Presidency of John Adams
served as the second president of the United States from March 4, 1797, to March 4, 1801. Adams, who had served as vice president under George Washington, took office as president after winning the 1796 presidential election. The only member of the Federalist Party to ever serve as president, his presidency ended after a single term following his defeat in the 1800 presidential election. He was succeeded by Thomas Jefferson of the opposition Democratic-Republican Party.
When Adams entered office, the ongoing major European war between France and Great Britain was causing great difficulties for American merchants on the high seas and arousing intense partisanship among contending political parties nationwide. Attempts to negotiate with the French led to the XYZ Affair, in which French officials demanded bribes before they would assent to the beginning of negotiations. The XYZ Affair outraged the American public, and the United States and France engaged in an undeclared naval conflict known as the Quasi-War, which dominated the remainder of Adams's presidency. Adams presided over an expansion of the army and the navy, and the navy won several successes in the Quasi-War.
The increased expenditures associated with these actions required greater federal revenue, and Congress passed the Direct Tax of 1798. The war and its associated taxation provoked domestic unrest, resulting in incidents such as Fries's Rebellion. In response to the unrest, both foreign and domestic, the 5th Congress passed four bills, collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Signed into law by the president, these acts made it more difficult for immigrants to become U.S. citizens, allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were deemed dangerous or who were from a hostile nation, and criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government. The Federalist majority argued that the bills strengthened national security during a time of conflict, while the Democratic-Republicans harshly criticized the laws.
Opposition to the Quasi-War and the Alien and the Sedition Acts, as well as the intra-party rivalry between Adams and Alexander Hamilton, all contributed to Adams's loss to Jefferson in the 1800 election. Historians have difficulty assessing Adams's presidency. Samuel Eliot Morison has written that "he was by temperament unsuited for the presidency. He did know more than any other American, even James Madison, about political science; but as an administrator he was uneasy." Nonetheless, Adams was able to avoid war with France, arguing that war should be a last resort to diplomacy. In this argument, he won the nation the respect of its most powerful adversaries. Although Adams was fiercely criticized for signing the Alien and Sedition Acts, he never advocated their passage nor personally implemented them, and he pardoned the instigators of Fries's Rebellion. "Seen in this light," observed historian C. James Taylor, "Adams's legacy is one of reason, moral leadership, the rule of law, compassion, and a cautious but active foreign policy that aimed both at securing the national interest and achieving an honorable peace."
Election of 1796
The election of 1796 was the first contested American presidential election. George Washington had been elected to office unanimously in the first two presidential elections. However, during his presidency, deep philosophical differences manifested between the two leading figures in the administration—Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Their competing visions of domestic and foreign policy caused a rift within the administration, and led to the founding of the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party. Washington's announcement that he would not be a candidate for a third term ignited an intense partisan struggle over the presidency.Like the previous two presidential elections, no candidates were put directly before the voters in 1796. The Constitution instead provided that each state selected presidential electors, and a vote of the presidential electors selected the president. As the election took place before the ratification of the 12th Amendment, each presidential elector cast two votes for president, though electors were not allowed to cast both votes for the same person. The Constitution prescribed that the person receiving the most votes would become president, provided that they won votes from a majority of the electors, while the person with the second most electoral votes would become vice president. Voters chose the presidential electors in seven states. In the remaining nine states, they were chosen by the state's legislature.
Adams and Hamilton both wanted to lead the Federalist Party, but Vice President Adams was widely viewed as Washington's "heir apparent," and he consolidated support among his party's electors. The clear favorite of Democratic-Republicans was Thomas Jefferson, though he was reluctant to run. The Democratic-Republicans in Congress held a nominating caucus and named Jefferson and Aaron Burr as their presidential choices. Jefferson at first declined the nomination, but he finally agreed to run a few weeks later. Federalist members of Congress held an informal nominating caucus and named Adams and Thomas Pinckney as their presidential candidates. The campaign, was, for the most part, unorganized and sporadic, confined to newspaper attacks, pamphlets, and political rallies. Federalists attacked Jefferson as a Francophile and an atheist, while the Democratic-Republicans accused Adams of being an Anglophile and a monarchist.
In early November, France's ambassador to the United States, Pierre Adet, inserted himself into the political debate on behalf of Jefferson, publishing statements designed to arouse anti-British sentiment and to leave the impression that a Jefferson victory would result in improved relations with France. Meanwhile, Hamilton, desiring "a more pliant president than Adams," maneuvered to tip the election to Pinckney. He coerced South Carolina Federalist electors, who had pledged to vote for "favorite son" Pinckney, to scatter their second votes among candidates other than Adams. Hamilton's scheme was undone, however, when several New England state electors heard of it, conferred, and agreed not to vote for Pinckney.
The votes of the 138 members of the Electoral College were counted during a joint session of Congress on February 8, 1797; the top three vote recipients were: Adams 71 votes, Jefferson 69, and Pinckney 59. The balance of the votes were dispersed among Burr and nine other candidates. Almost all of Adams's votes came from Northern electors, and almost all of Jefferson's votes came from Southern electors. As President of the Senate, it fell to Adams to announce himself as president-elect and his chief opponent, Jefferson, as vice president-elect. A week later he delivered an emotional farewell speech to the body whose deliberations he had presided over for eight years. The American two-party system came into being during the run-up to the 1796 electionthe only election to date in which a president and vice president were elected from opposing parties. The rivalry between New England and the South, with the middle states holding the balance of power, began to germinate at this time as well.
Inauguration
Adams was inaugurated as the nation's 2nd president on March 4, 1797, in the House of Representatives Chamber of Congress Hall in Philadelphia. Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth administered the oath of office, making Adams the first president to receive the oath from a Supreme Court chief justice.Adams began his inaugural address with a review of the struggle for independence,
The 2,308-word speech included an eloquent tribute to George Washington, a call for political unity, and a pledge to support the development of institutions of learning. To the chagrin of some of his Federalist allies, Adams also praised the French nation.
At the time he entered office, the country's population stood at around five million people, with two-thirds of those living within one hundred miles of the East Coast of the United States. The greatest population growth, however, was occurring in regions west of the Appalachian Mountains. By the end of his term, 500,000 people, principally from New England, Virginia, and Maryland, had migrated west into Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Northwest Territory.
Administration
Cabinet
Aside from the appointment process, the Constitution included only a passing reference to the operation of executive branch agencies. Late in Washington's first term, the term "cabinet" began to be applied to the heads of the executive branch departments, and Washington relied on his cabinet as an advisory council. While the Constitution made it clear that the people appointed to lead these agencies answered to the president, it was silent on termination of cabinet appointments. When Adams became president, there was no precedent regarding the continued service of the previous president's top officials. Rather than seize the opportunity to use patronage to build a loyal group of advisors, Adams retained Washington's cabinet, although none of its members had ever been close to him.Three cabinet members, Timothy Pickering, James McHenry, and Oliver Wolcott Jr., were devoted to Hamilton and referred every major policy question to him in New York. These cabinet members, in turn, presented Hamilton's recommendations to the president, and often actively worked against Adams's proposals. "The Hamiltonians by whom he is surrounded," wrote Jefferson in a May 1797 letter, "are only a little less hostile to him than to me." The other holdover from the Washington administration, Attorney General Charles Lee, worked well with Adams and remained in the cabinet for the duration of Adams's presidency. In 1798, Benjamin Stoddert of Maryland became the first Secretary of the Navy, and Stoddert emerged as one of Adams's most important advisers. As a split grew between Adams and the Hamiltonian wing of the Federalists during the second half of Adams's term, the president relied less on the advice of Pickering, McHenry, and Wolcott. Upon apprehending the scope of Hamilton's behind the scenes manipulations, Adams dismissed Pickering and McHenry in 1800, replacing them with John Marshall and Samuel Dexter, respectively.