It’s a holiday weekend, so let’s take a short look back in American history and see how it may inform us today.
Donald Trump was the second authoritarian American president; the first was America’s first “conservative” president, one-term Federalist John Adams, who followed George Washington in the election of 1796 and was replaced by Jefferson in the election of 1800. We almost lost our democracy because of Adams’ ego and unwillingness to accept criticism.
There was quite an effort to rehabilitate Adams’ image during the George W. Bush administration, including books and a multi-part TV series, pushed hard by conservatives because, like the Bush family, the Adams family produced a son who also went on to be president.
But, in reality, John Adams (1797-1801) was a pretty terrible president (although his son, abolitionist John Quincy Adams [1825-1829], was a pretty good president, but that’s another story).
It started in 1798 when Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin and editor of the Philadelphia newspaper the Aurora, began to speak out against the policies of then-President John Adams.
Back then, there wasn’t a president/vice-president ticket for voters like today; whoever got the most Electoral College votes became president while whoever came in second became vice president. Thus, in the election of 1796 Federalist Adams and Democratic-Republican Jefferson became president and vice president.
Benjamin Franklin Bache supported Vice President Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party (today called the Democratic Party) when John Adams led the conservative Federalists (who today would be philosophically close to most Republicans).
Bache attacked Adams in an op-ed piece by calling the president “old, querulous, Bald, blind, crippled, Toothless Adams.”
To be sure, Bache wasn’t the only one attacking Adams in 1798. His Aurora was one of about 20 independent newspapers aligned with Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, and many were openly questioning Adams’ policies and ridiculing Adams’ fondness for formality and grandeur.
On the Federalist side, conservative newspaper editors were equally outspoken. Noah Webster wrote that Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans were “the refuse, the sweepings of the most depraved part of mankind from the most corrupt nations on earth.”
Another Federalist characterized the Democratic-Republicans as “democrats, momocrats and all other kinds of rats,” while Federalist newspapers worked hard to turn the rumor of Jefferson’s rape of his deceased wife’s half-sister, the enslaved Sally Hemmings, into a full-blown scandal (which it certainly was and deserved to be characterized as).
But while Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans had learned to develop a thick skin, University of Missouri-Rolla history professor Larry Gragg points out in American History magazine that Bache’s writings sent Adams and his wife into a self-righteous frenzy.
Abigail wrote to her husband and others that Benjamin Franklin Bache was expressing the “malice” of a man possessed by Satan. The Democratic-Republican newspaper editors were engaging, she said, in “abuse, deception, and falsehood,” and Bache was a “lying wretch.”
Abigail insisted that Congress must act to punish Bache for his “most insolent and abusive” words about her husband and his administration. His “wicked and base, violent and calumniating abuse” must be stopped, she demanded.
Abigail Adams followed the logic employed by George W. Bush’s followers who referred to his administration as if it was “the government” and say that those opposed to an administration’s policies are “unpatriotic.” She wrote that Bache’s “abuse” being “leveled against the Government” of the United States (her husband) could even plunge the nation into a “civil war.”
Encouraged by Abigail and Federalist newspapers of the day, Federalist senators and congressmen — who controlled both legislative houses along with the presidency — came to the defense of John Adams by passing a series of four laws that came to be known together as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The vote was so narrow — 44 to 41 in the House of Representatives — that in order to ensure passage the lawmakers wrote a sunset provision into its most odious parts: Those laws, unless renewed, would expire the last day of John Adams’ first term of office, March 3, 1801.
Empowered with this early version of the Patriot Act, President John Adams ordered his “unpatriotic” opponents arrested, and specified that only Federalist judges on the Supreme Court would be both judges and jurors.
Bache, often referred to as “Lightning Rod Junior” after his famous grandfather, was the first to be hauled into jail (before the laws even became effective!), followed by New York Timepiece editor John Daly Burk, which put his paper out of business. Bache died of yellow fever while awaiting trial, and Burk accepted deportation to avoid imprisonment and then fled.
Others didn’t avoid prison so easily. Editors of seventeen of the twenty or so Democratic-Republican-affiliated newspapers were arrested by the Adams administration, and ten were convicted and imprisoned; many of their newspapers went out of business.
On the Federalist side, conservative newspaper editors were equally outspoken. Noah Webster wrote that Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans were “the refuse, the sweepings of the most depraved part of mankind from the most corrupt nations on earth.”
Another Federalist characterized the Democratic-Republicans as “democrats, momocrats and all other kinds of rats,” while Federalist newspapers worked hard to turn the rumor of Jefferson’s rape of his deceased wife’s half-sister, the enslaved Sally Hemmings, into a full-blown scandal (which it certainly was and deserved to be characterized as).
But while Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans had learned to develop a thick skin, University of Missouri-Rolla history professor Larry Gragg points out in American History magazine that Bache’s writings sent Adams and his wife into a self-righteous frenzy.
Abigail wrote to her husband and others that Benjamin Franklin Bache was expressing the “malice” of a man possessed by Satan. The Democratic-Republican newspaper editors were engaging, she said, in “abuse, deception, and falsehood,” and Bache was a “lying wretch.”
Abigail insisted that Congress must act to punish Bache for his “most insolent and abusive” words about her husband and his administration. His “wicked and base, violent and calumniating abuse” must be stopped, she demanded.
Abigail Adams followed the logic employed by George W. Bush’s followers who referred to his administration as if it was “the government” and say that those opposed to an administration’s policies are “unpatriotic.” She wrote that Bache’s “abuse” being “leveled against the Government” of the United States (her husband) could even plunge the nation into a “civil war.”
Encouraged by Abigail and Federalist newspapers of the day, Federalist senators and congressmen — who controlled both legislative houses along with the presidency — came to the defense of John Adams by passing a series of four laws that came to be known together as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The vote was so narrow — 44 to 41 in the House of Representatives — that in order to ensure passage the lawmakers wrote a sunset provision into its most odious parts: Those laws, unless renewed, would expire the last day of John Adams’ first term of office, March 3, 1801.
Empowered with this early version of the Patriot Act, President John Adams ordered his “unpatriotic” opponents arrested, and specified that only Federalist judges on the Supreme Court would be both judges and jurors.
Bache, often referred to as “Lightning Rod Junior” after his famous grandfather, was the first to be hauled into jail (before the laws even became effective!), followed by New York Timepiece editor John Daly Burk, which put his paper out of business. Bache died of yellow fever while awaiting trial, and Burk accepted deportation to avoid imprisonment and then fled.
Others didn’t avoid prison so easily. Editors of seventeen of the twenty or so Democratic-Republican-affiliated newspapers were arrested by the Adams administration, and ten were convicted and imprisoned; many of their newspapers went out of business.
As Congressman George Thatcher wrote in a letter now held at the Massachusetts Historical Society, “Mr. Griswald [sic] [was] laying on blows with all his might upon Mr. Lyon… Griswald continued his blows on the head, shoulder, & arms of Lyon, [who was] protecting his head & face as well as he could. Griswald tripped Lyon & threw him on the floor & gave him one or two [more] blows in the face.”
In sharp contrast to his predecessor George Washington, America’s second president John Adams had succeeded in creating an atmosphere of fear and division in the new republic, and it brought out the worst in his conservative supporters.
Across the new nation, Federalist mobs and Federalist-controlled police and militia attacked Democratic-Republican newspapers and shouted down or threatened individuals who dared speak out in public against John Adams.
Even members of Congress were not legally immune from the long arm of Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts.
Congressman Lyon — already hated by the Federalists for his opposition to the law, and recently caned in Congress by Federalist Roger Griswold — wrote an article pointing out Adams’ “continual grasp for power” and suggesting that Adams had an “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.”
The rightwing Federalists were outraged, and convened a federal grand jury and indicted Congressman Lyon for bringing “the President and government of the United States into contempt.”
Lyon, who had served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, was led through the town of Vergennes, Vermont in shackles. He ran for re-election from his 12×16-foot Vergennes jail cell and handily won his seat.
“It is quite a new kind of jargon,” Lyon wrote from jail to his constituents, “to call a Representative of the People an Opposer of the Government because he does not, as a legislator, advocate and acquiesce in every proposition that comes from the Executive.”
The failure of John Adams’ efforts to turn the presidency into a king-like position shows that when enough people become politically active, as they did to defeat Adams in 1800, we can rescue the soul of America from sliding into a corrupt, abusive police state.
In the end, as Dan Sisson wrote in a book I edited, The American Revolution of 1800, America turned away from Adams’ authoritarianism and became a more democratic republic. Now, again, we have a similarly huge job ahead of us as Trumpism spreads like a virus.
Tag, you’re it!
Originally posted at The Hartmann Report