nevertheless. The government records, furniture, cabinet 1 8 officers and minor officials arrived in June. Soon after the removal of the archives, a fire destroyed all the military records and another fire broke out in the treasury department. The opposition newspapers charged that the fires were kindled to destroy the evidence of some maladministration. President Adams visited the new city in June, spent the summer at Quincy as usual, and took up his residence in what the satirists of the day called the "President's Palace" in November. The "city" had the population of a village and was a chaos of building materials, unfinished houses, brick kilns, temporary huts, and wet "slashes" covered with scrub-oaks and alders. As there was but one good tavern, lodgings were difficult to obtain and many members of congress sought quarters at Georgetown where there was a famous inn known as Suter's Tavern. The people were poor and, Oliver Wolcott wrote to his wife that "as far as I July 14 can judge, they live like fishes, eating each other." Pennsylvania Avenue was, wrote a Connecticut congressman, nearly the whole distance a deep morass covered with alder bushes, which were cut through the width of the intended avenue during the ensuing winter." After the comforts of Philadelphia, life in the new capital was far from satisfactory, and "Wilderness City," "City of Streets without Houses," "A Mud-hole almost equal to the Great Serbonian Bog," "Capital of Miserable Huts," and "City of Magnificent Distances," were some of the epithets bestowed upon it by luxury-loving statesmen and their friends.

In 1764, John Adams had married Abigail Smith who Abigail was endowed with rare qualities of head and heart and Adams was of a social position higher than his own; one of what Holmes has called the Brahmin caste of the old New England theocracy. In accordance with a stately and stilted habit of that period, many of her letters to her husband were signed "Portia" and she was worthy of the name, Roman or Shakesperian. Five days after the battle of Lexington, she wrote: "Courage we have;

1 8 o o conduct we shall not want; but powder, where shall we get a sufficient supply?" Of the battle of Bunker Hill she wrote that it was "dreadful but glorious." At the court of Saint James, she met the contemptuous demeanor

At the

White House

of Queen Charlotte with at least an equal dignity. When her husband was chosen president, she wrote to him: "My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation; they are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important truths, and numerous duties connected with it."

In November, Mrs. Adams left her Massachusetts home to become "the first lady of the White House," a memorable journey by postchaise, stage-coach, and private equipage, with break-downs on the

for relays. The party lost

the way through the thick woods not far from Baltimore and, when it was regained with the help of a straggling negro, went on and on through forests; "you can travel for miles without meeting a human being," writes Mrs. Adams. Thus the party slowly advanced to the city of Washington and, along "the mud-rucked" avenue to the president's house. No lawn, no fence, no yard, no approach, the principal staircase not up nor a single apartment finished; no bells, no lights, no grates. All the available wood had been used to dry out the newly plastered walls and the mistress of the house sits shivering as she writes: "Surrounded by forests, can you

believe that wood is not to be had because people cannot 18 oo be found to cut and to cart it! all this to yourself and, when asked how I I write you the situation is beautiful truth." Moreover,

in the unfinished East Room, Abigail Adams had a magnificent place in which to hang her clothes.

Under such depressing conditions, the second session of the sixth congress was begun at the permanent capital on the seventeenth of November, 1800. Davie had re

You must keep
like it, say that
which is the

Congress
Meets in the
Capitol

turned from

France with the

Abigail Adams

treaty of peace as agreed upon at Paris, and it became the first theme of importance for the consideration of the senate with the results recorded in a previous chapter. Wolcott's treasury report showed an improvement in the national finances, the customs receipts having increased about two and a half million dollars over those of the preceding fiscal year. At the end of the year, as already recorded, Wolcott left the cabinet, the dropping off of another fragment of Washington's "legacy of secretaries." Chief-justice Ellsworth having gone abroad on the French mission, concluded to stay in Europe and resigned his office. Adams tendered to John Jay a reappointment to the chief-justiceship, but Jay had determined to retire from public life and Adams gave the appointment to his January 31, new secretary of state, John Marshall, "the first of federal 1801 chief-justices who grew and mellowed in the office." For

18

what little was left of the Adams administration, Mar1 8 0 I shall continued to perform the duties of secretary of state.

An Electoral
Tangle

1801

The defect in the electoral machinery was now fully revealed. When the electoral colleges met on the first Wednesday in December, 1800, all the Republican electors voted for Jefferson and Burr; when the votes were February 11, counted in congress, it appeared that Jefferson and Burr had seventy-three votes each; Adams, sixty-five, and Pinckney, sixty-four; Jay had received one vote in Rhode Island. The eight votes of South Carolina had been cast for Jefferson and Burr; had they been cast for Jefferson and Pinckney as promised, the former would have been elected president and the latter vice-president. The intention of the Republican caucus and the Republican electors that Jefferson should be president and Burr vice-president counted for nothing; as the presiding officer, Jefferson had to announce a tie vote between himself and Burr; under the constitution, the choice was thrown into the house of representatives there to be decided by a vote of states. The Republican electors had been too "solid" for the immediate interests of their party. The Federalists controlled a majority of the members of the house and half of the state delegations, so that into their hands was thrown the decision as to who should be the next president-with the limitation that their choice was confined to two Republicans.

Burr's Aspiration

In the House

The only honorable course open to Burr was to refuse to allow his name to be considered in connection with the presidency. But he had hopes that the electoral vote might give him a majority over his chief and appears to have intrigued to induce a New York elector not to vote for Jefferson. Now he protested against the sacrifice of his colleague-an empty protest that no one believed to be sincere. In reality, he was eager for the presidency and his friends gave out privately that he would accept the office.

The Federalists were in a quandary. They held a party caucus and, disregarding the fact that Jefferson was unquestionably the choice of the people, decided to

subordinate the atheistic "semi-maniac" by supporting 1 8 0 1 Burr. Thus they would sow the seeds of rank dissension among the Republicans and impose the bonds of gratitude upon a president that they alone had made. When the first ballot was taken in the house, six states, New February 11 Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, and South Carolina voted for Burr; Vermont and Maryland were divided; the remaining eight states voted for Jefferson who lacked one vote of the required nine. Five other ballots were taken with the same result. The house then ordered that no other business should be transacted and no adjournment made until an election was accomplished. When the nineteenth ballot was taken at midnight, the scene was serio-comic. "Many had sent home for night-caps and pillows, and, wrapped in shawls and great-coats, lay about the floor of the committee-rooms, or sat sleeping on their seats. At one, and two, and at half-past two, the tellers roused the members from their slumbers and took the same ballot as before. The sleepers were then suffered to rest until four in the morning." In all, nine votes were taken on the twelfth, one on the thirteenth, four on the fourteenth, one on the sixteenth, one on the seventeenth, making thirty-five votes without result.

The situation was full of excitement and, when the A third angle of the Federalist opportunity was presented, Revolutionary it became perilous. The Federalists might keep the house balloting without choice until the fourth of March. Might not such an emergency, for which the constitution made no provision, be met by an act of congress creating the office of president pro tempore and then filling the supposititious office with Marshall or some other member of their own party? Bayard of Delaware said that some of the New England members were so determined to rule or ruin that "they meant to go without a constitution and take the risk of civil war." But Jefferson's friends gave out that the day such an act was passed, the middle states would arm; they would not submit to such usurpation. Against such a scheme they planned to surround the