WI: Adams responded differantially to the XYZ affair

What if Adams responded the way that the Federalists wanted him to in the xyz affair and declared war on France?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Alexander Hamilton will use the nonexistent military threat to pretty much take over the country. Jefferson and Madison will be arrested and thrown in jail, and their followers subject to severe restrictions as martial law takes over.
 
I will leave it to my much better prepared colleague, Mr. Marty, to respond in detail, and I will restrict myself to saying that the historical AH was not a cryto-fascist, waiting for the right moment to impose a dictatorship on America.
AH certainly believed in a stronger central government than TJ and JM and he was intersted in the military glory that a standing army and a successful war against France or Spain could bring him but he expressed concern that the Alien and Sedition Acts were a step too far and he always played the game of politics within the boundaries of late 18th and early 19th century rules.
If I promise not to call TJ or JM dangerously naive Jacobins, can the other members of this august assembly agree not to call AH a Napoleon in waiting?

Your humble servant,
AH
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
If I promise not to call TJ or JM dangerously naive Jacobins, can the other members of this august assembly agree not to call AH a Napoleon in waiting?

With respect, dear sir, he may have been exactly that. Do you deny that he contemplated using the new army for a campaign of conquest against Spanish possessions in the New World, at a time when Spain was at peace with the United States? Do you deny that he considered using the new army against Virginia in the event that the state act on the proposals outlined in the Virginia and Kentcky Resolutions? Do you deny that he attempted to persuade John Jay (Governor of New York at the time) to use extra-constitutional means to throw the electoral votes of New York away from Jefferson, thus denying him his rightfully-won place as the Third President?
 
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Anaxagoras

Banned
Right, but HOW would he gain power, Adams is in power at the time.

Adams is President, but in terms of raw power, Hamilton probably trumped him. After all, the heads of the executive agencies answered to Hamilton first and Adams second, and the Federalists in Congress also generally took their marching orders from Hamilton.

The political situation of the United States was extremely rocky at the time, nor had much time passed since the Constitution had been written and ratified. In a certain sense, the 1790s in America were rather like the 1790s in France, except that the Americans didn't face the external warfare which the French faced.

Washington was dead, and Adams was never particularly popular. If a war with France breaks out, nad severe civil discord follows as Virginia and perhaps other states refuse to support the national government, just about anything could have happened. . . including Dictator Hamilton.
 
Adams is President, but in terms of raw power, Hamilton probably trumped him. After all, the heads of the executive agencies answered to Hamilton first and Adams second, and the Federalists in Congress also generally took their marching orders from Hamilton.

So this was why Hamilton seized power in a coup in 1799, right?
 
Well, AH did indeed write a letter to his friend Governor John Jay in 1800 suggesting that the old (Federalist dominated) legislature elect NY State's Electors rather than the incoming (Republican majority) legislature. Jay, to his credit, ignored this rather lame brained idea and AH let the matter drop (not very Napoleonic).
Adams ignored AH's advice and sent a peace commission to France, disbanded the New Army and sacked AH's fiends in the cabinet, Timothy Pickering and James McHenry, and AH immediately marched on Philadelphia with his New Army to remove Adams from office and make himself Dictator. Um, no. He went back to New York and resumed the practice of law, but he did write a really, really nasty letter to his friends about what an idiot Adams was which was later printed as a pamphlet and which had the dual effect of helping to defeat Admas and show what a poor politician AH was (again, not very Napoleonic).
Finally, during the election crisis of 1801, AH not only failed to support the Federalist's hare brained attempts to either elect a temporary President or elect Hamilton's acquitance and frequent co-counsel, Aaron Burr (who let it be known that he would support many Federalist policies) and instead supported his arch enemy TJ for the simple reason that he thought he would be a better President than the untrustworthy Burr (not very Napoleonic).
AH certainly said and wrote some silly things, but no sillier than TJ who wrote about the tree of liberty needing to be watered by the blood of patriots and the West splitting off into a separate nation, but that was OK because it would still be governed by American principles.
I am afraid if you are looking for an American Napoleon or an American Caesar, AH just does not fit the bill. For a glory hunting militarist, he was just too much of a Wall Street lawyer and bad politician to enslave America.
 
What if Adams responded the way that the Federalists wanted him to in the xyz affair and declared war on France?

I think two events would occur:

(1) Adams would probably be re-elected President, taking his term of office to March 1805, instead of OTL March 1801.

(2) The resulting war with France, however short, would no doubt so further embitter Franco-American relations in the near future that there most probably would not be a Louisiana Purchase in 1803, whether Adams was re-elected or not. And maybe never with all of the vast changes that would mean in American and world history.
 
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