Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents

by Cormac O'Brien

  In the end, Adams’s rocky term reflected qualities that one can’t help associating with the man himself. For John Adams was a complex and difficult man indeed . . .

  TALK ABOUT A HEARTY BREAKFAST . . .

  Whenever his governmental responsibilities allowed, John Adams spent as much time as he could at his farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. While there, he rose with the sun and began nearly every day by downing a “gill” of hard cider (a gill being roughly equivalent to half a pint).

  MR.POPULARITY

  John Adams once described his principal attributes as “candor, probity, and decision.” His contemporaries probably would have added four more: irritability, vanity, vanity, and irritability. Adams was headstrong, perhaps to a fault; he was convinced of his own genius and ability, and his temper blew with alarming frequency. Those around him took note, including:

  Thomas Jefferson:“He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men.”

  Ben Franklin:“[Adams is] sometimes absolutely mad.”

  Abigail Adams (his devoted wife): “[You have] a certain irritability which has sometimes thrown you off your guard.”

  James McHenry (secretary of war, noisily fired by Adams): “Actually insane.”

  HIS ROTUNDITY

  As vice president under George Washington, Adams was president of the Senate, which empowered him to cast a deciding vote whenever the Senate was equally divided. Aside from this, it was understood that his role was mostly passive and that he would essentially keep his mouth shut. When it came to the subject of how to address the president, however, Adams voiced his opinion with every opportunity: “Whether I should say, ‘Mr. Washington,’ ‘Mr. President,’ ‘Sir,’ ‘may it please your Excellency,’ or what else?” Adams believed that noble-sounding titles bestowed dignity on an office; his opponents accused him of being pompous. Neither side would let the issue die, and the debate turned really nasty when Adams’s opponents began referring to him as “His Rotundity.”

  Incredibly, it took the new Senate nearly a month to agree on “the president of the United States.”

  Pen Pals

  Nothing but mutual love and respect was evident when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson first met. Their backgrounds could not have been more different: Adams, a Yankee lawyer who abhorred slavery, almost never went into debt and had a modest farm that would never make him rich; Jefferson, a Virginia gentleman, depended on slavery, lived his life grandly, and always owed money to someone. Despite this, they instantly impressed each other and put their extraordinary heads together on creating a nation. In Europe, while serving as diplomatic envoys, they grew even closer, finding fascination in each other’s company and ideas.

  But in time, such mutual admiration would disappear, a casualty of their vehement, often vicious disagreements over the French Revolution, states’ rights, the limits of executive power, and other issues that typically divided Republicans and Federalists. During Adams’s presidency, their communication essentially ceased, and a silence endured for years—until their mutual friend, Benjamin Rush, got them to start writing each other again. In their final years, Adams and Jefferson kept up a correspondence that remains one of the most extraordinary in the English language, reflecting the thoughts, fears, ideals, and geniuses of two of history’s most outstanding intellects.

  They died on the same day—July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

  3 THOMAS JEFFERSON

  April 13, 1743–July 4, 1826

  ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries

  TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1801–1809

  PARTY: Republican

  AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 57

  VICE PRESIDENT: Aaron Burr (first term); George Clinton (second term)

  RAN AGAINST: Aaron Burr, John Adams, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (first term); Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (second term)

  HEIGHT: 6′2″

  NICKNAMES: “Sage of Monticello,” “Philosopher of Democracy”

  SOUND BITE: “I wish to see this beverage [beer] become common instead of the whiskey which kills one-third of our citizens and ruins their families.”

  In 1962, when President John Kennedy entertained a group of Nobel Prize winners in the White House, he heralded the event as the most distinguished gathering of intellectual talent that ever graced the Executive Mansion—except for when Thomas Jefferson dined there alone.

  JFK wasn’t far off the mark. Thomas Jefferson was the walking, talking embodiment of the Enlightenment, a polymath whose list of achievements is as long as it is incredibly varied. As if penning the Declaration of Independence, sitting as governor of Virginia during the Revolution, and serving as secretary of state in George Washington’s first term weren’t enough, he went on to do much more—architecture, linguistics, agriculture, philosophy, music, prose, you name it. While others dabbled, Jefferson mastered.

  He left behind a vast collection of essays and correspondence, which reveal a mind of stunning complexity and apparent contradictions. Jefferson was an avowed abolitionist whose fortune relied on a large population of slaves; a forward-thinking humanist whose opinions on minorities such as Native Americans could be truly alarming; a man whose awkwardness around women stood in stark contrast to his legendary romances.

  Since this was an era before candidates chose their running mates, Thomas Jefferson was free to challenge his boss, John Adams, in the election of 1800. His victory marked the first time that his new party, the Republicans, held the office of chief executive, and they looked upon the triumph as a second revolution. Jefferson used the opportunity to make a clean break with his Federalist predecessors. If they had cloaked the chief executive in a mantle of aristocratic solemnity, he brought it back down to earth. While they embraced the British model of government, he was a Francophile. And while they believed that the masses needed to be led by a class of educated gentlemen, he put his faith in the ordinary man.

  Thomas Jefferson was fond of greeting ambassadors in his pajamas—a practice that most of them found appalling.

  Despite his preference for a less active federal government, his two terms were eventful ones. After purchasing the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon for $15 million (thereby doubling the size of the United States), he sent Lewis and Clark to discover just how big a bargain it really was. He worked tirelessly to retire the national debt that the Federalists had worked so hard to maintain. He aggressively promoted westward expansion. And while he mostly managed to avoid the labyrinth of European hostilities, he did endure one nasty run-in with Britain (when the British ship Leopard fired on the American Chesapeake, drawing the two nations perilously close to war). Through it all, Jefferson endured a ceaseless barrage of acrimony from the Federalist press, which fanned whatever flames his detractors were willing to spark.

  Revolutionary, leader, inventor, romantic—the Sage of Monticello was all of these and more. How much more, you ask? Well, let’s see . . .

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  CHILLIN’ CHIEF

  Jefferson believed that Washington and Adams had both acted a bit too much like kings during their terms as president. And few things irritated him more than kings. To Jefferson, the Revolution had done away with tyranny and all its trappings—a new age had dawned, and it didn’t have room for fancy titles, powdered wigs, elaborate regalia, or any other aristocratic mumbo jumbo. As far as Jefferson was concerned, the president was just another voting member of the Republic, and he was proud to act like one.

  Not everyone agreed, of course, and there were countless ways to offend foreign dignitaries back in the early nineteenth century—one of which was to greet them in your pajamas. As Andrew Merry, British minister to the United States, fumed, “I, in my official costume, found myself at the hour of reception he had himself appointed, introduced to a man as president of the United States, not merely in an undress, but ACTUALLY STANDING IN SLIPPERS DOWN TO THE HEELS, and both pantaloons, coat
, and under-clothes indicative of utter slovenliness and indifference to appearances, and in a state of negligence actually studied.”

  Promises, Promises . . .

  Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a fiery condemnation of slavery, but the Continental Congress struck it from the document. That Jefferson had taken the opportunity to shed light on the issue is no surprise—he was a devout opponent of slavery, and he lobbied against it for virtually his whole life.

  Of course, we would be more inclined to applaud his efforts were it not for the fact that he owned so many slaves. His home was one of the largest slave-operated estates in the country. That he often endeavored to make their lives easier is a fact—he gave as many as possible household duty, sparing them the hardship of working in the fields. And he freed them when he could, although bestowing liberty upon a person who had known nothing but servitude had its share of complications. When Jefferson freed his chef, James Hemings, the poor guy didn’t know what to do with himself, begged to be taken back, became an alcoholic, and ended up committing suicide.

  Despite Jefferson’s reliance on slave labor, he couldn’t avoid serious financial woes. He even had a manufacturing enterprise going for a while, in which he subjected young African men and boys to the monotonous routine of producing nails—as many as a ton of them per month. And for what? By the time of his death, Thomas Jefferson was $107,000 in debt—a deficit that Jefferson’s heirs partially alleviated by sending most of his slaves to the auction block.

  TOM FOOLERY

  By all accounts, Jefferson was devoted and faithful to his wife, Martha, during the ten years they were married before her death. But that didn’t stop him from walking all over other people’s marriage vows.

  Consider Betsey Walker, the wife of Jefferson’s close friend, John Walker. In 1768, John ventured to New York to negotiate a treaty and asked Jefferson to keep an eye on Betsey. Jefferson promptly proceeded to do more than just that. Their indiscretions didn’t come to light until years later, at which time John Walker’s opinion of both his spouse and his “trusted” friend took a precipitous nosedive.

  Or consider Maria Cosway, the wife of portraitist Richard Cosway. In 1786, Jefferson—then a widower—was minister to France, where he met and fell hard for Maria, a beautiful, talented musician and artist. While walking with her through the countryside, in an apparent fit of romantic zeal, Jefferson attempted to leap a fence and fractured his wrist. It isn’t clear whether the couple consummated their attraction for each other. However, Maria—a devout Catholic who’d considered entering a convent in her youth—probably wasn’t as crazy about the idea as Jefferson, whose firm belief in natural philosophy included a conviction that sex was perfectly right and normal for lovers (even those cheating on their husbands).

  FOREIGN FELON

  Jefferson’s knowledge of and passion for all things agricultural were truly extraordinary (the man even had a family of plants named after him, for crying out loud: Jeffersonia diphylla). Driven by a desire to see the South freed from its reliance on cotton, he was always on the lookout for crops that could replace it.

  While touring the south of France in 1787, Jefferson discovered that Italian rice was preferred to the American import grown in the Carolinas. Intent on discovering why this might be so, he took a detour into the Italian region of Lombardy on a mission of rice reconnaissance (a journey that, because it required crossing the Alps, was extremely dangerous at the time). There he discovered that the good folks of Lombardy were growing a superior strain of crop—whose export for planting outside of Italy was a crime punishable by death. Undaunted, Jefferson proceeded to literally stuff his pockets with seeds. He even went so far as to bribe his mule driver into smuggling some of the stuff and keeping his mouth shut. The rice is grown in parts of the United States to this day.

  WHEN JEFFERSON MET SALLY

  In September 1802, James Thomson Callender, a onetime supporter of Thomas Jefferson who had taken a beating in the press and was bent on revenge, printed the scandalous accusation that President Jefferson “keeps, and for many years past has kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY.” And so began the American preoccupation with Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings—what historian Joseph J. Ellis says “may be described as the longest-running miniseries in American history.”

  Sally Hemings, a mulatto, wasn’t only one of Jefferson’s slaves—she was also the half sister of Jefferson’s late wife, Martha. Their romance began when Hemings was seventeen and Jefferson was forty-eight and continued on and off until Jefferson’s death at age eighty-three. Recent DNA evidence confirmed that they had at least one child together and perhaps as many as five. The kicker? Jefferson was known to abhor interracial relationships, and the propagation of children by such a match made his hair stand on end.

  Go figure.

  For all that, Jefferson didn’t even give the poor woman her freedom. In his will, he provided for the release from bondage of only five of his slaves. Sally was later given “unofficial” freedom by Jefferson’s daughter, Martha Randolph.

  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO TOM

  “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” a written work begun by Jefferson during his first term as president and concluded in 1820, was a sincere expression of his understanding of what Jesus Christ contributed to Western notions of morality. It was also, from a dyed-in-the-wool Christian standpoint, a work of outright blasphemy. In effect, he’d gone through the Gospels, removed anything remotely supernatural, rearranged the wording to suit his own humanist tastes, and produced a work that revealed Jesus Christ as a really neat fellow with ideas worthy of the greatest ancient thinkers but devoid of the otherworldly qualities that made him the center of Christianity. No wonder Jefferson kept the project a secret (it was discovered by his daughter after his death).

  A MASTER TINKERER

  Among Jefferson’s numerous talents was the art of invention. Monticello, his elegant Virginia manor, was peppered with bizarre and often amusing creations of its master’s vast imagination. They include a copying machine that allowed its user to write two identical letters at once; “magical” sets of doors (as one pair is opened or closed, the following pair does so automatically); and dumbwaiters (that’s right, Jefferson invented them). One of his most celebrated “conveniences” was a closet in which he had installed a “turning machine”—a sort of rotating set of clothes hangers that could be turned with a stick.

  Cold Feet

  In a time when people were lucky to make it into their fifties, Thomas Jefferson lived to the ripe old age of eighty-three. What was his secret? According to him, cold foot baths. For sixty years, he would soak his feet every morning in cold water.

  A MINOR OMISSION

  Jefferson left behind specific instructions for the design of his tombstone. On it, he insisted, should be inscribed the following:

  HERE WAS BURIED

  THOMAS JEFFERSON

  AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

  OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

  & FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

  Notice anything missing? Yep—our third president didn’t think his two terms as chief executive were worth mentioning. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

  4 JAMES MADISON

  March 16, 1751–June 28, 1836

  ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces

  TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1809–1817

  PARTY: Republican

  AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 57

  VICE PRESIDENT: George Clinton (first term); Elbridge Gerry (second term)

  RAN AGAINST: Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, George Clinton (first term); DeWitt Clinton (second term)

  HEIGHT: 5′4″

  NICKNAME: “Father of the Constitution”

  SOUND BITE: “Nothing more than a change of mind” (spoken just before he expired).

  No man had more to do with the writing of the American Constitution than James Madison
. His “Virginia Plan” was adopted as its basis, and his considerable intellect was instrumental during the months of debate that created a new government. Indeed, his career reads like the early history of the Republic itself.

  A devoted patriot from the moment war broke out in 1775, Madison helped create the independent government of his native Virginia. He was appointed to the Continental Congress in 1779, where he argued persuasively for a strong central government. Along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, he composed the Federalist Papers, which persuaded many reluctant Americans of the need for a potent federal government with the power to tax.

  Madison was extremely learned, wise beyond his years, even-tempered, and a compassionate supporter of an America capable of exerting great influence in the world. He even had the good sense to marry Dolley Payne Todd, who would go on to become one of the country’s most beloved first ladies. Thomas Jefferson, a close friend in whose administration Madison served as secretary of state, hailed him as “the greatest man in the world.”

  Now for the bad press. As invaluable to the founding of the United States as Madison was, things turned ugly when he was elected president. His administration has been slammed by contemporaries and historians alike—and you can’t really blame them. After all, Washington, D.C., was sacked and burned by the British on his watch (ouch). It seems matters of international diplomacy and war weren’t exactly Madison’s strong suits.

  At 5′4″, James Madison has the distinction of being the shortest president in U.S. history.

  Nevertheless, by the time he’d finished his stint as president, the economy was booming, and the United States was on its way to international respect. So things definitely could have been a lot worse.

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