A National Experiment in Ordered Liberty: New England’s Hegemony in the Adams Presidency, 1797-1801The constitutional coalition survived this danger, but it did not long remain intact. The French Revolution caused a major realignment in American politics by raising urgent new questions about the nature of liberty and republican government—questions to which every regional culture had its own range of answers. During the era of the French Revolution, voting patterns in Congress on both domestic and foreign policy were primarily partisan in nature, but party pluralities were regional in their base.
A leading example was Jay’s Treaty with Great Britain, which became the major issue of Washington’s second term. More than any other question, Jay’s Treaty caused two new political parties to form in the national capital—the Federal Republicans (a different group from the Federalists of 1787) against the Democratic Republicans. New England and the Delaware Valley solidly supported Jay’s treaty; the coastal south and backcountry were strongly opposed.4
After the retirement of George Washington, the new President was New Englander John Adams, who was narrowly elected by a plurality of three electoral votes. In office, he surrounded himself with men from his own region. So complete was New England’s hegemony that in 1800 the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of War (more than half of the entire Cabinet) came from Massachusetts and Connecticut alone.
During the presidency of John Adams, New Englanders and their allies responded to the great questions of the French Revolution by attempting to create a national system of ordered liberty, such as had long existed in their own region. This idea meant an active role for government, increased taxation, a strong navy, an expanded national judiciary with broad common law jurisdiction, a more active regulation of commerce, narrow restriction of immigration, an active attempt to suppress dissent, and a moralistic tone of government that was deeply resented by others of different persuasions. All of these policies were enacted by the Fifth and Sixth Congresses in the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Naturalization Act of 1798, the Navy and Army acts of 1798, the Bankruptcy Act of 1800, the Judiciary Act of 1801 and many new federal taxes, including a direct tax, a salt tax and even a stamp tax. New England’s idea of ordered liberty was very different from the ideology of the French Revolution, which Federalists condemned for its violence, its corruption and its hostility to religion.
After 1797, the American republic found itself embroiled in a “quasi-war” with France, which briefly caused an interesting realignment in regional politics. With war fever at its height in 1798, voters in the coastal south and the backcountry suddenly rallied to the government. In the Congressional elections of 1798, Federalists carried 63 out of 106 seats, including 20 seats below the Potomac and in the back settlements. Even counties that gave rise to the Whiskey Rebellion now voted Federalist.5
The war fever of ’98 marked the beginning of a consistent pattern in American military history. From the quasi-war with France to the Vietnam War, the two southern cultures strongly supported every American war no matter what it was about or who it was against. Southern ideas of honor and the warrior ethic combined to create regional war fevers of great intensity in 1798, 1812, 1846, 1861, 1898, 1917, 1941, 1950 and 1965. Here is another subject that remains to be studied in detail.
But in the Delaware Valley, Quaker and German voters turned against the Federalist administration in 1798. So strong was this feeling that it led to an insurrection in Bucks, Montgomery and Northampton counties of eastern Pennsylvania. Historians call this event Fries Rebellion after a German who forcibly opposed a federal marshal in the town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Contemporaries knew it as the Hot Water War, after the weapon which angry farm wives used against federal troops and tax assessors.
President John Adams observed the growth of this war fever with increasing alarm. The effective head of the new national army was Alexander Hamilton, whom the President distrusted. Conservative military officers interfered in elections and assaulted civilians of other political views; a captain and lieutenant of marines even attacked Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke. Suddenly it appeared that the “Friends of Order,” as they called themselves, were beginning to become a greater danger to Adams’s ideal of balanced government and ordered liberty than the specter of revolution from the left.
In February 1799, John Adams suddenly reversed the foreign policy of his administration, and sent a peace mission to France. By that act, he instantly stopped the war movement, but also shattered his party and wrecked his chances for reelection. As the war fever rapidly cooled, southerners abandoned against the administration. Adams’s decision led to a regional realignment in 1799, and an electoral revolution in 1800.