Mr. President (32 page)

The framers’ illusion did not last long. In a pamphlet penned during the ratification debates, the ardent Federalist Noah Webster had boasted, “The president of the United States is elective, and what is a capital improvement on the best governments, the mode of choosing him excludes the danger of faction and corruption.” In 1800, however, next to these words in a personal copy of his own pamphlet, he jotted down, “This proves how little dependence can be placed on theory. Twelve years experience, or four elections, demonstrates the contrary.”
⁴

The earliest real test of the elector system did not come until 1796, the first contested presidential election. Without Washington in the mix, there was no longer an iconic figure to mask the system’s imperfections.
In a competitive election, could the complex formula detailed in the Constitution yield a chief executive who would not only have the support of a majority of presidential electors or state delegations in the House of Representatives but also command the respect of a broad majority of American citizens?

In the spring of 1796, several months before Washington’s formal resignation, Federalists and Republicans alike began to discuss among themselves strategies for securing the presidency. First and foremost, each group reasoned it should unite around a candidate or, because of the peculiarity of the system, two candidates. Unless they did so, a preferred choice would be unlikely to muster votes from more than half the electors. Decision making and organization were prerequisites for success.

Republicans settled quickly on the former secretary of state Thomas Jefferson, certainly the highest-ranking figure among them. They paid scant attention to the vice presidency; the Constitution had vested little authority in that office, and besides, there was no other candidate with significant national appeal. Their main job, as they saw it, was to ensure that John Adams, Washington’s heir apparent, did not automatically ascend to the highest office. Adams’s pro-British leanings, which allegedly included an infatuation with British-style monarchy, made him extremely unpopular with Republicans.

Federalists, conversely, viewed their central task as keeping Jefferson from becoming president. In the words of Oliver Wolcott Jr., who had taken over as Treasury secretary when Hamilton stepped down in 1795, “The election of Mr. Jefferson, I consider as fatal to our independence.” If Jefferson became president, he would “innovate upon and fritter away the Constitution.” Was John Adams, however, really the best candidate to beat Jefferson? He had little support in the South, so his fellow Federalists naturally worried he could not muster the necessary votes among electors. Strategically, they cast about for a southerner of their persuasion, someone who could bring at least a few electors their way. Some thought Patrick Henry might consent to run. He had immense regional appeal, and he had warmed to the Constitution and the Federalists since opposing them during the ratification debates. Hamilton and others, though, did not trust Henry’s politics, and besides, Henry showed no interest. Federalist insiders also discussed running Thomas Pinckney, a Federalist from South Carolina who had just negotiated a
widely popular treaty with Spain that secured rights to the Mississippi River. On May 4, 1796—more than four months before Washington informed the nation he would not seek a third term—Hamilton wrote to Rufus King, a Federalist strategist from Massachusetts: “I rather wish to be rid of P.H., that we may be at full liberty to take up Pinckney…. Mr. P—— ought to be our man.” If Pinckney became president, he would owe his office to Hamilton and his friends, while Adams would have earned it in his own right. In the words of Hamilton’s confidant Robert Troup, “We [will] have Mr. Pinckney completely in our power.”
⁵

In the first stage of politicking, Federalists did not have to confront the Adams-or-Pinckney issue; they needed only to ensure that people of their persuasion were chosen as electors. In eight of the sixteen states (Kentucky, Tennessee, and Vermont had been admitted to the union), electors were selected by the legislatures, where political lines had already been drawn. Of the eight states with popular elections, only two, Pennsylvania and Maryland, were seriously “in play,” as we say today. Knowing this, partisans on both sides organized by forming tickets of electors who would essentially be pledged to vote for their party’s candidates. Voting by ticket was not new, but this was the first time the practice was used for a presidential election. In a remarkable display of party unity, the fifteen Republican candidates for electors in Pennsylvania received nearly the identical numbers of votes in areas flooded by their printed tickets, and so did the fifteen Federalist candidates in areas they covered. In the end, statewide, fourteen of the fifteen candidates on the Republican ticket prevailed. Unless Adams could somehow pick up a few stray votes in the South, it looked as if Jefferson would prevail.
⁶

It was time to activate the Pinckney strategy. Immediately following the Pennsylvania election, Oliver Wolcott wrote to Hamilton: “The Federal ticket is lost here. There are still hopes that Mr. Adams will be elected, but nothing more. I hope Mr. P. [Pinckney] will be supported as the next best thing which can be done. Pray write to our Eastern friends.” (New England, New York, and New Jersey were often referred to in those times as the eastern states rather than the northern states.) Hamilton needed little prodding. He had already been promoting Pinckney, and now he redoubled his efforts by writing “some additional letters to the Eastward enforcing what I had before written.”
One of these letters, written to “——” and apparently duplicated several times, survives. “All personal and partial considerations must be discarded, and every thing must give way to the great object of excluding Jefferson,” he wrote. Although most Federalists now agreed that both Adams and Pinckney would be on the ticket, he suspected that some New Englanders, partial to Adams, would “withhold votes from Pinckney,” fearing “he may outrun Mr. Adams.” This was precisely the strategy he had advocated in the first presidential election, when he suggested electors “throw away” a few votes for Adams, but now he feared the consequences. If Adams did not have enough votes to defeat Jefferson, Pinckney still might, but only if New Englanders supported the full party ticket. “Pinckney has the chance of some votes southward and westward, which Adams has not. This will render our prospect in the main point, the exclusion of Jefferson, far better.”

How would Adams and those close to him relate to the well-reasoned scheme of Hamilton, Wolcott, and their cohorts? Knowing this was a touchy matter, Hamilton closed his letter: “I never was more firm in an opinion than in the one I now express, yet in acting upon it there must be much caution and reserve.”
⁷

As it turned out, Adams managed just enough electoral votes in the South (four from Maryland and one each from Virginia and North Carolina) to prevail; he needed seventy to win and received seventy-one. Had all Federalists held firm to the party ticket, Pinckney would have tied Adams and the final choice between them would have been made by the House of Representatives. Had all but one or two Federalists voted the party line, Pinckney would have received enough votes to become vice president. Hamilton’s letters, though, did not have the impact he had hoped for, and several New England electors “threw away” their votes for Pinckney for fear of his overtaking Adams. Jefferson, meanwhile, mustered sixty-eight votes. Even though not one of those came from any state north and east of the Delaware River, Jefferson had been elected vice president.

A president from one party and his possible successor from the opposition? Although that might appear strange to us, many Americans at the time were quick to embrace this fortuitous outcome. If ever there was hope for transcending the partisan divide, this was it. Perhaps the framers had it right after all.

Adams, for his part, embraced Jefferson as vice president. Although
the two had fallen out politically, Adams recalled the critical days in Congress during the lead-up to independence, when they had worked “together in high friendship.” Even during their rupture in the early 1790s, Adams had mixed his criticism with guarded respect. When Jefferson resigned his post in Washington’s cabinet in 1793, Adams commented to his wife, Abigail, “I have so long been in the habit of thinking well of his abilities and general good dispositions, that I cannot but feel some regret at this event: but his want of candour, his obstinate prejudices, … and his low notions about many things have so nearly reconciled me to it, that I will not weep.” Now he was willing to forget the bad and focus on the good, assuming that Jefferson’s “good sense and general good disposition” would allow them to renew their “ancient friendship.”
⁸

Jefferson was equally accommodating. From his home in Monticello, he wrote to Adams directly just before the final results were known: “The public & the papers have been much occupied lately in placing us in a point of opposition to each other. I trust with confidence that less of it has been felt by ourselves personally.” He then predicted Adams would prevail in the election because he himself had no support in the North and Hamilton’s attempt to elect Pinckney would fall short. (“Indeed it is impossible that you may be cheated of your succession by a trick worthy the subtlety of your arch-friend of New York,” he commented.) He wished Adams’s administration “may be filled with glory,” and he concluded amiably, “Tho’ in the course of our own voyage thro’ life, various little incidents have happened or been contrived to separate us,” he still retained “for you the solid esteem of the moments when we were working for our independence, and sentiments of respect & affectionate attachment.” Meanwhile, Jefferson instructed Madison, his ally in the House of Representatives, “to solicit on my behalf that Mr. Adams may be preferred” in case the election would be decided there. “He has always been my senior, from the commencement of my public life, and the expression of the public being equal, this circumstance ought to give him the preference.”
⁹

The goodwill was contagious. Benjamin Franklin Bache’s strident Republican newspaper,
Aurora
, momentarily changed its tone: “
ADAMS
and
JEFFERSON
, lately rivals, and competitors for the most distinguished station which a free people can confer, appear in the amiable light of friends…. Surely this harmony presages the most happy consequences
to our country.” The conciliatory tone was echoed on the other side by the staunch Federalist Rufus King: “The change of the Executive here has been wrought with a facility and a calm which has astonished even those of us who always augured well of the government and the general good sense of our citizens. The machine has worked without a creak.”
¹⁰

Aiding the reconciliation between Adams and Jefferson was their shared antipathy to Hamilton, who had plotted against both of them. Writing to Madison about “Hamilton’s insurrection,” Jefferson held that Adams was “the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in,” while Adams complained to his wife, Abigail: “There is an active spirit in the Union, who will fill it with his politics wherever he is. He must be attended to, and not suffered to do too much.” On one level, the split within Federalist ranks would seem to work against Adams as he tried to unite the nation behind him, but in a sense it played in his favor, freeing him from any possible need to maintain party loyalty. Positioned between polar opposites—Jeffersonian Republicans and Hamiltonian Federalists—Adams could pursue his own course, which is precisely what he wished to do in any case.
¹¹

Adams had always been a proponent of independence on all levels: independence from Great Britain, independence of one branch of government from another, and independence of each individual to make his own decisions. (“I must think myself independent, as long as I live. The feeling is essential to my existence,” he wrote to his son John Quincy Adams in later years.) According to the political philosophy he had long advocated, independence was absolutely essential to the proper functioning of the presidential office. In a republic, governmental authority should be divided among branches with equal power. Within the legislative branch, an upper house would represent aristocratic interests and a lower house democratic interests. Since these frequently conflict, an independent executive, which Adams impoliticly referred to as monarchical, would hold and manage the scale, keeping the competing interests well balanced. The reason he had wanted to call the president “His Highness” or “His Elective Highness” was to dignify the office and elevate it above all others, so contending factions would submit to its arbitration. To arbitrate fairly, the president must not be beholden to any particular group, whether aristocratic or democratic, Federalist or Republican.
¹²

Such was his philosophy, but could President Adams—or anyone—hold himself to it when confronted with real-life political contests?
The next four years would serve as a field test for his theory of government, anchored and highlighted by a transcendent, nonpartisan chief executive. Through his own agency, he had the opportunity to prove by positive example that a republican government under strong and impartial leadership could in fact beat back, in his words, “that fiend, the Spirit of Party.”
¹³

John Adams’s presidential “honey moon”—a term used and perhaps coined by Jefferson—proved short, even by today’s standards. This did not surprise his vice president, who alleviated the disappointment of his own defeat with this somber realization: “I know well that no man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honey moon would be as short in that case as in any other, & its moments of exstacy would be ransomed by years of torment & hatred.” That gloomy prospect consoled Jefferson perfectly. “I protest before my god, that I shall, from the bottom of my heart, rejoice at escaping.”
¹⁴