772 Chapter XXXI
men clamoring for all- out war against that infidel republic, for which armies were
being raised, American citizens prosecuted as if they were traitors, and alliance
solicited with Great Britain.
As John Adams expressed it to Abigail, it was the corruption of Poland, with
the roles of Russia and Prussia played by John Bull and Louis Baboon. He was
captivated by neither.
Democracy in America
That the United States not only survived intact, but saw the Republicans come
peaceably into office, and within three years even acquired Louisiana, so that the
old European ambitions in the heart of the continent were at last removed, was
due to a combination of factors, some of which can be credited to the wisdom of
the Americans, and some simply to their good fortune. The British by 1799 were
so preoccupied with restoring their rule in Ireland, and the French found the res-
toration of their rule in Haiti so hopeless, while both became so involved in the
renewal of hostilities on the Continent, that they both relieved their pressure on
the United States, which, being on the other side of the ocean, they could not in
any case really quite treat as a “Poland.” Adams reasserted Washington’s policy of
governmental neutrality, however unneutral the country itself might be. He de-
cided early in 1799 to negotiate with France. Since he was doubtful of French in-
tentions, his chief aim was to combat the war spirit of the Hamiltonians, which
was running very high. Russian victories in Italy, mediated through the British
Foreign Office, convinced Hamilton that the hour had come to strike. The High
Federalists, like counter- revolutionaries in Europe, believed for several months in
1799 that the French Revolution was at last over, that the Bourbons would be re-
stored, that Britain was about to triumph, and that the moment was therefore op-
portune for an Anglo- American liberation of Spanish America. Adams scoffed at
the notion; the French Revolution, he said, would go on for years.
Against the loud protests of the most intransigent Federalists, Adams sent over
a peace commission. French attacks on American shipping soon came to a halt.
The High Federalists, robbed of their war and their dreams of glory, in which some
of them had hoped to snuff out American “Jacobinism,” disowned their own presi-
dent as hardly better than a Jacobin himself. Adams, in making peace, probably
expressed the wishes of the rank and file of his party, but he ruined himself in the
eyes of its leaders, who, detesting him as a traitor, would not exert themselves for
his re- election.
In the election of 1800 the Republicans, Jefferson and Burr, won 73 electoral
votes against 65 for Adams and Pinckney. After the crisis produced by the tie be-
tween Jefferson and Burr, which had to be resolved by the House of Representa-
tives, the transfer of power took place to what, until then, had been an organized
opposition. Adams yielded his office rather ungracefully; Hamilton refrained from
the coup d’état of which, in another environment, he might have been capable; and
Jefferson proved to be entirely conciliatory, happily free of any spirit of retaliation.
No doubt the special conditions in America, in contrast to Europe, made it possi-