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Adams and Jefferson by Alan Brinkley This reading is excerpted from Chapter Six of Brinkley’s American History: A Survey (12th ed.). I wrote the footnotes. If you use the questions below to guide your note taking (which is a good idea), please be aware that several of the questions have multiple answers. Study Questions 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Do you have any questions? What problems did John Adams face that limited his ability to be an effective president? At the end of the eighteenth century, why were relations between the US and France so poor? Why did the Federalists sponsor the Alien and Sedition Acts? Why were the Alien and Sedition Acts so controversial? Why did Jefferson and Madison write the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions? What do these resolutions argue? Why was Jefferson reluctant to purchase Louisiana? The Election of 1796 Despite strong pressure from his many admirers to run for a third term as president, George Washington insisted on retiring from office in 1797.... With Washington out of the running, no obstacle remained to an open expression of the partisan rivalries that had been building over the previous eight years. Jefferson was the uncontested candidate of the Republicans in 1796. The Federalists faced a more difficult choice. Hamilton, the personification of Federalism, had created too many enemies to be a credible candidate. So Vice President John Adams, who had been directly associated with none of the unpopular Federalist measures, became his party’s nominee for president. The Federalists were still clearly the dominant party, and there was little doubt of their ability to win a majority of the presidential electors. But without Washington to mediate, they fell victim to fierce factional rivalries that almost led to their undoing. Hamilton and many other Federalists (especially in the South) were not reconciled to Adams’s candidacy and favored his running mate Thomas Pinckney instead. And when, as expected, the Federalists elected a majority of the presidential electors, some of these Pinckney supporters declined to vote for Adams; he managed to defeat Jefferson by only three electoral votes. Because a still larger number of Adams’s supporters declined to vote for Pinckney, Jefferson finished second in the balloting and became vice president. (Until the Twelfth Amendment was adopted in 1804, the Constitution provided for the candidate receiving the second highest number of electoral votes to become vice president—hence the awkward result of men from different parties serving in the nation’s two highest elected offices.) Adams thus assumed the presidency under inauspicious circumstances. He presided over a divided party, which faced a strong and resourceful Republican opposition committed to its extinction. Adams himself was not even the dominant figure in his own party; Hamilton remained the most influential Federalist, and Adams was never able to challenge him effectively.... Austere, rigid, aloof, he had little talent at conciliating differences, soliciting support, or inspiring enthusiasm. He was a man of enormous, indeed intimidating rectitude, and he seemed to assume that his own virtue and the correctness of his positions would alone be enough to sustain him. He was usually wrong. The Quasi War with France American relations with Great Britain and Spain improved as a result of [treaties signed during the Washington administration]. But the nation’s relations with revolutionary France quickly deteriorated.... Some of President Adams’s advisers favored war, most notably Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, a stern New Englander who detested France. But Hamilton recommended conciliation, and Adams agreed. In an effort to stabilize relations, Adams appointed a bipartisan1 commission... to negotiate with France. When the Americans arrived in Paris in 1797, three agents of the French foreign minister, Prince Talleyrand, demanded a loan for France and a bribe for French officials before any negotiations could begin. [One of the commissioners] responded succinctly and angrily: “No! No! Not a sixpence!” When Adams heard of the incident he sent a message to Congress denouncing the French insults and urging preparations for war. He then turned the report of the American commissioners over to Congress, after deleting the names of the three French agents and designating them only as “Mssrs. X, Y, and Z.” When the report was published, it created widespread popular outrage at France’s actions and strong support for the Federalists’ response. For nearly two years after the “XYZ Affair,” as it became known, the United States found itself engaged in an undeclared war with France.... The United States also began cooperating closely with the British and became virtually an ally of Britain in the war with France. In the end, France chose to conciliate the United States before the conflict grew. Adams sent another commission to Paris in 1800, and the new French government (headed now by “first consul” Napoleon Bonaparte) agreed to a treaty with the United States that canceled the old agreement of 17782 and established new commercial arrangements. As a result, the “quasi war” came to a reasonably peaceful end. Repression and Protest The conflict with France helped the Federalists increase their majorities in Congress in 1798. Armed with this new strength, they began to consider ways to silence the Republican opposition. The result was some of the most controversial legislation in American history: the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien Act placed new obstacles in the way of foreigners who wished to become American citizens, and it strengthened the president’s hand in dealing with aliens.3 The Sedition Act allowed the government to prosecute those who engaged in “sedition” against the government. In theory only libelous or treasonous activities were subject to prosecution; but since such activities were subject to widely varying definitions, the law made it possible for the 1 Bipartisan: consisting of members of both parties This was the alliance by which France assisted us in the Revolutionary War against Britain. 3 It is a peculiarity of the United States that we have always referred to non-citizen immigrants as “aliens,” as if they had come to the US from another planet. American exceptionalism? 2 federal government to stifle virtually any opposition. The Republicans interpreted the new laws as part of a Federalist campaign to destroy them and fought back. President Adams signed the new laws but was cautious in implementing them. He did not deport any aliens, and he prevented the government from launching a major crusade against the Republicans. But the legislation had a significant repressive effect nevertheless. The Alien Act helped discourage immigration and encouraged some foreigners already in the country to leave. And the administration made use of the Sedition Act to arrest and convict ten men, most of them Republicans newspaper editors whose only crime had been to criticize the Federalists in government. Republican leaders pinned their hopes for a reversal of the Alien and Sedition Acts on the state legislatures. (The Supreme Court had not yet established its sole right to nullify congressional legislation, and there were many who believed that the states had that power too.) The Republicans laid out a theory for state action in two sets of resolutions in 1798-1799, one written (anonymously) by Jefferson and adopted by the Kentucky legislature and the other drafted by Madison and approved by the Virginia legislature. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, as they were known, used the ideas of John Locke to argue that the federal government had been formed by a “compact” or contract among the states and possessed only certain... powers.... If the parties to the contract, the states, decided that the central government had exceeded those powers, the Kentucky Resolution claimed, they had the right to “nullify” the appropriate laws. (Such claims emerged again in the South in the decades before the Civil War.) The Republicans did not win wide support for nullification; only Virginia and Kentucky declared the congressional statues void. The Republicans did, however, succeed in elevating their dispute with the Federalists to the level of a national crisis. By the late 1790s, the entire nation was as deeply and bitterly divided politically as it would ever be in its history.4 ... The “Revolution” of 1800 These bitter controversies shaped the 1800 presidential election. The presidential candidates were the same as four years earlier: Adams for the Federalists, Jefferson for the Republicans. But the campaign of 1800 was very different from the one preceding it. Indeed, it may have been the ugliest in American history.... The election was close, and the crucial contest was in New York. There, Aaron Burr had mobilized an organization of Revolutionary War veterans, the Tammany Society, to serve as a Republican political machine. And through Tammany’s efforts, the Republicans carried the city by a large majority, and with it the state. Jefferson was... elected.5 ... After the election of 1800, the only branch of the federal government left in Federalist hands was the judiciary. The Adams administration spent its last months in office taking steps to make the party’s hold on the courts secure. By the Judiciary Act of 1801, passed by the lame duck 4 Some have argued that the current divisions in Washington approach—or even exceed—the level of political disharmony of the late eighteenth century. 5 Although a flaw in the electoral college system, fixed by the Twelfth Amendment, led to Jefferson and his vicepresidential running mate, Burr, being tied. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives. It took the intervention of Hamilton and some leading Federalists to ensure that Jefferson was elected. Burr never forgave Hamilton, with fateful—and fatal—results. Congress, the Federalists reduced the number of Supreme Court justiceships by one but greatly increased the number of federal judgeships as a whole. Adams quickly appointed Federalists to the newly created positions. Indeed, there were charges that he stayed up until midnight on his last day in office to finish signing the new judges commissions. These officeholders became known as the “midnight appointments.” JEFFERSON THE PRESIDENT Privately, Thomas Jefferson may well have considered his victory over John ADams in 1800 to be what he later termed it: a revolution “as real... as that of 1776.” Publicly, however, he was constrained and conciliatory as he assumed office, attempting to minimize the differences between the two parties and to calm the passions that the bitter campaign had aroused. “We are all republicans, we are all federalists,” he said in his inaugural address. And during his eight years in office, he did much to prove those words correct. There was no complete repudiation of Federalist policies, no true “revolution.” Indeed, at times Jefferson seemed to outdo the Federalists at their own work—most notably in overseeing a remarkable expansion of the territory of the United States.... Jefferson and Napoleon Having failed in a grandiose plan to seize India from the British Empire, [French Emperor] Napoleon began turning his imperial ambitions in a new direction: he began to dream of restoring French power in the New World.... Under the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800 between the French and the Spanish, France regained title to Louisiana, which included almost the whole of the Mississippi Valley to the west of the river, plus New Orleans near its mouth. The Louisiana Territory would, Napoleon hoped, become the heart of a great French empire in America.... Jefferson was unaware at first of Napoleon’s imperial ambitions in America, and for a time he pursued a foreign policy that reflected his well-known admiration for France. He appointed as American minister to Paris the ardently pro-French Robert R. Livingston. He worked to secure ratification of the Franco-American settlement of 1800 and began observing the terms of the treaty even before it was ratified. The Adams administration had joined with the British in recognizing and supporting the rebel regime of Toussaint L’Ouverture in Santo Domingo; Jefferson assured the French minister in Washington that the American people, especially those of the slaveholding states, did not approve of the black revolutionary, who was setting a bad example for their own slaves. he even implied that the United States might join with France in putting down the rebellion (although nothing ever came of the suggestion). Jefferson began to reconsider his position toward France when he heard rumors of the secret transfer of Louisiana. Jefferson was even more alarmed when, in the fall of 1802, he learned that the [governor of New Orleans] had announced a disturbing new regulation. American ships sailing the Mississippi River had for many years been accustomed to depositing their cargoes in New Orleans for transfer to oceangoing vessels. The [governor] now forbade the practice... thus effectively closing the lower Mississippi to American shippers. Westerners demanded that the federal government do something to reopen the river. The president faced a dilemma. If he yielded to the frontier clamor and tried to change the policy by force, he would run the risk of a major war with France. If he ignored the westerners’ demands, he might lose political support. But Jefferson saw another solution. He instructed Robert Livingston... to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans. Livingston on his own authority proposed that the French sell the United States the vast western part of Louisiana as well. In the meantime, Jefferson persuaded Congress to appropriate funds for an expansion of the army and the construction of a river fleet, and he deliberately gave the impression that American forces might soon descend on New Orleans and that the United States might form an alliance with Great Britain if the problem with France were not resolved. Perhaps that was why Napoleon suddenly decided to accept Livingston’s proposal and offer the United States the entire Louisiana Territory.... The Louisiana Purchase Faced with Napoleon’s startling proposal, Livingston and James Monroe, whom Jefferson had sent to Paris to assist in the negotiations, had to decide first whether they should even consider making a treaty for the purchase of the entire Louisiana Territory, since they had not been authorized by their government to do so. But fearful that Napoleon might withdraw the offer, they decided to proceed without further instructions from home. After some haggling over the price Livingston and Monroe signed the agreement on April 30, 1803. By the terms of the treaty, the united States was to pay a total of 80 million france ($15 million) to the French government. The United States was also to grant certain exclusive commercial privileges to France in the port of New Orleans and was to incorporate the residents of Louisiana into the Union with the same rights and privileges as other citizens.... In Washington the president was both pleased and embarrassed when he received the treaty. He was pleased with the terms of the bargain but uncertain whether the United States had authority to accept it, since he had always insisted that the federal government could rightfully exercise only those powers explicitly assigned to it. Nowhere did the Constitution say anything about the acquisition of new territory. But Jefferson’s advisors persuaded him that his treatymaking power under the Constitution would justify the purchase of Louisiana. The president finally agreed, trusting, as he said, “that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of loose construction when it shall produce ill effects.” The Republican Congress promptly approved the treaty and appropriated money to implement its provisions. Finally, late in 1803, the French assumed formal control of Louisiana from Spain just long enough to turn the territory over to General James Wilkinson, the commissioner of the United States. The government organized the Louisiana Territory much as it had organized the Northwest Territory, with the assumption that its various territories would eventually become states. The first of these was admitted to the Union as the state of Louisiana in 1812.