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The Presidency of John Adams

John Adams, born to a prosperous farmer in Massachusetts, became the second President of the United States after George Washington, who was a "tough act to follow" (i.e., no one could be as respected as Washington was). John Adams was elected President as the Federalist Party's candidate in 1796, and served from 1797-1801.

He served only one term (four years) and his presidency was a failure due primarily to foreign policy humiliations. The problem was that no one in Europe respected this new country called the United States, and Adams had to deal with that lack of respect. Adams had been a successful attorney, and had courageously obtained "not guilty" verdicts at the trial of the British soldiers who fired upon colonists in the Boston Massacre. But like many trial attorneys, Adams was combative in personal discussions also. He loved to argue all the time. That does not make for a good President.

Adams did not handle the criticism of him well. Recall that he was from Puritan Massachusetts, where it was customary to exclude or even execute someone who challenged authority. Adams' reaction to unfavorable statements about him was to sign the Alien & Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize him!

The political party known as the "Federalist Party," which Adams led, wanted to censor and weaken the opposition party, known as the "Democratic-Republican Party." The Alien & Sedition Acts were designed to weaken the Democratic-Republican Party, which had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as its leaders. The Alien Act gave the President the power to expel aliens (immigrants) from the country, and the Sedition Act made it a crime to impede any law or utter criticism of high government officials like Adams. By today's standards, the Sedition Act was blatantly unconstitutional under the First Amendment protection of free speech.

Jefferson and Madison responded to the Alien & Sedition Acts by drafting strong state resolutions (Kentucky and Virginia, respectively) to "nullify" or declare the Alien & Sedition Acts unconstitutional. Jefferson and Madison viewed the Acts primarily as an attack on their Democratic-Republican Party by Adams' Federalist Party. Jefferson and Madison invoked state sovereignty, claiming that a state does not have to obey an unconstitutional federal law. This unintentionally provided a basis for states in the South later to try to "nullify" other federal laws, leading to the Civil War.

The Adams Administration then went from bad to worse. From 1798 through 1800, there was an undeclared naval war with France, which was the result of the United States aligning itself with France's enemy, England, on the high seas. Specifically, American accepted British naval protection, and that resulted in conflicts with the French. (England and France were enemies throughout the 1700s and 1800s).

One final act by President Adams angered his political opponents further. There was a five-month delay between the presidential election and the swearing in of a new President (the gap is only about two months now). After Thomas Jefferson crushed Adams in the election of 1800, Adams appointed a bunch of "midnight judges" just before Adams was replaced by Jefferson. Jefferson was so angry by this "lame duck" action (something done by a politician after he is defeated but just before he is replaced in office by the winner) that Jefferson blocked the payment of salaries to these new judges for their work. This led to the famous case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), where the Supreme Court held in Jefferson's favor by declaring a federal law to be unconstitutional. This was the first time the new Supreme Court declared an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional and thus void.



 


Date: 2016-04-22; view: 721


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