John Adams, Lovable Grouch
My recommended biography for our second president will come as no surprise to many of our readers: David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize–winning volume, John Adams.
With his simple, direct prose, McCullough portrays the Founding Father brilliantly. Consider his description of the 40-year-old Adams:
Dismounted, he stood five feet seven or eight inches tall—about “middle size” in that day—and though verging on portly, he had a straight-up, square-shouldered stance and was, in fact, surprisingly fit and solid. His hands were the hands of a man accustomed to pruning his own trees, cutting his own hay, and splitting his own firewood.
In such bitter cold of winter, the pink of his round, clean-shaved, very English face would all but glow, and if he were hatless or without a wig, his high forehead, and thinning hairline made the whole of the face look rounder still. The hair, light brown in color, was full about the ears. The chin was firm, the nose sharp, almost birdlike. But it was the dark, perfectly arched brows and keen blue eyes that gave the face its vitality. Years afterward, recalling this juncture in his life, he would describe himself as looking rather like a short, thick Archbishop of Canterbury.
McCullough himself will be the first to admit that Adams wasn’t a particularly successful president. Serving from 1797 to 1801, he followed that demigod George Washington, and, in a way, cleaned up the mess that the Father of His Country had left for him.
After the U.S. signed the Jay Treaty to stay out of war with Britain, it found itself at odds with France. The former ally regarded the treaty as a betrayal and in response, started seizing American merchant ships. To avoid war, Adams sent three commissioners—Elbridge Gerry, John Marshall, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney—to secure a peace.
Unfortunately, the scheming French foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, sicced three minions—mysteriously known as X, Y, and Z—on the Americans, and the Frenchmen demanded 50,000 pounds sterling, a $12 million loan from the U.S., and a $250,000 bribe before even broaching negotiations with the commissioners. The Americans refused, and political folklore soon memorialized their response in the catchphrase: “Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute!”
Once news of the XYZ affair spread, anti-French sentiment grew rapidly throughout the country, securing the Federalist Party huge wins in the 1798 elections. Although he wanted peace, Adams built up the country’s navy and raised a large land army to negotiate from a position of strength. Adams asked Washington to lead the army, and the aging general insisted on appointing his own officers, including Alexander Hamilton as inspector general—to Adams’s dismay.
Adams’s mistrust of Hamilton was well founded; the inspector general seemed a little too eager to take the fight to the French. Luckily, Gerry remained in France after Marshall and Pinckney had left and received word that peace was possible. After Adams sent some additional commissioners, the two countries eventually signed the Treaty of Mortefontaine.
On the home front, Adams was less successful. In the heated atmosphere of incipient war, the Democratic Republicans became even more vicious in their attacks on the president. As a result, the Federalist Congress passed—and Adams later signed—the Alien and Sedition Acts. These laws increased the naturalization period necessary for immigrants to become citizens, allowed the president to expel any foreign national he deemed dangerous, and slapped journalists who published “any false, scandalous, and malicious writing . . . against the government of the United States” with fines worth up to $2,000 and prison sentences lasting up to two years.
Needless to say, these measures were wildly unpopular with the opposition. They prompted Vice President Thomas Jefferson and former congressman James Madison to pen the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, protests of these infringements on the freedoms of speech and of the press. The avoidance of war wasn’t enough to win Adams reelection, and his rival Jefferson won election in the “Revolution of 1800.”
Despite Adams’s political failures, I find him to be the easiest Founding Father to relate to. He had many flaws: vanity, stubbornness, anger. But throughout his life, he tried his utmost to be a good man, and many times his stubbornness, whether in the cause of American independence or peace with France, wasn't actually a vice. It was integrity.
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Nov '10
Re: John Adams, Lovable Grouch
Gosh, this is one of my favorite presidential biographies! It thoroughly explores the depth of the devotion to country shared by both John and Abigail Adams. She was an impressive patriot in and of herself.
As an aside, I know McCullough thought the "movie" (HBO miniseries) did great justice to his book.
Dec '10
Re: John Adams, Lovable Grouch
I too enjoyed McCullough’s book. For a more complete view of Adams and the tenuous infancy of this nation, I would suggest reading Ron Chernov's biography of Washington and of Hamilton in that order.
The political conflicts of that time concerning the proper role of government remain unresolved and at the center of controversy today. The intrigues of Jefferson and Madison and the bitterness of the Federalists and the Democrats for each other are not unlike present day partisanship. The press of that time was vitriolic and extreme but made no pretense of objectivity. Fascinating.
Jun '10
Re: John Adams, Lovable Grouch
Jon in DC: I too enjoyed McCullough’s book. For a more complete view of Adams and the tenuous infancy of this nation, I would suggest reading Ron Chernov's biography of Washington and of Hamilton in that order.
The political conflicts of that time concerning the proper role of government remain unresolved and at the center of controversy today. The intrigues of Jefferson and Madison and the bitterness of the Federalists and the Democrats for each other are not unlike present day partisanship. The press of that time was vitriolic and extreme but made no pretense of objectivity. Fascinating. · May 22 at 3:35pm
Add me to the list of admirers if McCulloch's book. I also love the Chernow bio of Hamilton.
Totally agree that political vitriol is not a recent invention. I have always admired the fact that Adams and Jefferson buried the hatchet and engaged in a long, friendly correspondence. A testimonial to the power of forgiveness.
Then, amazingly, they died within hours of each other on a July 4.
Jul '10
Re: John Adams, Lovable Grouch
Adams lost me with the Alien and Sedition Act. For heaven's sake, the ink was hardly dry on the First Amendment.
As for the HBO series, the screenwriters wrote so much feminism and abolitionist fervor into Abigail Adams' character that I expected her to burn her bra while giving the black power salute.
Nov '10
Re: John Adams, Lovable Grouch
But they didn't, really - the "truce" was quite superficial, according to McCullough. And certainly, Abigail, although an ardent admirer and friend of Jefferson, knew this all too well.
Mar '11
Re: John Adams, Lovable Grouch
I guess going bald wasn't such a handicap in those days...
Sep '10
Re: John Adams, Lovable Grouch
I haven't read McCullough's book. But did I see a different HBO series? Maybe you got hold of the director's cut, Kenneth.
Jan '11
Re: John Adams, Lovable Grouch
The Sedition Act was scurrilous, but don't be so quick to single-out Adams for scorn; guess who wrote this:
The Federalists, having failed in destroying the freedom of the press by their gag-law, seem to have attacked it in an opposite direction; that is by pushing its licentiousness and its lying to such a degree of prostitution as to deprive it of all credit. And the fact is that so abandoned are the Tory presses in this particular, that even the least informed of the people have learned that nothing in a newspaper is to be believed. This is a dangerous state of things, and the press ought to be restored to its credibility if possible. The restrains provided by the laws of the States are sufficient for this, if applied. And I have, therefore, long thought that a few prosecutions of the most prominent offenders would have a wholesome effect in restoring the integrity of the presses. Not a general prosecution, for that would look like persecution, but a selected one.