Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, October 1800, Alexander Hamilton writes a letter about fellow federalist and

incumbent president John Adams, titled The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams.

And while that title technically doesn't give away what he felt about the public

conduct and character of John Adams, let's just say it was a critique of the public

conduct and character of John Adams.

You rarely write a letter titled like that and then you go on to say, actually it's quite good and

I really like the guy.

So yes, this was a critique of John Adams and we'll get into the specifics of that critique

and the reasons for it, but it is worth noting that this was just a few weeks before that year's election, which was slated for December 3rd in 1800.

So we have here, perhaps, a very early example of an October surprise a last minute

curve in the election cycle Adams did indeed end up losing that election to

Thomas Jefferson who Hamilton didn't really like either.

So maybe the story here is that Alexander Hamilton kind of had beef with everyone.

But we will get into it and mostly focus on Hamilton versus Adams.

Here as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and

Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. And our

special guest for this episode is Lindsay Trevinsky presidential historian and the executive

director of the George Washington Presidential Library. She's been on the show

before talking about George Washington and executive privilege. She wrote a book

called The Cabinet about George Washington and the new book is called

...