1. Electioneering and press coverage grew fiery throughout the fall as JA and Thomas Jefferson separated from the pack as the two lead contenders for the presidency. State electors were instructed to cast their votes by 7 Dec., and early results emerged in mid-December although the votes were not formally opened and tallied until Feb. 1797. Longtime friends offered early congratulations. “I hasten to send your Excellencÿ another Letter from mÿ solitarÿ mansion—before the united American Electors have called you—to occupy the chair of their President,” François Adriaan Van der Kemp wrote to JA on 10 Nov. 1796 as the voting continued (Adams Papers). In his correspondence, JA remained cautious and circumspect, confining his hopes and plans for the presidency to AA and a few trusted family members. He remained in Quincy farming until late fall. JA left Quincy for Philadelphia on 23 Nov. and arrived on 2 Dec., three days before the opening of the 2d session of the 4th Congress. JA knew that any candidate’s victory would come with a small majority, and he prepared for the eventuality of either Jefferson or Thomas Pinckney as vice president. “I look upon the Event as the throw of a Die, a mere Chance, a miserable meagre Tryumph to either Party,” JA wrote to JQA on 5 December. For the final results of the presidential election of 1796, see JA’s 4 Jan. 1797 Certification of Receipt of Presidential Votes from Kentucky, and note 2, below (AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963– . description ends , 11:399–400, 597; JA, D&A description begins Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1961; 4 vols. description ends , 3:248–249).

2. In late 1796, Pierre Auguste Adet (1763–1834), a Parisian politician who served as the French minister to the United States, suspended his functions after several months of sharply criticizing American foreign policy. Adet spurred a controversy, sparring with Timothy Pickering in the press over the significance of U.S. neutrality for French defense, especially as it related to the terms of the 1778 Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, the promises of the Jay Treaty, and the ongoing British attacks on U.S. shipping (Hoefer, Nouv. biog. générale description begins Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer, ed., Nouvelle biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours, Paris, 1852–1866; 46 vols. description ends ; AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963– . description ends , 10:444, 11:400).

3. The Washingtons left Philadelphia on 9 March 1797 and arrived at Mount Vernon at four o’clock in the afternoon of 15 March, after pausing for public feasts and honors at several towns along the way. Assessing his retirement projects on the estate, the first U.S. president observed: “I find myself in the situation, nearly, of a new beginner; for although I have no houses to build (except one, which I must erect for the accommodation & security of my Military, Civil & private Papers …) yet I have not one or scarcely anything else about me that does not require considerable repairs. In a word I am already surrounded by Joiners, Masons, Painters & ca” (Washington, Diaries description begins The Diaries of George Washington, ed. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, Chalottesville, Va., 1976–1979; 6 vols. description ends , 6:236, 237–240).