It might sound like something out of Sesame Street, but the XYZ Affair was, in fact, an incident in which French diplomats named "X," "Y," and "Z" in reports to Congress, demanded bribes from American officials and led to an undeclared war at sea.

The Alien and Sedition Acts made it harder for an immigrant to become a citizen, allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were deemed dangerous or who were from a hostile nation, and criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government.

In his bid for re-election, opposition from Federalists and accusations of despotism from Democratic-Republicans led to Adams' loss to his former friend Thomas Jefferson, making him the first one-term president. He retired to Massachusetts and eventually resumed his friendship with Jefferson by initiating a correspondence that lasted fourteen years.

After the Federalists lost control of both houses of Congress along with the White House in the election of 1800, the lame-duck session of the 6th Congress in February 1801 approved a judiciary act that created a set of federal appeals courts between the district courts and the Supreme Court. Adams filled the vacancies created in this statute by appointing a series of federalist judges, whom his opponents called the "Midnight Judges," just days before his term expired. Most of these judges lost their posts when the 7th Congress, with a solid Democratic-Republican majority, approved the Judiciary Act of 1802, abolishing the newly created courts.

John Adams died on July 4, 1826--the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence--just hours after the death of Thomas Jefferson.

John Quincy Adams served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829.