XIII
Hamilton was planning a repetition of the scheme he engineered in 1789, to bring Adams in second, with Pinckney first. He had never cared for the downright Puritan of Quincy, and the latter had never forgiven him the reduction of the Adams vote far below that of Washington in the first election. During the first Administration, Adams’s vote was indispensable to Hamilton’s policies on several occasions, and it had never failed. Thus there was no opposition to his reëlection. But the Presidency—that was different. It was evident that Adams was not a man to be led around by the nose by any man or clique, and Hamilton had never been a god of his idolatry. Thus, during the summer and autumn of ‘96, Hamilton was busy with a subterranean plan to substitute Pinckney for Adams in the Presidency by arranging for Federalist electors, scattered over the country, to vote to a man for Pinckney, while throwing a few Adams votes away on other men. As the high man was elected President and the second Vice-President, he expected to carry his point by management.
It does not appear, however, that all his followers were in on the secret. His ever-faithful servitor, Oliver Wolcott’s father, either knew nothing of it or disapproved, for he feared that the juggling would result in the election of Jefferson, to the Vice-Presidency at least.[1180] In the event of his election to the Presidency, Wolcott hoped ‘the northern States would separate from the southern.’[1181] As fate would have it, the suspicious Adams anticipated some such attempt to trick him, and his friends decided quietly to offset any possible Adams losses by dropping a few Pinckney votes to a third party. The result was a Jeffersonian sweep in the West and South, with the exception of Maryland, where Adams had a majority of three. Of the thirty-nine New England votes, Pinckney received but twenty-two, while all went to Adams. Such was the result of Hamilton’s strategy. Adams was elected with 71 votes, and Jefferson, with three votes less, had eight more than Pinckney.
Thus the hated leader of the Democrats became Vice-President.
Then, too late, the Hamiltonians realized their mistake. Wolcott groaned that Jefferson in the Vice-Presidency ‘would be more dangerous than as President.’[1182] His very willingness to accept the position was ‘sufficient proof of some defect of character.’ Chauncey Goodrich was in accord. ‘We must expect him to be the nucleus of a faction,’ he wrote, ‘and if it will give him some greater advantage for mischief, it draws him from his covert.’[1183] Ames dreaded his election as ‘a formidable evil.’[1184] Hamilton buried his chagrin in a cynicism. ‘Our Jacobins say they are pleased that the Lion and Lamb are to lie down together,’ he wrote King. ‘Mr. Adams’s personal friends talk a little the same way.... Skeptics like me quietly look forward to the event, willing to hope but not prepared to believe. If Mr. Adams has vanity ’tis plain a plot has been laid to take hold of it.’[1185] These hints at the possible seduction of Adams were not without some justification.
Madison had urged Jefferson to accept the Vice-Presidency on the ground that ‘your neighborhood to Adams may have a valuable effect on his counsels.... It is certain that his censures of our paper system, and the intrigues at New York for setting Pinckney above him have fixed an enmity with the British faction.’[1186] Before receiving this letter, the incomparable strategist at Monticello had written Madison that in the event of a tie he should ‘solicit on my behalf that Mr. Adams may be preferred.’[1187] Could he, by any chance, have expected this admonition to reach Adams in any way? A few days later, we find him writing directly to Adams expressing regret that they had been put in opposition to one another. It seemed, he said, that Adams had been chosen. Of course he might be ‘cheated’ by ‘a trick worthy of the subtilty of your arch-friend of New York who has been able to make of your real friends tools to defeat their and your best wishes.’ Personally, he asked no happier lot than to be left ‘with the society of neighbors, friends, and fellow-laborers of the earth’ rather than with ‘spies and sycophants.’[1188] Four days later, we find him writing Madison of his willingness to serve under Adams. ‘He is perhaps the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in.’[1189] Other letters probably phrased for Adams’s eye went out from Monticello, referring to their ‘ancient friendship.’ But he wanted no place in the counsels of the Administration—and that was significant enough.[1190]
Meanwhile, the Jefferson letter to Adams, sent to Madison to be delivered or withheld according to his judgment, was put aside. There was a ‘general air’ in the letter indicative of the difficulty under which it was written. Adams might resent the reference to Hamilton. Again he might interpret Jefferson’s expressed preference for the simple life as a reflection on his own ambition. ‘You know the temper of Mr. Adams better than I do,’ wrote Madison, ‘but I have always conceived it to be a very ticklish one.’ The Jeffersonian press had begun to speak in kindly tones of Adams to the disgust of the Federalists.
Then, one bitter cold day, the family carriage appeared at the door of Monticello, and the master carefully supervised the packing of the bones of a mastodon which he had recently acquired and wished to present to the Philadelphia Philosophical Society, of which he had been elected president. Thus he reached the capital on March 2d, to be received, against his expressed wishes, with gun-fire and a procession flying a flag inscribed: ‘Jefferson, Friend of the People.’ He went at once to Francis Tavern to pay his respects to Adams.
Thus the new Administration began, Bache sending a brutal parting shot at the old—an insult to Washington.[1191] But the star of Hamilton had not set, for Adams had foolishly retained the Washington Cabinet, hand-picked by his ‘arch-friend of New York,’ and the congressional leaders were still under the magic spell of the old Federalist chief. That was the cloud on the horizon, small that day, but destined to grow bigger and blacker until the storm broke, leaving much wreckage behind.