John Adams

B

2

Representative to Great Britain

Adams continued to live in France after the treaty was signed. He negotiated a second loan from the Netherlands and then, in 1785, became the first American diplomatic representative to Britain. He found the British cordial to himself and his family but cool and skeptical toward the country he represented. Frustrated in his attempts to carry out the terms of the peace treaty, Adams asked Congress to recall him. His service in Britain and his career as a diplomat ended in February 1788.

C

Vice President of the United States

C

1

National Election

The Constitution of the United States had been drafted in 1787 and ratification by the states had begun. Under its provisions, members of the Electoral College, who were chosen by the states, voted in February 1789 to choose a president and vice president. At that time, each elector cast two votes. When the votes were tallied, the person who got the most votes became president and the runner-up became vice president. (The system was later changed to permit separate choices for president and vice president.) In 1789 all 69 electors voted for George Washington, electing him president. John Adams received the second largest number, 34 votes, and became the first vice president of the United States.

Adams took office on April 30, 1789. He served as vice president under Washington for eight years. The office, which was intended to provide a head of government in case of the president's death, did not suit the spirited Adams. He regarded the vice presidency as unworthy of his abilities, calling it “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.”

Adams did exert some influence by casting tie-breaking votes in his role as president of the Senate, the newly created upper house of the Congress of the United States. In 20 such votes, on a variety of issues, Adams consistently supported Washington's policies. He helped to decide on U.S. neutrality in a new war between France and Britain and the adoption of reprisals against Britain for interfering with American shipping. He also supported financial measures proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.

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During his vice presidency, Adams was part of the beginning of the political party system in the United States. President Washington regarded himself as president of the entire nation and deplored the division of the country into partisan groups. His Cabinet, however, fostered the very divisions he sought to prevent. The Federalists, led by Hamilton, favored a strong central government. They soon became the Federalist Party. The anti-Federalists or Republicans (later to become the Democratic-Republican Party), under Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, sought more power for the individual states and urged that all citizens be given a voice in government.

Adams had begun his career as a defender of the rights of the people. He did not, however, share Jefferson's belief in people's basic goodness, and he feared tyranny of the masses as much as tyranny of a monarch. The disorder and bloodshed of the French Revolution (1789-1799) confirmed his fear of unbridled popular rule. “It has been said,” he wrote in a postscript to his Davila papers, “that it is extremely difficult to preserve liberty … It is so difficult, that the very appearance of it is lost over the whole earth, excepting one island (England) and North America.” Now Adams stressed the necessity of a balanced government with “an independent executive authority, an independent senate, and an independent judiciary power, as well as an independent house of representatives.” In time, although he was a close friend of Jefferson's, Adams found himself siding with the Federalists.

The Federalist Party, however, was by no means united. Adams and Hamilton, although they often supported the same policies, were divided on basic issues. Adams did not share Hamilton's belief in a government controlled by a small group of wealthy aristocrats.

C

2

Election of 1796

In 1796 Washington, who had twice been unanimously elected president, declined to run for a third term. For the first time in the history of the United States the office of president was contested. The election of 1796 set the pattern for all future U.S. elections. There were rival candidates and rival parties. The chief contenders were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Hamilton supported Thomas Pinckney, former diplomatic representative to Great Britain. A fourth contender was Aaron Burr, one of the leaders of the Tammany Society, a political machine in New York City. Adams and Pinckney were Federalists. Jefferson and Burr were Republicans.

Most of New England stood firmly behind Adams but was willing to support Pinckney for vice president. Some New England electors then decided they would vote for Adams but not for Pinckney. This would ensure that Adams got a majority of the electoral votes. Hamilton argued against this move, insisting that Jefferson might become vice president.

Fortunately for Adams, New England held firm and withheld many votes from Pinckney. Some Federalist electors in other sections of the country switched their votes to Pinckney and, if New England had followed Hamilton's advice, Pinckney would have won. The final vote stood: Adams, 71; Jefferson, 68; Pinckney, 59; and Burr, 30. It was the only time the nation had a president and vice president who were members of different political parties and had run against one another in the election. (In 1864, Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, and Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, were elected as president and vice president, but they had run together as a unity ticket during the midst of the American Civil War.)

IV

President of the United States

John Adams was inaugurated as president at Federal Hall, Philadelphia, on March 4, 1797. Philadelphia was then the nation's capital. Adams spent only the last few months of his presidency at the new capital, Washington, D.C.

President Adams was immediately confronted with a number of pressing issues. The most urgent was a threat of war with France. For four years the United States had remained neutral in the struggle between France and Britain. Britain, however, had a policy of seizing neutral ships—including those of the United States—that traded with France. To stop this seizure of American ships, the United States negotiated Jay's Treaty of 1794, which appeased Britain by giving it various trading concessions. The treaty was unpopular in the United States; moreover, it enraged the French, who believed the Americans were aiding the British. Early in 1797 the French began attacking American shipping, and by June they had seized 300 American ships. France had broken relations by sending the U.S. diplomatic representative home. Many American leaders now saw war as the only option.

Adams would not find it easy to continue Washington's policy of neutrality, although he had consistently supported it. Many Federalists did not shy away from war with France. Hamilton, especially, supported war with France. Jefferson and his followers, on the other hand, defended France's actions and urged support of France against England. Adams called a special session of Congress to deal with the French question. In his message to Congress he urged a peaceful policy. He proposed that a new mission be sent to negotiate the differences with France and that the U.S. Army and Navy be kept ready in case negotiations should fail. His recommendations were well received, and a three-man diplomatic mission was dispatched to France.

A

XYZ Affair

The French government did not receive the new mission. Instead the diplomats were approached by agents of Charles Talleyrand, the French foreign minister. The agents proposed that the United States could make reparations for its alleged injuries to France by paying Talleyrand a huge bribe and financing a large loan to the French government. These terms were so exorbitant and dishonorable that the American diplomats rejected them. When Adams, who had been waiting anxiously for news, got their report, he tried to keep it secret. But Jefferson's pro-French Republicans accused Adams of suppressing information that was favorable to France and thereby driving America into war with that country.

Adams finally let the report be published. The names of the French agents were changed to X, Y, and Z, but the details were left unchanged. Jefferson now found himself on the defensive as anti-French feeling rose over the XYZ Affair, as it was called. He argued that there was no reason to believe that the agents were actually speaking for the French government. Hamilton, although out of office, took advantage of the growing antagonism toward France to advocate war. Still controlling a faction of the Federalists in Congress and in the Cabinet, he was able to influence Congress to renounce all the treaties it had made with France during the American Revolution. Congress also ordered an expansion of the army, created the Department of the Navy, and commissioned the building of naval fighting ships. George Washington was called out of retirement to lead the army, with Hamilton as his second in command. By the end of 1798 more than a dozen American men-of-war had been launched, and an undeclared naval war with France had begun. Adams did not like the vast military preparations, but he complied with the nation's wishes.

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