The vice presidential candidates received more than their fair share of attention this year. The election is finally over so we can get back to more important issues, but the vice presidency intrigued me, though, and prompted me to do a little research on the beginnings of this office since I'd forgotten most everything I'd once learned in Political Science 101. The first vice president was John Adams. It was no question that George Washington would be elected president, and, after only a little discussion, Adams was chosen to serve as VP because of the solid reputation he'd earned with his domestic and foreign statesman experience. Also, his peers considered him to be a man of high intelligence who inspired a lot of the thinking that went into the Declaration of Independence, although Thomas Jefferson has received a lot of credit because he was the better writer. With input from Benjamin Franklin these three gave birth to the document. The Declaration did not meet immediate approval from the Second Continental Congress. There, Adams had to go to work promoting it because he was much the better orator; Jefferson was poor at speech making. It was adopted, as we know, on July 4. At this point Adams and Jefferson were still on friendly terms.
Washington retired from the Presidency after his second term, probably with a belly full of the bickering that had developed within his cabinet. Alexander Hamilton held the post of Secretary of Treasury and Thomas Jefferson was the Secretary of State. These two battled over their huge ideological differences, and as an outgrowth of it, the political party system began to take shape. Adams was in the background to this because as VP he had no voice in the cabinet, but he agreed with Hamilton who supported strong federal powers. Jefferson believed in strong states' rights, and when the election took place it was Adams versus Jefferson. The electoral college met to elect a president and chose Adams with 71 votes to Jefferson's 68 votes.
Adams was now the top man and Jefferson's second place made him the vice president, the only time in our country's history that men of opposing political parties held the top two positions in the government. Since Adams supported the Hamiltonian philosophy of government, he was at odds with Jefferson. The rift between these two former friends widened, and in the next election Jefferson went on to defeat Adams. Still, these two held enormous respect for each other, and after a period of several years of no communication between them, they started their friendship up again. It seems as though their destiny revealed itself with this improbable fact: they died hours apart on July 4, 1826
