George Washington may have set the standard for American presidents, but those precedents wouldn’t have mattered if John Adams hadn’t followed through on them. Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library, joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the second U.S. president, how he solidified many of the functions of the chief executive we still know in the 21st Century, and why that meant he would sacrifice a second term. Her book is “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic.”
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Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] Ask a first grader who the first U.S. president was, and they’ll probably get the right answer. George Washington, Revolutionary War hero, our one and only unanimously elected chief executive. The precedent setting president. But here’s the thing. The first in history to do something can set all kinds of great examples, but the only things that develop into essential traditions are the ones that the next person in line for the job chooses to follow. We may not call the name of John Adams to mind as easily as George Washington, but a lot of what we think of as standard practice for U.S. presidents can be traced to his decision. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Krys Boyd. It took John Adams, after all, to demonstrate that the office of the president could even be filled by somebody without the brand cachet of a Washington. It was Adams who helped clarify and strengthen the authority of the chief executive over foreign policy and the military. And Adams, who acknowledged his defeat by vice president and rival Thomas Jefferson and left office with dignity and without violence. It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t do much to make Adams popular in his own time. He served just a single term. But as my guest will tell us, it was an extraordinarily consequential four years. The influence of which is felt even into the 21st Century. Lindsay Chervinsky is executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and author of “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic.” Lindsay, welcome to Think.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:01:28] Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here with you.
Krys Boyd [00:01:31] To state the obvious right off the top. George Washington was always going to be a hard act to follow, even by a guy as dedicated to the country as John Adams. What did Washington have going for him as he assumed the presidency that Adams did not?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:01:47] Well, Washington was blessed with a number of unique characteristics that presented him to the American people in a really special way. He physically was quite dominating. He would walk into a room and people would notice. He was very tall for the time. He had a lot of physical stature and he knew how to carry it really well and to dress accordingly. So that was part of it. He was hard to miss. He had served as the commander in chief of the Continental Army for eight years, only going home to Mount Vernon once in that entire time for a couple of days and never left his army side, and then had critically given up power, which was not something that people did in the 18th century. And so he had demonstrated that he was trustworthy. He could use this enormous power and then give it up. And then, of course, he was elected unanimously as the first president and came in already being called the father of the country.
Krys Boyd [00:02:40] We did presidential elections very differently at the very beginning. How was Adams selected as vice president in the first place?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:02:48] Well, the way the Constitution worked in terms of how people were elected is all of the electors would cast two votes. And there was an expectation by the delegates at the Continental Convention, the constitutional convention, excuse me, that there would be lots of candidates and the best or most experienced people would rise to the top. And so when Washington was put forward, everyone knew that he was going to become the first president if the Constitution was ratified. And then there was a sense of trying to pull the country together would require maybe someone from the north so that you would have geographic representation and the different parts of the country would feel that they were a part of this new project. So John Adams was one of the candidates. He had extraordinary diplomatic experience. They really cared about the presidents or presidential candidates being experienced at the time. And so he seemed, I think, like sort of a natural choice to go well with what Washington brought to the office. The electors cast their votes. Washington received a unanimous vote from every single elector. And then John Adams came in second, which is how the vice president was selected.
Krys Boyd [00:03:54] So Adams had a great deal of relevant experience. He also lacked some relevant experience.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:03:59] He did. So John Adams had been in Congress. He was a great lawyer. He had been a diplomat at The Hague and London and Paris. He had helped write the Massachusetts State Constitution, which was a model for the US Constitution. And of course he was vice president for eight years, but he had never been in an executive position. And anyone knows who’s been on a committee versus actually being in charge of something. Those are very different skills. And so when he came into the presidency, he had never sat in on one of Washington’s cabinet meetings. He had never led other men. And that was a really big new challenge for him.
Krys Boyd [00:04:36] I want to draw a line under that. Washington did not make cabinet meetings open to John Adams. That seems inconceivable to us today.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:04:45] It does, but it’s actually quite consistent with most of American history. For most of U.S. history, vice presidents have been totally irrelevant. And John Adams actually described the office as the most insignificant office ever designed by man. It’s actually not the worst thing that vice presidents have said about the office. So he was actually minding his P’s and Q’s there. But the vice president doesn’t have any constitutional responsibilities other than to have a pulse and to cast tiebreaking votes in the Senate. And so when Washington was putting together his cabinet, he picked advisers that he wanted to hear from. And for whatever reason, he doesn’t really tell us. John Adams was not one of those advisers. And so I don’t so much blame him for not doing so, because I do think all presidents need to be able to trust the people around them. But I think that when it became clear that Adams was going to be his successor, he could have provided a lot more information to help him understand the challenges of the office.
Krys Boyd [00:05:44] You mentioned a few minutes ago that Adams was a master diplomat. This doesn’t seem to square with his reputation as being really prickly and difficult and easy to offend. You’ve actually found a wealth of information to demonstrate that not only did Adams have a sense of humor, he had a sense of humor about himself in the right context.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:06:03] Absolutely. I think this is one of the things I actually like best about him is he was so aware of his own flaws and could be quite self-deprecating about them and have a sense of humor about where he fell short. To be sure, his time in France was not always very successful because something about his personality and his work ethic, he really came from like good Puritan stock and valued hard work and industry and frugality. And France was an anathema to him. He just did not understand what they were doing or French culture.
Krys Boyd [00:06:32] They wanted a Jefferson.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:06:33] They wanted a Jefferson or a Franklin who really loved to have a good time, who understood that parties were an essential part of the French diplomatic process. And Adams wanted to know why they didn’t get out of bed until noon and actually go to work. So but when John Adams went to The Hague, the Dutch people loved him and even the British people really understood him. So when he was in London, he had a much better time as a diplomat. I also think our sense of him as this prickly, difficult person comes from the accounts that were written by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson at the same time, often when they were competing against Adams as political opponents. And we know from our experience with politics today that sometimes we don’t always say the nicest or most accurate things about our political opponents. And I think that was true back then as well.
Krys Boyd [00:07:21] He did have the good sense, John Adams did, throughout his life to recognize the brilliance of his wife. And many people are familiar with that famous remember the lady’s letter that Abigail Adams wrote, her husband. But this was like the tip of the iceberg of counsel that she provided him over the years.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:07:35] That’s right. It’s a great place to start with Abigail, because it does get at a lot of her wisdom and her strong opinions. But it is really just only the beginning. She was self-taught mostly. She was quite brilliant. She was a phenomenal financial manager. She took care of everything in their life, especially when he was abroad for years at a time. But she also was a great political adviser because she was so canny about understanding people around them and their motivations so she could assess the political scene much better than almost anyone else. And he knew it. And he sought out her counsel. But others did, too.
Krys Boyd [00:08:13] Having read so much documentation from that period of time, looking at all kinds of historical figures, I think we have the perception today that most men thought their wives were idiots and not to be talked about. I’m wondering if in reality, you know, in many households it was different for women.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:08:33] I think it really does depend on the relationship because I think most men probably valued their wives, but not necessarily as intellectual or political equals. So, for example, George Washington loved Martha. He loved having her around. She was home to him. And so every year during the war, she would come to winter quarters because he did not feel at home unless she was there. And she would set up a social environment that made him feel at ease. So there’s no doubt that they talked together about their plantation, about their family, about home life. But there’s also no evidence that he talked to her about politics or anything that we would consider to be super intellectual. And I think that was probably more the norm in the 18th century, partly because a lot of women did not have the same access to education that men did. Most women were taught reading, writing and arithmetic so that they could be good housewives and could take care of the home and the children. But they were not given opportunities to read Latin or to read Shakespeare or read these other things that men would talk about in public spaces. Abigail is unusual because she sought out those materials, and John is unusual because he valued that in her.
Krys Boyd [00:09:45] What sort of notice did George Washington give John Adams that he was finished at the conclusion of his second term.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:09:53] In the spring of 1796, rumors started to circulate a little bit that Washington was planning to retire after the end of his term. And that made sense because rumors had started to circulate about that after the first term, and he had ended up staying on for four more years. In the spring, they did have a dinner. There was a public gathering, and then afterwards, John Adams stayed. And Washington had a deep conversation with him about foreign policy. Was actually the first time in eight years that they had had a nuanced, thoughtful conversation. And Adams was surprised by how much they agreed about substantive matters. And in that conversation, Washington dropped several hints that he was planning to be done at that time. But it wasn’t until September of 1796 that Washington actually made that proclamation publicly, and he did not give any atom. He did not give any notice to Adams that that proclamation was coming, whereas he did give notice to the chief justice of the United States and to the cabinet secretaries.
Krys Boyd [00:10:52] Another big difference in the way we do presidential elections now as compared with the beginning, is that early on, people who wanted the job didn’t openly campaign for it. It was seen as untoward.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:11:04] Yes, that’s right. So they were expected to stay at home to not say anything publicly, to not go to events, to not do, you know, TV or radio, not that they had those things. And their supporters instead were supposed to do all of the work. They were supposed to write the articles and pass around the pamphlets and engage in the public letter writing campaigns that really did form the center of political activity in the 18th century. And in 1796, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson adhered to that quite strictly. In fact, James Madison, who was Thomas Jefferson’s closest ally, wasn’t sure that Jefferson would even agree to run for president. And so he didn’t write to him for four months on the off chance that Jefferson would say no. So he just, like, avoided him and did this whole campaign on his behalf, which I think is pretty funny.
Krys Boyd [00:11:54] So how actively did Adams pursue the job behind the scenes in a retiring manner?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:12:00] Not really at all. I mean, he he wanted it, but he didn’t want to want it. He wanted to not be an ambitious person. He wanted to be content to being a farmer. He liked to write about his carrot beds, but he also was deeply ambitious. And he saw the election as a confirmation of the American people’s esteem for him and respect for his service. And so he really saw it not so much because he wanted power, but because of what it meant for his role in the American imagination. But he didn’t do anything to get it. He stayed behind the scenes. He’d not say anything publicly.
Krys Boyd [00:12:33] It’s poignant to think about a figure like John Adams as being sort of hungry for approbation.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:12:40] I think this is one of the things that’s so relatable about him is that he understands that this concept of ambition is in some ways, he saw it as a sin and he saw it as a weakness. And so he wanted to combat it. He wanted to be well liked. He wanted to be celebrated like Washington was. And he was a little bit bitter that his diplomatic service didn’t receive the same sort of acclaim as Washington’s military service. But he also didn’t want those things. And that internal battle, I think, is so relatable to a lot of people who sometimes feel pulled in different directions. And as one of the things that makes him very human.
Krys Boyd [00:13:15] Did Abigail want him to be president?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:13:17] No. Abigail was very interested in politics, but would have been very content to read about it from afar. She loved to be home. She loved to be surrounded by her family. She hated seen him criticized. And she knew that politics was becoming increasingly nasty. And the longer he stayed in office, the more criticism he would receive. So when he was doing a little bit of a spoiler alert here, when he lost his reelection campaign in 1800, she was so relieved.
Krys Boyd [00:13:46] Lindsey, Washington famously warned about all the ways political parties could ruin the country. But by the time Adams, his successor, was taking the oath of office, they were a significant force. Now, in Adams time, you had the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans often just referred to as the Republicans. We’ll note that neither party maps perfectly onto the ones we have today. But back then, what were the issues that broadly divided these two parties?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:14:13] The two parties really had different visions for what the future of the nation would be. So the Federalists generally wanted to be closer to Great Britain. Britain was the largest trade partner for the United States at the time. They wanted to have a stronger central government that invested in supporting trade and 18th century infrastructure. They tended to get their support from New England and the urban spaces, the Democratic Republicans or just the Republicans. They were a little bit more ideologically aligned with France. They were very distrusting of Britain. They generally got their support among farmers and the working classes in the South and in the western regions. So they wanted a smaller central government that kind of got out of the way of the farmers and they understood that a little bit of trade was important for those farms, but they didn’t want. Ought to be a central focus of the government.
Krys Boyd [00:15:01] So, broadly speaking, federalists hailed from New England in the mid-Atlantic and the South, southern states where it was largely controlled by the Democratic Republicans. Adams is a Massachusetts guy. He was a federalist. But even back then, party unity was like a distant dream. Right?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:15:18] That’s so true. And I think part of it is because at least the Federalists were quite weak as a party. And when you have a weak party infrastructure, it cannot protect diversity of opinion. It cannot protect more moderate voices from the more extreme voices attacking the same people in their own party. And so very early on in Adams administration, he realized that the divisions in the Federalist Party, we’re going to become quite extreme over issues like a potential war with France, the size and strength and management of the U.S. Army and domestic policy as well in terms of how they responded to Republican opposition. And Adams was definitely in the more moderate wing. He considered himself to actually be above party, and he did not consider himself to be a party man. Which one of his main opponents, Alexander Hamilton, agreed with and felt he was too independent and he would not to the party line, which is one of his biggest frustrations with Adams.
Krys Boyd [00:16:17] If Adams was on the more moderate side of the Federalist Party, how did that shape his foreign policy?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:16:23] Adams believed very strongly that Americans did need to engage in the world through trade and intellectual exchange. But he did not want to pursue war with either Britain or France because he understood that war could be fatal. War, you never know what is going to happen, especially if you’re a new nation and you’re fighting against the biggest army in the world. And so he really pursued diplomacy because he wanted to he wanted peace with honor, but he wanted to avoid the potential catastrophic outcomes of war. And the more extreme federalists opposed this diplomacy because they actually thought war would be really helpful to their political interests and the development of the army, which they were basically using as a spoils system.
Krys Boyd [00:17:06] So just to clarify here, I mean, Americans today may assume that Americans back then assumed that our victory in the Revolutionary War meant our sovereignty as a nation was settled. The great powers of Europe didn’t necessarily feel that way at the time.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:17:21] That is so right. They really still saw the United States kind of as a pawn to move around in their conflict. France and Great Britain had been at war with one another off and on for centuries and would continue that for a bit. And the United States was really just a piece of leverage that they tried to use against one another, whether it was through trade or as an ally or as a place to gain resources, and Adams understood that this is exactly how European nations saw the United States. And they were not particularly interested in looking out for the best interests of Americans. They were self-interested. And so he didn’t want to engage in that war, recognizing it really had nothing to do with them.
Krys Boyd [00:18:02] So when George Washington was president, because of his reputation and the way people felt about him, he could say, jump in. People would say, how high? How did Adams leadership help to establish for everyone else who would follow the degree of control the president actually has over foreign policy decisions as opposed to a figure like the secretary of state?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:18:25] Washington had established precedents that the president was very much in charge over both the executive branch and the cabinet would be subordinate to him, as well as over things like domestic crises and foreign affairs. But as you said, he was such a unique figure in that he was so respected and his power was so unchallenged that those rights, those privileges, those powers were very theoretical because a lot of times constitutional authority has a question mark after it until someone has actually tested it and confirmed. So Adams came into this position knowing that it was probably going to be terrible because he was going to fall short compared to Washington. And he assumed the task of defending executive authority not because he was precious about his own authority, but because he was trying to preserve the character of the presidency as Washington had created it. And that required a lot of fighting with Congress and with the Cabinet to defend that authority and prove, A, that someone else could do it, and B, that other people should be able to do it. And so he made a number of really important steps along the way to defend his right, to shape foreign policy, to defend his right to make appointments, and critically, to remove cabinet secretaries if he disagreed with them or if they weren’t doing a good job, because that is not something that Washington had done and he had to prove that it was a part of the presidency.
Krys Boyd [00:19:48] Yeah. How did Adams figure out the delicate matter of letting people go who had been part of the Washington administration without having this be perceived as some kind of criticism of Washington himself?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:20:04] I think this is one of the biggest challenges that he probably didn’t anticipate, because today when a new president comes in, the expectation is that they will have an all new staff, even if it’s someone of the same party. The cabinet secretaries give pro forma resignations with the understanding that a president needs their own advisers. That was not the established expectation in 1797. And so Adams retained Washington’s cabinet, thinking that it might provide some institutional stability at a time when the American people were very nervous about this transition, also believing that Washington would have told him if the secretaries weren’t any good. And lastly, recognizing that these positions could be really hard to fill, and if Washington had trouble, he might, too. So he actually kept all of the secretaries in place, and he didn’t make any changes until the spring of 1800. So several years into his administration, he got into a disagreement with James McHenry, who was the secretary of war at the time. And when it was very clear that he thought poorly of McHenry’s tenure, tenure as secretary of war, McHenry offered his resignation, which Adams accepted. And resigning was the gentleman’s way out. There was nothing cowardly or dishonorable about resignation. So then John Adams turned to the secretary of state, Timothy Pickering, who was by far the most powerful of the cabinet members. The position was the most prestigious. Pickering had also been the most outwardly insubordinate to Adams and had really been a thorn in his side for quite some time.
Krys Boyd [00:21:36] He took Adams orders, often as suggestions. Yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:21:39] Orders, absolutely. And he would when Adams did give him an order and he knew that he eventually had to follow it, he would stall for months to undermine the policy. He would work behind the scenes to try and get Adams nominees rejected in Congress. I mean, this is not loyal Cabinet behavior by any stretch. And if that happened in the modern time, a president would fire them immediately. So Adams turned to Pickering and offered him the opportunity to resign as well. Again, the gentleman’s way out. And Pickering said no. In a very snotty letter that was so disrespectful to the office. And Adams then fired him. This was really important because the Constitution did not specify how secretaries were removed. And when the first federal Congress in the summer of 1789 created the departments. They didn’t specify it either because they couldn’t come to an agreement. And so they acknowledge that removal might happen, but they didn’t say how. And so until Adams did it, it was this giant looming question over this relationship. And when the Senate confirmed the replacement who happened to be John Marshall, they were tacitly acknowledging that the president did have the right to do this, which the Supreme Court actually confirmed in 1826.
Krys Boyd [00:22:53] Until I read your book, I had not fully considered how hard it must have been in the late 18th century to do foreign policy and strategise on these matters when it took weeks or even months for word to bounce back and forth across the Atlantic. Adams was famously not a particularly patient guy, but there were many situations in which he just had to wait to hear what had happened.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:23:16] I sympathize with this so much because I am not a patient person. And so imagine, you know, you send he sent these envoys to Paris to try and come up with peace with France, which was the dominant issue in his presidency. And the future of the nation was at stake. And he had to wait months and months and months and months to even hear a peep. It must have been so impossible. And I think it did a couple of things. First, that lack of information created a vacuum in which lots of conspiracy theories could form and lots of misinformation and disinformation. So, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And this was one of the things about the 1790s that I think feels familiar today. The second thing is it meant that the diplomats had extraordinary agency over how foreign policy and diplomacy actually evolved because they couldn’t pick up the phone and ask for an update. They couldn’t say, we have this new information. What do you think? They had very detailed instructions and then they just had to try and figure it out. And that feels very foreign.
Krys Boyd [00:24:21] So John Quincy Adams, the son of John and Abigail Adams, had a great gift for diplomacy. That said, he was 23 when his father installed him in his own administration and put him in a very important position. How concerned was anybody about perceptions of nepotism?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:24:40] So he, John Quincy Adams was one of the most experienced diplomats by the time Adams came into the administration, because when he was 12, he had gone with his father to serve as his private secretary. So he had been to all these countries in Europe. He spoke like five languages. He was incredibly gifted. He was Washington’s favorite diplomat. So Washington had first appointed him to The Hague and then to Lisbon. When Adams came into office, he had planned to recall John Quincy because he was concerned about these threats of nepotism. And Washington said, don’t do that. That will really harm the nation’s interests because he is so exquisite as a diplomat. Now, interestingly, that still did lead to these accusations of nepotism. And one of them was that he was young and that he was getting paid more than everyone else. Turns out he was paid the same amount that Congress established. And he had all of this incredible experience, though he may have been young, but he certainly knew what he was doing.
Krys Boyd [00:25:39] One thing that George Washington did that set a general precedent was to make himself scarce upon his exit from the presidency. This was surely a relief to Adams. How did Washington’s retirement from politics, though, destabilize the country?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:25:55] At no other time in the American imagination have we essentially had two presidents in our minds. And as long as Washington was alive, because as we’ve talked about, he was so unique. Which really does sound like hyperbole that historians usually avoid. But in this case, I really think it’s quite accurate. Americans were always thinking about him and John Adams as president. And so anything that Washington said, any affirmation of Adams actions or any disagreement with Adams actions almost had like a constitutional weight behind them, which was a very perilous situation for Adams to be in. And in 1798, when Congress had built up this new army in response to the potential threat of war with France, Adams recognized that he kind of needed to bring Washington back as a way to stave off some more pernicious forces, and also that if the country needed to be unified, Washington had to be involved. But then you had two commanders in chief. You had the commander in chief of the army and the president as commander in chief. And when Washington pushed back, Adams didn’t have a choice. He had to fold because if Washington had resigned, it would have looked terrible for the president. That is a very destabilizing situation for the presidency and for the president, who’s supposed to be in charge of the military. And as a result, when Washington did finally die in December of 1799, you can almost see Adams like exhale with relief that he’s no longer dealing with this threat.
Krys Boyd [00:27:25] It does seem remarkable that Adams had the recognition that the country would need Washington again. You would think that he could look to somebody who had, you know, rank just below him and put that person in charge of the military.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:27:39] Yeah, you would think so. I think the problem with all of the other officers is that they felt very regional in their support. They were not national figures. So Charles Coatsworth Pinckney, for example, was a very high ranking major general, but he was from South Carolina. And he felt to people like he was a Southerner. Whereas Alexander Hamilton Adams didn’t trust him to begin with. But he was very much a New Yorker. And so they were divisive in a way that Washington was not.
Krys Boyd [00:28:05] Washington just wanted to be retired. Do you have a sense of why he felt compelled to accept Adams request that he returned to run the military once again?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:28:16] I think there are probably two reasons. One, he did genuinely care about service. And when the people called him to a position, he never said no. And that was true of well, I think he really wanted the command of the Continental Army, actually. But there was terror over the presidency, and it was true in this post-presidential position. And so I do think that he felt and a lot of people share this this ethos that if you were one of the best men, if you are blessed with wealth and privilege and education and good leadership skills and the American people tapped you to use those, then you had an obligation to serve your nation. And I do think he felt that way. The second reason was he was very sensitive about his reputation. He understood how. Worshiped. He was. But also that that was always going to be a little bit fragile. And he could only really go one direction, which was down. And so I think he worried that if Adams appointed him to this position and he said no, then he would be accused of selfishness or not being willing to serve the nation.
Krys Boyd [00:29:15] Are you saying George Washington had a thin skin?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:29:18] He was the thinnest skinned he was. So. I mean, it’s amazing because someone who really was unchallenged in their stature, he was so sensitive in one of my favorite moments in his presidency was when he would get in. He had a temper, too, in the cabinet meetings. He would occasionally get super frustrated because there was a lot of newspaper criticism and some of the newspapers really tried to, you know, kind of like get under his skin. And they would deliver several copies of the newspaper to the president’s house every day, even though he was not a subscriber, just so that that he would see the criticism and he would rail about this in the Cabinet meetings. And so it’s a really good reminder that for the marble bust vision we have of him, he was also very human.
Krys Boyd [00:30:02] And presidents have never cared for media coverage.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:30:04] No, I don’t think that any president has ever really liked how the media has portrayed them.
Krys Boyd [00:30:09] Lindsey, what sort of sacrifice of his own popularity and reelect ability did Adams make in choosing to pursue peace rather than returning the country to war, even when he had built up the strong military with Washington at the helm?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:30:26] John Adams understood that if he did send another diplomatic mission, it was going to really fracture the Federalist Party. The cracks were already there, but this was going to completely blow it open. He also understood that the Army had been very politically advantageous for the Federalist Party, and they had really used it as a way to build up a network of political supporters. And if diplomacy worked, then officers were willing to return their commissions and soldiers were going to desert from their regiments. And this thing that had been very useful was going to basically disintegrate. And yet he did it anyway because he believed it was in the best interest of the nation and he was willing to sacrifice his own political career and his own political reputation for something that he felt was really quite essential. And I think that takes incredible political courage and bravery to be willing to do so and to be willing to put the Constitution and the nation above one’s own political interests. And he was right. The extreme wing of the Federalist Party was furious after he sent this peace commission, they started referring to him as an evil, but had to be endured. Just really strong language from a president of your own party. And they talked about this irreparable split in the party that had come from this peace commission. And while I don’t know that it was the only reason that he was defeated in 1800, it certainly led to what we would consider to be an enthusiasm problem for Federalist voters.
Krys Boyd [00:31:53] We should talk about the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were not proud moments in American history. First of all, for folks who had their last American history class more than a few years ago, can you remind us of what these were?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:32:05] So the Alien and Sedition Acts were actually four bills. There was a naturalization bill that made it much harder for immigrants to become citizens because immigrants tended to vote for Republicans. There was a sedition bill that made it illegal to criticize or to encourage opposition to the president and to Congress, notably leaving the vice president, who was Thomas Jefferson, out of that bill. And then there were two alien acts and one was bipartisan, was a totally standard defensive measure. And it said that in times of declared war, the president can start to pursue deportations of foreign nationals with all due process. We have had a bill like that on the books ever since and in war times with appropriate due process, it has been used. The next alien bill basically said that the president can deport whoever he wants without due process. John Adams did not ask for any of these bills. He did not encourage support. He did not whip votes, but he did sign them. Now, critically, the one that gave him all of the power to deport people he never used because he felt it was an inappropriate grant of power to the executive branch and due process was quite essential. However, Timothy Pickering was in charge of overseeing the and he was the secretary of state in charge of overseeing the sedition prosecutions. And he did so with gusto. And Adams signed off on some of them and was excited about some of them because they had been quite critical of him. I think the other piece of context that’s really important is there was a good faith basis for concern about the use of speech to invoke violence at the time. There were not the same sort of limitations that we see in our jurisprudence on First Amendment rights, like you are not allowed to shout fire in a crowded theater or your speech that intentionally invokes violence is not protected by the First Amendment. We recognize those limitations. Those did not exist at the time. And newspaper editors were calling for and successfully calling for violence. However, that good based fear was used by the Federalists to create this bill to try and crush their political opposition. And it is absolutely a dark mark on the Adams administration.
Krys Boyd [00:34:16] Adams, vice president, of course, was Thomas Jefferson from the other party. Jefferson was a Democratic Republican. There was already some tension between them, obviously, based on their affiliations and experiences. We should note Adams did not look back on his time being kept out of Washington’s cabinet meetings and think, I’m going to turn this around. He basically froze Jefferson out in quite the same way. What use did Jefferson make of the time he was not spending in those cabinet meetings?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:34:44] Jefferson was probably one of the All-Time worst vice presidents because he came perilously close to treason when he was in office. He really disagreed with most of Adams policy positions, and critically, although if they had just stopped to talk about it, I think they would have realized that they actually had a lot more in common. And they agreed about a lot more than they disagreed. But he really always thought the worst of Adams and thought that Adams was controlled by his much more extreme cabinet. And so shortly into the Adams administration, when Adams was pursuing diplomacy with France and trying to find a peaceful solution to this conflict, Jefferson met with the French minister and said, Don’t sign anything with Adams. I will be in office in three years and I will give you a better deal. I’m obviously using my language, but nonetheless, that was an extraordinary thing for a vice president to do for his own administration. He also, a couple of years later penned, helped pen the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, which introduced the concept of null and void or nullification into the political discourse, which of course, many decades later did lead to secession and the Civil War.
Krys Boyd [00:35:55] So Jefferson was really just biding his time to take over.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:35:59] He was. And in 1796, he did not want to be president because he understood that whoever came after Washington was going to have a terrible time. But by 1800, he really wanted to be president and he went for it.
Krys Boyd [00:36:11] So we think we know about close and contested elections, but I’d venture to say most of us don’t remember very much about the contest between Jefferson and Adams for that presidential term that started in 1801. What sort of let’s call it consternation bubbled up there.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:36:30] So for those of you who haven’t read about this election in a while, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, who are the two Republican candidates tied in the Electoral College with 73 votes apiece, which meant that under the terms of the Constitution, the election was thrown to the House of Representatives, where each state would have one vote. They basically realized it was going to be a tie from on December 3rd, 1800, and Congress was not gathering to certify those votes until February 11th. In those two months, the Federalists came up with all sorts of plans to try and either put Burr into the presidency because he might be more malleable and work with them a little bit more or to try and delay the outcome so they could convene another election or appoint a temporary president that could then campaign as the incumbent. And in response, the Republicans had militias ready on the state border of Pennsylvania and Virginia, ready to march into the city if the Federalists did try and put another president in place. A mob gathered in the city and gathered outside of the Under-construction Capitol building and threatened to kill anyone that was put into the presidency other than Jefferson. The French minister at the time who was in Washington, D.C., said that there were 100,000 people outside the Capitol. Now 100,000 people did not fit in Washington, D.C., in 1800. But it does demonstrate the severity of the moment and how worried he was about this outcome. When the voting started on February 11th, it took them 36 ballots to finally decide on it. Thomas Jefferson. And by the time that 36 the ballot was actually cast, it was only two and a half weeks until the inauguration. And I think for those of us who, you know, it’s we know what happened. And so we know that it was peaceful. We know that there was this transition, but they didn’t know that. And had it gone another two and a half weeks and March 4th had arrived, I genuinely don’t know what would have happened if the militias would have marched on the city and if the constitution would have survived. And so the threat of the moment was both tangible and real in terms of violence, but also to the ultimate survival of the Constitution.
Krys Boyd [00:38:44] So John Adams was long out of the running by this point and surely not thrilled with the result in either case. What did he do to provide stability to a country that wasn’t quite sure yet? Whether it would be Burr or Jefferson in the top spot.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:39:01] So he did two really important things. First, he exercised enormous restraint. And this is not something we typically celebrate in our politicians and our presidents, but it is so important, especially in moments of constitutional crisis. So he read the Constitution. He realized that the president had no role in this process. And so he refused to create one for himself, which would have been a further destabilizing factor. The second thing he did was work really hard behind the scenes to set the tone of what a transition would look like. He invited Jefferson to the White House for dinner, which must have been extremely awkward given that their supporters had been saying horrific things about one another for years. He expressed his expectation that Jefferson would be the winner and should be the winner. He told Jefferson what was in the stable so that Jefferson didn’t have to buy new horses once he eventually won, and he introduced him to the staff in the White House so that he could potentially hire from them. He also, once Jefferson did actually win, instructed his cabinet to work closely with Jefferson to provide all important information. Basically what we would think of as briefings today, long before any of that was mandated by statute. And then he went home. He lost and he went home. And that was a radical thing to do. So his behavior basically from December 3rd, when it was clear that he had lost all the way to March 4th, was an attempt to lower the temperature and to ensure that the character of the transition would be a model for those to follow.
Krys Boyd [00:40:34] So you mentioned, Lindsay, that Adams went home. He did not attend Jefferson’s inauguration as Washington had not attended his. This wasn’t a display of petulance, though, right? This just didn’t become a thing until decades later.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:40:46] Well, so Washington did actually attend to Adams, and it was remarked on the time because it was not expected. And that gets to your point that there wasn’t this tradition of former executives at whether it be at the state level or the national level attending their successor’s inaugurations. And Washington did, because he recognized that it was important for him to sort of lend his credibility to this new administration. But Adams did not. And I think that most people attribute that to the fact that he was bitter, that he lost. And and that’s true. He didn’t really like losing. And I’m not sure anyone likes losing. But as you said, the tradition of a president who lost attending an inauguration was not started until 1845. Jefferson did not invite him to the inauguration. Jefferson did not say he wanted him there. And this election had been so close to destructive and so contested that Adams didn’t think that his presence would lend credibility in the same way that Washington’s had done so for him. He worried that he would be a distraction, that it would continue the Partizan spirit that he would take away from this transition. And by not being there, he thought it would allow Jefferson to turn the page to start sort of with a fresh slate. And so I think that he really genuinely had a higher purpose for leaving that morning. And he demonstrated that by leaving in a public carriage, he came in and a private coach and he left in this public carriage demonstrating that he was just an average citizen, just like everyone else, despite the fact that he was a former president.
Krys Boyd [00:42:18] So Adams left. He went back to Massachusetts to pick up his life as it had been before. Why, then, did Jefferson feel the need to continually sully Adams reputation as president?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:42:32] That is a really good question. So at this point, Jefferson and Adams weren’t really speaking. They had been really close friends and then later became friends again. They started writing or resumed their correspondence in 1812, but for that 12 year period they did not really speak. And Jefferson could hold grudges. Jefferson was was angry with some of the things that Adams had done and was also often writing about Adams. Not so much because he was writing about Adams, but because he was responding to things about Washington. So, for example, during his presidency, John Marshall, who was the chief justice at the time, wrote a multi-volume work on Washington. But it was really about the Federalist Party. And so Jefferson often wrote in response to that because he hated Marshall. They were cousins, and they just had real antipathy, antipathy for one another. And so he was often writing about that and as a result would criticize Adams not necessarily because Adams was the target, but because he was in this broader group of federalists.
Krys Boyd [00:43:35] What was the rest of John Adams life like?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:43:38] It was definitely much more quiet. It was less adventurous than it had been. He was pretty much at home for the rest of his life. He would occasionally go into Boston. He was celebrated by some of the local groups there. One of his proudest moments is he did live to see his son, John Quincy, elected president. And he wrote a letter to John Quincy and said. I have no words. And John Adams almost never had no words. So you can tell that he was so moved by this moment.
Krys Boyd [00:44:05] Was John Quincy Adams, as good a president as he was a diplomat?
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:44:09] Not really no. John Quincy was so brilliant that he sometimes found politics really frustrating because other people were not nearly as brilliant as he was, and compromise could be difficult. However, I will say both John Adams and John Quincy had extraordinary long term vision, so John Quincy had really put forth a proposal for infrastructure and railroad and canal development, which was actually picked up by Andrew Jackson. He also left the nation in a stronger position on foreign policy than when he came into the office. And the two Adamses were only a couple of presidents that I can actually say that.
Krys Boyd [00:44:47] Lindsay Chervinsky is executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and author of the book “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic.” Lindsay, thank you so much for making time to talk.
Lindsay Chervinsky [00:44:59] Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.
Krys Boyd [00:45:01] Think is distributed by PRX the Public Radio Exchange. Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
