Chapter 9
Jefferson and
Adams’s First Round, 1796

IN THE STORY of presidential campaigns, the departure of Washington was a dividing line between the overture and the curtain raiser. In 1788 and 1792, when his name appeared on the ballot of every single elector as one of the two allowed, the Constitution’s original system had caused no problems. But that unanimity would never recur. Theyear 1796 would see the first genuinely contested election for the chief executive’s post. As such, it would at a minimum be more complicated than the earlier two. The point of distinction was the clear emergence by 1796, admittedly or not, of two political parties. But that was the only recognizable resemblance to the elections of later centuries.

Each party wanted to provide its electors with a clear Presidential choice as well as a number two candidate for vice president, who must get fewer votes to avoid a tie. But there was no nominating structure, only understandings among small numbers of scattered unofficial leaders dependent on a poor network of communication. Even the faithful did not always get—or follow—the word. Besides that, some electors still ran as independents. Further, in different states electors were chosen by different methods and on different dates, leading to a long wait for complete results. A cloud of uncertainty and rumor overhung the whole process, right through the official deposit of the electors’ ballots in their state capitals in December and the official count before the Senate in February. Until the the last minute the candidates themselves did not know which job, if either, they would win.

The number one choices for both Federalists and Republicans were clear. No one on the proadministration side had anything like the credentials of John Adams—not merely his services, sacrifices, and risks during the Revolution but his seven years of loyal support in the mausoleum of the vice presidency. He understood as much. “I am heir apparent, you know,” he wrote to Abigail. The idea was pleasing, though it had negatives. Being “the butt of party malevolence” would be “bitter, nauseous and unwholesome.”¹ Besides, he had gotten to enjoy the long, quiet months at Peacefield when the Senate was not sitting and the gentle intimacy with Abigail of an aging couple whose love had survived hard times. One bitter winter morning she wrote him that it was cold enough to freeze the blood in her veins, but “not the warmth of my affection for him for whom my heart beats with unabated ardor through all the changes and vicissitudes of life.” And when, in another letter, she said that a man of sixty ought not to spend much time away from his family, his reply was: “How dare you hint or lisp a word about ’sixty years of age.’ If I were near I would soon convince you that I am not above forty.”² Both of them enjoyed having leisure to visit daughter Nabby and lawyer son Charley and their grandchildren in New York and to write long letters to their eldest, John Quincy, who had started a diplomatic career as minister to the Netherlands in 1794, taking brother Tommy with him as his secretary. And neither liked the social prospect of becoming president and first lady and the discretion that it would demand from their frank natures. She said that if it happened, “I must impose a silence upon myself when I long to talk.” And he wrote back: “I hate speeches, messages, addresses and answers, proclamations, and such affected, studied... things. I hate levees and drawing rooms. I hate to speak to a thousand people to whom I have nothing to say.”

In spite of all that they both believed that he should not, could not, and would not say no when asked. “I have a pious and a philosophical resignation to the voice of the people,” he told her, and her answer was that “the Hand of Providence ought to be... cheerfully submitted to.” His only worry was about coming in second once more, in which case he would resign, unwilling to play accompanist to anyone but Washington.³

Jefferson appears to have fought harder than Adams against the “Hand of Providence” that made his “nomination” automatic. In February Madison wrote to Monroe: “The Republicans, knowing that Jefferson alone can be started with hope of success, mean to push him. I fear much that he will mar the project... by a peremptory and public refusal.”⁴ Madison, as a good political manager, dodged that risk for months by simply never asking Jefferson. Jefferson persisted in telling friends, “I have no ambition to govern men; no passion which would lead me to delight to ride in a storm.”⁵ He was happy at Monticello with his bricks, nails, and building projects, his crop experiments, and the nearness of his two daughters and their families. Opponents were skeptical of these disclaimers, and with Jefferson there was always a slight cloud of ambiguity about his exact political intentions. He did let his name be submitted finally, but when it appeared clear that he had not become president his reaction was: “On principles of public interest I should not have refused; but I protest before my God that I shall... rejoice at escaping.”⁶ He was certain that no man left the office with the good reputation that brought him into it.

It is hard to believe that either he or John Adams could resist the call, given the intensity of their alarm about the future of the country they had made and loved. During the final Jay Treaty battle, Adams, looking on, believed that if House Republicans killed the pact, it would “be then evident that this constitution could not stand.” The mere fact of debating an already concluded agreement—of “whether national faith is binding on a nation”—showed “no national pride—no national sense of honor.” The Francophiles would “throw this country into the arms of a foreign power, into a certain war and as certain anarchy.”⁷ Jefferson was just as passionate in his way. He wished for an “ocean of fire” to separate America from England, whose corruption threatened to infect the pure republican morals of America’s people. He lamented that “an Anglican, monarchical, & aristocratical party” had sprung up, composed of “timid men who prefer[red] the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty... [and] speculators & holders in the public funds.” Even good men [like Washington, by implication] had “gone over to these heresies,” men who were “Samsons in the field... but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England.”⁸ Granted that these outbursts were in private letters and that both Adams and Jefferson could be colorfully excessive in their correspondence with intimates, they were not the sentiments of political veterans ready to quit the fight and become onlookers.

The two men were still on good terms despite their differences. The Adamses simply believed that their old friend was misguided. “Though wrong in politics... my friendship for him has ever been unshaken,” John informed Abigail, who answered that her own fondness for “that gentleman” had “lived through his faults and errors—to which I have not been blind.”⁹ Jefferson was equally open in his liking for the blunt Yankee he had known since they were working together for separation from Britain in 1776. The two had much more in common with each other than with many of their own political allies. They were farmers at heart, swapping long paragraphs of information about frosts, fences, manures, and yields. Neither really cared much for cities or their throngs of unpropertied workers. Both of them were omnivorous and wide-ranging readers with solid grounding in the classics. Adams may have lacked some of Jefferson’s intense love of architecture, music, and natural science, but his own constant study of history, biography, and political philosophy in search of the essence of human nature matched the Virginian’s. If he came up with a more hard-boiled assessment of humankind’s frailty than Jefferson did, the disagreement was respectful. Jefferson’s revolutionary anarchism and Adams’s distrust of too much freedom were theoretical positions that each man knew could not be strictly applied to the realities of American life. Finally, while Adams did not share Jefferson’s loathing for “stockjobbers,” neither did he care much for fellow Federalist Hamilton’s cultivation of the banking elite. He had, in fact, a lingering Puritanical distrust of usurers and sharpers. In the same way, Jefferson’s speculative flights sometimes put a slight distance between him and his friend Madison, who tended to focus his own fierce intelligence strictly on political issues.

The Adams-Jefferson friendship was unusual, for partisanship was dividing both friends and families. John’s cousin Sam Adams, the old Boston radical democrat, ran for Republican elector in Massachusetts. (He lost there, but fifteen Republican electors from Virginia made him their second choice for president.) In South Carolina, cousin Charles Pinckney broke with Charles Cotesworth and Thomas to become a Republican. Nothing quite matched what happened to Pennsylvania’s Frederick Muhlenberg. Two days after he crossed the party line to vote with the House Federalists in favor of Jay’s Treaty, his Republican cousin stabbed him, though not fatally. In Philadelphia, according to Jefferson, men who had known each other for years crossed the street and looked the other way to avoid greetings.

In spite of that the election was relatively quiet. The “campaign” did not begin until Washington formally announced his retirement in September. The four understood candidates did not say anything on their own behalf in public. It was considered unseemly and, in the case of the Federalists’ choice for vice president, Thomas Pinckney, impossible. He was en route home from his diplomatic stint, literally “at sea” until mid-December. Burr, the Republicans’ number two man, always preferred to work offstage. So such debates as there were took place in newspapers, pamphlets, and public meetings to promote individual electors in the four states where they were chosen by district, or to push statewide electoral slates in the two states where that was the law. In ten states the only way to register one’s preference for president was to vote for a state legislator who promised in turn to vote for an elector supporting that candidate. So much indirection did not encourage a large turnout, nor did the tendency of local editors to touch only lightly on the presidential contest. The only state in which the election had a somewhat modern cast was Pennsylvania. Its fifteen electors were chosen on a statewide basis, meaning that the winning party got them all (as nowadays), and the Republicans mounted a tremendous organizational and public relations effort, ably coordinated by John Beckley, to get a slate of well-known names, have the names written out on thousands of prepared tickets, and have the tickets put in voters’ hands. And since Philadelphia was the capital of the United States, the papers there gave plenty of room to diatribes on national issues.

The rhetoric was harsh enough. Jefferson was charged with atheism and cowardice, among other things. His supporters scattered handbills like the one that declared: “Thomas Jefferson first framed the sacred political sentence that all men are born equal. John Adams says this is all farce and falsehood; that some men should be born Kings, and some should be born Nobles. Which of these, freemen of Pennsylvania, will you have for your President?” Even so, the Pennsylvania turnout of some twenty-five thousand voters was only a quarter of those eligible— and the Republicans won by a margin of no more than one or two hundred votes.¹⁰

The real spice in the election was provided by two out-of-the-ordinary attempts to influence the result, one through bullying and the other by backstairs intrigue. The first involved the latest French ambassador, Pierre Adet. Both he and his home government reasonably believed that a Republican administration would be more friendly to France and made the mistake of trying to help produce one. Just around the time of the voting in Pennsylvania he informed secretary of state Pickering of a new French policy to counteract the Jay Treaty. Hereafter they would treat American shipping as roughly as the British did. Adet sent a copy of his official notification to the violently antiadministration Philadelphia newspaper, the Aurora, from which it would be later picked up by other sheets around the country. Then—again with copies to the press—he announced the suspension of diplomatic relations in a message bitterly criticizing the Federalists’ betrayal of the 1778 alliance. The implicit message to the electorate was that voting Republican would prevent being sucked into war with France. Unluckily for him, Adet sounded more as if he intended to frighten than to persuade Americans by referring to his nation as one “terrible to its enemies, but generous to its allies.” The results were probably counterproductive overall. Adet’s meddling let Federalist pamphleteers paint Jefferson as the disloyal tool of a foreign power. The envoy himself knew better. What he warned Paris in December was that “Jefferson likes us because he detests England... but he might change his opinion of us tomorrow, if tomorrow Great Britain should cease to inspire his fears.” And he added: “Jefferson, I say, is American and as such, he cannot be sincerely our friend. An American is the born enemy of all the European peoples.”¹¹

Besides Adet’s open, undiplomatic attempt to help the Republicans, there was an underhanded effort by Hamilton to make Thomas Pinckney president instead of John Adams. The plot sprang from the rich soil of Hamilton’s personal distaste for Adams. Pinckney, thanks to the popularity of his treaty, and because as a southerner he could pull electoral votes in what was heavily Republican territory, was a good Federalist choice for second place, but clearly no more than second place. Now, however, Hamilton secretly tried to arrange that every Federalist elector should cast one vote for Pinckney, knowing that a few in the South would give their alternate choice to someone other than Adams. That would bring Pinckney in ahead of Adams, the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen. Hamilton’s official excuse was that Adams was lagging in the anticipated count, Jefferson was a threat, and it was all-important to have Pinckney and Adams get the two highest vote totals in no matter what order. But word of his strategy leaked out and enraged New England Federalists, who gathered perfectly well that Hamilton was trying to reverse the party’s preferences. Thereupon some of them scratched Pinckney, which resulted in dropping his total below Jefferson’s. Hamilton’s maneuver simply backfired.

When news of the bungled intrigue reached the ears of John and Abigail Adams, their own rage at Hamilton bubbled like lava in their letters. She called him “as ambitious as Julius Caesar, a subtle intriguer.... His thirst for fame is insatiable.” John’s view was that Hamilton was “a proud-spirited, conceited, aspiring mortal... As great a hypocrite as any in the U.S.” Both of them apparently suspected him of sexual misconduct, an unforgivable affront. He had “as debauched morals as old Franklin,” John reported, and she readily agreed. “I have read his heart in his wicked eyes many a time. The very devil is in them. They are lasciviousness itself.”¹² This mutual Adams-Hamilton hatred—not always understandable but as violent as that between Hamilton and Burr— would soon have explosive results.

When the ballots were finally counted, John Adams had 71 of the total 138 votes, just one more than the 70 he needed, and just 3 more than Thomas Jefferson, with 68. Pinckney had 59, and Burr a miserable 30. Pinckney owed his third-place finish partly to Hamilton’s interference and partly to local politics in his own South Carolina, where the legislature gave him 4 electoral votes and 4 to Jefferson. Burr was hurt most by getting only 1 vote from Virginia’s 20 Jefferson supporters and only 9 from Republican electors in the rest of the South. He would not forget that four years later.

The sectional dividing line was bright and clear. All of New England—plus New York, New Jersey, and Delaware—went for Adams. South of Maryland he picked up only 2 electoral votes. Jefferson swept the South and the two new western states of Kentucky, admitted in 1792, and Tennessee, which had just joined the Union. Only Pennsylvania in the North joined the” Republican column, thanks to a strong western element. Her 14 electoral votes pushed Jefferson ahead of Pinckney.¹³

In mid-December, when there was still a chance that Jefferson and Adams might be tied and the choice thrown into the House of Representatives, Jefferson sent instructions to Madison. Republicans were to be clearly told that he, Jefferson, wanted Adams to have the presidency. “He has always been my senior,”¹⁴ the letter graciously explained. With authorization, Madison made it public, much pleasing Adams. A possibly more cynical explanation might be Jefferson’s awareness that it was not a good time, in his phrase, to take the helm. Sectional ties were stretched to the screaming point, and war with France was on the horizon. Referring in another letter to the outgoing Washington, Jefferson noted: “The President is fortunate to get off just as the bubble is bursting, leaving others to hold the bag.”¹⁵

On December 28 he sent Adams generous congratulations on his election, for by then he was sure of the outcome. He said he had always preferred that Adams should win. He was sorry that Adams had been forced to endure efforts of a scheming supposed “friend” (meaning Hamilton, whom he did not name outright) to defeat him. The new president would deserve all the glory if he could keep the peace. And finally, in spite of a few “little incidents” here and there, there was no break in the “solid esteem” of the old days together. It was a warm, lovely, nonpolitical note. All the same, Jefferson showed it first to Madison for his opinion. Madison, knowing that it might in the future make a fine campaign document for the Federalists, advised against sending it. And it was never sent.

With or without that letter, however, the new president and vice president were not formal adversaries when they took their inaugural oaths on March 4. Chubby Adams in his pearl-gray suit and sword and tall Jefferson buttoned into a long blue frock coat made an amusing contrast, but there was something heartening about their presence together in those roles, twenty years and eight months to the day after they had pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to American liberty. For a magic moment it looked as if the electoral system of the Constitution was a good one after all. The two nationally known figures best qualified to follow George Washington had been chosen. If they were not personal enemies, there might be a fleeting chance of their rising above party to share their knowledge and talent.

It was not to be. They did, however, make a try. When Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia, Adams called on him to say that he was planning to send a three-man deputation, representing both North and South, to Paris to talk peace. What would Jefferson think about being a member? They talked it over and agreed that it would not be a fit assignment for the vice president, and in any case Jefferson said he was not interested. Adams then wondered out loud if James Madison, who was retiring from the House, would go. Jefferson promised at least to ask him. A couple of days later they met again at a dinner given by Washington and exchanged news. Jefferson relayed Madison’s refusal. And a slightly embarrassed Adams explained that it was just as well. He had already held a cabinet meeting (dominated by three very ardent Federalists), and they had objected to the nomination. Jefferson recorded that he was never afterward asked about “any measures of the government,” and Adams’s recollection was: “We parted as good friends as we had always lived, but we consulted very little together afterwards.” There was simply too much “party violence,” which, in old age, Adams laid at Hamilton’s door.¹⁶

Shortly after that farewell dinner, Washington set off for Mount Vernon, happy to be out of office, especially under such lowering skies. On inauguration day Washington, suited in unobtrusive black, seemed to be enjoying himself more than Adams, the presumed star of the moment. Adams noticed, too, and confided his opinion to Abigail: “Methought I heard him say, ‘Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be the happiest.’”¹⁷ Relief rather than happiness was probably the dominant emotion in the First Citizen’s mind. His hopes of a nation as orderly as Mount Vernon, a people as self-restrained as he had always tried to be, had not come to pass. In his farewell address of the preceding September he had warned “in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.” In governments based on the people’s will, it was “seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.” And he had gone on especially to counsel against “passionate attachments” to foreign nations or automatic animosity toward them, which could fuel a self-defeating foreign policy. It was “folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another.” There would always be a price. But as the horses’¹⁸ hooves carried him southward he knew that the advice was having as little effect as most good advice. The remaining year and nine months of his life would be troubled by the turbulence his own extraordinary example had not been able to control. He was not superhuman, not the man of marble that idolizers would make him, but he was quite unlike any American who followed him in his capacity to unite Americans and set a model for them. Now his day was passing. Behind him he left a fire burning in an ammunition dump, on which John Adams sat.