CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 1 GREAT A S MERICAN PRESIDENT J OHN A DAMS CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 2 GREAT A S MERICAN PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS JIMMY CARTER THOMAS JEFFERSON JOHN F. KENNEDY ABRAHAM LINCOLN RONALD REAGAN FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT THEODORE ROOSEVELT HARRY S. TRUMAN GEORGE WASHINGTON WOODROW WILSON CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 3 GREAT A S MERICAN PRESIDENT J OHN A DAMS HEATHER LEHR WAGNER FOREWORD BY WALTER CRONKITE Philadelphia CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 4 CHELSEA HOUSE PUBLISHERS VP,NEWPRODUCTDEVELOPMENT Sally Cheney DIRECTOROFPRODUCTION Kim Shinners CREATIVEMANAGER Takeshi Takahashi MANUFACTURINGMANAGER Diann Grasse STAFFFORJOHNADAMS ASSOCIATEEDITOR Kate Sullivan PRODUCTIONASSISTANT Megan Emery PHOTOEDITOR Sarah Bloom SERIESDESIGNER Keith Trego COVERDESIGNER Keith Trego LAYOUT 21stCentury Publishing and Communications,Inc. ©2004 by Chelsea House Publishers, a subsidiary ofHaights Cross Communications. All rights reserved.Printed and bound in the United States ofAmerica. www.chelseahouse.com First Printing 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wagner,Heather Lehr. John Adams/by Heather Lehr Wagner. p.cm.—(Great American presidents) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7910-7603-2 — ISBN 0-7910-7787-X (pbk.) 1.Adams,John,1735-1826—Juvenile literature.2.Presidents—United States— Biography—Juvenile literature.[1.Adams,John,1735–1826.2.Presidents.] I.Title.II.Series. E322.W23 2003 973.4'4'092—dc21 2003014157 CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 5 T C ABLE ONTENTS OF FOREWORD: WALTER CRONKITE 6 1 A WISE AND HONEST MAN 10 2 A PATRIOT’S CHALLENGE 20 3 FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM 30 4 DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 42 5 THE BURDENS OF OFFICE 58 6 PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS 74 TIMELINE:THE PRESIDENTS OFTHE UNITED STATES 86 PRESIDENTIAL FACT FILE 88 PRESIDENTADAMS IN PROFILE 91 CHRONOLOGY 92 BIBLIOGRAPHY 93 FURTHER READING 94 INDEX 95 CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 6 F OREWORD WALTER CRONKITE Acandle can defy the darkness.It need not have the power of a great searchlight to be a welcome break from the gloom of night.So it goes in the assessment ofleadership.He who lights the candle may not have the skill or imagination to turn the light that flickers for a moment into a perpetual glow,but history will assign credit to the degree it is due. Some of our great American presidents may have had a single moment that bridged the chasm between the ordinary and the exceptional. Others may have assured their lofty place in our history through the sum total of their accomplishments. When asked who were our greatest presidents,we cannot fail to open our list with the Founding Fathers who put together this 6 CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 7 FOREWORD nation and nursed it through the difficult years ofits infancy. George Washington,John Adams,Thomas Jefferson,and James Madison took the high principles of the revolution against British tyranny and turned the concept ofdemocracy into a nation that became the beacon of hope to oppressed peoples around the globe. Almost invariably we add to that list our wartime presidents—Abraham Lincoln,perhaps Woodrow Wilson, and certainly Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Nonetheless there is a thread of irony that runs through the inclusion of the names of those wartime presidents: In many aspects their leadership was enhanced by the fact that,without objection from the people,they assumed extraordinary powers to pursue victory over the nation’s enemies (or,in the case of Lincoln,the Southern states). The complexities ofthe democratic procedures by which the United States Constitution deliberately tried to withhold unchecked power from the presidency encumbered the presidents who needed their hands freed of the entangling bureaucracy that is the federal government. Much of our history is written far after the events themselves took place.History may be amended by a much later generation seeking a precedent to justify an action considered necessary at the latter time.The history,in a sense,becomes what later generations interpret it to be. President Jefferson in 1803 negotiated the purchase of vast lands in the south and west ofNorth America from the French.The deal became knows as the Louisiana Purchase. A century and a half later, to justify seizing the nation’s 7 CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 8 FOREWORD steel mills that were being shut down by a labor strike, President Truman cited the Louisiana Purchase as a case when the president in a major matter ignored Congress and acted almost solely on his own authority. The case went to the Supreme Court,which overturned Truman six to three. The chief justice, Fred Vinson, was one of the three justices who supported the president. Many historians,however,agreed with the court’s majority, pointing out that Jefferson scarcely acted alone: Members of Congress were in the forefront of the agitation to consummate the Louisiana Purchase and Congress voted to fund it. With more than two centuries of history and precedent now behind us,the Constitution is still found to be flexible when honest and sincere individuals support their own causes with quite different readings of it. These are the questions that end up for interpretation by the Supreme Court. As late as the early years of the twenty-first century, perhaps the most fateful decision any president ever can make—to commit the nation to war—was again debated and precedent ignored.The Constitution says that only the Congress has the authority to declare war. Yet the Congress,with the objection of few members,ignored this Constitutional provision and voted to give President George W.Bush the right to take the United States to war whenever and under whatever conditions he decided. Thus a president’s place in history may well be determined by how much power he seizes or is granted in 8 CH.GAP.JAd.aFM.Final.q 7/23/03 04.05 PM Page 9 FOREWORD re-interpreting and circumventing the remarkable document that is the Constitution. Although the Founding Fathers thought they had spelled out the president’s authority in their clear division of powers between the branches of the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, their wisdom has been challenged frequently by ensuing generations. The need and the demand for change is dictated by the march of events, the vast alterations in society, the global condition beyond our influence, and the progress of technology far beyond the imaginations of any of the generations which preceded them. The extent to which the powers of the presidency will be enhanced and utilized by the chief executives to come in large degree will depend, as they have throughout our history, on the character of the presidents themselves. The limitations on those powers, in turn, will depend on the strength and will of those other two legs of the three- legged stool of American government—the legislative and the judiciary. And as long as this nation remains a democracy, the final say will rest with an educated electorate in perpetual exercise ofits constitutional rights to free speech and a free and alert press. 9