Episode 2.11 The Adamses in Philadelphia

[Transcript]

Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.

Episode 2.11 The Adamses in Philadelphia

We left off last week in the summer of 1790. Congress had just passed legislation funding the national debt but also moving the capital to Philadelphia.

Congress adjourned on August 12, 1790. John left for Philadelphia to look for a suitable house to rent there. Nabby gave birth to a third son that summer, and they named him Thomas Hollis Smith. He died sometime the following year, of unknown causes. 

In October, Abigail fell ill with what was probably malaria. It would flare up for the rest of her life. After securing a home in Philadelphia, John returned to New York to undertake the move with Abigail. Charles would remain in New York, living with Nabby and her family. He had gone into the law and hoped to open his own practice. Thomas had graduated from Harvard that summer, and arrived in New York in time to accompany his parents to Philadelphia, where he intended to study the law. 

John Quincy was still in Massachusetts. He had been admitted to the Bar and was in practice in Boston. He was interested in a young lady named Mary Frazier, but he was only 23 and not secure in his income, so his parents dissuaded him from any serious romantic plans.

So not only did John and Abigail have one son in the law, they had all three in the law. John had also advised his son-in-law William to go into the law, but William thought government would be more rewarding. He was having some difficulty staying in any job for too long though, and the Adamses were beginning to question his value as a husband for their only daughter. He had recently left her alone with three small children so he could undertake a mysterious business trip to London.

The family arrived in Philadelphia in November. Abigail was still sick during the journey, and then her niece Louisa became ill upon their arrival, followed by Thomas. It was several weeks before the household was well again. 

The home John had rented was called Bush Hill and was about two miles west of the city, overlooking the Schuylkill River. Abigail thought it was poorly named, pointing out that “there remains neither bush nor shrub upon it, and very few trees, except the pine grove behind it.” She thought it was beautiful, but not nearly as grand as Richmond Hill.

Congress reconvened on December 6, and Abigail’s official schedule resumed in Philadelphia. On Mondays she held a reception at home and on Wednesdays she hosted 16-18 people for dinner each week. In between she returned visits paid to her by others and sometimes dined out with John. They also had a full schedule of teas, balls, parties, and attending the theater with President and Mrs. Washington.

On Feburary 25, 1791, President Washington signed the bill establishing the Bank of the United States, Alexander Hamilton’s crowning achievement. Abigail wanted to invest in more government securities, but John overruled her, preferring, as always, Massachusetts real estate.

Congress adjourned in May, and Abigail and John headed for Braintree. They stopped in New York to see Nabby, but Abigail fell ill with a recurrence of the previous year’s malaria. They spent the summer in Braintree, and Nabby came for a long visit with her children. 

They returned to Philadelphia in October, but not to Bush Hill. John wanted to be in the city and closer to Congress, so they rented a smaller house. Abigail was sick for six weeks after their return to Philadelphia, and unable to leave her bed. She continued to be sick throughout most of the winter. 

Nabby and her children visited Philadelphia in February 1792, and Nabby was able to help take care of her mother. But shortly after the visit, Nabby and her family departed for London so William could pursue some business opportunity.

Congress adjourned in May again that year, and John returned to Braintree. Abigail had already left Philadelphia in April, convinced that Braintree would be better for her health. While they had been living in Philadelphia, part of the town of Braintree had broken off from the rest, forming itself as the new town of Quincy. This happened to be their part of town, so from here on out, I’ll be referring to Braintree as Quincy.

After spending the summer at home, Abigail felt she couldn’t jeopardize her health by returning to Philadelphia. It was an election year, and it was unclear whether John would be re-elected as vice president. So when he returned to Philadelphia in November, she stayed home. It also would be less expensive for John to live in Philadelphia without her. Instead of renting a house, he would rent only a room as others did. And he would not have to do any entertaining without his wife there, so that would cut down considerably on their expenses.

The election of 1792 played out mostly like the election of 1788 had. Washington was unanimously elected president and John came in second place. This time Hamilton had exercised his schemes on John’s behalf, because the other two possible vice presidents were anti-Federalists, Aaron Burr and New York Governor George Clinton, and Hamilton hated them both.

The entire House of Representatives had also been up for election, along with one-third of the Senate, but the new Congressmen would not take their seats until fall 1793. The lame-duck Congress adjourned early, in March, so John took the opportunity to go home to Quincy. And so he was not in Philadelphia during the brutal, deadly yellow fever epidemic of 1793 that we covered last season.

Abigail never returned to Philadelphia as Second Lady. She spent John’s entire second term as Vice President in Quincy, to preserve her health. John spent about six months in Philadelphia each year when Congress was in session, and then the remaining six months at home with Abigail. They wrote to each other weekly during the months he was in Philadelphia.

As we learned last season, the second term for Washington and Adams was pretty nasty. The newspapers were sniping at them all the time. Washington was trying to keep America out of European wars, and political factions at home were dividing the main players on the stage.

John felt pretty useless as Vice President. Washington really didn’t ever come to him for advice. He had very little to do in the Senate, merely breaking ties when necessary. He couldn’t meaningfully contribute to any discussions or debates. Shortly after the election results of 1792 were certain, he wrote to Abigail, 

“Four years more will be as long as I shall have a Taste for public Life or Journeys to Philadelphia. I am determined in the mean time to be no longer the Dupe, and run into Debt to support a vain Post which has answered no other End than to make me unpopular. [I hold] the most insignificant office that ever the Invention of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived.”

Abigail disagreed, telling him that even though the office was insignificant he could exert a “benign influence” throughout the federal government. She assured him that America “will one day do justice to your Memory.” 

It was unpleasant for both of them to be separated once more, even if it was only for half the year. The ability to exchange letters in less than four to six months must have been a comfort though. Philadelphia was a hell of a lot closer than Paris.

She wrote to him in early 1793, “My days of anxiety have indeed been many and painful in years past, when I had many terrors that encompassed me around. I have happily surmounted them, but I do not find that I am less solicitous to hear constantly from you than in times of more danger. … Years subdue the ardor of passion but in lieu thereof friendship and affection deep-rooted subsists which defies the ravages of time, and whilst the vital flame exists.”

For his part, John told her, “I want to sit down and converse with you, every evening. I sit here alone and brood over possibilities and conjectures. [Your letters] give me more entertainment than all the speeches I hear. There are more good thoughts, fine strokes, and mother wit in them than I hear in the whole week. … I am with all the ardor of youth, yours.”

On March 4, 1793, Washington was sworn in at his second inauguration, with John beside him. Shortly after the inauguration, John returned to Quincy because Congress had adjourned until December. Quoting extensively here from Charles Akers’s Abigail Adams: A Revolutionary American Woman,

“By living in Quincy from March to November 1793, John missed the crisis in relations with France, which had created a republic, executed Louis XVI, declared war on Great Britain and Holland, and commissioned a new minister—Edmond Charles Genêt—to the United States. Citizen Genêt’s arrival in the spring of 1793 divided Americans. He rejected Washington’s policy of neutrality and appealed directly to Congress and the nation to support France in all ways short of war. In the long run even Jefferson thought it wise to dissociate hinself from this undiplomatic rashness, a move that caused John to hope for a moment that the Virginian had at last come to his senses. 

That hope was dashed when Jefferson resigned from the cabinet at the end of the year, perhaps, John suspected, to improve his chances of succeeding Washington. John Quincy, bored with writing writs, entered the public controversy surrounding Genêt. Over various pseudonyms he wrote incisive newspaper letters defending the administration’s position that the French alliance had ended with the death of the king and that the President had full constitutional authority to dismiss an unacceptable foreign minister. His letters were widely read from Boston to Philadelphia. At twenty-six, Abigail’s eldest son suddenly emerged from the obscurity of his law office to become a leading citizen of Boston and to catch the eye of Washington, who welcomed his persuasive defender.”

Washington was so grateful for John Quincy’s efforts to defend him that he rewarded John Quincy with the post of “minister resident” to the Netherlands. Somehow this was not quite a full ambassadorship, so would only pay $4500 annual salary instead of the usual $9000 for an ambassador. But even $4500 was much more than he was making as a Boston attorney. It was practically as much as John was paid to be vice president.

John Quincy left for the Netherlands in September 1794, taking his brother Thomas with him as his secretary. This would be Thomas’s first voyage to Europe, and meant that all four of the Adams children had traveled abroad.

The other two Adams offspring were doing better than they had been in earlier years. Nabby and her family had returned from England in February 1793, and it seems that William had had some success there and was actually making some money. Charles was practicing law in New York, and began courting William Smith’s younger sister, Sally Smith.

In September 1794, Abigail’s younger sister Elizabeth lost her husband, John Shaw. Abigail may not have approved of their marriage at the outset, but Shaw had prepared her two younger sons quite well for Harvard, and had turned out to be a decent husband. Unfortunately, their home in Haverhill belonged to the town, not them. As soon as the town hired a new minister, Elizabeth and her children would essentially be homeless. Elizabeth ended up marrying a man named Stephen Peabody just over a year after John Shaw’s death. Peabody was a minister in Atkinson, New Hampshire, across the state line with Massachusetts.

The year 1795 was busy in other ways. Nabby gave birth to her fourth and final child, a girl named Caroline Amelia Smith. Charles married Sally Smith at the end of August, and they would continue to live in New York. And the treaty with Great Britain that John Jay had negotiated was ratified by the Senate in June, immediately causing an uproar over what were perceived as overly favorable terms with Great Britain. 

Washington had sent Jay to London in 1794 to negotiate with the British, who were at war with the French. Both countries were attacking neutral ships, including American ships. American sympathizers with the French cause were calling for the U.S. to declare war on Great Britain, which Washington definitely did not want to do.

John and Abigail were firmly on the anti-war side of things. And for all her lamentations about the inequities of class that she witnessed in Europe, she couldn’t see how the differences between land owners and non-land owners in America created a similar distinction of class. She wrote to John, “The voice of the landed interest is not for War and I dare say it will be found a sound Maxim that the possessors of the soil are the best Judges of what is for the advantage of the Country.” I’m willing to bet that if she and John weren’t among the “possessors of the soil,” her thoughts would have been different.

John Jay had as little negotiating leverage in 1794 as John Adams had had in 1784. The final terms of the treaty gave the Americans almost nothing they wanted: no protection for their ships and no access to British ports for purposes of trade, except in the West Indies. The British did offer to withdraw their troops from forts in the northwest by the end of the year, but they were supposed to be doing that anyway under the terms of the 1783 peace treaty. 

But the treaty did accomplish one important goal, and that was to avoid war with Great Britain. The Senate debated the treaty for 13 days during a special session in June 1795. John returned to Philadelphia for this session, during which he could do nothing but watch and listen. Being Vice President was very unsatisfying, indeed.

1796 was another election year, and there was much speculation about whether Washington would allow himself to be put forth for a third term. As Vice President, John referred to himself in letters to Abigail as the “heir apparent,” which definitely would have caused an uproar if those letters had ever been published. Speaking about “heirs” made the presidency sound like a monarchy, and John already had enough trouble with people thinking he was a monarchist, after all his years in Europe.

John wanted the Presidency, but worried about his age and the toll it would take on his health. He wavered from one day to the next, writing “I am weary of the game. Yet I don’t know how I would live out of it. I hate speeches, messages, addresses, proclamations and such affected, constrained things. I hate levées and drawing rooms. I hate to speak to 1,000 people to whom I have nothing to say. Yet all this I could do.”

Abigail said she had no desire “to be first in Rome” and found no “comfort or pleasure in the contemplation [of it].” She reminded him of how difficult it would be to be president, “You know what is before you—the whips, the scorpions, the thorns without roses, the dangers, anxieties, the weight of empire.”

She told him that if she took only personal considerations into account, she would want him to retire but she would try not to influence him “in a Matter of such Momentous concern.” And as for continuing as vice president under another man, she ruled it out altogether, writing, “I would be second to no Man but Washington.”

She also thought it might be difficult for her to be First Lady, because she was used to speaking her mind. “I should say that I have been so used to a freedom of sentiment that I know not how to place so many guards about me, as will be indispensable, to look at every word before I utter it, and to impose a Silence upon My Self when I long to talk.”

Once Washington made it abundantly clear that he would neither seek nor accept a third term as president, the campaign of 1796 was officially underway. It was still considered unseemly to actively seek public office, so none of the candidates did anything like what we would recognize as campaigning.

John and Thomas Jefferson were widely seen as the two leading candidates. The Republican press declared that Adams was unfit to lead the country and was the “champion of kings, ranks, and titles.” The Federalist papers did the same to Jefferson, accusing him of being an atheist, a Jacobin, and a coward for fleeing his plantation at Monticello during the war.

Side note: in America, calling someone a Jacobin was essentially calling them a supporter of France, which Jefferson was. But it meant a little more than that. During the French Revolution, different factions had arisen out of political clubs. The Girondins and the Jacobins were the two leading factions. The Jacobins were more radical than the Girondins, and they were the ones responsible for the Reign of Terror during which over 10,000 people were executed by the state. So calling Jefferson a Jacobin at this point, post-Reign of Terror, was basically accusing him of supporting state-sponsored terrorism.

Suffice it to say that the newspapers were relentless in their criticisms, and did not limit themselves to publishing things that were actually true. Newspapers could and did print anything they wanted to, regardless of whether it was true. Abigail wrote to John Quincy, still in the Netherlands, “I feel anxious for the Fate of my Country, if the Administration would get into Hands who would depart from the system under which we have enjoyed so great a share of peace, prosperity and happiness. I fear America will never go through an other Election without Blood Shed. We have had a paper War for six weeks past, and if the Candidates had not themselves been intirely passive, Rage and Violence would have thrown the whole Country into a Flame.”

Besides John and Jefferson, other candidates in 1796 were Aaron Burr of New York and Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina. Hamilton was up to his old tricks in election manipulation. He hated both Jefferson and Burr, and he didn’t dislike John, but he thought John was both too independent and also not anti-French enough. Hamilton thought he would have more influence over a President Pinckney than a President Adams. And if Pinckney ended up as vice president instead of Jefferson, that would also be an acceptable outcome in Hamilton’s mind.

News of Hamilton’s machinations in the first election back in 1788 hadn’t reached John until after the election, and hadn’t permanently poisoned him against Hamilton. In fact, when Charles first came to New York after graduatiing from Harvard, he studied law under Hamilton.

But this time, Abigail and John were both fed up with Hamilton’s double-dealings when word of his shenanigans reached them before the election of 1796. Abigail considered Hamilton “a man ambitious as Julius Ceasar, a subtle intriguer.” John called him “as great a hypocrite as any in the U.S. His intrigues in the election I despise.”

Hamilton’s intrigues backfired on him when John won the election with 71 votes, Jefferson came in a close second with 69, and Pinckney in a more distant third with 59 votes. The electoral vote was counted in the Senate, over which John presided, so he had the pleasure of announcing his own election as President of the United States.

Abigail’s worries about the presidency are amusingly described in a dream she had before the election results were announced. “I was riding in my Coach, where I know not, but all at once I perceived flying in the Air a Number of large black Balls of the Size of a 24 pounder, all directed at me. All of them however burst and fell before they reach’d me tho I continued going immediately towards them.” Anxiety in the form of cannonballs would certainly be disconcerting.

But she was, as always, ready to do her duty and to support John as he did his. After the election results were final, she wrote to him, “My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation. … They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important Trusts and Numerous duties connected with it. I am my dearest Friend allways willing to be a fellow Labourer with You in all those Relations and departments to which my abilities are competent, and I hope to acquire every requisite degree of Taciturnity which my Station calls for, tho…truly…it will be putting a force upon Nature.”

John knew his inauguration date would be March 4, 1797, and he wrote to Abigail from Philadelphia in early January, asking her to join him in Philadelphia in time for the inauguration. She knew she couldn’t avoid living in Philadelphia as First Lady, but she also was in no hurry to return. 

She replied to John’s letter, “You ask me what I think of coming in February? I answer that I had rather not if I may be excused.” She also didn’t want to take on the responsibility of furnishing the President’s House where they would reside: “I desire to have nothing to do with it, there are persons who know what is both necessary and proper.” She did offer to help hire and supervise the servants though.

A month later, still before the inauguration, she told John that she didn’t think she could be in Philadelphia until October. John seemed to accept that, writing “It is best for you not to come till next fall. I will go to you as soon as I can but that is uncertain.”

And so John Adams was inaugurated on March 4 without a single member of his family present. George Washington had graciously stayed to see his successor sworn in, and then promptly departed for Mount Vernon. That afternoon in Philadelphia was the last time Washington, Jefferson, and Adams, heroes of the Revolution in different ways, would be together. John felt shorter than ever in the presence of the two tall Virginians. Jefferson wore a long blue frock coat, Washington had on a black velvet suit, and John wore a simple suit of gray broadcloth, without fancy buttons or knee buckles.

He had ridden to the inauguration in a simple but elegant carriage drawn by two horses. After being relentlessly accused of being a monarchist, he was trying to be as overtly non-monarchical as possible.

John was disappointed by his family’s absence, writing to Abigail, “It would have given me great Pleasure to have had Some of my Family present, at my Inauguration which was the most affecting and over powering Scene I ever acted in.” 

He also was having second thoughts about Abigail waiting until the fall to join him. Two weeks after the inauguration he wrote, “I never wanted your Advice and assistance more in my Life.” As the weeks passed, his entreaties grew more desperate: 

“I must go to you or you must come to me. I cannot live without you.” 

“I must entreat you to lose not a moment’s time in preparing to come on, that you may take off from me every care of life but that of my public duty, assist me with your councils, and console me with your conversation.” 

“The times are critical and dangerous, and I must have you here to assist me. I must now repeat this with zeal and earnestness. I can do nothing without you.”

John was being overwhelmed by the presidency. He wrote to Abigail, “I should not have believed it possible for my Eyes to have read the Papers which are brought me every day and every hour of the day.” He half-joked that Washington must have been secretly gleeful during John’s inauguration, writing, “He seemed to enjoy a triumph over me. Methought I heard him think Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest.”

And as usual, John was worried about the expense of being president. No matter how much money he made, he never thought it would be enough. During Washington’s presidency, he and Martha had rented the Robert Morris mansion and furnished it with their own furniture from Mount Vernon. Obviously they had taken their furniture with them when they left.

John’s salary as president was $25,000, which would be worth about $924,000 today. The rent on the Morris mansion was $2700 per year, plus another $2500 to purchase a new carriage and a pair of horses. Congress had given him an allowance of $14,000 to purchase furniture, which is more than $350,000 in today’s money. Sure, he needed to buy a lot of things, but that’s A LOT of money! In the end, the Adamses would leave the presidency with thousands of dollars of savings, so as usual, it was much ado about nothing.

Abigail finally relented to John’s pleas and decided to come to Philadelphia as soon as possible, but there were things in Quincy that needed to be wrapped up first. Taxes needed to be paid, and all their various properties and homes had to be rented or otherwise put into someone’s care. John’s elderly mother died at the age of 89 on April 21, followed a few days later by Abigail’s 21-year-old niece Mary, one of her brother William’s daughters. His other daughter, Louisa, still lived with Abigail and would accompany her to Philadelphia. 

After holding a funeral for John’s mother in the parlor at Peacefield, Abigail departed Quincy on April 27. Along the way, she stopped in East Chester, New York, a backwater town where Nabby and her family were now living. William Smith’s fortunes had taken a turn for the worse, and he had lost a lot of money in land speculation. The Smith family was barely making ends meet. Abigial wrote to her sister Mary, “My reflections upon prospects there, took from me all appetite to food, and depresst my spirits, before too low.”

Abigail also stopped in New York City to see Charles, his wife Sally, and their one-year-old daughter, Susanna, who had been named after John’s mother. She was relieved to see that Charles seemed to have settled down into married life, and to discover that Sally seemed quite different from other members of her family, namely her brother William, Nabby’s husband.

On May 10, 1797, Abigail was still 25 miles from Philadelphia when she was surprised by the appearance of John in his carriage. Apparently he had calculated the date of her arrival and had come out to meet her and ride with her the rest of the way to the city. They dined in the riverside town of Bristol, Pennsylvania and arrived into Philadelphia at sunset. America’s second First Lady had finally arrived.

Next week, we’ll join the Adamses for their sole term as President and First Lady.

Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matthew Dull. And thanks to everyone who has recommended the podcast to others, it’s really helping!