3Īdams had been away from the seat of government since May and was greatly behind on his work. “I am so engaged in indispensable business, that I know not how to leave it,” he wrote Abigail. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.” When Adams turned to the business of being president, he found that there was much to be done. While summoning Abigail, he cut short the personal sentiments: “Before I end this letter,” he wrote, “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. Few Federalist leaders were still on speaking terms with the president.ĭespite his troubles with the election and his party, or perhaps because of them, public concerns remained paramount in Adams’s mind. In the ensuing election, vice presidential candidate Hamilton had denounced President Adams as fundamentally unfit for the office, and this faction of high Federalists tried to place Hamilton ahead of the nominal presidential candidate in the election (as was possible in the days before the 12th Amendment). In May 1800, he had dismissed half his cabinet because he found that they had been working against him, often taking orders from Alexander Hamilton rather than from himself. Because of his policies, President Adams had become a man without a party, and for that reason he feared that he would be a man without friends in Washington. “It is fit and proper that you and I should retire together and not one before the other,” he wrote. Now we wish for your company.” At 65, he was too old to face the business of government and his probable loss of the presidential election alone. The day after arriving at the President’s House with his servant, Adams wrote his beloved Abigail: “The building is in a state to be habitable. He wrote his father that he had “scarce a doubt but that a change will take place at the ensuing election which will leave you at your own disposal.” 1 Deep down, the president knew that his son was right, but part of him still hoped he was wrong.įeeling isolated and lonely, Adams summoned his wife to his side as soon as he reached Washington. His son John Quincy Adams, although several months behind the news from America, saw things much more clearly and dispassionately from his diplomatic post in Berlin. Perhaps the cheers reflected sentiment that would reelect him. No doubt, the crowds that feted him along the way raised his spirits. In the late fall of 1800, President Adams journeyed from Massachusetts to the new capital with foreboding. His policies had split his own party the electorate thrust him from the presidency and he was hurt by a family tragedy. It was a time of severe personal and political trial for him. President Adams’s time in the White House deserves a closer look. But the dynamics behind the scenes were far more complicated. The story has certain elements of truth. With the ink still fresh on the last of his “Midnight Appointments,” he rode out of town and refused to attend the Republican Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration. History has given us the image of a petulant President John Adams staying up to all hours of the night in his last days in office in March 1801, commissioning Federalist party members as judges throughout the land.
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