First Family (33 page)

Abigail was the designated vote counter on the Adams team, while John felt obliged to cultivate at least the posture of studied indifference toward such mundane matters. But the realization that his electoral prospects were remote seemed to lift a burden from his shoulders. Right after the New York results were confirmed, he did what he should have done long ago, that is, demand the resignations of McHenry and Pickering. When Pickering refused to resign, claiming among other things that he needed the salary, John fired him outright and then appointed John Marshall as his new secretary of state. McHenry’s account of the occasion described it as the impulsive act of a raving lunatic, whereas John’s chief mistake had been to delay the decision much too long. Hamilton urged McHenry to comb the cabinet files on the way out for any documents that could be used to question John’s competence.
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When Congress adjourned in late May, John headed down to survey the new capital on the Potomac, still very much a work in progress that was nonetheless scheduled to become the seat of government the following fall. There were as yet no clearly marked roads into the capital, prompting John to label it a “wilderness city” and then joke about losing his way: “Rolling, rolling, rolling,” he wrote Abigail, “till I am very near rolling into the bosom of Mother Earth.” His spirits were obviously up.
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They were buoyed even higher upon receiving a letter from Abigail, who had stopped at Newark on the way back to Quincy in order to serve as John’s surrogate at the ceremony for disbanding the New Army. She stood alongside Hamilton amid the pomp and circumstance as they witnessed the final parade of troops that Hamilton had hoped to lead on a grand and glorious adventure. Hamilton behaved gallantly, despite his pain, Abigail reported, and “I acted as the
Aurora
says, as your proxy, praised and admired.” Then she added “and regretted,” referring to Hamilton’s obvious discomfort at her awkward presence as the death knell sounded on the chief instrument of his extravagant ambitions.
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If the political battle between John and Hamilton had become a duel to the death—and it had—then John could only relish the realization that, despite his own gloomy political prospects, he was taking Hamilton down with him. As he wandered through the Maryland woods on the way back to Abigail at Quincy, he had placed himself in a familiar position that fit squarely into the dominant pattern of his public life.

He invariably focused his fire on opponents who achieved satanic status for blocking his path, such as Thomas Hutchinson, Benjamin Franklin, Vergennes, and now Alexander Hamilton, the latest entry in his rogues’ gallery. (Jefferson kept slipping on and off the list.) He was deeply attuned to the ambitions of his enemies, which he understood intuitively because the same ambitions were stirring in his own soul, so by eviscerating them he was assuming control of himself. His deepest energies were mobilized in defense of worthy causes that appeared lost, against enemies who embodied the formidable strengths of his own darker side.

As he began the long trek back to Quincy, then, even though the forces aligned against him constituted a political version of the perfect storm, the interior forces of the Adams soul were perfectly aligned in their most potent pattern. The fact that the Republicans and ultra-Federalists had deployed their forces to defeat him was a reassuring sign that his own course was correct. The fact that he was likely to lose the election was also greatly satisfying, since it meant that political motives had played no role in shaping his policies, which had only the
long-term interests of the American republic as a guide. Singular acts of defiance had become his trademark from the day he decided to defend the British troops after the Boston Massacre. So now he would be going out as he came in, like a cannonball aimed at the center of American history, primed for one final explosion.

Soon after he had settled in at Quincy, John received an extraordinary letter from Hamilton: “It has been repeatedly mentioned to me,” wrote Hamilton,

As John surely recognized, this was the language of an affair of honor, the preliminary verbal etiquette that preceded a challenge. Hamilton had obviously crossed another line in his headlong descent toward self-destruction, carrying his political competition with the president of the United States to the brink of a duel.

A few weeks later a series of essays began appearing in the newspapers entitled
Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq. President of the United States
. Although it stopped short of calling John crazy, it did accuse him of being mentally unstable and unfit to serve as president. Hamilton described his nemesis as “a man of imagination sublimated and eccentric; propitious neither to the regular display of sound judgment or to steady perseverance in a systematic plan of conduct … that to this defect are added the unfortunate foibles of a vanity without bounds, and a jealousy capable of discoloring every subject.” Material that
McHenry and Pickering had confided to Hamilton was cited to document John’s irritable and volatile behavior in cabinet meetings and “the disgusting egotism, the distempered jealousy, and the ungovernable indiscretion of Mr. ADAMS’ temper.”
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The dominant reaction, even among Hamilton’s most devoted disciples in the Federalist camp, was that the pamphlet was conclusive evidence that Hamilton himself had lost his mind. (The Republicans were overjoyed to see the Federalists engaged in public bloodletting that clinched Jefferson’s election.) John’s somewhat disingenuous reaction was to express regret: “I am confident it will do him more harm than me.” Abigail regarded the episode as confirmation of her original assessment of Hamilton as a diabolical egomaniac, who was, in fact, “a mere Sparrow,” and further evidence that the electoral politics of the infant republic had become an intellectual swamp fit only for scandalmongers and ideological fanatics. It would be an enormous relief to be free of this increasingly toxic atmosphere, she claimed, and leave Jefferson to navigate among the floating piles of muck, which he would surely describe as “a turbulent Sea of Liberty.”
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When John left for Washington in October, the only question was whether Abigail should risk the difficult trip to join him. They had obviously talked at some length about the looming public and private tribulations coming their way: the near-certain loss of the presidency, and the deteriorating condition of Charles, which raised domestic questions about their obligations to his wife and children. It was clearly time for the Adams family to circle the proverbial wagons in preparation for the imminent blows.

In early November John wrote from the still unfinished presidential mansion, urging Abigail to join him: “It is fit and proper,” he explained, “that you and I should retire together.” (In the same letter he penned the words later inscribed into the mantel of the fireplace at the White House: “May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.”) Thomas volunteered to accompany his mother on the final leg of the trip from Philadelphia to Washington. They arrived at the fledging capital on November 16, 1800, Abigail pronouncing that “the country is romantic but wild, a wilderness at present.”
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Her chief task was to make the presidential mansion habitable. As
it turned out, this was not easy. The plaster on the walls was still drying, the staircases were unfinished, there was not enough wood to keep the twelve fireplaces going sufficiently to dry the paint on the walls, and the roof leaked so badly that twelve tubs were needed to catch the water during a storm. The grounds around the building, a huge mud pile, were being landscaped by slaves: “I have amused myself from day to day in looking at the labour of 12 negroes from my window loading dirt in carts,” she observed, but working at a leisurely pace that two hardy New England laborers would easily outstrip. Washington was a decidedly southern city, she reported to Nabby, which meant that it was cursed by the stain of slavery, the unmentionable centerpiece of Jefferson’s “true Republicanism.”
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The expected bad news came all at once in the first week of December. The tandem of Jefferson and Burr had received seventy-three electoral votes to sixty-five for John and sixty-four for Pinckney. It was actually much closer than Abigail and John had expected. John ran ahead of the Federalist candidates for Congress and, apart from the New York vote, ahead of his margin in the previous election. “The deflection of New York has been the source,” Abigail observed, adding that “at my age and with my bodily infirmities I shall be happier at Quincy.” John chimed in with a similar sentiment: “I feel my shoulders relieved from a burden,” he informed Thomas. “The short remainder of my days will be the happiest of my life.” They had been preparing themselves for this moment for several months, and now that it had arrived, they both were eager to move past it.
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The second blow arrived almost simultaneously with the election results, and although they had been anxiously anticipating it as well, the news that Charles had died on December 1 produced emotional tremors that shook both parents to the core. “The melancholy death of your brother is an affliction of a more serious nature to this family than any other,” John apprised Thomas. “Oh! That I had died for him if that would have relieved him from his faults as well as his disease.” Having renounced Charles while he was still alive, now that he was gone John felt free to express his love for him again.
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Abigail feared this was so deep a wound that it would never completely heal. Political defeat was a bitter pill, to be sure, but the loss of
a son was a tragedy beyond words. She intended to banish from her mind “all the frailties and offences of my dear departed son” and to focus her memories on the young child whose beguiling personality had made him the most popular boy in the neighborhood and “a favorite where ever he went.” She kept asking herself if there was something she could have done as a mother to avert the tragedy, but kept reaching the conclusion that Charles was the victim of his own demons. She informed Charles’s widow that she and John stood ready to assist with the two children in whatever way seemed appropriate. The political defeat was actually a godsend on this score, because it meant that they would now have the time and energy to become dutiful grandparents.
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A piece of splendid news cast at least one beam of light into the prevailing darkness. Secretary of State Marshall had kept John apprised of the dispatches from France, which suggested that the peace negotiations were proceeding apace. Soon after the election results became known, official word arrived that a new Franco-American treaty, named the Treaty of Morfontaine, had been signed ending the “quasi-war.” Although the French had refused to pay compensation to American merchants for losses suffered, an unnecessary war that threatened to undermine the entire American government was now avoided. And since this had been the central goal of his presidency, John could plausibly say that he had steered the American ship of state through stormy seas and into a safe port.

As it turned out, while it was clear that John had lost the election of 1800, it was not clear who had won. The same flaw in constitutional procedure that had made Jefferson his vice president in 1796 this time permitted Jefferson and Burr to tie in the Electoral College at seventy-three votes apiece. The decision was therefore thrown into the House of Representatives, as mandated by the Constitution, and eventually required six weeks and thirty-six highly contentious ballots to resolve.

Both Abigail and John assumed that Jefferson would win and that he was the vastly preferable candidate. (So, ironically, did Hamilton, who lobbied against Burr behind the scenes, which helped pave the way to their deadly encounter nearly four years later.) Abigail thought
that Burr had “risen upon Stilts,” meaning that none of the voters had intended to elect him as president, and that if he were to sneak in, “God save the United States of America.” John concurred, describing Burr as “ambitious, insinuating, a voluptuary … and a much more dangerous Man than Mr. Jefferson.” John came under some pressure to make a public statement on Jefferson’s behalf, but he refused, claiming that such interference would be inappropriate. Moreover, his own mind had already moved on to planning his retirement, he claimed somewhat disingenuously. Jefferson’s fate, he joked, was of less concern to him than the fruit trees, cucumbers, and new potato field he was contemplating as “The Farmer of Stoneyfield.”
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At Abigail’s urging, they did make a social statement of sorts in Jefferson’s behalf by inviting him to dinner in early January. “Mr. Jefferson dines with us,” she informed Thomas, “and in a card of replie to the President’s invitation, he begs him to be assured of his
Homage
and
high consideration.”
Although neither member of the Adams team was yet prepared to forgive Jefferson’s duplicities during the campaign, Jefferson was apparently disposed to forget them. Abigail was surprised during their dinner conversation that he seemed less informed about the provisions of the new French treaty than she was, and that she had to introduce him to members of the House, fellow guests, who, in fact, would soon determine his fate. Jefferson could only laugh when Abigail joked that he obviously needed her to serve as his political manager.
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While it was somewhat true that John had little to do as a lame-duck president other than daydream about fruit trees and cucumbers, circumstance presented him with the opportunity to make one final decision that turned out to be one of the most consequential acts of his presidency. Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth chose to resign, creating a vacancy that John was still empowered to fill. He then offered the post to John Marshall, who had impressed John with his uncommon sense, massive probity, and total loyalty.