y, and its majority leant to Federalism.
Immeasurably the ablest man among the Federalists was Hamilton, but for
many reasons he was not an "available" choice. He was not a born
American. He had made many and formidable personal enemies even within
the party. Perhaps the shadow on his birth was a drawback; perhaps also
the notorious freedom of his private life--for the strength of the party
lay in Puritan New England. At any rate the candidate whom the
Federalists backed and succeeded in electing was John Adams of
Massachusetts. By the curiously unworkable rule, soon repealed, of the
original Constitution, which gave the Vice-Presidency to the candidate
who had the second largest number of votes, Jefferson found himself
elected to that office under a President representing everything to
which he was opposed.

John Adams was an honest man and sincerely loved his country. There his
merits ended. He was readily quarrelsome, utterly without judgment and
susceptible to that mood of panic in which mediocre persons are readily
induced to act the "strong man." During his administration a new quarrel
arose with France--a quarrel in which once again those responsible for
that country's diplomacy played the game of her enemies. Genet had
merely been an impracticable and impatient enthusiast. Talleyrand, who
under the Directory took charge of foreign affairs, was a scamp; and,
clever as he was, was unduly contemptuous of America, where he had
lived for a time in exile. He attempted to use the occasion of the
appearance of an American Mission in Paris to wring money out of
America, not only for the French Treasury, but for his own private
profit and that of his colleagues and accomplices. A remarkable
correspondence, which fully revealed the blackmailing attempt made by
the agents of the French Government on the representatives of the United
States, known as the "X.Y.Z." letters, was published and roused the
anger of the whole country. "Millions for defence but not a cent for
tribute" was the universal catchword. Hamilton would probably have
seized the opportunity to go to war with France with some likelihood of
a national backing. Adams avoided war and thereby split his party, but
he did not avoid steps far more certain than a war to excite the
hostility of democratic America. His policy was modelled upon the worst
of the panic-bred measures by means of which Pitt and his colleagues
were seeking to suppress "Jacobinism" in England.