James Madison was the fourth President of the United States. He once served as Secretary of State under President Thomas Jefferson.
During the first year of Madison’s Administration, the United States prohibited trade with both Britain and France; then in May, 1810, Congress authorized trade with both, directing the President, if either would accept America’s view of neutral rights, to forbid trade with the other nation.
Napoleon pretended to comply. Late in 1810, Madison proclaimed non-intercourse with Great Britain. In Congress a young group including Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, the “War Hawks,” pressed the President for a more militant policy.
The British impressment of American seamen and the seizure of cargoes impelled Madison to give in to the pressure. On June 1, 1812, he asked Congress to declare war.
The young Nation was not prepared to fight; its forces took a severe trouncing. The British entered Washington and set fire to the White House and the Capitol.
But a few notable naval and military victories, climaxed by Gen. Andrew Jackson’s triumph at New Orleans, convinced Americans that the War of 1812 had been gloriously successful. An upsurge of nationalism resulted. The New England Federalists who had opposed the war–and who had even talked secession–were so thoroughly repudiated that Federalism disappeared as a national party.
In retirement at Montpelier, his estate in Orange County, Virginia, Madison spoke out against the disruptive states’ rights influences that by the 1830’s threatened to shatter the Federal Union. In a note opened after his death in 1836, he stated, “The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.”
Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States of America. He once served under George Washington who had been elected the first president of the United States of America, as his secretary of state.
In 1797, despite Jefferson’s public ambivalence and previous claims that he was through with politics, the Republicans selected Jefferson as their candidate to succeed Washington as president. In those days, candidates did not campaign for office openly, so Jefferson did little more than remain at home on the way to finishing a close second to then-Vice President John Adams in the electoral college, which, by the rules of the time, made Jefferson the new vice president. Besides presiding over the Senate, the vice president had essentially no substantive role in government. The long friendship between Adams and Jefferson had cooled due to political differences (Adams was a Federalist), and Adams did not consult his vice president on any important decisions.
To occupy his time during his four years as vice president, Jefferson authored “A Manual of Parliamentary Practice,” one of the most useful guides to legislative proceedings ever written, and served as the president of the American Philosophical Society.
John Adams‘s presidency revealed deep fissures in the Federalist Party between moderates such as Adams and Washington and more extreme Federalists like Hamilton. In the presidential election of 1800, Hamiltonian Federalists refused to back Adams, clearing the way for the Republican candidates Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr to tie for first place with 73 electoral votes each. After a long and contentious debate, the House of Representatives selected Jefferson to serve as the third U.S. president, with Burr as his vice president.
The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 was a landmark of world history, the first peacetime transfer of power from one party to another in a modern republic.
Delivering his inaugural address on March 4, 1801, Jefferson spoke to the fundamental commonalities uniting all Americans despite their partisan differences. “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle,” he stated. “We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
President Jefferson’s first term in office was remarkably successful and productive. In keeping with his Republican values, Jefferson stripped the presidency of all the trappings of European royalty, reduced the size of the armed forces and government bureaucracy and lowered the national debt from $80 million to $57 million in his first two years in office.
Nevertheless, Jefferson’s most important achievements as president all involved bold assertions of national government power and surprisingly liberal readings of the constitution. Jefferson’s most significant accomplishment as president was the Louisiana Purchase. In 1803, he acquired land stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains from cash-strapped Napoleonic France for the bargain price of $15 million, thereby doubling the size of the nation in a single stroke. He then devised the wonderfully informative Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore, map out and report back on the new American territories.
Jefferson also put an end to the centuries-old problem of Barbary pirates disrupting American shipping in the Mediterranean by forcing the pirates to capitulate by deploying new American warships. Notably, both the Louisiana Purchase and the undeclared war against the Barbary pirates conflicted with Jefferson’s much-avowed Republican values. Both actions represented unprecedented expansions of national government power, and neither was explicitly sanctioned by the Constitution.
Although Jefferson easily won re-election in 1804, his second term in office proved much more difficult and less productive than his first. He largely failed in his efforts to impeach the many Federalist judges swept into government by the Judiciary Act of 1801. However, the greatest challenges of Jefferson’s second term were posed by the war between Napoleonic France and Great Britain. Both Britain and France attempted to prevent American commerce with the other power by harassing American shipping, and Britain in particular sought to impress American sailors into the British Navy.
In response, Jefferson passed the Embargo Act of 1807, suspending all trade with Europe. The move wrecked the American economy as exports crashed from $108 million to $22 million by the time he left office in 1809. The embargo also led to the War of 1812 with Great Britain after Jefferson left office.
Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — only a few hours before John Adams also passed away in Massachusetts. In the moments before he passed, John Adams spoke his last words, eternally true if not in the literal sense in which he meant them, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello
The Declaration of Independence, written by Jefferson
“But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.”
– John Adams
In 1796, Adams was elected as the Federalist nominee for president.Thomas Jefferson led the opposition for the Democratic-Republican Party. Adams won the election by a narrow margin, becoming the second president of the United States.
During Adams’s presidency, a war between the French and British was causing political difficulties for the United States. Adams’s administration focused its diplomatic efforts on France, whose government had suspended commercial relations. Adams sent three commissioners to France, but the French refused to negotiate unless the United States agreed to pay what amounted to a bribe. When this became public knowledge, the nation broke out in favor of war. However, Adams did not call for a declaration of war, despite some naval hostilities.
By 1800, this undeclared war had ended, and Adams had become significantly less popular with the public. He lost his re-election campaign in 1800, with only a few less electoral votes than Thomas Jefferson, who became president.
Both Adams and Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of American independence. Adams’s last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
John Quincy Adams, Adams’s son, would eventually become the sixth president of the United States, though he was a member of the opposition party, the Democratic-Republicans.
President John Adams and his wife, Abigail.
Portrait of an old John Adams, painted by Gilbert Stuart.
Graves of President John Adams and his family
John Adams and Abigail Smith
On October 25, 1764, John Adams married Abigail, the daughter of Reverend William Smith and his wife Elizabeth Quincy Smith. She was born in Weymouth, MA, in 1744, where her father was a Congregationalist minister. Abigail’s mother, Elizabeth Quincy, was born in 1721 in Braintree, MA, the daughter of John Quincy and Elizabeth Norton. John Quincy was Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly and part of the Governor’s council.
John and Abigail’s Descendants
Abigail gave birth to six children, of which four grew to adulthood. Their children were:
Abigail “Nabby” (1765-1813), who married William Stephens Smith and had four children: William Steuben Smith, John Adams Smith, Thomas Hollis Smith, and Caroline Amelia Smith.
John Quincy (1767-1848), who became the sixth U.S. President and married Louisa Catherine Johnson. They had four children: George Washington Adams, John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, and Louisa Catherine Adams.
Susanna (1768-1770)
Charles (1770-1800), who married Sarah Smith and had two children: Susanna Boylston Adams and Abigail Louisa Adams.
Thomas Boylston (1772-1832), who married Ann Harrod and had seven children: Abigail Smith Adams, Elizabeth Coombs Adams, Thomas Boylston Adams, Isaac Hull Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Joseph Harrod Adams.
Elizabeth (stillborn 1777)
Abigail Smith Adams died at their home in Quincy of typhoid fever on October 28, 1818. Her husband died at Quincy on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. They are buried beside each other in a crypt at the United First Parish Church (also called the Church of the Presidents) in Quincy.
George Washington was the first President of the United States of America from 1789 to 1797.
Washington was elected President as the unanimous choice of the electors in 1788, and he served two terms in office. He oversaw the creation of a strong, well-financed national government that maintained neutrality in the wars raging in Europe, suppressed rebellion, and won acceptance among Americans of all types.
On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. “As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent,” he wrote James Madison, “it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.”
Washington enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon, for he died of a throat infection December 14, 1799. For months the Nation mourned him.
George Washington takes oath of Office
George Washington’s Cabinet
John Adams
John Adams served George Washington as vice President throughout Washington’s presidency.