A curious rivalry has developed over the relative merits of our second and third presidents. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, credited with the authorship of the Declaration of Independence and ordering the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, has always been listed among the greats.

John Adams, the second president, often overlooked and slighted by history, came to current prominence in two recent books, David McCullough’s best-selling biography, “John Adams,” and Joseph Ellis’ Pulitzer Prize winning “Founding Brothers.” Both writers consider Adams underrated, and McCullough calls Jefferson seriously overrated.

This new veneration of Adams, sometimes at Jefferson’s expense, brought a sharp outcry from Floyd Abrams, a constitutional lawyer. In a New York Times op-ed piece, Abrams accused both authors of understating the significance of Adams’ decision to sign and then enforce the Sedition Act of 1798. This repressive law, said Abrams, was a carefully crafted political weapon aimed by Adams’ Federalists at Jefferson’s Republicans, the antecedent of the present-day Democratic Party. It made it a crime to defame the United States government or its top officials by bringing them into “contempt or disrepute” among “the good people of the United States.”

The act was used to repress Republican speech. Journalists were indicted and convicted, and some Republican newspapers were forced out of business. Jefferson wrote that the law was the product of “a reign of witches” and was “an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution.”

Adams advocates rushed to his defense in letters to the editor. Richard Brookhiser, a biographer of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, wrote that Jefferson supported even more stringent state sedition laws and used them against journalists of the rival Federalist Party. Brookhiser quoted Jefferson as having written privately that “a few prosecutions of the most prominent [Federalist] offenders would have a wholesome effect in restoring the integrity of the process.”

Both sides are right. After two centuries, we can see that both Adams and Jefferson fell short in respect for the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free press. But presidents can never be the best defenders of these freedoms, since they tend to be preoccupied with gaining and retaining office. The best hope for maintaining a free and independent press lies in the American people as a whole and in the press itself, supported by a court system that puts principle ahead of partisanship.

After the agonizing failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, President John F. Kennedy looked for ways to prosecute newspapers that had published even limited reports of the invasion plans. Mr. Kennedy later said that he was wrong and that fuller advance disclosure could have saved his administration from a disastrous defeat.

So don’t be too hard on Adams and Jefferson. List them both among the great. They were just doing what most presidents are tempted to do. That’s a good reason why we have a free press and an independent court system.