Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic

BOOK REVIEW: Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic by Lindsay M. Chervinsky (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024) $34.99 hardcover

It was the January term of my final year at Pacific Lutheran University. Thoroughly over the college experience (man cannot live on Hot Pockets and Diet Mountain Dew alone), and aware of the rigors that awaited me in my final semester, I wanted a class that would be both interesting and one that would cover familiar intellectual ground. I opted for a 200-level course on the American presidency, and I walked into class the first morning confident that I would be able to coast my way through the month and whatever coursework that would be required.

To open the first session, the professor asked all of us to make two lists on whatever piece of paper we had nearest to hand: the first of our top five presidents of all time; the second our worst five. An informal tabulation of the class’s results showed a general, rather conventional consensus: a lot of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR on the best five; a lot of Nixon, Harding, and Buchanan on the worst five. I, like many of my classmates, had John Adams on my sheet of scrap paper. Unlike the rest of them, he was on my best five.

The reasons given for his inclusion on the worst five were, essentially, his signature on the Alien & Sedition Act and his failure to win re-election. I argued that, given the context of his having to follow in the footsteps of Washington, he had entered office in perhaps the most impossible circumstances any of our chief executives has had to overcome, and should therefore be graded on a steep curve. Even without this, his ability to keep peace with France and maintain his country’s honor in international affairs (all while his cabinet on one side, his vice president and the opposition on the other, were scheming against his efforts in different directions) was a crucial feat of statecraft at an intensely vulnerable time in the nation’s history.

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As I concluded my Adams apologia, I sat back in my chair convinced that, in that room, I had been like Demosthenes in the Ecclesia. Regrettably, a quick look around the room presented nothing but unpersuaded and half-asleep peers.

My failure on a small-scale all those years ago is Lindsay M. Chervinsky’s overwhelming success on a grand-scale today. In her Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic, Dr. Chervinsky is the champion that Adams deserves and has long gone without.

Dr. Chervinsky not only discusses the appalling challenge Adams faced in succeeding Washington, but throughout the book masterfully documents the personal price Adams had to be willing to pay—and is in many ways is still paying—to be the man that did so. As she writes, “The office required a president willing to sacrifice his reputation and popularity on behalf of the nation.”(page 2) That being the case, Adams was every bit the indispensable man for the United States at the end of century that Washington had been at so many moments before.

Beyond the achievements I tried to thrust before my inattentive classmates years ago, Dr. Chervinsky highlights another one—one that is by far the most significant of them all, and that is the central idea of her book:

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Adams proved that someone else could be president. He never enjoyed Washington’s vaunted reputation, be he did his best to instill the office with prestige and respectability. Washington established countless executive precedents, but until they were repeated, they were little more than historic anomalies. Adams forged the parameters of the presidency for everyone that followed. (page 7)

As Dr. Chervinsky documents in exquisite depth and detail throughout, Adams managed to do this over the unanimous opposition of his own administration. Vice President Thomas Jefferson not only declined Adams’ offer to work together, but was actively undermining his policies throughout the most dangerous days of the “Quasi-War” with France, writing to French officials and advising them on how to best resist Adams’ initiatives.

Jefferson’s interference came remarkably close to treason. The United States had not declared war on France—yet—but vessels from both nations were engaging in open hostilities on the high seas. As vice president, Jefferson actively undermined the administration’s foreign policy and encouraged its enemy to forestall peace. (page 76)

The more treacherous snake in the grass, though, was Alexander Hamilton: former secretary of the treasury, but active puppet master of the secretaries within Adams’ cabinet and many, if not most, of the Federalist officials in Congress. Dr. Chervinsky’s chapters on the ministrations and counter-ministrations between Hamilton and Adams read as much as a gripping narrative as they do documentary history. In the end, even the most ardent of Hamilton’s admirers today would be hard-pressed to disagree that Adams performed a significant, lasting service to his country, at the cost of party unity and his own re-election prospects, in thwarting Hamilton:

Adams might not have known the full scope of Hamilton’s machinations, but he intuited enough. He realized that their visions for foreign policy were diverging rapidly, a development that threatened to undermine the presidency. Hamilton was scheming to make himself . . . the primary moving force behind foreign policy. This plot would sideline Adams and undermine the president’s constitutional authority over both the army and foreign affairs. Adams was determined to thwart Hamilton’s bid for power, no matter the cost. (page 184)

In this, and in refusing to participate in Federalist schemes to meddle with the outcome of the election of 1800 (another chapter—the last chapter—of Adams’ presidency masterfully covered by Dr. Chervinsky), Adams deserves far more approbation than he has received from history.

For a figure who was notoriously skeptical of democracy, it was Adams as president, as much as any founding figure in any role, who helped secure its blessings for a largely-ungrateful posterity. As Dr. Chervinsky puts it, it is a mistake to assume that Americans of the late-eighteenth century “revered the Constitution and respected the sanctity of their elections.” Such was not a given then (or now, for that matter), but was an ethos that emerged only because “the first two administrations established precedents that crystallized into norms and customs.”

As she concludes,

None of this would have been possible without John Adams. He refused to meddle in Congress, he rejected Federalist schemes, he steadfastly adhered to the text of the Constitution, and he walked away after losing with no fuss. These invaluable contributions ensured the survival of the presidency. (pages 337–338)

President Adams, at long last, has his Demosthenes.

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