As president, George Washington’s first office was in a mansion in Manhattan, one of the boroughs of New York City. He allowed anyone to visit him at certain times because “he believe[d] it vital that Americans meet him in person” (5). Washington’s wealth derived from the labor of enslaved people who worked the plantations given to his wife, Martha.

When Washington was inaugurated as the first president in Manhattan, he was “nervous” (7). While giving his inauguration speech, he “stumble[d] over his words” (7). He struggled with speaking and public appearances, in part because almost all his teeth were dentures. His administration was defined by aftermath of the Revolutionary War, which left the new United States with a large debt and an intense debate over whether power should reside with the states or the federal government. Washington sided with his secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who supported a strong federal government.

To help with the debt, Washington implemented a tax on distilled liquor. Frontier farmers, who depended on profits from turning spoiled wheat, corn, and rye into whiskey, refused to pay the tax. The unrest led to the “whiskey rebellion” in western Pennsylvania, as rebels burned down the house of a tax collector.

By Washington’s second term, he had relocated his office to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while waiting for improvements to be made to Washington, DC. The United States was drawn into other crises, such as a war between Britain and France, during which Britain seized US merchant ships for trading with France despite the US’s neutrality in the war. Meanwhile, Washington personally led his army to defeat the whisky rebels, solidifying the power of the federal government. Exhausted by criticism from the press and growing political factionalism, Washington chose not to run again after his second administration. He published a farewell address aiming to “calm the American people” (11), who were concerned that the United States would collapse without him as president. Washington’s decision to retire after his second administration set an unofficial precedent that no president should serve more than two terms.

George Washington’s vice president, John Adams, was elected the second president. He eventually moved into the president’s house in the District of Columbia, even though the mansion had not yet been completed.

Adams opposed slavery, and his “household staff” did not include enslaved people (14). As a boy, Adams wanted to be a farmer, but his father forced him to go to school, and he became a lawyer. Despite his “social awkwardness” (15), Adams became a prominent politician and went on to lead the Federalist Party.

During Adams’s administration, the growing newspaper industry stoked anti-French sentiment among the public. This led to a “quasi-war” between France and the United States (16). Adams opposed an actual war with France, believing that the United States would lose. Adams’s own vice president, Thomas Jefferson, encouraged the press to attack Adams. In response to press criticism, Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which practically outlawed criticism of the president. These laws led to the imprisonment of James Callendar, an anti-Adams journalist paid by Jefferson.

Adams spent the first part of his presidency in the same Philadelphia mansion as George Washington. He would wake up at five o’clock every morning and take a five-minute walk. The first president to have pets, he owned two dogs named Satan and Juno, a horse named Cleopatra, and a crocodile given to him by General Lafayette in France. Abigail was politically outspoken, supporting education for women and joining with Adams in his hatred of Alexander Hamilton, one of Adams’s political rivals. Adams’s rivalry with Hamilton split the Federalist Party into Adams’ Federalists and Hamilton’s High Federalists, weakening the party and leading to its eventual demise. Despite Hamilton’s opposition, Adams made an impact during his term, establishing a United States Navy and negotiating peace with France at the Convention of 1800.

Even after Hamilton published a pamphlet denouncing him, Adams became the Federalist nominee in the presidential election of 1800. This election, between Adams, Jefferson, and Aaron Burr, was “one of the nastiest presidential campaigns in the history of the United States” (20). The election ended in a tie between Jefferson and Burr and was decided by the House of Representatives and the states. Hamilton used the press to denounce Burr, turning the election in Jefferson’s favor. It was the “the first time in American history that power [was] peacefully transferred from one political party to the other” (21).

As president, Jefferson intended to strengthen the states at the expense of the federal government, abolish the United States’ standing army, avoid foreign alliances, and “heal the national divide” (24). Jefferson grew up in the western frontier of Virginia and received a law degree from William and Mary College, but he was also interested in “ethics, religion, history, and the study of agriculture” (25).

As president, Jefferson clashed with other founding fathers like Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and especially Patrick Henry. Jefferson and Henry fell out over Henry’s belief that there should be an “established church” (26). In 1803, Jefferson paid $15 million for land west of the Mississippi River from France. The Federalists saw this as hypocrisy since the Constitution did not allow the president to “purchase lands from foreign governments” (26). To fund the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson used the national bank.

Other actions by Jefferson were to abolish the whiskey tax and send the United States Navy to deal with North African pirates. Jefferson sent two explorers, William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, to lead an expedition into the new Western territories. Jefferson also defended slavery as “a necessary part of America’s growth” (26). He had six children with one enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, whom he never acknowledged.

After Jefferson was reelected for a second term, he started “descending into eccentric behavior” (29). One accomplishment from Jefferson’s second term was the Embargo Act of 1807, which made it illegal for the United States to trade with European nations until they stopped attacking American ships. Though this act prevented the British from seizing American ships and conscripting American sailors, it did damage the US economy, and Jefferson was forced to repeal it in a year.

This chapter begins in the middle of the War of 1812, a conflict between Britain and the United States. British troops had set fire to much of Washington, DC, including the president’s house, nicknamed the “White House” by the press. President James Madison’s wife, Dolley Madison, saved a portrait of George Washington and had it hidden in a barn in Maryland. The portrait survived and today hangs in the East Room of the White House.

James Madison was the son of a tobacco plantation owner in Virginia. He studied political philosophy at Princeton (then the University of New Jersey) and later taught himself law. He “[wa]s often incapacitated by anxiety” (35), once refusing to leave the house for two days because he had lost his hat and had no head covering. Despite his social anxiety, Madison entered politics and joined the Democratic-Republican party with his friend Thomas Jefferson. He married Dolley Payne Todd, an extrovert who compensated for Madison’s anxiety.

Dolley had the White House lavishly decorated, providing a welcome contrast for visitors to the underdeveloped city of Washington, DC. Hosting diplomats, dignitaries, and writers like Washington Irving, Dolley made the White House the “social center of Washington society” (37).

The War of 1812 began when Britain continued seizing American merchant vessels and impressing sailors. The United States Congress, with Madison’s approval, declared war. Though the United States lacked the military resources of Great Britain, American victories at the Battle of Lake Erie and the Battle of New Orleans caused the war to end inconclusively, with some Americans believing that their nation had won.

Even with the harm caused by the War of 1812, the United States expanded because of improved roads and steam-powered river boats. Despite being an enslaver himself, Madison also supported the outlawing of the trade in enslaved people. However, the booming cotton industry meant that Southern plantation owners began to form a powerful political bloc that opposed any nationwide ban on slavery. “This effectively divide[d] America between pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates” (39), a division that worsened as the United States expanded west.

In 1818, President James Monroe authorized General Andrew Jackson, who had successfully fought the British at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, to march into Spanish-held Florida and attack members of the Seminole tribe who were raiding territory that the US claimed as its own. Jackson treated the Seminoles brutally, hanging two leaders and burning 300 houses. Despite Spain’s ownership claims in Florida, Jackson attacked a Spanish fort and set up a US governor for Florida. After this, President Monroe’s era became more uneventful. A Boston newspaper deemed the Monroe presidency the “Era of Good Feelings” because it saw the Federal Party dissolve and the Democratic-Republicans emerge as the sole party (42, 44).

Monroe was the son of a wealthy Virginian planter. He dropped out of William and Mary College to join George Washington’s army during the Revolutionary War. A former governor of Virginia and secretary of state under James Madison, he was elected with 68% of the vote. Monroe had the reconstructed White House refurbished with French materials rather than the British décor favored by Dolley Madison.

Monroe’s wife was Elizabeth Kortright, the daughter of a New York merchant, but due to her ill health, the role of the White House social host was often taken by their daughter Eliza. A scandal emerged when some wine that Monroe had ordered from France was paid for using a furniture fund. Nonetheless, Monroe had an “enormous popularity” not seen since Washington (45).

Monroe’s administration was tested by two problems. The first was the Panic of 1819, the first economic recession in the United States “since the 1780s” (45). The second was the Missouri Compromise that Monroe negotiated, which was designed to preserve the balance in Congress between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions by making Maine an anti-slavery state and granting statehood to Missouri, which had legalized slavery.

Despite such problems, Monroe remained popular. He ran unopposed in the 1820 presidential election, the last presidential candidate to do so. In his second administration, Spain sold Florida to the United States for $4 million. A series of revolutions for independence among many of Spain’s other territories across South and Central America caused the European powers to intervene more drastically in the Americas. In a speech before Congress, “the president starkly warn[ed] Europe not to meddle in North America” and vowed that the United States would not intervene in European affairs (46), a declaration called the Monroe Doctrine.

The end of Monroe’s second term saw a contentious election between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. The Monroes retired to their Virginian plantation, Oak Hill. Like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Monroe died on July 4.

John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote in the 1824 election to Andrew Jackson, but since Jackson did not receive over 50% of the electoral college vote, Adams was able to win the election by convincing one of the candidates, Henry Clay, to give him his electoral votes. This would later be denounced by Jackson as a “corrupt bargain” (50). Adams was the son of a previous president, John Adams, and had “a broad vision for the ideals of American liberty” (49). Before becoming president, Adams had worked as a secretary for his father and as a diplomat to Russia. He married an intellectual and outspoken woman, Louisa Catherine Johnson, who did not often stay at the White House after Adams’s election.

As secretary of state under President Monroe, Adams was heavily involved in the Monroe Doctrine and the United States’ purchase of Florida, and he worked out a deal with Britain in which both nations jointly occupied the Oregon Territory. Despite these achievements, he was unpopular because he presented a cold image. By selling public lands, Adams funded the construction of new roads and canals. His other ideas, like establishing a national university, a naval college, a standardized system of weights and measures, and a national observatory, failed to win congressional approval.

After losing the 1828 election to Andrew Jackson, Adams returned to Massachusetts and was elected to the House of Representatives, “the only man to ever serve as a congressman after being president” (51). In Congress, Adams was an outspoken opponent of slavery who successfully fought against a “gag rule” to silence criticisms of slavery in Congress (51). During the famous Amistad legal case, he also defended a group of enslaved people who had arrived in American territory after overthrowing the crew of a Spanish slave ship. Adams won the case, guaranteeing the formerly enslaved people’s freedom. Adams was still a member of Congress when he died in 1848 at the age of 80.

Coming out of poverty, Andrew Jackson had little formal education. Joining the army during the Revolutionary War, Jackson was captured by the British. When he refused to polish the boots of a British officer, the officer slashed his face, leaving a scar. Learning law, Jackson served as a public prosecutor, a judge, and a US senator. He married Rachel Donelson, who mistakenly believed that she was divorced from her first husband. Suspicions of adultery and bigamy followed Rachel. When a lawyer named Charles Dickinson insulted her, Jackson challenged him to a duel that killed Dickinson and left Jackson with a bullet in his chest.

Andrew and Rachel Jackson lived on a Tennessee plantation, The Hermitage, with 150 enslaved people, whom he treated abusively. When he became the commander of the Tennessee militia, he had a habit of “making up rules” and “executing treaties with Indian nations he ha[d] no power to authorize” (59). He became a “national hero” after the Battle of Orleans in the War of 1812 (59), even though the battle took place after negotiations ending the war had taken place.

During Jackson’s presidency, running water was installed in the White House, and public and private areas of the house were divided for the first time. Jackson’s niece Emily Donelson took over hosting duties at the White House, but she died in 1836 from tuberculosis.

Jackson forcibly relocated Indigenous tribes from Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, removing “almost all tribes east of that river—seventy thousand individuals” to Oklahoma (61), an event that led to thousands of deaths and came to be called the Trail of Tears. When Texas declared independence from Mexico and asked to join the United States, Jackson resisted accepting their petition because it would disrupt the balance between pro- and anti-slavery states. He only recognized Texas as an independent nation at the end of his second term.

Jackson’s vice president, John C. Calhoun, was a proponent of nullification, the legal theory that “allows states to reject laws passed by the federal government” (62). The “obvious intent [of nullification was] to prevent the banning of slavery” (62). Jackson and Calhoun fought over nullification, causing Calhoun to resign as vice president near the end of Jackson’s first term. Calhoun was next elected to the Senate, where he became an obstacle for Jackson’s policies. The authors conclude that Jackson “governed capably, with unbending will” (63).