The Collaborators - Adams and Jefferson

My title might suggest John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the collaborators, but in reality Ellis's essay describes how their friendship fell apart to be replaced by secondary collaborations -- Adams with his wife, and Jefferson with Madison -- and by partisan politics.

Although they had been close friends for over twenty years, Adams and Jefferson found themselves on opposites sides of the political divide that emerged after the ratification of the Constitution.  The natural tendency is to ask: who was to blame?  The answer is: Jefferson.  He put political considersations above friendship.

Having narrowly defeated Jefferson for president, Adams wanted to bring Jefferson into the circle of his administration-- in a way that Adams had not been during Washington's presidency.  According to Ellis, Adams was "disposed to agree and consider a bipartisan political alliance grounded in the personal trust of the once-great collaboration."

Jefferson seemed to inclined to accept the alliance, but Madison persuaded him against it.  "Jefferson must not permit himself to be drawn into the policy-making process of the Adams administration," the argument ran, "lest it compromise his role as leader of the Republican opposition."

Jefferson presented his "friend" Adams with his decision, and Ellis summarizes the encounter:

On March 6, 1797, Adams and Jefferson dined with Washington at the presidential mansion in Philadelphia. Adams learned that Jefferson was unwilling to join the cabinet and that neither Jefferson nor Madison was willing to be part of the peace delegation to France. Jefferson learned that Adams had been battling his Federalist advisers, who opposed a vigorous Jefferson presence in the administration. They left the dinner together and walked down Market Street to Fifth, two blocks from the very spot where Jefferson had drafted the words of the Declaration of Independence that Adams had so forcefully defended before the Continental Congress almost twenty-one years earlier. As Jefferson remembered it later, "we took leave, and he never after that said one word to me on the subject or ever consulted me as to any measure of government." 

Adams "was left alone with Abigail, the only collaborator he could truly trust." This is what he wrote to her:

"I never wanted your advice and assistance more in my life. . . . The times are critical and dangerous and I must have you here to assist me. . . . You must leave the farm to the mercy of the winds. I can do nothing without you."