The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers (25 page)

With Abigail saying such things at the dinner table, it was hardly surprising that President Adams also wanted a declaration of war. But Congress was too divided to produce one. They compromised by creating a twelve-ship navy and a “provisional” army of ten thousand men. Adams asked George Washington to take command of the army, and he reluctantly agreed. But he informed the president that he had no intention of exercising actual command. That large task called for a younger man, and Washington chose Alexander Hamilton as his chief deputy.

Here was a new humiliation that tormented both Adamses. For weeks the president struggled to evade appointing Hamilton. In a raging memo to Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Adams called it “the most difficult action to justify” that he had been forced to take in his “whole life.”
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But Washington made it clear that he would resign if he did not get Hamilton, and the president was forced to capitulate.

With Abigail’s warm approval, the president attempted to name William Stephens Smith as a brigadier general in the new army. When
Washington saw his name on the list, he exploded: “What in the name of military prudence could have induced [this] appointment?” An enraged President Adams told Secretary of State Timothy Pickering that his son-in-law was “far, very far superior to Hamilton” as a soldier. Pickering saw to it that the Senate vetoed Smith. It was not a difficult task. The colonel’s reputation as a bankrupt speculator was well and widely known. An overwrought Abigail cried in a letter that “secret springs” were at work. But Smith remained defunct—another painful political humiliation.
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VI

While John Adams was fighting a losing struggle over control of the army, the Federalists in Congress decided to silence the newspapers that were slandering and insulting them and the president. Abigail Adams was an enthusiastic backer of these “Alien and Sedition Acts,” as they were soon called. She told Mary Cranch she wanted to “punish the stirrer up of sedition, and the writer and printer of base and unfounded calumny.” Such laws would add immeasurably “to the peace and harmony of our country.”
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The acts were actually four in number, dealing with different aspects of the situation that seemed to be threatening the United States. One bill revised the naturalization laws, requiring a fourteen-year wait to become a citizen. Two other acts empowered the president to deport “aliens”—noncitizens he deemed dangerous to the nation’s peace and safety. The chief target of these laws were the 25,000 refugees from the French Revolution in America. Some came from France, but a far larger number had fled from French West Indian islands, which had undergone their own revolutions. The law also made immigrants from Ireland, England, and other nations liable to expulsion if they criticized the government.

Abigail approved of these alien laws. She thought a “more careful and attentive watch ought to be kept over foreigners.” But it was the Sedition Act that brought rejoicing to her lips. The act called for fines and imprisonment for anyone who wrote, printed, or uttered “any false, scandalous and malicious” statements against the government of the United States, either house of Congress, or the president “with intent to defame” these public servants, or bring them “into contempt or disrepute.” Here was a law that would protect Portia’s dearest friend from slanderers like Bache.
To no one’s surprise, John Adams signed the bills into law. He saw them as “war measures”—temporary weapons that would enable the government to retain control of the country. The bills stated that the special powers they authorized would expire in 1801, unless Congress renewed them.

The Republicans, thrown on the defensive by the XYZ revelations, were desperate for an issue. They seized on the Alien and Sedition Acts as a heaven-sent weapon. Thomas Jefferson and his ally James Madison drafted resolutions that were passed by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia denouncing the acts. Jefferson’s Kentucky resolutions declared a state had the right to nullify acts of Congress that violated the Constitution. Federalists saw these declarations as little short of a call to revolution.

Up and down the country, Republican orators fulminated and newspapers published hysterical denunciations of the acts. They were condemned as a first step toward setting up a Federalist dictatorship, with a president and senate elected for life. The vituperation flung at John Adams reached hitherto unimaginable heights. In July 1798, a bewildered, exhausted Abigail reeled back to Quincy with her politically battered husband—and collapsed.

VII

Abigail’s symptoms were similar to those that had laid her husband low when he took to his bed in Amsterdam in 1781, demoralized by his losing struggle with Benjamin Franklin’s fame. Rheumatic-like pains roamed Portia’s body, diarrhea contracted her intestines, and insomnia wracked her nights. Most of the time she was close to a helpless invalid, too weak to rise from her bed. Today’s doctors would probably call her condition a nervous breakdown. John hovered over her day and night for the next four months, letting the federal government operate without him. The thought of losing Abigail left him virtually unable to function. When letters warned him against giving Hamilton unchecked control of the army, he responded that Abigail’s “dangerous sickness” had left him too depressed and agitated to do anything about it.
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In November, the president returned to Philadelphia without his dearest friend. Abigail was tormented by guilt. She felt she had “quitted” her “post” at John’s side. But she was mentally and physically incapable of facing more political warfare. She followed the ongoing turmoil from
a soothing distance, relying on letters from John and from his secretary, their nephew William Shaw.

During these months alone in his mansion, the president began to rethink the international situation. From several sources, including his diplomat son, John Quincy, he learned that the French Directory and its spokesman, Foreign Minister Talleyrand, were now saying they did not want a war with the United States. They realized it would inevitably convert the Americans into allies of the English. At home, American voters were not enthusiastic about the taxes the Federalists levied to pay for the new navy and army. One of these measures was a stamp tax, not much different from the one that had helped launch the revolution against George III. Then there was the matter of the man Adams now unreservedly hated, Alexander Hamilton, parading around Philadelphia in the uniform of a major general. Wouldn’t it be delicious if his army suddenly became superfluous?

The president decided to dispatch another envoy to see whether an understanding could be reached with the Directory. To the astonishment of everyone in the Federalist party, on February 18, 1799, Adams sent a note by messenger to Vice President Jefferson and asked him to read it to the Senate. The staggered solons learned that Adams was appointing William Vans Murray, the young ambassador to the Netherlands, as minister plenipotentiary to France to see if peace could be achieved. Politicians all, the Federalists in Congress saw Adams destroying the issue that had won them unparalleled popularity.

A delegation of congressional leaders called on the president to discuss the decision with him. According to Secretary of State Pickering, Adams flew into a “violent passion” and rebuked the visitors for questioning his judgment. When the Federalists threatened to reject Murray as a nominee, Adams told them that if they did, he would resign and hand the presidency over to Jefferson. Senator Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts lost his temper and called Adams’s decision “the wild and irregular starts of a vain jealous and half frantic mind.”
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Throughout the country, a large percentage of the Federalist Party shared Sedgwick’s reaction. One New York Federalist leader said the Murray appointment had given “almost universal disgust.”
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The Federalists thought Adams was risking another series of runarounds and humiliations by submitting so eagerly to reports of France’s changed mood.
Instead of staying in Philadelphia and combating this reaction, when Congress adjourned, President Adams departed for Quincy and the company of the other member of his party of two. Not even an armed revolt against federal taxes in Pennsylvania, led by a German American named Fries, delayed him. He issued a proclamation declaring the rebels guilty of treason, ordered the army to seize them, and left for Quincy. He stayed there for the next seven months—the longest absence of any president from the seat of government in America’s history.

The other member of his party of two professed total admiration for the president’s peace initiative. In a fervent letter, Abigail told John his decision was a “master stroke” that had “electrified the country.” She dismissed the Federalist senators and congressmen who questioned John as “dupes of intrigue.” The president had exercised the power given him by the Constitution. “Time will discover who is right and who is wrong,” she wrote.

Portia particularly enjoyed hearing that several people had declared that if “Mrs. Adams” had been in Philadelphia, she would have stopped the president from making such an awful mistake. “That ought to gratify your vanity enough to cure you,” John wrote. When he reached home and added intimate details of the uproar, Abigail became even more enthusiastic.
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Her support was not enough to prevent John from slipping into a black depression as he pondered his wounded presidency. One hot July day, three old friends, led by General Henry Knox, rode out from Boston to see him. John sat in the parlor reading a newspaper while they tried to converse with him. He did not offer them so much as a sip of cold water before they stalked out, wondering if the president was more than a little crazy. A few days later, a group of young men from Boston and some officers from the newly commissioned frigate USS
Constitution
paid him an unannounced visit. Adams gave them a snarling, raging lecture about their bad manners, while Abigail watched, appalled. He was almost as irritable with the house servants and farmhands.

Even Abigail was the target of John’s barbed remarks. But she forgave him and gently coaxed him out of his gloom. She persuaded him to attend the Harvard Commencement and a Fourth of July celebration in Boston. She monitored his mail, withholding letters that warned him of chicanery in his cabinet and elsewhere because, in his present condition, they
would upset him to no purpose. Her loving concern slowly restored the president’s emotional balance. The visible evidence of how desperately he needed her help inspired Abigail to banish her own nervous tremors. Soon, John was taking an interest in the political scene again. When the tax rebel Fries was captured and sentenced to death for treason, Adams demanded to see all the papers related to the trial and verdict, and decided to pardon him.
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VIII

Not until November 1799 did President Adams respond to worried letters urging him to take charge of the government again. The Hamiltonians in his cabinet were doing everything in their power to sabotage his peace initiative. Before he left Philadelphia, Adams had agreed to appoint two older Federalist politicians to bolster the youthful Murray in the negotiations. Secretary of State Pickering repeatedly delayed their departure for Europe. Adams grimly resolved that he would see to it that these envoys sailed as soon as possible.

En route to Philadelphia, John stopped at Nabby’s house in Westchester County. He found his daughter and her children surprisingly contented. The president had managed to wangle William Stephens Smith a colonel’s commission in Hamilton’s army. For once there was some money in the family exchequer. But there were unexpected guests—Charles Adams’s wife, Sally, and her two children. With tears on her cheeks, Sally told the president that Charles had become a hopeless alcoholic. His law practice had collapsed and he had vanished into New York’s back streets, running up ruinous bills in taverns and consorting with prostitutes.

Frantic with grief and rage, John turned to the only person who could share his anguish. He told Abigail how much he “pitied…grieved…mourned” for Sally and her children. Charles was “a madman possessed of the devil…I renounce him.” The president made no attempt to see his son. He had urgent business awaiting him in Philadelphia. He resumed his journey, “loaded with sorrow,” begging Abigail to “write me every day.
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The nation’s capital was in the grip of another yellow fever epidemic. The government had moved across the Delaware to the capital of New Jersey, Trenton. There, Adams confronted his cabinet, who told him the latest news from France: the Directory had been overthrown by a
young French general, Napoleon Bonaparte. Secretary of State Pickering argued that there was no point in sending a peace mission now. Adams was unconvinced and no one was able to change his mind, not even Major General Hamilton, who rushed to Trenton to add his arguments to the contretemps. The president ordered the peace commissioners to sail for France as soon as possible. A disgusted General Hamilton fired off a deploring letter to General Washington, obviously hoping to bring his influence into play.

IX

Stunning news from Mount Vernon distracted everyone: George Washington was dead. President Adams expressed his genuine grief in his message to Congress. “I feel myself alone, bereaved of my last brother,” he wrote. Black bunting shrouded the door of the presidential mansion and the entrance to Congress Hall. Abigail told her sister Mary Cranch that “no man ever lived who was more deservedly beloved and respected.”
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On December 26, John and Abigail joined a host of distinguished mourners at Philadelphia’s Christ Church to hear Congressman Henry Lee of Virginia extol Washington as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” The Episcopal service lasted almost five hours, and the Adamses followed it with a presidential dinner for thirty guests. Over the next weeks, more and more extravagant eulogies of the dead hero appeared in the newspapers, and Abigail began to grow impatient with their rhetoric. When a New England clergyman called Washington “Liberty’s spotless high priest,” and hoped President Adams had the ability to become “Columbia’s second savior,” she called it “a mad rant of bombast.” It was time for someone to declare that “no one man” was or ever could be the country’s savior. These idolaters did not seem to realize that by exalting one character, they “degrade that of their country.”
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