John Adams

By Atlas MeyersThe 2nd Presidency (1797–1801)

Length1h 6m

Summary

If Washington was the invention of the American ideal, John Adams was the intrusion of reality. His presidency serves as the first true stress test of the Constitutional machinery: a demonstration of what happens when a mortal man, stripped of mythic infallibility, steps into a role designed for a demigod. We traverse the years 1797 to 1801, a period defined by a singular, suffocating paranoia. The United States found itself locked in an undeclared naval war with its former savior, France, while internal political fissures widened into canyons of ideological hatred. This is the story of a presidency besieged by friends and enemies alike. We observe Adams (brilliant, insecure, and stubbornly independent) navigating a political landscape rigged with the trapdoors of a burgeoning party system. It is a study of the friction between liberty and security, culminating in the republic’s first great sin against free speech and its first peaceful surrender of power to a rival faction.