set.

hello. i'm leah rosovsky and i'm the director of the boston athenaeum and it is my pleasure to welcome all of you here for tonight's truly wonderful program. for those of you who are first time visitors, let me just say that the boston atheneum is a library and a museum, and we are a place where curiosity, culture and community come together in a beautiful, vibrant space. all of this is possible only because of the generosity of our members and our donors. and i just want to take a moment to thank all of you who are in that category. and for anybody who is not a member, we would welcome you to join us. and all you need to do is go to our front desk and ask and they will tell you everything you

need to do. i have to do a little bit of housekeeping right now. the first housekeeping point is take out your cell phones and make sure they're on silent. the second one is that we will do a question and answer portion of tonight's of tonight's after an evening, i guess. and when that happens, we will have somebody walking around with a microphone. please wait to ask your question until you have a microphone in front of you. it is very hard to hear and all of your fellow attendees will be very grateful to you for waiting for the mic. final after we're done with the conversation, we will have a book signing. our partners beacon hill books, will be right outside and will be happy to sell you a copy of this absolutely wonderful piece. and we will have a reception. now we have a special treat tonight because following the reception we will have or excuse me, not following during the

reception, we will have a number of items that we've pulled from our special collection. out in the conference room. so that's basically the reception is over there. the conference room is at the way back and we will have some books from the library's of george washington thomas jefferson. john adams. i think there are a couple of letters from john adams that will be out. and the thing that i didn't know that we had was we will have a copy of a book that john adams actually gave the boston athenaeum in 1818. so some very fun things to go see. this is actually the great treat about being the director of the atheneum is i actually am constantly surprised by what we have in our collections. so tonight we are in for a very interesting conversation between dr. lindsay chervinsky and dr. catherine al gore, and they'll be discussing dr. drew pinsky, his latest book making the presidency. john adams and the precedents

that forged the republic. and this book really focuses on john adams, who had the truly unenviable task of following george washington to become the second president of the united states. and he became president in a moment of enormous challenge for a brand new country that still had fairly tentative institutions. and dr. trevaskis will share with us tonight her thoughts on john adams leadership and his legacy. dr. stravinsky is a historian in and she focuses on the presidency, political culture and u.s. government institutions. she is the executive director of the george washington presidential library and she's the author. in addition to this book on john adams of the award winning book, the cabinet, george washington and the creation of an american institution. she was also the coeditor from morning of the president's loss and legacy in american culture. she's been published in the

washington post and time magazine and the wall street journal. she's a regular guest on a variety of podcasts, including listening to america. she'll be in conversation tonight with dr. catherine al gore, who is herself a noted historian, nonprofit leader and public history innovator. she's the professor emerita of the massachusetts historical society. she is currently a visiting scholar of history at tufts university. she was formerly the nadine and robert scott heim, director of education at the huntington library. before that, she was a professor of history at the university of california riverside. she has written extensively on dolley madison. we were trying to count how many books and we agreed it was for that. she's written on dolley madison, one of which a perfect union. dolley madison and the creation of the american nation was a finalist for the george washington book prize. so please join me in welcoming dr. kavinsky and dr. al gore to

what i know will be a fascinating conversation. thank you. thank you so much, lisa. and welcome to boston. thank you. dr. i'm going to call you lindsay. please do. just said that we have the best view out of a green room she's ever seen. that's right. that's us, you know. so let's start tonight a little bit up. what you mention at a dramatic moment, because you start with the dramatic moment, which is john adams inauguration. he's going to be the first president after george washington, the only predecessor and referring back to your title, making the presidency. can you give us an idea at that moment what's ahead of him and maybe a little hint about what's he going to keep? what's not going to keep? what obstacles does he face? well, i think the really important thing about this moment is for us to remember that we know what happened, but they very much did not.

and so there were these real and pressing questions that john adams was worried about. but so too were many other americans about whether or not the presidency would actually work with anyone else in it, whether or not the powers could be trusted to another person, whether or not anyone else could make the government function in that way, whether or not the cabinet secretaries would respect the president or the other institutions, they would work with the president without washington. and whether the foreign nations in the world that the united states had to work with would try and trample all over the united states. and these questions were really quite pressing, because no one else had ever been in that office. and it turns out that americans are actually not very imaginative. and we really have a hard time envisioning something. if we haven't seen it before. and typically, when i'm showing slides, i show this portrait of john adams by william

winstanley, and it was painted in 1798. and it is awful. it is terrible. it would you know, no one wants it on a wall of beautiful art. and it's terrible because they basically copied john adams head onto george washington's body. boy, there's a metaphor for you. so the proportions are all wrong. but it's a perfect visual. demonstrate of just how hard it was to figure out what the presidency would look like. so that was really the big picture question for john adams coming in. and that went all the way down to the nitty gritty of which of the daily practice is. would he continue? which of the governing precedents would hold up when he was actually trying to make those decisions? and by and large, i think he really did try and adhere to washington's model whenever possible. he believed in the same sort of general executive design and wanted to maintain that type of character for the presidency. but he learned the hard way that

some things he very much should not keep. there you go. that is a hint of foreshadowing. well, listen, before we plunge into sort of the story and what happens when he starts his first day on the job, give us a little background and i'm not going to call them political parties because they're not quite parties yet. and you can address that or disagree. factions. but we have the federalist. i'm going to call them the federalist parties and the republicans and tell us where john adams is in that just give a little setup. so i tend to call them like baby parties because they certainly did not have the financial infrastructure that we associate with a political party today. but they did have loosely some leadership and they had some editorial apparatus through various partners, newspapers. there was a little bit of organization there, but they were much more chaotic. well, that's maybe not a fair thing to say about political parties. i was even going to say they were much more chaotic than

today, but maybe that's not accurate. they were very chaotic. we'll say it that way. so the federalist party had been in power since washington came into office and it was starting to show strain from having been in power. it was starting to sort of split. there were various fissures in the party and there was a more radical wing, which i call the arch federalists, and a more moderate wing and the more radical wing really wanted a very strong army that was in place all the time. they were much more pro-british. they really distrusted the french and they thought that a war might not be a bad thing because it was very politically advantageous and the republicans and i'm using that term carefully because that is what they called themselves, but they should not be confused with the republican party of lincoln or the republican party of today. were the party of jefferson and madison and they were very distrusting of the british. they were very distrusting of a strong central government, at least while they were out of power.

and they really hated standing armies. so those were sort of some of the big picture disagreements in terms of john adams. he was nominally a federalist, but he was very much a moderate federalist and he did not see himself as a party man. and in fact, this was one of alexander hamilton's key complaints that john adams was too independent, he was too independently minded, and he wouldn't tow the party line, which i think generally sounds pretty good to us for a president. but hamilton did not think so, and so adams really saw himself as being above the party. he genuinely wanted to be a president for all americans. yeah, and well, we're going to get to more to hamilton later, but a little bit more history, because i was actually in a meeting and i was trying to explain to somebody that the historical narrative that we all saw in our books is often shaped around wars. you've got a narrative. the truth about a war that doesn't happen. the quasi war. and because of that, a lot of people don't know what it is. so if you wouldn't mind just

giving us a quick quasi war background, it is the backdrop of what your book is and the central event in his presidency. i think it is so. the quasi war was the non war with france. between france in the united states and it was provoked by the treaty which washington's administration negotiated. and john jay was the chief justice at the time, and he went to london and negotiated it with great britain and france really believed that it was a betrayal of their most favored nation status that they had enjoyed since 1778. and in response, they they had they were already at war with britain, but they started seizing american ships, imprisoning american sailors, and selling off the goods and keeping the profit. no surprise, as this behavior was fairly unpopular with americans who wanted their family members back and wanted their ships back and wanted the profits from their goods. and so adams sent a three person commission to france to try and resolve this crisis, which was

not a full fledged war yet, but was maybe heading in that direction. he sent several commissions and maybe talk about some of that and a little bit more detail. but the crux of the question was, would the nation be better for going to war with france or would it be better for remaining neutral in this conflict? and adams firmly believed that when you have a new nation, no war is ever a good idea. if you can maintain an honorable peace because you just don't know what's going to happen if you go to war, especially when you're going to war with napoleon, you just really ever can't count on an outcome. and so that was really the fundamental question. but you're right, i think one i think there are a couple of reasons we don't remember it. one, it was never a declared war. we'll also talk about the thing that finally resolved it. it wasn't great messaging because the treaty of morta fontaine is not really a name that we think of when we think of like the treaty of paris or the treaty of versailles. so it was also partly a messaging problem.

yeah, it doesn't go trippingly off the tongue. yes. so your first book is, as leah said, it's about george washington's cabinet. and in many ways this book about john adams presidency is also about the evolution of the cabinet. so can you talk a little bit about the cabinet that john adams and heritage, which he did and kind of a little bit the story of the evolution of the cabinet in this time period. so washington had established a cabinet model that the cabinet was really designed to support the president. however, the president needed to be supported, and that could be a very flexible institution. and so sometimes he met with the cabinet up to five times per week. other times he didn't meet with them for months and months at a time and preferred written advice or even meeting with advisers outside of the administration. adams came into the administration and always expected that he would have a cabinet because washington had had a cabinet, but there was no precedent for getting rid of cabinet secretaries or offering pro forma resignations like we

do today. when there's a change in administration. so adams looked at this scene and realized how difficult it had been for washington to fill vacancies in the administration. cabinet positions were not as prestigious or as well-paid or as fancy as they are today, and it was really hard to get good people in those positions. he also worried that if he removed the secretaries, that might be seen as judgments against washington's choices, which was not something he wanted to do. and lastly, he knew that the american people were very nervous about this transition, and he thought that keeping the secretaries might actually be quite helpful because it would provide some continuity between the two administrations to secure some institutional knowledge, which i think on its face makes sense. like i don't blame him for that decision. the problem was that the cabinet was quite terrible.

are there any pickering descendants in the room. this is a question i have to ask in new england. excellent. okay. so i can be free to speak. so james mchenry, who is the secretary of war, was apparently by all accounts a very nice man, but just really not up to the demands of high office. he just could not handle a lot of details, which is a problem when your country is potentially going to war. oliver wolcott, junior, who was the secretary of the treasury, was a very competent secretary of the treasury, but he was completely loyal to alexander hamilton over his loyalty to the president. and lastly, secretary of state timothy pickering was probably one of the all time worst secretaries of states. he was very smart. he was very hard working. but he believed that compromise was a moral failing. he believed that anyone who disagreed with him had to be crushed. he thought he was the smartest person in the room. despite regularly spending time

with some of the greatest minds in american history and he, from the very beginning, really opposed the adams agenda. he opposed whatever adams wanted to do and by the end was outwardly insubordinate. and so adams really had a terrible cabinet and the problem was at least some of those characteristics. washington knew about and didn't tell. adams, which was, i think, a failing on his part. yeah. and in fact, whenever one reads a new book, you're always asking, what's new? how are you advancing the narrative? and i think it's this discussion of the cabinet that is a major contribution that your work makes. and also the struggle over executive power, which is also partly about the cabinet as well. but if we know that, if we know that the cabinet is evolving, that there's a struggle over executive power, does that explain in the outrageous behavior and i have to say, when i was taking my notes, when i was reading about pickering, i

wrote unhinged really seriously. and for the cabinet, is it fair to call them the perfidious cabinet? it's totally fair. i love that i will be stealing it in future talks. you know, i mean, borderline treason. yeah, they got close. so did jefferson, too, by the way, who was vice president at the time? you know, i think what's really interesting is that at various points in time, the cabinet secretaries articulated a different version of what the executive could look like. so they said they were articulating a vision of a cabinet that had shared authority with the president, meaning they could pursue different policies if they believed different policies were the right choice because they had a share of executive power, which is not unlike what the british cabinet turned into, but was very much not what washington had created. and interestingly, they had not articulated that when washington was in office. so they started articulating it when adams was in office and he

was fighting for an executive that was much more in line with what washington had had done in when he was in office and i would say it was, i think, much more true to the spirit of the constitution, which is that the president is in charge. the secretaries defer to the president, the secretary serve at the president's pleasure. but that was one of the questions that was very much theoretical. it was untested because washington's stature was so unparalleled and so unusual, which is generally language. we try and it sounds a little hyperbolic and historians try and avoid that. but in this case, i think is quite accurate that his use of executive power was not going to apply to anyone else. and so adams had to figure out if it would work for him to. yeah, and we'll get a little bit more to that, especially when we start talking about being commander in chief. i do need to say he does he does get rid of them, but it's it's too late. really long time. but i hope that you have the the feeling that i did that when it

finally happens, you'll be cheering because it comes really late, but it does finally happen. and this thing about leadership, you know, it's like get rid of people right away. like he did not. so i think at this moment then we talk about the cabinet. it might be the moment that we talk about the redoubtable all and wonderful abigail adams because while she was not a member of the cabinet, she was in some ways his cabinet. so she is obviously a star in this book as well. i wondered if you might want to talk about her as political advisor. the good, the bad, the ugly. she was probably one of my most favorite parts to write about in this book because she was referred to as his cabinet of one, and they meant that as a criticism, but it was extraordinarily accurate. she most people know that. remember the ladies letter and for good reason because it's extraordinary. but that letter was almost average for her because she had so much insight and was so witty and so sharp that all of her letters, especially when she's

talking about politics, are just so fun because she has so much to say about the people around her and to his great credit, john adams understood this about his wife and wanted that around him. and so, for example, one of my favorite stories is when james mchenry comes back from a trip and he goes to the president's house to brief the president, and he finds them at the breakfast table and he hands over these documents on a major staffing decision to john adams. and john adams reviews them and then hands them to abigail and she reads them. so there are no secrets. there are no state secrets that are being kept from her. and what's sometimes a challenge is trying to figure out exactly where her influence was pushing him, because when they were together, they were, of course, talking and not writing generally. i think she encouraged him to pursue diplomacy generally. i think she didn't support war. i think that's generally good judgment. she had very good judgment about a lot of the men around her, especially alexander hamilton.

but in terms of the ugly, she also could be much more strident on certain things, especially when she felt like adams, her husband, was being unfairly attacked. and so she was much more vocally supportive of the sedition act. in 1798, she, i think, had good reason to fear for his security, but that that caused her to want to support a sedition bill that we would, of course, consider to be a violation of the first amendment. and i think probably her support for it did color his perspective later. he made some appointments that suggested he perhaps regretted that decision, but he didn't write a whole lot about it. so we're kind of having to make educated guesses. i was reminded of the late, great cokie roberts was talking about. one of the things that anybody who lives in the white house and they will soon live in the white house experiences. is that defensive posture that you feel pretty embattled? and it was interesting to me that that right away we absolutely see that.

but let's talk a little bit about the violence, which, you know, thanks to the work of john freeman, we know a lot about the violence of the early republic. you expand on that. and i wonder if you would talk about the violence that was threatened or actually happening and the reaction, which is the alien and sedition acts. so it's really important to understand that like the american people have been a violent people for a very long time and violence was much more pervasive, especially political violence was much more pervasive in the 1790s. so by the time adams was in office, newspaper editors were regularly beaten. they were pulled out of their offices and beaten in the streets. congressmen were dueling and in fisticuffs in the house of congress, which is something that you and freeman has, of course, brought to light. but people were emulating that in the streets as well. and one of the moments that i think has not received as much attention in this period of time, but i try and bring

forward is the what was the things giving day in may of 1798 in which there were basically these dueling mob days in philadelphia a pro french mob and a pro-british mob, and they what started the the fracas was they tore each other's cocaine's off of their hats, which were these little flower rosettes and the federalists wore black rosettes and the republicans wore red, white and blue rosettes, and they tore them off and they threw them in the mud. and that started this this mob scene. and adams was in the president's house. there was no gate. there was no secret service, there was no protection. and so he sent a number of his clerks to go to the war department to bring back arms and ammunition such that if they had to defend the president's house and this mob was taking place right outside, so with that in mind, with that sort of context, as well as the fact that threats were being delivered to the house and

anonymous threats were being published in the newspaper, and some newspaper editors were outwardly calling for violence. there was, i think, a real, genuine fear that the language in papers was exacerbating political violence and was provoking political violence and there were not the same sort of jurisprudence carve outs in the laws that we have today. so today you're not allowed to shout fire in a crowded theater of course, there is an exception to protected speech that if the speech is intended to invoke or incite violence, that is not protected under the first amendment, none of that existed in the 1790s. and so i think there were genuine fears. but then the federalists use those genuine fears to create a series of bills that targeted immigrants, made it harder for them to become citizens, made it harder for them to vote for republicans, which they tended to do, and made it a crime to criticize the president and congress, notably leaving out the vice president.

so so it was a very political bill. so but i think the lesson in that that's really helpful for today is that there can be genuine, good faith fears that are then used for very political purposes. and i wanted to be sure that i provided that context in the book and in our conversation today, because it's not as easy as just dismissing it as a political thing. it's there were real fears that were then used in a really political way. and when you're talking about so we're talking about the alien and sedition acts and one of the other things that i think is a contribution that you make in the book, and we're going to i'm going to give you the last few minutes to talk about the sort of legacy of john adams. but you try to really examine how he functioned as a politician. of course, it's fair to lay the alien sedition act at his door. the buck stops. here is somebody who's going to say later in the white house, but you caution us to be a little bit careful about that because really it's how they were used and i wondered if you

would talk about our friend, mr. pickering, but then maybe address the issue of the pardons? yeah. so i think that it's absolutely the dark mark on the adams administration. i don't shy away from that in the slightest, but i think some more content is helpful, which is that the president did not really have much of a role in crafting a legislative agenda at that point, congress took quite seriously its role as the legislative body and was really the instigator of these bills. adams did sign them, of course, but he didn't whip votes or kind of, you know, try and curry support. so once these bills were in place, timothy pickering was really responsible for sort of selecting the prosecutions. and adams did cheer some of them because some of them had been particularly odious towards him. and he didn't really like what they were saying. and so he absolutely deserves criticism for that in other ways that one of the alien bills gave

him basically unilateral authority to deport any foreign national at will without due process. he never used it. so i do think that is worth noting as well. and lastly, when he felt that there were excesses in the judicial system, especially after the freeze rebellion, which really when we're talking about hyperbole, rebellion is not quite an accurate statement. it was more like a little tiny protest in which only one cow was killed in the crushing of said rebellion. and that was the only casualty. he felt that the judicial process had been quite extreme and that the treason decisions and the treason judgments and the death penalty that were brought with these were really inappropriate. and so he gave pardons and partly he was doing so because he was following washington's example, but also partly he was doing so because he understood the importance of what it would mean for the legal system if these extreme punishments and decisions were allowed to stand.

so i do think and and i should say it was a very politically unpopular decision among his own party. so it was one of many moments where he demonstrated a lot of political courage because he was trying to do the right thing for the good of the nation. and this is another occasion where we have thomas jefferson moving behind the scenes and a kind of a, i don't wanna say treasonous way, but definitely against his president. and in fact in his opposition he introduces a very interesting word. and i wondered if you would. i was very struck by that. and i have to say i've never seen that discussed in any other book. so so thomas jefferson is the only vice president that was from a different party, i guess technically. john c calhoun kind of flips partway his vice presidency, but john c calhoun does a lot of stuff. so we're going to put him to the side. thomas jefferson was, of course, a republican. he was he was vice president while john adams was president. and he does a lot of stuff that borders on treason. if there had actually been a

declaration of war against france, some of his behavior behind the scenes would have counted. but of particular note, in 1798, he hated the alien and sedition acts. and as some of the prosecutions did begin to take up, especially in the south, he and james madison drafted the virginia and kentucky resolutions. now the ordering of this and their involvement is quite important. so thomas jefferson drafted the kentucky resolution first and sent it to an ally in kentucky who then moderated the language and got it passed. no problem, james madison wrote the virginia declaration or virginia resolution, and it was more moderate than jefferson's draft and their their friends shared it with jefferson and jefferson inserted a clause that said that the states could declare laws to be null and void. they didn't tell madison that they had inserted this clause

and then send it to the virginia legislature to pass. it was very contentious and the language leaked and made its way north and the federalists howled that basically the southerners were trying to start a civil war, were trying to secede. when madison learned of this clause, he asked that it be removed. and so the final version does not include the words null and void. however, the language was now in the political lexicon, and so several years later, when the federalists are talking about maybe seceding during the war of 1812 and many decades later, when southerners start to talk about secession, they're using this language that was first introduced by jefferson into the political dialog and i know this is a book about john adams, but one of the best quotes i think in it is from john quincy adams, who was in europe as the minister to prussia. the time and when he read about the virginia and kentucky resolutions, he said they're not going to secede right now.

we're not going to have a civil war right now. but there will come a time when the union and the old dominion come to a clash and it just is such a remarkable statement of foresight and nullification. the arms a thing, the thing something on there on the agenda. so as you're talking us through this, you know, we're all preparing for war. and i think you've covered some of this. you've got john adams striving for peace. hamilton boyd, does he want an army? and i wonder if you would talk about his efforts and what standing army meant to americans, because we also went to, i think, one of your arguments is that john adams is reflecting more what americans want and maybe talk a little bit about that and maybe the navy as well. yeah. so in response to the quasi war, congress passed the limitation acts. but they also did two other things. they finally created an able department and built out the navy, which adams had been clamoring for for decades,

because as a good son of new england, he knew where the wood came from, where the ships were built, where the sailors came from, where most of the merchants were located. but he also understood the value of a navy for diplomacy and benefiting the american economy. so he was pumped about the navy. congress also expand of the army from about 2500 to 50000. he did not want a 50,000 man army largely because he knew that the arch federalists were very involved in the ordering of the officers and in the officer corps. and so he was very concerned that the army would do two things. one, it would be extra ordinarily expensive, and most of the americans that he was living with were the same americans that had protested against high taxes and had protested against a standing army. and he didn't particularly think that they had their mind on those subjects. between 1776 and 1796. and he was right. and so when there was this standing army and there were new

taxes to pay for it all of a sudden liberty polls started to pop up again all the way through the united states, and he would see them when he was traveling to and from massachusetts and philadelphia. so he was very distressing of how americans would perceive this army. but he was also very distressed of what the federalists, alexander hamilton in particular, wanted to do with this army. they basically turned the army into a spoils system for the party. it was very partizan they wanted to march itself down through virginia and into north carolina and crush their domestic opponents. they wanted to go seize the floridas and new orleans and then go to south america and start revolutions for good measure. but he didn't think that was a very good use of american men or american dollars, and he worried what might happen if there was this very large, very political force that was sort of independent of the president, see, and what that would mean for the future of the republic.

yeah. and, you know, you actually have a chapter titled washington recedes and it's actually pretty early in the book. and the truth is, washington took a long time receding, especially when it came to sort of this issue, because john adams did not feel that he had the commander in chief chops. and so he turned to washington. and i'm going to say washington was not helpful and again, this also this thing that you have of development, executive power also not so helpful. yeah. so in addition to having to follow washington, adams, the rare experience of being president while washington was still alive, which is a uniquely different thing because no other former president has cast a shadow like washington, has no other former president lingering in sort of just off scene or just over his shoulder like washington was for adams.

and so for the american people, i think a lot of them felt that they genuinely had like two presidents in mind. so when there was the threat of war, adams, i believe, felt that he had no choice. washington would be a unifying force. he would bring the american people together as, as you said. adams didn't have any military experience, which he knew. and so he felt like it would be useful to have someone who had been the commander in chief of the continental army back in charge of the army. and he hoped that washington would also sort of stave off any threats that were posed by hamilton and some of the arch federalists. that plan didn't go very well because washington said that he would accept the position if he could stay at mount vernon until france invaded, which meant that whoever was number two was actually going to have all of the power and the cabinet secretaries and some of the arch federalists sort of maneuvered washington into threatening to resign if he couldn't name hamilton as his number two. and adams could not possibly let

washington resign because it would kneecap his presidency, which set up a question about who actually is the commander in chief, because washington have never permitted that. he was 100% in control of the army. and so it set up this conflict over executive power, which i think really was only resolved through adams devotion to diplomacy, which basically took away the need for the army and washington's very timely death. he died in december of 1799, and i think, frankly, got a little bit lucky because. it didn't really tarnish his legacy or the presidency in a long term way. yeah, you know, we started with a dramatic moment and as we get to the end of our discussion, let's get to an even more dramatic moment, because now we're talking about spoiler alert john adams loses the bid for reelection. it's now 1800. and so when a john adams assumes the presidency, it's the first

peaceful transfer of power, which again, is one of your seems that you talk about it was greeted like a sublimity or sublime was the where things were more dire in 1800 and i wonder if you could sort of discuss what was happened 1800 and how close things came really falling apart. yeah, i think that we often think of the revolution of just give away the punchline of what i was gonna say. we often think of the election of 1800 as the revolution of 1800, because that is how jefferson described it. but in reality it was much messier and much closer to disaster. so by december 3rd, 1800, it was clear that there was going to be a tie between thomas jefferson and aaron burr. and yet the votes were not going to be certified until february 11th, 1801, which left two months for the federalists to get up to no good. and they did the arch federalist wanted to push burr passed to jefferson into the presidency because they thought he would be

more malleable so that was plan one planned to was to try and postpone the results of an election. so basically deadlock it so that no decision could be made until march 4th, at which point there would not be an inauguration. they could potentially appoint a temporary president who could then run as an incumbent if. they had a new election or maybe not have a new election and just have the temporary president. as republicans learned of these plots because they didn't stay secret, the republican governors of pennsylvania and virginia gathered their militias on the state borders, ready to march into washington, d.c. if anything went wrong or if they tried to put a new president in place. as citizens learned of these plots, they started to gather in washington, in d.c. and in january, a mob gathered outside the capitol and threatened to kill anyone who tried to put someone other than jefferson into the president's. now, the frenchman, mr. at the

time said that there were 100,000 people gathered outside the capitol. 100,000 people didn't fit in washington, dc. so he was definitely exaggerating. but i think the statement gets at how serious he felt the threat was to security. and 50 years later, when albert gallatin was writing about it and he was in the house at the time, he said that he genuinely believed that violence was just on the horizon what got the united states through that moment. and i should say that when when jefferson finally was elected as the third president on the 36th ballot, there were only about two and a half weeks until the inauguration. if they had gone another two and a half weeks, i don't know what would have happened. i genuinely don't know if militias would have marched into the city and if the constitution could have survived that. that is a hypothetical. i am just really not sure about the outcome and they knew it.

and so what got the united states through what allowed jefferson to win on the 36th ballot were a couple of moderate republicans, a couple of moderate federalists willing to make compromises to come up with a resolution that put the constitution above their own partizan interests, which i define as civic virtue. the other thing that got the country through it was that john adams did not medal. he looked at the constitution and he said he had no role and he practice something. we don't usually celebrate in presidents, which was restraint. he then very carefully set the tone for what a transition should be. he invited jefferson over to the white house. he instructed his cabinet secretary to basically provide briefings on what was happening in the department, secretary in the department offices long before any of that was required by statute. and when he went home to massachusetts he wrote a letter back to jefferson and said, everything looks peaceful here.

i wish you a safe and happy. none of that is written down in the constitution and yet it set a model for what we want all of his successors to do. i feel it would be remiss if i did not quote from the musical hamilton. so i'm going to where he does say, and i think eliza sings it to about who tells your story. so while i'm going to ask this, the last thing i'm going to ask you to sort of sum up your your thoughts about john adams legacy, about him being a politician. but to focus on what jefferson and hamilton talked about, those final days, those final weeks, and how that's echoed through history in a way that you just don't think is quite accurate. yeah. so jefferson and hamilton were two of the all time greatest propagandists in american history, and i say that with admiration. they were extraordinarily talented. but what that meant was they spent the season of 1800

discussing john adams in terms that were awful. they were often, sometimes outright lying about him because they were competing in a political campaign. and that's what people did. and yet, for reasons i can't totally figure out, their descriptions of john adams have stood the test of time have basically taken these descriptions verbatim and applied them as though they are hard truth to what john adams was. and so you know words like vain and irascible, which are words that most people usually associate with him that comes directly from the pamphlet that hamilton wrote in, the fall of 1800, when he was trying to undermine john adams campaign. and that combined with the fact that the federalist party collapsed over time and hamilton was the ideological figurehead of that party, left adams without anyone to really champion his legacy. and so i think that despite the

fact that he was a one term president, despite the fact that he lost his reelection, there was much there to celebrate terms of the preservation of the presidency to the defense of executive power, peace with france, which was huge. and of course, the peaceful transfer of power at the end. absolutely. well, listen, i know this crowd very well and they've got a lot of wisdom out there. and i wonder if we could share a little of that wisdom. just a reminder, please wait, for the microphone. yeah. so we would like to start us off. jerry and i like go. thank you. in a way, you answered my question with your last remarks, but if you were to kind of grade adams presidency, i was wondering how how you would rate it. and personally, i've always regarded it as kind of the least distinguished part of his career. but you've mentioned a number things that maybe he hasn't given a lot of credit for. they don't get mentioned all

that often that actually were, you know, major accomplishments. yeah. thank you for that question. mean, i think you're not alone. i think most people genuinely thought for a long time that the presidency was the least remarkable part of his career. and i think it's because so many of the things that he did are not particularly flashy. but what opened adams presidency for me was january 6th, because i realized that i was taking for granted american institutions and i was taking for granted the peaceful transfer of power, despite the fact that i had spent a very long time studying these things and so when i started to look for because i realized i was taking it for granted, i started to look for where did this start? how was it cultivated, how was it crafted from scratch? and in doing so, i was asking questions about adams presidency that i think previous biographers hadn't really asked because they hadn't seen a transition like that. it wasn't that they were asking bad questions or that they were wrong. it was that we often write

history based on what we experience. and so i think that my hope for this book is not to say that the presidency is more important than his service in the netherlands or his service in congress, helping with the declaration of independence. but rather, it's really important that we appreciate the small things behind the scenes. and there i think now more relevant than ever. i didn't really give a letter grade, ma'am. it's really hard. this is one of the reasons i don't like teaching. making these decisions are so difficult. i would say i would say like a b, i think a solid b. well, at mount holyoke, they had something called the ab. so an a-minus. b-plus, that's perfect. there you go. do that. now, give me your other question. yeah, i think we had a gentleman right there. yeah, the atheneum had a neighbor down the street on beacon street. harrison gray otis, who was a

moderate federalist. did how did he interact with john adams? so harrison gray otis was one of the few. well, not one of. so there were these moderate federalists and harrison gray, otis sided with adams over the arch federalist, which really annoyed a lot of the other arch federalists who happened to most of them were located in boston, which felt like really a purse or massachusetts, i should say, which felt like a personal betrayal to adams. and the fact that otis did side with them and supported his efforts at diplomacy and supported the peace treaty meant a great deal to john adams and harrison great. otis apparently started every morning with a pot of potato and yet lived to be a great age. that's an interesting choice for beer. i don't know that i would choose that for breakfast. he also wrote phenomenally interesting letters to his wife. and i will confess that i tend to judge historic figures based on what they write to their wives. do we have any sedgwick

ancestors here? well, back on sedgwick. theodore sedgwick, who was a senator from massachusetts and, then the speaker of the house at the end of adams administration, wrote fabulously interesting letters to his friends and the most boring letters to his wife, saying like, here's what the weather is and i miss you in, the children. and that was it for you. people are really learning a lot and getting the dirt to know more questions out there. oh, i see. there's a there you go. you're on it, my friend. forever. interesting. so washington was in many ways the man of the hour for you know making secede would if any of the other major political figures of the day had become president after washington would the union have survived with the constitution have survived right. oh, that's a really interesting hypothetical. i'm not sure jefferson had if it would, because i think that jefferson was quite sobered by some of the things that happened

at the end of adams administration, both the response to the virginia and kentucky resolutions, but also how close it came to violence. and i think that he once he was in office, he discovered that a lot of the criticisms he had had of washington and adams were not totally fair and really enjoyed the use of executive power that they had defended. but i think he probably would have been much more rash in 1797. i think there are probably maybe some other more moderate figures who could have been counted on to do the thing, but they didn't necessarily have the same sort of national stature to gain the votes that would have been needed. and don't you think somebody like burr would have just been, oh, forget it. yeah, he yeah. burr was highly erratic. and i think would have been quite unpredictable and not a good way in the in the presidency. not in a delightful way. no. i think i saw a hand over there. oh, oh, we have somebody in the back and then i think. thanks a lot. great presentation.

by the way. a question on the alien sedition acts. were they ever revoked or canceled? excellent question. so the sedition act helpfully had a sunset clause that had it expire. the day of adams presidency, as did some of the other, the alien acts as well. so there there were two alien acts. there's actually four that fall into that category as naturalization act two. alien acts and the sedition act. one of the alien acts was called the alien and enemies act. and that was a war time measure that was actually bipartisan. and it said that if there was a declaration of war, the president can start the removal of foreign nationals with all appropriate due process. and it was bipartisan because it was a very measured and reasonable bill. and while that exact bill has been amended, a bill similar to it has been on the books ever since. good. and did franklin roosevelt use that for the internment? i don't know if that was his

justification. it sound i mean, so i know that the alien act has been used in periods of wartime. it was used in world war one as well. i don't if that was 20th century, nancy, we don't know. i know it's there was a question right there, i think, sir. yeah, very good. stand up. thanks. you mentioned the idea of jefferson behaving in almost a treasonous manner as vice president. was there ever any indication that that he was of conducting his own foreign policy with people in france? because i know he was you know, he was ambassador there. and yeah, when i refer to treasonous behavior, that is exactly what i am talking about. so early on in adams presidency, when he sent his first peace commission, jefferson met repeatedly with the french minister and said, don't sign anything with adams. i will give you a better deal when i am in office in four

years. he also suggested helpfully that maybe france should invade great britain if they were looking for something to do which they did not take that suggestion. but but to my point, if there had been a declaration of war, i think that probably would been considered treason. you cannot believe it, ma'am. you should shaking your head like melania talk a little bit with the missing letter is that the same? yeah. right. so the marseille letter was a letter that jefferson had written to a friend who was italian. and in it, you know, it's him. yeah, yeah. okay. yeah. and it which he referred to. well doesn't use washington's name but he says the i'm going to get the names wrong now the stamps sit in the field in the solomon, in the cabinet. is that right. i might have gotten the order wrong, but basically what he was saying was that washington had

been emasculated and sure born and enslaved by the british. criticize. is it public criticism of washington was never a good idea. but to that extent was a really bad idea. and the letter had actually been written a couple years earlier, but was finally published in the first year of adams presidency. and what it did was to harden partizan lines. it made it very clear that jefferson was a republican figure. he was not going to be a member, a productive member of adams administration. it increased the federalist attacks on jefferson and the attacks in response by the republicans an immediate very for adams to get anything done in a bipartisan fashion. yeah, that's where you need to call h.r. late in the game adams changed his cabinet members.

what sparked it and what was the reaction to the public as far as setting that precedent? excellent question. thank you so much. so we don't know exactly what sparked it, but i have two theories. the first is that adams finally felt like he had gotten his foreign policy under control. and so he sort of had all of his pieces in line. i think the more pressing consideration was that he finally had the reelection nomination by the federalist party because he knew it was going to fracture the party pretty significantly. and so he first got into a fight with james mchenry and mchenry, offered to resign. adams agreed. he then gave pickering the opportunity to resign because that was the gentlemen's way out. there was nothing dishonorable about resignation. and pickering basically said no. he said, i would like to stay in office through the of the term and adams then dismissed him summarily without some sort of salutation. ah, thank you for your service and for good measure. change the locks on the secretary of state offices,

which i really love that pettiness and then he nominated john marshall as, the replacement and the senate debated for a day or two whether or not they were going to accept it because the constitution does not say anything about removal and the bills that created the cabinet secretary positions do not say anything about removal because congress couldn't come to an agreement. some thought that the senate should have a role. some some that the president should have, that unilateral power. some thought that congress should decide when the time came. and so this was all theoretical because washington had never fired anyone. when he was displeased with people, they just quit because they were so upset about it, actually. and so the senate confirms john marshall and tacitly accepted that the president does have this right, which established a precedent that was confirmed by the supreme court in 1926. and every president, with maybe

the exception of andrew johnson, has enjoyed it. and was there a public outcry some federalists were annoyed. arch federalists were annoyed by it because they they were very loyal to timothy pickering. but there was also there had been speculation and for months and months and months that this was going to happen. so i think a lot of americans shared our sense of relief that he had finally done it. yeah, we have time for one more question. if somebody would like to. we have one of the trashed hamilton terribly much. there we go. the intended forget how small the government was in terms of cabinets, a number of people working with. the other thing that struck, as i recall, is a john adams spent a lot of time in braintree. i think given the communications sort of how how can you be president if you're not in washington. so this is a good this is a good question with the exception we're going to put 1790, 1799

aside, and i'll come back to that here in a moment. all of the other years he was gone, the exact same amount of time that washington was gone. but the talking point that he was gone every year for most of the year is a jeffersonian talking point. the difference is that washington would do several short because mount vernon is much closer to philadelphia. you and adams would do one longer trip in the summer. 1799 is different. he was gone for more, i think eight months now. they did exchange letters. he sent letters every day and they sent letters every day to him. but it did take about a week to get back and forth between philadelphia and quincy, massachusetts i in the book i say that i think this was a mistake on his part. he does use the distance at one point, actually as a strategic tool to undermine the growth of the army because basically stalls any army appointments because he forgets to respond to mchenry's letters and he makes them go through all of these hoops.

so he uses it strategically. but it was a mistake. and people at the time did accuse him of sort of abandoning the responsibilities of office. all right. well, thank you so much. this has been great. well, thank thank you so much. this really was wonderful and thank you to everybody who came. and i could just remind you that we will have a book signing. we have some of our treasures out in the conference room and a reception and please come back. thank you. so let's try to get you out there. it's possible. have you put your special pen? very good. so.

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