Hamilton vs Adams

Who were Hamilton and Adams?

John Adams was born on 30 October 1735 in Braintree, Massachusetts, the son of a farmer and deacon. A Harvard-trained lawyer, he defended the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre in 1770, argued for independence in the Continental Congress, helped negotiate the peace treaty with Britain in 1783 and served as the first Vice President (1789 to 1797) and second President (1797 to 1801). He lived to 90, dying on 4 July 1826, fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence.

Alexander Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, in 1755 or 1757 (the records disagree), outside marriage, and was orphaned in all but name as a boy. He reached New York in 1772, served as George Washington's aide during the Revolutionary War, wrote most of The Federalist essays in 1787 and 1788, and as the first Secretary of the Treasury (1789 to 1795) set up the national debt system, the Bank of the United States and the customs service. He was shot in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr on 11 July 1804 and died the next day.

Hamilton vs Adams: comparison table

What they agreed on

On most big questions they were on the same side. Both wanted a national government strong enough to pay its debts, raise revenue, conduct foreign policy and keep order. Both distrusted pure democracy and admired the balance of the British constitution. Adams's Defence of the Constitutions argued for strong independent branches; Hamilton, at the Constitutional Convention on 18 June 1787, praised the British system as the best model. Both opposed the radical turn of the French Revolution, and both supported Washington's neutrality and the Jay Treaty with Britain.

Adams would have agreed with that sentence. Their quarrel was about who should exercise that energy, and how.

How the feud grew, step by step

• 1796: Hamilton quietly hoped Federalist electors would put Thomas Pinckney ahead of Adams. The plan backfired: Adams won, and his rival Thomas Jefferson became Vice President. Adams found out and never forgot it.
• 1797: Adams kept Washington's cabinet. Several members, especially Timothy Pickering (State), James McHenry (War) and Oliver Wolcott (Treasury), regularly consulted Hamilton, who was by then a private lawyer in New York.
• 1798: after the XYZ Affair, in which French agents demanded bribes from American envoys, an undeclared naval war with France began. Congress created a provisional army. Washington agreed to command it only if Hamilton was his second, as inspector general, and Adams gave way against his own preference.
• February 1799: without consulting his cabinet, Adams sent a new peace mission to France. Hamilton and the cabinet Federalists were furious.
• May 1800: Adams dismissed McHenry and forced out Pickering, convinced they served Hamilton rather than the President.
• 30 September 1800: the American envoys signed the Convention of 1800 with France, ending the naval war, though news reached America only after the election had begun.

The 1800 pamphlet against Adams

In October 1800 Hamilton wrote a long Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq. President of the United States, dated 24 October and printed in New York. It was meant for Federalist leaders, but Republicans obtained it (Aaron Burr is usually said to have got hold of a copy) and newspapers printed extracts. In it Hamilton listed what he saw as Adams's vanity, jealousy and violent temper, and his handling of France and the cabinet.

Strangely, the pamphlet ended by telling Federalists to vote for Adams and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney equally, in the hope that Pinckney might come out ahead. Even many Federalists thought Hamilton had damaged himself and his party.

The result: Jefferson and Burr each received 73 electoral votes, Adams 65 and Pinckney 64. The pamphlet was not the only cause. The Alien and Sedition Acts, new taxes for the army and the strength of Jefferson's party in the South mattered more. But the open split made the Federalists look divided at the worst moment, and they never won the presidency again.

What they said about each other afterwards

Adams spent years defending his presidency. In 1809 he wrote a long series of letters to the Boston Patriot newspaper answering Hamilton's charges. In private letters, for example to Benjamin Rush in January 1806, he sneered at Hamilton's illegitimate birth and Caribbean origins. Later in life he said he wanted to be remembered above all for making peace with France in 1800.

Hamilton did not live to answer. In the tied election that followed, he urged Federalists in the House of Representatives to choose Jefferson over Burr, whom he considered dangerous. The rivalry with Burr, not with Adams, ended in the 1804 duel.

Questions to ask Hamilton and Adams

1. Hamilton: why did you publish an attack on the leader of your own party weeks before an election?
2. Hamilton: did you want war with France in 1798?
3. Hamilton: should cabinet members take advice from someone outside the government?
4. Hamilton: how do you reconcile the Manumission Society with your own family's dealings in enslaved people?
5. Adams: why did you keep Washington's cabinet in 1797?
6. Adams: was sending the peace mission in 1799 worth losing your party?
7. Adams: what do you regret about the Alien and Sedition Acts?
8. Adams: what did Abigail think of Hamilton?

Yuga lets you put these by voice to Hamilton and Adams, and to Abigail Adams, who had sharp opinions of her own. They are AI recreations built from their writings and the historical record, and they can be wrong. A stage musical is not a source: cite the pamphlet and letters at Founders Online.

Which one for your project?

Choose Hamilton for a project on the financial system, The Federalist, immigration and social mobility, or the culture of honour and duelling. See questions to ask Alexander Hamilton.

Choose Adams for a project on the presidency, the rule of law (the Boston Massacre trial), diplomacy, or a marriage told through letters. See questions to ask John Adams.

Choose both for a project on how parties first formed and fell apart, using one primary source, the 1800 pamphlet, as your centre. For the wider cast see America at 250: the founders.