would be entertaining a delegation of Indians that evening, February 16, 1801, his last official dinner—and was glad to say he was sleeping better “for having the shutters open.”
Among Adams's final acts as President, and undoubtedly with strong encouragement from Abigail, was to recall John Quincy from his diplomatic service abroad.
Among the last letters he wrote as time ran out was a considerate reminder to Jefferson that he need not purchase horses or carriages, since those in the stable at the President's House were the property of the United States and would therefore remain behind.
• • •
ON INAUGURATION DAY, Wednesday, March 4, John Adams made his exit from the President's House and the capital at four in the morning, traveling by public stage under clear skies lit by a quarter moon. He departed eight hours before Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office at the Capitol, and even more inconspicuously than he had arrived, rolling through empty streets past darkened houses, and again with Billy Shaw and John Briesler as his companions.
To his political rivals and enemies Adams's predawn departure was another ill-advised act of a petulant old man. But admirers, too, expressed disappointment. A correspondent for the Massachusetts Spy ob
served in a letter from Washington that numbers of Adams's friends wished he had not departed so abruptly. “Sensible, moderate men of both parties would have been pleased had he tarried until after the installation of his successor. It certainly would have had good effect.”
By his presence at the ceremony Adams could have set an example of grace in defeat, while at the same time paying homage to a system whereby power, according to a written constitution, is transferred peacefully. After so vicious a contest for the highest office, with party hatreds so near to igniting in violence, a peaceful transfer of power seemed little short of a miracle. If ever a system was proven to work under extremely adverse circumstances, it was at this inauguration of 1801, and it is regrettable that Adams was not present.
It would also have been more politic to have expressed confidence in his successor, but, such expressions were not Adams's way if he did not mean them.
No President having ever been defeated for reelection until then, there was no tradition of a defeated president appearing at the installation of the winner. It is also quite possible that Adams was not invited to attend, or made to feel he would be welcome. When it was rumored, for example, that Adams might deliver a valedictory to Congress, the Aurora had questioned how possibly the “Duke of Braintree” could ever consider appearing before “a body in which his former friends are his enemies, and his former opponents the only persons who pity him.” Adams, said the Aurora, was a man who had been cast out by God like “polluted water out at the back door.” “May he return in safety to Braintree, that Mrs. Adams may wash his befuddled brains clear.”
Perhaps, given what Adams had been through at the hands of the Republicans and a number of Federalists still in Congress, those who had done all they could to overthrow him, he simply could not face being made a spectacle of their triumph.