“Adams had spent most of his vice presidency exiled in the Senate, casting a record thirty-one tiebreaking votes. Of the number-two post, he said wearily but indelibly that it was “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

“Adams had spent most of his vice presidency exiled in the Senate, casting a record thirty-one tiebreaking votes. Of the number-two post, he said wearily but indelibly that it was “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

— Ron Chernow