John Adams A Success Or A Failure

After the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, Americans needed a policy on how they were going to run their country. They first established the Articles of Confederation, which turned out to be a huge failure, they then decided to create The Constitution written by James Madison. Soon after, George Washington was unanimously voted into office. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson soon followed as the next two presidents. All three of these presidents experienced failures and successes under their presidency. However, John Adams handled tough situations better than the other two presidents making him have a more powerful impact on this country than the other two presidents. Throughout Washington’s presidency he made some decisions

The French were mad at the United States for signing that treaty so Adams sent over Pinckney to negotiate with the French. Three agents told Pinckney that if he wanted to speak to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs he would have to pay a quarter of a million dollars just to speak to him. Then the minister wanted a twelve million dollar loan. John Adams then referred to the agents as “X”, “Y”, and “Z” when telling congress of this incident. By Adams referring to the agents as “X”, “Y”, and “Z” and not by their real names helped the nation not get into a war. John Adams also kept George Washington’s policy of neutrality which is very hard to do. If the public knew the agents name they would push harder for war against France. The XYZ Affair led America into an undeclared war called the Quasi War. Adams tried really hard to make this undeclared war only a naval conflict. People began to bash Adams and his policies by making false names and accusations about him. These really started to affect his political life. If he had people making fun of him then he would not receive the right amount respect to run a country and then no one would take him seriously. Adams could not afford to have people bashing him so he created the Alien and Sedition Act. This Act targeted Republican immigrants by making the amount years to become a United States citizen from five to fourteen years. It also gave John Adams the power to deport an immigrant that deemed a threat to the United States. Lastly, it became illegal to criticize public officials. Without the Alien and Sedition Act, states would have never had the power to nullify a law that they deemed unconstitutional. This was considered a success because some people thought that the power should be in the hands of the state and not the federal government to avoid a monarchy. In the Election of 1800, John Adams was running