Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/113

JOHN ADAMS understanding and arrangement to reduce his vote in the electoral college below that of C. 0. Pinckney, the other of the two candidates voted for by the federalists. The republicans, on the other hand, under the prospect of an ar- rangement with France, rapidly recovered from the blow inflicted upon them by the violence and mercenary rapacity lately charged upon their French friends, but which they now in- sisted was a charge without foundation. Taking advantage of the dissatisfaction at the heavy taxes necessarily imposed to meet the expenses of warlike preparations, and especially of the unpopularity of the alien law and the sedition law two acts of congress to which the pros- pect of war had led they pushed the canvass with great energy ; while in Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr they had two leaders unsur- passed for skill in party tactics, and in Burr, at least, one little scrupulous as to the means which he employed. Not only was the whole blame of the alien and sedition acts, to which he had merely assented without ever having recommended them, laid on Adams's shoulders, but he was the object of most vehement and bitter attacks for having surrendered up, under one of the provisions of Jay's treaty, one Thomas Nash, an English sailor, charged with mutiny and murder. Having been recognized and arrested in Charleston, S. C., Nash had endeavored to save himself by assuming the name and character of Jonathan Eobbins, an American citizen, in the light of which assumed character the greater part of Adams's political opponents insisted upon exclusively regarding him, and Adams himself as having basely yielded up an American citizen, who, it was argued, even if guilty of mutiny as charged, had been justified in it by the fact of having been, as it was alleged, previously pressed into the British naval service. Nor was it against his public acts alone, nor even to his political opponents, that these assaults upon Mr. Adams were confined. With strong feeling and busy imagination, loving both to talk and write, Adams had been betrayed into many confidences and into free expression of feelings, opinions, and even conjectures and suspicions a weak- ness very unsuited to the character of a politi- cian, and which he had frequent occasion to rue. During Washington's first term of office he had thus been led into a confidential corre- spondence with Tench Coxe, who held at that time the place of assistant secretary of the treasury, and had afterward been appointed supervisor of the internal revenue, but who since Adams's accession had been dismissed from this place on the charge of being a spy upon the treasury department in the service of the "Aurora," the principal newspaper organ of the opposition, with which party Coxe sym- pathized, and since his recent dismissal from office had acted. In this state of mind Coxe betrayed a private confidential letter of Adams, which, after having been handed about in manu- script for some time, to the great damage of Adams with his own party, was finally printed in the "Aurora," of which Coxe had become one of the principal contributors. The purport of this letter, written as long ago as May, 1792, was to give countenance to the favorite charge of the opposition that Washington's cabinet, and of course Adams's, which followed the same policy, was under British influence, and that Thomas Pinckney and his brother C. C. Pinck- ney, candidates with Adams on the federal presidential ticket, were especially obnoxious to this suspicion. The publication of this letter was followed up by a still more deadly blow in the shape of a pamphlet written and printed and signed by Hamilton, and probably intended by him for private distribution among the federal leaders, but which was made public by Aaron Burr, who had succeeded in possessing himself of some of the proof sheets. This pamphlet had its origin in the same charge against Hamil- ton of being under British influence, thrown out by Adams in private conversation, and as to which, when written to by Hamilton, he had refused to give any explanation, though when a similar request was made by C. C. Pinckney in consequence of the publication of the letter to Coxe, Adams fully exonerated both him and his brother in a published letter from any sus- picion which his letter to Coxe might seem cal- culated to convey. Hamilton declared in the conclusion of his pamphlet, that as things then stood he did not recommend the withholding from Adams of a single vote. Yet it was the leading object of his pamphlet to show, without denying Adams's patriotism and integrity, or even his talents, that he had great and intrinsic defects of character which disqualified him for the place of chief magistrate, and the effect which he desired it to have must have been to give C. C. Pinckney the presidency, by causing a certain number of votes to be withheld from Adams. The result, however, of the election was to throw out both the federal candidates. Adams received 65 votes and Pinckney 64, while Jefferson and Burr had 73 each. In the ensuing struggle between Jefferson and Burr Adams took no part. Immediately on the expira- tion of his term of office (1801) he left Wash- ington, to which shortly before the seat of gov- ernment had been removed, without even stop- ping to be present at the inauguration of Jef- ferson, against whom he felt a sense of personal wrong, probably thinking he had been deluded by false professions as to Jefferson's views on the presidential chair. This state of feeling on the part of Adams led to a strict non-intercourse for the next 13 years, though both were much given to letter-writing, and had previously, at least till within a short time before, been on terms of friendly correspondence. The only acknowledgment for his 25 years' services to the nation which Mr. Adams carried with hin } in this unwelcome and mortifying retirement, was the privilege which had been granted to Washington on his withdrawal from the presi- dency, and after his death .to his widow,