George Washington, Father of His Country, Hero of the Revolution, has been President for eight years. He has been the very first executive of the new (2.0) U.S. government formed by the Constitution, following the failure of the Articles of Confederation. He has put down rebellion, supported a stronger Federal government, and represented his nation as the first among equals, as the fledgling United States has stepped onto the global stage.
Now you, John Adams, get to follow that act.
John Adams was the second President of the United States. He was one of the Founding Fathers, a successful lawyer from the Boston area who was part of the Massachusetts delegations to the First and Second Continental Congresses. He wrote the Constitution for the state of Massachusetts and wrote extensively on government. He was on the wartime committee for the armed forces, he served as an envoy to France during the war, and after the war was in the court of France, and later essentially the first ambassador to the United Kingdom in the Court of King George. He served as Vice President under George Washington and served a single term of his own as President.
John Adams was a lawyer, well-read and of strong and vocal opinion. He would say of himself that he was not well-liked by his peers, though he was generally well-respected. He was a fierce patriot, as some of the writing in his letters illustrates. His son, John Quincy, would later serve as President, and obtain a reputation as an early abolitionist. He was good friends and at times a mentor to Thomas Jefferson, and though the two men bitterly divided over politics, later in life they reconciled, and both passed away on the Fourth of July, America’s birthday, in the year 1826, half a century after the Declaration of Independence.
I read David McCullough’s John Adams biography, not once but twice. The first time, it was simply a book on my shelf, before I started to make a study of Presidents. I dithered over whether to read it again, but I am glad that I did; it was years later, and some of what was fuzzy came back in clarity.
To read a biography of Adams is to read a history of the beginning of our country; especially after reading a biography of Washington, the shifts being by region (Adams was from the north, Washington from the south) and theater (Adams the politician, Washington the general).
Adams was a lawyer, and by most accounts a successful one. As such, or perhaps in addition to that, he gave much attention to government, to how government should work. In an era where the Classics of ancient Greece and Rome were the foundation of a good education, he drew on writings from that period as well as Enlightenment contemporaries. It is difficult to imagine today how novel the idea of democracy was in the eighteenth century; the idea that the people could make decisions for their nation, rather than a sovereign. Even the idea of a “citizen” was uncommon; most people were “subjects”.
Adams notably defended the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. In 1770 a mob attacked a British sentry, and after backup arrived, the mob only increased and eventually, shots were fired, killing five civilians. Adams won an acquittal, and is quoted as saying, “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” These are words worth recalling in modern times; in any event, this act is presented as evidence for Adams being a principled man, in this case, favoring a presumption of innocence over presumption of guilt.
As the Thirteen Colonies moved slowly towards independence, Adams became one of the leading voices. He advocated a strong central government of the states, as opposed to each state essentially being sovereign and in covenant with the others. He quickly wrote a book, Thoughts on Government, outlining much of what would become part of the future Constitution: a bicameral legislation, an executive office, and an independent judiciary. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that after reading McCullough, it’s easy to come away with the idea that if Washington was father to the nation, Adams was father to the government.
A common refrain in my reading has been that there are no statues of John Adams. There are memorials, to be sure, and busts here and there, and he is certainly a revered son of Massachusetts. However, in his time people either loved or hated him, and in the annals of history it’s hard to be the second act following Washington, especially having served only a single term, and without any highly visible accomplishments like, say, buying enough land to double the size of the country.
John Adams was a nerd. A law and government nerd, and his expertise in those fields made his contributions immeasurably important. Yet, they don’t translate well to an easily understood story; it’s hard to stir feelings in a six-year-old, or a nine-year-old, or a twelve-year-old by telling them, “John Adams was important because he understood how rules work, and many of his rules are the foundation of the rules we use today.”
One notable event that caught my attention was Adams’ participation as one of three envoys who met with the British, shortly after the American retreat in the Battle of Long Island; sometimes referred to today as the Battle of Brooklyn. For one thing, Washington and the Continental Army passed through what is now my neighborhood. When I visit my local grocer, I walk past a park where Washington’s headquarters were situated, and my regular running routine takes me into a park where the Americans set up artillery, high on hills overlooking the Hudson River and the Bronx.
The Americans retreated, and while they lost New York City as a strategic location, their retreat across the East River was remarkable, and Washington eventually removed his soldiers to New Jersey. Nonetheless this defeat, which followed earlier success in Boston, set back American morale, and the British Admiral Lord Howe (brother of the General Howe who led the British in the battle) invited the Americans to parley at what is now known as Conference House, on the southern tip of Staten Island in New York. It’s a park nowadays. I’ve launched kayaks off the beach there.
Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge were the American committee sent to meet with Howe. Adams was opposed at the beginning, anticipating a scheme by the British to suborn American Independence. To a degree, he was correct.
Howe presented the British position as, essentially, “too bad we didn’t work things out before the Declaration of Independence, because that document is essentially treason and everyone who signed it is a traitor.” Howe was empowered to offer pardons to some members of Congress, though not all. Adams would learn much later that he was not on the list of rebels to be pardoned.
John Adams spent a great deal of time overseas, in a time when that was a very literal phrase. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean four times (twice roundtrip) to complete missions for the United States, in a time when such a journey took weeks at sea and was fraught with peril. The descriptions of these journeys alone were alarming to read, and hard to imagine in modern times.
Adams’ first journey was during the Revolutionary War, and he brought along his son, future President John Quincy Adams. They left in winter, which is a rough time in the North Atlantic, and along the way engaged and captured a British merchant vessel, after enduring a lightning strike earlier in the voyage.
Adams’ mission was to be part of a commission of three Americans to France, seeking French support against the British, a traditional French enemy. In this effort, he would find himself at odds with Franklin’s style, which seemed to match the French Court: go to parties, be charming and witty, and just be liked. Adams, not alone in his thinking, was wary of trading one monarch effectively for another, and his stubborn, direct style put him at odds with the French foreign minister, and eventually Adams spent more time in the Netherlands borrowing money and working out trade deals with the Dutch.
Adams’ time overseas, both during and after the war, made him unusually attuned to foreign policy for a one-term President. More typically, Presidents today focus on domestic issues in their first term, and foreign policy takes a back seat until a second term, when it also serves as the basis for their legacy. For Adams, world events, along with the nature of early American domestic politics, would combine to effectively make one a part of the other.
The issues of his day can be boiled down to two: the development of political parties, or rather factions as they were known, and relations with the British and the French, who were very much at war.
As recently as the year 2020, as journalist Ezra Klein puts it, the US system of government was not designed for political parties (I’m paraphrasing a bit). Many of the Founding Fathers were against political parties, feeling they were inherently divisive and antithetical to good republican government and representative democracy. Yet before, during, and after the war and the ratification of the Constitution, there were essentially two factions: those who favored a strong central government, and those who favored power devolved to the states; we’ve come to know these as Federalists and anti-Federalists, the latter later known as Democrat-Republicans, respectively.
John Adams was a firm Federalist. He wouldn’t have called himself that, not at first, but that was how he thought about it. Washington was as well, and both men’s opinions on the matter were hardened during the war, when it was nearly impossible to get Congress to procure funding for the army. In that time, there was no federal tax system. The representatives for the states would debate how much money was needed, and then once agreed, go try to pass taxation in their own states. There were debates over whether and which states should pay more or less; states bearing the brunt of the war, states providing the most troops, and so on.
Adams saw early on how that one example would repeat itself, in foreign affairs, trade policy, fiscal policy, as well as defense. He experienced challenges in those areas as he worked his way through various positions, in Congress and later as an overseas envoy.
Democrat-Republicans reacted to Federalism as another form of monarchy; their belief that it made the President a king in all but title, and their fear, not entirely unfounded, that eventually some states would effectively have dominion over other states.
This debate is more-or-less unchanged today, and has persisted all through American history: how much power should the Federal government have, compared to the states? In any case, in Adams’ time, this was the issue around which the first few Presidents fought their campaigns and administered their governments, and it was a painful point of division between former friends and allies.
In international affairs, the United States had two challenges following the war. The first was to re-establish relations with the British, who were a global trading power, and essentially, still the biggest market and supplier for American goods. The second was to maintain friendly-but-not-too-friendly relations with France, lest the fledgling United States fall into a junior partnership with the French, who had supported America during the war.
This was all complicated by the French Revolution. Now when I was a kid, the French Revolution was taught and portrayed along the lines of a continuation of American notions of freedom. On paper it looks good: the population rises against a despotic monarch, democracy is established, and Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite proceed from there. As an adult, I’ve learned that the French Revolution was messy, bloody, and complicated, and eventually led to Napoleon, who more-or-less plunged all of Europe into a massive series of wars on an unprecedented scale.
The result was that the United States had to decide on whether to stay neutral in various individual wars between these two powerhouses, when to take sides, and what to do if their hand was forced. It meant that the first three Presidents of the United States were essentially dealing with a new French government every couple of years. Was this the same France that had supported America’s War for Independence, or a new, different France?
During Adams’ term as President, this dilemma played out in what has come to be known as the XYZ affair and the Quasi-War with France. America remained neutral and tried to continue trade with both the United Kingdom and France, but the French harassed American shipping and closed their ports to the United States, since the US was still shipping to their enemy. Adams sent a commission of three Americans to entreat with France, including his longtime friend and ally, Elbridge Gerry, the latter against the advice of his cabinet.
The XYZ affair essentially boiled down to this: the French stalled even meeting with the commission, until a trio of French agents approached them soliciting bribes in return for access to Tallyrand, the French foreign minister. The agents were referred to in the American press as X, Y, and Z, hence XYZ affair. The Americans refused, and over time Tallyrand stopped talking to them, except informally to Gerry. The commission eventually decided to leave, but Gerry remained because Tallyrand said France would declare war if he left. Thus, Adams was in a precarious position since the only person negotiating with the French was basically the guy he picked over opposition from his own government.
Meanwhile, Adams had supported and gained funding for an expanded US Navy to protect American shipping. Within his own party there was growing support for declaring war with France. As shipping losses increased, anti-French sentiment in the United states grew into outright war fever. Gerry was seen by war hawks as colluding with the French and subverting American interests, and he was pilloried in the press and burned in effigy.
Eventually, however, Gerry returned home, with a note from the French that they would re-open negotiations, and eventually a treaty was worked out. Adams breathed a sigh of relief, having averted war. Unfortunately, not everyone in United States was satisfied with that outcome.
It didn’t help that by standing up to France, Adams only opened himself up further to criticism of supporting the British, of supporting monarchy and the English king. While Adams found this vexing, he would not back down from his position. American shipping was under attack, and the United States government had a duty to protect its trade, no matter who was attacking it.
Adams also faced opposition from former allies. Members of his own cabinet conspired against him, leaking correspondence and plotting against his policies, to the point where he had to start firing people. Alexander Hamilton used the war fever to enlarge the US Army and get himself put in charge, nominally under an aged George Washington, but effectively the commander in chief. His frustrations with Adams, including being brushed off from an attempt to meet Adams by surprise, led him to publish a book denouncing Adams as, more or less, an inept and ineffective leader.
Adams sustained a lot of grief politically. He saw early on that tyranny is tyranny, whether it be from a monarch or a mob; he and his allies believed that no one was infallible, and favored a system of government where no single branch could overrule the others. Jefferson may get credit for declaring our independence, but Adams and several others held great influence in crafting the Constitution – which, in case you missed it, was the second attempt at devising a form of government for the fledgling United States.
While Adams stood for a second term, he was defeated by his Vice President and fellow Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had supported much of the anti-Federalist press, and many of his policies and governing principles were the opposite of Adams’: a smaller Federal government, a smaller navy, and power devolved to the states. Adams made several appointments and changes to the judiciary as he finished out his term, then caught a pre-dawn carriage to get a head start on the long journey home, on the day Jefferson took office.
Adams lived into his early 90s, and in that time gradually disengaged from politics and grew into the elder statesman and Founding Father brought out every Fourth of July for various parades and celebrations. There were family tragedies and triumphs; his daughter died of breast cancer, despite surgery, and two of his sons were alchoholics; Charles died age thirty of cirrhosis. On the other hand, his son John Quincy, who had accompanied his father on his wartime adventures overseas, was a successful lawyer who entered politics, became a Senator, Secretary of State, and eventually President, achieving the last just a year or so before his father passed away.
Could John Adams be elected President today? Honesty, I doubt it. His strengths were his intelligence and his persistence, the latter possibly better described as stubbornness. The past twenty years of voting skew towards “smart” being nearly a smear. While Obama was smart, lawyerly, and professorial, he was not contentious in public, and was able to unite the population despite “professorial” being used with a negative connotation by the opposition. Candidates of both parties who have campaigned as smart people have been derided as out-of-touch elites by their competitors, even of the same party.
John Adams was a policy wonk, and however right they may be, wonks do not generally make good leaders. They make good policy, at least when they’re right. What Adams had going for him in leadership was his ability to cling to his convictions. He was not one to waffle, and precisely because he was a wonk, he usually had a lot of ammunition to back up why his way was the right way. He just didn’t have the personality to convince people of that in less confrontational terms.
John Adams’ influence on the nation extends far beyond the Presidency. His entire political career spanned influential roles in military affairs, foreign policy, parliamentary procedures, not to mention the foundational documents of our country. Adams was a lifelong student not only of politics but of people, and he applied his knowledge to devising a form of government that prevented, or at least made difficult, any one power center from overwhelming the rest.
Adams remains a sharp contrast to the gauzy idyllic that the Founding Fathers are typically pictured as. He opposed slavery throughout his life, though like everyone else was afraid that pressing the issue would alienate the slaveholding states; he did predict that the issue would eventually split the nation in two. Adams was a religious man, in contrast with deists and atheists such as Jefferson; his writings contain many remarks thanking Providence and graciously accepting the blessings thereof, as well as bearing the burdens and tragedies of life. Adams supported a strong central government, a truly united states as opposed to a confederation of independent and sovereign states. These three issues alone would frame nearly every national debate up to and including the modern day.
Adams stands in contrast to his peers in being a realist, not an idealist. He believed that all power was corruptible, and therefore our system of government had to be difficult for any single part to gain dominance. Yet the county had to be able to function, without participation in the United States being optional. This is the root of Federalism vs. anti-Federalism: if your ideal is freedom from tyranny, then any control by an outside power feels monarchic and tyrannical.
In modern times, we tend to invoke the Founding Fathers to underscore our ideals, as if to say that what we believe, they believed, and therefore what we believe is the bedrock firmament upon which our nation stands. The truth is, there was great debate and disagreement between the Founding Fathers over what that bedrock should be.
Perhaps that is why Adams is not held aloft as much as Washington, Jefferson, or Franklin – men he was friends with, whom he influenced, and by whom he was influenced. Easily overlooked in the long parade of Presidents, John Adams deserves to be remembered well for his contributions to our notions of government. He may have been President Number 2, but he is Number 1 in so many other regards.