John Adams

John Adams took the oath of office on March 4, 1797, replacing George Washington as president of the United States. I believe that Washington was the second-greatest president in American history. He sits between FDR and Abraham Lincoln. While Lincoln abolished slavery and FDR saved humanity from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, George Washington preserved the spoils of the American Revolution. With the British surrender at Yorktown, a new nation was born. The first nation since ancient Athens and the Roman Republic (which collapsed all the way back in -27 BCE!) to prioritize democracy and consent of the governed, America was a unique nation with a unique destiny. It was a nation built not upon religious worship or ethnic labels, but on liberty, opportunity, equality, progress, and democracy. George Washington, by making the presidency an office that respected checks and balances, showed the rest of the world that the American Revolution's values could serve as the basis for a stable nation. Could John Adams ever live up to his lofty predecessor, or would he be doomed to look awful in comparison?

In 1794, Washington and his administration signed the Jay Treaty. Amidst rising tensions between the US and Britain, the Jay Treaty was created to revive the two nations' alliance. It worked in regards to cooling off tensions with Britain but had other disastrous impacts. In 1778, France joined the Revolutionary War on the side of the US, wanting to spite their opponent in a centuries-old rivalry. After the war, strong ties between the US and France remained, but Paris felt betrayed by the Jay Treaty. At the end of 1796 and the start of 1797, France retaliated against the Jay Treaty by randomly attacking American ships. It was in this startling environment that Adams assumed control of the executive branch. Adams wisely realized the severity of the situation and started looking for a diplomatic solution.

Just under a year into his presidency, Adams, in the autumn of 1797, sent a trio of American politicians to resolve the crisis. The 3 men sent by Adams were John Marshall, Elbridge Gerry, and Charles Pinckney. In October 1797, Gerry, Marshall, and Pinckney met with then-French Minister of Foreign Affairs Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. De Talleyrand gave them only 15 minutes of his time, immediately abandoning the conference after those 15 minutes were up. Replacing de Talleyrand was a French trio serving as a counterpart to Adams' delegates. The three French officials then said that the peace conference could not continue until Marshall, Gerry, and Pinckney delivered the following:

• A formal apology for criticisms of the French government made by Adams
• American coverage of debts France owed to US citizens
• A $10,000,000 loan to the French government
• A gift of $25,000 for de Talleyrand himself

Obviously, Pinckney, Gerry, and Marshall all refused to comply with the diplomats' demands. Marshall then wrote a letter to President Adams describing what had taken place. Adams kept the letter a secret for several months, correctly identifying how it threatened to spark a full-out war between France and America, which neither country was prepared for. However, in late March 1798, many Congressmen accused Adams of hiding good news regarding diplomatic developments in order to make France look bad. These allegations soon convinced all of the Senate and House of Representatives, who, on April 3, 1798, ordered Adams to release all information regarding the peace conferences. Adams reluctantly complied, publishing, among other things, Marshall's letter. Because Marshall named the 3 French politicians "X", "Y", and "Z", the resulting scandal became known as the XYZ Affair.

Upon learning about the XYZ Affair, the American people were furious. Despite Adams' opposition to war, the Senate withdrew from all treaties signed between US and French diplomats on July 7, 1798. With this, the Quasi-War - a period of undeclared conflict between America and France - commenced. Throughout this period, Adams made some of the best choices of his whole presidency. For instance, he signed the Logan Act in 1799, which makes it a crime to engage in geopolitical conferences with other nations on behalf of the US if the federal government never gave you permission to attend those meetings. The Logan Act protects America's reputation abroad, as now people cannot humiliate the country by representing it at peace conferences unprepared and unqualified. Adams also established the navy.

To fund the new navy, Adams passed a tax on homes that increased with every window adorning the house. Despite how necessary it was amidst the Quasi-War, Americans despised the policy. In February of 1799, Adams sent a tax collector to an agrarian part of Pennsylvania where many ethnically German farmers lived. There, the tax collector was required to give a speech defending and justifying the tax. The Pennsylvania Dutch farmers weren't convinced by the speech and actually ran the official out of town in the middle of his presentation. This began a period of revolution in Pennsylvania known as the Fries Rebellion in honor of its leader: An auctioneer named John Fries. Over the next few months, the participants in Fries Rebellion kidnapped tax collectors and only let them go on the condition that they go to Adams and tell him what happened. They hoped these tales would pressure Adams into repealing the tax.

When Adams heard these reports, he boldly resisted the pressure. Instead, he sent law enforcement to Pennsylvania, where they arrested several people involved in the Fries Rebellion. Fries then rode on horseback with many of his rebels to the prison where those arrested were being held. While trying to break into the prison and free the rioters, Fries himself was arrested. He and the other participants in his revolt were then tried, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death. On May 21, 1800, Adams pardoned all of those involved in the Fries Rebellion, arguing that their German heritage made it difficult for them to understand US laws - all of which were written in English. I love how Adams handled the Fries Rebellion. The initial tax was justified, and so Adams' fight against the Fries Rebellion was justified. I also oppose the death penalty because it prevents criminals from being fully punished for what they did. Living with the stigma of having participated in the Fries Rebellion is a better penalty than simply dying.

Although Adams demonstrated his love of liberty with his merciful - yet brave - response to the Fries Rebellion, I'll admit that he was quite authoritarian during the bulk of his presidency. And that is why he ranks lower than Washington, Lincoln, or other important crisis leaders. For instance, Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Prior to the Quasi-War, the two main political parties in the US at the time (the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists, of which Adams belonged to the latter) were divided over which member of Europe's duopoly of power America should associate with: Britain or France? Democratic-Republicans supported France because of their pre-existing affection for the French Revolution. Meanwhile, Federalists preferred Britain specifically because they lacked affection for the French Revolution.

Even as the Quasi-War began to unfold, Democratic-Republicans continued their Francophilia, just as Federalists grew even more Anglophilic. Owing to the fact that Democratic-Republicans were more comfortable with immigration than Federalists were, immigrants tended to prefer the Democratic-Republicans to the Federalists. As a result, Adams signed the quartet of infamous laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts:

• Naturalization Act of 1798: Signed on June 18, 1798, the Naturalization Act of 1798 raised the amount of time an immigrant had to live in the US before becoming a citizen from 5 years to a staggering 14!
• Alien Friends Act: Signed on June 25, 1798, the Alien Friends Act allowed the federal government to deport any immigrant accused of plotting against public authorities. While the law expired on March 3, 1801, it also never required that the immigrant receive a trial.
• Alien Enemies Act: Signed on July 6, 1798, the Alien Enemies Act (which is still in effect!) allows the president to deport all immigrants from a country the US is at war with.
• Sedition Act: Signed on July 14, 1798, the Sedition Act - which also expired on March 3, 1801 - banned all criticism of the government.

Being a free-speech absolutist and staunchly pro-immigrant, I despise the entirety of the Alien and Sedition Acts. The fact that half of them automatically expired on March 3, 1801, keeps Adams' score from going any lower, but the 4 laws still cause him to lose dozens of points. Just before his tenure expired, Adams responded to his defeat in the 1800 election by Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson by signing the Judiciary Act of 1801. Before Adams approved this bill, members of the Supreme Court would have to leave Washington DC and travel to the headquarters of a circuit court themselves whenever said court was asked to hear a case. This practice (known as circuit riding) was abolished by the law and in its place, an office was established in each circuit court and asked to manage their respective region's cases. The Judiciary Act of 1801 was a necessary reform, but I still consider it a negative as most historians agree that Adams was using it to stuff the court with Federalists that would stymie Jefferson's domestic agenda.

A few months before losing the 1800 election to Jefferson, Adams signed the Treaty of Mortefontaine on September 30, 1800. By restoring all treaties signed by French and American diplomats prior to 1798, the Treaty of Mortefontaine ended the Quasi-War. Adams saved America from a devastating European war! Both France and the US saw thousands of lives and millions of dollars (or francs, in Paris' case) spared from the destruction of war. Adams tried his best to prevent the Quasi-War as a whole in 1798 and then in 1800, he succeeded in preventing it from becoming a full, true war.

That same year, Adams also signed the Slave Trade Act of 1800. The Constitution prohibited the federal government from creating a nationwide ban on the importation of slaves until 1808 at the earliest. Adams found a loophole, realizing that he could regulate the slave trade before that date. Washington realized this same fact. Washington signed the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which said that only foreign ships - and no American ships - could import slaves into the US. Adams went even further, prohibiting Americans from aiding in the shipment of slaves to any country except the United States. Really, Adams could be understood as America's first fully anti-slavery president. While Washington and Jefferson were southerners from Virginia, Adams was a northerner from Massachusetts who proclaimed that the American Revolution wouldn't be complete until slavery was abolished. The tax that sparked the Fries Rebellion also placed a toll on owning slaves!

While I identify more with the Democratic-Republicans than I do with the Federalists, I still believe John Adams was a good president. His authoritarian restrictions on speech and immigration - coupled with his efforts to cripple political opponents by flooding the judicial branch with his supporters - heavily damage his score. But outside of that one major flaw, Adams restricted the slave trade, established the navy, protected America's international reputation via the Logan Act, instituted a liberal and reasonable response to the Fries Rebellion, and prevented America's earliest years from being scarred by the miseries of war and bloodshed. He did not live up to the Washingtonian brilliance of his predecessor, but he still performed well enough to sit at the above-average mark on my list.