self desirous of cordial
relations. Mrs. Adams responded by expressions of pleasure at the success
of Jefferson, between whom and her husband, she said, there had never been
"any public or private animosity." Such rejoicing over the defeat of the
Federalist candidate for Vice-President did not promote good feeling
between the President and the Federalist leaders.

The morning before the inauguration, Adams called on Jefferson and
discussed with him the policy to be pursued toward France. The idea had
occurred to Adams that a good impression might be made by sending out a
mission of extraordinary weight and dignity, and he wanted to know whether
Jefferson himself would not be willing to head such a mission. Without
checking Adams's friendly overtures, Jefferson soon brought him to agree
that it would not be proper for the Vice-President to accept such a post.
Adams then proposed that Madison should go. On March 6, Jefferson reported
to Adams that Madison would not accept. Then for the first time, according
to Adams's own account, he consulted a member of his Cabinet, supposed to
be Wolcott although the name is not mentioned.

Adams took over Washington's Cabinet as it was finally constituted after
the retirement of Jefferson and Hamilton and the virtual expulsion of
Randolph. The process of change had made it entirely Federalist in its
political complexion, and entirely devoted to Washington and Hamilton in
its personal sympathies. That Adams should have adopted it as his own
Cabinet has been generally regarded as a blunder, but it was a natural
step for him to take. To get as capable men to accept the portfolios as
those then holding them would have been difficult, so averse had prominent
men become to putting themselves in a position to be harried by Congress,
with no effective means of explaining and justifying their conduct.
Congress then had a prestige which it does not now possess, and its
utterances then received consideration not now accorded. Whenever
presidential electors were voted for directly by the people, the poll was
small compared with the vote for members of Congress. Moreover, there was
then a feeling that the Cabinet should be regarded as a bureaucracy, and
for a long period this conception tended to give remarkable permanence to
its composition.

When the personal attachments of the Cabinet chiefs are considered, it is
easy to imagine the dismay and consternation produced by the dealings of
Adams w