BS. Under Adams, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Andy Jackson created the Trail of Tears in defiance of the Supreme Court. Pierce took us into a bold faced war of aggression against Mexico.
No 'good individuals' stopped any of that.
I am not saying that good individuals did stop everything, but that the environment was such that they might have. And some things were stopped. For example, the Alien Act and the Sedition Act are no longer with us, and led to the election of 1800, which was a fairly good year.