It Happened Here in 1797!

Nov 6

The first U.S. peaceful exchange of power took place in Philly

*George Washington handed over the presidency to John Adams in this building on March 4, 1797 in Philadelphia. Photo by Jim Murphy, author of Real Philly History, Real Fast.*

When I take tour groups past Independence Hall, I love to stop, point at Congress Hall and say:

“On March 4, 1797, this is where George Washington and John Adams demonstrated how our democracy is supposed to work.

“That’s the day George Washington stepped down as President of the United States, and John Adams stepped up, in our country’s first peaceful exchange of power.

Washington even insisted that President Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson exit before him. Why? As a private citizen, he was now outranked. And realized it.

Washington looked “radiant,” according to onlookers, says The Washington Post. John Adams, not so much. He was described as “bewigged and beruffled, but looking underslept and out of sorts.”

Happy to be out of public life

Adams said Washington’s “Countenance was as serene and unclouded as the day. He Seem’d to me to enjoy a Tryumph over me. Methought I heard him think Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! see which of Us will be happiest.”

Of course, this peaceful and polite exchange of power in 1797 was between presidents of the same party.

Four years later, at the first inauguration in Washington, D.C., the new capital, relations between the outgoing and incoming president–who were from competing parties –were far more acrimonious.

A bitter and bizarre election

The Center for Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says, “The presidential election of 1800 was perhaps the most bitter in American history.” The National Park Service calls it “one of the most bizarre and cantankerous elections on record.”

Adams, a Federalist who was president for just one term, came in third place in the voting, behind Democratic-Republicans Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.

An overwhelming win for Jefferson, his party won the top offices of president and vice president, and captured both houses of Congress, too.

But this didn’t take place until the House of Representatives took 36 torturous ballots over six days to name the winners.

At Jefferson’s inauguration, John Adams was MIA

One-term President John Adams was a no-show. He skedaddled out of town at 4 a.m., unwilling to participate in handing the government over to Thomas Jefferson.

Other losing presidents who didn’t show up:

John Quincy Adams after his defeat by Andrew Jackson; Andrew Johnson, the impeached president — who was not nominated — failed to attend the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant; and Donald Trump, who lost to Joe Biden, chose to fly to Florida before the festivities.

Interesting Oddities:

Edwin Wolf 2nd, Librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia, says “Philadelphia’s centrality in the cultural life of the nation remained long after the capital moved to Washington. In 1808 a bill advocating a move back from the dull, uncomfortable, and muddy Federal City won a majority vote in Congress, but a crisis with Great Britain intervened and the resolution was tabled.”
George Washington warned the U.S. in his Farewell Address about the dangers of political parties. “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion,” he said.
When Ben Franklin was asked by his friend and renowned Philadelphia socialite Elizabeth Willing Powel after the Constitutional Convention, “Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy”? “A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”

I often think back to that conversation. And before I move on from the Independence Hall area, I usually tell my tours: “After the January 6th attack on the Capitol in 2021, I’m not sure now what’s going to happen in the future … and whether our Constitution can continue to hold. It has for 287 years. I hope we can keep it.”

Some Sources:

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2020/03/a-president-and-a-king-george-washington-and-king-george-iii-in-a-dangerous-year/

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-philadelphia-lost-the-nations-capital-to-washington

https://csac.history.wisc.edu/2021/01/07/the-transfer-of-presidential-power/

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/John_Adams%27_Inaugural_Address

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_transition_of_power#:~:text=A%20peaceful%20transition%20of%20power%20has%20historically%20been%20the%20norm,the%20United%20States%27%20fledgling%20democracy.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-12-02-0005

https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdstatehouse/html/gwresignation.html#:~:text=When%20told%20by%20the%20American,return%20to%20his%20beloved%20Mt.

https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=ask_gleaves

https://time.com/5928537/trump-biden-not-attend-inauguration-history/

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/winter/inaugurations

https://www.coopertoons.com/merryhistory/quotes/theydidntquitesaythat.html