This song follows the inauguration of John Adams, told from the perspective of King George III. Although humorous, this song also contains many important facts about John Adams.
John Adams wasn't exactly the most popular president, especially when being compared to George Washington, who is one of the most popular presidents to date. John Adams was cold, not very charismatic, and appeared small coming right after Washington as president. He managed to beat Jefferson in the election, but many mistakes in his administration would cause the Federalist party to lose popularity, allowing Jefferson to become president in the next election.
Painting of John Adams
John Adam's administration can be summarized by a number of incidents.
The XYZ affair: a French diplomat offered to stop French impressment (French kidnapping of American sailors and ships for not helping them during the French Revolution). John Adams exposed this corrupt affair to the public in hopes of gathering pro-British + anti-French support. The agents in charge of communicating this bribe were anonymously labeled "XYZ".
Naturalization act: Raised residency requirement for citizenship from 5 years to 14 years. This made it almost 3 times as hard for foreigners to obtain citizenship.
Alien Acts: Allowed for deportation of foreigners. This was very targeted towards the French, and Adams was heavily criticized for this by his opponents, the Democratic-Republicans.
Sedition Acts: In response to the criticism from the Alien Acts, Adams made it illegal for people to criticize his actions, which directly violates the Bill of Right's guarantee of free speech.
In summary, the XYZ affair was good for Adams. However, both the Naturalization Act and Alien Acts were very nativist, and angered many people. The Sedition Acts to silence those angered people was just pouring oil on the fire, and caused him to lose the next election to Jefferson by a landslide in the popular vote.
However, the night before Jefferson took office, Adams had one more trick to play. He appointed a number of Federalist judges to the federal and state courts. When Jefferson took office, he told Madison to not deliver those appointments, but one judge, Marbury, says that is illegal. They brought the affair, known as Marbury vs Madison, to the Supreme Court, where the Federalist Chief Justice Judge declared Madison the winner. It is odd that a Federalist judge would declare Madison, a Democratic-Republican, the winner, but with this one move, the Supreme Court made everyone acknowledge that the judges had the power to declare laws unconstitutional, and therefore solidified the Supreme Court's power for the rest of history.
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