Chapter Thirty-Four
PHILADELPHIA
Pennsylvania
In the cobblestone streets and redbrick buildings of the City of Brotherly Love, I heard more languages than in any other
place I’d been. German settlers still spoke their native language in the marketplace, where one might also hear Dutch, Algonquin,
and Iroquois. The growing black population, both enslaved and free, switched freely between English and a mixed tongue that
drew upon their native African languages. And French was heard everywhere, as the city had become a haven for refugees fleeing unrest. Many Americans greeted them with open arms,
inspired by the notion that France, too, might cast off a king.
Philadelphia was the most populous city in the United States. And as winter descended, so did high society, leaving calling
cards every afternoon while our new rooms were still heaped with boxes and trunks I had yet to unpack.
The president’s house was on Market Street, just south of Independence Hall. And Mrs. Washington’s drawing room announced
the season with garlands of pine and candles aplenty. As guests thronged and a constellation of beauties each came to curtsey
before Mrs. Washington, I overheard conversations whispered behind the flutter of fans.
Some guests enthused over Hamilton’s dynamism and exciting financial plans.
Others, wearing tricolor cockades of red, white, and blue, praised Jefferson for championing the common man against the overreach of a too-powerful federal government.
And some were still whispering that the volumes Vice President Adams wrote in London proved he distrusted democracy so much that he’d make us a monarchy in all but name.
Hearing absurd nonsense like that made me exceedingly sour. And attending the president’s lady on the dais, I whispered in
her ear, “I don’t think Philadelphia beauties quite compare to New York’s.”
Mrs. Washington revealed only the hint of a smirk. “Certainly, the occasion is poorer for the absence of your lovely daughter,
Mrs. Church, and Mrs. Van Rensselaer, but we are recompensed by the company of their sister, Mrs. Hamilton.”
We both looked in the direction of Eliza Hamilton, who was, in that moment, modestly demurring an offer to dance from Senator
James Monroe. The poor young lady was besieged night and day with those seeking favor and influence, for it was now openly
and notoriously said that her husband was the most important man in government.
And that Washington was merely the figurehead.
Hamilton’s tireless but aggressive efforts to establish American commerce were masterly, but his tendency to behave as if
he controlled all the levers of government rubbed many the wrong way.
Including and especially Secretary Jefferson.
“I feel caught between them,” John often grumbled. “That is, if either deigns to involve me in matters of state. Nevertheless,
public affairs go on so smoothly that we scarcely know Congress is sitting. I fear I’m quite ornamental. The vice presidency
of these United States is the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
I would laugh, asking, “If the vice president is ornamental, then what can be said of the vice president’s wife?”
The truth was that I had little to do in Philadelphia but fan Martha Washington at public levees and spend our savings fixing
up our rented house on so-called Bush Hill—which I disliked, not least because there wasn’t a single bush upon the property.
For this insignificant office of the vice presidency, we’d been away from Braintree nearly two years!
Oh, how I longed to tend my own rosebushes and plant herbs in my own garden. And if I was to fling our money about like rain, I’d rather shower it on our
friends and family.
I tried not to let it gall me that we were emptying our coffers to serve strangers tea, coffee, cranberry tarts, and gingerbread cake. But at least we had the comfort of our sons, as Charlie and Tommy had both joined us in Philadelphia to read the law.
When the boys weren’t studying, they squired me about the city. We visited the State House Bell, its inscription proclaiming
liberty to all the land. They also took me to the playhouse, and I enjoyed the performance—until someone nearby remarked that
the author was Royall Tyler.
My head snapped up in shock. Charlie feigned innocence. Tommy laughed aloud.
“You rogues!” I cried. That Nabby’s one-time suitor—father of an illegitimate child—had become a successful playwright was
galling enough.
That I’d enjoyed his work? Nearly intolerable.
“He’s now attorney for the state of Vermont,” Charlie said when we returned home.
I cursed myself for thinking—just for a moment—that he was doing better for himself than Colonel Smith. “You boys had better
outstrip him in accomplishment. You’re the sons of John Adams, after all.”
“We will,” said Tommy, putting his feet on the table to vex me. “One day, Papa’s three sons will all practice together with
him.”
“The law offices of Adams, Adams, Adams, and Adams?” Charlie grinned. “It sounds like a farce.”
From behind his paper, John muttered, “Don’t think I’ll share my clients with you. As it happens, Johnny already lost his
first case in Boston, so I may have to disown him.”
The boys exchanged a glance.
I shot John a warning look.
“I jest,” he said. “Am I not allowed levity in my own home—especially after I sit bored all day presiding over the Senate?”
Unless Congress was in session, there was nothing of import he could do. So when the Congress went into recess, we saw no
reason to stay in Philadelphia. Indeed, I could scarcely contain my excitement to return to the house we’d left to the wilderness
in Braintree, making our escape from the political whirl.
Unfortunately, politics followed us wherever we went. Upon our return home, John Quincy arrived for supper carrying a pamphlet by Thomas Paine: The Rights of Man.
John rolled his eyes. “I can guess what it says and it may go directly into the fire.”
But our eldest son insisted upon reading it to us anyway. It was important, he said. People were reading it everywhere in
the country—farmers praising it, merchants cursing it.
So, we sat down to listen.
We knew, of course, that Paine championed the violent overthrow of the French monarchy, but this pamphlet also attacked the
very concept of a balanced government that had been adopted in the United States. The Constitution that my husband had so
ably championed in his A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.
“Now comes the coup de grace,” John Quincy said. “Jefferson has endorsed Paine’s pamphlet.”
There it was, printed in plain black and white for all to see.
It was no secret that Jefferson considered our Constitution to be flawed and the French Revolution to be an extension of our
own. But he was secretary of state now. For him to say it—nay, to print it!—gave it the stamp of American policy.
The president wouldn’t like that.
Alas, my husband was more upset that Jefferson wrote he was glad “something is publicly said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us.”
At hearing that, John nearly choked on his cider. “Heresies?”
I tried to calm my husband. “Don’t read too much into it.” Though we’d sensed a growing difference of opinion with Jefferson,
we remained extremely warm friends. “I’m sure he meant Hamilton, not you.”
John shot out of his chair. “It wasn’t Hamilton who wrote three volumes defending the very separation of powers Paine mocks.”
I blew out a slow calming breath. “Nevertheless, you ought not think Thomas Jefferson, of all people, would attack you personally.”
“It gets worse,” our son said, ignoring the plea in my eyes to leave it alone before his father burst a blood vessel. “‘No doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard of common sense.’”
Now my husband looked stricken. “What can Jefferson mean, saying our citizens will rally a second time? Is he encouraging
citizens to rebel against the very government in which he serves? And for what reason?”
John Quincy now put down the pamphlet. “Whatever he means by it, this endorsement is indiscreet and disloyal.”
Our son was now a rising, but struggling, lawyer in Boston, deeply ashamed whenever he borrowed a few coins to keep afloat.
We sensed a frustration in him. His brain—once employed in the intrigues of foreign courts—was dulling with legal matters
no weightier than an overdue tavern bill or a family quarrel over the inheritance of a cow.
But Jefferson’s folly set the rusting gears of my son’s political mind into motion. “It doesn’t matter if Jefferson named
Papa as a so-called heretic. Everyone has inferred it. In Boston, they say my father is such a monarchist that he’d welcome
King George back to our shores. And this will only confirm their worries.”
“One will always hear slanders,” I murmured.
Nevertheless, our son took umbrage against what seemed a betrayal by a family friend and government official. “Jefferson is
abusing his position of high authority to frighten people with his paranoia about the powers of the presidency.”
Looking pained, John grumbled, “Well, a free man has a right to believe what he likes.”
“Does Jefferson think so?” John Quincy asked. “If he did, he wouldn’t accuse those who disagree with him of heresy. Who elected Jefferson to be the Pope of Democracy?”
No one. No one, indeed.
Now John Quincy said, “Father, this must not be suffered with silence.”
My husband shook his head. “Jefferson has misstepped here, and Washington will be wroth. I won’t add to the president’s burdens
by carrying on a pointed quarrel in public with his secretary of state.”
“Then I’ll do it,” said John Quincy.
My husband thought it a bad idea but did not forbid it. For my part, I felt as if a veiled accusation could not simply sit
unanswered. And did my son not deserve to express his political beliefs? We’d fought a war for just that principle.
In the end, John Quincy published a series of letters in the paper under the pseudonym Publicola, which prompted a letter
from Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson wrote to my husband, “I have a dozen times taken up my pen to write to you and as often laid it down again, suspended
between opposing considerations. I determine however to write from a conviction that truth, between candid minds, can never
do harm.”
Thereupon he explained that his endorsement had been published without permission. Someone had lent him the pamphlet, and
to excuse the delay in returning it, he scribbled a line of colorful praise. Never did he think this little note would then
be forwarded to the publisher and printed.
“I hoped it would not attract notice,” Jefferson now claimed. “But a writer came forward under the signature of Publicola,
attacking not only the author and principles of the pamphlet, but myself as its sponsor, by name.”
Still, Jefferson closed his letter on a conciliatory note. “We have always differed as friends should do, respecting each
other’s motives, and confining our differences to private conversation. And I declare that nothing was further from my intention
than to have had your name or mine brought before the public on this occasion.”
John groaned. “He thinks that I am Publicola!”
My husband took up his pen to deny it. Then wrote, “The friendship which has subsisted for fifteen years between us, without
the smallest interruption, and until this occasion without the slightest suspicion, ever has been and still is, very dear
to my heart.”
As it was to mine.
Unfortunately, whatever our personal feelings, the incident exposed an expanding chasm inside our own government.
Differences between friends that might grow too wide to ever paper over.
Divided between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, factions were hardening.
And if forced to choose, I feared Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would no longer be on the same side.
Across the ocean, another people yearning for freedom were awash in blood. Jefferson thought it a mirror of our own revolution.
But was it a distorted picture of corrupted ideals, or a reflection of a fratricidal struggle here yet to come?