JOHN ADAMS . 1797-1801

Learned and thoughtful, John Adams was more a political philosopher than a politician. "People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity," he said, doubtless thinking of his own as well as the American experience.

Adams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony on October 30, 1735. A Harvard-educated lawyer and a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, he led in the movement for independence. During the Revolutionary War he served in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace. In 1788 he was elected vice president under George Washington.

Adams's two terms as vice president were frustrating. He complained to his wife Abigail, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."

When Adams became president, the war between the French and British was causing partisanship among factions within the nation. His administration focused on France, where the Directory, the ruling group, had refused to receive the American envoy and had suspended commercial relations. Adams sent commissioners to France, but the Directory refused to negotiate unless they were bribed. Adams reported the insult and the Senate printed the correspondence, in which the Frenchmen were referred to only as "X, Y, and Z. " The nation broke out into what Thomas Jefferson called "the X. Y. Z. fever." The populace cheered itself hoarse wherever the president appeared. The Federalists had never been so popular.

Hostilities began at sea. After several naval defeats, France agreed to receive an envoy with respect. Sending a peace mission to France turned the Hamiltonians against Adams. In the campaign of 1800, the Republicans were united and the Federalists divided. Still, Adams polled only a few less electoral votes than Jefferson, who became president.

Just before the election, Adams had written these words about his new residence, the White House:

"I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof."

Adams retired to his farm in Quincy. Here on July 4, 1826, he whispered his last words: "Thomas Jefferson survives." But Jefferson had died at Monticello a few hours earlier.

THOMAS JEFFERSON . 1801-1809

In the thick of party conflict in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

This powerful advocate of liberty was born On April 13, 1743 in Albermarle County, Virginia. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton and brought her to his partly constructed mountaintop home, Monticello.

Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. At 33, he drafted the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France in 1785. When Jefferson became secretary of state in President Washington's Cabinet, his sympathy for the French Revolution led him into conflict with Alexander Hamilton. He resigned in 1793. Sharp political conflict developed and two separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to form. Jefferson assumed leadership of the Republicans, who empathized with the French cause. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed strong centralized government and championed the rights of states.

A reluctant candidate for president in 1796, Jefferson came within three votes of election. Through a flaw in the Constitution, he became vice president, although an opponent of President Adams. When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crises in France had passed. He slashed army and navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey, yet reduced the national debt by a third. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality and acquired the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.

During Jefferson's second term, he was increasingly preoccupied with keeping the nation from involvement in the Napoleonic wars, though both England and France interfered with the neutral rights of American merchantmen. Jefferson's attempted solution, an embargo upon American shipping, worked badly and was unpopular.

Jefferson retired to Monticello to ponder such projects as his grand designs for the University of Virginia. A French nobleman observed that he had placed his house and his mind "on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe." He died on July 4, 1826.

JAMES MADISON . 1809-1817

At his inauguration, James Madison, a small, wizened man, appeared old and worn. But whatever his deficiencies, Madison's wife Dolley compensated for them with her warmth and gaiety. She was the toast of Washington.

Born on March 16, 1751, Madison was raised in Orange County, Virginia, and attended Princeton (then called the College of New Jersey). A student of history and government, well-read in law, he participated in the framing of the Virginia Constitution in 1776, served in the Continental Congress, and was a leader in the Virginia Assembly.

When delegates to the Constitutional Convention assembled at Philadelphia, the 36-year-old Madison took part in the debates. He made a major contribution to the ratification of the Constitution by writing, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the Federalist essays. Years later, when called the "Father of the Constitution," Madison said that the document was not "the off-spring of a single brain," but "the work of many heads and many hands."

In Congress, he helped frame the Bill of Rights. And out of his opposition to Hamilton's financial proposals came the development of the Republican, or Jeffersonian, Party.

As President Jefferson's Secretary of State, Madison protested to warring France and Britain that their seizure of American ships was contrary to international law. Despite the obvious failings of the Embargo Act of 1807, Madison was elected president in 1808.

The difficulties continued with Britain and France. In Congress a young group called the "War Hawks" pressed the president for a more militant policy. The British impressment of American seamen and the seizure of cargoes impelled Madison to give in to pressure. On June 1, 1812, he asked Congress to declare war.

The young nation was not prepared to fight. The British set fire to the White House and the Capitol. But a few notable victories, climaxed by General Andrew Jackson's triumph at New Orleans, convinced Americans that the War of 1812 had been gloriously successful. The New England Federalists who had opposed the war – and who had talked secession - were so repudiated that Federalism disappeared as a national party.

In retirement, Madison spoke out against the disruptive states' rights influences that by the 1830s threatened to shatter the Federal Union. In a note opened after his death in 1836, he stated, "The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated."