CHAPTER 5

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“To Meet the Fate to Which I Am Destined”

AS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS COMPLETED HIS TENURE AT THE Department of State, he found himself immersed in the contest to succeed James Monroe. He would know some success, but would prove unable to sustain it. Between 1824 and 1828 the political world of the Founding Fathers, which Adams idealized and to which he paid fealty, underwent wrenching transformation. In this rapidly changing universe Adams felt uncomfortable. He usually could not bring himself to work actively in his own behalf or to support energetically others wishing to do so. He even refused to employ political patronage for his own benefit. In short, the old political order that he cherished was in its death throes, and Adams was unable or unwilling to escape from its paroxysms.

The highlight of the Washington social season took place at the Adams home on F Street on January 8, 1824, the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, when the Adamses hosted a gala to celebrate the victor, General Andrew Jackson, now a sitting U.S. senator. The decision to put on this extravaganza had been made little more than two weeks earlier.¹

Characteristically Louisa Adams took charge. Her first task involved the preparation of invitations—she ordered five hundred printed. Those invited included almost all members of Congress, executive department heads, and the capital elite. Then she hand delivered most of them herself. Many who did not receive one called on her hoping to be added to the chosen. A marveling, and perhaps political, Louisa Catherine noted in her journal, “The number of persons who came to be invited on this occasion exceed belief.”2

Contemplating her event, she recorded that she had “a beautiful plan in my head which I shall endeavor to be executed.” She transformed her home. Taking doors off hinges, clearing out furniture, rearranging rooms, she made space for the expected throng. Adams’s library and study became the ballroom. She had her own design of spread eagles, flags, and the greeting “Welcome to the Hero of New Orleans” chalked on the dance floor. For the music she hired members of the U.S. Marine Band. Worried about the weight of the crowd on the second floor, where the late supper would be served, she went to the trouble of having pillars installed for additional support. To camouflage them she would “make some sort of ornament,” which she feared would “occasion more talk than I like.” She did not hesitate, however: “I must take my chance and brave it as well as I can.”³

The elite of Washington political and social society began arriving at seven thirty, with their passage to the home lit by bonfires placed as far as two blocks away. She in an elegant ball gown and her husband in his usual working attire stationed themselves at the front door to greet guests. As expected, hundreds arrived. At nine the guest of honor appeared. Louisa escorted him through the crowd, guiding him up the stairs and to the head of the supper table, while Adams escorted an honored lady to the foot. At the bountiful table the general drank to her health. Although he departed after the meal, the festivities lasted until the early hours of the next morning.

The ball was such a huge success that it became known as the Adams Ball. Louisa observed that it generated lots of talk and “a great deal of nonsense in the Newspapers.” The press did give it much attention. A doggerel by an editor caught on:

Belles and matrons, maids and madams

All are gone to Mrs. Adams.

The soiree was widely hailed as a phenomenon, both social and political. Plaudits aplenty came Louisa’s way. One observer even asserted that she now rivaled the long-recognized doyenne of Washington society, Dolley Madison.4

The dazzling evening permitted Adams to reap the rewards that stemmed from a broadly publicized and admired event designed not to benefit himself but to recognize and exalt the contributions to the nation of another. Yet that he paid a warmly received tribute to Jackson could only redound to his credit. Moreover, his doing so made abundantly clear his positive connection with the man already identified as the “Hero.” An Adams-Jackson alliance seemed within the realm of possibility.

While the Adams Ball surely had the intention of advancing his candidacy for president as well as celebrating Jackson’s victory, it underscored Adams’s opinion of the renowned general. At least since the Florida episode, he had upheld Jackson as a true patriot who deserved his country’s gratitude. Furthermore, he never grouped Jackson with the three men he branded as political intriguers and manipulators—Calhoun, Clay, and Crawford. Still, he considered Jackson a formidable candidate, meritorious as well as strong. According to a friend, Adams preferred the Tennessean to any other possibility, except for making “a tacit reservation in his own favor.”⁵

At the same time the extent and depth of Jackson’s natural charisma and popular appeal escaped him. Through the winter and spring of 1824 he constantly pushed the general as an ideal vice-presidential choice. “I thought the place suited to him and him suited to the place,” he confided to a Vermont senator. Although that statement is telling about Adams’s ignorance of Jackson’s character, he did have some understanding of it. He told a congressman that “the Vice-Presidency was a station in which the General could hang no one, and in which he would need to quarrel with no one.” Most important, in Adams’s view, he would restore prestige to the office. Time and time again he let his supporters know that he preferred Jackson for vice-president, urging his friends that whenever they could they should register their preference for him in that office. Mostly left unsaid, he clearly hoped that John Quincy Adams would head the ticket on which Jackson had the second spot.6

No matter how often he might decry politicians who paid attention to public opinion, Adams sided with Calhoun and Clay as well as Jackson on one critical issue. By the early 1820s the traditional method for Republicans to choose their presidential nominee, the caucus of all congressional Republicans, had come under increasing criticism. Partly it derived from growing popular demand for a more open nominating process. Additionally, partisans of candidates who feared that their favorite stood little chance in the caucus attacked it as unfair, as violating the rights of the people. Convinced that a majority of both citizens and states opposed the caucus, Adams made up his mind to join those standing against it. He told a New York congressman that he considered the procedure “adverse to the spirit of the Constitution and tending to corruption.”⁷

The one candidate whose backers championed the old way was William Crawford. They believed that he had the loyalty of a majority of congressional Republicans and would emerge from the caucus as the nominee. They pressed vigorously for it despite having to contend with a severe liability. In September 1823 while visiting in Virginia, Crawford was felled by a stroke. Even though he still suffered from serious physical disabilities in the new year, his political managers refused to let up in their campaign for him.

One tactic they pursued involved Adams. From numerous pro-Crawford sources he got word that the Georgian wanted him as vice-president. A Crawford-Adams ticket, they maintained, would combine New England with the South and surely result in triumph. Never hesitating, Adams refused, stating that a ticket with Crawford “could have no charm for me.” At the same time, he insisted his rejection rested on his objection to the caucus more than to the man. He went so far as to announce that because of his strong antipathy to the caucus, he would never even consider a nomination with himself in the first spot. While no doubt can exist about his genuine aversion to the caucus, it is difficult to imagine under any circumstances his uniting with Crawford, a man he had stingingly criticized since joining Monroe’s cabinet.8

The caucus did meet on February 14, 1824, and it did nominate Crawford. In fact he obtained all but four of the votes, but only sixty-six Republicans attended, barely over one-third of their total number; others chose deliberately not to be there. That Crawford won overwhelmingly created little excitement. His was a Pyrrhic victory. The opposition had withered the status of the caucus.

Although noting in January that the canvas for the presidency was heating up, Adams, as he saw it, maintained his candidacy on his terms. He wanted nothing to do with what he designated as the “mining and countermining,” which he identified “as an admirable study of human nature.” The newspapers engaged in “pouring forth continual streams of slander upon my character and reputation, public and private” brought forth little retaliation. He recorded that he even answered few letters calling for his opinion, and should not have responded to any.⁹

Yet he kept in contact with his preferred supporters, in certain instances directing them to act, for example, to oppose the caucus and any union with Crawford and to assist Jackson where appropriate. In addition, he made every effort to assure Federalists that the old antagonisms between him and them, which dated back to his days in the U.S. Senate, had disappeared, at least for him. He assured them that an Adams presidency would not mean “a general proscription of federalists from office.” Moreover, concrete evidence of what he viewed as spontaneous support gratified him enormously. A handbill from Rhode Island indicating that twenty-seven of thirty-one towns had nominated him for the presidency, even though he recognized it probably meant little in the larger context, “call[ed] for my most grateful sentiments.”¹⁰

For his quest for the presidency Adams paid a high emotional and psychological price. Given his highly self-critical nature, he constantly dealt with the possibility of failure. “The game is up for him,” Louisa commented as early as December 1823. In March 1824 he reported dim prospects. In May he opined to his diary, “We know so little of that in futurity,” he wrote, “which is best for ourselves, that whether I ought to wish for success is among the greatest uncertainties of the election.” He continued, “Were it possible to look with philosophical indifference to the event, that is the temper of mind to which I should aspire; but

Who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucuses?

To suffer without feeling is not in human nature,” he noted, in Hamlet-like lines, “and when I consider that to me alone, of all the candidates before the nation, failure of success would be equivalent to a vote of censure by the nation upon my past service, I cannot dissemble to myself that I have more at stake upon the result than any other individual in the Union.” Left unsaid was that each of his opponents had also rendered past service to their country, albeit arguably less extensive. In his judgment any man aspiring to the presidency “shall be a man proof alike to prosperous and to adverse fortune.” Furthermore, he who would be president “must possess resources of a power” to serve the country when the country denies him that goal. As always, he concluded, “I look to wisdom and strength from above.”11

He had delayed his usual summer sojourn in Massachusetts, but by late August “the bitterness and violence of Presidential electioneering” disgusted him. He complained it took too much time from his public business. As a result he decided to bolt Washington, head for home to visit his father, and “dismiss care.”¹²

Two events on that trip illuminated his uneasiness with his candidacy, even at that late date. When the steamboat carrying him from New York City docked in Providence, Rhode Island, he received a request to go to the front cabin. There, he recorded, almost all the male passengers had gathered. They paid him a magnificent personal compliment and requested that he join them in a glass of wine. He gratefully accepted and shook hands with each man.

Yet, when at Quincy, he declined an invitation to a public dinner in Boston given in his honor. Fearing it would seem a political spectacle, he directed the bearer of the invitation to say “in the present agitation of the public mind,” he thought his appearance would lead to even more excitement, which he wanted to discourage.13

On the way back to the capital after a month’s holiday, he prepared himself for what he saw as his uncertain future. He recorded that he was anxiously returning to Washington, where he would “meet the fate to which I am destined by the Disposer, who ‘Leads the willing, drags the backward on.’ ”¹⁴

Back in the capital, Adams had little additional time to fret about the election. In November, Americans would make their choice. There was no uniform procedure, as there is today, with the popular vote prevailing in every state on the same day. In 1824 the election was held on different days. Moreover, some states allotted electoral votes by congressional district, and in six the legislature decided. That no person could amass a majority of the electoral vote was almost foreordained. With four strong candidates, each claiming allegiance to the dominant Republican party, it would be practically impossible for any one of them to rise very far above all the others. There were four, not five, because Calhoun had for the time being given up his presidential hopes and opted for the vice-presidency, for which he had no substantial opposition.¹⁵

Both the popular and the electoral votes were spread among the four contenders. Still, the outcome separated the four into two distinct groupings. Adams and Jackson far outdistanced their rivals in both counts. Jackson won 99 electoral votes; Adams 84. Far behind, Crawford and Clay garnered 41 and 37, respectively. That result meant the election would move to the House of Representatives, for the Constitution stipulated that when no one gained a majority of the electoral votes, the House would make the final choice from the top three finishers. That meant dropping the man with the fewest votes. Accordingly, Henry Clay, the most influential member of the House, would not come before that body. The representatives would decide among Adams, Crawford, and Jackson.

The Constitution gave no role to the popular vote in the House proceedings. Yet in a basic sense it followed the electoral count. Jackson and Adams each had far more than either Crawford or Clay. Traditionally, Jackson has been given a clear lead in the popular count with almost 142,000, while Adams polled just under 116,000. Crawford trailed with not quite 48,000. Recent scholarship, however, including estimates of the popular vote in the states where the legislatures still chose, has reversed that standing, allotting Adams more than 212,000 votes and Jackson almost 178,000, with Crawford still far in the rear with over 139,000.

The voting totals aside, the election had a clear sectional dimension. Adams swept New England and enjoyed an overwhelming electoral majority in New York. In the slave states he managed only six votes from Delaware, Maryland, and Louisiana combined. Though Jackson swept Pennsylvania and New Jersey, his great score was seven southern states, while he split the West with Clay. Crawford managed to carry only his native Virginia and his adult home Georgia, with eight additional votes from three states. Clay took Kentucky and Ohio along with Missouri, as well as four in New York. Thus the House would select between two southerners, who shared the votes of their section, and one northerner, who predominated in the Northeast.

With the knowledge that he would be one of the three contestants before the House, Adams did not, as he so often did, sit on the sidelines and let the outcome be what it may. Earlier he had declared that if he finished third, he would withdraw, but no evidence suggests that placing second would have caused him to contemplate dropping out. The convening of Congress at the beginning of December signaled the start of the final push for the prize, which the House would award in early February. At that point Adams became quite active, meeting and talking with numerous congressmen and senators. In December and January his diary details a host of engagements.16

Likewise, Louisa kept up her role as the manager of the crucial social dimension of her husband’s campaign. Her dinners and drawing room soirees continued to attract notables, and she did not show favoritism. A participant in the Washington scene commented on an evening at the Adamses where “Jacksonites and Adamsites and Crawfordites all mingled harmoniously together.” Bitter political partisanship had not yet triumphed over social civility.¹⁷

Viewing the upcoming House contest, Adams did express distress about one matter. He noticed that both his opponents had settled on a vice-presidential preference. Calhoun had allied himself with Jackson. For their choice Crawford’s partisans turned to the longtime congressional veteran from North Carolina, Nathaniel Macon. That the two southerners aligned themselves with two other southerners especially upset Adams. “The north was having nothing by this double conspiracy, of the south and west, the north was proscribed,” he informed a friend. In his judgment the motive was dislike of his section, not of individuals, as if anticipating the political fissures that would cleave the nation in future decades. He predicted change in his section that would eventually lead to success. At the moment, however, he depicted himself standing alone, succeeding solely “upon his own strength.” Still, he foresaw victory for himself if his side held firm against the divided opposition.¹⁸

By the close of 1824 his outlook became unusually positive. On Christmas Eve, Congressman William Plumer Jr., of New Hampshire, a political ally, found Adams in better spirits than when he had last seen him. He was “now entertain[ing] more expectation of success than he appeared then to indulge.” On New Year’s Day, in his diary Adams admitted, “There is in my prospects and anticipations a solemnity and moment never before experienced.” Unused to thinking he might actually win, he had, of course, to call up his shortcomings, avowing “to which unaided nature is inadequate.”19

Adams’s almost optimism derived chiefly from his conversations with Robert P. Letcher, a Kentucky congressman close to Clay. As early as December 17 Letcher intimated that he would receive Clay’s backing. A week later Letcher was even more direct. On January 1 Adams recorded in his diary that Letcher now assured him that the Kentucky delegation in the House would cast its ballot for him. He also wanted Adams to meet with Clay, a request with which Adams readily agreed.²⁰

Finishing fourth in the electoral count and eliminated from any possibility that he could become president, Clay quickly shifted from candidate to president-maker. The question for him was which of the three remaining contenders he should get behind. He and Crawford differed profoundly on critical issues, chiefly the role of the federal government. Clay advocated a vigorous government, sponsoring what he termed the American System, which would have the central government active in the country’s economy and society. In contrast, Crawford was championed by southern states’ righters bent on a weak central government. Moreover, he disliked Crawford, who in any case had finished a distant third. By this time he and Jackson already had great antipathy for each other. Furthermore, Clay had grave reservations about elevating a military chieftain to the presidency. Finally, Jackson, from Tennessee, was a westerner as well as a southerner, as was Clay. His rise would not assist Clay’s own ambition to reach the nation’s first office.

That left Adams, with whom Clay had not previously been friendly. In fact, at Ghent and during Adams’s years in the State Department the two men had often been at odds. And Clay surely had a hand in the Russell forgery scandal, of which Adams was convinced. Yet in this circumstance for Clay the man from Massachusetts had distinctly positive attributes. They agreed on a vigorous federal government, especially regarding internal improvements. Moreover, the accession of Adams, a New Englander, would provide no impediment either to Clay’s stature in the West or to his national aspirations.

Adams was thus Clay’s logical choice. The question for Clay then became whether he could bring enough strength to elect Adams. Victory would require thirteen states, a majority of the twenty-four then in the Union, to triumph in the House. The Constitution directed that in this process each state would have one vote, no matter the size of its delegation. Assuming that Adams could hold the seven he had carried electorally and Clay’s three would do as he desired, that combination would bring Adams’s total to ten, just three short of the magic thirteen. Clay believed that with his influence plus Adams’s basic support, he could deliver the needed three additional states. He set out to do just that.21

On at least two occasions, January 9 and 29, the political kingmaker and the patrician intellectual met for extended discussions. After going over past disagreements, the two men managed to put aside former hostile feelings. They talked about policy, agreeing that on most basic issues, particularly the role of the federal government, they found themselves in accord. Insisting that his decision for Adams came “without any personal considerations for himself,” Clay said he preferred the secretary of state over either Jackson or Crawford.²²

Adams left no record of what he told Clay concerning any considerations for Clay personally or for anyone else he might bring to Adams’s side. Yet little doubt can exist that for Adams these conversations were of high moment. The silence in his diary on this matter testified to his reluctance even to mention what he always considered unseemly politics. A bit earlier, however, after a long meeting with Congressman Letcher on December 23, he concluded his summary of their exchange with a sentence in Latin that illuminated his feelings, feelings that would not abate for the next six weeks: “Incedo super ignes.” (Translation: I am treading upon fires.)23

While he met constantly with members of Congress and conferred privately with Clay, Adams continued to assert that he would not bar Federalists, past or present, from office. This assurance could become important in swaying those men in crucial delegations to back him. He informed a lawmaker from his own state that he would exclude no one based on the old party differences. Instead, he aimed to “bring the whole people together in sentiment as much as possible.” He made a similar declaration to a rising star in Massachusetts politics, Congressman Daniel Webster. Webster, like Adams, had been a Federalist, and he wanted Adams’s pledge on the Federalist question. Although in Adams’s opinion Webster suffered from the fatal flaw of “ambition in the breast,” he met with him, making unmistakably clear that he would not proscribe Federalists from participation in his administration. A satisfied Webster conveyed to Federalists, including a representative from Maryland who had a crucial place in his state’s delegation, that he was convinced Adams would govern without “excluding Federalists, as such from his regard and confidence.”²⁴

Two weeks prior to the House vote on February 9 signs pointed toward Adams’s victory on the first ballot. Clay publicly announced his support. At the same time the Kentucky and Ohio delegations, with whom he had enormous influence, promised they would vote for Adams, although the legislatures of both states directed them to go for Jackson. Even Adams admitted a prevailing impression that he would triumph. A whirl of politics had enveloped Washington, with Adams’s exclaiming just a few days before the House would decide, “The excitement of electioneering is kindling into fury.”²⁵

Confronting the real possibility of his becoming president, Adams called on his old companion self-doubt. “To me the alternatives are both distressing in prospect,” he confided to his diary, “and the most formidable is that of success.” He told himself, “All the danger is on the pinnacle.” Danger, because “the humiliation of failure will be so much more than compensated by the safety in which it will leave me, that I ought to regard it as a consummation devoutly to be wished, and hope to find consolation in it.”26

The day of decision came on a snowy February 9. Adams did retain his seven states, and Clay held his three. Moreover, Clay’s influence was central in bringing both Maryland and Louisiana into Adams’s camp. Illinois became the essential thirteenth state, even though Jackson had won two of its three electoral votes. The lone congressman who would cast the state’s vote was a longtime supporter of Adams. He withstood considerable pressure from the Jackson forces to stand by his personal favorite. On the first ballot the House awarded the presidency to Adams. Relaying the day’s events to his father, Congressman Plumer reported, “Every thing in this election was conducted with perfect propriety and decorum on the part of the House.” Calm prevailed: “There was no noise or confusion—no undue exultation in Mr. Adams’s friends and no resentment expressed by those of the other candidates.”²⁷

One great irony characterized Adams’s victory. Despite his deep, though guarded, antipathy toward slave owners and his long history of decrying the political strength of slavery, a slave owner and slave states were utterly critical in his victory. It was most unlikely that he could have prevailed without the vigorous participation of the slave-owning Clay. Additionally, his majority of thirteen states included four slave states—Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, and Missouri—almost one-third of his total. The South and slavery provided him with a crucial component of the coalition that generated his triumph.

With all the uncertainty finally gone, Adams rejoiced, “May the blessing of God rest upon the event of this day!” On March 4 he would become the sixth president of the United States. He would follow his father twenty-eight years later into the nation’s highest office, vindicating him and reaching the goal, though always unspoken, set by his father and now dead mother as well as himself. Labeling February 9 “the most important day of my life,” he wrote his father “asking for his blessing and prayers.” In that letter John Quincy Adams related he would close the day as he began it, “with supplications to the Father of mercies that its consequences may redound to His glory and to the welfare of my country.”28

The protracted tumult now seemed over. Congressman Plumer’s description of the House vote emphasizing calm and decorum seemed to herald an end to the political clamor that had pervaded Monroe’s second term. A presidential reception honoring the president-elect held on the evening following the election provided an encore to Plumer’s assessment. Those crowding into the Executive Mansion included the victor and his closest rival. No unpleasantness took place. Meeting Adams, Jackson extended his hand; the two men shook. The result of the House decision had not altered the friendly relations between them that had spanned Monroe’s presidency.²⁹

Yet, even before his inauguration, which occurred less than a month after his selection, Adams initiated an action that would not only change forever how he and Jackson viewed each other but also fundamentally affect his presidency. Before taking office, he understandably wanted to settle upon his cabinet. Appointing people to office brought up his hated topic of patronage. Moreover, as Daniel Webster perceived, appointments would have an added difficultly because Adams’s situation was “full of embarrassment,” in Webster’s words. He had not won in an open election and had not even garnered a plurality of electoral votes. Underscoring his antipathy toward what he had long considered an unsavory part of politics, Adams attempted to shield himself from as much of the process of dispensing patronage as possible. He wanted Monroe to make several diplomatic assignments before leaving office so that he would not face that task. Furthermore, even before he was chosen, he divulged to an ally that he had decided he would ask all of his colleagues in Monroe’s cabinet to retain their offices, even Crawford, for whom he had expressed nothing but disdain. That would leave for him to fill only his own post of secretary of state and the slot vacated by Vice-President Calhoun, secretary of war.30

The former, of course, was the plum. With his advance to the presidential chair, Adams became the third secretary of state in a row to make that move. As a matter of course whoever he named would be looked upon as the anointed one, at least as the obvious favorite to succeed him.

Three days after his election Adams offered his old stand to Henry Clay. Contemporary evidence does not clearly indicate his thinking, but five years later he spelled out his reasons, specifying three. First, Clay had been a prominent candidate for the presidency; second, he carried several western states; third, he was, in John Quincy’s opinion, the “best fitted” man in the country for the job. While all of these surely had validity, there is a notable absence from that catalog. Clay’s role in the House selection does not appear, and it is difficult to explain its nonappearance, except in realizing that reward for personal service, or favor, was not among the political acts acceptable to Adams. Reward must come from merit and qualifications, alone. Yet he surely knew that Clay had been essential to his victory in the House.³¹

Clay said he would take the offer under advisement, and after consulting with friends give the president-elect an answer. Recognizing a possible outcry against his appointment, Clay, according to Adams, “made light of the threatened opposition, and thought all the projects of that nature . . . were ebullitions of disappointment at the issue of the election, which would soon be abandoned.” Clay obviously foresaw the possibility of aversion to his becoming secretary of state in this manner. As for Adams, he had been cautioned that nominating Clay would be troublesome. Representative Plumer, who enjoyed Adams’s confidence, informed his father that everyone expected Clay to get that spot. Yet Plumer discerned the “current peculiar state of things” that would make it “a question of great delicacy to determine what [Clay] might do in this emergency.” Should Clay accept, he feared, political enemies would have “an opportunity to represent both Adams and Clay as unprincipled intriguers.”32

In less than two weeks Clay told Adams he would accept the invitation. He remained confident that his nomination would face little opposition in the Senate, with a maximum of ten senators against him. In fact, there were thirteen; all the other cabinet appointees were confirmed unanimously.³³

Much more important, the Jackson forces raged. Upon getting the news, an unrestrained Jackson exploded: “The Judas [Clay] of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver—his end will be the same. Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any country before?” Vice-President Calhoun, who before the House election had aligned himself with the general, echoed that judgment, declaring “the power of the people [sic] has been set at naught” by “ambitious men with a view to their own interest.” The result, he was convinced, has deservedly “caused the deepest discontent in the country.”³⁴

Across the country Jacksonians took their clue from terms like “Judas” and “ambitious men” and raised the cry of corruption. The charge of a corrupt bargain reverberated from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River—a diabolical deal had been struck, the presidency in 1825 for Adams and the president-designate for Clay. Did the two men consciously make such a bargain? The evidence does not permit a definitive answer. Each man made a logical, though politically disastrous, choice. Also, both men never stopped denying they had entered into any such agreement. Even after the passage of almost two decades, Adams still felt the yoke of that accusation. In public remarks on a western trip after paying his respects to Clay, he proclaimed, “I solemnly declare that the charges of corrupt bargaining which have been trumped up against him and me are utterly without foundation.” Even later, in 1850, Clay was still denying the charge of political corruption, though he finally acknowledged that he had erred in political judgment to become secretary of state.35

The real damage to Adams from the uproar against an alleged corrupt bargain was that it gave a rallying call for the rise of a national political opposition. All opposed to him could claim they had a simple and noble goal—to protect the republic and the rights of the people from scheming corrupters. And they had a unique and charismatic man to champion and to lead them—Andrew Jackson.

Since any untoward conduct involving the two men was problematic at best, the question remains why they so massively misjudged the political fallout. Even the superbly talented politician Clay failed to anticipate the maelstrom following his acceptance. Perhaps his ambition interfered with his political antennae, or more probably even he did not grasp how rapidly the popular politics spawned by the campaign and election of 1824 had transformed the political landscape. Without either Clay’s political skills or his temperament, Adams never envisioned danger. In his mind, he had awarded the first cabinet seat to the most qualified and deserving person. He believed that the public should understand, as he told himself he did, rewarding merit, expertise, and service to the nation. He could not comprehend what had happened in any other way, nor could he admit otherwise.

With Clay set in the State Department, Adams turned to filling the remaining cabinet positions. Holding to his decision to retain his colleagues from Monroe’s official family, he did invite them all, including the detested Crawford, to continue in their posts. Crawford promptly declined, but Samuel Southard and William Wirt agreed to stay on as secretary of the navy and attorney general, respectively. In Crawford’s stead as secretary of the treasury Adams selected one of his supporters, Richard Rush of Pennsylvania, who had replaced him in London. For the final vacancy, the War Department, Adams to no avail tried to interest Jackson, who spurned the offer. He then picked a Crawford backer, James Barbour of Virginia, a sitting U.S. senator.

Adams could legitimately present this group as a unity cabinet. Only a strong Jackson partisan was missing, yet Jackson himself had refused Adams’s overtures. There was certainly no sectional bias. Three—Barbour, Clay, and Wirt—came from slave states, while two—Rush and Southard—resided in free states. Except for Clay, none of them generated any opposition in the Senate; that body unanimously confirmed the other four.

Adams desired harmony and conciliation as the hallmarks of his presidency. He would build on what he identified as the nonpartisanship pushed by Monroe. He wanted no partisanship, political or sectional, past or present, to characterize his administration. His private statements made clear that intention. He informed Senator Barbour, “The ultimate principle of my system with reference to the great interests of the country was conciliation, and not collision.” To a Massachusetts congressman he emphasized his ambition to “bring the whole people together in sentiment as much as possible.”36

His inaugural address would declare to the public that same goal. He realized the importance of his first pronouncement as president. Not surprisingly he had two sleepless nights prior to his inaugural day that accentuated the anxiety and emotion he felt. Just before noon on March 4 he left his house on F Street for the Capitol, with a militia escort, along with a complement of citizens. President Monroe followed in his own carriage.³⁷

In the crowded home of the House of Representatives, Adams took the oath of office. Solemnity marked the occasion. Congressman Plumer described it as “one of the most august and interesting spectacles” he had “ever witnessed.” Plumer noted that when John Quincy began his address he “was a little agitated but soon recovered his self possession and spoke with great clearness, force, & animation.” The then vastly popular writer James Fenimore Cooper, part of the audience, commented on the earnestness and sincerity that marked his delivery.³⁸

Evoking many themes espoused by the Founding Fathers before him, he began by professing a “religious obligation” to perform the duties of his new office. Then he offered a paean to the Constitution, which he defined as the instrument that had guided the country to its present happy state, a success that equaled even the most sanguine outlook of the noble forefathers who had adopted it and put it into operation. The incredible geographic expansion along with the roads and canals that spanned much of the country testified to the current national well-being. The Constitution’s ultimate principle, from which no patriotic American could dissent, pronounced “the will of the people” the only authentic cornerstone of government. Proclaiming that all remnants of rancor and discord among Americans must be discarded, he called on all to join together with him in unity and harmony. That aim transcended all others, and he professed that he and his administration would hold it high.

Closing, he addressed the “peculiar circumstances” of his election. He knew that he did not begin with the confidence bestowed upon his predecessors. Yet he pledged he would make every effort to earn that confidence. He fervently called upon his God for favor and blessing. To that Providence he committed his own fate and that of his country.39

Following the ceremony both the outgoing and the incoming presidents entertained large numbers of people, Monroe in the Executive Mansion, Adams in his home on F Street. The new president now stood where his father had stood almost three decades earlier. The Adams name and Adams values had both been recognized and vindicated. To succeed in his quest to harmonize and unify his country, he told his inaugural audience, he would zealously bring hard and honest work to his task, but he looked for assistance and guidance from Congress, the states, and his fellow citizens. In his mind his elevation had rewarded his conviction about merit and individual worth. Now, still gripping this persuasion, he expected it to serve him well as his nation’s chief executive.

Following his inauguration Adams had to begin thinking about how to formulate and articulate a program he could present to Congress and the country that would advance his professed desire for a united America and permanently jettison all forms of partisanship. His opportunity would come in his first annual message to Congress. In his time those communications received great attention from members of Congress and the general public alike. Americans looked to them not only for a report on the status of their country but also for a blueprint of what their president envisioned for them and their country, especially a newly elected chief executive.40

The first session of the Nineteenth Congress would convene in early December. Before that date Adams would prepare drafts of his message, which he would put before his cabinet for comments. While working on the document, he recognized that his relationship with Congress might be fraught. He told himself that he must “be prepared for severe trials.” At the same time he reiterated his conviction that human actors, even presidents and congressmen, did not control events. In his diary he quoted from the Bible: “It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”⁴¹

In late November he began sharing his handiwork with his official family. He found that in reacting to what he presented, his unity cabinet was not unified. Different members supported and opposed different particulars. Some felt he went too far in proposing a multitude of projects involving the federal government, such as a national university, to him a civilian counterpart to the military academy at West Point, and a national astronomical observatory. The southerners Barbour and Wirt worried that his push for a centralized system of federally sponsored internal improvements would hurt him politically in their section.

Highlighting these specific disagreements, Barbour and Clay gave differing general recommendations. Barbour wanted no proposal that had such inherent popularity that it could win congressional approval without a presidential endorsement. Clay, on the other hand, insisted on excluding any item that might fail because if its unpopularity. Receiving such contradictory advice, the president told his advisers that they put him in the position of “the man with his two wives—one plucking out his black hairs, and the other the white, till none were left.”42

After a thorough discussion in which the individual officers had their say, Adams decided to retain the basic purport of the document he had placed before them. Their division did not caution him to temper his thrust. Not backing away, he informed them that his thinking went beyond the upcoming congressional session. “The plant may come later,” he declared, “though the seed should be sown early.” Even so, his divided cabinet should have signaled to him that his ambitious agenda entailed political hazards that might threaten the national harmony he so valued.⁴³

On December 6, 1825, he sent it to Congress. As had his predecessors since George Washington’s first year as president, Adams had his message delivered to the Capitol, where it was read. He did not appear in person. This document would have far-reaching effects on both President Adams and his country; it reflected a distinct inability for the new president to gauge the political antipathy and discord that lay in his future.⁴⁴

He began with thanksgiving to God for His blessings bestowed on America and Americans. To him abundant evidence demonstrated divine favor. Then he spent a few pages detailing the financial health and the general well-being of the country, emphasizing that peace and prosperity marked the nation’s situation.

When he turned to his vision for America, he concentrated on a single concept, improvement. Improvement he defined as “the great object of the institution of civil government.” His list of what he considered essential improvements included a massively expanded system of roads and canals, planned by and under the control of the central government. Equally important, he advocated using the federal government to improve the citizens’ condition through the acquisition of knowledge. Doing so would involve a national university and federal support for scientific investigation. Here astronomical observatories were central; he called them “light-houses of the skies.” Adams pointed out that the great European powers had expended considerable sums and effort to expanding knowledge, especially in science, including some 130 astronomical observatories. While asserting that those countries had forms of government greatly inferior to the American, John Quincy insisted that in this area the United States should strive to emulate them.

Having spelled out in concrete fashion the direction he hoped Congress would follow, he acknowledged that the Constitution did limit the power of the national legislature. Thus, if representatives and senators decided that enacting his proposals exceeded these limits, they should not “assume the exercise of powers not granted to you by the people.”

Yet, even after such a qualifying statement, he returned to his main theme. “The spirit of improvement is abroad upon the earth,” he declared. The moral purpose of the Creator, he sermonized, aimed at improving the lot of mankind. He therefore challenged the solons to join him and not “to slumber in indolence or fold up on our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents.” Not seeming to perceive the contradiction between telling the Congress not to reach beyond the warrant given by the people through the Constitution and simultaneously not to be barred by that same warrant, he hurried on to urge action on measures that would benefit the entire Union and all its citizens.

This message did not end up in a dustbin, unheard and unread. In a howl of dissent that would come to reflect the disharmony of his term, horrified conservatives and states’ righters charged that the perpetrators of the corrupt bargain intended to create a gargantuan central government pervaded by corruption that would destroy constitutional liberty. The phrase that members of Congress should not be palsied by the will of their constituents sparked particular outrage. It appeared to mock the very meaning of government by the people. Andrew Jackson, though personally motivated, spoke for the outraged: “I shudder for the consequence—if not checked by the voice of the people, it must end in consolidation, and then in despotism.”45

Undoubtedly both political naïveté and utter conviction about the rightness of his vision left Adams unprepared for this reaction. Even among his adherents his eloquent appeal to nationalism and national greatness caused concern. Though some did applaud, many feared that he asked for too much, went too far. They worried that a congressional opposition would emerge that could thwart his initiatives and be followed by a national opposition that could endanger his reelection.

A specific item embedded in the message would add measurably to the antagonism toward the administration growing from it. Adams noted that back in the spring the United States had been invited to a conference of Latin American republics to be held in Panama, and that he had accepted the invitation. He did not divulge, however, that his cabinet had been divided over acceptance, even though he had Secretary of State Clay’s support.

Because he wanted Senate confirmation of his envoys and House approval of their financing, he sent to Congress three weeks after the message an additional note in which he detailed his reasons for agreeing to the Panama meeting. He pointed out that those nations were sister republics in this hemisphere, though behind the United States in development. Thus this country should extend the hand of friendship and also support, giving guidance on the proper direction for them. He wanted the U.S. delegation to propound the worth of generous commercial relations and the principle of maritime neutrality. Additionally, in accord with his tone in his annual message, he asserted the United States would press upon its southern neighbors the advantages of advancing religious liberty, for some of them still formally embraced the Roman Catholic Church.46

In his brief for participation Adams in a significant way moved from his earlier foreign policy principle of keeping the United States out of the internal affairs of other countries. Despite his insistence on his consistency, his proposal for American engagement, especially his upholding moral precepts, did differ from the hands-off maxim he had advocated and promulgated as secretary of state. He obviously desired a direct American influence, which he felt could come only from an American presence on-site.

The congressional reaction to his proposed Panama mission in a fundamental sense mirrored the response to his annual message. It did even more, however, for that answer fueled the increasing resistance to what his opponents deemed an ever-expanding, almost missionary federal government.

Accusing Adams of breaking with George Washington’s hallowed doctrine from his Farewell Address of no foreign entanglements, antagonists set about blocking both Senate confirmations and House appropriations. Much of the objection was centered among southerners, who had special reservations about an American presence in Panama. That Haiti, the creation of a successful slave revolt and governed by blacks, would have representation at the conference mightily distressed them. They wanted nothing to do with Americans dealing on any level of equality with Haitian delegates. Congress wrangled for months before finally signing on to Adams’s Panama enterprise. Yet the confirming of envoys and appropriating of funds took so long that the conference ended before any American appeared.

Congressional delay and the failure of American participation was not, however, the key result of this ill-fated adventure. The Panama episode provided a powerful catalyst to the unease stemming from the substance of the message. A heretofore formless political force was taking shape or, more accurately, being shaped to stand against Adams and all that he proposed. The danger posed by corruption and consolidation became the watchword of these men.

Of course, the cornerstone of the movement was unhappiness at the outcome of the presidential election. Still, Adams in his vision of an energetic federal government committed to the great moral crusade of improvement provided cement. Experienced politicians who had favored Crawford or Jackson would use it to construct a formidable political organization. This effort had two leaders—Vice-President Calhoun, who had tied himself to Jackson even before the House chose Adams as president, and Senator Martin Van Buren of New York, who had led the Crawford campaign but now, in alliance with Calhoun, turned to Jackson. With Jackson they had a proven, popular champion to place at the head of their forming coalition. Jackson, now a fabled hero, had the fame and charisma that could hold it together. Moreover, he was eager to avenge the great wrong he claimed had been done him, the stealing of the presidency from him.

Adams’s supporters in Congress recognized the essential political dimension governing the anti-Adams alliance. Congressman Daniel Webster informed a correspondent that those who were against the Panama measures intended more than merely to defeat them. “Various parties, not likely to act together often,” he wrote, “united on this occasion in a close phalanx of opposition.”47

Apprised that those aligning against him denounced him for taking Caesar as his model and for endangering the liberty and happiness of his fellow citizens, Adams grasped that a great undertaking was being mounted against him. And he correctly identified the Calhoun, Crawford, and Jackson stalwarts as leading the way. He even designated Calhoun and Van Buren as the two men most responsible. This political landscape, Adams remarked in his diary, “admonishes me to proceed with extreme circumspection.”⁴⁸

While facing the reality of growing opposition, the president on July 4, 1826, joined other luminaries in the Capitol to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, of the nation’s birth. For him that day was to become even more meaningful. Two days later news reached Washington that the chief author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, had died, on the fourth. The symbolism of Jefferson’s death on that special day touched many. Then, on July 8, Adams received letters from three different people informing him that his father, almost ninety-one, was rapidly approaching the end of his life.

The next morning at five in his own carriage and accompanied by his son John, Adams left for Massachusetts. At a stop halfway to Baltimore, he learned that his father had died, also on the fourth, and eight years after the death of his mother, Abigail Adams. Because of the letters that had prompted his departure, that information did not surprise him. He proceeded onward, arriving in Boston on July 12.

The next day he went to Quincy, too late for the funeral, which had taken place on the seventh. As he entered his father’s bedchamber, where the two had last seen each other, the reality of his father’s death powerfully sank in. “That moment was inexpressibly painful,” he recorded in his diary. He felt as if an arrow had penetrated his heart. No longer could he consider that the house possessed a distinctive enchantment. At the same time he experienced a resurgence of his attachment to his homeplace and region, stronger, he affirmed, than ever before.49

That his father had departed life on the same national birthday as his Revolutionary partner Jefferson made an indelible impression on both Adams and the country. It seemed that heaven wanted to welcome the last two titans of the founding generation on the same day. Adams also knew that in their later years his father and Jefferson had reconciled their differences through correspondence, renewing in a significant way their friendship of an earlier time. Adams remembered those days fondly, when as a boy in France he had first come to know Jefferson. The connection he fathomed between his God and his country upon Jefferson’s death on the fourth grasped him even more tightly. The coincidence that the lives of the two men ended on such a notable day in his country’s history he counted as “visible and palpable marks of Divine favor.”⁵⁰

Adams also held dearly to his conviction of his father’s greatness, a belief he never relinquished. He admired much about his father—from his patriotism and public service to the frugality of his old age, which he contrasted favorably with Jefferson’s profligacy. He wanted to build a library next to his father’s house, which he inherited, to hold his parent’s books and papers, as well as in time his own. Some fifteen years later reading his father’s letters filled him with awe. He deemed them profound; in his opinion no others in the English language could match them. So taken was he that he confessed he “dare[d] not turn upon them a critical eye.”51

Always viewing his father’s loss to Jefferson in the presidential election of 1800 as a blot on the history of the nation and an insult to his father, Adams could never see that outcome as resulting from anything but the machinations of unscrupulous men. More than to the victor Jefferson, he assigned chief blame for denying his father his deserved second term to collusion between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Yet, contemplating the role of the divine in human affairs, he found some solace. That one murdered the other—Burr killed Hamilton in a famous duel—and that the one left alive ended up disgraced he viewed as a “remarkable example of Divine retributive justice.” In his mind the scales of justice had never been more evenly balanced. That the final judgment came from “a higher state of being” pleased him immensely. God himself had avenged the injustice done his father.⁵²

Adams remained for a time in Quincy to settle his father’s estate. During those weeks he made a momentous decision. He determined to join the church of his ancestors and of his parents in which he was raised. Although as an adult attending church services, reading the Bible, pondering religion, and calling on his God all formed a central part of his life, he had never openly professed his faith by becoming a member of a church. At this point he rationalized that he had not done so because of his moving about and his sense of unworthiness. As a result, he had not taken a step he should have taken three decades earlier. He decided he wanted to belong to the ancestral church in Quincy, where he hoped when his time came to be gathered to his fathers.

On October 1, during the morning service, he, a sitting president, made his public profession. In the ritual the minister asked that each person intent on joining the congregation profess his or her faith in the divine mission of Christ and commit to living by the precepts of His gospel. Adams did so and then took communion for the first time in his life. Making this declaration of Christ’s divinity was no perfunctory or rote pronouncement for him. He had previously contemplated the matter of Christ’s divinity and would continue to do so. Some six months later he confided to his diary that the New Testament did countenance that doctrine. Although in his mind scripture did not clearly reveal that truth, it both directly and indirectly pointed toward it. Still, he acknowledged that the New Testament left the question debatable, “never to be either demonstrated or refuted till another revelation shall clear it up.”53

Returning to Washington, Adams resumed his busy schedule. As he had for so many years, he rose quite early, usually between five and six, but occasionally at four. Prior to breakfast at nine, he read the Bible, public documents, and newspapers. At times exercise would follow, but sometimes that effort would not come until later afternoon.⁵⁴

From midmorning until around five in the afternoon, his hours were often filled with visitors. During sessions of Congress its members regularly trooped into his office. On one day in December 1826 he noted that thirty-three congressmen and eleven senators called on him. Adams complained that the avalanche of callers had begun to render life burdensome. It emphasized the different age in which he lived that others considerably less distinguished commonly found their way into the presidential presence—the wife of a Baltimore tailor looking for a job, a dismissed West Point cadet seeking reinstatement at the military academy, a young woman hoping to gain a government clerkship for her husband, even a man, termed objectionable by Adams, who announced himself as Saint Peter and spoke violently for fifteen minutes. The president did, however, make use of one of these uninvited callers. When a man identified himself as a dentist, Adams promptly took the opportunity to have him pull a decayed tooth and remove the tartar that for the past four years had been collecting on his front teeth. Although he surely benefited on at least that occasion, the range of people finding their way to his office amazed even him. By early 1828 he considered the increasing number an annoying nuisance.

Between the visits of those from both high and low stations, he attended to the business of the country. Following the example of President Monroe, he held frequent cabinet meetings, where he sought the opinions of his official advisers on foreign and domestic issues. When his annual messages came due as well as responses to specific congressional requests, he usually prepared the drafts by himself. Then he looked to the entire cabinet or individual officers for comment.

After dinner, usually at seven until eleven and bed, he engaged in several occupations. Work was never far away; signing individual land grants and blank patents took up many evening hours. He affixed his signature to every one of them. On occasion, however, he would escape from official duties at the billiard table or with a favorite author, like Tacitus, Plutarch, or even Voltaire. The former, of course, he denounced as idleness, even though it afforded him relaxation. In contrast, the latter was always profitable.

Once Adams had to deal with a threat to his life. Informed that an army surgeon cashiered for embezzlement threatened to kill him, he was urged to be extra cautious, making sure the individual never got in to see him alone. Despite considering the warning credible, Adams asserted that he could not possibly guard himself against a determined assassin. Finally, however, he did receive the desperate man, but only with another person present. Denying that he had ever entertained murder, the disgraced doctor begged for reinstatement. Adams refused. His account ends tersely: “He finally went away.” Through this episode Adams contented himself with his oft-stated belief that “a higher power than the will of man” controlled his life.55

One aspect of his role as president he clearly disliked, even more than having to face a herd of visitors. In May 1825 the Maryland Agricultural Society requested his presence at its exhibition outside Baltimore. Adams refused. Making what he identified as a public spectacle of the president not only took time away from important tasks but, even more, would set a precedent for him to end up as an exhibit at “all the cattle-shows” in the country. Two years later he declined an invitation to appear at the opening of the Pennsylvania Canal because it did not mesh with his principles or taste. He considered such public showings unsuitable to both his office and his character.56

Some occasions he could not escape. In October 1827, after he had toured the Philadelphia navy yard, a crowd of several thousand gathered. He spoke to those closest to him, saying he would shake hands with all who could make their way to him. Some two or three hundred did grasp the presidential hand. When his boat left the wharf, the assembly sent up three cheers. That gesture Adams returned with a bow. Yet he worried that some “vain or unworthy sentiment” might mingle with the grand thoughts and reflections that the experience excited in him.

On July 4 of the next year he participated in ground breaking for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which took place in Maryland just west of the District of Columbia boundary. With some two thousand onlookers he was handed the spade for the initial breaking of the ground. His first several efforts failed because he struck a large stump hidden just beneath the surface. Undeterred, Adams removed his coat and returned to his chore, succeeding in bringing up the first shovelful of dirt. His triumph brought forth a shout from the gathered throng. Following his own brief remarks and a few other incidents, he returned to the Executive Mansion accompanied by the marshals of the day. He invited them in, and all joined in a glass of wine. He reported himself exhausted and also, as usual, bemoaned his awkwardness in crowds. Still, he was thankful he got through the day without notable failure.⁵⁷

In fact, on this occasion as in Philadelphia, he conducted himself admirably. Even so, these situations obviously made him uncomfortable. As in other areas of the new political environment taking shape around him, he found himself ill at ease. This rapidly shifting landscape disturbed him, for he perceived that it called for him overtly to advertise himself. That endeavor he could never bring himself to embrace.

The social events that helped define Adams’s stand for the presidency did not disappear when he became chief executive. His diary refers to well-attended drawing rooms as well as dinner parties held at the Executive Mansion during the Washington season. He generally counted them successes, though he occasionally grumbled that the length of the dinners and the dissipation accompanying them deprived him of his usual postdinner commitment to official business.

In one critical aspect, however, these affairs differed from those of the prepresidential years. Although Louisa Adams presided over some of her drawing rooms, she did not exhibit the magnetism and verve that had made her the envy of Washington society. Simply, she seems to have lost her enthusiasm both for her special social role and for political life in general. Even during her heyday as the capital’s leading social figure, she did not relish the political future. “I have no ambition beyond my present situation,” she confided to her journal; “the exchange to a more elevated station must put me in Prison.” She conveyed the same feelings in letters to her sons.

Even though she had demonstrably assisted her husband’s elevation to the presidency, those sentiments dominated her time as first lady. Serious illness, including fainting, kept her from the inaugural ball. Sickness continued to plague her, causing her absence from some of her drawing rooms. Moreover, she grew more and more distant emotionally from the political world. No longer did she relish participating in, much less promoting, John Quincy’s hopes for reelection.58

A trip that she took in the summer of 1826 with her youngest son revealed the change that had occurred in her attitude and outlook. Traveling with his mother in upstate New York, Charles Francis observed that she was wandering about the country with apparently “no fixed purpose and with no intent.” In an attempt to boost her spirits, he adopted a forced gaiety, but his effort did little to alter her mood. Finally, he prevailed upon her to return home.

Two years later a distressed son remarked on what had now become her “usual melancholy.” According to him she had “lost all elasticity of character,” which had previously served her so well. Obviously an emotional pall had enveloped Louisa Catherine Adams; today some would call it a depression. Although concerned about his wife’s physical failing and emotional disillusionment, John Quincy could not permit his anxiety to deter him from his duty.59

President Adams was the subject of two notable paintings. Shortly after his inauguration he received a request from a Boston friend to permit the renowned Gilbert Stuart, who had done his portrait while secretary of state, to paint a full-length portrait, which the friend would commission. Adams agreed and first sat for Stuart in Boston in the fall of that year. Delay set in, however, and when Stuart died in 1828, he had finished only the head. Stuart’s head presents a familiar forceful visage looking toward the artist, with a mostly balding head above a strong nose and chin. Thomas Sully of Philadelphia was engaged to complete the assignment, which he did in 1830. The result was considerably less than successful. Sully’s placing Stuart’s head on a standing Adams did nothing to enhance the total work. Sully’s fully clothed body is indistinctive, as are the surroundings in which he placed his subject. Still, in 1831, Adams himself thought the head bore a true resemblance to the man.

In 1827 and 1828 he sat in Washington for a second portrait by the successful portraitist Chester Harding. Harding painted the president from the waist up. The head, here completely bald, again dominates, with nose and chin once more prominent. In this portrait the eyes focus directly to the front, adding to the strength of character the artist wanted the face to convey.⁶⁰

Having portraits painted did not seriously intrude on the demands of the presidency, but those demands did overwhelm an activity that for decades had been central in his life—maintaining his diary. Almost from the outset he periodically bemoaned the difficulty of keeping it. And the diary itself makes this clear. In the twelve-volume edition of his father’s journal that he edited and published between 1874 and 1876, Charles Francis Adams stated directly that it was not continuous for the presidential years. Comparing the coverage in this edition of the years of the secretaryship of state with those of the presidency illustrates the impact of the latter on his diary keeping. The secretaryship gets two full volumes plus all but thirty pages of a third, a total of 1,592 pages, while the presidency has only one full volume along with small portions of two others, a total of 681 pages, more than two-thirds fewer. The manuscript diary confirms that extensive difference. The lengthy discussions that characterized so much of it prior to March 1825 have become much sparser. A great deal of the diary during the presidential years consists of jotted notes or lists of various items, ranging from visitors to the weather to chapters from the Bible he had read.61

Although the diary suffered, Adams did not cut back his exercise regimen. Almost daily he engaged in some vigorous physical activity. In the warm months he continued to swim, in the Potomac River when in Washington. Unimaginable as it is today, crowds did not gather to watch the president take to the water. As before, he continued to praise this activity, though he told himself he must discard the motive of swimming just to show what he could do, and instead focus on the physical benefit. During one swim in the Potomac he watched the body of a drowned man pulled from the river. That incident caused him to reconsider the potential hazard in this form of exertion, but he concluded that abstaining would pose an even greater danger to his health. He resolved to be careful but, as always, affirmed that his life rested in the hands of God, to whom he was indebted for every breath he drew.

When the weather turned colder, Adams resumed his walking. He generally alternated his treks, from the Executive Mansion to the Capitol and back or a round-trip from the mansion to Georgetown, each around three to four miles. Usually, walking before breakfast, he was out in the predawn chill, which on occasion could get to him. He recorded one morning, with the thermometer at thirteen degrees, that it took him an hour after his return to regain full feeling in his fingers.

In the spring of 1828 he added a third activity to his customary swimming and walking, horseback riding. At times he would substitute it for one of the other two. He rode as many as fourteen miles in a morning and often noted that the ride left him fatigued. Still, he was confident the effort improved his physical well-being.62

Concern about his health was a constant for President Adams. He frequently worried that even his regular exercising was failing to keep him fit. His diary, though terser than usual, contains numerous comments on maladies that struck his body. Catarrh and inflammation of his eye particularly plagued and alarmed him, though the latter did not equal the seriousness of his ophthalmological illness in London. On various occasions he mentioned a vague soreness and pain that so disheartened his spirits that he could not use reason to revive them. In May 1827 he reported his health as “drooping,” prompting him to count his career as closed.⁶³

Yet in the Executive Mansion he did find a new hobby, gardening. This interest stemmed from a resolution passed in 1828 by the House of Representatives designed to promote the silk industry. And he plunged in with fervor. Botany became a fresh passion; he read voraciously on the subject, utilizing books in both English and French. On his walks he began to notice plants and their characteristics. He devoted so much time to the pursuit that he reiterated his time-honored lament that he spent too much time away from what he should be doing. Furthermore, despite the pleasure he experienced, he reported his almost desperate effort to learn about this newly embraced topic, even admitting that it created an anxiety in him, which caused sleepless nights.

The study of trees emerged as a special interest. Around his house in Quincy he planted both fruit and what he termed forest trees, preferring to put seeds in the ground rather than transplant young trees. He ended up with almost a forest of his own. Still, that so many of his plantings failed to grow into healthy trees both puzzled and distressed him.64

Although becoming an amateur tree farmer both exhilarated and frustrated Adams, he could never totally divorce himself from his presidential duties. As chief executive of his country, he had significant responsibilities for domestic as well as foreign affairs. With the latter he could easily take the initiative, though as the Panama episode illustrated, he could still need congressional approval to conclude certain projects. Regarding the former, he laid out an ambitious agenda in his first message. Realizing it in the face of serious opposition would require from him enterprise and determination.

As president, Adams kept as his chief foreign policy goal one of his two as secretary of state. He wanted to secure the hegemonic position of his country in the Western Hemisphere that had been set by the close of Monroe’s second administration. Thus his major purpose became ensuring that no European intervention occurred on his side of the Atlantic Ocean. Keeping Europe out, he believed, would permit the growth and strengthening of the republics south of the United States. To that end he strove to advance the peaceful resolution of remaining conflicts between Spain and its former colonies. His policy also included insisting that Colombia and Mexico halt their effort to expand by absorbing Caribbean islands still in Spanish hands. He feared that their continuing on that path would prompt the European interference he so wanted to prevent. On these fronts he largely succeeded. Yet, as the failure of his Panama venture exemplifies, the United States did not become as active as he had hoped regarding the development of the new republics.

The second great objective of his tenure in the State Department had been territorial expansion. And in this endeavor he had remarkable success, making his country a continental nation. During his presidency, however, expansion became distinctly secondary. Three locations occupied his and Secretary of State Clay’s attention: the unsettled boundary between Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick; Cuba, still Spanish; and Texas, which came under Mexican control in 1821 when that country won independence from Spain. The issue of the Maine boundary had existed since the end of the American Revolution and had not been finalized in the Treaty of Ghent. Even though Adams had no ambition to attach Canadian territory, a lasting settlement escaped him and, in fact, did not occur until 1842.

Regarding Cuba and Texas, Adams had different aims. He had no intention of acquiring Cuba, though the island was just over one hundred miles from southern Florida. Yet he did have a great interest in keeping any other country from replacing Spain as Cuba’s master. In his judgment the United Sates could not permit any such change. Should a major European power like England or France attempt to take over, the United States would have to prevent it by whatever means necessary. During his presidency no serious effort to displace Spain took place.65

Texas was different, however. Its eastern and northern frontiers abutted the state of Louisiana and the territory of Arkansas, which placed that portion of Texas far from the center of Mexican authority in Mexico City and close to the United States, from which immigrants were already streaming into the territory. The precise location of the boundary had been at issue in the negotiations behind the Adams-Onís Treaty. Moreover, Adams knew that an insecure border like that with Florida had the potential to cause serious problems. Thereupon he and Clay tried to purchase Texas with a border as far south and west as possible, instructing the American minister to Mexico to try and make the deal. In large part because of internal Mexican politics, their attempt failed, once again passing along the Texas issue to reappear in both his and the country’s future.⁶⁶

Nothing had been more central in the grand national plan that Adams described in his first annual message than a centrally planned and managed system of internal improvements. Yet, after presenting that soaring vision, he basically backed away, leaving its implementation to Congress. Aside from an almost halfhearted effort to enlist Congressman Daniel Webster as a leader for his legislative program, he all but withdrew. His sense of his role as president evidently did not include active engagement in the legislative process.67

Why he took that position is not easily explained, for he certainly believed in and advocated an energetic central government. Perhaps his lack of legislative experience made him reluctant. Two decades earlier, during his brief time in the U.S. Senate, the mechanics of legislation had scarcely interested him. Unquestionably the arrangements, trade-offs, and deals usually necessary to construct congressional majorities he found distasteful. Possibly, his intent to press his oft-praised virtue of harmony motivated him. In February 1828, congratulating himself on the lack of vigorous Senate opposition to his treaties and nominations, he recorded that he had done “everything in my power to avoid a collision, and none has occurred.” Whatever the entire explanation, no substantial Adams program ever passed Congress; in fact, none was even specifically proposed and fought for.⁶⁸

His withdrawal did not mean, however, that internal improvements ground to a halt during his administration. On the contrary, more legislation passed and more projects got underway then than during all the previous presidencies. Congress passed many bills, and he signed them. But they were overwhelmingly local projects following no national blueprint. Most members of Congress were eager to support internal improvements, though only for undertakings that benefited their constituents. They had no appetite for a national system planned and directed by the federal government. On this matter Adams clearly did not lead. Rather, he followed as Congress mutilated his grand design.

On another major domestic issue he acted similarly. A protective tariff, a tax on imports to benefit particular sectors of the economy, had been a significant question in national politics since the 1790s. Generally northern states backed such a tariff in order to support their fledgling, but by the 1820s growing, manufacturing interest. In contrast, southern states with an economy devoted mainly to raising staple crops for export, with cotton ascendant by the 1820s, mostly opposed protection. To them a protective tariff meant their agriculture subsidizing northern industry.

In addition, constitutional interpretation became involved. The Constitution clearly empowered Congress to enact tariff legislation with the goal of funding the government. But it did not specifically sanction protection. Strict constructionists accordingly denied the constitutionality of protection, while those championing broad construction, or a more elastic interpretation, found it within the intent of the Constitution. Protection thus got caught up in the disagreement over the size and function of the federal government—strict constructionists wanted it small and limited, whereas the broad constructionists favored a more expansive and active version.

Although Adams certainly aligned himself with the broad constructionists, he also had no difficulty with some form of protection. He would support a tariff policy that assisted manufacturing, but he did not want agricultural interests severely harmed. In the midst of the presidential campaign of 1824, he told a South Carolina congressman that opposing sides on the tariff contest of that year should invoke “a spirit of mutual accommodation and concession” to reach an equitable solution.69

Becoming president did not change his opinion. During his administration discussions about the tariff occurred, but he neither took the initiative nor pushed any measure. His policy was to let Congress make its choices, and as president his duty was either to accept by signing or to reject by vetoing legislation sent to him. Congress did act in 1828, passing a new protective tariff, the highest up to that time. In fact, none would exceed it before 1860. Its opponents denounced it as the Tariff of Abominations. Involved and tangled politics connected to the 1828 presidential contest of that year marked its journey through Congress. Standing where he had previously, Adams took no active part in the congressional struggle. He did, however, sign the bill into law.

One other major domestic issue concerned him, a conflict between the state of Georgia and the Creek Indians. The future of the native tribes had occasioned discussion in his cabinet. Secretary of State Clay took a hard line, asserting the impossibility of civilizing the Indians. Anticipating their extinction sometime in the future, he did not believe them worth preserving, though he did favor treating them humanely while they survived. A shocked Secretary of War Barbour could not stand with Clay. He said, however, that he had given up the idea of incorporating Indians into the states where they resided. Instead, he proposed grouping them all into “a great territorial Government west of the Mississippi [River].”

Adams eventually sided with Barbour. He had long held the belief that the natives possessed no God-given right to maintain themselves on their original lands. He felt Clay’s views much too severe, though he feared they had more than a little validity. At the same time he could envision “no practicable plan by which they can be organized into a civilized, or half-civilized Government.” Still, he approved Barbour’s approach because he admitted he had nothing better to suggest.70

Any possible long-term solution aside, Adams had to make a timely decision in the clash between Georgia and the Creeks. He had to decide, not turn to Congress or wait for it to act. Following their defeat by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812, the Creeks had been required to cede the bulk of their land to the United States. Most was located in the area that became Alabama and Mississippi, but a portion fell within Georgia.

Then a treaty with the Creeks in 1825 transferred title to some five million acres to the state of Georgia. In the last days of Monroe’s presidency, the Senate ratified it, and upon taking office Adams affixed his signature. He soon learned, however, that to obtain the Creeks’ agreement corruption and force had been employed. Adams thereupon suspended that treaty and obtained a more equitable one, which the Senate also ratified.

Refusing to retreat from the original accord, Governor George Troup of Georgia moved quickly to have the Indian land surveyed and made available for settlement by eager white Georgians. News of Georgia’s rapid move distressed Adams, who in December 1825 informed his cabinet that the United States could not yield to Georgia. Doing so, in his judgment, would visit a great injustice on the Creeks. Told that opposing Troup would drive Georgia toward his political opposition, Adams averred that potential outcome was inconsequential to him.71

When Governor Troup actually sent his surveyors into land not given up by the Creeks in the second treaty, the struggle between the state and the federal government escalated into a full-blown crisis, a precursor to the well-known clash that took place later involving Georgia, the federal government, and the Cherokee Indians. Both Creek and federal authorities challenged the surveyors, with Secretary of War Barbour writing Governor Troup that the president would use all the means in his power to enforce the provisions of the second treaty. On the offensive, Troup responded to Barbour that he would resist any federal military action against his state. Many southerners lined up on Georgia’s side, encouraged by the man looming over Adams’s reelection chances, Andrew Jackson.

Adams received conflicting advice from his two chief advisers on this matter. Henry Clay wanted him to use force, to send in the army. Barbour preferred dispatching a confidential agent to Troup to warn him against proceeding further. They agreed that all pertinent documents should go to Congress. The president declared he had no doubt about his authority to order troops in as well as the right to take that course. Yet he seriously questioned the wisdom of doing so.⁷²

On February 5, 1827, he dispatched to Congress what he deemed “the most momentous message” he had ever sent to that body. In it he went over the history of the confrontation and contrasted his civil and military choices. While there was cause to employ the latter, he told the representatives and senators, he had chosen not to do so. If he had chosen military force, he wrote, “a conflict must have ensued,” which would have inflicted a terrible wound on the Union—one state at war with the rest. At all hazards he wanted to avoid that outcome. Yet he asserted that, should Georgia persist in illegally encroaching on Creeks, he would have to reconsider. He never did. He was not ready for combat, believing that the damage done to the Union might result in its demise. He did not feel the country ready for that eventuality, and he was certainly not willing to chance the possibility.73

While formulating plans to deal with events in Georgia, Adams faced a mushrooming political opposition. The force that had initially appeared to oppose Clay’s confirmation only intensified in the succeeding months, until by 1828 it had become a full-fledged party. As at the outset the two most prominent national leaders associated with the movement remained Calhoun and Jackson. Both of them professed that their former admiration for Adams had ceased because of his own actions. Calhoun wrote that changing his opinion he counted “one of the great misfortunes of life” because formerly he had thought so highly of his colleague in Monroe’s cabinet. Yet he claimed he had no choice given Adams’s ambition and lack of judgment, which turned him away from President Monroe’s cause, from principles, and led him to embrace those propounded by his former foes, with Clay at the forefront.⁷⁴

Jackson concentrated chiefly on his interpretation of the Adams-Clay connection, insisting that he had always “esteemed [Adams] as a virtuous, noble and honest man.” When first informed that Adams had made a pact with Clay, he declared, he refused to believe it. Only Clay’s actually receiving the appointment as secretary of state moved Jackson to accept what he deemed Adams’s disgraceful conduct. At that point he halted all exchange with Adams because his code forbade him to maintain an association with “those whom we believe corrupt or capable of vice when it ministers to self aggrandizement.” Considering Adams captured by Clay, whom he regarded as evil, Jackson concluded that the man he used to admire was now “really to be pitied.”75

A third man had an equally central, perhaps even more central, role in molding the political union determined to make John Quincy Adams, like his father, a one-term president. A master political manager and strategist, who had risen to leadership of one of the two factions of his state, Senator Martin Van Buren of New York did the difficult work of bringing together disparate groups into an organized unit. In his early forties the short, stocky, always elegantly dressed Van Buren had the ability to ingratiate himself with political friend and enemy alike. With perfect manners and exquisite social skills he cultivated all. Unlike his more notable contemporaries Adams, Calhoun, and Jackson, who could never separate the personal from the political, Van Buren kept personalities out of his political vocabulary. Without name, fame, or outstanding achievement to rely on or to boost him, Van Buren made politics his profession. He had an unmatched political mind.⁷⁶

Though no ideologue, Van Buren did profess loyalty to the classical Jeffersonian doctrine of limited government and strict construction. He wanted to build on an alliance between southerners and northerners who shared his outlook, the hallmark of Jefferson’s original Republican party. And he saw the hero Jackson as the vehicle that could make his dream a reality. Behind Jackson’s popularity he could bring together those who disliked Adams, those who simply desired office, those who wanted power, and those who held dearly the traditional constitutional and ideological shibboleths. His ultimate goal was to construct a political party that, like the first Republican party, could dominate nationally. In sharp contrast to Adams, he had no aversion to party, either intellectually or practically. Nor did an opposing party concern him; in fact, he saw it as essential for holding his coalition together. A common enemy was as important as common goals.

While Jackson’s heroic image and popular appeal were certainly essential to the ultimate success of this new political organization, Adams’s opponents employed concrete measures to build up their edifice. Without doubt the South provided a sturdy foundation. Early on Congressman Webster discerned that congressional southerners did not like losing their hold on the executive branch of the federal government. In his judgment they would stand against not only John Quincy but any northern president. On the other side Calhoun confirmed Webster’s observation, pointing to an increasing southern unity against Adams. The loss of regional power in 1825, coupled with the almost simultaneous call to regain it, resonated with southerners.77

Van Buren understood this fact. In the spring of 1827 he toured the southeastern states, urging all to line up behind Jackson, including those who had backed Crawford, as he had. He especially courted Virginians who had been Crawford stalwarts and who distrusted Jackson’s military background. With the heroic general heading their presidential ticket, he prophesied the new party would return victory and power to the South. After all, Jackson was not only a westerner but also a southerner, a slave-owning cotton planter. To this base Van Buren anticipated Jacksonian strength in the West and expected to attach his own New York and other northern states that could be rallied behind the hero to return the country to what he described as constitutional and republican government.

The leaders of the Jackson party did not rely solely on the general’s stature to build their following. First, they proclaimed their allegiance to strict construction and limited government; simultaneously they assaulted Adams’s eloquent plea for a powerful government. In the hands of Calhoun, Jackson, Van Buren, and their loyalists that goal inevitably meant despotism and tyranny.⁷⁸

They brandished Adams’s refusal to stand foursquare with Georgia on the Indian question as a pro-Indian program that would deprive white American farmers of the land they deserved. It did not matter that his cautious policy did not really defend the Indians. Although this instance referred only to Georgia, opponents presented it as a precedent for what would occur with lands farther west.

For most southerners the tariff of 1828, the infamous Tariff of Abominations, became an exclamation point to the powerful central government they equated with Adams. Even though this bill did not originate with him and he had little influence on its course through Congress, he did sign it into law. It served as another millstone around his neck. In fact, Van Buren adroitly orchestrated the arrangement of legislation intended to bring doubtful states like Pennsylvania to Jackson’s side. He discounted southern opposition, aware that the South would never embrace Adams, as he assumed New England would not stray from the president’s camp. Still, southerners blamed John Quincy and touted Jackson as their savior from such nefarious measures.

Yet, underlaying the several specific items, Adams’s foes repeatedly announced that he had set about to destroy the republic. According to their script the corrupt bargain signaled that his administration began in a cesspool of corruption. American citizens had been robbed of precious rights, and their villainous president did not care. An unending drumbeat of speeches, pamphlets, and editorials underscoring his not caring about the wishes of the people reverberated through the country, with Adams’s unfortunate phrase that members of Congress should not permit the will of their constituents to reject his program as the major chord. A rabid pro-Jackson editor summed up this strident cry: “Power is always stealing from the many to the few.”79

Adams definitely heard the heavy artillery shelling him. In the wake of the Clay confirmation vote, he admitted that his administration would have antagonists, and he acknowledged the growth of their strength over time. Furthermore, he recognized Calhoun and Van Buren as leaders of the forces gathering behind Jackson’s banner.⁸⁰

For him their political opposition turned into personal enmity. He could not conceive of friends and those he had supported taking a political stance against him. Thus Calhoun, whom he had once praised for his intellect and ability, had despite his talent been brought down by an overweening ambition, which had made of him a “dupe and the tool of every knave.” As for Jackson, he had become a Judas, for in Adams’s mind his attention and backing in an earlier time made the general obligated to him. He even understood the key role of Van Buren, whom he evaluated as “the ablest man of them all.” Yet he faulted the New Yorker for wasting his talent on political intrigues and machinations instead of championing principles.81

At the same time Adams granted Van Buren’s ability to retain civil relations with all, including adversaries. He recorded a visit Van Buren made in May upon his return from his southern tour, noting that the two men engaged in friendly conversation. Even Adams, who understood that the goal of his visitor’s mission in the South had been to eject him from the presidency, could not rebuff Van Buren’s charming manner.⁸²

While he identified the chieftains of those against him, Adams was also aware of the weapons they utilized. The floor of Congress became a rostrum for constant, often abrasive, speeches against him and his administration. Perhaps the most vituperative was John Randolph of Roanoke, whom Adams had met during his time in the U.S. Senate. By the late 1820s he had grown to despise the Virginian, so much so that Randolph was barred from all social occasions at the Executive Mansion. Denouncing his nemesis, Adams asserted, “The rancor of this man’s soul against me is that which sustains his life.” Adams could also count what was happening in Congress. By 1827 a strong majority opposed him, with congressional committees stacked with foes. He comprehended his predicament.⁸³

Early in 1826 the Jackson camp took an important step. Major Jackson supporters purchased a Washington newspaper, renamed it, and brought in a Calhoun disciple as editor. The United States Telegraph became the organ in the nation’s capital of the anti-Adams party. Partisan newspapers had long been a staple of American politics, and Washington had known its share. The Telegraph, however, came into existence with a single mission—to shape national public opinion against Adams and for Jackson. Cries about venality and abuse of power filled its columns. Aware of the purpose of the Telegraph, friends asked Adams whether they should take tangible notice of what one called “the declaration of war.” He responded negatively. Once again he neither could nor would accept or adapt to the new politics swirling around him, though he understood them.84

Adams’s refusal to countenance a vigorous, focused response to the establishment of the United States Telegraph conformed to his disdain for newspapers that to him had joined the spearhead of election battles delivering mortal wounds to reason. Those who penned articles and editorials attacking him he grouped with the speakers and pamphleteers who wallowed in lies and misrepresentations, terming the lot of them “skunks of party slander.” In their bitter contests he saw intelligent, talented men, even those with integrity, surrendering all those qualities to “passions.” Defending his position, he asserted that the presidency of the United States was an office neither to be sought nor to be declined. With such opinions he surely considered himself above the ugly fray. He had evidently stored away the memory of the exertions he had made in 1824 and 1825 to secure that office for himself, though he never did engage in public name-calling.⁸⁵

During the campaign his attitude did not change. In different situations he clung to his rejection of active participation in his own behalf. When Daniel Webster urged him to intervene in a struggle for a U.S. Senate seat in New Hampshire, he said no, averring that his doing so would both contravene his principles and probably prove unsuccessful. Told that funds were needed in Kentucky to carry state elections that would be crucial for the outcome of the presidential race there, Adams would not contribute, declaring such an act unprincipled. Exhorted by a Philadelphia supporter to attend the opening of the Pennsylvania Canal, where he could do himself great good by meeting German farmers and speaking with them in their own language, he replied that that form of electioneering violated his taste as well as his principles.86

Adams’s utter rejection of the political dimension of both his presidency and reelection hopes centered on patronage—the lifeblood of political leaders. Rewarding the faithful with jobs generated enthusiasm and loyalty that could spread through the electorate in any given area. Upon assuming office, he made clear he would remove federal officeholders only for cause, such as malfeasance or misconduct, never for purely political reasons. He maintained that his desire for harmony and conciliation precluded any standard of partisanship for officeholding. Such a criterion “would make the Government a perpetual and unremitting scramble for office,” and he could imagine nothing more pernicious. He was emphatic; he would not employ patronage for his political advantage. He seemed to be trying to cling to a political order that no longer pertained in the late 1820s.⁸⁷

He held tenaciously to that creed even when his own stalwarts pushed him to make patronage decisions that could only benefit him. Clay and the cabinet desired that none but friends of the administration be appointed to public office. Specifically, Clay recommended the removal of principal customs officials, whom he branded as antiadministration, in Charleston, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, and their replacement with pro-Adams men. Webster encouraged the president to give a post to a friend of a key Philadelphia editor in an effort to bring that influential newspaperman to the president’s side. A Kentuckian reported to Clay that a postmaster appointment in the town of Maysville would seriously harm the administration. He went on to say that he had written Adams on this matter, to no avail. In all these cases Adams refused to act. Neither the importuning of associates nor their criticism for his spurning their advice would move him. Even at the close of 1827, almost three years into his presidency, he held to his conviction that without a substantiated charge of moral or official misconduct he would not remove anyone, thus creating a situation where his enemies reviled him while dwindling supporters regarded him as pusillanimous or ineffective.88

Adams’s dealings with Postmaster General John McLean best illustrate his steadfastness, even stubbornness, on patronage. The Post Office Department controlled more jobs than any other unit in the federal government; even villages had federally appointed postmasters. At the same time it was not a cabinet-level department. And without doubt McLean was a most productive postmaster general, who made the postal service a model of efficiency and effectiveness. Yet he was no nonpartisan civil servant. He had gained his appointment in 1823 through the efforts of John C. Calhoun, and he remained a Calhoun loyalist, though he followed his benefactor into Jackson’s camp.

By spring 1827 Adams recorded in his diary that broad opinion identified the postmaster general as hostile to his administration; the warnings about McLean’s true allegiance kept coming. In October, Clay told the president he believed McLean “to be bitterly, though insidiously” opposed. He pointed out that in a recent New York election almost all postal officials lined up on the opposite political side. Nothing changed in McLean’s conduct during the remainder of Adams’s term.

Adams listened, and even heard these alarms. Initially, he acknowledged that because of McLean’s ability he made allowances for the postal chief, unwilling to believe him “willfully treacherous.” But he admitted that McLean masked his war against the administration. Becoming more apprehensive, he privately accused McLean of placing Calhoun’s minions in office while professing personal friendship to him. In the spring of 1828 he used the term “double-dealing” to describe McLean’s behavior. At the same time, however, he noted that firing the traitorous officer would be extremely ill considered.

Rendering a final judgment in the summer of 1828, only months before the presidential election, he condemned McLean for “deep and treacherous duplicity.” He admitted that despite McLean’s protestations of personal friendship and commitment to the administration, the postmaster general had used the extensive patronage at his disposal to advance the president’s enemies for three years. Even so, Adams did not let him go. He rationalized, “I can fix no positive act that would justify the removal of him.” Fixated on his self-proclaimed ideal of public service and his unwillingness to act on his own identification of a disloyal and even pernicious subordinate, Adams assisted in bringing about his own political destruction. In his inflexible and unrealistic handling of patronage, he committed a form of political suicide.89

In one political subject, the choice of a vice-presidential running mate, Adams did become directly involved in deliberations, though without taking charge. The incumbent, Calhoun, who had become a major Jackson figure, would have to be replaced. To that date the vice-presidency had not offered the most favored route to the presidency. The first two vice-presidents, Adams’s father and Jefferson, had moved up from the second slot, but since 1800 the secretaryship of state had seemingly provided the preferred path to the presidency. Still, the vice-president occupied a potentially advantageous place for advancement. At the outset of his term Adams indicated that he intended to follow Monroe’s course and remain neutral in all matters regarding the succession. In late 1826 Clay spoke of himself as a possibility for the vice-presidency, though he stated the choice should be made solely on the basis of its influence on the election. And John Quincy was told that Clay would be a real asset in the West, where he surely needed help. Much discussion about Clay went on between Adams and other cabinet members, who objected to the secretary of state. By late 1827 numerous other names had been brought up.

Adams finally decided on his general preference, informing supporters that the man should reside south of the Potomac. Yet he never made a great effort to ensure such a selection. Beginning in January 1828 several state conventions, all above the Potomac, nominated Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush of Pennsylvania. When they did so, Adams signed on and naïvely said he hoped all on his side would accept Rush. He also told Rush that no other person would have pleased him more. Even though Adams engaged in discussions, he did not press his preference for a southerner. Others made the choice for him. In this instance, as in all others, he did not use his office to assert himself as a major player in his own reelection effort.90

In the midst of Adams’s term two new parties presented themselves to American voters. Recognizing that fact, Clay called their existence an “incontestable truth.” He identified them as supporters and opponents of the administration, asserting that any reference to any organizations from the past was solely “for the purpose of fraud and deception.” The Jacksonians called themselves by different names—the Democratic party, the Democratic-Republican party, the Republican party, or sometimes the National Republican party. But most often and to most people they were known simply as the Jackson party. The Adams forces spoke of the Republican party, the National Republican party, or occasionally the People’s party. Yet, like their foe, they were generally known by their candidate’s name, the Adams party. These personal designations would not disappear and be replaced by formal party titles until after the election of 1828.⁹¹

Although there were two parties, they were not equal. The Jacksonians had more central direction and purpose, from organization to newspapers to speakers. Adams’s side did, of course, have newspapers and speakers, but they operated in a more fragmented manner without a driving, forceful single message. Basically, as a political union the Adams men could not match their opponents. They lacked a heroic candidate. In addition, they had no organizational master like Van Buren. Finally, and perhaps more important, they campaigned for a sitting president who would not lead, who, in fact, rejected the entire process.

These two parties, incipient though they might be, did engage in intense partisanship. The charges each flung at the other became vicious. In a widely circulated accusation a Jackson editor charged that while in Russia, Adams had acted as a pimp for the tsar, procuring a young American girl to satisfy His Majesty’s lust. An outraged Adams categorized this incendiary accusation as the worst of “the thousand malicious lies which outvenom all the worms of Nile.” And he went to some lengths in an attempt to demonstrate its utter falsehood.92

His friends wallowed in the same gutter, however. A Cincinnati newspaper printed a malevolent editorial proclaiming that Jackson’s mother was a common prostitute brought to this country by British soldiers. Thereupon she married a mulatto man with whom she had several children, among them Andrew Jackson. Apprised of this far-fetched, scandalous tale, Adams thought it absurd, but cynically went on to comment that even if proved true it would probably not hurt Jackson. The course of the campaign seemed to substantiate all Adams’s apprehensions that fervent partisanship was demolishing reasonableness, a slugfest of calumny and lies replacing political civility. Vice was triumphing over virtue. And the cynicism expressed in his reaction to the malignant piece regarding Jackson’s mother and his birth signaled that he had begun to doubt the probity of the republic and its citizens.⁹³

Through all the bombast of the summer and fall of 1827 and early 1828 both sides struggled for votes. Optimism often reigned among Adams’s loyalists. Detailing states they hopefully put in his column, Clay and Webster pointed to encouraging signs that Adams would prevail. Adams himself was more circumspect. In November 1826 he recorded in his diary that accidents would surely have a part in the outcome. The final issue, however, rested, as always, with “a wise, unerring hand.” By the late summer of the next year, contemplating his return from Quincy to Washington, he could foresee nothing positive about it. By the spring of 1828 he pictured his chances as growing desperate and referred to his presidency as “the wreck,” from which certain members of his cabinet wanted to flee.⁹⁴

The results of the 1828 election bore out his fears. Jackson won a resounding victory with 56 percent of the popular vote, the largest margin in the nineteenth century—the totals: Jackson 647,292 and Adams 507,730. Those numbers included every state except Delaware and South Carolina, where the legislature still cast the state’s presidential ballot. Adams managed to hold New England along with New Jersey and did well in New York, losing there by just over 5,000 votes out of more than 276,000 cast. Yet in the West and the South, Jackson swamped him; Adams could count only Delaware and barely Maryland in his column. The Electoral College result matched the popular outcome, giving Jackson a crowning 178–83 victory. Adams’s numbers included the states he won outright and included 6 of Maryland’s 11 and 16 of New York’s 20. Fundamentally, the election pitted the Northeast against the rest of the country. Adams as president had not been able to expand his appeal, but he had not really tried.

Still, a closer look at the popular returns reveals a tighter election. With only a slight shift Adams could once again have become a minority president, losing the popular vote, but winning the electoral count. Movement of just over 11,500 popular votes in five states—Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, New York, and Ohio—would have given Adams a margin of 132 to 129 in the Electoral College. His opponent would still have enjoyed, however, a sizable popular majority. No such turnabout occurred, of course. Moreover, it is unknowable how the country would have reacted. The historical result made Adams’s distance from the political world around him total; he lost the presidency.95

His defeat made him only the second president, the other being his father, to be denied a second term as president of the United States. The causes came from several directions. Jackson’s military exploits went a long way with most American voters, but his image makes up only part of the story, and not the central part. Adams spurned the political world taking shape during his presidency. Defeating Jackson might have been impossible no matter what he did. Yet, had he accepted the reality of this new universe by acting on patronage and using his office to his advantage, he would surely have improved his chances of winning. In his corner he did have talented politicians like Clay, but the haphazardly organized and fundamentally directionless Adams party was no match for the political behemoth the Jacksonians had created. In 1828 the old political order suffered a vanquishing as unequivocal as Adams’s own.

In the aftermath Adams expressed two disparate emotions. Personally, he knew, of course, that he would have to submit to his loss, whatever the pain. And the pain was deeply palpable. To his diary he confided, “The sun of my political life sets in the deepest gloom.” And he prayed that he and those dear to him would be sustained. Still, in his melancholy he could rejoice that “[the sun] of my country shines unclouded.”96

Adams’s defeat ended one political era and ushered in another. The advent of Andrew Jackson signaled the beginning of a popular politics buttressed by organized, vigorous political parties. Hereafter, without the latter a presidential contender could not triumph, a truth the Jacksonian opposition would learn through experience. Never again could a presidential candidate claim to wear a mantle that had literally been possessed by the Founding Fathers.