John Adams / Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had always claimed to be dear friends, despite the enormous differences in their personalities and their political choices. This friendship began to wear thin when Adams was elected president. Jefferson became one of the most vocal critics of the Adams presidency. Adams believed that this criticism was instrumental in denying him a second term of office.



John Adams: You ask how I see the differences between the two of us. The differences are so numerous that I fear not to live long enough to enumerate them all. First and foremost, you have such appetites of a carnal nature that would make any minister of the cloth blanche in despair. You constantly hide your head in the sand and think no one can see it. You have spent thousands on self-aggrandizement which have not added an inch to your stature. We are still friends so I will tone down my appraisal. You had been slower, more cautious and ambivalent than I about resolving your views on independence. As recently as August 1775, less than a year past, you had written to a Tory kinsman, John Randolph, of "looking with fondness towards reconciliation with Great Britain." You longed for the "return of the happy period when, consistently with duty, you said that you might withdraw yourself totally from the public stage, and pass the rest of your days in domestic ease and tranquility, banishing every desire of afterwards even hearing what passes in the world."


Thomas Jefferson: You mean to insinuate that there are more damaging comments to make?


 Adams: Indeed. Whereas I was supportive of the president that led this nation, you in a similar position, having me as your president, served only to undermine my authority. As you resigned from your position in the Washington administration because you opposed his neutrality, you should not have presented yourself as vice president knowing you had no intention of supporting me.


Jefferson: You are building a head of steam which I must help you to release. You and Washington were of the same political party. Of course you would support him, in the toady fashion that you have. Speaking to democratic republicans, you pretended you were closer to our way of thinking. But you never were. You were a handmaiden to the will of England, just like old George. As far as carnal appetite is concerned, from what hauteur can you speak of it? You haven’t seen your shoes in years. In keeping with your background, you were less than dazzled by the Virginia grandees. In Virginia, you would say, "all geese are swans." For my part, I admit that I knew little or nothing of New Englanders and counted none as friends. As a man of cultivated, even fastidious tastes, I often mentioned to my Virginia neighbor James Madison that I had observed in you a certain "want of taste," this apparently was in reference to the fact that you, John Adams were known on occasion to chew tobacco and take your rum more or less straight.


Adams: You have slaves which you use and it is publicly known that you abuse. You pretend to support a strong central government but only because it presents a larger target to attack. You blamed Washington for behaving like a king; yet, you kept secrets from your own Congress that astonished the world.

John Adams

 Jefferson: Please use the English language to be more explicit.


Adams: How is this for clarity? You bought Louisiana from Napoleon without consent from the Congress with funds you gathered on your own. Isn’t that what kings do? You speak of freedom for all but your slaves never enjoyed that largess. When Thomas Paine urged you to bring on the new territory in non-slave status, you were too busy to think about it. You, my friend, wear many colors at the same time.


Jefferson: Perhaps you should tell me what you really think. The purchase of Louisiana never threatened my presidency. Not like your support for the Jay Treaty that was passed by Congress as a weak and insipid bit of legislation only to become irrelevant in the hands of the British. Your Alien and Sedition legislation cost you a second term as president. It was not my undermining. I listen to the people of America for their concerns. It was Stephen Girard who gave me all the facts regarding the Barbary Coast pirates that he also enunciated to both you and Washington. I was the only one to act on that information and put those bandits out of business.


Adams:  Maybe one day you will tell me why your usual good sense deserted you when you made that decision to hire James Callender.


 Jefferson: I’ve already said all that I plan to say on that matter.


Adams: I suppose your duties as vice-president left you ample time for behind-the-scenes mischief. A closet politician is the most dangerous sort. He smiles and pretends the nation’s welfare is his major concern while he sharpens his stiletto and looks for a place to plunge it in.


Jefferson: John you are babbling again. Are you trying to make a point?


Adams: The point I am making is that it is far below you to engage the services of a liar and a scandalmonger to attack honest members of my party, in one man's expression, writing letters and lending support—ideas, information, and money—to the Republican press, including such "gladiators of the quill" as that dissolute Scottish pamphleteer—James T. Callender, who wrote for the Aurora and specialized in attacks on me.


Jefferson:  Just because he writes for the Aurora does not mean…


Adams: You gave that snake money and probably offered him future work. And why is it Thomas that you don’t want to talk about it? Is it because he was jailed and you needed to pretend you had nothing to do with his nefarious mission. And the more you tried to buy his silence, the angrier he became until he turned his fangs on you.

Jefferson: Do you and your dear wife coordinate your metaphors?  She wrote to me and said: “The serpent you cherished and warmed bit the hand that nourishes him.” But we do agree that Callender is not a man to be trusted. And while we are on the subject of disappointments, why in the world did you select the one man to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court whom you knew I detested.

Adams: I took great pleasure in that appointment. John Marshall was a great jurist and the best man for that position. Besides, as the new president, you needed an important challenge.


Jefferson: Why was it, John, that after your retirement and return to Quincy you reserved your vilest criticisms for Hamilton and Paine?


Adams: You’re referring to my calling Hamilton: “a bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.” He was “as ambitious as Bonaparte though less courageous and save for me would have involved us in a foreign war with France and a civil war with ourselves.”


Jefferson: Pretty strong language for a colleague.


Adams: Not nearly strong enough for the likes of him. But I’ve never been afraid of using the English language as appropriate. You, on the other hand, have lots of friends who never know what you really think.


Jefferson: It may have been Hamilton’s words that ultimately cost him his life.


Adams: I rather suspect that his double-dealing spoke louder than his words.



 Jefferson: Was it because I initially gave my support to Thomas Paine that you called him: "The Satyr of the Age—a mongrel between a Pig and a Puppy, begotten by a wild Boar on a Butch Wolf?”


Adams: We were once good friends. Back in 1776, we worked as a team for this budding nation of ours. I cherish those days. But you have betrayed me like a burglar who comes in the night to steal away my fondness for you, leaving no trace of your deeds.


Jefferson:  I still consider you a dear friend. Our differences will never change that.


Adams: I’m curious as to why the words: “life, liberty and property,” were changed to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” You were asked to finalize the document but never explained the change.


Jefferson: I didn’t think an explanation was necessary. Not all Americans own property but all have a right to pursue their dreams or happiness as they understand it.


Adams: By all Americans do you include Africans? The country you so admire—France has abolished slavery in any form. Ben Franklin got rid of his slaves and spent a good part of his later years preaching against this cruel and detestable practice. When did you plan to match your words with deeds?


Jefferson: Did you ask your idol George Washington that question?  He had more than two hundred slaves. No, I’m sure you were choosing your battles and chose not to bite the hand that would ease you into the presidency. But to answer your question: A growing nation needed cash to provide for all its needs. Plantations in the south could not survive on voluntary workers. And so slavery became a viable option. Do I think America will one day abolish slavery? Yes, I do but it will be for another generation to bring that about. By the way, Madison reported to me that your letters to Congress from France revealed nothing so much as your vanity, your prejudice against the French Court, your "venom" against Franklin. When I learned that you were again to collaborate with Franklin in Paris, I was incredulous and in a coded letter to Madison offered a private view of John Adams that was anything but an unqualified endorsement. I was at a loss even to imagine how you might behave in any negotiation, I wrote, and likened you to a poisonous weed.


"Southerners had a great and growing fear that northerners would eliminate slavery somehow, in the near future. Federalist George Nicholas wanting to refute their concerns explaining that the growth of the United States was in the South and the Southwest, slave areas and that all the new states and new people in those areas would protect slavery."



The Aurora, in turn, lashed out at the President as a man "unhinged" by the "delirium of vanity." 
Had Adams refrained from insulting the French, had he chosen more suitable envoys, the country would never have been brought to such a pass. But in a matter of days subscriptions and advertising fell off so drastically that it appeared the paper might fail. 


Anger at Bache and Callender was as intense nearly as that of the French. John Fenno, editor of the rival Gazette of the United States, who asked, "In the name of justice and honor, how long are we to tolerate this scum of party filth and beggarly corruption ... to go thus with impunity?" In the heat of the moment, it was a question many were asking, including the wife of the President. Bache and his kind had the "malice and falsehood of Satan," wrote Abigail, whose dislike of the press, dating from the attacks on Adams by London newspapers a decade before, had nearly reached the breaking point.