Joseph J. Ellis (31 page)

Trust was crucial. On almost all the disputes over domestic and foreign policy in the 1790s Adams and Jefferson had found themselves on different sides. And each man had made brutally harsh assessments of the other, rooted in their quite different convictions about the proper course the American Revolution should take. Adams was distinctive, however, for his tendency to regard even serious political and ideological differences as eminently negotiable once elemental bonds of personal trust and affection were established. In the Adams scheme, intimacy trumped ideology.

Several of Adams’s closest friends—Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Benjamin Rush, Mercy Otis Warren—were ardent Republicans but still retained his confidence. He was especially predisposed to forgive or ignore political differences when the other person had been one of the “band of brothers” in 1776. He harbored, as Fisher Ames described it, “a strong revolutionary taint in his mind, [and] admires the character, principles and means which that revolutionary system … seems to legitimate, and … holds cheap any reputation that was not then founded and top’d off.” By this standard, Jefferson was a more reliable colleague than staunch Federalists who had been reluctant or merely peripheral participants in the climactic phase of the revolutionary drama. “His [Jefferson’s] talents I know very well,” Adams wrote to Gerry in a letter he knew would find its way to Monticello, “and have ever believed in his honour, Integrity, his Love of Country, and his friends.”
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Because nothing like the full-blooded machinery of a modern political party system existed, Adams conveyed his tentative scheme for a bipartisan initiative informally through letters and conversations sure to be picked up by the press. That was how Jefferson learned that Adams was contemplating a truly bold response to the most glaring problem facing his presidency—namely, to send a delegation to France analogous to Jay’s mission to England, this time to negotiate a treaty designed to avert war with the other great European power. What’s more, Adams let it be known that he was considering either Jefferson or Madison to head the delegation—in effect, including the leadership of the Republican party in the shaping of foreign policy. When Madison got wind of this rumor, he could not believe it: “It has got into the Newspapers that an Envoy Extraordinary was to go to France,” he wrote Jefferson, “and that I was to be that person. I have no reason to suppose a shadow of truth in the former part of the story; and the latter is pure fiction.”
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But the rumor was true. Abigail endorsed the initiative. Again, the idea might have originated with her, though the communication within the Adams marriage was so seamless and overlapping that primacy is impossible to fix. When the trial balloon floated past several dedicated Federalists, they could not believe it either, since it seemed to them like willfully dragging the Trojan horse into the Federalist fortress. Adams heard about the Federalist reaction and told Abigail
that if it persisted, he would threaten to “resign the office and let Jefferson lead them to peace, wealth, and power if he will.” He was sure, in any event, that a bipartisan effort maximized the prospects for a truly neutral American foreign policy, which was what Washington had attempted and the vast majority of Americans wanted: “We will have neither John Bull nor Louis Baboon,” he joked to Abigail. His response to those partisans of both parties who disagreed was one defiant word: “Silence.”
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Jefferson was the master of silence, especially when he disagreed. But the early letters and leaks out of Monticello indicated that he was in fact disposed to agree and consider a bipartisan political alliance grounded in the personal trust of the once-great collaboration. He reiterated his claim, simultaneously sincere and misleading, that he had been embarrassed to learn that he had become a candidate for the presidency. “I never in my life exchanged a word with any person on the subject,” he noted, “till I found my name brought forward generally, in competition with that of Mr. Adams.” In fact, he claimed to feel quite awkward being pitted against a man whom he regarded much like an older brother and one with a superior claim to the office based on seniority and experience: “Few will believe the true dispositions of my mind,” he told his son-in-law. “It is not the less true, however, that I do sincerely wish to be second on the vote rather than first.” When a dispute over the electoral vote in Vermont threatened to produce a tie in the final tally and throw the election into the House of Representatives, Jefferson let out the word that he would defer to Adams so as “to prevent the phaenomenon of a Pseudo-president at so early a day.” His posture seemed the model of graciousness and elegant accommodation.
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This was not a mere facade, but it was only the top layer of Jefferson’s thinking. A level below the surface, he, much like Adams, was preoccupied with the long shadow of George Washington. Mixing his metaphors in uncharacteristic fashion, he confided to Madison his deeper reasons for embracing the Adams victory: “The President [Washington] is fortunate to get off just as the bubble is bursting, leaving others to hold the bag. Yet, as his departure will mark the moment when the difficulties begin to work, you will see, that they will be ascribed to the new administration, and that he will have his usual good fortune of repaying credit from the good acts of others, and leaving
to them that of others.” He was certain that “no man will bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it.” While strolling around the grounds of Monticello with a French visitor, he expanded on his strategic sense of the intractable political realities: “In the present situation of the United States, divided as they are between two parties, which mutually accuse each other of perfidy and treason … this exalted station [the presidency] is surrounded with dangerous rocks, and the most eminent abilities will not be sufficient to steer clear of them all.” Whereas Washington had been able to levitate above the partisan factions, “the next president of the United States will only be the president of a party.” There was no safe middle ground, only a no-man’s-land destined to be raked by the cross fire from both sides.
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From Jefferson’s perspective, then, Adams was essentially proposing that the two men join forces and stand back-to-back in the killing zone. To his credit, Jefferson’s first instinct was to accept the invitation. After congratulating Adams on his electoral triumph, assuring him that “I never one single moment expected a different issue,” Jefferson warned him of the partisan bickering that his administration would have to negotiate. “Since the days on which you signed the treaty of Paris,” Jefferson noted ominously, “our horizon was never so overcast.” He would be pleased and honored, however, to play a constructive role in moving the nation past this difficult moment and to recover the old patriot spirit of ’76, “when we were working for our independence.” He closed with a vague promise to renew the old partnership.
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Adams would have been overjoyed to receive such a message—given the stilted language of their most recent and rather contrived correspondence, it seemed to meet him more than halfway—but the letter was never sent. Instead, Jefferson decided to pass it to Madison in order to assure its propriety. Madison produced six reasons why Jefferson’s gesture of support might create unacceptable political risks. The last and most significant was the clincher: “Considering the probability that Mr. A’s course of administration may force an opposition to it from the Republican quarter, and the general uncertainty of the posture our affairs may take, there may be real embarrassments from giving written possession to him, of the degree of compliment and confidence which your personal delicacy and friendship have suggested.” In short, Jefferson must choose between his affection for Adams, which was palpable and widely known, and his leadership of
the Republican party. If registering a nostalgic sentiment of affinity was Jefferson’s main intention, Madison suggested that could be done by leaking part of the message to mutual friends. (In fact, Madison had already handled that piece of diplomacy by sending such words to Benjamin Rush, who would presumably pass them along to Adams, and did.) But Jefferson must not permit himself to be drawn into the policy-making process of the Adams administration, lest it compromise his role as leader of the Republican opposition.
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When Madison offered tactical advice of this sort, Jefferson almost always listened. Nevertheless, he wanted Madison to know that it came at a price: “Mr. A. and myself were cordial friends from the beginning of the revolution,” he explained. “The deviation from that line of politics on which we had been united has not made me less sensible of the rectitude of his heart: and I wished him to know this.” That said and duly recorded on one portion of his soul, Jefferson concurred that a diplomatic leak of that message satisfied his conscience. “As to my participating in the administration,” Jefferson then observed, “if by that he meant the executive cabinet, both duty and inclination will shut that door to me.” By “duty,” Jefferson meant his obligation to orchestrate the opposition to Adams’s presidency. By “inclination,” he meant his personal aversion to the kind of controversy and policy debate inside the cabinet that Adams seemed to be proposing. “I cannot have a wish,” Jefferson concluded, “to descend daily into the arena like a gladiator to suffer martyrdom in every conflict.” Instead of acknowledging that he was choosing loyalty to party over loyalty to Adams—for Jefferson, ideology was trumping intimacy—he preferred to cast his decision in personal terms. He simply did not have the stomach or the stamina to argue the Republican agenda from inside the tent. Though psychologically incapable of seeing himself as a party leader, in truth that was what he had become.
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It was a personally poignant and politically fateful decision. Adams did not know about it for several weeks. The reports he was receiving from mutual friends emphasized Jefferson’s generosity of spirit in defeat. This sounded hopeful. Abigail remained confident that Jefferson could be trusted, that the bipartisan direction was the proper course, and the inclusion of a prominent Republican on the peace delegation to France, probably Madison, was a shrewd move. On the other hand, the Federalists whom Adams chose for his cabinet—he retained
Washington’s advisers, his biggest blunder—had threatened to resign en masse if Adams tried to implement his bipartisan strategy. (In retrospect, this would have been the best thing that could have happened to Adams.) How the incoming president would have resolved this impasse if Jefferson had agreed to resume the collaboration is impossible to know.

As it was, events played out in a rather dramatic face-to-face encounter. On March 6, 1797, Adams and Jefferson dined with Washington at the presidential mansion in Philadelphia. Adams learned that Jefferson was unwilling to join the cabinet and that neither Jefferson nor Madison was willing to be part of the peace delegation to France. Jefferson learned that Adams had been battling his Federalist advisers, who opposed a vigorous Jeffersonian presence in the administration. They left the dinner together and walked down Market Street to Fifth, two blocks from the very spot where Jefferson had drafted the words of the Declaration of Independence that Adams had so forcefully defended before the Continental Congress almost twenty-one years earlier. As Jefferson remembered it later, “we took leave, and he never after that said one word to me on the subject or ever consulted me as to any measure of the government.” But of course Jefferson himself had already decided that he preferred the anomalous role of opposing the administration in which he officially served.
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A few days later at his swearing-in ceremony as vice president, Jefferson joked about his rusty recall of parliamentary procedure, a clear sign that he intended to spend his time in the harmless business of monitoring debates in the Senate. After Adams was sworn in as president on March 13, he reported to Abigail that Washington had murmured under his breath: “Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest.” Predictably, the sight of Washington leaving office attracted the bulk of the commentary in the press. Adams informed Abigail that it was like “the sun setting full-orbit, and another rising (though less splendidly).” Observers with a keener historic sense noticed that the first transfer of power at the executive level had gone smoothly, almost routinely. Jefferson was on the road back to Monticello immediately after the inaugural ceremony, setting up the Republican government in exile, waiting for the inevitable catastrophes to befall the presidency of his old friend. As for Adams himself, without Jefferson as a colleague, with a Federalist cabinet filled with men loyal
to Hamilton, he was left alone with Abigail, the only collaborator he could truly trust. His call to her mixed abiding love with a sense of desperation: “I never wanted your advice and assistance more in my life,” he pleaded. “The times are critical and dangerous and I must have you here to assist me.… You must leave the farm to the mercy of the winds. I can do nothing without you.”
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L
OOKING BACK
over the full sweep of American history, one would be hard-pressed to discover a presidency more dominated by a single foreign policy problem and simultaneously more divided domestically over how to solve it. The Adams presidency, in fact, might be the classic example of the historical truism that inherited circumstances define the parameters within which presidential leadership takes shape, that history shapes presidents, rather than vice versa. With all the advantages of hindsight, Jefferson’s strategic assessment of 1796 appears more and more prescient: Whoever followed Washington was probably doomed to failure.

Beyond the daunting task of following the greatest hero in American history, Adams faced a double dilemma. On the one hand, the country was already waging an undeclared war against French privateers in the Atlantic and Caribbean. The salient policy question was clear: Should the United States declare war on France or seek a diplomatic solution? Adams chose the latter course; like Washington, he was committed to American neutrality at almost any cost. He coupled this commitment with a buildup of the navy, which would enable the United States to fight a defensive war if negotiations with France broke down.