Weisberger - America afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the first contest election

AMERICA AFIRE

BERNARD A. WEISBEEGER

Jefferson, Adams,
and the
First Contested Election

For Ken Cameron

Contents

Prologue
Washington, D.C.,
Inauguration Day, 1801

IT WAS 4:00 A. M. on March 4still dark and wintry cold in Washingtonwhen a fat old man of sixty-five, without retinue or fanfare, settled his sleepy bones into a public stagecoach. Ahead lay a jouncing fourteen-hour trip to Baltimore, forty-plus miles away, the first stop on a long trip to Quincy, on the outskirts of Boston. He was still officially the president of the United States and would be until Thomas Jefferson was sworn in at noon. But in reality, the unheralded departure marked the finish of his presidency and of thirty years at the center of history. In gloom, chill, and apparent stealth, John Adams was ending his public career.

Historians have not been kind to Adams for his predawn flight a mere eight hours before the installation of the man who had beaten him in the 1800 election. It was a case of plain bad manners according to one scholar. Others claim that he crept sullenly out of town, cheating the public of the ceremony of transition, because he would not suffer the humiliation of watching the winner claim the prize. A typical show of Adamss cranky temperament, these critics suggest, and an ungracious contrast to his own swearing-in of 1797, when he was decked out in a brocade suit and a ceremonial sword and Jefferson, the loser in the previous years election, looked on. But in fact, Jefferson had no choice on that occasionhe had just been sworn in as vice president.

Adams was indeed angry in those final days, though not necessarily at Jefferson, his old partner in the Revolution though they were currently political enemies. Shortly before March 4, for example, he had courteously reminded the president-elect that he need spend no money on transportation, since two taxpayer-owned carriages and seven horses would be at his disposal in the stables of the presidential residence. Jefferson in turn had paid a civil good-bye call to sip tea and nibble cake with Abigail Adams, a dear friend for many years. though after that there would be an eleven-year chill before more letters passed between them.

Adams, meanwhile, claimed to look forward to retirement. It was already an established tradition set by George Washington, in imitation of the legendary Roman landowner-general Cincinnatus, that the good citizen of a republic did not seek high office, accepted it only when requested by the people, and gladly gave it up as soon as duty allowed in order to return to his acres. Adams, too, informed a friend that the remainder of my days will probably be spent in the labor of agriculture [at Peacefield, his eighty-acre farm near Quincy] and the amusements of literature in both of which I have always taken more delight than in any public office. But underneath his optimism was the sting of rejection by his fellow Americans, which is exactly what defeat in a reelection campaign amounts to. Adams felt it all the more keenly because he was convinced, as usual, that his official actionsno matter how unpopularhad been not only well-intentioned but unalterably right.

Worse than his sense of public ingratitude was the conviction that the country as a whole was on a downslide. After only a restless two weeks back at Peacefield, he poured out his feelings in a letter to his former secretary of the navy. A group of foreign liars, he fumed, encouraged by a few ambitious native gentlemen, have discomfited the education, the talents, the virtues and the property of the country. The reason is, we have no Americans in America.

No Americans in America? And after only a quarter century of independence? Could this be the view of John Adams, one of the republics most important founders? Granted, he had always harbored a deep distrust of human nature, inherited from ancestors who believed in original sin, and he had suffered the recent affronts of a divisive and losing campaign. Still, it was only a short time ago, as history went, that he had been proud to stand as vice president beside George Washington during the first, happy inauguration under the new, unifying Constitution. What had turned his optimism to bitterness? How could such bright beginnings become so dismal for him so soon?

The answer may have been just outside the coach window, through which Adams could see the crude and unfinished seat of government where he and the Congress had worked and lived in partly completed buildings for the last few months. Washington, D.C., was founded with high aspirations toward becoming the capital of a model classical republic founded on virtue. And it had immediately encountered the gritty realities of local politics, private ambition, and outright greed. Its brief history almost duplicated in miniature that of the infant nation. Both were aspiring but unfinished works. The cartoon image of either could have been a half-chiseled marble statue up to its knees in mud.

WITH RARE EXCEPTIONS , the capital cities of other nations were established by the accidents of history. They were already market towns or gathering places before becoming seats of the mighty. The capital of the United States, however, was created from scratch by a political horse trade. The Constitution (Article I, Section 8) provided for a district no more than ten miles square for the seat of government, over which Congress would exercise exclusiv jurisdiction. It was to be created by a state or states voluntarily yielding some territory. A perfectly adequate existing city like Philadelphia, the temporary capital after 1790, would not do because Pennsylvania might thereby exert too much influence on the federal establishment within its boundaries. Constitution or no Constitution, states still kept a wary eye on one another.

When the First Congress, sitting in New York in 1790, began to debate the actual site of the future District of Columbia, sectional jealousy came into play. Southern members, supported by Jefferson, then secretary of state, were especially eager for a location close to them. Alexander Hamilton, heading the Treasury Department, hoped to firm up the national credit by getting the federal government to assume the war debts of the states and guarantee their payment. At an arranged dinner party, the two leaders struck a dealSouthern votes for assumption in exchange for Northern endorsement of a Potomac River capital to which the government would move in 1800. After surveys, the District was marked off where an eastern branch, the Anacostia, flowed into the Potomac between the small towns of Georgetown and Alexandria. It was an almost totally uninhabited area, heavily wooded, with gentle elevations and some riverbank tidal marshes. The choice gave great pleasure to President Washington, whose Mt. Vernon home was nearby, and for whom the capital itself eventuality was named.

The next step was to move from deal to design. The assignment of planning a worthy federal city was given by Washington himself to a thirty-six-year-old engineer and architect, Major Pierre-Charles LEnfant, a French-born Revolutionary War veteran who had come over to join the Americans in their fight for liberty and stayed. His credentials included survival through the winter at Valley Forge and capture by the British at Charleston, plus some postwar decorative and artistic commissions. LEnfants father had been a painter employed by the king of France, which may well have influenced the sons thinking. The major wanted to make Washington proportioned to the greatness which the Capital of a powerful Empire ought to manifest. There was an unmistakable resemblance to the overpowering royal palace and grounds that Louis XIV had created at Versailles. LEnfants ambitions assumed that the same kind of lavish funding and unquestioned authority would be at his command. It was a fatal mistake.