First Family (22 page)

The ostentatious display of learning in
Defence
—lengthy citations from Machiavelli, Plato, Aristotle, Milton, Hume, Thucydides, Hobbes, and Cicero, to name just a few—exposed John’s need to brandish his credentials as a constitutional authority. One London reviewer described the whole work as a pathetic case of posturing, which he likened to a college essay “written by a youth with a view to obtain some academic prize.” In John’s case, the prize he sought was recognition of his standing as one of America’s premier political thinkers. But the conspicuous erudition of
Defence
, plus its swollen size—it ran on for nearly a thousand pages—only seemed to reinforce John’s reputation for vanity.
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For those with the stamina to plow through
Defence
, it was clear that John had inadvertently provided evidence that seemed almost calculated to have a negative impact on his own reputation. His discussion of executive power, for example, reiterated his conviction, first articulated in his draft of the Massachusetts Constitution, that the executive should be empowered to veto a decision by the legislature, a right of veto that could not be overturned by a two-thirds majority. The delegates at the Massachusetts Convention had found this excessive, indeed smacking of monarchy, and had revised his draft so as to restore the legislature’s authority to override. Undeterred, John went back to his original formulation in
Defence
, claiming that unfettered executive power was essential to ensure balance by offsetting the more
dangerous ambitions of political elites sure to dominate the legislature. He argued that the American aversion to a strong executive, while a plausible response to George Ill’s travesties in the prerevolutionary years, had become anachronistic in the postrevolutionary era, when all the state constitutions required that governors be selected by some form of direct or indirect election.

Abigail, who was reading drafts at the end of each day, tried to warn John that his warm embrace of executive power, no matter how republicanized by the American electorate, effectively invited misunderstanding back home. “I tell him,” she informed John Quincy, “that they will think in America that he is setting up a king.” Her instincts on this score proved impeccable, but John was not listening. The only voices he heard came from inside his own head. For
Defence
had become his all-consuming obsession, the pages pouring out in torrents that defied Abigail’s editorial suggestions much in the way that a catharsis defied correction.

Another theme, also sure to alienate American readers, was his insistence that in all societies, to include the United States, “an aristocracy has risen up in a course of time, consisting of a few rich and honorable families, who have united with each other against both the people and the first magistrate.” Whether this was a hereditary aristocracy, as in Europe, or a natural aristocracy or meritocracy, as in America, was less important than the fact that wealth and talent were never evenly distributed, that elites were an abiding presence in all societies, and one of the main tasks of government was to manage them so as to make use of their talent while preventing their outright domination. His somewhat simplistic solution was the Senate, which would serve as a podium from which to project their power and a prison that confined their ambitions.
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None of this translated very well into the American context, where an all-powerful executive sounded suspiciously like a king, and where the rhetoric of republican equality left no room for an embedded aristocracy, whether hereditary or natural. Abigail was torn between her duties as a wife and as a political partner. As a wife she encouraged John’s emotional investment in
Defence
, which lent some sense of purpose to their London exile and kept her husband so preoccupied that
he did not even look up from his papers when she served him tea. As a political partner, however, she feared that
Defence
would turn out to be a lengthy political death warrant.

She reconciled these roles by reverting to her “little cottage” refrain, which visualized a life of bucolic splendor in retirement upon their return to America. The damage John was doing, in effect, was irrelevant, because he had no intention of resuming his public career after leaving London. This was a convenient illusion, but Abigail embraced it with all her might. She asked her uncle to spread the word that John was no threat to other aspiring political candidates in Massachusetts, because “he has always dealt too openly and candidly with his Countrymen to be popular.” This was simultaneously a shrewd analysis and a classic case of wishful thinking.
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In December 1787 news arrived from Philadelphia that John’s resignation, which he had submitted a year earlier, was finally approved. Abigail was overjoyed. She immediately began writing friends and relatives back home to expect her the following spring. Jefferson received the news with mixed feelings: “I learn with real pain the resolution you have taken of quitting Europe,” he apprised John. “Your presence on this side of the Atlantic gave me a confidence that if any difficulties should arise within my department, I should always have one to advise with on whose counsels I could rely. I now feel widowed.”
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As it turned out, fate in the form of the Dutch bankers brought Jefferson and John together for a final joint venture, which proved to be the last time they would work together on public business in perfect harmony. In March 1788 John had decided, without official authorization from the congress, to make a quick trip to The Hague to negotiate an extension of the American loan and a new timetable for the interest payments. Jefferson decided to join him in order to familiarize himself with the financial details, since he would become the responsible American minister upon John’s departure. As he prepared
to dash up from Paris, Jefferson alerted John to his plans: “I hope to shake your hand within 24 hours after you receive this.”
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The Dutch bankers, notoriously hard bargainers, had demanded a substantial increase in interest payments because the American government wanted to delay its obligations for two years, when a new federal government would presumably be up and running. John, instead, persuaded them to float several bonds to cover the gap. Jefferson acknowledged that he was a complete innocent on all matters of high finance—indeed, throughout his life he found it impossible to balance his books or to comprehend the impact of compound interest on his debts. John’s deft handling of such details struck him as a kind of magic.

John worried about Jefferson’s competence once he was senior minister in Europe, warning him to be on guard “against the immeasurable avarice of Amsterdam.” He knew he was leaving America’s financial fate in inexperienced hands: “I pity you, in your situation, dunned and teased as you will be, all your philosophy will be wanting to support you. But be not discouraged … Depend upon it, the Amsterdammers love Money too well to execute their threats.”
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Back in London, Abigail relayed the American news reported in the British press. Seven states had ratified the new Constitution, Massachusetts by a narrow margin of 19 votes out of 340 cast: “Thus my dear Friend,” she observed, “I think we shall return to our country at a very important period and with more pleasing prospects opening before her.” This did not quite sound like someone poised for her husband’s retirement.
⁶⁹

John and Jefferson managed one last exchange of opinion on the shape of the new Constitution, which proved to be a preview of coming attractions. They agreed that the document should have included a Bill of Rights, and that drafting one should be the first business of the new government. Beyond that, however, their reactions were polar opposites. Jefferson thought that the Articles of Confederation required revision, not wholesale replacement: “I think that all the good of the new constitution might have been concealed in three or four articles to be added to the good, old, and venerable fabrick,” he
explained to John, “which should have been preserved even as a religious relique.” John thought that the Constitution should have gone further in asserting federal sovereignty over the states, which was also seriously compromised by the vague powers allocated to the executive. Jefferson, on the other hand, feared the office of the presidency was too powerful, permitting routinized reelection for life in the manner of an American king. John’s response was unequivocal: “So much the better it seems to me.”
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Abigail and John had to wait at Cowes for nearly a week before their ship, the
Lucretia
, could clear the harbor. “I have never before experienced to such a degree what the French term ennui,” Abigail confided to her diary, eager as she was to get the inevitable seasick phase of the voyage over and to set foot at last on New England soil. Looking back on England’s shores as the winds carried them out to sea in early April 1788, she offered a clear conclusion about her time in Europe: “I do not think four years I have past abroad the pleasantest part of my life. Tis Domestic happiness and Rural felicity in the Bosom of my Native Land that charms for me. Yet I do not regret that I made this excursion since it has only attached me more to America.” And, she might have added, to her “dearest friend.”
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CHAPTER FIVE

1789–96

T
HE CANNONS ON
Castle Island boomed in celebration as the
Lucretia
approached Boston Harbor, welcoming two American stalwarts back home. John and Abigail had spent three years as pariahs in London, where they were an unwelcome reminder of American independence. But the crowd at the Boston dock loved them for the same reason that Londoners loathed them, as prominent embodiments of that improbably successful achievement called the American Revolution.
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Governor John Hancock’s ornate carriage was dispatched to pick them up, then sped them through the streets as church bells sounded all around. The ocean voyage had transformed them from outcasts into celebrities. In case John had somehow forgotten, the jubilant reception reminded him that, alongside George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, he stood at the very peak of the American version of Mount Olympus.

The downside of this triumphal return came when they arrived at their new home in Braintree, which they had purchased sight unseen. Abigail’s first impression was disappointment. “In height and breadth,” she reported to Nabby, “it feels like a wren’s house.” They had grown accustomed to the spacious, high-ceilinged rooms of their residences in Paris and London, which made the rooms of their new home feel like cubicles. Abigail warned Nabby that the ceilings were so low that she would not be able to wear her feathered hats when visiting,
and her husband would have to stoop if he wore his heeled boots.
²

In July 1788, as Abigail and John were moving into their new home, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, thereby ensuring that a newly empowered federal government would be elected in November. A new chapter in the evolution of the American Revolution was beginning, a chapter in which an aspiring American nation-state replaced a loose-knit confederation of individual states. The question facing Abigail and John was whether or not to participate in this next round in the American experiment.

Both of them had made a point of signaling a preference for retirement to the bucolic splendors of Braintree. While utterly sincere, such Ciceronian testimonials had become formulaic refrains among the top echelon of the revolutionary generation, less statements of their true intentions than ritualistic posturings. In this venerable tradition, anyone exhibiting a conspicuous craving for political office was presumed unqualified to serve.

Nabby reported from her new home in New York, already identified as the first capital of the aspiring nation, that no one took such protestations seriously. There was as yet no organized party structure, no agreed-upon process for selecting candidates, so the “smoke-filled rooms” of the day were the taverns and coffeehouses where informal conversations weeded out prospective nominees. Nabby apprised her father that—no surprise—George Washington was the foregone conclusion for the top spot, and that “You will be elected to the second place on the continent,” meaning the vice presidency. Moreover, as she observed to John Quincy, if the informal appraisals proved correct, there was no way that their father would refuse the summons to serve. “The Happiness of our family,” she shrewdly noted, “seems ever to have been so interwoven with the Politics of our Country as to be in a great degree dependent upon them.”
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