Jefferson and Hamilton: The struggle for democracy in America

By Claude G. Bowers

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Title: Jefferson and Hamilton: The struggle for democracy in America

Author: Claude G. Bowers

Release date: November 25, 2023 [eBook #72222]

Language: English

Original publication: NYC: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON: THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA ***

JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON

[Illustration: THOMAS JEFFERSON

By Nancy Clifton M. Randolph after Thomas Sully]

JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON

_The Struggle for Democracy
In America_

BY
CLAUDE G. BOWERS

AUTHOR OF ‘THE PARTY BATTLES OF THE JACKSON PERIOD’

_With Illustrations_

[Illustration: colophon]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

TENTH IMPRESSION, JANUARY, 1927

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

PREFACE

All American history has since run along the lines marked out by
the antagonism of Jefferson and Hamilton. Our history is sometimes
charged with a lack of picturesqueness because it does not deal
with the belted knight and the moated grange. But to one who
considers the moral import of events, it is hard to see how
anything can be more picturesque than the spectacle of these two
giant antagonists contending for political measures which were so
profoundly to affect the lives of millions of human beings yet
unborn.

JOHN FISKE

It is the author’s purpose, in developing the stirring story of the
Plutarchian struggle of Jefferson and Hamilton, to show that without
belted knights the period was picturesque and dramatic. The
extraordinary men who gave and took lusty blows did not, as some would
have us think, confine themselves to calm academic discussions of
elemental principles. The dignified steel engravings of the
participants, with which we are familiar, give no impression of the
disheveled figures seen by their contemporaries on the battle-field.

This battle-field was rich in movement and color. There was tragedy and
pathos, much of comedy, something of the grotesque. Here we shall meet
marching mobs, witness duels and fist-fights, turbulent mass meetings,
public dinners in groves and taverns, hangings in effigy, and champions
of democracy in the galleries of theaters, pelting the aristocrats in
the pits, and coercing the orchestras into playing ‘La Marseillaise.’ It
was in the midst of such scenes as these that Jefferson and Hamilton
fought the battle of the fundamentals.

The struggle of these two giants surpasses in importance any other waged
in America because it related to elemental differences that reach back
into the ages, and will continue to divide mankind far into the future.
The surrender at Yorktown ended one phase of the Revolution, but it was
not complete until, after twelve years of nationhood, it was
definitively determined that this should be not only a republic, but a
democratic republic. That was the real issue between Jefferson and
Hamilton.

The passions of the period still persist, and much of myth has been
built up by idolaters and enemies about both leaders. It has seemed
possible to the author to tell the story of their struggle with complete
justice to both. The part each played in the creation of the Nation was
essential. It has been the purpose to depict these two men and their
associates as they really were in the heat of controversy, neither
sparing their weaknesses nor exaggerating their virtues; to paint them
as men of flesh and blood with passions, prejudices, and human
limitations; to show them at close quarters wielding their weapons, and
sometimes, in the heat of the fight, stooping to conquer; and to uncover
their motives as they are clearly disclosed in the correspondence of
themselves and friends. This has necessitated the demolishment of some
fashionable myths, when myths have obstructed the view to truth.

The facts as here set forth throw a vivid light on the causes of the
collapse of the Federalist Party, which, in the average of its
leadership, was, perhaps, the most brilliant, and certainly the most
attractive, in American history. Men of wonderful charm they were, but
they were singularly lacking in an understanding of the spirit of their
times and country. They fell, as we shall find, because they neither had
nor sought contact with the average man, and sternly set themselves
against the overwhelming current of democracy.

Even so, we shall find an explanation of their distrust of popular
government in the illiteracy of the times, the exaggerated notions of
freedom that prevailed, and the levity with which so many looked on
financial obligations. It is easier to understand the Hamiltonian
distrust of democracy than to comprehend the faith of Jefferson--a faith
of tremendous significance in history. Quite as remarkable as his faith
was the ability of Jefferson to mobilize, organize, and discipline the
great individualistic mass of the towns, the remote farms along the
Savannah, the almost unbroken wilds of the Western wilderness. With a
few notable exceptions, he was forced to rely for assistance on
lieutenants pathetically inferior to the group of brilliant men who sat
on the Federalist board of strategy. He won because he was a host within
himself, capable of coping single-handed against the combined geniuses
of the opposition in the field of practical politics.

A liberal use has been made of the newspapers of the period; not only of
the descriptions of actual events, but of the false rumors and stories
that entered into the creation of the prejudices that always play their
part in the affairs of men. In determining why a given result was forced
by public opinion, it is no more necessary to know what the truth was
than to know what the people who formed that opinion thought the truth
to be.

Along with the struggles in Congress, the bickerings in streets,
coffee-houses, and taverns, the actions of mobs and mass meetings, it
has been thought important to show the part ‘society’ played in the
drama--for it was a significant part. This was inevitable in a clear-cut
fight between democracy and aristocracy. The elegant home of Mrs.
Bingham was scarcely less identified with the Federalists than was that
of Lady Holland with the English Whigs, or that of Madame Holland with
the party of the Gironde. The pettings which the Otises and Harpers
there received after the battles in the House were very real rewards to
men of their temperament. The part played by men and women of fashion in
the politics of the time will appear in the ostracism of Democrats from
their charmed circle, when even Jefferson, snubbed, was driven for
solace to the solitude of the library of the Philosophical Society.

Throughout the struggle we shall find the forces well
defined--aristocracy against democracy, and sometimes we shall see it
illustrated with theatrical exaggeration, as when the Philadelphia
aristocrats of the army that marched against the Whiskey Boys, on
prancing horses and in broadcloth uniforms, paraded their ragged,
weather-beaten prisoners of the frontier through the fashionable streets
for the delectation of the ladies at the windows.

It is impossible to treat of this period without giving to John Adams a
place apart. He was in some respects a tragic figure, and, though
ludicrously vain and often all but clownish in small things, we shall
have occasion to admire and respect his independence and courageous
subordination of his personal fortunes to the service of humanity and
country in making the peace with France. If at times the mere recitation
of his personal weaknesses seems like ill-natured ridicule, it should be
borne in mind that this is necessary to the explanation of why a
statesman and patriot, so able and deserving, was so unfortunate in his
public career.

The purpose of the author is not to make out a case for or against
democracy, but to show how it came to the Republic, sometimes blundering
and making a fool of itself on the way; to re-create, if possible, an
heroic, picturesque, and lusty age; to make the men of the steel
engravings flesh and blood; to stage the drama of a day when real giants
trod the boards.

CLAUDE G. BOWERS

CONTENTS

I. DAYS OF COMEDY 1

A depressing dawn--Pessimism of Ames and Madison--Petty jealousies and
ambitions--Federal Hall--Caliber of Congress--Adams’s triumphant
entry--His elation--Form and titles--‘Majesty’ or ‘Excellency’?--Adams
scorns ‘President’--‘What shall I be?’--Maclay’s amusement--Ellsworth
puzzled--‘How shall I behave?’--Carroll’s disgust--Debate on
titles--Maclay’s irreverence--Fenno’s plea for titles--Washington’s
arrival and reception--Scene at the inauguration--The inaugural
ball--New York in 1789--Streets, lights, sanitation--Homes of
celebrities--Auction block and gallows--Funeral
bells--Tea-gardens--Taverns--Theater--Washington at the play--Maclay
shocked--The wax-works--Social climbers--Cost of living--Luxury of
society--Its Tory tone--Ball at the French Minister’s--The Court on
Cherry Street--Snobbery and pretense--The Hamiltons entertain--The
dinners of the Pennsylvanians--Robert Morris’s stories--The Wall Street
promenade--The House of Gossip--Richmond Hill--Washington’s
dinners--Madison seeks revenue--Trickery of the merchants--Enter the
‘moneyed class’--Power of removal--Washington and the Senate--Hamilton’s
appointment.

II. HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 22

Appearance--Elegance--Mystery of origin--Precocity--In Santa Cruz--Early
ambition--At King’s College--Literary brilliancy--His eloquence--Was he
a military genius?--His aristocracy--Love of luxury--Government by
‘gentlemen’--Respect for wealth--Contempt for democracy--Preference for
monarchy--His plan for a Constitution--Distrust of the one
adopted--Never reconciled--Work for its adoption--His genius
analyzed--Methods of work--Fighting qualities--Moral courage--Personal
integrity--Analysis of his strength and weakness--As a party
leader--Lovable traits--His conviviality--Fondness for women--His home
life--Attitude toward religion--Toward Washington.

III. HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 43

Confidence in Hamilton in commercial circles--_Report on Public
Credit_--Reason not personally presented--Scene when read--Reactions of
a radical--Enthusiasm in commercial quarters--The discords--Hate of
speculators--‘In the interest of the rich’--Plan to bind moneyed
class--Activity of speculators--Public men involved--Rumors of Robert
Morris--Fast-sailing vessels--The gambling mania--Fenno defends
speculators--The debate on Funding--Gallery scenes--Jackson’s
attack--Hamilton turns lobbyist--Organizes his forces--Newspaper
attacks--Portrait of Madison--He proposes
discrimination--Consternation--Gloom at the Knox dinner--Hamiltonians
attack--The debate--Sedgwick--Smith--Ames--The gallery--Madison
replies--Maclay’s plan--An old roué--Madison’s snub--Discrimination
voted down--Abuse of Madison--Reaction in the streets--Assumption--A
caucus of Hamiltonians--Robert Morris’s interest--Opposition
appears--Revolt of Southerners--The cause--Annihilation of
States--Wolcott reveals Hamilton’s motives--The debate--Hamiltonians
‘piped to quarters’--Fear of vote--Rumors of Vining--Activity of the
lobby--Lame and sick carried to House--Morris approaches Maclay--Alarm
of Hamiltonians--Scenes in the Senate--Assumption voted down--Distress
of Sedgwick, Wadsworth, Clymer, Fitzsimons--Scenes in
coffee-houses--Hamiltonian Senate on a strike--Threats of
disunion--Press comments--‘Bastard of Eastern speculators’--Jefferson
reaches New York--Hamilton tries bargaining--Early morning walk on the
Battery--Hamilton and Jefferson barter--Dinner at Jefferson’s--Madison
agrees--Assumption wins.

IV. PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 69

Hamilton at high tide--Idol of business--Masterful manner in
Cabinet--New fortunes and class feeling--Hamilton’s excise--Welcomes
test of strength--Distillers aroused--Pennsylvania protests--Neutrality
of Jefferson and Madison--Street debates--House debate--Denunciations of
Jackson--Madison’s embarrassment--Liquor and morals--Giles
approves--Revenue agents in elections--Hamilton takes personal charge in
Senate--Meets with committee--Maclay’s rebuff--‘Hamilton fails in
nothing’--Bloodshed predicted--The National Bank--Hamilton’s powerful
following--Maclay notes drift of moneyed men--Debate in House--Madison
attacks monopoly and implied powers--Ames defends--Sectional
significance of vote--Fight in the Cabinet--Madison consulted by
Washington--Asked to reduce views to writing--Fear of veto--Ames
explains Washington’s hesitation--Ugly talk in New York--Hamilton and
Jefferson break--The battle of the press--Hamilton man of the
hour--Given reception in New York--Jefferson and Madison on a
journey--Their intimacy--Their association in the public
mind--Significance of their journey--Pamphlet duel of Burke and
Paine--‘Rights of Man’ and Adams’s ‘Discourses of Davilla’--Jefferson’s
‘preface’ to Paine’s pamphlet--Reference to Adams--British Agent
shocked--Also ‘Society’--Press joins the fray--Burke versus Paine in
country towns--Adams disgusted with Paine--Enraged by Jefferson--J. Q.
Adams attacks Jefferson and Paine--Defends English institutions--The war
in the press--Turmoil pleases Jefferson--Embarrassed by the
‘preface’--Explains to Adams--Friends of democracy aroused--Scandal of
‘scrippomony’--Swindlers’ harvest--Frenzy of speculation--Press
warns--Political phase--Scandal in choice of Bank directors--Hamilton’s
brilliant support.

V. THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 92

Appearance--A woman’s impressions--His cold first look--Charm of
manner--Maclay’s impressions--His conversation--His frontier
training--Westerner with Eastern polish--Bred in democratic
community--College influences--Fights for democracy in
Virginia--Associations in Paris--Life there--Interest in peasants’
plight--Sympathy with dawning of French Revolution--Chats with
Gouverneur Morris--Consulted by leaders of Revolution--His plan to save
the monarchy--His humanity--Toward Hessian prisoners--Against death
penalty for minor offences--Against degrading prisoners--Relations with
servants--With slaves--Hostility to slavery--Attitude toward
religion--Toward the Constitution--Methods as party leader--His
tact--Persuasions of dinner table--Dislike of quarrels and
separations--Self-control--Justly estimates opponent’s
strength--Relations with Adams--His cunning--The art of
mining--Practical political methods--Serenity in storms--The artistic
phase--Music--Architecture--The scientific phase--Interest in natural
history--Astronomy--Inventions--Passion for agriculture--Life at
Monticello.

VI. THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 116

Complaints of Philadelphia prices and manners--The physical
city--Streets and gardens--Halls of Congress--Offices of Jefferson,
Hamilton, and Washington--Life in the taverns--In
boarding-houses--Drinking-places--Arrogance of the masses--Their social
life--Public gardens--Streets by night--Shops and shopping--Economic
status of workers--The aristocracy--Vanity of wealth--‘Elegance of
dress’--Entertaining--Heavy drinking--_Risqués_ conversations--Burr’s
wine--A dinner at Clymer’s--Hamilton and Mrs. Church--Portrait of Mrs.
Bingham--The Bingham mansion--Mrs. Bingham’s hectic life--Monroe’s
social blunder--Judge Chase’s boorishness--A reception at Mrs.
Bingham’s--The Morrises--Mrs. Walter Stewart--Mrs. Samuel Powell--Mrs.
Knox--Mrs. Hamilton--Mrs. Wolcott--Mary Ann Wolcott--Pierce Butler--Mrs.
William Jackson--Foreign visitors--A scene at the British
Legation--Country places--The hunt--Dancing Assembly--The
theater--Washington at the play--The players--The circus--Home of
Jefferson.

VII. JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 140

Hamilton’s advantage in organization--Jefferson’s raw material--His
problem--The scattered masses--The disfranchised--Jefferson plans
amalgamation of local democratic groups--Busy with his pen--Hancock and
Sam Adams--Charles Jarvis--Ben Austin--Abraham Bishop--Politics in
Connecticut--Gideon Granger--Ephraim Kirby--John Langdon--Matthew
Lyon--George Clinton--The Livingstons--Aaron Burr--Jefferson approaches
Burr--Tammany--Jeffersonian leaders in Pennsylvania--John Francis
Mercer--The Virginia machine--Willie Jones of Halifax--Nathaniel
Macon--Timothy Bloodworth--James Jackson of Georgia--Charles
Pinckney--Jefferson’s iron discipline--He works on the
masses--Aristocrats shocked at his associations--Uses the press--John
Fenno--His relations with Federalist leaders--Launching of Freneau’s
paper--Its national appeal--Portrait of Freneau.

VIII. THE GAGE OF BATTLE 161

Hamilton’s _Report on Manufactures_--Its reception--Hamilton’s plan for
factories at Passaic Falls--Appears before New Jersey Legislature for
charter--Visits site to select locations--Pamphlet attacks on his
Passaic project--Admirers subscribe for Trumbull portrait of him--He
watches Freneau’s paper--Its early tone--‘Brutus’ attacks funding
system--Attacks on Freneau’s paper--‘Work of foreigners’--Of a
‘junto’--‘Sidney’ assails Hamilton and his policies--Other assaults in
Freneau’s paper--Fenno to the defense--Demolished by Freneau--Scene at
the Morris house--The rivals visit a factory--Washington’s hope for
reconciliation--Fenno regrets lack of King--Fenno versus Freneau--Fenno
again crushed--Hamilton’s rage--His ‘T.L.’ letter--Freneau’s
reply--Hamilton’s anonymous attacks on Jefferson--Seeks affadavit from
Boudinot--Washington appeals for peace--Hamilton’s
reply--Jefferson’s--Hamilton continues--Madison attacks Hamilton’s
letter--Fenno fears duels--Jefferson holds aloof--Attack postpones his
plans to retire--‘It is a Fact’--Collapse of St. Clair’s
expedition--Jeffersonians attack Knox--Bubble of speculation
bursts--Press denounces the gamblers--The Duer failure--Business
paralyzed--Charged to funding system--The Clinton-Jay contest--Bitter
campaign of 1792--Federalist pessimism--Maryland fight--Hamilton
involved--In North Carolina--In Kentucky--In Virginia--Hamilton’s
cultivation of Virginia Federalists--Adams opposed--Hamilton to the
rescue--Carroll for Vice-President--McHenry’s letter--Hamilton orders
Adams to his post--Press battle over Adams--Results.

IX. HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 185

A remarkable winter--Jeffersonians aggressive--Hamilton’s methods
challenged--Madison demands report on finances--Hints of
corruption--Threats of Duer--Blackmail of Reynolds--Explanation asked of
Hamilton--Scene in Hamilton’s office--In his home--His confession
concerning Mrs. Reynolds--Jeffersonians attack finances--Fight planned
at Jefferson’s--Portrait of Giles--Freneau creates atmosphere for
assault--First Giles Resolutions--Giles’s speech--Hamilton’s
indignation--His candle-lit office--His prodigious achievement--His
friends’ enthusiasm--Criticism of his enemies--Technical violation of
law--Giles resolution of condemnation--The political strategy--The
caucus at Hamilton’s--The debate--The night session--Madison sums
up--Ames replies--The vindication--Reactions of the press--Toast at
Providence Society dinner--Jeffersonians analyze the vote--‘Parties to
the cause’--Jefferson finds bank directors and speculators did it--A
conference at Port Royal--John Taylor’s pamphlet--End of the fiscal
phase.

X. ÇA IRA 207

The French Revolution--Its appeal to American democrats--A wave of
enthusiasm--At Baltimore--At Boston--At Charleston--Political
significance of the Revolution to America--Americans divide on issue of
democracy--Federalists opposed--Their action in the
Senate--Denunciations of France--Federalist scorn for Louis’s
weakness--Jefferson’s attitude--His instructions to
Ministers--Hamiltonians capitalize execution of King--‘Cato’ revived in
Philadelphia--‘Capet has lost his Caput’--Sorrow at
Providence--‘Cordelia’ urges black rose for mourning--Tide turns against
the French--Jefferson’s disgust--Society mourns--Jefferson and Madison
on right to execute--George III joins coalition--‘Monarchy versus
Democracy’--Masses swing back to France--Under the Bingham
windows--Bitterness against England--Hamilton’s alarm--Summons
Washington from Mount Vernon--Hamilton’s misrepresentation of England’s
action--He usurps Jefferson’s functions--Prepares questions for Cabinet
council--Cabinet struggle--Neutrality Proclamation--Madison’s
anger--Protests of the streets--Genêt--His ovations--Jefferson and
Madison pleased--Hamiltonians plan cool reception in
Philadelphia--Popular protests--False report on Count de
Noailles--Hysterical reception--Washington cold--Press attacks
Neutrality--A French craze--Mobs march--The provocations--Scenes in
theaters--Federalists mock--Democratic clubs--Their political
significance--How Neutrality fared--Genêt’s madness--English
outrages--‘Red Coats’ toasted--‘Pacifist’--Jefferson orders Madison to
reply--Attacks on Hamilton--The ‘Little Sarah’--Jefferson and
Genêt--Reactions against French--Madison meets it--Cabinet confers on
Genêt--Jefferson demands his recall--Society pro-English--Party
bitterness--Jefferson’s social ostracism--He resigns--Washington’s
efforts to dissuade him--A near duel--A scare in Boston--Yellow fever in
Philadelphia--Hamilton stricken--Jefferson’s _Report on Commerce_--A
party document--He retires to Monticello.

XI. HECTIC DAYS 240

Madison’s Commercial Resolutions--Their political purpose--English party
aroused--Hamilton speaks by proxy--Madison avows retaliation--The
debate--Ames’s unfortunate speech--Arraignment of English outrages and
defense--‘An English agent here’--Press attacks on
Madison--Jeffersonians call town meetings--At Boston--At New York--At
Philadelphia--At Portsmouth--Ames and Smith hung in effigy--Vogue of
Smith’s speech in London--Hammond an English Genêt--British Orders in
Council--Seizure of American vessels--Retaliatory measures--Hamiltonians
plead for calmness--A mercenary patriot--English Minister
insulted--Jeffersonian press fans the flames--French outrage in
Charleston--Clamor for war--Hamiltonians plead for negotiations--Prefer
Hamilton to negotiate--His intimacy with British Minister and
Agent--‘No. 7’--Protests against Hamilton--A Federalist caucus--Hamilton
selected--Veer to Jay--His personality and character--His fatal
admission--Fight against his confirmation--Popular protests--Hamiltonian
caucus prepares Jay’s instructions--He sails--The ‘Whiskey Boys’--Their
grievances--Insurrection--Political phase--Hamilton welcomes military
measures--Demanding a law’s repeal is urging its violation--Attacks on
Democratic Societies--Their position--That of the Jeffersonian
press--Hamilton goes to war--‘Why Hamilton?’--‘Where is Knox?’--Hamilton
plans a political effect--Cruelty to prisoners--The chariot wheels of
the conqueror--East versus the frontier--Elections of 1794--Ames’s close
call--Livingston’s triumph--Gives Ames the ‘hypo’--In North
Carolina--Fitzsimons defeated--Jefferson’s summer--Dr. Priestley
arrives--Cobbett’s attack--Life in Philadelphia--Theater
mobs--Washington attacks Democratic Societies--Madison meets and defeats
approval in House--The bitter debate--The press battle--Foreshadowings
of Alien and Sedition Laws.

XII. THE MARCHING MOBS 266

Hamilton resigns--Fenno’s tribute--Bache’s comment--Madison’s--Hamilton
given dinner in Philadelphia--In New York--Greenleaf on the
banquet--Jay’s negotiations--Hamilton’s indiscretion--Jay’s
treaty--Hamilton’s disgust--Jefferson’s--Why Hamilton would not
reject--His reservations--Senate debates in secret--Withholds treaty
from publication--Hamilton doubts wisdom--Senator Mason--He gives treaty
to press--Bache’s comments on the secrecy--Mob at Goldbury’s
wharf--Philadelphia mob on the 4th--Jay burned in effigy--Dinner on
Frankfort Creek--Protest meeting in State House yard--‘Kick it to
hell’--Rival dinners in New York--Letter to ‘Sir John Jay’--Boston
mobs--Charleston mob--Rutledge denounces treaty--Mass meeting at
Richmond--Portsmouth mass meeting--Dinner to Langdon--In Vermont--In
Connecticut--In Rhode Island--In Delaware--Jay burned in effigy in
Georgia--Street brawls--Tavern quarrels--Washington’s hesitation--Cabot
anxious--Ellsworth disgusted--Randolph scandal--Washington signs
treaty--Appeals to Washington to make public plea--Bache attacks
him--Hamilton writes ‘Camillus’--Trouble with editor--British outrages
continue--Jeffersonians use them--Jefferson asks Madison to reply to
Hamilton.

XIII. THE DRAMA OF ‘96 289

Senate rejects Rutledge--Jefferson’s comment--Edward
Livingston--Portrait of Albert Gallatin--The Livingston Resolution--A
constitutional question--The debate--Cobbett’s offensive
action--Gallatin’s speech--Sedgwick’s sneer at the people--Resolutions
adopted--Hamilton’s concern--His advice to Washington--Fight on
appropriations for treaty--Disunion threats--Jefferson and Madison on
Washington’s action--‘Still in leading-strings’--Organizing outside
sentiment during debate--Insurance companies enter politics--Banks
also--Boston mass meeting--Otis’s sneer at Gallatin--Abuse of
Gallatin--Intimidation--Federalist alarm--Portrait of Fisher Ames--His
physical collapse--The invalid’s slow journey to the capital--Warrior
borne on a stretcher--His sensational speech--Hamiltonians’ delight--‘In
the hands of Pitt’--The vote--The effect--Jefferson during treaty
fight--His health--The Mazzei letter--Presidential election--Patrick
Henry sounded by Hamiltonians--They choose Pinckney--Thomas
Pinckney--Adams versus Jefferson--Scurrility--Adet’s letter--Hamilton’s
scheme against Adams--His dislike of Adams--Adams or secession--The
results--Hamiltonian distrust of Jefferson as Vice-President--Jefferson
cultivates Adams--The undelivered letter--Jeffersonian press
complimentary to Adams--Federalist displeasure.

XIV. AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 315

A treacherous Cabinet--Portrait of John Adams--Of Timothy Pickering--Of
Oliver Wolcott--Of James McHenry.

XV. COMEDY AND HEROICS 339

The crisis with France--Portrait of Gouverneur Morris--Compared with
Monroe--Monroe’s difficulties in Paris--Federalist intrigue against
him--Ignored by Pickering--Deceived by Jay--French indignation over
Jay’s treaty--Monroe’s recall--Pinckney refused--Hamilton proposes a
mission--Suggests Madison as one--War party’s opposition--Hamilton
prevails--Adams’s objections to Jefferson for the mission--He confers
with Jefferson--Latter discourages sending Madison--Ames proposes
Cabot--Adams names Gerry--Thinks Hamilton ‘in a delirium’--Adams’s
Message--Harrison Gray Otis--Robert Goodloe Harper--Debate on Reply to
the Message--Livingston attacks English party--Harper’s war speech--It
is popular in London--British Minister conspicuous on floor--Taps Harper
on shoulder--Dayton’s compromise--War party attacks him--Lyon shocks the
formalists--Is attacked--His hot reply--‘Porcupine’ assails him--Mass
attack on Jefferson--His silence--Luther Martin attacks him--Is insulted
at Harvard--‘Porcupine’s’ abuse--Jefferson drops society--English party
jeers memory of Franklin--Hisses Paine--First toast to Women’s
Rights--Abuse of Swanwick--Of Mrs. M’Lean--Of Giles--Press comments on
Hamilton’s Reynolds pamphlet--Brilliant social season for
Federalists--Scene at Adams’s dinner table--_Porcupine’s
Gazette_--William Cobbett--Rival banquets--Discourtesy to Monroe--Dinner
in his honor--He confers with party leaders--Gallatin’s
conclusions--Lyon-Griswold fight--Press comments.

XVI. HYSTERICS 362

Hamiltonians bent on war--Hamilton runs the government--Bitterness of
debates--Harper’s wild war speech--Petitions against arming
ships--Adams’s ‘insane message’--Hamilton in the wings--Sprigg
Resolution--Harper’s blunder--X Y Z papers--Partisan abuse--Jefferson
disheartened--War clouds lower--Jefferson’s view of X Y
Z--Madison’s--Monroe’s--War hysteria--Adams greets young warriors of
capital--A drunken mob--Attack on Bache’s house--Adams alarmed--The
‘terror’ of Fast Day--‘Hail Columbia’--Resented by Jeffersonians--Author
rewarded--War hawks beat tom-toms--Hamilton urges Washington to stir the
country--Ames demands war at once--Return of Marshall--His
ovation--Partisan purpose--Capitalization of Pinckney’s return--Hamilton
writes philippics against France--Jefferson asks Madison to
reply--‘Porcupine’s’ war propaganda--War party keeps presses busy with
Harper’s speech--Other war pamphlets--Clergy joins war hawks--‘Why so
much anger in the heart of a divine?’--Terrorizing
Jeffersonians--Jefferson ready--Bache assaulted--Hamilton goes
gasconading--His amazing letter--Democrats fight for time--Jefferson
insulted--Ostracized--Spied upon--Mail opened--Abusive
toasts--Persecution of Lyon--Of Livingston--Of a Boston editor--The
Alien Law--Hatred of the Irish--Political reason--Jeffersonians and
English Whigs versus Hamiltonians and Pitt--Hamiltonians and Irish
Rebellion--King’s part--Otis’s ‘wild Irish’ speech--Sedition laws
proposed--Hamilton shocked at original bill--Mobbing Democrats in
debate--Livingston’s speech on Alien Bill--Wild talk in Sedition Bill
debate--Yellow fever again--Dr. Rush--Death of Fenno--Of
Bache--Elections of ‘98--Washington an active and extreme
partisan--Marshall’s campaign--Opposes Alien and Sedition
Laws--‘Porcupine’s’ comment--Reign of Terror begins--College degrees for
Federalists--‘Patriot’ mobs--Jeffersonians discharged from jobs--A
Bishop’s sermon.

XVII. THE REIGN OF TERROR 386

Arrest of Matthew Lyon--A ludicrous trial--Cruel treatment--Loathsome
cell--Protest of Green Mountain Boys--Lyon in jail elected to
Congress--Plans to rearrest him--His fine subscribed--Dramatic scene on
release--Ovations en route to Congress--Persecution of the Reverend J.
C. Ogden--Imprisoned--Assaulted by soldiers--Arrest of Anthony
Haswell--His offense--Brutal treatment--Trial--Ovation on release--Case
of David Brown--The comedy case of Richard Fairbanks--Ames’s
plea--Persecution of Adams of the _Chronicle_--Resentment of
public--Trial--Dana’s bitter charge--Adams in jail--Visited by Sam
Adams--William Duane--The Saint Mary’s Church
‘riot’--Arrest--Trial--Dallas excoriation--Acquittal--Rearrest--Case of
Thomas Cooper--Chase on the bench--His conduct--Cooper
imprisoned--Refuses pardon--Dinner on release--The Callender
case--Chase’s boast--His conduct--Lawyers refuse to proceed--Case of
Judge Peck--Public sentiment aroused--Political effect--Case of Charles
Holt--The list of victims--Use of Alien Law--Case of John D. Burk--Of
Moreau de Saint Merys--Toasting Alien and Sedition Laws--Harper’s
jeer--Mass meetings demanding repeal--Congressional speakers for repeal
mobbed--A conference at Monticello--Portrait of John
Breckenridge--Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions--As viewed at the
time--Answers of Legislatures--Fight in Massachusetts--By Senator John
Bacon--And Aaron Hill--Abuse of Bacon--Stoning of Hill’s
house--Porcupine preaches right of secession.

XVIII. ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 412

‘Hamilton’s war’--Hamilton for commander--Adams’s veto--Cabinet
conspired for Hamilton against Adams--McHenry’s trip to Mount
Vernon--The trick turned--Adams’s revolt--Hamilton’s
activities--Wolcott’s--The Essex Junto’s--Working on Washington--His
letter to Adams--Latter’s retort--Exclusion of Jeffersonians from
commissions--Washington in accord--Hamilton’s charge--Adams overruled on
Burr--And Muhlenberg--Moderate Federalists protest
extremes--Jeffersonian sarcasm--Hamilton organizes for war--His
difficulties--Scolds McHenry--Decline of war spirit--Jefferson fears
insurrection over taxes--eight per cent interest--‘Damned army will ruin
the country’--Jeffersonians capitalize eight per cent--Fries
Rebellion--Hamilton in Philadelphia--Soldier outrages--On Jacob
Schneider--On Duane--‘Porcupine’s’ delight--Militarism
rampant--Recruiting lags--Clergy to the rescue--Attempt to revive war
fever--Army for domestic purposes--Desertions--Discussions on
executions--Logan goes to Paris--Federalist alarm--War unnecessary--Why
Otis knew it--Cries of ‘treason’--Logan learns French wish
peace--Snubbed by Pickering--By Washington--The Logan Law--Jeffersonians
fight--Harper exposed--Case of Gerry--The Miranda conspiracy--Hamilton’s
part--His plan to wipe out the States--Adams consults Cabinet on
negotiations--Is ignored--Conspirators frame Message--Adams’s
amendment--Hamiltonians caucus to force declaration of
war--Defeated--Pickering sulks--Adams nominates an envoy--Enemies
caucus--Committee calls--Porcupine attacks--Retreats--Compromise on
mission--Some Hamiltonian letters--An Adams
dinner--Procrastination--Working on Adams--Cabot calls--Adams’s
summer--Adams at Trenton--Talks with Hamilton--With Ellsworth--A Cabinet
meeting--Envoys sail--Rage of Hamiltonians--Dreary winter in
Philadelphia--Marie Bingham’s escapade.

XIX. ‘THE GRAPES OF WRATH’ 440

Enter John Marshall--The Ross Bill--Withheld from public--Duane gets and
prints it--Protests--Marshall’s disaffection--Working on Marshall--He
wrecks the bill in the House--What Jefferson had done--His
platform--Jeffersonian leaders in South Carolina--‘Rye House
Plot’--Jefferson at home--New York election--Aaron Burr--Compared with
Hamilton--Hamilton takes charge--His plan--His caucus and ticket--Burr’s
system of espionage--His personal machine--Tammany--Caucuses at his
home--Plans Assembly ticket of national figures--Labors with Gates,
Clinton, and Livingston--Wins consent--Shock to Hamilton--Attacks on
Clinton and Gates--Merchants mobilized--Burr organizes--His brilliant
work--Campaigning with the lowly--The election--Hamilton’s proposal to
Jay--Burr for Vice-President--Federalist losses in New England--Caucus
agrees on Adams and C. C. Pinckney--Adams’s rage over New York--Scene
with McHenry--Pickering dismissed--Hamilton’s letter to Pickering--His
excitement--Reactions of Hamiltonians--They plan defeat of Adams--Adams
toasts ‘proscribed patriots’--An anti-Adams session of the
Cincinnati--Hamilton’s New England tour--His political purpose--Sees
Governor Gilman in New Hampshire--Meets rebuff in Rhode Island--A
meeting of the Essex Junto--At Salem--At Ipswich--At
Newburyport--Hamilton’s unfortunate statement--Jeffersonian
ridicule--Hamilton grasps the situation.

XX. HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 464

Hamilton plans coercion of Federalist electors--Letter to
Carroll--Enemies in Adams’s camp--Wolcott’s treachery--Cabot
doubtful--Noah Webster deserts Hamilton for Adams--Attitude of
press--Jeffersonians attack Hamilton--Their campaign--The Dayton
scandal--‘Adams a monarchist’--Langdon’s signed statement--Corroboration
from New Haven--Webster’s slur at the poor--Fenno’s fatal
pamphlet--Secession talk of Federalists--Wolcott’s father--Letters of
‘Pelham’--Those of ‘Burleigh’--Reply of ‘Rodolphus’--Jeffersonian
progress in New England--In Connecticut--Abraham Bishop--His Phi Beta
Kappa oration--Political preachers--The Reverend Cotton Smith’s
slander--Jefferson’s comment--The Reverend Dr. Abercrombie--Duane
attacks--Dr. Lynn electioneers for Pinckney--Rebuked by Jeffersonian
woman--Persecution of Jeffersonian clergymen--Pamphlets on Jefferson’s
religion--Ridicule of Federalists’ religious pose--‘Diary’ of
Fayton--Federalists seek Catholic votes--Hamilton plans personal attack
on Adams--Seeks aid of Adams’s Cabinet--Writes pamphlet--Burr gets and
publishes--Editor of _New York Gazette_ explains--Hamilton’s case
against Adams--Cabot’s criticism--Major Russell’s
floundering--Jeffersonian press attacks Hamilton--Pamphlet
replies--Hamilton eager to answer--Friends dissuade--Election tricks--In
Pennsylvania.

XXI. DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 486

Washington City--Morris’s cynical description--Mrs. Adams’s--The
physical town--Lodgings--Social life--Jefferson calls on Adams--His
lodgings at Conrad’s--Others at Conrad’s--Federalist conspiracy to elect
Burr--Hamilton’s indignation--His attempt to dissuade his party--A drama
in letters--Morris and Jay join Hamilton--Others desert--Harper calls on
Morris--Plan to prevent an election--Burr’s aloofness--He hears from
Harper--Burr’s letter to General Smith--Hamilton wins
McHenry--Pickering’s preference for Burr--Bayard’s
embarrassment--Sedgwick for Burr--Federalist caucus agrees on
Burr--Hamilton makes serious charge--His depression--The serenity at
Conrad’s--Jefferson’s non-political letters--Visitors pack the
town--Federalist press in the contest--Gallatin surveys the
field--Jefferson’s secret plan--He writes Burr--Writes scientific
friends on bones--Hamilton’s final shot at Wolcott dinner--A Washington
snowstorm--Nicholson carried in bed to Capitol--Scenes during all-night
voting--The drama of the struggle--Jefferson during the
voting--Approached by Morris--Conspirators surrender--Adams
notified--Jefferson takes leave of Senate--Morris’s resolutions of
thanks--The die-hards protest--Inaugural crowds--Creating new
judges--Adams rewards Wolcott--Adams’s flight--Sedgwick’s--Breakfast at
Conrad’s--Jefferson sworn in by Marshall--‘All Federalists, all
Republicans’--Mrs. Smith pours tea--Epilogue.

BOOKS, PAMPHLETS, NEWSPAPERS, AND MAGAZINES CITED OR CONSULTED 513

INDEX 519

ILLUSTRATIONS

THOMAS JEFFERSON _Frontispiece_

From a copy of the Thomas Sully portrait, painted by Nancy Clifton M. Randolph,
wife of Thomas Jefferson Randolph IV, a lineal descendant of Jefferson

ALEXANDER HAMILTON 22

From an engraving by E. Prud’homme after a miniature by Archibald Robertson

MRS. WILLIAM BINGHAM 128

From an engraving in Rufus Wilmot Griswold’s _Republican Court_ after the
painting by Gilbert Stuart

FOUR HAMILTONIANS 140

FISHER AMES
From a portrait by Gilbert Stuart

ROBERT GOODLOE HARPER
From a painting

GEORGE CABOT
From a woodcut after a pastel of Cabot at the age of sixteen, the only known
portrait

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
From an engraving after a portrait by Thomas Sully

FOUR JEFFERSONIANS 148

ALBERT GALLATIN
From a portrait by Gilbert Stuart

EDWARD LIVINGSTON
From an engraving by E. Wellmore after a drawing by J. B. Longacre

WILLIAM BRANCH GILES
From a miniature painted in Washington in 1812, reproduced in heliotype in
_The Centennial of Washington’s Inauguration_, by Clarence Winthrop Bowen

JAMES MADISON
From a portrait by Thomas Sully

FACSIMILE OF HAMILTON’S LETTER TO OLIVER WOLCOTT APPOINTING
HIM AUDITOR IN THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT 332

From the original pasted in George Gibbs’s own copy of his _Administrations
of;
Washington and Adams_

THE GRISWOLD-LYON FIGHT IN THE HOUSE 360
From a contemporary cartoon

‘MAD TOM IN A RAGE’ 384
From a contemporary cartoon typical of the Federalist attacks on Jefferson

JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON

_The Struggle for Democracy in America_

CHAPTER I

DAYS OF COMEDY

When Fisher Ames, exuberant over his unhorsing of Samuel Adams, and
eager to try his lance on others, reached New York to take his place in
the House of Representatives, he was disgusted to find few indications
that a new government was about to be established. Wandering about the
narrow, crooked streets he encountered few colleagues. That was the
beginning of his cynicism.

A week after the date set for the opening of Congress but six Senators
had appeared, and a circular letter was sent to the others urging their
immediate attendance. Two weeks more and neither House nor Senate could
muster a quorum.[1] Ames could see little improvement on the ‘languor of
the old Confederation,’ but expected an organization of the House within
a day or two. A Virginian, lingering in Philadelphia with a slight
indisposition, was expected momentarily and the Representatives from New
Jersey were on the way. But there was nothing definite on which to base
such fair hopes of the Senate.[2] The next day Madison wrote Washington
in a similar vein.[3] This seeming indolence or indifference was the
subject of pessimistic conversations among the members in town as they
meandered about the streets. Revenue was being lost--‘a thousand pounds
a day’; credit was going; the spirit of the new experiment was sinking.
‘The people will forget the new government before it is born,’ wrote
Ames. ‘The resurrection of the infant will come before its birth.’[4]
Already petty jealousies and ambitions were manifesting themselves, with
much intriguing for the honor of being messengers to notify the
President and Vice-President of their election.[5] The little city was
overrun with job-hunters. Even before the gavel fell on the first
session, there were discussions of removing the capital elsewhere
because of ‘the unreasonable expense of living,’ in New York.

It was not until April 2d, almost a month late, that a quorum was formed
in the two houses. The following day George Washington was elected
President, John Adams Vice-President, and messengers started for Mount
Vernon and Braintree. Confronted by the most momentous governmental task
in history, the men on whom fell the burden of creating a new nation had
consulted their personal convenience about starting. It was not a
promising beginning.

If the lawmakers had been derelict, the people of New York had not. They
at least appreciated the possibilities of a capital. The task of
designing Federal Hall in which Congress was to meet had been entrusted
to L’Enfant--who was to win undying fame by planning the city of
Washington--and he had done his work well--some thought too well. Ames
was rather delighted over the fact that it had cost ‘20,000 pounds York
money,’ but Ames was a lover of luxury, and the more democratic Wingate,
while conceding that the city had ‘exerted itself mightily,’ was afraid
it had done so ‘excessively.’[6] In truth there was dignity and beauty
in the stately arches and the Doric columns, in the lofty vestibule
paved with marble and lighted from an ornate dome, in the design and
decorations of the chambers, with their graceful pilasters and their
crimson draperies. There was richness enough to disturb the republican
souls of members from the rural districts and the small towns.[7] Among
the members who sat down amidst these surroundings were a number who
were nationally known and brilliant, but the majority were comparatively
obscure and mediocre. Looking over his colleagues, the enthusiastic and
impressionable Ames found himself ‘less awed and terrified’ than he had
expected; for while it was ‘quite a republican assembly’ because ‘it
looks like one,’ he could see few ‘shining geniuses.’[8] To the more
experienced Madison, the outlook was not so pleasing. ‘I see on the list
of Representatives a very scanty proportion who will share in the
drudgery of business,’ he wrote.[9]

III

After a triumphant journey, constantly interrupted by ovations and
addresses, by the thunder of artillery, the clatter of cavalry, and the
ringing of bells, John Adams reached the city, took his seat beneath the
canopy of crimson velvet in the Senate and began his reign. The ceremony
and adulation of his progress from Braintree had gone to his head.
Almost immediately he began to mimic the manners and parrot the language
of the Old World court circles, until even the aristocratic Ames was
moved to regret his ‘long absence’ from the country because of which he
had ‘not so clear an idea of the temper of the people as others who have
not half his knowledge in other matters.’[10]

With the approach of Washington, the Senate, partly under the
inspiration of Adams, began to grapple soberly with the problem of form
and titles. Even before the arrival of Adams, when every one was ‘busy
in collecting flowers and sweets ... to amuse and delight the President
... on his arrival,’ the prosaic Roger Sherman had ‘set his head to work
to devise some style of address more novel and dignified than
“Excellency.”’ There was an ominous growl from the skeptics who doubted
the propriety, and some ribald laughter from the wits. A caricature had
even appeared under the caption ‘The Entry,’ representing the President
on an ass, and in the arms of his man Billy Humphreys, who was shouting
hosannas and birthday odes, while the Devil looked on with the comment:

‘The glorious time has come to pass
When David shall conduct an ass.’[11]

It was to require more heroic treatment than this, however, to cool the
senatorial ardor for high-sounding names. Even before Adams had been
elected, he had participated in serious discussions in Boston as to
whether the President should be called ‘Majesty,’ or ‘Excellency,’ or
nothing at all. Of course the Senators and Representatives should be
given the honest English title of ‘Most Honorable’ for Major Russell in
the ‘Centinel’ had been doing that all along. But the time for decision
had come. The President was approaching. It had been decided that on his
arrival at the Senate Chamber for his inauguration, he was to be met at
the door by Adams, conducted to a chair, and informed that both houses
were ready to attend him when he took the oath. But how should he be
addressed? Should it be as ‘Mr. Washington,’ ‘Mr. President,’ ‘Sir,’
‘May it please your Excellency,’ or what? Adams took his troubles to the
Senate. Should it be as ‘Excellency,’ as in the army? Adams was free to
admit that he preferred it to ‘Mr. President,’ which ‘would put him on a
level with the Governor of Bermuda.’

There were Senators who instantly caught the importance of the point.
One proposed the appointment of a committee to determine.[12] But these
troubles came, not singly, but in battalions. What was Mr. Adams to do
when Washington was in the Chamber? He did not know whether the framers
of the Constitution ‘had in view the two Kings of Sparta or the two
Consuls of Rome when they formed it,’ He could not tell whether the
architect of the building, in making his chair wide enough for two, had
the Constitution before him. He was Vice-President--but he was also
President of the Senate. ‘When the President comes into the Senate, what
shall I be?’ he asked plaintively. ‘I cannot be President then. I wish
gentlemen to think what I shall be.’

It was a solemn moment. Adams, with an air of distress, sank into his
chair. The silence was depressing. The leveler from the frontier of
Pennsylvania, Maclay, found ‘the profane muscles of his face in tune for
laughter,’ but controlled himself. Ellsworth, a practical man, was seen
feverishly turning the pages of the fundamental law. At length he rose
to announce the result of his research. It was clear enough that
wherever the Senate was, ‘there, sir, you must be at the head of them.’
But--‘here he looked aghast as if some tremendous gulf yawned before
him’--but ‘further, sir, I shall not pretend to say.’[13]

Thus the great day arrived to find the Senate caught unawares by a new
crisis. Adams had just risen to explain that Washington would probably
address the Congress, and to ask instructions as to ‘how I shall
behave.’ It was a congenial subject for discussion. Lee of Virginia rose
to explain the ways of the Lords and the Commons. Izard of South
Carolina, who had been educated abroad and wished it understood, told
how often he had been in the Houses of Parliament. Lee had observed
that, while the Lords sat, the Commons stood. True, admitted Izard, but
there were no seats for the Commons. Adams here interrupted to tell the
Senate how often he too had been in Parliament. Old Carroll of
Carrollton, who lived like a lord, but did not think like one,
grumblingly suggested that it did not matter what the English did.

And just then--consternation! The Clerk of the House was at the door!
How should he be received? The discussion was feverishly resumed. Lee,
getting his cue from the Commons again, was sure that he should be met
at the door by the Sergeant-at-Arms with his mace on his shoulder.
Confusion worse confounded--the Speaker and members of the House were
now at the door! Members left their seats in their embarrassment, the
doors were opened, the House filed in. Some one had blundered![14]

Meanwhile, with increased animation, the debate over the title for the
President was resumed. Of course there should be titles, said Lee.
Venice, Genoa, Greece, Rome--all had them. Ellsworth began to find
virtue in kings; Izard was impressed with the antiquity of kingly
government. Old Carroll, grumbling--or laughing--as usual, did not care
for kings. But the President’s title--what should it be? Ellsworth
thought ‘President’ common. Adams eagerly added that there were
‘presidents of fire companies and cricket clubs.’
‘Excellency?’--suggested by Izard. ‘Highness?’--proposed by Lee.
‘Elective Highness?’[15]

At length it was settled--‘His Highness the President of the United
States and Protector of the Rights of the Same.’ Adams was disgusted.
‘What will the common people of foreign countries; what will the
soldiers and sailors say to “George Washington, President of the United
States”? They will despise him to all eternity.’[16]

The rabid republicans began to laugh. Speaker Muhlenberg dubbed Maclay,
‘Your Highness of the Senate.’ Maclay himself, usually sardonic, grew
facetious in debate, and thought the title satisfactory if the President
was really high ‘and gloriously greased with a great horn of oil’ to
make him conspicuous. Even Robert Morris complained that the Congress
was also ‘Protector of the Rights of the People.’[17] But alas, it was a
case of love’s labor lost, for when the ponderous title reached the
House, James Madison quietly announced that the Constitution had given
the head of the State a title--‘President of the United States’; and so
it has been from that day to this.

The more thoughtful had witnessed the tempest in a teapot with some
misgivings. Madison thought the success of the Senate plan would have
‘given a deep wound to our infant Government’;[18] and Ames thought it
‘a very foolish thing to risk much to secure’ and wished ‘that Mr. Adams
had been less disguised.’[19] But they who continued for twelve years to
refer to ‘the court’ were not content. A correspondent of Fenno’s
‘Gazette,’ the ‘court journal,’ continued to plead for ‘titles of
distinction’ and to pray piously that Congress would ‘not leave the
important subject to chance, to whim, caprice, or accident.’[20]

In the midst of these acrimonious discussions of the flubdubbery of
ceremonials, and with Adams proposing that the Sergeant-at-Arms be
called ‘Usher of the Black Rod,’[21] Washington reached New York. A
black mass of humanity awaited him in the rain at the water-front,
peered down upon him from roofs and windows. The roaring of cannon and
the pealing of bells apprized the crowd that the ornate barge the city
had provided to ‘waft His Excellency across the bay’[22] had been
sighted. The thirteen pilots in white uniforms who manned the barge were
conspicuous as it moved on to the accompaniment of cheers to the Wall
Street wharf. As it swept alongside the landing, bands on the banks
joined in the noisy welcome of the cannon and the bells. When
Washington, in a plain suit of blue and buff, rose to descend ‘the
stairs covered with crimson trapping, the shouts of the populace drowned
the combined noises of the mechanical devices.’[23]

Declining the use of carriages, he proceeded with his party and the
committee on foot down Wall Street to Pearl, then Queen, and up the
full length of that then fashionable thoroughfare, which boasted a
sidewalk that would accommodate three walking abreast, to the house
prepared for him on Cherry Street. The crowd followed, men, women, and
children, masters and men. There at the house they left him; and a few
moments later he returned down Pearl Street to the home of Governor
George Clinton to dine. That night the houses of the city were
illuminated. The monarch had entered his capital. To the masses he was
the maker of a nation; to the world of fashion he was the creator of a
court.[24]

The day of inauguration found the city fluttering with flags, colorful
with decorations, Wall Street fairly screaming with the spirit of
festivity. Wreaths and flowers hung from windows. A reverential throng
packing Wall, Broad, and Nassau Streets watched the great man enter the
Hall; and a few minutes later he appeared upon the balcony of the Senate
Chamber--a gallant figure in deep brown, ‘with medal buttons, an eagle
on them, white stockings, a bag and sword’[25]--to take the oath.

The keen eyes of Alexander Hamilton surveyed the scene from his home
across the street.

Thence back to the Senate Chamber where the inaugural address, in
trembling hands, was read with difficulty because of the shaking paper.
The erratic but loyal Maclay was pained to find that his hero was not
‘first in everything.’[26] Thence back to the house on Cherry Street.

Never had the little city been so picturesquely and brilliantly
illuminated as on that night of general rejoicing. Transparent paintings
shone all over the town--that at the bottom of Broadway ‘the finest ever
seen in America.’[27] It was a beautiful evening, ‘and no accident cast
the smallest cloud upon the retrospect.’[28]

A few evenings later, an inaugural ball was given by the Assembly in
their rooms on Broadway above Wall Street. The President ‘was pleased to
honor the company with his presence,’[29] and ‘every pleasure seemed to
be heightened’ as a result.[30] There, too, was ‘His Excellency the
Vice-President,’ and members of Congress with their families, officers
of the army, the Ministers of France and Spain. ‘Joy, satisfaction and
vivacity was expressed on every countenance.’[31] Each lady, passing the
ticket-taker, was presented with a fan made in Paris, with an ivory
frame containing a medallion portrait of Washington in profile. ‘A
numerous and brilliant collection of ladies’ it was, according to the
impressionable reporter, all dressed ‘with a consummate taste and
elegance.’[32]

Society awoke that night to the fact that a nation had been created and
a capital established on the Hudson, and it fairly titillated at the
prospect of the gayety of a ‘court.’

Now let us take a turn around the city and familiarize ourselves with
the setting of the drama. It will not take long, for the little city of
thirty-five thousand was compactly built. Broadway, the most promising
and pretentious of the thoroughfares, was paved only to Vesey
Street--beyond that, mud. The houses, most of them modest, were
surrounded by gardens. From the west side of Broadway to the west side
of Greenwich, the town was well built up from Bowling Green to Reade.
Beyond that, only the hospital and a few widely scattered houses. On the
east side, building extended as far north as Broome. Were we on a
shopping expedition we should seek Nassau and William, the heart of the
retail district, passing on the former many attractive homes including
that of Aaron Burr. Were we bent on a promenade, to meet the ladies and
the dandies, we should betake ourselves to Wall, where, notwithstanding
the auctioneers, the shoemakers, the grocers, the tailors, the
confectioners, the peruke-makers, we should pass handsome homes. Perhaps
we should jostle the statesmen emerging from the boarding-houses along
the way.

These narrow, crooked streets we should find more tolerable by day than
by night. The street lamps were at wide intervals and frequently
unlighted. If we escaped a highwayman in the night, we should be lucky
to escape the mud of the poorly paved sidewalks, and if we did not
bruise our shins by collision with the town pumps, we should be
fortunate not to stumble over a pig. Off somewhere in the darkness we
should probably hear the curses of some unfortunate wanderer fallen over
an obstruction, the grunting of hogs rooting in the gutters, the
barking of innumerable dogs.[33] The long line of negroes bearing
burdens toward the river might pique our curiosity did we not know that
they were the sewage carriers of the city doing their nightly routine
work.

Even by day we should find traveling not without its risks, for many of
the streets were torn up for improvements.[34] Thus ‘the Hon. Mr.
Huger,’ thrown from his sedan chair and painfully bruised, lays claim to
immortality in the pages of Maclay[35] and in the yellowing sheets of
Fenno’s journal.[36] Faring forth in search of the political
celebrities, we should not have far to go, for most were herded in
boarding-houses. Hamilton lived comfortably at Broad and Wall Streets,
Burr around the corner on Nassau. Jefferson was soon realizing his dream
of comfort on Broadway after living in a little house in Maiden Lane.
Randolph, the Attorney-General, had found a modest place in the country
for two hundred and fifty dollars with ‘an excellent pump of fresh
water.’[37] Knox was living beyond his means on Broadway, and Adams was
at Richmond Hill. But most of the lawgivers found boarding-houses more
congenial to their purses. Thus, within a few steps on Great Dock Street
we should find Robert Morris, Caleb Strong, Pierce Butler, Fisher Ames,
and Theodore Sedgwick; in Maiden Lane, James Madison; on Smith Street,
Charles Carroll, and on Water Street, Oliver Ellsworth.

Turning from the celebrities to the lowly and the base, we could visit
the slave market which was then active, for there were more than two
thousand negroes in bondage in the city. While the orators at Federal
Hall were speaking reverently of liberty, the hammer of the auctioneer
was knocking down negro girls to the highest bidder, and the local
papers were running ‘rewards’ for the capture of runaway slaves.[38]
Were we in the mood to walk to the end of the pavement on Broadway, we
could regale ourselves, in the grove where the City Hall now stands,
with a view of the gallows enshrined in a Chinese pagoda where the
executioners competed successfully at times with the debaters in
attracting the curious. There, too, stood the whipping-post.[39] In the
midst of so much that was grim, little wonder that the statesmen
resented the frequent ringing of funeral bells. ‘The gentlemen from the
country complain exceedingly of this noisy, unmeaning and absurd
custom,’ wrote ‘A Citizen’ to his favorite paper. ‘This is the moment to
abolish it, and give an evidence of a disposition to please them.’[40]
But it is not of record that the ‘gentlemen from the country’ were
permitted to interfere with the privileges of the dead.

Were we to turn from these grim specters to amusement, we could get a
conveyance at one of the city’s six livery stables to carry us into the
country to the Florida tea-gardens on the North River; thence to Perry’s
on the present site of Union Square, or to Williamson’s, near the
present site of Greenwich and Harrison.[41] But were our mood of darker
hue, we could find no dearth of entertainment at the taverns. When
Congress quarreled and struggled at Federal Hall, and Washington dwelt
on Cherry Street, one hundred and thirty-one taverns were licensed in
the city to which flocked all manner of men. There, with liquor or ale,
we could enjoy a cock-fight and pick the winner, or gather about the
table and gamble at cards. Laborers, loafers, sailors, criminals
infested these dives, and if we preferred cleaner company, we might get
an invitation to the Black Friars, the one social club in the city.[42]
Or, if more intellectual entertainment were desired, it could be found
in the wooden building painted red on John Street, a stone’s-throw from
Saint Paul’s Church where Washington had his pew, where the Old American
Company regaled the people of the pit, the boxes, and galleries with the
plays of Shakespeare, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Garrick, and some of
indifferent merit.[43] Here ‘The Father,’ by William Dunlap, the
historian of the American theater, had its first presentation--a notable
event, since Washington, a spectator, was seen to laugh at the
comedy.[44] Indeed, his health permitting, the President was frequently
seen in his box which bore the arms of the United States, and the press
was not amiss in keeping the public informed when the great man went to
the play.[45] He had been in the house on Cherry Street but a few days,
when, disregarding the frowns of the purists, he went to see the
‘School for Scandal.’ Two days before, the ‘Daily Advertiser’ had gayly
hinted of the prospective visit. ‘It is whispered that “The School for
Scandal” and “The Poor Soldier” will be acted on Monday night for the
entertainment of the President,’ it said. And then it added, by way of
gentle admonition to the players: ‘Mrs. Henry ought on this occasion to
condescend to give passion and tenderness to Maria.... Mrs. Henry ought
to act Norah and improve the delightful farce by the melody of her
voice. Mrs. Henry ought to take no offense at the suggestion.’[46] We
may be sure it was a festive occasion, for Fenno’s ‘court journal’ said
that ‘there was a most crowded house and the ladies, who were numerous,
made a most brilliant appearance.’[47] One sour Senator in the
presidential party did not take kindly to the play. ‘I think it an
indecent representation before ladies of character and virtue,’ he
wrote--and there were ladies in the party![48] The President, however,
was pleased to go again quite soon to see ‘The Clandestine Marriage,’
again subjecting ‘ladies of character and virtue’ to temptation, for
Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Knox were with his party when ‘Mrs. Henry and Mrs.
Morris played with their usual naïveté and uncommon animation’ due to
‘the countenance of such illustrious auditors.’[49]

Other forms of entertainment, all too few, were not neglected by the
celebrities. ‘The President and his Lady and family and several other
persons of distinction were pleased to honor Mr. Bowen’s wax-works
exhibit with their company at 74 Water Street’--looms among the
announcements of the ‘court journal.’[50]

Nor were the entertainments dependent wholly upon the residents and
governmental dignitaries. The little city was bravely simulating the
airs of a real capital. The social climbers, hearing of the ‘court’
flocked to town from the four corners with their wives and
daughters.[51] The cost of living mounted alarmingly, and the rental of
suitable houses was prohibitive to many. Oliver Wolcott, hesitating
about accepting a place paying fifteen hundred dollars a year, had been
assured by Ellsworth that a house could be had for two hundred dollars,
wood for four dollars a cord, hay for eight dollars a ton, but that
marketing was twenty-five per cent higher than at Hartford.[52] But soon
after his arrival, the discouraged official was writing his father that
‘the expense of living here will be greater than I had imagined.’[53]
The leading tavern, on the west side of Broadway, near Cedar, was a
modest establishment with immodest prices.[54] And to make matters
worse, ‘society’ had set a giddy pace.

We are especially interested in this society because Jefferson, on his
arrival, was shocked at its unrepublican tone. The inner or select
circle did not number more than three hundred.[55] A French traveler was
impressed with its tendency to luxury, its love of grandeur, and
ostentatious display. ‘English luxury,’ ‘English fashions,’ the women in
‘the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair,’ the men,
more modest as to dress, but taking ‘their revenge in the luxury of the
table’ and in smoking cigars from the Spanish islands.[56] The Loyalist
families were forward in asserting their social prerogatives in the
shadow of the Republican ‘Court.’ Did they not have money and the
prestige of having wined and dined and danced with the officers of His
Majesty in the days of the occupation? None more conspicuous than the
Henry Whites with a fine house on Wall Street, with one son in His
Majesty’s army, another a rear admiral in His Majesty’s navy. About the
Misses White--‘so gay and fashionable, so charming in conversation, with
such elegant figures’--the young blades gathered like moths about the
flame. Giddy were the parties there, the men Beau Brummels in the
extreme of fashion, and out of the few fugitive pictures we catch a
glimpse of Mrs. Verplanck dancing a minuet ‘in hoop and petticoats,’ and
a young beau catching cold from ‘riding home in a sedan chair with one
of the glasses broken,’ after partaking too freely of hot port wine.[57]

Balls and teas there were aplenty, but ‘society’ preferred to dine and
talk. Hamilton in his home on Wall Street gave frequent dinners
insinuating when not boldly proclaiming his doubts of the people. Van
Breckel, the Dutch Minister, entertained lavishly, making his
dining-room the resort of the little foreign circle--and every one tried
to keep up the pace.

It was the pace that killed--financially. The Henry Knoxes then began
their journey toward bankruptcy, living elaborately on Broadway,
maintaining horses and grooms, five servants, and giving two dinners a
month. Almost a ninth of his salary went for wine alone. What with his
own hair-dressing, and that of the expansive Lucy, who wore her hair,
after the extreme fashion, ‘at least a foot high, much in the form of a
churn bottom upward,’ the family account with Anthony Latour,
hair-dresser, was no small matter,[58] and his annual deficit was a
third of his salary.

Nor was the Secretary of War unique. The social life was a hectic swirl
of calls, teas, entertainments. ‘When shall I get spirit to pay all the
social debts I owe?’ wrote one lady of quiet tastes.[59] It was
harvest-time for the dressmakers, the jewelers, the hair-dressers. The
ball given in compliment to Washington by the French Minister called for
special costumes, for there were ‘two sets of Cotillion Dancers in
complete uniforms; one set in that of France and the other in Buff and
Blue,’ while the ladies were ‘dressed in white with Ribbands, Bouquets
and Garlands of Flowers answering to the uniforms of the Gentlemen.’[60]
And so with other functions equally gay.

But after all, the ‘court’ had come to town, and if there was no Majesty
on Cherry Street, it was not because the ‘court set’ did not pretend it
so. The illusion of vanity was fostered by the snobbery of Fenno of the
‘court journal.’ When Madame Washington arrived, ‘conducted over the bay
in the President’s barge rowed by thirteen eminent pilots in handsome
white dress,’ the editor enumerated the ladies who had ‘paid their
devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved President.’ There were
‘the Lady of His Excellency the Governor, Lady Sterling, Lady Mary
Watts, Lady Kitty Duer, La Marchioness de Brehan, the ladies of the Most
Honorable Mr. Langdon, and the Most Honorable Mr. Dalton ... and a
great many other respectable characters.’[61] This was too much for ‘A
Republican’ who worked off his fury in a scornful letter to the
opposition paper referring to the ‘tawdry phraseology,’ to the ‘titular
folly of Europe’s courts,’ and suggesting that we ‘leave to the sons and
daughters of corrupted Europe their levees, Drawing Rooms, Routs, Drums,
and Tornedos.’[62] It was to require more than this, however, to jar the
high-flying Fenno from the clouds, and his readers were soon informed
that ‘His Excellency the Vice-President, His Excellency the Governor of
the State, and many other personalities of the greatest distinction will
be present at the theater this evening.’ It was not for nothing that the
pedagogue pensman from Boston had launched his paper with the hope ‘that
the wealthy part of the community will become patrons of this
publication.’[63] The ‘inconveniency of being fashionable’ was impressed
upon one Senator on finding a colleague, who, having ‘set up a coach,’
and, embarrassed in his plans by the irregular adjournments, was wont to
sit alone in the Chamber ‘in a state of ennui’ as much as ‘two or three
hours’ waiting for his carriage ‘to take him three or four hundred
yards.’[64]

But while there was much of this ridiculous affectation, society was not
without its charms; for Mrs. Hamilton had her days for receiving, and
her drawing-room was brilliant, and all the more interesting because her
vivacious sister, Mrs. Church, just back from London, bringing with her
‘a late abominable fashion of Ladies, like Washwomen with their sleeves
above their elbows,’ was there to assist.[65] And all the men were not
on stilts, for it is on record that the congressional delegation from
Pennsylvania would occasionally break through the ‘court circle’ to dine
from three to nine, and indulge in ‘a scene of beastial badness’ with
Robert Morris proving himself ‘certainly the greatest blackguard in that
way.’[66] There was the usual small gossip to bring the soarers to
earth. The cream served at the table of Mrs. Washington was not the
best. Mrs. Morris had been compelled to ‘rid herself of a morsel’ of
spoiled food there, but ‘Mrs. Washington ate a whole heap of it.’[67]
Mrs. Knox amused the Mother Grundys because so fat, and her blundering
misuse of words caused much tittering behind fans and much whispering
among her friends.

But it was on the Wall Street promenade that the gossips depended for
their choicest morsels. The Wall Street of that day was just beginning
to displace Pearl as the abode of fashion. True, there were a few
business houses, a tavern, a fashionable caterer, a jeweler, but from
Broadway to Pearl there was a row of substantial residences in which
dwelt people of importance. It was there in the promenade that the
political celebrities were encountered, but more appealing to the
gentlemen of pleasure were the fine ladies who passed in their
finery--gay silks and satins--walking or taking the air luxuriously in
their sedan chairs. The cronies of Dan McCormick, the unsnared and
lordly entertainer, who gazed out of the windows of his House of Gossip
at Number 39, and from his front steps surveyed the parade with the eyes
of connoisseurs, must have been trying to the modesty of the timid--but
perhaps none such passed that way. If they laughed over the latest
blunders of Mrs. Knox as she hove into sight like a huge ship in full
sail, and made merry over the sister of the French Consul as she was
borne luxuriously along in her sedan chair, we may be sure that they
were appreciative of the pretty. And these crowded the narrow street for
the promenade, quite as much bent on amusement and flirtation as the men
about town on the steps of the House of Gossip.

For it was an age of gallantry, the men quite as vain as the women dared
be, and there, in addition to political celebrities, paraded the local
blades of society in their white buzz wigs, their three-cornered hats,
and silver shoe buckles. Here the elegant Hamilton in banter with a
blushing belle, there the courtly Burr bowing over the hand of a
coquette unafraid of the fire, and yonder Dr. John Bard, who prescribed
pills for the fashionable, pounding the pavement with his heavy cane as
he walked along smiling a bit sardonically upon his patients. And,
swinging along like a symphony, a dandy in a scarlet coat with
mother-of-pearl buttons, a white silk waistcoat embroidered with colored
flowers, black satin breeches, white silk stockings, and a cocked hat,
an Irish miniature painter out for an airing and to give the ladies a
treat. Here--on Wall Street--was Vanity Fair.[68]

Albeit the Vice-President had not then become the social head of the
Nation, society liked nothing better than an invitation to Richmond
Hill, the home of Adams, a mile and a half from the city. Even Abigail
was delighted, for her home reminded her ‘of the valley of Honiton in
Devonshire,’ with its avenue of forest trees, its shrubbery, its green
fields, its pastures full of cattle, and the Hudson ‘white flecked with
sails.’[69] Here at the dinner-table statesmen and their wives and the
social leaders contrived to talk like ladies and gentlemen of the court,
and Jefferson thought in a language foreign to a republic. But good talk
it was, and good dinners, we may be sure, even though the French Consul
did take his cook to Richmond Hill with the explanation that he had had
experience with New York dinners.[70] There was enough elegance at
Richmond Hill to encourage the Adams coachman to put on airs that
offended the groundlings as he drove through the streets.

VII

But it was about the ‘court’ on Cherry Street that the interest of
society centered. It was a plain brick mansion with five windows looking
out on Cherry Street and as many on Franklin Square. The furniture was
plain, and Madame Washington had sent by sea from Mount Vernon numerous
articles of luxury and taste--pictures, vases, ornaments presented by
European admirers. Here the first President in the first days of the
Republic received visitors, gave dinners and receptions, consulted with
his Cabinet. The following year he moved to a more commodious house on
Broadway below Trinity Church.

The great man had entered upon his physical decline when he assumed the
Presidency, and many found him changed--‘pale, almost cadaverous,’ his
deportment ‘invariably grave,’ his sobriety barely stopping short of
sadness. Even at Mrs. Washington’s drawing-rooms, when beautiful girls
swarmed about him, his face never softened to a smile.[71] It is more
than probable that he was not a little bored by the artificial
restraints imposed upon him by his advisers on etiquette who had
aristocratic notions of the dignity of his position. Both Hamilton and
Adams were responsible for planning his isolation from the people. Did
citizens seek a meeting? This was a matter for the chamberlain or
gentleman-in-waiting. Should he give public entertainments? Not at
all--only small dinners. Could he make calls? Very guardedly, and with
‘few attendants,’ but formal visits should be reserved for the rare
occasions when ‘an Emperor of Germany or some other sovereign should
travel in the country.’[72] Thus it came to pass that he found himself
with a ‘court chamberlain’ in the flamboyant Colonel Humphreys, who
reveled in ceremony, and on one occasion moved Parson Weems’s perfect
man to profanity.[73] When the erstwhile host of Fraunces Tavern was
selected as the presiding deity of the kitchen, he appeared in the
papers as ‘Steward of the Household.’[74] He too tried the great man’s
patience and outraged his sense of economy by serving a shad early in
the season that had cost two dollars, and the royal fish was devoured by
the ‘Steward of the Household’ in the kitchen.[75]

But on state occasions the highfaluting notions of his advisers
prevailed, and he rode forth in regal magnificence in the finest coach
ever seen in America, a marvelous thing in shape and color, decorated
with cupids and festooned with flowers. Thus he lumbered through the
streets drawn by four horses except when driving to Federal Hall, when
six were necessary.

And so they who dreamed of royal pomp were pleased with the progress
made, and at the dinner tables wagging tongues dwelt ecstatically on the
advantages of monarchical government, and Fenno’s ‘court journal’ began
the publication of ‘The Discourses of Davila,’ by the Vice-President.
Thus, when Jefferson arrived the following spring to meet society at the
dinner tables, he was filled with ‘wonder and mortification’ to find
that ‘politics was the chief topic, and a preference for kingly over
republican government ... evidently the favorite sentiment.’[76]

But we may be sure that no such sentiments were heard at the President’s
dinners, which appear to have been dull, formal, and silent enough. No
fault could be found with the food, drink, or service. Even the
gout-pestered Maclay found one of these dinners ‘the best of the kind I
was ever at,’[77] and the more easily pleased Iredell was immensely
delighted with the wine.[78] But such silence, such solemnity! ‘The most
solemn dinner ever I sat at,’ wrote Maclay. ‘Not a health drank, scarce
a word said until the cloth was taken away.’ Then Washington filled his
glass and solemnly drank to the health of each of his guests by name.
Then ‘everybody imitated him, and such a buzz of “health, sir,” and
“health, madame,” and “Thank you, sir,” and “Thank you, Madame,” never
had I heard before.’ Then another prolonged silence--and the ladies
retired--and the dinner was over.[79] Months later, Maclay dined at the
President’s again. ‘The President seemed to bear in his countenance a
settled aspect of melancholy,’ he wrote. ‘No cheering ray of convivial
sunshine broke through the cloudy gloom of settled seriousness.’ The
great man was evidently bored--much company forced upon him that he
would gladly have shunned. Cold, serious to melancholy, silent, he sat
and ‘played on the table with a knife and fork like a drum stick.’ So it
was at the previous dinner when, retaining his fork as the cover was
removed, he ‘played with the fork, striking on the edge of the table
with it.’[80]

Here we may leave him playing on the table with his fork, and turn to
the proceedings at Federal Hall.

VIII

Madison soon verified his fear that few members of Congress could be
relied upon for constructive work. Then, as ever after, this fell to the
industrious few, of whom Madison himself was by odds the most dependable
and wise. Petty ceremonies and formalities continued to disturb the
serenity of some. When a member took exception to the reference in the
minutes to a Presidential message as a ‘most gracious speech,’ as
imitative of the parliamentary references to addresses from the throne,
Adams was all but shocked to suffocation. As for himself he preferred ‘a
dignified and respectable government,’ but the point was pressed and the
offensive words erased.[81] Receiving a letter addressed to him as ‘His
Excellency,’ Adams took the sense of the Senate on the propriety of
opening it. Robert Morris dryly remarked that their Majesty, the people,
could write as they wished, and that crisis passed.[82] When a Bishop
was mentioned in the minutes as ‘Right Reverend,’ and Maclay snorted his
disapproval, Adams, in righteous wrath, informed him that ‘the
government will never be properly administered until titles are adopted
in the fullest manner.’[83]

But all the while James Madison, constructive, profound, was seeking to
drag his colleagues of the divine afflatus from the clouds to the
working of the untilled field. Money was needed--more even than
titles--and precious time was being squandered. In an earnest appeal, he
begged for the postponement of the consideration of a permanent fiscal
system in the hope of persuading the suppliants for tariff aid to wait
awhile. But it was of no avail. Privilege entered the halls of Congress
in the very beginning. When, at length, a measure was framed, the
merchants of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston made common cause to
hold it back. They had ordered heavily in anticipation of such a law and
were determined to prevent its enactment until their goods arrived. The
whole thing smacked of scandal. The merchants had already added the
amount of the duties to the price of the goods on their shelves,
increasing their profits while depriving the Government of the
necessities of life. With the Government starving for revenue, the
mercantile interest, with the aid of members, held it off until July
4th, and then it was passed with the proviso that it should be
inoperative until August 1st. Many, says a noted historian, thought this
‘the first instance of a series in which the action of government turned
in favor of the moneyed class.’[84]

The creation of the executive departments next called forth acrimonious
discussions. Should the finances be in the hands of a man or a
commission? Where could be found a single man capable of such a task?
The Republic would be endangered were one man to have command of three
or four millions. Then, too, the Cabinet was liable to be looked upon by
the President as of more consequence than the Senate. A system of
favoritism would be established, and oligarchy confirmed, the liberties
of the people destroyed.[85] And the power of removal--who should
possess that? Some wanted to lodge the power in the President, others in
the Senate. Madison favored the former.[86] But others could not see it
that way. What! exclaimed one statesman, give the power to the
President? Why, ‘ministers would obtrude upon us to govern and direct
the measures of the legislature and support the influence of their
master.’ A new Walpole would arise.[87] ‘Good God,’ cried another,
‘authorize in a free republic ... by your first act, the exertion of a
dangerous royal prerogative in your Chief Magistrate!’[88] The result
was the striking out of the authorization of the President to remove on
the ground that it was implied in the Constitution. Madison took this
view, and it was to rise against him in his later battles with Hamilton
over the implied powers.

This jealousy between the executive and legislative departments soon
found some justification in the action of Washington himself. It was
late in the summer of the first year that he appeared in the Senate with
General Knox to get ‘advice and consent’ to some propositions respecting
a treaty with the Southern Indians. With cold dignity he took his place
beside Adams, with Knox near at hand. The latter passed him a paper
which he, in turn, gave to Adams, who began to read. The windows were up
and the purport was all but lost in the rumble of carriages on Wall
Street.

‘Do you advise and consent?’ asked Adams.

A Senator suggested that in a matter of importance new to the Senate, it
was the duty of Senators first to inform themselves. Storm-clouds
appeared on the presidential countenance. Some one moved postponement of
action on the first article, then the second--and third. Finally, the
motion was made that the whole be referred to a senatorial committee.

Up Washington ‘started in a violent fret.’ The motion defeated the
purpose of his coming. He had brought along the Secretary of War who
knew all that it was necessary for the Senate to know. The reference to
the committee would mean delay and time was pressing. Then, making a
virtue of necessity, he agreed to the postponement, and withdrew ‘with
sullen dignity.’

‘I cannot be mistaken,’ wrote a Senator that evening in his
boarding-house, ‘the President wishes to tread on the necks of the
Senate. Commitment will bring the matter to discussion, at least in the
committee, where he is not present. He wishes us to see with the eyes
and hear with the ears of his Secretary only. The Secretary to advance
the premises, the President to draw the conclusions, and to bear down
our deliberations with his personal authority and presence.... This will
not do with Americans.’[89]

This fear, accentuated by the incident referred to, was to grow into a
conviction a little later, when a more domineering and masterful figure
than Washington or Knox appeared upon the scene. By many his advent had
been eagerly awaited. To the leaders his identity was known, for the
genius of Alexander Hamilton as a financier had been established, and
his ambition was surmised.[90] His aspirations were supported by the
mercantile interests generally, and the political forces they
controlled. Even they who were to become his political enemies were
favorable to his selection--preferring him to John Jay, who was
considered. There is something of irony in the letter written to
Jefferson by Madison to the effect that Hamilton was ‘best qualified for
that species of business, and on that account would be preferred by
those who know him personally.’[91]

To most he promised to be a successful administrator of finance, and
only the few among his intimates foresaw his rapid rise to the brilliant
leadership of a powerful party. Certainly there could have been but few
to take alarm on reading in the ‘Daily Advertiser’ on September 12,
1789, the simple announcement of one of the most momentous events in the
political history of the country:

The President of the United States has been pleased to make the
following nominations of Officers for the Department of the
Treasury:

Alexander Hamilton, Esq. of this city, Secretary.

Nicholas Everleigh, Esq. of South Carolina, Comptroller.

And the Senate of the United States having taken the said
nominations into consideration were pleased to advise and consent
to the same.

CHAPTER II

HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT

The genius for whom the Nation had been waiting, who walked briskly and
with a martial air[92] into the Treasury, and sat down at the almost
effeminate mahogany desk with the women’s faces carved upon the legs, to
bring order out of chaos, looked the leader. Not that he was of
commanding stature, for he was but five feet seven in height, with a
figure of almost boyish slimness. It was rather in his soldierly
erectness and the dignity of his bearing that he impressed. If his
carriage suggested the camp, the meticulous care of his dress hinted of
the court, for he was something of an elegant in his attire. We have one
striking picture of him in a blue coat with bright buttons, the skirts
unusually long, with a white waistcoat, black silk small-clothes, white
silk stockings;[93] another in fine lace ruffles.[94] It is quite
impossible to think of him as unfit for an instant summons to a court
levee or a ladies’ drawing-room, albeit Wolcott, who saw him first in
his office, thought him ‘a very amiable plain man.’[95] It was an age of
frills and fancies among the men of the aristocracy and his very
conservatism would have dissuaded him from the slightest departure from
the conventions.

It was his head and features that denoted the commander. His
well-shaped, massive, and symmetrical head, with its reddish fair hair
turned back from his forehead, powdered and collected in a queue behind,
was not so likely to attract attention as his pronounced features. These
were unique in that rarest of all combinations of beauty and strength.
He was handsome enough to be attractive to women, with his fair
complexion and almost rosy cheeks, his well-moulded lips, and dark,
almost violet, deep-set eyes that could smile as sweetly and seductively
as any gallant’s.

[Illustration: _A Hamilton_]

And yet these lips could be firm and stern, and the soft, mirthful eyes
could freeze and flash. If women were to observe the softer nature, the
politicians were to note the man of relentless will disclosed in the
firm, strong jaw. Graceful and debonair, elegant and courtly, seductive
and ingratiating, playful or impassioned, he could have fitted into the
picture at the Versailles of Louis XV, or at the dinner table at Holland
House. No one born in the atmosphere of courts could have looked the
part more perfectly.

And yet, such was his origin that the envious Adams could sneer at him
as ‘the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar,’[96] and it was not without
reason that Gouverneur Morris, meditating his funeral oration, and his
‘illegitimate birth,’ contrived a mode ‘to pass over this
handsomely.’[97] Even the sympathetic researches of Mrs. Atherton have
failed to lift the mystery of his origin and family. All we know is that
he was born of an irregular relation, without the intervention of the
clergy,[98] between an unprosperous Scotch merchant of the West Indies
and a brilliant and beautiful daughter of the French Huguenots. Even his
parentage by the man named Hamilton was doubted, on circumstantial
evidence, by so ardent a friend as Pickering, who thought he had found
the father in a physician.[99] Whoever the father--and the Pickering
Papers are not convincing--there is no doubt that Hamilton inherited his
genius from his brilliant, passionate, high-strung mother.

Nor does the mystery end with his birth. Pickering was half persuaded
that the mother lived into the manhood of her son, but the church
records at Saint Kitts bear out the claims of the family that she died
in 1768. It is not easy to account for the rather morbid relations later
between Hamilton and his father and brother. Both appear to have been a
worthless sort. For years Hamilton was ignorant of his father’s
whereabouts, which does not appear to have bothered him much.[100] Later
there was some correspondence looking to a possible reunion in America,
out of which nothing came.[101] At intervals money passed from the great
man in America to the indigent old man in the West Indies,[102] but at
no time does it appear that Hamilton had any thought of visiting his
father in the isle of his childhood. It was a long cry from the squalid
life in the West Indies to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room, and the genius
turned his back upon the past.

There is nothing so inexplicable in this amazing man as the precocity of
his genius. There is a suggestion of it in the younger Pitt, but he had
sat from infancy at the feet of Chatham. To the easy-going natives of
his natal isle this passionate, fiery-tempered, supersensitive boy,
dreaming of power, must have seemed an exotic. As a mere child he
appeared to sense that his field of conquest lay across the sea. He was
planning a career while his companions were absorbed in childish games.
His early range of knowledge and reading was remarkable. In his passion
for literature he was unconsciously moulding one of the weapons for his
successful assault on fame; through the pages of Plutarch he was lifting
himself above the drab slothful surroundings to the companionship of the
great.

Sometimes fate was serving his destiny when he felt himself a captive
beating against his cage. Thus, in the counting-room at Santa Cruz he
was mastering business methods and absorbing the commercial spirit on
which he was later to predicate his philosophy of government.[103] The
business letters he wrote were preparations for the framing of his
‘Report on the Public Credit.’ Even then it was a peculiarity of his
genius that he could write on business matters without clipping the
wings of his fancy. He seemed born with a mastery of words, a rare gift
of expression. When a hurricane swept the islands the description he
wrote for a paper became the talk of the West Indies. Only a little
while before he was rebelling against the ‘groveling ambition of a
clerk,’ and passionately writing that he ‘would willingly risk his life
but not his character to elevate his station.’ These were the aspirings
of a boy not yet thirteen. ‘I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was
a war.’ Here we have a vivid light upon his character.[104]

The description of the hurricane made his fortune. Dreaming of rising by
the sword, it was his pen that rallied friends who raised the money to
send him to America for an education. Through all his days he was to
aspire to glory through the sword, little knowing that he was winning
immortality with his pen.

The Little Corsican touching the soil of France, the little West Indian
landing in America--there is a striking analogy: both dreaming of
martial glory in the land of strangers; both obsessed with a morbid
ambition sustained by the rarest powers of application.

The records of the years preceding the Revolution are but vague, though
we get glimpses of the genius forging his weapons in the boy at the
grammar school at Elizabethtown poring over books till midnight, to rise
at dawn to continue his studies in the quiet of a near-by cemetery;
practicing prose composition; writing an elegy on the death of a lady;
composing the prologue and the epilogue of a play,[105] and, at Kings
College (Columbia), amazing his companions by the energy of his mind,
and puzzling pedestrians by talking to himself as he walked for hours
each day under the great trees of Batteau (Dey) Street.[106] Here, too,
an occasional display of the eloquence of maturity, enriched by the glow
of genius, set him apart.

Then came the Revolution. ‘I wish there was a war!’ cried the boy of
thirteen. And war came to find the lad of nineteen as eager to seize its
opportunities as was the Corsican youth when ordered to clear the
streets of Paris.

III

The war was to prove his genius, not as a soldier, but as a writer and
constructive thinker on governmental matters. He was a natural
journalist and pamphleteer--one of the fathers of the American
editorial. His perspicacity, penetration, powers of condensation, and
clarity of expression were those of a premier editorial writer. These
same qualities made him a pamphleteer without a peer. That he would have
shone with equal luster in the reportorial room of a modern paper is
shown in his description of the hurricane, and in his letter to Laurens
picturing vividly the closing hours of Major André.[107] From the moment
he created a sensation, with ‘A Farmer Refuted,’ in his eighteenth year,
until, in the closing months of his life, he was meeting Coleman
surreptitiously in the night to dictate vigorous editorials for the New
York ‘Evening Post’ he had established,[108] he recognized his power. No
man ever complained more bitterly of the attacks of the press; none ever
used the press more liberally and relentlessly to attack.

In ‘A Farmer Refuted,’ the maturity of the thought, the severity of the
reasoning, the vigor of the onslaught, the familiarity with history and
governmental processes displayed, denoted the hand of one seasoned in
controversy. The sprightliness, wit, humor, sarcasm, suggested more than
talent. The evident joy in the combat, with the air of assurance, was
that of the fighter unafraid. These are the qualities that were to run
through all of Hamilton’s literary work. Nowhere in the literature of
invective is there anything more vitriolic than the attack on a war
speculator and profiteer, under the signature of ‘Publius.’[109] This
tendency to bitter invective will appear, as we proceed, in Hamilton’s
attacks on Jefferson and Adams.

But usually he appealed to reason, and then he was at his best. Thus, in
‘The Continentalist,’ urging a more perfect union and a more potent
government, and in his letter to James Duer,[110] we are impressed with
the writer’s intimate knowledge of conditions, his constructive
instinct, his vision.[111] And thus, especially do these appear in ‘The
Federalist’--one of the most brilliant contributions to the literature
of political science in the world’s history. It will be impossible to
comprehend the genius of Hamilton, his domination of his party, and his
power, despite his unpopularity with the masses, without a foreknowledge
of his force with the pen. It was his scepter and his sword.

His power as an orator was unsurpassed in any assembly that called it
forth, but with very few exceptions he did not appear before the
multitude. He swayed the leaders and won them to his leadership. There
was little of fancy in his speeches, scarcely any appeal to the
emotions, but he spoke with enthusiasm and an intensity of conviction.
Force, clearness, fire--‘logic on fire’--and a rapid fusillade of
impressively directed facts--with these he usually swept all before
him. The comparatively few speeches which have come down to us fail to
explain his power. The stories of audiences moved to tears are scarcely
in keeping with the absence of the slightest attempts at pathos or
appeals to the emotions. Kent, who heard him in court, recalled, long
after Hamilton was dead, ‘the clear, elegant and fluent style, and
commanding manner.’[112] Physically, he was far from imposing, but it is
easy to imagine the virility of his manner, the flash of his conqueror’s
eye. In the New York Convention called to pass on the Constitution, it
was the force and persuasiveness of his arguments that converted a
hostile majority. Later Congress was to refuse him permission to present
personally his reports on the ground that he might unduly sway its
judgment; and Jefferson was to resent his interminable and passionate
‘harangues’ in the Cabinet room. But these exhibitions of his eloquence
advanced his political career by impressing the leaders with the
brilliancy of his intellect.

It is significant that, while he was not vain of his power as a writer
and orator, he lived and died firmly convinced of his genius as a
soldier. In the earliest of his letters we have his longing for a war.
His son and biographer was impressed with the fact that, ‘while arms
seemed to be his predominant passion, the world was at peace.’[113] He
never faced the prospect of a war without seeing an opportunity for
distinction. At a time when he abhorred the French Revolution, and all
associated with it, he wrote of Napoleon as ‘that unequalled conqueror,
from whom it is painful to detract.’[114]

Was he a military genius? We have nothing on which to base a judgment.
In the Revolution we see him attracting the attention of Washington by
his military alertness on the heights of Harlem. At Monmouth we see his
horse shot under him as he dashes into the fray with a recklessness that
looked to the commander like a courting of death. Throughout his
services in the military household of Washington, where he became all
but indispensable in a secretarial capacity and in diplomacy, he chafed
under the conviction that his place was in a position of command. One of
his friends declared that ‘the pen of our army was held by Hamilton;
and for dignity of manner, pith of matter, and elegance of style,
General Washington’s letters are unrivaled in military annals,’ but the
youthful Hamilton felt that he should have been the army’s sword.[115]
The vision of the renown of the military conqueror was ever before him.
The war was an opportunity for glory, and he was missing it. ‘I
explained to you candidly my feelings in respect to military
reputation,’ he wrote Washington when seeking a separate command, ‘and
how much it was my object to act a conspicuous part in some enterprise
that might perhaps raise my character as a soldier above
mediocrity.’[116] At Yorktown he took desperate chances in an effort for
renown.[117] We shall find him leaving the Treasury to command soldiers
sent to put down the western insurrection, with no possible occasion for
it beyond his preference for the saddle and the sword. And when war with
France loomed large, we shall find him resorting to importunity and
intrigue to get the command over the protest of the President.

Was Hamilton a Napoleon? He thought himself of the race of military
masters. He had the courage, the coolness under fire, and the audacity,
but nothing that he did disclosed more genius than was shown by Aaron
Burr. Had the chance come, he might have justified his own high
pretensions as a military genius--but it did not come. He died with his
boyhood ambition to command great armies unrealized--and undimmed.[118]

His association of a strong military establishment with a strong and
stable government was due in large measure to his temperament. He was
essentially an aristocrat. From the moment of his arrival in America, he
cultivated only the élite. His most partisan biographer has painted his
portrait in a sentence--‘His sympathies were always aristocratic, and he
was born with a reverence for tradition.’[119] There is nothing more
contradictory in his career than the lowliness of his origin and his
inherent passion for the lofty. This charity student moved in mansions
as to the manor born. He had lived on terms of comparative intimacy with
the aristocratic Washington of the camp, with Lafayette who brought
something of the flavor of Old World aristocracy, and he married into
one of the proudest of the manorial families, but his love of grandeur
was inherent. He luxuriated in elegant society and fine houses, loved
fine laces as an adornment, and, without having ever seen the interior
of a gallery, at least affected a partiality for the fine arts,
collecting such prints as his purse permitted, painting some himself,
and advising Mrs. Washington in the purchase of paintings.[120]

His ideal of government was the rule of ‘gentlemen’--the domination of
aristocrats; on the theory that these, with a certain prestige to
maintain, were more jealous of their honor and above the vulgar
strivings for mere place.[121] Thus it was impossible for him to
conceive of a strong and capable government over which the aristocracy
did not have sway.[122] Long before the Constitutional Convention we
find him writing Morris on financial matters, setting forth the
importance of creating an alliance between government and men of
wealth.[123] One of his most enthusiastic panegyrists has illustrated
his ideal: ‘The nearest approach to it is the popular conception of the
empire of Japan--a mass of intelligent humanity, reckless of their
lives, yet filled with the joy of life, eager for distinction, hungry
for success, alert, practical, and merry; but at the same time
subordinate, humbly and piously subordinate, to a pure
abstraction.’[124] But this abstraction had to be aristocracy--never
democracy; for he believed that democracy could only lead to
anarchy.[125] Temperamentally hostile to democracy in the beginning,
maintaining that attitude to the end, he never appreciated and always
despised public opinion, and in 1794 he frankly confessed to Washington
that he ‘long since learned to hold public opinion of no value.’[126]
This distrust of the people, contempt for democracy, and reliance on
strong government supported by wealth, and, if need be, sustained by
standing armies, were carried by him into the Constitutional Convention
and there proclaimed with all the tremendous force of his personality.

VII

Unless we divest ourselves of the Hamiltonian myths in reference to the
Constitution, an intelligent comprehension of his political character
will be impossible. We must rid ourselves of the fallacious notion that
he was satisfied with the Constitution or believed it adequate. No one
contributed more mightily to making the Constitutional Convention
possible. In the preliminary convention at Annapolis, no one did more to
crystallize sentiment for it, and it was his persuasive pen that wrote
the history-making address there determined upon. About his dining-table
in New York he did yeoman service in coaxing skeptical and reluctant
members of Congress to call a convention. There, under a simulation of
gayety, his eloquence and wit and banter made converts of the most
stubborn--a service of immeasurable value.[127]

But in the Convention itself he played no such part as is popularly
ascribed to him. After the presentation of his own plan in the early
stages, he played an inconspicuous part, and much of the time he was not
only absent from the Convention, but out of the State. This was not
because of indifference to the event, but to a realization that he could
accomplish nothing for his plan.[128]

This plan was a direct contradiction of that which was adopted. There is
nothing conjectural about that fact--the records are indisputable. We
have the plan, the brilliant five-hour oration in its behalf, the brief
from which he spoke. These have come down to us, not from his enemies,
but from his partial biographers, his son the editor of his ‘Works,’ and
the report of Madison on the authenticity of which he himself passed.
This plan provided for the election of a President for life; for
Senators for life or during good behavior, and by electors with a
property qualification; and for the crushing of the sovereignty of
States through the appointment by the President of Governors with a life
tenure and the power to veto any act of the State legislatures, though
passed unanimously. Not only was the President enabled under this plan
to negative any law enacted, but he had the discretionary power to
enforce or ignore any law existing.[129] Though his President, serving
for life, was not called a king, he was to be armed with more arbitrary
power than was possessed by the King of England. His English eulogist
does not overstate when he says that ‘what he had in mind was the
British Constitution as George III had tried hard to make it,’ and
failed because the English people would not tolerate it.[130] This
interpretation of Hamilton’s purpose is reënforced by another of his
most brilliant disciples who asserts that ‘Hamilton’s governor
[President] would have been not dissimilar to Louis XIV and could have
said with him, “L’état c’est moi.” ... Thinly veiled, his plan[131]
contemplated an elective king with greater powers than those of George
III, an imitation House of Lords, and a popular House of Commons with a
limited tenure.’[132] Even so this plan confessedly fell far short of
his conception of an ideal government. In the brief for his speech[133]
we are left in no doubt as to his partiality for a monarchy, in which
the aristocracy should have a special power. ‘The monarch ... ought to
be hereditary, and to have so much power that it would not be his
interest to risk much to acquire more.’ As for the aristocracy, ‘they
should be so circumstanced that they can have no interest in a
change.’[134] We should be ‘rescued from the democracy.’[135] As to the
republican form of government--‘Republics are liable to corruption and
intrigue,’[136] and, since ‘a republican government does not admit of a
vigorous execution, it is therefore bad.’[137]

Later, in one of his few discussions, he said that ‘those who mean to
form a solid republican government ought to proceed to the confines of
another government.’[138] His republic, and in his great speech he had
conceded that no other form would be accepted by the people, ‘was to be
an aristocratic as distinguished from a democratic republic, and the
power of the separate States was to be effectually crippled.’[139] In
one of his brief Convention talks he said of the States that ‘as States
he thought they should be abolished.’[140] Even after the Constitution
had been adopted, he believed that one of the objects of administration
should be ‘to acquire for the federal government more consistency than
the Constitution seems to promise for so great a country,’ to the end
that it ‘may triumph altogether over the state governments and reduce
them to an utter subordination, dividing the large States into simpler
districts.’[141] Such were the ideas urged by Hamilton in the forceful
five-hour speech which Gouverneur Morris thought the most brilliant
intellectual exhibition he had ever witnessed. After this exhaustive
exposition, he took but little part. Toward the close he explained his
comparative silence: ‘He had been restrained from entering into the
discussions by his dislike of the scheme of government in general.’[142]
This distaste did not diminish as the Convention closed its labors, and
he accepted the Constitution in the end ‘as better than nothing.’[143]
His motive for joining in recommending it to the people is conclusively
shown in his last Convention utterance: ‘No man’s ideas are more remote
from the plan than my own are known to be; but is it possible to
deliberate between anarchy and convulsion on one side, and the chance of
good to be expected from the plan on the other?’[144]

Nor did he ever lose faith in his own plan, or gain confidence in the
Constitution which was adopted.[145] Just before retiring from the
Cabinet he avowed himself a monarchist who had ‘no objections to a trial
being made of this thing of a republic.’[146] Two years before his death
he wrote bitterly to Morris of his support of a Constitution in which he
had never had faith ‘from the beginning,’ in which he described it as ‘a
frail and worthless fabric.’[147] And the night of his death, when his
bosom friend and confidant was meditating the funeral oration he was to
deliver on the steps of Trinity Church, he wrote in his diary, ‘He was
in principle opposed to republican and attached to monarchical
government, but then his opinions were generally known and have been
long and loudly proclaimed. His share in the forming of our Constitution
must be mentioned, and his unfavorable opinion cannot therefore be
concealed.’[148]

If, however, he was a tremendous factor in making any Constitutional
Convention possible, he was to be even more essential in securing the
ratification of the document he disliked--and it is here that he rises
to the pinnacle of patriotic statesmanship, and earns the eternal
gratitude of the Republic. When on that summer day, on a packet floating
lazily down the Hudson, he subordinated his personal preferences to the
public good, and sat down to the writing of the first number of ‘The
Federalist,’ he reached the very acme of his greatness. Had he done
nothing else, his fame would have been as eternal as the Nation he
helped to make. Thus does he take his rightful place among the greatest
nation-builders of all time.

VIII

The qualities of strength and weakness accounting for the successes and
failures of his political leadership are easily found in an analysis of
his character. As is true of most genius, his was three fourths hard
work. From his earliest boyhood he had learned the value of system.
Nothing was permitted to disturb the programme by which he regulated his
days and nights. We may surmise that he was his own most relentless
taskmaster from the rules he wrote for the guidance of his favorite son.
This almost monastic schedule denotes the system by which he governed
his own life.[149] He never completed his education, and the exactions
of politics and his profession never made him a stranger to his library.
Here, surrounded by his family, he ministered to an insatiable mind.
Never tiring of the classics, he kept pace with the printing-press, and
Mrs. Church rummaged about the book-stalls of London to supply him with
all the new worth-while publications. Thus the ‘Wealth of Nations’ was
in his hands as soon after its appearance as a boat could cross the
sea.[150] His manner of study was intensive, absorbing, and he fairly
lashed his mind and memory to their allotted tasks. Walking the floor
while reading and studying, it was a comment of his friends that with
equal exertion he could have walked from one end of the country to the
other.[151]

Quite as remarkable as the intensity of his application was his abnormal
capacity for sustained exertion. He thought nothing of sitting over a
paper ‘until the dawn dimmed his candles.’[152] Talleyrand’s comment on
finding lights in his office in the early morning is famous. It was not
unusual for him to ponder a problem long and earnestly until he had
thought it through, then to retire to sleep regardless of the hour of
the night, and after a while to arise, refresh himself with a cup of
strong coffee, seat himself at his table, and work on with great
rapidity for six, seven, or eight hours without rest. The resulting
product of his pen was so perfect, we are assured, such was his felicity
of expression, that it seldom required revision.[153]

This tenacity was one of the factors in his leadership. He was never a
fair-weather fighter. Opposition only whetted his appetite for battle.
Nor was he easily discouraged. Explaining to a friend who wished to
carry the news to New York of the situation in the Poughkeepsie
Convention, that the members stood two to one against the ratification
of the Constitution, he concluded with grim emphasis: ‘Tell them the
Convention shall never rise until the Constitution is adopted.’[154]

Along with this tenacity, he had an illimitable moral courage which made
it easy for him to fight for a cause without counting the cost. The real
Hamilton is seen in his defense of the persecuted Tories at the close of
the Revolution; in his fighting his way through a mob eager for the
blood of the Tory president of Columbia College to hold it at bay with
his indignant eloquence; in his letter to Jay against the destruction of
the notorious Rivington Press by a mob.[155] This reverence for law and
the constituted authority was the mainspring of his political character,
and he always had the moral courage to stand for both when cowardice
would have recommended compromise.

To these qualities must be added another which gave character to his
leadership--he was personally honest. Called to a station where he might
easily have enriched himself, as did many of his friends, he retired to
private life poorer than when he entered the public service. Small
wonder that Talleyrand was astounded at such disinterestedness and
restraint. There was no affectation in his letter lamenting his
inability to succor some immigrants from France. ‘I wish I was a Crœsus;
I might then afford solid consolation to these children of adversity,
and how delightful it would be to do so. But now, sympathy, kind words,
and occasionally a dinner are all that I can contribute.’ And at the
time he wrote great fortunes had been built on the financial system he
had created. So impeccable was he in this regard that his great
political protagonist, writing an estimate of his character in the calm
of his closet, recorded him as ‘disinterested, honest and honorable in
all private transactions.’[156] Profound as a thinker, exhaustive as a
student, moving in eloquence, powerful with the pen, logical in his
reasoning, constructive in his methods, tenacious in the advancement of
his plans, possessed of the courage of his convictions, personally
honest in public and private action, he possessed qualities of
leadership that drew high-minded men about, and to, him. But he
unhappily had the weakness of his strength that was to operate
disastrously upon his political fortunes. It is impossible to understand
his ultimate failure as a leader without a reference to his
temperamental deficiencies.

As a party leader he was singularly lacking in tact, offensively
opinionated,[157] impatient and often insulting to well-meaning
mediocrity, and dictatorial. He did not consult--he directed. He did not
conciliate--he commanded. In the Cabinet he was to offend Jefferson
early because Hamilton ‘could not rid himself of the idea that he was
really the prime minister.’[158] It was not diplomatic to order Adams
back to his post of duty in Philadelphia in the manner of one addressing
a subordinate. Nor was it considerate to write to McHenry, who adored
him, and was doing the best his limited ability would permit: ‘Pray take
a resolution adequate to the emergency and rescue the credit of your
department.’[159] These outbursts of impatience and this intolerance of
weakness were forgiven by the strong, but treasured against him by
smaller and more envious minds, and the time was to come when, with his
field marshals loyal, he was to have few colonels and captains, and
practically no privates. He was a failure in the management of men, and
only his superior genius made it possible for him to dominate so long.

There was much of egotism and some vanity behind this dictatorial
disposition. This was inherent and incurable. The lowliness of his
origin, the phenomenal rapidity of his rise, the homage properly paid
him for the brilliancy of his youthful efforts with voice, pen, and
sword, all tended to convince him of his superiority. No one knew or
lamented his egotism more than men who loved him. Morris went weeping
from his death-bed to write his intimate opinion in his diary that he
was ‘vain and opinionated.’[160] Cabot, who clung to him like a lover,
wrote him frankly: ‘I am bound to tell you that you are accused by
respectable men of egotism.’[161] A descendant and biographer concedes
his vanity, taking issue with Hamilton’s son who had foolishly, but
naturally, denied it in his biography.[162] His self-sufficiency is
evident in his letter to Laurens: ‘It is my desire to preserve myself
free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent
of the caprices of others.’[163] But were we without these confessions
from his friends, we should find them in his letters. What more amazing
and amusing than his letter to Schuyler explaining with gusto and some
swagger his quarrel with Washington.[164] Even at the age of
twenty-three and while serving in a secretarial capacity to one of the
foremost figures of all time, he was placing himself on an equality at
least with Washington and writing glibly of ‘what we owed to each
other.’ This spirit of self-exaltation was to drive many of the minor
leaders of his party from him, and to lead him, in the end, to the
supreme folly of his pamphlet attack on Adams which was hopelessly to
cripple, if not completely destroy, his influence.

Even more serious than his flamboyant egotism was his queer lack of
judgment in the handling of men. It was an irreparable blunder to force
the election of his father-in-law to the Senate from New York over
Chancellor Livingston who had superior claims. It was a temporary
triumph that drove one of the most powerful families in the State into
the ranks of his enemies.[165] Only the most execrable taste can pardon
the undignified writing of anonymous attacks on a colleague of the
Cabinet.[166] His blunder in the case of the Schuyler election could be
excused by his lack of political experience, but his most sympathetic
biographer admits that ‘middle age instead of ripening his judgment,
warped it.’[167] His was a nature of eternal youth, and in many respects
the indiscretions of boyish exuberance cursed him to the end.

If these personal weaknesses were to weaken him with the leaders of the
second rank, his unpopularity with the rank and file was to come from
his lack of sympathy for, and understanding of, the American spirit. No
one realized it more than he. In justice it must be said that he
honestly tried to suppress his doubts of America; but in moments of
depression he burst forth with expressions that bear the marks of long
incubation. ‘Am I a fool--a romantic Quixote--or is there a
constitutional defect in the American mind?’ he wrote King. ‘Were it not
for yourself and a few others I would adopt the reveries of De Paux, as
substantial truths, and could say with him that there is something in
our climate which belittles every animal, human or brute.’[168] And
toward the close of his life he wrote Morris: ‘Every day proves to me
more and more that this American world was not made for me. You, friend
Morris, are a native of this country, but by genius an exotic. You
mistake if you fancy that you are more of a favorite than myself, or
that you are in any sort upon a theatre suited to you.’[169] This touch
of the exotic, of which he himself was painfully conscious, was not lost
upon his political enemies. ‘Thus ignorant of the character of this
nation, of Pennsylvania, and of his own city and State of New York, was
Alexander Hamilton,’ wrote Adams.[170] But it was left for another to
‘discover the real secret of his confusion as to the American
character--he had never known the spirit, or had the training, of the
New England town meeting.[171] A marvelous genius, he thought in terms
of world politics at a time when America was creating a new spirit and
system of her own. It was not to weaken his work as the creator of
credit, but it was to dim his vision as an American leader.

If he possessed traits that made him thoroughly hated by some, he had
other qualities that bound his friends to him with bonds of steel. He
commanded affection because he was himself affectionate. His letters to
his wife were uniformly tender and playful. He was idolized by his
children. His comrades in the army loved him because he not only shared
their hardships, but at times helped them to necessities out of his own
all but empty pockets. He was sensitive to the sufferings of many
refugees in Philadelphia and New York, and he would often direct his
wife to send money and delicacies to the women and children.[172] We
have many instances of his generosity, like his attempt to spare Andre
the humiliation of the scaffold, and his letter to Knox protesting
against the execution of British officers in retaliation for the murder
of an American.[173] Among the young French officers he was idolized
because of his merry disposition and the cleverness and brilliancy of
his conversation. While prone to hold aloof from the mass, he was a
‘good fellow’ among those whom he considered his social equals. In
social assemblies of both sexes he fairly sparkled with boyish
enthusiasm.[174] In stag affairs, where he was immensely popular, we may
be sure that he was nothing of a prude. It is not of record that he
often drank to excess, but like most men of his time he loved his wine,
and we have it on the best authority that he sometimes took a wee bit
too much.[175] On these convivial occasions he could always be prevailed
upon to sing his one and only song:

‘We’re going to war, and when we die
We’ll want a man of God near by,
So bring your Bible and follow the drum.’

His one serious weakness was an inordinate fondness for women which was
to involve him in the one serious scandal of his career. It was McHenry
who wrote to Pickering, another friend: ‘Far be it from me to attempt to
palliate his pleasures, the indulgence in which Mr. Hamilton himself
publicly lamented.’[176] It was Otis who wrote of his ‘liquorish
flirtation’ with a married woman at a fashionable dinner party.[177] It
was Lodge who, in touching on his overpowering passions, refers to his
‘relations, which had an unenviable notoriety.’[178] It is Oliver who
says that ‘his private shortcomings cannot be denied,’[179] and that
‘in private life Hamilton was not always vigilant.’[180] It is the
historian of ‘The Republican Court’ who records that ‘it is true that
Hamilton was something of a roué.’[181] And it was reserved for a
descendant to remind us of the story of the alleged relations with the
celebrated Madame Jumel, who, in old age, made an unsuccessful attempt
to live with Aaron Burr,[182] and of the gossip, which he discredits,
that his relations with his sprightly sister-in-law, Mrs. Church, were
more tender than they should have been.[183] This same descendant,
writing with professional authority, explains these moral delinquencies
on the theory that, like other men of genius and great intelligence, he
was prone to ‘impulsively plunge into the underworld in obedience to
some strange promptings of their lower nature.’[184]

And yet, such are the strange inconsistencies of the
temperamental--nothing could have been more beautiful than his home
life. His endearing traits are evident in the passionate devotion of all
who knew the Hamilton of the hearth. If the ties that bound Angelica
Church to him were not more tender than they should have been, her
letters indicate something akin to love.[185] His wife, who must have
suffered tortures over the confessions of the Reynolds pamphlet, clung
to him with a faith born perhaps of an understanding of how much he must
have resisted. If he sometimes broke his vows, there can be no doubt
that the shrine of his heart was at his hearth.

‘Colonel Beckwith tells me that our dear Hamilton writes too much and
takes no exercise, and grows fat,’ wrote Angelica Church to Mrs.
Hamilton from London. ‘I hate both the word and the thing, and I desire
you to take care of his health, and his good looks.’[186] Here we have
the suggestion of another frailty which makes all the more notable the
intensity of his sustained efforts and the magnitude of his
achievements--the delicacy of his health. The first, and possibly the
last, medical service rendered by McHenry on becoming a member of
Washington’s military family was to prescribe for Hamilton and make
suggestions as to his diet. Early in the war he who was never robust
contracted a malarial infection from which he suffered every summer
throughout his life.[187] His correspondence is sprinkled throughout
with references to his health.[188] While in no sense an invalid, the
magnitude and multiplicity of his labors despite a chronic physical
disability measure the power of mind over matter and indicate something
of his unyielding will.

In view of the sincere or simulated interest in religion shown by
Hamilton where political interests were involved, it would be
interesting to know just what he thought and felt. The records here are
slight. During his youth he passed through the period of religious
exaltation not uncommon in the average life. Not only was he attentive
to public worship, but he prayed fervently and with eloquence in the
seclusion of his room.[189] About this time he wrote a hymn, ‘A Soul
Entering into Bliss,’ which is said to have had some literary
merit.[190] We hear no more concerning his religious fervor for many
years until he pretended, if he did not feel, an intense indignation
against the revolutionary reaction aimed at the church establishment in
France. He was shocked that ‘equal pains have been taken to deprave the
morals as to extinguish the religion of the country.’[191]

A few years more, and, with the fall of his party, he outlined to Bayard
a ‘Plan of Conduct’ for Federalists with a view to its rehabilitation,
and proposed an association to be denominated ‘The Christian
Constitutional Society,’ having for its objects ‘the support of the
Christian Religion’ and ‘the support of the Constitution.’[192] This
hints strongly of the Old World idea of the union of Church and State.
In Connecticut the clergy had been the shock troops of Federalism, and
it is quite possible that the political advantage of an alliance between
the Church and his party appealed to Hamilton.

At any rate, he was a member of no church. One of his descendants
assures us that ‘he was a man of earnest, simple faith, quite
unemotional in this respect, so far as display was concerned, but his
belief was very strong.’[193] Strong as it was, it never led him to the
altar.

Leaving his idol’s death-bed, Oliver Wolcott wrote his wife that
‘Colonel H. in late years expressed his conviction of the truths of the
Christian Religion, and his desire to receive the Sacrament--but no one
of the clergy who have yet been consulted will administer it.’[194] At
length, life ebbing away, a bishop consented after being earnestly
solicited the second time. Thus in his dying hour, Hamilton declared:
‘It has for some time past been the wish of my heart, and it was my
intention to take an early opportunity of uniting myself to the church.’
The natural deduction from the meager information we have is that his
intensive political and professional activities and consuming ambitions
gave him little time to meditate on religion. He certainly never gave it
the consideration of his greatest political opponent whom his party
attacked as an enemy of Christianity. But he used the Church, whenever
possible, to advance his political views--and with effect.

Quite as problematical as his religious feeling was his attitude toward
Washington. It was the policy of the Federalists to capitalize
politically the popularity of the man of Mount Vernon, and they
succeeded, as we shall find, to a marked degree. Even so, some of
Hamilton’s most partial biographers[195] have commented on the absence
of any deep affection between the two, and Dr. Hamilton is not
convincing with his observation that his ancestor signed his letters to
Washington, ‘Very affectionately.’[196] As a matter of fact none of his
letters to Washington denote real affection. This would be more
impressive, however, but for the singular absence of the note of
affection in all his political correspondence. But in one of his letters
we find the very opposite of either affection or admiration. This was
his letter to General Schuyler on the occasion of Hamilton’s withdrawal
from Washington’s military family, and it does not speak well for the
reliability of his son’s biography that he deliberately mutilated the
letter. It was in this that he wrote that he had found his chief
‘neither remarkable for delicacy or good temper’ and complained of his
‘self love.’ Here we have the confession that ‘for three years past I
have felt no friendship for him and have professed none.’[197]

In his letter to Lear, the secretary, when Washington died he probably
came perilously near to summing up his attitude in a sentence: ‘I have
been much indebted to the kindness of the General, and he was an Aegis
very essential to me.’ And then, the significant postscript: ‘In whose
hands are his papers gone? Our very confidential situation will not
permit this to be a point of indifference to me.’[198]

* * * * *

Such a man was Hamilton, a Colossus, brilliant, fascinating, daring, and
audacious--a constructive statesman of the highest order, a genius of
the first rank, with all the strength and the weaknesses of genius. Such
the man who sat down at the mahogany desk to write the documents that
were to give credit to a nation and a programme to a party.

CHAPTER III

HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE

There was quite enough in the picture of the handsome, penniless
Hamilton, at the age of thirty-two, striding upon the national scene
with the air of a conqueror to undertake the solution of the problem on
which the existence of the young Republic depended, to appeal to the
popular imagination. The mystery and romance of his history, the dash in
his manner, the shimmer of his genius, interested all and fascinated
many of his contemporaries. The audacious gayety with which he faced his
task imparted a feeling of confidence to those who did not know, as many
did, just what was in his mind. He set to work with an enthusiasm that
smacked of inspiration, for it was a task to his taste.

With the startling effect of a magician at his tricks he created the
machinery of his complicated department, selected his assistants with
discrimination, trained them with meticulous care in their duties,
outlined his plans for revenue immediately required, and sat down with
joy to the preparation of his ‘Report on the Public Credit,’ which was
to proclaim the public faith and establish the Nation’s credit.

The mere presence of this youthful figure at the mahogany desk commanded
confidence. Here was a man who was primarily interested in the rights of
property, who believed in the sanctity of contracts and had the courage
of his convictions. Even as he was writing his ‘Report,’ he loomed large
as the man of the hour. His close associates foresaw the nature of his
recommendations. The mercantile and financial interests plumed
themselves upon a triumph. Within a month after his appointment a
contemporary rhymester put in verse the counting-room conception of the
man:

’...young Hamilton’s unshaken soul
The wayward hosts of anarchy control--
And while the Senate with his accents rung
A full conviction followed from his tongue.’[199]

His plans, given in confidence to some, were soon whispered among the
politicians and the merchants of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and
the market price of public securities in the cities rose fifty per cent
two months before Congress convened.

It was not until in early January that the ‘Report’ was read in House
and Senate. His wish to present it personally was denied, not by his
political enemies as his partial biographers contend, but by the
supporters of his plan.[200] In the galleries of the House eager
speculators were closely packed. They overflowed and filled the lobbies.
Some were drawn by mere curiosity, some were the original creditors who
had waited long for their reward, but the greater number were
speculators, who, in anticipation of such a recommendation, had bought
freely of the skeptical holders at ridiculously low prices. Not a few of
these poured forth into Wall Street at the conclusion with the
exhilarating knowledge that a fortune was within their grasp.

In the Senate the ‘Report’ was heard in secret and in ‘awful silence,’
for the elder statesmen met behind doors closed and locked. Most of
these listened with approval, but the rheumatic Maclay, who had been
puzzled for some time with ‘the extraordinary rise in public
securities,’ wrote that night in his journal that Hamilton ‘recommends
indiscriminate funding, and, in the style of the British Minister, has
sent down his bill.’ There were some complaints that ‘a committee of
speculators in certificates could not have formed it more to their
advantage.’ In truth, ‘it occasioned many serious faces,’ and Maclay
himself was ‘struck of a heap.’[201] But the prevalent note was one of
jubilation. In New York, enthusiasm in the coffee-houses; in Boston,
‘great applause’;[202] in other commercial cities, Philadelphia,
Charleston, Baltimore, approbation, with reprobation for
objections.[203]

All men of honor sympathized with the purpose of discharging the debt.
The repudiationists were among the ignorant and the vicious. Few at the
moment found fault with the funding system, though some would have
preferred a speedy liquidation through the sale of the public lands.
Then--suddenly--a low murmur of protest, followed by acrimonious
attacks. Thousands of the original creditors had been ‘swindled’ out of
their certificates for a song--were these, who rendered Revolutionary
services, to be taxed to ensure exorbitant profits to the speculators?
Why should the Federal Government assume the debts contracted by the
separate States--debts unevenly distributed? And what was the purpose of
the proposal that the Government should be prohibited from paying more
than two per cent of the principal a year? The indignation of the
insurgents, at first a glimmer, became a flame. The greater part of the
certificates were in the hands of the prosperous who had taken advantage
of the necessities of the original holders--Revolutionary soldiers,
small farmers, hard-pressed country merchants. The funding system would
tax all the people to pay to the rich a hundred cents on the dollar for
evidence of debts that had cost them fifteen and twenty. With the people
taxed to pay the interest--it was proposed to perpetuate the debt. Thus,
for generations, perhaps, as many reasoned, the Government would operate
for the enrichment of the few already rich, and the masses would pay the
piper.

Had Hamilton been disposed to frankness, he would have smiled his
acknowledgment of the charge. One of his biographers has conceded that
through this system he hoped to ‘array property on the side of the
Government,’ by giving it a financial interest in the Government, and
‘to assure to the property of the country a powerful influence upon the
Government.’[204] Having ‘been unable to introduce a class influence
into the Constitution by limiting the suffrage ... with a property
qualification,’ he hoped through his financial system to accomplish his
purpose in another way.[205]

There was nothing diabolical in the plan--coming from one who looked
upon the masses as lawless and unfit for self-government. His obsession
was a strong, stable government--and to sustain it he required the
interested devotion of the propertied class. The astonishing thing is
that the comparatively crude Maclay from the wilds of Pennsylvania and
the leather-lunged James Jackson from sparsely settled Georgia should
have caught the full significance of it all before it dawned on
Jefferson and Madison. The latter thought the ‘Report’ ‘well digested
and illustrated,’ and ‘supported by very able reasoning,’ but after a
while he, too, was depressed with the injustice to the original
creditors who ‘were most instrumental in saving their country,’ and
concluded there was something ‘radically wrong in suffering those who
rendered a bona fide consideration to lose seven eighths of their dues,
and those who had no particular merit toward their country to gain seven
or eight times as much as they advanced.’[206]

Meanwhile, speculation was manifesting itself with incredible audacity
and mendacity. The greater part of the securities in the hands of
original creditors were in the hands of soldiers, farmers, and merchants
in the remote interior. To most of these, they had come to mean so much
worthless paper. No telegraph could flash the news into the back country
of Georgia and North Carolina that Congress was about to legislate to
par the promises to pay. Weeks or months would pass before the
proceedings in New York could be known and comprehended by holders of
the paper living in the woods of the Carolinas or on the banks of the
Savannah. Poor, and mostly ignorant, they had no correspondents in the
coffee-houses to write them of the activities at Federal Hall; and even
if they had, it required weeks for a letter to reach them.

But members of Congress knew what to expect--for they were the actors in
the drama; and their friends, the capitalists and merchants of the
cities, knew--for they had been informed. The unscrupulous and
adventurous soldiers of fortune on the scene comprehended the
opportunity at a glance. The day after the ‘Report’ was read, the city
buzzed with the gossip of the speculators. One Senator, making calls in
the congressional circle, found it almost the sole topic of
conversation. He heard that Robert Morris of the Senate, who had been
consulted by Hamilton, ‘must be deep in it, for his partner ... had one
contract for $40,000 worth.’ It was whispered that ‘General Heister had
brought over a sum of money for Mr. Morris for this business.’ Senator
Langdon, it was noted, was living with a Mr. Hazard ‘who is an old and
intimate friend of Mr. Morris,’ and he admitted that he had followed
buying certificates for some time past.’ ‘Ah,’ said the visiting
Senator, ‘so you are one of the happy few who have been let in on the
secret’--and Mr. Hazard seemed abashed. It was understood that
Representative Fitzsimons of Philadelphia was likewise concerned in the
business.

Four days after the ‘Report’ was read, ‘expresses with very large sums
of money on their way to North Carolina for purposes of speculation in
certificates’ splashed and bumped over the wretched winter roads, the
drivers lashing the straining horses. Two fast-sailing vessels,
chartered by a member of Congress who had been an officer in the war,
were ploughing the waters southward on a similar mission--and this
scandalous proceeding was to be mentioned frequently in the subsequent
debates. ‘I really fear,’ wrote Maclay, ‘the members of Congress are
deeper in this business than any others.’[207] Whether they were deeper
or not, they were deep enough, and numerous enough to hold the balance
of power in the body that legislated the certificates to par. These
ranged from Robert Morris, the chief legislative agent of Hamilton in
the Senate, to Fisher Ames, who was his most eloquent defender in the
House.[208] In later years Jefferson was to record in justice to Ames
that his speculative activities had been greatly exaggerated and that he
had acted as an agent in the enterprises of his Boston friends, Gore and
Mason.[209]

So thoroughly did this money-madness take possession of the minds of men
that even the puritanic John Quincy Adams was to write his father,
without a homily, that by September of 1790, Christopher Gore, the
richest lawyer in Massachusetts, and one of the strongest Bay State
members of Hamilton’s machine, had ‘made an independent fortune in
speculation in the public funds’; and that other leaders of the bar[210]
had ‘successfully engaged in speculation’ by playing at ‘that hazardous
game with moneys deposited in their hands’ by clients at a distance.
They took the chance of becoming ‘masters of sums to an equal amount
before they have been called upon for payment.’[211] Maclay thought
‘there is no room to doubt but that a connection is spread over the
whole continent on this villainous business.’[212] Everywhere men with
capital--and a hint--were feverishly pushing their advantage by preying
on the ignorance of the poor. Thus, paper held for years by the private
soldiers was coaxed from them for five, and even as low as two,
shillings on the pound by speculators, including leading members of
Congress, who knew that provision for the redemption of the paper had
been made.

In all this, Hamilton had no part and no responsibility beyond having
made indiscreet disclosures of which his friends availed themselves, and
through buying and selling through his agents in New York and
Philadelphia for his brother-in-law.[213] Just how he viewed the
scandalous proceedings in the earlier stages we do not know. They were
not without defense from his supporters. The obsequious John Fenno took
notice of the gossip with a defense of speculation in the ‘Gazette.’
Were not moneyed men ‘the props of the infant credit of the United
States?’[214] The dark insinuations of the gossips, the criticism of the
‘rabble,’ we may be sure caused Hamilton no concern. Surveying the field
at the beginning of the battle, he must have been content. He saw the
financiers, the commercial interests of the large centers, including the
speculators, enlisted under his banner. The influential Society of the
Cincinnati, composed of Revolutionary officers, men of means who had
been able to hold on to their paper, gave dignity to his cause. With its
compact organization in every State, and its system of correspondence,
it was an engine of tremendous power. The social and intellectual
circles were flying his flag. He looked upon his work and called it
good.

III

With the first discussion in the House, it was apparent that speculation
was to play a conspicuous part in the debates. The speculators packed
the galleries, overflowed into the lobby, causing the complacent
Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts, himself a speculator, to insist
that the ‘ardent expectations of the people on this subject want no
other demonstration than the numerous body of citizens assembled within
these walls.’ The effect was different on the pugnacious Jackson of
Georgia. ‘Since this Report has been read,’ he shouted, with a
contemptuous glance at the eager gallery, ‘the spirit of speculation ...
has arisen and been cherished by people who had access to information
the Report contained, that would have made a Hastings blush to have been
connected with, though long inured to preying on the vitals of his
fellow man. Three vessels, sir, have sailed within a fortnight from this
port freighted for speculation.’[215]

The unctuous Sedgwick was melting suavity. Speculation within reasonable
bounds was not bad, but action should be taken with all possible speed
to stop it; and the troublesome Jackson returned to the attack--this
time on New York City. He wished to God Congress had met in the woods
and out of the neighborhood of a populous town. The gallant veterans,
driven by economic necessity to the wilderness, were being robbed by
these speculators of the pittance a grateful country had bestowed. Since
the assumption of State debts was proposed, why not postpone action
until the various legislatures could express the sentiment of the
States? ‘Then these men may send out other vessels to countermand their
former orders; and perhaps we may yet save the distant inhabitants from
being plundered by these harpies.’[216]

This line of attack had not been anticipated, and Hamilton was not the
man to take anything for granted. His well-groomed figure was seen
moving nervously about the lobbies of Federal Hall, within a few days
after the commencement of the debate. One of his enemies observed that
he ‘spent most of his time running from place to place among the
members.’[217] In the evenings he gathered his more influential
supporters about him at his home. At his table he brought his most
seductive charms to bear upon the doubting. Time was all-important and
indefinite delay might be fatal.

With the thunder of Jackson’s ugly charges reverberating through the
streets, taverns, coffee-houses, Hamilton was ‘moving heaven and earth
for his funding system.’ The commercial interests and the members of
the Cincinnati hastened to join the lobby, which began to seek out the
wavering or the doubtful in their lodging-houses. A fashionable minister
found his way to the quarters of Speaker Muhlenberg and Senator Maclay
to extol the policies of the dynamic young Secretary, and ‘argued as if
he had been in the pulpit.’ Time, too, for a redoubling of effort, for
there were rumors that Madison, the strongest man in the House, had been
unpleasantly impressed with the fast-sailing vessels and the expresses
jolting over the roads southward. A bitter attack had appeared in one of
the papers which gossip ascribed to the popular George Clinton.[218]

In the House--still harping were the foes on speculation, when with a
benevolent expression Sedgwick rose with saccharine urbanity to regret
the vice of speculation, and declare himself ‘totally disinterested,’
albeit he was financially concerned. It was only his distress over
speculation that admonished him to speedy action to minimize the evil.
It was really unfortunate that so much heat had been engendered. After
all, were not ‘a great and respectable body of our citizens creditors of
the United States?’ It would be tragic were these animosities to create
‘factions among the people.’

‘A danger there?’ bellowed Jackson, the incorrigible infant terrible.
‘Do not gentlemen think there is some danger on the other side? Will
there not be grounds for uneasiness when the soldier and the meritorious
citizen are called upon to pay the speculator more than ten times the
amount they ever received from him for their securities?’[219]

Meanwhile the fight was spreading from Federal Hall to the newspapers
where congressional courtesy imposed no restrictions on the temper.
Sinister stories were finding their way into print. ‘Several officials
in conjunction with Robert Morris and wealthy contractors “were” at the
bottom of this new arrangement.’ If it succeeded, Robert Morris would
benefit $18,000,000, Jeremiah Wadsworth would profit $9,000,000 and
Governor George Clinton would make $5,000,000.[220]

It was under these conditions, with the speculators packing the
galleries, with the lobbyists, legitimate and illegitimate, buzzing
through the corridors, with the most amazing rumors floating about the
streets, that James Madison, who had remained silent heretofore, rose in
a crowded House to fire the first fun in the Jeffersonian war on the
financial policies of Alexander Hamilton.

Here was a man at whom the Federalist leaders dare not sneer. A
stranger, looking down from the gallery, would have been at a loss to
understand the deference with which members hung upon his words. His
personal appearance was disappointing. The short little man dressed in
sober black, with a bald head, and a little protuberant in front, whose
lower limbs were slight and weak,[221] was surely not meant to ride on
the whirlwind and direct the storm. The impression of physical weakness
he conveyed did belie the fact. In the mild blue eyes there was much to
suggest the meditative philosopher, nothing to hint of the fighter. His
voice was so weak that even in the cozy little chamber he could scarcely
be heard.[222] He spoke in low tones, without gesture or excitement,
almost like a man communing with himself in the seclusion of his closet.
And yet he commanded a hearing vouchsafed to few. It was the triumph of
character.

Here, too, was a man with a background second to none in the infant
Republic. An ailing body had obsessed him in youth with the premonition
of an early death, and, feeling the futility of entering on any pursuit,
he had sought consolation in his books. He not only consumed, he
assimilated. He not only read, he thought. Thus he became something more
than a learned man--he developed into a political philosopher ‘worthy to
rank with Montesquieu and Locke.’[223] At the time he rose to propose an
amendment to Hamilton’s plan there was not a man in America who was his
peer in the knowledge of constitutional law or history. Nor was there a
man, either, whose support Hamilton more eagerly coveted. Even the
jealous Ames conceded him to be ‘our first man,’ consoling himself for
the concession with the comment that ‘I think him too much of a book
politician and too timid in his politics,’ and that ‘he speaks decently
as to manner and no more.’[224]

But the ill-natured jealousy of the more ornamental Ames failed to take
account, as most of his colleagues did, of the important practical use
to which he had put his knowledge of the battles he had fought and the
victories he had won. No one in either branch of Congress or at the head
of any of the departments had approached his services in the framing of
the Constitution. It was his genius that conceived the Virginia plan
which became the basis of the agreement. At many critical junctures his
speeches had dissipated the gathering darkness with their light. His
pen, unknown to many at the time, had recorded the story of the
Convention. His contributions to ‘The Federalist’ had been quite as
important, if not so numerous, as those of Hamilton; and the fight he
waged in the Virginia Convention for ratification was quite as Titanic
and conclusive as that of Hamilton in New York, but with this
difference--Hamilton was confronted by Melancthon Smith, while Madison
had to cross swords with Patrick Henry, with the powerful George Mason
and the accomplished Pendleton.

He was not an orator of frills and fancies, magnetic and dramatic,
appealing to the passions and emotions, but he was formidable in debate.
In the speeches of none of his contemporaries is found such erudition,
more driving logic, such tact and moderation of statement, or greater
nobility of sentiment, fairness, justice. If they are a bit heavy in
their sobriety, the occasion called for something remote from theatrical
frivolity. His grace was in his reasoning, not his rhetoric--and yet his
style would have given him a foremost place at Saint Stephen’s.

It is not surprising that such a man should not have been a favorite
with the crowd. There was a diffidence in his manner, a formality and
precision in his method, a quiet dignity in his bearing that discouraged
familiarity. He was too absorbed in his work to fit in with the social
festivity of his time. Only at his own table and among his intimates did
he appear in the rôle of ‘an incessant humorist’ and ‘keep the table in
roars of laughter over his stories and his whimsical way of telling
them.’[225] Even his letters read like state papers. But there were a
few, greater than Ames, who appreciated him. These were the three most
important personages of his time--Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson.

Washington consulted him and made use of his pen. Hamilton cultivated
him. Jefferson loved him as a son. His relations with the latter were no
less than beautiful. Through many years they constantly interchanged
visits, corresponded regularly, and traveled together whenever possible.
A strikingly incongruous pair they must have seemed as they plodded
along country roads together, or rode to and from Philadelphia together
in Jefferson’s carriage--the tall, thin, loose-jointed, and powerful
master of Monticello, and the short, frail, bald-headed Madison. But the
incongruity was in their physical appearance only, for they had much in
common--a common sweetness of disposition, a common code of political
principles and morals, a common liberality of views, and a common
passion for knowledge. The older man paid tribute to his protégé’s
qualities long after both had passed from active public life: his
‘habits of self-possession which placed at ready command the rich
resources of his luminous and discriminating mind’; his language
‘soothing always the feelings of his adversaries by civilities and
softness of expression’; his ‘pure and spotless virtue which no calumny
has ever attempted to sully’--all qualities that made him a congenial
companion for the philosopher who shared them in a large degree.[226]
Observing Jefferson’s happiness at the inauguration of his successor, a
lady who knew them both intimately wrote what all who knew them felt: ‘I
do believe father never loved a son more than he loves Mr.
Madison.’[227] But when Madison rose that cold February day to make his
first attack on Hamilton’s programme, he acted on his own volition and
without consultation with the man who was to be his chief.

The character of Madison’s speech in favor of discrimination between the
original holders and the purchasers of securities was not so open to
attack as that of the impulsive and loose-thinking Jackson. He began in
a manner to conciliate his hearers, matching Hamilton in his insistence
on the sanctity of the debt and the necessity for its discharge. The
question is--to whom is the money due? There could be no doubt in the
case of the original holders who had not alienated their securities. The
only rival pretensions were those of the original holders who had
assigned and the present holders of the assignments.

‘The former may appeal to justice,’ he said, ‘because the value of the
money, the service or the property advanced by them has never been
really paid to them. They may appeal to good faith, because the value
stipulated and expected is not satisfied by the steps taken by the
Government. The certificates put in the hands of the creditors, on
closing their settlements with the public, were of less value than was
acknowledged to be due; they may be considered as having been forced on
the receivers. They cannot therefore be adjudged an extinguishment of
the debt. They may appeal to the motives for establishing public credit,
for which justice and faith form the natural foundation. They may appeal
to humanity for the sufferings of the military part of the creditors who
never can be forgotten while sympathy is an American virtue.’

Admitting that the purchaser also had a claim, he proposed a plan
designed, as he thought, to do justice to both--to pay the original
holder in full, and, where there had been an assignment, the assignee to
receive the highest market value and the original holder whatever
remained over.[228] The plan spread consternation. At the Knoxes’ dinner
table that night, where members of Congress and diplomats were gathered,
it was almost the sole topic of conversation. In the coffee-houses,
where the speculators gathered about their mugs, Madison was denounced
as a dreamer and an enemy of public faith. The more cautious regretted
the insurmountable difficulties of the scheme. This was felt by Madison
as the one legitimate argument in opposition, and writing Jefferson
three days later he made the admission with the suggestion that ‘they
might be removed by one half the exertions that will be used to collect
and color them.’[229] It was not until four days later that the
Hamiltonian leaders attacked the plan with their heavy artillery. One
by one they rushed to the assault. ‘It is not pretended,’ cried
Sedgwick, ‘that any fraud or imposition has been practiced’--which is
precisely what was charged. If the original holders lost, it was their
own fault. It was too bad. He really sympathized with their misfortunes.
But business was business. There was ‘no fraud on the part of the
holder,’ echoed Laurance of New York--who knew that the town was humming
with the charge. At any rate, ‘the general opinion of men of property is
in favor of it.’ No public bodies like Chambers of Commerce were against
the Hamilton plan. As for ‘the people’--newspapers and pamphlets could
not be taken as expressive of public opinion. William Smith of
Charleston had heard few advocates of discrimination ‘in society.’ As
for the newspapers, they appeared on both sides. And why so much
sympathy with the original holders?

It was reserved for Ames, whose friend Gore was getting rich on
speculation, to take a stouter stand. Why should not ‘the seller who
sold for a trifle be taxed to pay the purchaser?’ he asked. ‘He
certainly ought to fare as other citizens do. If he has property, then
the plea of necessity is destroyed; if he has none, then his taxes will
be a mere trifle.’ And public opinion against it? Then ‘all the more
duty on Government to protect right when it may happen to be unpopular;
that is what Government is framed to do.’ Away with maudlin
sentiment--it was not the function of the State to ‘rob on the highway
to exercise charity.’[230]

Meanwhile the commercial organizations of the larger towns were summoned
to the field against discrimination, and they responded--even in
Richmond. ‘It is the natural language of the towns,’ wrote Madison, ‘and
decides nothing.’[231] As the debate proceeded, Wall Street swarmed with
the curious who could not get into the House where the speculators
packed the galleries, and lined up deep behind the railing in the rear
of the chamber. Petitions began to pour in. Passions rose. ‘I do not
believe the crowd in the gallery consists of original holders,’ shouted
one speaker with a contemptuous glance at the covetous group bending
over the railing.[232] Soldiers! ‘Poor soldiers!’ sneered Wadsworth--he
who had sent the two fast-sailing vessels to the South--‘I am tired of
hearing about the poor soldiers. Perhaps soldiers were never better paid
in any part of the country.’[233]

Two days later, Madison returned to the attack in a speech unusually
spirited for him. Only when he had parted with his self-respect ‘could
he admit that America ought to erect the monuments of her gratitude, not
to those who saved her liberties, but to those who had enriched
themselves on her funds.’ It was his last effort. He had spent himself
to the utmost. A spectator entering the House late in the day found him
‘rather jaded.’[234] He had incurred the hate of the Hamiltonians
without having consolidated all the opposition in favor of his plan.

Three days later--it was Sunday--that extreme democrat Senator Maclay,
who was indifferent to Madison’s plan because opposed to funding
altogether, sat down in his boarding-house and framed a plan of his own
looking to the extinguishment of the debt through the sale of public
lands. Having satisfied himself, he went forth in search of Thomas
Scott, his colleague. But ‘shame to tell it--he a man in years and
burdened with complaints--had lodged out and was not home yet.’ Pity
that ‘a good head should be led astray by the inordinate lust of its
concomitant parts.’ At length the old ‘roué’ was found, and he urged
that it be submitted to Madison at once.

The next day found Maclay indignantly chafing at Madison’s lodging-house
because it was ‘a long time’ before he appeared. As the radical from
Pennsylvania read his plan, it seemed to him that Madison ‘attended to
no one word, being so much absorbed in his own ideas.’ Maclay handed him
the paper, and Madison handed it back without glancing at it. Alas,
thought the radical, ‘his pride seems of the kind that repels all
communications.’[235] It was not an easy task to organize the forces of
Democracy.

The next day Madison’s plan was voted down. It was found long afterward
that of the sixty-four members of the House, twenty-nine were
security-holders.

One thing, however, had been accomplished--the public interest had been
awakened. The tongue of criticism had been loosened. The man in the
street began to hold forth. It was all beyond him--as problems of
finance were beyond Madison himself; but he could understand that a
policy had been adopted that would be advantageous to the rich,
profitable to the speculator, and mean loss to the common soldier. In
the commercial centers of the cities Madison became anathema. Young
Adams reported to his father that in Boston ‘Mr. Madison’s reputation
has suffered from his conduct,’ albeit so respectable a character as
Judge Dana had adopted Madison’s views.[236] The immediate reaction
through letters to the papers was so bitter that Fenno was moved to a
homily under the caption, ‘Honor Your Rulers,’ in which he pointed to
such outrageous derelictions as expressions of doubt concerning the
propriety of the proceedings of Congress.[237] These expressions had
gone far beyond a mere questioning of the wisdom of Congress. ‘A War
Worn Soldier’ thought it ‘happy there is a Madison who fearless of the
blood suckers will step forward and boldly vindicate the rights of the
widows and orphans, the original creditors and the war worn
soldier.’[238] Another ‘Real Soldier’ described ‘the poor emaciated
soldier, hungry and naked, in many instances now wandering from one
extreme part of the country to another.... But thank God there lives a
Madison to propose justice....’[239] An uglier and more pointed note was
struck by ‘A Farmer’ in Pennsylvania. ‘Would it not be a good
regulation,’ he wrote, ‘to oblige every member of Congress ... to lay
his hand on his heart and to declare that he is no speculator; and that
he did not come forward to claim for himself the price of the blood or
the limb or the life of the poor soldier?’[240] Another wrote to
‘gentlemen who by superior wealth have monopolized the public
securities’ that if honor and public faith called for the maintenance of
the paper at par then, there was more occasion for it ‘when they were in
the hands of those poor people to whom they were justly due, who had
implicitly pinned their faith on your sheaves.’[241] ‘An Old Soldier’
recalled Washington’s pledge to see justice done the common soldier.
‘Ample means are said to be now about to be provided, not for their
relief, but to enable eight or nine hundred per cent gain on the
purchase money of the speculator.’[242] ‘Ah well,’ wrote ‘A Citizen’ of
Boston, ‘Madison, Jackson and others in favor of discrimination in
funding the public debt have probably immortalized their memories.’[243]

Their letters probably reflect the talk among the workers on the
wharves, the pioneers on the fringe of the forests, the gossips of the
taverns. Rightly or wrongly, a spirit of resentment had been aroused--a
feeling in the breast of many that their interests were being
subordinated by the Government. This sentiment was to grow and to
increase the trouble of Hamilton in the next step toward the adoption of
his funding system.

VII

With the easy victory, however, the Hamiltonians entered with gayety
upon the next step--the Assumption of the State debts--determined to
rush it through. On the very night of the day discrimination was
defeated, the Pennsylvania delegation, on the suggestion of Robert
Morris, met at the lodgings of Representative Fitzsimons of Philadelphia
to ‘consider’ the matter of Assumption. One glance convinced the
keen-eyed Maclay that the meeting was for ratification, not for
consideration purposes. ‘By God,’ swore Morris, ‘it must be done!’
George Clymer, another of the Hamilton Reliables, bubbled with
enthusiasm over the advantage that would accrue to Pennsylvania. Maclay
was embarrassed by the almost affectionate comradery of some of his
colleagues. Why should the delegation not hold weekly social sessions
and work in harmony? Fitzsimons’s lodgings would be the very place to
meet. Yes, agreed Morris, and they could have wine and oysters.[244]

A few days later Muhlenberg, returning to Maclay’s lodgings from a levee
at the presidential mansion, declared with intense emphasis that the
State debts must be assumed--which impressed the suspicious Senator as
‘the language of the Court.’[245]

But it was not to be so simple as all that. Assumption, argued many,
would but extend the scope of the operations of the hated speculators.
It was another move to mortgage the Government to the capitalists. The
greater part of the speculating gentry were in the North; they would
soon accumulate all the State certificates of the South into their own
hands and one section would be paying taxes to increase the fortunes of
a favored class in another.

There was another reason for the revolt of the Southerners--which,
reversed, would have operated quite as powerfully on the Northerners.
The States with the largest unpaid debts were in the North,
Massachusetts with the greatest debt of all. Virginia, which led the
opposition, had liquidated most of her debt. There is nothing
inexplicable in the objections of the Virginians, who had paid their
debt, to being taxed to help pay the debt of Massachusetts and
Connecticut.

This was appreciated by many in the North, and a citizen of Stockbridge,
Massachusetts, writing for a New York paper, thought it unfair. If the
‘leveling system’ was vicious as applied to men, it was quite as bad
when applied to States. Then, too, ‘the public creditors, the most
opulent part, of the community, would, by this means, be detached from
the interest of the State Governments and united to that of the general
Government.’ This aimed at the annihilation of the State Governments and
the perpetuation of the debt.[246] Thus an attack began on the general
policy of funding, taking an ugly form, appealing to class prejudices.
‘A number of drones are brought into society and the industrious bee is
forced to furnish them with all the honey of its search.’[247]

But this opposition from the unimportant meant nothing to Hamilton. In
those days, and for many days to come, it was only necessary to know
what Oliver Wolcott[248] said or wrote to know what his master thought.
Writing his father about this time, Wolcott gives us sketchily the
operations of Hamilton’s mind. This matter of assumption was connected
with ‘the engine of government.’ Since ‘the influence of the clergy, the
nobility and the army’ was impossible, ‘some active principle of the
human mind can be interested in the support of the Government.’ It would
never do to have ‘civil establishments,’ but there was an influential
class in existence--the moneyed class. They could and should be bound
by interest to the general Government. What more ‘active principle’ of
the human mind than the desire for wealth? And if the capitalists looked
to the Federal rather than to the State Governments for their money,
what better ‘engine of government’ than that? ‘For these reasons,’ wrote
Wolcott, ‘I think the State debts should be assumed.’ True, it would
make the debt of the United States ‘inconvenient,’ the taxes would be
‘burdensome,’ and ‘will appear to be just only to those who believe that
the good attained is more important than the evil which is
suffered.’[249]

It was fear of the effect of these ‘burdensome taxes’ on the popularity
of the Federal Government that led some men, including Madison, into
opposition.[250] Some of the Hamiltonians were alarmed, fearing that
‘such bold politics are unfitted to ... the infant resources’ of the
young Republic.[251] Every enemy of Assumption was not hostile to the
central Government, but all who were jealous of the sovereignty of the
States were in opposition. Rufus King, the brilliant and virile
Hamiltonian leader in the Senate, was convinced that in New York ‘the
anti-federalists think that the advantages to be derived to the State
from the retention of that debt are so great and important that they
stand ready to accede to any terms which the creditors may
propose.’[252] About the same time the unreconciled Patrick Henry was
writing James Monroe that ‘it seems to be a consistent part of a system
I have ever dreaded,’ and that the ‘subserviency of Southern to Northern
interests are written in Capitals on its very front.’[253]

Such was the atmosphere in which the second battle began.

VIII

On the opening of the debate one champion of Assumption[254] let the cat
out of the bag with the statement that ‘if the general Government has
the payment of all the debts, it must of course have all the revenue,
and if it possesses the whole revenue, it is equal, in other words, to
the whole power.’ ‘Yes,’ cried the irrepressible Jackson in stentorian
tones, ‘if it lulls the Shays of the North it will rouse the Sullivans
of the South’--and the fight was on.

Almost immediately Assumption became confused with the whole system of
funding, and a week after Madison had made his argument against the
former, he was compelled to return to a defense of the latter, not as
something he desired, but as a necessity imposed by unescapable
conditions. Madison was too much of a statesman to be a demagogue.

Very soon, Maclay, watching the proceedings in the House with ferret
eyes, thought he observed ‘the rendezvousing of the crew of the Hamilton
galley.’ He found that ‘all hands are piped to quarters.’ The plan to
force a vote on March 8th was abandoned toward evening, and that night
he heard it was to await the arrival of Representative Vining of
Delaware, and to give Hamilton time ‘to prepare him properly.’[255]

There was some mystery about Vining, and wild rumors were afloat that
some one had said that he would give the new arrival a thousand guineas
for his vote. ‘A thousand guineas,’ snorted Maclay, with a twinge in his
gouty knee, ‘they could get him for a tenth that sum.’

Meanwhile, there was feverish activity among Hamilton’s supporters in
Congress and out. Government officials left their desks to become
lobbyists. The clergy turned politicians and solicited. The speculators
were active. The members of the Cincinnati were mobilized and marched.
Two Congressmen, one lame, the other sick, were carried to the House to
meet a possible emergency. Another, planning to leave town, was ordered
to his post.[256] The friends of Assumption were becoming uneasy.
Letters in opposition were pouring in from men like Doctors Rush and
Logan of Philadelphia and were being peddled about by Maclay to members
of the Pennsylvania delegation. Alas, that he should have found ‘a woman
in the room’ with old man Scott again.[257]

These activities so wrought upon the nerves of Robert Morris that he
sought a new avenue of approach to his erratic colleague. Would Maclay
join Morris in some land speculations? The former was suspicious, but
interested.[258] For several days Morris talked land--the play
continuing for eleven days. The debate was becoming bitter. The able,
bitter-tongued Ædanus Burke of South Carolina made a ferocious attack on
Hamilton, and the lobbies, coffee-houses, streets, buzzed with talk of a
duel.[259]

The distress among Hamilton’s friends increased. In the Senate, shut off
from the curious eyes of the public, feelings could be manifested with
some abandon. Ellsworth and Izard ‘walked all the morning back and
forward.’ Strong of Massachusetts and Paterson of New Jersey ‘seemed
moved but not so much agitated.’ King ‘looked like a boy who had been
whipped.’ And the hair on Schuyler, a heavy speculator and father-in-law
of Hamilton, ‘stood on end as if the Indians had fired at him.’[260]

But courage was revived, and there was unwonted activity. Most of
Washington’s household joined the lobby--Humphreys, Jackson, and Nelson,
his secretaries--and were particularly attentive to Vining. This was the
result of a caucus of Hamilton’s supporters the night before when the
decision was reached to risk a vote.

Three days later, the chance was taken, and Hamilton lost by two votes.
The scene was dramatic. Sedgwick made an ominous speech and, on being
called to order, took his hat and left. ‘A funeral oration,’ sneered
Maclay. When he returned he seemed to have been weeping. Even the eyes
of the self-contained Fitzsimons ‘were brimming full’ as he went about
‘reddened like scarlet.’ Clymer, ‘always pale,’ was ‘deadly white,’ his
lips quivering. But ‘happy impudence sat on Laurance’s brow.’ Wadsworth,
who was financially interested, ‘hid his grief under the rim of a round
hat,’ and Boudinot,[261] another speculator, left his distress naked to
his enemies--‘his wrinkles rose in ridges and the angles of his mouth
were depressed and assumed a curve resembling a horse shoe.’[262]

The speculators poured out of the galleries and into the coffee-houses
and taverns to relieve their feelings with oaths over a mug. The air was
electric--and cause enough. Many speculators or their agents had been
scouring the back country of the Carolinas and Georgia for months buying
up State securities on the assumption that they would be funded. They
had bet on a sure thing--and lost.

For a moment the friends of Assumption appeared to lose interest in the
new Government. Some acted as though the experiment launched by the
Constitution had failed and was not worth a ceremonious burial. The
interest of Congress lagged, and in the Senate, where the Assumptionists
were strongest, business was practically abandoned. In less than an hour
after it was called to order, Rufus King would move an adjournment.[263]
It was a gloomy and cold April--the distant hills and even the
house-tops covered with snow.[264] ‘The Eastern members talk a strange
language,’ wrote Madison to Monroe. ‘They avow, some of them at least, a
determination to oppose all provisions for the public debt which does
not include this, and intimate danger to the Union from a failure to
assume.’[265] Senator Johnson of North Carolina found ‘the gentlemen who
are in favor of assumption ... very sore and impatient under their
defeat.’[266] Not a few of the Federalists began to speak and write
pessimistically of the doubtful value of the Government. From his
library at Beverly, George Cabot could see the danger of ‘division,
anarchy and wretchedness,’[267] and if the States seized the opportunity
to ‘provide honestly for their creditors ... the general government
would be ruined irrevocably.’ But the thing that pained Cabot most was
the attitude of Madison. Had he changed his principles?[268]

In the Hamiltonian press the comments were funereal. Fenno’s paper
teemed with indignant protests and savage attacks on the State
‘demagogues’ who were ‘hankering after popularity at home.’[269]
‘Americanus,’ paying tribute to Hamilton and his funding plan, found it
‘wantonly destroyed’ and ‘in broken pieces at the several shrines of
ambition, avarice and vanity.’[270]

Yet all the scribes were not similarly depressed. A writer in the ‘New
York Journal,’ describing the birth and death of Assumption, worked the
advocates of the measure into a frenzy. He pictured it as ‘the bastard
of Eastern speculators who have lost their puritanic manners’--the
‘brat’ having been brought into the world ‘by the dexterous application
of the forceps.’ Thus it was injured by the ‘violence of the delivery,’
but ‘Dr. Slop’ had hoped to save it by having it bathed ‘in Yankee rum.’
‘The unfortunate child was presented to the baptismal font by Granny
Fitzsimmons; and Mr. Sedgwick, who is gifted with canting talents,
officiated as priest, baptized the infant, and his name stands on the
parish books as Al--ex--der Assumption.’ But alas, ‘the child of promise
who would have redeemed the Eastern States from poverty and despair is
now no more.’[271]

But Hamilton was not despairing--he had just begun to fight.

It was under these conditions that an event of tremendous import
occurred. On Sunday a stage-coach lumbered up to the tavern on Broadway,
and a tall, travel-worn man emerged and entered the hostelry. Momentous
as was the meaning of his arrival, it claimed but scant notice in the
papers of the city.

‘On Sunday last, arrived in this city, Thomas Jefferson, Esq.,
Secretary of State for the United States of America.’[272]

There is nothing in the press or the correspondence of the time to
indicate the slightest appreciation of the significance of this
accession to governmental circles. No doubt Madison was among the first
to greet him, but of this we have no evidence. For two weeks Jefferson
had been upon the road from Richmond, resting a day at Alexandria where
an eighteen-inch snow caused him to send his carriage on by water and
take the public stage. The roads were wretched and there was little
opportunity for restful sleep. Occasionally the long-legged traveler
left the stage to mount his horse for exercise. Thus he rode to the
field of battle.

As Hamilton surveyed the wreckage of the field, he saw an opportunity.
There was another bitter battle pending over the selection of the site
of the permanent capital. Might he not bargain a bit and trade enough
votes for Assumption? The site of the capital was a matter of
indifference to him. No sentimental ties bound him to any State or
community. No dust sacred to him rested anywhere in American soil. He
was ready to go with any group that could contribute enough votes to
make Assumption sure. Philadelphia--New York--the
Susquehanna--Baltimore--the Potomac--a mere bagatelle to him. In the
fact that it was more than that to others he saw his chance. Could the
Virginians or the Marylanders who had opposed Assumption pay him in
votes for a capital at Georgetown, or even Baltimore? Could Robert
Morris whip the stubborn Pennsylvanians into line for a capital in
Philadelphia or on the Susquehanna? True, Washington favored Georgetown,
but that meant nothing to Hamilton if Georgetown could not bring
Assumption. It is a myth of history that he was tenderly considerate of
the wishes of his chief: the facts to sustain it do not appear. Far more
important to him was the fact that Madison and Carroll favored
Georgetown. They had votes.

The intense bitterness over the struggle called for infinite diplomacy
and sagacity in negotiation. The papers of the country were filled with
ill-natured letters on the fight which was no more in evidence in
Congress than in the bar-rooms of the competing cities. Ames, like
Hamilton, cared little about the site if he could but get Assumption,
and was disgusted with the ‘despicable grogshop contest, whether the
taverns in New York or Philadelphia shall get the custom of Congress.’
Sedgwick had become a ‘perfect slave to the business,’ and ‘Goodhue
frowned all day long and swears as much as a good Christian
can....’[273]

By early June the bargaining stage had been reached. One day Tench Coxe,
of the Treasury, and Jackson, one of Washington’s secretaries, called at
the lodgings of Fitzsimons and Clymer with the bald proposition to trade
the permanent residence to Philadelphia for enough Pennsylvania votes to
pass Assumption. Taking this as a hint from Hamilton, Robert Morris
wrote him that early the next morning he should be taking a walk on the
Battery, and if any propositions were open he would be very glad to have
the Secretary of the Treasury join him in his constitutional. Thus,
long before many of the statesmen had enjoyed their coffee, Hamilton and
Morris paced up and down at the deserted Battery. With Walpolean
directness, Hamilton went to the point. He needed one vote in the Senate
and five in the House. If Morris could assure him these, he could give
assurance, in return, that the permanent residence would be given to
Germantown or the Falls of the Delaware. Morris promised to consult his
colleagues--but how about the temporary residence for Philadelphia?
After thinking it over, Hamilton sent word that he would not think of
bargaining on the temporary residence.[274] For several days these
negotiations continued. The Pennsylvanians moved with a deliberation
that tried Hamilton’s patience. A few days later he threatened his
Philadelphia friends with the possibility of the New-Englanders going to
Baltimore or the Potomac.[275]

Meanwhile, Hamilton had been thinking seriously of Jefferson. They met
as strangers, knowing one another well by reputation. Their feelings
were friendly. There were innumerable reasons why they should ultimately
fly at each other’s throats, but that was in the future. One June day
they met at the presidential mansion on Broadway, and, leaving at the
same time, Hamilton saw his opportunity.

There was a picture for an artist to paint--Hamilton and Jefferson, arm
in arm, walking along Broadway discussing the possibilities of a
bargain. With all the persuasiveness of his eloquence, Hamilton dwelt on
the very real danger of disunion if Assumption failed. With subtle
diplomacy he seemed to throw himself trustfully on Jefferson’s mercy. A
great struggle for independence--a promising young nation--and was all
to be lost? The South wanted the capital, the North wanted
Assumption--could there not be a common meeting-ground? Jefferson would
see.

A dinner at Jefferson’s table in the house on Broadway. Men from the
South about the board. The topic--the pending bargain. A little later,
Hamilton was informed that an agreement could be reached. The word was
passed along the line. Even Madison satisfied himself that, since
Assumption could not be prevented, the bargain might as well be
made--but if there had been no bargain there would have been no
Assumption. A few nights later the Pennsylvania delegation entertained
both Hamilton and Jefferson at dinner. The latter impressed one guest
with his ‘dignity of presence and gravity,’ Hamilton with his ‘boyish
giddy manner.’ Whatever may have been the cause of the gravity of
Jefferson, there was reason for the giddiness of Hamilton--he had
won![276]

XII

The attempt of Jefferson in later life to explain his part in the
bargain over Assumption, with the assertion that he had been deceived by
Hamilton, is in the nature of an alibi created after the crime. He was
not a simple-minded rustic, and his correspondence previous to the
bargain shows that he had given serious consideration to Assumption. He
had been in daily contact with Madison who had led the fight against it.
A meticulously careful student of the press, he unquestionably was
familiar with every objection to Assumption and funding which he
afterward offered. He had undoubtedly read Madison’s argument which had
been published a month after he reached New York. As late as June 20th,
he was writing Monroe that, unless the quarrel over Assumption and the
residence was settled, ‘there will be no funding bill agreed to, our
credit will burst and vanish, and the States separate, to take care,
every one of itself.’ Much as he would prefer that the States pay their
own debts, he could see ‘the necessity of yielding to the cries of the
creditors ... for the sake of the Union, and to save it from the
greatest of all calamities, the total extinction of our credit in
Europe.’[277] Here was justification enough for his action without
resorting to the fanciful story of his deception by Hamilton. ‘The
question of assuming the State debts has created greater animosities
than I ever yet saw,’ he wrote Dr. Gilmer a week after his letter to
Monroe.[278] Thus he knew precisely how the lines were drawn. Perhaps he
did not appreciate at the moment the political advantage of appearing on
the side of the opposition,--but he was not deceived. Nor was Madison
imposed upon. He accepted the bargain because ‘the crisis demands the
spirit of accommodation,’ albeit he wished it ‘considered as an
unavoidable evil and possibly not the worse side of the dilemma.’[279]

With many, however, the triumph of Assumption meant placing Hamilton and
his followers in an impregnable position; this, too, was the idea of the
Hamiltonians and great was their rejoicing. When the measure passed the
Senate, members of the lower House were packed behind the iron railing,
the smiling faces of Ames and Sedgwick conspicuous among them. To the
extremists in the opposition it seemed the end. ‘I do not see that I can
do any good here and I think I had better go home,’ wrote Maclay.
‘Everything, even to the naming of a committee is prearranged by
Hamilton and his group of speculators.’[280] And the Hamiltonians, who
had raged over the satirical article on the birth of Assumption, made
merry over a verse in Fenno’s journal:

‘The wit who bastardized thy name
And croaked a funeral dirge
Knew not how spotless was thy fame
How soon thou would’st emerge.’[281]

When Congress adjourned, Hamilton, rejoicing in his triumphs, turned
gayly to the next step in his programme, with more powerful influences
behind him than he had ever had before.

CHAPTER IV

PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE

Hamilton was at the high tide of his popularity and power when Congress
next convened in Philadelphia. His funding system had established the
Nation’s credit, and the genius and daring of the brilliant young man of
thirty-three were on every tongue. The ‘Maryland Journal’ claimed
‘respectable authority’ for the assertion that in Quebec he was
‘supposed equal to the celebrated Mr. Pitt, and superior to the Prime
Minister of any other court in Europe.’[282] Among the merchants and
people of wealth and property he was acclaimed the savior of the State.
Everywhere he was the idol of the aristocracy.

And, in the saddle, he was riding hard. Although his was the second
position in the Cabinet, he thought of himself as the Prime Minister.
Washington was a constitutional monarch. The other members of the
President’s official family were his subordinates. His policies were the
policies of the Government, and to question them was hostility to the
State. In the Cabinet meetings his manner was masterful to a degree.
Considering himself Prime Minister, he felt no delicacy about
interfering in the departments of his colleagues. Even Knox, who adored
him, resented his determination to make all the purchases for the
Department of War. When the War Secretary resisted, Hamilton had a
compliant Congress pass a law giving him that privilege--an absurdity
that continued as long as he was in the Cabinet.[283] The soft-spoken,
mild, and courteous Jefferson, who preferred the ways of conciliation
and persuasion, observed the dictatorial airs of his masterful young
associate with a surprise that hardened to distaste.

But the feeling awakened among the masses by the failure to discriminate
in the matter of the securities, and by Assumption, was increasing in
intensity. The common soldier had not profited by these policies. The
farmer and the mechanic could see no benefit to themselves, but among
speculators, some of them members of Congress, they observed evidence of
new-found wealth. These were building finer houses, riding in coaches
where they had previously walked, and there was an ominous rumbling and
grumbling beneath the surface, to which the Hamiltonians were oblivious
or indifferent. After all, this was merely the whining of the
ne’er-do-wells of the taverns and the illiterates of the farms.

The work was only begun, and there could be no turning back now. The
assumption of the State debts called for the tapping of new sources of
revenue. This would increase the burdens of the people, but what would
they have? They could not eat their cake and have it too--could not have
a strong government without paying the price. Utterly unmindful of the
complaining of the people of no importance, Hamilton turned resolutely
to his task and prepared his excise tax for the consideration of
Congress.

In raising money to meet the obligations of Assumption, it was the
purpose of Hamilton to resort to direct taxation as little as possible,
and to make luxuries bear the burden. This directed his attention to the
domestic manufacture of spirits--luxury to some, but a very real
necessity to others. This was particularly true in the States where
distilleries were plentiful. That it would call forth a protest from
some quarters, he had no doubt, and he rejoiced in the certainty of
combat. Strong man that he was, he went forth in shining armor to
establish the right of the Government to an internal revenue. He knew
that excise taxes were obnoxious, albeit necessary, and he sought the
chance to vindicate the right of the Government to do the necessary,
unpopular thing.

Instantly the challenge was accepted in Pennsylvania where whiskey
stills abounded in the Alleghanies. Some of the State’s representatives
in Congress were instantly on their toes, denouncing the plan as
arbitrary and despotic. In the Legislature, Albert Gallatin, a
remarkable young man, soon to prove himself the only member of the
opposition capable of coping with Hamilton in the field of finance,
framed a reply, denouncing the plan as ‘subversive of the rights,
liberty and peace of the people.’ In the midst of excitement--for the
Legislature sat in Philadelphia--the reply was debated and adopted by an
overwhelming majority.

But the opposition was comparatively weak. Jefferson and Madison were
hostile to the principle, but there had been a bargain on Assumption to
which they were parties. They could not deceive themselves as to the
necessity. If Jefferson raised a finger to prevent the passage of the
bill, he covered his tracks. Even Giles, soon to become the most
vehement leader of the Jeffersonian party, at first looked upon it with
some favor. Madison could see no escape.

Among the masses throughout the country, however, the obscure orators
were busy in the bar-rooms, on the streets, and at the crossroads. The
character of the discussion among the people is indicated in imaginary
conversations by a writer in a Baltimore paper. A friend of the excise
fares forth into the streets and meets its enemies. ‘An outrage!’ cried
one. ‘Had we not gone to war with England on a tax?’ ‘Ah,’ but, says the
defender, ‘then we were taxed by another country and without
representation, while here we tax ourselves through our chosen
representatives.’ ‘Yes,’ but, says Rumor, ‘under the excise act men can
break into the people’s houses.’ ‘Wrong,’ says the defender; ‘the law
provides no such arbitrary power.’ ‘But,’ persists the enemy, ‘we shall
be eaten up by excise officers.’ ‘Silly,’ says the defender;
‘numerically these officials will be unimportant.’ Then the defender
encounters one candid enemy of the measure. ‘I hate the excise,’ he
cries, ‘because it strengthens the Government by providing effectually
for its necessities; and the Government which lays it because it is a
Government of vigor.’ Whereupon the defender praises him as an honest
man.[284]

The moment the Excise Bill was presented in the House, the ever alert
Jackson was ready with a motion to strike out the essential part of the
first clause. ‘The mode of taxation was odious, unequal, unpopular, and
oppressive, more particularly in the Southern States,’ where under the
hot Southern skies spirituous liquors were more than salutary--they were
necessary. Why deprive the masses of ‘the only luxury they enjoy’? Why
impose upon the American people an excise that had been odious in
England from the days of Cromwell, and which had been reprobated by
Blackstone?

Yes, added an indignant Virginian,[285] ‘it will convulse the
Government; it will let loose a swarm of harpies, who, under the
domination of revenue officers, will range through the country, prying
into every man’s house and affairs, and like a Macedonian phalanx bear
down all before them.’ The mercantile interests were paying their duties
with promptitude? He was tired of these encomiums. ‘The increase in the
revenue has served to enhance the value of the public securities, of
which it is well known they hold a very considerable portion.’[286]

On the second day, Madison went on record as opposed to the principle
and in favor of the measure. The only question to be considered was the
necessity for the revenue--and that was indisputable. He personally
would prefer direct taxes, but the majority of the people were against
them. Of all forms of the excise, that on ardent spirits impressed him
as the least objectionable.

But, demanded Jackson, disappointed at Madison’s failure to join in the
assault, why not other taxes--taxes on salaries, pensions, lawyers?
Because, answered Laurance, the Assumption calls for revenue, and this
is the best way to raise it. True, added another,[287] and he had ‘not
found a single person against it’--and this in Philadelphia where the
Legislature was sitting! What! exclaimed Timothy Blood worth of North
Carolina, why ‘people to the southward universally condemn the tax.’
Yes, indeed, contributed another, especially in North Carolina, ‘where
the consumption of ardent spirits is ten times greater than in
Connecticut.’

Up rose Sedgwick in conciliatory mood. He was not impressed with ‘the
considerations of morality,’ and could not think that the tax ‘would be
attended with any sensible inconvenience.’ There certainly was no
thought of using military force in its collection. And then it was that
Giles, who, next to Madison, was the most fervent and able of the
Jeffersonians, astonished many by giving his hearty approval to the tax
as necessary ‘to the honor, peace and security’ of the country.[288]

Thus for days the debate continued with its reiterations, until a new
note was struck with a proposed amendment, aimed at Hamilton whose
audacious methods and successive successes were causing grave concern in
some quarters, to prohibit revenue agents from interfering in elections.
These officers in their work, said Samuel Livermore, ‘will acquire such
a knowledge of persons and characters as will give them great advantage
and enable them to influence elections to a great degree.’ ‘Impolitic in
respect to law, repugnant to the Constitution, and degrading to human
nature,’ protested Ames. It would prevent self-respecting men from
taking the places, added Sedgwick. When the vote was taken, the
amendment was defeated with both Madison and Giles voting against it.

It was not until the House took up the duration of the tax that the
great battle began, and under the leadership of Giles, who had hitherto
given it his support.[289] But Madison was not impressed, and in the
vote on placing a limitation on the operation of the bill he was found
with the Hamiltonians--and there he stood on the final vote.

Even in the Senate the attempt to defeat the measure was continued, and
while Hamilton was strongest in that body, the energetic young Secretary
took nothing for granted. It was not enough that the committee
considering the bill had been packed with his supporters; he took
personal charge. For several days he walked briskly into the room and
took his place at the table, after which the doors were closed and
locked. The worried Maclay, who was preparing the case against the
measure on behalf of the distillers, sensed a conspiracy. When Adams
hastened an adjournment of the Senate while the committee was sitting,
the victim of the gout put him down as ‘deep in the cabals of the
Secretary.’[290] Preparing a list of distillers who would be affected,
on which to base an argument, Maclay knocked at the committee room. The
door opened and the eager eye of the Senator caught a glimpse of
Hamilton at the table before Robert Morris closed it, as he stepped
outside. With his suspicions confirmed, the gruff old Democrat left his
papers with his colleague and turned away. ‘I suppose no further use was
made of it,’ he commented.[291] When the bill passed four days later,
he thought ‘war and bloodshed ... the most likely consequence’; and
concluded that ‘Congress may go home’ since ‘Mr. Hamilton is
all-powerful and fails in nothing he attempts.’[292]

The same conclusion had been reached by Jefferson before. Just after the
passage of the bill, he was writing a friend of his fears of the effect
of the policies of the Treasury upon the people. Even though they were
right, ‘more attention should be paid to the general opinion.’ The
excise had passed--the Bank Bill would pass. Perhaps the only corrective
for ‘what is corrupt in our present form of government’ would be an
increase in the membership of the House ‘so as to grant a more
agricultural representation which may put that interest above that of
the stock jobbers.’[293]

Jefferson had reached the end of his patience, and was preparing to
challenge the pretensions, policies, and power of his ardent and
dictatorial young colleague.

III

It was inevitable that a national bank should be a feature of Hamilton’s
financial system. Long before a national government loomed large as a
probability, he had conceived the plan, and with the temerity of
youthful audacity had solemnly outlined it in letters to Robert
Morris.[294] With the opportunity before him, he moved with confident
strides to his purpose, and the day after his recommendation of an
excise reached Congress, his ‘Report on the Bank’ was read. His rare
familiarity with the principles of finance, the history of banking, and
the banking experiences of nations made his ‘Report’ a persuasive
document.[295] Its adoption was as inevitable as its submission. He was
on the very peak of his power. Commerce and wealth in all the cities
were saluting him, for his policies were in their interest, and the
professional and intellectual class had been won by the dazzling success
of his daring undertakings. In House and Senate he numbered among the
registers of his will the greater part of the strong and the brilliant.
Somehow, too, the impression was prevalent that he was the favorite
instrument through which Washington wrought his plans. If the small
farmers and the mechanics seemed acquiescent, it only meant that they
were inarticulate--but inarticulate they were as this dashing figure
moved on from triumph to triumph with a shouting multitude of merchants,
lawyers, politicians, and speculators in his wake.

Thus, when the Bank Bill reached the Senate, Maclay expressed the
general feeling in the comment that ‘it is totally in vain to oppose
this bill.’[296] Ten days later, he was all the more convinced at a
dinner where he met Morris and sat between two ‘merchants of
considerable note,’ and observed, on mentioning the Bank, that they were
‘magnetically drawn to the contemplation of the moneyed interest.’[297]

If the bill passed the Senate without a conflict, it was not to get
through the House without a skirmish which was to mark, as some
historians think, the definite commencement of party warfare.

The House debate was brief but sharp, though pitched upon a higher plane
than some preceding discussions. There was some questioning of the
necessity of a bank; some criticism of the monopolistic features of the
bank proposed; but Madison, who spoke at the beginning, furnished the
dominant theme in his challenge to the constitutionality of such an
institution. There was certainly no specific authorization of
congressional power in the Constitution. This was conceded by Hamilton,
who boldly evoked the doctrine of implied powers. It required no
abnormal perspicacity to foresee the unlimited possibilities of these.
Here was something read into the Constitution that would, rightly or
wrongly, have made its ratification impossible had it provided a
specific grant of such power. Hamilton and many of his lieutenants had
been frankly dissatisfied with the powers that had been conceded by the
people; and here was an opening for the acquisition of power that the
people would have refused. This to-day--what to-morrow?

When Madison rose to oppose the Bank, we may be sure that it was after
many intimate conversations with Jefferson. He spoke in low tones and
with his customary dignity and precision and without abuse, and his
argument was not susceptible to an easy assault. After all, ‘the Father
of the Constitution’ knew something about his child.

‘The doctrine of implication is always a tender one,’ he said. ‘The
danger of it has been felt by other governments. The delicacy was felt
in the adoption of our own; the danger may also be felt if we do not
keep close to our chartered authorities.... If implications thus remote
and thus multiplied may be linked together, a chain may be formed that
will reach every object of legislation, every object within the whole
compass of political economy.’ More than that--‘It takes from our
constituents the opportunity of deliberating on the untried measure,
although their hands are also to be tied by the same terms.’ More
still--‘it involves a monopoly which affects the equal rights of every
citizen.’[298]

On the next day Fisher Ames made his defense of the doctrine of implied
powers. The argument of Madison had impressed him as ‘a great speech,’
but steeped in ‘casuistry and sophistry.’ He thought Madison had wasted
his time, however, in reading the debates on constitutional powers in
the various State ratifying conventions--not at all to the purpose. ‘No
man would pretend to give Congress the power,’ he wrote, ‘against a fair
construction of the Constitution.’[299]

But the clever Ames had no intention of making such a frank admission on
the floor. He was a practical man and he defended the Hamiltonian
doctrine with eloquence and vigor.[300] With these two speeches, the
debate might as well have closed, but it continued long enough to permit
the Hamiltonian Old Guard to say their pieces. Giles argued and Jackson
raved in opposition, and the measure passed with a margin of nineteen
votes.

It is significant that nineteen of the twenty votes in opposition were
those of Southern members, the only Northerner in the list being
Jonathan Grout of Massachusetts, a Democrat, who did not return to the
next Congress. Like preceding Hamiltonian measures, this meant the
concentration of the financial resources of the country in the
commercial North to the disadvantage of the agricultural South. But this
was not the only reason. With the Southerners, among whom banks were a
rarity, and the Westerners, to whom they were as meaningless as the
canals on Mars, the advantage of such an institution was not felt. In
both sections anything that hinted of monopoly was abhorrent. Thus, in
addition to the constitutional difference, there was an economic
conflict that was sectional in its nature.

But the battle was not yet won. The conflict was transferred to the
Cabinet, for Washington was not at all convinced that there was no
constitutional prohibition. Not only did he withhold his signature till
the last minute, but there are reasons to believe that he had a veto in
mind almost to the end. For Madison, with whose part in the framing of
the Constitution he was familiar, he had a profound respect. Having
discussed the bill with Jefferson informally, Washington requested
written opinions from both Jefferson and Randolph, the Attorney-General.
Both were in complete accord with the conclusions of Madison. The
opinion of Jefferson, expressed with all his force of reasoning, was a
powerful challenge to the doctrine of implied powers.[301]

It was at about this time that Washington summoned Madison to the Morris
house, which served as the Executive Mansion in Philadelphia, to invite
a fuller expression of his views. The great man listened in silence, and
Madison thought with sympathy, while the little giant of the
Constitutional Convention, out of the wealth of his learning and
experience, poured forth his reasons for opposition. Not once, but
several times, the little figure of Madison must have been seen entering
the Morris house in those days of suppressed excitement, for there were
numerous conferences. As the ten-day period followed for the affixing of
the presidential signature was drawing to an end, and Washington
requested his friend to reduce his objections to writing, Madison
assumed that it was a veto message he was asked to frame. Nor was it a
far-fetched assumption, for on more than one occasion the President had
made use of Madison’s pen.[302]

Meanwhile the Hamiltonians, at first puzzled, became alarmed. From the
temper of their talk in Philadelphia, Madison was convinced that in the
event of a veto they were ready for open opposition to Washington,
backed by the wealth and influence of the powerful.[303] Ugly, silly
stories, reflecting upon the great personage on whom the Hamiltonians
found it profitable to claim a monopoly, were set afloat. Fisher Ames
gave currency in Boston to the theory that Washington was influenced by
the fear that the establishment of a financial capital in Philadelphia
would prevent the removal of the political capital to the banks of the
stream that washed the boundary of Mount Vernon.[304] If some discretion
was used in Philadelphia, where the grumbling was confined to the
fashionable drawing-rooms, no such circumspection was observed in New
York, where the meanest motives were ascribed to the President, and
among the speculators and Tory sympathizers open threats were made.
Madison heard, while there a little later, that ‘the licentiousness of
[these] tongues exceeded anything that was conceived.’[305] This
struggle marked a definitive break in the relations of Hamilton and
Jefferson. The dictatorial disposition of the former would brook no
opposition, and he was temperamentally incapable of a differentiation
between political opposition and personal hostility. The fact that
Jefferson, in response to a command from Washington, had written an
opinion against the Bank could bear only one interpretation--‘asperity
and ill humor toward me.’[306] The fact that Washington accepted
Hamilton’s view, did not, however, shake Jefferson’s faith in the
President, and in defeat nothing so ill-tempered escaped him as flowed
in a stream from the Federalists when threatened with defeat. Within a
month after Hamilton had won his fight, Jefferson, in commenting to a
friend on what he conceived to be a dangerous trend, wrote that ‘it is
fortunate that our first executive magistrate is purely and zealously
republican’--the highest praise he could bestow.[307]

The press was not verbose in its comments on the bill, albeit Freneau
fought it in the ‘Federal Gazette.’[308] The ‘Pennsylvania Gazette’ was
ungraceful in defeat. Denouncing the Bank as ‘a proposition made to the
moneyed interest,’ it commented on its ‘preparations to subscribe,’ and
found ‘the terms ... so advantageous that no equal object of speculation
is perhaps presented in any quarter of the globe.’[309] Fenno offered
his best in a verse:

‘The States as one agree that this is right
Let pigmy politicians rave and write.’[310]

Thus the First Congress closed its labors with no little rhapsodizing in
the press over the results. A New York paper offered an epitaph of
glorification,[311] which a Boston paper condensed into the simple
comment that it had ‘established public confidence and credit,
reconciled the jarring interests of discontented States, and cemented
the people in the bonds of harmony, peace and love.’[312]

One man, at least, had cause for jubilation. In two years Hamilton had
risen to a position of commanding power, proved his genius in
constructive statesmanship, accomplished everything he had set out to
do, made himself the idol of the wealthy and the powerful, the
recognized leader of the influential commercial class, the acknowledged
head of a brilliant and militant party. His friends were comparing him
to Pitt, then in the heyday of his power--and he was only on the
threshold. So great was the enthusiasm in commercial circles that he
made a special trip to New York to accept the homage of the Chamber of
Commerce at a reception, to linger a week among his worshipers, and to
return to Philadelphia reinvigorated by the wine of idolatry pressed to
his lips.[313] At that moment he was on the top of the world.

Meanwhile, Jefferson and Madison drove out of Philadelphia together on
one of those journeys of recreation during which politicians so often
plan the strategy of war. Historians have found more in this journey
than is to be discovered in the record. The trip through New England
probably had no other object than that of pleasure and enlightenment.
The relations of these two men were beautiful and went far beyond a mere
congeniality in political opinions. There was a marked similarity in
their characters. Both scholarly in their tastes, the books that
interested one were certain to appeal to the other. Here were two men
whose spirits were in accord. It is easy to think of them as sitting the
candle out in converse about the winter fire, or as sitting far into the
night in silence, each finding pleasure in the mere presence of the
other. Such a relationship had grown up through the years. They thought
alike, found similar enjoyment in agricultural pursuits, and in the many
little things of common life.

‘What say you,’ wrote Jefferson just before the beginning of the
much-discussed journey, ‘to taking a wade into the country at noon? It
will be pleasant above head at least, and the party will finish by
dining here. Information that Colonel Beckwith[314] is coming to be an
intimate with you, and I presume not a desirable one, encourages me to
make a proposition which I did not venture as long as you had your
agreeable congressional society about you; that is to come and take a
bed and plate with me.... To me it will be a relief from the solitude of
which I have too much; and it will lessen your repugnance to be assured
that it will not increase my expenses an atom.... The approaching season
will render this situation more agreeable than Fifth Street, and even in
the winter you will not find it disagreeable.’[315] It required no
assiduous and cunning cultivation by Jefferson to wean Madison away from
Hamilton. The relations of the first two far antedated those of the
last. Madison had agreed with Hamilton on the necessity for a more
permanent and substantial union. They had fought together for the
ratification of the Constitution, but such were their temperamental
differences that the breach which quickly appeared was inevitable when
it came to the determination of the policies of that union. While
Jefferson was still in Paris, Madison, without consulting his friend,
was foreshadowing the policy of the future Jeffersonian party in his
fight for discrimination against England in the revenue measure of the
first congressional session. He proposed discrimination between the
original creditors and the speculators before he had the opportunity to
discuss the subject with Jefferson. If there was an accord with the
latter, it was due less to the influence of one upon the other than to
the similarity of their thinking. The little man with the mild, almost
shy expression, who rode out of Philadelphia with Jefferson that spring
of 1791, was much too big to have been led around by the nose by any of
his contemporaries.

As early as the spring of 1791, the names of the two were associated in
the minds of many as the prospective leaders of a party that would
challenge the purposes of the Federalists. Answering a series of
articles in the ‘Maryland Journal,’ some one advised the author of how
to make his opinions worth while. ‘Keep always before your eyes the
steps by which Jefferson and Madison have gradually ascended to their
present preëminence of fame. Like them you must devote your whole
leisure to the most useful reading. Like them you must dive into the
depths of philosophy and government.’[316] Thus they were already
associated in the public mind, and there was some whispering among the
Federalist leaders when they set forth in their carriage.

Bumping and splashing over the rough tree-lined roads those spring days,
they unquestionably discussed the political situation, but these
discussions were only the continuation of others that had been
proceeding throughout the previous fall and winter. If politics was the
object of the journey, they were both remarkably successful in covering
their tracks. There is nothing in the letter Jefferson wrote his
daughter Mary to indicate anything more than a pleasure jaunt.[317] In a
letter to his other daughter, Martha, we hear much of fishing for
speckled trout, salmon, and bass, of the strawberries in bloom, of
vegetation and agricultural conditions--but nothing of politics.[318] To
his son-in-law he wrote descriptions of historic places, of botanical
objects and scenery, and of running foul of the blue law in Vermont
prohibiting traveling on Sunday.[319] The one reference to the journey
in the correspondence of Madison merely says that ‘it was a very
agreeable one, and carried us through an interesting country, new to us
both.’[320] In none of these letters do we find a single reference to
politics or politicians.

Something is made of the call of the travelers on Burr and Livingston
when in New York, and on Governor Clinton at Albany; but their conduct
would have been suspicious only if they had failed to observe the
ordinary amenities of social life in calling upon the leading public
characters in the towns through which they passed. Still we may safely
surmise that they found time while waiting for the fish to bite to
exchange views on the necessity of organizing an opposition to the
Federalists. It is even possible that out of these conversations on
country roads actually sprang the Democratic Party, but there is no
evidence.

On his return to Philadelphia, Jefferson found himself the center of a
remarkable newspaper controversy. Fascinated by the beauty of Marie
Antoinette, Edmund Burke of England had written his bitter attack, not
only on the excesses of the French Revolution, but upon its democratic
principles as well. It was the fashion in those days to conceal a hate
of democracy under the cloak of a simulated horror over the crimes of
the Terrorists. Thomas Paine had replied to Burke with his brilliant and
eloquent defense of democracy, ‘The Rights of Man.’ In American circles
where democracy was anathema, and even republicanism was discussed with
cynicism, the Burke pamphlet was received with enthusiasm. It was not
until some time later that ‘The Rights of Man’ reached New York, albeit
its nature was known and there had been a keen curiosity to see it.
Early in May, Madison had promised Jefferson to secure a copy as soon as
possible. He understood that the pamphlet had been suppressed in
England, and that Paine had found it convenient to retire to Paris.
‘This,’ he wrote, ‘may account for his not sending copies to friends in
this country.’[321] At length a single copy arrived and was loaned by
its owner to Madison, who passed it on to Jefferson. He read it with
enthusiasm. Here was a spirited defense of democracy, and of the fight
the French were waging for their liberties; here an excoriation of the
prattle in high social and governmental circles of the advantage, if not
necessity, for titles of nobility. Here was not only an answer to Burke,
but to John Adams, whose ‘Discourses of Davilla’ had been running for
weeks in Fenno’s paper, and had been copied extensively in other
journals with a similar slant. Jefferson was immensely pleased.

Before he had finished with it, the owner had called upon Madison for
its return, as arrangements had been made for its publication by a
Philadelphia printer. It was agreed that Jefferson should send it
directly to the print shop, and in the transmission he wrote a brief
explanation of the delay, and added: ‘I am extremely pleased to find it
will be reprinted here, and that something is at length to be publicly
said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us. I
have no doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard
of “Common Sense.”’

To this note he attached so little importance that he kept no copy. With
astonishment he found that the printer had used his note as the preface,
with his name and official title as Secretary of State. The general
conviction that the word ‘heresies’ was meant to apply to the Adams
papers sufficiently indicates the popular interpretation of their trend.
The storm broke.

Major Beckwith, the British Agent, hastened to express his pained
surprise to Washington’s Secretary at the recommendation by the
Secretary of State of a pamphlet which had been suppressed in England.
The secretary was sufficiently impressed by the scandalized tone of the
aristocratic society of Philadelphia, which was usually lionizing some
degenerate members of the European nobility, to write his chief in
detail. When Randolph dined with Mrs. Washington, Lear retailed it to
him, and the suggestion was made that Jefferson should know. Thus there
was something more than a tempest in a teapot. Everywhere men were
partisans of the pamphlets of Burke or Paine, the aristocrats on one
side, the democrats on the other, the stoutest of the republicans
everywhere delighted with ‘The Rights of Man.’ This was true in even the
small towns and the villages of far places. One traveler passing through
Reading was surprised to find the two pamphlets the ‘general topic of
conversation,’ and he was assured of the delight that awaited him in the
reading of Paine’s.[322] All too long had the Americans been drugged
with Fenno’s deification of the upper classes--with John Adams’s
‘Discourses’ on the necessity of ‘distinctions’--and here was old
‘Common Sense’ back again in the old form slashing the aristocrats fore
and aft. The press responded to the popular demand, and everywhere ‘The
Rights of Man’ was being published serially to be eagerly read by the
thousands who had not seen the pamphlet. But it was not all one-sided.
If the ‘Painites’ wrote furiously in some papers, the ‘Burkites’ were
prolific in Fenno’s and a few others. In the fashionable drawing-rooms a
poll would have shown a decided preference for the defender of
aristocracy who had wept so eloquently over the woes of a frivolous
Queen. Nowhere was Burke so popular and Paine so loathed as in the home
of Adams, the Vice-President. ‘What do you think of Paine’s pamphlet?’
asked Dr. Rush, to whom society was cooling because of his democratic
tendencies. The second official of the Republic hesitated as if for
dramatic effect, and then, solemnly laying his hand upon his heart, he
answered, ‘I detest that book and its tendency from the bottom of my
heart.’ Indeed, most of the Federalists were frankly with Burke.
‘Although Mr. Burke may have carried his veneration for old
establishments too far, and may not have made sufficient allowance for
the imperfections of human nature in the conflict of the French
Revolution,’ wrote Davie to Judge Iredell, ‘yet I think his letter
contains a sufficient amount of intelligence to have rescued him from
the undistinguishing abuse of Paine.’[323]

With most of the Federalist leaders in sympathy with Burke, few ventured
to attack Paine in the open. Not so with Adams who was spluttering mad
over the Jefferson ‘preface.’ He was positive that the publication of
Paine’s pamphlet in this country had been instigated by his former
colleague at Paris.[324] To him the pamphlet of Paine, the ‘preface’ of
Jefferson, the acclaim for both on the part of the people was but a
devilish conspiracy of Jefferson’s to pull him down. ‘More of
Jefferson’s subterranean tricks.’ And with this conviction, John Quincy
Adams, the son, then in Boston, took up a trenchant pen to write the
articles of ‘Publicola’ for the ‘Centinel,’ sneering at the Jeffersonian
note to the printer, assailing Paine and democracy, and stoutly
defending the governmental forms of England. So well did he discharge
his filial duty that his articles were published in pamphlet form in
England by the friends of Burke, and many of the Federalist papers
reproduced them as they appeared.

Then the newspaper battle began in earnest. Many indignant democrats
rushed to the attack of ‘Publicola’ with all the greater zest because of
the belief that ‘Publicola’ was none other than ‘Davilla’ himself.
‘America will not attend to this antiquated sophistry,’ wrote one,
‘whether decorated by the gaudy ornaments of a Burke, the curious
patch-work of a Parr to which all antiquity must have contributed its
prettiest rags and tatters, or the homely ungraceful garb which has
been furnished her by Mr. John Adams.’[325] Another suggested that
‘Publicola’ would soon cease to write since ‘the time for the new
election is approaching,’ although the ‘Discourses’ might be continued
without danger since ‘dullness, like the essence of opium, sets every
reader to sleep before he has passed the third sentence.’[326] As for
‘Publicola,’ his letters were ‘being brought forward to persuade the
people that an hereditary nobility, and, of consequence, high salaries,
pomp and parade are essential to the prosperity of the country.’[327] In
Boston, where the letters were appearing, ‘Agricola’ and ‘Brutus’ began
spirited replies in the rival paper.[328] Other writers, with less grace
and force, joined in the fray. Who are to constitute our nobility,
demanded ‘Republican,’ our moneyed men--the speculators? If so ‘Dukes,
Lords and Earls will swarm like insects gendered by the sun,’ and the
worn-out soldier who had been tricked out of his paper would have the
satisfaction of ‘bowing most submissively to their lordships while
seated in their carriages.’[329]

But Adams was not without his defenders. ‘An American’ declared that all
the abuse was ‘designed as a political ladder by which to climb.’
Miserable creatures! ‘Ages after the tide of time has swept their names
into oblivion, the immortal deeds of Adams will shine on the brightest
pages of history.’[330] ‘The Ploughman’ indignantly resented the
insinuation that Adams had written the ‘Publicola’ letters. In truth,
‘his friends consider Dr. Adams as being calumniated’ by having such
sentiments ascribed to him.[331] To all the ‘hornets’ that were buzzing
about Adams, Fenno felt he could be indifferent, for they had no stings.
They were merely nonentities trying to give consequence to their
scribblings by appearing to be answering the Vice-President.

Meanwhile, Jefferson was keenly enjoying the turmoil. We wish it were
possible to trace it all to his contrivance, for nothing could have
served his purpose better. To have foreseen that the writing of a few
simple lines would have awakened the militant republicanism of the
country and have aroused the democratic impulses of the inert mass would
have been complimentary to his political genius. But this is not the
only instance where a clever politician with the reputation of a
magician has stumbled forward. There is no doubt that Jefferson was
astonished and embarrassed on learning that the printer had made an
unauthorized use of his personal note. He admitted to Washington that he
had Adams’s writings in mind, but that nothing was more remote from his
thoughts than of becoming ‘a contributor before the public.’ However, he
was not impressed with the reflections on his taste. ‘Their real fear,’
he added, ‘is that this popular and republican pamphlet ... is likely
... to wipe out all the unconstitutional doctrines which their
bellwether, Davilla, has been preaching for a twelve-month.’[332] This
explanation was enough for Knox, who wrote accordingly to Adams,[333]
but not enough for Jefferson who sent a frank explanation to Adams with
an expression of regret. In generous mood, the latter accepted the
explanation with the protestation that their old friendship was ‘still
dear to my heart,’ and that ‘there is no office I would not resign
rather than give a just occasion for one friend to desert me.’[334]

Madison, to whom Jefferson had sent a similar explanation, had assumed
that there had been a mistake or an imposition, but he could see no
reason for indignation on the part of Adams or his friends. ‘Surely,’ he
wrote, ‘if it be innocent and decent for one servant of the public to
write against its government, it cannot be very criminal or indecent in
another to patronize a written defence of the principles on which that
Government is founded.’[335]

However much Jefferson may have regretted the unauthorized use of his
letter, he rejoiced in its effect. He wrote Paine that the controversy
had awakened the people, shown the ‘monocrats’ that the silence of the
masses concerning the teachings of ‘Davilla’ did not mean that they had
been converted ‘to the doctrine of king, lords and commons,’ and that
they were ‘confirmed in their good old faith.’[336] The incident had
established Jefferson in the public mind as the outstanding leader of
democracy, had set the public tongue to wagging on politics again. More
was involved in the pamphlets of Burke and Paine than differences over
the French Revolution. The keynote of Burke’s was aristocracy and
privilege; that of Paine’s was democracy and equal rights. The former
was the gospel of the American Federalists; the latter the covenant of
the American Democracy. Studying the reactions with his characteristic
keenness, Jefferson was convinced that the time was ripe to mobilize for
the inevitable struggle.

VII

‘What do you think of this scrippomony?’ Jefferson wrote to Edward
Rutledge in the late summer. ‘Ships are lying idle at the wharfs,
buildings are stopped, capital withdrawn from commerce, manufactures,
arts and agriculture to be employed in gambling, and the tide of public
prosperity ... is arrested in its course.... I imagine that we shall
hear that all the cash has quitted the extremities of the nation and
accumulated here.’[337] As he wrote, Jefferson had before him the report
of the craze which had just reached him in a letter from Madison in New
York. ‘Stock and scrip the sole domestic subjects of conversation ...
speculations ... carried on with money borrowed at from two and a half
per cent a month to one per cent a week.’[338]

Men grown reckless with the frenzy of the intoxication were resorting to
fraud to rob the Government, many taking out administration papers for
deceased soldiers who had left no heirs. ‘By this knavery,’ wrote
Madison at an earlier period, ‘a prodigious sum will be unsaved by the
public, and reward the worst of its citizens.’ And suppose one of the
clerks of the account offices is not proof against the temptation?[339]

By the middle of the summer (July 10th) Bank stock had risen as much in
the market in New York as in Philadelphia with the feeling that there
was a certainty of gain. A scramble had set in ‘for so much public
plunder.’ The meticulously scrupulous Madison, with his lofty notions of
official propriety, was shocked to find ‘the members of the Legislature
who were most active in pushing this job openly grasping the
emoluments.’ Schuyler, the father-in-law of Hamilton, was to be the head
of the directors of the Bank ‘if the weight of the New York subscribers
can effect it.’ Stock-jobbing monopolized all conversation. The
coffee-houses buzzed with the gamblers.[340]

Meanwhile, from the high-placed to the ordinary scamp, men maddened, by
the money-itch, were resorting to ordinary crime to get possession of
public paper. In some places clever counterfeiters were driving through
the country under the pretext of examining securities with the idea of
purchase and cleverly exchanging the worthless for the real.[341] In the
South and in the remote parts of Maine, swindlers were scouring the
woods for State notes, lying to the uninformed and ignorant about their
value, and getting them for a song. ‘What must be the feelings of the
widow and orphan,’ wrote a correspondent of a Philadelphia paper, ‘when
they find themselves thus defrauded of a great part of their little all,
and that, not unlikely, the earnings of their late husbands and fathers,
who died in the service of their country, by these pests of society who
ought to be despised?’[342] But greed knew no shame. An appalling
picture: members of Congress feathering their nest through their
legislative acts, counterfeiters robbing the unwary, common crooks
stealing from the Government by posing as the administrators of the
dead, and distinguished members of the Boston Bar, like Otis and Gore,
speculating with their clients’ money without their knowledge or
consent.

So sinister was the situation that notes of warning began to appear in
the newspapers. The ‘Pennsylvania Gazette’ found that speculators had
‘turned raving mad, and others so agitated that they appear on the
borders of insanity.’[343] Fenno tried vainly to restore sobriety to the
drunk--for Hamilton himself was shocked and not a little concerned.[344]
Better be careful about parting with Bank scrip, warned the ‘New York
Daily Advertiser.’ Efforts were being made to buy up all the scrip in
the city ‘and for this purpose a powerful combination was formed ... on
Saturday night to reduce the price.’[345] Beware of another South Sea
Bubble, warned ‘Centinel’ in the same paper. ‘The National Bank stock
has risen so high, so enormously above its real value, that no two
transactions in the annals of history can be found to equal
it....’[346]

From Boston came similar stories of the madness. All the while the New
York papers were publishing day-by-day quotations on the scrip.[347] By
August 15th the mania was at its height. ‘It has risen like a rocket,’
wrote an amused scribbler. ‘Like a rocket it will burst with a crack and
down drops the rocket stick. What goes up must come down--so take care
of your pate, brother Jonathan.’[348] The craze was becoming ridiculous.
The sane and the honest looked upon it as a spectacle. Above the angry
cries in the market-place rang the laughter of the observers who kept
their heads. Some put their scoffing into verse:

‘What magic this among the people,
That swells a Maypole to a steeple?’[349]

Suddenly the bubble showed signs of bursting. A New York bank stopped
discounting for some of the speculators. Messengers hurried forth with
the ominous news, horses’ hoofs hammering the Jersey roads to
Philadelphia, where there was consternation and a falling-off in
buying.[350] Pay-day had not yet come, but it was on the way, and men
began to regain their senses.

Then came the emergence of the political phase. ‘Does history afford an
instance,’ asked one observer, ‘where inequality in property, without
any adequate consideration, ever before so suddenly took place in the
world? or the basis of the power and influence of an Aristocracy was
created?’[351] A Boston paper commented significantly on the ease with
which the mere opening and closing of the galleries of Congress could
serve the purposes of speculation. ‘How easily might this be done should
any member of Congress be inclined to speculate.’[352]

Thus the talk of a ‘corrupt squadron’ in the First Congress was not the
invention of Jefferson--it was the talk of the highways and the byways,
the coffee-houses and the taverns, and we find it recurring in the
correspondence of the public men of the period. Everywhere sudden
fortunes sprang up as if by magic. There was a rumbling and grumbling in
the offing. With the people thinking more seriously of Madison’s fight
for discrimination, he began to loom along with Jefferson as a
prospective leader against the ‘system.’ With the discovery that the law
had been violated in the subscription of more than thirty shares, it was
hoped that it would ‘draw the attention of Madison ... immediately on
the meeting of Congress’ and that ‘the whole proceedings ... be declared
nugatory.’[353]

Then came the election of Bank directors in the fall, and indignation
flamed when the prizes went to leaders in the Congress that had created
the Bank--to Rufus King, Samuel Johnson of North Carolina, William Smith
of South Carolina, Jeremiah Wadsworth of the ‘fast sailing vessels,’
John Laurance of New York, William Bingham of Philadelphia, Charles
Carroll of Carrollton, George Cabot, Fisher Ames, and Thomas Willing,
the partner of Robert Morris.

Members of Congress had speculated heavily and profitably on their
knowledge of their own intent in legislation; they were owners of bank
scrip of the Bank they created, and their leaders were on the board of
directors. There was talk among the people of a ‘corrupt squadron,’ and
Jefferson did not invent the term; he found it in the street and used
it. Though Hamilton, scrupulously honest, was not involved in
proceedings that were vicious, if not corrupt, many of his lieutenants
were, and that, for the purposes of politics, made an issue.

But Hamilton was in the saddle, booted and spurred, and riding hard
toward the realization of his conception of government, followed by an
army that fairly glittered with the brilliancy of many of his field
marshals, and which was imposing in the financial, social, and cultural
superiority of the rank and file; an army that could count on the
greater part of the press to publish its orders of the day, and on the
beneficiaries of its policies to fill its campaign coffers. And it was
at this juncture that Jefferson began the mobilization of an army that
would seem uncouth and ragged by comparison. The cleavage was distinct;
the ten-year war was on.

As a preliminary to the story of the struggle, it is important to know
more of the character and methods of the man who dared challenge
Hamilton’s powerful array and something of the social atmosphere in
Philadelphia where the great battles were fought.

CHAPTER V

THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT

In the personal appearance of Thomas Jefferson there was little to
denote the powerful, dominating leader and strict disciplinarian that he
was. Unlike Hamilton, he did not look the commander so much as the
rather shy philosopher. The gruff Maclay, on seeing him for the first
time, was disappointed with his slender frame, the looseness of his
figure, and the ‘air of stiffness in his manner,’ while pleased with the
sunniness of his face.[354] He was of imposing height, being more than
six feet, and slender without being thin.[355] All contemporaries who
have left descriptions refer to the long, loosely jointed limbs, and
none of them convey an impression of grace. His hair, much redder than
that of Hamilton, was combed loosely over the forehead and at the side,
and tied behind. His complexion was light, his eyes blue and usually
mild in expression, his forehead broad and high. Beneath the eyes, his
face was rather broad, the cheek-bones high, the chin noticeably long,
and the mouth of generous size. The casual glance discovered more of
benevolence than force, more of subtlety than pugnacity. Nor, in that
day of lace and frills, was there anything in his garb to proclaim him
of the élite. His enemies then, and ever since, have made too much of
his loose carpet slippers and worn clothes, and the only thing they
prove is that he may have had the Lincolnian indifference to style. Long
before he made his ‘pose’ in the President’s house for the benefit of
the groundlings, we find a critic who was to be numbered among his
followers complaining because his clothes were too small for his
body.[356] The truth, no doubt, is that he dressed conventionally,
because men must, and was careless of his attire.

Certain it is that when she first met him, Mrs. Bayard Smith, who had
been unduly impressed with the Federalist references to the ‘coarseness
and vulgarity of his manners,’ was astonished at the contradiction of
the caricature by the man. ‘So meek and mild, yet dignified in his
manners, with a voice so soft and low, with a countenance so benign and
intelligent’ she found him.[357] In truth there was enough dignity in
his manner to discourage the stranger on a first approach, as Tom Moore
found to his disgust. Even Mrs. Smith thought his ‘dignified and
reserved air’ chill at first;[358] and a French admirer who made a
sentimental journey to Monticello thought him somewhat cold and
reserved.’[359] ‘The cold first look he always cast upon a
stranger’[360] appears too often in the observations of his
contemporaries to have been imaginary.

As some have found fault with his dress, others have criticized a
slovenly way of sitting--‘in a lounging manner, on one hip commonly,
with one of his shoulders elevated much above the other’;[361] while
another--a woman too--was charmed at the ‘free and easy manner’ in which
he accepted a proffered chair.[362] The natural deduction from the
contradictions is that he seated himself as comfortably as possible with
little regard to the picture in the pose. There is a manifest absurdity
in the idea that the man who moved familiarly in the most cultured
circles of the most polished capital in Europe could have been either
impossible in dress or boorish in manner.

But there is one unpleasant criticism of his manner that cannot be so
easily put aside--a shiftiness in his glance which bears out the charge
of his enemies that he was lacking in frankness. The most democratic
member of the first Senate, meeting him for the first time, was
disappointed to find that ‘he had a rambling vacant look, and nothing of
that firm collected deportment which I expected would dignify the
presence of a Secretary or Minister.’[363] Another found that ‘when
speaking he did not look at his auditor, but cast his eyes toward the
ceiling or anywhere but at the eye of his auditor.’[364] This weakness
was possibly overemphasized, for he was notoriously shy.

Aside from this, there is abundant evidence that there was an ineffable
charm in his manner. One who objected to his ‘shifty glance’ was
favorably impressed with ‘the simplicity and sobriety’ of his
deportment, and found that while ‘he was quiet and unobtrusive ... a
stranger would perceive that he was in the presence of one who was not a
common man.’[365] He was free of the affectations of pedantry, courteous
and kindly, modest and tolerant. Thus he appeared to excellent advantage
in conversation, and, with one exception, all who knew him and have left
their impressions found him an entertaining and illuminating talker.
Maclay, who was certainly not the most competent of judges, thought his
conversation ‘loose and rambling,’ and yet admitted that ‘he scattered
information wherever he went, and some even brilliant sentiments
sparkled from him.’[366] It is probable that the gout-racked radical
confused conversation with set speeches, and quite as possible that on
this particular occasion, when Jefferson was meeting with a curious
senatorial committee, he was not inclined to tell all he knew.

Certainly the polished nobleman, familiar with the most intellectual
circles of Paris, who found his ‘conversation of the most agreeable
kind,’ and that he possessed ‘a stock of information not inferior to
that of any other man,’ and ‘in Europe ... would hold a distinguished
rank among men of letters,’ was quite as competent a judge as the
Senator from the wilderness of Pennsylvania.[367] Among men his manner
of conversation was calm and deliberate, without the Johnsonian
_ex-cathedra_ touch, and yet he ‘spoke like one who considered himself
as entitled to deference.’[368] Among friends, and particularly women,
he appears to have been deferential and captivating in his tactful
kindness. Then when, ‘with a manner and voice almost femininely soft and
gentle,’ he ‘entered into conversation on the commonplace topics of the
day,’ at least one woman found that ‘there was something in his manner,
his countenance and voice that at once unlocked [her] heart.’[369]

Such was the Jefferson seen superficially by his contemporaries.

Those who prefer to think of Jefferson as an aristocrat, born to the
purple, who departed from the paths of his fathers, refer only to the
maternal ancestry. The American founder of this branch of the family
liked to think of himself as the descendant of gentlemen of title and of
the half-brother of Queen Mary. Jefferson preferred to dismiss this
claim on the aristocracy with the statement that his mother’s family
traced ‘their pedigree far back in England and Scotland, to which let
every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses.’ From the Randolphs he
probably inherited his love of beauty, his fondness for luxury, but they
failed utterly to transmit to him any aristocratic notions of
government. There was a reason--his father was a middle-class farmer,
and it was from him and his early environment that he received his
earliest and most lasting political impressions.

This father was no ordinary man. Physically a giant, he was big in mind
and strong in character. By the light of the log fire in the evenings,
he was wont to read Shakespeare, Swift, and Addison to his family. An
ardent Whig with advanced democratic ideas, he as a magistrate
manifested sympathy for the plain people.[370] His thousand acres at
Shadwell were in the wilderness and on the frontier, and his son was as
much a Westerner in his boyhood as is the boy of Idaho to-day, for the
West is a relative term.

This Western boy at the most impressionable age was sent to school in
Louisa County, which was then the hot-bed of radical democracy and
Presbyterian dissent. The natives about him were in buckskin breeches
and Indian moccasins, and, with no coat over their rough hunting shirts,
they covered their heads with coon-skin caps. It was a long cry from the
polished circles of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to this typical
Western scene; if one was the East, the other was the West. The small
proprietor farmers lived in crude cabins, and theirs was the hard lot of
the pioneer. Thus Jefferson’s training was that of the Westerner.[371]

The boy was father to the man. When he entered college at Williamsburg,
he found himself in the headquarters of the aristocracy, for there, at
the capital, the lords of the land had their winter homes where lavish
hospitality was displayed. Into this society Jefferson was thrown, and
he moved therein as to the manor born--at heart a Western man with
Eastern polish.[372] It was not for nothing that there was Randolph
blood in his veins.

Even as he moved among the hard-drinking, fox-hunting imitators of the
English squires, his sympathies were enlisted in the growing democratic
movement of the small farmers among the upper rivers, the
tobacco-growers, the hunters and trappers of the Alleghany slopes. The
western counties, then the western frontier, had been populated by the
Scotch-Irish and Germans--earnest, hard-working, hard-thinking men, who
wrestled with nature as with their consciences, built churches in the
woods, and school-houses in the clearing. These men were democrats, and
their cause became the cause of Jefferson even while he was in college.
Volumes have been written to explain Jefferson, but it was reserved for
Professor William E. Dodd to do it in a paragraph:

It is not difficult ... to see how the great principle of
Jefferson’s life--absolute faith in democracy--came to him. He was
the product of the first West in American history; he grew up with
men who ruled their country well, who fought the Indians
valiantly.... Jefferson loved his backwoods neighbors, and he, in
turn, was loved by them.[373]

If in college he was confirming his faith in democracy, born of his
schooling in the land of the small farmers, he was burnishing his
weapons for the fight. It is significant that he disliked Blackstone and
liked Coke because he found the former a teacher of Toryism and the
latter a reflector of the philosophy of the Whigs. His training in the
law was thorough, for he studied under George Wythe, with whom both
Marshall and Clay received their legal schooling. The friendship of
Professor Small encouraged his natural spirit of toleration and
investigation; and at the ‘palace’ of Francis Fauquier, the gay and
brilliant royal governor--‘a gentleman of the school of Louis XV
translated into England by Charles II, and into English by Lord
Chesterfield’[374] he formed his literary tastes and learned the virtues
of literary style. Thus assiduous in his studies, reasonably circumspect
in his morals, and profiting immeasurably by contact with superior
minds, he was receiving an intensive preparation for his future labors.
In the seclusion of his room he communed with Coke and Milton,
Harrington and Locke, and the time was to come when his most notable
literary production was to disclose, in word and phrase, the influence
of the latter. Locke, not Rousseau, was the well from which he drew;
and there is no sillier assertion in history than that his democracy was
born of association with the men of the French Revolution.

III

Long before there were levelers in France, Jefferson was a leveler in
Virginia; and because he was a leveler in Virginia, the reactionaries
who resented his reforms were afterward to charge his democracy to the
influence of the levelers of Paris. His democracy was inherent, in part
inherited from a pioneer father. His dislike of the aristocratic system
amounted to a prejudice, and he could not bear the novels of Scott
because of his detestation of the institutions of medieval times.[375]
Having written the Declaration of Independence in the house of a
bricklayer, he declined a reëlection to Congress to enter the House of
Burgesses in Virginia to revamp the institutions of the State along
democratic lines. When he finished his work there, he had made himself
one of the foremost democrats of all times--and the French Revolution
was still in the distance.

The Virginia system had been made for caste society; the landed
aristocracy were as much a caste as that in England--minus the titles.
They had the same love of land, the same obsession that the alienation
of any part of their possessions was treason to the family. Through the
system of entail, the lands and slaves of the aristocracy could be
passed on down through the generations, proof against the extravagance
and inefficiency of the owners and the attacks of creditors. The law of
primogeniture was designed to serve the same general end of preventing
the disruption of the great estates. With a fine audacity, Jefferson
sallied forth quite gayly to attack them both. Even Henry thought this
was radicalism gone mad. Pendleton was more hurt than outraged. The
aristocratic members of his mother’s family looked upon him as a
matricide. Undaunted by the hate engendered, he put his hand to the
plough and kept it there until he had ploughed the field and prepared it
for a democratic harvest. His friend Pendleton begged a compromise on
primogeniture giving the eldest son a double share of the land. ‘Yes,’
replied the leveler, ‘when he can eat twice the allowance of food and
do double the allowance of work.’ It was his purpose to eradicate ‘every
fibre of ancient or future aristocracy.’[376] The outraged landed
aristocracy never forgave him. He was the first American to invite the
hate of a class, and from the beginning he turned his back on the
aristocracy and made his appeal to the middle-class yeomanry.[377] All
this was behind him when he went to Paris before the Revolution there
began. There the tall, slender American in the elegant house on the
Grande Route des Champs Elysées, with its extensive gardens and court,
was an impressive figure. ‘You replace Doctor Franklin, I hear,’ said
Vergennes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. ‘I succeed him,’ Jefferson
replied; ‘nobody could replace him.’ There could have been no more
ingratiating reply, for his predecessor had been greatly admired and
loved.

No one could have found the conversation of the salons and dinner tables
more congenial. His manners were those of a man of the world, and he
shared the French fondness for speculative talk, and the French knack of
spicing gravity with frivolity. Even his table tastes were similar. He
ate sparingly and preferred the light wines. Both his natural
hospitality and his respect for the dignity of his position spread the
reputation of his lavish table; and while he gave no great parties, gay
and frequent dinners were the rule. Lafayette ran in and out constantly;
members of the diplomatic set found Jefferson’s house an agreeable
meeting-place; the young French officers who had served in America liked
his company, and De la Tude, the wit, who had served thirty-five years
in prison for writing an epigram on Pompadour, enlivened many an evening
with his reminiscences. American tourists were captivated by his
civilities, introductions to celebrities, itineraries for profitable
trips. Like Franklin before him, he charmed the beautiful women of the
court with his wit and humor, and the eloquence of his conversation. He
loved the promenades and shops, and was constantly alert for something
unusual to send his friends at home--rare books for Madison, Monroe, and
Wythe, a portable table for Madison, an artistic lamp for Lee. And yet
he was far from an elegant idler, and his days were laboriously passed;
mornings at his office, afternoons given to country walks, evenings to
society, art, music. He found time for elaborate and illuminating
reports that are models in diplomatic literature and which exacted
tribute from even John Marshall. Feeling frequently the need of absolute
seclusion for his work, he had rooms in the Carthusian Monastery on
Mount Calvary where silence was enjoined outside the rooms, but where he
had the privileges of the garden.

‘I am much pleased with the people of this country,’ he wrote a lady.
‘The roughness of the human mind is so thoroughly rubbed off with them,
that it seems one might glide through a whole life without a
jostle.’[378] And in another letter, the same impression: ‘Here it seems
a man might pass a life without encountering a single rudeness.’[379]
But if he loved the society of Paris, he was not, like Morris, seduced
into an acceptance of its system. His passion for democracy did not
permit him to judge the happiness of a nation by the luxuries of the
court and aristocracy. He struck out into the country to judge for
himself of the condition of the peasants, looked into the pots on the
fire to see what they ate, felt their beds to see if they were
comfortable. He inquired into the wages and the working conditions of
the artisans of the cities--and his conclusions were unavoidable, of
course. ‘It is a fact,’ he wrote, ‘in spite of the mildness of their
governors, the people are ground to powder by their form of government.
Of twenty million people supposed to be in France, I am of opinion there
are nineteen million more wretched, more accursed in every circumstance
of human existence than the most conspicuously wretched individual in
the whole United States.’[380] And to another: ‘I find the general fate
of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire’s observation
offers itself perpetually, that every man here is either the hammer or
the anvil.’[381] He was shocked by a system that dedicated the sons of
peasants as cannon fodder in remote wars precipitated by the whims of a
prostitute; that winked at the debauchery of their wives and daughters;
that gave men to the Bastile for the expression of a criticism; that
crushed the people with intolerable taxation to sustain the luxury of a
few; that forced the poor to live on food not fit for a stray dog in a
city slums, and which awed the masses into submission to such conditions
by the bayonets of the soldiery. This was the France of which he
thought in the day when his sympathy with the Revolution was to damn him
with the Federalists’ taunt of ‘Jacobin’ and ‘anarchist.’

Such being his observations and views, he rejoiced in the popular
awakening in the dawning days of the Revolution. Witnessing the meeting
of the Assembly of the Notables, a fascinated spectator of the razing of
the Bastile, listening, deeply moved, to the audacious eloquence of
Mirabeau, he wrote, with the joy of the reformer, to Washington that
‘the French nation has been awakened by our Revolution.’ It was in those
days that Gouverneur Morris, the friend of Hamilton, was accustomed to
drop in on Jefferson for a chat on the situation, and their friendly
disagreements were soon to appear in a party division in America. ‘He
and I differ,’ wrote Morris in his diary, ‘in our system of politics. He
with all the leaders of liberty here is desirous of annihilating
distinctions of order.’[382] And yet he was not hostile to the King or
the monarchy. He hoped for reforms, freely granted. Louis he found
‘irascible, rude, very limited in his understanding,’ with ‘no
mistress,’ but governed too much by the Queen--‘devoted to pleasure and
expense, and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues.’[383] As the
storm-clouds lowered and the easy-going monarch remained inert, he
became less tolerant. ‘The King, long in the habit of drowning his cares
in wine, plunges deeper and deeper. The Queen cries but sins on. The
Count d’Artois is detested.’[384] And a month later: ‘The King goes for
nothing. He hunts one half the day, is drunk the other, and signs
whatever he is bid.’[385]

As the future Terrorists ascended from the cellars and descended from
the garrets, and occasional riots gave premonitory signs of the bloody
days ahead, he reported to Jay that the rioting was the work of the
‘abandoned banditti of Paris,’ and had no ‘professed connection with the
great national reformation going on.’[386]

All this time he was being constantly consulted by Lafayette and the
moderate leaders who were to become the members of the attractive but
unfortunate party of the Gironde. They even met at his dinner table to
make plans, without notifying him of their intent, and his voluntary
explanation to the Minister was received with the expression of a hope
that he might be able to assist in an accommodation of differences. He
did, in fact, propose a plan, which, had it been accepted, might have
saved the monarchy. It was his suggestion that Louis step forward with a
charter in his hands, granting liberty of the person, of conscience, of
the press, a trial by jury, an annual legislature with the power of
taxation, and with a ministry responsible to the people.[387] These
associations and these views are conclusive as to the absurdity that he
was permeated with the theories of Jacobinism and brought them back to
the United States. He was the same kind of Jacobin as Lafayette. His
interest was the interest in democracy and popular rights that he had
taken with him when he sailed for Europe. Mirabeau was still laboring to
save the monarchy with reforms when Jefferson returned to America on
leave.

Jefferson was a humanitarian ahead of his time. His humanity spoke above
the passions of the Revolution in his letter to Patrick Henry against
the mistreatment of the German prisoners. ‘Is an enemy so execrable,’ he
wrote, ‘that though in captivity his wishes and comforts are to be
disregarded and even crossed? I think not. It is for the benefit of
mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible.’[388] These
captives, interned near Monticello, came to love the master on the hill
for his efforts to lighten the burdens of their captivity.[389] A little
later, in the Virginia Legislature, we find him opposing the death
penalty except for treason and murder, and the policy of working
convicts on the highways and canals. ‘Exhibited as a public spectacle,’
he wrote, ‘with shaved heads and mean clothing, working on the highroads
produced in the criminals such a prostration of self-respect, as,
instead of reforming, plunged them into the most desperate and hardened
depravity.’[390] It was novel then to hear men speaking of reform
instead of punishment.

That this humanitarian impulse was not confined to people at a distance
is shown in his relations to his own servants, both the employees and
the slaves. A woman of fashion commented on ‘the most perfect servants
at the White House’ during his eight years there and the significant
circumstance that ‘none left.’[391] But we must turn to his relations
with his slaves to find him at his best. One picture will suffice. It is
on the occasion of his return to Monticello from his French mission. At
the foot of the hill all the slaves in their gaudiest attire are
assembled to greet him. The carriage appears down the road. The slaves,
laughing, shouting, rush forward to welcome him, unhitch the horses to
draw the carriage up the steep hill, some pulling, some pushing, and
others huddled in a dark mass close around the vehicle. Some kiss his
hands, others his feet, and it is long after he reaches the house before
he is permitted to enter. This was long before the day when
correspondents with cameras pursued public men and demonstrations were
staged.[392] Here was a master who loved his slaves.

Nor can there be any possible doubt as to his hostility to slavery. One
of the features of his Virginia reforms was abolition. While he failed,
he never doubted that ultimately the chains would fall. ‘Nothing is more
certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be
free’ he wrote in his ‘Autobiography.’[393] A little later, referring to
his strictures on slavery in his ‘Notes on Virginia,’ he expressed a
desire to get them to the young men in the colleges. ‘It is to them I
look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for
these great reformations.’[394] Declining membership in a society for
abolition in France on the ground that his official status would make
improper a demonstration against an institution his own people were
retaining, he said that ‘it is decent of me to avoid too public a
demonstration of my wishes to see it [slavery] abolished.’[395] Without
any of this evidence, his hostility to slavery would be irrefutably
established by the Ordinance of the Northwest Territory, in the
handwriting of Jefferson in the archives of the Nation, prohibiting
slavery in any of the States that might be carved therefrom after the
year 1800.

Such is the persistency of falsehood that Jefferson has come down to us
vaguely as an atheist and an enemy of the Christian religion. Since this
charge is to play a part in the political story we are about to tell, it
calls for some attention. He was brought up in the Church of England,
and his earliest recollection was of saying the Lord’s Prayer when his
dinner was delayed.[396] He planned at least one church and contributed
to the erection of others, gave freely to Bible Societies, and liberally
to the support of the clergy. He attended church with normal regularity,
taking his prayer book to the services and joining in the responses and
prayers of the congregation. No human being ever heard him utter a word
of profanity. During the period of his social ostracism by the
intolerant partisans of Philadelphia, he passed many evenings with Dr.
Rush in conversation on religion.[397] ‘I am a Christian,’ he once said,
‘in the only sense in which Jesus wished any one to be--sincerely
attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.’ On one occasion
when a man of distinction expressed his disbelief in the truths of the
Bible, he said, ‘Then, sir, you have studied it to little purpose.’[398]
While the New England pulpits were ringing with denunciations of this
‘infidel’ and old ladies, unable to detect the false witness of the
partisan clergy, were solemnly hiding their Bibles to prevent their
confiscation by the ‘atheist’ in the President’s House, he was spending
his nights in the codification of the ‘Morals of Jesus,’ and through the
remainder of his life he was to read from this every night before
retiring.[399] In his last days he spent much time reading the Greek
dramatists and the Bible, dwelling in conversation on the superiority of
the moral system of Christ over all others. In his dying hour, after
taking leave of his family, he was heard to murmur, ‘Lord, now lettest
Thy servant depart in peace.’[400]

The reason for the myth created against him is not far to seek. Just as
the landed aristocracy of Virginia pursued him with increasing venom
because of his land reforms, the clergy hated him for forcing the
separation of Church and State. When he made the fight for this reform,
it was a crime not to baptize a child into the Episcopal Church; a crime
to bring a Quaker into the colony; and, according to the law, a heretic
could be burned. If the latter law was not observed, that compelling all
to pay tithes regardless of their religious affiliations and opinions
was rigidly enforced. This outraged Jefferson’s love of liberty. The
Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, who were making inroads on the
membership of the Established Church, were prosecuted, and their
ministers were declared disturbers of the peace and thrown into jail
like common felons. Patrick Henry and his followers fought Jefferson’s
plan for a disestablishment--but he won.[401] The ‘atheist’ law, which
was never forgiven by the ministers of Virginia and Connecticut, was
simple and brief:

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious
worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced,
restrained, molested or burdened in his mind or goods, nor shall
otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief;
but all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain,
their opinions in matters of religion, and the same shall in no
wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Here we have the secret of the animus of the clergy of the time--but
there were other reasons. In his ‘Notes on Virginia’ he did not please
the orthodox, and Dr. Mason, a fashionable political minister of New
York City, exposed him in the pulpit, holding him up to scorn as a
‘profane philosopher’ and an ‘infidel.’ Discussing the theory that the
marine shells found on the high mountains were proof of the universal
deluge, Jefferson had rejected it. ‘Aha,’ cried Mason, ‘he derides the
Mosaic account’; he ‘sneers at the Scriptures’ and with ‘malignant
sarcasm.’ When Jefferson, referring to the tillers of the soil, wrote
that they were ‘the chosen people of God if ever He had a chosen
people,’ and referred to Christ as ‘good if ever man was,’ the minister
charged him with ‘profane babbling.’[402]

His view of creation is set forth in a letter discussing a work by
Whitehurst. He believed that a Supreme Being created the earth and its
inhabitants; that if He created both, He could have created both at
once, or created the earth and waited ages for it to get form itself
before He created man; but he believed that it was created in a state of
fluidity and not in its present solid form. This was his infidelity. He
probably did not believe that Jonah was swallowed by the whale--and that
was enough to damn him. But if he was not a Christian, the pulpits are
teeming with atheists to-day.[403]

We have seen that Hamilton had no faith in the Constitution, but did
yeoman service for its ratification; we have the charge that Jefferson
was hostile to both; and the truth is that he was hostile to neither and
favorable to both. The evidence is overwhelming.

When the new form of government was under consideration, he proposed ‘to
make the States one in everything connected with foreign nations, and
several as to everything purely domestic,’ and to separate the
executive, legislative, and judicial branches.[404] He was bitterly
hostile to any plan based on the monarchical idea, and advised its
friends ‘to read the fable of the frogs who solicited Jupiter for a
King.’[405] When the Convention met, he wrote Adams that it was ‘really
an assembly of demigods,’ but regretted that they began their
deliberations ‘by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the
tongues of the members.’[406] His first impressions of the completed
document were unfavorable. In a letter to Adams he complained of the
reëligibility of the President.[407] To another correspondent he
complained that the proposed system would merge the States into one
without protecting the people with a bill of rights.[408]

Writing to Madison, he went more into detail, balancing the good against
the bad. He liked the separation of the departments, endorsed the
lodging of the power of initiating money bills with the representatives
of the people, and was ‘captivated with the compromise of the opposite
claims of the great and little States’; but he insisted that a bill of
rights ‘is what the people are entitled to against every government on
earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse
or rest in inference.’ Professing himself ‘no friend to a very energetic
government’ as ‘always oppressive,’ he added that should the people
approve the Constitution in all its parts he should ‘concur in it
cheerfully in hopes that they will amend it whenever they think it works
wrong.’[409]

Little more than a month later he had become an ardent friend of
ratification. ‘I wish with all my soul,’ he wrote, ‘that the nine first
Conventions may accept the Constitution, because this may secure to us
the good it contains, which I think great and important. But I equally
wish that the four latest Conventions, whichever they may be, may refuse
to accede to it till a declaration of rights is annexed.’[410]

When the Massachusetts Convention accepted with ‘perpetual instructions
to her Delegates to endeavor to secure reforms,’ he was delighted,[411]
and the same day he wrote another correspondent of his pleasure at the
progress made toward ratification. ‘Indeed I have presumed that it would
gain on the public mind as I confess it has on my own.’[412] When South
Carolina acted, he wrote E. Rutledge his congratulations. ‘Our
government wanted bracing,’ he said. ‘Still we must take care not to run
from one extreme to another; not to brace too high.’[413] When the
requisite nine States had ratified, he wrote Madison in a spirit of
rejoicing. ‘It is a good canvas on which some strokes only want
retouching. What these are I think are sufficiently manifested by the
general voice from North to South which calls for a bill of
rights.’[414]

After the ratification, he wrote Madison in praise of ‘The Federalist,’
describing it as ‘the best commentary on government ever written,’ and
admitting that it had ‘rectified’ him on many points.[415] In the same
vein he wrote to Washington, expressing the hope that a bill of rights
would be speedily added.[416] In the spring of 1789 he wrote another
that the Constitution was ‘unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented
to men.’[417] And after the Bill of Rights had been added, he wrote to
Lafayette that ‘the opposition to the Constitution has almost totally
disappeared’ and that ‘the amendments proposed by Congress have brought
over almost all’ of the objectors.[418]

Years afterward, when he wrote his ‘Autobiography,’ he reviewed his
reactions on the document: ‘I received a copy early in November,’ he
wrote, ‘and read and contemplated its provisions, with great
satisfaction.... The absence of express declarations, ensuring freedom
of religious worship, freedom of the press, freedom of the person under
the uninterrupted protection of the Habeas Corpus & trial by jury in
civil as well as in criminal cases excited my jealousy; and the
reëligibility of the President for life I quite disapproved. I expressed
freely in letters to my friends, and most particularly to Mr. Madison
and General Washington, my approbations and objections.’[419] His
recollections were true to the facts as conclusively shown in the
correspondence to which reference has been made.

He was no more opposed to the Constitution and its ratification than he
was an atheist.

VII

This brings us to Jefferson the creator and leader of a party, and his
methods of management. Here he was without a peer in the mastery of men.
He intuitively knew men, and when bent upon it could usually bend them
to his will. He was a psychologist and could easily probe the minds and
hearts of those he met. In his understanding of mass psychology, he had
no equal. When a measure was passed or a policy adopted in Philadelphia,
he knew the reactions in the woods of Georgia without waiting for
letters and papers. This rare insight into the mass mind made him a
brilliantly successful propagandist. In every community he had his
correspondents with whom he communicated with reasonable regularity,
doing more in this way to mould and direct the policies of his party
than could have been done in any other way. Seldom has there lived a
more tireless and voluminous letter-writer. With all the powerful
elements arrayed against him, he appreciated the importance of the press
as did few others. ‘I desired you in my last to send me the newspapers,
notwithstanding the expense,’ he wrote a friend from Paris.[420]
Believing that the people, in possession of the facts, would reach
reasonable conclusions, he considered newspapers a necessary engine of
democracy. ‘If left to me,’ he once wrote, ‘to decide whether we should
have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the
latter.’[421] There is not a scintilla of evidence to confute his stout
contention that he never wrote for the papers anonymously, but the
evidence piles mountain high to prove that he constantly inspired the
tone of the party press.

In his personal contacts he was captivating--a master of diplomacy and
tact, born of his intuitive knowledge of men. Perhaps no better
illustration of his cleverness in analyzing men can be found than in his
letter to Madison on De Moustier, a newly appointed French Minister to
the United States. ‘De M. is remarkably communicative. With adroitness
he may be pumped of anything. His openness is from character, not
affectation. An intimacy with him may, on this account, be politically
valuable.’[422]

In his leadership we find more of leading than of driving. He had a
genius for gently and imperceptibly insinuating his own views into the
minds of others and leaving them with the impression that they had
conceived the ideas and convinced Jefferson. To Madison this was a
source of keen delight.[423] Jefferson was the original ‘Easy Boss.’ His
tact was proverbial. He never sought to overshadow or overawe. Inferior
men were not embarrassed or depressed in his presence. He was amazingly
thoughtful and considerate. In a company he instinctively went to the
assistance of the neglected. Thus at a dinner party, a guest, long
absent from the country, and unknown to the diners, was left out of the
conversation and ignored. In a momentary silence, Jefferson turned to
him. ‘To you, Mr. C., we are indebted for this benefit--’ he said, ‘no
one deserves more the gratitude of his country.’ The other guests were
all attention. ‘Yes, sir, the upland rice which you sent from Algiers,
and which thus far succeeds, will, when generally adopted by the
planters, prove an inestimable blessing to our Southern States.’ After
that the neglected guest became the lion of the dinner.[424]
Thoughtfulness in small things--this entered not a little into
Jefferson’s hold on his followers.

It was at the dinner table that he planned many of his battles. He did
not care for the stormy and contentious atmosphere of a caucus. He was
not an orator. In the Continental Congress he was disgusted by the ‘rage
for debate.’[425] Later he was to find his lot in the Cabinet
intolerable because he and Hamilton were constantly pitted against each
other ‘like cocks in a pit.’ He was not afraid of a fight, but the
futility of angry controversy repelled him. It was this which made him a
delightful dinner host--all controversial subjects that might offend
were taboo. If his position were warmly controverted, he changed the
subject tactfully. It was never the opposition that interested him, but
the reason for it; and with rare subtlety he would seek to obliterate
the prejudice, if it were prejudice, or to remove the misunderstanding
if it were ignorance of facts. Thus he won many victories through a
seeming retreat.[426]

Unescapable quarrels and separations were minor tragedies to him. He
long sought to get along with Hamilton. He advised his daughters to be
tolerant of disagreeable people and acted on his own advice. Fiske has
explained him in a sentence: ‘He was in no wise lacking in moral
courage, but his sympathies were so broad and tender that he could not
breathe freely in an atmosphere of strife.’[427] Thus considerate of his
foes, he never hurt the sensibilities of his friends through offensive
methods. He liked to gather his lieutenants about him at the table and
‘talk it out’--each man free to give his views. Here he ironed out
differences, dominating by the superiority of his intellect and
fascinating personality while appearing singularly free from domination.

In his power of self-control Jefferson had another advantage over his
leading political opponents. There was something uncanny in his capacity
to simulate ignorance of the hate that often encompassed him. To the
most virulent of his foes he was the pink of courtesy. He mastered
others by mastering himself. And because he was master of himself, he
had another advantage--he kept his judgment clear as to the capacity and
character of his opponents. One may search in vain through the letters
of Hamilton for expressions other than those of contemptuous
belittlement of his political foes. Jefferson never made that mistake.
He conceded Hamilton’s ability and admired it. Visitors at Monticello,
manifesting surprise at finding busts by Ceracchi of Hamilton and
Jefferson, facing each other across the hall, elicited the smiling
comment--‘opposite in death as in life.’ There never would have been a
bust of Jefferson at ‘The Grange.’ Through the long years of
estrangement with Adams, Jefferson kept the way clear for the
restoration of their old relations. Writing Madison of Adams’s faults,
he emphasized his virtues and lovable qualities. When the bitter battles
of their administrations were in the past and a mutual friend wrote that
the old man at Quincy had said, ‘I always loved Jefferson and always
shall,’ he said, ‘That is enough for me,’ and set to work to revive the
old friendship. Thus the time came when in reply to Jefferson’s
congratulations on the election of John Quincy Adams in 1824, Adams
wrote: ‘I call him our John because when you were at the Cul de Sac at
Paris, he appeared to me to be almost as much your boy as mine.’[428]
This capacity for keeping his judgment clear of the benumbing fumes of
prejudice concerning the qualities of his enemies was one of the strong
points of his leadership.

This does not mean that in practical politics Jefferson was a ‘Miss
Nancy’ or a ‘Sister Sue.’ This first consummate practical politician of
the Republic did not consider it practical to underestimate the foe, nor
to dissipate his energy and cloud his judgment by mere prejudices and
hates. He was not an idealist in his methods, and this has given his
enemies a peg on which to hang the charge that he was dishonest. He was
an opportunist, to be sure; he never refused the half loaf he could get
because of the whole loaf he could not have. He trimmed his sails at
times to save his craft--and this was wisdom. He compromised at the call
of necessity. He was hard-headed and looked clear-eyed at the realities
about him. He was cunning, for without cunning he could not have
overcome a foe so powerfully entrenched. He was as elusive as a shadow,
and this has been called cowardice--but it was difficult to trap him in
consequence. His antipathy to the frontal attack has often been referred
to with contempt, but, leading a large but unorganized army against one
of tremendous power, he preferred the methods of Washington in the
field--which was to avoid the frontal attack with his ragged
Continentals against the trained and disciplined army. Because of these
conditions he was given to mining. When apparently quiescent, he was
probably sowing discord among his foes--his part concealed. This was
hateful to the Federalists--just as the tactics of Frederick were
hateful to the exasperated superior forces against him.

Jefferson was the most resourceful politician of his time. For every
problem he had a solution. He teemed with ideas. These were his shock
troops. If he seemed motionless, it was because by a nod or look he had
put his forces on the march. Like the wiser of the modern bosses, he
knew the virtue of silence. When in doubt, he said nothing. When certain
of his course, he said nothing--to his foes. It was impossible to smoke
him out when he preferred to stay in. In the midst of abuse he was
serene. And he was a stickler for party regularity.[429] He appreciated
the possibilities of organization and discipline. When money was needed
for party purposes, his friends would receive a note: ‘I have put you
down for so much.’ When the party paper languished, he circulated
subscription lists among his neighbors, and instructed his friends to
imitate his example. He was never too big for the small essential
things, and he was a master of detail--very rarely true of men of large
views. His energy was dynamic and he was tireless. He never rested on
his arms or went into winter quarters. His fight was endless. The real
secret of his triumph, however, is found in the reason given by one of
his biographers: ‘He enjoyed a political vision penetrating deeper down
into the inevitable movement of popular government, and farther forward
into the future of free institutions than was possessed by any other man
in public life in his day.’

VIII

No American of his time had such versatility or such diversified
interests. He was asked to frame the Declaration of Independence because
of his reputation as a writer. Adams has told the story: ‘He brought
with him a reputation for literary science and a happy talent for
composition. Writings of his were handed about[430] remarkable for their
peculiar felicity of expression.’ It was the ‘Summary View’ which
elicited the admiration of Edmund Burke. A more ambitious effort, his
‘Notes on Virginia’ were written during the fatal illness of his wife,
and while he was confined to the house two or three weeks by a riding
accident.[431] It was a valuable contribution to the natural, social,
economic, and political history of the State, with a number of eloquent
passages and fascinating pages.

He had an artistic temperament, loved music, and at the beginning of his
career we find him busy planning his garden at Monticello, and
practicing three hours a day on his loved violin, under the instructions
of an Italian musician. His hospitality to the Hessian prisoners is
partly explained by a mutual love of music. Returning from an absence to
find ‘Shadwell,’ his early home, in ashes, he inquired anxiously about
his books. ‘Oh, my young master,’ exclaimed the distressed slave, ‘they
were all burnt, but we saved your fiddle.’[432]

Loving art in all its forms, he was fond of the company of artists. It
was he who arranged in Paris for Houdon to go to America to make the
statue of Washington.[433] He entertained Trumbull in the French
capital, accompanying him to Versailles to see the King’s art
collection, and urged him to remain in Paris and study.[434] He was
delighted with architectural beauty and lingered about the masterpieces.
From Nesmes, he wrote enthusiastically to a woman friend: ‘Here I am,
Madame, gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarree, like a lover at his
mistress. This is the second time I have been in love since I left
Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye in
Beaujolais, a delicious morsel of sculpture, by M. A. Soldtz. This you
will say was in rule, to fall in love with a female beauty; but with a
house. No, Madame, it is not without a precedent in my own history.
While in Paris I was violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm.’[435]
When the Capitol at Richmond was in contemplation, he urged the
construction of the most beautiful edifice possible as a model to be
emulated in other buildings; drew some plans himself; examined those of
Hallet, was captivated with those of Thornton, and urged their
acceptance. ‘Simple, noble, beautiful,’ he wrote home.[436]

And yet, so many-sided was this man, that he was a utilitarian and
scientist as well as artist. In Europe he was thought a philosopher, and
Humboldt came to America to pass many hours under his roof. A perusal of
his letters discloses the intensity and range of his interests. He was
entranced with clocks, and we find him writing David Rittenhouse
reminding him of ‘a kind promise of making me an accurate clock,’[437]
and later to Madison of a watch he had made for himself and inquiring if
his friend wished one.[438] He summoned a Swiss clock-maker to
Monticello who died on the mountain and is buried in the enclosure with
his patron. He put the noted Buffon to rout in Paris on points in
natural history.[439] Admiring the red men, he spent years collecting
their vocabularies.[440] When in Paris he heard that an Arabic
translation of Livy had been found in Sicily, and importuned the
_chargés des affaires_ of Naples to make inquiries, and was much excited
to hear that such a translation had been found ‘and will restore to us
seventeen of the lost books.’[441] In the midst of the political
diversions and social distractions of Paris he found time to write at
length on the ‘latest discoveries in astrology.’[442] As early as the
summer of 1785, when Pilatre de Rozière made his fatal attempt to cross
the English Channel in a balloon, we find him eagerly discussing the
possibilities of the aeronautical science.[443] A newly invented lamp
pleased him and he sent one to a friend from Paris.[444] The use of
steam in the operation of grist mills interested him and he found time
to witness the test.[445] Even the absorbing drama of the French
Revolution in its early stages did not lessen his interest in Paine’s
iron bridge, and he attended its exhibition,[446] and finding the
inventor hesitating between ‘the catenary and portions of a circle,’ he
sent to Italy for a scientific work by the Abbe Mascheroni.[447]
Fascinated by inventions, he was, himself, the inventor of a plough.

Interested as he was in art and inventions, his heart was with the
country life and the farmer’s lot. He was never happier than when, in
the early morning, mounted on one of his beloved horses, he rode over
his broad acres at Monticello, observing with a perennial zest the
budding of the trees in spring, the unfolding of the flowers, the
ripening of the harvest. Wherever he was, throughout his life, he longed
for the house he had made on the hill, the broad fields, the family
circle and the servitors and slaves. There he was lord of the domain. If
he employed Italian gardeners, they conformed to his ideas. If he had a
supervisor, it was he himself who determined what should be planted and
where--where the orchards should be, what trees should be set and their
location; and even the vines and shrubs, the nuts and seeds, the roots
and bulbs claimed his personal attention. Even his hogs were named, and
when one was to be killed, he designated it by name.[448] There, too, he
lived in an atmosphere of affection. There he had taken his bride, a
woman of exquisite beauty, grace, and loveliness; there his children had
been born, and there, all too soon, their mother died. He was
passionately devoted to her and there was no successor. To the daughters
who were left he became both a father and a mother, resulting in an
intimacy seldom found between father and daughters. In Paris he would
not permit even his trusted servant to do their shopping, reserving that
duty for himself. Always patient, never harsh, and ever sympathetic, he
was the ideal parent.[449]

Though he did not remarry, he was fond of the society of women and they
of his. The few letters to women that have been preserved are
masterpieces of their kind, sprightly, playful, sometimes beautiful. His
relations with the women of the Adams family are shown in a note to John
Adams’s married daughter, written from Paris: ‘Mr. Jefferson has the
honor to present his compliments to Mrs. Smith and to send her the two
pair of corsets she desired. He wishes they may be suitable, as Mrs.
Smith omitted to send her measure. Times are altered since Mademoiselle
de Samson had the honor of knowing her; should they be too small,
however, she will be so good as to lay them by a while. There are ebbs
as well as flows in this world. When the Mountain refused to go to
Mahomet, he went to the Mountain.’[450] In Paris he formed a few
cherished friendships with women, notably with Mrs. Cosway, Italian wife
of an English painter, a woman of charm, beauty, and intellect, with
whom he corresponded. One of his letters, the dialogue between the Head
and the Heart on her departure for England, is unique and
sparkling.[451] He appreciated the exquisite Mrs. Bingham whom he met in
Paris, and his chiding letters to her after her return to America must
have pleased that artificial lady immensely.[452] He was a friend of the
Comtesse De Tesse whose mind he admired,[453] and of Madame De Corney
whose beauty attracted him. ‘The Bois de Boulogne invited you earnestly
to retire to its umbrage from the heats of the sad season,’ he wrote her
gallantly. ‘I was through it to-day as I am every day. Every tree
charged me with this invitation.’[454]

Such was Thomas Jefferson who took upon himself the organization of the
forces of democracy, when its enemies were in the saddle, booted and
spurred, and with a well-disciplined and powerful army at their back.
None but an extraordinary character could have dared hope for victory,
and he was that, and more. Democrat and aristocrat, and sometimes
autocrat; philosopher and politician; sentimentalist and utilitarian;
artist, naturalist, and scientist; thinker, dreamer, and doer; inventor
and scholar; writer and statesman, he enthralled his followers and
fascinated while infuriating his foes.

CHAPTER VI

THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND

‘If New York wanted any revenge for the removal,’ wrote Mrs. Adams to
her daughter soon after reaching Philadelphia, ‘the citizens might be
glutted if they could come here, where every article has been almost
doubled in price, and where it is not possible for Congress and the
appendages to be half as well accommodated for a long time.’[455]
Reconciliation for the removal was not complete several months later
when Oliver Wolcott wrote his father complaining that ‘the manners of
the people are more reserved than in New York.’[456] Even so he had
‘seen nothing to tempt [him] to idolatry,’ after having seen ‘many of
their principal men,’ and he had no apprehensions of ‘self-humiliating
sensations’ after a closer acquaintance.[457] It was not with
unrestrained enthusiasm that the officials took up their residence in
the greater city, with its population of more than 60,000. ‘The
Philadelphians,’ according to the indignant comment of Jeremiah Smith,
‘are from the highest to the lowest, from the parson in his black gown
to the fille de joie or girl of pleasure, a set of beggars. You cannot
turn around without paying a dollar.’[458]

To the visitor entering by coach on Front Street and rumbling up to the
City Tavern the prospect did not seem so black as to those who received
their first impressions from the water-front. These beheld ‘nothing ...
but confused heaps of wooden store houses, crowded upon each
other’--and, behind the wharves, Water Street, narrow, shut in by the
old bank of the river, dirty, filthy, stinking.[459] Could he have
looked down upon the city from some convenient hill, he would have found
something to revive his drooping spirits in the compactness of the town
and the substantial character of the houses. The principal streets of
the period were Front, Second, Third, and Fourth, and beyond Sixth
there were scarcely any habitations. No one thought of building on Arch
or Chestnut Streets west of Tenth, where the land was thickly dotted
with frogponds.[460] Practically all of business and fashion was to be
found east of Fourth Street, and the visitor or official sojourner could
congratulate himself on the ease with which he could get about from
place to place. An English tourist, observing that with the exception of
Broad and High Streets the thoroughfares were not more than fifty feet
in width, found them suggestive of ‘many of the smaller streets of
London except that the foot pavement on either side is of brick instead
of stone.’[461]

If the filth of the odorous water-front, the narrowness of the streets,
and the frogponds on the outskirts, so audible in the night, were
depressing, the houses, attractive, and in many instances
architecturally pretentious, hinted of comfort and solidity if not of
opulence. The fact that almost all were constructed of brick was not
lost upon the travelers.[462] In the more congested districts these
houses had a shop on the first floor.

The streets, with their red-brick foot pavements and rows of trees,
making them fragrant after summer rains, and drearily murmurous in the
winter winds, were paved with pebbles in the middle,[463] with a gutter
made of brick or wood, and lined with strong posts to protect the area
of the pedestrians.[464] The trees, mostly buttonwood, willow, and
Lombardy poplars, had been brought over from Europe some years before by
William Hamilton.[465] At frequent intervals town pumps offered
refreshment to the thirsty, or, in the night, an accommodating
hanging-post for the inebriate staggering home from one of the popular
taverns.[466] Not without its charm was a walk through the streets of
Philadelphia in the days when Hamilton and Jefferson were exchanging
shots, with the poplars and willows to shut off the sun, the pumps to
minister to the comfort, and with most of the houses offering to the
view a garden filled with old-fashioned flowers--lilacs, roses, pinks,
and tulips, morning-glories and snowballs with gourd vines climbing over
the porches. In the case of the more imposing mansions there were more
elaborate gardens with rare flowers and shrubbery, but in many of these
wealth claimed its privilege and shut off the view from the common folk
who could only catch the fragrance.[467]

The visitor on public business bent found all the governmental centers
close together. If interested in the debates at Congress Hall, erected
for the purpose at Sixth and Chestnut Streets next to the State House,
the smallest child could direct him. If a person of no special
importance, he could find his way into the commodious gallery of the
House, and, looking down upon the chamber, a hundred by sixty feet, with
its three semi-circular rows of seats facing the Speaker’s rostrum--‘a
kind of pulpit near the center’[468]--could find Ames busy at his
circular writing-desk, Madison on his feet or Sedgwick in conference
with a lobbyist. If fortunate he might be admitted to the space on the
floor beneath the gallery. But it was not so easy to penetrate to the
more sacred precincts of the Senate on the floor above where the
self-constituted guardians of the covenant and the rights of property
held themselves aloof from the gaze of the vulgar. Perhaps, if he really
prized the privilege, he might look down from some point of vantage on
the State House Garden where the statesmen were wont to take the air and
compose their thoughts.

Did he have business with Jefferson? It was only a little way to the
three-story brick residence at High and Eighth Streets which had been
taken over for the purposes of the State Department. With Hamilton? It
was but a few steps to the old Pemberton mansion near Chestnut and
Third, with its well-cultivated garden in the rear where the
indefatigable human dynamo worked far into the night.[469] With the
President? It was but a short distance from Jefferson’s office to the
Morris house.

At the time Washington moved in, the Morris house was one of the most
distinguished in the city, a dignified and impressive brick mansion,
with two large lamps in front, and with ample gardens to proclaim it the
abode of a personage of consequence. It was under its roof that
Washington had lived as the guest of Morris while presiding over the
Constitutional Convention. It was not without difficulties and
annoyances that the house was taken over. The banker was lustily praised
by his friends for his sacrifice in abandoning his home, but it appears
to have been a sacrifice similar to that of managing the finances of the
Revolution. One writer questioned whether ‘giving up a house of moderate
dimensions for 700 pounds a year can be deemed a great sacrifice ...
when ... the President was accommodated in this city [New York] with a
much more elegant house at 400 pounds per annum.’[470] Even Washington,
who was Morris’s intimate friend, was distressed at the difficulty in
persuading him to fix the rental, and wrote Lear that he could not
understand the Senator. He would be willing to pay as much as he paid in
New York, and even more if there was not clear extortion. The owner
finally fixed the rental at three thousand dollars a year.[471] Thus
Washington moved in, and there the Presidents lived until the capital
was moved to Washington.

There, if properly presented, the visitor might call to receive the
rather cold, stately bow of Washington or even drink a cup of tea with
Mrs. Washington. In the case of a levee, he was sure to be welcome. But
if his social status did not suffice to justify the crossing of the
threshold, he might, if he were patient, see the great man as he drove
forth in his ornately decorated coach; or, better still, see him emerge
on foot with his secretaries, Lear and Jackson, one on either side, with
cocked hats on their heads, the aides a little in the rear. If he had
the temerity to follow at a respectable distance, he would have been
surprised, perhaps, to find that the President did not converse with his
secretaries while on his walks.[472]

It was not joy unconfined to be interned in any of the hotels or taverns
of Philadelphia at any time while it was the capital. In the journals of
tourists who sojourned there we encounter no enthusiastic encomiums,
even for O’Eller’s, which owes something of its glamour in perspective
to the fact that the Assembly dances were held in its ballroom. It was
infinitely better, at any rate, than the Sign of the Sorrel Horse on
Second Street, which comes down to us as a ‘bad one.’[473] The City
Tavern, scene of numerous political demonstrations, concededly one of
the best, would have been better rid of vermin that infested the
beds.[474] The London Tavern, which had its days as the ‘principal
hotel,’ was ‘deficient in comfort’ even at its best,[475] and the Indian
Queen distinguished itself as the scene of a doleful robbery when some
of Ames’s colleagues lost their linen, and thirty thousand dollars in
securities, and he escaped only because his name on his trunk assured
the ‘partial rogues’ that ‘nothing was to be got by taking it
away.’[476] In 1794, the Golden Lion or the Yellow Cat at Eighth and
Filbert Streets was a favorite because of its well-drawn beer and
porter; and the visitor, pushing through the smoke-laden air to drink
malt liquor from a pewter mug, would, likely as not, find Governor
Mifflin or General Knox of the Cabinet enjoying their mugs along with
the mechanics and clerks.[477] But it was not necessary to sleep in the
beds of the Yellow Cat to quaff its liquors, and after a brief
experience with the taverns the tourist would be likely to follow the
example of Thomas Twining and seek more comfortable and sanitary
quarters in some of the numerous rooming-houses that catered
particularly to members of Congress. The choicest of these resented the
idea that they were other than the private houses of gentlemen
accommodating political personages--this particularly true in the case
of Francis, the Frenchman, at whose house on Fourth Street,
Vice-President Adams had a room.[478] In these private rooming and
boarding-houses, in which the majority of the celebrities lived, an
abundant table, clean agreeable rooms, and the congenial companionship
of colleagues made an appeal. At Francis’s the head of the table was
reserved for Adams, and all the ceremonial forms were scrupulously
observed, although he frequently had his meals served in his rooms. It
was not until he had escaped from the Indian Queen and found lodgings
‘at the house of Mrs. Sage’ that Ames began ‘to feel settled and at
home.’[479] This hiving had its comedies, sometimes its scandals, and
occasionally its romances, as on the day Senator Aaron Burr took James
Madison to call upon the winsome daughter of his landlady, and history
was made in the candlelit parlor of the boarding-house.

Quiet and home-like, at least, these boarding-houses of our early
statesmen, and if they had no bars, they were in close proximity to
many that were of good repute. The members of the Legislature sometimes
were known to discuss important measures at Geisse’s Tavern over the
mugs,[480] were wont, on adjournment, to linger at Mr. O’Eller’s for his
incomparable punch,[481] and to celebrate the ending of a session with
an evening of conviviality at ‘Mr. Burns tavern on Tenth Street.’[482]
Gentlemen riding along the banks of the Schuylkill could seldom resist
the impulse to dismount at the tavern of Metz--for these drinking-houses
were kindly placed among a people intolerant of puritanism.[483]

Going forth into the streets to mingle with the common people was a
revelation to the polished tourist from the old lands. Here they found
nothing of the humility of the lowly to which they were accustomed. The
mechanics and common laborers took the theory of equality seriously. One
traveler found ‘the lower sort of people’ lacking in good manners[484]
and observed that a well-dressed stranger, asking a polite question, was
almost certain of an impudent answer.[485] These were the men who were
to man the societies fashioned after those of the Parisian radicals, to
rally passionately to the support of the French Revolution, and to
supply Jefferson with his shock troops--and sometimes shocking
troops--in his fight for the democratization of the Republic.

These, too, in their desperate striving for equality were moved to
imitations of the spendthrift practices of the rich. Even the servants
and the negroes gave elaborate balls which Liancourt found ‘destitute of
the charming simplicity of the fêtes of our peasants.’[486] The women
appeared in dresses beyond their means; the laborer and his lady rode in
coaches to the dance, where an elaborate supper was served, with liquid
refreshments. Sundays found the public-houses of the environs packed
with the men of the factories and shop, borne thither, with their
families, in chairs. There was much drinking and spending with gambling
on the fights arranged for their delectation.[487] At Harrowgate
Gardens, two miles out on the New York road, and Gray’s Gardens on the
Schuylkill, they flocked to drink tea or liquor, to dance, promenade, or
flirt, and on summer nights the young men of all stations were lured to
them by the promise of romance. Even the grave and reverend statesmen
could not, in all cases, resist the call. Gay and wicked some must have
thought the scene--with the painted women of the town a bit brazen in
their fishing for men. ‘We have Eves in plenty, of all nations, tongues
and colors,’ wrote Oliver Wolcott to his wife from Gray’s Gardens where
he had taken refuge from the yellow fever, ‘but do not be jealous--I
have not seen one yet whom I have thought pretty’--leaving her to
imagine the possibilities should one such appear.[488] And yet,
pleasure-loving as the population was, the nights were reasonably quiet.
About the time the city assumed the dignity of a capital, there was
little to disturb the tranquillity of the night after ten o’clock beyond
the voice of the watchman, or the footsteps of some night-hawk wending
his way by the light of the street-lamps ‘placed like those in
London.’[489] But five years later, a visitor who recalled that in 1794
it was unusual to meet any one at night, or to hear any noises after
eleven o’clock, found that the nocturnal annoyances continued far later
into the night.[490]

It was by day, however, that the city made its best impression. The
luxury-loving people, the wealth and extravagance of the social leaders
insisting upon London and Parisian styles, the commercial traditions of
the community gave to its shopping district an elegance found nowhere
else in America. The houses of the importers and wholesalers, some
maintaining their own ships, were found, for the most part, on Front and
Water Streets. When in the spring and autumn the ships came in, and the
great boxes of English dry-goods were stretched along the pavement of
Front between Arch and Walnut Streets to be opened, it was a thrilling
event to the Philadelphians. Fluttering about them were the retail
merchants--for most of these in the days of the city’s political
preëminence were women--exclaiming ecstatically over the contents. Soon
the goods were transferred to the shops, which even a Frenchman found
‘remarkable for their neatness’[491]--due, no doubt, to the sex of the
proprietors. What more fascinating than to stand before the great show
windows--something new--at Mrs. Whiteside’s fancy dress-goods shop, with
exquisite cloths and dresses hung full length and festooned to best
advantage after the manner of Bond Street, London. Did it add anything
to the appeal to know that the proprietress had come from London? Alas,
no doubt. Thither the ladies from the mansions drove in their carriages
to make their purchases, and thence, perhaps, for something more, to the
South Second Street store of the smiling Mrs. Holland, and then on,
perchance, to Mrs. Jane Taylor’s at the Sign of the Golden Lamb.[492]
And then, having ministered to the materialistic yearnings of vanity, as
like as not milady directs the coachman to stop at Bell’s British Book
Shop on Third Street, near Pearl, lest the lord and master, in placing
his order with his London agent, overlooked something she would not
miss.

An easy, patrician life for some of these Philadelphians, but not for
all. The workman receiving a dollar a day and board, and with the
smallest houses on the outskirts renting for three hundred dollars a
year, found it far from a frolic to make both ends meet. The
middle-class employees of the stores and industries, paying from eight
to twelve dollars a week for board, without wine, candles, or fire,
could have found little to interest them in Mrs. Whiteside’s show
windows, for, while the clerks were courteous and the merchant polite,
the cost of her goods was far in excess of that on Bond Street.[493] But
it is not with these of the more humble order that we are concerned just
now. It is quite possible that the curious Jefferson, who had a habit of
prying into the living conditions of ‘people of no importance,’ may have
wondered how these lived, but the social environment of the majority of
the statesmen was far removed from the common people. It is with the
world of fashion that we are concerned.

III

No society in America could have been less in harmony with the spirit of
democracy, for nowhere was class consciousness and caste pride more
pronounced. ‘Those who constitute the fashionable world are at best a
mere oligarchy, composed of a few natives and as many foreigners,’ wrote
Otis to his wife.[494] ‘I might have believed myself in an English
town,’ said Viscount de Chateaubriand.[495] An Englishman noted that
‘amongst the upper circles ... pride, haughtiness, and ostentation are
conspicuous; and it seems that nothing could make them happier than that
an order of nobility should be established, by which they might be
exalted above their fellow citizens, as much as they are in their own
conceit.’[496] A French nobleman could not escape the observation that
‘the English influence prevails in the first circles and prevails with
great intolerance.[497] And Otis, who liked the tone himself, was much
impressed with the discovery that ‘the women after presentations to the
court of George III or Louis XVI transplanted into Philadelphia society
the manners of the English aristocracy and the fashions of Paris.’[498]
During the days of the British occupation, the cream of society had
reveled with the British officers, and many of these had resumed their
places in the society of the republican capital without abandoning their
former views. This English tone was to be felt by Jefferson a little
later when his sympathy with the French Revolution was to enter into his
policies. From the beginning these pro-English aristocrats were to draw
political lines in social intercourse, and in time Otis was to record
that ‘Democratic gentlemen and their families, no matter how high their
social qualifications, were rigidly ostracised by the best
society.’[499] Along with this went a rather vulgar deification of the
dollar, and, strangely enough, a lack of polite hospitality to the
stranger. ‘What is justly called society,’ wrote Liancourt whose ideas
had been fashioned at Versailles, ‘does not exist in this city. The
vanity of wealth is common enough.’ The picture he paints is not a
pretty one. It shows a flamboyant rich man flauntingly displaying ‘his
splendid furniture, his fine English glass, and exquisite china,’ to the
stranger invited to come to ‘one ceremonious dinner,’ and then
dismissing him for another who had not ‘seen the magnificence of the
house, nor tasted the old Madeira.’ This, we are told, was the routine
for all who came from Europe--‘philosophers, priests, literati, princes,
dentists, wits and idiots.’ But alas, ‘the next day the lionized
stranger is not known in the street except he be wealthy.’[500] However
much they may have fallen short in manners, they yielded nothing to
Versailles in dress. This ‘elegance of dress’ astonished Chateaubriand,
and Liancourt was amazed at ‘the profusion and luxury’ in ‘the dresses
of their wives and daughters.’ At balls, ‘the variety and richness of
the dresses did not suffer in comparison with Europe.’ The brilliant
note was assiduously sought in costumes, and there was much copying of
the subjects of Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. One foreigner
noting the ‘immense expense on their toilet and head dress’ thought it
‘too affected to be pleasing.’[501] But by common consent these grand
dames and belles were beautiful, with their sparkling eyes, graceful
forms, and the brilliancy of their complexions.

If this aristocracy was neglectful of the stranger who had no golden key
to its interest, it was not because of a dearth of entertaining. Here
there was a hectic activity--dinners, dances, breakfasts, teas, parties
enough to satisfy the most insatiate passion for such excitement.
Throughout the season the great houses were ablaze with light, and if,
as Mrs. Adams complained, there was much the same company in all, it was
congenial company, and the intimacy of the contact allowed a familiarity
that sometimes verged on the _risqué_. In less than a month after her
arrival, Mrs. Adams was appalled at ‘the invitations to tea and cards in
the European style,’[502] and was complaining that she ‘should spend a
very dissipated winter if [she] were to accept one half the invitations,
particularly to the touts or teas and cards with even Saturday night ...
not excepted.’[503] A little later Aaron Burr was being swamped with
‘many attentions and civilities--many invitations to dine, etc.’[504] If
Burr declined, as he wrote his wife, the handsome young Otis, who loved
the company of women, was not so coy. ‘I have dined once with Cuttling
at Mrs. Grattan’s,’ he wrote home, ‘once at Yznardi’s [Spaniard who
spent much time in Philadelphia] in great stile; and yesterday in the
country with Jonathan Williams [nephew of Franklin]. I am engaged for
next Christmas with Mrs. Powell, but with nobody for the Christmas after
next.’[505]

At these functions--heavy drinking--flirting--_risqué_ talk. Even a
German was shocked to find that at public dinners each person would
often consume six bottles of Madeira.[506] Only Burr was hard to
satisfy. ‘I despair of getting genuine Trent wine in this city,’ he
wrote Theodosia. ‘There never was a bottle of real unadulterated Trent
imported here for sale. Mr. Jefferson, who had some for his own use, has
left town.’[507] But if there was no Trent, Madeira flowed in streams,
beer and ale, punch and whiskey and champagne could be had for the
asking, and there was asking enough, even at parties and dinners. Even
Hamilton, who drank with moderation, sometimes became ‘liquorish’ at the
table, and on one occasion made rather free with another man’s wife to
the husband’s indignation until mollified with the assurance of his
spouse that she ‘did not like him at all.’ Even so, thought the irate
husband, Hamilton ‘appears very trifling in his conversation with
ladies.’[508] And ‘trifling’ indeed must have been much of the talk.

Thus it was at a dinner at Clymer’s, a leading member of the House.
Present, Otis, the Binghams, the Willings--the top cream of the
aristocracy. Aha, cried the vivacious sister of Mrs. Bingham, referring
to the host’s newly acquired stomacher, and mentioning the touching case
of the Duke of York, recently married to the Duchess of Württemberg who
was compelled to cut a semi-circle out of his table to give access to
his plate. Mrs. Bingham coyly expressed sympathy for the Duchess.
(Bursts of laughter and applause.) But Clymer, not to be outdone, turned
to his married sister with the comment that he would ‘soon be able to
retort this excellent jest on her.’ (Renewed laughter and more
applause.) It was an hilarious occasion, the applause ‘would have done
credit to a national convention’ and ‘Miss Abby and Miss Ann did not
disguise their delight nor their bosoms.’[509] On now to a dinner at
Harrison’s, who married a sister of Mrs. Bingham, where one of the
guests, ‘after rallying Sophia ... upon her unfruitfulness,’ led to a
‘natural but not very flattering transition’ which ‘introduced Mrs.
Champlin and her want of prolific qualities as a seasoning for the
Canvas Backs.’[510] But let us hurry on to a third dinner, with
Hamilton, his vivacious sisters-in-law, Mrs. Church and Miss Schuyler. A
lively company! Mrs. Church, ‘the mirror of affectation,’ who is ‘more
amusing than offensive’ because so affable and free from ceremony; and,
still more lively, Miss Schuyler ‘a young wild flirt from Albany, full
of glee and apparently desirous of matrimony.’ Mrs. Church drops her
shoe bow, Miss Schuyler picks it up and fastens it in Hamilton’s
button-hole with the remark, ‘I have made you a knight.’ ‘But what
order?’ asks Mrs. Church, ‘he can’t be a knight of the garter in this
country.’ ‘True, sister, but he would be if you would let him.’

Wine, women and song--such the spirit in some of the great houses in
moments of _abandon_. But it would be unfair to leave the impression
these incidents would convey. There were brilliant men of vast
achievement, and women of extraordinary charm and cleverness moving
behind these curtained windows. Let us meet them in the mansion of Mrs.
Bingham--the uncrowned queen of the Federalist group--the woman without
a peer.

None of the three capitals of the country have produced another social
leader of the cleverness, audacity, and regality of Mrs. William
Bingham. During the eight years of the domination of the Federalists, of
whom her husband was one of the leaders, there was no public character
of the first order who did not come under the influence of her
fascination. By birth, environment, nature, and training she was fitted
to play a conspicuous part in the social life of any capital in the
world. The daughter of Willing, the partner of Robert Morris, she was
the favored of fortune. Some years before her birth, her father,
inspired by sentimental motives, built the mansion on Third Street in
which she was born, and patterned it after the ancestral home in
Bristol, England. There, surrounded by all the advantages of wealth, her
beauty unfolded through a happy childhood. The pomp and pride of great
possessions did not imbue her with a passion for republics or democracy.
She was destined to play a part in a rather flamboyant aristocracy, and
was as carefully perfected in the arts and graces of her sex as any
princess destined to a throne. In the midst of the Revolution, in her
sixteenth year, she married William Bingham who combined the advantages
of wealth, social position, and a capacity for political leadership.

She was only twenty, when, accompanied by her husband, she went abroad
to captivate court circles with her vivacity, charm, and beauty. At
Versailles, the gallants, accustomed to the ways and wiles of the most
accomplished women of fashion, were entranced. At The Hague, where she
lingered awhile, the members of the diplomatic corps fluttered about the
teasing charmer like moths about the flame. In the court circles of
England she suffered nothing in comparison with the best it could offer,
and the generous Abigail Adams, thrilling to the triumph of the young
American, found her brilliancy enough to dim the ineffectual fires of
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Five years of familiarity with the
leaders in the world of European fashion and politics prepared her to
preside with stunning success over the most famous political
drawing-room of the American capital.

It was after their return from Europe that Mrs. Bingham moved into the
imposing mansion on Third Street built on the ample grounds of her
childhood home. All the arts of the architect, landscape gardener, and
interior decorator had been drawn upon to make a fit setting for the
mistress. The garden, with its flowers and rare shrubbery, its lemon,
orange, and citron trees, its aloes and exotics, was shut off from the
view of the curious, only mighty oaks and the Lombardy poplars visible
above the wall--‘a magnificent house and gardens in the best English
style.’[511] The furnishings were in keeping with the promise of the
exterior. ‘The chairs in the drawing-room were from Seddon’s in London
of the newest taste, the back in the form of a lyre, with festoons, of
yellow and crimson silk,’ according to the description of an English
tourist. ‘The curtains of the room a festoon of the same. The carpet,
one of Moore’s most expensive patterns. The room papered in the French
taste, after the style of the Vatican in Rome.’[512] The halls, hung
with pictures selected with fine discrimination in Italy, gave a promise
not disappointed in the elegance of the drawing-rooms, the library, the
ballroom, card-rooms, and observatory.[513] To some this extravagant
display of luxury was depressing, and Brissot de Warville, who was to
return to Paris to die on the guillotine as a leader of the ill-fated
party of the Gironde, held the

[Illustration: MRS. WILLIAM BINGHAM]

mistress of the mansion responsible for the aristocratic spirit of the
town. It was a pity, he thought, that a man so sensible and amiable as
Bingham should have permitted a vain wife to lead him to ‘a pomp which
ought forever have been a stranger to Philadelphia.’ And all this
display ‘to draw around him the gaudy prigs and parasites of Europe,’
and lead ‘to the reproach of his fellow citizens and the ridicule of
strangers.’[514] But if the French republican was shocked, even so
robust a democrat as Maclay was so little offended that he was able to
write after dining at the mansion that ‘there is a propriety, a
neatness, a cleanliness that adds to the splendor of his costly
furniture and elegant apartments.’[515]

And ‘the dazzling Mrs. Bingham,’ as the conservative Abigail described
her,[516] what of her? The elegance and beauty which has come down to us
on canvas prepares us for the glowing descriptions of contemporaries.
Hers was the type of patrician beauty that shimmered. She was above the
medium height and well-formed, and in her carriage there was
sprightliness, dignity, elegance, and distinction. Sparkling with wit,
bubbling with vivacity, she had the knack of convincing the most
hopeless yokel introduced into her drawing-room by the exigencies of
politics that she found his personality peculiarly appealing. Daring at
the card-table, graceful in the dance, witty in conversation even though
sometimes too adept with the naughty devices of a Congreve dialogue,
inordinately fond of all the dissipations prescribed by fashion, tactful
in the selection and placing of her guests at table, she richly earned
the scepter she waved so authoritatively over society.[517] What though
she did sometimes stain her pretty lips with wicked oaths, she swore as
daintily as the Duchess of Devonshire, and if she did seem to relish
anecdotes a bit too spicy for a puritanic atmosphere, she craved not the
privilege of breathing such air.[518]

Hers the consuming ambition to be the great lady and to introduce into
American society the ideas and ideals of Paris and London. Did Jefferson
gently chide her for her admiration of French women? Well--was she not
justified? Did they not ‘possess the happy art of making us pleased with
ourselves?’ In their conversation could they not ‘please both the fop
and the philosopher?’ And despite their seeming frivolity, did not these
‘women of France interfere with the politics of the country, and often
give a decided turn to the fate of empires?’ In this letter to the man
she admired and liked, while loathing his politics, we have the nearest
insight into the soul of the woman.[519]

But these graver ambitions were not revealed to many who observed her
mode of life, her constant round of dissipations, her putting aside the
responsibilities of a mother, leaving her daughters to their French
governesses until the tragic elopement of Marie with a dissipated
nobleman, and the apprehension of the pair after their marriage at the
home of a milliner in the early morning. Hers were not the prim notions
of the average American of her time. It was Otis, not she, who was
shocked to find Marie so thinly dressed in mid-winter that he was
‘regaled at the sight of her whole legs for five minutes together,’ and
wondered ‘to what height the fashion would be carried.’[520] Swearing,
relating risqué stories, indulging in dissipations night after night,
shaming her motherhood by her affected indifference or neglect, the fact
remains that the breath of scandal never touched her until the final
scene when in her early thirties they bore her on a stretcher from the
home of her triumphs in the vain hope of prolonging her life in the soft
air of the Bermudas.

And so to her dinners, dances, parties, the clever men of the Federalist
Party flocked, with only a sprinkling of Jeffersonians, for, though
Jefferson himself could always count on a gracious reception from the
hostess, he was not comfortable among the other guests. Always the best
was to be had there--and the newest. Did she not introduce the foreign
custom of having servants announce the arriving guests, to the
discomfiture of Monroe?

‘Senator Monroe,’ called the flunky.

‘Coming,’ cried the Senator.

‘Senator Monroe’--echoed a flunky down the hall.

‘Coming as soon as I can get my greatcoat off,’ promised the Senator.

But we may be sure that no expression of amusement on the face of the
beaming Mrs. Bingham added to his embarrassment.

‘A very pretty dinner, Madame,’ said the intolerable Judge Chase, after
looking over the proffered repast, ‘but there is not a thing on your
table that I can eat.’

An expression of surprise or resentment on the hostess’s face? Not at
all. What would the Judge relish? Roast beef? Very well--and a servant
received his orders and soon hurried back with beef and potatoes to be
gluttonously devoured and washed down with a couple of bottles of stout
ale instead of French wines.

‘There, Madame,’ said the Judge, made comfortable, ‘I have made a
sensible and excellent dinner, but no thanks to your French cook.’

And he never knew from the lady’s pleased expression that she thought
him an insufferable bore.

Such the woman whose home was to be to the Hamiltonians what Madame
Roland’s was to the Girondists, and Lady Holland’s to the English Whigs.
Now let us peep into the drawing-room and observe the men and women who
bowed to her social scepter.

In deference to Mrs. Bingham we shall permit the servant to announce
these visitors as they arrive.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris.’

No doubt about their importance, for he was as intimate with Washington
as she with Mrs. Washington, and such was her intimacy that she was
frequently referred to as ‘the second lady in the land.’ It was she who
accompanied Mrs. Washington from Philadelphia to New York after the
inauguration, and during the spring and autumn the two might frequently
be seen under the trees at ‘The Hills,’ the Morris farm near the city,
enjoying the view of the river and such pastoral pictures as were
offered by the imported sheep and cattle grazing on the rolling hills.
Of Mrs. Morris it was said that ‘so impressive is her air and demeanor
that those who saw her once seldom forgot her.’[521] She had dignity,
tact, and elegance, and, like Mrs. Washington, no respect for ‘the
filthy democrats.’ She was a thorough aristocrat. Her husband, banker,
merchant, Senator, was of imposing height, his merry blue eyes, clear
complexion, and strong features denoting something of his significance;
and he had the social graces that captivate and hold. His wealth alone
would have made him a commanding figure in the society of the time and
place. Some generations were to settle on his grave before he was to
appear as the martyr who had sacrificed a fortune to liberty, for there
was a different understanding in his day.[522] A natural aristocrat,
ultra-conservative because of his business connections and great
possessions, if he was tolerant of the experiment in republicanism, he
took no pains to conceal his contempt of democracy--in Senate or
drawing-room.

‘Mrs. Walter Stewart.’

Another of the intimate circle of the Washingtons who dwelt in a fine
house next door to the Morrises, she was one of the most brilliant and
fascinating women with whom Mrs. Bingham liked to surround herself. A
long way she had traveled from her girlhood home as the daughter of
Blair McClenachan, the ardent democrat who was to help burn Jay’s
Treaty, welcome Genêt, and to follow Jefferson, for she was the wife of
the rich General Stewart, and had been seduced by the glitter of the
aristocracy. Like Mrs. Bingham, she had had her fling with the nobility
in London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome, and had returned to open her house
for some of the most elaborate entertaining of her time. In striking
beauty, conversational charm, and a caressing manner, she rivaled Mrs.
Bingham at her best. About her dinner table the leaders of the
Federalist Party were frequently found.[523]

‘Mrs. Samuel Powell.’

An interesting lady, ‘who looks turned fifty,’[524] enters to be greeted
by the hostess as ‘Aunt.’ A courteous, kindly woman, almost motherly in
her manner, she talks with the fluency and ease to be expected of the
mistress of the famous house on ‘Society Hill.’[525] No one of Mrs.
Bingham’s guests who has not promenaded on summer evenings in the Powell
gardens, the walks lined with statuary.[526]

‘General and Mrs. Knox.’

An impressive figure, the Secretary of War, his height carrying the two
hundred and eighty pounds not ungracefully, his regular Grecian nose,
florid complexion, bright, penetrating eyes giving an attractive cast to
his countenance. They who know him best suspect that he enjoys too well
the pleasures of the table, but love him for a kindliness that temper
cannot sour, a sincerity and generosity that know no bounds, a gayety
that his dignity cannot suppress--a fine sentimental figure with a
Revolutionary background. What though he had been a bookseller before he
eloped with a lady of quality, he was too keenly appreciative of the
advantages of aristocracy to have much patience with the queer notions
of Tom Jefferson, whom he liked. He rubbed his shins when Hamilton
stumbled over a chair.

And Mrs. Knox--she must have been a dashing belle in her romantic youth,
for despite her enormous weight, she was still handsome with her black
eyes and blooming cheeks.[527] Passing her girlhood in the Loyalist
atmosphere of an aristocratic home, she had never become reconciled to
the impertinence of the people, and even during the war her adoring
Henry had been moved to warn her against sneering openly at the manners
and speech of the people of Connecticut. ‘The want of refinement which
you seem to speak of is, or will be, the salvation of America,’ he
wrote.[528] But hers was the more masterful nature and his democracy was
to capitulate to her aristocracy in the end.[529] But--whither goes the
lady from the drawing-room so quickly? Ah--of course, it is to the
card-room, for was it not the gossip that ‘the follies of a gambling
wife are passed on to the debits of her husband?’[530] In the morning,
no doubt, she will run in on Mrs. Washington at the Morris house, for
they are very close.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton.’

What a romantic picture he makes in the finery that sets him off so
well--brilliant eyes sparkling, eloquent lips smiling, a courtly figure
bending over the hostess’s hand. Only a moment for the lightest kind of
banter with the ladies, and he is off to the Pemberton mansion to work
far into the night. Mrs. Hamilton will linger a little longer, an
appealing type of woman, her delicate face set off by ‘fine eyes which
are very dark’ and ‘hold the life and energy of the restrained
countenance.’[531] Hamilton had found her in the Schuyler homestead at
Albany, ‘a brunette with the most good-natured, dark lovely eyes,’[532]
gentle, retiring, but in the home circle full of gayety and courage.
Weeks and months sometimes found her missing from the social circle, for
with her, in those days, life was just one baby after another.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, and Miss Wolcott.’

A pleasing personality was that of the handsome protégé of Hamilton,
breathing the spirit of jollity, given to badinage, capable, too, of
serious conversation on books and plays. He loses himself in the lively
throng, but his infectious laughter is as revealing of his presence as
the bell of Bossy in the woods. But we are more interested in his
companions. Mrs. Wolcott was all loveliness and sweetness, grace and
dignity, and such was the appeal of her conversation that one statesman
thought her ‘a divine woman’; another, ‘the magnificent Mrs. Wolcott’;
and the brusque Senator Tracy of her State, on being assured by a
condescending diplomat that she would shine at any court, snorted that
she even shone at Litchfield.[533] Even so the eyes of the younger men
are upon Mary Ann Wolcott, sister of the Federalist leader, a pearl of
her sex, combining an extraordinary physical beauty with opulent charms,
and a conversational brilliance unsurpassed by any woman of the social
circle. Very soon she would marry the clever, cynical Chauncey Goodrich
and take her place in official society in her own right. The Wolcotts,
we may be sure, read Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’ with amazement and disgust.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick.’

A magnificent type of physical manhood, the face of one accustomed to
command and sneer down opposition; a woman of elegance and refinement,
typical of the best New England could offer in a matron.

‘Pierce Butler.’

A handsome widower this man, maintaining an elegant establishment in
Philadelphia, who affected to be a democrat, and carefully selected his
associates from among the aristocracy, a South Carolinian with a certain
reverence for wealth.

‘Mrs. William Jackson.’

An equally charming but less beautiful sister of the hostess, now wife
of one of Washington’s secretaries, a favorite at the Morris mansion,
and with no time for thinking on the grievances of the yokels and
mechanics--an American prototype of the merry ladies of Versailles
before the storm broke.

Among the foreign faces we miss the tall figure of Talleyrand whose
Philadelphia immoralities shocked the French Minister, and whose affairs
with a lady of color[534] excluded him from the Bingham drawing-room.
But there is Viscount de Noailles who had proposed the abolition of
feudal rights in the early days of the French Revolution; and Count
Tilley, the dissipated roué planning an elopement with his hostess’s
daughter with the connivance of her French governess; and Brissot de
Warville, enlightened political idealist of France soon to fall beneath
the knife of Robespierre. There, too, the Duc de La
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt who was redolent of courts, and the Baring
brothers of London, bankers, soon to marry the Bingham girls.

A veritable Vanity Fair, many clever, some brilliant, most skeptical of
republics, idolatrous of money and distinctions, and few capable of
discriminating between anarchy and democracy. Such was the social
atmosphere of the capital when the fight to determine whether this
should be a democratic or aristocratic republic was made.

We have an English-drawn picture of an evening at the British Legation
with many American guests gathered about the blazing fire. The Consul is
‘descanting on various subjects, public and private, as well as public
and private characters, sometimes with unbecoming levity, sometimes with
sarcasm even more unbecoming.’ An English guest was afraid that such
talk ‘could hardly fail to be offensive to ... many of the guests and to
the good taste of all.’ But could this English gentleman have listened
in on the conversations at Mrs. Bingham’s, Mrs. Morris’s, or Mrs.
Stewart’s, he might have concluded that these reflections on certain
public characters were altogether pleasing to the principal figures in
the society of the capital.[535] And could he have returned a little
later to find society chuckling over the display in the windows of a
newspaper office of the pictures of George III, Lord North, and General
Howe, he might have decided that there was a pronouncedly pro-English
party in America. Had he driven about the environs, among the hills, and
along the banks of the rivers, he would have seen country houses of the
aristocracy--Lansdowne, the seat of the Binghams; Bush Hill, where the
Adamses lived at first; Woodford, and other country places to suggest
similar seats in his own land. And had he been meandering in the
neighborhood of Horsehead’s or Chew’s Landing, seven or nine miles out,
he might have been startled at the familiar English picture of gentlemen
in bright coats, the pack in full cry after the fox.[536] And having
made these observations he could have found some extenuation in the
conversation in the British Minister’s house.

The snobbery of class consciousness entered into even the Dancing
Assembly which held forth at frequent intervals at O’Eller’s, in a
ballroom sixty feet square, with a handsome music gallery at one end,
and the walls papered after the French style.[537] The suppers at these
dances were mostly liquid,[538] and, since it is on record that on hot
summer days ladies and gentlemen could count on a cool iced punch with
pineapple juice to heighten the color, it may be assumed that the
Assembly suppers were a success.[539] The fact that the young ladies
sometimes took two pair of slippers, lest they dance one out, hints of
all-night revels.[540] And the expulsion from membership of a young
woman who had dared marry a jeweler tells its own tale.[541] At the
theater, which was usually crowded,[542] the aristocrats and democrats
met without mingling, for the different prices put every one in his or
her place, and if wine and porter were sold between acts to the people
in the pit ‘precisely as if they were in a tavern,’[543] the aristocracy
paid eight dollars for a box,[544] and an attaché, in full dress of
black, hair powdered and adjusted in the formal fashion, and bearing
silver candlesticks and wax candles, would meet Washington at the
entrance and conduct him with much gravity to the presidential box,
festooned with red drapery, and bearing the United States coat of
arms.[545] ‘The managers have been very polite to me and my family,’
wrote Mrs. Adams. ‘The actors came and informed us that a box is
prepared for us. The Vice-President thanked them for their civility, and
told them he would attend whenever the President did.’[546] On these
occasions, when the highest dignitaries of the State attended, a
stranger, dropped from the clouds, would have scarcely thought himself
in a republic. At the theater he would have found a military guard, with
an armed soldier at each stage door, with four or five others in the
gallery, and these assisted by the high constables of the city and
police officers.[547] There was no danger threatening but the occasion
offered the opportunity for pompous display so tempting to the society
of the city.

At first the statesmen had to content themselves with the old Southwark
Theater, which was dreary enough architecturally, lighted with oil lamps
without glasses, and with frequent pillars obstructing the view.[548]
But the best plays were presented, by good if not brilliant players, and
the aristocracy flirted and frolicked indifferent to the resentful
glances of the poorer classes in less favored seats. It reached the
climax of its career just as the new theater was about to open with the
then celebrated tragic actress, Mrs. Melmoth--and soon afterward, the
new Chestnut Street Theater opened its doors and raised its curtain. The
opening was an event--the public entranced. Two or three rows of boxes,
a gallery with Corinthian columns highly gilded and with a crimson
ribbon from capital to base. Above the boxes, crimson drapery--panels of
rose color--seats for two thousand. ‘As large as Covent Garden,’ wrote
Wansey, ‘and to judge by the dress and appearance of the company around
me, and the actors and scenery, I should have thought I had still been
in England.’[549] And such a company! There was Fennell, noted in Paris
for his extravagance, socially ambitious, and handsome, too, with his
six feet of stature, and ever-ready blush, about whom flocked the
literary youth of the town. Ladies--the finest trembled to his howls of
tragedy and simpered to his comedy. There, too, was Harwood, who had
married the granddaughter of Ben Franklin--a perfect gentleman; and
Mrs. Oldmixon, the spouse of Sir John, the ‘beau of Bath,’ who divided
honors in his day with Nash and Brummel; and Mrs. Whitlock, whom her
admirers insisted did not shine merely by the reflected glory of her
sister, Mrs. Siddons.

Quite as appealing to both aristocrat and democrat was the Circus at
Twelfth and Market Streets, established in 1792 by John Ricketts whose
credentials to society were in his erstwhile connection with the
Blackfriars Bridge Circus of London. Washington and Martha occasionally
witnessed the performances, quite soberly we may be sure, and the ‘court
party’ thus got its cue if any were needed. The proprietor riding two
horses at full gallop, Signor Spinacuta dancing daringly on a tight
rope, a clown tickling the risibilities of the crowd and mingling Mrs.
Bingham’s laughter with that of Mrs. Jones, her washwoman, women on
horseback doing stunts, and a trained horse that could leap over other
horses without balking--such were the merry nights under the dripping
candles.[550]

Then there was Bowen’s Wax Works and museum of curiosities and paintings
and the museum of Mr. Peale--and under the same roof with the latter the
reading-room of the Philosophical Society, where Jefferson was to find a
sanctuary in the days when he was to be anathema in the fashionable
drawing-rooms.

Frivolity, extravagance, exaggerated imitation of Old-World
dissipations, could scarcely have been suited to Jefferson’s taste; but
when he wished for society of another sort he could always run in on
Rittenhouse to discuss science, or on Dr. Rush who mixed politics with
powders, or, better still, he could drive out to ‘Stenton,’ the
beautiful country house of Dr. James Logan and his cultured wife,
approached by its glorious avenue of hemlocks. There he could sit under
the trees on the lawn or walk in the old-fashioned gardens or browse in
the fine library. There before the huge fireplace in the lofty
wainscoted rooms he could sit with the Doctor and discuss the
aristocratic tendencies of the times--and this he frequently did.
Despite his democracy, Jefferson lived like an aristocrat. He had found
a place in the country near the city where the house was ‘entirely
embosomed in high plane trees with good grass below,’ and there, on warm
summer days, he was wont to ‘breakfast, dine, write, read, and
entertain company’ under the trees. Even in its luxury, his was the home
of the philosopher. It was under these plane trees that he worked out
much of the strategy of his political battles.[551] Such was the social
background for the struggle of Hamilton and Jefferson--with little in it
to strengthen or encourage the latter in his fight.

CHAPTER VII

JEFFERSON MOBILIZES

When Jefferson assumed the task of organizing the opposition to the
policies of the Federalists all the forces most susceptible to
organization and intelligent direction were arrayed upon the other side.
The commercial interests, constituting Hamilton’s shock troops, had
their organizations in all the larger towns and in a crisis could be
speedily mobilized in the smaller. The various Chambers of Commerce were
Federalist clubs that could be summoned to action on a day’s notice. The
financial interests, always in close formation when not sleeping on
their arms, could be ordered to the front overnight. The live-wire
speculators whose fortunes had sprung up magically were on their toes to
do battle for the system that had enriched them, and eager to do the
bidding of the magician who had waved the wand. The greater part of the
intellectuals, lawyers, doctors, professors, preachers, were
enthusiastic champions of Hamiltonian policies--and because of their
prestige these were powerful factors in the moulding of opinion. And,
most serious of all, from Jefferson’s point of view, the major portion
of the press was either militantly Hamiltonian or indifferently
democratic. In the drawing-rooms were heard the sentiments of the
Chambers of Commerce--in glorification of materialism.

The rich, the powerful, and their retainers among the men of the
professions, were bound to the Federalist by a common interest in
property and a common fear of the masses. Since the policies of Hamilton
were frankly in the interests of the commercial classes, their
supporters were found largely in cities and towns of the commercial
North--within easy reach. A word from the chief to his leaders in the
capital--Ames and Cabot of Massachusetts; King, Schuyler, and Lawrence
of New York; Wolcott and Ellsworth of Connecticut; Morris, Bingham, and
Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania; Dayton of New Jersey; McHenry of Maryland;

[Illustration: FISHER AMES]

[Illustration: ROBERT GOODLOE HARPER]

[Illustration: GEORGE CABOT]

[Illustration: GOUVERNEUR MORRIS]

Smith and Harper of South Carolina--a word from these to the commercial
leaders in their States, and from these a word to those under
obligations to them--the small merchants operating on credit--and the
coffee-houses buzzed, the Chambers of Commerce acted, editors plied
their pens, preachers thundered from pulpits, and even at the social
functions they danced and flirted in the war paint of the party.

As Jefferson surveyed the field, he observed that his great antagonist’s
organization was but a consolidation of organizations previously
existent--and these imposing in their representation of wealth,
intellect, and social prestige. Hamilton could snap his fingers, and the
merchants came; could lift his hand, and the officers of the Cincinnati
were in the saddle; could wave his wand, and Fenno, Russell, and other
potent editors would instantly do his bidding, and the preachers of New
England scarcely waited for the sign to pass the devil by to damn
democracy.

But Jefferson had his eye on other forces, numerically stronger, if less
imposing. The farmers, comprising ninety per cent of the Nation, were
resentful of policies that pampered the merchant and left them out in
the cold. The private soldiers of the Revolution, less respected then
than when Webster made his Bunker Hill address, were embittered because
their securities had gone for a song while speculators had waxed wealthy
on the sacrifice. The more robust republicans were shocked at the
aristocratic affectations of their rulers and the tone of the Federalist
press. The excise law was hated in the remote sections, and unpopular
with the masses everywhere. The doctrine of implied powers had alarmed
the friends of State sovereignty. There was an undercurrent of feeling,
which Jefferson, with ear marvelously keen for rumblings, caught, that
laws were passed for the few at the expense of the many. And it was
being bruited abroad that in high quarters there was a disposition to
cultivate England to the neglect of France. Everywhere through the South
and West there was a bitter resentment of government by and for the
East.

Including all, and more important than any single one, there was a
fervent spirit of democracy running through the land, while the
Federalist leaders were openly denouncing the democrats. ‘Looking simply
at the field of American history,’ says Professor Anson D. Morse, ‘it
would be just to enumerate among the causes of the Democratic Party all
influences which from the beginning of the colonial period carried
forward at a really marvelous rate the democratization of the American
character.’[552] The country was really democratic before there was a
party of democracy. Jefferson knew it; Hamilton never suspected it, or,
suspecting, determined to override the sentiment. Therein lies the
original cause of the ultimate triumph of Jefferson, and the evidence
that the Federalist Party was foredoomed to ultimate failure.

But how to reach, galvanize, vitalize, organize this great widely
scattered mass of unimportant, inarticulate individuals--that was the
problem that confronted Jefferson. Ninety-five per cent of the people
lived in the country or in villages. Communication was difficult. There
were for them no Chambers of Commerce, no coffee-houses, no Faneuil
Halls. Thousands had no idea what was going on outside the boundaries of
their isolated farms and villages. If the masses in the cities were in
sympathy with democracy--and they were--comparatively few of these were
permitted to vote. Under the John Jay Constitution of New York, as late
as 1790, only 1303 of the 13,330 male residents of voting age in New
York City were allowed to vote with the property qualification
deliberately designed for their disfranchisement.[553] In Vermont alone,
of the New England States, no property qualification attached to the
suffrage, albeit in New Hampshire any male paying tax, however small,
was qualified. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut great
numbers were excluded by their poverty. Thus, in the beginning, the
thousands of hewers of wood and drawers of water in the towns and cities
of the North were lost to all practical purposes. But all of the common
folk were not disfranchised, and they who had the vote were splendid
material for a militant organization. They had a genius for practical
politics when under the orders of a drill master, and were not too
fastidious for the grime and sweat of the polling-places. One of these
was worth a dozen dandies from Mrs. Bingham’s circle on election
day.[554] There was abundant material for a party--if it could be
assembled and coordinated.

As Jefferson’s mild eye surveyed the field, he found in almost every
State local parties, some long in existence, fighting for popular rights
as they understood them; but their fights had been waged on local
issues. The party he was to create was to fight in precisely the same
cause--on the national field. Here, then, was something already at hand.
Why not consolidate these local parties into one great national
organization, and broaden the issue to include the problems of both
State and Nation? The local leaders? Why not make them field marshals in
command of the Massachusetts division, the North Carolina division,
Pennsylvania and Maryland divisions?

The philosopher-politician took up his pen, for he had learned in the
organization of the Revolution what could be done through
correspondence. Out under the plane trees he was to sit at his table
writing--to Sam Adams, to Rutledge, to John Taylor, to Willie Jones.
Under his roof and at his table conferences with Madison, Monroe, Giles,
Bloodworth, became commonplace. ‘Oh, I should note that Mr. Jefferson,
with more than Parisian politeness, waited on me at my chamber this
morning,’ wrote Maclay. ‘He talked politics, mostly the French
difference and the whale fishery.’[555] A very cautious approach, we may
be sure, for the master politician and psychologist thoroughly
understood the little vanities, prejudices, and weaknesses of that
singularly suspicious democrat. Quite different would have been a
conversation with Gallatin or Monroe. Taking an inventory of prospective
lieutenants in the States, and comparing the material with that against
him, he could not but have realized his disadvantage. Brilliant men are
prone to flutter about the rich and powerful, and nothing succeeds like
success with the strong. No chance for him to ride to war surrounded by
such scintillating company as that which encircled Hamilton--but here
and there was a man who shimmered in the sun.

In Massachusetts, home of Ames, Cabot, and Sedgwick, Jefferson could
count on two men who surpassed any of this famous group in service in
the making of the Republic, but, strange as it may seem in perspective,
old Sam Adams and John Hancock were not in good standing with the staid
business men of Boston. Their republicanism was too robust, their
devotion to the principles of the Declaration too uncompromising for the
materialists, who appeared, for the most part, on the battle-field after
the fight was won, to claim the fruits of the victory. Sam Adams had
lost his race for Congress to Fisher Ames who had dallied with his books
when the ragged Continentals were struggling in the field. When the
clever politicians of the Essex Junto exchanged letters, these erstwhile
Revolutionary heroes of the dark days were seldom mentioned with
respect; but they had their following in the streets and among those who
had shared in the perils they had faced. Upon these two Jefferson could
rely.

But there were others, more active and militant in the Boston of those
days in the building of the party of democracy. Foremost in the fight,
and most annoying to the ruling oligarchy, was the brilliant Dr. Charles
Jarvis, who was a powerful orator[556] whose social status, on a par
with that of Otis, raised him above the condescension or contempt of the
moneyed aristocracy, and whose ability was beyond the reach of
disparagement.[557] Through many years of leadership in the legislature
he ‘had made the rights of man his pole star.’[558] No one did so much
to organize and vitalize the masses, for he could pass from the
legislative hall to the public platform without any diminution of power.
As in the former he could match the best in argument, on the latter no
one knew better how to direct the storm. ‘Jarvis’s electioneering
influence in this town is very great,’ wrote John Quincy Adams to his
father.[559]

As a file leader, organizer, agitator, he had powerful support in the
robust, rough-hewn rope-maker, Ben Austin, who wrestled under the rules
of catch-as-catch-can, mingled with the element that Ames and Cabot
considered vulgar, and under the signature of ‘Honestus’ dealt telling
blows in letters that the mechanic could understand. ‘Rabid essays,’
they were--judged by the standard of the élite.[560] Sam Adams, John
Hancock, Austin, and Jarvis--these were the Jeffersonian leaders in the
Old Bay State. Less aggressive, but often valuable, was James Sullivan,
orator, leader of the Bar, letter-writer and pamphleteer, whose vigorous
mind, powers of application, and indomitable courage were to render
yeoman service.

In the other New England States the democrats were less fortunate. In
Connecticut, ruled with an iron hand by an oligarchy of preachers,
professors, and reactionary politicians, the prospects were dark enough,
but even there the Jeffersonians found a leader capable of coping with
the best of the opposition in the hard-hitting, resourceful Abraham
Bishop, who was a veritable scandal and stench to the gentlemen of the
cloth and of the counting-room. Nowhere in America was such an amazing
combination of Church and State. Election days were celebrated with
religious services, and the sermons were party harangues, described by
the irreverent Bishop as consisting of ‘a little of governor, a little
of Congress, much of politics, and a very little of religion--a strange
compote, like a carrot pie, having so little ingredients that the cook
must christen it.’[561] The ruling Council of the State was so organized
that the system was an impregnable stronghold beyond the reach of the
people. Nowhere on American soil anything so un-American or
unrepublican. It did its work behind doors closed and barred. The
Congregational clergy were the Cossacks of Connecticut Federalism,
laying the lash of their furious denunciation on the backs of critics.
It required more than a majority to rule under this system, and more
than ordinary courage to challenge its pretensions.[562] The good Doctor
Dwight of Yale was busy damning democrats to perdition. A little later
Gideon Granger and Ephraim Kirby were to take their place beside Bishop,
and with the aid of the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford and the ‘New
London Bee’ to give blow for blow. But the fighting was against
desperate odds, the Federalists strongly entrenched on a steep hill, the
ascent to which could be raked with canister.

‘The masses are disfranchised,’ cried Bishop. ‘Yes, poor porpoises,’
sneered Noah Webster the Federalist who was soon to become editor of a
New York paper launched by Hamilton.[563] But Bishop and his little
coterie were fighters, and Jefferson took them to his heart.

In New Hampshire, Jefferson had to bide his time. Among the members of
the Senate no one had a better record of unselfish Revolutionary service
than John Langdon. Practical, hard-headed, unimaginative, a lover of
money, he had accumulated some wealth in mercantile pursuits. Fond of
company, pleasing and unaffected in his manner, impressive in
appearance, his senatorial toga became him well.[564] When Hamilton’s
financial plans were pending, he gave them his support, and, alas,
profited not a little, but from the beginning the keen-eyed Jefferson
discerned the traits that were ultimately to separate him from the
Hamiltonians. Within two years Langdon had assumed the leadership of the
Jeffersonians in New Hampshire, but as late as 1798, according to the
recollection of a famous Jacksonian, ‘with the exception of Langdon and
a few sterling patriots there could not be said to be in this State a
party favorable to the principles of Thomas Jefferson.’[565]

In Vermont the situation was somewhat similar, albeit the opportunities
there were greater in the absence of a property qualification for the
vote. There, too, was Matthew Lyon, of whom we shall hear much, whose
fanatical devotion to democracy was a heritage from a father who had
paid the penalty of his patriotism on the gallows in Ireland; whose
hatred of aristocracy was but a reaction to the memory of his days of
poverty. Possessing a genius for business, and succeeding, he was
irresistibly drawn to politics, where his Celtic humor, his energy,
impetuosity, and sincerity surrounded him with friends. His radicalism
became a flaming torch that lighted up the granite hills. Not for
nothing was he born in the land of the Donnybrook Fair, for he loved a
fight or a frolic, and he was to have much of both. Enlisting in the
Jeffersonian fight in the beginning, he was to fight unceasingly, take
blows, and know the degradation of a cell. There was a degree of felony
in democracy in the New England of the last days of the eighteenth
century.

In Rhode Island, Jefferson sought vainly for an effective leader, though
the field was fertile because of the lingering hostility to
centralization and the poverty and debts of the people.

Leaving New England, the leader found much to interest him in New York.
There was that sturdy, indomitable champion of State rights, and
inveterate enemy of aristocracy, George Clinton, an uncompromising
republican of Cromwellian audacity and decision, with an unequaled hold
on the confidence and affections of the people. There, too, were the
Livingstons, mortally offended by the political stupidity of Hamilton in
defeating the brilliant Chancellor’s aspirations for the Senate. Had
this numerous and powerful family a conference one night to discuss the
affront and to emerge a unit in opposition?[566] Whatever the cause, the
effect was clear--the Livingston clan was only too eager to join the
insurgents, and this was not lost on the astute politician of
Monticello. Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, convincing orator, erudite
lawyer, profound statesman, fascinating personality, possessing the
glamour of wealth and tradition so important to a Jeffersonian leader in
New York with its commercial princes and barons of the soil--here was a
man to be cultivated with all the finesse of which Jefferson was
capable. The master of Monticello could speak the language of the master
of the New York manor house.

And Burr? Just what Jefferson expected of Burr is a mystery unsolvable.
He appreciated his brilliancy and professional prestige, but were the
penetrating eyes blind to the weaknesses of character? Just a little
while before Burr had joined with Hamilton against Clinton, and
Federalist votes had sent him to the Senate. There, to be sure, he had
arrayed himself on the popular side, but could he be relied upon? He had
played a lone hand, holding aloof from the Clintonians and the
Livingstons, and dining often at the table of Hamilton; but that he was
singled out for assiduous cultivation we may be sure. No one was closer
to Jefferson than Dr. Rush when, in the early fall of 1792, the latter
wrote a wheedling note to Burr. ‘Your friends everywhere,’ wrote the
Doctor, ‘look to you to take an active part in removing the monarchical
rubbish of our government. It is time to speak out or we are
undone.’[567] Previous to this, Jefferson had been most courteous in
permitting the charming Senator from New York to examine papers in the
archives of the State Department until Washington interposed.[568]

Clinton, Livingston, and Burr--a triumvirate that caught Jefferson’s
fancy; but he was interested in opportunities in New York having no
direct connection with any of the three. The less imaginative Maclay had
seen in a parade of the Sons of Tammany only ‘a grotesque scene,’ with
the members ‘in Indian dresses,’ and while he had addressed them at a
dinner he had concluded that ‘there is some kind of a scheme’ which was
‘not well digested as yet.’[569] Jefferson made it his business to learn
more. He found that the strange organization was an answer, in part, to
the Cincinnati which stood, in the popular mind, for aristocracy; that
it was rabidly republican and wholly democratic; that it sympathized
with the revolutionists in France, and resented the property
disqualifications of our own Revolutionary soldiers for the suffrage,
while the wealthy, notoriously friendly to England when these soldiers
fought, were being accorded political recognition and place. Here was a
society after his own heart, here a method to make the masses felt--a
combination and coördination of their efforts. All over the land the
hundreds of thousands of inarticulate, unimportant, ineffective,
commonplace friends of democracy, and in one city these had been given a
voice, an arm, a rostrum. It was not ‘grotesque’ to Jefferson. He did
not join these imitation red men in their wigwam, nor drink of their
ale, but John Pintard the chief became his friend and idolater, and with
him the great man talked. The non-partisan society grew more and more
democratic, soon intensely partisan, and at Tammany dinners the welkin
rang to the toast to ‘Thomas Jefferson.’ New York became a cock-pit from
the start.

But when the Jeffersonian board of strategy turned to New Jersey, the
problem was more difficult. No outstanding leader, strong in the faith,
stood ready to mount and ride. There, true, the Janus-faced Jonathan
Dayton was ready to flirt with any force that might serve his personal
ends. He was a speculator--and worse. Supporting and profiting from the
Hamilton policies, he smiled on the Jeffersonians significantly.

In Pennsylvania there was the nucleus of a party and virile men to lead
it--men like Mifflin, who, despite his drunkenness, was popular and a
power; like Maclay, who had the force that intense conviction brings in
spite of temperamental handicaps; men like Alexander J. Dallas,
aggressive, daring, able; men utterly unfit for

[Illustration: ALBERT GALLATIN]

[Illustration: EDWARD LIVINGSTON]

[Illustration: WILLIAM BRANCH GILES]

[Illustration: JAMES MADISON]

the rough-and-tumble combats of practical politics whose characters and
abilities made them potent in the fight--like Rush the physician,
Rittenhouse the scientist, Logan the philosopher, and, looming above the
tops of the Western forests, a young giant and genius, Albert Gallatin.

In Delaware, nothing; in Maryland, John Francis Mercer, fighter and
intriguer, sapper and miner, agitator and organizer, with whom democracy
was a religion, Hamilton a devil, and Jefferson a saint. In Virginia, a
sparkling galaxy, Madison, Monroe, the accomplished Pendleton, the
resourceful Giles, the extraordinary John Taylor of Caroline.

In North Carolina, Jefferson found a leader cut from his own pattern, an
aristocratic democrat, a radical rich man, a consummate politician who
made the history that lesser men wrote without mentioning his name,
Willie Jones of Halifax. His broad acres, his wealth, his high social
standing were the objects of his pride, and he lived in luxury and wore
fine linen while the trusted leader of the masses, mingling familiarly
with the most uncouth back-woodsman, inviting, however, only the select
to partake of the hospitality of his home. There was more than a touch
of the Virginia aristocrat of the time in his habits--he raced, gambled,
hunted like a gentleman. Like Jefferson he was a master of the art of
insinuation, a political and social reformer. He loved liberty, hated
intolerance, and prevented the ratification of the Constitution in the
first State Convention because of the absence of a Bill of Rights. There
he exerted a subtle influence that was not conspicuous on the floor. If
he was neither orator nor debater, he was a strategist, disciplinarian,
diplomat, who fought with velvet gloves--with iron within. A
characteristic portrait would show him puffing at his pipe in the midst
of his farmer followers, suggesting, insinuating, interspersing his
political conversation with discussions of the crops, farming
implements, hunting dogs, horses. An Anthony in arousing the passions by
subtle hints, he was an Iago in awakening suspicions.[570] Here was the
man with the stuff that Jefferson required, generous and lovable in
social relations, in politics relentless, hard as iron. He was the
Jefferson of North Carolina--‘a man ... the object of more hatred and
more adoration than has ever since lived’ in that State.[571] Nor did he
stand alone without assistants, for there was Nathaniel Macon, honest,
intense, man of the soil who loved his few acres, his dogs and horses,
and his class; and there was Timothy Bloodworth whose fierce adherence
to democracy and fanatical hatred of privilege may have been a poignant
reflection of his poverty. Jones, the aristocratic lord of many acres;
Macon the representative of the small farmer; Bloodworth the artisan,
smithy at the forge, watchmaker, wheelwright, as well as preacher,
doctor, and cultivator of the soil: his radicalism was born in suffering
and in suffering he had grown.[572]

In Georgia, Jefferson had equal cause for satisfaction. There were small
farms, poor industrious men, ardent republicans, with the frontiersmen’s
natural democracy and the debtors’ suspicions of concentrated wealth
allied with governmental power. And there to lead them was James
Jackson, idol of the people, a boisterous, impassioned orator whose
eloquence often gave more heat than light. Historians have been prone to
sneer at him, but this man who came as a child from Devonshire in
England to take his place three years later in the army of Washington,
and to receive the keys of Savannah from the British ten years after his
arrival, was something more than an upstart. He who refused the
governorship of his State when twenty-one, and six years after leaving
his English home, to take his chances in the field, was scarcely an
object for jest. He was a power as a leader and was to strike Titan
blows in the cause that Jefferson nationally led.[573]

In South Carolina, dominated by rich commercial Charleston, Jefferson
long looked in vain for a leader for his cause. A friend of the
Pinckneys and the Rutledges, they held aloof or joined their fortunes
with Hamilton. Only toward the close did Charles Pinckney, the most
eloquent, resourceful, and magnetic of his family, part company with his
cousins to lunge and lash with gusty joy for the man of Monticello.

Such were the leaders on whom Jefferson was dependent in welding the
popular parties in the various States into a strong national army
marching in step, with a common policy and purpose.

III

Had Jefferson been even richer than Hamilton in brilliant leaders, he
would not have made the latter’s fatal blunder of assuming them to be
enough. He was too much the practical politician to be impressed with a
brilliant staff of officers--without privates. He set out to arouse the
masses, mobilize, drill, and lead them. Above all, it was his intention
to lead. Within a year, Ames was to observe with desperation and disgust
the divisions among the Federalists and to comment that ‘Virginia moves
in a solid column ... the discipline of the [Jefferson] party is as
severe as the Prussian’ and ‘deserters are not spared.’[574]

The first necessity was to get the men to discipline. A vast number of
the masses had no conception of their political power and were
indifferent to the vote. Thousands over the country were disfranchised
by property qualifications, and one of the prime purposes of the new
party would be to break these down. The immediate problem was to awaken
the interest of those who, having the vote, did not appreciate the
privilege. With many of these, this was due to the lack of political
consciousness; with others, to the feeling that it was useless for the
unimportant to attempt to influence governmental action. To the latter
it would be necessary to prove the possibilities of the concerted action
of large numbers of uninfluential men--and there was the Society of
Tammany pointing the way. No squeamishness in the mobilization
either--the possession of the vote was enough. Soon, very soon, strange,
disturbing things would be seen even in New England--cabinetmakers,
shoemakers, mechanics perking up on politics, with evidence of
organization here and there. Federalist leaders would soon be
complaining that organization was conspiracy against the ‘government.’
In New Hampshire they would be calling those uniting for political
action ‘insurgents.’ The insolence of the Jeffersonians appealing to the
people for support would be frowned upon as degrading. ‘Of course,’ said
a Massachusetts paper, ‘there can be but two parties in a country--the
friends of order and its foes.’[575]

And such people! The very riff-raff that one would never invite into
one’s parlor--‘desperate, embarrassed, unprincipled, disorderly,
ambitious, disaffected, morose men.’[576] Were not these the
propertyless who wasted their earnings in a grogshop?[577] And who were
these petty agitators? Who but ‘Jacobins’ holding forth ‘in the
bar-rooms of Rhode Island and Vermont and trying to stir up
opposition.’[578] Wretched offal after all--but what a pity that
Jefferson should countenance, least of all cultivate, such people. ‘Mr.
Jefferson appears to have shown rather too much of a disposition to
cultivate vulgar prejudices,’ wrote Wolcott, and ‘accordingly he will
become popular in the ale-houses.’[579]

Miserable ‘Jacobins!’ Disreputable clowns of the bar-rooms! And such
unthinkable methods! Here--there--everywhere, when a few men could be
gathered together, some one appeared to deliver free lectures on
practical politics. And such subjects! ‘Discipline’; ‘How to Make Men
Follow their File Leaders.’[580]

In arousing and consolidating the widely scattered democrats, Jefferson
instantly appreciated the importance of a national newspaper to the end
that the farmer in Georgia, the planter in Virginia, the frontiersman in
western Pennsylvania, the mechanic in Boston, the shopmen of Rhode
Island, and the reds of Tammany sipping their ale in the New York
tavern, might all talk the same language at the same time. True, the
Jeffersonians were not without able editorial support. There was Thomas
Greenleaf pounding away vigorously in the ‘New York Journal’; Thomas
Adams hammering merrily in the Boston ‘Independent Chronicle’; and in
Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Bache was making a mild show of
opposition in his ‘Pennsylvania Daily Advertiser.’ But these were
independent supporters, not ‘organs,’ and it was an ‘organ’ that was
needed--something to meet the Hamilton organ which was becoming
increasingly offensive to the democrats.

In estimating the sincerity of the simulated shock of the Federalists
when the Secretary of State encouraged the establishment of a paper to
support his principles, it is well to bear in mind that the Secretary
of the Treasury had done precisely the same thing two years before.
Then, as always, politicians were shocked at the turpitude of their
opponents. Just how John Fenno came to establish the ‘Gazette of the
United States’ is an impenetrable mystery. He was in his thirty-eighth
year when he appeared at the home of Rufus King, perhaps the ablest of
Hamilton’s supporters, with a letter of introduction from Christopher
Gore, a member of the inner council of Boston Federalism who afterward
waxed wealthy on speculation in the funds. The record is meager as to
Fenno’s previous career beyond the revelation that he was born in Boston
and taught for several years in the Old South Writing School. In the
letter to King, we have the assurance of Gore that Fenno’s ‘literary
accomplishments are very handsome’; that Gore had known him long and
could testify that ‘his honor and fidelity are unquestionable’; and,
strangely enough, that ‘his talents as the editor of a public paper are
unrivaled in this commonwealth.’ As John Russell was then editing the
‘Columbian Centinel,’ the tribute would seem strained but for the
intimation that the strength and sparkle of that able journal was due to
Fenno’s contributions; and since the ‘Centinel’ suffered no apparent
loss on his leaving Boston, even this theory seems absurd.

If his origin is a mystery, the purpose of his call on King was made
clear enough in the letter of introduction. The ‘unrivaled’ editor
sought encouragement for the establishment of a newspaper through
arrangements for ‘obtaining the patronage of Congress’ in the printing
of its journals and official papers. If something of the sort could be
arranged, Gore was positive that Fenno would prove ‘capable of
performing essential service in the cause of Federalism and good
government.’[581]

The conversation was evidently agreeable, assurances of some sort were
manifestly given, and within a few weeks the ‘Gazette of the United
States’ was making its appearance. That Hamilton, who was intimately
identified with King, was consulted, we may he sure; and within four
years the relations between Fenno and Hamilton were so confidential that
the former felt no hesitancy in appealing in a letter to the latter for
a loan of two thousand dollars. Months before, the editor had submitted
a schedule of his debts and credits to the head of the Treasury. The
two had talked over the financial difficulties of the paper. The appeal
for the loan was not lightly brushed aside. Hamilton wrote to King of
the troubles of ‘poor Fenno,’ and proposed that if King would raise a
thousand dollars in New York, he would himself undertake to raise a
similar amount in Philadelphia. It is to be assumed that the money was
raised, for the paper continued to appear. It is significant that in his
letter to Hamilton, the editor wrote as one who had rendered faithful
service and was entitled to consideration.[582]

From the beginning Fenno had liked to think of himself as the editor of
‘the court journal.’ Possessing considerable merit, it is impossible to
turn its yellowing pages even now without being oppressed with a sense
of sycophancy and snobbery. There was a fawning on wealth and kow-towing
to power in most of the leading articles. The tone was pronouncedly
pro-English and all Hamiltonian. Democracy was anathema. The critics of
the policies of the leader of the Federalists were inciters to disorder.
All the influence of the Federalist leaders was exerted to throw all
possible governmental patronage into his office.

Hamilton had his paper before Jefferson got his own.[583] It was to meet
these conditions that James Madison and Governor Henry Lee conceived the
notion of persuading Philip Freneau, ‘the poet of the Revolution,’ to
establish a newspaper in Philadelphia. This fiery petrel of democracy
was eking out a mere existence on a New York newspaper when Madison, who
had been his roommate at Princeton, made the proposal. This was due in
part to personal affection and the feeling that the poet’s sufferings
and losses in the Revolution entitled him to some consideration, but in
large measure to the purity of his republicanism and his zeal for the
popular cause. ‘I entertained hopes,’ wrote Madison later, ‘that a free
paper, meant for general circulation, and edited by a man of genius of
republican principles and a friend of the Constitution, would be some
antidote to the doctrines and discourses circulated in favor of Monarchy
and Aristocracy.’[584] With the view to giving some slight protection to
a precarious enterprise, Madison sought a clerkship for his college
friend in one of the governmental departments. Nor was it to Jefferson
that he first applied.[585] The outcome, however, was the offer of a
clerkship of foreign languages in the State Department at a salary of
two hundred and fifty dollars a year. He accepted, went to Philadelphia,
and established the ‘Federal’ or ‘National Gazette.’

The leaders of the new party were plainly pleased with the prospect.
Jefferson himself did not scruple to solicit subscribers among his
Virginia neighbors. Henry Lee, who was to desert to the enemy later,
sent in subscriptions through Madison, in a letter rejoicing because the
paper ‘is rising fast into reputation,’ and lamenting because of the
precariousness of its arrival.[586] ‘His paper in the opinion here,’
wrote Madison acknowledging Lee’s letter, ‘justifies the expectations of
his friends, and merits the diffusive circulation they have endeavored
to procure it.’[587]

The Philadelphians awoke with a start to find that an entirely new note
had been struck in political journalism. Within a few weeks, the
‘Federal Gazette’ was being extensively copied in the papers over the
country. Bache in his ‘Advertiser’ caught something of Freneau’s fire
and audacity, and began to take a firmer, bolder tone. Fenno found
himself forced to defend himself and his friends in almost every issue.
Men and even women scanned its columns eagerly and with emotions
determined by their political prepossessions. Within a few months the
poet-editor was being hotly debated by the two leading papers of Boston.
‘As all the friends of civil liberty wish at all times to be acquainted
with every question which appears to regard the public weal,’ said the
‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘a great number of gentlemen in this and
neighboring towns have subscribed for the Federal Gazette published by
Mr. Philip Freneau at Philadelphia; and it is hoped that Freneau’s
Gazette, which is said to be printed under the eye of that established
patriot, Thomas Jefferson, will be generally taken in the New England
States.’[588] What! wrote a correspondent in the ‘Centinel,’ is this an
avowal that Jefferson is the real editor? A paper hostile to religion
and government! ‘Surely T. Adams ought to be well founded in his
affections before he brings forward Mr. Jefferson as the patron of such
a Gazette.’[589]

Within a short time Freneau had aroused the savage rage of the
Federalist leaders and the zealous loyalty of the democrats everywhere.
Here was a man who was not awed by power, and, brushing aside mild
criticism and vapory innuendoes, struck hard and mentioned names. Soon
the Jeffersonian farmers in Georgia were talking what he was writing,
and Jeffersonian editors generally were following his lead. In the
bar-rooms of Rhode Island men of no consequence were reading the paper
aloud over their mugs, and David Rittenhouse in the library of the
Philosophical Society was chuckling over its vicious thrusts. Just then
‘friends of the Constitution’ among the Federalists began to regret a
certain provision in the Bill of Rights and to begin the slow incubation
of the Sedition Law. That incomparable political preacher, Timothy
Dwight, began to denounce papers as the ‘vice’ of the people in the new
settlements, and another pious gentleman of the cloth thundered from the
pulpit: ‘Many of you in spite of all the advice and friendly warnings of
your religious and political fathers have taken and continue to take and
read Jacobin papers, full of all manner of mischief and subtlety of the
Devil.’[590] The hand-to-hand fighting of Hamilton and Jefferson was
forced by the lusty blows of Freneau, who deserves to be something more
than a name in the Plutarchian struggle.

Philip Freneau had richly earned the right to hold and express opinions
concerning the destiny of his country. Many years before the Revolution,
his Huguenot ancestors had come over from France, and for years his was
a well-known name in the best circles of New York City where he was
born. His childhood had been passed on the thousand-acre estate of his
father near the battle-field of Monmouth, in a fine old mansion
fashioned after the colonial style, with a great hall running through
it, and large porticoes commanding a view of a beautiful country. The
house was served by many domestic slaves. Near by rose Beacon Hill,
thickly timbered, and from the peak could be seen the lower bay and the
blue waters of the Atlantic. There his early childhood was passed under
the tender care and training of a mother of rare intelligence. From her
he caught a love of poetry, and of the things of which poetry is made.
The spirit of his liberty-loving ancestors was strong within him. He had
all the impulsiveness, the fighting courage of the Gael. When not at his
studies, he wandered alone into the woods and upon the hill where he
could brood dreamily upon the mystery of the sea. On the site where the
battle of Monmouth was to be fought, he began the study of Greek and
Latin in his tenth year. Even as a child he had a hot passionate hatred
of oppression, an unfathomable contempt for hypocrisy, and an ardent
love of beauty. All this he put into childish verse.

When he entered Princeton (Nassau Hall), great events were beginning to
unfold. The patriots of Massachusetts, protesting against an English
law, had been declared rebels, the leading offenders had been ordered
across the sea for trial, the troops of General Gates had marched into
Boston. The college was a hot-bed of sedition. That superb patriot, John
Witherspoon, was president, and among the students who gathered in the
evening in the room that Freneau shared with Madison, were ‘Light Horse’
Harry Lee, Aaron Burr, William Bradford, destined to close an
exceptionally promising career as a member of Washington’s Cabinet, and
Brockholst Livingston.

Nothing that Freneau ever said or did in after-life that was not
foreshadowed at Princeton can be found. His tongue was sharp, and his
pen dripped the vitriol of satire. He wrote much verse, and long before
the Declaration of Independence, he had a hatred of kings. Even thus
early in his ‘Pyramid of Kings,’ he made profession of his democracy.

‘Millions of slaves beneath their labors fainted,
Who were here doomed to toil incessantly,
And years elapsed while groaning myriads strove
To raise this mighty tomb--and but to hide
The worthless bones of an Egyptian king.’

Under the encouragement of Witherspoon, all the patriotic fire within
him burst into flame.

Long before Washington, Adams, or Franklin were dreaming of a republic
and absolute independence, this was his dream. During the time he was
supposed to be poring over Coke and Blackstone, he was feverishly plying
his pen writing political articles for the press. He was a rebel by
nature. He wrote deliberately to arouse a burning hatred of tyranny and
a militant love of liberty. He sang the songs of hate, and read and
studied the Roman and French satirists to perfect himself in the art he
was to use so effectively later. When the war began he threw himself
into the struggle. A pathetic little figure, this--a mere wisp of a boy
charging on ahead to smash the connection with England, only to find
that the other patriots had no such thought. They were fighting for
rights within the empire, not for independence. Even then he was too
radical for his times or the comfort of his associates. They were
thinking of rights, and he of liberty--and in sheer disgust he sailed
away to Jamaica.

There was the illusion of liberty on the sea and there was beauty and
poetry, and there was opportunity, too, to prepare himself for the part
he was to play a little later. It was always his joy to be prepared. On
that voyage he perfected himself in the science of navigation. In the
languorous air of Santa Cruz he luxuriated in the beauties of nature at
its richest, and sought to transcribe to paper all he saw and felt. He
had an irresistible impulse for creation--a poet’s passion for
expression.[591] But even here he was a rebel born to protest. Slavery
at its worst was all about him--and he hit it hard in his descriptions.

It was while a guest of the Governor of Bermuda, writing love sonnets to
the fair daughter of his host, that the news came of the Declaration of
Independence. This was the sort of rebellion Freneau could understand,
and he hurried home to find that a battle had been fought at his very
door, and that the cushions of the Tennant church he had attended had
been stained with blood. Instantly he took out letters of marque and
reprisal from the Continental Congress, and put to sea to battle with
the British ships. Plunging patriotically with all his means he had a
ship built for his own use, named it the _Aurora_, and sought the enemy.
In a battle his ship was struck, and it was as a prisoner on the deck of
an enemy vessel that he saw his ship, his fortune, sink beneath the
waves. The rest was torture and a living death. The Scorpion on which he
was confined was a miserable old hulk converted into a prison ship,
reeking with foul smells and rank disease, and into this he was packed
where the accommodations were not fit for swine. One by one he saw his
fellows perish from disease and neglect, listened in the night to their
shrieks of pain and dying groans. When verging on death, he was
transferred to the _Hunter_ which some sardonic soul had dubbed a
‘Hospital Prison Ship.’ Its horrors have come down to us in his own
poems with its bitter execration of the Hessian doctor.

‘Here uncontrolled he exercised his trade,
And grew experienced by the deaths he made;
By frequent blows we from his cane endured
He killed at least as many as he cured.’

At length he was exchanged. Leaving the vessel with a raging fever, with
pains in his joints that made walking a torture, he turned toward home,
going through the woods ‘for fear of terrifying the neighbors with [his]
ghastly looks.’[592] This was the background against which he was to
view Washington’s policy of neutrality in the war between France and
England. He hated England from that hour to his death.

Broken in health almost beyond hope of redemption, his ship sunk, his
money gone, the war still on, he turned to his other weapon and took up
the pen. ‘The Prison Ship’ helped to fire the patriots shivering about
the cold camps. The poem of contemptuous imprecation, in imitation of
Horace, on the treason of Arnold, fanned their wrath. That on the
victory of Paul Jones heartened the downcast. Poem followed poem, copied
throughout the country, many published on strips of paper and
distributed through the army. Some were posted in conspicuous places
where they could be committed to memory. Paine wrote ‘The Crisis’ in
prose, Freneau wrote of the crisis in verse; both were a tonic for the
wavering. Even Washington did not then speak of him as ‘that rascal
Freneau’ and that characterization even from Washington cannot rob him
of the glory of having been ‘the Poet of the Revolution’ who gave his
health, his entire fortune, almost his life, and all his heart to the
cause of liberty.

The close of the war found him in New York barely existing on crumbs
from the table of an editor. His was a familiar figure in the
Merchants’ Coffee-House at Wall and Water Streets where leading men
congregated. The problem then was to get the necessities of life, and
literary work was not then included among the means. This was the
condition in which Madison found him. He knew the story of his poet
friend, and thus it came about that the plan was made for the ‘Federal
Gazette.’ He was ideally fitted for the task. It called for one who
could write in the language of the people, could wield a scorpion lash,
whose heart was in the cause--and no greater master of invective was in
view, no keener satirist. He required no tutoring, and he would accept
no orders. He was a rebel still, a radical, a crusader for democracy,
who looked with amusement on ‘aristocracy,’ with hatred on monarchy. He
was an original thinker, a breaker of idols, an iconoclastic genius. He
had the wit, the keenness, the quickness, the felicity of his French
blood, the stern firmness of the Huguenot mind. He was a gusty warrior
with a lusty blade and he kept it shining in the sun.

Soon Philadelphia found him a familiar figure in its streets--a rather
little man with slightly stooped shoulders, thin yet muscular, who
walked briskly like one who knew where he was going. In his office at
his work he was more imposing, for there one could note the high
intellectual brow, the dark gray deep-set eyes that sometimes blazed
under the slightly drooping lids. Usually pensive in repose, his face
lighted with animation when he talked. His manners were courteous and
refined and women found him interesting and gallant. Nor was this
democrat a Marat in dress--he wore the small-clothes, the long hose, the
buckled shoes, and cocked hat, long after others had accepted less
picturesque fashions. He had no vanity, no ambition for place or power,
and no fear of either. He wore no man’s collar and he was no man’s man.
He was a law unto himself.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GAGE OF BATTLE

There was little in the reception of Hamilton’s famous ‘Report on
Manufactures’ during the congressional session of 1791-92 to foreshadow
the part it was to play in American politics. Bristling with facts and
figures laboriously assembled, the plea for protection and bounties for
manufacturers was plausibly presented. Foreseeing the hostility of the
farmers, the most persuasive arguments were reserved for them. The
diversification of industry would increase the demand for the products
of the farm; the elimination of foreign competition would decrease the
cost of manufactured goods; and the certainty of immigration would
prevent any labor shortage with agriculturists. Better still, the
factories would afford the farmers an opportunity to put their wives and
children to work in the mills.[593] Four sevenths of the employees of
the cotton mills of England were women and children, and many of the
latter of ‘tender age.’[594] In the making of nails and spikes young
boys were able to do the work.[595] As to the constitutional objection,
that was disposed of by the doctrine of implied powers.

The newspapers, including Freneau’s, ran the report in full, but nothing
came of it for the moment. No one was shocked at the idea of working
women and children of tender age. After a while a writer in Freneau’s
paper warned that a new field was being opened ‘for favoritism,
influence and monopoly.’[596] Madison wrote to Pendleton that ‘if
Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done with money ...
the Government is no longer a limited one.’[597] But this ‘Report’
resulted in less controversy than any that had preceded. There was no
storm--just a bare stirring of the leaves.

But Hamilton was not content to allude to brighter worlds--he led the
way. Long before, he had been impressed with the industrial
possibilities of beautiful Passaic Falls in New Jersey, midway between
New York and Newark at the very door of the market. Just how long he was
in interesting moneyed men in his ambitious plans for a great national
manufactory there, we do not know. But even before the publication of
his ‘Report,’ he had personally appeared with others interested before
the New Jersey Legislature to ‘elucidate anything that may appear
obtuse’ in the request for a charter.[598] It was only a little trip
from Philadelphia to Trenton. Then, one summer day, a group of men
appeared at the Falls to purchase land and select the precise sites for
the various mills, and the small but masterful figure of Hamilton was
the center of the group. All sorts of things would be manufactured,
cotton mills predominating, and it would become--this city of
Paterson--the industrial capital of the Republic. Major l’Enfant was
summoned to the task of making this industrial beehive beautiful, and he
responded.[599] Soon there were grumblings among the farmers, outraged
because the charter that Hamilton’s influence had secured gave the
company the right to dig canals on any man’s land. The other
manufacturers were indignant because the new factory was to be free from
taxation for ten years, and its employees were to be excused from
military services except in cases of dire necessity. ‘A Manufacturer’
wrote a vehement protest, mentioning Hamilton by name, and denouncing
the act of the legislature as vicious beyond comparison.[600] Soon the
Philadelphia papers were advertising that the five letters ‘To the
Yeomanry,’ in pamphlet form, complaining of the privileged nature of the
corporation and of the part played by Hamilton, could be had at the
various stores of the city.

But Hamilton was not concerned with the grumblings of the groundlings,
for he was at high tide. In New York men had subscribed for a portrait
of him by Trumbull, and the subscription lists ‘were still open in the
coffee-house.’[601] He had become the idol of the most powerful class. A
little later, Trumbull’s work completed, ‘the best that ever came from
his pencil,’ it was placed temporarily in the old city hall in New
York.[602] The obscure boy from the West Indies had become an
institution in the city of his adoption. Even so Hamilton was ever
vigilant. He had not liked the Freneau project from the start, and he
was watching it like a hawk.

When the poet-journalist took an office on High Street and began the
publication of his paper, there was little to justify grave
apprehensions. In his first issues the editor had pledged himself to the
support ‘of the great principles on which the American Revolution was
founded,’ and while this smacked of the jabberings of Sam Adams,
Hancock, and Jefferson, it was probably only a gesture. The tone of the
early editions was temperate, almost academic. The ordinary reader must
have thought it harmless enough, but Hamilton, who used the press
effectively himself, examined the articles more critically. There were
phrases creeping in, innocently, perhaps, that Fenno would have scorned.
The idea that ‘public opinion sets the bounds to every government, and
is the real sovereign of every free one,’[603] would never have soiled
the pages of the ‘Gazette of the United States.’ The little essays on
politics and government were sprinkled all too freely with these
disturbing suggestions. Only an essay on ‘Nobility’--but why make it the
vehicle for the thought that ‘the downfall of nobility in France has
operated like an early frost toward killing the germ of it in
America.’[604] With Fenno chiding the critics of officials, what more
unfortunate than Freneau’s assertion that ‘perpetual jealousy of the
government’ is alone effectual ‘against the machinations of ambition,’
and his warning that ‘where that jealousy does not exist in a reasonable
degree the saddle is soon prepared for the back of the people.’[605] A
defense of parties coupled with a denunciation of privilege,[606] stiff
criticism of ministerial inefficiency apropos of the St. Clair
expedition; forceful protests against the excise law;[607] and then an
article by ‘Brutus’ on the funding system which could not be
ignored--these were bad enough. That system, said ‘Brutus,’ had given
undue weight to the Treasury Department ‘by throwing the enormous sum of
fifty million dollars into the hands of the wealthy,’ thus attaching
them to all the Treasury measures ‘by motives of private interest.’
Having combined the great moneyed interest, it had been made formidable
by the Bank monopoly. Out of it all had come the ‘unlimited excise laws
and imposts’ that ‘anticipated the best resources of the country and
swallowed them all up in future payments.’ Because the certificates had
fallen to the wealthy, ‘the industrious mechanic, the laborious farmer
and poorer classes generally are made tributary to the latest
generation.’[608] Rights of property? Yes--but there is property in
rights.[609] Be loyal to the Union? Yes, but who are the enemies of the
Union? ‘Not those who favoring measures which, pampering the spirit of
speculation, disgust the best friends of the Union.’ ‘Not those who
promote unnecessary accumulations of the debts of the Union.’ Not those
‘who study by arbitrary interpretations and insidious precedents to
pervert the limited government of the Union into a government of
unlimited discretion.’[610]

With Freneau hitting his stride, the Federalists began to lose their
patience. Soon the ‘United States Chronicle’ of Providence learned that
the ‘very extraordinary productions’ were probably ‘the work of some
foreigners who wish to reduce the funds in order to purchase.’[611] The
‘Centinel’ of Boston warned that Freneau’s paper was ‘supported by a
junto for electioneering purposes’ and was filled with ‘the most absurd
misrepresentations of facts, or falsehoods highly injurious to the
prevailing character and principles of our government and people.’[612]

But it took the articles of ‘Sidney’ to force the fighting. These were
open attacks on Hamilton and his principles and were written with a
punch. He assailed the House for abdicating its power to originate money
bills to the Secretary of the Treasury. To delegate that duty was to lie
down on a job. And such ‘reports’! Arguments! Pleas! Sophistries! Thence
to the major attack. ‘If we admit that the Secretary is a fallible
mortal, and, however great his capacity may be, that he is liable to
mistakes or to be imposed upon, or, in range of hypothesis, if we
suppose these possible cases, that his political principles do not
correspond with the genius of the government, or with public opinion;
or that he embraces the interests of one class in preference to the
interests of the other classes,--I say admitting any or all of these
circumstances to be possible, then the ministerial mode of influencing
the deliberations of Congress practiced since the change of the
government, is more dangerous than even that which is pursued but loudly
complained of in Britain.’[613] These attacks by Sidney continued with
painful regularity, and Freneau’s paper became a scandal in the
best-regulated families in Philadelphia. Others joined in the fray. ‘A
Citizen’ from a remote section, who had visited the capital to ‘know
more of men and measures,’ speedily convinced himself that many members
of government ‘were ... partners with brokers and stock jobbers, and
that the banking schemes have been too powerfully and effectually
addressed to their avarice.’[614] ‘Centinel’ warned that ‘the fate of
the excise law will determine whether the powers of government ... are
held by an aristocratic junto or by the people.’[615] With the pack in
hot pursuit of his idol, Fenno rushed to the defense with a denunciation
of the ‘mad dogs’ and ‘enemies of the government.’ ‘Ah,’ replied
Freneau, welcoming the fight, ‘I will tell a short story that will put
the matter in a proper light. A pack of rogues once took possession of a
church ... held in high veneration by the inhabitants of the surrounding
district. From the sanctuary they sallied out every night, robbed ...
all the neighbors, and when pursued took shelter within the hallowed
walls. If any one attempted to molest them there, they deterred him from
the enterprise by crying, “Sacrilege,” and swearing they would denounce
him to the inquisition as a heretic and an enemy of the Holy Mother
Church.’[616] And Freneau persevered in his perversity. Right joyously
he returned to the scandal of speculation. ‘It is worthy of notice that
no direct denial has ever appeared of the ... multiplied assertions that
members of the general government have carried on jobs and speculations
in their own measures even while those measures were depending.’[617]

III

An interesting picture was presented the day after the appearance of
this attack: Emerging from the doorway of the Morris house was a
distinguished party. Washington himself, sober and stately, with his
matronly spouse; Hamilton, alert and suave, with little Betty; and a
tall, loose-jointed man of pleasing aspect whom spectators instantly
recognized as Jefferson. Entering carriages they drove away to visit Mr.
Pearce’s cotton manufactory. No one knew better than Washington that a
crisis had been reached in the relations of his ministers. But a few
days before he had sat pondering over a letter from Jefferson. It dealt
with the reason for the growing distrust in government, the fiscal
policy of Hamilton, the disposition to pile up debt, the corruption in
Congress--and it announced a determination to retire from the
Cabinet.[618] Washington, greatly distressed, had earnestly importuned
him to remain. He had agreed to stay on awhile, but the quarreling was
becoming intolerable.

At the factory the little party entered, pausing to examine the
machinery and comment upon it, Hamilton the irreproachable gentleman,
courteous, amusing, pleasant, Jefferson observing all the amenities of
the occasion. It was their last social meeting in small company. But if
Washington, who had invited them, hoped thus to persuade them to drop
their quarrel, he was foredoomed to disappointment. The cause of their
disagreement was elemental and eternal. They returned to the Morris
house after a pleasant diversion--and the fight went on.

In early June, Fenno and Freneau were lashing each other with much
shouting. But the editor of the Hamilton paper played constantly into
the hands of his opponent. He lamented the appearance of a ‘faction,’
meaning party, because factions mean convulsions under a republican
government. It would not be so serious if there were a king, because ‘a
king at the head of a nation to whom all men of property cling with the
consciousness that all property will be set afloat with the government,
is able to crush the first rising against the laws.’[619] There must
have been high glee among the cronies of Freneau in the office on High
Street when they read it. ‘King,’ ‘men of property’--Freneau could not
have dictated the comment for his purpose better. ‘Your paper is
supported by a party,’ charged Fenno. Yes, agreed Freneau, if ‘by a
party he means a very respectable number of anti-aristocratic, and
anti-monarchical people of the United States.’[620] But, not to be
diverted, the poet-editor returned persistently to his indictment.
‘Pernicious doctrines have been maintained’--‘Members of Congress deeply
concerned in speculating and jobbing in their own measures ... have
combined with brokers and others to gull and trick their uninformed
constituents out of their certificates.’[621]

‘The names--give us the names,’ demanded Fenno. ‘That reminds us,’ said
Freneau, ‘of the impudence of a noted prostitute of London, who, having
a difference with a young man, was by him reproached for her profligacy,
and called by the plain name of her profession.... “I’ll make you prove
it or pay for it,” said she. Accordingly, she sued the young man for
defamation of character, and although half the town knew her character,
yet nobody could prove her incontinency without owning himself an
accomplice, and the defendant was lost for want of evidence and obliged
to pay heavy damages. Thus it is when any man talks of
speculators--“prove the fact, sir”--as if, indeed, the men who hired out
the pilot boats and the brokers who negotiated the securities would come
forward to expose their employers and themselves.’[622]

Thus with charge on charge, with sarcasm and satire, especially the
latter, Freneau constantly increased the intensity of his assaults.
These slashing and insidious attacks did not reach the citizens of
Philadelphia only--they were copied far and wide. The paper itself went
into every State. Men were discussing and quoting it on the streets, in
the coffee-houses of New York, on the stage-coaches jolting between the
scarcely broken forests of remote places, about the fireplace in the
cabin in the woods. No one had followed it with greater rage than
Alexander Hamilton. One day Fenno’s ‘Gazette’ contained a short letter
bearing the signature ‘T. L.,’ which started the tongues to wagging all
the way from O’Eller’s grogshop to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room.

Mr. Fenno: The editor of the National Gazette receives a salary
from the Government. QUERE--Whether this salary is paid him for
translations, or for publications, the design of which is to vilify
those to whom the voice of the people has committed the
administration of our public affairs--to oppose the measures of
government, and by false insinuations to disturb the public peace?

In common life it is thought ungrateful to bite the hand that puts
bread in its mouth; but if a man is hired to do it, the case is
different.

Freneau’s paper had become dangerous, Fenno was unable to meet its
onslaughts, and thus, anonymously, Hamilton took up his pen.[623]

It was at this time that Hamilton first shocked his friends with the
disclosure of his temperamental weakness that was to destroy his
leadership. Persuaded that Freneau’s journal was established for the
primary purpose of wrecking him, he saw red, lost his customary poise
and self-control, and, throwing discretion to the winds along with his
dignity as a minister of State, he entered the lists as an anonymous
letter-writer. We search in vain through the correspondence of his
friends for evidence of approval.

The attack was met by Freneau with a certain dignity. Reproducing the
‘T. L.’ letter he wrote:

The above is beneath reply. It might be queried, however, whether a
man who receives a small stipend for services rendered as French
translator to the Department of State, and as editor of a free
newspaper admits into his publication impartial strictures on the
proceedings of government, is not more likely to act an honest and
disinterested part toward the public, than a vile sycophant, who
obtaining emoluments from government, far more lucrative than the
salary alluded to, finds his interest in attempting to poison the
minds of the people by propaganda and by disseminating principles
and sentiments utterly subversive of the true republican interests
of the country, and by flattering and recommending every and any
measures of government however pernicious and destructive its
tendency might be to the great body of the people. The world is
left to decide the motive of each.[624]

This controversy of mere journalists did not interest Hamilton. He was
out gunning for bigger game. Thoroughly convinced that Jefferson was
responsible for much of the contents of Freneau’s paper, he hoped to
draw his colleague into an open newspaper fight and, if possible, drive
him from the Cabinet. The relations of the two Titans had been growing
more and more hostile. They disputed across the table in the council
room, and at rare times seemed at the point of blows. Hamilton knew
Jefferson’s opinions of his policies--and similar opinions were
appearing in the paper edited by a clerk in his rival’s office. Nor were
they slovenly, superficial articles. They were the work of close
observers and clever controversialists. Not only was he ignorant of the
fact that many of these were the work of Madison, that Brackenridge
wrote some, George Tucker, editor of the American edition of Blackstone,
some,[625] but he ridiculously underestimated the capacity of Freneau.
These articles were strong, stinging, effective, and therefore Jefferson
wrote or dictated them. He would drag Jefferson into the arena and have
it out.

Thus, in his letter of August 4, he contemptuously dismissed the editor
as ‘the faithful and devoted servant of the head of a party,’ and
launched his personal bitter attack on Jefferson. If he wished to attack
‘the Government,’ why didn’t Jefferson resign?[626] ‘Can he reconcile it
to his own personal dignity, and the principles of probity, to hold an
office under it, and employ the means of official influence in that
opposition?’ Besides, he was an enemy of the Constitution. He had been
opposed to it and had written his objections ‘to some of his friends in
Virginia.’[627] Four days later, Freneau denied in an affidavit
published in Fenno’s paper that Jefferson had any connection with the
‘National Gazette’ or had written or dictated a line. The same day, in
his own paper, he raised the curtain on Hamilton’s _nom de plume_, with
a comment that ‘all is not right with certain lofty-minded persons who
fondly imagined their ambitious career was to proceed without check or
interruption to the summit of their wishes.’ To which he added that
‘the devil rageth when his time is short.’[628] In his letter of August
11th, Hamilton dismissed the denial unimpressively. At this moment he
thought himself hot on the trail. Elias Boudinot, he recalled, had once
told him of the part Madison had played. If he could get an affidavit
from Boudinot! Acting on an impulse, he wrote him that ‘a friend’ was
writing the attacks on Jefferson. He had mentioned the Boudinot
conversation to that ‘friend’ who was anxious to have an affidavit. ‘It
is of real importance that it should be done,’ he wrote. ‘It will
confound and put down a man who is continually machinating against the
public happiness.’[629] But Boudinot does not appear to have had any
stomach for the mess, albeit he, like every one else, must have known
that the ‘friend’ was Hamilton himself. No affidavit was forthcoming.

While he was waiting vainly for the affidavit, an anonymous writer in
Freneau’s paper, referring to Hamilton’s assaults, made a
counter-charge. What about ‘the immaculate Mr. Fenno’? Did he not have
the printing of the Senate, ‘the emoluments of which office are
considerable?’ Did he not ‘enjoy exclusively the printing of the
Treasury department where it seems he has rendered himself a particular
favorite?’ Was he not already ‘making his approaches to another office
on Chestnut Street [the Bank],’ and in a fair way to secure ‘if not
already in possession of the business appertaining thereto?’[630]

On August 18th, Hamilton appeared again to sneer at Freneau’s
announcement that he would pay no attention to the charges until the
author came forward to make them in the open. ‘It was easily anticipated
that he might have good reasons for not discovering himself, at least at
the call of Mr. Freneau, and it was necessary for him to find shelter.’

Freneau’s affidavit! scoffed a writer in Hamilton’s organ. He had no
faith in it. The editor had certainly not sworn upon the Bible. Had he
taken the oath on Jefferson’s ‘Notes on Virginia’?[631]

But Hamilton was already discovered. No one there was in public life
from Washington down who did not know the author. The amazing spectacle
was the talk of the taverns and the dinner tables, and was beginning to
assume the proportions of a scandal. Washington was shocked and
aggrieved. He would stop it.

On August 26th he tried his art of conciliation, appealing to both
Hamilton and Jefferson, albeit, as he knew, the latter had not written a
line. Both replied in September, Hamilton admitting the authorship of
the articles, and declared his inability ‘to recede now.’ He had been
forced to write. He had been ‘the object of uniform opposition from Mr.
Jefferson’; ‘the object of unkind whispers and insinuations from the
same quarter’; and he had evidence that the ‘National Gazette’ had been
instituted by Jefferson ‘to render me and all the objects connected with
my administration odious.’ He had been most patient. In truth, he had
‘prevented a very severe and systematic attack upon Mr. Jefferson by an
association of two or three individuals, in consequence of the
persecution he brought upon the Vice-President by his indiscreet and
light letter to the printer, transmitting Paine’s pamphlet.’[632]

Jefferson replied that in private conversation he had ‘utterly
disapproved’ of Hamilton’s system, which ‘flowed from principles adverse
to liberty and calculated to undermine and demolish the Republic by
creating an influence of his department over members of the
legislature.’ He had seen this influence ‘actually produced’ by ‘the
establishment of the great outlines of his project by the votes of the
very persons who, having swallowed his bait, were laying themselves out
to profit by his plans.’ Then, too, Hamilton had constantly interfered
with his department, particularly in relation to England and
France.[633] As to Freneau, he hoped he ‘would give free place to pieces
written against the aristocratic and monarchical principles.’ He and
Fenno, he said, ‘are rivals for the public favor. The one courts them by
flattery, the other by censure, and I believe it will be admitted that
the one has been as servile as the other has been severe.’ Then, turning
again to Hamilton: ‘But is not the dignity and even decency of
government committed when one of its principal Ministers enlists himself
as an anonymous writer or paragraphist for either the one or the other
of them?’ As for criticism of governmental measures, ‘no government
ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever
will. If virtuous, it need not fear the free operation of attack and
defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the
truth, either in religion, law, or politics. I think it is as honorable
to government neither to know nor notice its sycophants, as it would be
undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the
latter.’[634]

Thus ended Washington’s attempt to intervene. Hamilton had refused to
discontinue his attacks, and, within two days after replying to
Washington’s appeal, he was again appearing in the ‘Gazette of the
United States.’

VII

Even while Hamilton and Jefferson were writing their letters, the fight
was proceeding merrily, if bloodlessly, in the papers. ‘Aristides,’ none
other than Madison, had gone to the defense of his leader in an article
in Fenno’s paper on Jefferson’s attitude toward the Constitution. No one
was so well qualified to know, unless it was Washington himself. He had
sat in the Convention, a leading figure, and listened to Hamilton’s
speeches and proposals, and had been in correspondence with Jefferson.
It was not this defense that made Fenno restive. It was a pointed
attack. ‘It is said, Mr. Fenno, that a certain head of a department is
the real author or instigator of these unprovoked and unmanly attacks on
Mr. Jefferson--and that the time of that gentleman’s departure from the
city on a visit to his home was considered as best suited to answer the
design it was intended to effect.’ ‘Unmanly attack’ and an insinuation
of cowardice! Fenno took the precaution to add a note warning that no
further letters would be printed containing ‘personal strictures’ unless
the name of the author was furnished ‘in case of emergency.’ Coffee and
pistols--was it coming to that?[635] Freneau had no such concern, for on
the same day a writer in his paper referred to the ‘base passions that
torment’ Hamilton, and called upon the author of the anonymous articles
to ‘explain the public character who on an occasion well known to him,
could so far divest himself of gratitude and revolt from the spirit of
his station as to erect his little crest against the magnanimous chief
who is at the head of our civic establishment, and has on many free
occasions since spoken with levity and depreciation of some of the
greatest qualities of that renowned character; and now gives himself out
as if he were his most cordial friend and admirer, and most worthy of
public confidence on that account.’[636]

Two days after refusing Washington’s request for a cessation, Hamilton
returned to the attack in answer to the charge of the ‘National Gazette’
that he had not liked the Constitution, and had pronounced the British
monarchy the most perfect government. All this he stoutly denied. The
records and debates of the Constitutional Convention were then under
secrecy, and members who had heard his speeches were under the ban of
silence. He felt safe. This is the most amazing letter of the series.

And so the dismal affair dragged on. Another letter appeared reiterating
a connection between Jefferson and Freneau; another charging that
Jefferson was opposed to the Constitution and against paying the public
debt; still another complaining of Jefferson’s interference with the
Treasury Department. Then another on Jefferson and the Constitution, and
finally, two months after Washington’s appeal, demanding that Jefferson,
who remained in the Cabinet on the earnest solicitation of Washington,
withdraw. ‘Let him not cling to the honor or emolument of an office,
whichever it may be that attracts him, and content himself with
defending the injured rights of the people by obscure or indirect
means.’

Meanwhile, Jefferson had refused to be drawn into the controversy
personally. The situation had become painful--the Philadelphia
drawing-rooms lifting their brows at him. His official associations were
unpleasant, but he never touched pen to a paper intended for
publication. Only in his personal letters did he pour forth his
bitterness against his colleague. ‘The indecency of newspaper squabbling
between two public Ministers,’ he wrote Edmund Randolph, ‘has drawn
something like an injunction from another quarter. Every fact alleged
... as to myself is false.... But for the present lying and scribbling
must be free to those who are mean enough to deal in them and in the
dark.’[637] He had hoped for an early retirement, and the attacks had
indefinitely postponed the realization of his desire. ‘These
representations have for some weeks past shaken a determination which I
had thought the whole world could not have shaken,’ he wrote
Martha.[638] Meanwhile, the small-fry partisans were busy in all the
papers. The effect, on the whole, had been favorable to Jefferson,
making him the idol of the democrats everywhere. ‘It gives us great
pleasure,’ said a Boston paper, ‘to find that the patriotic Jefferson
has become the object of censure, as it will have a happy tendency to
open the eyes of the people to the strides of certain men who are
willing to turn every staunch Republican out of office who has
discerning to ken the arbitrary measures, and is honestly sufficient to
reveal them.’[639] To the ‘Independent Chronicle’ the ‘slander and
detraction’ of men like Jefferson seemed ‘a convincing proof of the
badness of the cause behind it.’[640] The onslaught had in no wise
weakened Jefferson’s faith in the effectiveness of the ‘National
Gazette.’ The smoke had not lifted from the field when he was rejoicing
because it was ‘getting into Massachusetts under the patronage of
Hancock and Sam Adams.’[641] Even Freneau found the democrats rallying
around him.

It is a Fact [wrote a correspondent] that immense wealth has been
accumulated into a few hands, and that public measures have favored
that accumulation.

It is a Fact that money appropriated to the sinking of the debt has
been laid out, not so as most to sink the debt, but so as to succor
gamblers in the funds.

It is a Fact that a Bank law has given a bounty of from four to
five million dollars to men in great part of the same description.

It is a Fact that a share of this bounty went immediately into the
pockets of the very men most active and forward in granting it.

These, Mr. Freneau, are facts--...severe, stubborn, notorious
facts.[642]

VIII

Thus Hamilton’s remarkable attack had only whetted the appetite of the
Jeffersonians for battle--and a national campaign was in progress. The
unanimous reëlection of Washington was universally demanded, but why
should the ‘aristocratic’ and ‘monarchical’ author of ‘The Discourses of
Davilla’ be chosen again? At any rate, efforts could be made to change
the political complexion of Congress.

There were mistakes, blunders, tragedies, that could be used to affect
public opinion. What more shocking than the humiliating collapse of the
General St. Clair expedition against the Indians in the western country?
Gayly enough had the unfortunate commander set forth with twenty-three
hundred regular troops and a host of militiamen. There had been a
scarcity of provisions and inadequate preparations. Hundreds of
soldiers, consumed with fever, shaken with chills, had vainly called for
medicine. Many died, hundreds deserted in disgust, and finally but
fourteen hundred worn and weary, sick and hungry men remained to face
the enemy. It was easy enough to blame St. Clair, and, as he passed
through the villages en route to the capital, the people flocked about
to hiss and jeer.

But why the lack of proper preparations? Why the insufficiency of the
commissary? Even the officials in Philadelphia were prone to find
extenuations for the failure of St. Clair. A correspondent of the Boston
‘Centinel,’ dining with some of the first official characters where the
tragic collapse of the expedition had been discussed, found ‘not one
expression dropped to his prejudice.’[643] The Jeffersonians were aiming
higher than St. Clair. There was Knox, Secretary of War--what had he to
say in defense of the honesty of the army contractor, to the negligence
of the quartermaster? The House investigating committee bore heavily on
these two in its report--but who was responsible for the cupidity of the
one and the inefficiency of the other? Soon the Jeffersonian press was
attacking Knox with distressing regularity, picturing him as the
‘Philadelphia Nabob.’[644] Was he not squandering public money on
‘splendor’ and ‘extravagance’? Soon the more irresponsible of the
gossip-mongers were whispering that he had profited financially.
‘Infamous!’ screamed the Federalist press. ‘The public monies have never
been in the hands of Mr. Knox.’[645] ‘But who made arrangements with
the dishonest contractor?’ replied the Jeffersonians. ‘Who selected the
quartermaster who let the soldiers starve?’

All through the summer and autumn this was the talk in the taverns and
coffee-houses, but with the bursting of the bubble of speculation a far
more effective weapon of assault was at hand. To this inevitable outcome
of the gambling mania Jefferson had looked forward with the utmost
confidence. He had seen money ‘leaving the remoter parts of the Union
and flowing to [Philadelphia] to purchase paper’; had seen the value of
property falling in places left bare of money--as much as twenty-five
per cent in a year in Virginia. Extravagance, madness everywhere.[646]
As a result in the remoter sections the hatred of the speculator had
reached the stage of hysteria. ‘Clouds, when you rain, bleach him to the
skin,’ prayed a Georgia paper. ‘When you hail, precipitate your heaviest
globes of ice on his ill-omened pate. Thunders, when you break, break
near him, shatter an oak or rend a rock full in his view. Lightning,
when you burst, shoot your electric streams close to his eyelids.
Conscience, haunt him like a ghost.... Ye winds, chill him; ye Frost,
pinch him, freeze him. Robbers meet him, strip him, scourge him, rack
him. He starved the fatherless and made naked the child without a
mother.’[647] Even the Worcester correspondent of the orthodox Boston
‘Centinel’ complained that ‘as soon as one bubble bursts another is
blown up’ and ‘we are in the way of becoming the greatest sharpers in
the universe’--all ‘assuredly anti-republican.’[648] When a town meeting
was advertised for Stockbridge, a village wit penciled on the poster the
purpose of the conference: ‘To see if the town will move to New York and
enter into the business of speculation.’[649] While publishing these
letters and stories the Federalist organ in Boston did it with the
sneer: ‘They who are in--Grin. They who are out--Pout. They who have
paper--Caper. They who have none--Groan.’[650]

Then in April, with the failure of Colonel Duer in New York the crash
came. Many went to ruin in the wreckage, and New York became a madhouse,
with business paralyzed, and Duer taking to flight. He had been among
the most favored of the beneficiaries of Hamilton’s policies, rising
from opulence overnight, and he was among the first to fall from their
abuse.[651] The brutality and cowardice of the speculators intensified
the general contempt for the tribe. ‘Instead of exerting themselves to
preserve some kind of moral character,’ wrote a New York correspondent
of the ‘Maryland Journal,’ ‘they are endeavoring to lower themselves
still more by descending to the mean level of fish women and common
street boxers.’[652]

All this was viewed by Hamilton with indignation and concern. He had
sought in every way to discourage the frenzy of speculation, and had
used his office to protect the public wherever possible. But it began
with the funding system--and with thousands that was enough. Instantly
the Jeffersonian press was hot on the trail. ‘Business has not been
benefited by Hamilton’s Bank,’ declared the ‘Independent Chronicle,’
‘for a merchant can scarcely venture to offer his note for $100, while a
speculator can obtain thousands for no other purpose than to embarrass
commerce.’ Look around and see who have obtained wealth. ‘Speculators,
in general, are the men.’ Thus, ‘the industrious merchant is forced to
advance to the government thousands, while the gambling speculator is
receiving his quarterly payments.’[653] A Maryland correspondent of
Louden’s New York ‘Register’ ‘could not help thinking Mr. Madison’s
discriminating propositions would have prevented in great measure the
exorbitant rage of speculation.’[654] Meanwhile, Fenno was denouncing
the critics as ‘anarchists’ and enemies of the Government, which only
intensified their rage. ‘Our objection is not to paying off the debt,’
protested an indignant critic, ‘but to ... the excise, failure to
discriminate, the play to speculation’; and if all who shared these
views could be assembled it ‘would make the greatest army that ever was
on one occasion collected in the United States.’[655] In the Boston
‘Centinel,’ John Russell was taking a lighter tone. ‘The suffering
yeomanry burdened with taxes? Why not simply eliminate all State and
National debts and forget them?’[656] The storm? What of it? ‘The Six
Per Cents, a first rate, belonging to the fleet commanded by Admiral
Hamilton, notwithstanding several hard COUNTRY gales, and a strong lee
current setting out of the Hudson and Delaware is still working to
windward and bids fair to gain her destined port.’[657]

With such attacks and counter attacks in the papers, the campaign of
1792 was fought, with the bitter gubernatorial battle between John Jay
and George Clinton in New York setting the pace in the spring. The
Federalists had set their hearts on the crushing of Clinton, and but for
the frown of Hamilton, Burr might have joined them in the attempt.[658]
The campaign was spectacular, and class feeling and prejudice played a
part. Jay was an aristocrat by birth and temperament, and this gave the
Clintonians their cue. Up, Plebs, and at ’em! An aristocrat against a
democrat, the rich against the poor. Had not Jay said that ‘those who
own the country ought to govern it’? Had not Jay’s Constitution
disfranchised thousands on the score of their poverty? Were not the
speculators, the stock-jobbers, the bankers, the gamblers, swindlers,
and the forces of privilege supporting Jay?[659] The result was the
election of Clinton, on a technicality,[660] and instantly there was an
uproar, broken bones and bloody noses, coffee-house quarrels and blows,
wild talk of a revolutionary convention and the seating of Jay with
bayonets, and serious bloodshed was prevented only through the efforts
of Hamilton, Jay, and King. Never had party feeling run so high, and
several duels were fought in the course of a week.[661] The defeated or
cheated candidate was accorded the acclamations due a conqueror on his
journey from his judicial circuit to New York where he was given a
testimonial dinner.[662] The democrats were none the less jubilant
because of the questionable nature of their triumph, and at a dinner in
honor of Clinton, the Tammany braves rose to the toast, ‘Thomas
Jefferson,’ and gave their war-whoop.[663]

The bitterness in New York spread to various parts of the country where
the Jeffersonians were fighting brilliantly, with clever strategy, to
gain seats in the Congress. Some of the Federalists, who were to prove
themselves generally inferior except in a smashing charge, and incapable
of maintaining their morale in a siege or in reverses, were even then
growing pessimistic. ‘Perhaps you are not informed,’ wrote George Cabot
to Theophilus Parsons, ‘that in Pennsylvania and New York the opponents
are well combined and are incessantly active, while the friends discover
a want of union and a want of energy.’[664] And Parsons, in melancholy
mood, was convinced that the Government had ‘seen its best days.’[665]
Woe to the politician who enters the reminiscent stage when confronted
by a virile opponent looking to the future. There was little in the New
England of 1792 to depress the Federalists. Only a little evidence that
among the working-men in Boston ‘heresies’ were making their way; only
reports that ‘itinerant Jacobins’ were haranguing the curious in the
bar-rooms of Rhode Island and Vermont; only the strange spectacle of
‘drill masters’ meeting with people of no property or importance to
organize them to battle for democratic principles.[666] Only this, and a
strange doctrine creeping into Vermont papers. In choosing members of
Congress who should be selected? asked a ‘Land Holder’ of that State.
‘What class of people should they represent? Who are the great body of
the people? Are they Lawyers, Physicians, Merchants, Tradesmen? No--they
are respectable Yeomanry. The Yeomanry therefore ought to be
represented.’[667] In Maryland a ferocious fight was waged under the
eyes of both Hamilton and Jefferson, for both were interested in the
fate of Mercer who had slashed right lustily at the policies of
Hamilton, making no secret of his belief that they were bottomed on
corruption. He had vitalized the democrats of Maryland, extending his
interest into districts other than his own, and arranging for candidates
to oppose the sitting Federalists in the House. McHenry, who kept
Hamilton informed of the progress of the fight, hoped to array the
German Catholics against the obnoxious Mercer through the intervention
of Bishop Carroll, whom he thought more influential than the better
known Charles Carroll of Carrollton.[668] A man was employed by the
energetic McHenry to circulate bills against Mercer, who fought back,
and gave blow for blow. He was charged with having said that Hamilton
had tried to bribe him in the Assumption fight;[669] that he was
personally interested in the contract for supplying the western army,
and privately engaged in the purchase of securities. This, Mercer was to
disavow, and Hamilton’s friends were to show that the conversation
between the Marylander and the Secretary had been in the presence of
company and in jest.[670] Even so we may assume that Mercer had painted
the incident black. He let it be understood that Washington wished his
reelection, and the celerity with which the President issued a denial
was probably due to the importunity of Hamilton who did not scruple to
use him without stint to further the cause of his party.[671]

In North Carolina the Jeffersonians, under the crafty leadership of
picturesque Willie Jones, contested every inch of the ground, determined
to retire all the Hamiltonians from Congress, and before the impetuosity
of their charge the Federalists were forced to fight defensively and
under a cloud.[672]

In the new State of Kentucky the Jeffersonians were thoroughly organized
under the leadership of John Brown, a Virginian, educated at Princeton
and at Jefferson’s alma mater, who had fought through the War of
Independence. ‘Brown can have what he wants,’ Madison wrote his leader
in midsummer,[673] and he took the toga. In Virginia the Democrats were
strongly in the ascendancy. The influence of Jefferson had been
strengthened by the acquisition of Madison, and Hamilton, in the course
of the campaign, wrote his famous letter to Colonel Edward Carrington
attacking both in an effort to satisfy the Virginia Federalists of the
justice of his own position, but it was blowing against a tornado.[674]
An amazing campaign document--this letter.

Thus, in 1792, if the Jeffersonians had not yet perfected their
organization, they had forced sporadic fighting, and the result of the
congressional elections was greatly to strengthen them in the House.

It was clear quite early that the Jeffersonians would not permit Adams’s
reëlection to go unchallenged. The press had teemed with controversial
articles on his books for more than a year. As early as March his
friends took up the cudgels in his defense. ‘Homo’ in the Boston
‘Centinel’ warned that ‘a detestable cordon of desperadoes’ were trying
to destroy public confidence in Adams by vilification.[675] Within three
months, Hamilton convinced himself that the opposition, in dead earnest,
had concentrated on Clinton, and hastened to warn Adams, who was
enjoying the placidity of his farm at Quincy.[676] It is interesting to
observe that this plan to displace Adams was interpreted by Hamilton as
‘a serious design to subvert the government.’ If the candidacy of
Clinton was annoying to Hamilton, the warning he received in September
of the possible candidacy of Aaron Burr was maddening, and he fell
feverishly to the task of denouncing the ambitions of this ‘embryo
Cæsar’ in letters to his friends.[677] Clinton ‘has been invariably the
enemy of national principles,’ he wrote General C. C. Pinckney in
ordering a mobilization for defense in South Carolina, and as for Burr,
he was a man of ‘no principles other than to mount, at all events, to
the full honors of the state, and to as much more as circumstances will
permit.’ Was Jefferson behind the conspiracy against Adams--Jefferson,
that man of ‘sublimated and paradoxical imagination, entertaining and
propagating opinions inconsistent with dignified and orderly
government?’[678] To John Steele in North Carolina he wrote in the
manner of a commander, to inform him ‘that Mr. Adams is the man who will
be supported by the Northern and Middle States.’ Of course, he had ‘his
faults and foibles,’ and some of his opinions were quite wrong, but he
was honest, and loved order and stable government.[679] Meanwhile,
painful complications were threatened in Maryland where a number of
notables[680] joined in a public letter rallying Marylanders to the
support of Charles Carroll of Carrollton.[681] This gave James McHenry,
an idolater of Hamilton, and still tortured by a persistent, and, as
yet, ungratified itch for office, his opportunity. He assumed the
responsibility for whipping the rebels back into line. These signers of
the Carroll letter had been imposed upon. The fight against Adams was a
fight against the Constitution--in keeping with the plan of the enemies
of government to drive able men from office. Had not Hamilton ‘whose
attachment to the Constitution is unquestionable’ been assailed with
virulence? Yes, from ‘the master workman in his craft down to the
meanest of his laborers,’ all were engaged in the dirty work. Thus the
submission of Carroll’s claims at so late an hour wore ‘a very doubtful
and invidious aspect.’ Was it done ‘to get ten votes against Adams or to
promote Carroll’s election?’ Was any one so foolish as to think that the
Democrats in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia would desert
Clinton?[682] This letter, signed by ‘A Consistent Federalist,’ was
copied by all the Federalist papers of the country.

Meanwhile, Adams, lingering lovingly on his home acres, showed no
inclination to return to Philadelphia, and it was reported that he might
not appear to preside over the Senate until late in the session. This
was an appalling lack of tact. Hamilton, assuming the rights of the
leader, did not hesitate. ‘I learn with pain that you may not be here
until late in the session,’ he wrote the loiterer behind the firing
lines. ‘I fear this will give some handle to your enemies to
misrepresent.... Permit me then to say it best suits the firmness and
elevation of your character to meet all events, whether auspicious or
otherwise, on the ground where station and duty call you.’[683]

By November the press was hotly engaged in the controversy, but poor
Fenno was to have trouble with his correspondents who were to convert
his dignified journal into a cock-pit. Adams was both pelted and salved
on the same page. His writings proved him a monarchist at heart, wrote
‘Mutius.’[684] His writings would be appreciated more a century hence,
said a defender in the same issue. Had he not already been vindicated on
one point in the appearance of the ‘gorgon head of party’? Freneau
cleverly replied by quoting a laudatory article from an English paper
paying tribute to the governmental notions of ‘the learned Mr.
Adams.’[685] Yes, wrote ‘Cornucopia’ in the ‘Maryland Journal,’ ‘it will
require the whole strength of the federalists to keep poor John Adams
from being thrust out of the fold.’[686]

And ‘poor John Adams’ was not entirely happy in his defenders. Why not
reëlect him, demanded ‘Philanthropos’ in a glowing tribute, for was he
not ‘a man of innocent manners and excellent moral character?’[687] ‘Why
not?’ echoed a scribe in Albany. He was ‘a reputed aristocrat, at the
same time an honest man, the noblest work of God.’[688] From ‘Otsego’
came a more robust blow at Adams’s enemies as ‘the jacktails of
mobocracy’ seeking the defeat of ‘the virtuous Adams’ because he was
against ‘anarchy and disorder.’[689] Wrong, wrote ‘Portius’ the next
day, advocating Clinton. ‘Untinctured by aristocracy, and a firm
republican, the patriots of America look to him.’[690] ‘Titles, titles,’
sneered ‘Condorcet.’ ‘This rattle which so peculiarly delights certain
characters.... He never appears but in the full blaze of office, as if
every place he went was a Senate, and every circle which he invited
needed a Vice President.’[691] Thus, throughout the fall and early
winter the lashing and slashing went on, but when the time came Adams
was reëlected, albeit the result was a bitter humiliation to the proud,
sensitive spirit of the victor. Where Washington had been unanimously
reëlected, Adams had a margin of but twenty-seven votes. New York,
Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia had moved _en masse_ into the
Clinton camp, and Kentucky had cast her vote for Jefferson. Five States
had gone over to the Jeffersonians, and the Federalists had been unable
to get a unanimous vote in Pennsylvania. But if Adams was hurt, Hamilton
could bear his pains, for the brilliant, dashing chief of the party
preferred that the uncongenial man from Braintree should not become too
perky.

Thus ended the first year of actual party struggle--Hamilton a bit
soiled by his descent to anonymous letter-writing, Jefferson greatly
strengthened by his silence under assault; the Hamiltonians triumphant,
but not exultant over the reëlection of Adams, the Jeffersonians, having
tasted blood, and tested their weapons, more than ever eager for combat
and rejoicing in their congressional gains.

Hamilton had tried to drive Jefferson from the Cabinet, and failed. It
was now the latter’s turn.

CHAPTER IX

HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER

The winter of 1792-93 was notable in many ways. Not within the memory of
the oldest inhabitant of Philadelphia had one so mild been known. As
late as February there had been no interruption in the navigation of the
Delaware, and the papers, making much of the catching of shad, were
predicting that ‘a considerable school may soon be expected.’ In this,
however, the sons of Ike Walton were to be disappointed, for a snowstorm
and a northwester soon put an end to fishing.[692] Even so, the weather
continued, for the most part, mild beyond the usual. Never had society
adorned itself with more frills and furbelows, danced more feverishly,
or pursued its pleasures with greater zest. The elegant new Chestnut
Street Theater threw open its doors for the entertainment the mimic
world can give, and the aristocracy, along with the plebeians, flocked
to the play, despite the pouting of the uppish Mrs. Bingham who had been
refused a box on her own terms. Even the venomous bitterness of the
politicians failed to dim the lights of the great houses, albeit the
followers of Jefferson were more and more given to understand that they
were not wanted among the elect. The events, moving rapidly in France,
were making a distinct cleavage here among the aristocrats and
democrats. The members of the old French nobility, who had left their
country for their country’s good, were giving the tone to the most
fashionable dinner tables. Out in the streets the ‘people of no
particular importance’ were vulgarly vociferous over the trials and
tribulations of the King and Burke’s beautiful Queen--and the
Jeffersonians were taking their tone from the howlings of this ‘mob.’

It was evident from the moment Congress convened that a tremendous party
struggle was impending. The incidents of the preceding summer had left
their scars. The Jeffersonians were embittered against Hamilton because
of his anonymous attacks, and nothing could have done more to unsheathe
their swords. The truce was over. Washington had permitted Hamilton to
continue his attacks by disregarding his request; they would not now
permit even Washington to interpose to save Hamilton from their
assaults. The elections had given them a confidence they had not had
before. The next Congress would not be so subservient to ‘the first lord
of the Treasury.’[693] The supercilious assumption of superiority on the
part of the Federalist leaders would henceforth be resented. The war
would begin in earnest.

The line the attack would take was shown early when Fitzsimons, one of
Hamilton’s henchmen in the House, offered a resolution calling for the
redemption of so much of the public debt as the Nation had a right to
redeem, and asking Hamilton ‘to report a plan for the purpose.’ This was
in accordance with the custom which had grown up. From the moment he had
taken office, Hamilton had considered the members of the House,
constitutionally charged with the duty of framing money bills, as his
automatons. He would determine upon the plans himself, prepare the
bills, and call upon the House to pass them without too much discussion.
He would manage the finances himself and he would not be plagued by
foolish questions. For many months the committees to which his measures
had been referred had been of his own choosing. They were his followers,
and, not a few of them, beneficiaries of his policies.

The Fitzsimons Resolution was instantly challenged by the Jeffersonians
as a rather high-handed proposal under a republican form of government,
and Madison rose to suggest that the House should know the exact state
of the finances before measures were taken for the reduction of the
debt. After all, it was with the House, not with the Secretary of the
Treasury, that money bills should originate. At any rate, the House
could not act intelligently without having the facts in its possession.
All too long had it been patient without definite reports.[694]

The feeling of the masses over the by-products of the funding system had
by this time become deep-seated. Men who had voted to create the Bank
had been made members of the board of directors. The ne’er-do-wells of
yesterday were riding in coaches and building pretentious houses.
Hamilton was urging bounties or protective duties for manufacturers one
day and running over to the Falls of Passaic on the next to assist the
directors of a corporation, that was to profit by his recommendations,
in selecting the sites for the factories. Not a few honestly believed
that he was personally profiting through governmental measures. Almost
from the beginning, Senator Maclay had been suspicious of his integrity.
This utterly false impression grew out of the positive knowledge that
some of Hamilton’s closest political associates were speculating in the
securities. ‘Hamilton at the head of the speculators, with all the
courtiers, are on one side,’ Maclay wrote in his diary.[695] Only a
month before at Mount Vernon, where Washington had begged Jefferson to
reconsider his determination to resign, the latter had charged the head
of the Treasury with creating ‘a regular system for forming a corps of
interested persons who should be steadily at the orders of the
Treasury.’[696] In 1790, William Duer retired from Hamilton’s office to
become the king of the money-chasers, and, going down to ruin in the
financial crash of the preceding summer, was sending out dire threats of
startling revelations from the debtors’ prison. Many honest men were
quite ready to believe that these threats were aimed at Hamilton.[697]
It was under these conditions that a miserable creature by the name of
James Reynolds, in prison for a crime against the Treasury, sought to
blackmail his way out. He had papers in his possession to prove some
financial transactions with Alexander Hamilton. An obscure person of a
low order of mentality, he hinted at his use as a dummy in business in
which a member of the Cabinet did not care to appear. These facts
reached some members of Congress.

On December 15th, two sober-faced members of the House and one Senator
filed into Hamilton’s office in the Pemberton mansion. The Secretary
knew them all and knew two of them as enemies. Frederick Muhlenberg had
served as a Speaker in the first House and was to resume that post in
the third. A strong character, the recognized leader of the Germans, the
foremost American Lutheran minister of his time, he had played a
conspicuous part in the Revolution and in the constructive work that
followed. Abraham Venable was a Representative from Virginia. The
Senator was James Monroe whose fanatical devotion to Jeffersonian ideals
and ideas had long since made him the object of Hamilton’s contempt.

As they took seats facing the masterful little man at the desk, they had
the manner of judges confronting a victim. None of them were finished in
the art of tactful speech. Bluntly they blurted forth their
mission--they had evidence of a mysterious connection between the
Secretary of the Treasury and James Reynolds. What had Mr. Hamilton to
say to that? Even under the least provocative circumstances, Hamilton
was quick-tempered, and here was something to arouse the lion in him.
For a moment he raged in his resentment. The visitors, a little moved,
perhaps, stood their ground. They had papers and the right to an
explanation. His fury having consumed itself, Hamilton realized that
there was something to explain, and he was ready. Would they meet him at
his house that night? They would. The three men rose, bowed, departed.

When they reached the Hamilton home that winter night, they found Oliver
Wolcott, the protégé of the host, there before them. In the presence of
these enemies it was wise to have one friend as a witness. The visitors
were received with the courtly courtesy of which Hamilton was capable,
and after they had found chairs about the table, he produced some papers
of his own, spreading them out by the candlelight, before him. Then,
quite calmly, and with an occasional touch of humor, he made a
remarkable confession.

It was the old story of a great man’s weakness. One summer day in 1791 a
Mrs. Reynolds had appeared at his home with a pathetic story of her
desertion by her husband and a plea for funds to enable her to return to
her family in New York. Strangely enough, no description of this
adventuress has come down to us, but it is a reasonable presumption that
she was comely. The family of Hamilton was in the house. The master was
moved. Naturally he would accommodate her, but at the moment he had no
money with him. He would take her address and send or bring it in the
evening. That night the gods looking down from Olympus might have seen
one of their favorite earth-children furtively making his way through
the dimly lighted streets, away from the fashionable quarter into the
section of cheap boarding-houses. The woman received him in her room. It
was the old story of Cæsar and Cleopatra, albeit this was a Cleopatra of
the more vulgar sort. ‘After that,’ said Hamilton, ‘I had frequent
meetings with her at my own house, Mrs. Hamilton and her children being
absent on a visit to her father.’[698] The comedy hurried on. At length
he thought to bring it to a termination, and it was then that Mrs.
Reynolds proved herself a mistress of her art. She was passionately in
love. A separation would break her heart. Here, surely, was a violent
attachment--perhaps it would be better to break off gradually. The lover
was not lacking in the finer sensibilities, and then, too, his vanity
was pleased.[699] With the continuance of the _amour_, Mrs. Reynolds,
simulating a consuming passion, began to flood her _innamorato_ with
tender epistles.[700] The climax was on the wing. One day an hysterical
note announcing the husband’s discovery of her infidelity, and warning
that, if no answer was forthcoming to the letter the Secretary would
receive from the irate husband, Mrs. Hamilton would be informed. Would
it not be wise to see him? Hamilton thought so and summoned Reynolds to
his office. The cunning rascal had his story ready: the wife discovered
writing a mysterious letter--a black messenger traced to the Hamilton
house--the accused wife on her knees confessing all.[701] After
negotiations the heartbroken husband decided that a thousand dollars
would salve his wounded honor. ‘And I will leave the town ... and leave
her to Yourself to do for her as you think proper,’ he added.[702]

In the midst of these painful revelations, Muhlenberg and Venable
declared themselves satisfied, but Hamilton insisted on telling the
story to the end. Then followed the most amazing part of the tale. The
husband invited his wife’s lover to resume the _amour_. Hamilton was
coy. Mrs. Reynolds added her plea in illiterate, pleading letters. The
vanity of Hamilton was likewise persuasive, and the comedy was resumed.
When he sought to escape notice by going by the back way, Reynolds was
indignant. ‘Am I a person of such a Bad carector [character] that you
would not wish to be seen Coming to my house in the front way?’ he
wrote.[703] This should have put Hamilton on his guard, but he fell into
the trap. A witness had been provided in another blackmailer, Clingman,
who had been a clerk in Hamilton’s office, and was an unspeakable
scoundrel. Then more money was demanded. Mrs. Reynolds was again
alarmed. Her husband was often morose and beat her. At times he
threatened to murder Hamilton. Loans were made. This, then, was the
nature of the mysterious financial relations with Reynolds.

When the party rose to leave, Muhlenberg and Venable were
apologetic--but not so James Monroe. He bowed stiffly, the sternness of
his features unrelaxed, as the three passed out into the winter night.
Hamilton had vindicated his official honor at a painful sacrifice. It
was understood that the confession should be sacredly confidential, but
in a sense he had lost. As he sat with Wolcott before the fire after his
tormentors had departed, he realized that his enemies were out to wreck
his official reputation. He may have had a premonition of the storm that
was about to break.

III

Nine days after the scene enacted by candlelight in Hamilton’s library,
the bill authorizing the President to negotiate a loan of two million
dollars to be applied to the reimbursement of a loan made of the Bank
came up for consideration in the House. William B. Giles, who was now
dividing the leadership of the Jeffersonians with Madison, was instantly
on his feet with a request for postponement. Perhaps some method could
be found without recourse to a new loan. It might be better to pay the
loan by selling the stock the Nation owned in the Bank. The watchful
Sedgwick was shocked at the suggestion. Dumping so much stock upon the
market would reduce the price and not enough money would be realized to
meet the country’s obligation to the Bank. It was a mild premonitory
skirmish.[704]

Christmas Day brought an armistice, but the next day the discussion was
resumed, with Madison taking a leading part. Why was so much more to be
borrowed than was demanded by the Bank? To his personal knowledge a
large sum was lying idle and unappropriated in the Treasury. If this
balance was appropriated by the President, he wanted to know it. A
delicate subject to discuss, suggested Sedgwick. Not at all, thought
Madison. It was time for some ‘candid explanation.’ Was the
appropriation lying dormant in the Treasury, borrowed to meet the
obligations to France, being demanded by the country to which it was
due? The important question concerned the diverting of money
appropriated to that specific purpose to the payment of Bank
installments. Could gentlemen justify themselves to their constituents
for such conduct? The debt to France was one of gratitude and justice,
and he wished the money could be sent thither on the wings of the wind.
True, the debt in whole was not yet due, but in the critical condition
of our benefactor, it would no doubt be particularly acceptable and he
was opposed to the diversion of any part of it.[705] Why two millions
for the Bank? demanded Giles. True, two hundred thousand dollars would
be due the Bank on January 1st, but why two millions? No one had offered
an explanation of how the money lying dormant was disposed of, or how it
was intended to dispose of it. No member rose to explain, and the bill
was lost.

During the next month the lobbies, boarding-houses, taverns, buzzed with
discussions of the finances of the country. After all, even the members
of the House, presumed to be familiar with the fiscal affairs of the
Nation, knew scarcely anything. They had appropriated blindly. There was
something uncanny in the silence. Would the raising of the curtain
disclose skeletons in the closet of the Treasury? At any rate, the House
had a right to the facts and figures. Throughout the month Madison and
Giles were frequently at the table or about the blazing fire at
Jefferson’s. Here the campaign was planned. The fight should be forced
into the open on the floor of the House. Jefferson could not
participate, for manifest reasons, but he could direct. Madison could
assist in the preparation of the resolutions and in the debate. Giles,
who was a masterful debater, fearless and slashing in attack, could
sponsor the resolutions and lead in the assault. Because of the part he
then played, it has been the fashion to dismiss him flippantly with a
shrug and a sneer--but this is absurd. Giles of Virginia was unsurpassed
by any American debater of his time.

Giles was a veritable D’Artagnan of debate, a gusty, lusty Gascon
transplanted to the tobacco-fields of Virginia, eager always for a fight
or a frolic, and lightning-swift with his blade. A blustering fellow,
true, quick to assert his rights and repel assault, he carried himself
with a swagger that did not endear him to the Federalists, who rather
plumed themselves on having a monopoly on that particular vice or
virtue. But sneers at his ability are absurd. He who won the admiration
of Patrick Henry,[706] commanded the confidence and respect of
Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, received the discriminating praise of
Randolph of Roanoke,[707] and the reluctant tribute of Justice
Story,[708] cannot be sneered from a respectable place in history by a
wretchedly unfair caricature by a partisan English biographer of one of
his enemies.[709]

The young Virginian who appeared in Philadelphia in the winter of
1790-91 was not prepossessing in appearance. Of average height, the
fullness of his person conveyed the impression of a squat figure. His
face, large, round, but colorless, bore none of the indications of
genius, albeit there was something of virility in his brown eyes that
harmonized with the robustness of his physique. One who knew him has
recorded that he was of fair complexion,[710] but another who heard him
frequently in debate commented on his dark color, and, since his hair
and eyes were those of a brunette, we may accept the latter as more
probable than the former.[711] All agree that he was careless in his
dress, after the then prevailing Virginia manner,[712] although we have
the record of one dramatic appearance in the Virginia Legislature, at
the height of his renown, ‘elegantly dressed in blue and buff’ and with
the Gascon touch of being ‘booted and spurred, with a riding-whip in his
hand.’[713] If there was nothing imposing or picturesque in his
appearance, his manners were such as to make him stand out
conspicuously among his fellows. These were such as to impress the none
too finished Maclay that ‘the frothy manners of Virginia were ever
uppermost.’ It is easy enough to reconstruct the scene at Washington’s
table where Maclay met our Gascon, with Giles, the good liver, dwelling
unctuously on Virginia canvasback ducks, Virginia hams, Virginia
chickens, and the old Madeira, which was a little more mellow when
drained from a Virginia glass in a joyous Virginia dining-room. Proud of
Virginia was this provincial from the tobacco country, and proud as
D’Artagnan himself of his physical prowess, for didn’t he take more
manual exercise than any man in New England? No place like the Old
Dominion where the living was ‘fast and fine,’ where from noon to night
the people drank wine or cherry bounce like gentlemen. Thus he thundered
along, to the amazement of Maclay, who observed that ‘he practiced on
his principle every time the bottle passed.’[714] The picture is no
doubt true, for Giles was racy of his native soil. The Amelia County of
his early days was of the frontier, with all that that implies of the
primitive vices and virtues. The sparsely settled country, with its
miserable roads, lived very much to itself, and strangers who ventured
among its inhabitants were treated coldly. The living was truly ‘fast
and fine’ and rather loose, for the men were careless, indifferent to
dress, heavy drinkers, inveterate smokers, their conversations
picturesque with profanity; and they were fighters, too. Dumas’s three
immortals would have found it to their liking, and had they encountered
young Giles at some crossroads tavern they would have taken him to their
hearts. The spirit of independence flamed on every hearth, and the
religious dissenters found it a happy hunting-ground.[715] It was in
this atmosphere that Giles grew up. Like most of the Jeffersonian
leaders, he was a frontiersman.

When he went to Princeton to complete his education, we get again the
D’Artagnan touch. He set forth like a Virginia gentleman with his negro
slave to serve him, no doubt kicking, cursing, and loving him all the
way. Then followed a law course at William and Mary--and then a law
office was opened in the little tobacco town of Petersburg. We are
interested in this period of his career only in that it throws light on
his character and capacity. He favored the ratification of the
Constitution, and, as a fascinated spectator of the debates in the
Virginia Convention, formed a deep admiration for Madison. In the
evenings he argued for ratification at the tavern, no doubt in the
taproom. Hearing him one night, George Mason, a leader of the
opposition, made the comment that ‘he has as much sense as one half of
us, though he is on the wrong side.’[716] He was not, then, an
anti-Federalist on the Constitution.

Immediately on entering Congress at twenty-eight, he commanded
attention, for he had a genius for congressional life. He became at once
a giant in debate. When John Randolph, more cynic than flatterer,
pronounced Giles the Charles James Fox of the House, he referred to the
impression made by the Virginian in action. Fox was a student; Giles was
not. Fox was capable of sustained research; Giles was not. Fox was a
lover and reader of books, and Giles cared nothing for them. He bore a
closer resemblance to Mirabeau or Danton in his methods, absorbing his
knowledge from others in conversation. In the tavern, on the highway, at
the dinner table, he was a tireless talker, and by provoking his friends
into discussion he tested, corrected, and formed his impressions of
events and measures. His mind absorbed like a sponge, his memory was
retentive. The idea that Jefferson or Madison outlined his speeches for
him is ludicrous. He merely assimilated what they said--and then gave it
out more forcefully than either could in debate.[717]

It is impossible to reconcile the slurring references of some historians
to his manner in debate with the speeches that speak for themselves on
the musty pages of the ‘Annals of Congress.’ Here was a man speaking
directly to a purpose. No critic need kill off his Roman consuls, for
there were none. No craving here for a reputation for erudition. No mere
rhetorical flourishes to confuse the sense. No theatrical appeals to the
emotions. No verbosity at all--but ‘a clear, nervous expression, a
well-digested and powerful condensation of language,’ which could make
an impression on the scholarly Story. That great jurist, an unfriendly
witness, could not hear him without admiration. ‘He holds his subject
always before him,’ he wrote, ‘and surveys it with untiring eyes; he
points his objects with calculated force and sustains his positions with
penetrating and wary argument. He certainly possesses great strength of
mind.’[718]

Having prepared himself to meet all comers, he thus dashed to the
combat. Having assimilated all that he had absorbed, his native
resourcefulness and ready command of good plain English did the rest. He
spoke with the forceful fluency which was the best possible substitute
for eloquence. A powerful voice, a virile manner, compelled attention
and respect. Did an enemy attack him as he rushed along? He either
crushed him with brutal strength, or cleverly ducked the blow--and was
on his way again. Instinctively he knew when to strike and when to
dodge. When on the floor, he dominated the scene. This was the man, so
much belittled, whom Benton wrote down in cold deliberation as ‘the most
accomplished debater which his country has ever seen.’ This the man
selected in the conferences of Jefferson and Madison to lead the attack
on the Secretary of the Treasury.

During this period of waiting, with the gossips busy in the taverns and
the streets, Freneau was zealously seeking to create the right
atmosphere for the attack. With the Hamiltonians ascribing all
prosperity to the policies of their chief, Freneau and other editorial
enemies were making much of the protest of ‘Patriot,’ who had been
ruined through the abuse of these fiscal policies.

The tale is true [it ran]. I loved my country. In 1775, my only son
fought on Bunker Hill.... His mother sent the chair down to carry
him home. She wiped the blood from his face and dressed the wound
in his breast. He died. My neighbor, Smallacre ... said it was the
proper reward for rebellion, but that a halter would have been more
proper. I persevered in the cause of freedom. Congress wanted
money--I called in my debts and sold all my land excepting forty
acres. In ... 1778 I had 12,000 in paper. I loaned the whole, and
when they were consolidated at forty for one I had a loan office
certificate for $300. In 1784 the General Court issued a large tax.
As I could obtain neither the interest or principal of my loan
office note I was obliged to sell it. My neighbor, Smallacre,
saved his property from the waste of a cause to which he was
heartily opposed, and he appeared to buy my note at Three Shillings
for Twenty. By this means I paid my State tax of Nine pounds, ten
shillings and had four pounds left for town and parish taxes. As my
son was dead I was content to be poor.... My old chair and horse
remained.... My neighbor, Smallacre, has now become rich by
purchase of public securities from people distressed as I was. He
tells me that our Hancocks and our Sam Adams and those kind of men
know how to pull down a government, but do not know how to build
one.[719]

Prosperity? Yes, but for whom? demanded the enemies of Hamilton, poking
the ‘Patriot’s’ protest under the nose of his defenders. With the
Hamiltonians crediting their idol with all the good things that had
occurred, Freneau was moved to mirthful verse:

‘Whales on our shores have run aground,
Sturgeons are in our rivers found--
Nay--ships have on the Delaware sailed,
A sight most new.
Wheat has been sown--
Harvests have grown--
On coaches now, gay coats of arms are borne
By some who hardly had a cent before--
Silk gowns, instead of homespun, now are seen,
Instead of native straw, the Leghorn hat,
And, Sir, ’tis true
(Twixt me and you)
That some have grown prodigious fat,
And some prodigious lean.’[720]

This press crusade against Hamilton was carried on along with much
laudation of Jefferson, inspired by the report of his decision to retire
from the Cabinet. ‘Mirabeau’ heard with distress that ‘the leader of
democracy’ wished to ‘seek the peaceful shades’ to ‘solace himself with
his favorite philosophy.’ True, the sea had been made tempestuous for
him, but ‘the crew are his friends, and notwithstanding the endeavors of
the officers to raise a mutiny to supercede him ... his honest labor and
firmness has frustrated their wicked intentions and he rides
triumphant.’ But with his retirement ‘monarchy and aristocracy would
inundate the country.’[721] Right, agreed ‘Gracchus,’ ‘for though he
has been in office near four years he has never assumed the insolence of
it. His department has been that of a Republican and in no one action or
expression has he manifested a superiority over his fellow
citizens.’[722]

Hamilton and his followers had frankly sought to drive Jefferson from
the Cabinet and failed; the plan was now complete for driving Hamilton
himself into private life.

On January 23d, the result of the deliberations of Jefferson, Madison,
and Giles appeared when the latter rose in the House to present a set of
resolutions calling upon the President to submit complete reports on the
fiscal operations of the Government. To these the House was clearly
entitled. Nor was there anything violent or outrageous in Giles’s speech
in which he explained them. The House had been legislating for four
years ‘without competent official knowledge of the state of the Treasury
or revenue.’ They had ‘engaged in the most important fiscal
arrangements,’ and had ‘authorized a loan of the Bank ... for more than
$500,000 when probably a greater sum of public money was deposited in
the Bank.’ They were now on the point of authorizing a further loan of
$2,000,000 in the dark--and they were entitled to light. ‘I conceive
that it is now time for this information to be laid before the
House.’[723] No one rose to object and the resolutions were adopted.

To Hamilton, who looked upon Congress as a meddlesome body, they
appeared as something more than a bore. They were an imposition and an
insult. He was entrusted with the financial arrangements, and all he
asked was to be let alone. But he realized that such a lofty tone could
not be publicly assumed. Suppressing his indignation, he set to work
with meticulous care to prepare the fullest possible reports before the
expiration of the congressional session. His enemies thought to burden
him with a task that could not be performed in so short a time. Their
strategy was to let the resolutions with their implications seep in on
the minds of the people throughout the ensuing summer; his cue was to
thwart them in that purpose, to achieve the impossible, to meet the
resolutions during the session, and win a triumph.

Not for him, that winter, the gala nights at the new Chestnut Street
Theater, nor the dinners at the Binghams’, nor the dances at the
Stewarts’, nor the felicities of the hearth with Eliza at his side. His
place was at the Pemberton mansion, day and night, until the work was
done. Oliver Wolcott and the clerks were doomed to the same drudgery.
Far into the night the lights gleamed in the windows of the old house,
and dark and deserted were the streets when the workers made their way
to their various homes after dreary hours of poring over figures,
assembling facts, and writing explanations.

Within twelve days, the first report, with elaborate tables containing
the most minute details of transactions, was sent to the House. Two days
later, the second report was done and in. A week more and the third was
sent. Another six days, and the last was finished. The intense
application, the late hours, the nervous strain, told perceptibly on
Hamilton, who was never robust. The color left his cheeks when they were
not flushed with excitement. His nights were all but sleepless. His
waning strength was sustained by the driving force of his powerful mind.
When it was over, even Wolcott found that his routine business had
fallen behind and that he would ‘be busy for some time to bring it up.’
To his father he apologized for failure to answer letters. There was no
time for letters. ‘The winter ... has required every exertion which I
could make.’[724]

As these voluminous reports poured in upon the House in rapid
succession, the Jeffersonians were amazed and the Hamiltonians beside
themselves with joy. A startling intellectual feat, to be sure. ‘I can
recall nothing from the British Minister in all the conflicts of party
equal to it,’ wrote one admirer. ‘Even Neckar’s boasted account of the
finances of France ... is inferior, although that was the result of long
study and elaborate preparation, and Hamilton’s the work of a moment.
Poor fellow, if he has slept much these last three weeks I congratulate
him upon it.’[725] Wonderful reports, agreed the ‘Centinel’ of Boston.
‘The manly unequivocable sentiments--the fair and accurate statements,
and the judicious arrangements ... must fix his character as a Patriot,
a statesman, and an able and honest financier.’[726] Yes, added another,
‘he will come forth pure gold.’[727]

But his enemies were not so much delighted. They read and studied the
reports, complaining that the wizard of the speculators was up to his
old tricks. A maze of words, interminable sophistries, columns of
confusing figures, arguments instead of facts, and special pleading--no
one could understand these reports--such the verdict of the rank and
file. To which the Hamiltonians responded with a sneering verse:

‘The Secretary makes reports
When’er the House commands him;
But for their lives, some members say,
They cannot understand him.
In such a puzzling case as this
What can a mortal do?
‘Tis hard for ONE to find REPORTS
And understanding too.’[728]

But the leaders among the Jeffersonians were studying the reports and
finding a few things that they could understand. Evidence of corruption
they did not find, but they found technical violations of the law, an
indifference on Hamilton’s part to the clear intent of Congress in
making appropriations--quite enough, as they thought, on which to
continue the attack. Again Giles and Madison sat with Jefferson in his
home going over the reports, and framing the second set of resolutions
with which it was hoped to drive their enemy from the Cabinet.

VII

Three days before the end of the session, Giles presented his famous
resolutions in condemnation of Hamilton’s official conduct, based on the
disclosures in his reports. It does not matter who originally wrote
them. A scholarly historian[729] has produced proof of the part played
by Jefferson. In the very nature of things he must have had a part.
Madison unquestionably made suggestions and possibly revamped the copy
produced by Jefferson. Giles presented them, and they embodied the
conclusions of the three outstanding leaders of the opposition.

These resolutions, intemperately denounced from the day of their
appearance, set forth some novel theories, in view of the manner in
which the Treasury had been administered, but, read in the light of the
present regulations in the matter of appropriations, they are scarcely
remarkable and not in the least vicious. They set forth that ‘laws
making specific appropriations of money should be strictly observed by
the administrator of the finances’; that a violation of this rule was
tantamount to a violation of the Constitution; and charged that Hamilton
had violated the law passed August 4, 1790, making appropriations of
certain moneys authorized to be borrowed in the following particulars,
viz.:

First, by applying a certain amount of the principal borrowed to the
payment of interest falling due upon that principal, which was not
authorized by that or any other law.

Secondly, by drawing part of the same moneys into the United States
without the instruction of the President.

They charged him with deviating from the President’s instructions, with
neglecting an ‘essential duty’ in failing to give Congress official
information of his proceedings in the transactions of the foreign loans.
More to the point, politically, was the charge that he ‘did not consult
the public interest in negotiating a loan with the Bank of the United
States, and drawing therefrom $400,000 at five per cent per annum, when
a greater sum of public money was deposited in various banks at the
respective periods of making the respective drafts.’ In conclusion, it
was provided that a copy of the resolutions should be transmitted to
Washington.

The main thing proved by the investigation was something that required
no proof--that Hamilton had been managing the finances in the spirit of
an autocrat, a little contemptuous of the rights of Congress, a little
indifferent to the specific terms of the appropriations. These he had
not hesitated to juggle to suit his own purposes. In so doing he had
been guilty of technical violations of the law, but he had committed no
crime. His hands were clean. Yet money intended for France had not been
paid, and money not intended for the Bank had gone into its vaults. This
was enough. Suspicion did the rest.

The most censurable feature of the attack was the introduction of the
resolutions on the eve of adjournment. Jefferson, Madison, and Giles had
no idea that they would or could be disposed of before Congress should
automatically expire. Copies had gone to the papers of the four corners
to be read by the people, and it is probable that it was the intent that
they should have the summer and autumn to make their impression on the
public mind. It was manifestly an unfair advantage. But the Hamiltonians
had no thought of permitting any such delay. They were in a majority in
the House. In the Pemberton house, by candlelight, the Treasury clan was
summoned to a council of war, and they went forth to force the fighting
to a speedy finish.

The reports had settled nothing with Hamilton’s enemies. ‘When
Catullus[730] invited America to look through the windows of his breast
and judge of the purity of his political motives, he did not invite in
vain,’ exulted ‘Decius’ in the ‘National Gazette.’[731] Willing to meet
his accusers? sneered ‘Franklin.’ ‘Pardon me, sir, if I am one of those
unbelievers, who, placing no confidence in any of your professions, do
verily think that you neither wish, desire nor dare to meet full and
fair inquiry. Have you asked it, sir?’[732] These jeers and exultant
cries were intolerable. The vindication of the House must come speedily.

On the last day of February there was a preliminary skirmish, and on
March 1st, the contending armies were marshaled for a decisive struggle.
Sedgwick and the faithful Smith of South Carolina led off for Hamilton,
and Giles followed for the Resolutions. Fitzsimons of Philadelphia and
Laurance of New York City, both representatives of the commercial
interests, attacked, and Mercer of Maryland replied. Boudinot defended
Hamilton, and Madison rose to make the premier argument in condemnation
of the policies of the Treasury; and Ames, the most brilliant of the
Hamiltonian orators, who had been held in reserve for Madison, replied.
Thus the day wore on, darkness fell, and the candles had long been
lighted before the House adjourned for dinner. Seven o’clock found the
galleries packed, Senators upon the floor, favored spectators in the
rear of the Chamber packed in close. The leading drawing-rooms were dark
that night, for their mistresses looked down upon the drama of the black
eyes and bloody noses. The struggle continued far into the night.

Here let us pause to catch the drift of the speeches. The supporters of
Hamilton made the most of the failure to find any evidence of
criminality. ‘They present nothing that involves self-interest or
pecuniary considerations.... Instead of anything being detected that
would disgrace Pandemonium, nothing ... which would sully the purest
angel in Heaven.’ Thus spoke Smith. No longer ‘the foul stain of
peculation,’ but ‘the milder coloring of an illegal exercise of
discretion and a want of politeness in the Secretary of the Treasury,’
said Barnwell.[733] What if a critical examination had revealed a
deviation from the letter of the law, exclaimed Laurance. Was that an
excuse for sounding ‘the alarm from St. Croix to St. Mary’s?’ No
corruption! cried Mercer, who had been forced to deny campaign charges
he had made. ‘I still entertain the opinion that there is corruption.’
The House was in turmoil, and the Marylander was sharply called to
order. On he plunged, recklessly fighting his way against calls to
order.

No charge of corruption stained the lips of Madison, who moved on solid
ground. There had been a technical violation of the law, and he proved
it. There had been a disregard of the instructions of the President, and
he showed it. He went thus far, no farther, and he hammered home the
facts. ‘I will not deny,’ he said, ‘that there may be emergencies in the
course of human affairs of so extraordinary and pressing a nature as to
absolve the Executive from an inflexible conformity to the injunctions
of the law. It is, nevertheless, as essential to remember ... that in
all such cases the necessity should be palpable; that the Executive
sanction should flow from the supreme source; and that the first
opportunity should be seized for communicating to the Legislature the
measures pursued, with the reasons of the necessity for them. This early
communication is equally enforced by both prudence and duty. It is the
best evidence of the motives for assuming the extraordinary power; it is
a respect manifestly due to the Legislative authority.’ On this ground
he stood, and there stood Giles.

The charges were dismissed by Ames, _ex-cathedra_-wise, with a shrug.
What if there had been a juggling of the funds? ‘It is impossible,’ he
said unblushingly, ‘to keep different funds, differently appropriated,
so inviolably separated as that one may not be used for the object of
the other.’ Nothing criminal had been proved.[734]

One by one the resolutions were taken up and overwhelmingly voted
down--voted down even where Hamilton had admitted the charge and
justified his acts. Before the last vote was reached, many of the
members, worn by the excitement, the confinement, and fatigue, and
confident of the result, deserted their posts and wandered forth into
the winter night.[735]

VIII

Hamilton had sought, through his anonymous letters, to drive Jefferson
from the Cabinet--and failed. Jefferson had tried, through this
investigation, to drive Hamilton from public life--and failed. The
struggle must go on. Each had caused the other some distress, each drawn
a little blood, but neither had inflicted a serious wound.

With the adjournment of Congress, the skirmishing was taken up all over
the country through the press. The Boston Federalists opened fire upon
the ‘Boston Argus.’ It had published the resolutions, but not the
Hamilton reports. The resolutions had been carried on the same mail that
conveyed the vote of vindication, and the defeat of Giles had not been
mentioned. Infamous![736] ‘Marat’ proposed satirical resolutions
declaring ‘highly reprehensible’ every official ‘who by integrity,
talents, and important services ... conciliates the esteem and
affections of the people.’[737] Hamilton had come out pure gold, wrote a
Philadelphian to a citizen of Rhode Island. ‘The more it is rubbed, the
more it will shine.’[738] A writer in the ‘Connecticut Gazette’ was
moved to a frenzy of indignation. ‘Dutch Republicans murdered De Witt
and ate his heart. Republicans banished Aristides, the first, and
condemned Socrates to Hemlock. And yet we have confined the punishment
of eminent services and ability to attempts to degrade them from office
by innuendoes, electioneering slanders, and newspaper detraction. This
however may be the prelude to eating and banishing.’[739] A traveler in
the Southern States wrote of the effect of the investigation in
Virginia. It had ‘opened the eyes of many who have hitherto been under
the explicit direction of a certain would-be umpire of the United
States.’[740] He found that prejudice had been created against Hamilton
on the ground that he ‘had not done as much as he ought to assist
certain needy men to their claims for services,’ but he was pleased to
find that ‘the unjust prejudice against the industrious patriot is
decreasing daily.’[741]

Everything possible was done to make Hamilton’s vindication a veritable
triumph. When the Providence Society of New York met at Haut’s Tavern
for a dinner, the toast, ‘The Secretary of the Treasury--may his
distinguished talents and integrity command universal respect,’ was
received with shouts and the clicking of glasses.

But the Jeffersonians were unimpressed. ‘After all,’ they said, Hamilton
‘acknowledges the freedom taken with appropriations and strives to work
out an apology, rather than a justification.’[742] A week later, the
‘National Gazette’ presented an analysis of the vote of which the
Jeffersonians were to make much. Vindication, indeed!--and by whom?
Three were directors of Hamilton’s National Bank. Fifteen or twenty were
reputed to be stockholders in the same institution. ‘Can these men be
admitted as judges--men who in fact are parties to the cause?’[743] All
over the land the Jeffersonians were making it uncomfortable for many
members who had voted to vindicate, and the Kentuckians soon had
Christopher Greenup begging for a suspension of judgment until he could
explain.[744] ‘Vindicated!’ cried the Hamiltonians. ‘Yes, and by whom?’
answered the Jeffersonians. ‘By Bank directors, by Bank stockholders who
profited, by congressional speculators in the funds.’

Thus the Jeffersonians sought to explain their defeat and even turn it
to account. The master mind among them expressed no surprise at the
result. He drew up a list of the members who had voted the vindication,
indicating which owned Bank stock and which speculated in the funds.
When Jefferson journeyed back to renew his strength and courage on his
beloved hill, others of his party followed. A little later there was a
movement of the leaders to the country home of John Taylor of Caroline
at Port Royal, Virginia, where the conferences were continued. Thither
went Giles, Senator Hawkins of North Carolina, and Nathaniel Macon. The
master of Port Royal was a remarkable character, an ardent Republican,
an earnest champion of the agricultural interests, a robust, original
thinker with something of the political philosopher, an able writer, a
dignified though reluctant Senator. His mind ran much in the same groove
with Jefferson’s and Madison’s, both of whom were anxious to enlist him
more actively in their fight.

Just what occurred at the conferences that summer is not known. A few
months later, however, the probable fruit of the discussions appeared in
Philadelphia in the publication of a startling pamphlet, ‘An Examination
of the Late Proceedings of Congress Respecting the Official Conduct of
the Secretary of the Treasury.’ Here in an analysis of the vote the
charge that interested parties had furnished the majority was not only
made, but names were given. Of the thirty-five supporters of Hamilton,
twenty-one were set down as stockholders or dealers in the funds, and
three as Bank directors. Referring to the fervent declaration of Smith
of Charleston that Hamilton was as free from taint ‘as the purest angel
in Heaven,’ the author of the pamphlet commented that ‘it is well known
that [Smith] holds between three and four hundred shares in the Bank of
the United States, and has obtained discounts, ad libitum.’ As for
Hamilton’s reports, they contained vindications of his conduct ‘in
certain particulars relative to which no charge had been brought
forward.’ His explanation of the shuffling of appropriations was
unimpressive. A deficiency in the appropriation? ‘In such event it
becomes his duty to state the fact simply and correctly to the
Legislature, that they might, in turn, furnish fresh and additional
funds.’ Hamilton had done nothing of the sort. He had treated the House
with contempt and violated the law.

Here was clearly the answer of the Jeffersonians to the vote of the
House. It found its way to every city, town, and hamlet, to the cabin in
the Kentucky clearing, to the mansion of the master of many slaves on
the river James, to the pioneers about Fort Pitt on the far frontier.
John Taylor of Caroline had struck his blow.[745]

Thus the congressional battle merely served to accentuate the
differences of the parties. It marked, in great measure, the close of
the purely fiscal phase of the struggle. Neither Jefferson nor Madison
was qualified to cross swords with Hamilton in the field of finance.
Giles was hopelessly inadequate. A little later, a Jeffersonian leader
was to join them whose genius as a financier would be as far above all
the Federalists, save Hamilton alone, as Hamilton was superior to Giles,
but he was still waiting in the wings for Fate to give the cue for his
appearance.

Even as Taylor wrote, a new issue had appeared, made to order for the
purposes of Jefferson.

CHAPTER X

ÇA IRA

Up to this time Jefferson had been fighting under a disadvantage. In the
field of finance he was unable to cope on equal terms with his great
protagonist. The mass of the people were not consciously concerned with
the Hamiltonian policies, few comparatively had been swindled by the
speculators, and, while they resented their neighbors’ sudden
acquisition of wealth, it was not easy to capitalize their discontent.

Then the French Revolution entered a more dramatic stage, captivating
the imagination of the multitude. As the real significance of the
struggle began to take form, with the crowned heads of the Old World
marching in serried ranks under the leadership of Brunswick on the
French frontier, the excitement was electric; and when they were turned
back by the gallant resistance of the Revolutionists the floodgates of
enthusiasm broke. One prolonged, triumphant shout went up from the
masses. The ‘people of no particular importance’ somehow felt that the
victory was theirs. They had been a little indifferent, these men of the
shops, taverns, wharves, and the frontier, over the disputed financial
and economic policies of their country, but they could understand the
meaning of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity.’ It meant democracy. Thus the
news of the French victories shook the bells in the New York steeples,
Tammany celebrated with song, shout, and speech in her wigwam, and the
bung was knocked out of the barrel of illiterate oratory in the beer
saloons. These ‘people of no importance’ had been inarticulate, and they
were moved to eloquence. They had found a cause they believed their
cause--the cause of the people against privilege.[746] The enthusiasm
swept over the country, and the scenes of riotous joy at Mr. Grant’s
fountain tavern in Baltimore[747] were imitated at Plymouth, Princeton,
Fredericksburg, Norfolk, Savannah, Charleston, Boston, Philadelphia.

In Boston there was a salute of cannon at the castle, and a picturesque
procession moved, fluttering French and American flags, bearing a
roasted ox of a thousand weight for the barbecue and a hogshead of punch
to wash it down, while girls and women waved from the windows, boys
shouted from the roofs, and the frenzied throng roared approval to the
eloquence of Charles Jarvis, the Jeffersonian leader, and to the
Revolutionary poem by ‘Citizen’ Joseph Croswell.[748] The cheers of
Boston were echoed back from Charleston, where the artillery boomed in
the day, mingling its thunder with the bells of Saint Michael’s. Only
‘the pen of a Burke could describe the scene on State Street’ packed
with exultant humanity, with men looking down from the chimney-tops,
while ‘bevies of amiable and beautiful women’ blessed the marchers with
their smiles from the balconies of the houses.[749] On to Saint Philip’s
tramped the crowd for religious exercises, for these men were not
anarchists or criminals, but decent citizens, moved to the depths by the
defeat of the persecutors of France.[750]

And observing the unprecedented enthusiasm from his quiet corner, Thomas
Jefferson rejoiced. At length the masses were politically awake, and the
enemies of democracy had their answer.

The issues precipitated by the French Revolution had everything to do
with American politics--inevitably so. There were sentimental reasons
for the popular enthusiasm for the nation that had served America with
men and money; and there were economic reasons for the opposition in the
fact that the great merchants operated on English credit. But the
political significance of the divisions soon to appear have been
persistently written down, where they should be written up.

With some exceptions the Hamiltonian leaders were hostile to the
purposes of the French Revolution from the beginning. Here was a rising
of the people with a claim to power, and the keynote of Federalist
policies was distrust of the people; here was defiance of ‘authority,’
and they were sticklers for constituted authority; here was a
challenging of privilege, and they honestly believed in privilege; here
was democracy, and they hated it. They were against it, just as Burke
was against it, because it was an iconoclastic movement, a trampling on
tradition. The death of the King, the slaughtering by the guillotine,
the stupidity and infamy of Genêt, the intemperance of the American
‘Jacobin clubs,’ the defiance of Washington’s proclamation--on these
they were to seize to neutralize or destroy the popularity of the
Revolution, but it was the proclaimed principles of the Revolution that
they hated.

In the Senate, where the Hamiltonians were dominant, this was evident
from the beginning. As early as December, 1790, when the resolutions of
condolence adopted by the National Assembly on the death of Franklin
were submitted to the Senate, Adams, in reading the letter from the
President of that body which accompanied them, referred sarcastically to
the writer’s titles, apropos of the action of the Assembly in abolishing
titles of nobility.[751] A few weeks later Oliver Ellsworth and Rufus
King, the ablest Federalists in the Senate, openly denounced the French,
and ridiculed their claims upon American gratitude, and when Maclay made
indignant protest, Ellsworth, taking snuff, pretended not to hear, Adams
talked audibly with Otis the secretary, and other Senators gathered in
groups to talk aloud. As early as February, 1791, the Hamiltonians in
the Senate were in no mood to listen to a defense of France.[752] Even
the concession of a constitution by Louis XVI was resented by the
senatorial fathers of the Federalist persuasion. The more democratic
House adopted a reply praising ‘the wisdom and magnanimity’ shown in its
formation and acceptance, but when it reached the Senate, George Cabot
objected to the word ‘magnanimity,’ Ellsworth supported him, the
Federalists voted accordingly, and it was stricken out. ‘Too many
Frenchmen, like too many Americans, panting for equality of persons and
property,’ grumbled Adams as early as April, 1790.[753] ‘We differed in
opinion on the French Revolution,’ wrote Adams in retrospect to
Jefferson many years later.[754] Adams and Hamilton, King and Ellsworth,
Cabot and Ames, Jay and Bingham, looked with mingled cynicism and alarm
upon the Revolution from the moment it began to take on a popular
character and to aim at the destruction of privilege.

Jefferson was just as ardent in its support. He knew the miserable state
to which the feudalistic institutions of the Bourbons had reduced the
masses of the people. He had seen justice bought and sold in France on
the auction block, the operations of the hideous game laws that threw
open the peasants’ fields to the trampling of the horses of the
aristocracy, the bestial poverty of the poor, the insulting of their
wives and the debauching of their daughters, with justice open-eyed and
leering. He knew the wantonness of Versailles, the drunkenness of the
King, the profligacy of the Queen, and he had no illusions as to the
dignity of the law or the righteousness of the authority in France. He
had sat at the table with some of the noblest minds in that country
planning the regeneration of a society that was rotten to the core.

But, more important to him, he was persuaded that the fate of the
American experiment was bound up with the success of the French
Revolution. From this opinion he was never to deviate one hair’s
breadth.[755] In January, 1792, he had instructed the American Minister
in Paris that, if circumstances forced an expression as to the French
Government, it should be ‘in conformity with the sentiments of the great
mass of our countrymen, who, having first in modern times taken the
ground of government founded on the will of the people, cannot but be
delighted at seeing so distinguished ... a nation arrive on the same
ground and plant their standard by our side.’[756] A little later he
reminded the American Minister in London that ‘we certainly cannot deny
to other nations that principle whereon our government is founded, that
every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it
pleases, and to change these forms at its own will.’[757]

Thus, Jefferson was in sympathy with the purposes of the French
Revolution, and the Hamiltonians were hostile. To Jefferson it meant
republicanism, democracy, the end of privilege--and he wished it well;
to the Hamiltonians it meant democracy--and they wished it ill. When the
despots of Europe combined to crush it and force a degenerate king and
court on the bowed backs of the people, Jefferson’s heart was with the
untrained boys rushing to the defense of the frontiers; the heart of the
Hamiltonians was with the combination of the kings. And because the
masses of the American people were in sympathy with the French,
Jefferson rode on the crest of the wave in the closing days of 1792.

III

With the execution of the King, the political enemies of the Revolution,
simulating shock, ventured into the open. Fenno eagerly seized upon the
more graphic stories of the execution in the London papers and published
them in full, and soon he was printing sympathetic poems on the
event.[758] But the friends of the Revolution were not easily moved to
compassion, and one of the theaters in Philadelphia revived the play
‘Cato’ to the noisy acclaim of frenzied partisans. The actors appeared
before the curtain to sing ‘La Marseillaise,’ and the audience rose to
join lustily in the chorus. Night after night this was repeated. The
Pittsburgh ‘Gazette’ published a brutal pæan under the caption, ‘Louis
Capet has lost his Caput,’ and this was copied throughout the
country.[759] But these more savage bursts of glee did not meet with
general approval, for when the news of Louis’s fate reached Providence
the people ‘fell into an immediate state of dejection, and in the
evening all the bells of the churches tolled.’[760] Many put on
mourning, and ‘Cordelia’ announced her purpose to wear, in mourning for
the martyred King, a black rose near the left breast, and ‘entreated her
dearly beloved sisters ... to follow her example.’[761] For a time the
reaction was so pronounced as to threaten the popularity of the
Revolution, and it seemed that half the Nation had turned monarchists
overnight.

The Democrats were infuriated to find that the reaction was not confined
to the fashionable houses, but extended to the people in the streets.
Even from New Bedford came the protest that ‘the advocates of monarchy’
and ‘crocodile humanity defenders’ were insisting that ‘the succors from
France ... proceeded wholly from Louis,’ and that he had really wished
Frenchmen to be free.[762] A citizen of Charleston was disgusted to see
how ‘the death of one man’ could ‘so affect the generality of the
people’ of his city. ‘They burst forth in the most vehement invectives
... against the whole French nation--forgetting the thousands that said
king had directly or indirectly been the cause of their death.’[763] An
‘Old Soldier’ in Philadelphia was shocked to find that ‘beer houses,
taverns and places of public resort are filled with panegyrics upon the
measures of the British administration, and our good allies, the French,
are branded with every felonious epithet.’[764] And why all this fuss?
Had not letters been received from one who had witnessed the execution
with the assurance that ‘everything was conducted with the greatest
decency,’ and had not the writer, traveling over France ‘found the
people quiet and generally approving of the public measures?’[765] Thus
the debate raged in drinking-places, on the streets, in the highways, in
the counting--and drawing-rooms--the enemies of the principles of the
Revolution perking up and taking heart and seeming in the ascendant for
a few days.

Meanwhile what of the leaders?

The Federalists were delighted with the reaction. Jefferson observed
that the ladies of Philadelphia ‘of the first circle are open-mouthed
against the murder of a sovereign, and generally speak those sentiments
which their more cautious husbands smother.’ Tennant, the French
Minister, at length ‘openly hoisted the flag of monarchy by going into
deep mourning for his prince,’ and discontinued his visits to Jefferson,
who interpreted it as ‘a necessary accompaniment to this pious duty.’
More significant to the keen-eyed politician was the observation that ‘a
connection between him and Hamilton seems to be springing up.’[766]
Without indecent manifestations of pleasure over the King’s death,
Jefferson found some satisfaction with the tendency to render ‘monarchs
amenable to punishment like any other criminal.’[767] Madison was quite
as unresponsive to pity. ‘If he was a traitor he ought to be punished
like any other man,’ he wrote Jefferson.[768] If these clever
politicians were not impressed with the cries of commiseration, it was
due to their appraisement of the noise. It was the first plausible and
safe opportunity for the enemies of French democracy to denounce the
movement they despised, and they made the most of it. Even so, for a few
days the Hamiltonians were riding the crest of the wave.

Then another sea change.

George III had joined the Coalition of the Kings, and the familiar
redcoats were marching with the rest to crush the Revolution, and
democracy. Here was something the masses could understand--monarchy
against republicanism, autocracy and aristocracy against democracy,
kings against people. The plain man of ‘no particular importance’ looked
about to see the effect. Yes, the old Tories who had hobnobbed with the
British officers while the ragged Continentals walked barefoot through
the snows of Valley Forge were partisans of England--against France. The
duty of the patriot was clear--France against England. The cry was
spontaneous with the masses, and rent the heavens. Even then we owed a
debt to Lafayette. Poor imbecile Louis was forgotten, the guillotine
faded from the view. ‘Ça Ira!’ Even the children of Philadelphia had
learned enough French to sing ‘La Marseillaise,’ and they sang it right
lustily even before the windows of the Binghams. Did we not have a
treaty with France that we had been glad to sign? Was not our own
existence involved in the European struggle now? The Republic of France
crushed by the allied monarchs to-day--our turn to-morrow.

And the partisans of England--who were they? The old American Tories,
the rich merchants operating on English capital, the crooked speculators
fawning on the money-lenders of Europe, the aristocrats kow-towing to
the roués of a degenerate nobility in the homes of the moneyed
aristocracy, the politicians who excluded the poor man from the polls.

The effect of the English declaration of war was magical. Again the old
‘rabble’ that precipitated the American Revolution poured into the
streets, swarmed into the saloons, formed into processions and marched.
And why not? England was still our enemy, impressing our seamen,
retaining our western posts in defiance of the treaty, playing havoc
with our commerce. Were the pioneers on the fringe of the western
forests in daily danger of the tomahawk? England was responsible--so
most of the argument ran. Now was the time to stand up and be
counted--for the two republics or the Coalition of the Kings. Thus the
reasoning, and it caught on and flashed and flamed like a conflagration
sweeping the sun-parched grass of the plains.

To Hamilton this new burst of frenzied friendship for the French was
alarming. Washington was at Mount Vernon. His immediate presence in
Philadelphia was imperatively needed. He and he alone could stem the
rising tide. It was setting in heavily against the English. On April
8th, Hamilton sat at his desk writing his chief a confirmation of the
war between England and France with the sly comment that ‘the whole
current of commercial intelligence ... indicates thus far an
unexceptionable conduct on the part of the English Government toward the
vessels of the United States.’ This, he added, ‘is received here with
very great satisfaction as favorable to the continuance of peace ...
which may be said to be both universal and ardent.’

As his pen traveled over the paper the ‘rabble’ was shouting for war in
the streets, and Jefferson was expressing the hope that the English
interference with our vessels would ‘not force us into war.’ If he could
only have looked over his rival’s shoulder as he wrote!

Washington hastened back to Philadelphia.

He immediately gathered his Cabinet about him for a momentous decision.
Genêt, young, dashing, audacious, had arrived in Charleston and would
soon present his credentials as the Minister of the French Republic. He
might even refer to the treaty in which we had pledged ourselves to
guarantee the French possessions in the West Indies, and to throw open
the ports of America to the prizes of the privateers of our ally while
closing them to her enemies. It was a treaty we had been delighted to
get, and now it rose to plague us--but there it was. Worse still, the
people in the streets understood the nature of the pledge.

It was not Hamilton’s way to concede to Jefferson a primacy where
foreign relations were involved, and he had not been inactive while
awaiting the return of Washington. Jay and King had been consulted
particularly as to the receiving of Genêt. Neither could find any
pretext for refusing to receive him; both thought he should be received
with qualifications. Uppermost in the minds of all three was the
treaty--the necessity of evading its obligations.[769] Having decided on
the policy of Jefferson’s department, Hamilton took no chances, and
prepared the list of questions to be submitted to the Cabinet, which
Washington copied in his own handwriting, but Jefferson was not deceived
as to the authorship.[770] There were no illusions on Jefferson’s part
as to his position that April day in the room in the Morris house. There
was Hamilton, eager, not a little domineering, who had prepared
Washington’s questions on which the Secretary of State had not been
consulted; and Knox, big, pudgy, a bit flamboyant, complacent, and proud
of his utter subserviency to Hamilton; and Randolph, with a legalistic
mind capable of refining away any position he might take.

Should Genêt be received?

Yes, said Hamilton, with qualifications. Yes, said Jefferson,
unqualifiedly. Yes, with qualifications, said Knox, dutifully echoing
Hamilton, and, says Jefferson, ‘acknowledging at the same time, like the
fool he is, that he knew nothing about it.’[771] Randolph agreed with
Jefferson.

Let him be received, said Hamilton, with the distinct understanding that
we must reserve for future consideration the binding force of the
treaties. There was no proof that Louis had been guilty, and evidence
that the republicans in France had actually premeditated a plan to get
rid of monarchical power.[772] There was no proof that the execution was
an act of national justice, and all the courts in Europe held a
different view.[773] In truth, ‘almost all Europe ... seems likely to be
armed ... with the intention of restoring ... the royalty in the
successor of the deceased monarch.’[774] If our treaty obligations
proved disadvantageous, we should have the right to renounce them.[775]
Respect the right of a nation to change its form of government? Yes.
Receive its ambassador? Yes. But to throw our weight into the scale for
the new republic might be lacking ‘in national delicacy and
decorum.’[776] As to our obligations under the treaty, there were none,
for France was waging an offensive war. The coalition of the monarchs to
crush the republic forced the war? Perhaps--but France made the first
formal declaration of hostilities.[777]

Jefferson approached the question from a diametrically opposite point of
view. ‘The reception of the Minister at all,’ he said, ‘is an
acknowledgment of the legitimacy of their government; and if the
qualifications meditated are to deny that legitimacy, it will be a
curious compound which is to deny and admit the same thing.’ The
abrogation of the treaties? ‘I consider the people who constitute a
society as the source of all authority in that nation,’ he said: ‘as
free to transact their common concerns by any agents they think proper;
to change these agents individually, or the organization of them in form
or function whenever they please; that all the acts done by these agents
under the authority of the nation, are obligatory to them and inure to
their use, and can in no wise be annulled or affected by any change in
the form of government.... Consequently the treaties between the United
States and France were not treaties between the United States and Louis
Capet, but between the two nations of America and France; and the
nations remaining in existence, though both of them have since changed
their forms of government, the treaties are not annulled by these
changes.’[778] All the Cabinet agreed to a proclamation forbidding
Americans from participating in the war, to the unqualified reception of
Genêt while holding the treaties in abeyance, and to the issuing of a
proclamation.

With the appearance of the proclamation, the storm broke.

This had seemed inevitable to Jefferson from the beginning.[779]
Madison, then in Virginia, wrote that the proclamation ‘wounds the
national honor by seeming to disregard the stipulated duties to France,’
and ‘wounds the popular feeling by a seeming indifference to the cause
of liberty.’[780]

The party issue was made. The Hamiltonians were sympathetic toward
monarchical France, hostile to revolutionary France, friendly to
England; the Jeffersonians were friendly to revolutionary France,
hostile to the Bourbons, and unfriendly to the policy of Pitt in
England. The heart of the Hamiltonians beat in tune to the martial steps
of the Coalition of the Kings marching on the French frontier; that of
the Jeffersonians was with the French peasants hurrying to defend their
soil and revolution. And the overwhelming sentiment of the Nation was
with Jefferson.

Instantly the Democratic masses saw in the coming of Genêt the
opportunity for the manifestation of their feelings. There was much in
the personality, appearance, and background of this ardent diplomat of
the Gironde to explain the fervent enthusiasm with which he was
received. Washington had been warned in advance by Morris, the Minister
to France, that he was an ‘upstart’--not a bad estimate, as it turned
out, but the President had abundant proof that all the French
republicans were upstarts.[781] He was not an upstart, however, in that
he did not belong in the great world of high politics and society. For
almost half a century his father had been in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, and his celebrated sister, Madame Campan, had been one of the
ladies of Marie Antoinette, of whom he had been a prime favorite. A
familiar figure among the fashionable young dandies of Versailles, he
had served for a while as the secretary of one of the brothers of the
monarch. An extraordinarily brilliant youth, he had translated the
‘History of Eric XIV’ at the age of twelve, with historical notes of his
own. Entering the diplomatic service, with the blessings of the Queen,
he had served as attaché at the courts of Berlin, Vienna, London, and
St. Petersburg. He spoke several languages with the fluency of a native.
A romantic figure, this young man, handsome, elegant in manner, eloquent
and entertaining in conversation, gracious, friendly, impulsive, with
the virtues to neutralize the vices of his years.

If the reception he received in the aristocratic city of Charleston was
enough to turn his head, it was nothing to the continuous ovation
accorded him as he proceeded slowly on his month’s journey to
Philadelphia. Farmers flocked to the rough roads to cheer him and offer
him produce at a loss. In every town he was a conquering hero, and
everywhere he was greeted with the strains of ‘Ça Ira’ and orators paid
tribute to France and the principles of its Revolution. The ringing of
bells, the shouting of the multitude wearing liberty caps and waving
French flags--such the sights and sounds that greeted him everywhere.
Nor was this charming young diplomat pleasing to the Democratic rabble
alone. At Baltimore, Justice Iredell of the Supreme Court was impressed
with his ‘fine open countenance, and pleasing unaffected manner.’[782]
Federalist Iredell failed to find the ‘upstart’ who was so conspicuous
to Federalist Morris.

As the reports of the continuous ovation dribbled into Philadelphia,
Hamilton and the Federalists were alarmed and disgusted, Jefferson
delighted. Here was proof that the people were sound in their
republicanism. Better still, here were the masses making themselves felt
in public affairs for the first time. Even better, they were casting
aside the spirit of humility, and standing erect with their sovereignty
under their hats. While Genêt was proceeding to the capital, Jefferson
was writing joyously to Monroe of the ‘old spirit of ‘76 rekindling the
newspapers from Boston to Charleston’ and forcing ‘the monocrat papers
... to publish the most furious philippics against England.’[783] And
Madison was quite as pleased. He had hoped for a reception that would
make ‘the cant of the cities’ and the ‘cold caution of the Government’
less offensive.[784]

Meanwhile, as Genêt approached, the Democrats in Philadelphia,
suspecting that the Government hoped ‘to prevent a joyful reception,’
were determined to disappoint that hope. ‘An Old Soldier,’ in a stirring
reminder of French services in the American Revolution, declared that
‘if after such recollections you will hesitate to welcome their
ambassador, I will mourn over the departed virtue of my country.’[785]

The appeal was not made in vain. Freneau and Bache in their papers were
arousing the emotions of the people. The former was publishing Grey’s
speech in Parliament against going to war with France. ‘A shining
character,’ thought the editor.[786] He was also informing his readers
that the news of our neutrality ‘gave much satisfaction to the English
nation.’[787] Meanwhile, the ‘rabble,’ embracing such characters as
Rittenhouse, Dr. Hutchinson, and A. J. Dallas, was making preparations.
The Minister would be met at Gray’s Ferry, and every one who possibly
could should go. The cannon on _L’Ambascade_ would roar the
announcements of the hero’s approach early enough to permit all who
wished to reach the Ferry in time.[788]

It was at this time that a strange rumor was floating about the streets,
taverns, and beer-houses of the city. Count de Noailles had arrived in
Philadelphia at nine o’clock on the night of May 3d, commissioned as
Minister by the former Princes at Coblentz, and at a very late hour at
night had been received by Washington at the Morris house where the two
‘were in private conversation until near morning.’ The Count had
arrived--every one knew it. What sort of treachery was this? So this was
the reason the Government was trying to discourage the reception to
Genêt.[789] The people would see to that.

Thus, Genêt was met at Gray’s Ferry by an immense throng with thunderous
cheers--cheers that accompanied him all the way to the City Tavern. The
streets packed, throbbing with joy. Looking out over the excited
multitude, Genêt ‘was quite overcome with the affectionate joy that
appeared on every face,’ according to a lady of Philadelphia who shared
it. ‘It is true,’ she said, ‘that a few disaffected persons did try to
check the ardor of the people, but they had the mortification to find
all their efforts blasted and were obliged themselves to join the
general torrent and affect a cordiality ... contrary to the feelings of
their hearts.’ A truly inspiring spectacle. ‘It would be impossible, my
dear, to give you any idea of the scene.’[790] Then followed the formal
welcome. Resolutions were prepared at the home of Charles Biddle, were
adopted enthusiastically at an immense meeting in the State House
yard--then on in a body to the City Tavern, Biddle leading the way and
setting a merry pace. Ever and anon he received a frantic plea from Dr.
Hutchinson, ‘fat enough to act the character of Falstaff without
stuffing,’ to slow up, and with sardonic humor Biddle hurried on. The
corpulent doctor reached the hotel in a state of complete exhaustion.
But it was worth it. ‘Ça Ira!’ Long live the French Republic and
damnation to its foes![791] Then the dinner at O’Eller’s, the finest the
city had ever seen, at four dollars a plate, with Genêt thrilling the
diners by singing the French fighting song, the audience roaring ‘Ça
Ira,’ liberty caps passing around, toasts fervent and fiery. ‘What
hugging and rugging!’ grumbled a Philadelphian a quarter of a century
later. ‘What addressing and caressing! What mountebanking and chanting
with liberty caps and the other wretched trumpery of sans-culotte
foolery!’[792] When Genêt called on Jefferson, he was cordially
received, but there was a drop in temperature when he presented his
credentials to Washington, whose sober and restrained manner seemed cold
to the Frenchman after the reception from the people. Worse still, he
found portraits of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the room. Enough,
quite enough, had been done to turn the head of a stronger character
than he. But the Philadelphia lady was right--many who hated the
Revolution simulated enthusiasm, and one day Knox, Bingham, and other
leading Federalists might have been seen going aboard _L’Ambascade_ with
Genêt to partake of a fraternal dinner.[793]

VII

Thus the popular protest against neutrality between England and France
rose in a crescendo to a scream. Be patient with England? scoffed a
Boston writer. What, with the western posts still held, the Indian wars,
the impressment of American sailors on the sea?[794] The country’s
grievances against the English were mobilized and marched to the
accompaniment of hisses. A resident of Pittsburgh wrote an open letter
to Washington against neutrality. ‘I doubt much whether it is the
disposition of the United States to preserve the condition you enjoin.
It may be the disposition of those who draw from funds but from no one
else.’[795] Thus encouraged, ‘Veritas’ grasped his pen. ‘I am aware,
sir, that some court satellites may have deceived you’--not difficult to
impose on a ruler ‘particularly if so much buoyed up by official
importance as to think it beneath his dignity to mix occasionally with
the people.’[796] Freneau, who began to print a series of satirical
poems attacking Washington, sardonically sent two copies of each issue
to his desk. The great man fumed, fretted, occasionally burst into rage.
‘Civic’ launched his thunderbolts against ‘incendiaries ... who have
lately outraged decency ... by insulting Washington,’[797] and Fenno
rushed to the defense with stupid denunciations of all critics as
anarchists and traitors. The men in the streets jeered their
disapproval.

Thus, the summer of 1793 was one of utter madness. Mechanics were
reading the speeches of Mirabeau; clerks were poring over the reports of
revolutionary chiefs; college students were finding Paine preferable to
Virgil; and even the women were reading, with flushed cheeks, Barlow’s
‘Conspiracy of Kings.’ Others too illiterate to read were stalking the
narrow streets like conquerors, jostling the important men of the
community with intent, and sneering at the great. Men were equal. The
people’s day had dawned. Down the streets swaggered the mob looking for
lingering relics of royalty to tear or order down. A medallion enclosing
a bas-relief of George III with his crown, on the eastern front of
Christ’s Church, caught its eye. Down with it! The church officials did
not hesitate, but tore it down. On swept the mob in search of other
worlds to conquer. Occasionally the lower element, drinking itself
drunk, staggered out of the beer-houses to shout imprecations on a
government that would not war on England.

Not wholly without provocation, these outbursts. Fenno’s fulsome
snobbery was disgusting to people of sense, and the English sailors in
Philadelphia did not help. When four of these jolly tars attacked and
all but murdered a lone French sailor without a rebuke from the city
officials, Bache’s paper warned that the friends of the French would
‘take signal vengeance on such infamous banditti.’ When, in New York,
the aristocrats of the ‘new and elegant coffee-house’ and the exclusive
Belvedere Club were ‘swallowing potent draughts to the annihilation of
liberty,’ notice was served that unless suppressed ‘a band of Mohawks,
Oneidas, and Senecas will take upon themselves that necessary duty’--for
Tammany was the very heart of the French movement in New York.[798] ‘Ça
Ira!’ The people were the masters, and even in the theaters they went to
dictate to managers and actors. When Hodkinson, a favorite actor,
appeared, as his rôle required, in the uniform of a British officer, he
was hissed. ‘Take it off!’ shouted the crowd; but when the quick-witted
actor smilingly explained that he represented a bully, the jeers were
turned to cheers.[799] On then with the play. The orchestras played ‘La
Marseillaise,’ the galleries sang ‘Ça Ira,’ the managers shunted
Shakespeare and Sheridan aside for ‘Tyranny Suppressed,’ ‘Louis XVI,’
and ‘The Demolition of the Bastile.’ In Boston, where the Federalists
were firm, the Boston Theater continued to cater to their tastes, but
even there the Haymarket drew the greater crowds with drama for the
Democrats.

Everywhere liberty caps were worn and liberty poles were raised, and men
and women became ‘Citizen’ and ‘Citizeness,’ while the Federalists
roared their glee to keep up courage, making merry in their letters and
through their papers at the expense of the ‘citness’:

‘No citness to my name, I’ll have, says Kate,
Though Boston lads so much about it prate;
I’ve asked its meaning, and our Tom, the clown,
Says darn it ‘t means “woman of the town.”[800]

From Hartford the witty Chauncey Goodrich wrote Wolcott that ‘our
citizenesses quite execrate their new name,’ and that while ‘they will
have no objection to being called biped in common with men, if it can
clearly be shown that term denotes nothing above the foot or ankle, but
as it comes so near they are suspicious of mischief.’[801] What a world!
What a world ‘agog to be all equal to French barbers.’[802]

Then, suddenly, these Federalists ceased to grin, when Democratic Clubs,
suggestive of those of Paris, appeared like magic everywhere, differing
according to the community and character of their leadership. It was not
riff-raff in Philadelphia where David Rittenhouse was president, but it
was sinister enough with its bold assertion that free men should ‘regard
with attention and discuss without fear the conduct of public
servants.’[803] That at Norfolk summoned patriots to a courageous
expression of their sentiments in answer to ‘the tyrants of the world’
united ‘to crush the infant spirit of freedom’ in France.[804] Strangely
enough, they were nowhere so extreme as in Charleston where the ‘Saint
Cecilia Society’ scorned the membership of plebeians or men in trade;
and where Robert Goodloe Harper, fresh from the country and poor, rose
rapidly to fame as the vice-president of the Jacobin Club, wearing a
‘red rouge with great grace and dignity.’[805] And nowhere did they mean
so much to the Jeffersonians as in New England where they were giving
political importance to the masses. Even the Germans of Philadelphia
organized to serve liberty and equality in their native tongue.[806]

The shrieks of protest from the Federalists against these clubs is
inexplicable to the twentieth century. Like innumerable clubs for public
purposes to-day, they were composed of the wise and foolish, the vicious
and virtuous, but their purpose was to discuss and disseminate
information on public affairs. Some then, as now, passed asinine
resolutions, but that which alarmed the Hamiltonians was that they
created power for the masses. Had not Fenno preached and preached that
the masses were to be ruled and satisfied? The merchants should have
their Chambers of Commerce; the financiers and even speculators could
organize to influence public action--but what right had the ‘man of no
particular importance’ to interfere?

In brief, these clubs were vicious because democratic. These ‘demoniacal
societies,’ as Wolcott preferred to call them, were ‘nurseries of
sedition’ because ‘they are formed for the avowed purpose of a general
influence and control upon measures of government.’[807] It was
‘sedition’ in those days for people of no special significance to hold
views in opposition to the policies of their rulers. It was the kind of
sedition that Jefferson liked. From his home on the river he watched
their organizations multiply and grow with a fond, hopeful interest.
They were his Citizens’ Training Camps where the army he was to lead to
victory was being trained for political war.

VIII

Meanwhile, how fared neutrality on the part of England and France? On
the part of Genêt, badly enough. Week by week some outrage was
committed; and, worse still, the young fanatic was persuading himself of
the propriety of his actions. The cheers in the streets convinced him
that he could defy the President and appeal with safety to the people.
He could hear the comparatively few extremists because they shouted
loudest. Day by day he was becoming more intolerable. Devoted to the
cause of revolutionary France, Jefferson sought to curb the impetuosity
of its Minister in the interest of the cause, but toward the latter part
of June he was plainly worried.[808]

The British were as arrogant and impudent. Outrages on American ships
and the impressment of American seamen were almost daily occurrences,
and protests to the Government in London brought no response.[809]
‘Ships stopped, insulted, searched; cargoes confiscated; seamen seized,
impressed, and thrown into jails; until Thomas Pinckney, the American
Minister in London, was overwhelmed with his correspondence with Newgate
Jail--for the poor wretches there were begging him for succor he could
not give. He was met with a courteous smile and contemptuous
indifference.’[810]

In American waters British as well as French were arming and equipping,
and into American ports sailed English vessels with prizes taken in
direct violation of the treaty with France. Then came the Orders in
Council of June 8th ordering British ships to capture and take to
British ports all vessels with foodstuffs destined for France.

On the day before this Order went into effect, a goodly company of
English sympathizers met at Richardet’s Tavern in Philadelphia to
celebrate the birthday of George III. An elegant dinner, unmarred by the
presence of any part of the ‘rabble,’ with a guest list reading like a
page from a Social Register. Enthusiasm bubbled, and ‘Ça Ira’ was not
sung. The orchestra played ‘God Save the King.’ That monarch was
toasted, and they toasted the Queen, and Hammond the British Minister,
and Phineas Bond, the British Consul. They toasted Washington once and
‘Neutrality’ twice. And they brought a perfect evening to a close with
another toast: ‘The Red Coats and Wooden Walls of Old England.’[811]
Fenno in the Federalist organ published a sympathetic account which was
read with varying emotions from Mrs. Bingham’s library to the beer
saloon on Front Street. Even the soberest began to wonder if neutrality
was one-sided. Nowhere was neutrality appealing to the masses as just,
wise, or fair.

One June morning, Washington drove out of Philadelphia in a phaëton and
pair for a fortnight’s visit home,[812] and six days later the first of
a brilliant and powerful series of articles by ‘Pacificus’ began to run
in Fenno’s paper. By the light of the candles, Hamilton was rushing into
the breach with a pen that was mightier than a sword.

No one doubted the identity of ‘Pacificus.’ None but the man in the
Pemberton house was capable of such brilliancy, audacity, and dash in
controversy. His purpose was twofold--to justify the Proclamation of
Neutrality, and convince the people that they had greatly exaggerated
the services of France in the Revolution. In the first paper he defended
the constitutional right of the President to issue the Proclamation
without a consultation with Congress. In the second he released the
country from all treaty obligations on the ground that France was waging
an offensive war. In the third he appealed to fear with the assertion
that if we sought to serve our ally we should be forced to wage war on
the sea against the combined fleets of the coalition. In the fifth he
treated the claims of France on American gratitude as trivial and
absurd.[813] In the sixth he paid a tribute to the stupid Louis,
attacking the French people for executing their king. In the last he
urged the timeliness and necessity of the Proclamation. Brilliant
letters, mingling truth and sophistry, but readable--and they were read
with mingled emotions. Society was enchanted, the ‘mob’ roared, and even
Jefferson, who never made the Hamiltonian mistake of underestimating a
foe, was concerned.

When ‘Pacificus’ was appearing, Jefferson was summering under his plane
trees near Philadelphia, Madison was sweltering in his Virginia home,
wishing nothing better than a release from political duties. As
Jefferson sat under the trees with Fenno’s paper before him, he
instantly appreciated the necessity of a reply, and he ordered Madison
to the task. Nothing could have been more distasteful to the mild little
man suffering ‘a distressing lassitude from the excessive and continued
heat of the season,’ and with avowed reluctance he undertook the
task.[814] But in August, Madison’s replies were running in all the
papers--forceful, spirited, rapid in reasoning, making telling points
with citations from Hamilton’s articles in ‘The Federalist.’[815] He
denied the power of the President to declare a treaty no longer
operative. Proof? The best--Hamilton’s Number 75 of ‘The Federalist.’
Challenge the right of a nation to abolish an old government and
establish a new? Why, it ‘is the only lawful tenure by which the United
States hold their existence as a nation.’

But the two sets of letters merely served to keep the discussion going.
The papers were doing their part. ‘This discussion must cease,’ wrote
Fenno. ‘The Government has said we must be neutral and the people have
no right to question its wisdom.’ Freneau sniffed and snorted forth
satirical articles on the infallibility of rulers.[816] No writer
presuming to castigate the democrats was spared. ‘Justice’ was pouring
forth indignant eloquence against them. Ah, sneered Freneau--

‘Because some pumpkin shells and lobster claws
Thrown o’er his garden wall by Braintree’s Duke,[817]
Have chanced to fall within your greedy jaws--

* * * * *

Because some treasury luncheons you have gnawed
Like rats that play upon the public store ...’[818]

The bitterness intensified with the heat of the summer. A satirical
letter ascribed to a Tory in Philadelphia to one in London rejoicing
over the turn American affairs had taken, went the rounds of the
Democratic press. Washington was not spared. He ‘is well surrounded,
well advised.’ Hamilton moved the correspondent to rapture--‘that great
prop of our cause, that intrepid enemy of liberty.’ Just read the third
of the ‘Pacificus’ letters ‘and judge ... if there is anything criminal
which honest Pacificus has not undertaken to defend.’[819]

‘A blessed situation truly,’ exclaimed ‘Consistent Federalist,’
referring to the recent Orders in Council. ‘Camillus and Pacificus come
forward and vindicate the lenity of Britain; continue to blast the
French, and vent their spleen on the only nation that seems disposed to
befriend us.’[820] ‘Go on, then, Pacificus,’ wrote ‘Ironicus,’ ‘traduce
the French nation and the combined powers of Europe will thank you for
your assiduity.’[821] Soon the Democrats were grinning over the
satirical announcement of the forthcoming book ‘collected from the
immortal work of Pacificus’ on how to destroy free government by
‘aristocracy and despotism.’[822]

But Hamilton could afford to disregard the attacks--he had Genêt working
on his side. Never had conditions seemed so promising to the
light-headed and hot-headed young diplomat than on July 4th, when he had
licked his chops over the opportunity to decline an invitation to dine
with the Cincinnati on the ground that he would not sit down at the same
table with the Viscount de Noailles.[823] There were other celebrations
in Philadelphia more to his taste.

It was at this moment that the brig _Little Sarah_, a French prize, was
being rapidly converted into a privateer with the view to sending it to
sea regardless of neutrality. Governor Mifflin sent his secretary, A. J.
Dallas, scurrying through the midnight streets to Genêt’s residence to
order him to keep the vessel in port. The young fire-eater raved and
ranted, and said strange things about appealing over the head of the
President to the people. Jefferson, hearing of the incident, hurried in
on Sunday from the country, listened to Genêt’s cocky talk, attempted to
reason with him without success, but left with the feeling that the ship
would not be sent to sea before Washington’s return from Mount Vernon.

The Cabinet met on Monday at the State House. Hamilton and Knox proposed
establishing a battery on Mud Island and firing on the vessel if it
sought to reach the sea. Hamilton vehemently denounced the French.
Jefferson, having in mind his representations to England, was not at all
sure that the violations of neutrality were on one side. He stoutly
protested against any measure that might lead to war without a
consultation with Washington.

Three days later the _Little Sarah_ was still in Philadelphia and
Washington returned. Hamilton and Knox were instantly on his neck.
Jefferson, ill with fever, had prepared all the papers in the case for
the President’s use, marked them for ‘instant attention,’ left them on
his desk, and retired to his home. Glancing at the papers, Washington
sent a peremptory summons to Jefferson’s office. Learning then of his
absence, a note was sent to the sick man’s home sizzling with
indignation over Genêt’s threat, and requiring Jefferson’s opinion on
procedure ‘even before to-morrow morning, for the vessel may be gone.’
Jefferson kept his temper--unless it is betrayed in the brevity and cold
dignity of the reply: ‘T. J. is himself of opinion that whatever is
aboard of her of arms, ammunition, or men, contrary to the rules
heretofore laid down by the President, ought to be withdrawn.’

It was after this that the _Little Sarah_ put to sea.

The lunatic caperings of Genêt had been maddening to Jefferson, who
instantly sensed the inevitable reaction against his party, and the ease
with which the sophisticated reasoning of the Federalists could confuse,
in the public mind, the cause of the French Revolution with the
insolence of its Minister. Wherever his influence could be successfully
exerted, he divorced his followers from the addle-brained diplomat who
had become raving mad. To Madison he complained of the continued
adherence of Freneau and Greenleaf to Genêt.[824] Dr. Hutchinson had
informed him that ‘Genêt has totally overturned the republican interest
in Philadelphia.’ Referring to the threat to appeal to the people over
Washington’s head, he added: ‘I can assure you it is a fact.’[825]

Justifications for the fears of the leader under the plane trees were
soon reaching him from Madison in Virginia, who had a plan afoot for the
complete divorcing of Genêt from the Jeffersonian Party and from the
cause of the French Republic. He prepared resolutions and arranged for
their adoption in various county meetings in Virginia. One copy was sent
to Edmund Pendleton of Caroline; Monroe was sent with another copy to
Staunton. Still another went to Charlottesville.[826] The first of the
county meetings to adopt the Madison Resolutions was at Caroline with
Pendleton in the chair, and they were hurried to the newspapers
throughout the country. They declared devotion to the Constitution, to
the cause of peace, and to Washington, were warmly appreciative of the
debt of gratitude to France, sympathetic toward her struggle for
liberty, and denunciatory of the attempt to alienate the two republics
and to drive the United States in the direction of monarchy and
England.[827] They were sent to Washington, whose reply must have been
galling to the English party with its laudation of France and the
republican principle of government.[828] The Jeffersonian press gave the
reply the widest possible publicity.

Thus, through July, August, and September the two parties contended over
the threat of Genêt, each playing for advantage. Comparatively few
extremists offered any excuse for the ruined Minister, who was despised
by Jefferson and Madison for compromising their party and the cause of
France. ‘His conduct has been that of a madman,’ wrote Madison to
Monroe.[829] Even the Democratic Clubs followed the line laid down in
Madison’s Caroline Resolutions.

Such was the inflammatory state of parties when on August 1st,
Jefferson, Hamilton, Knox, and Randolph arrived at the Morris house to
discuss with Washington the disposition to be made of Genêt.

Knox was not given to finesse when his passions were involved. ‘Send him
out of the country,’ and without ceremony, he said. Publish all the
correspondence in an appeal to the people before Genêt could carry out
his threat, urged Hamilton. For forty-five minutes he spoke
impassionedly, attacking Genêt, denouncing the Democratic Societies,
assailing France. Jefferson, sitting in silence, thought it was an
excellent ‘jury speech.’

Randolph spoke in opposition to radical measures, and the meeting
adjourned until the morrow.

The next day Hamilton again took the floor and spoke again for three
quarters of an hour with unrestrained bitterness. As he sat down,
Jefferson rose. He was not alarmed over the Democratic Clubs. They would
die if left alone and would grow on proscription and persecution.
Publish the facts and decisions of the President on the whole foreign
controversy? Those decisions had been reached with divisions in the
Cabinet--was it desired to proclaim that condition to the country? Was
it desirable to injure our friend France with a stab, in the face of her
enemies, the allied kings of Europe?

It was here that Knox broke in with references to Freneau’s attacks on
Washington. He had calculated the effect. The President flew into a
rage, and the meeting adjourned because of the turmoil and
excitement.[830] Determined to manage his own department, Jefferson
thereupon sat down to the preparation of a letter to the American
Minister in Paris, setting forth with scrupulous fairness and severity
the antics of Genêt, and asking his recall. The sting to France was
removed with an eloquent protestation of friendship. Hamilton at no time
drew so damning and effective an indictment of Genêt, but all this was
lost upon him because of the note of friendliness to France.[831]

Twelve days after the first meeting, the Cabinet again sat about the
council table in the Morris house listening to the Jefferson draft. It
was so unassailable that it was unanimously accepted--with one
exception. Jefferson had referred to a possible conflict between the two
republics as ‘liberty warring on itself.’ Hamilton moved to strike out
these words, Knox parroting his master’s suggestion. Washington favored
their retention, expressing the conviction that France, despite her
blunders, was fighting for liberty; but Randolph voted with Hamilton and
Knox against Washington and Jefferson, and the words were stricken
out.[832]

In due time Genêt was recalled. That episode was over. Jefferson had won
his fight to prevent a rupture with France--but it had cost him dearly.

XII

As early as May, Jefferson had been able to put his finger on the French
and English parties in this country. With the English, the fashionable
circles, the merchants trading on English capital, the supporters of the
Treasury, the old Tory families; with the French, the small merchants,
the tradesmen, mechanics, farmers, ‘and every other possible description
of our citizens.’[833] There was no doubt in his mind as to the position
of the social circles of Philadelphia--he was made to feel it. The men
were courteous in his presence, and he still dined occasionally with the
Binghams and Robert Morris, though the ladies were but chillingly
polite. The friend of the ‘filthy democrats,’ as Mrs. Washington is said
to have called them, was, to them, beyond the pale. Mr. Hammond, the
English Minister, was such a charming man! A few of the French noblemen,
once numbered among the dissolute loafers of Versailles, were to be
found frequently drinking Bingham’s wine, paying courtly compliments to
the women, and making love to the daughters of the house a bit
clandestinely, as Mrs. Bingham was to find to her dismay a little later.
Not a few of the social leaders had been ‘presented’ at court in both
France and England, and they never recovered. Others looked forward to a
possible presentation as the consummation of a life’s ambition. Kings
were adorable creatures, after all, and queens were as ‘sweet queens’ as
Fanny Burney found hers, and the nobility was so elegant! As for the
‘people’--were they not as the rabble who had cut off the head of the
lovable Louis? And Jefferson was the enemy of kings, the idol of the
rabble--and what was worse, their defender. The men thought his
principles askew, but the women knew that his heart was black.

Thus it was fortunate that during the exciting summer of 1793, Jefferson
could retire to the solitude of his murmuring plane trees and let
society buzz. Even the Philadelphia streets were cold to him. Party
feeling was running amuck. Old acquaintances pretended not to see each
other as they passed. It was true everywhere. Even Noah Webster was
complaining bitterly of this party narrowness in New York. ‘Examine the
detached clubs at the Coffee-House,’ he wrote, ‘there you will see
persons of the same family associated. Go into the private families at
dinner and on evening visits, there you will find none but people of the
same party.’[834]

When Jefferson remained in town after leaving his office, he spent more
and more time in the library of the Philosophical Society, at the home
of Dr. Rush talking books more than politics, or he went to the welcome
shade of ‘Stenton,’ where he was always sure of a cordial greeting from
Dr. Logan and that incomparable Quakeress who was his wife. To Madison
he opened his heart in the lament that he found ‘even the rare hours of
relaxation sacrificed to the society of persons ... of whose hatreds I
am conscious even in those moments of conviviality when the heart wishes
most to open itself to the effusions of friendship and confidence, cut
off from my family and friends ... in short giving everything I love in
exchange for everything I hate.’[835] The attacks on Washington, which
society ascribed to the influence of Jefferson, made his position all
the more unpleasant. Articles signed ‘Democrat’, or ‘Veritas’ foully
assailing the President appeared in Federalists papers. The worst of
these, Jefferson thought, were written by his enemies for the purpose of
embittering decent men against his party. It was even whispered about
that he was the author of the ‘Veritas’ letters, for Genêt, in an
attempt to impress his Government with his own power, hinted that
Jefferson had written them. The latter talked it over with Tobias Lear,
the President’s secretary, and made an investigation of his own,
concluding that the author was William Irvine, a clerk in the
Comptroller’s office. ‘I have long suspected this detestible game was
playing by the fiscal party to place the President on their side,’
Jefferson wrote.[836] It was manifestly absurd, but society preferred to
believe it.

Unpleasant as was the attitude of the fashionable circles, it was not so
offensive to Jefferson as the constant quarreling and intriguing in
official circles. He complained that he and Hamilton were always against
each other like cocks in a pit. He was never fond of futile disputation.
His own views were fixed, as were those of his opponent. He was too much
the philosopher to enjoy argumentation that accomplished nothing. Long
before that summer he had wanted to retire, and, as we have seen, had
only been dissuaded by the importunities of Washington, but he was now
intolerably tired of it all. Acknowledging a letter from a friend in
Paris, he had written, in reference to the ‘oppressive scenes of
business,’ that ‘never was mortal more tired of these than I am.’[837]
Three months earlier, he had promised his daughter Martha that the next
year they would ‘sow [their] cabbages together.’

By July the situation was becoming unendurable. It was about this time,
when he was writing his notes to Hammond, the British Minister, who was
an intimate friend of Hamilton’s, that Oliver Wolcott, the mere shadow
of his chief, was bitterly complaining of Jefferson’s ‘duplicity of
character’ in treating Hammond harshly.[838] These were the notes to
which John Marshall gave the highest praise in his ‘Life of Washington,’
but the observation of Wolcott reflected the tone of society.

On July 31st, the philosopher-politician seated under his plane trees
might have read an attack upon himself in Fenno’s paper charging him
with crimes against his country committed in such a way as ‘to keep him
out of reach of the law.’[839] That very day he sat down at his desk to
write his resignation. Six days later, Washington drove out to
Jefferson’s country place, and out on the lawn sought again to dissuade
his Secretary of State from his purpose. But he had had enough. With
some bitterness, he told the President that ‘the laws of society oblige
me always to move exactly in the circle which I know to bear me peculiar
hatred ... and thus surrounded, my words are caught up, multiplied,
misconstrued, and even fabricated and spread abroad to my injury.’[840]
Convinced that Jefferson was unshakable, Washington discussed, with
him, a possible successor. He favored Madison, but feared he would not
accept, and then asked Jefferson’s opinion of Jay and Smith, both rabid
Hamiltonians. Jefferson asked him if he had ever thought of Chancellor
Livingston. He had--but Hamilton was from New York. What did Jefferson
know about Wolcott? ‘I have heard him characterized as a very cunning
man,’ was the dry reply. It was finally agreed that Jefferson should
remain on until January.[841]

XIII

August was a dreadful month in Philadelphia, a dry, deadening heat
making the days and nights unbearable. Any one walking near Water Street
was sickened by the fetid smells from the stinking wharves. Politically
conditions were as depressing. The bitter party struggle went on. Even
the heat and smells could not give it pause. Bache’s paper published a
letter describing Viscount de Noailles as ‘a man who was employed by the
late King of France to bribe the members of the Convention ... and
afterwards ran off with the money’; and the next day the nobleman,
swords and pistols in his eyes, appeared to demand that the editor
publish a denial and furnish the name of the author of the article.
Thinking discretion the better part of valor, Bache gave ‘Mr. Pascal,
the Secretary of Genêt,’ as the author and society expected a French
duel--to be disappointed.[842] Genêt was hurrying off to New York to
accept an ovation and the Hamiltonians began to lose faith in
Washington, because he sat ‘with folded arms’ and let the Government ‘be
carried on by town meetings.’ The Federalists were concluding that town
meetings were a vicious influence. Meetings of Chambers of Commerce were
different.[843] But it was reserved for Boston to give the Federalists
their greatest shock when at the masthead of the French frigate _La
Concorde_, appeared the names of eleven staid men of the city placarded
as ‘aristocrats,’ and unfriendly to the French Republic. The charge was
true, but here was something that smacked of the Terror in Paris. With
the town seething with righteous wrath, a committee boarded the vessel
and demanded the removal of the placard. The officers expressed surprise
that it was there, apologized, removed it. But the opportunity was too
good to be lost. ‘I wish to know what is to be their [the eleven
citizens’] punishment, and who is to execute it,’ wrote ‘A Free
American’ in the ‘Centinel.’ ‘Are they to suffer by the lamp post or by
the guillotine here, or are they to be sent in irons to Paris to suffer
there?’[844] Viewing the scene, as became a Cabot, from the
vantage-point of aristocratic aloofness, George Cabot was alarmed. He
wrote King of his ‘amazement’ at ‘the rapid growth of Jacobin feeling.’
Why had not the truth concerning France been told the people? Had she
not ‘obstructed our commercial views?’[845] Had Cabot unbent to the
reading of the ‘Independent Chronicle’ of his city he might have
understood the cause of the ‘growth of Jacobin feeling.’ It fairly
teemed with the French and their Revolution. ‘In case of distress whence
is our succor to arise?’ it demanded. ‘Is there one among the combined
powers contending against France on whose cordiality we could
depend?’[846] Ask the soldier of our Revolution who helped win American
independence. ‘Who were the men who marched in columns to the capture of
Cornwallis--or whose navy thundered the music of that defeat?’[847]

Then, with September, the reaper of Death stalked through the streets of
Philadelphia.

XIV

It began with the filth and sickening smells of Water Street and spread
like the deadly gas of modern battle-fields over the city. The poor of
the congested quarters near the water-front fell like flies in winter.
Soon it spread to the best residential sections. The evident inability
of the physicians to cope with the disease increased the terror.
Washington was ordered out of the city and hastened to Mount Vernon, and
Knox took to precipitate flight.[848] Soon all the great houses were
closed, and every one who could afford it abandoned his business and
fled from the stricken city. Soon half the houses were abandoned, and
they who remained locked their doors, closed the windows, and lived in
complete isolation as far as possible.[849]

Day and night the death-carts rumbled through the town and a covered
wagon was kept busy conveying the sick to Bush Hill Hospital in the
country--a dismal wagon with a bed, drawn by a weary horse.[850] With
half the stores closed, the upward bound in the cost of provisions
intensified the distress of the poor.[851] The streets were as those of
a dead city, no one caring to brush against the black robe of the grim
reaper that was taking such an appalling harvest. One observer looking
down the street one day could not see a single soul.[852] Terror seized
upon every one. Lifelong friends evaded one another like guilty
creatures. Even the families of the stricken fled, leaving the suffering
to die in barbarous neglect.[853] One man determined to remain in the
city, but passing twelve corpses in the streets, he summoned a carriage
and fled in horror.[854] Only the negroes seemed immune, and ‘much to
their honor, they ... zealously contributed all in their power.’[855]
And to accentuate the horror, the rumble of the death-cart, the cries of
the dying, the groans of the abandoned, were mingled with the bold
footsteps of the robbers making their way from one deserted mansion to
another.’[856] Panic everywhere. A toothache, and the victim was on the
verge of collapse from fright--it was the fever.[857] Timothy Pickering
had a twinge, and off he hastened to the doctor to be bled, put on a
starvation diet, and sent on long horseback rides into the country ‘for
pure air.’ Many died literally from fear, and the horror of the scenes
and sounds.[858]

When the death toll mounted from scores to hundreds, from hundreds to
thousands, the neighboring villages and towns met to devise plans for
keeping the Philadelphians away, and one of these threatened to receive
them ‘at the point of the bayonet.’[859] The hospitals were packed--two
hundred Irishmen in the Naval Hospital alone.[860] Meanwhile the
physicians were fighting courageously, desperately, but blindly and
futilely. Fisher Ames, who had a malicious humor, was amused at their
plight and methods. ‘All vouch success--none have it,’ he wrote, ‘and
like Sangrado’s patients they die for want of bleeding and warm water
enough.’ One doctor treated the disease as a plague--‘his patients
died’; he adopted Rush’s methods--‘they died.’ He hit upon a combination
of the methods--‘all died.’[861] Bache filled his columns with cures and
suggestions, but the death-rate increased frightfully. It was impossible
to keep a record. On October 20th, Wolcott wrote Washington that ‘more
than four thousand persons have died,’ and the next day Pickering wrote
him that ‘about three thousand have died.’[862] As many as 517 were
buried in the Potter’s Field between August 19th and October 1st.[863]

The streets deserted, houses closed, death-like silence but for the
rattle of burial wagons and the groans of the stricken, the tread of
robbers in the night--the horrors deepened. No one understood the reason
why--no one but Alexander Graydon, who thought it a grim visitation of
God to purge the foul hearts of the Philadelphians because of their
enthusiasm for French democracy. One of the democrats had fallen early,
when Dr. Hutchinson paid his profession the honor of dying in the
harness. One day he met a friend in the street and urged him to take his
family and leave. Was the Doctor going? No, he felt it his duty to stay
and serve the sick. Was he not afraid? Well, he thought he would
probably fall a victim, and bade the friend farewell. A few days later
he was dead--the greatest hero of the scourge.[864]

Meanwhile, Jefferson, living in the country, thought it his duty to go
to the city every day, and did. And then Graydon’s God made a blunder
that must have made the angels weep--he struck Hamilton down with the
blow that must have been intended for the Jacobin Jefferson.

Living two miles out in the country, Hamilton was stricken violently.
Having given thought to the disease, he had conceived that cold water
would be effective. He summoned Dr. Stevens and many attendants--‘the
method being expensive’--and through cold water and bark he was
cured.[865] ‘Colonel Hamilton is ill of the fever but is recovering,’
Jefferson wrote Robert Morris who had taken to flight.[866] By the time
the country knew of Hamilton’s peril he had recovered, and, with his
family, had hastened to the Schuylers at Albany.

With the approach of winter the disease receded--died out.

Even so, there was no disposition on the part of Congress to meet in the
gloomy city, and November found the Government established temporarily
in Germantown. The statesmen had to accommodate themselves to wretched
quarters. Jefferson ‘got a bed in the corner of a public room in a
tavern,’[867] but it mattered little to him, for his time was short. As
late as December 22d, Washington made a final effort to persuade him to
remain. ‘I hope it will be the last set at me to continue,’ Jefferson
wrote Martha.[868]

The publication of his correspondence with both Genêt and Hammond had
raised him in the esteem of his worst enemies. No one then or since has
pretended to the discovery of undue partiality in the treatment of the
offenses of the two nations. In the field of foreign relations the
papers of Jefferson during this period were as distinguished as those of
Hamilton in the sphere of finance.

But he was to submit to Congress a final Report on Commerce which was to
cut short his popularity with his enemies. ‘The letting loose of the
Algerines on us, which was contrived by England, has produced a peculiar
irritation,’ he wrote his daughter. ‘I think Congress will indemnify
themselves by high duties on all articles of British importation.’[869]
Here he was referring to his Report.

In this notable document, which his party instantly adopted as a chart
by which to steer, he laid down some broad general propositions which
called for retaliation on England. If a nation placed high duties on our
products, we should place high duties on its products, even to excluding
articles that came into competition with our own. Where a nation
prohibited American merchants or agents from residing in parts of its
domain, we could retaliate with propriety. If it refused to receive in
our vessels any products but our own, we could adopt a similar
regulation as to theirs. If it declined to consider any vessel as ours
not built in our territory, the rule could work both ways. All this was
accompanied with a report on our relative commercial intercourse with
both England and France. The purpose was in harmony with the policy for
which Madison had fought from the beginning.[870]

Leaving this as a legacy to his party, Jefferson prepared for his return
to his beloved Monticello. The executive branch of the Government was to
be turned over to the enemy, for no Jeffersonian considered Randolph,
who succeeded Jefferson, as a party man. Better a complete separation
and open opposition than a further pretense at an unworkable coalition
of the two parties. And home was calling imperatively. His private
affairs were in need of attention. His ten thousand acres had been
neglected. His hundred and fifty-four slaves had not been properly
directed. And there, on his serene hilltop, were his daughters, his
grandchildren, his friends the books, the trees, the view over the
valley at sunrise.

Bidding farewell to his friends and making ceremonious calls upon his
foes, he set forth in his carriage for the southward on January 5th. He
was going home. Soon the house he had planned on the hill would be in
view, soon the negroes would be running down the hill road to meet the
carriage, to touch his clothes, to kiss his hands. Soon he would be
sitting at his own fireside--in rooms sacred to the memory of the woman
for whom the house was built.

CHAPTER XI

HECTIC DAYS

Scarcely had Jefferson reached his quiet hilltop when Madison submitted
the resolutions based upon his chief’s Commercial Report, and the
English party was instantly in arms. These resolutions were more
political than commercial and were clearly aimed at England in
retaliation for her refusal to enter into a commercial treaty. The
resentment against the English policy had been increasing rapidly, even
John Quincy Adams finding the French ruling powers more favorable to the
Western Republic than was the Ministry of Pitt.[871] Only in the
commercial centers was there a disposition to suffer long and be kind
for business reasons. The Chambers of Commerce were on their toes
hissing; the Democratic Societies shouldered arms and marched to the
tune ‘Ça Ira.’ The galleries of the House filled.

The Federalists met the Madison attack with a counter-charge from
William Smith of Charleston, in an elaborate recitation prepared for his
delivery by Hamilton. The Carolinian entered the fray with the breezy
confidence born of the knowledge that a master mind was behind his
utterances. No one was deceived. ‘Every tittle of it is Hamilton’s
except the introduction,’ Jefferson wrote Madison.[872] The strategy of
the Smith-Hamilton speech was to divert attention from the political to
the commercial phase, by showing that our business relations with
England were more valuable than those with France. The next day Madison
boldly proclaimed the political purpose of the resolutions.[873]
Thereafter, with spectators packing the galleries, and almost
suffocating the legislators by crowding onto the floor of the chamber,
the forensic gladiators fought with more ferocity than finesse. Ames
sowed trouble for himself with the amazing declaration that ‘there is an
amicable disposition on the part of Great Britain.’[874]

The English are ‘as angry at us as we are at them,’ said Dexter, warning
of war. ‘Ridiculous!’ exclaimed Madison. ‘What would Britain gain by
war? Would it employ her starving manufacturers’ or ‘give employment to
the vessels that formerly imported luxuries to America?’[875] But why
these strange accusations against England? asked Ames. What are the
specific facts? Facts? thundered Giles. She has ‘subjected our vessels
... to seizure and search’; she ‘prevents our vessels from conveying to
our friends and allies goods not contraband’; she is responsible for
‘letting loose the pirates of the Barbary States upon our
commerce.’[876] Tracy, Hamiltonian, could see no advantage we had
received from the French treaty. At any rate, added Boudinot, we should
‘not over-value the friendship of France.’[877] What, roared Giles, ‘if
a prophet in 1778 had foretold that in 1794 that question would have
been triumphantly put in an American Congress ... would not the prophecy
have been deemed an imputation on the American character?’

But--blandly from Ames--what are our grievances against England? ‘Is it
necessary,’ shouted Nicholas, Jeffersonian, ‘to tell the gentleman of
the hostilities of the savages on the frontier, of the murder of our
citizens, and the plunder of our settlements?’[878] ‘Only a set of
resolutions on paper,’ sneered Dayton. Is that our only or best weapon?
Yes, answered Madison, ‘we can make use of none against Great Britain
more effectual than commercial weapons.’[879]

Thus day by day the debate dragged on. ‘What recent injuries?’ inquired
Samuel Smith of Maryland, merchant. ‘The recent proclamation respecting
the stoppage of vessels of neutral nations, with all such excepted but
the United States,’ hotly answered Madison. ‘Better accept excuses than
fight battles,’ warned Ames. Instantly Giles, whose passions slept with
one eye open, was on his feet protesting against the idea ‘that the mere
exercise of our rights as an independent government is equivalent to a
declaration of war.’

Thus the bitterness intensified, with personalities entering the
discussions. One day the venerable Abraham Clark of New Jersey, signer
of the Declaration of Independence, sat open-mouthed while Smith of
Charleston reiterated his views, and then, trembling with age and
infirmities, declared that ‘if a stranger were to come into this House
he would think that Britain has an agent here.’ Cries of ‘Order!’
‘Order!’ Smith replied with a sneer at the old man’s garrulity and
years. With passions at white heat, the debate was postponed until the
first Monday in March.

Meanwhile, out of doors the fight was being waged with spirit. In
Boston, the ‘Centinel,’ organ of the Federalists, was making scurrilous
attacks on Madison. He had been the counselor and abettor of Genêt--a
corrupt tool of France since the embassy of Gerard.[880] He was the
agent of France,[881] the tool of anarchists,[882] and he could have
learned nothing about commerce in Virginia ‘where no other commerce is
transacted than buying and selling of negroes.’[883]

To these attacks the Jeffersonians responded with a call for a town
meeting to act on the Madison Resolutions. Before a great crowd at the
Old South Church a dramatic forensic scene was staged, the eloquent
Jarvis leading for the Resolutions, the brilliant young Harrison Gray
Otis for the opposition, until darkness forced an adjournment till the
morrow when it was renewed until afternoon, when the question was
indefinitely postponed. Otis had won the only victory possible in
successfully filibustering against a vote.[884] At Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, a mass meeting at the State House endorsed the
Resolutions,[885] and to the astonishment of Madison a meeting was held
in New York City at the instance of the Jeffersonians.[886] In
Philadelphia, with Hamilton looking on from the wings, the merchants met
to denounce the Resolutions, but after a demonstration in their favor
the attempt to get a vote upon them was abandoned.[887]

But it was in Charleston that the rage of the populace over the
pro-English utterances of Smith and Ames assumed the most virulent form.
Men cursed them in the streets, denounced them in resolutions, burned
them both in effigy. Bache, then the leading Jeffersonian editor,
deprecated the burning. ‘Sorry I am to see these English fashions
adopted by free-born Americans.’[888] The cynical Ames’s sense of humor
left him unscorched by the flames. ‘I am willing to have it believed,’
he wrote, ‘that as I come out of the fire undiminished in weight, I am
pure gold.’[889] But it was more serious to Smith, for it was his
constituents who consigned him to the fire. The publication and
circulation of the speech he had not written had deepened the
resentment. How much hotter might have been the flames had the mob
foreseen the printing of an English edition with the boastful prefatory
statement that it had driven the author of the Declaration of
Independence from office![890] Indeed, the fortunes of the fight had
turned, and the Hamiltonians, lately jubilant over Jefferson’s
embarrassment with Genêt, had troubles of their own. Wolcott was
complaining that Hammond, the British Minister, was ‘weak, vain and
impudent,’[891] and even Ames was alarmed because he ‘rails against the
conduct of our Government, not ore rotundo, but with a gabble that his
feelings render doubly unintelligible.’[892] By their speeches against
Madison’s Resolutions, the Federalists had inextricably entangled
themselves with British policies, and it was the chatter of the streets
and the gossip of the press.

‘From the speechification of Sedgwick and Ames
Some might think that they both had drank deep of the Thames,
For “our dear Mother Country,” the former stands forth
In strains that were worthy a pupil of North.’[893]

It was in this state of public opinion, and with Ames wailing that
England was ‘driving us to the wall,’ that the news from the West Indies
aroused the people to a white heat of fury and put them on the march.

In compliance with an Order in Council, the British had seized more than
a hundred vessels and held them for condemnation. So appalling were the
possibilities that even Bache made the announcement in terms of
measured moderation.[894] Ames no longer mentioned the ‘amicable
disposition’ of the British, or inquired with a childlike innocence what
England had done to offend the Americans. With war seemingly inevitable,
the Hamiltonians were driven to the simulation of a warlike mood. The
spirit of ‘76 burst into flames.

Under such conditions the debate on the Madison Resolutions was resumed.
When the sneer of Ames and Parker that they bore ‘the French stamp’ was
loudly hissed by enraged visitors in the galleries, the Federalists took
to cover.[895] Extreme provocative measures were introduced and pressed.
The demand for the sequestration of British debts led to vitriolic
exchanges. ‘That king of sea robbers!’ That ‘Leviathan which aims at
swallowing up all that floats upon the ocean!’ Boudinot, Hamiltonian,
pleaded for ‘calmness.’[896] Dexter denounced the proposal as the
counsel of dishonor. ‘English tool!’ roared the raging streets.

Then came the Non-Intercourse Act, with the Federalists, off their high
horse, literally begging for ‘calm deliberation.’ Even Sedgwick was in
an importunate mood; but the measure was pushed with all the more
determination and passed with most of the Hamiltonians against it.[897]
Even when Fitzsimons fell into line, he was trounced by the press with
the open charge that he had held out until his own brig ‘had departed to
our good English friends at Kingston ... with a cargo of flour.’[898]
Clearly the Hamiltonians had to conciliate the public in some way, and
Sedgwick came forward with a plan for an army; and Madison denounced it
as ‘the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for
accumulating force in the government.’[899]

Out in the streets the people were on a rampage. Phineas Bond, the
British Consul in Philadelphia, reported to Grenville that the Americans
even resented the Orders in Council.[900] Worse still, he and Hammond
the Minister could not even walk the streets without being subjected to
‘menaces from knots of street politicians.’ The consul in Baltimore had
been forced by threats of violence to take refuge in the capital.[901]

The democrats followed up every advantage. Where was the spirit of ‘76?
‘Shall a paper system hold you in bondage?’[902] England would not dare,
declared the Democratic Society of Philadelphia, but for the declaration
of neutrality, interpreted as evidence of American cowardice.[903] And
perhaps Smith of Charleston had given the English a wrong impression.
Had he published his speech against the Madison Resolutions to show
Americans he ‘despises their opinion’ or ‘to prove to Great Britain that
he has been a faithful friend?’[904]

Under such encouragement some French sailors in American ports became
cheeky and chesty. In a Charleston theater one of these having insulted
a woman and been roughly handled, hastened to his ship with the story of
an assault by English sympathizers. His fellows sallied forth to avenge
the insult, making accessions to their ranks on the way by spreading the
fictitious story of the incident. Armed with cutlasses, they descended
on the theater as the people were pouring out, in an indiscriminate
attack which included the wrecking of some carriages and the wounding of
a few horses. The alarm bells were rung, and citizens rushed to the
battle.[905]

Everywhere people were steeling themselves for war. In New York a mass
meeting, held at the Coffee-House[906] was belittled by Noah Webster,
the Hamiltonian editor. Both he and Fenno were clamoring for
negotiations. ‘Why, to be sure, we must negotiate,’ sneered Bache.
’...The honor, the interest, the welfare of the United States are locked up
in the funding system.’[907] Everywhere citizens were helping with
fortifications. In New York the students of Columbia (King’s) formally
tendered their services,[908] the house carpenters gave their
labor,[909] and other trades followed. The country boiled with
excitement. The Nation was rushing into war. Hamilton and his associates
put their heads together to devise a method to prevent it.

III

The rage of the people could be held in check only by a definite action
looking to the righting of wrongs, and since the last thing the
commercial interests wanted was war, the only thing left was
negotiation. Even though this finally failed, it might postpone the
fatal day. The Federalists, in control, instinctively turned in the
crisis to Hamilton as the safest man to negotiate. He above all was
interested in preserving peace with England at all costs. His whole
political system rested on the supremacy of the commercial element. He
was the father of the national credit and it would collapse without the
revenue from the imposts, the greater part of which came from English
trade.

In the beginning no other name was considered in the Federalist
conclaves for ambassador. ‘Who but Hamilton would perfectly satisfy all
our wishes?’ wrote Ames.[910] A correspondent of Rufus King was writing
about the same time that Hamilton’s selection would give general
satisfaction because he had ‘the full confidence of the merchants and
the people at large’;[911] and King was replying that he wished Hamilton
‘may speedily go,’ since ‘then there would be some hope of our remaining
at peace.’[912]

In truth, Hamilton’s relations with England’s representatives in America
had been intimate. In the days of the agency of Colonel Beckwith, before
a Minister was accredited, an intimacy had been established with
Hamilton so close that Professor Bemis concludes that never afterward
was Jefferson ‘able to conduct his office with thorough
independence.’[913] That intimacy continued until the arrival of the
Minister, and in the meanwhile Hamilton figured in the Agent’s
confidential reports as ‘No. 7.’[914]

The Minister, with more assiduity than ability, was George Hammond, a
young man of twenty-seven, who immediately established similar relations
with the Secretary of the Treasury. Soon we find him reporting to Lord
Grenville that he preferred to make most of his communications privately
to Hamilton and to have no relations with Jefferson that were not
absolutely necessary.[915] It is fair to say that in every crisis he
found the opportunity to confer with the Secretary of the Treasury.[916]
All this was known, in a general way, to the commercial element when it
was urging Hamilton’s appointment as ambassador, and suspected by the
people at large. Thus, when the rumor of his prospective selection
spread, there was a roar of protest. ‘The object of a special embassy
might as well be answered by commissioning Lord Grenville or Mr. Pitt,’
wrote Bache.[917] In the meantime, Senator James Monroe had formally
protested to Washington against the appointment. The opposition was due
to the reason set down in the memorandum of Hamilton’s warm friend,
Rufus King: ‘Colonel Hamilton did not possess the general confidence of
the country.’[918]

It is easy to understand how hard it was for the Federalists to abandon
their chief. Thrill enough there is, in the thought of Hamilton and Pitt
seated across the table in one of the dingy little rooms in Downing
Street--so similar in precocity, brilliancy, and genius.

One evening four men sat in the candle-lit room of Rufus King in
Philadelphia. There was Oliver Ellsworth, a powerful figure before the
Senate and Bar; George Cabot, in some respects a saner leader than
Hamilton; Caleb Strong, whose strength was in common sense and
toleration; and King, who was a monumental figure. It was agreed to make
an effort for Hamilton, and Ellsworth was designated to call at the
Morris mansion for the purpose. Washington did not commit himself.
Whereupon Robert Morris was sent to reënforce the plea, but on learning
that not only Hamilton and Jefferson were being considered, but Jay as
well, he sensed the situation and veered to Jay. The result was that Jay
was summoned and offered the post. He took it under consideration. The
next day Jay was overrun with visitors. Hamilton urged his acceptance,
having in the meanwhile written Washington withdrawing his own name from
the list of aspirants.[919] King, Strong, Cabot, and Ellsworth followed,
demanding Jay’s acceptance as a duty. While Jay was deliberating, his
party was thrown into a panic with the rumor that Madison was a
possibility, and that Monroe had encouraged a hope in Pierce Butler
with a promise of the support of the Jeffersonians. Jay accepted.

No one but Hamilton could have been more obnoxious to the Jeffersonians
than John Jay. He was now verging on fifty, with a notable career behind
him on which to base an opinion of his bias. In appearance he was
amiable but unimpressive, with nothing in his manner to indicate his
intellectual power.[920] Mrs. Adams’s daughter was impressed with the
‘benevolence stamped in every feature.’[921] Of commanding stature, he
was slender, albeit well formed. He wore his hair down a little over his
forehead, tied behind, and moderately powdered. Coal-black, penetrating
eyes increased his pallor, for he was never robust. Kindly, gracious,
courtly in social intercourse, he was sternly uncompromising where his
integrity was involved. Politically, he was an aristocrat, with contempt
for democracy, and an incurable distrust of the people. This, with his
predominant devotion to the commercial interests, fixed his status among
the Federalists. Upon the principles of the French Revolution he looked
with abhorrence. ‘That portion of the people,’ he once wrote a friend,
‘who individually mean well never was, nor until the millennium will be,
considerable.’ Others thought the masses too ignorant to act well, but
it was reserved for Jay to say that they did not even mean well.

Few Americans then living were better qualified by experience for a
diplomatic mission. At Madrid he had shown rare tact, infinite patience,
and dignity in defeat, and he had helped negotiate the treaty of peace.
It was unfortunate that he had, for a while, been Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, for he had then made a secret report to Congress holding
England justified in clinging to the western posts.[922] That secret was
out.

In writing Jefferson of the appointment, Madison gave no indication of a
probable opposition to Jay’s confirmation. ‘The appointment of Hamilton
was likely to produce such a sensation,’ he wrote, ‘that to his great
mortification he was laid aside and Jay named in his place.’[923] But
behind closed doors the Senate engaged in a bitter battle over the
confirmation. The opposition made much of the impropriety of naming a
Justice of the Supreme Court, submitting in a resolution ‘that to permit
Judges of the Supreme Court to hold at the same time other offices
emanating from and holden at the pleasure of the President is
destructive of their independence, and that tending to expose them to
the influence of the Executive is ... impolitic.’ According to Bache,
the majority of the Senate subscribed to this reasoning and the scruples
of enough for confirmation were overcome only by the assurances that
Jay’s ‘delicacy and sense of propriety would certainly induce him to
resign his office.’ Eight persisted in opposition on the supposition
that ‘more was to be feared from Mr. Jay’s avarice than was to be hoped
from his delicacy or sense of propriety.’[924] By the suspicious Adams,
who witnessed the struggle from the chair, the opposition was ascribed
to the fear that a successful negotiation would interfere with plans for
the elevation of Jefferson to the Presidency. On the surface, Jay’s
indifference to the navigation of the Mississippi, his mythical
monarchical principles, his attachment to England and aversion to
France, appeared explanatory of the hostility.[925]

The confirmation shifted the attack from the Senate to the streets. The
Jeffersonians resented it as a purely partisan appointment, but the
opposition ‘out of doors’ went deeper. Could no one be found outside the
little coterie of office-holders? Was it the intent ‘that certain
characters should have a monopoly of power?’[926] The Democratic Society
of Philadelphia bore down heavily on Jay’s justification for the holding
of the posts.[927] A frontiersman from western Pennsylvania denounced
the appointment as evidence of indifference to the interest of the
western country.[928] After Jay’s report on the posts would it not be
answer enough for Lord Grenville to quote Jay’s own opinion ‘on file in
the Secretary’s office’?[929] The Democratic Society of Washington,
Pennsylvania, thought that ‘no man but Washington ... would have dared
... to have insulted the majesty of the people by such departure from
any principle of republican equality.’[930]

Disregarding the clamor of the ‘rabble,’ Jay had made preparations for
an immediate departure, and without tendering his resignation as Chief
Justice. The instructions he carried had been prepared almost
exclusively by Hamilton.[931] So intimately was the economic policy of
the Federalists connected with the relations to England that these
instructions had been determined upon at a secret conference of
Federalist leaders dominated by their chief.[932] Thus, provided with
instructions from a party conference, Jay set sail on May 12th from New
York. A thousand people assembled at Trinity Church to escort him to the
ship and give three cheers as he went aboard. A salute was fired as he
passed the fort. But, wrote Greenleaf, ‘the militia had refused parading
to honor the departure of our extraordinary Minister.’[933]

If the Federalists were pleased, the Jeffersonians were complacent and
Madison wrote that Jay’s appointment ‘is the most powerful blow ever
suffered by the popularity of the President.’[934] But the Federalists
regained confidence after several months of unpopularity and
depression--and it was now the Jeffersonians’ time to suffer again--for
the Whiskey Boys were up in western Pennsylvania.

The Whiskey Boys of the ‘insurrection of 1794’ have been pictured as a
vicious, anarchistic, unpatriotic, despicable lot--and they were nothing
of the sort. These men were doing more for America than the speculators
of Boston and New York, for they were hard-working conquerors of the
wilderness, felling the forests, draining the swamps, redeeming the land
for the cultivation of man. Fortunately for America, they were a tough
set. These rough men in coarse raiment and coonskin, with muskets on
their shoulders, were not arrayed for a pose. They fought their way
against savage forces, subduing Nature while warding off the blows of
the tomahawk. Their lot was hard. No luxuries in the log cabins where
they fought, wrought, suffered in the Homeric work of extending an
empire and making it safe for the soft creatures of the counting-rooms
and drawing-rooms who would ultimately follow. Newspapers they seldom
saw, books scarcely at all, and most were illiterate. It was a long cry
from these powerful figures with muscular arms and dauntless hearts to
the perfumed dandies simpering silly compliments into the ears of the
ladies at Mrs. Bingham’s.

Within a radius of a hundred miles, there were but seventy thousand
souls. Pittsburgh was a crude little village of twelve thousand people.
Here they lived, shut off from the eastern country by the mountains, for
the few passes and winding roads through the dense woods were too rough
for vehicles. The little trade they carried on with the East was through
the use of pack-horses. From the South they were shut off by savage
tribes of red men. Here they were, left to shift for themselves by their
Government, which manifested little interest in their welfare, but did
not forget the taxes. Because there was no market for their grain, they
were forced to convert it into alcohol, which was largely their medium
of barter. Money was seldom seen, and the excise tax laid on their
alcohol was payable only in money. No people in America received so
little benefit from the Government, and none were hit so hard by the
Excise Law. Perhaps these pioneers who thought themselves abused were
ignorant, but there was an intellectual giant among them who knew they
were abused. This was Albert Gallatin.

A mingling of comedy and pathos is the story of the insurrection. The
masses were victims of a few demagogues,[935] but alas, these demagogues
were working with a real grievance. Public meetings had not served to
moderate the passions. Wise advisers, like Gallatin, were unable to
control, and the extremists followed the more flamboyant and less
scrupulous. The law was resisted, officials intimidated, prisoners
released from custody by mobs, and farmers who informed revenue men of
the location of stills read their mistake by the light of their burning
barns. When Washington sought to suppress the insurrection through
negotiations, it was too late, and the troops he summoned marched.

It was inevitable that politics should play a part. The Excise Law was
Hamilton’s child, born to meet the obligations of the Assumption.

The Jeffersonians had opposed its passage, and Jefferson thought it ‘an
infernal law.’[936] Then, too, it was felt that Hamilton welcomed the
opportunity to test the Federal power. There had been too much
skepticism on that point, and he longed for a decisive contest with the
‘mob.’ Bache had complained that Hamilton’s report to Washington on
conditions in the trouble zone read ‘like a lawyer’s summing up to a
jury.’[937] The Federalist papers traced the trouble to the
Jeffersonians because they had opposed the enactment of the Excise Law,
denounced the Democratic Societies for inciting the people to
insurrection, and satisfied the moron-minded that a demand for a law’s
repeal is the same as urging its violation. These were the days when the
high-flying Federalists, under the shadow of Washington on horseback,
were meditating the Sedition Law. Yes, and the Alien Law as well, for
they were pointing to the ‘foreigners’ as the ringleaders in the ‘plot
to overthrow the Government.’ The Irish, now numerous in Pennsylvania,
were mostly Jeffersonians. That was enough. Fenno warned of ‘the refuse
of Europe that will swarm to our shores’ if laws were not rigidly
enforced.[938] Wolcott wrote his father that the insurrection was ‘a
specimen of what we are to expect from European immigrants’ and that
‘Pennsylvania need not be envied her Irishmen.’[939] ‘Down with the
Democrats!’ ‘Down with the critics of public men and measures!’ ‘Down
with the foreign devils!’ On these themes the Federalists harped through
the summer and autumn. Their persistence was so persuasive that
Muhlenberg, the Speaker, narrowly escaped defeat for renomination
because he had voted against the Excise Law.[940] The Hamiltonians made
the most of the situation.

Before this fusillade the Jeffersonians and Democratic Societies handled
themselves well. Never had these societies done more than denounce the
excise and demand its repeal, and under the fierce fire they made their
position plain. One after another they gave public expression to their
views. The Excise Law was reprehensible, but as long as it remained a
law it should be obeyed.[941] The Democratic press took a similar
stand. ‘The question is not whether the excise is a proper or improper
mode of collecting revenue,’ wrote Bache. ‘It is constitutional ... and
it becomes the duty of every citizen to give his aid, if called upon, to
enforce its execution. If the opposers should triumph ... the axe is
laid to the root of all national government.’[942] Greenleaf in the ‘New
York Journal’ was quite as direct: ‘The excise, however obnoxious, is
the law of the Union; constitutional measures only therefore ought to be
adopted.’[943] Jeers of derision from the Federalists greeted these
resolutions and editorials. The insurrection, they contended, ‘is the
natural result of these Democratic clubs.’ Honest men among their
members had been deceived and the rioting in the West would open their
eyes. ‘Down with the Democratic Clubs!’ ‘Down with the critics of
governmental measures!’[944] This aroused the wrath of the
Jeffersonians, who now took the offensive. Bache summoned the
Jeffersonians to join in the suppression of the insurrection to ‘give
the lie to the bawlers against the Democratic Societies.’[945] The
response was instantaneous. Members of these societies and enemies of
the excise rushed to the colors. The Irish Democrats of Philadelphia in
an advertisement urged the Irish to ‘stand to their arms,’ and they
formed a volunteer company.[946] The Federalists found themselves in a
brisk competition for places in the army. With the Philadelphia
aristocrats eager to follow Hamilton, and with the Democrats demanding
places, the city’s quota was soon doubled. ‘Let those who derive the
most benefit from the revenue laws be the foremost to march,’ wrote
Bache gleefully. ‘Let the stockholders, bank directors, speculators and
revenue officers arrange themselves immediately under the banner of the
Treasury, and try their prowess in arms as they have in
calculation.’[947] But the jubilant Bache was soon to sing another
tune.

On the last day of September, three spirited horses stood in front of
the President’s house on Market Street. Three men emerged from the house
and mounted, Washington in the center, Danbridge, a secretary, on one
side, and on the other--Alexander Hamilton. They turned their horses
toward the camp at Carlisle. So Hamilton was going to enforce his law
with the sword. Well did the Democrats know the spirit in which he rode
to his task. Under the signature of ‘Tully,’ he had not been able to
conceal his identity in a series of articles in the summer designed to
prepare the country for forceful measures. These had bristled with
partisan invective. The Excise Law was defended and its opponents were
charged with playing ‘with passions and prejudices.’ And it was not
without passion and prejudice that he himself rode forth that September
morning.[948] It was at this time that Bache began to sing another tune.
In response to what constitutional duty was the head of the Treasury
usurping the functions of the Secretary of War? he asked. ‘Pray, where
is the Secretary of War? Is he superintending the operations of the
Treasury department?’[949] He knew at the time that Knox was on a
mission of private business in Maine, for more than two months before he
had sternly taken him to task for his absence in a crisis.[950] But
Washington was going--why Hamilton? It was whispered about that he had
intruded without an invitation, and some felt ‘that his conduct is a
first step in a deep laid scheme.’[951] Madison was convinced that
Hamilton planned to use the insurrection as a pretext for the creation
of a standing army,[952] long before the dynamic young leader rode forth
with Washington to join the army. A cry of rage went up from the
Democrats everywhere.
‘Malignant--malevolent--uncandid--spiteful--envious--pitiful--mean,’
responded Fenno--and so throughout the summer and autumn the epithets
were hurled, the war in the East more venomous than that on the western
front.

Meanwhile, Hamilton rode on, close to Washington’s ears, contemptuous
of the attacks. Never had he had less respect for democracy. ‘It is long
since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value,’ he wrote
Washington after the President had returned to Philadelphia, leaving him
in actual command.[953] ‘Without rigor everywhere,’ he wrote King at the
same time, ‘our tranquillity will be of very short duration.’[954] It
was the tone of Federalist society in Philadelphia that led Bond, the
British Consul, in a letter to Grenville, to comment that ‘the
establishment of a national force to strengthen the hands of the
executive party can alone secure the existing form of government.’[955]
As the brilliant young leader rode along the wood-lined roads, aflame
with the colors of the fall, his plans for the capitalization of the
insurrection for his party were made. The Executive should have more
power, with an army of some pretensions to enforce the laws. The
Democratic Societies that had awakened the political arrogance of the
masses should be crushed. Attacks on governmental measures should be
associated with disloyalty to the State. Perhaps on this trip Albert
Gallatin, the one financial genius among the Jeffersonians, could be
ruined--even indicted.[956] But the insurrection faded at the army’s
approach. Nowhere was opposition offered. Everywhere the soldiers met
with cordial receptions, albeit the liberty poles literally lined their
way. Only an occasional frontiersman in his cups made a weak show of
hostility by hurrahing for the Whiskey Boys.[957] The ringleaders and
many who should have been unmolested were arrested and sent to jail in
Philadelphia under military guard. They who fell to General White were
brutally treated, confined in damp cellars, tied back to back, kept in
confinement from Thursday until Sunday morning with scarcely anything to
eat or drink. Most of them were misguided youths who were redeeming an
empire, and not a few had fought in the war for independence. Most of
these were acquitted on trial. But when they reached the ferry at
Schuylkill, they were forced to decorate their hats with a paper bearing
the inscription, ‘Insurgent.’ Thus denounced, they were subjected to the
humiliation of a march down Market Street, like slaves at the chariot of
a Roman conqueror, for the amusement of fashionable ladies at the
windows.[958]

A pitiful spectacle--that march--and more significant than many
realized. The soldiers were of the first Philadelphia families in
wealth, gorgeous in their blue uniforms made of the finest broadcloth,
all mounted on magnificent bay horses so nearly uniform in size and
color that ‘any two of them would make a fine span of coach horses.’ A
proud show they made with their superb trappings, their silver-mounted
stirrups and martingales, their drawn swords glistening in the sun.
Patrician conquerors, these. And their captives, mounted on nondescript
plough and pack horses--old men who had fought for American
independence, young men, all bronzed by the weather, some pale and sick,
some sad, others flushed with fury that they should be used to make a
show for the rich Philadelphians who looked upon them with complacent
smiles. It was the East and the frontier--it was Aristocracy with drawn
sword and Democracy with the insulting paper in its hat. The
insurrection was over--a tempest in a teapot. A small army of
twenty-five hundred was left in the western country like an army of
occupation. Two men were found guilty of treason and pardoned by
Washington. The law was vindicated--now for the crushing of the
Democratic Societies.

VII

Foremost among the reasons for the virulence of the Hamiltonians toward
these societies was that they were interfering with the Federalist plans
for the political suppression of the ‘mob.’ Many ‘men of no particular
importance’ were, by combining, making themselves a force to be reckoned
with at the polls. Meeting regularly throughout the year, they were
teaching the mechanic, the clerk, the small farmer, to think in terms of
politics. Worse still, they were manifesting an uncomfortable
disposition to pry into the proceedings of their representatives in
Congress. No one saw this more clearly than Jefferson, who, in his
retirement, was observing their growing power with complete approval.
Throughout the summer of 1794, politicians were constantly driving up
the hill to Monticello. It was determined to force the fight in that
year’s elections. Candidates were brought out in most of the districts,
and wherever there was a Democratic Society, the fight was a hard one
for the Federalists. For the first time they faced an organization,
disciplined, practical, aflame with enthusiasm.

This was especially true in Massachusetts where a herculean effort was
made to defeat Fisher Ames with Dr. Jarvis in the Boston district. The
Titan of the Federalists in debate was kept on the defensive, with
charges that he had speculated in the funds and was in English pay. The
men in the streets made merry with Ames’s solemn assurance that England
was ‘amicably disposed.’ He was an ‘aristocrat’ and had ‘no faith in
republican institutions’--a close guess. His friends mobilized for his
defense. What if he had speculated?--so had Jarvis.[959] Alarmed at the
rising sentiment for Jarvis, the friends of Ames resorted to modern
methods of propaganda, with business men signing an appeal published as
an advertisement.[960] This, described by the ‘Independent Chronicle’ as
‘a new practice,’ was turned upon the Federalists. ‘How many of the poor
seamen or Captains are there among the signers who have lost their all?
Not one--are they of no account in the estimate?’[961] Election day
found at the polling-place ‘the greatest collection of people ever at a
Boston election.’ The polls opened at eleven and closed at one. The hall
was so crowded ‘it was difficult to receive the votes with any degree of
order.’ Half an hour before the polls closed, it was discovered that
many non-residents and non-taxpayers were in the room, and thereafter
these were challenged by the Jeffersonians. The Democrats afterwards
charged that Ames had been the beneficiary of ‘voters consisting of
foreigners from on board vessels at the wharf, and persons from other
towns.’[962] Ames carried Boston by a majority large enough to overcome
his notable losses outside the city. Madison wrote Jefferson that Ames
owed his victory to ‘the vote of negroes and British sailors smuggled in
under the loose mode of holding elections’ in Massachusetts. Even so, he
found a ray of sunshine in the close calls of Sedgwick and Good.[963]

In New York City the Federalists moved heaven and earth to defeat Edward
Livingston with the cry that ‘Livingston is an aristocrat, his opponent
a plebeian’; but this appeal to the masses fell flat with the exposé of
the questionable patriotism of this ‘plebeian.’ Tammany, the Democratic
Society, and Jeffersonians generally fought energetically for their
young orator, and the exhortation to ‘let Edward Livingston, the poor
man’s friend, and the uniform asserter of the Rights of Man return to
Congress,’ was not made in vain.[964] The severity of this blow to the
Federalists was acknowledged in Ames’s admission that ‘the election of
Edward Livingston almost gives me the hypo.’[965] In North Carolina a
spectacular fight was made to crush the Federalists under the leadership
of Timothy Bloodworth, directed by the cunning Willie Jones, who
continued to make history with his whittling knife and pipe, and, with
the resulting Waterloo, the Hamiltonians began to entrench themselves in
Federal jobs.[966] There the country-squire type rose on the shoulders
of the people under leaders who ‘could not have obtained entrance to
Lady Washington’s parlors, but who knew the difference between the
demands of popular institutions and special interests.’[967]

Even in Philadelphia the Jeffersonians won a sensational victory by
defeating Fitzsimons, one of Hamilton’s lieutenants, with John Swanwick,
who had led the fight in the merchants’ meeting for the Madison
Resolutions. In Charleston, William Smith narrowly escaped defeat
through the intervention, according to Madison, ‘of British merchants
... and their debtors in the country.’[968] All in all, Madison felt
that great progress had been made. It was the first real challenge the
Federalists had met, and they had not enjoyed the experience. Surveying
the field in search of the cause, they pointed accusing fingers at the
Democratic Societies.

VIII

Before passing on to the mass attack on these societies, let us pause
for a hasty review of other happenings of that eventful summer and
autumn. Madison was in a tender mood. A little before he had fallen
under the spell of a merry widow whose glance was coquettish and whose
tongue was nimble. The early autumn found him married to Dolly Todd; the
early winter, cozily ensconced in the house the Monroes had occupied
before they went to France.[969]

In the house on the hilltop, Jefferson was living a quiet life. He was
little more than fifty, his hair touched with gray, his form erect, his
step elastic, his strength undiminished. With his daughters about him,
all was gayety about the blazing hearth in winter and on the lawn in
summer. The supervision of the plantation was to his taste. There were
fences to be repaired, trees to be planted. He was interested in the
growth of potatoes. He rode about ordering the uprooting of weeds here
and bushes there. His correspondence was light. In acknowledging a book
from John Adams, he wrote that his retirement had ‘been postponed four
years too long,’ and that his present happiness left him nothing to
regret. That fall Washington had sought again to entice him back into
the Cabinet, but he had been untempted. Though happy in his retirement,
he was the old war-horse, sniffing the battle from afar.[970]

And things were happening over the land. Dr. Joseph Priestley, the
English liberal, driven from England by persecution, had been given an
uproarious greeting in New York and had replied to addresses from
Tammany and Democratic Societies with severe strictures on the
repressive measures of Pitt; and an exotic creature, who had been living
obscurely in Philadelphia as a teacher, startled the country with a
pamphlet reply in a vein of sarcasm and satire worthy of the masters of
the art. England was glorified, France crucified, Democratic Societies
excoriated, the Irish in America damned--and the Hamiltonians rejoiced.
Many were shocked. Since William Cobbett was to work under the
encouragement of Hamilton,[971] we shall become better acquainted with
him by and by.

Otherwise life was moving along in Philadelphia much the same as usual.
Society was still in the saddle. Blanchard, who was thrilling the
people with balloon ascensions, was postponing one of his ascents
‘because of the marriage of a person of distinction.’[972] The French
madness was unabated, and on July 11th a French victory was theatrically
celebrated. ‘La Carmagnole’ was danced in the streets. Public officials
marched with the populace to the French Minister’s house where orations
were heard and ‘La Marseillaise’ was sung. At Richardet’s five hundred
sat down to a noisy feast, after which they danced around a liberty
tree, set off fireworks, and burned a British flag.[973] Even Rickett’s
Circus was so fashionable that Fenno hoped he would begin his
performances an hour earlier to permit citizens to enjoy the dare-devil
feats before repairing to the House of Representatives to hear the
debates.[974] Bache, educated abroad, was a lover of the play and
interested in seeing democratic features introduced--say, an occasional
‘simple air’ interspersed with the classics for the delectation of the
‘gallery gods who pay their money like other folks.’[975] But the time
was to come when even Bache was to make sad grimaces at democratic
manners in the theater. This was when the ‘gallery gods’ hit upon a
novel mode of entertainment, of selecting some inoffensive ‘aristocrat’
in the pit and demanding that he doff his hat to the gallery. Naturally
ignored, ‘a hundred stentorian voices would call out for his
punishment.’ Thereupon the gods would pelt the unfortunate victim with
apples and pears, sticks, and even stones, and assail him ‘with
scurrillity and abuse.’ Throughout the evening the persecution would
continue. Spitting, and emptying beer-bottles upon him increased his
misery. It was bad enough, thought Bache, to spit upon the men
‘aristocrats,’ without spattering the delicate dresses of the
aristocratic ladies with beer. One night most of the orchestra was
driven out of the house. ‘It is time to stop this growing evil,’ wrote
Bache, ‘which has been on the increase ever since the opening of the
house.’[976] The Federalists were delighted at his embarrassment. Here
was the rabid editor’s ‘democracy.’ These people in the galleries were
his ‘sovereign people.’ And all this was due to the leveling influence
of the Democratic Societies. They must go!

When, in his Message to Congress, Washington made his amazing attack on
the Democratic Societies, the influence of Hamilton and the Federalist
leaders, who had received not a few scars in the recent elections, was
evident. Here was a proclamation that the masses of the people in
private life had no right to organize for political purposes. That the
Hamiltonians had no interest in the mass of the people was generally
understood.[977] They were impressed with petitions from the Cincinnati,
or Chambers of Commerce, but frankly contemptuous of those signed by
mere citizens ‘of no particular importance.’ When these people organized
into Democratic Societies, things were going too far. If this continued,
the ordinary mechanic might get the impression that he counted in
governmental affairs. There was too much of this democratic virus in the
body politic.

The Jeffersonians were momentarily stunned by Washington’s denunciation,
but quickly rallied. Madison, calm, composed, courteous, but grimly
determined, sat on the House committee to frame the Reply to the
President’s Address, and he planned to ignore that feature of the
Message. He was not deceived as to its purpose or inspiration. ‘It was
obvious that a most dangerous game was playing against the Republicans,’
he wrote Jefferson. ‘The insurrection was ... deservedly odious. The
Democratic Societies were presented as in league with it. The Republican
part of Congress was to be drawn into an ostensible patronage of those
societies, and into an ostensible opposition to the President.’ The
sponsorship of a purely partisan attack by Washington pained Madison,
but it did not intimidate him. He considered it an assault on the
citadel of liberty, and it was, in truth, the forerunner of the infamous
Sedition Law.[978] In a letter to Monroe, he described the attack as the
‘greatest error in his [Washington’s] political career.’[979] That it
was ‘an attack on the essential and constitutional right of the
citizen,’ he had no doubt.[980] Jefferson characterized it as ‘one of
the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from
the faction of monocrats’--an attack ‘on the freedom of discussion, the
freedom of writing, printing and publishing.’ And what of the
Cincinnati, ‘self-constituted,’[981] whose members met behind closed
doors, maintained a system of secret correspondence, while ‘carving out
for itself hereditary distinctions?’[982]

Even so, the Jeffersonians would have taken no notice of the attack had
not the Federalists forced the issue by proposing an amendment to the
Reply commendatory of the assault on the societies. That Hamilton was
the inspiration of this move there can be no doubt. When the debate
began, we find him hurrying around to Fitzsimmons’s house with ‘proof’
of the connection between the societies and the insurrection; and,
finding the mover of the amendment absent, leaving a memorandum. The
Hamiltonian proof was that the Mingo-Creek Society was ‘sometimes called
the Democratic Society’; that some of the insurrectionists were on its
membership rolls; that one of its members had led one of the attacks and
another a second. Quite enough, he thought, to damn all the societies in
America, albeit almost all had denounced the insurrection, and many of
their members had marched under arms against the rebels.[983] This was
the reasoning of all the extreme Federalists.

Into the debate both parties dragged their heavy artillery. Madison,
Giles, and Nicholas on one side, Ames, Sedgwick, Smith, and Tracy on the
other. ‘Stand by the President!’--from the Hamiltonians. ‘Stand by the
Constitution!’--from the Jeffersonians. ‘Plunge these societies into
contempt--sink them into abhorrence and detestation,’ shouted Sedgwick,
still smarting from the pummelling they had given him.[984] ‘The people
have a right to speak and to think,’ protested Venable of Delaware. ‘The
fact that the President thinks them guilty is enough,’ thought Murray of
Maryland. ‘I refuse to surrender my opinions to the President where a
matter of fact is involved,’ retorted Nicholas. ‘No,’ thundered Giles,
‘the fiat of no person in America should ever be taken for truth.’
‘Infamous creatures!’ snorted Smith of Charleston who had felt their
blows. Nonsense, exclaimed Christie of Maryland, the members in
Baltimore ‘were not the fair weather patriots of the present day, but
the patriots of Seventy-five.’ Yes, added Carnes of Georgia, citing the
case where one of these societies ‘turned out as volunteers against the
rioters,’ and expressing the hope that the time ‘will never come when
the people of America shall not have leave to assemble and speak their
mind.’

Giles and Madison closed against the amendment in powerful
constitutional arguments on the rights of citizens to have opinions on
men and measures or to express them by voice or pen, individually or
collectively; and Ames closed for it, making much of the burning of Jay
in effigy by the society at Lexington, and picturing the people on
tip-toes on all the post-roads to learn whether Washington or the
societies had triumphed in the House.[985] Dexter foreshadowed the
Sedition Law, toward which the Federalists were feeling their way, with
the declaration that the Constitution did not give the people ‘the
precious right of vilifying their own Government and laws.’ Madison
warned of the tendency, the vote was taken, and in the end the Reply of
the House went to the President without a reference to his attack on the
clubs.

But in the press the fight went on throughout the year. ‘Are men’s
principles among the subjects of public concern which you are to
discuss?’ asked the incredulous Noah Webster of the ‘American Minerva.’
‘If so, your society bears a resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition,
destitute only of its power.’[986] One of Fenno’s scribes was moved to
hilarity at the absurdity of the defense that the societies had
uniformly denounced the insurrection. Had they not at the same time
denounced the excise law and asked for its repeal?[987] Republican
societies checks and balances? sneered the ‘Centinel.’ ‘So are lanthorn
posts and guillotines.’ The same journal neatly condensed the entire
Federalist line of attack in a satirical ‘book of the generations and
downfall of Jacobinism,’ from the hour ‘Brissot begat the Jacobin club
of Paris.’ Genêt--Democratic Societies of America--the Pittsburgh
rebellion--the armament of fifteen thousand men--an expense of two
million dollars--ran the argument.[988] Thus it was reduced to a matter
of dollars and cents.

Meanwhile, the societies, recovering from the shock of the attack, stood
to their guns, and issued statements setting forth in moderate tone
principles, then jeered, which no one would care to challenge publicly
in America to-day. The German Republican Club of Philadelphia
concentrated the defense in a few words: ‘Are we the abettors of
insurgents for supposing that Government can do wrong, and for
disapproving the excise? Then is the freedom of opinion at an end.’[989]

But the shadow of Washington fell darkly on the clubs and their power as
organizations rapidly diminished. Many who refused to antagonize
Washington openly were deeply resentful, and from that hour the popular
impression grew that he had aligned himself as a partisan of the
Federalists. From that hour, too, the high-flying Federalists began to
move with greater confidence and celerity toward the Sedition Law. The
erstwhile members of the societies fell back into the body of
citizenship, but more keenly and intelligently interested in politics
than ever before, and more than ever determined to make their influence
felt. They were not to forget what they had learned of tactics,
organization, and propaganda, and very soon the Jeffersonian Party would
be the beneficiary of the Washington assault.

If this congressional session foreshadowed the Sedition Law, it also
foreshadowed the Alien Law in a Naturalization Act reflecting the
Federalist distrust of the immigrant. The Catholics were attacked in the
debate, and Madison indignantly replied that ‘there is nothing in their
religion inconsistent with the purest republicanism.’[990] When the
Jeffersonians created a diversion by offering an amendment that no
titled foreigner could be admitted to citizenship until he had renounced
his title, the Federalists stupidly fell into the trap and were
instantly on their toes with indignant protests. Instead of accepting
the amendment as a joke, they were soon pleading that titles were not so
bad, and it did not matter if titled gentlemen voted and held office.
‘You may force a man to renounce his title,’ said Smith of Charleston,
‘but you cannot prevent his neighbor from calling both him and his wife
by the title.’ Great must have been the merriment in the taverns at the
spectacle of the Federalist leaders fighting with desperation and
indignation against the proposal to prevent Lords, Dukes, Barons, and
Viscounts from becoming American citizens without leaving their titles
outside the door. What matter if Sedgwick did explain that the
acceptance of the amendment would be a justification of the charge that
there was a monarchical party in the country?--the better psychologists
among the Jeffersonians knew that with the man in the street nothing
could have been more conclusive on that point than the unification of
the Hamiltonians in opposition to the amendment.[991] They had been
maneuvered into standing up and being counted against the renunciation
of titles--and the ‘mob’ shouted with joy.

CHAPTER XII

THE MARCHING MOBS

During the remainder of the short session of Congress, feeling ran high.
The Jeffersonians made a second foolish attempt to trace some act of
official turpitude to Hamilton, and signally failed. The latter was now
ready to go. His great work had been achieved with the establishment of
public credit. His official honor had been vindicated. Never had he
stood so high in the esteem of the commercial interests, the only class
whose good opinion he coveted. He was the leader of the leaders of his
party. With the rank and file he had never been popular, though always
admired, but he sought no popularity with the multitude for whom he had
a certain contempt. After years in the public service, he found himself
in poverty, confronted with obligations to an increasing family. Early
in December he wrote of his plans to Angelica Church: ‘You say I am a
politician, and good for nothing. What will you say when you learn that
after January next I shall cease to be a politician at all? Such is the
fact. I have formally and definitely announced my intention to resign
and have ordered a house to be taken for me in New York.’[992] A little
earlier he had hoped to take a vacation in Europe. He was ‘heartily
tired’ of office. Only the opportunity to quit ‘with honor and without
decisive prejudice to public affairs’ held him at all. Now political
conditions seemed favorable for an early retirement for the elections
promised ‘to prove favorable to the good cause.’[993]

When Jefferson retired, Fenno announced the event in two lines, but he
heralded the resignation of Hamilton in a glowing eulogy, double-spaced,
of the man who had made ‘two blades of grass to grow where none grew
before.’[994] This was too much for Bache. ‘America will long regret
that his work lives after him,’ he wrote. And why the fawning rhapsody?
Had Washington done nothing?--nor Congress?--nor the natural advantages
of the country?--nor the Constitution? ‘No, the Secretary was the life,
the soul, the mind of our political body; the spirit has flown--then we
are a lifeless mass, dust, ashes, clay.’[995]

But the sneer of Bache and the contemptuous fling of Madison, because it
was ‘pompously announced in the newspapers that poverty drives him back
to the Bar for a livelihood,’[996] could not rob the daring innovator of
his triumphs. The Lancaster Troop of Horse, dining, toasted him,--‘May
his domestic felicity be equal to his public services.’[997] The day the
story of this toast was printed, a hundred and fifty of the leading
merchants, capitalists, and social leaders of Philadelphia sat down to a
farewell dinner in his honor. Judges of the Supreme Court and
governmental functionaries were in attendance. When the project was
suggested, merchants ‘crowded to the subscription paper,’ and many were
excluded for lack of space. Toasts were mingled with convivial songs,
and wine, we may be sure, flowed like water. After Hamilton had toasted
the Philadelphia merchants, he withdrew, and he himself was toasted.
‘May he enjoy in private life that happiness to which his public
services have so justly entitled him’--and the rafters rang.[998] Two
nights later, the fashionable Dancing Assembly, celebrating Washington’s
birthday with a dance and dinner, took note of Hamilton’s departure with
a toast.[999] When he reached New York, he found another dinner awaiting
him, when more than two hundred people in his honor sat down at
Tontine’s Coffee-House ‘at the expense of the merchants of the city.’
There among the guests were the Chancellor, the Judges, the Speaker of
the Assembly, the Recorder of the City, the President of Columbia. More
convivial songs and stories, more wine and cheers and laughter, and
again Hamilton toasted the merchants--of New York. And again he retired
to permit the toastmaster to propose ‘Alexander Hamilton’ with nine
cheers. Reporting the affair honestly enough, the ‘New York Journal’
could not omit the observation that ‘few of our best citizens and
genuine Republicans were present.’ The editor had never questioned
Hamilton’s ‘financial abilities,’ but he doubted ‘the propriety of his
political principles.’ However, ‘in the language of the play bills it
was a great dinner, Mr. Hodgkinson,[1000] one of the managers of the
farce being present.’[1001]

Having been thus wined and dined, toasted and roasted, Hamilton retired
with his family to the Schuyler mansion in Albany for relaxation and
rest. Perhaps he could not afford the coveted trip to Europe--it did not
materialize. In April, Justice Iredell wrote his wife that Hamilton had
‘already received more than a year’s salary in retainer fees’ and that a
‘number of mechanics here [New York] have declared that they will build
him a house at their own expense’--a promise unredeemed.[1002] Hamilton
had hoped to open his New York office in May, but autumn found his
family lingering under the hospitable roof of the Schuylers.[1003]

Such, however, was his insatiable craving for power that he was unable
to forget, even for a month, the familiar field of battle. Enraged by a
triumph of his political foes on a measure in the House, he wrote
furiously to King that ‘to see the character of the country and the
Government sported with ... puts my heart to the torture.’[1004] Events
were not moving with the felicity of old under the successor of his own
choosing, and he turned spitefully upon some of his most faithful
followers. ‘So,’ he wrote King, ‘it seems that under the present
administration of the department, Hillhouse and Goodhue are to be
ministers in the House ... and Ellsworth and Strong in the Senate. Fine
work we shall have. But I swear the nation shall not be dishonored with
impunity.’[1005] Clearly he had determined to keep his hand on the
driving wheel from afar. The Cabinet was composed largely of his
followers, only Randolph remaining to plague him, and his days were
short and full of trouble. The Federalists in Congress could be directed
by correspondence--and should be; Washington not only could, but would
be kept constantly advised. Hamilton retired from office in January,
1795, but he was not to retire from power until Adams, repeatedly
betrayed, should drive the Hamiltonian stool-pigeons from his Cabinet
some years later. Meanwhile, a party crisis was approaching that would
require all Hamilton’s genius to save his party from destruction.

We speak of the ‘Jay Treaty’; the Jeffersonians called it the ‘Grenville
Treaty’; as a matter of fact it was more nearly the Hamilton treaty, and
it was certainly a Federalist Party treaty.[1006] Jay had arrived in
London, to be so graciously received and so lavishly entertained that he
had cautiously refrained from mentioning this unusual cordiality in
official reports. Thomas Pinckney, the regular Minister, who had stoutly
fought for American rights, was shunted aside. ‘If I should say that I
had no unpleasant feelings on the occasion I should be insincere,’ he
wrote his brother.[1007] But he accepted the situation with good grace.

In time, after receiving attentions from the King not previously
accorded America’s diplomats at the court, Jay sat down with Lord
Grenville to the negotiation of a treaty. The latter, a favorite of
Pitt’s, comparatively young, but rising rapidly because of an abnormal
capacity for hard work rather than brilliancy, was in no sense the
intellectual superior of Jay. In the first days of the negotiations, the
prospects were bright enough for the Federalist emissary. England had
previously faced and accepted the necessity for the abandonment of the
western posts, and she was not, at the moment, in position vigorously
and persistently to protest the other outstanding American claims. The
conditions on the Continent were far from satisfactory, with the
coalition apparently verging toward disruption. England was not seeking
another open enemy, and she could not afford the loss of the American
trade. But there was another danger threatening that was causing
Grenville no little distress--and this is where Jay held the high card
in the gamble.

The neutral nations of Europe had grown tired of the arrogant sea policy
of the English, and steps were taken for the unification of neutrals in
defense of neutral rights. Sweden and Denmark had ratified an Armed
Neutrality Convention on March 27, 1794, agreeing to join their fleets
for the protection of their peoples. Pinckney had been approached by the
Swedish Minister in London with an invitation to the American Government
to join. He had received the invitation with frank enthusiasm, and
thought his country would agree.[1008] This was all known to Grenville,
who was painfully impressed with the possibilities. He had put his spies
to the task of opening diplomatic mail and keeping him informed of
developments. Instructions had been sent to Hammond, the Minister at
Philadelphia, to exert all his ingenuity to prevent the United States
from joining the Scandinavian combination.[1009] The day that Grenville
sat down with Jay, the former had been informed by Count Finckenstein,
the Prussian Minister of Foreign Affairs, that the position of America
was doubtful, and that Jefferson had left the Cabinet to go to Denmark
to assist in the organization and consolidation of the neutrals.[1010]
It was Grenville’s cue to procrastinate on the treaty until he could
ascertain to a certainty just what the United States contemplated in
reference to the Armed Neutrality. Impatient over the delay, Jay
submitted a complete draft of a treaty on September 20, 1794, which was,
in many respects, an admirable document. When the treaty which was
finally signed was submitted with the other papers to the American
Government, the draft of September 20th was conspicuously absent--for
the actual treaty was an almost complete surrender of the claims of the
first draft, and its publication would have had a disastrous effect on
Jay’s reputation and on his party.

Ten days before Jay submitted his draft, Grenville was in possession of
a curious report from Hammond. The latter had been informed by Hamilton,
‘with every demonstration of sincerity,’ that under no circumstances
would America join the Armed Neutrality. This, Hammond understood, was
secret information on Cabinet action.[1011] Thus, through the amazing
indiscretion of Hamilton, Jay was deprived of his high card at the
critical moment of the negotiations. Hamilton was standing behind Jay,
to be sure, but he was holding a mirror, however unconsciously, which
reflected the American negotiator’s cards to the enlightenment of the
suave and smiling Grenville. From that moment Grenville stiffened his
opposition to Jay’s demands, and thenceforth the latter was in a
continuous retreat.[1012]

The result was a sweeping victory for England and the most humiliating
treaty to which an American has ever put his signature.[1013] It
provided for the abandonment of the western posts after June 1, 1796,
but there was to be no remuneration for stolen negro slaves and no
provision for ending the impressment of American seamen. The principle
that ‘free ships make free goods’ was surrendered and the contraband
list was extended. British claimants could appeal to the Mixed Debts
Commission without first exhausting their resources in American courts,
while the American claimants had to exhaust the resources of the British
courts before appealing to the Commission. The Mississippi was to be
opened to British trade; and the West Indian trade, which Jay was
specifically instructed to secure, was granted to American ships of
seventy tons burden only, and then on condition that the West Indian
trade should be wholly free to British vessels and that American vessels
should not carry molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, and cotton to any ports
in the world except their own. The East Indian trade was opened to
Americans provided no further restrictions should be laid on British
commerce. And Jay agreed to provisions--despite specific instructions to
enter into no obligations incompatible with our treaty obligations to
France--which amounted to an alliance with England against America’s
ally in the Revolution.[1014]

All in all, it was a rather disreputable performance which even Hamilton
admitted to Talleyrand, in a social moment, to be an ‘execrable one’ on
the part of ‘an old woman.’[1015] By a queer coincidence, Jefferson
described the treaty with the same adjective, as ‘an execrable thing,’
in a letter to Edward Rutledge.[1016]

However, Hamilton, familiar with the treaty long before it reached the
Senate, was willing to accept the ‘execrable thing’ provided the twelfth
article, forbidding American vessels from carrying cotton, among other
articles, to the ports of Europe, should be suspended. He wrote William
Bradford, the Attorney-General, in May, of his distress over this
article,[1017] and Rufus King about the middle of June.[1018] But he was
sternly set on ratification, against a renewal of negotiations, and that
was enough to determine the course of the Senate. There was no other
way. It was a Federalist negotiation. The negotiator had been chosen in
a Federalist caucus. The instructions had been determined upon in a
Federalist conclave. They were practically written by the great
Federalist leader, and the purpose served was in line with Federalist
economics.[1019]

Thus, when the Senate met in extraordinary session, its work was cut out
for it. For eighteen days the Senators debated in secret. The American
people knew that the treaty was under consideration, but they did not
have the most remote idea what it was all about. For eight days the
discussion was general; then the Federalists, acting under Hamilton’s
inspiration, submitted a form of ratification conditioned on the
suspension of that portion of Article XII which enumerated the articles
American ships could not carry to Europe. Meanwhile, the commercial
interests in New York were becoming apprehensive over the delay.
Hamilton was bombarded with anxious inquiries on the report that the
treaty had been rejected, and was able to deny it, writing at the same
time to Rufus King of the ‘disquietude.’[1020] Two days after Hamilton
wrote King, Senator Aaron Burr moved to postpone ratification and to
institute new negotiations, but this, with other hostile motions, was
voted down. At length the Federalist programme was pushed through,
Senator Gunn of Georgia voting to ratify. Ten Senators remained in
opposition. And then the Senate, with a keen appreciation of the
humiliating nature of the treaty, solemnly voted to ‘not countenance the
publication’ of the document.[1021] Such a high-handed proceeding,
predicated upon the theory that the people had no right to know to what
they had been bound, made an unpleasant impression even on Hamilton,
who wrote Wolcott that it was ‘giving much scope to misrepresentation
and misapprehension.’[1022]

But there was one Senator who refused to be bound in a conspiracy to
conceal from the people the people’s business. Stevens Thomson Mason of
Virginia had crowded into his thirty-five years as much patriotic
service as any of his colleagues. Although but sixteen when the
Declaration of Independence was signed, he had served as a volunteer
aide on the staff of Washington at Yorktown, and had been made a
brigadier-general in the militia of Virginia. In the few years that
remained to him, he was to earn an appreciation that partisan historians
have denied him by his militant challenge to the Sedition Law. Ardent
and courageous, he felt that the people had a right to know the contents
of the treaty, and, while the Federalist Senators were congratulating
themselves on having bound the Senate to secrecy, Bache’s paper came out
with the full text of the treaty. Mason had deliberately, openly,
defiantly taken a copy to the office of the ‘Aurora.’

Then something like a cyclone swept the land.

III

The injunction of secrecy and Bache’s sharp comments upon it had
prepared the public for something startling. ‘A secrecy in relation to a
law which shall rival the darkness of a conclave of a seraglio.’[1023]
‘Secrecy is the order of the day in our government--charming expedient
to keep the people in ignorance.’[1024] ‘What are we to infer from this
secrecy’ but that ‘the treaty will be unacceptable to the people?’[1025]
‘This imp of darkness,’ he had written, referring to the treaty.[1026]
When Mason’s copy reached Bache’s paper, it was eagerly seized upon by
the people, and copied in all the papers of the country. The people all
but rose _en masse_.

July 3d found the Philadelphia streets littered with a handbill urging
an attack on a British vessel at Goldbury’s wharf. That night the
streets leading to the wharf were packed with people, most of them from
the section of the laborers, with a sprinkling of the curious. The
Governor had ordered out some soldiers who prepared to meet the
emergency with stern methods. Until eleven o’clock the crowd stood in
sullen silence waiting for something to happen, for some one to lead the
assault. Darkly outlined in the night loomed the British ship, in front
the silent soldiers, behind them the angry crowd. Slowly this dwindled,
and before midnight the danger was over, but the sight of the ship had
not worked a conciliatory spirit in the people.[1027] It aroused the mob
spirit for action on the Fourth.

Throughout that day--an ominous quiet. Out in the suburb of Kensington,
the ship carpenters were planning a demonstration. This was postponed
till night because the troops were out in honor of the Nation’s natal
day. Eleven o’clock found five hundred men, mostly workmen, moving from
the suburb on the city. By the lights they carried could be seen an
effigy of Jay. This, according to rumors that flew over the town, was to
be burned before Washington’s house on Market Street. Then a feverish
summoning of the light-horse, little Paul Reveres hurrying from door to
door summoning soldiers to the saddle. Long before the marching mob
reached the heart of the city, the cavalry was drawn up on Market Street
waiting. On moved the mob in uncanny silence. Most of the people were
asleep, and only the bobbing lights of the marchers indicated that
something was stirring. No attempt was made to reach Washington’s house.
Through other streets tramped the mob in orderly procession, then back
to Kensington where Jay was burned in effigy. Just for a moment a pause
in the jubilation, when Captain Morrell and some of his men dashed into
the glare of the lights to disperse the mob and to be pelted with stones
and forced to precipitate flight. Only that, and an advertisement in the
papers the next day announcing the finding of ‘an elegant horseman’s
sword’ which could be recovered by ‘producing his muddy regimentals.’
Little damage had been done. Some one had hurled a stone through the
window at Bingham’s house, but that was all, aside from the bruises of
Captain Morrell, who had fought neither too wisely nor too well.

The next morning the curious strolled toward Kensington, where they
found the ashes, and a board stuck in the ground bearing the words:
‘Morrell’s Defeat--Jay Burned July 4, 1795.’ There, unmolested, it
stood for days. ‘I think an attempt to take it down without considerable
force would be attended by serious consequences,’ wrote a Philadelphian
to a friend in New York.[1028] The story of the burning spread rapidly
over the country, carrying its inevitable suggestion.[1029] While the
ship carpenters were nursing their plans at Kensington, the Philadelphia
County Brigade was celebrating the Fourth with a dinner in the woods
along Frankfort Creek, where the French Treaty was toasted, and those
seeking to supersede it were denounced as traitors. The ten Senators who
voted against ratification were praised for having ‘refused to sign the
death warrant of American liberty,’ Mason was eulogized, and the woods
reverberated with shouts and laughter over the toast: ‘A Perpetual
Harvest to America--but clipped wings, lame legs, the pip and an empty
crop to all Jays.’[1030] Three weeks later a throng assembled in the
State House yard to take formal action, with men of the first
distinction in the community on the platform. A memorial of denunciation
was read, adopted without debate, and the treaty was thrown
contemptuously to the crowd, which pounced upon it, stuck it on the end
of a pole, and marched to the French Minister’s house where a ceremony
was performed, albeit Adet denied himself to the mob; thence on to the
British Minister’s house where the treaty was burned while the mob
cheered lustily; then on to the British Consul’s and Bingham’s for a
hostile demonstration.

The Federalist leaders observed these demonstrations with misgivings,
whistling the while to keep up courage. Somewhere on the outskirts stood
Oliver Wolcott, who instantly wrote Washington at Mount Vernon that the
crowd was composed mostly of ‘the ignorant and violent part of the
community.’ Nothing shocked him more than the introduction to the mob of
Hamilton Rowan, the Irish patriot, and the swinging of hats in token of
welcome. Judge M’Kean swung his, Wolcott supposed, ‘because he expected
the honor soon of having the fellow to hang for some roguery in this
country.’[1031] Even more shocking to Wolcott was the invitation of the
colorful Blair McClenachan, as he threw the treaty to the crowd, to
‘kick it to hell.’[1032] Pickering assured Washington that there ‘were
not probably two hundred whom Chief Justice M’Kean would deem qualified
to sit on a jury.’[1033]

But it was not to be so easy to belittle the protest or to confine it to
Philadelphia. It spread--like an epidemic. In New York City, the home of
Jay, the feeling was virulent. The Fourth of July celebrations disclosed
the sharp divisions between the commercial interests and the body of the
people. With the merchants dining at the Tontine with Jay, the Democrats
at Hunter’s with the French Consul were shouting approval of the toast:
‘May the cage constructed to coop up the American eagle prove a trap for
none but Jays and King-birds.’[1034] The ‘Argus’ published a scathing
open letter to ‘Sir John Jay.’[1035] With the advertisement of a town
meeting, Hamilton and King sought to organize the opposition of the
merchants at a meeting at the Tontine when it was decided to contest the
issue at the mass meeting. An address, protesting against the method of
the proposed meeting, written by Hamilton, was given to the papers, and
circulated in handbills. The stroke of twelve found from five to seven
thousand people assembled, and the plans of the Hamiltonians were
instantly surmised. There, on the stoop on Broad Street stood Hamilton
himself, with King and a few others grouped about him. At the stroke of
the clock, Hamilton, without waiting for the organization of the
meeting, began to speak impassionedly. ‘Let us have a chairman!’ cried
the crowd. A chairman was chosen and took his station on the balcony of
Federal Hall. Instantly Peter Livingston began to speak. Hamilton
interrupted. Cries of ‘Order! Order!’ from the people. ‘Who shall speak
first?’ asked the chairman. ‘Livingston,’ shouted the greater part of
the crowd. But when he sought to comply, he could not raise his voice
above the confusion, though he managed to reach the swaying mass with
the suggestion that all favoring the treaty go to the left, and those
opposed to the right. A goodly portion of the crowd passed to the right
to Trinity Church, and Hamilton, assuming that only friends of the
treaty remained, began to speak. Hissing--hooting--coughing--his voice
was drowned. The orator paused, consulted his supporters, and a
resolution prepared by King was passed to the chairman to read. A
momentary lull, and then, finding it commendatory of the treaty, an
angry roar--‘We’ll hear no more of that, tear it up.’

Meanwhile, a stone struck Hamilton, without injuring him severely. With
a derisive smile, he called on ‘all friends of order’ to follow him, and
the Hamiltonians deserted the field. That afternoon at Bowling Green a
cheering crowd could have been seen burning the treaty, while in the
Fields another crowd was screaming its delight as Jay’s effigy went up
in smoke.

The next day the meeting reconvened and unanimously adopted resolutions
against the treaty, and the Hamiltonians called a meeting of the
merchants to protest against the action. This meeting of the merchants
is more impressive in books than it was in reality. The ‘Minerva’
announced that the treaty had been endorsed by a practically unanimous
vote; while the ‘Argus,’ more specific, reported that among the seventy
present, ten had opposed the treaty, and that these ten ‘own more
tonnage than the other sixty put together.’[1036] The minority of ten
publicly denounced the majority as ‘either inimical to this country in
the late war, or have immigrated to this country since that period.’
Having made the charge, they entered into details. Of the sixty
merchants favoring the treaty, only eighteen had been outside the
British lines in the Revolution, eight had actually joined the British,
six came to the country from England during the war and located in
sections held by the British army, and ten entered the country after the
war.[1037] At any rate, there were seven thousand people in the mass
meeting and but seventy in the meeting of the merchants.

The ferocity of the protest had a depressing effect on Hamilton, who
could imagine nothing less than ‘Jacobins meditating serious mischief’
to ‘certain individuals.’ Instinctively he thought of mobs, and
meditated on soldiers to put them down. He was afraid the New York
militia was sympathetic toward the mob. Time would be required for the
Federalists to ‘organize a competent armed substitute.’ He had thought
of the ‘military now in the forts,’ but understood they were ‘under
marching orders.’ Would not Wolcott confer confidentially with the
Secretary of War and ‘engage him to suspend the march?’[1038] The
majority were against the treaty--time to summon the soldiers. Nor was
Hamilton alone in this thought of force. Ames could see no other way and
was ready to ‘join the issue tendered.’ The moment was favorable for the
Government to show its strength. Then action--‘Washington at the head,
Pittsburg at its feet, pockets full of money, prosperity shining like
the sun on its path.’[1039] Within two weeks Hamilton, in the Assembly
Room on William Street was denouncing the rabble, declaring the
situation meant a foreign or civil war, and expressing his preference
for the latter. Meanwhile he was proposing a house-to-house canvass
through the wards for the treaty.[1040]

If Hamilton was alarmed in New York, and Pickering chagrined in
Philadelphia, the Federalist leaders in Massachusetts were stunned by
the intensity of the feeling of the mob. A protest meeting was held at
Faneuil Hall, with the venerable Samuel Adams participating with spirit.
Without a dissenting vote resolutions were passed denouncing the treaty
and praising Senator Mason for ‘his patriotism in publishing.’[1041] The
aristocratic leaders of the Federalists in Boston knew the futility of
challenging the throng. Declining the issue, they busied themselves with
the merchants and wrote explanatory letters to their friends. ‘Men of
reputation would not attend the meeting,’ Stephen Higginson, the
merchant-politician, wrote Pickering, ‘being opposed to the town’s
taking up the subject. They were left wholly to themselves; no attempt
was made to counteract them, though nine merchants out of ten reprobated
the procedure.’ The people, to be sure, were excited, for had not Bache
been to Boston ‘with a large collection of lies of riots in Philadelphia
and New York to create a flame here.’[1042] Cabot, more truthful, was
lamenting about the same time that ‘some of our most respectable men
have on this occasion joined the Jacobins and very many of them
acquiesced in their proceedings.’[1043] Ames could not restrain his
disgust because many of the rich had participated. Even so, these
clever, tireless Massachusetts leaders were not inactive. After all,
what were the farmers, artisans, and lawyers compared with the
merchants? One merchant was more influential with them than a thousand
tillers of the soil. Thus, they summoned the Chambers of Commerce to
action, and resolutions were passed endorsing the treaty. ‘The
proceedings are to be transmitted to the President,’ wrote the
complacent Cabot to Wolcott.[1044]

But that did not end the treaty fight in Boston, for throughout the
summer the indignation of the people simmered and occasionally boiled
over. The ‘rabble’ had to have its fling. On the walls enclosing the
home of Robert Treat Paine were chalked the words: ‘Damn John Jay! Damn
every one who won’t damn John Jay! Damn every one who won’t put lights
in his windows and sit up all night damning John Jay!’[1045] Then, early
in September, a great crowd marched through the crooked, narrow streets
with a figure representing Jay; and the next day it reappeared with
another effigy of Jay with a watermelon head, and marched noisily
through the principal streets to the home of Samuel Adams who appeared
and smiled approvingly upon the scene. A few days later, Jay was burned
in effigy at Oliver’s Wharf, and the home of the editor of the ‘Federal
Orrery’ was attacked with bricks and stones.[1046] The non-participants
observed that the Federalist leaders were more outraged at the burning
of the effigy than over the action of a British man-of-war that sailed
into the harbor and helped itself to anything it wanted.[1047]

Fisher Ames ascribed the mob spirit to ‘a few young men who have lost
property by British captures.’ Just a few, he said--mostly boys with
fifes and drums. ‘The anti-treaty men were ashamed of the
business.’[1048] The Boston Federalists preferred to fight the mob with
merchants’ resolutions and their barbed wit. ‘The reason given by the
Jacobins for not reading the treaty,’ wrote Russell in the ‘Centinel,’
‘is that no person ought to read what he knows to be bad.’[1049]
Meanwhile, the leaders were busy as swarming bees all over
Massachusetts, drumming up the merchants, soliciting resolutions,
exerting influence to prevent town meetings. ‘At Salem the respectable
people are all acquiescent; and many of them approve but think it
inadvisable to act,’ wrote Cabot to Wolcott. ‘At Newburyport, the
principal merchants are also well satisfied; and some steps have been
taken to bring them to express their opinions.’[1050] With the merchants
acquiescent, and the principal merchants satisfied, need any one worry
over the marching multitudes?

But alas, in commercial Charleston, home of the Pinckneys and William
Smith--there, too, the marching mobs, and mingling with them some of the
rich and aristocratic. Here was the most bitter disappointment of all.
It began in the Senate when the patrician South Carolina Senator Pierce
Butler, cousin of the Duke of Ormond, refused to vote for ratification.
Nothing of the rabble about him or his charming wife. When the treaty
reached Charleston, the flags of the city were lowered to half-mast. The
treaty was burned ‘amidst shouts of abhorrence’--nor was there anything
clandestine about the burning. It was duly advertised in advance. ‘This
evening at 8 o’clock,’ read the notice, ‘will be burned by the public
executioner near the old Market in Broad street, the treaty proposed to
be established between Great Britain and America to show the disapproval
of the citizens of Charleston. Also an effigy of Jay will be burned.’
Taking cognizance of rumors of possible interference, the ‘satellites of
anarchy,’ were promised ‘tar and feathers.’ These took the hint and both
the treaty and Jay crackled in the flames.

Then followed a formal meeting of protest in the Exchange--a great
crowd--many veterans of the Revolution--an adjournment to Saint
Michael’s Church to accommodate the throng. Then rose a figure familiar
to the generation of the Revolution, and then Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States, John Rutledge. An able man was
Rutledge, with a luminous career. Speaking with vigorous eloquence,
analyzing the treaty as he proceeded, he denounced it as a betrayal of
American interests and an insult to American manhood.[1051] At a
subsequent meeting condemnatory resolutions were adopted, Butler was
lauded, and Senator Read, who had voted to ratify, was denounced as
‘unworthy of any further public trust.’[1052] In the midst of this
meeting there was a stir of anticipation when the popular orator Charles
Pinckney, just arrived from his country place and covered with dust,
strode into the room and claimed recognition. His was one of the
fiercest excoriations of the year, and a few days later this speech,
revised, appeared in the ‘City Gazette,’ to be copied by all the papers
inimical to the treaty in the country. A master of the philippic, he
poured oil upon the flames.[1053] In parish after parish, meetings were
called and the treaty denounced. The Federalists were appalled at the
action of Rutledge, and he who had been numbered among ‘the wise and the
good’ became a symbol of unspeakable depravity over night. It was
suddenly discovered that he whom Washington had deliberately chosen for
Chief Justice was ‘insane.’[1054] In the ‘Centinel’ of Boston appeared
an open letter to him declaring him unfit to sit upon the Bench--because
of his hostility to the document of Jay.[1055] The private
correspondence of the Federalist leaders bristled with abuse, and plans
were immediately made to reject his nomination in the Senate.

In North Carolina the opposition was even more bitter, partly because of
the absurd surrender in Article XII, and partly because of the provision
which threw the property rights of Americans into jeopardy.[1056] This
one provision was said to affect half the lands in the State, and there
was wild talk of resisting it by force.[1057] Even Senator Johnson,
Federalist, was shocked and disgusted. ‘A hasty performance’ at best,
and one which greatly lowered his opinion of Jay’s ability.[1058]
William R. Davie, however, was outraged at the opposition and thought
the treatment of Jay measured ‘the baseness of human nature.’[1059]

In Virginia the people were infuriated. They, too, were affected by
Article IX, and on the day the treaty was signed, Grenville presented
Jay with papers which began the long litigation over the Fairfax estate;
and more than any other State she was a sufferer from the loss of
negroes carried away by the British troops. In 1791, Cornwallis had
taken thirty thousand slaves, of whom all but three thousand had died
of smallpox and fever. When a mass meeting was convened at Richmond, the
Federalist leaders had another shock when the celebrated Chancellor
Wythe, a powerful figure at the American Bar, took the chair--‘a
circumstance,’ wrote Madison to Jefferson, ‘which will not be without
its weight, especially as he presided at the former meeting in favor of
the Proclamation.’[1060] Here the treaty was denounced as ‘insulting to
the dignity, injurious to the interests, dangerous to the security, and
repugnant to the Constitution, of the United States.’[1061] Patrick
Henry thought it ‘a very bad one indeed.’[1062] And so thought the
Virginians generally. At Petersburg a tribute was paid Senator Mason and
Jay was burned in effigy.[1063]

Still another blow fell to the Federalists when Senator John Langdon of
New Hampshire, who had supported Hamilton’s financial policies, deserted
on the treaty. The merchants of Portsmouth--a sacred class with the
Hamiltonians--shared in the general protest. A mass meeting was called
at the State House. ‘Your only hope is in the President,’ ran the
handbills. ‘Assemble, then, to a man; shut up your shops; repair to the
State House; remonstrate.’[1064] And never had Portsmouth seen so great
a throng. The treaty was denounced, Langdon approved, Mason praised for
giving out the document ‘unduly withheld by the Senate from the people.’
When Langdon returned, he was given a public dinner at the Assembly Room
with practically every merchant and tradesman gathered about the board.
Stinging toasts, patriotic songs, a stirring speech from Langdon--who at
this time aligned himself with the Jeffersonians and became their leader
in New Hampshire.[1065]

Even so, the Federalists held the line fairly well in New England. In
Vermont, where the treaty was the sole topic of conversation, there were
no public meetings. The Democratic Societies of the State had fallen
under the frown of Washington, and rough-and-ready Matthew Lyon had not
assumed the leadership. As late as September, ‘Vermont Farmer,’
complaining of non-action, urged that meetings be called in every town
and county--but nothing was done.[1066] In Connecticut, where the
preachers, professors, and politicians had the people cowed, there was
scarcely a whimper. ‘I have heard little said by our people about the
treaty,’ wrote Governor Wolcott to his son. ‘Our people are calm and
hard at work.’[1067] In New Jersey a mass meeting was held at Trenton in
the State House and the treaty denounced--with numerous township
meetings following in its wake.[1068] The sentiment generally was
hostile. Another meeting at Newport, Rhode Island, and another sweeping
denunciation.[1069] In Delaware the opposition was overwhelming, even
the Cincinnati at its Fourth of July dinner at Newcastle drinking
heartily to the toast: ‘John Jay, may he enjoy all the benefits of
purgatory,’[1070] while the diners at a more popular dinner drank, ‘His
Excellency, John Jay ... may he and his treason be forever politically
damned.’[1071] In August the people of Wilmington crowded the Upper
Market House in protest, with men like Cæsar Rodney and John Dickinson
participating.[1072]

In Georgia, where the popular sense had been betrayed by the
ratification vote of Senator Gunn, the bitterness was sizzling. One day
the people gathered about a poster in the Market at Savannah inviting
them to meet the next day at the Court-House and join in the burning of
John Jay in effigy. Most of the town responded. There they found the
effigies of Jay and Gunn on a cart. Forming in procession, with the cart
in front, they paraded through the numerous streets, along the Bay and
back to the Court-House, and thence to the South Common where the
gallows stood. Halters were put about the necks of Jay and the offending
Senator, solemnly the accusation of treason was read to them, and they
were given to the flames.[1073]

In Maryland the Federalists whistled hard to sustain their courage, and
made a brave effort to close their eyes to the situation. Representative
Murray wrote encouragingly to Wolcott that among the men gathered for
the General Court ‘nine tenths ... from all the counties approved the
treaty.’[1074] In Baltimore the merchants rallied and sought to
intimidate Sam Smith, their Representative, by the circulation of a
paper of instructions. He hastened home to suppress it, and failing,
had a set of counter-instructions started. But there was no magic in
pretense, and soon Murray, himself intimidated, was writing of his
decision to retire with the admission that on the Eastern Shore there
‘had been more agitation than I had imagined.’[1075]

These marching mobs, mass meetings, resolutions and petitions, and
burning effigies give no conception of the popular ferment. Never had
the people been more agitated or outraged. Whenever two men met, whether
bankers or bakers, the treaty was the topic of their talk. In taverns,
where travelers were promiscuously packed like sardines in a box, the
quarreling made night hideous and sleep impossible. In the bar-rooms,
men, in their cups, disputed and fought. The stage-coaches were a forum,
the crossroads store a battle-ground. An English tourist, finding
himself in a wayside tavern, was driven to distraction by the noise of
combat. The farmers were against the treaty, the lawyers for it, and
they debated with passion, with more heat than light. Assigned to a room
with five or six beds, the forlorn foreigner was forced to listen to the
continuance of the struggle until at length ‘sleep closed their eyes and
happily their mouths at the same time.’[1076] The Duc de la Liancourt,
journeying through upper New York, was swept into the maelstrom of
controversy and had to record his own opinions in his ‘Travels.’[1077]
When the messenger from the Boston mass meeting reached New York,
hurrying to Philadelphia, Greenleaf stopped his press to print the story
of the incident.[1078] Soon the anti-treaty press was publishing
statistics on public sentiment--the mass meetings against the select
gatherings of the merchants. Fifteen thousand people had met and
denounced the treaty, and seven hundred had approved it, according to
the ‘Independent Chronicle.’[1079]

Meanwhile, Washington was causing the Federalists some uneasiness. As
late as July 31st, he had written Pickering evincing a desire to know
public sentiment. Had the Jacobins captured Washington? Wolcott was
painfully depressed lest America lose the respect of England. What
would she think with their ‘Minister’s house insulted by a mob, their
flag dragged through the streets as in Charleston ... a driveler and a
fool appointed Chief Justice’ by Washington?[1080] Only the day before,
Washington was writing of his alarm lest France resent a treaty she had
some right to resent.[1081] Clearly Washington required some attention.

The President held the treaty seven weeks before signing, and this put
the Federalist leaders to the torture. Among themselves they made no
concealment of their chagrin and indignation. Cabot, writing to King,
confessed that the President’s hesitation ‘renews my anxiety for the
welfare of the country.’ He would suggest to the Boston merchants that
they make ‘a manly declaration of their sentiments’ to Washington. He
had ‘too much respect for the character of the President to believe that
he can be deterred from his duty by the clamor or menaces of these city
mobs,’ but he realized that something should be done to counteract their
influence.[1082] If Cabot kept a rein on his patience, it was not true
of all. In a great house known as ‘Elmwood’ at Windsor, Connecticut,
surrounded by elm trees and filled with books and religion, a stern and
forceful master was literally walking the floor, and tossing restlessly
on a sleepless bed, for Oliver Ellsworth was doubting Washington’s
firmness and courage. In bitterness he was writing that ‘if the
President decides right or wrong or does not decide soon his good
fortune will forsake him.’[1083] In commercial circles in New York many
were already turning upon the man they made a virtue of pretending to
worship. About the middle of July, Washington and his family left
Philadelphia for Mount Vernon, he in a two-horse phaëton for one, his
family in a coach with four horses and two servants, another servant
leading a saddle horse--and without giving the slightest intimation of
his intention.[1084]

Then came the scandal involving Randolph and the French Minister Faucet.
There was infinite joy in the Federalist camp. Pickering and Randolph
hastened a summons to Washington to return. There was a dramatic scene,
in which Washington is described as winking at Pickering, and setting a
trap for his Secretary of State, who was the sole member of his original
Cabinet chosen by the President to please himself. Randolph was
dismissed--and Washington signed the treaty. The merits of the treaty
were in no wise affected by anything Randolph may have done, and it is
fair to assume that there was no connection between the disgracing of
the Secretary and the signing.[1085] The strategy of the Federalist now
outlined itself, and Washington became the treaty and the treaty became
Washington, and to oppose the treaty was to insult Washington. The
popular President was literally pushed to the front line in the fight.
Pickering was writing Jay suggesting that Washington be persuaded to
issue ‘a solemn public declaration ... of the principles of his
Administration,’ appealing to the record of his life ‘for the purity and
patriotism of his conduct’;[1086] and Jay was replying that while ‘in
many respects useful,’ he doubted the wisdom.[1087] Christopher Gore was
writing King inquiring if it were not ‘possible for Col. Hamilton and
yourself to induce the President to adopt some measures that would
decidedly express his sentiments in favor of the treaty.’ He was
positive that ‘in New England the word of the President would save the
Government.’[1088]

This plan of using the prestige of Washington for a party measure was
not made for this particular occasion. Pickering and Gore wrote on the
same day,[1089] one from Philadelphia, and the other from Boston. It had
long been a favorite feature in the party strategy. Ellsworth regained
his composure and wrote Wolcott that ‘the current I believe is turning
in Massachusetts, though you may perhaps hear of some obscure town
meetings.’[1090] Senator James Ross, writing to Pickering from
Pittsburgh, thought that after all it was well that Washington had taken
his time. ‘His sanction after hearing all the objections will quiet the
minds of the thoughtful.’[1091]

All that was required to make Washington the issue in the treaty fight
was a stupid attack upon him from the Democratic press, and that was
instantly forthcoming. When Fenno’s paper announced that the treaty had
been signed, Bache wrote that since ‘no information has been filed for a
libel on the Executive ... it may be fairly presumed, the character of
the President for patriotism and republicanism notwithstanding, that the
assertion is well founded.’[1092] And when a great crowd attended the
next presidential levee, Bache capped the climax of asininity with the
comment that ‘it was certainly necessary to let the public know that the
just resentment of an injured and insulted people had not reached the
purview of Saint Washington.’[1093] These bitter expressions convinced
the Federalists that the fight was not yet over. The public had too
bitterly and generally resented the treaty to be so quickly won.
Instinctively the friends of the treaty thought of Hamilton and the
prowess of his pen. ‘Mr. Hamilton might do great good,’ wrote Murray of
Maryland to Wolcott, ‘by giving the public his luminous pen.’[1094] Even
as Murray wrote, Hamilton sat in his office writing ‘Camillus’ for Noah
Webster’s paper. His health was failing at the time, but King and Jay
had promised to assist. For weeks and months the papers appeared,
thirty-eight in all, in the most effective argumentative style, covering
every possible phase. ‘It is to pass for Hamilton’s,’ wrote John Adams
to his wife, ‘but all three consulted together upon most.’[1095] Two
months after the series began, the enemies of the treaty were
circulating the story that Hamilton and Webster had quarreled because of
the latter’s decision to limit the number of papers. ‘More than a
hundred columns have already been run, to the exclusion of news, and the
people are tired, no doubt,’ suggested an editor.[1096]

Unhappily, while Hamilton wrote, England was up to her old tricks upon
the sea again. Scarcely had the treaty been ratified, when Pickering was
officially protesting against an outrage on the United States by the
British ship of the line _Africa_, and by the British Vice-Consul in
Rhode Island,[1097] and was writing complainingly to John Quincy Adams
in London that ‘if Britain studied to keep up the irritation in the
minds of Americans ... some of her naval commanders appear perfectly
qualified for the object.’[1098] The enemies of the treaty made the
most of these affronts. ‘A Loyalist of ‘75’ was urging Hamilton to
‘discontinue his laborious work of defending the treaty’ to give some
attention to the justification of Captain Home of the _Africa_, and to
the defense of the other sea captain who stole a peep ‘at Mr. Monroe’s
despatches.’ ‘Camillus’ could resume on the treaty after quieting ‘the
minds of the swinish multitude’ on these later outrages.[1099] Thus
Hamilton’s efforts were being constantly neutralized in effect by the
conduct of the English, and the ‘swinish multitude’ chortled not a
little over the doggerel:

‘Sure George the Third will find employ
For one so wise and wary,
He’ll call “Camillus” home with joy,
And make him Secretary.’[1100]

In truth, even as he wrote, Hamilton was raging not a little over these
stupid insults to America, and was writing Wolcott proposing that the
exchange of ratifications be refused until the order to seize our
vessels with provisions be rescinded.[1101]

Far away on his hilltop, Jefferson was observing Hamilton’s literary
efforts with real concern, if the rank and file of his party were not.
‘Hamilton is really a colossus to the anti-republican party,’ he wrote
Madison, apropos of the defense of the treaty. ‘Without numbers, he is a
host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they
can be finished; but too much security on the republican part will give
time to his talent ... to extricate them.... When he comes forward there
is no one but yourself who can meet him. For God’s sake take up your pen
and give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillus.’[1102] But neither
‘for God’s sake,’ nor for Jefferson’s, did Madison comply. He was
enjoying his vacation with Dolly. Even so, the Federalists were still in
the woods on the treaty--and there was yet a memorable fight ahead.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DRAMA OF ‘96

Exuberant over their success in capitalizing Washington’s consent to the
treaty, the Federalists returned to Philadelphia in an ugly mood. With
celerity and _éclat_, the Senate threw down the gauntlet with the
rejection of the nomination of John Rutledge because of his hostility to
the treaty. The motive was unescapable. He was an able jurist, an
erudite lawyer, a pure patriot with a superb record of high public
services--but he had denounced the Federalist treaty. That was enough.
The leaders were delighted with their action, Senator Johnson thinking
it would have been unfortunate to have permitted Rutledge to remain upon
the Bench ‘after what had appeared.’ Of course, the opposition would
‘endeavor to impress it upon the minds of the people that the majority
were influenced by improper motives,’ but that was unavoidable.[1103]
Jefferson viewed the incident from his hilltop with the vision of a
prophet. ‘A bold thing,’ he thought, ‘because they cannot pretend any
objection to him but his disapprobation of the treaty.’ It meant that
the Federalists ‘would receive none but Tories hereafter into any
department of the government,’ and it would not be surprising were
Monroe recalled from Paris because ‘of his being of the partisans of
France.’ Monticello was remote, but its master could see a long
way.[1104]

The Senate still seemed safe to the Federalists on their return, but
there were grave misgivings as to the House. Young Livingston had caused
trouble enough and he was back to give more than Ames ‘the hypo,’ but
more ominous was the appearance there for the first time of Albert
Gallatin. He had been thrown out of the Senate as speedily as possible,
but not before he had given proof of his financial genius. There, the
Jeffersonians had been weak in leadership. It was characteristic of the
inner circle of the Federalists to hate any opponent they could not
despise--and they dare not despise this young man from Geneva. Even in
private life he had been denounced and damned in the spirit of the
pothouse, and Hamilton had ardently hoped for his indictment in
connection with the Whiskey Insurrection. When his election had seemed
probable, an effort had actually been made to disfranchise his district
as a region of sedition--but here was Gallatin. A duel between
Gallatin’s father-in-law, Admiral Nicholson, and Hamilton had been
narrowly averted in the autumn; but Gallatin, rising serenely above his
detractors, had refused to be ruffled, and had advised his wife not to
express her sentiments on the treatment accorded him too hotly lest it
‘lead to consequences you would forever regret.’[1105] Since these two
brilliant, bitterly hated, and violently abused men, Livingston and
Gallatin, were to play conspicuous parts in the drama of the House, it
is worth while to pause for a more intimate impression of them.

‘Edward Livingston now lives here in the style of a nabob,’ wrote
Wolcott during this session.[1106] It was a style to which he had been
accustomed from birth, for he was of the baronial aristocracy of New
York. He was but thirty-two at the time, tall, handsome, dashing and
daring, witty and eloquent, and with a luminous background of wealth,
culture, tradition, and personal achievement. Even the most inveterate
snob among his political opponents must have envied him his advantages.
Born in the mansion of the Livingstons at ‘Clermont,’ on the Hudson, he
had passed his winters in the town house in New York, which swarmed with
slave servants. From boyhood, his society had been eagerly sought. With
his fleeing mother he had witnessed from a hilltop his loved home given
to the flames by British soldiers; and to his dying day he carried a
poignant memory of the parting of his sister with her hero husband,
Richard Montgomery, when he set forth for his final fight. Lafayette had
been so captivated by the charming youth while visiting his home that he
had vainly importuned his mother for permission to take him to France;
and when the young man attended the Marquis a way on the Boston road, so
romantic was the attachment that the latter had urged the youth to make
the journey, nevertheless, with the promise to conciliate the family.
His was a unique charm, a fascinating personality.

Graduating from Princeton, in the class with Giles, he had his choice
between a life of laborious accomplishment and one of leisurely
elegance. Society, the gayest, giddiest, most entrancing, held forth its
arms to him. His mother’s drawing-room was always crowded with brilliant
and beautiful women and clever men, attracted partly by the exquisite
charms of the widow of Montgomery. He had an income, a town and country
house, slaves to do his bidding, and he turned from the enticing
prospect to bury himself in the assiduous study of the law. Now and then
he laid his books aside to flirt with Theodosia Burr, to dance with the
pretty belles, to play for stakes with women at the gambling-table
inseparable from the more fashionable houses--but only as a diversion.

Scarcely had he begun the practice of his profession when he took a
commanding position. Hard work, a noble ambition, and native talent made
him a success. But he could not have been a Livingston and indifferent
to politics. Very early his capacity and popularity swept him into the
fight. Strangely enough, he immediately became the idol of the masses.
This aristocrat was a democrat who was able to move in the crowd with a
distinction that commanded respect while compelling affection. Perhaps
the artisans, the clerks, the lowly were flattered by his smile and
condescension, perhaps captivated by his fighting mettle--whatever the
cause, they loved him, gathered about and sustained him. The Tammany of
his time marshaled its forces for him, and all the wit and wiles of
Hamilton could not harm him. But the Federalists hated him. What moral
right had a man of wealth and intellectual distinction and social
prestige to affiliate with the ‘mob’? They hated him as deserters are
hated--he was an American Égalité to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room, and
Wolcott hated him less because he ‘lived like a nabob’ than because he
fought like the devil.[1107]

III

Quite a different type was Albert Gallatin--and yet both were born
aristocrats. From the beginning of the republic at Geneva in the
sixteenth century, his family had been second to none in prestige and
power. The governmental system was aristocratic; his people were
uncompromising aristocrats, and five Gallatins had been, at one time or
another, head of the State. Into this reactionary atmosphere he was
born, and in it he passed his youth. At the home of his grandmother, a
domineering but clever old autocrat, who believed in the divine right of
the aristocracy to rule, he often met Voltaire. Strange couple, that old
woman worshiping tradition, and that cynical old philosopher sneering it
away. And yet in his family Gallatin was an exotic. Instinctively he
despised the system his people thought sacred. Rousseau may have
influenced him, but he was probably born with democracy in his blood.
When his grandmother arranged to get him a commission in the mercenary
army of her friend the Landgrave of Hess, and he scornfully refused on
the ground that he would ‘never serve a tyrant,’ the old woman boxed his
ears--but without jarring his principles.[1108] He was a grave
disappointment in the family circle. It is a notable coincidence that
like Hamilton he was remarkably precocious. He graduated from the
Academy of Geneva in his seventeenth year, first in his class in
mathematics, natural philosophy, and Latin translation. There, too, he
had studied history under Müller, the eminent historian, and in the
facts and philosophy of world history he was to have no equal in
American public life. Nothing contributed more to his desertion of his
country than his hatred of its petty aristocracy, its autocratic rule.

He was a dreamer in his youth. Was it Rousseau who planted in him a
dislike of cities and a passion for the wilderness? Secretly he left
Geneva and came to America, landing in Boston. He carried a letter of
introduction from Benjamin Franklin to his son-in-law, the father of the
editor of ‘The Aurora’ at Philadelphia. A few dreary months in Boston, a
happier winter in a cabin in the wilderness of northern Maine, a year at
Harvard as a teacher of French, a short time in Philadelphia in a
boarding-house with Pelatiah Webster, the political philosopher, and
the lure of land speculation led him to Virginia. There, in Richmond,
some of his happiest days were passed. Society was courteous, kindly,
and there he came in contact with great minds. John Marshall invited him
into his office with the prediction that he would distinguish himself at
the Bar, and Patrick Henry advised him to go West, with the observation
that he was intended for statesmanship. At this time he was a youth of
twenty-one with a pronounced foreign accent. Washington met him, and,
impressed with his keenness, offered to make him his land agent--an
honor happily declined. Then into the wilderness of Pennsylvania; a
house on a hilltop which he called ‘Friendship Hill’; a domestic
tragedy--the death of his young wife; and soon the Whiskey Boys, keen of
vision as Marshall, Henry, or Washington, literally swept him into
public life.

He was primarily a democrat and an opponent of strong government.
Fascinated by the work of the Constitutional Convention, he thought the
Executive had been given too much power. But he was opposed to tinkering
with constitutions once adopted.[1109] As a member of the convention to
revise the Constitution of Pennsylvania, he worked as earnestly as had
Madison in the greater convention, fighting with moderation, but
persistence for a popular government, for the freedom of the press, and
popular suffrage. It is significant that when the subject of courts was
reached he sought the advice of John Marshall--and received it.[1110]
His views on the French Revolution were those of Jefferson. He
recognized the many excesses, the greed of demagogues for power, and he
did not expect ‘a very good government within a short time,’ but he knew
‘their cause to be that of mankind against tyranny’ and that ‘no foreign
nation has the right to dictate a government to them.’[1111] One glance
at Genêt revealed to him the naked man--‘totally unfit for the place he
fills,’ his abilities ‘slender.’[1112] Yet, like Jefferson, despite the
massacres in Paris and the Genêt excesses in Philadelphia, he clung to
France because, ‘if France is annihilated, as seems to be the desire of
the combined powers, sad indeed will the consequences be for
America.’[1113] If he opposed the Excise Law, as was his right, he had
a reason, and it was sane.[1114] The charge the Federalists were to
make, that he had incited the hard-pressed pioneers to violations of the
law, was maliciously false. Throughout that insurrection, his part was
hard, and he met it with sanity and courage.

This was the background of this remarkable man when, at the age of
thirty-five, he stepped forward with the confidence of a veteran to
assume the intellectual leadership of the Jeffersonians in the House. A
shy man in social relations, he was utterly fearless in debate. There
was no mind in that body so well stocked with facts, and none with a
broader vision or deeper penetration. There was no one more masterful in
logic, more clear, downright, incisive in statement, and none more
impervious to abuse. His was the dignity of a superior mentality. If his
foreign accent was still pronounced, and members, priding themselves on
their refinement and taste, sneered openly, he remained the perfect
gentleman, indifferent to such jeers. In the midst of excitement, he was
calm. When others were demoralized, he kept his head. No greater figure
ever stood upon the floor of an American Congress than when Albert
Gallatin appeared, to force notable reforms in the fiscal system, and to
challenge the Federalists to an intellectual combat that would call
forth their extreme exertions.

One of the most important and brilliant debates in American history,
surpassing that on the Foote Resolutions, was precipitated early in
March when Edward Livingston threw a bomb into the complacent camp of
the Federalists with resolutions calling upon the President to lay
before the House the instructions and papers pertaining to the Jay
Treaty. There was some maneuvering in the beginning to feel out the
position of the enemy, and then the members settled down to a month of
memorable debating. On the whole, the discussion was pitched upon a high
plane, for the question was one of constitutional interpretation.
Throughout, there was scarcely a touch of personalities, albeit Tracy,
described by his admirers as the ‘Burke of Connecticut,’ and by his
enemies as the ‘Burke of Connecticut without his intelligence,’ could
not restrain a stupid sneer at the accent of Gallatin who led for the
enemies of the treaty. A Pennsylvania member denounced Tracy’s vulgar
conduct as ‘intolerable,’ and there were many cries of ‘order.’ With the
brazen effrontery of his school, Tracy asked Speaker Dayton to decide,
and that rather disreputable speculator, if not peculator, held it in
order to insult Gallatin with impunity.[1115] But this incident was
happily unique.

The Livingston Resolutions were based upon the theory that the House was
a party to the treaty in that it would be asked to make appropriations
to carry it into effect, and that the facts were necessary to the
determination of its course. This was in perfect accord with the
position of Jefferson.[1116] The Federalists contended that the
President and Senate alone were officially concerned, and that the House
was obligated to carry out any financial arrangements entered into in a
treaty. Did not the Constitution specifically say that the treaty-making
power was lodged in the President and the Senate? Conceded, replied the
opposition, but the Constitution also said that money bills must
originate in the House, and in making appropriations for any purpose the
popular branch of Congress is constitutionally bound to use its own
discretion. Both sides could, and did, appeal to the Constitution. There
was nothing merely factious or obstructive in the fight of the
opposition, and it is impossible to peruse the seven hundred and nine
pages of the debates without a realization of the complete sincerity of
the participants. Into the debate dashed all the leaders of the first
order. The galleries were packed. The discussion was the sole
conversational topic in streets and coffee-houses. The newspapers
printed the leading speeches in full. Even the Federal courts injected
themselves into the controversy, and one jurist introduced a
denunciation of the enemies of the treaty into his charge to the grand
jury.[1117] Fenno stupidly stumbled into the blunder of proving the
opponents of the treaty a ‘Robespierre faction’ by quoting the London
‘Morning Chronicle,’[1118] and Cobbett, the Englishman and Federalist
pamphleteer, selected this particular time to outrage the Philadelphia
‘rabble’ by filling his windows with pictures of kings, queens,
princes, dukes, Pitt, Grenville, and George III. With studied insolence,
he added some portraits of American Revolutionary heroes, and ‘found out
fit companions for them.’ Thus he ‘coupled Franklin with Marat’ and
‘M’Kean and Ankerstrom.’[1119]

The burden of the debate was borne by Gallatin, Madison, Livingston, and
Giles for the Resolutions, and by Sedgwick and Griswold against them.
Livingston spoke with spirited eloquence and with that power of
reasoning which was afterward to compel his recognition as one of the
foremost political thinkers of his time.[1120] Giles sustained his
reputation as a fluent, forceful, slashing debater. Madison spoke with
moderation; but the honors of primacy fell to Gallatin. He was a
revelation, and the Federalists were beside themselves with rage. Tall,
and above medium size, his fine face aglow with intelligence, his black
eyes burning with earnestness, his profile resembling in its sharp
outlines that of a Frenchman, his accent foreign, his delivery slow and
a little embarrassed, he spoke with a clarity and force that made the
Federalists wince. Livingston was more showy, Giles more boisterous,
Madison more academic. This new man was another Madison with greater
punch.[1121] He did not wander a moment from his argument--the
constitutional rights of the House in the case of treaties involving
appropriations.

‘The House has a right to ask for papers,’ he said, ‘because their
coöperation and sanction is necessary to carry the Treaty into full
effect, to render it a binding instrument, and to make it, properly
speaking, a law of the land; because they have a full discretion to
either give or refuse that coöperation; because they must be guided in
the exercise of that discretion by the merits and expediency of the
Treaty itself, and therefore they have a right to ask for every
information which can assist them in deciding that question.’ Whence led
the argument of the foes of the Resolutions? ‘The Constitution says that
no money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of
appropriations made by law. But treaties, whatever provisions they may
contain, are law; appropriations may therefore be made by treaties. Then
the shortest way to carry this treaty into effect would have been to
add another article appropriating the money.’ Turning to the power of
the House of Commons in the case of treaties involving an appropriation,
he found an analogy to the constitutional power of the President and the
Senate, in the power of the King to make treaties. But no one in England
challenged the right of the Commons to appropriate or not in putting the
provisions of a treaty into effect--and the speaker cited instances
where the Commons had rejected treaties by refusing appropriations. ‘Are
we in a worse situation than Great Britain?’ he asked. ‘Is the House of
Representatives ... the immediate representatives of the American people
ranked below the British House of Commons? Shall the Legislative power
be swallowed up by the Treaty-making power as contended for here, though
never claimed even in Great Britain?’ The issue raised by the opposition
to the Resolutions was clear, and their rejection would be ‘tantamount
to saying that the House abandons their share in legislation, and
consents that the whole power shall be centered in the other branches.’

Such, in general, was the tenor of the argument for the Resolutions;
while the Federalists insisted that the House possessed no power to
refuse any appropriation called for by a treaty--and thus the discussion
went round and round like a wagon wheel in motion. Sedgwick, in
justifying the Senate’s power, made a blunder on which the supporters of
the Resolutions seized and with which they played throughout the
discussion. The Senators were safer than the Representatives, he
thought, because the former were not chosen by ‘an ignorant herd, who
could be cajoled, flattered, and deceived.’

At length the vote was taken, and the Resolutions adopted by 61 to 38.
Gallatin and Livingston, chosen by the House, personally presented the
call for the papers to Washington, who promised an answer after
consideration. An answer, sneered Bache, which sounds like that which
the King of France used to give to his subjects.[1122]

When Livingston introduced his Resolutions, Hamilton, in New York, was
momentarily at sea. His first impression was that they were ‘of
doubtful propriety.’[1123] Within a few days, after discussions with
‘those who think,’ he was persuaded that the papers should be
refused--possibly on the ground that no purpose could be served unless
impeachment proceedings against Washington were in contemplation.[1124]
Here we have, in a flash, the political strategy outlined--to convince
the people that the Jeffersonians were planning the expulsion of
Washington from office. Again the Federalist war-cry--‘Stand by the
President!’ But a week later, Hamilton wrote King that the papers should
be refused on the ground that the House had nothing to do with treaties,
and that they were laws of the land to which the House had to
conform.[1125] Learning of the adoption of the Resolutions, Hamilton
wrote Washington to refuse compliance and to await suggestions that
would be sent the next day.[1126] Two days later, he was mortified at
his inability to send the promised papers, but he was at work upon them.
Meanwhile, the papers should not be sent because the instructions to Jay
would ‘do no credit to the Administration.’ Some would disappoint and
inflame the people.[1127] Two days after this, Washington sent his reply
to the House, following Hamilton’s instructions and using some of his
phraseology, even to the convenient suggestion of an impeachment.[1128]
The House, with equal firmness and with a dignified moderation,
responded with resolutions reaffirming its right--and the issue was
made.[1129] Almost immediately the introduction of a resolution
providing the appropriation threw the House into another month’s battle,
on the treaty itself.

Up to this time the congressional struggle had caused little excitement
among the people. Now the idea that the Union itself was at stake was
assiduously put out by the Federalist leaders. The Senate practically
ceased to function. When Senator Tazewell called attention to the
accumulation of business and urged action, King bluntly told him it was
purposely held back, and that if the House failed to appropriate for the
treaty, the Senate would consider all legislation at an end, and he
would assume the Union dissolved. The next day Cabot expressed something
of the same sentiment. In important commercial circles there was much
loose talk of the dissolution of the Union.

The action of Washington, on the other hand, had aroused resentment and
disgust. Jefferson, with his usual prescience, had foreseen it while
hoping against it. ‘I wish that his honesty and his political errors may
not furnish a second occasion to exclaim, “curse on his virtues, they
have undone his country,”’ he had written of Washington to Madison three
days before the refusal was sent to Congress.[1130] Madison thought the
tone and temper of the presidential letter ‘improper and indelicate,’
and suggested that Jefferson compare it with ‘one of Callimus’ last
numbers ... and the latter part of Murray’s speech.’[1131] It was
reserved to Bache, as usual, to strike the harsh note. ‘Thus though his
decision could not be influenced by the voice of the people, he could
suffer it to be moulded by the opinion of an ex-Secretary,’ he wrote.
‘Thus ... though he has apparently discharged the nurse, he is still in
leading strings.’

Meanwhile, the attacks on the Treaty were spreading consternation in all
commercial quarters and infuriating the Federalist leaders. ‘A most
important crisis ensues,’ wrote Hamilton to King a week after the debate
opened; and he outlined a plan of action in the event the appropriations
were refused. The President should send a solemn protest to the House
and a copy to the Senate. That body should pass a resolution strongly
commending the protest and advising the President to proceed with the
execution of the Treaty. Then the merchants should meet in all the
cities, adopt resolutions commendatory of the position of the President
and Senate, and invite their fellow citizens to coöperate with them.
Petitions should be circulated throughout the country. The Senate should
refuse to adjourn until the terms of the members of the House had
expired. Washington should send a confidential apology to England. ‘The
glory of the President, the safety of the Constitution depend upon it.
Nothing will be wanting here.’[1132]

Hamilton immediately set his machinery in motion, and thus, while the
debate was at high tide in the House, the political leaders were busy
with the country. King had written of the alarm of the merchants in
Philadelphia. ‘Our merchants here are not less alarmed and will do all
they can,’ Hamilton replied. Arrangements had been made for the
insurance people to meet that day; the merchants and traders would meet
the next. A petition would be put in circulation.[1133] Two days later,
he wrote jubilantly of the action of the merchants. ‘Unexampled
unanimity,’ he said. And more--‘persons to-day are going through the
different wards’--presumably with petitions.[1134] That very day he was
writing Wolcott that ‘the British Ministry are as great fools or as
great rascals as our Jacobins, else our commerce would not continue to
be distressed as it is, with their cruisers.’[1135]

The very day that Hamilton was writing of the distress of the New York
merchants, Madison was writing to Jefferson of the plans of the
Democrats. While a merchants’ petition had been circulated in
Philadelphia, he promised that ‘an adverse petition will be signed by
three or four times’ as many people. In New York and Boston similar
petitions would be put out. In Baltimore little could be expected, for
there, while originally against the treaty, they had been won over ‘by
the hope of indemnification for past losses.’[1136] Five days later, he
reported progress. The Philadelphia petition against the treaty greatly
outnumbered that for it, and petitions were being circulated in Delaware
and New Jersey. The insurance companies in Philadelphia and New York
were seeking to intimidate the people by stopping business. The banks
had been active peddlers of petitions in the cities where there was
‘scarce a trader or merchant but what depends on discounts.’ A hateful
picture, thought Madison. ‘Bank Directors soliciting subscriptions are
like highwaymen with a pistol demanding the purse.’[1137]

Boston found the Federalists triumphant in a town meeting dominated by
the eloquence of Otis, who played upon the horrors of war, and thus gave
Ames and the other party leaders their cue. It was on this occasion that
the orator, who had studied French under Gallatin at Harvard, and been
treated kindly, referred to the latter sneeringly as a nobody who had
come to America without a second shirt on his back. Later, to the
disgust of his Federalist co-workers, he had the decency to apologize to
Gallatin.[1138] Everywhere the latter was being deluged with
billingsgate. There was not contempt here--there was hate. Noah Webster,
in the ‘Minerva,’ was sneering at his foreign birth, while taking his
cue from Hamilton, born in the West Indies; attacking his position on
the excise with falsehoods and innuendoes; charging him with being an
agent of France. Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ replied with a
parody, substituting Hamilton for Gallatin and England for France and
making as good sense.[1139] Wolcott was writing his father that it was
‘neither unreasonable nor uncandid to believe that Mr. Gallatin is
directed by foreign politics and influence.’[1140] Nothing could have
pained the sensitive Wolcott more than the feeling that he was being
uncandid.

Meanwhile, the fight in the House went on--Gallatin in the forefront.
The Federalists were thoroughly frightened over the prospect, resorting
to every device to gain votes. Dreadful pictures of war if the treaty
failed, appeals to ‘stand by Washington,’ and intimidation--these were
favorite devices. ‘I am told,’ wrote Wolcott, with evident pleasure,
‘that if Findlay and Gallatin don’t ultimately vote for their
[treaties’] execution, their lives will be scarcely spared.’[1141] But
frightened and afraid of a vote, they decided ‘to risk the consequences
of a delay, and prolong the debates in expectation of an impulse from
some of the districts on their representatives.’[1142] However, a vote
could not be indefinitely delayed. Public business was at a standstill.
Everything possible had been done. The bankers had been sent out with
petitions to their creditors. The insurance companies had stopped
business. The merchants had passed resolutions. Petitions had been
circulated. Washington’s glory had been pictured as in jeopardy. And the
horrors of war had been described. The time had come to close the
debate. The greatest orator in the country was their spokesman, and he
had been held back for the last appeal. The time had come for Fisher
Ames to make the closing plea.

VII

Fisher Ames was not only the premier orator of his party; he was one of
its most brilliant and captivating personalities. He had a genius for
friendship and was good company. Nature had blessed him with her richest
intellectual gifts. His precocity equaled that of Hamilton or
Gallatin--he was a prodigy. At six he was studying Latin, at twelve he
had entered Harvard, and there he was conspicuous because of his
scintillation. His powers of application were equal to his natural
ability, but he found time for relaxation when his animation, wit, and
charm, combined with modesty, endeared him to his fellows and won the
affection of his instructors. Even at Harvard he was ardently
cultivating the art of oratory, and the style then formed, while
strengthened by age and experience, never greatly changed. Cicero was
his model through life. During his preparation for the Bar, his appetite
for good literature was not neglected, and he delved deeply into ancient
history and mythology, natural and civil history, and he pored over the
novelists and lived with the poets--Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil. These
were fruitful years and the Federalists were to get the harvest. At the
Bar he instantly took rank as a pleader, but he found time to write
articles on the political affairs of the time. In the convention called
to ratify the Constitution, he disclosed the political prepossessions
that were to govern his career. While not hostile to a republican
experiment, he was skeptical of republics, fearing the domination of
popular factions. These factions he considered the rabble. Democracy, he
despised. He was an aristocrat by instinct and this guided his political
conduct.

He would have distinguished himself in literature had he devoted himself
to it. He wrote, as he spoke, out of a full mind, and his first draft of
an article required no polishing or revision. This made him an amazingly
brilliant extemporaneous orator. Although the slow processes of logical
argumentation were not beyond him, he depended more on illustration. His
mind fairly teemed with images. The poets had endowed him with their
gift. There was something Shakespearean in the fertility of his fancy,
and he delighted his hearers or readers with his rapidly changing
pictures. These came spontaneously, and, leaving an indelible
impression on his audience, they were lost to him with their utterance.
He scattered gems as though they were grains of the sea, and he the
owner of the sands of the shore. Remarkably enough, this did not lead
him to rhetorical flamboyance or over-elaboration. He was a master of
the short sentence, and he possessed rare powers of condensation.

In social relations he was lovable, but he carefully selected his
intimates, having no stomach for the commonplace person. His companions
were of the élite. Among them he was simplicity itself, and generosity
and kindness, but no man had a more brutal wit or sarcasm for a foe.
Above middle height and well proportioned, he held himself erect. There
was little in his features to distinguish him, for they were not
strongly marked. His forehead was neither noticeably high nor broad; his
blue eyes were mild and without a suggestion of the fire of domination;
his mouth was well formed, but not strong; but his voice was melody
itself. One who often heard him found that ‘the silvery tones of his
voice fell upon the ear like strains of sweetest music’ and that ‘you
could not choose but hear.’[1143] There was more than a touch of
aristocratic cynicism in his nature, and his favorite weapon in attack
was sarcasm, but he was ordinarily considerate of the feelings of a foe
in combat. No other member of the House could approach him in the
eloquence of persuasion.[1144]

VIII

Happily married to a beautiful woman, Ames had built himself an elegant
home at Dedham where he lived and was to die, but in the fall of 1796 he
had little expectation of lingering long to enjoy it. Nothing had
enraged him more than the popular agitation against the Jay Treaty, and
in the midst of the fight he suffered a physical collapse. In September,
he was unable to ride thirty miles without resting for a day.[1145] He
had consulted various ‘oracles’ and found that he was bilious, nervous,
cursed with a disease of the liver, and he had been ‘forbidden and
enjoined to take almost everything’--meat--cider--a trotting horse--and
to refrain from excess of every kind.[1146] In October, with the
congressional battle approaching, he had a relapse--‘extreme weakness,
want of appetite, want of rest.’ Faint hope then of reaching
Philadelphia at the first of the session, ‘if ever.’ Still, the cool
weather might restore him. Philadelphia, perhaps, by December.[1147] But
December found him at Dedham, with King writing him of the desperate
prospects in the House and urging his presence,[1148] and in January
Ames was writing Jeremiah Smith of his resolve to go on to Philadelphia.
‘Should this snow last, I am half resolved to jingle my bells as far as
Springfield.’ At any rate, on the morrow he would go to ‘my loyal town
of Boston in my covered sleigh by way of experimenting of my
strength.’[1149]

February found him on the way. At New Haven where he lodged, the snow
grew thin, and ‘there was great wear and tear of horse flesh.’ At
Stamford it was gone and he took a coachee. At Mamaroneck, twenty-five
miles from New York, he slept, and awoke to find the snow ‘pelting the
windows.’ Back with the coach, and a wait for the sleigh. Even so, he
wrote, ‘to-morrow I expect to hear the bells ring and the light horse
blow their trumpets’ on reaching New York. ‘If Governor Jay won’t do
that for me, let him get his treaty defended by Calumus, and such
under-strappers.’ Two days in New York--three more--and Philadelphia.
‘Do not let me go down to the pit of the Indian Queen,’ he had written a
colleague. ‘It is Hades and Tartarus, and Periphlegethon, Cocytus, and
Styx where it would be a pity to bring all the piety and learning that
he must have who knows the aforesaid infernal names. Please leave word
at the said Queen, or if need be at any other Queens where I may unpack
my weary household gods.’[1150] The day before this letter was written,
Bache’s paper said that the ‘ratification is not to arrive until Mr.
Ames has recovered,’ because ‘the subaltern officers of the corps not
being supposed sufficiently skilled in tactics to be entrusted with the
principal command.’[1151] Six days later, he announced Ames’s arrival in
New York.[1152] Thus, like a warrior borne to battle on a stretcher,
Ames entered the capital.

All through March he sat in silence listening to the debate on
Livingston’s Resolutions, groaning under his physical disability. ‘I am
not a sentry, not in the ranks, not on the staff,’ he wrote in disgust.
‘I am thrown into the wagon as part of the baggage.’[1153] With the
debate on the treaty itself about to begin, he wrote that he was ‘not
fit for debate on the treaty and not able to attend through a whole
sitting.’[1154] Thus he watched the swaying fortunes of the fight, sick
and feeble, but expected to save the day in a pinch. When he rose that
April day to make the final effort for his party, there was drama in the
general appreciation of his condition. That Ames enjoyed it, we have no
doubt. It was so much like Chatham carried into the House of Peers
wrapped in his flannels.

Ames was a consummate actor that spring day. Not without art did he
begin with a reference to his frailty. Here was a man ready to die for a
cause. Impassionedly he pleaded against passion. The treaty, he said,
had ‘raised our character as a nation.’ Its rejection would be a
‘violation of public faith.’ It had ‘more critics than readers,’ and
‘the movements of passion are quicker than those of understanding.’
Lightly he touched upon the constitutional question, and then hastened
to his purpose--to discuss the consequences of rejection, to play on
fear. With this he expected to win his fight--with this he won. Reject
the treaty and leave the posts in the hands of the British and invite
war?

‘On this theme,’ he said in his most thrilling tones, ‘my emotions are
unutterable. If I could find words for them ... I would swell my voice
to such a note of remonstrance, it would reach every log house beyond
the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, wake from your false
security, your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions are soon to
be renewed; the wounds yet unhealed, are to be torn open again; in the
day time your path through the woods will be ambushed, the darkness of
midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. You are a
father--the blood of your son shall fatten your corn field. You are a
mother--the war whoop shall waken the sleep of the cradle.... By
rejecting the posts we light the savage fires, we bind the victims. This
day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom our
decision will make; to the wretches who will be roasted at the stake; to
our country; and I do not deem it too serious to say, to our conscience
and God. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of the wilderness;
it exclaims that while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the
other grasps a tomahawk. It summons our imagination to the scenes that
will open.... I can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage vengeance
and the shrieks of torture; already they seem to sigh on the western
wind; already they mingle with every echo from the mountains.’

How the frontiersmen in the gallery must have stared at this solicitude
for them from a Federalist of New England!

Then, in closing, a perfect piece of art. ‘I have perhaps as little
personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no
member who will not believe his chance to be a witness to the
consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to
reject, and a spirit should rise as it will, with the public disorder to
make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my
hold upon life is, may outlive the governments and Constitution of my
country.’ He sank into his seat. ‘My God,’ exclaimed a Federal Judge,
‘did you ever hear anything like it?’ Crusty old John Adams wiped his
eyes. Accept, said Ames, or England will turn the savages upon you;
accept, or your Constitution will be overthrown; accept, or the Republic
will be destroyed.

The Federalists were jubilant--as was Ames, none the worse for the
speech. Soon Christopher Gore was writing him from London that he knew
his speech was ‘in the hands of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Dundas and Lord
Grenville.’[1155] The Jeffersonians were alarmed. Madison was bitter
because of the summons to ‘follow Washington wherever he leads.’[1156]
Soon he was to find that ‘the name of the President and the alarm of
war’ had done mischief.[1157] When the roll was called, several enemies
of the treaty had been frightened from the firing line. Patton of New
Jersey had a convenient illness. Varnum was unavoidably absent. Freeman
of New Hampshire had obtained leave of absence, and a newly elected
Democrat from Maryland discreetly withheld his credentials until after
the fight was over. By a majority of three the House decided to
appropriate. Even so, it was the most expensive victory the Federalists
had won, for the majority in the country was on the other side. Out of
the struggle had emerged a new great leader to serve the Jeffersonians,
Albert Gallatin. Jefferson had been so delighted with his speech that he
wrote Madison that it deserved a place in ‘The Federalist.’[1158] During
the remainder of the session, he was to cause much mental distress with
his fiscal reform plans and his attacks on the Treasury.

Jefferson had followed the fight on the treaty from his mountain, making
no personal effort to influence the result. It had not been so easy as
he had hoped to forget politics in the cultivation of his peas, and when
Congress met he had subscribed for Bache’s paper.[1159] He divided the
friends of the treaty into two classes; the honest who were afraid of
England, and the dishonest who had pecuniary motives. At no time did he
question the honesty of Washington. In his letters to Madison he poured
forth his innermost thoughts, but beyond this his correspondence had not
been extensive.

It is the fashion to set down as a pose his pretended indifference to
the Presidency in 1796, but there is evidence enough that he was deeply
concerned over his health. He had begun, as he thought, ‘to feel the
effects of age,’ and was convinced that his health had ‘suddenly broken
down.’[1160] In a letter to Washington touching on political topics, he
wrote that he would ‘put aside this disgusting dish of old fragments and
talk ... of peas and clover.’[1161] In July, with the Federalist press,
in expectation of his candidacy, intemperately denouncing his letter to
Mazzei, he was writing a friend his estimate of the height of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, explaining his plan for a moulding-board, and
expressing his indignation because of the silly attacks on the memory of
Franklin.[1162]

Fenno and Webster were working themselves into a frenzy over the letter
to Philip Mazzei, the Italian, in which Jefferson had frankly discussed
American politics. It contained nothing that Jefferson had not
repeatedly said to Washington’s face. ‘An Anglican
aristocratical-monarchical party’--this the theme. But he had hinted
that Washington had been captured by the aristocrats and
monarchists--and here was treason. Webster said so with all his
vocabulary, and there was some ridiculous talk of impeaching the author
of the letter after his election to the Vice-Presidency, but throughout
it all Jefferson made no public comment, no denial, no explanation. He
was ever the consummate politician.[1163] The announced decision of
Washington to retire made Jefferson’s candidacy a certainty, whether he
willed it or not. Three years before, the Democrats had decided. All
through the summer and autumn that was the understanding.

To the Hamiltonians the retirement of Washington was peculiarly
distressing. On most controversial subjects he had ultimately adopted
their view. More than one of their unpopular measures had been saved
with their war-cry, ‘Stand with Washington.’ With Washington eliminated,
it was vitally important to Hamilton and his leaders to find a successor
who would be more or less subservient. Hamilton himself was out of the
question for the reason that Hamilton had given--he did not have the
confidence of the people. Jay, who would have been the second choice,
would have been a red rag to the ‘rabble’ in 1796. Few of the other
leaders, with all their brilliancy and personal charm, could have made a
popular appeal; and Adams was thoroughly distrusted and disliked by the
Hamiltonians because of his independence.

Under these circumstances, Hamilton and King, consulting, conceived the
idea of persuading Patrick Henry to be a candidate. Just what appealed
to them has never been satisfactorily explained, for Henry had been
among the most bitter and brilliant enemies of the ratification of the
Constitution. With the acquisition of wealth, great changes had occurred
in the old patriot’s manner of thinking, and he had come to lean
strongly toward the Federalists.[1164] Fear of Jefferson and a desire to
break the solidarity of Virginia’s vote may have been a determining
motive. That an effort was being made to find a candidate who would
appeal to the South and West appears in King’s letter to
Hamilton.[1165] Whatever the motive, the decision to offer Henry the
support of the Hamiltonians was reached, and John Marshall was asked to
approach him.

The old orator was living quietly and happily at ‘Red Hill,’ his home in
the country, where he liked nothing better than to drag his chair out
under the trees, tilt it against one of the trunks, and, with a can of
cool spring water beside him, look out lazily across the green valley.
There, with his family and friends about him, he asked nothing better
than to be let alone.[1166] Motives of discretion and the limitations of
a letter dissuaded the chosen emissary from writing to ‘Red Hill,’ but
Henry Lee, who knew Henry more intimately, was asked to write him an
intimation of what was in the air. No answer was forthcoming. Very soon,
however, the old patriot would be in Richmond and Marshall would then
sound him, and, discovering an indisposition to embark on the
enterprise, would ‘stop where prudence may direct.’[1167] Thus Henry was
cautiously approached, without being given any intimation of the source
of the suggestion, and was found ‘unwilling to embark in the
business.’[1168] Thus ended the flirtation with Patrick Henry, with the
friendly conspirators hidden behind the fan.

Anticipating a declination, Hamilton and King had canvassed the
availability of Thomas Pinckney, the American Minister in London. ‘It is
an idea of which I am fond in various lights,’ wrote Hamilton to King.
‘I rather wish to be rid of Patrick Henry that we may be at full liberty
to take up Pinckney.’[1169] This was due to the feeling that ‘to his
former stock of popularity he will now add the good will of those who
have been peculiarly gratified with the Spanish treaty’--which he had
negotiated.[1170] Thus the inner circle of the Hamiltonians settled the
matter for themselves without reference to the rank and file of the
party.

Thomas Pinckney was one of the finest gentlemen of his time. Tall,
slender, erect, with handsome features and a princely bearing, he was a
superb figure of a man. His manners were those of the natural
aristocrat; he was courteous, dignified, and charming. A perfect
self-control was reflected in the repose of his features and the tone of
his voice. Though of ardent temper, he kept a tight rein upon it, and he
became a master of persuasion and conciliation. A man of artistic
temperament, with a touch of architectural genius, he planned his own
houses, all imposing, and his town house in Charleston was the first to
have self-supporting stairs four stories high. His library was one of
the most extensive in the country. While lacking luster, there was a
charm in his personality and a solidity in his character that appealed
to men of conservative disposition. Born of wealthy parents, he had been
educated in England, at Westminster, Oxford, and the Temple, and he had
attended the fencing and riding school of Angelo in London. He had been
trained as one destined to command. Through his English experiences he
passed without yielding one jot of his robust Americanism, and he fought
in the Revolution and was once left wounded on the field of battle.

As Governor of South Carolina, he had served with distinction; as
Minister to England, he had stubbornly maintained positions that Jay was
to yield; and as Minister to Spain he had electrified the country with a
signal triumph. Matching wits with the celebrated Godoy, he had secured
a treaty establishing our southern limits from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi, making the river our western boundary, and throwing it open
to our navigation with an outlet to the Gulf and the privileges of the
port of New Orleans. It was this achievement, hailed with enthusiasm in
sections where the Federalists were weak, that led to his selection by
Hamilton and King.

XII

The campaign of 1796 was one of scurrility, albeit both Jefferson and
Adams, favored by the rank and file of the Federalist Party, comported
themselves becomingly. The party press teemed with silly attacks and
personalities. Adams was a monarchist, an aristocrat, a panter after
titles, an enemy of the masses, the defender of the red-coated assassins
of the Boston massacre; and Jefferson was a French tool, a friend of
anarchy, the inciter of the Whiskey Insurrection, a foe to public
credit, an atheist, an enemy of the Constitution,[1171] an incompetent
in office, and a plagiarist who had stolen his essay on weights and
measures from a pamphlet with which Noah Webster was familiar.[1172]
Worse still: Adet, the French Minister, ‘better supplied with money than
Faucet,’ was distributing it liberally in an effort to elect Jefferson,
and had sent agents into the western country in his behalf. Had not
Gallatin been seen ‘in frequent conferences with Adet?’[1173] A grave
disappointment, this Adet who had such a ‘handsome wife’ and had seemed
‘mild tempered, well educated and no Jacobin.’[1174] Then came Adet’s
letter to Pickering reviewing the complaints of France against the
American Government, and mentioning Jefferson pleasantly in connection
with his official acts--and the Federalists had an issue. France was
trying to dictate a President to America. Her Minister was
electioneering. Fenno and Noah Webster were hysterical, Hamilton was
pleased, Pickering, the new Secretary of State, was frothing so
furiously as to disgust the Federalist leader in New York.[1175] Madison
was disgusted too,[1176] and the notorious Judge Chase was demanding the
jailing of editors who had dared publish the Adet letter which had been
given to the press.[1177] What though Bache did point out that the
letter was written on instructions from Paris given before the
announcement of Washington’s retirement--it was a campaign screed![1178]
Soon it was the paramount issue, and the ‘Aurora,’ accepting it, was
urging Fenno to spare some of his indignation for ‘the scourging of an
American at a British gangway as Captain Jessup was scourged,’ and the
shooting of a brother of a member of Congress trying to escape from a
British press gang.[1179] Meanwhile, strange things were happening
behind the screen in Federalist circles.

XIII

Hamilton was planning a repetition of the scheme he engineered in 1789,
to bring Adams in second, with Pinckney first. He had never cared for
the downright Puritan of Quincy, and the latter had never forgiven him
the reduction of the Adams vote far below that of Washington in the
first election. During the first Administration, Adams’s vote was
indispensable to Hamilton’s policies on several occasions, and it had
never failed. Thus there was no opposition to his reëlection. But the
Presidency--that was different. It was evident that Adams was not a man
to be led around by the nose by any man or clique, and Hamilton had
never been a god of his idolatry. Thus, during the summer and autumn of
‘96, Hamilton was busy with a subterranean plan to substitute Pinckney
for Adams in the Presidency by arranging for Federalist electors,
scattered over the country, to vote to a man for Pinckney, while
throwing a few Adams votes away on other men. As the high man was
elected President and the second Vice-President, he expected to carry
his point by management.

It does not appear, however, that all his followers were in on the
secret. His ever-faithful servitor, Oliver Wolcott’s father, either knew
nothing of it or disapproved, for he feared that the juggling would
result in the election of Jefferson, to the Vice-Presidency at
least.[1180] In the event of his election to the Presidency, Wolcott
hoped ‘the northern States would separate from the southern.’[1181] As
fate would have it, the suspicious Adams anticipated some such attempt
to trick him, and his friends decided quietly to offset any possible
Adams losses by dropping a few Pinckney votes to a third party. The
result was a Jeffersonian sweep in the West and South, with the
exception of Maryland, where Adams had a majority of three. Of the
thirty-nine New England votes, Pinckney received but twenty-two, while
all went to Adams. Such was the result of Hamilton’s strategy. Adams was
elected with 71 votes, and Jefferson, with three votes less, had eight
more than Pinckney.

Thus the hated leader of the Democrats became Vice-President.

Then, too late, the Hamiltonians realized their mistake. Wolcott groaned
that Jefferson in the Vice-Presidency ‘would be more dangerous than as
President.’[1182] His very willingness to accept the position was
‘sufficient proof of some defect of character.’ Chauncey Goodrich was in
accord. ‘We must expect him to be the nucleus of a faction,’ he wrote,
‘and if it will give him some greater advantage for mischief, it draws
him from his covert.’[1183] Ames dreaded his election as ‘a formidable
evil.’[1184] Hamilton buried his chagrin in a cynicism. ‘Our Jacobins
say they are pleased that the Lion and Lamb are to lie down together,’
he wrote King. ‘Mr. Adams’s personal friends talk a little the same
way.... Skeptics like me quietly look forward to the event, willing to
hope but not prepared to believe. If Mr. Adams has vanity ’tis plain a
plot has been laid to take hold of it.’[1185] These hints at the
possible seduction of Adams were not without some justification.

Madison had urged Jefferson to accept the Vice-Presidency on the ground
that ‘your neighborhood to Adams may have a valuable effect on his
counsels.... It is certain that his censures of our paper system, and
the intrigues at New York for setting Pinckney above him have fixed an
enmity with the British faction.’[1186] Before receiving this letter,
the incomparable strategist at Monticello had written Madison that in
the event of a tie he should ‘solicit on my behalf that Mr. Adams may be
preferred.’[1187] Could he, by any chance, have expected this admonition
to reach Adams in any way? A few days later, we find him writing
directly to Adams expressing regret that they had been put in opposition
to one another. It seemed, he said, that Adams had been chosen. Of
course he might be ‘cheated’ by ‘a trick worthy of the subtilty of your
arch-friend of New York who has been able to make of your real friends
tools to defeat their and your best wishes.’ Personally, he asked no
happier lot than to be left ‘with the society of neighbors, friends, and
fellow-laborers of the earth’ rather than with ‘spies and
sycophants.’[1188] Four days later, we find him writing Madison of his
willingness to serve under Adams. ‘He is perhaps the only sure barrier
against Hamilton’s getting in.’[1189] Other letters probably phrased for
Adams’s eye went out from Monticello, referring to their ‘ancient
friendship.’ But he wanted no place in the counsels of the
Administration--and that was significant enough.[1190]

Meanwhile, the Jefferson letter to Adams, sent to Madison to be
delivered or withheld according to his judgment, was put aside. There
was a ‘general air’ in the letter indicative of the difficulty under
which it was written. Adams might resent the reference to Hamilton.
Again he might interpret Jefferson’s expressed preference for the simple
life as a reflection on his own ambition. ‘You know the temper of Mr.
Adams better than I do,’ wrote Madison, ‘but I have always conceived it
to be a very ticklish one.’ The Jeffersonian press had begun to speak in
kindly tones of Adams to the disgust of the Federalists.

Then, one bitter cold day, the family carriage appeared at the door of
Monticello, and the master carefully supervised the packing of the bones
of a mastodon which he had recently acquired and wished to present to
the Philadelphia Philosophical Society, of which he had been elected
president. Thus he reached the capital on March 2d, to be received,
against his expressed wishes, with gun-fire and a procession flying a
flag inscribed: ‘Jefferson, Friend of the People.’ He went at once to
Francis Tavern to pay his respects to Adams.

Thus the new Administration began, Bache sending a brutal parting shot
at the old--an insult to Washington.[1191] But the star of Hamilton had
not set, for Adams had foolishly retained the Washington Cabinet,
hand-picked by his ‘arch-friend of New York,’ and the congressional
leaders were still under the magic spell of the old Federalist chief.
That was the cloud on the horizon, small that day, but destined to grow
bigger and blacker until the storm broke, leaving much wreckage behind.

CHAPTER XIV

AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY

It is a pity that in the days of the Adams Administration it was not the
fashion to paint group portraits of the President and his Cabinet. Had
it been the custom, a purely commercial artist might have left us a
conventional picture of no special interest; but had the task fallen to
a great artist of intuitive penetration, capable of seizing upon the
salient characteristics and the soul of his subjects, the result would
have been a fascinating study in incongruities and clashing spirits. The
suspicion on the round, smug face of Adams; the domineering arrogance on
the cold Puritan countenance of Pickering; the suave and smiling
treachery in the eyes of Wolcott; and the effeminate softness and
weakness in the physiognomy of McHenry would have delighted a gallery
through the generations.

Ali Baba among his Forty Thieves is no more deserving of sympathy than
John Adams shut up within the seclusion of his Cabinet room with his
official family of secret enemies. No other President has ever been so
environed with a secret hostility; none other so shamelessly betrayed by
treachery. The men on whose advice he was to rely were not even of his
own choosing. He inherited them--that was his misfortune; but he meekly
accepted them--and that was his weakness. Where Washington had begun
with at least two advisers of transcendent ability, he was to undertake
his task with the assistance of an official family that exceeded
mediocrity only in the field of treachery and mendacity. Not only were
they to disregard his wishes--they were to conspire against him. Not
only were they to ignore his leadership--they were to take orders from a
private citizen who was his political rival and personal foe. Years
later, the relative of one was solemnly to justify their disloyalty with
the remarkable statement that, having been appointed by his predecessor,
‘they owed him nothing’; and to defend their retention of place despite
their indisposition to serve him honestly with the astounding assertion
that ‘the interest of their party and the wishes of their friends
prevented them.’[1192]

We are interested in the personalities of these men primarily because it
was not only not ‘in the interest of their party’ for them to remain,
but ultimately destructive. The taxes, the standing army, the Alien and
Sedition Laws would have weakened, and might have destroyed, Federalism;
the party treachery within the Cabinet would have wrought its ruin
without them.

John Adams was a very great man and a pure patriot, with many fatal
temperamental weaknesses. Like Dr. Samuel Johnson, whom he strongly
suggests, he would have thrived in an atmosphere of admiration. Had he
been surrounded by incense-throwers and idolatrous disciples applauding
his every utterance, forgiving his bursts of temper and smiling at the
pinching of their ears and the kicking of their shins, with a worshiping
Boswell jotting down his conversations, he would have been supremely
happy and probably at his best. Like the genius who spread his tail
feathers so proudly at Streatham, he was vain, domineering, ponderous,
at times tempestuous in his bursts of passion, disdainful of finesse,
given to intemperate expressions, learned, prejudiced, often
selfish--and a little fat. But he had played a noble part in the
Revolutionary struggle, a dignified rôle in the diplomacy of the Old
World, and he was entitled to something better than he received.

There was nothing thrilling in the appearance of Adams to captivate the
crowd. Below the medium height and rather full, he looked the stolidity
of the English country gentleman[1193] and invited the sobriquet of the
sharp-tongued Izard of ‘His Rotundity.’[1194] His fat round face would
have been less offensively smug had it not been so cold,[1195] and his
dignity more impressive had it been less aggressive. The top of his head
was bald as a billiard ball, and, while he carefully powdered the
remnant of his hair, nothing could have made this solid gentleman of the
Quincy farm the glass of fashion. Unlike many of the public figures of
the time, he affected no foppery, and, while he dressed with
conventional propriety, his garb was so little a part of himself that
most of the chroniclers of his time ignore it. We know that he appeared
one day for dinner at Mrs. Francis’s boarding-house in a drab-colored
coat[1196] and at his inauguration in ‘a full suit of pearl-colored
broadcloth.’[1197] Even the saturnine Maclay, who poked fun at all his
peculiarities of appearance, could find nothing objectionable but the
sword he affected when he first presided over the Senate.[1198]

Of his manner in company we must reach a conclusion from a composite of
contradictions. Thanks to the Adams spirit of self-criticism, we have a
confession of the manners of his youth when he was prone to make a
display of his intellectual wares, and to prove his parts with sneering
sarcasms about his elders.[1199] Years later, an English tourist was
impressed with his ‘somewhat cold and reserved manner’ and with ‘the
modesty of his demeanor.’[1200] In neither picture do we have an
attractive personality, and are safe in assuming that it was not
pleasing, without drawing on the honest prejudices of Maclay. On the
first attempt of the latter to establish social relations, he found
Adams ‘not well furnished with small talk,’ and he was particularly
struck with his ‘very silly kind of laugh.’[1201] This interested the
sour democrat from the Pennsylvania frontier, and, critically observing
his manner of presiding over the Senate, he complained that ‘instead of
that sedate easy air I would have him possess, he will look on one side,
then on the other, then down on the knees of his breeches, then dimple
his visage with the most silly kind of half smile.’[1202] This smile was
evidently aggravating to the Senator’s gout, for we hear of it again at
a dinner at Washington’s where he was clearly angered when he caught the
great man ‘ever and anon mantling his visage with the most unmeaning
simper that ever mantled the face of folly.’[1203] ‘Bonny Johnny Adams,’
snorts the Senator, more than once.[1204] Thus, painfully
self-conscious, and without capacity for the appealing levity of banter,
he was temperamentally incapable of that personal approach that makes
for the intimacy of friendship. In the parlance of the day, he was a
‘poor mixer,’ and this had the same effect on political fortunes then as
now.

This alone would have made men indifferent, but he had a vanity that
drove them away. If we are to believe the common comment of friend and
foe, he was inordinately vain. With that strange, penetrating insight
into his own character, he appreciated this weakness in his youth, and
no doubt sought to uproot a vice that was in the very fiber of his
being. In the musings of his diary we have the frank admission: ‘Good
treatment makes me think I am admired, beloved, and my own vanity will
be indulged in me; so I dismiss my guard and grow weak, silly, vain,
conceited, ostentatious.’[1205] On another page he promises himself
‘never to show my own importance or superiority.’[1206] But the weakness
increased with age. ‘I always considered Mr. Adams a man of great
vanity,’ wrote the father of one of his Cabinet to his son two weeks
after the inauguration.[1207] This quality was so predominant that both
friend and foe sought to turn it to advantage. Hamilton, in his
ill-advised attack, was able to refer to ‘the unfortunate foibles of
vanity without bounds,’ without fear of contradiction.[1208] After his
election to the Vice-Presidency, this vanity became ‘ridiculous.’[1209]
Strangely enough, there is some evidence that this very weakness was
responsible in part for his election to that post. Referring to the part
played in the event by Dr. Rush and himself, Maclay wrote that ‘we knew
his vanity and hoped by laying hold of it to render him useful among the
New England members in our schemes of bringing Congress to
Pennsylvania.’[1210] But stranger still--and this is something to be
kept in mind throughout--it was reserved for his greatest political
opponent to predict to one of his lieutenants that, while Adams was
‘vain’ and ‘irritable,’ ‘he is so amiable that I pronounce you will love
him.’[1211] The general effect, however, was far different from love. It
unquestionably played into the hands of his enemies and neutralized the
effect of both his ability and militant patriotism.

III

Because of his inordinate vanity, he was susceptible to flattery, and
they who knew him best approached him accordingly. We have an
illustration of it at the time of the decision to dismiss Genêt. There
was some question as to the attitude of Adams, and, knowing of his
secret jealousy of Washington, George Cabot, to whom was assigned the
task of guiding him favorably, called upon him one morning at an early
hour.

‘Mr. Adams, this French Minister’s conduct seems to me to be the most
objectionable,’ ventured Cabot casually.

‘Objectionable? It is audacious, sir,’ stormed Adams.

‘I think if you were President you would not permit him to perform his
office very long,’ said the cunning Cabot.

‘Not an hour, sir. I would dismiss him immediately.’

‘I wish you would allow me to say to the President that such are your
views,’ said Cabot.

‘Certainly, sir; I will say so to the President myself when I see
him.’[1212]

Thus the danger of Adams’s opposition was cleverly removed by conveying
the impression that the suggestion of a dismissal had come from him. So
thoroughly were his enemies imbued with the idea that he could be led by
subtle flattery that the apologists for the traitors in his Cabinet,
taking note of his later harmonious relations with Marshall, explained
that these were due to the genius of the latter in insinuating his own
ideas into Adams’s head. However that may be, there was one thing that
flattery could not do--it could not coax him from a principle or from
the performance of a patriotic duty. When the royal Attorney-General of
Massachusetts undertook to flatter him into the service of the King in
the fight against the people eight years before the Declaration of
Independence, he failed utterly.

The violence of his temper made him difficult even to his friends, and
he had but few. He had a genius for embroilment, and dwelt perpetually
on a battle-field, sometimes real, often imaginary, but always genuine
to him. Liancourt, calling upon him at Quincy and finding his
conversation ‘extremely agreeable,’ noted, however, that it was ‘tinged
with a sort of sarcasm.’[1213] Madison, we have seen, referred to his
‘ticklish’ temper.[1214] If a political opponent could give a moderate
description of his weakness, and a Frenchman one so mild, the members of
his Cabinet felt no compulsion for restraint. Franklin had done him a
grave disservice in a brief but altogether friendly characterization
carrying the suggestion that he sometimes appeared mad. This was a hint
on which his enemies were to play as long as he lived. They took
Franklin literally and called Adams ‘crazy.’ ‘What but insanity’ could
have led him to this or that? asks the biographer of Wolcott.[1215] ‘No
sane mind could have imagined such a thought,’ he says again.[1216] ‘A
weak and intemperate mind,’ writes one of his Cabinet to another.[1217]
Even Jefferson, who was more considerate of him than others, thought his
French war message ‘crazy.’ But it was reserved for McHenry to sum up
his enemies’ case against him. ‘Whether he is spiteful, playful, witty,
kind, cold, drunk, sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous, cautious,
confident, close, open, it is almost always in the wrong place or to the
wrong person.’[1218] All of which means that he was super-sensitive,
irritable, the victim of an ungovernable temper which drove him into
spluttering rages on ridiculously slight provocations. Men shrank from
conferences with him on subjects involving a difference of opinion. Then
he could be as insulting as Dr. Johnson without the advantage of having
obsequious idolaters on whom to vent his rage. What a joy it would have
been to have pitted these two men against each other on the question of
colonial rights! What a picture Boswell could have made of the
encounter!

Adams was difficult in conference, too, because of his suspicious
disposition. He could never quite persuade himself of the sincerity of
his conferee, and he carried a chip upon his shoulder. This suspicion of
his fellows had been a curse of his youth; it followed him to the grave.
He felt himself surrounded by envy, hatred, malice, and was inclined to
suspect that a good-natured smile was in derision. In youth he fancied
that his neighbors were anxious to retard his progress. He was miserable
in London, where his reception, while cool, was not half so bad as he
imagined. The British Minister in Paris could not disabuse him of the
notion that in London he would be looked upon ‘with evil eyes.’[1219]
His worst fears were realized in ‘the awkward timidity in general’ and
the ‘conscious guilt’ and shame in the countenances of the people.[1220]
This feeling that he was in the midst of enemies made him more than
ever tenacious of his rights. He knew the privileges and civilities to
which his position entitled him, and keenly felt his failure to receive
them. It was something he was never to forgive. The begrudging or
withholding of a right was always, to him, an affront instantly to be
met with a stormy challenge. ‘I am not of Cæsar’s mind,’ he wrote, soon
after becoming Vice-President. ‘The second place in Rome is high enough
for me, although I have a spirit that will not give up its right or
relinquish its place.’[1221] This sense of his deserts, because of
ability and services, goes far to explain his relations with Washington
and Hamilton.

The evidence is abundant that he resented the fame and popularity of
Washington. Like Pickering, he did not share the enthusiasm over the
great man’s military genius. During the war he had sometimes found fault
with his military tactics.[1222] Later, when he became the second
official of the Republic, he secretly resented the distance that
separated him from the chief. He had played the patriot’s rôle long
before Washington had shown a marked interest in the quarrel of the
colonies; had been one of the makers of the Revolution; had served with
distinction in diplomacy; and, unlike Washington, had studied politics
and statecraft all his life. Why should he, with such a record, be so
completely overshadowed, and why relegated to the end that upstarts like
Hamilton--‘the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar’--might be pushed to the
front? This, the reasoning of his jealousy which was to destroy his
perspective and lead him into trouble.

This was due in some measure to the distance between reality and the
dream world in which he lived. As he grew older, he became more and more
impressed with the pomp of power. The son of a Yankee shoemaker was
covetous of the ribbons of distinction. The masses receded to a
respectful distance. In the forefront were the gods, and he among them;
and among these he claimed a right to the front rank. Ceremony became
important. Titles were safeguards of organized society. An order of
nobility sprang up in his imagination. ‘You and I,’ he wrote Sam Adams,
‘have seen four noble families rise up in Boston--the Crafts, Gores,
Dawes, and Austins. These are really a nobility in our town, as the
Howards, Somersets, Berties in England.’ His feet lost contact with the
earth--he soared. ‘Let us do justice to the people and to the nobles;
for nobles there are, as I have proved, in Boston as well as in
Madrid.’[1223] Many things, he thought, can make for nobility--even
matrimony. ‘Would Washington have been Commander of the Revolutionary
army or President ... if he had not married the rich widow of Mr.
Custis? Would Jefferson have been President ... if he had not married
the daughter of Mr. Wales?’ Thus he challenged John Taylor of
Caroline.[1224]

Infatuated with such views, he was naturally in harmony with his party
in its contempt for democracy.[1225] ‘If our government does well I
shall be more surprised than I ever was in my life,’ he said one day,
standing by the stove in the Senate Chamber before the gavel had fallen.
Carroll ventured the opinion that it was strong enough. ‘If it is, I
know not whence it is to arise,’ Adams replied. ‘It cannot have energy.
It has neither rewards nor punishments.’[1226] This distrust of
democracy was ingrained. We find it outcropping in his early life, as
toward the end. When he was summoned to go over the reply of the
Massachusetts Legislature to the pretensions of Hutchinson, the royal
Governor, in 1773, he found ‘the draught of a report[1227] was full of
very popular talk and of those democratical principles that have done so
much mischief to this country.’[1228] Even Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ which
was tonic to the Revolution, was spoiled for him because ‘his plan was
so democratical.’[1229] Haunting the bookstalls in London he thought
‘the newspapers, the magazines, the reviews, the daily pamphlets were
all in the hands of hirelings,’ and was convinced that the men who
‘preached about ... liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of
man’ could be hired ‘for a guinea a day.’[1230] It was after this that
he wrote the ‘Discourses of Davilla’--an onslaught on democracy. And
fourteen years after his retirement he wrote from his library at Quincy
to John Taylor: ‘Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes,
exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not
commit suicide.’[1231] This distrust and distaste for the masses
weakened him as much with the people as his temperamental defects with
his party associates. I have dwelt on these weaknesses because they
explain the tragedy of his failure. There were other qualities that
entitled him to a happier fate.

Chief among these were the fervor and the disinterestedness of his love
of country. Had he died the day after the signing of the Declaration, he
would have been assured a permanent place in history. No man played a
more heroic part in the fight for independence. The struggling young
lawyer who refused a position under the Crown that he might not be
embarrassed in supporting his countrymen in their inevitable
struggle;[1232] who, awakened by the sinister drum-beats of the red
coats every morning, ‘solemnly determined at all events to adhere to
[his] principles in favor of [his] country’;[1233] who defended Hancock
in the courts on the charge of smuggling with stubborn tenacity until
the case ‘was suspended at last only by the battle of Lexington’;[1234]
who, when the crisis came, prepared to immolate himself and family upon
the altar of liberty;[1235] and who had the audacity to base an argument
against the Stamp Act on the principles of the Revolution itself, and,
standing four square against more petitions to the King, won the lasting
gratitude and admiration of Jefferson when, as ‘the Colossus of the
Debate,’[1236] he bore the brunt of the battle for the Declaration--that
man could well hold his head high in the presence of Washington himself.
‘Politics,’ he wrote Warren, ‘are an ordeal path among red-hot plough
shares. Who then would be a politician for the pleasure of running about
barefooted among them. Yet some one must.’[1237] And again: ‘At such
times as this there are many dangerous things to be done which nobody
else will do, and therefore I cannot help attempting them.’[1238] Nor
was he blind to his fate in the event of the failure of his cause. ‘I go
mourning in my heart all day long,’ he wrote his wife in dark days,
‘though I say nothing. I am melancholy for the public and anxious for my
family.... For God’s sake make your children hardy, active and
industrious.’[1239] This intense Americanism did not moderate with
time. As a politician he was all too often open to censure; as a patriot
he was above reproach. Jefferson never doubted his absorption in his
country; and Hamilton, temperamentally unable to get along with him,
wrote him down as ‘honest, firm, faithful, and independent--a sincere
lover of his country.’[1240] Because he had more enemies than friends,
and more detractors than admirers, one might conclude from the opinions
of his contemporaries that he had but mediocre ability. There is no
question as to the fallibility of his judgment where his prejudices were
enlisted and the characters of men were involved. Again we find
Jefferson more friendly than the Federalists. ‘A bad calculator of the
force and probable effect of the motives which govern men,’ he wrote;
and then added, ‘This is all the ill that can possibly be said of him;
he is profound in his views and accurate in his judgment except where
knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment.’[1241] Hamilton
thought him ‘a man of an imagination sublimated and eccentric,’ and was
not impressed with his intellectual endowments.[1242] The father of
Wolcott thought him ‘of a very moderate share of prudence, and of far
less real abilities than he believes he possesses.’[1243] And McHenry,
having been expelled from the Cabinet for his disloyalty, declared ‘the
mind of Mr. Adams like the last glimmerings of a lamp, feeble, wavering
and unsteady, with occasionally a strong flash of light, his genius
little, and that too insufficient to irradiate his judgment.’[1244] The
Adams who emerges from these opinions is a man of ability often reduced
to impotency by the lack of judgment. This is, no doubt, the whole truth
about his intellect. The sneers from men who could not forgive him for
the wrong they had done him, and from others who could not control him,
cannot stand in the light of what he did, and said, and wrote.

As a writer, he suffers in comparison with Hamilton and Madison, and his
more ambitious productions, like the ‘Discourses of Davilla,’ while
showing much erudition and some ingenuity, are heavy and pompous. But in
the earlier days when he was writing shorter papers for the press, he
did better. Whether he could write or not, he loved to do it. The author
of the earlier period was more interesting and attractive than that of
later times.

However much the critics may quarrel over his capacity to write, the
evidence is conclusive as to his ability to speak. As an orator he was
the Patrick Henry of New England. His argument against the Writs of
Assistance in 1761 fired the heart of Otis and swept him into the ranks
of the active patriots. Jefferson bears testimony to the power of his
eloquence in the fight for the Declaration. Given a cause that appealed
to his heart and imagination, he never failed to find himself by losing
himself in the fervor of the fight.

Nor can there be any question of his courage. It required temerity to
step forth from the patriots’ ranks to face the representative of the
Crown with the most audacious denials of his pretensions; courage, too,
to lead the fight against further attempts at conciliation with the
King. But the most courageous act of his career was his defense in court
of Captain Preston, the British officer charged with murder in the
Boston massacre. Not only physical courage was here demanded, for he
invited personal attack, but moral courage at its highest. He was
dependent for clientage on the Boston public and the victims of the
massacre were Bostonians. He was an American, and he was standing
between a hated redcoat and an American revenge. He gambled with his
career, for he armed his enemies with ammunition, and he was charged
with selling his country for an enormous fee. The fact that he received
but eighteen guineas would have been the answer, but he maintained a
dignified silence. There is nothing finer or more courageous in the
records of a public man.[1245] This courage was to stand him in good
stead when he defied his party for his country in the French
negotiations, and played for the verdict of history.

This courage could only have sprung from the consciousness of an honest
intent--and his honesty, personal or political, has never been
questioned. Sedgwick recommended him to Hamilton for the Vice-Presidency
as ‘a man of unconquerable intrepidity and of incorruptible integrity,’
and Hamilton was to find to his chagrin that the compliment was not
given in a Pickwickian sense.[1246] And yet he was not a Puritan of the
intolerant sort. In early life he was given to the reading of sermons
and at one time confessed to an inclination to the ministry--but it did
not last long. In early manhood, we find him moralizing in his diary
against card-playing, but not on moral grounds. ‘It gratifies none of
the senses ...; it can entertain the mind only by hushing its
clamors.’[1247] Even the scurrility of his times spared him the charge
of immorality. ‘No virgin or matron ever had cause to blush at sight of
me,’ he wrote in his ‘Autobiography.’[1248] And while Franklin and
Morris appear to have taken advantage of the moral laxity of Paris, we
are quite sure that Adams, packed in tight among fashionable ladies
watching the Queen eat soup, never gave a flirtatious glance, and are
more than half persuaded that his declination to join Madame du Barry in
her garden was due to her none too spotless reputation. But if he was
not given to women or to song, it appears that he consumed his full
share of wine. We have his own story of the fashionable dinners in the
Philadelphia of the Continental Congress, when he would sit at the table
from three until nine ‘drinking Madeira, claret and burgundy.’[1249] We
get a glimpse of him in a New York Club before the Revolution with
‘punch, wine, pipes and tobacco.’[1250] And on another occasion he
records with boastful pride that he ‘drank Madeira at a great rate and
found no inconvenience in it.’[1251] Even so, we may be sure that he
seldom drank to excess.

Such the man who sat facing the Cabinet he did not choose--stubborn,
suspicious, vain, jealous, courageous, honest, irascible, tempestuous,
patriotic, and rising above its members in ability and public service as
a mountain above the pebbles at its base.

No student of physiognomy, familiar with the character of Adams, could
have glanced at the stern, cold Puritan face of Timothy Pickering, his
Secretary of State, without a premonition of certain estrangement. The
long, thin, super-serious features were as uncongenial and unresponsive
as though carved from granite. The thin, silvery locks and the
spectacles combined to create an unpleasant impression of asceticism;
and the cold eyes that peered through the glasses spoke of the narrow,
uncompromising mind of a follower of Cromwell. There, too, he could
read the insatiable ambition, the audacious courage, the relentless will
of the Roman conqueror. Seldom did that face soften with a smile; for he
had no sense of humor. His portrait, by Stuart, as a frontispiece to a
volume of old New England blue laws would have symbolized the spirit of
the book. No Indian stoic ever presented a countenance less revealing in
repose, or more stone-like in composure. The resemblance to the
Roundhead fanatic was accentuated in the extreme simplicity, the
Quaker-like plainness of his garb.

Here was clearly a man to whom joyous frivolity was indecent
dissipation; with whom the scrutiny of suspicion was a duty; and to whom
duties were the sum total of life. But beneath the repellently cold,
metallic exterior there were volcanic fires of passion, and when he
emerged from the deadly calm of composure it was to storm. It was not in
his nature to confer, but to lay down the law. So lacking was he in a
sense of humor that he honestly persuaded himself that he always stood
at Armageddon and battled for the Lord. Even when he was moved to
treachery by an ambition wholly incongruous to his capacity, he really
felt that he was detached from all personal considerations and was
fighting for the abstract principle of right.[1252] Never once in his
long life, even when he was a cheap conspirator planning the destruction
of the Union, did he think himself in the wrong. Never once in his
voluminous correspondence does he hint at a possible mistake. He was, in
his political views and his personal relations, impeccably pure--and he
admitted it. Not only did he admit it--he impassionedly proclaimed it,
and this alone made him an impossible adviser for John Adams. He was the
smug, self-righteous type that would remake the world in its own image.
They who disagreed with him were hounds of the devil to be thrown
without pity into the uttermost darkness. And he was sincere in it all.
He was fond of hymns and psalms, in church devout, at prayer most
fervent, and he read the Bible habitually without discovering the
passage about the throwing of stones.[1253]

This temperament made him difficult in even ordinary conversation. He
had an excellent command of language, but he preferred the harsher
words. There was no twilight zone for him. Things were white or black.
He was violent in his opinions and violent in the gesticulation with
which he tried to force them on his hearers. So little could he see
himself as others saw him that, when he once exclaimed, ‘I abhor
gesticulation,’ with a powerful sweep of his muscular arms, he could not
understand the smile of his auditor.[1254] But for this intemperance,
all too much like that of Adams to make harmony possible, he would have
been a great conversationalist. He used words with accuracy, was
interesting in narrative, and had read widely and wisely; but too
frequently to converse with Pickering was to quarrel. This unhappy
quality, along with his poverty, explains why he did not figure in the
social life of the Federalist capital. His tactlessness and bluntness,
which he confused with honesty, were intolerable. In a letter to a
friend who had given an acquaintance a note of introduction, he wrote
that he should ‘not put myself to the expense nor my family to the
trouble of a splendid exhibition at table.’[1255] It must have caused
some mirth in the home of the elegant Binghams to read his reply to an
invitation to dinner: ‘Mrs. Pickering and I are constrained to forego
many pleasures of society, because we cannot persuade ourselves to enter
on a career of expenses, which, being far beyond our income, would lead
to ruin. For this reason, Mrs. Pickering chooses to dine abroad only at
Mrs. Washington’s, as a consequence of my official station; and this as
seldom as decency will permit.... But Mrs. Pickering is aware that as a
public man I cannot seclude myself ... and therefore often urges, on my
part singly, an intercourse which is useful as well as agreeable. I
shall, then, with pleasure, dine with you occasionally, but without
promising to reciprocate all your civilities.’[1256]

Here we have one of several traits that make him stand out among the
other Federalist leaders as an exotic. He was poor, but not so poor as
the letter indicates; nor was he so completely shut off from society,
despite his frugality. If he gave no fashionable entertainments, his was
a home of hospitality, and he who promised no reciprocation for the
entertainments of the Binghams was able to entertain at his board a
future King of France.[1257] But, unfashionable, and plain as a Yankee
huckster, he found the ways of fashion irksome and offensive. Writing
his wife disgustedly of the enormous head-dresses of the Philadelphia
ladies, he added: ‘But you know, my dear, I have old-fashioned notions.
Neither powder nor pomatum have touched my head these twelve months, not
even to cover my baldness.’[1258] And the ‘extravagance of the
prevailing fashions,’ suggested by the introduction of ‘the odious
fashion of hoops’ convinced him that many families would be
ruined.[1259] Verily such a creature would have been grotesquely out of
place among his fellow Federalists in the gay drawing-rooms of Mrs.
Bingham.

He differed from them, too, theoretically at least, on a more vital
point. They were thorough aristocrats; he was instinctively a
democrat--though he seemed to prefer it as an ideal rather than as a
reality. Lodge recognizes this difference and explains that ‘he had all
the pride of the Puritan who gloried in belonging to the chosen people
of God.’[1260] We can well believe the assertion of his son and
biographer that he liked the common people because among them he
belonged. Then, too, he inherited a respect for them from his father who
ardently espoused the cause of equal rights for all men, and was prone
to apologize for the weaknesses of the poor, and to criticize people of
wealth and power.[1261] With this inheritance he was to enter the field
of controversy at twenty-five in a newspaper battle with the Tories of
Salem with a letter which might have been written by Jefferson. ‘For
whom was government instituted?’ he wrote. ‘Was it solely for the
aggrandizement of the few, who, by some fortunate accident, have been
bred in a manner which the world calls genteel? or to protect the lives,
liberty and property of the body of the people? Is government supported
by the better sort? On the contrary, has not every attack on the laws
and constitution proceeded from that class? The very phrase, “friends of
government” is invidious and carries with it an impudent insinuation
that the whole body of the people, the pretended friends of government
excepted, are enemies to government; the suggestion of which is as
ridiculous as it is false.’[1262]

The tall, gaunt figure in plain garb, seated in company with the
fashionable Hamilton or Morris, was not more incongruous than the mind,
capable even in youth of such heretical and ‘demagogic’ thoughts.
Stranger still, this liking for the common herd never wholly left him.
Thus his experiment in pioneering in the western wilderness--where
democracy thrived best. A wholly admirable figure, this Pickering of the
frontier, applying brain and brawn to the conquering of the woods,
organizing civil government, battling at the peril of his life for law
and order, kidnaped and carted away. His own story of this adventure is
as thrilling as a dime novel.[1263] Even then his faith in the people
was not destroyed.

Thus Pickering finally entered public life--a ‘friend of the people,’
farmer, frontiersman, unsuccessful merchant. About him there was no
glamour of success. He had been a failure. At Harvard he had made a fair
record, and his meager career as a lawyer was unsuccessful. He had
failed as a farmer, failed as a pioneer, failed as a Philadelphia
merchant because unfit for commercial life. He had played a spinet and a
violin and given lessons in sacred music at Salem and Marblehead, but
that could scarcely be deemed success;[1264] and in the army, where he
was capable as a trainer of raw recruits, his courage, energy, and
promptness might have taken him far but for the handicap of
short-sightedness and glasses.[1265] Thus, when he entered the public
service at forty-six his career had been one of failure, and he was to
get this new chance through importunate applications to a man he little
respected--for he had a poor opinion of the ability of Washington. Here
again he differed from other Federalists holding a similar opinion; he
did not simulate admiration.[1266] The naming of a child after
Washington called for his sarcasm.[1267] He was disgusted during the war
when a rustic was heard to say, ‘I suppose he [Washington] is the
greatest man in the world.’[1268] He criticized Washington as
over-cautious[1269] and refused to hail him as a hero because he thought
him lacking in ‘eminent military talents.’[1270] He thought the army
suffered through his procrastinated decisions.[1271] Serving on the
committee at the close of the struggle to formulate the answer of the
officers to the ‘Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States,’ he
referred sarcastically to the word ‘Orders,’ and wrote his wife:
‘Though it is rather modest, or in other words does not abound in
panegyric, I think it (the reply) will be graciously received.’[1272] To
another he boasted that the reply was marked ‘as the Italians do some
strains of music--moderato.’[1273]

But land poor, and a failure, he was quite willing to serve under the
man he did not appreciate. From the organization of the government, he
was an office-seeker, looking, not for a career, but for a job. There
was no demand for his services--he urged them. His brother-in-law, a
member of Congress, became his broker. He applied to Hamilton for an
assistant secretaryship of the Treasury, to find it promised.[1274] In
August his broker wrote him of a prospective vacancy in the
postmaster-generalship and suggested that he see Washington at
once.[1275] A month later, Pickering made application,[1276] but his
interview with the President only resulted in a temporary position as a
negotiator with the Indian tribes. In May, 1791, he asked Washington for
the Comptrollership of the Treasury, to be refused,[1277] and it was not
until August, after more than a year of persistent wire-pulling, that he
was recognized with the then comparatively unimportant post of
Postmaster-General, which was not at that time a Cabinet position.

Thus he came into close contact with Hamilton, entered into his plans,
made himself useful, and slowly ascended, finally reaching the State
Department with some misgivings, and only after many others had declined
the place. He owed everything to Hamilton, nothing to Adams, and, as he
sat in sphinx-like silence at the Cabinet table, it was to Hamilton, not
to Adams, that he looked as chief.

VII

The same was true of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, albeit
these two men were, in most respects, the antitheses of each other.
There was nothing of saturnity and brooding silence in Wolcott--he
smiled. Both wore masks--one that of a stoic, the other that of a
smiling epicurean. They resembled in a common capacity for uncommon
treachery. In this, they both excelled. Both were professional feeders
at the public crib and passionate panters after office.

The handsome Wolcott had infinitely more finesse in the art of
double-dealing. He had read his Machiavelli to better advantage. If he
was to conspire with the enemies of the chief, he was to present an
ever-smiling face to Adams in the conference room. He was too exquisite
a conspirator to seem one. He had early learned the advantage of smiling
through; and leaving Adams, with his face wreathed in friendly smiles,
he could sit down to the writing of a letter to Hamilton with the same
smile still on his face. Life was altogether lovely and interesting to
this happy warrior who delivered his sword thrusts through curtains.

The son of an idol of Connecticut Federalists who was repeatedly elected
to the governorship, Wolcott passed his boyhood in and near Litchfield,
ministering to a frail constitution by tending cattle and working on the
farm. He did not permit the war to interfere with his career at Yale,
felt no sentimental call to Valley Forge, and found that the rattle of
musketry need not interfere with his preparations for the Bar. Almost
immediately on the conclusion of these preparations, he found a job as a
clerk in the office of the Committee of Pay Table, and such was his
industry and methodical efficiency that he rose in that line of the
civil service to be Comptroller of Public Accounts before the formation
of the National Government.

This opened a new and fairer vista for an efficient bureaucrat, and the
moment the department of the Treasury was established he was ‘induced by
his friends’ to offer himself for a position.[1278] Even then,
professional office-seekers merely yielded to the importunities of
admirers. The congressional delegation for Connecticut pressed hard for
an appointment, and he was offered the post of Auditor of the Treasury
at fifteen hundred dollars a year. We can scarcely conceive that he
hesitated, though it is of record that his sponsors urged him to accept,
and that Hamilton expressed the hope that he would not refuse. He had
hoped for the Comptrollership--but that might follow. The fact that
Hamilton had favored him for the better place was promising.[1279]
Meanwhile, on the salary, he could ‘live cheap and snug as you
please.’[1280] Thus he went upon the Federal payroll. Thus he came under
the observation and supervision of the genius at the head of the
Treasury,

[Illustration]

then the most powerful dispenser of patronage. Thus he was able to
practice his ingratiating arts on one worth while. In little more than a
year he was made Comptroller on the recommendation of Hamilton, and when
that statesman retired to private life, it was he who lifted the
faithful servitor into the Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. There
Adams found him; there, unhappily for him, he let him remain.

It would be unjust to leave the impression that Wolcott was without
merit. He was not brilliant, but he possessed an infinite capacity for
taking pains. Even in college, where he failed to sparkle, he was a hard
student with ‘the strong reasoning faculties of the Wolcott family’ a
little neutralized by ‘some eccentricities in reasoning.’[1281] In the
Treasury, in subordinate positions, he had shown good judgment, much
practical sense, a comprehensive acquaintance with business and business
needs, exceptional power of sustained application, no imagination, and a
dog-like devotion to Hamilton. The latter found this combination of
virtues had not only made his conduct good, ‘but distinguished.’ More,
he had ‘all the requisites which can be desired,’ and these were
‘moderation with firmness; liberality with exactness, indefatigable
industry with an accurate and sound discernment, a thorough knowledge of
business, and a remarkable spirit of order and arrangement.’[1282] In
brief, he was the perfect bureaucrat, the indispensable man Friday. If
he brought no political strength to the Administration, he could, with
dependability, do the drudgery and register the will of others who
could.

If he was not a friend of the people, nor the electorate of him, he was
the courtier and friend of the powerful, and thus his was one of the
first careers created by the social lobby. If he did not cultivate the
voters, he selected his friends with fine discrimination with the view
of his own advancement. At Yale he cultivated Noah Webster and Uriah
Tracy, a potent writer and a powerful politician; he early profited by
the popularity and prestige of his father, and through his father’s and
his family’s influential friends; and socially, he made himself the
‘bonny boy’ of the Hamiltonian circle, and smiled and joked himself into
the affections of the Bingham set. A beautiful and brilliant sister
brought him the championship of the clever Chauncey Goodrich and his
associates. A charming wife threw wide all the doors of the capital.
While he was earning the grateful appreciation of Hamilton and the Essex
Junto, this attractive wife was winning and deserving the tender
affection of Mrs. Washington, with whom she was on terms of intimacy,
and she was corresponding regularly with Nellie Custis.[1283] When
Washington left public life, his wife gave the wife of Wolcott a lock of
the General’s hair and one of her own. The social lobby looked after its
own--and Wolcott was its very own.

For this cultivation of the social lobby, he was well adapted, for he
had a genius for society, with his cheerful disposition, his playful
manner, his conversation, which, while sometimes sober, was usually gay.
The ‘small talk’ that Adams lacked, Wolcott had in full measure running
over. A master of the art of banter, no one with entrée to Mrs.
Bingham’s could tell a joke better or more noisily enjoy one. His laugh
was hearty, frequent, and infectious. Living in a world of statistics,
he at least affected a love of literature, was fond of quoting poetry,
and interested in the personalities of distinguished writers. His
conversation after office hours could be light and graceful. Gracious,
smiling, ingratiating, this bureaucrat--one of the first--created and
sustained by the social lobby as one of its first exhibits. He differed
from Pickering as day from night, but like his sphinx-like colleague of
Salem, he owed everything to Hamilton, nothing to Adams; and as he sat,
suave and smiling, at the Cabinet table, it was to Hamilton, not to
Adams, that he looked as chief.

VIII

If Pickering was a conspirator against Adams and did not care who knew
it, and Wolcott a conspirator trying to conceal it, James McHenry, the
Secretary of War, was a conspirator and scarcely knew it. The simplicity
of this Irish immigrant is most disarming. Left alone, he would have
been harmless. His was only another instance of loving, not wisely, and
too well. Born in comfortable circumstances in Ireland, the impairment
of his health through intensive application to his studies in an
academy in Dublin brought him to America on a recuperative voyage. So
favorably was he impressed that his family soon followed and his father
opened a general store in Baltimore. A year later, we find him in an
academy in Newark, Delaware, and then in Philadelphia studying medicine
under the celebrated Dr. Rush. But he took as little to his profession
as to the prosaic duties of the counting-room, and, thanks to inherited
property, lived through the greater portion of his life as a gentleman
of leisure. In nothing that he ever undertook did he attain distinction.
The practice of his profession was limited to a brief period as surgeon
in the army; his career in commerce was almost as much curtailed; and he
employed his leisure as a dilettante in politics and literature.

Had McHenry remained in Ireland, it is easy to imagine him as a young
blade about Dublin, affecting the fashions, a bit dandified in dress,
over-fond of society, given to verse. A searcher of souls might have
discovered in him an ambition--to write poetry. Even in his academy days
at Newark he was an inveterate verse-maker, and he thought enough of his
effusions to send them to the papers. It was a weakness he never
overcame, and at his death they found a great portfolio full of rhymes.
It is possible--and it is this pathetic touch that makes one almost love
him--that he hoped for a posthumous volume as a memorial and
monument.[1284] Some of these lyrics are clever, light and graceful,
reminders of the sort that even Curran liked to make for the amusement
of his friends--thoroughly Irish. He could never have become a poet, but
there is evidence in his letters that had he turned his attention to the
humorous essay, he might have produced things worth while. These
epistles are charming in their playfulness, sprightly, witty, glowing
with humor. No one among the public men of the period could have made
posterity so much their debtor with letters on men, women, and
events--not even Morris, Ames, or Goodrich. He was really made for an
observer, rather than participant, in the harsh conflicts of life--more
of a Horace than a Robert Walpole, more of a Boswell than a Johnson.
Dinners, dances, routs, these, and the writing of light verses, were
enough to make him happy.

And yet he was not effeminate. If he did not play his part in the
affairs of men with brilliancy or even efficiency, he did with courage
and to the best of his ability. We have few references to his services
as surgeon in the army. It was when he became one of Washington’s
secretaries that he fell completely under the fascination of Hamilton.
Even before his resignation from the army, he had entered politics as a
member of the State Senate in Maryland, a rather important body
consisting then of but fifteen members. Here he was the representative
of the commercial class. In the Constitutional Convention he was
obscure, and strangely enough his views were the very opposite of
Hamilton’s. Speaking seldom, his voice was raised in warning against too
much centralization.[1285] He was even favorable to a mere amendment to
the Articles of Confederation,[1286] and his chief interest was in the
provisions for the regulation of commerce.[1287] When the work was over,
he signed with avowed reluctance, and solely on the ground--which was
characteristic--that he distrusted his own judgment, that amendments
might be made, and he was willing to take a chance.[1288] In the bitter
fight over ratification in the Maryland Convention, he took but little
part.

Even so, the confidence and friendship of Washington and Hamilton were
not weakened. To him they looked from the beginning for advice on
Maryland patronage, and Washington found it convenient to use him as an
agent in matters of this sort.[1289] Hamilton thus employed him
frequently.[1290] Taking seriously his rôle as the Federalist boss and
distributer of the loaves and fishes, he resented the disregarding of
one of his recommendations, and even the long explanatory letter of
Hamilton failed to smooth his ruffled feathers.[1291] More than two
years were to elapse before his woman-like affection for his idol gained
the ascendancy over his resentment. ‘I have not ceased to love you nor
for a moment felt an abatement of my friendship,’ he wrote impulsively
after the long silence.[1292]

Like Pickering and Wolcott, McHenry was persistent in his hints for
place. Six years before the Constitution went into effect, we find him
soliciting the influence of Washington to get him a diplomatic post in
Europe, and the great man tried and failed.[1293] Among the first
letters Hamilton received on entering the Cabinet was one from McHenry.
‘I am not wholly lost to ambition,’ he wrote, ‘and would have no
objection to a situation where I might indulge and improve at the same
time my literary propensities, with, perhaps, some advantage to the
public. Would you, therefore, be good enough to feel ... whether the
President has thought of me, or would, in such a case, nominate me. I
wish you would do this for me as a thing springing entirely from
yourself.’[1294] Nothing came of it, and the faithful party hack
continued to run the errands of the Administration in Maryland. Three
years later, he took his courage in both hands and wrote directly to
Washington asking to be sent to Paris and Vienna to attempt to secure
the release of Lafayette. He wanted a change of air. It would be no use,
the President replied.[1295] It was not until near the close of
Washington’s eight years in office--and only then because many others
had declined--that he was finally summoned to Philadelphia to become
Secretary of War. Would he have felt so much elated had he read
Hamilton’s comment on his capacity? ‘McHenry, you know,’ wrote the
leader. ‘He would give no strength to the Administration but he would
not disgrace the office. His views are good.’[1296] But happily he did
not know, and jubilantly he gave up all private enterprises as
incompatible with public office--for in such matters he was meticulously
proper--and, mounting his horse, he rode to Philadelphia. He carried the
conviction with him that he owed his honor to the earnest persistency of
his idol. To the extent indicated, this was true. The great genius of
Federalism, now planning to continue his domination of the Government
from his law office in New York, had reasons to believe that whoever
might be President, McHenry would be his own faithful servitor. When
Hamilton had married Betty Schuyler, his friend had journeyed to Albany
with some verses for the event. Was it with an indulgent smile that the
bridegroom acknowledged the poem? ‘You know I often told you you wrote
prose well, but had no genius for poetry. I retract.’[1297] Six years
before the first inauguration of Washington, this ardent friend had
written Hamilton: ‘Were you ten years older and twenty thousand pounds
richer, there is no doubt but that you might obtain the suffrages of
Congress for the highest office in their gift.’[1298] Verily it was not
without an eye to the future that Hamilton found a place for such an
idolater and political valet in the Cabinet.

There is something a bit wistful and pathetic about McHenry that
persuades forgiveness for even his treachery to Adams. His were the sins
of a lover, and love covers a multitude of sins. Nature intended him for
a snug harbor, and fate pushed him out upon tempestuous seas. His own
best epitaph has been written by himself: ‘I have built houses. I have
cultivated fields. I have planned gardens. I have planted trees. I have
written little essays. I have made poetry once a year to please my wife;
at times got children, and at all times thought myself happy.’[1299]
Like Pickering and Wolcott, he owed everything to Hamilton--nothing to
Adams; and as he faced Adams in the Cabinet room, it was to
Hamilton--not to Adams--that he looked as chief.

The other member of the Cabinet, the Attorney-General, was a political
cipher. Knowing what we now know of the characters and factional
affiliations of the President and his advisers, it will not be difficult
to follow the serpentine trail of the next four years, nor to understand
one of the forces that worked with Jefferson for the utter destruction
of the Federalist Party.

CHAPTER XV

COMEDY AND HEROICS

Scarcely had Adams entered upon his office when he found himself
confronted with the possibility of a war with France. Some time before,
Gouverneur Morris, the American Genêt in Paris, had been recalled, none
too soon, and James Monroe had been sent to smooth the ruffled feathers
of the French. Because he had followed his instructions too
enthusiastically and failed to understand that ‘a diplomat is a person
sent abroad to lie for his country,’ he had been recalled in disgrace,
as Jefferson had foreseen, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a Charleston
Federalist, had been sent as Minister. Not only had the French
Government refused to receive him, but he had been ordered from the soil
of France. All this seems wicked perversity on the part of France
without a hasty glance at the antecedents of the story.

Primarily nothing could have been more unfortunate than the appointment
of Morris. No more charming or clever diplomat than this bosom friend of
Hamilton has served America abroad. Born to the purple, he was an
aristocrat by nature, with a blatantly cynical and contemptuous
conception of the masses of mankind. His was the shimmer due to
generations of polishing. As a young man in the society of New York and
Philadelphia, he was enormously popular because he was handsome,
dashing, witty, eloquent, a bit _risqué_ and in consequence of his
fashionable and gilded background. In the Constitutional Convention no
one spoke with greater fluency or frequency--or with less effect. He
sought the establishment of an aristocratic state, and made no secret of
his hostility to democracy. To an even greater degree than Hamilton he
foreshadowed the extreme policies of the Federalist Party. He was, in
truth, its personification, able, brilliant, rich; socially delightful,
cynical, aristocratic, masterful, and disdainful of the frontier.[1300]
Like Hamilton, he failed in the Convention, but his was the hand that
fashioned the phrasing of the fundamental law.

There was more than a hint of the fashionable _roué_ in this handsome
fellow when he went to Paris. Women and their pursuit was ever an
engrossing game with him. Even his graduation essay was on ‘Wit and
Beauty,’ and for his Master’s Degree he wrote on ‘Love.’ He was the sort
of beau that Congreve would have cherished, elegant in dress and manner,
given to levity and light banter, eagerly sought. The loss of a leg
through an accident in 1780 did not sour him nor diminish his appeal to
women. On ‘a rough oak stick with a knob at the end,’[1301] he hobbled
on to his triumphs.

Such was the man sent to succeed Jefferson, the philosopher of
democracy, at the moment the Revolution was breaking on the
boulevards--a bitter, outspoken partisan of the old régime, a sarcastic
enemy of the Revolution, a champion of privilege less compromising than
the nobility itself. While Genêt was intriguing against the Government
in America, Morris was intriguing against the Government in France. But
his love flowers were still thrown over the garden wall of politics.
Jefferson had been shocked at his reactionary opinions in Paris. Madame
Lafayette had chided him on being an aristocrat.[1302] Quite early he
began his affair with Madame de Flahaut, the novelist, a pretty, winsome
woman who effectively used her marriage to an old man as a lure for
lovers, and his diary teems with references to the frail beauty. There
were evenings at her home, sneering at liberty and democracy; teas in
her salon; drives and dinners, when he was entranced by the ‘spirituel
and delicate repartee’ of his friend.[1303] Then walks in the Gardens of
the Tuileries and about the Champs Élysées, afternoons at Madame’s house
reading ‘La Pucelle,’ while she rode about Paris in the well-known
carriage of the American Minister,[1304] and finally, when danger came,
he took her into his house. The Minister aimed high, and even the
Duchess of Orleans was not above his amorous expectations, thinking her
beautiful enough ‘to punish the duke for his irregularities,’ and we
find him writing poems to her, and buying her a Newfoundland dog in
London.[1305] No young blade ever found Paris more seductive.

On swept the Revolution, on came the Terror, with Morris openly and
defiantly sneering at the former and its principles. The coldness of the
crowds in the streets when the Queen rode by enraged him.[1306] In the
terrible August days of 1792 he drove the reactionary Madame de Flahaut
through the Bois de Boulogne,[1307] and when the nation imprisoned the
King he was soon neck-deep in intrigues to effect his rescue.[1308]
Messages were exchanged with Louis, plans perfected, and only the King’s
courage failed. Later Louis made him the custodian of 750,000 livres to
be used in bribing those who stood in the way of his escape. America’s
Minister was paymaster of the King seeking to join the allied monarchs
in the crushing of the Revolution.[1309] Much of this was known in
Paris, and much of it known and approved by Federalist leaders in
America, Ames objecting to the publication of certain papers because
they would disclose Morris’s intolerable activities.[1310]

Monroe was the antithesis of Morris. Where Morris was brilliant, Monroe
was dull; where Morris was bubbling with a sense of humor, Monroe had
none at all; where Morris was a lover of dinners and dances, Monroe was
indifferent; where Morris was a Cavalier, Monroe was a Puritan in his
relations with women; where Morris was an aristocrat, Monroe was a
democrat; Morris was a monarchist at heart, Monroe, a robust republican;
Morris an enemy of the French Revolution, Monroe, a friend. But if
Monroe was not scintillating, he was sincere, and if not brilliant, he
was industrious.[1311] Soon he was as popular in Paris as Morris had
been unpopular--so popular that Jay thought it not beneath his dignity
as an American Minister to England to exchange belittling letters with
Grenville about him. He had ironed out old differences when the Jay
Treaty compromised his position.

No diplomat ever worked under more disheartening handicaps, for the
Federalists in Philadelphia hated him, and months went by without a line
of instructions or news from the State Department. Meanwhile,
Washington was being poisoned against him by Federalist politicians who
had his ear, and in the spring of 1796 Madison wrote Monroe that his
enemies had ‘been base enough to throw into circulation insinuations
that you have launched into all the depths of speculation’ and
‘purchased the magnificent estate of the late Prince of Condé.’[1312]
Pickering and Wolcott were planning his recall that spring and writing
Hamilton about it.[1313] The latter was easily persuaded.[1314] Some one
else should be sent--some one not so friendly to the French. That the
leaders of the English party were not averse to giving offense to France
is shown in the astounding suggestion that William Smith, spouter of
pro-English speeches, written by Hamilton, that had been printed and
circulated in England, should be sent.[1315] It required no blundering
by Monroe to pave the way for his recall--the politicians were sparing
him that trouble.

He had officially informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs that Jay was
not to negotiate a commercial treaty, and would sign none that was in
conflict with the Franco-American Treaty--because those were his
instructions. When, with rumors to the contrary flying over Paris, on
the completion of the treaty, he had, on the strength of a solemn and
utterly false assurance from Jay, reiterated that there was no conflict.
When the document reached Paris, the French were bitterly resentful and
Monroe was discredited and crippled. Even so, he probably prevented a
declaration of war by representing that such a course would throw
America into the arms of England--and this was charged against him by
those Federalist leaders who sought war. Then he was recalled; and at
the farewell audience an offensive speech by the French official, which
Monroe unpardonably failed to resent, gave his enemies more ammunition.

III

With the refusal to receive Pinckney, the crisis came. To the war hawks
it was a golden hour--war and no negotiations. Pickering and Wolcott
fumed over the suggestion of an extraordinary mission. Hamilton, the
sanest and most prescient of them all, realizing the importance of a
united country in case of war, proposed sending an embassy of three,
including one Jeffersonian of distinction. For almost five months a
spirited debate of the leaders continued. In January, Hamilton had
written Washington urging an extraordinary mission, including Madison,
to conciliate the French, with Pinckney, who was not distasteful to
them, and George Cabot, to moderate the Gallicism of the other two, to
supply commercial information, and to represent the friends of the
Administration.[1316] Two months later, in a similar recommendation to
McHenry, he proposed Jefferson instead of Madison, and Jay in the place
of Cabot. Then he would have a day of fasting and prayer for the opening
of Congress, an embargo, an increase in the revenue, the use of convoys,
and qualified letters of marque for merchantmen to arm and defend
themselves.[1317] The same day he wrote the same suggestion for
Pickering.[1318]

It was at this juncture that Hamilton began to run foul of the
pro-English war craze of Pickering, who questioned the plan because the
Democrats favored it. All the more reason for it, replied Hamilton.
Unhappily, there was a prevalent feeling that the Administration wanted
war and this should be counteracted.[1319] To Wolcott, he wrote in the
same strain the next day.[1320] Even the usually pliant Wolcott was in
rebellious mood and replied with an attack on Madison as a frequenter of
M. Adet’s parties, whom that Minister wished sent, and who would wreck
the negotiations, and ‘throw the disgrace of failure on the friends of
the Government.’[1321] Clearly it was time for Hamilton to assume his
imperial manner, and he did, in a sharp rebuke to his protégé against
‘passions that prevent the pliancy to circumstances which is sometimes
indispensable.’ Then ‘what risk can attend sending Madison, if combined,
as I propose, with Pinckney and Cabot,’ he added.[1322] Realizing now
the importance of bringing up his congressional reserves, he wrote to
William Smith by the same mail.[1323]

The insurgency against the plans of the Federalist chief was now in full
blast. Tracy was writing Wolcott--‘No man will be sent on this business
but a decided Federalist.’[1324] Jeremiah Smith having informed Cabot of
the dispute, the latter wrote Wolcott that he could see no possibility
of finding new messengers ‘with the expectation that they will not be
kicked.’[1325] The same day--less circumspect outside Administration
circles--he wrote Jeremiah Smith that a new embassy ‘would be
disgraceful.’[1326] Ames had been won over by Hamilton, but the day
after the extra session began, Cabot wrote Wolcott that his mind was
‘still as unsatisfied as at first.’[1327] Four days before the session
opened, Hamilton was bringing pressure to bear on Pickering, declaring
the mission ‘indispensable to silence the Jacobin criticism and promote
union among ourselves.’ But by this time he had changed the personnel of
his mission--Rufus King, rabidly pro-English, should be sent with
Pinckney and Jefferson.[1328] Meanwhile, McHenry was receiving letters
from Maryland Federalists urging war,[1329] but Hamilton’s masterful
methods had won the Cabinet, and when Adams took the opinions of the
Ministers he received replies that had been dictated, and, in the case
of McHenry, written in large part, by the Federalist chief.[1330]

All the while Adams had been receiving volunteered advice, though it
does not appear that Hamilton thought it worth while to communicate with
him direct. He had received a letter from Knox urging Jefferson because
of the compliment that would be implied in his rank. This touched Adams
where he was ticklish. ‘The circumstance of rank is too much,’ he
replied. ‘What would have been thought in Europe if the King of France
had sent Monsieur, his eldest brother, as an envoy? What of the King of
England if he had sent the Prince of Wales? Mr. Jefferson is in a sense
in the same situation. He is the first prince of the country, and the
heir apparent to the sovereign authority.’[1331] Ah, ‘Bonny Johnny,’
lucky that this letter did not fall into the hands of Bache with its
references to the ‘prince’ and the ‘heir apparent’!

However, in a discussion of the mission with Jefferson, the President
had suggested Madison. The wary Democratic chief received the suggestion
with caution, for the experience of Monroe offered little inducement to
a Democrat to subject his reputation to the mercies of the man-eating
Pickering. Certainly the suggestion received no encouragement. The
President and his most dangerous opponent had a friendly chat and parted
friends--not soon to meet in conference again. The sage of Monticello
had never been more courteous or courtly, the man from Braintree never
calmer nor more kindly, but the hour had passed for a coalition.
Jefferson was out for scalps, not olive branches.[1332]

Thus the time came when Adams had to take the bit in his mouth in the
naming of the envoys. One day Fisher Ames had a long talk with him in
urging Cabot, as a compliment to the Northern States, and the next day
the envoys were named--with Cabot out. He was eliminated because Adams
knew that Talleyrand was familiar with Cabot’s bitter hostility to
France, and the President refused thus to ‘gratify the passions of a
party.’[1333] That was ominous enough; but when he disregarded the
almost unanimous protest of the Hamiltonians and named Elbridge Gerry
along with Pinckney and Marshall, the gage of battle was thrown down.
From that hour, the high-flying Federalists knew that John Adams would
be no man’s man and no man’s parrot. Thus early, the small cloud on the
horizon widened and darkened.

The proud old patriot of Braintree had been given a shock on the opening
day of the extra session when Senator Tracy spread a lengthy letter
before him on the table in the _ex-cathedra_ manner of one disclosing
the tablets of Moses. The squat little President read it with rising
wrath. It was a letter from Hamilton, setting forth in detail ‘a whole
system of instructions for the conduct of the President, the Senate and
the House of Representatives.’ He read it through and returned it to
Tracy. ‘I really thought the man was in a delirium,’ Adams wrote
afterwards.[1334] And the cloud on the horizon grew more ominous.

The opening of the session found the New England Federalists in high
glee over the prospects. The correspondence of their leaders discloses
their grim determination to have war with France; and if they had
failed in their efforts to prevent a renewal of negotiations, they could
use the extra session for the spreading of war propaganda. Upon this
task they entered with unprecedented arrogance and intolerance.

The Message of Adams was dignified and calm, reviewing the situation,
announcing the plans for a new attempt at negotiations, and urging the
adoption of defensive measures in the meantime. The first fight came in
the framing of the Reply to the Address in the House--and two young
brilliant new members forged to the front to assume the aggressive
leadership of the war party. The persuasive, polished eloquence of Ames
could not be heard, for he was nursing himself in his fine new house at
Dedham; nor, on the other side, could the lucid, convincing logic of
Madison appear, for he was in retirement in Virginia. Sedgwick had been
sent to the Senate, Fitzsimons had been defeated, Murray of Maryland was
on his way to The Hague as Minister. On the Democratic side, Gallatin,
Giles, and Nicholas of Virginia were to bear the brunt of the battle,
and the two new men were to lead the Federalists with an audacity seldom
equaled and never surpassed. These two young blades, Harrison Gray Otis
of Boston and Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, were in their
thirty-second year. The former was strikingly handsome, tall and well
proportioned, with coal-black hair, eyes blue and sparkling with
vivacity, nose thin and patrician, complexion rosy--his presence in any
assembly would have been felt had he remained silent, and he was seldom
silent. In dress fastidious, in manners affable, in repartee stinging,
in the telling of a story a master of the art: a devotee to pleasure,
dinners, dances, and women carried for him an irresistible appeal. His
eloquence was of a high order. A thorough aristocrat, he prided himself
on having no illusions as to liberty and democracy, and he made no
secret of his contempt for the masses. The rising of the French against
the ineffable cruelties of the nobility and monarchy merely meant to him
an attack of beasts upon the homes and rights of gentlemen. Speedily he
became an idol of his party, and he enjoyed the bitter conflicts of the
House as keenly as the dinners where he was the life of the party.

Robert Goodloe Harper had much in common with Otis. Like him, Harper was
a social lion and a dandy in dress. Of medium height, and with an
uncommonly full chest which accentuated his pomposity, he had a handsome
head and features, creating withal an impression of physical force and
intellectual power. In eloquence he made up in force what he lacked in
ornament. He had all of Giles’s bumptiousness without his consistency,
and no member of the House approached him in insolence. Coming upon the
scene when the conditions seemed ripe for bowling over the Democrats
with abuse and intimidation, he fitted into the picture perfectly. Thus
he became the outstanding orator against the French. True, four years
before, in Charleston, he had paid court to the Jacobins with an
assiduity that should have made him blush in later life--but did not.
Appealing for membership in an extreme Jacobin society, he had worn the
paraphernalia, spouted his harangues on the rights of man, paid his
tribute to the Revolution, become the vice-president of the
organization--and all he lacked to make him a Camille Desmoulins was a
table on the boulevards and a guillotine.[1335] Now a convert to ‘law
and order,’ he outstripped the most rabid enemies of the French. From
‘dining almost every day’ in 1793 at the table of the French Consul in
Charleston, he passed without embarrassment four years later to the
table of Liston, the British Minister.[1336] The rabid democrat had
become a rabid aristocrat, and the society of the capital took him to
its heart. In social intercourse, he was entertaining, amiable, and
pleasing.[1337] Fond of the epicurean feast, expansive in the glow of
women’s smiles, he became a social favorite, and his enemies broadly
hinted that he was a master in the gentle art of intrigue.

Brilliant, charming men, these two young orators of the war party, and
it is easy to imagine the homage of the fashionable ladies when, after
their most virulent attacks on the Democrats, they found themselves
surrounded in Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room.

Even before Congress met, the premonitions of the coming Terror were in
the air. With the impatient Giles, this was intolerable, and he soon
retired to fight elsewhere; but Gallatin determined to ignore insults,
disregard abuse, and to fight for moderate measures to keep the door
open for negotiations. He was of the rare few who can keep their heads
in the midst of riots and remain calm in a tempest. For a while he could
count on Giles for rough blows at the enemy, on Livingston for eloquence
and courage; he would have to rely upon himself for wisdom and the
strategy of statesmanship.

The Message received, the war party in the House set itself with zest to
the framing of a bellicose Reply calculated to compromise the chances
for a peaceful accommodation of differences. Nicholas of Virginia,
representing the Jeffersonians, proposed a substitute, couched in more
conciliatory language, promising a review of the alleged grievances of
the French--and this let loose the dogs of war. In presenting his
amendment, Nicholas deprecated the Reply as framed because extreme,
denunciatory, and provocative and not calculated to assist the embassy
the President was sending. In negotiations it would necessarily follow
that there would be an examination of the charges made against America
by the French.[1338] It irritated Smith of Charleston that the Virginian
should be ‘so wonderfully afraid of using language to irritate France,’
albeit he had protested against language that would irritate England
when Jay was sailing on his mission.[1339] Otis was weary of references
to England’s offenses against American commerce. ‘The English were
stimulated to annoy our commerce through apprehension that we were
united against them, and the French by a belief that we are divided in
their favor.’[1340]

Livingston followed with a brilliant five-hour address, pointing out the
flagrant violation of Article XVII of the treaty with France. We had
made that treaty upon the basis that free bottoms make free goods, and
in the Jay Treaty we had abandoned that ground in the interest of
England. Of what was it that the French complained? What but the
adoption of the British Order in Council which we had not resented? Even
so, she was not justified in her course. That she would recede in
negotiations he had no doubt, provided we used ‘language toward her
suitable to that liberality which befits a wise and prudent nation.’ He
had no apology to offer for his devotion to the cause of France. ‘I
could read by the light of the flames that consumed my paternal mansion,
by the joy that sparkled in every eye,’ he said, ‘how great were the
consequences of her union with America.’[1341] Giles followed, a little
more severe on the Federalist discriminations for England against
France; and Gallatin closed in a sober, dignified, dispassionate
analysis of the phrasing of the amendment to show that it was firm
without being offensive.[1342]

Then Harper, with an elaborate speech laboriously wrought in seclusion,
entered the debate. The French were intemperately denounced, the
Democrats lashed, and Monroe treated with contempt. It was a war speech,
prepared as war propaganda, the first of his war speeches to be
published and widely circulated throughout the country, and printed and
acclaimed in England. Like Smith and Ames before him, he was to have his
triumph in Downing Street. The profits of one of his war productions,
which had a ‘prodigious sale’ in England, were given to a benevolent
society in that country.[1343] The Democrats were infuriated by Harper’s
attack, and the ‘Aurora’ truly said that he had ‘unseasonably unmasked
the intentions of his party.’[1344] When, about this time, Liston, the
British Minister, was seen to tap the orator unceremoniously upon the
shoulder while seated at his desk--for Liston was then a familiar figure
upon the floor--and to whisper to him, Bache saw red. ‘If the French
Minister had acted thus familiarly with Mr. Giles or Mr. Livingston, we
should have heard something about French influence.’[1345] Pooh! sneered
Fenno in the ‘Gazette,’ Liston was merely reminding Harper of a dinner
engagement for that night. ‘Having heard it whispered,’ he added, ‘that
Mr. Harper has received an invitation to dinner from another British
Agent, the Consul General, we think ourselves bound to mention
it.’[1346] Nothing could better illustrate the confident arrogance of
the Federalist leaders at this time.

‘I am not for war,’ said Smith of Charleston. ‘I do not believe that the
gentleman wishes for peace,’ retorted Gallatin, who had written four
days before that ‘Wolcott, Pickering, William Smith, Fisher Ames, and
perhaps a few more are disposed to go to war’ and ‘to carry their party
any length they please.’[1347] Thus the debate continued until Jonathan
Dayton, the Speaker, proposed a substitute amendment that received the
support of the Democrats. Seizing upon a passage in Adams’s Message,
this commended the President’s decision to seek further negotiations and
cherished ‘the hope that a mutual spirit of conciliation and a
disposition on the part of the United States to place France on grounds
as favorable as other countries in their relations and connection with
us, will produce an accommodation compatible with the engagements,
rights, duties, and honor of the United States.’[1348] With the
Democrats joining the more moderate Federalists under Dayton, the
contest was speedily ended to the disgust of the war party. The
batteries of scurrility were turned upon the Speaker. ‘A double-faced
weather-cock,’ screamed ‘Porcupine’ the Englishman. ‘His duplicity has
been too bare-faced for decency. He is, indeed, but a shallow,
superficial fellow--a bawler to the galleries, and unfit to play the
cunning part he has undertaken.’[1349]

Then, after the heroics, the comedy. Matthew Lyon, a Vermont Democrat
and a new member, shocked the formalists with a characterization of the
practice of marching in stately procession to the President to present
the Reply as ‘a boyish piece of business.’ The time had come to end the
silliness. ‘Blood will tell,’ sneered a colleague, referring to Lyon’s
humble origin. ‘I cannot say,’ replied Lyon, ‘that I am descended from
the bastards of Oliver Cromwell, or his courtiers, or from the Puritans
who punish their horses for breaking the Sabbath, or from those who
persecuted the Quakers and burned the witches.’[1350] Some chortled,
others snorted with rage. Vulgar Irish immigrant! But their wounded
culture was soon soothed by a salvo from ‘Porcupine.’ How society must
have screamed its delight in reading that Lyon as a child ‘had been
caught in a bog, and when a whelp transported to America’; how he had
become so ‘domesticated’ that Governor Crittenden’s daughter (his wife)
‘would stroke him and play with him as a monkey’; how ‘his gestures bear
a remarkable affinity to the bear’ because of ‘his having been in the
habit of associating with that species of wild beast in the
mountains.’[1351] The majority of the House, lacking Lyon’s sense of
humor, continued for a while their pompous strut through Market Street
to read solemnly the meaningless Reply that had consumed weeks of futile
debate.

Then Congress proceeded to measures of defense, prohibiting the
exportation of arms and ammunition, providing for the strengthening of
the coast fortifications, creating a naval armament, authorizing a
detachment of militia, and adjourned. But the atmosphere had been one of
intense party bitterness which had ostracized the Democrats, from
Jefferson down, from the ‘society’ of the ‘best people.’

Mounted, booted, and spurred, and swinging their sabers, the Federalists
started out to ride roughshod over their opponents. It was their
strategy to attach a stigma to Democrats, and treat them as political
outlaws and social outcasts. No one was to be spared--Jefferson least of
all. A year before he had written the confidential letter to his friend
Philip Mazzei, stating his oft-repeated views on the anti-republican
trend in Federalist circles, and saying that men who had been ‘Samsons
in the field and Solomons in the council ... had had their heads shorn
by the harlot England.’[1352] Sent to an Italian paper, it was
translated from Italian into French for a Parisian journal, as we have
seen, and thence translated again into English for political purposes in
America. The translators had unintentionally taken liberties with the
text and in the final translation it was quite different from the
original. At last, it seemed, the cautious Jefferson had delivered
himself into the hands of his enemies, for had he not attacked
Washington? At Alexandria, en route to Philadelphia, Jefferson first
learned of the renewed attack in Fenno’s paper. Reaching the capital, he
found the vials of wrath let loose upon his head. A politician of less
self-possession or finesse would have offered some explanation or
defense. None of the courtesies of warfare were to be shown him--he was
to be mobbed, his character assailed, his reputation blackened, his
personal honor besmirched, and he was to be rejected socially as unfit
to associate with the Harpers, Sedgwicks, and Wolcotts. An open letter
greeted him in Fenno’s paper on his arrival. ‘For the honor of the
American name,’ it read, ‘I would wish the letter to be a forgery,
although I must confess that your silence ... leaves but little
probability of its not having proceeded from you.’[1353] Jefferson
ignored it. ‘You are the author of the abominable letter to Mazzei,’ ran
a second open letter. ‘Your silence is complete evidence of your
guilt.’[1354] ‘Slanderer of Washington!’ ‘Assassin!’ ‘Liar!’--and
Jefferson was silent.

Knowing the curative powers of time and patience, it was not until in
August that he consulted Madison and Monroe as to his course. ‘Reply,’
urged the impulsive Monroe, ‘honest men will be encouraged by your
owning and justifying the letter.’ Madison advised against it as more
apt to give a ‘gratification and triumph’ to his foes.[1355] ‘Character
assassin!’ ‘Libeler of Washington!’ ‘Atheist!’ ‘Anarchist!’
‘Liar!’--these characterizations buzzed through the streets and in the
drawing-rooms--and Jefferson was silent.

Then an attack from a new angle. In his ‘Notes on Virginia,’ published
years before, in paying tribute to the red men and the eloquence of
Logan, an Indian chief, he had referred to a Colonel Cresap as ‘a man
infamous for the many murders he had committed on these much injured
people.’ When the mass attack on Jefferson was at its height, a long
open letter to him appeared in ‘Porcupine’s Gazette’ from the brilliant,
erratic, and usually intoxicated Luther Martin, known as ‘the Federalist
bull-dog,’ demanding Jefferson’s authority in the name of ‘two amiable
daughters who are directly descended from that man whose character your
pen ... had endeavored to stigmatize with indelible infamy.’ This had
been preceded by no personal note and was manifestly a part of the
political plot to wreck him--and he was silent.[1356] Time and again
Martin returned to the attack in long open letters, to be ignored
utterly as though he were as inconsequential as a ragpicker instead of
being the leader of the Maryland Bar.[1357] ‘The mean and cowardly
conduct of Mr. Jefferson,’ growled ‘Porcupine.’[1358]

An open season now for shooting at the Democratic leader, all the
snipers were busy with their guns. At Harvard College, on Washington’s
Birthday, there was a toast to Jefferson: ‘May he exercise his elegant
literary talents for the benefit of the world in some retreat, secure
from the troubles and danger of political life’--and the Federalist
papers gloated over it.[1359] Bache was seen entering Jefferson’s rooms,
and a Gallic conspiracy loomed before the affrighted vision of Fenno.
‘The brat may gasp,’ he promised, ‘but it will surely die in the infamy
of its parents.’[1360] Jefferson a man of the people? snorted
‘Porcupine.’ ‘So is the swindling bankrupt Charles Fox who is
continually vilifying his own government and stands ready to sell his
country to France.’[1361] Nothing angered ‘Porcupine’ more than
Jefferson’s suggestion in his ‘Notes on Virginia’ that British freedom
had crossed the Atlantic. Freedom would live in England, he growled,
when Jefferson’s ‘head will be rotting cheek by jowl with that of some
toil-killed negro slave,’ and when nothing would be remembered of
Jefferson ‘save thy cruel, unprovoked, and viperous slander of the
family of Cresap.’[1362] And Jefferson was silent.

Philadelphia was a city of but seventy-five thousand people. The papers
were generally read, or their contents were at any rate the talk of the
town. They formed the topic for ladies at their teas. Their husbands
were sulphurous in their attacks at the breakfast table. And Jefferson
became, in the fashionable circles, a moral monster unfit to drink
whiskey with a _roué_ of the morally bankrupt French nobility at the
table of the Binghams. He was ostracized. It was at this time that he
wrote Edward Rutledge that ‘men who have been intimate all their lives
cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest
they be obliged to touch their hats.’[1363] To his daughter Martha, he
wrote of his disgust with the ‘jealousies, the hatreds and the
malignant passions,’[1364] and of the ‘politics and party hatreds [that]
seem like salamanders to consider fire as their element.’[1365]

Under these conditions he dropped out of the social life of the capital.
In the evenings he consulted with his political associates; during the
day he presented a calm, unruffled complacency to his enemies in the
Senate over whom he presided with scrupulous impartiality. Driven from
society, he found consolation in the little rooms of the Philosophical
Society, among the relics of his friends Rittenhouse and Franklin.

With such abuse visited on Jefferson, it is easy to imagine the fate of
his less important friends. Sam Adams was the laughing-stock of the silk
stockings. Franklin was considered as base as Jefferson. ‘Some person
left at my house this morning a copy of Old Franklin’s works, or rather
plagiarisms,’ wrote ‘Porcupine.’ ‘I look upon everything which this
unclean old fellow had a hand in to be contaminated and
contaminating,’[1366] and the time was to come when a Federalist mob
raging through the streets of Philadelphia would throw rocks through
Bache’s windows and besmear Franklin’s statue with mud. Tom Paine,
always a fair mark, was written down in print as a libertine.
‘Porcupine’s Gazette,’ which was the favorite journal in the cultured
homes of the pure at heart, had a story that Paine had been ‘caught on
his knees at a lady’s feet by her husband,’ and had explained that he
was ‘only measuring your lady for stays,’ at which the delighted husband
‘kissed and thanked him for his politeness.’[1367] Because John
Swanwick, a popular young Philadelphia merchant, had cast his lot with
the Democrats, blocked the plans at the meeting of the merchants on the
Jay Treaty, and defeated Fitzsimons for Congress, he was venomously
assailed. When he toasted ‘The Rights of Women’ at a Democratic banquet,
‘Porcupine’ sneered that he did well ‘to turn out a volunteer,’ for ‘no
lady will ever give a bounty for his services.’[1368] That he was a
conscienceless rascal may be inferred from ‘Porcupine’s’ suggestion that
his ‘consummate wisdom and patriotism’ had been shown, when, in the
legislature, he had ‘sought to procure a law preventing imprisonment
for debt.’[1369] Fatally ill at the time, ‘Porcupine’ followed him with
indecent sneers to his grave.[1370]

Nor were even the Democratic women spared, and the Federalists’ favorite
journal sneered repeatedly at the wife of Justice M’Kean. ‘Why is Mrs.
M’Kean like a taylor? Because she trims her good man’s jacket.’[1371] ‘I
have no objections to their toasting Judge M’Kean’--at a banquet--‘but
the unmannerly brutes might have added his lady.’[1372] Even the Judge’s
famously beautiful daughter was not spared, and during her courtship by
the Spanish Minister, Don Carlos de Yrujo, the fashionable circles were
snickering behind their fans over ‘Porcupine’s’ comment that ‘what were
his motives in commencing the suit we shall leave our readers to
divine.’[1373] Giles was ‘Farmer Giles,’ who descended ‘from the lowest
grade of gentleman’--‘a gambler at heart’--devotee of the race-track,
and ‘the infamous faro table.’[1374] Monroe was infamous, and even
gentle, cultured old Dr. Logan, ’neath whose magnificent trees at
‘Stenton’ Mrs. Washington had passed delightful afternoons, became a
cross between a clown and a rascal. No Democrat was spared.

The Democrats, overwhelmed, were comparatively tame, but the publication
of Hamilton’s pamphlet on his relations with Mrs. Reynolds, necessitated
as he foolishly thought by the book of the notorious Callender, made him
an easy mark for the Democratic scandal-mongers. In July he had appeared
in Philadelphia to secure affidavits from Monroe and Muhlenberg--‘an
attestation,’ as Bache phrased it, ‘of his having cuckolded James
Reynolds.’ It was understood that ‘his man Oliver [Wolcott] had made out
an affidavit as long as your arm,’ but that others were desired ‘to
patch up the threads and fragments of his character.’ Soon, said Bache,
‘our ex-Secretary expects to be brought to bed of his pamphlet
containing love-sick epistles.’[1375] When it was printed three months
later, Bache published a letter from New York to the effect that it had
appeared in the morning ‘and at six o’clock in the evening the town
rings with it.’ But ‘the women cry out against it as if its publication
was high treason against the rights of women.’[1376]

It was impossible for the ostracism of Democrats, however, to blur the
social brilliancy of the season. Pinckney found his evenings crowded
‘with plays, public and private,’ and his dinner invitations
‘abundant.’[1377] Subscription dances, brilliant dinners every night,
elaborate entertainments, a giddy whirl. The diplomats were particularly
lavish, none so much so as Liston, the British Minister, at whose table
Otis, Harper, Sedgwick, Wolcott were frequent guests, and he was on
terms of such familiarity with the President that they sometimes
strolled together in the streets. But everywhere in the fashionable
houses the Jeffersonians were excluded, if not by lack of invitation, by
the offensive coldness of their reception. The play-houses were packed,
albeit the entertainment was sometimes so vulgar and obscene that
fathers indignantly left with their daughters.[1378] Everywhere politics
was on a rampage, and even at the dinner table of President Adams the
passions seethed. ‘By God, I would rather see this world annihilated,’
shouted Blair McClanachan, ‘than see this country united with Great
Britain.’[1379] ‘I dine next Tuesday at Court,’ wrote Gallatin to his
wife, ‘Courtland dining there the other day heard Her Majesty, as she
was asking the names of different members of Congress of Hindman, being
told of some of the aristocratic party, say, “Ah, that is one of OUR
people.” So that she is Mrs. President, not of the United States, but of
a faction.’[1380]

VII

This rabid spirit was not a little inspired by the press, which, in
turn, was encouraged by the politicians. A new Knight of Scurrility had
entered the lists, encouraged by Hamilton, armed with a pen that flowed
poison. He had previously distinguished himself by his brilliant and
abusive pamphlets attacking Priestley, the Democratic Societies, and the
Irish, and by his exhibition in his shop window of pictures of George
III and Lord North, with Franklin and Sam Adams coupled with fools or
knaves. His unlimited capacity for abuse, his insane fury against the
French Revolution, his unfathomable contempt for democracy, his devotion
to England, fitted in with the spirit of society, and William Cobbett
launched his ‘Porcupine’s Gazette’ under the most distinguished
patronage. In his first issue, in an open letter to Bache, he had
described the ‘Aurora’ as a ‘vehicle of lies and sedition.’ This was his
keynote. Soon the Federalists were reading ‘Porcupine’ as a Bible, and
the editors were making journalism a matter of blackguardism, of black
eyes and bloody noses. In blood and breeding, Cobbett was inferior to
Freneau, Bache, or Duane, but he was a more consummate master of satire
than any of them. He could string chaste words into a scorpion lash that
Swift would have envied, or stoop to an obscenity and vulgarity that
would have delighted Kit Marlowe in his cups. None but a genius could
have risen from his original low estate, with so little education. But a
little while before a corporal in the British army, and still a citizen
of England, his English biographer makes the point that the happiest
days of his life were those when he edited the Federalists’ favorite
journal because ‘he was fighting for his country.’[1381] Nothing pleased
him more than to lash and lambaste the old heroes of the American
Revolution, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and Sam Adams, and he could not
only do it with impunity, but to the applause of society. Fenno sought
to keep pace, in his weak way, and Bache tried to match him in abuse.
The fur flew. There were physical assaults and rumors of assaults. The
time was approaching when Bache would have to barricade himself with a
few armed friends in his office to protect his life and property from
the destruction of a Federalist mob; when he would be set upon by
ruffians and beaten, and when he would exchange blows with Fenno in the
street. ‘The white-livered, black-hearted thing Bache, that public pest
and bane of decency,’ wrote ‘Porcupine,’ and the ladies of Mrs.
Bingham’s circle agreed that Mr. Cobbett was tremendously clever.[1382]

It was a feverish summer, fall, and winter. Public dinners were the
fashion, bristling with fighting toasts. Through these the Jeffersonians
sought to keep up the courage of their party. Always toasts to the
French Republic, and always toasts to the Irish patriots--‘May the
Irish harp be speedily torn from the British willow and made to vibrate
to a revolutionary tune.’ References to Jay’s Treaty were followed by
the playing of ‘The Dead March.’ Franklin, Jefferson, Monroe--these were
invariably honored.[1383] The Federalists penetrated the Jeffersonian
stronghold of Philadelphia with a banquet at the Cameron Tavern,
Southwark, with warlike toasts, and with Harper as the hero,[1384] and a
few days later the ‘young men’ of this district met to pass ringing
resolutions endorsing the ‘wisdom and integrity’ of the Administration.
One courageous soul moved to strike out the word ‘wisdom,’ and the crowd
struck him out instead; whereupon a few gathered about and cheered for
Jefferson.[1385]

But the most notable banquet was in honor of Monroe in Philadelphia.
Reaching the city, the former Minister to France left the boat with Mrs.
Monroe, to be summarily ordered back by the health officers until he had
‘undergone the usual formalities of examination.’ Short shrift for
Democrats was the order of the day, and the returning Minister of his
Government to another nation returned with his wife to remain on board
until ‘examined.’ Such was the morbid madness of the Federalists of this
period that it was considered a triumph for the Administration to hold
the former Minister and his wife with the immigrants. ‘Porcupine’ roared
with glee in his best barrack-room manner.[1386] When finally released,
Monroe went into conference immediately with Jefferson, Gallatin, and
Burr, and for two hours the leaders listened to a detailed story of his
mission. Gallatin, who had refrained up to this time from expressing an
opinion on Monroe’s conduct, was convinced, from his conversation,
‘manner, and everything,’ that he was ‘possessed of integrity superior
to all attacks of malignity,’ and had conducted himself ‘with
irreproachable honor and the most dignified sense of duty.’ When the
conference was over, Gallatin, at least, felt that the ‘Administration
have acted with a degree of meanness only exceeded by their
folly.’[1387]

This became the view of the Jeffersonians generally. A dinner was given
at O’Eller’s Hotel, with General Horatio Gates in the chair. There was
Jefferson, and there, too, were Burr, Livingston, Gallatin, Tazewell,
Judge M’Kean, the Governor, and fifty members of Congress. With
enthusiasm they drank to the freedom of Ireland, and on the invitation
of Gates they lifted their glasses with cheers to ‘Charles James Fox and
the Patriots of England’--a frequently recurring Jeffersonian toast of
the times. Livingston proposed--‘Monroe, the virtuous citizen, who, to
keep the peace of the country, refuses to do justice to himself.’ Monroe
responded in a brief speech, unexceptionable in every way, but Gallatin
predicted, in a letter to his wife, that ‘Porcupine & Co. will roundly
abuse us.’[1388] And Gallatin was right, for that was ‘Porcupine’s’
business. ‘At some tavern in the city,’ ran the ‘Porcupine’ account, ‘a
most ludicrous farce called “The Welcome of Citizen Monroe” was
performed. The principal characters were the Virginia Philosopher, Mrs.
M’Kean’s husband, and Monsieur Citizen Tazewell of the ancient dominion
commonly called the Land of Debts.’[1389] Livingston was wrong, however,
in his notion that Monroe would remain silent. Urged on by the
Jeffersonians, he prepared a defense which was given a nation-wide
circulation through the exertions of his fellow partisans.[1390]
Jefferson was satisfied, the Federalists enraged. ‘A wicked
misrepresentation of the facts,’ though ‘many applaud it,’ wrote
Wolcott.[1391]

Meanwhile, the envoys were lost in the mists of the sea, and nothing had
reached the public regarding their reception. In November, the
atmosphere charged with the electricity of war, Adams returned to the
capital from his seat at Braintree, to be escorted with military pomp
into the city. The war propagandists were good psychologists sometimes.
When Governor Mifflin, Democrat, ordered out the militia to parade in
the President’s honor, ‘Porcupine’ graciously declared it ‘the first
decent act he had ever been guilty of.’[1392] On the night of his
arrival there was a dinner at O’Eller’s in honor of ‘His Serene Highness
of Braintree,’ as Bache put it, and so noisy was the demonstration that
‘some ignorant people imagined a boxing match was on the carpet.’[1393]
This was the spirit of the hour when Congress met in November--the
bitterness among the members fully as intense as among the loungers in
the streets.

VIII

And yet it was not to be without its touch of comedy. Before the crisis
came, two incidents had set the country roaring. Matthew Lyon, the
Vermont Democrat, was a constant provocation to the Federalists.
Hot-tempered, ardent, uncouth in his manners, but thoroughly honest at
heart, he had outraged the clubby spirit of the Federalists. During the
Revolution he had been shamefully cashiered for an act deserving of a
medal, but almost immediately he had been vindicated. The vindication
was thoroughly understood in Philadelphia, but it suited the purpose of
his political foes to ignore the facts for the benefit of the slander.

The House was sitting, but in a state of confusion--every one including
the Speaker talking--Lyon holding forth in conversation on the ease with
which Connecticut could be converted to Democracy through a Democratic
paper in that State. Roger Griswold, a Federalist leader, made a
slurring reference to Lyon’s ‘wooden sword.’ The latter, hearing it,
preferred to ignore the insult. Whereupon Griswold, following him and
plucking at his coat, repeated the slander. At this Lyon made an
unpardonable blunder--instead of slapping Griswold’s face, he spat in
it. Instantly the Federalists were in ferment. The ‘little beast’ was
unfit to associate with gentlemen, anyway, and should be expelled. There
was an investigation, with denunciatory speeches as indecent as the act
denounced. The purpose was clear--to get rid of Lyon’s vote. The
Jeffersonians thereupon rallied to his support. Neither condoning the
act nor asking that it go unpunished, Gallatin opposed the expulsion
resolution on the ground that Congress was not a fashionable club and
had no right to deprive a district of its representation on the basis of
manners. A two-thirds vote was necessary to expel, and this was lacking.
It was a party vote.

A few days later, Lyon was seated at his desk buried in papers,
oblivious to his surroundings, and Griswold, armed with a hickory stick,
approached from the rear and began striking him on the head. Several
blows were struck before the victim of the assault

[Illustration: THE GRISWOLD-LYON FIGHT IN THE HOUSE]

could extricate himself from his desk. Then, grasping some coal tongs,
he advanced on Griswold, who, finding his enemy also armed, gallantly
retreated, striking wildly. They clinched, rolled on the floor, and
colleagues intervened. Here was another insult to the dignity of the
House, but the Federalists were delighted with it. Since nothing could
be done to Lyon without doing as much to Griswold, the matter was
dropped. The scribes fell upon the morsel with a zest, the first
political caricature in American history resulted, the public shrugged
its shoulders and laughed, Jefferson thought the whole affair ‘dirty
business,’[1394] but Gallatin, quite as much of a gentleman as Otis,
thought that ‘nobody can blame Lyon for resenting the insult,’ since
there was ‘a notable lack of delicacy in the conversation of most
Connecticut gentlemen.’[1395] Fenno called Lyon a ‘filthy beast.’
‘Porcupine,’ who had rather urged that some one spit in the face of
Bache, gloated over Griswold’s assault,[1396] dubbed those who voted
against expulsion ‘Knights of the Wooden Sword,’[1397] and virtuously
resolved ‘to make the whole business as notorious as the courage of
Alexander or the cruelty of Nero.’[1398] Speaker Dayton, whom he had
recently denounced as a ‘double-faced weather-cock,’ having voted for
expulsion, became an ornament over whom ‘New Jersey has indeed new
reason to boast.’[1399] The real significance of the incident was that
the war party had fared forth, chesty and cocky, to intimidate the
Jeffersonians and had met a check--but they were to have another chance
at Lyon.[1400]

CHAPTER XVI

HYSTERICS

The meeting of Congress in the early winter of 1797 found the war party
in fine fettle and the Jeffersonians fighting desperately for peace.
Early in the session, Adams called for the advice of his Cabinet on the
policy to be pursued in the event of the failure of the envoys. The
three Hamiltonian members had conferred and McHenry was instructed to
write Hamilton for instructions. ‘I am sure I cannot do justice to the
subject as you can,’ wrote the Secretary of War to the President’s enemy
in New York. Agreeing, no doubt, with the sentiment, the power behind
the Cabinet speedily complied, and the response to the President of his
advisers was the recommendations of Hamilton copied into the handwriting
of McHenry.[1401] These did not contemplate a declaration of war, but a
resort to warlike measures. Merchant vessels should be armed, twenty
sloops of the line built, an immediate army of sixteen thousand men
recruited with provision for twenty thousand more, the French treaty
abrogated, a loan authorized, and the tax system put upon a war basis.
An alliance with England? Not improper, perhaps, but inexpedient; though
Rufus King in London should make overtures to the British for a loan,
the aid of convoys, perhaps the transfer of ten ships of the line, and,
in the event of a definite rupture with France, he should be authorized
to work out a plan of coöperation with England.[1402]

All this while the debates in Congress were increasing in bitterness.
Monroe was accused and defended, democrats denounced and damned,
aristocrats and monocrats assailed. Orators were mobilized and paraded
in war-paint spluttering their most vituperative phrases, and the most
insignificant pack-horse of the war party attacked Jefferson’s letter to
Mazzei as ‘a disgraceful performance.’[1403] The chest of the flamboyant
Harper was never so protuberant as in those days when he strutted
through the Dictionary hurling the most offensive words in the language
at the Jeffersonians, rattling his sword, waving his pistol, and
offering to meet gentlemen outside the House. All revolutions he thought
the work of fools and knaves, philosophers, Jacobins, and
_sans-culottes_. The Jeffersonians were conspiring to prostrate popular
liberty and establish tyranny by curtailing the power of the Executive
and increasing the power of the House. It was all very simple. The
President crushed, the Senate next destroyed, three or four audacious
demagogues would dominate the House until the strongest cut the throats
of the others and seized the scepter. The Federalists were
delighted--what a wonderful man was Harper![1404] Day by day the
violence increased. Harper snapped at Giles, who snapped back, and when
Otis made a nasty attack on the Virginian and the latter dared him to
repeat it ‘out of doors,’ there were loud cries of ‘order.’ Only
Gallatin remained cool, in possession of his senses. He contented
himself with the assertion that only on information that had not been
given could war measures be excused.[1405]

The superheat of the House cooled the passions of the people and
remonstrances against the arming of merchant ships poured in. Even from
New England they came, maddening to Cabot and Ames, reassuring to
Jefferson, who made the most of them in his correspondence.[1406] When
the town meeting at Cambridge joined the remonstrators, the Boston
‘Centinel’ fumed over ‘the indecent abuse of the merchants,’ and the
‘forestalling knavery’ of the town.[1407] Then, to revive the failing
spirits of the war party, Adams came to the rescue with a Message
announcing the failure of the envoys and recommending warlike measures.
How the little patriot would have winced had he known that in adopting
the recommendations of McHenry he was accepting the dictations of
Alexander Hamilton! Jefferson wrote Madison that it was ‘an insane
message,’ and the Jeffersonians, no longer doubting that war was the
purpose, arranged to force a show-down.[1408] Thus appeared the Sprigg
Resolutions providing for purely defensive measures for the coast and
the interior, and declaring that ‘under existing conditions it is not
expedient for the United States to resort to war against the French
Republic.’[1409]

Momentarily taken unaware, the Federalists were stunned. Harper
blundered into the admission that he could see no objections, but Otis,
with keener insight, proposed to substitute the word ‘declare’ for
‘resort to’ war--and the cat was out of the bag. The Jeffersonians
feared, not so much a declaration of war as warlike measures that would
force a state of war, and to forestall that was the purpose of the
Resolutions. Thus the debate proceeded, more bitter and personal, with
Giles and Harper resembling the wenches of the fishmarket without their
skirts.

Meanwhile, the Federalist leaders were familiar with the X Y Z papers of
which the Democrats were kept in ignorance. Hamilton, private citizen of
New York, knew their contents; Jefferson, Vice-President of the United
States, did not. This was the trump card of the war party, and no one
saw it so quickly as Hamilton, who immediately began to work secretly,
through his agents in the Cabinet, for their publication. ‘Nothing
certainly can be more proper,’ he wrote Pickering. ‘Confidence will
otherwise be wanting.’[1410] In utter ignorance of their contents, the
Jeffersonians began to demand their production. Only a few days before,
the Jeffersonian organ in Boston was charging that Adams withheld the
papers because they ‘contain an account of some resentful expressions of
the French respecting our Cabinet, and Mr. Adams does not expect any
credit by publishing them.’[1411] Thus, when the motion was made that
the papers be produced, Gallatin, Giles, Livingston, and Nicholas
supported it, and the next day they were sent with the request that they
be considered in confidence until the effect of their publication could
be discussed.

The galleries were cleared--the doors locked and guarded--and for three
days and into the fourth the secret discussion continued. Then the doors
were opened and the crowd in the galleries heard a brief discussion of
the number of copies to be printed for circulation. ‘One thousand, two
hundred,’ said Bayard of Delaware. ‘Three thousand,’ urged Harper.
‘Seven thousand,’ sneered the hot-headed Matthew Lyon, ‘for the papers
are so trifling and unimportant that no printer would risk the printing
of them in a pamphlet.’ Otis incredulously inquired if he had rightly
understood the Vermont fire-eater. Lyon unblushingly repeated his
strange assertion. The suggestion of Bayard was adopted, and, when the
members filed out of the little room in which they deliberated that day,
Harper and the war hawks could already hear the thunder of the guns.

Thus did the shadows close in on the Jeffersonians. The blow was
staggering. On the appearance of the damaging documents, most of the
Democratic papers were silent, while printing them in full. One made a
brave show of satisfaction by criticizing Adams for withholding them so
long, and suggesting that perhaps ‘the most important papers’ had been
withheld.[1412] Even the buoyancy of Jefferson suffered a momentary
collapse. Writing Madison the day the papers were read, he did not have
the heart to indicate the nature of their contents.[1413] The next day
he had recovered sufficiently to write that his first impressions were
‘very disagreeable and confused,’ and that this would be the first
impression of the public. A more mature consideration, he thought, would
disclose no new ground for war, but war psychology and fear of false
imputations might drive the people to the war hawks.[1414] Madison,
equally astonished, thought Talleyrand’s conduct ‘incredible,’ not
because of its ‘depravity, which, however heinous, is not without
example,’ but because of its ‘unparalleled stupidity.’[1415] Monroe, who
had spent the night with Madison in Virginia, thought the incident
‘evidently a swindling experiment,’ which was clear enough on its
face.[1416] The public, in the meantime, was reading one of the most
grotesque stories of political infamy and personal cupidity on record.
The envoys had been treated with contempt, refused an audience, insulted
by unofficial blackmailers sent by the unscrupulous Talleyrand to demand
a loan for France and, more particularly, a bribe for himself. The
envoys had conducted themselves with becoming dignity and spirit.
‘Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,’ was a clarion call
to battle. The pride of the people was touched, and overnight the
political complexion of the country had been changed. A wave of
hysterical patriotism swept over the Nation, and the war hawks set to
work to turn it into frenzy. It was now or never.

III

For once John Adams was on top of the world. He who had so longed for
popularity had found it. Everywhere, in cities, on Southern plantations,
under the primeval forests of the frontiers, men were wildly waving
flags and saluting the President. Addresses pledging life and fortune
poured in to be prominently printed in the papers, and nowhere more than
in the Jeffersonian States.[1417] Most were the spontaneous expressions
of an excited people, some were unquestionably engineered by the
politicians.[1418] But on the surface the country was aflame. Down the
Philadelphia streets one day swung twelve hundred young men, keeping
step to martial music, the streets lined with the cheering populace,
and, as ‘Porcupine’ observed, with ‘every female in the city whose face
is worth looking at’ gladdening ‘the way with her smiles.’[1419] At
Adams’s house the little man, who had always wanted to be a warrior,
appeared on the steps to greet them, wearing a cockade, in full military
regalia, his sword dangling at his side. Intoxicated by the adulation,
he plunged impetuously into a denunciation of France and its
Revolution.[1420] Madison thought his language ‘the most abominable and
degrading that could fall from the lips of a first magistrate of an
independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary
patriot.’[1421] Aroused by the philippic of the President, the young men
spent the day marching the streets, and in the evening wined and dined
until ten o’clock, when they sallied forth to exercise their patriotism
in deeds of violence. The Terror had begun. Reeling and shouting, they
bore down upon the home of Bache. With only women and children in the
house, they fell in right gallant fashion on the doors and windows and
were making headway when the neighbors interfered and sent the drunken
youngsters upon their way.[1422] But with the war hawks, the attack on
the home of Bache was not least among the virtues of the mob, and the
Federalist press was unstinted in its praise.

Then, on May 9th, came the day of fasting and prayer, set by Adams in
happy ignorance that when he yielded to the importunities of Pickering
for a proclamation, he was again acting under the direction of the hated
Hamilton.[1423] The President had worked himself into a morbid state of
mind. Some mysterious wag had sent him a warning that the city would be
burned that night. The Jeffersonians smiled and shrugged their
shoulders, and one editor suggested that, since the conflagration was
promised for the fast day, ‘the incendiaries meant political or
ecclesiastical fire.’[1424] But Adams, taking it seriously, saw
conspirators all about, incendiaries, assassins. Determined to die
resisting at his post, he had his servants carry arms and ammunition
into the house by the back way to withstand a siege.

The day was quiet enough, with business suspended and the churches
filled. Preachers pounced upon the Democrats and infidels with demoniac
fury. But in the evening the Terror came--and even as an old man Adams
could recall it only with a shudder. The Administration papers of the
time, eager to paint the picture black, could find nothing serious to
report, however. A few butcher boys, none the wiser for drink, exercised
their lungs in the State House yard until the soldiers swept down upon
them, arresting a few who were dismissed on the morrow, and frightening
the others home.[1425] But that was not the only mob that roved the
streets that night. The patriots had their inning, too, smashing the
windows of Bache’s house and smearing the statue of that filthy
Democrat, Benjamin Franklin, with mud from the gutters. The war
propagandists fairly fluttered with activity. Hopkinson’s new song,
‘Hail Columbia,’ was wildly cheered at the theaters, much to the disgust
of the Democrats, who resented the complimentary reference to
Adams,[1426] and, when the author was soon given a Government position,
it was suggested that Hopkinson had certainly ‘written his song to the
right tune.’[1427] When Fox the actor sang the song at the theater in
Baltimore, it was observed that ‘some Jacobins left the room.’[1428]
Even this hysteria did not satisfy the war hawks who stood in the wings
beating tom-toms and crying, ‘War! War! War!’ Hamilton was urging
Washington ‘under some pretext of health’ to tour Virginia and North
Carolina to give occasion for dinners and warlike addresses. From his
retreat at Dedham, Fisher Ames was writing nervously to Pickering that
‘we must make haste to wage war or we shall be lost.’[1429] Hopkinson,
the song-writer, observing the serenity of New York, was wishing that he
were a despot that he might ‘order the whole city to undergo the Turkish
ceremony of the bastinado’ and ‘rouse the lazy drones with a
whip.’[1430] In far-off Lisbon, William Smith was nauseated with ‘the
old womanish whining about our reluctance to war.’[1431]

Then John Marshall returned and the tired voices of the shouters found a
tonic. Out to Kensington they went to meet him, sour-visaged Pickering
in a carriage looking stern and warlike despite his spectacles, three
companies of cavalry on prancing steeds, citizens and Congressmen in
conveyances or on horseback. Long before the town was reached, ‘the
streets and windows, even the housetops in many instances, were crowded
with people.’[1432] The bells in the steeple of Christ Church began to
peal, and peal they did far into the night. The reverberations of cannon
mingled with the huzzas of the populace as the procession moved slowly
on through as many streets as possible to the City Tavern. ‘All this was
to secure him to their views that he might say nothing that would oppose
the game they were playing,’ Jefferson wrote Madison.[1433] The next
morning the war party thronged the tavern, a dinner was given, and there
was much satisfaction when Jefferson, who had called, was unable to see
the hero.[1434] Livingston, who had accompanied Marshall from New York,
had been assured that France had no thought of war, but soon stories
were afloat through the city, as emanating from the envoy, of a
contradictory nature.[1435]

Again the prancing of cavalry in the streets when Marshall departed for
Virginia--a series of ovations all the way.[1436] Then Pinckney
returned--and more pageants. Soldiers and citizens vied at Princeton and
Trenton, and a dinner was given and the French damned.[1437] All the
time the country was being overwhelmed with propaganda such as it had
never known before. Hamilton was writing his bitter invectives against
the French,[1438] in which France was ‘a den of pillage and slaughter’
and Frenchmen ‘foul birds of prey.’ These letters, running in Fenno’s
paper, alarmed Jefferson, who wrote to prod Madison from the lethargy of
retirement. ‘Sir, take up your pen against this champion. You know the
ingenuity of his talents, and there is not a person but yourself who can
foil him. For heaven’s sake, then, take up your pen and do not desert
the public cause entirely.’[1439] But even more damaging than the pen of
Hamilton was that of William Cobbett, ‘Peter Porcupine.’ As a
manufacturer of horrors he makes the wildest propagandists of the World
War pale like a candle held against the sun. Childishly happy was the
‘Porcupine’ of those days when he could fight, on American soil, ‘for
his country’ and his King. Thus ‘the sans-culottes’ had ‘taken vessels
off the bar at Charleston’ and the French had landed and were plundering
farmhouses.[1440] Thus a French invasion plot was discovered.
‘Porcupine’ had the particulars. The negro slaves were to be armed and
used as allies against the whites. ‘What a pretty figure Nicholas and
Giles will cut,’ wrote the jubilant Peter, ‘when Citizen Pompey and
Citizen Cæsar shall have tied their hands behind them.... Could its
miseries be confined to these, I would say, God hasten it.’[1441] ‘Gaunt
Gallatin’ working hard all night? Useless, useless--‘war, frightful war
there will be in spite of all his teeth and his nails too.’[1442] And
then again, the invasion. Rumor had it that the French were buying three
thousand stand of arms for the West Indies. ‘That these arms were
bought for Virginia and Georgia is much more likely,’ commented
‘Porcupine.’ ‘Take care, take care, you sleepy southern fools. Your
negroes will probably be your masters this day twelve month.’[1443]
‘Extra!’ ‘Extra!’ ‘Startling News from Virginia’--‘these villians have
actually begun to tamper with our negroes.’ An ‘ill-looking fellow on
horseback’ had been seen talking with some slaves. It was understood he
had come from Philadelphia, and the ruffian was a refugee from English
justice in Ireland.[1444] And then, another lurid article on ‘Horrors of
a French Invasion,’ with bloodcurdling pictures of the outraging of
American wives and daughters.[1445]

The French invasion at hand--slaves armed--masters murdered in their
beds--churches burned--women outraged--girls kidnaped--horrors piled on
horrors, and all because of democracy. Little wonder that the
apprehensive Adams, who temperamentally sniffed treachery in every
breeze, all but trembled as he turned the pages of his ‘Porcupine’ that
year. In Boston the presses were kept busy turning out Harper’s war
speech,[1446] and Cabot was spurring Harper on to greater efforts.
There, too, the rabid war speech of a Harvard professor made on Fast Day
in Brattle Street was being published as a pamphlet,[1447] and the
clergy were urging the hate of French democracy as a Christian duty, and
converting their pulpits into pedestals of Mars. Dr. Tappan of Boston
was making political harangues that Federalist politicians were
praising,[1448] and Father Thayer was clamoring for slaughter in pious
accents.[1449] Sometimes Democratic members of congregations who sought
Christ instead of Cæsar in the temples indignantly left, and on one
occasion an audacious and irreverent Jeffersonian paused on his way out
to exclaim in Latin, ‘Why so much anger in the heart of a divine?’[1450]
Nor were some of the war propagandists on the Bench to be outdone by
those in the pulpit. Judge Rush was thundering vituperative phrases at
the French in a charge to a jury.[1451] Chief Justice Dana of
Massachusetts phrased one of his charges like a participant in a
congressional party scrimmage.[1452] Much earlier, Chief Justice
Ellsworth of the United States Supreme Court made a grand jury charge
the occasion for an amazing attack on the Jeffersonian Party.[1453] As
early as May, Jefferson was utterly disheartened by the ‘war spirit
worked up in the town.’[1454] By June he was writing Kosciusko that he
thought war ‘almost inevitable.’[1455] In August he felt that ‘there is
no event however atrocious which may not be expected,’ and was promising
to meet the Maratists ‘in such a way as shall not be derogatory either
to the public liberty or my own personal honor.’[1456]

The country was rushing toward the Terror, with the war party rattling
sabers and threatening their opponents with violence. ‘Porcupine’ was
predicting gleefully that ‘when the occasion requires, the Yankees will
show themselves as ready at stringing up insurgents as in stringing
onions.’[1457] It was an open season for physical assaults on
Jeffersonian editors and Bache was being attacked in his office,[1458]
and another assailant who had sought to murder him found his
fifty-dollar fine paid by the politicians when he proffered the money,
and Adams sent him on a mission to Europe.[1459] The Federalists, for
the moment, were cocks of the walk, and even Hamilton was rushing into
print with a letter that would have endeared him to the Three
Musketeers. A nondescript had referred in the press to his ambition and
his affair with Mrs. Reynolds. Ludicrously interpreting it as a threat
of assassination because of a reference to Cæsar, Hamilton lost his head
and published a signed statement promising that the ‘assassin’ would
‘not find me unprepared to repel attack.’[1460] This childish boast
played into the hands of the obscure assailant, who replied: ‘Armed with
a cane (whether with a sword therein I cannot say) you walk about,
prepared, you say, to defy attack. By this you fall beneath resentment
and excite my pity.’[1461] A few days later he was writing of ‘the
declaration made in company’ by ‘a Mr. Patterson, a clerk to Alexander
Hamilton,’ that the writer would be murdered, and offering five hundred
dollars reward for the apprehension of the prospective assassin.[1462]
Wild days, wild days!

This was the temper in which Congress resumed its deliberations after
the publication of the X Y Z papers. Jefferson advised his followers to
seek an adjournment to permit the members to consult the people, and had
this procedure been adopted the Federalists might have escaped the
pitfalls to which they were reeling.[1463] The Democrats in the streets
were cowed and only the most audacious met threats with bravado or
courage. The braves of Tammany at a public dinner drank to the toast:
‘May the old Tories and all who wish to engage the United States in a
war with any nation, realize the felicity they anticipate by being
placed in the front of the first battle.’[1464] The Boston ‘Chronicle’
was publishing letters from ‘Benedict Arnold’ offering his services in
the war for England, and rejoicing ‘to hear that so many of my
countrymen have shaken off their delusion, as I predicted they would
only eighteen years ago.’[1465] Day after day it published Josiah
Quincy’s speech, made in 1774, against standing armies. Soon it was
calling attention to profiteering of war patriots in Boston who had a
monopoly on Raven’s Duck which would be wanted for tents.[1466]

III

But the Democratic leaders required all their courage to stand up before
the fusillade--Jefferson most of all. With the Philadelphia streets
filled with swaggering young men in uniforms, many nights he heard ‘The
Rogue’s March’ played beneath his windows. Bitter, threatening letters
burdened his mail. Spies crept to his dinner table to pick up the stray
threads of casual conversation that could be given a sinister twist, and
he was forced to deny himself to all but his most intimate
friends.[1467] When forced to appear in company, he simulated an
abstracted silence, ignored personal affronts, and talked calmly when at
all. ‘All the passions are boiling over,’ he wrote in May, ‘and he who
would keep himself cool and clear of the contagion is so far below the
point of ordinary conversation that he finds himself isolated in every
society.’[1468] Convinced that even his correspondence was tampered
with, he no longer dared write freely in letters entrusted to the
mails.[1469] Spies dogged his footsteps and kept guard at his
door.[1470] When on a visit to Virginia he accepted an entertainment on
Sunday, the floodgates were opened upon him, and his enemies boasted
that ‘this fact has been trumpeted from one end of the country to the
other as irrefutable proof of his contempt for the Christian religion,
and his devotion to the new religion of France.’[1471] Sad that Rufus
King and Christopher Gore had continued their English tour on Sunday,
and too bad that the Federalists persisted in holding their political
caucuses in Boston on Sunday evenings, retorted the ‘Independent
Chronicle.’[1472]

No dinner of the war party was complete without an insulting toast on
Jefferson. ‘Jefferson--May he deserve better of his country than he has
hitherto done.’[1473] ‘The Vice-President--May his heart be purged of
Gallicism in the pure fire of Federalism or be lost in the
furnace’--with groans.[1474] ‘John Adams--May he like Samson slay
thousands of Frenchmen with the jaw bone of Jefferson.’[1475] And in the
midst of the mobbing, the self-contained philosopher kept his mouth shut
and his feet upon the ground. With ‘The Rogue’s March’ ringing in his
ears he was able to write a long letter on the value of crop
rotation;[1476] another on a plough he had invented;[1477] and in the
midst of the Sedition Bill debate, learning that an acquaintance was
going west of the Mississippi where wild horses roved the plains, he
sent the suggestion that this was ‘the last opportunity to study them in
a state of nature,’ and requesting him to prepare a report for the
Philosophical Society.[1478] Many days found him alone in the library of
this Society, and once, during that hectic summer, he stole away from
the turmoil and hate to the beautiful country home of the Logans where
he could forget the bitterness of the battle browsing in its great
library or lounging beneath its majestic trees.[1479]

Everywhere the Democrats were fair game for persecution. Matthew Lyon
found a band playing ‘The Rogue’s March’ in front of his tavern at
Trenton and New Brunswick where crowds shouted imprecations.[1480] In
New York, only the appearance of fighting Irish friends prevented the
war hawks from serenading Edward Livingston’s home with the offensive
March.[1481] In Boston the ‘patriots’ expelled Thomas Adams, editor of
the ‘Chronicle,’ from the Fire Society of which he had been a faithful
member for fourteen years.

In this atmosphere, the Federalist machinery in Congress was set in
motion at high speed on war measures. Provisions were made for the
strengthening of the coast defenses, a navy was created, an army
provided, taxes levied, and through all this the Jeffersonians, under
the calm, courageous leadership of Albert Gallatin, merely sought to
exercise a moderating influence. If war was to come, provision had to be
made. But that was not enough for the radicals among the
Federalists--the conditions were ripe for the crushing of domestic foes
as well as foreign enemies. Here was the opportunity to destroy the
party of democracy.

The first manifestation of this intent came with the introduction of the
Alien Bill in the Senate--aimed at the Irish more than at the French, if
we may judge from the correspondence of the Hamiltonian leaders and the
tone of the Federalist press. Both fairly bristled with hatred of the
Irish immigrant who was beginning to make himself felt in American
politics. This, in part a by-product of the Federalist partiality for
England, was, in large measure, an expression of the Federalist
abhorrence of insurrections against constituted authority everywhere.
From the Ireland of that day, seething with rebellion, incoming vessels
were bringing Irish refugees, most of whom were members of the
revolutionary United Irishmen. Instinct and observation took them in a
body into the Jeffersonian Party, of which they became the shock troops
in many parts of the country. It was only at Jeffersonian dinners that
glasses were drained to the Liberal leaders in England, Fox and
Sheridan, and to the success of the Irish Rebellion; and only in
Jeffersonian papers that sympathy was expressed. It was during this
time that Irish patriots were being hurried to the gallows, and John
Philpot Curran was making his incomparable orations, now classics, in
their defense. His burning phrases were being punctuated by the rattle
of the soldiers’ musketry intended to awe him into silence. The patriot
press was being crushed in Dublin. Castlereagh was busy with his dirty
money buying members of the Irish Parliament where money would buy them,
and finding renegades ready to cut their country’s throat for a title, a
place, or a ribbon to pin on their coats. Of these latter the most
loathsome was Lord Clare, whose infamy has been embalmed in the
eloquence of Curran.

It is not without significance that the Jeffersonian dinners in those
days were toasting John Philpot Curran, and that his speeches were
printed by the column in the Jeffersonian press,[1482] while Cobbett was
giving three full pages to Lord Clare’s excoriation of his
countrymen.[1483] A month before the Alien Bill reached the House,
Cobbett was devoting a full page to a weird story involving the Irish in
America in a conspiracy with the French for the destruction of the
Government of the United States.[1484] ‘That restless, rebellious tribe,
the emigrated United Irishman,’ snorted ‘Porcupine,’ the English
citizen.

All this was on the surface, but it did not reveal half the story. With
the Irish patriots, crushed by the soldiers of Cornwallis, seeking an
asylum in America, Rufus King, the Federalist Minister in London, was
writing Hamilton rejoicing over the suppression of the Irish Rebellion,
and expressing the hope that ‘our Government ... will have the power and
inclination to exclude these disaffected characters, who will be
suffered to seek an asylum among us.’[1485] It was King’s aggressive
protest to the British Government that delayed for four years the
release of the Irish prisoners who had planned an extensive settlement
in America. Ten years later, the most brilliant of these, Thomas Addis
Emmet, who was to become one of the ornaments of the New York Bar and to
sleep at length by the roaring traffic of Broadway in Saint Paul’s
churchyard, wrote King in bitter rebuke: ‘I should have brought along
with me a brother [Robert Emmet] whose name perhaps will you even not
read without emotions of sympathy and respect.’[1486] The Ministry had
been favorable to the release and migration until King’s hot
remonstrance against admitting such desperadoes as Thomas Addis Emmet!
This Federalist hate of the Irish reeked in the sneers of its press,
exposed itself in the ‘wild Irish’ speech of Otis, in the official
actions of King, in the correspondence of the leaders, in the
description by Gibbs[1487] of the victims of Cornwallis’s bayonets and
Castlereagh’s bribes as ‘fugitives from the justice of Great Britain.’

Many thought, when the Alien Bill was introduced, that it was aimed at
Gallatin, and it was boasted in the coffee-houses of New York that it
would soon be easy to ‘ship him off.’[1488] Terrorized by the threat of
the measure, many harmless Frenchmen, including Volney, hastily
chartered a ship and sailed away,[1489] but when a little later some
emigrant French royalists came knocking at the door they were
admitted.[1490] Jefferson thought the bill ‘detestable,’[1491] and
Madison, ‘a monster that will disgrace its parents.’[1492] Even Hamilton
was shocked at the bill introduced in the Senate, and he hastened a
letter to Pickering urging moderation. ‘Let us not be cruel or violent,’
he wrote.[1493]

The purpose of the Sedition Bill was to crush the opposition press and
silence criticism of the ruling powers. Among the extreme and dominant
Federalists criticism had long been confused with sedition, and Fenno
had long described attacks on Administration measures as treason.
Scurrility in the press was all too common, but the worst of the
Jeffersonian organs could be matched by the Federalists; and no one in
1798 imagined that a Sedition Law would ever be evoked against
‘Porcupine’ or Russell. The Hamiltonians were moving with such celerity
toward repression that a Congressman’s circularization of his
constituents with comments on policies and measures was being denounced
as seditious, and Judge Iredell, a narrow partisan, had actually called
the attention of the Richmond Grand Jury to a letter from Representative
Cabell. ‘Porcupine’ had published this letter with abusive comments as
though it were a treasonable correspondence with an alien enemy.[1494]
The next day he published with enthusiastic praise a letter that Otis
the Federalist had written to a constituent in Boston.[1495]

The moment these measures were introduced, every one knew that Gallatin
was in danger because of his Genevese accent, but that ‘Porcupine,’ the
English subject, had no fears. Men like Hamilton Rowan, Dr. James
Priestley, and Volney could be sent away, but the putrid offal of the
defunct court of Versailles could continue to count upon a dinner at the
Binghams’. Cabell was subject to indictment for an action that was
commendable in Otis, and the merest child knew that the Sedition Law
would be applied to Jeffersonian papers alone.

Bad as was the Alien Law, it did not approach the viciousness of the
Sedition Act; and the Sedition Bill as passed was mild compared with the
one the Federalist leaders in the Senate originally framed. Albeit
America and France were not at war, the bill declared the French people
enemies of the American people, and that any one giving the former aid
and comfort should be punishable with death. A strict enforcement of
such an act would have sent Jefferson to the gallows. Under the Fourth
Article any one questioning the constitutionality or justice of an
Administration measure could be sent to herd with felons. It would have
sealed the lips of members of Congress.

When this monstrous measure reached Hamilton, he was dumbfounded at the
temerity and brutality of his followers. Grasping his pen, he hurriedly
sent a note of warning to Wolcott. There were provisions that were
‘highly exceptionable’ that would ‘endanger civil war.’ He hoped that
‘the thing will not be hurried through.’ Why ‘establish a tyranny?’ Was
not ‘energy a very different thing from violence?’[1496] Reeling drunk
with intolerance, even Hamilton’s warning only coaxed a slight
concession to liberty, and it was a thoroughly vicious and tyrannical
measure that was debated in the House. These debates were conducted
under conditions of disorder that would have disgraced a discussion of
brigands wrangling over a division of spoils in a wayside cave.
Gallatin, Livingston, and Nicholas were forced to talk against coughs,
laughter, conversation, and the scraping of the feet of the apostles of
‘law and order.’ No personal insult too foul, no nincompoop too
insignificant to sneer in the face of Gallatin. Despite these
terrorizing tactics, the Jeffersonians stood firm and made their record.
Even the customary courtesy of Gallatin deserted him, however, and when
the sneering Harper darkly hinted at traitors in the House, he retorted
sharply that he knew ‘nothing in the character of [Harper], either
public or private, to entitle him to the ground he so boldly assumes.’

On the last day of the debate on the Alien Bill, Edward Livingston
closed for the opposition; and in discussing the constitutional phase,
he anticipated the doctrine of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions,
indicating probable conferences with the tall, silent man who was
presiding over the Senate. ‘If we are ready to violate the
Constitution,’ he said, ‘will the people submit to our unauthorized
acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that
these measures are forging for them.’ The effect of such a measure? ‘The
country will swarm with informers, spies, delators, and all the odious
reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of despotic power.... The hours
of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the
recesses of domestic retirement, afford no security. The companion whom
you must trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic who
waits in your chamber, are all tempted to betray your imprudent or
unguarded follies; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted
by calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides--where fear
officiates as accuser, and suspicion is the only evidence that is
heard.... Do not let us be told that we are to excite a fervor against a
foreign aggression to establish a tyranny at home; that like the arch
traitor we cry “Hail Columbia”[1497] at the moment we are betraying her
to destruction; that we sing, “Happy Land,” when we are plunging it in
ruin and disgrace; and that we are absurd enough to call ourselves free
and enlightened while we advocate principles that would have disgraced
the age of Gothic barbarity.’[1498]

The vote was taken and the Alien Bill passed, 46 to 40.

Livingston was to hear a few days later when the debate on the Sedition
Bill was reached that he had been guilty of sedition in his speech on
the Alien Bill. Not least among the grotesque features of the crazy
times was the prominence, amounting to leadership, attained by John
Allen of Connecticut--a tall, hectic, sour-visaged fanatic. It was
reserved for him to indict the Jeffersonians generally for sedition. Had
not Livingston been guilty of sedition when he proposed that Gerry be
authorized to renew negotiations? Was not the ‘Aurora’s’ explanation of
the effect of the Alien Law upon the Irish treason? Were not members of
Congress who dared write their views to their constituents traitors?
From a want-wit like this fanatic such views were more ludicrous than
depressing, but Harper rose to give his full assent to the buffoonery of
Allen. ‘What!’ exclaimed Nicholas, ‘is it proposed to prevent members
from speaking what they please or prohibit them from reaching the people
with their views?’ And Harper, disclaiming any desire to curtail the
freedom of speech upon the floor, bravely admitted a desire to prevent
the speeches from reaching the people ‘out of doors.’ This astounding
doctrine brought Gallatin to his feet with a scornful denunciation of
Allen’s criticism of Cabell’s letter. It ‘contained more information and
more sense than the gentleman from Connecticut has displayed or can
display.’ Taking up every assertion in Cabell’s letter and making it his
own, he challenged a denial of its truth. Then, referring to the attack
on Livingston’s speech, Gallatin gave his full sanction to the New York
statesman’s doctrine of resistance to unconstitutional measures. ‘I
believe that doctrine is absolutely correct and neither seditious nor
treasonable.’

On the last day Livingston spoke with his usual spirit and eloquence,
and Harper closed for the bill with an anti-climactic charge, apropos of
nothing, that the Jeffersonian plan of government was in the interest of
‘men of immoderate ambition, great family connections, hereditary
wealth, and extensive influence’ like Livingston. ‘Great patrician
families’ would walk over the heads ‘of we plebeian people.’ This
touching appeal for the plebeians could hardly have been meant for
Philadelphia where at that time ‘the great patricians’ were lavishly
wining and dining the Harpers, and rigidly excluding the Livingstons
and Gallatins from their tables. Thus the Federalists closed their case
and the bill passed, 44 to 41.[1499]

The press was peculiarly silent through the debates. Russell in the
Boston ‘Centinel’ observed that ‘Benedict Arnold complained bitterly of
the treason bill,’[1500] and his rival, Thomas Adams of the ‘Chronicle,’
announced the passage with the comment that ‘we are now abridged the
freedom of the press.’[1501] Soon the ‘Commercial Advertiser’ of New
York would be dubbing all men traitors who criticized the Sedition Law,
and Jefferson would be inviting Hamilton Rowan to the sanctuary of
Monticello with the assurance that the Habeas Corpus Act was still
operative in Virginia.[1502] Almost immediately the Reign of Terror
broke upon the land.

In the midst of political terrors the yellow fever stalked again into
the haunts of men, striking in New York, in Boston, with special
virulence in Philadelphia. By the first of October, fourteen hundred had
died in New York City. Hamilton remained in town until persuaded by his
family to go to the country, but he continued to visit the city daily to
confer with his political friends.[1503] In Philadelphia those who could
afford it took to flight. Soon thousands were encamped in tents on the
common on the outskirts and by October not more than seven thousand
people remained in the stricken city. An English traveler, entering in
September, found the theaters, taverns, drinking-houses, gambling-dens,
and dance-halls closed, hospital carts moving slowly through abandoned
streets, the casket-makers alone busy. Sitting one night on the steps of
a house in Arch Street, where most houses were deserted, he could hear
nothing but the groans of the dying, the lamentations of the living, the
hammers of the coffin-makers, the dismal howling of deserted dogs.[1504]
Even the physicians took to their heels, but Dr. Rush, the head of his
profession, remained to battle with the disease.[1505] The health office
was kept open day and night.[1506]

But even in the midst of death the politicians fought with scarcely
diminished ferocity. ‘Porcupine’ and Fenno were stooping to the ghastly
business of maligning the methods of Dr. Rush in treating the disease.
Standing heroically to his duty where others had fled, he was forced,
day by day, to read the most scurrilous attacks upon him. The animus was
due to the fact that Rush was a Jeffersonian; and even from Lisbon,
William Smith contributed his slur in a letter to Wolcott manifesting
sympathy with the attacks because he had ‘always considered the Doctor a
wrong-headed politician.’[1507] Bache and Fenno clawed on, amidst the
dying and the dead, until one September day the fever entered the Fenno
house and struck down both the editor and his wife. When she died, the
‘Gazette’ was suspended, and the next day John Fenno ceased his attacks
on Dr. Rush, for Death had intervened.[1508] ‘Alas poor John Fenno,’
wrote Ames, ‘a worthy man, a true Federalist, always firm in his
principles, mild in maintaining them, and bitter against foes. No
printer was ever so correct in his politics.’[1509] A few days later,
Benjamin Franklin Bache of the ‘Aurora’ fought no more. The Boston
‘Chronicle’ announced his death in a black-bordered editorial lamenting
‘the loss of a man of inflexible virtue, unappalled by power or
persecution, and who, in dying, knew no anxieties but what was excited
by his apprehensions for his country and for his young family.’[1510]
The Jeffersonian press published long articles and poems of tribute. In
New York the Democrats lost the services of Greenleaf of the ‘Argus,’
another victim of the plague.

John Ward Fenno took up the work of his father, and the widows of Bache
and Greenleaf sought to continue the ‘Aurora’ and the ‘Argus,’ the
former calling to her assistance one of the ablest controversial
journalists of his time, William Duane. No Jeffersonian papers made an
unfeeling reference to the death of Fenno; the passing of Bache was
gloated over in ghoulish fashion by the Federalist press, and soon
‘Porcupine’ and young Fenno were making merry over ‘the widows Bache and
Greenleaf.’ It was part of the Reign of Terror--and the fight went on.

VII

It went on because there was a congressional election pending and both
parties were putting forth their utmost effort. The Federalists were
hoping that under the influence of war hysteria the Jeffersonians could
be annihilated; the Jeffersonians were fighting desperately to hold the
line. The most sensational feature of the campaign was the emergence as
an avowed party man of Washington, whose aristocratic viewpoint made
democracy offensive. He went the full length, finding nothing
objectionable in the Alien and Sedition Laws. When, on his persuasion,
Patrick Henry entered the campaign as a candidate for the Assembly, he
too defended these wretched measures with the silly and insincere
statement that they were ‘too deep’ for him and were the emanations of a
‘wise body.’[1511]

But more important than the emergence of Washington was the
congressional candidacy of John Marshall, who entered the fight on
Washington’s insistence. The Hamiltonian Federalists were delighted with
his candidacy until the publication of his letter opposing the Alien and
Sedition Laws, when they turned upon him with bitter scorn. ‘His
character is done for,’ wrote Ames.[1512] Noah Webster commented that
‘he speaks the language of true Americanism except on the Alien and
Sedition Laws.’[1513] ‘Porcupine’ added an editor’s note to the letter
in his paper: ‘The publication of these questions and answers will do
neither good nor harm. I insert them as a sort of record of Mr.
Marshall’s character. If I were a voter, however, I would sooner vote
for Gallatin than for Marshall.’[1514] The New England Federalists were
wrathy among themselves over Marshall’s apostasy. ‘Mr. Marshall,’ wrote
Cabot to Pickering, ‘has given us great uneasiness here by his
answers.... Mr. Marshall, I know, has much to learn on the subject of a
practical system of free government for the United States.... I believe,
however, that he will eventually prove a great acquisition.’[1515] It
was at this juncture that Cabot proved his superior political
perspicacity by taking up his pen in defense of Marshall for the Boston
‘Centinel.’[1516] The struggle in Virginia was bitter. The
Jeffersonians, long prepared for Washington’s action, were undismayed,
and they fought with increased vim. The result was that, while Marshall
won by 108 majority, the Jeffersonians elected all but eight of the
Representatives, carried the Legislature, and elected a United States
Senator.

The Federalists were chagrined with the general result. Cabot was
disappointed with Massachusetts[1517] and Maryland.[1518] A Senator had
been lost in North Carolina, and from South Carolina the Jeffersonians
had sent to the Senate their most resourceful leader, Charles Pinckney.
Theodore Sedgwick, surveying the field, and writing his observations to
King in London, could find no improvement in the Senate and but a slight
‘amelioration’ in the House. The Jeffersonians had won six out of ten
seats in New York, gained two in New Jersey, and eight out of thirteen
in Pennsylvania.

But Giles was gone--retiring in disgust to the Legislature of Virginia.
The election was over--and the Reign of Terror was beginning.

VIII

It began in the summer of 1798 and extended through the autumn of 1800.
The growing sentiment for democracy and the increasing popularity of
Jefferson were maddening to the Federalists, who fared forth to destroy
both with a club. The Alien and Sedition Laws were to be used for the
purpose. Democrats, from the highest to the most lowly, were to be
proscribed and treated with contempt. The New England clergy, for the
most part, entered heartily into the plan. The colleges joined. So
openly partisan became the institutions of learning that the
Jeffersonian press opened their batteries upon the ‘arbitrary spirit
which has been exposed in the eastern seminaries.’[1519] With much
ceremony Doctors’ Degrees were being bestowed upon Federalist
politicians, and Pickering and Wolcott were made Doctors of Law. ‘Except
Timothy’s vulgar diplomacy who ever heard of the qualifications in him?’
asked the irreverent Duane, and while ‘Oliver has dabbled in politics
and glittered in prose’ ‘he would never have been discovered by the
savants had he not been in the Cabinet of a New England
President.’[1520] Other Federalist politicians were thus given the
disguise of scholarship, but Jefferson, President of the Philosophical
Society, and friend of Franklin and Rittenhouse, received no degrees.

Very early, gangs of self-proclaimed patriots sallied forth into the
country to tear down the liberty poles erected by the Democrats, armed
with pistols and swords, and clattering over the country roads like
Cossacks on a rampage. One of these gangs under the leadership of a
Philip Strubling, operating in Berks County, Pennsylvania, had a
triumphant career, except where armed men showed fight, when the gallant
band found discretion the better part of valor.[1521] This sort of
outrage was being committed all over the country. Plans were made to
wreck the printing plant of Duane until it was found that his friends
had armed for defense, and the editor warned the conspirators that an
attempt at violence ‘would carry public vengeance to their
firesides.’[1522]

When thwarted in their plans against the leaders, the terrorists turned
upon the weak and lowly, demanding the discharge of Jeffersonian
artisans employed in the manufacture of war material. Out with them! ‘It
is a notorious fact,’ complained Fenno, ‘that a number of artisans ...
are of politics destructive of the Constitution.’[1523] Everywhere, in
the pulpits of political preachers, from the Bench of Federal Judges,
through the press and on the streets, men were beating upon the tom-toms
arousing the apprehensions of the people; and when, one night, some
pirates, sentenced to execution, escaped from the Philadelphia jail, the
clatter of the mounted soldiers in pursuit was enough to fill the
streets with affrighted people. The Germans of Northampton were marching
on the city with pitchforks. The soldiers were out after Duane,
whispered others, and armed Democrats rushed to the rescue. At length
the fever subsided and order was restored. ‘Nothing more serious than
the disturbance of love-making,’ said the

[Illustration: _MAD TOM in A RAGE_

A CONTEMPORARY CARTOON TYPICAL OF THE FEDERALIST ATTACKS ON JEFFERSON]

‘Aurora.’[1524] These were minor incidents--the background for the real
terror to come. Judges were terrorizing the people with wild charges to
grand juries.[1525] The Right Reverend Bishop White of Philadelphia was
preaching piously and patriotically from the text: ‘Let every soul be
subject to the higher powers. For there is no purpose but of God. The
powers that be are ordained of God. Whoso therefore resisteth the power,
resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist shall receive to
themselves damnation.’[1526] The Administration organ in New York was
laying down the dictum: ‘When a man is heard to inveigh against the
Sedition Law, set him down as one who would submit to no restraint which
is calculated for the peace of society. He deserves to be
suspected.’[1527] And Timothy Pickering was nervously peering through
his spectacles over Jeffersonian papers seeking some phrase on which a
prosecution for sedition could be brought, and prodding the district
attorneys to action. ‘Heads, more heads!’ screamed Marat from his tub.
‘Heads, more heads!’ echoed Pickering from his office.

CHAPTER XVII

THE REIGN OF TERROR

It is not surprising that the first notable victim of the Terror was
Matthew Lyon whom we have seen insulted at various points when homeward
bound from Philadelphia. Bitter though he was, he had sound sense and
realized his danger. When the Rutland ‘Herald’ refused to publish his
address to his constituents, he launched his own paper, ‘The Scourge of
Aristocracy,’ with a defiant challenge: ‘When every aristocratic
hireling from the English Porcupine ... to the dirty hedge-hogs and
groveling animals of his race in this and neighboring States are
vomiting forth columns of lies, malicious abuse and deception, the
Scourge will be devoted to politics.’ How Pickering must have stared
through his spectacles at that defiance! But patience! If speeches and
papers offered no case, there still were letters, and one was found.
Here surely was ‘sedition.’ Had Lyon not referred to Adams’s ‘continual
grasp for power,’ to his ‘unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish
adulation, and selfish avarice’? Had he not charged that the President
had turned men out of office for party reasons, and that ‘the sacred
name of religion’ was ‘employed as a state engine to make mankind hate
and persecute one another’? Had he not printed a letter from Barlow, the
poet, referring to ‘the bullying speech of your President and the stupid
answer of your Senate’? It was enough. True, the letter had been
published before the Sedition Law was passed, but this was the Reign of
Terror. The trial before Judge Peters was a farce, and the culprit was
found guilty. ‘Matthew Lyon,’ said Peters in fixing the sentence, ‘as a
member of the Federal Legislature you must be well acquainted with the
mischiefs which flow from the unlicensed abuse of Government’--and Lyon
was sentenced to four months in jail and to pay a fine of a thousand
dollars.

Then the Terror began to work in earnest. There was a fairly respectable
jail at Rutland where the trial was held, but not for Lyon. There was
something worse at Vergennes, forty miles away, a loathsome pen in a
miserable little town of sixty houses, and thither he was ordered.
Refusing his request to return to his house for some papers, he was
ordered to mount a horse, and with two troopers with pistols, riding
behind, the forty-mile journey through the wilderness was made. At
Vergennes they pushed him into a cell, sixteen by twelve, ordinarily
used for common felons of the lowest order. In one corner was a toilet
emitting a sickening stench. A half-moon door opened on the corridor,
through which his coarse food was passed. Through a window with heavy
iron bars he got some light. There was no stove and the cold of autumn
nights came in through the window. When it became dangerously chilly,
the prisoner put on his overcoat and paced the cell. He was refused pen
and paper until the indignation of the public forced a concession. A
visitor peering through the half-moon of the door a little later would
have seen a table strewn with paper, Volney’s ‘Ruins,’ some Messages of
the President.

Meanwhile the Vermont hills were aflame with fury. The Green Mountain
Boys, the Minute Men, the soldiers who, with Lyon, had followed Ethan
Allen, were talking of tearing the jail down. Then, from the filthy,
foul-smelling hole, into which the Federalists had thrown a member of
Congress, came letters from the ‘convict,’ brave, cheerful letters,
exhorting these men to observe the law. One day, however, Lyon was
forced to plead through the iron bars of his window for the furious mob
without to seek redress legally at the polls. Thus popular resentment
increased with the growth of the prisoner’s popularity. Thousands of the
yeomanry of Vermont signed a petition for a pardon and sent it to Adams,
who refused to receive it. Aha, ‘the despicable, cringing, fawning
puppy!’ exulted Fenno.[1528] The indignation of the yeomanry of Vermont
now blazed high. The Administration was amazed, almost appalled. When
this ‘convict’ in a hideous cell was nominated for Congress, there were
not jails enough in Vermont for the talkers of ‘sedition.’ He was
elected overwhelmingly with 4576 votes to 2444 for his nearest
competitor.

Again the terrorists consulted on plans to thwart the public will. His
term was about to expire, but where would this pauper get a thousand
dollars? True, the farmers, the comrades of the Revolution, were going
into their pockets to get the money--but a thousand dollars! Still there
was a chance. The Marshal summoned Federalist lawyers to go over Lyon’s
letters and find more sedition on which he could be arrested on emerging
from the jail. His triumphant election was more than the terrorists
could bear. ‘Must our national councils be again disgraced by that vile
beast?’ asked their New York organ.[1529] Meanwhile, the problem of the
fine was being solved. The eyes of the Nation were on that dirty little
cell at Vergennes. Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, John Taylor of
Caroline, Senator Mason of Virginia--he who had given the Jay Treaty to
the ‘Aurora’--and Apollis Austen, a wealthy Vermont Democrat, were
solving the problem of the fine. On the day of Lyon’s delivery, the
Virginia Senator rode into the village, his saddle-bags bulging with a
thousand and more in gold. There he met Austen with a strong-box
containing more than a thousand in silver. Mason paid the money.

Before the jail had assembled a vast multitude. Out of the door rushed
Lyon. ‘I am on my way to Philadelphia!’--to Congress, he shouted. A roar
went up, a procession with a flag in front was formed, and the ‘convict’
was on his way triumphantly. The school children at Tinmouth paraded in
his honor, and a youthful orator greeted him with a welcome to ‘our
brave Representative who has been suffering for us under an unjust
sentence, and the tyranny of a detested understrapper of despotism.’ The
woods reverberated with shouts. Then on moved the procession. At
Bennington, another ovation, more speeches. Seated in a sleigh, his wife
beside him, Lyon was escorted by the throng. At times the procession was
twelve miles long. Through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the
ovations were repeated. He had gone home to the tune of ‘The Rogue’s
March’; he returned by the same route to the tune of ‘Yankee
Doodle.’[1530]

The terrorists ground their teeth and sought revenge--with nothing too
petty. The Reverend John C. Ogden dared to be a Democrat and to carry
the petition for Lyon to Philadelphia. Thenceforth he was a marked man.
He was in debt--and a debt would serve. Returning from Philadelphia, he
was arrested at Litchfield, Connecticut, and thrown into jail. ‘It is
presumed,’ sneered Major Russell of the Boston ‘Centinel,’ ‘that Lyon
when he goes from his jail to Congress will at least sneak into
Litchfield to pay a visit to his envoy and take a petition from him to
the Vice-President [Jefferson].’[1531] But jail was too good for such a
rascal. On his release a crowd of soldiers followed him out of
Litchfield, calling him ‘a damn Democrat,’ abusing, insulting,
collaring, shaking him. It was their purpose to take him back to
Litchfield and scourge him in public. Whirling him around, the gallant
soldiers started back. Meanwhile, the report had spread that the heroic
remnant of the army had set forth on a mobbing expedition, and a party
of Democrats and civilians mounted horses and rushed to the rescue. The
courage of the soldiers, so splendid in the presence of one man, oozed
out on the approach of the rescuers, and Ogden was released.[1532]

III

But Ogden was not the only victim of the terrorists, among the friends
of Lyon. Anthony Haswell, born in England, a man of education, who had
seen service in the army of Washington and had narrowly escaped death at
Monmouth, was editor of the ‘Vermont Gazette.’ A gentleman of amiability
and integrity, his popularity was great in Vermont--but he was a
Jeffersonian. One day the sleuths of the Terror, scanning the pages of
Democratic papers, found an appeal in Haswell’s ‘Gazette’ for funds to
pay the fine of Lyon. It referred to the ‘loathsome prison,’ to the
marshal as ‘a hard-hearted savage, who has, to the disgrace of
Federalism, been elevated to a station where he can satiate his
barbarity on the misery of his victims.’ It was a faithful portrait. But
in concluding, the article charged that the Administration had declared
worthy of the confidence of the Government the Tories ‘who had shared in
the desolation of our homes and the abuse of our wives and daughters.’

Thus, one night there was a hammering on the door of Haswell’s house,
and he was confronted by petty officials and notified to prepare for a
journey to Rutland in the early morning. In feeble health, and
unaccustomed to riding, he was forced to mount a horse for the
sixty-mile ride to the capital. Through a cold October rain the sick man
jolted along in misery through the day, and it was near midnight when
the town was reached. With his clothing soaked, he begged permission to
spend the night at a hotel where he could dry it. This was curtly
refused. At midnight they pushed the sick man in wet clothing into a
cell. Responsible men of Rutland begged permission to go security to the
end that the editor might spend the night in decent quarters--it was
denied. The next morning he was hurried to trial at Windsor before Judge
Paterson who, on the Bench, continued to be a New Jersey politician. The
defense introduced evidence to prove the charge of brutality against the
marshal, and asked the Court for permission to summon McHenry and
General Drake of Virginia to prove that on one occasion the
Administration had acknowledged the policy of occasionally appointing
Tories to office. The Court refused permission; and having refused,
Paterson declared in the charge that ‘no attempt had been made at
justification’ of the reference to Tories. The jury was probably packed.
The verdict was promptly rendered--guilty of sedition. And Haswell was
sent to jail for two months. On the day of the expiration of his
sentence, a great throng assembled at the prison to testify to their
regard for Haswell and their contempt for the Sedition Law and its
sponsors. When the editor appeared at the door, the band played while
the crowd sang:

‘Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy.’

It was all too evident that, despite the Sedition Law, there were
‘Yankee Doodles’ to ‘keep it up’ too numerous for the jails.

The enforcement of the law in Massachusetts offered comedy, tragedy, and
farce--with at least one hero among the victims. There was something of
pathos even in the farce. An illiterate and irresponsible soldier of the
Revolution, David Brown, was wandering about the country reading and
distributing some foolish compositions of his own that were
incomprehensible in their incoherency. It was possible to detect some
dissatisfaction with the Administration, however. His was the grievance
of many others of the ragged Continentals of the ranks. He was a
Democrat. Fisher Ames, who was not a soldier, though old enough to have
been one, was outraged and alarmed over the foolish fellow’s activities,
and pretended to believe that he was one of the Jeffersonian ‘runners
sent everywhere to blow the trumpet of sedition.’ He wrote Gore, who had
grown rich buying up the paper of the private soldiers, of this
‘vagabond ragged fellow, who lurked about in Dedham telling everybody
the sins and enormities of the government.’ Ames understood that he
‘knew of my speculating connection with you;[1533] and how I had made my
immense wealth.’[1534] Finally he participated in the erection of a
liberty pole at Dedham bearing among its inscriptions the sinister
words, ‘No Stamp Tax, No Sedition.’ The authorities pounced upon him as
legitimate prey.

The next scene was laid in the courtroom in Boston. On the Bench sat the
fat, red-faced Chase, like an avenging angel who looked too often on the
wine when it was red. It was solemnly proved that Brown had writings of
his own hostile to the Administration policies; that he had paid to have
the inscription painted for the pole at Dedham; and that in the presence
of forty or fifty dangerous farmers he had been seen holding the ladder
while another ascended to nail the board on. There was no defense. Chase
glowered on the miserable illiterate, and, reminding him that he was at
the mercy of the Court, demanded the names of the miscreants who had
subscribed to his writings. Brown refused to betray the imaginary men
higher up, and Chase fined him four hundred dollars and sent him to jail
for a year and a half. Working entirely on his own initiative, the
unhappy wretch was buried in a cell and all but forgotten. The
Federalist papers recorded his conviction with gusto, albeit with sorrow
that such things could be. After sixteen months, he sent a pitiful
petition to Adams asking for a pardon, but it was refused. In February,
1801, he sent a second petition, which was ignored. After spending two
years in a cell, he was pardoned by Jefferson.[1535] This trial was a
farce.

Followed then the comedy. Among the desperate characters who had
assisted in the pole-raising at Dedham was Richard Fairbanks. A
thoroughly decent citizen, he was arrested and dragged tremblingly into
court. Most of the victims of the Sedition Law were unrepentant and
defiant, but Fairbanks was full of remorse. There may have been a bit of
cunning in his confession of past wickedness and his profession of
conversion. At any rate, the scene in court was not so threatening.
True, the stern-faced Chase looked down from the Bench, but there in the
room, ready to plead for mercy, was Fisher Ames. The charge was read,
confessed, and up rose Ames. Not, however, as a paid attorney did he
appear, but there was something to be said in extenuation for Fairbanks.
He realized ‘how heinous an offense it was.’ He had promised to be a
good citizen in the future. ‘His character has not been blemished in
private life,’ the orator said, ‘and I do not know that he is less a man
of integrity and benevolence than others. He is a man of rather warm and
irritable temperament, too credulous, too sudden in his impressions.’ He
had been seduced by the ‘inflammatory sophistry’ of the illiterate
Brown. ‘Besides,’ continued Ames, in his most virtuous tones, ‘men in
office have not been wanting to second Brown and to aggravate the bad
opinion of the government and the laws.... The men who had Mr.
Fairbanks’ confidence and abused it are more blameable than he. A
newspaper has also chiefly circulated there which has a pestilent
influence.’ Thus he had bad advice. ‘Although Mr. Fairbanks was
influenced like the rest and was criminal in the affair of the sedition
pole he had no concern in the contrivance. He ... has freely confessed
his fault and promised to be in future a good citizen.’ Having attacked
the Jeffersonians in Congress and out, and denounced ‘The Aurora’ or
‘Independent Chronicle,’ and implied that Fairbanks would vote and talk
right in the future, Ames sat down; and just as solemnly Chase,
commenting that ‘one object of punishment, reformation, has been
accomplished,’ fined him five dollars and sent him to jail for six
hours. Whereupon we may imagine Chase and Ames felicitating themselves
on having scared the Democratic and Jeffersonian devils out of one
sinner.

This was comedy.

The tragedy in Massachusetts was reserved for a more important
person--the editor of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ Thomas Adams, who was
printing one of the most powerful Jeffersonian papers in the country. He
had published an attack on the denunciation of the Virginia Resolutions
by the Massachusetts Legislature.[1536] The Essex Junto had been seeking
a chance at the throat of the editor. His paper had been keenly searched
for some excuse for action under the Sedition Law. In the autumn of 1798
he had been arrested and the effect had been provoking. In announcing
his arrest, Adams had promised his readers a full report of the trial,
and pledged himself to ‘always support the rights of the people and the
liberty of the press, agreeable to the sacred charter of the
Constitution.’[1537] When, four days later, he reported the postponement
of his trial, he was able to ‘thank our new subscribers whose patriotism
has led them to support the freedom of the press since the late
persecution.’[1538]

The political persecution of Adams had in no wise intimidated him. Every
issue of his paper was a clarion call to the faithful. If anything, he
raised his banner a little higher. The public, looking upon his arrest
as tyrannical and outrageous, rallied around him as never before. Eleven
days after his arrest, he reported an ‘unprecedented increase in
circulation,’ and pledged himself to carry on the fight. Not without
point did he quote, ‘A free press will maintain the majesty of the
people,’ for, as he explained, ‘this was originally written by John
Adams, President of the United States, for Edes and Gill’s Boston
Gazette when British Excises, Stamp Acts, Land Taxes, and Arbitrary
Power threatened this country with poverty and destruction.’[1539]
Courageous though he was, the persecution drained the editor’s weakened
vitality, and he was confined to his bed in a country house near Boston
when the attack on the Massachusetts Legislature was published. Though
too ill to be dragged into court, he was not too ill to announce the
second phase of the persecution in the language of defiance.
Double-spacing the announcement to make it stand out like a challenge,
he said: ‘The Chronicle is destined to persecution.... It will stand or
fall with the liberties of America, and nothing shall silence its
clarion but the extinction of every principle which leads to the
achievement of our independence.’[1540] Because the editor could not be
dragged from a sick bed, Abijah Adams, the bookkeeper, was arrested on
the ground that he had sold the papers and therefore published the
‘libel.’

Chief Justice Dana presided at the trial--as intolerant, politically,
but not as stupid and coarse as Chase. The prosecution based its action
on the common law of England, which the defense declared inconsistent
with the Constitution of Massachusetts, and hostile to the spirit of the
American Government. Dana rose to the occasion, not only attacking
Adams’s lawyers from the Bench, but assailing them through the
press.[1541] The result was inevitable. A verdict of guilt was promptly
reached, and Dana made the most of his opportunity in sentencing the
criminal. The defendant’s lawyers were denounced for ‘propagating
principles’ as ‘dangerous as those of the article on which the
indictment was based.’ Since the editor would not give up the name of
the author of the offensive article, Adams would have to suffer, and he
was sentenced to jail for thirty days, ordered to pay costs, and to give
bond for good behavior for a year. So shocking was the spirit of Dana in
passing sentence that he was challenged in the ‘Chronicle’ to publish
his speech.[1542] Adams editorially denounced the application of the
common law of England as ‘inconsistent with republican principles
contemplated and avowed in our Constitution, and inapplicable to the
spirit and nature of our institutions,’[1543] and promised ‘a regular
supply of the papers.’ ‘The Editor is on a bed of languishment, and the
bookkeeper in prison, yet the cause of liberty will be supported amid
these distressing circumstances.’

The ‘convict’ was hurried off to jail, and into a damp, unhealthy cell
where his feeble constitution threatened to succumb, until an indignant
protest from without forced the jailer to transfer him to a better. The
friends who flocked to see him were forced to convey their consolations
through double-grated doors. Day by day the paper went to press, its
spirit not one whit diminished. With the editor sinking under disease
and the anticipated wreckage of his property, and the bookkeeper sick in
jail and distressed over the condition of his wife and children, the
fight was waged with undiminished vigor.[1544] One day old Samuel Adams,
his Revolutionary spirit ablaze, flaunted his respect for the editor and
his contempt for the persecutors, by stalking to the jail and expressing
his admiration through the bars.[1545] That day Adams’s prison doors
were opened and he passed out to freedom; and the next day the readers
of the ‘Chronicle’ knew that ‘Abijah Adams was discharged from his
imprisonment after partaking of an adequate portion of his “birth-right”
by a confinement of thirty days under the operation of the common law of
England.’[1546] Within three weeks, Thomas Adams, one of the bravest
champions of democracy and the freedom of the press, was dead--his end
hastened by the persecution to which he had been subjected. Like
Benjamin Franklin Bache, he sank into his grave with an indictment under
the Sedition Law hanging over him.

VII

When Bache thus escaped the vengeance of his enemies, they turned to his
successor, William Duane, who soon proved himself a more vigorous
controversialist than his predecessor. A remarkable character was Duane,
entitled to a monument for his fight for the freedom of the press. Born
in America of Irish parentage, he was taken to Ireland on the death of
his father, and there he grew to manhood. His career previous to his
return to America was colorful and courageous. For a time he had been a
reporter for the London ‘Times’ in the press gallery of the House of
Commons, before establishing a newspaper in India which he edited with
such signal ability that the East India Company found it advisable to
resort to force and fraud to destroy his property and send him out of
the country. At length in sheer disgust he returned to America, and soon
became the editor of ‘The Aurora.’[1547]

One Friday night before the Monday on which the question of the repeal
of the Alien Law was to be considered in Congress, a number of citizens,
including some foreign-born, met in Philadelphia to arrange for a
memorial to Congress. On Sunday morning, Duane and three others,
including Dr. James Reynolds, appeared during services in the churchyard
of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church with the memorial and a few placards
requesting natives of Ireland in the congregation to remain in the yard
after the services to sign the petition. Some of these placards were
placed on the church and on the gates leading into the yard. Some
belated worshipers of the Federalist persuasion tore these down, and,
entering the church, warned the priest that seditious men were in the
yard planning a riot. The four men in the yard conducted themselves with
perfect decorum. When the congregation was dismissed, Duane and his
party had the memorial spread upon a tombstone. A few approached and
signed. Almost immediately, however, the terrorists among the members of
the church closed in upon the group, centering their attacks mostly upon
Reynolds, who was knocked down and kicked. Struggling to his feet,
Reynolds drew a revolver and prepared to defend himself, at which moment
officers reached the scene and the four men were hurried off to jail on
the charge of creating a seditious riot.

Before a great crowd at the State House, the trial was held, with
Hopkinson, the author of the war song, as special prosecutor, and the
men in the dock brilliantly defended by A. J. Dallas. The testimony
showed that there had been no disturbance until the mob charged upon the
men with the memorial; that the memorial itself was unexceptionable in
every way; that Reynolds had been warned a week before of a conspiracy
to murder him and had armed himself on advice of a member of Congress;
that none of the others carried a weapon of any sort; and it was shown
by the testimony of a priest that it was then the custom in Ireland to
post notices in churchyards, and for members of the church to transact
such public business in the yards after services. Members of the
congregation testified that they had wanted to sign; the priest that
the posting of the notice was not considered disrespectful to the
church. In a brilliant speech of sarcasm and invective, Dallas riddled
the prosecution, calling attention to attempts to intimidate lawyers
from appearing for the defense, charging the prosecution with being
inspired by partisan hate, and denouncing the Alien Law. Hopkinson
replied lamely, attacking immigrants and Democrats. The jury retired,
and in thirty minutes returned with a verdict of acquittal. The State
House rang with cheers. The case, however, had not been tried in a
Federal Court.[1548]

That, however, was only the beginning of the attempt to wreck and ruin
the leading Jeffersonian editor. John Adams and Pickering had been
planning to reach him by hook or crook. The latter wrote Adams that
Duane, though born in America, had gone to Ireland before the
Revolution; that in India he ‘had been charged with some crime’; and
that he had come to America ‘to stir up sedition.’ More--he was
‘doubtless a United Irishman,’ and in case of a French invasion the
military company he had formed would join the invaders. The picture was
as Adams would have had it painted. ‘The matchless effrontery of Duane,’
he wrote, ‘merits the execution of the Alien Law. I am very willing to
try its strength on him.’ This trial was never made, but two months
later the Federal Courts began to move against him. At Norristown,
Pennsylvania, with Bushrod Washington and Richard Peters on the Bench,
an indictment was brought against him for sedition.[1549] The case was
continued until June, 1800--and Duane went full steam ahead with his
attacks on the Federalist Party. The trial was again postponed, and in
October, 1800, he was indicted again--this time for having published a
Senate Bill of a peculiarly vicious if not criminal character which its
sponsors for sufficient reasons wished kept from the public. But it was
of no avail. He would not cringe or crawl or compromise or be silenced.
The cases against him were dismissed when Jefferson became President.
Many historians have belittled him; he fought brilliantly for
fundamental constitutional rights when men high in office, who are
praised, were conspiring to strike them down.

VIII

One day the Sedition snoopers fell upon an article by Dr. Thomas Cooper,
an Englishman by birth, a scientist and physician by profession, a man
of learning and culture, and a Jeffersonian. It referred to the early
days of Adams’s Administration when ‘he was hardly in the infancy of
political mistake.’ It charged Adams with saddling the people with a
permanent navy; with having borrowed money at eight per cent; referred
to his ‘unnecessary violence of official expression which might justly
have provoked war’; to his interference with the processes of a Federal
Court in the case of Robbins. And that was all. Adams had made mistakes,
had established a permanent navy, had borrowed money at eight per cent;
and many thought at the time that he had unduly interposed in the
Robbins case. But this was sedition in 1800.

Hustled into the Federal Court at Philadelphia, Cooper found the
red-faced Chase glowering upon him from the Bench--the same Chase who
had been charged by Hamilton with speculating in flour during the
Revolution. There was no denial of the authorship of the article. The
evidence in, Chase charged the jury in his most violent partisan manner.
There are only two ways to destroy a republic, he said: one the
introduction of luxury, the other the licentiousness of the press. ‘The
latter is more slow but more sure.’ Taking up the Cooper article, he
analyzed it in the spirit of a prosecutor. Here, thundered the Judge, we
have the opinion that Adams has good intentions but doubtful capacity.
Borrowed money ‘at eight per cent in time of peace?’ What--call these
times of peace? ‘I cannot suppress my feeling at this gross attack upon
the President. Can this be true? Can you believe it? Are we now in time
of peace? Is there no war?’[1550] The jury promptly returned a verdict
of guilty. The next day Cooper appeared for sentence. Asked by Chase to
explain his financial condition as that might affect the sentence, he
replied that he was in moderate circumstances, dependent on his
practice, which would be destroyed by imprisonment. ‘Be it so,’ he
continued. ‘I have been accustomed to make sacrifices to opinion, and I
can make this. As to circumstances in extenuation, not being conscious
that I have set down aught in malice, I have nothing to extenuate.’
Chase became suspiciously unctuous and oily. If Cooper had to pay his
own fine, that would be one thing; if his party had arranged to pay the
fine, that would be another. ‘The insinuations of the Court are ill
founded,’ Cooper replied with indignation, ‘and if you, sir, from
misapprehension or misrepresentation, have been tempted to make them,
your mistake should be corrected.’ Judge Peters, who had been squirming
through these amazing partisan comments of Chase, here impatiently
intervened with the comment that the Court had nothing to do with
parties. Whereupon Cooper was fined a thousand dollars and ordered to
jail for six months.[1551]

Duane instantly announced an early publication in pamphlet form of the
trial in full. ‘Republicans may rest completely assured,’ he wrote,
‘that they will have every reason to be satisfied with the effect of
this most singular trial on the mind of the public.’[1552] The pamphlet
appeared, and, as Duane had foreseen, the public was aroused. A man of
decent character and high professional standing was languishing in a
jail in the capital of the country for having told the truth and
expressed an opinion on a constitutional question. There were rumblings
and grumblings in the streets, and some uneasiness in Administration
circles. The hint went forth that an appeal for a pardon might receive
consideration, and one was put in circulation, when out from the
‘convict’s’ cell came a letter of protest. He wanted and would have no
petition for pardon. He believed with Adams that repentance should
precede pardon[1553] and he had no feeling of repentance. ‘Nor will I be
the voluntary cat’s-paw of electioneering clemency,’ Cooper continued.
‘I know that late events have greatly changed the outward and visible
signs of the politics of the party, and good temper and moderation is
the order of the day with the Federalists now, as it has always been
with their political opponents. But all sudden conversions are
suspicious, and I hope that Republicans will be upon their guard against
the insidious or interested designs of those who may wish to profit by
the too common credulity of honest intention.’[1554]

The petition was dropped. Cooper remained happily in his cell. His
incarceration was making votes for Jefferson. When, on the expiration of
his sentence, Cooper stepped into the daylight, he found a deputation of
his friends awaiting him at the door. He was escorted to a fashionable
hotel where a public dinner had been arranged to honor him and express
contempt for the Sedition Law. Two long tables were set, with Dr. James
Logan presiding over one, Thomas Leiper over the other. That night, as
the wine flowed, the men who would not be silenced drank to Cooper--to
Jefferson--to a Democratic victory.[1555]

Having distinguished himself as an American Lord Clare in the case of
Cooper, Chase proceeded southward, boasting along the way that he ‘would
teach the lawyers in Virginia the difference between liberty and
licentiousness of the press.’ He was going to try James Thomas Callender
for sedition on an indictment based on his pamphlet, ‘The Prospect
Before Us.’ This unsavory creature was hated quite as much for the
truths he told as for the lies he circulated, and there was nothing in
the section of his pamphlet on which he was indicted to shock any one
to-day. It was an attack on Adams in connection with the French war
hysteria, the navy, the army, the Robbins case. The only phrase that
startles one to-day is the reference to the hands of Adams ‘reeking with
the blood of the poor friendless Connecticut sailor.’[1556] The scenes
in the little Richmond courtroom were scandalous to excess. It was
understood that Chase had instructed the marshal ‘not to put any of
those creatures called Democrats on the jury,’ and his boasts concerning
Virginia lawyers had preceded him. The most brazen tyranny presided in
the case of Callender, and the lawlessness of the Judge was more
threatening than the licentiousness of the culprit. It was a political
inquisition, not a trial. The courtroom was thronged. The case was the
sole topic of conversation in the streets and taverns. The Democrats had
no misapprehensions of the nature of the trial, and three
extraordinarily able lawyers were there for the defense--John Hay, who
was afterwards to prosecute Burr, Nicholas, and William Wirt, already
well advanced toward that professional eminence which he so long
enjoyed. There was a dignity and courage in the aspect of these three
men that Chase could only interpret as a challenge. He had made his
boasts. He would teach these Virginia lawyers--and there was nothing
apologetic or fawning in the manner of Hay, Nicholas, or Wirt. The fact
that neither was there anything of insolence made matters worse. Feeling
himself on the defensive, Chase sought to conceal his embarrassment in
the brutality of his conduct.

The shameful story of that travesty of a trial has been often told, and
it played a part in the impeachment proceedings against Chase a little
later. He stormed, fumed, spluttered, and injected Federalist stump
speeches into the ludicrous proceedings. He refused the defense
permission to ask a prospective juror if he had formed and expressed an
opinion on the Callender pamphlet. ‘The question is improper and you
shall not ask it,’ he thundered. When John Taylor of Caroline was put on
the witness stand, Chase nervously demanded what the defense intended to
prove by the witness. He was told. ‘Put the question in writing and
submit it to me,’ he demanded. But why, asked Nicholas, when nothing of
the sort is required in questioning witnesses for the prosecution? ‘It’s
the proper procedure,’ fumed the Court. Keeping a firm rein on both his
temper and his contempt for the Court, Nicholas submitted three
questions in writing. One glance, and Chase ruled them out. The Virginia
lawyers showed their amazement. Even Chase could see it. ‘My country has
made me a Judge,’ he shouted, ‘and you must be governed now by my
opinion.’

William Wirt rose to submit an argument on the admissibility of the
evidence. He began with observations on the embarrassments of the
defense because Callender had been ‘presented, indicted, arrested, and
tried during this term and had not been able to procure testimony
essential to a proper defense.’ He even hinted at the precipitancy of
the Court.

‘You must not reflect on the Court,’ shouted Chase.

‘I am prevented from explaining to you [the jury] the causes which have
conspired to weaken our defense, and it is no doubt right that I should
be prevented, as the Court has so decided.’

Chase saw at once that he was not going to care much for this ‘young
man,’ as he contemptuously called him repeatedly. Wirt proceeded to an
attack on the constitutionality of the Sedition Law.

‘Take your seat, sir,’ stormed the livid-faced Chase. ‘Ever since I came
into Virginia I have understood that sort of thing would be urged, and I
have deliberated on it.’ Whereupon he produced a long manuscript and
prepared to read. ‘Hear my words,’ he admonished, glaring around the
courtroom. ‘I wish the world to know them--my opinion is the result of
mature reflection.’

Wirt undertook to argue the point--Chase gesticulated, stormed,
insulted--and William Wirt folded his papers, and resuming his seat
declined to continue. Hay took up the argument, to be met constantly
with barking interruptions, until he, too, in sheer disgust, folded his
papers and sat down.

‘Please to proceed,’ urged Chase, wondering perhaps if he had gone too
far with these Virginia lawyers, ‘and be assured that you will not be
interrupted by me, say what you will.’ Hay refused to continue the
farce.

Thus, throughout, the mobbing of Callender and his attorneys went on.
The result was conviction and a jail sentence.[1557]

Meanwhile, a serio-comedy in New York State which was working
effectively for the Democrats. In the early spring of 1800, John
Armstrong, author of the ‘Newburgh Letters,’ and until this time an
ardent Federalist, outraged by the brazen attempt to suppress free
speech and the freedom of the press, prepared a powerful and
vituperative petition for the repeal of the Sedition Law and sent it
into several counties to be circulated for signatures. In Otsego, then a
new and undeveloped part of the State, it was entrusted to Jedekiah
Peck, an eccentric character known to every man, woman, and child in the
county. Poor to poverty, he had combined the work of an itinerant
surveyor with that of a preacher, and was popular as both. Wandering
through the country surveying land by day, night found him in some
settler’s home preaching and praying, and, in the intervals between, he
talked politics. He had baptized the infant, preached the funeral
sermons for the dead, married the young, prayed for and with the old.
His sincerity was apparent, his innate kindliness manifest. Many smiled
at the diminutive old man, but most men and all children loved him.
Burr, who had a genius for using the right man in the right place, took
him up and had him sent to the Legislature as a Federalist.[1558]

Right joyously the little old man started on his rounds with the
petition. When his activity was made known to Judge William Cooper,
father of the novelist, and temperamentally as unfit for the Bench as a
large number of the Judges of the time, he boiled with rage. Instantly
he wrote the District Attorney of Peck’s heinous sedition. Immediately a
grand jury was empaneled in the city of New York. A bench warrant for
Peck’s arrest was issued. At midnight he was dragged from his bed,
placed in manacles like a dangerous criminal, and the two-hundred-mile
march to New York began. The roads were bad, progress was slow, the news
spread, and in every village and at every crossroads crowds poured forth
to look upon the pitiful spectacle and to sympathize with the victim.
Jefferson could not have planned a more effective campaign tour. The
plain people of the countryside knew Peck--and they turned away with a
sense of personal outrage. For five days the march continued--it was a
triumphant march for democracy.

Thus the uneducated, itinerant preacher and surveyor of Otsego County
made his contribution to the election of Jefferson, marching in manacles
to illustrate the Federalist conception of liberty.[1559]

Merrily the Terror sped along.

The New London ‘Bee,’ under the editorship of Charles Holt, a
Jeffersonian, had greatly annoyed the Federalists of the surrounding
States, and a remedy was now at hand. Had it not attacked the French
war--and therefore tried to prevent enlistments? Here was sedition. The
editor was arrested, his own brother summoned as a witness against him.
There was more than one War of the Roses in those days. The paper on
which he was indicted was furnished by two Federalist editors, one of
whom had two brothers on the jury that brought in the indictment. The
foreman of the grand jury was an Amos Bull who had been a British
commissary in New York during the Revolution.[1560] Bushrod Washington
presided at the trial. The defense undertook to show the Sedition Law
unconstitutional and the charges of the ‘Bee’ true. The friends of Holt
‘had collected from Dan to Beersheba to hear the trial and afford aid
and comfort to their brother.’ When he was quickly convicted and
sentenced to jail for three months and to pay a fine of two hundred
dollars, a Federalist paper smugly commented upon the ‘mildness of the
punishment’ and ‘the humanity of the Judges.’[1561] Like the other
victims of the Terror, Holt took his punishment standing up, with
shoulders thrown back. A few days before his trial he wrote boldly of
the things he had refrained from saying--‘the insults and threats
offered to peaceable inhabitants and helpless women in the neighborhood,
and the alarm and disturbance excited by firing in the streets and under
the windows at all hours of the night.’[1562]

During the two years of the Terror the press was sprinkled with brief
reports on arrests, mostly of Democratic editors. One at Mount Pleasant,
New York, was arrested ‘in the name of the President for reprinting a
paragraph from the New Windsor Gazette supposed to be a libel against
the President,’ and he was forced to give bond for four thousand
dollars.[1563] By November, 1798, it was announced that twenty-one
‘printers’ had ‘fallen victims to the ... Sedition Law.’[1564] In
enumerating the arrests that month, the ‘Chronicle’ commented that no
Federalist editor was included ‘because they vilify none but Jefferson,
Livingston, and Gallatin.’[1565] Everywhere men were being intimidated
into silence. Sometimes there was a touch of comedy to the Terror. One
poor wight was dragged into court because of a comment, when a salute
was fired in honor of Adams, that it was a pity the ball did not find
lodgment ‘in the seat of his pants.’

Strangely enough, there was no serious attempt to make use of the Alien
Law. We have seen that about the time of its passage many Frenchmen
chartered a boat to escape its operations, and America thus rid herself
of the peril of Volney. General Victor Collot, an officer in the army of
Rochambeau, escaped deportation by leaving voluntarily. The only appeal
to the Alien Law was by indirection in the case of John D. Burk, editor
of the ‘Time Piece,’ a democratic paper in New York City. He had left
his native Ireland to escape the terror there under Pitt, and finally
ran foul of the law here by charging that a letter of Gerry to Adams,
which the latter had sent to Congress, had been tampered with. The
terrorists were not slow to act. When the offensive article stared at
Pickering through his spectacles, he wrote the District Attorney: ‘If
Burk is an alien no man is a fitter object for the operation of the
Alien Law. Even if Burk should prove to be an alien it may be expedient
to punish him for his libels before he is sent away.’ He had already
been arrested for sedition, however, and the prosecution was finally
dropped on condition that he would leave the country. Instead of
leaving, he went into hiding, only emerging from his obscurity with the
inauguration of Jefferson.[1566]

Many of the terrorists were infuriated by the failure to use the Alien
Law for wholesale deportations. ‘Why in God’s name is the Alien Law not
enforced?’ wrote the intolerant Tracy to McHenry.[1567] Everywhere the
Sedition Law was keeping men ‘on the run.’ E. S. Thomas, learning that
Thomas Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ had been arrested for the
publication of an article by the former, fled to South Carolina just in
time.[1568] In the capital at Philadelphia, the Jeffersonians, fearing
an attack, met in secret and made plans for defense. Moreau De Saint
Merys, a scholarly Frenchman who kept a bookstore, was given keys to two
houses where he could take refuge should his own be attacked. He was
quite incapable of anything that would have made him amenable to the
law, and President Adams had not only lounged in his bookstore
frequently, but the two had exchanged copies of their books. Hearing
that Adams had written him down among the proscribed, Moreau appealed to
Senator Langdon for the reason. ‘No reason,’ grunted Langdon, ‘beyond
the fact that you are French.’ Finally, thanks to the courtesy of
Liston, the British Minister, Moreau secured a passport and left the
land of liberty with his books, maps, and papers.[1569]

Drunk with hate and a sense of power, the terrorists were running amuck.
At a banquet at Hartford in July, 1799, they thrilled to the toast: ‘The
Alien and Sedition Laws: Like the Sword of Eden may they point
everywhere to guard our country against intrigue from without and
faction from within.’[1570] And every Democrat knew that ‘faction’ was
the Federalist name for party, and ‘party’ meant the Jeffersonians.
Armed with the sword, the Federalists no longer bandied idle words. When
George Nicholas of Kentucky challenged Robert Goodhue Harper to a debate
through the press on the Sedition Law, the latter was merely amused.
‘The old proverb says, let them laugh who win; and for the converse of
the maxim the consolation of railing ought to be allowed to those who
lose,’ jeered Harper.[1571] Why argue? The courts were busy silencing
and jailing the Jeffersonians, suppressing free speech, striking down
the liberty of the press.

With the Democrats partly intimidated in the Eastern States, the honor
of leading the fight against these laws was reserved for Virginia and
the frontier States of Kentucky and Tennessee. Here mass meetings were
held throughout the autumn of 1798. In Woodford County, Kentucky, it was
declared ‘the primary duty of every good citizen to guard as a faithful
sentinel his constitutional rights and to repel all violations of them
from whatever quarter offered.’[1572] Four hundred gathered in Goochland
County, Virginia, and, with only thirty opposed, denounced the laws and
called upon the next Assembly to protest to Congress.[1573] At
Charlottesville, at the foot of Monticello, the people of Albemarle
County, Virginia, met to adopt resolutions of denunciation, and at
Lexington, Kentucky, they added their protest.[1574]
Richmond--Knoxville--followed. These resolutions were dignified and
forceful protests, sponsored by men of the first ability in the
communities acting. But in the House of Representatives at
Philadelphia, when Jeffersonians spoke in favor of the repeal of the
obnoxious measures, their voices were drowned by loud conversation,
coughs, laughter, the scraping of the feet of the Federalists.
‘Livingston, however, attempted to speak,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘but after a
few sentences the Speaker called him to order.... It was impossible to
proceed.’[1575] From 1798 until 1801, liberty was mobbed in America with
the zealous support of the Federal Courts, to the applause of the
church--and out of these conditions came the Virginia and Kentucky
Resolutions.

XII

On the adjournment of Congress in 1798, Jefferson returned to his
Virginia home profoundly impressed with the significance of the
obnoxious laws. He had supposed that the freedom of speech and the
liberty of the press had been guaranteed by the Constitution. That the
fundamental law was outraged by these measures he had no doubt. It was
his firm conviction that they had been enacted ‘as an experiment on the
American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the
Constitution,’ and that if it succeeded ‘we shall immediately see
attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall
continue in office for life.’[1576] He was not alone in this belief.

One day in the late summer a memorable conference was held at
Monticello. There, in the center of the group, was Jefferson. There,
too, was W. C. Nicholas, one of the foremost Jeffersonians of Virginia,
and John Breckenridge of Kentucky, who had returned on a visit to his
native State. It does not appear that Madison participated in this
conference, although he was in complete accord with its purpose. There
the plan was perfected to launch a movement of protest against the Alien
and Sedition Laws through the Legislatures of the various States in
resolutions pronouncing them violative of the Constitution and void.
While Jefferson, recalling the occasion a quarter of a century later,
thought that he had been pressed to frame such resolutions, it is
unlikely that the plan did not originate in his own mind. He had an
uncanny faculty for calling forth suggestions from others to meet his
views. On one point his memory was clear--there was to be the utmost
secrecy as to the part he played. That he did prepare a draft is
thoroughly established; that the draft finally submitted to the Kentucky
Legislature, while based on the Jeffersonian draft, was the work of John
Breckenridge has been convincingly maintained.[1577]

This dashing young leader of the Kentucky Democracy had been a marked
figure from his earliest youth. More than six feet in height, spare and
muscular in build, with the strength and grace of carriage born of his
wilderness training, he looked the leader of men. His hair, a rich
chestnut tending to auburn, disclosed something of his ardent
temperament and was not unlike that of his idolized chief. His brown
eyes could be stern or tender. His address was easy and dignified, and
his manner not without that touch of gravity which creates confidence in
the follower. There was much of tenderness and everything of generosity
in his nature to explain the love which enveloped him wherever he went.

Born of Scotch-Irish stock in Virginia thirty-eight years before, his
had been an extraordinary career. Scarcely was he out of college when,
without any effort on his part, he was elected to the Virginia House of
Delegates at the age of nineteen. When the House refused him his seat
because of his age, his loyal constituents elected him again. Again
refused his seat, he was elected for the third time, and seated. During
the next five years he distinguished himself by his industry and ability
no less than by the charm of his personality. It was about this time
that the young man ascended the hill to Monticello to sit at the feet of
the god of his idolatry. Jefferson was impressed by ‘the large scope of
his mind,’ his great store of information, and ‘the moral direction’ of
his ideas.[1578] There had to be something extraordinary in the man to
whom Gallatin looked a little later as the man best qualified to
continue the work of Jefferson, Madison, and himself.[1579]

At the bar Breckenridge distinguished himself by his erudition, his
industry, and the fluency and force of his arguments, which were notably
free from the floridity then so popular in the South. Elected to
Congress when thirty-three, he had abandoned his seat to remove to
Lexington, Kentucky, where he acquired a large plantation and settled
down to the practice of his profession. Almost immediately he was deeply
engaged in politics. He was made President of the Democratic Society of
Kentucky and became one of the most engaging of the Democratic leaders
of the pioneer State. Returning to Kentucky with the Jefferson draft, he
made some changes, and on November 8th presented the Resolutions to the
Legislature. The debate was brief, and on the 10th they were adopted.

The Virginia Resolutions, written by James Madison after conferences
with Jefferson, were introduced in the Legislature of that State by the
celebrated John Taylor of Caroline. These, too, were speedily adopted
after a brilliant debate in which their sponsor and Giles crossed swords
with the eloquent George Keith Taylor.

The primary purpose of these Resolutions was to concentrate attention on
the Alien and Sedition Laws. They were to be sent to the Legislatures of
all the States where they would be thoroughly discussed. Jefferson was
too wise to have expected a favorable response from Legislatures
dominated by the Federalists. But there would be debate, agitation,
newspaper controversy--the hated laws would have the searchlight turned
full upon them. Historians have been interested in these Resolutions
because they set forth in the most impressive manner the compact theory
of the Union on which the nullificationists and secessionists were to
seize much later as justification for their course. We are interested
here in the contemporary view and the political aspect. The reader of
to-day is apt to overlook the fact that they were primarily intended as
a protest against interference with the freedom of speech and the
liberty of the press, and only ‘incidentally they gave expression to a
theory concerning the nature of the federal union.’[1580] That this was
the general contemporary interpretation is shown in the actions of the
other Legislatures. Thus Maryland, Federalist, rejected the Resolutions
as ‘highly improper’ because ‘a recommendation to repeal the Alien and
Sedition Laws would be unwise and impolitic.’[1581] Thus Delaware,
Federalist, dismissed them as a ‘very unjustifiable interference with
the general government.’ Thus New Hampshire, Federalist, declared the
obnoxious laws ‘constitutional and ... highly expedient.’ The
Federalists of Rhode Island pronounced them ‘within the powers delegated
to Congress and promotive of the welfare of the United States.’

Only in Massachusetts did the Federalists make a comprehensive and
argumentative reply to the effect that the constitutionality of measures
could only be passed upon by the Supreme Court. The Alien and Sedition
Laws were defended as in no wise interfering with the liberty of the
press. And here, strangely enough, Democrats were found to support the
Resolutions in speeches of no mean merit. In John Bacon of Berkshire the
Jeffersonians had their sole representative in the State Senate.
Formerly a minister of the Old South Church, and a speaker of some
ability, he delivered a carefully prepared speech assailing the
constitutionality of the oppressive laws, and gave it to the
press.[1582] Dr. Aaron Hill of Cambridge, a Jeffersonian in the House,
acted similarly in that body--and on both Hill and Bacon the floodgates
of falsehood and abuse were opened. In an open letter to Bacon in the
‘Centinel,’ he was charged with having been a Tory, with having
quarreled with the congregation at the Old South, with having owned, as
slaves, a married couple, and with having sold the husband into a
distant State.[1583] When Bacon proved the charges shamelessly false,
the ‘Centinel’ took no notice.[1584] Dr. Hill fared quite as badly when
students from Harvard exercised their learning by smashing the windows
and casements of his home.[1585] And it was at this juncture that Thomas
Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ was indicted and Abijah Adams was
thrown into a cell for criticizing the action of the Legislature.[1586]

Everywhere the Federalist papers made the Resolutions the occasion for a
justification of the Alien and Sedition Laws; everywhere the
Jeffersonians, usually refraining from a discussion of the theory of
the Federal Union advanced, made them the pretext for a denunciation of
the laws. And significantly enough, it was reserved for the favorite
Federalist organ of ‘Porcupine’ to preach and all but urge secession.
Replying to a correspondent who had denied the right of secession,
‘Porcupine’ said: ‘Does he imagine that the industrious and orderly
people of New England will ever suffer themselves to be governed by an
impious philosopher or a gambling profligate imposed upon them by
Virginia influence? If he does, he knows very little of New England. The
New Englanders know well that they are the rock of the Union. They know
their own value; they feel their strength, and they will have their full
share of influence in the federal government, or they will not be
governed by it. It is clear that their influence must decrease; because
... the Middle and Southern States are increasing in inhabitants five
times as fast as New England is. If Pennsylvania joins her influence to
that of New England the balance will be kept up; but the moment she
decidedly throws it into the scale with Virginia the balance is gone,
New England loses her influence in the national Government, and she
establishes a Government of her own.’[1587] This reflects the spirit of
the times when the two parties faced each other for the decisive battle
of 1800. The Alien and Sedition Laws and the Terror were issues; the
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions played scarcely any part at all.

CHAPTER XVIII

ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS

Meanwhile, the Federalist leaders, having, as they thought, cowed and
crushed the Democrats, were engaged in an internecine strife for
control. There was to be war--at all hazards a war. It was to be a
Federalist war, with Jeffersonians rigidly excluded from all places of
command. But more than that, it had to be a war personally conducted by
Alexander Hamilton--with no unseemly interference from John Adams. This
was the grim determination of the radical Federalists everywhere, even
the Essex Junto, in the President’s own State, sharing it with the three
leading members of the Adams Cabinet. Thus, when Adams one day casually
asked Pickering who should be made Commander-in-Chief of the army, and
the spectacled Puritan unhesitatingly answered, ‘Colonel Hamilton,’
there was an ominous silence. When, on another occasion, the same
question elicited the identical answer, with a similar silence, even
Pickering must have sensed the situation. But when, after a third
question had brought the same answer, and Adams, a little annoyed, had
rejected the suggestion with the sharp observation, ‘It is not his turn
by a great deal,’ Pickering might have dropped his plans without
disgrace.[1588] But nothing was more remote from his intentions. It was
at this time that the conspirators, including the three members of the
Cabinet, put their heads together to devise ways and means of forcing
the appointment of their idol. The chief command would naturally be
offered to Washington, who would accept the position in an honorary
sense, but old age and infirmities would make his activities and
authority but perfunctory. The important thing was to secure the second
position for Hamilton--and even there was a rub. Adams was prejudiced.

Then, one day, Adams ordered McHenry to Mount Vernon to proffer the
chief command to Washington, with a request for advice in the formation
of the officers’ list. The names of several eligibles for the leading
posts, enumerated by Adams, might be mentioned. Hamilton was among them,
but he was fourth on the list. That day McHenry hastened to Pickering,
and the conspiracy against the President in his own household began to
unfold. It was agreed that Pickering should send a personal letter on
ahead urging Hamilton for second place, McHenry should reënforce
Pickering’s plea in person, Hamilton should be instantly notified and a
letter from him should be delivered to Washington along with the
commission from Adams. Thus, when the smug-faced little War Secretary,
more familiar with the pen of the rhymester than with the sword of the
soldier, bade his chief adieu and set out upon his mission, he was the
messenger of his chief’s dearest enemy, prepared to exhaust his
ingenuity in thwarting the plans of the man of whom he was a subordinate
and on whose mission he went forth.

As early as June, Washington had planned to make Hamilton
Inspector-General, but without placing him ahead of Pinckney or Knox,
both of whom outranked him in the old army.[1589] Just what treachery
McHenry practiced as he sat on the veranda at Mount Vernon those July
days will never be positively known. That he pleaded the cause of
Hamilton against the wishes of his chief there can be no doubt. That it
was he who suggested that Washington should make his own acceptance
conditional on having absolute power in the selection of his
subordinates is more than probable. At any rate, when he returned to
Philadelphia he carried in Washington’s handwriting the names of the
three Major-Generals--Hamilton, Pinckney, and Knox, in the order given.
In this order Adams, who assumed that their relative positions would be
determined by himself, sent them to the Senate and they were confirmed.

Soon the Federalist camp was in fermentation as to whether Knox, favored
by the President, or Hamilton, preferred by the party bosses, should be
second in command. Pinckney, who accepted slights with the same contrite
spirit with which his brother had stepped aside for Jay in London,
agreed to serve under the Federalist leader, but Knox, not so humble,
refused, and the crisis came. Personally fond of Knox, the quarrel was
embarrassing to Washington, but it had never been the habit of the
Hamiltonians to spare him where their wishes were involved. Soon
Hamilton was bombarding Mount Vernon with letters strikingly lacking in
the spirit of humility. His claims were superior to those of Knox or
Pinckney, and the Federalists preferred him to the former.[1590] ‘If I
am to be degraded beneath my just claims in public opinion, ought I
acquiesce?’ he wrote the sympathetic Pickering.[1591] To McHenry he
wrote that he would not surrender the first place to which he ‘had been
called by the voice of the country’;[1592] to Washington that the
Federalists of New England favored him over Knox.[1593]

All the while the three leading members of the Cabinet were concocting
plans for the humiliation of Adams, taking their orders from Hamilton,
who, from his law office in New York, was directing the fight of the
President’s trusted advisers against their chief. One day the angels
looked down and smiled through tears on the spectacle of McHenry writing
a letter to Knox fixing his status, from a model in the handwriting of
Alexander Hamilton.[1594] As Adams stubbornly held his ground, one by
one all the Hamiltonians of consequence were drawn into the conspiracy
against him.

One evening the secretarial conspirators sat about a table phrasing a
persuasive note to Adams which Wolcott, the most consummate deceiver of
the three, should sign and send as his personal view. ‘Public opinion’
favored Hamilton, Washington preferred him, and ‘Knox [has] no popular
character even in Massachusetts.’[1595] Having dispatched this cunning
letter, Wolcott immediately wrote his real chief in New York that
‘measures have been taken to bring all right,’ and requesting Hamilton
neither to do nor to say anything ‘until you hear from me.’[1596]
Another little caucus of conspirators in Boston: present, Cabot, Ames,
and Higginson; purpose, the framing of a letter to Adams that Cabot
should sign, assuring the President of a ‘remarkable uniformity of
sentiment’ in New England for Hamilton over Knox.[1597] Having sent this
letter, Cabot wrote confidentially to Pickering suggesting that General
Wadsworth, who was ‘accustomed to tell [Knox] his faults,’ should be
enlisted in the cause.[1598] Meanwhile Pickering, more sinister, if less
deceptive than the others, was seeking to intimidate his chief by having
Hamiltonian Senators declare that the officers had been confirmed with
the understanding that Hamilton stood at the head.[1599]

All this time, Iago-like letters were going forth from members of the
Cabinet to Washington conveying the impression that Adams was
contemptuously indifferent to the great man’s wishes. The effect was all
that could have been desired. In a surprisingly offensive note,
Washington wrote peremptorily to the President demanding to know ‘at
once and precisely’ what was to be expected.[1600] Such a letter from a
less popular idol would have elicited an answer sharp and decisive; but,
taking discretion for the wiser course, Adams swallowed his pride and
wrote a conciliatory note, not neglecting, however, to remind the man
who had presided over the Constitutional Convention that under the
Constitution the President, and no one else, ‘has the authority to
determine the rank of the officers.’[1601] Thus the issue was closed,
with Hamilton triumphant, but with Adams awaiting only an opportunity
for revenge. The tiny cloud that had appeared in the beginning of the
Administration was now dark and large and threatening.

Having won with Hamilton, the Federalist leaders now turned to another
part of their programme--the rigid exclusion of Jeffersonians from
commissions in the army. This was to be a Federalist war, nothing less.
Even Washington, who had, by this time, become a partisan Federalist,
was in sympathy with the view that the friends of Jefferson, Madison,
Hancock, and Sam Adams should be proscribed. This appears in his
consultations with John Marshall as to the personnel of the army,[1602]
and in a letter to McHenry referring to the ‘erroneous political
opinions’ of an applicant.[1603] This enlistment of Washington in the
proscriptive policies of the Federalists is directly traceable to the
Iagos who were writing him all the while. Hamilton was solemnly assuring
him that the Democrats were ‘determined to go every length with France’
and to ‘form with her a perpetual offensive and defensive alliance and
to give her a monopoly of our trade.’[1604]

Thus one day Adams sat in conference with Washington on the organization
of the army. Knowing Aaron Burr as a brave and able officer anxious to
fight, he wished to recognize the Democrats by giving him a commission.
Washington, much under the influence of Hamilton, conceded Burr’s
capacity, but opposed his appointment because he was a master of
intrigue. Through the mind of Adams, hampered in his plans at every
turn, flashed the vivid memory of how his predecessor had forced him to
humiliate his own friends in the appointment of Hamilton--‘the most
restless, impatient, artful, indefatigable, and unprincipled intriguer
in the United States.’ But--as he afterward wrote--he was ‘not permitted
to nominate Burr.’[1605] Here again the traitors in the Cabinet had
played their part.[1606]

But the war was not to be national, but Federalist. ‘Every one of them
[Democrats] ought to be rejected, and only men of fair property employed
in the higher and more confidential grades,’ wrote a Federalist
Representative to Wolcott.[1607] When Adams’s son-in-law applied for a
commission his application was held until he sent a certificate that he
had not interfered in a gubernatorial election in New York.[1608] So
zealously did the minor politicians enter into this policy of
proscription that some of the wiser leaders began to take alarm. Even a
friend of McHenry at Baltimore was moved to protest. ‘They seemed to
imagine that nothing was left to be done but to exterminate every one
who had been on the Democratic side’ he complained.[1609] Even Hamilton
finally thought fit to call for a moderation of the programme. ‘It does
not seem advisable,’ he wrote McHenry, ‘to exclude all hope and to give
to appointments too absolute a party feature.’[1610] But there was no
relenting in party circles, and no one had done more to arouse this
fanatical spirit than Hamilton himself.

The climax of stupidity was reached in the case of Frederick A.
Muhlenberg, former Speaker of the House, a leader and oracle among the
Germans of Pennsylvania, but no blind follower of Federalism. In a
spirit of pure patriotism he had personally offered the service of his
sword to Adams, whose wish to accept it was again thwarted by
Washington, acting under the inspiration of the Federalist leaders.
Whereupon Muhlenberg marched with the Germans as a body into the
Jeffersonian camp and enlisted for another war.[1611]

Under this proscriptive program the Jeffersonians remained mute but for
a few sarcastic comments in their press. ‘General Washington must have
some very keen reflection,’ said the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘in taking
command of the army of the present day, in seeing so many new friends
who were his old enemies during the Revolution.’[1612] When it was
reported that Robert Goodhue Harper had been made Commissioner-General,
it chortled, ‘What lawyer would not plead for such a fee?’[1613] And it
had reflected on Adams’s ‘pretence’ for piety in connection with his
appointment of Hamilton, ‘who published a book to prove that he was an
adulterer.’[1614]

Bitter as were the reflections of Adams on reading such observations, it
could have mattered little to Hamilton. Everything he had started out to
get he got. He wanted a war with France--and got it. He wanted the
command directly under Washington as he had wanted nothing else in his
life--and got it, by striding to his sword over the humiliated pride of
the President. He wanted an army of fifty thousand men, and, if he fell
short in this, he nevertheless had an army. He was on the crest of the
wave, the most powerful man in America, and he was happy.

III

Feeling that supreme fortune was within his grasp, Hamilton threw all
his enthusiasm and vitality into the task of perfecting the army and
organizing the Nation for war. ‘The law has abandoned him, or rather he
has forsaken it,’ wrote a friend to King.[1615] Preparing the plan for
the fortification of New York Harbor, he personally superintended its
execution. He had worked out to the minutest detail the organization of
the army and all he lacked was men and a declaration of war. But alas,
he was confronted on every hand by disheartening difficulties. The
recruiting fell pathetically short of anticipations, the War Department
under the Secretary of his own choosing was pitifully inefficient, and,
while the army was woefully below the provisions of Congress, even the
fragment was not adequately clothed or provisioned, and there was a
deficiency of tents. In a rage, Hamilton wrote angrily to McHenry: ‘Why,
dear friend, why do you suffer the business of providing to go on as it
does? Every moment proves the insufficiency of the existing plan and the
necessity of auxiliaries. I have no doubt that at Baltimore, New York,
Providence, and Boston additional supplies of clothing may promptly be
procured and prepared by your agents, and it ought to be done, though it
may enhance the expense. ‘Tis terrible ... that there should be wants
everywhere. So of tents. Calls for them are repeated from Massachusetts
where better and cheaper than anywhere else they can certainly be
provided.’[1616]

The truth is that the hysteria for getting at the throat of the French
democracy was over almost as soon as it began, and the masses commenced
to reflect on the cost, as the war measures grew apace. Jefferson,
noting the increasing boldness of opposition in Pennsylvania, where
petitions were signed by four thousand people protesting against the
Alien and Sedition Laws, standing armies, and extraordinary war powers
for the President, and observing similar unrest in New Jersey and New
York, and ‘even in New Hampshire,’ was fearful of insurrection. ‘Nothing
could be so fatal,’ he wrote. ‘Anything like force would check the
progress of public opinion.’[1617]

When Wolcott tried to float a loan, he found the moneyed men cold to the
regular legal rate of interest, for their patriotic passion had suffered
a chill when it came to cash. After all, business was business, and why
should the Federalist men of money fail to get in on the profits? It was
not hard to persuade Wolcott, who had a sentimental weakness for the
financiers, and he could see nothing unreasonable in a demand for eight
per cent. The rates for stocks were good, commercial prospects were
alluring, and after all, eight per cent would be but ‘moderate terms.’
Adams, sore from the unmerciful pummeling from his party, was outraged
at such a rate,[1618] but Wolcott persisted--it was the only way. War
was war as business was business. Finally, in sheer disgust, Adams
capitulated to necessity with the exclamation: ‘This damned army will be
the ruin of this country; if it must be so, it must; I cannot help it.
Issue your proposals as you please.’[1619] When Hamilton had urged that
all the resources of revenue be seized upon, Adams thought him mad, but
it soon became evident that something of the sort would be
necessary.[1620]

Aha, said the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘“millions for defence but not
one cent for tribute.” This has been the language of those who are in
favor of war. The patriotism of such persons is every day becoming more
and more evident. A loan of five million has been attempted, but instead
of the old legal rate of six per cent these modern patriots have
required the moderate premium of Eight. At this rate we shall soon
verify the first part of the motto, viz., “millions for defence,” but
whether the latter is not violated by the extra interest is left to the
decision of those who are to bear the burdens.’[1621] And they who were
to pay the piper gave an acquiescent nod.

The taxes which the war party had levied with such patriotic abandon
aroused bitter resentment. Among the Germans of Pennsylvania, the taxes
on houses, lands, and windows were considered the beginning of a system
which would extend to everything. The immediate outcome was an
insurrection led by John Fries, an ignorant son of a German farmer, and
the marching of the troops and the easy dissipation of the incipient
rebellion against the assessors.[1622]

About that time Hamilton arrived in Philadelphia. ‘For what purpose?’
inquired ‘The Aurora.’ ‘Can it be to foment another insurrection and
thereby to increase the energies of the Government? What distinguished
citizen is there in the counties of Northampton and Bucks that he wishes
to glut his vengeance upon? Does he wish that Easton may be burned to
afford him a pretext for military execution?’[1623] If there were no
executions, the people had a touch of military rule. A troop of horse
from Lancaster committed outrages on citizens at Reading, and Jacob
Schneider, a local editor, commented with severity upon their actions.
On their return through Reading these troops went to the editor’s
office, tore his clothing from his back, dragged him to the Market
House, and were preparing to give him twenty-five lashes when troops
from Philadelphia interfered.[1624] The brutality of the soldiers
shocked the country. The prisoners taken on the expedition were treated
with the same unnecessary cruelty which marked the treatment of the
rebels in the Whiskey Insurrection. Ignorant or besotted with partisan
passion, under a lax discipline, and contemptuous of the civil
government, many soldiers strutting about in uniforms, insulting and
attacking citizens, convinced the majority of the people that the
Jeffersonians were right in their observations upon the evils of
standing armies.

No one had denounced these excesses with greater vehemence than William
Duane, editor of ‘The Aurora.’ One day some petty officers in uniforms,
swords and pistols on their persons, said by Duane to have numbered
thirty and by his enemies to have been fifteen, entered his office. With
drawn pistols the compositors and pressmen were driven into a corner and
kept at bay by a part of the assailants. Some grasped and held Duane’s
hands while others beat him over the head with the butt end of a pistol.
Then with ten gallant soldiers participating in the assault on the one
man, he was brutally dragged downstairs into Franklin Court, where the
assault was repeated. He was knocked down and kicked. The editor’s
request to be permitted to fight any one of them was ignored, and had
not his sixteen-year-old son thrown himself across his father’s body,
and a number of Democrats arrived to give battle, he would have been
murdered in cold blood. That night armed Democrats went to the ‘Aurora’
office prepared to give shot for shot if an attempt should be made to
destroy the plant.[1625] ‘Porcupine’ chortled, and young Fenno declared
that ‘the punishment of this caitiff is of no more consequence than
that of any other vagabond.’ Besides, did not every one know that ‘the
infernal Aurora and the United Irishman who conducts it’ were ‘expressly
chargeable with the Northampton Insurrection?’[1626]

With such encouragement from the organs of the Administration, these
outrages by soldiers soon became commonplace wherever they were
assembled, with uniformed ruffians swaggering down the streets pushing
civilians into the gutters, taking liberties with women, picking
quarrels while drunk, and slashing and lunging with dirk and
sword.[1627] This bullying spirit affected the petty officers and
reached a climax when civil officials, armed with a warrant for a thief
who had escaped to the soldiers near Philadelphia, were literally kicked
out of the camp, their warrant cursed and trampled.[1628] With the tide
rising rapidly against both the war and the army, the recruiting lagged.
Adams in later years recalled that the army was as unpopular ‘as if it
had been a ferocious wild beast let loose upon the nation to devour
it.’[1629] With the recruiting officers putting forth their utmost
efforts, ‘with all the influence of Hamilton, reënforced by the magical
name of Washington,’ they were unable to ‘raise one half of their ...
little army.’[1630] Duane wrote that before the law creating the army
passed ‘there were 15,000 applications for commissions--since the
passing of the law there have been only 3000 soldiers.’[1631] There is
more than a touch of irony in the fact that while the Administration
papers were vilifying the Irish, ‘three fifths of the men enlisted were
Irish immigrants.’[1632]

But there was another reason for the failure in recruiting--the people
soon concluded that some one had cried ‘wolf’ when there was no wolf. No
one, including Hamilton, believed that France had the most remote notion
of warring on the United States. The impression grew that the army was
intended for purposes other than the protection of the country from a
foreign foe. Meanwhile, the taxes were bearing hard, the national debt
was mounting and the passion for peace returned. Right gallantly the war
party sought to reawaken the fine frenzy of the hysterical days of the
X Y Z papers. The preachers were as distressed over the possibility of
peace as the politicians, and a convention of ministers in Boston issued
a war cry. ‘You will see by these things that the clergy are not asleep
this way,’ wrote a Massachusetts man to Wolcott. ‘They ought everywhere
to be awake.’[1633] From the New York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ came a
pathetic attempt to sweep back the rising tide for peace: ‘The necessity
in times like the present in cherishing the war spirit ... is
evident.’[1634] Apropos of the report that the French were ready to make
every concession to our interest and pride, the ‘Centinel’ in Boston
sent forth the warning, ‘The trying time is now approaching’;[1635] but
the rabble, as the masses were called, could see nothing distressing in
winning a war without the loss of a drop of blood. Fenno’s ‘Gazette,’
commenting on the business stagnation, promised that ‘a war with France
would within two months revivify every department of society, commerce
would be invigorated, the funds would rise, and every employment of life
would receive new vigor.’[1636] This sordid note he was soon to strike
again.[1637] But it was all unavailing. The enlistments dwindled to
nothing, common soldiers were actually cheering the Democratic Governor
in the streets of Philadelphia, no one feared an invasion, and, as
Wolcott confided to Fisher Ames, ‘no one has thought it prudent to say
that the army is kept to suppress or prevent rebellions.’[1638] To make
matters all the worse, desertions multiplied until the harassed McHenry
was writing Hamilton urging executions. The little rhymester was far
beyond his depths, scolded by Washington, kicked like a flunky by
Hamilton in one or two letters a day. But the idea of shooting a
deserter was a bit too high-toned for Hamilton. ‘There must be some
caution,’ he wrote, ‘not to render our military system odious by giving
it the appearance of being sanguinary.’[1639] Adams was prepared for
extreme measures, but it was decided to leave the decision with Hamilton
and McHenry--which meant with Hamilton. ‘If the virtuous General
Hamilton is determined upon shooting every soldier who deserts,’ said
‘The Aurora,’ ‘Billy Wilcox’s court martial will be kept at pretty
constant duty. In a Daily Advertiser of last week no less than ten of
these strayed gentlemen are advertised for apprehension at $10 a
head.’[1640]

But Hamilton was too wise to shoot.

The war cry was sinking to a hoarse whisper when Dr. James Logan, who
had entertained the Washingtons, and who was a follower of Jefferson,
quietly slipped out of Philadelphia one day and sailed for France--and
the war hawks were in a frenzy. When Logan, at his own expense and
wholly on his own volition, went to Paris, it was to determine the state
of the public mind there for himself. He was a leading citizen, his
family familiar to society, his home one of the most cultured in the
community, and, aside from being a friend of the French democracy, he
was a Quaker and an enemy of war. He felt that the country had been
deceived by war propaganda, and he determined to find out for himself.

The war wing of the Federalist Party knew that an investigation in Paris
was the one thing they could not afford. No one knew better that war was
unnecessary and that the French were ready if not eager to recede.
Harrison Gray Otis knew it best of all because his fellow Federalist of
Boston and classmate, Richard Codman, was writing him from Paris of the
French disposition for peace and conciliation. But this was being
carefully concealed from the American people. Thus, when Logan sailed it
was clearly the cue for the war party to hint darkly of weird
conspiracies with the French and a factional embassy from the Democrats.
Soon Harper, who had a supersensitive nose for conspiracies and treason,
was hinting mysteriously on the floor of the House of a traitorous
correspondence between the French Directory and the Jeffersonian Party.
The truth is that, when Logan foolishly made a mystery of his departure
and almost surreptitiously stole out of Philadelphia, he carried letters
from Jefferson and Governor McKean. Four or five days before his
departure he had informed Jefferson of his purpose and asked for letters
of introduction and a certification of his citizenship. It was not a
secret that Jefferson was opposed to a preventable war, but no
instructions were given the Doctor, no communication was sent by
Jefferson, and there was no conspiracy at all.[1641] Thus, on his own
volition Logan went to Paris, talked with Otis’s Federalist friend
Codman and other Americans, conversed with leading Frenchmen, dined with
Merlin, met Talleyrand, and ascertained, as he had expected, that peace
could be preserved with honor. A simple, honest man, with none of the
crooked mental twists of the professional politician, he returned with
the confident expectation that the President and his advisers would be
glad to get the benefit of his observations. He reached Philadelphia to
find himself the object of immeasurable abuse.

Not doubting that Pickering would be glad to have his impressions, Logan
went first to him. This was, in truth, a ludicrous performance, and a
Federalist paper was moved to mirth because he had ‘actually unfolded
his budget to Pickering’ and ‘needless to say’ returned ‘with a bug in
his ear.’[1642] Going on to Trenton, the temporary seat of government,
he saw Washington, to be received with more than his customary coldness.
He had a message from Lafayette to Washington. ‘Aye,’ said the General.
And one from Kosciusko. ‘Aye,’ said Washington. Whereupon Logan
courteously proffered him the use of his home, which the Washingtons had
often found agreeable, while in Philadelphia, to have his offer curtly
declined. Even Pinckney haughtily refused the use of Logan’s carriage
when the General was seeking a conveyance to the capital. ‘This fellow
Logan had the unparalleled effrontery to offer the General a seat in his
carriage,’ sneered a war paper.[1643] Some historians insist that Adams
treated him contemptuously, and this seems probable in the light of the
latter’s letter to Pickering,[1644] albeit Gibbs records that Adams was
much impressed with Logan’s story and with his sincerity and
candor.[1645] The letter was written to Pickering, however, before the
interview was granted.

When Congress met, Logan found himself the subject of a bitter debate
brought on by the introduction of the so-called ‘Logan Law’ prohibiting
unofficial meddling in international affairs. Harper had followed his
cue and found his conspiracy. Logan had actually presented a paper to
the Directory as from one having authority. The story was all too thin,
the facts too badly twisted, and the Jeffersonians under the leadership
of Gallatin showed their teeth. The climax came when Harper read the
paper which Logan was presumed to have presented. Then, through frank
letters in ‘The Aurora,’ Logan brought out the truth to the discomfiture
of the war hawks. In view of the scurvy treatment he has received, his
own statement is one of value. He had been met at Hamburg by Lafayette,
who had furnished him with the means to proceed to Paris. There he found
negotiations at an end. Knowing no law, ‘moral or political,’ that
prevented him from serving his country, he had sought interviews with
leading characters and found France anxious for peace. Whereupon he had
suggested the lifting of the embargo on American shipping detained in
French ports and the release of American sailors held prisoners. He had
not gone to Paris ‘at the direction or on the request or on the advice
of any person whatever.’ He went for his own pleasure, on his own views,
and at his own expense.[1646] Not only had the memorial Harper had read
to the house not been presented by him, it had not been written by him,
but by a good Federalist who was an intimate friend and correspondent of
Harrison Gray Otis, and he had refused the request to present it on the
ground of its ‘having too much the appearance of an official act.’[1647]
The absolute veracity of this story was known to Otis, who was intimate
with Harper, for he had a letter from Codman in verification, and to the
effect that Logan had told Talleyrand that in the event of war all
parties in America would rally around the Government ‘and oppose all its
enemies.’[1648]

Thus there was a conspiracy, a peculiarly ugly conspiracy, of the war
hawks to ruin an honest, patriotic, if Quixotic man because of his
interference with their plans to manufacture a needless and therefore a
criminal war.

But there was a special reason for the war party’s rage over Logan.
About this time Elbridge Gerry, one of the three envoys, who had stayed
over in Paris on the invitation of Talleyrand, had returned with a
similar story. The Federalists had been outraged by his failure to leave
with his colleagues, and on his return to his home in Cambridge he
found himself socially ostracized. Adams, who was his friend, had
severely condemned him for continuing his conferences in Paris.[1649] So
bitter was the feeling against him, that the war party did not scruple
to terrorize his family in his absence. His wife received anonymous
letters charging that a woman was responsible for his lingering in
Paris. With only women and children in his house, their nights were made
hideous with yells and bonfires under their windows; and one morning
Mrs. Gerry looked out of the window on a miniature guillotine smeared
with blood. On his return, Gerry had gone to Philadelphia and left his
dispatches, which Pickering had published with his intemperate comments.
The Federalists were well pleased with Pickering’s excoriation.

And Jefferson? So different was his conception of public opinion that he
was delighted. Seizing upon the Gerry correspondence as a complete
answer to the X Y Z papers, he wrote Edmund Pendleton that it was too
voluminous for the masses, and urging him to prepare ‘a capitulation ...
stating everything ... short, simple, and leveled to every capacity ...
so concise, as, omitting nothing material, may yet be printed in
handbills, of which we could print and disperse ten or twelve thousand
copies under letter covers, through all the United States by the members
of Congress when they return home.’[1650]

Meanwhile, Gerry had hastened to Quincy, and in the rambling frame house
of the President was going over the situation with him.

The restoration of peace with France would mean the end of the army
created with so much expense and trouble. So determined were the
Hamiltonians on war that they were ready to wreck the Federalist Party
on the issue. Many explanations have been offered. Wolcott had hinted in
his letter to Ames that an army was wanted for domestic use.[1651] That
was the common charge of the Democrats. That there was another and more
portentous reason we may be sure, albeit the public, and even John
Adams, was ignorant of it.

At that time a queer little Latin-American soldier of fortune, Francesco
de Miranda, was living in London, playing about Downing Street, and
conferring with Rufus King, the American Minister, who, next to Morris,
was the ablest of Hamilton’s lieutenants. There was a possibility that
at any time England might be forced to war on Spain should that country
enter into the struggle on the side of France. The United States was
then engaged in a quarrel with Spain. It was the idea of Miranda to
enlist England and the United States in a grand revolutionary scheme in
South America. He had discussed it with the British Ministers and with
King, who was in correspondence with Hamilton. It involved an alliance
between the English-speaking countries. This had been hinted at, as we
have seen, long before, by Hamilton in a letter to Pickering, who was in
favor of entering into such an alliance without delay. It was the plan
of Miranda for England to furnish the ships, not exceeding twenty, men
and money; the United States to supply no less than seven thousand
soldiers, two thousand of these being cavalry. The lure of Florida and
Cuba was held out to the United States.[1652] Here was a grand scheme of
conquest that appealed irresistibly to Hamilton’s ambition for military
glory.[1653] Entirely unknown to Adams or Washington, Hamilton had been
in correspondence with the soldier of fortune, and in communication with
him through King who was managing the London end of the affair. He made
it plain to King that in the event of a successful issue he would want
the United States to be the principal agency. ‘The command in this case
would very naturally fall upon me, and I hope I should disappoint no
favorable anticipations,’ he wrote. He thought the country not quite
ripe for the enterprise, but ‘we ripen fast, and it may, I think, be
rapidly brought to maturity if an efficient negotiation for the purpose
is at once set on foot.’[1654] To Miranda he was writing that he would
not embark in the affair ‘unless patronized by the Government of this
country.’ An army of twelve thousand men was being raised. ‘General
Washington has resumed his station at the head of our armies, I am
second in command.’[1655] In the autumn of 1798, he was writing Senator
Gunn on the importance of heavy cannon for fortifications and mortars
in the case of a siege. ‘If we engage in war our game will be to attack
where we can. France is not to be considered as separated from her ally.
Tempting objects will be within our grasp.’[1656] In January, 1799,
Hamilton was writing Otis in the same strain. ‘If universal empire is
still to be the pursuit of France, what can tend to defeat that purpose
better than to detach South America from Spain.... The Executive ought
to be put in a situation to embrace favorable conjunctures for effecting
that separation.’[1657] With all this Pickering was familiar and in
sympathy, but Adams was in total ignorance. In time the subject was
cautiously broached to him, to be rejected with the curt notation that
we were not at war with Spain. But the record is too clear to leave the
South American project out of consideration in seeking the reason for
the intense desire for war--and a large army. Through all this period,
Hamilton had visions of himself on horseback, at the head of troops in
South America, with England as an ally.[1658]

Never had Hamilton felt himself so near the top of the world. When
Congress met in the fall of 1798, he had a plan ready for a complete
change in the formation of the Nation. This provided for eighty United
States District Courts;[1659] the division of old States into new ones
for any territory having as many as 100,000 people on the request of any
considerable number--which would or could have made seven States out of
Virginia; and for the extension and more rigid enforcement of the
Sedition Law.

It was on this state of affairs that Adams, perplexed, harassed, worried
by the serious illness of Abigail, aching under the humiliations visited
upon him by the bosses of his party, meditated during the summer and
early fall of 1798. And he thought seriously, too, on what Gerry had
told him of the temper of France.

This had almost persuaded him that a new mission to France was feasible,
when a letter from Murray at The Hague, indicating uneasiness in Paris
lest the United States be forced into an alliance with England,
convinced him. Thus, about the middle of October, in a letter to
Pickering, he submitted two questions for the consideration of the
Cabinet. ‘Should there be a declaration of war?’ ‘Could proposals for
further negotiations be made with safety, and should a new envoy be
named, prepared to sail on assurances that he would be received?’

That letter fell like a bomb in the camp of the war conspirators. How
Pickering must have scowled, and McHenry grumbled, and Wolcott shrugged
his shoulders with a cynical grin when they sat down to meditate on its
meaning. That more important personages were informed we may be sure. To
that note, however, the Cabinet did not deign to reply. Had not Adams
declared that he would never send another envoy unless solemnly assured
that he would be received? No such assurance had come. Then why discuss
it--even on the request of the President? However, a Message would have
to be sent to Congress, and with Adams in a conciliatory frame of mind
it was imperative that something definite await him on his arrival. Thus
the conspirators sat down to the framing of a Message that would defeat
the very purpose the letter had indicated. Hamilton and Pinckney were
summoned to the conference. The result was a paragraph putting it
squarely up to France to take the initiative in the matter of a renewal
of negotiations. Wolcott, who, better than any of the others, could hide
his treachery behind an ingratiating urbanity, was put forward as the
author. Reaching the capital, Adams summoned his Cabinet to go over the
Message. All went well until the fateful paragraph was reached, and
instantly the keen eye of the suspicious old man caught its full
significance. That, he would not accept, and an open struggle began.
With earnestness and even heat the obnoxious paragraph was urged upon
him, but Adams planted his feet and stood. He would rewrite that
paragraph to conform to his personal view of the proprieties.[1660]

The Cabinet conspirators retired with the realization that there were
dark days ahead. Adams in his substitute held forth the olive branch to
the extent of declaring that no new envoy would be sent unless
assurances were forthcoming that he would be properly received.
Washington, Hamilton, and Pinckney, in uniforms, sat in the chamber
when the Message was read. Two of these, at least, had grave
forebodings. Then it was that the conspirators determined to override
Adams by meeting his plan for negotiations with an immediate declaration
of war. A caucus of the Federalists was called. The most brilliant and
fiery orators were primed for the occasion. The proposal was made and
supported with eloquence. The vote was taken, and by a small majority
Adams triumphed over his foes. This was the most significant incident
yet--it meant that Hamilton had lost control of the party
councils.[1661] With that knowledge, Pickering made no further attempt
to conceal his bitter hostility to his chief. Ordered to prepare a
treaty that would be acceptable, he ignored the request. Asked to
moderate his report on the Gerry dispatches, he refused. Among his
associates he was bitterly resentful, and all this was carried to the
President, who cunningly simulated ignorance of what was happening.
Then, at length, came the desired assurances from Talleyrand, that an
envoy would be ‘received as the representative of a great, free,
powerful, and independent nation.’ That was enough. Adams was ready for
action.

Thus, without further warning to the Cabinet, a messenger from the
President appeared in the Senate on February 18th with the nomination of
Murray as Minister to France. The Federalists were paralyzed. Jefferson,
equally amazed, managed to conceal his pleasure over the evident
discomfiture of his foes.[1662] Almost a week later he still suspected
that the nomination had been sent ‘hoping the Federalists ... would
accept the responsibility of rejecting it.’[1663] But the Federalist
Senators had no such suspicion. Their faces betrayed their indignation.
That night they met in caucus with their war paint on, and the decision
was reached to defeat the confirmation. They still had the whip hand. If
Adams would modify in some way--At any rate, he should remain in no
doubt as to their opinion of his action. A committee, consisting of
Bingham, Read, Sedgwick, Ross, and Stockton, was named to wait upon him,
and a note was sent requesting an audience. The reply left them in no
doubt as to the fighting mood of the man they sought to intimidate. He
would be very glad to receive them ‘as gentlemen, at his house, at
seven in the evening.’ At the appointed hour they were ushered into the
audience room. No one was there. Then the door opened, and Adams, the
picture of dignity on short legs, entered.

‘Gentlemen, I am glad to see you as friends and Senators; but as a
committee interfering, as I think you are, with my executive duties, I
cannot consent to receive you, and I protest against all such
interference. I have a duty to execute, and so have you. I know and
shall do mine, and I want neither your opinion nor aid in its
execution.’

At which he politely asked them to be seated.

Not a little nonplussed by his masterful manner, Bingham apologetically
explained that there was no thought of interference, but merely a
disposition to reconcile differences of opinion.

‘Well, then, gentlemen,’ snapped Adams, ‘if you are determined to
interfere in diplomatic matters, reject Mr. Murray. You have the power
to do this, and you may do it; but it will be upon your own
responsibility.’

As mildly as possible it was suggested that Adams’s action, so soon
after the insult, would be interpreted as a humiliation.

‘I know more of diplomatic forms than all of you,’ Adams hotly replied
with perfect truth. ‘It was in France that we received the insult, and
in France I am determined that we shall receive the reparation.’

Forced to compromise, a commission was then suggested.

‘Who would you have me send?’ Adams demanded, an ugly expression on his
face. ‘Shall I send Theophilus Parsons, or some of your other Essex
rulers? No, I will send none of them.’

At this the committee showed its teeth with the threat to defeat the
confirmation. Adams, infuriated by the threat, replied that there was a
party determined to rule him, but that they would fail.[1664]

That night when the caucus met again, it was decided to reject the
nomination. Meanwhile, the effect outside the Senate was quite as
sensational. Duane announced the nomination the day after it reached the
Senate, in large type. The next day ‘Porcupine’ fired a broadside.

‘For the last two days,’ he said, ‘there has been a most atrocious
falsehood in circulation ... that the President ... has intimated by a
messenger to the Senate that he has resolved on sending another
plenipotentiary to treat with the French Republic. Every one must
perceive the falsehood on the front of this; yet have audacious wretches
dared to promulgate it without hesitation and they have even named the
plenipotentiary, Mr. Murray.... I will not expatiate upon the
consequences of such a step ... because I cannot suppose the step within
the compass of possibility; but I must observe that had he taken such a
step it would have been instantaneously followed by the loss of every
friend worth preserving.’[1665] Encouraged by the applause of the
Federalists, he recurred to it the next day with a denunciation of ‘a
mere fabrication intended to alienate the President’s friends ... at
this momentous crisis and sink his character in the eyes of all Europe
and America.’[1666] But two days later, the ferocious ‘Porcupine’ had
changed his tune and was singing low, with the absurd protestation that
he had ‘never published a word with regard to the President that could
possibly be construed into disrespect.’[1667] He had discovered he was
amenable to the Alien Law he had so stoutly defended!

Adams had asserted himself and was happy, and when Pickering was writing
Washington that his successor was ‘suffering the torments of the
damned,’ Adams was writing cheerfully to his wife that he could hardly
be chosen President a second time, and would be glad of the relief.
‘To-night I must go to the ball; where I suppose I shall get cold and
have to eat gruel for breakfast for a week afterwards.’[1668] The
determined little patriot was now on the top of the world, and now it
was his enemies that were guessing. The senatorial committee had been an
idea of Hamilton’s, to whom Sedgwick had hastened the news of the
nomination. The committee had failed. Even the suggestion of two more
envoys had been scorned. Something might still be done through
conciliation. Ellsworth, the Chief Justice, had Adams’s confidence and
he was sent to try his powers of persuasion, and succeeded. Thus, the
nominations of Murray, Ellsworth, and Patrick Henry were sent to the
Senate, and confirmed without even a whimper from ‘Porcupine.’ But
beneath the surface, the passions were seething. Sedgwick wrote King
that he had not ‘conversed with an individual ... who did not
unequivocably reprobate the measure.’[1669] Tracy, who had wanted to arm
the women and children against the French, wrote McHenry that while he
had sacrificed much ‘to root out Democracy,’ he thought it ‘to be lost
and worse.’[1670] Cabot assured King that ‘surprise, indignation, grief,
and disgust followed each other in quick succession in the breasts of
the true friends of the country,’[1671] and informed Pickering that he
had written ‘a piece’ about it for the Boston papers, but that ‘the
Boston press had been fixed by the President’s friends and it had not
appeared.’[1672] To King, he ascribed Adams’s action to jealousy of
Hamilton and Washington.[1673] Pickering wrote Cabot that ‘the
President’s character can never be retrieved.’[1674] Stephen Higginson,
the merchant prince of the Essex Junto, found the world dark indeed. Why
had not war been declared in the summer of 1798? Even the powers given
Adams by the Alien and Sedition Laws had not been used![1675] Jonathan
Mason was furious because ‘from being respectable in Europe, from having
convinced Great Britain and from having associated with all the friends
of Order, Property, and Society ... we must again become soothers and
suppliants for peace from a gang of pitiful robbers.’[1676] Ames wrote
that the new embassy ‘disgusts most men here’ because they thought
‘peace with France ... an evil.’[1677] Even at Adams’s table the
jeremiads of the Federalists were heard, and the dinners were somber
affairs. Bayard of Delaware was loud in his lamentations.

‘Mr. Bayard, I am surprised to hear you express yourself in this
manner,’ said Adams. ‘Would you prefer a war with France to a war with
England in the present state of the world; would you wish for an
alliance with Great Britain and a war with France? If you would, your
opinions are totally different from mine.’

‘Great Britain is very powerful,’ Bayard replied mournfully. ‘Her navy
is very terrible.’[1678]

When at the end of the session, Adams set forth for his seat at
Braintree, Harper expressed the hope that his horses might run away and
break his neck.[1679] Only John Jay, among the outstanding Federalists,
could see no objections to the mission, but he was always bothered by
scruples.

VII

It was unfortunate that Adams’s love for Braintree caused him to desert
the capital in this crisis. The policy of the conspirators was to wear
out their chief’s purpose through procrastination, and, in the
meanwhile, to bring all possible pressure to bear to restore his secret
enemies to his good graces. He had made the sailing of the envoys
conditional on a direct assurance from France as to the reception they
would receive. Under the most favorable conditions this meant months of
delay, and the treacherous policy of Pickering made it worse. On March
6th Adams instructed his Secretary of State to inform Murray of the
conditions, but it was not until in May that the latter heard from
Pickering. Talleyrand was immediately informed, and within a week Murray
was in possession of the required official assurances, but it was the
last day of July before they reached Philadelphia. Disappointing to the
conspirators though these were, a careful study of the Talleyrand note
disclosed a touch of annoyance over the delay. The insolence of the man!
Another insult! The conspirators determined if possible to make this the
occasion for further delay. If Adams could only be persuaded to insist
upon an explanation of the impatient paragraph, more time would be
gained, and Pickering strongly recommended this in his note transmitting
the Talleyrand letter to the President. But Adams was too wary now to be
easily caught. Replying dryly that he could overlook the language for
the deed, he instructed Pickering that, while preparations for war
proceeded, the commission should be hurried to Ellsworth and Governor
Davie--for the latter had been named in the place of Henry, who had
declined--with instructions to prepare for embarkation at any moment.

Meanwhile, with Pickering taking six weeks in the preparations of the
instructions, efforts were being made to coax Adams into his enemies’
camp. One day Cabot suavely presented himself at the house at Braintree
on a purely social neighborly visit. He went at the instance of the
Hamiltonians to wheedle the old man back into their clutches. That the
ablest politician of the Essex Junto was affectionately friendly, we may
be sure, but his courtesy was matched by that of Adams and Mrs. Adams,
and he stayed for dinner. But Abigail never left the room. The President
occasionally went out, Abigail never. Though she was gracious to a
degree. Thus the door of opportunity was closed and locked and Abigail
had the key. Cabot found that ‘every heart was locked and every tongue
was silenced upon all topics that bore affinity to those which I wished
to touch.’[1680] Hamilton was in intimate touch with the leading members
of the Adams Cabinet all the while--far more so than Adams; but the
President knew of the movements of his dearest enemy through the
Jeffersonian press. The latter part of April found Hamilton in
Philadelphia with Gouverneur Morris, in close communion with Pickering,
Wolcott, and McHenry. Duane flippantly announced that they had ‘kept the
fast in Philadelphia,’ and that ‘a pair more pious, more chaste, more
moral perhaps never mortified the flesh and the spirit since the days of
David and the fair Shunammite.’[1681] At Braintree Adams was keeping his
own counsels, enjoying the serenity of domesticity, with occasional
excursions into Boston to attend church or the theater, always
accompanied by the Marshal of the district. When the Boston Troop went
to Braintree to accompany him, with military pomp, to the Harvard
Commencement, he was enormously pleased.[1682] But he was on the alert.
About the time Pickering’s belated instructions reached him with a
letter from the Cabinet suggesting the suspension of the mission for a
time, he read a cautiously worded note from Stoddert, his Secretary of
the Navy, hinting at the importance of his presence in Trenton, whither
the Government had temporarily gone because of the prevalence of yellow
fever again in Philadelphia. Adams was able to read between the lines.

The silent treatment to which the conspirators were being subjected
annoyed them beyond endurance. They were by no means certain it was a
hoax when they read in ‘The Aurora’ on August 15th that ‘the Executive
of the United States has ordered the frigate “John Adams” to be
prepared to carry our envoys without delay to Europe,’ and the
‘Centinel’ in Boston was not able to deny it for several days.[1683] In
September, Pickering was urging Cabot to persuade Ellsworth to dissuade
Adams from sending the mission. ‘There is nothing in politics he
despises more than this mission,’ he wrote.[1684] Ellsworth did as he
was bid--with a difference. He asked that early notice be given him of
the plans because of ‘unusual demands upon his time on the official
circuit.’[1685] The real attitude of Ellsworth is not at all plain, for
it was being whispered about that he hoped to reach the Presidency
through the success of the mission.[1686]

Then came another pretext for delay. There had come another shift in
French politics, with some indications of the restoration of the
Jacobins to power, and Talleyrand had resigned. Did this not call for
further postponement? Adams replied in the affirmative, fixing the
latter part of October as the limit, and promising to be in Trenton by
the middle of that month. Rejoicing in this delay, Pickering began to
meditate on the possible intervention of the Senate. With this in view
he wrote Cabot for advice. The reply was wholly unsatisfactory. ‘If the
Senate should be admitted to possess a right to determine a priori what
foreign connections should be sought or shunned, I should fear that they
would soon exhibit the humiliating spectacle of cap and hats which so
long and so naturally appeared in Sweden,’ said Cabot.[1687] Adams had
the power, and he was silent. The conspirators began to mobilize for a
desperate attempt at Trenton.

VIII

On October 6th, Adams drove down the road from Braintree on his way to
Trenton with such secrecy that he was halfway there before Cabot knew he
had gone.[1688] The conspirators were there before him, Pinckney on the
ground, Hamilton at Newark within easy call. Ellsworth had been summoned
from Hartford. Governor Davie, having received a flattering address from
his fellow citizens at Raleigh, was on the road, ‘a troop of horse and
a cavalcade of citizens escorting him four miles on his way.’[1689]

Adams reached Trenton on Thursday, and on Friday night there was ‘a
handsome display of fireworks’ in his honor, ‘in which Mr. Guimpe, the
artist, exhibited much skill and ingenuity.’ The initials of Adams and
Washington ‘displayed in colored fires was received with shouts of
applause.’ On Saturday, Ellsworth arrived. Hamilton appeared upon the
scene. Just at that juncture the conspirators were much elated with the
news of the successes of the British army under the Duke of York in
Holland, and the triumphant march of the Russians under Suwarrow in
Switzerland. Might not the next report bring the news of the restoration
of the Bourbons in France, and the end to the hideous nightmare of
democracy? Here was a new club, and the conspirators laid eager hands
upon it. Hamilton called to urge the point.

‘Why, Sir, by Christmas Louis XVIII will be seated upon his throne,’ he
declared.

‘By whom?’ demanded Adams.

‘By the coalition,’ Hamilton replied.

‘Ah, then,’ said Adams, ‘farewell to the independence of Europe.’[1690]

When the President entertained the two envoys at dinner, he was amazed
to find Ellsworth echoing the views of Hamilton.

‘Is it possible, Mr. Chief Justice,’ demanded Adams, ‘that you can
seriously believe that the Bourbons are, or will soon be restored to the
throne of France?’

‘Why,’ said Ellsworth, smiling sheepishly, ‘it looks a good deal so.’

‘I should not be afraid to stake my life upon it that they will not be
restored for seven years, if they ever are,’ was Adams’s retort.[1691]

The coincidence in the views of the two men was not lost on Adams, who
asked a member of his Cabinet if ‘Ellsworth and Hamilton had come all
the way from Windsor and New York to persuade me to countermand the
mission.’[1692] That was an ominous comment. The resulting excitement
among his advisers did not escape the watchful eye of Adams, who wrote
Abigail that it left him ‘calmly cold.’

On the night of October 15th Adams, calm, cold, thrice-armed, sat about
the table with his Cabinet, no longer deceived by any of them save
Wolcott. The purpose was the consideration of the instructions that had
been prepared. Some changes were made. Adams asked advice on certain
points. At eleven o’clock the instructions were unanimously approved.
The Cabinet lingered, but Adams brought up no new subject. Out into the
dark Trenton streets trooped the conspirators, almost hopeful. They were
still at breakfast the next morning when orders were received from Adams
that the instructions should be put in shape, a frigate be placed in
readiness to receive the envoys who should sail not later than the first
of the month.

The conspiracy had failed and John Adams was actually President.

The Jeffersonians were jubilant. Duane wrote that Adams had ‘crossed the
Rubicon,’ but that the rumor that Pickering and Wolcott had resigned was
groundless. ‘They will never sacrifice their places to squeamish
feelings.’[1693] Hamilton had sought to deter the President, but to his
honor ‘he resisted every seducement and repelled every
insinuation.’[1694] The Hamiltonians were either furious or depressed.
The Southern Federalists under Marshall approved, as did Jay, and the
‘Centinel’ commended the act, but the men who had made and maintained
the prestige of the Federalist Party were in murderous mood. The mission
would succeed--they knew it. There would be no war, and the army would
have to go. With that would go the instrument for keeping down
insurrections in America or for waging a war of conquest in South
America. With one masterful effort, Adams had pulled down the pillars of
the party temple and he could not escape in its fall. But it was the
proudest and most masterful moment in his life, and he was content. Long
after the _débâcle_ he was to write that he asked no better epitaph than
the sentence that he had taken upon himself the responsibility of the
peace with France.

From that moment the Federalists were a house divided against itself,
and the cloud burst and the rain descended and beat upon it, and the
days were dark. Dreary, indeed, that winter of 1799. ‘Porcupine’ was
driven from Philadelphia, and young Fenno, disgusted, gave up his paper
with a farewell address so contemptuous of democracy and American
institutions that the wiser leaders trembled at his temerity. M’Kean,
the Democrat, had been swept into the gubernatorial office. Washington
had died, and could no longer be used to advance the party interest.
Even the dashing Harper, clever in political fight or social frolic, had
despaired of the future in politics, resigned his seat, and made
arrangements to move to Baltimore as the son-in-law of Carroll of
Carrollton.[1695] Duane was firing relentlessly at the scandals and
finding flesh, and there was no ‘Porcupine’ to return the fire. The
brilliant and audacious Charles Pinckney had appeared in the Senate to
give a militant leadership to the Jeffersonians that the Federalists
could not match. Into the House had come a giant, in John Marshall, to
give to a later-day Federalism a sanity that came too late, but he was
with Adams, not Hamilton.

The shadows even fell on the brilliant Federalist society. Hamilton was
there that winter, to be sure, ‘to keep the watch,’ as Duane put it, and
through an unhappy coincidence ‘The Aurora’ was able to add that ‘Mrs.
Reynolds, the sentimental heroine,’ was back in town. But something like
tragedy had fallen on the Holland House of Federalism, and weeping was
heard in the rooms once given to gayety and laughter. One night Marie
Bingham, not sixteen, slipped out of the home of her father, with Count
de Tilly, age forty-five, a dissolute scion of the French aristocracy
with an eye to the Bingham fortune, and was married at two o’clock in
the morning. The couple were found in the home of a French milliner in
the early morning, and physicians worked over the brilliant Mrs.
Bingham, who was in hysterics. Money soon dissolved the union, but the
lights were never quite so bright thereafter in the princely mansion of
the cleverest hostess in Philadelphia. The rain fell even upon the House
of Bingham.[1696]

CHAPTER XIX

‘THE GRAPES OF WRATH’

When Congress convened in the winter of 1799, the Federalists thoroughly
appreciated the desperation of their situation. The tide of public
opinion was rising against them rapidly because of their measures, and
they were divided against themselves. As the sun of the once brilliant
party went down, there was one colossal figure of brilliant promise
silhouetted against the darkening sky, but John Marshall, now a member
of the House, was not in good odor with the Hamiltonians because of his
opposition to the Alien and Sedition Laws. The irrepressible clash of
contending policies and ambitions had been foreshadowed in the
difficulties Marshall had encountered in framing a Reply to Adams’s
Address that could command the united support of the party, and he had
succeeded measurably by giving the Reply a meaningless phrasing. For a
moment it seemed that Marshall might regain the confidence of his fellow
partisans when, in a speech of brilliancy and force, he had demolished
the flimsy case of the Democrats against the President in the matter of
Jonathan Robbins. With his characteristic readiness to concede the full
strength of an enemy, Jefferson had written Madison that in the debate
on Robbins ‘J. Marshall [distinguished himself] greatly.’[1697] But the
Federalist cheers for their new leader were speedily turned to groans
and hisses--and thereon hangs a tale of political infamy scarcely
approached in audacity in American history.

Almost two years before, when the French war hysteria was at its height
and the Federalists were cocks of the walk, the inner circle of the
party in the Senate met one night about the table in the Bingham
dining-room with the more moderate senatorial members. To assure party
solidarity on all important party measures, it was proposed to bind all
by the votes of the majority in a party caucus. The extremists had a
slight majority over the moderate element. Thus, for a season, the
Government was, to all practical purposes, in the hands of a Senate
oligarchy composed of a minority of the Senators. From the summer of
1799, the extremists entertained no illusions as to their popularity
with the country. The election of Jefferson seemed imminent--provided a
way could not be found to cheat him of his victory. From that moment on
until the hour of his final triumph by the vote of the House in 1801,
there was not a moment when the Federalist leaders were not ready to
adopt any method, however disreputable and desperate, to accomplish
their purpose. In this spirit they conceived the wicked scheme to rob
Jefferson of his victory through an amazing measure prescribing the mode
of deciding disputed elections for President and Vice-President. Senator
Ross of Pennsylvania agreed to sponsor the bill.

Briefly and baldly, this provided that on the opening and reading of the
certificates of the electoral votes in the presence of Congress, the
papers should be turned over to a grand committee consisting of six
members of each branch of Congress, with the Chief Justice as presiding
officer. The members of the House and Senate committees should be
elected by ballot. These, with the Chief Justice, were to go into secret
session behind locked doors. They were to have the power to send for
persons and papers, to pass on the qualifications of electors, and the
manner in which they had cast their votes; to investigate charges that
bribery, intimidation, persuasion, or force had been employed; and
finally, to decide which votes should be counted and which cast out.
This decision was to be final. In other words, it was a criminal scheme
and an unconstitutional plot to steal the election. It had the support
of the great majority of the best minds in the Federalist Party.

In keeping with the sinister nature of this monstrous measure, it was
proposed to withhold it carefully from the public until the consummation
of the crime. Happily there were members of Congress who did not
consider themselves bound in honor to protect dishonor from the light,
and almost immediately three copies of the bill found their way to the
office of Duane. Two of these were personally delivered with permission
to print and disclose the donors; one was mailed under cover.[1698] The
bill was immediately printed in full in ‘The Aurora’ with appropriate
comments, and the conspirators were dragged into the light. ‘The new
electoral council or college may be very fitly compared with the secret
Council of Ten at Venice of old,’ wrote the editor.[1699] Out of this
exposure grew the proceedings culminating in the prosecution for
sedition against Duane.

With the Federalists in control of both branches of Congress, it did not
appear at first to matter much. The leaders of the party had never
greatly concerned themselves with public opinion. They mustered their
men in the Senate for a vote, leaving a discussion of the measure to the
opposition. Behind the sorry smoke screen of the Duane prosecution they
marched unblushingly to their purpose. The final protest was made by
Charles Pinckney, the brilliant new leader of the Democrats in the
Senate, in a powerful constitutional argument that no one cared to
meet.[1700] ‘Equal in eloquence and strength of reasoning to anything
ever heard within the walls of Congress,’ said ‘The Aurora.’[1701] He
sat down. No one rose to reply. The question was taken on the passage of
the bill and it passed by a strict party vote of 16 to 12.

Meanwhile, the publicity given the rather brazen plan to steal the
election was having its reactions on the people, and Federalist members
of the House began to protest. There was no one in a more rebellious
mood than Marshall, who thought the situation too serious to permit him
to leave for home on the birth of his fifth child.[1702] With a more
far-reaching vision and a greater respect for public opinion than the
veteran leaders of his party, he made his objections audible. On the
floor of the House, on the street, at the boarding-house, he talked
boldly and incessantly against the measure. The Federalists were amazed,
disgusted. Some of the leaders who appreciated his ability observed his
insubordination with sorrow. They had doubted his ‘political judgment,’
but had counted on swaying him to their views because of his
companionable temperament. They took note of his ‘very affectionate
disposition,’ his attachment to pleasures, his conviviality, his seeming
‘indolence,’ and they cultivated him on the side of his weaknesses. But
they found him a difficult psychological problem. He had a timidity due
to his tendency to ‘feel the public pulse,’ was disposed to ‘erotic
refinement,’ and, worse still, to ‘express great respect for the
sovereign people.’ With all this he possessed a persuasive power that
worked with fatal effect on ‘more feeble minds,’ and he was exerting
this power among the members with disastrous results.

Theodore Sedgwick, ponderous and pompous, and in politics insinuating,
was apparently delegated to coax Marshall into the conspiracy. A number
of heart-to-heart talks with the rebel followed. The Virginian doubted
the constitutional ‘power of the legislature to delegate such authority
to a Committee.’ After a long talk he ‘confessed himself ... to be
convinced,’ but shifted, according to Sedgwick, to the ground that the
people had authorized the members to decide, each for himself, in the
case of election disputes. In its nature this power was ‘too delicate to
be delegated.’ To Sedgwick this was ‘so attenuated and unsubstantial’ as
to be beyond his comprehension, and Marshall was persuaded to abandon
this ground too. But ‘in the meantime he had dwelt so much in
conversation on these subjects that he had dissipated our majority,’
Sedgwick wrote King.[1703]

When the discussions opened in the House, Marshall questioned the
propriety of the Senate naming the chairman of the committee and of
making the decision final, and offered an amendment.[1704] This was
followed by other amendments and ultimately by the revamping of the
whole measure. The Senate refused to accept the amendments, and thus the
measure died between the two houses. Duane was jubilant. Here was
evidence of the value of a free press. The ‘odious bill was introduced
for party purposes,’ and a party in the Senate ‘sought to overwhelm by
terror and oppression the men who dared to publish the bill, which even
after numerous amendments was found too abominable to be countenanced by
the House of Representatives.’[1705] The Federalists were downcast and
indignant. Senator Tracy, who had no political scruples, declared that
‘Marshall has spoiled all the fair hopes founded on Mr. Ross’s
bill.’[1706] Thus Marshall saved the country from revolution and
Jefferson from defeat regardless of the vote--as Hamilton was to save
him later.

The campaign was now on, but from this time we shall hear little of the
activities of Jefferson. His work was done. Back to his beloved hilltop
he hurried on the adjournment of Congress, and there he remained,
apparently less concerned with politics than with potatoes. But he had
already created the machinery, trained the mechanicians, supplied the
munitions of victory, found means for financing the enterprise--and he
left the work with his lieutenants.

In the leadership of his party Jefferson had no rival, and he was the
idol of his followers, ‘the people’s friend.’ The persecution he had met
had but endeared him more to his supporters. He was their Messiah. On
New Year’s Eve in 1799, a company of Democrats spent the evening in
conversation and songs until the new year came. Then, headed by a
regimental band, they marched through the dark streets of Philadelphia,
past the homes of the rich and fashionable blazing with light, to pay
their respects to Jefferson at his lodgings. On the way, they
encountered another large group, who, unknown to the first, had
conceived the same plan for declaring their allegiance. The two crowds
fraternized and marched on together. With cheers and shouts they
summoned their leader to the door. When the tall, familiar figure
appeared, the welkin rang, the band played, and a song, written for the
occasion, was sung.[1707] The incident is significant of the common
recognition of Jefferson’s leadership.

During the two preceding years the consummate political genius of
Jefferson had been planning the programme for the struggle of 1800. The
congressional strategy of his party had been his work, and night after
night he had gathered his lieutenants about him at the dinner table of
the Indian Queen and given his orders for the morrow. If the party
platform had not then been conceived, he had his programme, which met
the purpose. Writing Madison in January, 1799, he proposed that all
possible emphasis be put upon the Alien and Sedition Laws, the direct
tax, the army and navy, ‘the usurious loan to set these follies on
foot,’ and on the picture of ‘recruiting officers lounging at every
court-house and decoying the laborer from his plough.’[1708] About the
same time he was expanding this programme in a letter to Gerry: The
constitutional rights of the States should be asserted. The right of
Congress to ‘its constitutional share in the division of power’ should
be maintained. The Government should be ‘rigorously frugal’ and all
possible savings should be applied to the discharge of the public debt.
The multiplication of offices should be stopped. A standing army in time
of peace should be attacked. Free commerce should be maintained with all
nations, and there should be ‘political connections with none.’ The
liberty of speech and the freedom of the press should be
preserved.[1709]

That same month he was writing Edmund Pendleton in the same vein--the
‘direct tax,’ the ‘army and navy in time of peace,’ the ‘usurious
interest,’ the ‘recruiting officers at every court-house to decoy the
laborer from his plough.’[1710] In these letters we have the first
Jeffersonian platform--and on these points, from that time on, the
Democrats harped constantly in Congress, in pamphlets and through the
press. Not least, nor least effective, among the methods of propaganda
were the congressional letters with which the Jeffersonian members
flooded their constituents, setting forth in vigorous fashion all the
counts in the indictment. As these letters fell upon the country like a
snowstorm, the Federalists were infuriated. They summoned their Federal
Judges to denounce them in charges to grand juries, and Iredell
foolishly responded. In Congress they hinted darkly that these records
of public affairs sent by public servants to the public they served were
seditious. Many years afterward Adams recalled them with rage--these
letters that ‘swelled, raged, foamed in all the fury of a tempest at sea
against me,’ a flood so enormous that ‘a collection of those letters
would make many volumes.’ Adams never forgave his party for finding no
means for their suppression.[1711]

These letters were part of the Jeffersonian plan to reach the people and
set the tongues to wagging. Everywhere Jefferson was encouraging his
followers to establish newspapers. Soon Noah Webster’s paper was
complaining that the irrepressible Matthew Lyon ‘in the course of one
year has established no less than four ... presses.’[1712] Was money
needed for the publication of pamphlets or the distribution of
newspapers? Jefferson made out a subscription list, put his friends down
for a contribution, and informed them of his action without apology.
Thus, to Monroe: An important measure is under contemplation which ‘will
require a considerable sum of money.’ He had therefore put Monroe down
for from fifty to a hundred dollars.[1713] Thus, to Madison: ‘Every man
must lay his pen and his purse under contribution.’[1714] Were articles
required? He sent instructions to his friends to write. Thus, to
Pendleton, asking him to prepare a pamphlet on the Gerry
correspondence,[1715] and to Madison asking him to ‘set aside a portion
of every post day to write what may be proper for the public.’[1716]
Were pamphlets printed and ready for distribution? Then a letter from
Jefferson to men of the standing of Monroe ordering them to place them
in the hands of ‘the most influential characters among our countrymen
who are only misled.’[1717]

In every State he had men of political sagacity through whom he could
work while maintaining the semblance of aloofness. In Massachusetts,
Gerry; in New Hampshire, Langdon; in Connecticut, Bishop and Granger; in
New York, Livingston and Burr; in Pennsylvania, Gallatin, M’Kean, and
the Muhlenbergs; in Maryland, Mercer and General Sam Smith; in Virginia,
Madison, Monroe, Giles, and Pendleton; in Kentucky, John Breckenridge
and George Nicholson; in North Carolina, Macon, Jones, and Joseph Gales,
the clever and daring editor of the Raleigh ‘Register’ who put the
Federalists to the torture with the best paper in the State, which was
sent free to prospective converts;[1718] and in Tennessee, Senator
William Cocke, an old Amelia County Virginian, and William C. C.
Claiborne. In South Carolina, where the Hamiltonians were strong in the
support of the Pinckney brothers, and through the commercial interests
of Charleston, he was fortunate in having Charles Pinckney, more
brilliant, daring, picturesque, and magnetic than his cousins, and Peter
Freneau, brother of the poet, and editor of the ‘Charleston City News.’
Nowhere did the Jeffersonians make better progress against stubborn
resistance than in the Palmetto State. Thence Hamilton had long drawn
for talent, but his party was being gradually undermined. William Smith,
who recited speeches Hamilton had written, had retired to escape defeat
to a berth in Lisbon; and Harper, noting the premonitions of a storm,
had announced his retirement from Congress to seek consolation in the
glamour of the Carroll wealth and in the charms of a Carroll daughter in
Maryland.

This revolution was largely wrought through the management of a few
Jeffersonians who met night after night in Freneau’s office on George
Street to plan the fight. Either of two participants in these
conferences was a host within himself. There was Freneau--huge in frame,
and, aside from height, bearing a striking resemblance to Charles James
Fox in voice, conversation, and manners, with a literary style which a
contemporary found to combine ‘the beauty and smoothness of Addison and
the strength and simplicity of Cobbett.’ And there was Charles Pinckney,
handsome, imposing, a favorite of fortune, dominating in leadership,
eloquent and forceful in debate, conspicuous in the Constitutional
Convention in his twenties and Governor of his State at thirty-one.
There about the table, and over their cups we may be sure, they set
their traps, and planned their propaganda. Freneau would take up his pen
and literally dash off a powerful article with a facility and felicity
that called for no revision or correction; and Pinckney would write an
article to be signed ‘A Republican,’ or appear unexpectedly at a public
meeting to sweep the audience with him by the fire and force of his
eloquence.[1719] These men sallied forth to battle with a gallant gayety
suggested by their own facetious description of their conferences as
‘The Rye House Plot.’

Thus everywhere Jefferson had men on whom he could depend, and his
orders given, his work done, he could spend the summer and autumn of
1800 with his potatoes. There we must leave him and look elsewhere for
the drama of the fighting. Only twice during the campaign did he wander
farther from Monticello than Charlottesville. Mounted on his horse, he
rode daily over his plantation. Every evening he made his customary
notations in his farm account book. When Marie’s pianoforte arrived, he
might have been seen tuning it himself while the battle raged on many
fronts. He wrote his daughter the details of a neighborhood murder, and
of the prospects of the harvest, but nothing of politics. His work was
done. He had ploughed and sowed and tended--but the work in the
harvest-field was for others. In the early summer a strange tale
traveled throughout the country, recorded in all the papers, that he had
died suddenly. The papers printed it cautiously, however, and there was
no political motive in its circulation. At length it was explained. One
of his slaves named ‘Thomas Jefferson’ had died at Monticello. Jefferson
was never more alive than that summer on his hilltop.

III

That a tidal wave toward Democracy had set in was shown in the early
spring in the elections in New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
By common consent New York was put down as the pivotal State and both
parties planned to put forth their utmost efforts there. Jefferson,
still in Philadelphia, was keeping in intimate touch with the situation
through his correspondents in the State, and placing reliance on the
sagacity of Aaron Burr. As early as January, he was writing Monroe with
the utmost confidence of the result ‘on the strength of [his]
advices.’[1720] In March he was assuring Madison, on the representations
of Burr and Livingston, that the State was safe if the city of New York
could be carried.[1721] The Federalists, he found seriously alarmed.
‘Their speeches in private, as well as their public and private demeanor
toward me, indicate it strongly.’[1722] Hamilton himself had seemed so
depressed that Henry Lee had written rallying him on his pessimism and
urging him to ‘be more like yourself and resist to victory all your
foes.’[1723] He had replied with a touch of petulance that he was not
despondent and stood ‘on ground which, sooner or later, will assure me a
triumph over all my enemies.’[1724] But he was then facing the most
desperate fighting of his career, with Burr leading the opposition with
a smiling gayety that was disconcerting.

The prevailing fashion of picturing Hamilton as a saintly soul sent to
his death by a deep-dyed villain of the type once popular in the
melodrama, cannot conceal the amazing resemblance of these two men.
There were probably no other two men in the America of their day who
were so much alike. Physically both were small, compactly built, of
militant carriage, with penetrating eyes of different colors, and of
persuasive voices. Both were dandies in their dress, the glass of
fashion and the mould of form, courtly, Chesterfieldian, and dashing.
Both had demonstrated their courage and military sagacity on the field
of battle--Hamilton in the assault at Yorktown, Burr in carrying his
beloved Montgomery from the battle-field on his back, wading knee-deep
in snow, and amidst a rain of bullets. Burr, no less than Hamilton, had
served in the military household of Washington, and both alike had
resented their leader’s rather imperious manner. At the New York Bar
both had risen to eminence, and some hesitated to give the superiority
to either. Here their methods were different--Hamilton relying on
erudition where Burr depended on finesse, the former exhaustive in
argument, the latter concise. Both were effective orators in different
ways. Hamilton was declamatory, Burr conversational. Socially they had
many points of similarity, and in a social sense they were not averse to
one another’s company at dinner. In conversation one was scarcely more
scintillating than the other, and both were fond of badinage, and adept
in compliments to the ladies. Both were gallants, attractive to, and
attracted by, women of wit and beauty. Neither was above the intrigues
of love, with ideas of morality that would have been appreciated in the
London of the Restoration. If Burr kept his diary, which seems so
shocking to some, Hamilton had his pamphlet on his affair with Mrs.
Reynolds--but Burr did not publish his diary. Neither should be judged
too harshly, for it was a day of rather loose morals, and the press made
free with the gossip concerning Harper and Sedgwick. Both were
inordinately ambitious for command, impatient under restraint, and wont
to dream of leading triumphant armies. The ambition of neither was
circumscribed by the boundaries of the country. If Burr wished to lead
an army of conquest into Mexico, Hamilton longed to lead the same sort
of an army into South America.

Hamilton and Burr were natural enemies because too much alike in
temperament and ambition. Their hopes clashed. Both were deeply in love
with their wives, notwithstanding their transgressions. There is
something touching in Burr’s letters to his sick wife, his anxiety, his
consultations with physicians, his instructions to Theodosia. He was
idolized by wife and daughter because they, in turn, were idolized by
him. Unlike Hamilton, he was even tender with his servants. It is quite
impossible to conceive of Hamilton writing friendly letters to his men
and women domestics and slaves. To understand Burr’s fascination for
many, one thing must be borne in mind--he was loved because he was
lovable in his personal contacts.

These two men faced each other for a finish fight in the spring of
1800.[1725]

In the early spring the surface indications were not favorable for a
Jeffersonian victory in the election that was to determine the political
complexion of the Legislature that would select the presidential
electors. The Federalists were seemingly entrenched. Behind them,
victories. Hamilton was openly active, Burr watchful like a cat. One of
the latter’s closest lieutenants wrote Gallatin of the situation
developing in March. ‘The Federalists have had a meeting and determined
on their Senators; they have also appointed a committee to nominate
suitable characters for the Assembly.... Mr. Hamilton is very busy, more
so than usual, and no exertions will be wanting on his part. Fortunately
Mr. Hamilton will have at this election a most powerful opponent in
Colonel Burr. This gentleman is exceedingly active; it is his opinion
that the Republicans had better not publish a ticket or call a meeting
until the Federalists have completed theirs. Mr. Burr is arranging
matters in such a way as to bring into operation all the Republican
interests.’[1726]

The purpose of Hamilton was twofold--to elect the Federalist electors,
and to elect only such electors as he could control against Adams. With
this in view he called a secret caucus composed of his most pliant
followers. Preferring tools to men of independence and capacity, the
caucus selected men of no popularity and little weight. Burr, who had an
incomparable system of espionage in this campaign, was instantly put in
possession of the ticket. The brilliant black eyes of the little
politician hastily and gravely scanned the list. Then, folding it and
placing it in his pocket, he murmured, ‘Now I have him hollow!’[1727]
Meanwhile, Burr had been busily engaged in the creation of a powerful,
compact organization. Like most brilliant men of ingratiating manners,
he had drawn about him a formidable array of the young men of the city
prepared to execute any orders he might give. This was his purely
personal following. He found the backbone of his organization in
Tammany.

The potentialities of that organization, composed, for the most part, of
men in the ordinary walks of life, the poor, the unimportant, he had
instantly sensed. They were democrats by instinct. Their Wigwam, a
one-story frame building, was so unprepossessing that the Federalists
dubbed it ‘The Pig Pen’--but that did not bother Burr. These men had
votes, and influence among others of their kind who had votes. They met
night after night to smoke their pipes and drink their ale, to tell
stories and talk politics. It is not of record that Burr ever entered
the Wigwam, but he was the Tammany boss notwithstanding, operating
through his friends who were the ostensible leaders. It was he, seated
in his law office, who moulded the policies. His suggestions whipped it
into shape as a fighting political organization.[1728] For weeks his
home had been crowded night after night with the most daring,
adventurous, and ardent members of his party. Most of them were young,
fit, and eager for any enterprise. Because there had been factions in
the party, he laid down the law on these occasions that personalities
should not be discussed or mentioned. These were to be submerged for the
campaign. Local considerations were to be ignored. Discipline was to be
maintained. Compromises necessary to solidarity were to be effected. The
all-important thing was to amalgamate every section of the party and
appeal to the people through a ticket notably superior to that of the
Federalists.

With the audacity of genius he determined that General Horatio Gates
should be a candidate for the Assembly. More daring still, that the
venerable George Clinton, many times Governor, should stand, and that
Brockholst Livingston, eminent as patriot and lawyer, should run. Samuel
Osgood, a former member of Congress, and Washington’s
Postmaster-General, was slated. It was easy to put them down--the
problem was to persuade them to accept. Here Burr’s genius for
leadership counted heavily. Time and again he labored without avail on
Clinton, Gates, and Livingston. At length Livingston agreed to stand
provided both Clinton and Gates would run. Straightway, Burr rushed to
Gates. It was a hard struggle. Burr pleaded, cajoled, flattered,
appealed to party pride. Finally Gates agreed to run if Clinton would
make the race. And there Burr almost met his Waterloo. The rugged old
war-horse was prejudiced against Jefferson. He had ambitions for the
Presidency himself, and they had been passed over. Burr left the matter
open, smiled, flattered, bowed, departed. Then, out from his office
committees began to make their way to Clinton with importunities to
stand. The personal friends of the stubborn old man were sent to
persuade him. He was adamant. A scene at Burr’s home at Richmond Hill:
Present, the nominating committee and Clinton. A mass movement on
Clinton--he would not budge. Then Burr’s master-stroke. A community had
a right to draft a man in a crisis--the crisis was at hand. Without his
consent they would nominate him. The rebellious veteran, flattered,
agreed not to repudiate the nomination. The victory was Burr’s--and
Jefferson’s.

A little later, the press announced that a meeting of the Democrats had
been held at the home of J. Adams, Jr., at 68 William Street, where the
Assembly ticket had been put up. Spirited resolutions were adopted. The
enthusiasm of the Jeffersonians reached fever heat. Hamilton and the
Federalists were paralyzed with amazement. The impossible had happened.
Against Hamilton’s mediocre tools--this ticket, composed of commanding
figures of national repute![1729] Immediately the frantic fears of the
Federalists were manifest in the efforts of ‘Portius’ in the ‘Commercial
Advertiser’ to frighten the party into action. Jefferson had become a
possibility--the author of the Mazzei letter! Clinton and Gates
candidates for the Assembly! Old men laden with honors who had retired,
in harness again! Clearly no office lured them--it must be the magnitude
of the issue. And who were Clinton, Gates, and Osgood? Enemies of the
Constitution! To your tents, O Federalists![1730] A few days later the
merchants met at the Tontine Coffee-House to endorse the Hamiltonian
ticket because ‘the election is peculiarly important to the mercantile
interests.’[1731] In the ‘Pig Pen’ the Tammanyites read of the action of
the merchants, clicked their glasses, and rejoiced. Hamilton, now
thoroughly alarmed, redoubled his efforts. The Federalist press began to
teem with hysterical attacks on Jefferson, Madison, and Clinton--men who
were planning the destruction of the Government.[1732]

Meanwhile, Burr, calm, confident, suave, silent, was giving New York
City its first example of practical politics. Money was needed--he
formed a finance committee to collect funds. Solicitors went forth to
wealthy members of the party to demand certain amounts--determined upon
by Burr. It was a master psychologist who scanned the subscription
lists. One parsimonious rich man was down for one hundred dollars.

‘Strike his name off,’ said Burr. ‘You will not get the money and ...
his exertions will cease and you will not see him at the polls.’

Another name--that of a lazy man liberal with donations. ‘Double the
amount and tell him no labor will be expected of him.’

With infinite care Burr card-indexed every voter in the city, his
political history, his present disposition, his temperament, his habits,
his state of health, the exertions probably necessary to get him to the
polls. The people had to be aroused--Burr organized precinct and ward
meetings, sent speakers, addressed them himself. And while Burr was
working, the lowliest too were working on the lowliest. One evening ‘a
large corpulent person with something of the appearance of Sir John
Falstaff’ was seen in the lobby of a theater ‘haranguing an old black
man who sells peanuts and apples to come forward and vote the Republican
ticket.’

‘You pay heavy taxes this year.’

‘Yes, Massa, me pay ten dollars.’

‘Well, if you vote the Republican ticket you will have little or no
taxes to pay next year; for if we Republicans succeed, the standing army
will be disbanded, which cost us almost a million of money last year.’

The peanut vendor promised to appear at the polls ‘with six more
free-born sons of the African race.’[1733] Whereupon the campaigner had
a tale to tell to the boys at the Wigwam that night.

The polls opened on April 29th and closed at sunset on May 2d. Days of
intense ceaseless activity. Hamilton and Burr took the field. From one
polling-place to another they rushed to harangue the voters. When they
met, they treated each other with courtly courtesy. Handbills were put
out, flooding the city during the voting. In the midst of the fight
Matthew L. Davis found time at midnight to send a hasty report to
Gallatin in Philadelphia. ‘This day he [Burr] has remained at the polls
of the Seventh ward ten hours without intermission. Pardon this hasty
scrawl. I have not ate for fifteen hours.’[1734] The result was a
sweeping triumph for the Democrats. When the news reached the Senate at
Philadelphia, the Federalists were so depressed and the Democrats so
jubilant that the transaction of business was impossible, and it
adjourned.[1735]

Hamilton was stunned, and ready for trickery to retrieve the lost
battle. The next night he was presiding over a secret meeting of
Federalists where it was agreed to ask Governor Jay to call an extra
session of the Legislature to deprive that body of the power to choose
electors. Hamilton approached Jay in a letter. ‘In times like these,’ he
wrote, ‘it will not do to be over-scrupulous.’ There should be no
objections to ‘taking of legal and constitutional steps to prevent an
atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics from getting possession of
the helm of state.’[1736] Jay read the letter with astonishment, made a
notation that it was a plan to serve a party purpose, and buried it in
the archives. It was the blackest blot on Hamilton’s record.

That victory elected Jefferson.

It destroyed Hamilton--and it made Burr Vice-President.

Scarcely had the polls closed when Burr’s friends, giving him the whole
credit, as he deserved, began to urge on the leaders in Philadelphia his
selection for the Vice-Presidency. Davis wrote Gallatin that the
Democrats of New York were bent on Burr.[1737] Admiral James Nicholas,
the father-in-law of Gallatin, wrote that the triumph was a miraculous
‘intervention of Supreme Power and our friend Burr, the agent.’ It was
his ‘generalship, perseverance, industry, and execution’ that did it,
and he deserved ‘anything and everything of his country.’ He had won ‘at
the risk of his life.’[1738] On May 12th Gallatin wrote his wife: ‘We
had last night a very large meeting of Republicans, in which it was
unanimously agreed to support Burr for Vice-President.’

That was a bitter month for the Federalists. In the gubernatorial
contests in New Hampshire and Massachusetts the Democrats had polled an
astonishing vote. Painfully labored were the efforts of the Federalist
press to explain these remarkable accessions. The ‘Centinel’ in Boston
had previously sounded a note of warning under the caption, ‘Americans,
Why Sleep Ye?’ The Democrats, it said, were ‘organized, officered,
accoutered, provided, and regularly paid.’ They were ‘systematized in
all points.’ In Pennsylvania a Jeffersonian Governor had thrown
Federalist office-holders ‘headlong from their posts.’ In New Hampshire
the Democrats were fighting ‘under cover of an ambuscade.’ In all States
new Jeffersonian presses were established, ‘from Portsmouth in New
Hampshire to Savannah in Georgia,’ through which ‘the orders of Generals
of the faction are transmitted with professional punctuality; which
presses serve as a sounding board to the notes that issue through that
great speaking trumpet of the Devil, the Philadelphia Aurora.’ Did not
Duane get the enormous salary of eight hundred dollars a year? ‘Why
Sleep Ye?’

Dismayed, disgruntled with Adams, but afraid to reject him openly, the
Federalist caucus convened in Philadelphia and selected Charles
Cotesworth Pinckney as his running mate with the idea of electing him to
the Presidency through treachery to Adams.

When Adams learned of the Federalist defeat in New York, he momentarily
went to pieces. His suspicious mind instantly saw in his humiliation the
hand of Hamilton and his supporters. He had long been cognizant of the
treachery about him, in his official household. On the morning of May
5th, McHenry received a note from the house on Market Street: ‘The
President requests Mr. McHenry’s company for one minute.’ As the
poet-politician walked up Market Street in response that spring morning,
he could not have conceived of any other issue than a brief discussion
of some departmental matter. Only a few weeks before he had, with
Adams’s knowledge, arranged for a house at Georgetown, and for the
removal of his family thither.[1739] As he had surmised, the subject
which had summoned him to the conference was a minor matter relating to
the appointment of a purveyor. This was satisfactorily disposed of. Was
there something smug or offensive in the manner of Hamilton’s messenger
that suddenly enraged the old man, smarting under the sting of the
defeat in New York? Suddenly he began to talk of McHenry’s derelictions,
his anger rising, his color mounting, his voice ringing with unrepressed
rage. McHenry thought him ‘mad.’ Washington, said Adams, had saddled him
with three Secretaries, Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry. The latter had
refused to give a commission to the only elector in North Carolina who
had voted for Adams. He had influenced Washington to insist on giving
Hamilton the preference over Knox--which was true. In a report to
Congress, McHenry had eulogized Washington and sought to praise
Hamilton--the President’s enemy. He had urged the suspension of the
mission to France. The old man was spluttering with fury, and his
disloyal Secretary was dumb with amazement. It was time for him to
resign. McHenry beat a hasty retreat, returned to his office, prepared
his resignation, which in decency should have been voluntarily submitted
long before, and sent it in the next morning.[1740]

Having set himself to the task of ridding his household of his enemies,
Adams bethought himself of Pickering. Five days after the stormy scene
with McHenry, the austere Secretary of State received a note from the
President inviting a resignation. This was on Saturday. On Monday
morning, Pickering went to his office as usual, having been long
accustomed to ignoring or thwarting the wishes of his chief, and sent a
letter dealing, strangely enough, with his pecuniary embarrassments, and
refusing to resign.[1741] The letter had not been sent an hour before an
answer was in his hands. It was curt and comprehensive. ‘Divers causes
and considerations essential to the administration of the government, in
my judgment requiring a change in the department of state, you are
hereby discharged from any further service as Secretary of State.’[1742]

Hamilton, enraged at the dismissal of his servitors, hastened an
astonishing letter of instructions to Pickering. He should ‘take copies
and extracts of all such documents as will enable you to explain both
Jefferson and Adams.’ No doubt Pickering was ‘aware of a very curious
journal of the latter when he was in Europe--a tissue of weakness and
vanity.’ The time was coming when ‘men of real integrity and energy must
write against all empirics.’[1743] To McHenry he wrote that ‘a new and
more dangerous era has commenced’; that ‘Revolution and a new order of
things are avowed in this quarter’; and, with something of Adams’s
hysteria, that ‘property, liberty, and even life are at stake.’[1744]

The news that Adams had rid himself of his betrayers, and found in John
Marshall and Samuel Dexter as successors men incapable of treachery,
made a profound impression. To Duane of ‘The Aurora’ it was a
vindication. Two months before he had divided the Cabinet into
Hamiltonians and Adamsites, with Pickering and McHenry bearing the brand
of Hamilton.[1745] Announcing the dismissals under the caption, ‘The
Hydra Dying,’ he described Pickering as ‘an uncommon instance of the
mischiefs that may be done in a country by small and contemptible
talents and a narrow mind when set on fire by malignity.’[1746] The
Federalist papers were hard put to sugar-coat the pill. The ‘Centinel’
cautiously said that ‘the best men here have variant opinions on the
measure’ of Pickering’s dismissal.[1747] Three days later, it rushed to
the defense of the humiliated representative of the Essex Junto with the
comment that the best eulogy on his official conduct was ‘the chuckling
of the Jacobins over his removal’ and the assurance that he carried into
retirement ‘the regrets of all good men.’[1748] The Essex Junto made no
attempt to conceal their disgust. Cabot, Ames, Gore, and Pickering were
soon sending their versions to Rufus King in London. ‘You are so well
acquainted with the sort of sensibility for which our chief is
remarkable, that you will be less surprised than most men,’ wrote
Cabot.[1749] Gore wrote that the dismissal ‘produces general
discontent.’[1750] The delicate moral sensibilities of all these
politicians were much hurt because Adams had fallen into the habit of
swearing and using ‘billingsgate.’[1751] He was even speaking with
bitterness of the Essex Junto and the British faction, quite in the
manner of Jefferson. It was even ‘understood’ among the Hamiltonians
that the dismissals were the price of the alliance which had been formed
between Jefferson and Adams.[1752]

But Adams knew what he was about. He knew that a plan had been made to
trick him out of his reëlection. The scheme was bald, bold, stupid. All
the Federalist electors in the North would be urged to vote for Adams
and Pinckney; in the South enough would be asked to vote for Pinckney,
and not Adams, to bring the Hamiltonian Carolinian in ahead. Hamilton
was writing frankly to his friends in this vein, ready to ‘pursue
Pinckney as my single object’;[1753] while Gore was writing King that
‘the intention of the Federalists is to run General Pinckney and Mr.
Adams as President and Vice-President.’[1754] When, in July, Adams
appeared in Boston at a dinner and toasted Sam Adams and John Hancock,
the much-abused Jeffersonians, as ‘the proscribed patriots,’ the
Hamiltonians groaned their disgust and the Democrats shouted with glee.
‘This was well understood by the Jacobins whom it will not gain,’ wrote
Ames.[1755] ‘The Aurora’ observed that ‘he did not give the great orb
[Franklin] around which he moved as a satellite.’[1756] The rupture was
now complete. When Adams was permitted to leave Philadelphia without a
demonstration the latter part of May, ‘The Aurora’ was unseemly in its
mirth. ‘Did the Blues parade? No? What--not parade to salute him “whom
the people delight to honor”--“the rock on which the storm beats”--the
“chief who now commands”? Did not the officers of the standing army or
the marines parade? The new army officers are not fond of the President;
he has dismissed Timothy.’[1757]

Meanwhile, the most consummate of the betrayers, Wolcott, unsuspected
still, remained within the fort to signal to Hamilton.

It was common knowledge early in the spring that Hamilton would exert
his ingenuity to defeat Adams by hook or crook. ‘The Aurora’ declared,
March 12th, that ‘the party with Alexander Hamilton at their head have
determined to defeat Adams in the approaching elections.’ The watchful
eye of the suspicious Adams, who felt the treachery, unquestionably read
the article and heard the gossip. When, after the death of Washington,
the Cincinnati met in New York to select Hamilton as the head of the
order, Adams was informed that his enemy had electioneered against him
among the members. He heard particularly of the action of ‘the learned
and pious Doctors Dwight and Babcock, who ... were attending as two
reverend knights of the order, with their blue ribbons and bright eagles
at their sable button-holes,’ in saying repeatedly in the room where the
society met, ‘We must sacrifice Adams,’ ‘We must sacrifice Adams.’

Thus, when in June, Hamilton, under the pretext of disbanding the army
in person, fared forth in his carriage on a tour of the New England
States, no one doubted the political character of his mission. His
purpose was to prevail upon the leaders to give unanimous support to
Pinckney and to drop a few Adams votes, or, that impossible, to give
Pinckney the same support as Adams. The records of this dramatic journey
are meager enough. It is known that in New Hampshire he talked with
Governor Gilman, who was the popular leader, and ‘took pains’ to impress
upon him ‘the errors and the defects of Mr. Adams and of the danger that
candidate cannot prevail by mere Federal strength.’ He urged support of
Pinckney on the ground that in the South he would get some anti-Federal
votes.[1758] In Rhode Island he evidently encountered a spirited
protest from Governor Fenner. The Governor expressed the hope that all
the electors would be Federalists, but clearly gave no encouragement to
the Pinckney candidacy, according to Hamilton’s own version of the
conference.[1759] There were other versions, however, indicative of a
stormy interview. The ‘Albany Register’ advised Hamilton, in giving the
story of his tour to the ‘Anglo-Federal party which wishes to make
Charles C. Pinckney President,’ to ‘forget his interview with the
Governor of Rhode Island.’[1760] ‘The Aurora’ followed in a few days
with a more circumstantial story. Hamilton had ‘warmly pressed Governor
Fenner to support Pinckney’ and ‘the old Governor’s eyes were opened and
he literally drove the gallant Alexander out of the door.’[1761] 3

But in Massachusetts, albeit the home of Adams, Hamilton could count
upon a cordial reception for his views, since it was also the home of
the Essex Junto. This was composed of the Big-Wigs of the party in that
State, all ardently devoted to Hamilton, sharing in his hate of
democracy and doubt of the Republic. For years these men had met at one
another’s homes and directed the politics of Massachusetts. They were
men of intellect and social prestige, intimately allied with commerce
and the law. There was George Cabot, the greatest and wisest of them
all, and one of the few men who dared tell Hamilton his faults. He was a
man of fine appearance, tall, well-moulded, elegant in his manners,
aristocratic in his bearing, earnest but never vehement in conversation;
a man of wealth, and a merchant.[1762] There was Fisher Ames, brilliant,
vivacious, smiling, cynical, eloquent, exclusive in his social tastes,
and wealthy. There was Theophilus Parsons, learned in the law,
contemptuous of public opinion and democracy, reactionary beyond most of
his conservative contemporaries, more concerned with property than with
human rights. Tall, slender, cold in his manner, colder in his
reasoning, he stood out among the other members of the Junto because of
his slovenliness in dress. Among his friends, at the dinner table, he
was a brilliant conversationalist, for he liked nothing better than to
eat and drink, talk and laugh, unless it was to smoke, chew tobacco, and
use snuff.[1763] He was the personification of the political
intolerance of his class. There, too, was Stephen Higginson, one of the
wealthiest and most cultured merchants of his day, a handsome figure of
a man who took infinite pains with his toilet and always carried a
gold-headed cane. Given to writing for the press, he made ferocious
attacks on John Hancock under the _nom-de-plume_ of ‘Laco,’ and the
truckmen on State Street whom he passed on his way to business taught a
parrot to cry, ‘Hurrah for Hancock; damn Laco.’ So intolerant and
bigoted was his household that a child, hearing a visitor suggest that a
Democrat might be honest, was shocked.[1764] There also was John Lowell,
able lawyer, cultured, ultra-conservative, disdainful of democracy; and
there was Christopher Gore, who amassed a fortune in speculation, and
held a brilliant position at the Bar. A striking figure he was, when he
appeared at the unconventional meetings of the group, tall, stout, with
black eyes and florid complexion, his hair tied behind and dressed with
powder, courtly in his manners, eloquent in speech, utterly intolerant
in his Federalism, and completely devoted to Hamilton’s policies.[1765]
These and their satellites were Hamilton’s Boston friends; more, they
were the backbone of his personal organization, his shock troops. Thus,
when he crossed into Massachusetts on his tour, he was going to his own
with the knowledge that they would receive him gladly--and they did.

Reaching Boston on Saturday evening, he conferred with his friends, and
on Sunday ‘attended divine services at the Rev. Mr. Kirkland’s.’ On
Monday a dinner was given in his honor, where, the party paper insisted,
‘the company was the most respectable ever assembled in the town on a
similar occasion.’ General Lincoln presided. Higginson and Major Russell
of the ‘Centinel’ were vice-presidents. Governor Strong, the
Lieutenant-Governor, the Speaker of the House, Chief Justice Dana, Ames,
Cabot, several members of Congress, and members of ‘the Reverend Clergy’
sat about the boards. ‘The tables were loaded with every dainty the
season affords and every luxury which could be procured.’[1766] It
appears that some Adamsites or Jeffersonians declined to do homage, for
we find the ‘Centinel’ commenting that ‘had a certain citizen known that
General Hamilton resembled his demi-god, Bonaparte, instead of refusing
a ticket to the dinner he would have solicited the honor of kissing--his
hand.’[1767] The Hamiltonians were clearly delighted with the occasion;
Hamilton himself expanded and talked with freedom in the friendly
atmosphere. He talked for Pinckney and against Adams; and in an
especially expansive moment, dwelling on the sinister presumption of
democracy, said that within four years ‘he would either lose his head or
be the leader of a triumphant army.’ The dinner over, the conference
concluded, he made an inspection of Fort Independence on Castle Island,
and was on his way, accompanied ‘as far as Lynn by a cavalcade of
citizens.’[1768] Everything had been carried off with becoming _éclat_,
for had he not stayed at ‘the elegant boarding house of Mrs.
Carter?’[1769] Unhappily the carriage in which he rode with the
‘cavalcade’ broke down in the middle of the street,[1770] to the delight
of the Jacobins, but his composure gave his followers much satisfaction.

Had not the Adamsites implied that he had received the cold shoulder
elsewhere in Massachusetts we might never have known his activities
beyond Lynn. He was ‘everywhere welcomed with unequivocable marks of
respect, cordiality, and friendship.’ He dined in Salem with Mr.
Pickman, ‘drank tea at Ipswich,’ arrived at Davenport’s late in the
evening, departed early in the morning for Portsmouth, and reached
Newburyport on Sunday. That is the reason there was no demonstration
there. But there in the evening he stayed with Parsons ‘in company with
some of the most respectable gentlemen of the town.’[1771]

But Hamilton and the Junto were not soon to hear the last of that tour.
The Democrats harped incessantly on the promise to lose his head or be
the leader of a triumphant army. ‘We have often heard of a French
gasconade,’ said ‘The Aurora,’ ‘but we have now to place alongside of it
a Creole gasconade in America. Alexander Hamilton leading an army to
effect a Revolution! Why, the very idea is as pregnant with laughter as
if we were to be told of Sir John Falstaff’s military
achievements.’[1772] ‘Manlius’ rushed to the attack, ostensibly in
behalf of Adams, in the ‘Chronicle.’ Why this trip to ‘disband the
army’? Had Hamilton ever been in the camp before? Had he appeared ‘to
plant the seed of distrust in the bosom of the troops? against Adams?’
And what a painful effect upon the great men of Boston! ‘Your personal
appearance threw poor Cabot into the shade. Even what had been deemed
eloquence in the smiling Ames was soon reduced to commentary; and so
petrifying was your power that our District Judge has scarcely since
dared to report an assertion from his Magnus Apollo of Brookline, either
on politics or banking.’ And lose his head or lead a triumphant army if
Pinckney were not elected? ‘Your vanity was more gross than even your
ignorance of the characters of the people of the eastern States.’[1773]
Two months later, the echoes were still heard. The Reverend Mr.
Kirkland, flattered by Hamilton’s cultivation and ingratiation, and
young, not content with indiscreetly repeating Hamilton’s observations
made in company, rushed into the papers with an attack on Adams and a
glorification of Hamilton. What a disgrace to the clergy, wrote ‘No
Politician,’ for this flattered youth ‘to vindicate the character of a
confessed adulterer, and artfully to sap the well-earned reputation of
President Adams.’[1774] Even King heard from a Bostonian that Hamilton
‘in his mode of handling [political themes] did not appear to be the
great General which his great talents designate him.’[1775] But Hamilton
made his observations and reached his conclusions--that the leaders of
the first order were in a mood to repudiate Adams, but that those of the
second order, more numerous, were almost solidly for him. He merely
changed his tactics.

CHAPTER XX

HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE

Finding that persuasion had failed to shake the fidelity of the
second-class leaders, Hamilton bethought himself of coercion. The moment
he returned to New York, he wrote Charles Carroll of Carrollton
proposing to ‘oppose their fears to their prejudices,’ by having the
Middle States declare that they would not support Adams at all. Thus
they might be ‘driven to support Pinckney.’ Both New Jersey and
Connecticut, he thought, might agree to the plan, since in both places
Adams’s popularity was on the wane. In any event, it was not ‘advisable
that Maryland should be too deeply pledged to the support of Mr.
Adams.’[1776] The effect on Carroll was all that could have been
desired. Two months later, an emissary of McHenry’s, sent to interview
the venerable patriot, found that he considered Adams ‘totally unfit for
the office of President, and would support ... the election of General
Pinckney.’[1777] Throughout the summer the leaders in the inner circle
of the Hamiltonian conspirators were busy with their pens. Richard
Stockton urged on Wolcott the wisdom of making a secret fight. ‘Prudent
silence ... get in our tickets of electors ... they will be men who will
do right in the vote ... and Mr. Pinckney will be the man of their
choice.’[1778]

No one was deeper in the business than Wolcott, who, holding on to his
position, and presenting a suave, unblushing front to his chief, was
writing feverishly to the leaders of the conspiracy. While Hamilton was
receiving the homage of his New England idolaters in June, Wolcott was
writing Cabot that ‘if General Pinckney is not elected all good men will
have cause to regret the inactivity of the Federal party.’[1779] In July
he was writing McHenry that if ‘you will but do your part, we shall
probably secure Mr. Pinckney’s election,’[1780] and to Chauncey Goodrich
that good men thought Mr. ‘Adams ought not to be supported.’[1781] He
was receiving letters from Benjamin Goodhue, presumably Adams’s friend,
concerning ‘Mr. Adams’ insufferable madness and vanity,’[1782] and from
McHenry that ‘Mr. Harper is now clearly of opinion that General Pinckney
ought to be preferred.’[1783] In August he was assuring Ames that ‘Adams
ought not to be supported,’[1784] and in September ‘The Aurora’ was
charging that during that month he had declared in Washington ‘that Mr.
Adams did not deserve a vote for President.’[1785] Clasping Adams’s hand
with one of his, this consummate master of intrigue was using the other
to wig-wag messages to Hamilton from the window of the fortress.

But Hamilton found much to disconcert him. Albeit Cabot rather boasted
that in July he had not yet paid a visit of courtesy to Braintree, and
probably would not,[1786] he was writing Hamilton that to discard Adams
at that juncture would mean defeat in Massachusetts.[1787] He was
opposed, however, only to an open rupture. Noah Webster, having made a
New England tour of his own, and lingered a moment under the trees at
Braintree, went over to Adams bag and baggage.[1788] All but two of the
Federalist papers were supporting Adams with spirit. To prod him more,
the Jeffersonian press was pouncing upon Hamilton ferociously. ‘Dictator
of the aristocratical party!’ ‘Father of the funding system!’ Working
desperately for Pinckney, ‘continually flying through the continent
rousing his partisans by the presence of their chief, prescribing and
regulating every plan,’ was Hamilton, charged a Jeffersonian editor.
Author of ‘a little book’ in which he ‘endeavors to give an elegant and
pleasant history of his adulteries,’ he added.[1789] Hamilton began to
meditate a sensational stroke.

Meanwhile, the Jeffersonians, united, enthusiastic, thoroughly
organized, confident, were waging war along the whole line. The
mechanics who could vote, the small farmers, the liberals and Democrats,
the private soldiers of the Revolution who felt they had been tricked,
the small merchants, the Germans because of taxes and the proscription
of Muhlenberg, the Irish because the Federalists abused them and passed
the Alien Law, were almost a unit behind their chief. All the cost of
the army and navy, and the frequent outrages of soldiers with nothing to
do, brought support. In North Carolina, Gales, in ‘The Register,’ was
using the camp near Raleigh as a veritable recruiting point for
Democrats. The eight per cent loan of that day and the Excise Law of the
day before were bringing great accessions to the ranks. The growing
indebtedness of the Nation, and Wolcott’s admission that another eight
per cent loan would be necessary, was making converts. The scandals in
administration were creating havoc in Administration circles and driving
Wolcott to distraction. The scandal of Jonathan Dayton, Federalist
leader of New Jersey, broke, and the hailstones beat upon the head of
Wolcott, who was the victim of his credulity alone. While Speaker,
Dayton had made written application at the end of the session of 1798
for thirty-three thousand dollars as compensation for the House. That
amount was not needed. Wolcott’s plea that he did not know he had given
Dayton more than necessary was greeted with jeers. His assertion that he
had the right to expect the unexpended balance to be immediately
refunded only met derisive laughter. Not until the winter of 1799 was
the discovery made that Dayton had retained more than eighteen thousand
dollars since July, 1798. Wolcott, discovering this fraud, summoned
Dayton, wrote him a sharp letter, and recovered the money--but not the
interest.[1790] Meanwhile, Duane, in ‘The Aurora,’ was devoting pages to
affidavits concerning Dayton’s notorious land frauds.[1791] Defalcations
were numerous, due, according to the apologists of the Administration,
to ‘the difficulty of procuring men of standing and character ... to
execute their duties.’[1792]

Then, to darken the picture for the Federalists, stories were afloat
corroborative of the Jeffersonian charge that they favored aristocracy
and monarchy. Again Adams appeared as the champion of kingly government.
Senator John Langdon, a reputable man, personally vouched in a signed
letter to the truth of the charge that, in the presence of himself and
John Taylor of Caroline, Adams had said that ‘he expected to see the day
when Mr. Taylor and his friend, Mr. Giles, would be convinced that the
people of America would not be happy without an hereditary chief and
Senate--or at least for life.’[1793] This was greatly strengthened from
Federalist sources. ‘The observations of the President when he went
through town [New Haven] last, made more Democrats than any other thing
beside,’ wrote Timothy Phelps to Wolcott. ‘He told Dr. Dana he did not
believe the United States could exist as a nation unless the Executive
was hereditary.’[1794]

The lesser lights among the Federalists were likewise contributing to
the Jeffersonian cause. Noah Webster was being vigorously assailed in
the ‘American Mercury’ for saying that reading and observation had
convinced him that republicanism was impossible unless the poorer
classes were excluded from the vote.[1795] But the climax came with the
publication of the stupid pamphlet of John Ward Fenno, who, with his
father, had been editor of the Federalist organ for years. In ‘Desultory
Reflections on the New Political Aspect of Public Affairs,’ he clearly
reflected the views of Hamilton, to whom he referred as having been
pitched ‘down the Tarpeian rock of oblivion, not for subsequent
apostacy, but for the very deed of greatness itself.’ It was a slashing
assault on Adams for making peace with France. Glorious prospects had
been opening ‘the doors of the temple of Janus,’ but Adams had acted in
a ‘puerile’ fashion. The masses were denounced as ‘the stupid populace,
too abject in ignorance to think rightly, and too depraved to draw
honest deductions.’ The patriotic Federalists were, by Adams’s action,
‘by one sudden stroke in one short hour, beaten off their ground,
overwhelmed with confusion, and left abandoned to all the ridicule and
all the rage of their antagonists ... and nauseating nonsense, meanness,
abject servility, and the effeminacy of Sybaris now reign with a
pomposity undisturbed even by any casual exertions of genius or common
sense.’ Pickering had been dismissed because he ‘approached too near to
holding a divided empire with [Adams] in the hearts of the people.’ The
time had come to ‘repudiate the author of our evils.’

More: the form of government should be changed. ‘The continent [should
be] divided into ten, fifteen, or twenty counties, to be governed by a
Lieutenant or Prefect appointed by the Executive; certain subaltern
appointments should be in his gift. These Prefects would constitute as
proper an upper House for one branch of the Legislature as could be
devised.’ The franchise should be ‘cut off from all paupers, vagabonds,
and outlaws’--the poor, the democrats--and ‘placed in those hands to
which it belongs, the proprietors of the country.’[1796] This from the
man who had edited the Hamilton Federalist organ in Philadelphia. Copies
were carried about in the pockets of the Jeffersonians and worn out by
readings in the taverns.

On top of this, Federalist leaders, writers, and papers began to hint at
secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. It had become a habit.
There had been talk of secession among them if the State debts were not
assumed: talk again if the Jay Treaty was not ratified. Wolcott’s father
had written his son, long before, of its desirability if Jefferson
should be elected. Four years previously the ‘Hartford Courant,’ the
strongest Federalist paper in New England, began to publish letters by
‘Pelham,’ paving the way for the secession of the North. The South was
bitterly assailed. There were more interesting objects than the Union,
thought ‘Pelham.’ The time had come to secede. A year later, ‘Gustavus’
began writing in the same paper on the same theme. Jefferson was
denounced as an atheist and traitor.[1797] In 1800, ‘Burleigh’ took up
his pen to advocate secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. In
this case the author was known--it was the fanatic John Allen, who, as a
member of Congress, had charged Livingston with sedition because of his
attack in the House on the Alien Law. In his initial letter he urged all
Federalist papers to copy, and some did. The election of Jefferson would
destroy the Constitution, result in anarchy, expel Federalists from
office, wreck the financial system, and lead to Revolution, for ‘there
is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a civil war.’ This would
be bad, but ‘less, far less, than anarchy or slavery.’ Secession would
be almost certain. Where would the boundary be? At the Potomac?--the
Delaware?--the Hudson? New England might have trouble if New York and
Pennsylvania were included in the Northern Confederacy. ‘They are large,
wealthy, powerful. They have many men of intrigue and talent among them,
desperate in their fortunes, ambitious and unprincipled.’ It would be
hard to get them to join a peaceful body and keep them quiet.

These were the leading political articles in the leading Federalist
paper in the most uncompromising Federalist State through the campaign
of 1800.[1798] In the ‘American Mercury,’ ‘Rodolphus’ replied with a
stinging rebuke. ‘He tells us,’ wrote ‘Rodolphus,’ ‘that if Mr.
Jefferson is elected our towns will be pillaged, our inhabitants
rendered miserable and our soil dyed in blood; that we shall have a
Jacobin government, that the Constitution ... will fall a sacrifice, and
finally if the man of his choice is not elected, the Federal Union must
be destroyed and that the Northern States must form a separate
Government. The writer is a Federalist indeed.’[1799]

The Jeffersonians made the most of ‘Burleigh’s’ secession articles.

III

Nowhere were the Jeffersonian activities more annoying to the
Federalists than in New England where Federalism thought itself
permanently entrenched. It had reached its peak in 1798 during the war
hysteria, and the next two years were marked by a notable decline. The
activities of the defiant Democrats were intensified. Denunciations of
the ‘aristocracy’ that governed, of the political meddling of the
clergy, brought the fight personally home to the leaders. In Vermont,
where Lyon had been persecuted and his followers aroused, the stamp tax
and the extravagance in government made a deep impression on the small
farmers. It was a scandal in the best regulated households that ‘Matthew
Lyon and his cubs’ were prowling about the highways.[1800] In
Massachusetts, where Gerry had made a remarkable race for Governor in
the spring, the fight was being made in every quarter, and Ames was
wailing that ‘on the whole the rabies canina of Jacobinism has
gradually passed of late years from the cities, where it was confined to
the docks and the mob, to the country.’[1801] In New Hampshire, the
Jeffersonians had made an astonishing showing in the gubernatorial
contest in the spring, carrying a number of the towns, including Concord
and Portsmouth. There, under the leadership of John Langdon, they had
capitalized the refusal of the Federalist Legislature to grant a charter
to a bank which proposed to loan money in small sums, and place credit
within the reach of the farmers and the poor.[1802] Their defeat,
notwithstanding their heavy vote, encouraged them to persevere in their
attacks on corporations and the ‘privileged few.’

But it was in Connecticut that the Jeffersonians gave the Federalists
their greatest shock by the audacity of their attacks. There the
Democrats, though few, made up in zeal and ability for what they lacked
in numbers. In the home of Pierrepont Edwards, a Federal Judge and a
foremost citizen, they perfected their plans for the campaign. Aaron
Burr spent some time in the State assisting in the creation of a
militant organization. A Federalist complained in a letter to Wolcott
that ‘the Democrats spent all their time and talents for eight weeks
endeavoring to persuade the ignorant part of the community that the
Administration was endeavoring to establish a monarchy; and even good
Mr. Edwards told them he had held an important office under government,
but that he had found them so vile and corrupt, he was determined to
resign the office.’[1803] Nothing could have been more distressing to
the aristocratic and clerical oligarchy which had long lorded it over
the people. The ‘Courant’ piously prayed that Connecticut would not
‘exhibit the distressing spectacle of two parties rending the State with
their reproaches and whetting their swords for civic combat,’ and held
up ‘the awful condition in Pennsylvania and Virginia’ as a
warning.[1804] The ‘New York Commercial Advertiser,’ founded by a son of
Connecticut, was disheartened at the effrontery of the Democrats.
‘Jacobinism in Connecticut,’ it said, ‘has heretofore been confined to
back streets and dark recesses; but in consequence of the successes in
other States it begins to creep forth and show its hideous front in good
company.’[1805] In September the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford was
boasting through ‘Gracchus’ that ‘in many towns where there was not a
man who a few months ago avowed the cause of republicanism, the friends
of liberty and the Constitution have now a majority,’ although ‘in most
towns there was a fight.’[1806]

To Abraham Bishop, the fighting leader of the Jeffersonians, was left
the congenial task of whipping the Federalists to a frenzy. A graduate
of Yale, of which Dwight, popularly known as ‘the Pope of Federalism,’
and a man of scholarly attainments, was President, he was invited to
deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at the commencement. It was assumed
that he would speak on some literary or scientific subject, but nothing
was more remote from his intentions. Very carefully, and with malice
aforethought, he prepared a scathing arraignment of Federalist
principles and policies. At the last moment the clergy discovered the
nature of the discourse and recommended its rejection. One indignant
partisan wrote Wolcott that ‘the Society discovered the cheat before it
was delivered and destroyed its effect so far as was within their
power.’[1807] The ‘Courant’ explained that when the invitation was
extended, the members of the fraternity were ‘ignorant of his
sentiments,’ and of the fact that ‘he had been once desired by a
committee of the society to resign the presidency because of profanity.’
The moment it was found that the wicked man had written ‘a seditious and
inflammatory libel on the religion and government of the country,’ it
was decided to dispense with the oration.[1808] But the seditious and
irreligious Bishop had no notion of being robbed of an audience. The
‘Courant’ reported that ‘with an impudence and effrontery known only to
weak or wicked men,’ Bishop ‘proceeded at seven o’clock to palm off on
the public the production.’[1809] More than fifteen hundred men, women,
and children, including some members of the clergy, heard him,[1810] but
the ‘Courant,’ looking over the assemblage, solemnly declared it as ‘a
singular fact that every open reviler of religion was there and highly
gratified,’ but that the young ladies of New Haven ‘refused to grace an
audience thus collected and consisting of such characters.’[1811]

No more slashing attack was heard during the campaign. The audience was
sympathetic, jubilant. The orator in fine fettle, the subject to his
taste. He attacked the extravagance in government, sneered at the
ceremonious launching of war vessels, ridiculed the military pretensions
of Hamilton. The army had not fought, but had ‘stood their ground
bravely in their cantonments.’ The funding system had ‘ruined thousands,
but ... has also led up to an aristocracy more numerous than the
farmers-general in France, more powerful than all others because it
combined the men of wealth.’

But it was for the political preachers of Connecticut that Bishop
reserved his heaviest fire. ‘How much, think you, has religion been
benefited by sermons intended to show that Satan and Cain were
Jacobins?’ Then a contemptuous fling at ‘Pope’ Dwight--‘Would Paul of
Tarsus have preached to an anxious, listening audience on the propriety
of sending envoys?’ After all, ‘the Captain of Salvation is not so weak
as to require an army and navy and a majority in Congress to support His
cause.’ Then, falling into satire: ‘Let no one imagine that I would
represent the clergy as acting out of their sphere ... for is it not
said unto them, “Go ye into all the world and preach politics to every
creature. When men oppose ye, call them enemies of God and trample them
under your feet.” ... When the people are assembled, say to them that
the Lord reigneth on the earth in the midst of men of power and wealth;
that he delighteth in the proud, even in those who are lofty; that he
will exalt the vain, and lay in the dust they who are humble in his
sight; that the great are gods; but that the little men are like the
chaff which he driveth before the wind; that in the day of his power he
will shine mightily on those who are in power, and that he will make the
people under them like the hay and the stubble and the sweepings of the
threshing floor.’

Immediately the speech was published in pamphlet form and sent broadcast
over the country. Editions were printed in numerous towns and
States.[1812] Within a week an answer had been published in a pamphlet,
‘A Rod for a Fool’s Back,’[1813] but it failed to affect the popularity
of Bishop’s ‘Oration on the Extent and Power of Political Delusions,’
and two months later, when he was at Lancaster during a session of the
Legislature, he repeated the speech on invitation of Governor
M’Kean.[1814] It was a palpable hit.

And it was a hit, primarily because it was an assault on the part the
clergy was playing in the campaign. All over New England, and in New
York and Philadelphia, ministers were preaching politics with an
intemperance of denunciation and a recklessness of truth that seems
incredible to-day. The game of the politicians to picture Jefferson as
an atheist, a scoffer at religion who despised the Church and laughed at
the Bible, was entrusted to the Ministerial Corps, which did the best it
could. It was a line of slander that had followed Jefferson from the
moment he forced religious liberty and toleration into the laws of
Virginia. The only campaign canard of which Jefferson took cognizance
was set afloat by the Reverend Cotton Smith, who proclaimed that the man
of Monticello had accumulated his property by robbing a widow and
fatherless children of their estate while acting as their executor. ‘If
Mr. Smith thinks that the precepts of the Gospel are intended for those
who preach them as well as for others,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘he will some
day feel the duties of repentance and acknowledgment in such forms as to
correct the wrong he has done. All this is left to his own
conscience.’[1815] But if Jefferson was content to leave to their
consciences clergymen bearing false witness, his followers were not.
When the Reverend Dr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia gravely warned his
congregation against voting for an atheist, Duane made a biting reply.
‘He is the man who opposed reading the Declaration of Independence on
4th of July last,’ he wrote. ‘Need we wonder at his hatred of Mr.
Jefferson?’[1816] When the clergyman, stung by the attack, made a weak
reply, Duane asked: ‘During the prevalence of yellow fever ... in 1798
on a day in the house of Mr. Richard Potter in Germantown did you not
provoke an argument in which you supported monarchical doctrines and
assert that the country would never be happy until it had a king?’[1817]
To another minister, fortunately ‘the late Rev. Dr. J. B. Smith of
Virginia,’ was ascribed one of the most amazing stories of the campaign,
that Jefferson on passing a dilapidated church had sneeringly said that
‘it was good enough for Him Who was born in a manger.’[1818]

When the Reverend John M. Mason published a political pamphlet under the
cover of religion,[1819] accusing Jefferson of being a Deist, and the
Reverend Dr. Lynn of New York, actively electioneering for Pinckney
against both Adams and Jefferson at the instance of Hamilton, printed
another,[1820] a Democratic pamphlet appeared declaring that ‘Jefferson
is as good a Christian as Adams,’ and charging that ‘Pope’ Dwight, ten
years before, had published a poem, ‘The Triumph of Infidelity,’ in
which he named Pinckney as a Deist. In this pamphlet[1821] Dr. Lynn was
handled as roughly as the Philadelphia pulpit politician. Had he not
called on a Democrat while electioneering for Pinckney and been forced
to admit that Jefferson was a good man? Had he not, when pressed, been
forced to concede that Pinckney was a Deist? Had not the wife of the
Democrat indignantly taken the clergyman to task for his ‘partiality to
a self-confessed adulterer?’

If the Jeffersonians were attacking the political preachers with
meat-axe and artillery, they were not without provocation enough. In
Connecticut, these ministers were the backbone of the Federalist Party
machine, with Dwight as their leader, than whom none more offensively
intolerant ever breathed curses on a foe. In Massachusetts, when the
Reverend Ebenezer Bradford espoused the cause of democracy, he was
ferociously abused by his fellow ministers and the Federalist papers,
ostracized in the name of Christ by his fellow clergymen, and refused a
pulpit in Essex County. It was not a time when ministers in some
sections were making much of the action of Christ in seeking his
disciples among workers and fishermen.[1822] The feeling of many of
these was expressed by the Reverend David Osgood when, speaking of the
masses, he said that ‘they may know enough for the places and stations
to which Providence has assigned them; may be good and worthy members
of the community, provided they would be content to move in their own
sphere and not meddle with things too high for them.’[1823]

In one pamphlet the case against Jefferson’s religion was set forth in
detail--he questioned the story of the Deluge; did not believe the Bible
in its entirety was inspired; and was opposed to teaching the Bible in
the public schools. ‘No one, I believe,’ wrote this distressed
Christian, ‘has openly and publicly asserted that Jefferson is a
Christian.’[1824] Soon a pamphlet in defense was in circulation. ‘Read,
ye fanatics, bigots, hypocrites ... and you base calumniators whose
efforts to traduce are the involuntary tribute of envy to a character
more pure than your own--read and learn and practice the religion of
Jefferson as displayed in the sublime truth and inspired language of his
ever memorable “act establishing religious liberty.” Read his views on
slavery in his “Notes on Virginia”--“I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”’[1825]
The ‘Chronicle’ was amused to observe ‘the characters who are professed
champions of religious zeal.’ Who were they? ‘What shall we say of a
faction that has at its head a confessed and professed adulterer?... In
connection with this Saint we have a group of zealots, consisting of
gamblers, bankrupts, Saturday evening carousers, or, to comprise the
whole in one general appellation, a British Essex Junto intermixed with
a few clerical hypocrites who have formed an alliance, offensive and
defensive, to calumniate Mr. Jefferson.’[1826] The ‘American Mercury’
dwelt on contributions made by Jefferson to the Church and to needy
clergymen. ‘Thus while Mr. Jefferson is ... practicing the blessed
religion of Jesus Christ by acts of charity and benevolence ... these
political parsons are abusing that holy religion and profaning the
temple of God by fulminating lies and slander against Mr.
Jefferson.’[1827]

Thus through the summer and autumn and into the winter the political
preachers continued their assaults, and the Jeffersonians replied
without undue reverence for the cloth. Everywhere the Federalist leaders
were assuming a pious pose, even Sedgwick and Ames and Otis were
becoming religious, and the Democrats greeted their pose with ribald
mirth. Into an amusing imaginary diary of Jonathan Dayton of the soiled
reputation, Duane was writing the notation: ‘Went to church--must go to
church--Federalists must be pious--‘twill do a great deal of
good.’[1828] When an appeal was made to Catholics to vote against
Jefferson, Duane dryly commented: ‘We presume the ... reason to be that
it was owing to Mr. Jefferson that the Catholic priest was saved from
being hanged for going into ... Virginia ... and that to his toleration
law it was owing that the Catholic can now build churches and adore God
without incurring penalties of fine and imprisonment.’[1829]

Thus religion in virulent form fought with politics in the campaign of
1800.

But this sort of fighting and sniping was not working to the
disadvantage of Adams--and that was of some concern to Hamilton, who had
concluded that he would be happier under the presidency of Jefferson
than under a continuation of Adams. Scurrility there was in abundance,
but Adams suffered little. Occasional references were made to his
vanity, his love of pomp, his partiality to titles, and to his writings
as evidence of monarchical tendencies, but these were mild enough. With
the political preachers and editors abusing Jefferson, and with the
Democrats attacking Hamilton, it was time for some one to assault
Adams--and Hamilton delegated himself to the task. During the summer,
Adams, smarting under the discovery of the treachery of his party
associates, had been freely talking in unguarded conversation of an
‘English party,’ and naming Hamilton and his friends. This furnished the
pretext.

On the first of August, Hamilton wrote a note to Adams asking a
verification or denial of the report that he had said there was a
British faction with Hamilton at the head. This was sent to Cabot for
transmission to Braintree. The cunning leader of the Essex Junto, in
acknowledging the receipt of the letter, suggested that perhaps the
election of Jefferson would be necessary for the reunification of the
Federalist Party. Were Pinckney chosen, he would encounter the venomous
hostility of the Adamsites. How would it do for the Federalists to throw
their support to Burr? Many Federalists favored such action.[1830] Adams
ignored the letter from Hamilton, as the latter unquestionably supposed
he would. Two days after its transmission and before it could have
possibly reached the President, Hamilton wrote Wolcott of his
‘impatience’ at the latter’s delay in sending the ‘statement of facts
which you promised me.’ The trusted member of Adams’s official family
had promised his chief’s most bitter foe the ammunition for attack. It
was plain, said Hamilton, working on Wolcott’s fears, that unless
something were done the Adams faction ‘will completely run us down in
public opinion.’ Had not Wolcott’s name been bandied about with
Hamilton’s as a member of the British party?[1831]

Later in the month he wrote McHenry, then nursing his wrath in
retirement, of his plan to publish a pamphlet defending himself and
friends and attacking Adams. He was prepared to put his name to it, but
this he could not do without ‘its being conclusively inferred that as to
every material fact I must have derived my information from members of
the Administration.’ To both McHenry and Wolcott he sent a copy of the
letter.[1832] At the moment he wrote, he was having difficulty with some
of his advisers. Cabot and Ames had discussed the wisdom of Hamilton’s
putting his name to the pamphlet, and both agreed it would be
indiscreet. It should be remembered that Adams might be reëlected.
Hamilton’s sponsorship of the pamphlet would give it force with men who
needed no conversion, while with his enemies ‘it would be converted into
new proof that you are a dangerous man.’[1833] A month later, Hamilton
was still in doubt about affixing his name, but evidently anxious for
encouragement to do so. Thus he wrote Wolcott that ‘anonymous
publications cannot affect anything,’ but that ‘some of the most
delicate of the facts stated I hold from the three ministers, yourself
particularly, and I do not count myself at liberty to take the step
without your permission.’[1834] On October 1st, Hamilton sent a second
letter to Adams, through Cabot, who, ten days later, wrote that it had
been transmitted,[1835] but no reply was made. Nothing could have suited
Hamilton better. Thus the pamphlet was written and sent to the editor of
the New York ‘Gazette’ to print. It bore the name of Hamilton. It was to
be guarded from general publicity and sent only to leading Federalists
over the country.

And right here the uncanny cleverness of Burr again intervened. The
suave little black-eyed master of espionage had known Hamilton’s slate
for the Assembly within an hour after the caucus had adjourned; when
Hamilton’s caucus decided to ask Jay to call an extra session of the
Legislature to defeat the effect of the election, the fact was heralded
in the papers the next day; and now Burr was to see a copy of the
printed pamphlet before the eye of its author had seen it. Just how he
got possession of the copy will never be known. His intimate political
associate and authorized biographer merely says that he learned it was
in the press and ‘arrangements were accordingly made for a copy as soon
as the printing of it was complete.’[1836] Parton has a more colorful
story. Burr was an early riser, and, walking in the street near
Hamilton’s house one morning, he met a boy carrying a covered basket. He
always spoke to children.

‘What have you there, my lad?’

‘Pamphlets for General Hamilton.’

Whereupon he requested and received a copy, immediately summoned Davis
and two others to his house, where extracts were copied and hastened
with the utmost speed to ‘The Aurora’ and the New London ‘Bee.’[1837]
There is still another version of the general circulation that neither
biographer mentions--that of the editor of the New York ‘Gazette,’ who
was forced to an explanation in self-defense. The general circulation
was ‘contrary to the expectation ... that it would be restricted to
particular quarters. The editor of the Gazette thinks it his duty to
exonerate Mr. Hamilton by making it known that the thing has happened in
direct opposition to his views. He had given the most precise
instructions that the circulation might be deferred; but the Editor,
having been informed that by a breach of confidence or indiscretion
somewhere it was likely that extracts might appear in some newspapers,
communicated the intelligence to Mr. Hamilton, who ... being about to
depart for Albany left a letter with a friend directing him that if such
a thing should happen, then to permit the letter to be thrown into
circulation.’[1838] This explanation did not appear, however, until
Hamilton found that the tremendous sensation the pamphlet created was
not reacting entirely in his favor. And for a sensation there was cause
enough.

An amazing production this, for the middle of the campaign. Adams did
‘not possess the talents adapted to the administration of government.’
There were ‘great and intrinsic defects in his character which unfit
him.’ Even during the Revolution, Hamilton had entertained doubts as to
‘the solidity of his understanding.’ When Adams had conducted Madame de
Vergennes, wife of the Foreign Minister in Paris, to dinner, and been
rewarded with her comment that he was ‘the Washington of negotiation,’
he had interpreted it as an illustration of ‘a pretty knack of paying
compliments,’ when he might have said that it disclosed ‘a dexterous
knack of disguising sarcasms.’ His vanity was so great that it was ‘more
than a harmless foible.’ True, Hamilton had sought to elect Thomas
Pinckney in 1796, but this was due to the ‘disgusting egotism, the
distempered jealousy, and the ungovernable indiscretion of Mr. Adams’s
temper, joined to some doubts of the correctness of his maxims of
administration.’ Adams’s letter to Tench Coxe, charging the Pinckneys
with being English toadies, was silly; his conduct in preventing the
French war was infamous. This latter had come out of the vice of not
consulting his constitutional advisers--meaning Wolcott, Pickering, and
McHenry. He had thus fallen into the hands of ‘miserable intriguers’
with whom ‘his self-love was more at ease.’ With gay disregard of the
truth, Hamilton denied that there was any conspiracy to interfere with
Adams’s plans at Trenton.

More amazing still, Adams was denounced for the dismissal of two
traitors in his Cabinet, and this, despite the fact that another, who
remained, had furnished the writer with much of the material for the
pamphlet. There was no cause for the dismissals--none at all. It was
only Adams’s ‘paroxysms of rage, which deprived him of self-command and
produced very outrageous behavior.’ Pickering had been driven out
because he was ‘justly tenacious of his own dignity and independence.’
The Adams interview with McHenry called for both ‘pain and laughter’--an
incredible performance. Then followed more abuse because Adams had not
given Fries and others to the scaffold. Then--a pitiful touch--for not
appointing Hamilton commander-in-chief to succeed Washington. Here the
author entered into more personal grievances. Having pictured Adams as
an ingrate, a liar, and a fool unfit for high administrative office, the
author concluded with the statement that because ‘the body of
Federalists, for want of sufficient knowledge of facts, are not
convinced of the expediency of relinquishing him,’ Hamilton would ‘not
advise the withholding from him of a single vote.’[1839]

It was the most astounding political performance in American
history--and the Nation rocked with mingled imprecations and laughter.
Even Cabot was a little shocked. ‘All agree,’ he wrote Hamilton, ‘that
the execution is masterly, but I am bound to tell you that you are
accused by respectable men of egotism; and some very worthy and sensible
men say you have exhibited the same vanity in your book which you charge
as a dangerous quality and great weakness in Mr. Adams.’[1840]

Major Russell, of the ‘Centinel’ in Boston, was painfully embarrassed,
and flopped about like a fish on the burning sands. In one issue he
supported Adams, and denounced the author of an attack on Hamilton’s
action as ‘as well qualified for the task as a Billingsgate oyster is to
contemplate the principles of the Newtonian philosophy.’[1841] In
another issue he regretted Hamilton’s ‘ill-timed epistle,’ and denounced
‘an imported renegado of the name of Cooper’ who had written Hamilton a
‘saucy production’ to the effect that if he would admit the authorship
of the pamphlet he would ask for his indictment under the Sedition
Law.[1842] This is evidence enough that Russell had parted with his
sense of humor, else he would have appreciated the shot. The Hartford
‘Courant’ contented itself by merely reprinting, without comment, the
Jeffersonian New London ‘Bee’s’ excoriation of Hamilton.[1843] The New
York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ was silent, but gave space to the
advertisement of a pamphlet entitled ‘A Letter to General Hamilton,
occasioned by His Letter to President Adams--by a Federalist.’[1844]

The Jeffersonian papers made the most of the opportunity. The ‘American
Mercury’ of Hartford, announcing the arrival of the pamphlet, explained
that, ‘since General Hamilton has secured a copyright to his masterly
production,’ only extracts could be given. It was evidently written in
the interest of Pinckney, who, having been ‘educated at the University
of Oxford’ in England, ‘was naturally’ supported by the British
faction.[1845] ‘I am sorry, sir,’ wrote the author of an open letter to
Hamilton in the ‘Independent Chronicle’ of Boston, ‘that you have been
persecuted in the manner you mention, ... but does it show a man of
fortitude and independence to be continually groaning, like some feeble
old woman under her troubles?... Egotism is the mark of a weak and vain
mind. Here, General, you descend from your usual greatness to the level
with female vanity.’[1846]

Duane, of ‘The Aurora,’ fell upon it with the zest of a kitten lapping
cream: ‘John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the Pinckneys are now fairly
before the public,’ he wrote, ‘not in the partial drawings of their
political rivals, the Republicans. Their claims and pretensions to
public confidence are exhibited by themselves.’[1847] The Portsmouth
‘Ledger’ struck the same note: ‘If President Adams is what General
Hamilton and the Essex Junto represent him, and if Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney is what President Adams in his letter to Tench Coxe has
represented him, viz., a British partisan--can any one hesitate to say
that Mr. Jefferson is the most suitable of the three for
President?’[1848]

But the most telling reply appeared in a pamphlet ascribed to James
Cheetham, the New York editor.[1849] Of course Hamilton was a
monarchist, it said. It had been ‘a thousand times reiterated from New
Hampshire to Georgia.’ The Madame de Vergennes incident? ‘Your
references to a certain private journal of Mr. Adams was surpassingly
brutal and low. They demonstrate the imbecility of your cause and point
out the base malignity of your heart.’ The Adams letter to Tench Coxe?
‘Evidently written in some jocular moment.’ The cause of Hamilton’s
hostility? ‘Envy, ambition, and the loaves and fishes.’ The French
peace? ‘If your intrusive advice had been received, what would have been
the condition of your country? Embroiled in an unprofitable war,
commerce would have been at a stand, and the cause of liberty on the
decline. A standing army would have gluttonized on the substance of
society.’ Adams? True, the ‘Duke of Braintree’ had ‘very slender
pretensions to consistency of character,’ and the Nation’s hope was in
Jefferson, ‘who has walked with dignity in every public and private
calling,’ whose mind ‘is illumined with science and whose heart is
replete with good’; who ‘has stood firm and unshaken amidst the venality
of courts and the temptations of power.’

Under such lashings Hamilton writhed and was eager to make reply. ‘The
press teems with replies,’ he wrote Pickering, ‘and I may finally think
it expedient to publish a second time. In this case I shall reënforce my
charges with new anecdotes. My friends will, no doubt, be disposed to
aid me. You probably possess some that are unknown to me. Pray let me
have them without delay.’[1850] But his friends had no such disposition.
They had had enough. Ames wrote him scornfully of his critics, who were
unworthy of notice. ‘It is therefore the opinion of your friends that
the facts stated must be left to operate on the public mind; and that
the rage of those whom they wound will give them currency.’[1851]

The Federalist Party had been split in two with a battle-axe.

VII

Its leaders realized the hopelessness of their prospects. Many did not
care. McHenry, smarting in Maryland, wrote Wolcott that the lack of
courage and initiative on the part of the leaders, and their failure to
fight Adams in the open, meant defeat. What did they do? ‘They write
private letters,’ said the scornful poet-politician. ‘To whom? To each
other, but they do nothing to give direction to the public mind. They
observe even in their conversation a discreet circumspection generally,
ill calculated to diffuse information.... They meditate in private....
If the party recovers its pristine character ... shall I ascribe it to
such cunning, paltry, indecisive, back-door conduct?’[1852] And for once
in his life McHenry was wise and right. Unable to meet the issues, the
Federalist Big-Wigs still hoped to win through sharp practice. They got
their cue from the Jeffersonians, who, finding from the election of the
year before that the selection of electors by districts would result in
the loss of one or two in Virginia, changed the law and provided for
their election by the Legislature. This was enough for the Federalists
in Massachusetts, where district elections would have given Jefferson at
least two votes. Otis and others wrote the Speaker of the House and the
President of the Senate to change the law and have the Legislature
choose. The change was made. Estopped from complaining by their own
action in Virginia, the Jeffersonians denounced the change in
Massachusetts as a trick of the Essex Junto to rob Adams and elect
Pinckney,[1853] and much bitterness was aroused. In Maryland the
district system was favorable to the Jeffersonians and the Federalists
there were importuned from without to have the Governor call an
extraordinary session of the Legislature to give that body the
power.[1854] Owing to the almost equal strength of the parties in that
State, however, the leaders were afraid to act, and a series of letters
appeared, first in the Baltimore ‘Gazette,’ and later in pamphlet form,
citing the action of the Democrats in Virginia and the retaliation in
Massachusetts. ‘Should the State of Maryland suffer itself to be bullied
out of its rights ... by the clamors of the partisans in Virginia?’
demanded the author.[1855] ‘The Aurora’ charged that James Carroll had
said at Annapolis that the Governor should call the General Assembly
together to deprive the people of the right to vote for electors.[1856]
But when it came to the test the courage of the Marylanders failed and
no change was made.

Only in Pennsylvania did the Jeffersonians have a real grievance. The
most sanguine of the Federalists could find no silver lining to the
cloud here. Fitzsimmons complained that in Philadelphia, ‘a city of
60,000 inhabitants, not a man is to be found who is fit for the station
who will accept the nomination for Congress.’[1857] The envenomed Uriah
Tracy, after traveling through the State, thought the outlook hopeless.
M’Kean had ‘brought forward every scoundrel who can read and write into
office.’ The Democrats, ‘with the joy and ferocity of the damned,’ were
enjoying ‘the mortification of the few remaining honest men.’ Tracy had
seen ‘very many Irishmen’ throughout the State--‘the most God-provoking
Democrats this side of hell.’ Then ‘the Germans are both stupid,
ignorant and ugly, and are to the Irish what the negroes of the South
are to their drivers.’ The Democrats were ‘establishing presses and
newspapers in almost every town and county in the country and the
Federal presses are failing for want of support.’[1858] Under these
conditions the Federalists conceived the idea of depriving Pennsylvania
of any voice at all in the election--an idea not unreasonable, since no
provision had been made as to the method of choosing electors. In July,
Senator Bingham had written Wolcott that there was little probability
that the State would have ‘any agency in the election,’ but in any event
its vote would be ‘equalized from the preponderance which the parties
reciprocally possess in the two branches of the Legislature.’[1859]

In November, Governor M’Kean called an extraordinary session. In the
Senate the Federalists had a small majority; in the House the Democrats
had the advantage; on joint ballot the Democrats outnumbered their
opponents. The Democrats urged a joint ballot; the Federalists laughed
the proposal to scorn. Excitement rose to fever heat. Charges were made
that Liston, the British Minister, was using money to affect the
result.[1860] The State, at the moment, was Jeffersonian, and the
legislators were deluged with petitions for a joint ballot, but
petitions from the people had never impressed the Hamiltonians. These
stood firm--holding the power of veto. At length they made a concession
to the end that the State might not be deprived of any voice. The Senate
could select seven electors, the House eight. The Democrats writhed and
raved without avail. The Federalists were relentless.

CHAPTER XXI

DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT

The final contest was staged in the new capital at Washington. It was as
though destiny had arranged a new setting for the new drama on which the
curtain was now rising. In the glamorous days of Federalist supremacy,
Philadelphia, with its wealth, its fashion, and princely houses,
harmonized with the spirit of government. The aristocratic party thrived
in an atmosphere of luxury. Consistency called for a stage setting of
more simplicity, in a wilderness suggesting the frontier, when the
curtain rose on the triumph of democracy.

When that charming philosopher of cynicism, Gouverneur Morris, just
elected to the Senate, reached the new capital in the clearing, after
days of bumping and hardships on the woodsy road through Maryland, he
looked about him with a smile and chuckled. Writing the Princesse de la
Tour et Taxis, he poked gentle fun at the new seat of government. ‘We
only need here houses, cellars, kitchens, scholarly men, amiable women,
and a few other such trifles to possess a perfect city,’ he said, ‘for
we can walk over it as we would in the fields and woods, and, on account
of a strong frost, the air is quite pure. I enjoy it all the more
because my room fills with smoke as soon as the door is closed.... I
hasten to assure you that building stone is plentiful, that excellent
bricks are baked here, that we are not wanting in sites for magnificent
mansions ...; in a word, that this is the best city in the world to live
in--in the future.’[1861]

Ten days before Morris wrote, Mrs. Adams had reached the capital in the
wilds looking older and graver, and without a ceremonious reception, due
to jealousies among the socially ambitious over the choice of a master
of ceremonies.[1862] After the well-traveled roads to Philadelphia, the
journey to Washington had been quite enough to add to both her age and
gravity. On the way from Baltimore her party had been lost in the
woods, wandering aimlessly about for two hours until rescued by a
wandering negro. ‘Woods are all you see from Baltimore until you reach
this city, which is only so in name,’ she wrote her daughter. ‘Here and
there, a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed amongst the
forest through which you travel miles without seeing a human being.’ Nor
was the grandeur of the President’s house entirely to her liking. From
her windows she could see on the Potomac the ‘vessels as they pass and
repass.’ But a rapid survey of the large mansion with its numerous
draughty rooms, convinced her that it would require thirty servants ‘to
attend and keep the apartment in order, and perform the ordinary
business of the house and stables.’ Not a single apartment finished.
‘The great unfinished audience [East] room I have made a drying room of
to hang up the clothes in,’ she wrote glumly. But--added the tactful
Abigail--‘when asked how I like it, say that I write you the situation is
beautiful, which is true.’[1863] A few days later she wrote of the
impatience of the ladies for a drawing-room, but ‘I have no looking
glasses but dwarfs for this house, nor a twentieth part lamps enough to
light it.’[1864] Had the disgusted Abigail fared forth for a peep into
the living arrangements of others, she might have thought herself more
fortunate. But surveying the city from her point of vantage she would
have found little to tempt to a tour of inspection.

Even then, it was a ‘city of magnificent distances,’ the houses
separated by miles of mud roads, not entirely free from stumps. Travel
by night was precarious. Blackness impenetrable, except when the moon
was at its full, settled down over the homes and the frog ponds. Morris,
having made an evening call, was forced to remain all night, for the
road was ‘not merely deep but dangerous to drive in the dark.’[1865]
James A. Bayard and a party of Federalist leaders, venturing forth on a
return to their lodgings from the home of a friend two miles from town,
were caught in a storm, and the coachman losing his way, they drove
about the waste lands throughout the night, threatened every moment by
the ruts and ravines.[1866]

Pennsylvania Avenue, stretching from the President’s house to the
Capitol, bordered by miasmic swamps, did not at this time boast a single
building; nor would it have been possible to have lived along this
causeway ‘without devoting its wretched tenant to perpetual
fevers.’[1867] From the steps of the Capitol one could count seven or
eight boarding-houses, one tailor’s shop, one shoemaker’s, one printing
establishment, the home of a washwoman, a grocery shop, a stationery
store, a dry-goods house, and an oyster market. And this was all. Three
quarters of a mile away on the Eastern Branch stood five or six houses
and an empty warehouse. At the wharf, not a single ship. From the
President’s house to Georgetown living conditions were better because of
immunity from swamps, but the wretched roads made it all but prohibitive
as a place of residence for members of Congress. Six or seven of the
more fastidious braved the distance and found comfortable quarters; two
or three found lodgings near the President’s house; but the remainder
crowded into the boarding-houses on Capitol Hill. In the best of these,
by sharing a room one could have attendance, wood, candles, food, and an
abundance of liquor for fifteen dollars a week. However, the fare was
unsatisfactory, the beef not good, and vegetables hard to get.[1868]
Such was the hair-trigger delicacy of the political situation that this
packing of the politicians might easily have led to altercations and
bloodshed had they not seen fit to herd together according to their
political views. There was some gambling, some drinking, but Gallatin
observed that for the most part the members ‘drank politics’ instead of
liquor.[1869]

How the dandies of the Federalist circle must have missed the royal
hospitality at Mrs. Bingham’s! Pathetic efforts were put forth to create
something that might pass for society, but so limited were the resources
that the lone church at the bottom of Capitol Hill, which had previously
served as a tobacco house, was found alluring, and women donned their
finery for worship.[1870] The Thomas Laws, who had one of the few
pretentious houses, organized a ‘dancing assembly’ to which many
subscribed.[1871] Mrs. Law, related to both Lord Baltimore and Mrs.
Washington, who aspired to the scepter of Mrs. Bingham, was a worldly
woman, over-fond of admiration and company, and finally there was a
divorce. But at this time she drew the gayer element to her by her merry
hospitality. ‘Lay down your hat, we have a fine roast turkey and you
must stay and eat it,’ she would say to a caller, and soon others would
casually appear, and an informal party would result.[1872] Callers in
the old houses in Georgetown where Southern hospitality held sway, found
‘bread, butter, ham, and cakes set before them,’ and on leaving they
would likely as not carry away cake and apples in their pockets, a
bottle of milk in their hands.[1873] Great was the amusement of the
fashionable men and women, who had been so elegantly served at the
Binghams’ by the French chef, on finding themselves jolting over the
dirt roads to their lodgings with their pockets crammed with cake.

This was the Washington into which Jefferson was carried in a
stage-coach for the decisive struggle of his career. Wishing to pay his
respects to Adams, for whom he felt more respect than did the
Hamiltonian wing of the President’s own party, he wondered if the
inordinate vanity of his defeated rival would interpret the call as an
attempt to humiliate him. He determined to take the chance. Entering the
President’s house, he found Adams alone--the old man in those difficult
days was all but isolated. One glance was enough to justify the caller’s
fears. In great agitation, and neglecting first to offer his visitor a
chair, Adams burst forth: ‘You have turned me out; you have turned me
out.’

With the gentleness of an elder soothing a hurt child, Jefferson
replied, drawing on his familiarity with the workings of the minds and
hearts of men, ‘I have not turned you out, Mr. Adams; and I am glad to
avail myself of this occasion to show that I have not and to explain my
views. In consequence of a division of opinion existing among our
fellow-citizens, as to the proper constitution of our political
institutions, and of the wisdom and propriety of certain measures ...
that portion of our citizens that approved and advocated one class of
these opinions and measures selected you as their candidate ... and
their opponents selected me. If you and myself had been inexistent, or
for any cause had not been selected, other persons would have been
selected in our places; and thus the contest would have been carried on,
and with the same result, except that the party which supported you
would have been defeated by a greater majority, as it was known that,
but for you, your party would have carried their unpopular measures much
further than they did.’ Suffering as he was under the treachery of the
Hamiltonians, this softened the unhappy President’s mood. Jefferson was
offered a chair. The two men, who had been intimate in Revolutionary
days and in Paris, engaged in a friendly discussion of the topics of the
day, and parted with mutual expressions of respect.

Jefferson returned to Conrad’s boarding-house, where he had taken a
suite of rooms. It was a commodious house, standing on a hill, the
precipitate sides of which were covered with grass and shrubs in a
natural state. The windows of Jefferson’s rooms commanded a beautiful
view of the surrounding country--the level plain between the hill and
the Potomac through which the tree-lined Taber wound its course; and the
man of Monticello could look down from his windows on the tulip-poplar
trees, the magnolia, the azalea, the wild rose, the hawthorn.
Characteristically enough, he had gone to Conrad’s because of the charms
of the scenery. There the man of the hour lived like the other lodgers,
with the exception of having a drawing-room for the reception of
visitors; eating at the common table with the others, at the foot of the
table nearest the door and most remote from the fire. When Mrs. John
Brown, wife of the Kentucky Senator, insisted that he sit at the head of
the table, as the oldest man if not as the Vice-President, he waved the
suggestion aside with a smile of deprecation, and there, in the coldest
part of the room, he continued until he moved into the President’s
house. But for Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Theodorus Bailey, wife of a
Jeffersonian Congressman from New York, the mess table would have
resembled ‘a refectory of monks.’[1874] Living under the same roof
during the hectic weeks that followed were Gallatin who shared his room
with Varnum, a Democrat from Massachusetts, Senator John Langdon,
General Sam Smith of Maryland, Senator Abraham Baldwin of Georgia,
Senator Wilson Carey Nicholas of Virginia, his brother, the Virginia
Representative, and the Browns and Baileys. In the impending crisis
Jefferson could scarcely have surrounded himself with a better board of
strategy. There we will leave him for a while to take up the threads of
the Federalist conspiracy to prevent his election and thwart the public
will.

While Jefferson was calmly observing the development of the conspiracy,
and Gouverneur Morris was reflecting on the absurdity of the human
comedy, Alexander Hamilton sat in his office in New York writing
feverishly to the leaders of his party. If he wrote in bitterness it was
because he was fighting for the last vestige of his prestige as a
leader. It had been ominous enough when he lost control of the party
caucus and the leaders of the second class deserted him for Adams, but
now, to his horror, he found the leaders of the first class scheming for
the election of Burr, his pet aversion, to the Presidency. This was too
much. Through the latter part of December, the indignant sparks flew
from his fast-flying pen as he sought desperately to dissuade the
conspirators who had been his faithful servitors. On the 16th he wrote
Wolcott of his hope that ‘New England at least will not so far lose its
head as to fall into this snare.’ Jefferson was infinitely preferable,
because ‘not so dangerous a man’ and because he had ‘pretensions to
character.’ But Burr was a ‘bankrupt beyond redemption except by the
plunder of his country.’ He was ‘the Catiline of America.’ Would Wolcott
communicate these views to Marshall and Sedgwick and reply
speedily?[1875] The next day Hamilton and his erstwhile idolater, Otis,
were both busy with their pens. The former, in an evident fever of
anxiety, was writing again to Wolcott. It was incredible that
Federalists should be considering Burr. Within the last three weeks at
his own table he had toasted the French Republic, the commissioners on
both sides who had negotiated the peace, Bonaparte and Lafayette. Could
anything have been more monstrous? ‘Alas, when will men consult their
reasons rather than their passions?’ he asked. Elect Burr merely to
mortify the Democrats by the defeat of Jefferson? ‘This disposition
reminds me of the conduct of the Dutch moneyed man, who, from hatred of
the old aristocracy, favored the admission of the French into Holland to
overturn everything. Adieu to the Federal Troy if they once introduce
this Grecian horse into their citadel.’[1876]

While Hamilton was writing thus to Wolcott, Otis, in Boston, was writing
to Hamilton. ‘It is palpable,’ he wrote, ‘that to elect Burr is to cover
the opposition with chagrin and to sow among them the seeds of morbid
division.’ But how open communication with Burr? ‘We in Massachusetts do
not know the man. You do. Please advise us.’[1877] Hearing a few days
later that Sedgwick was deep in the plot, Hamilton wrote him with almost
hysterical earnestness. ‘For heaven’s sake, let not the Federalist party
be responsible for the elevation of this man [Burr].’[1878] Two days
more, and Hamilton was writing in New York; Harper, who had been his
idolater, was similarly engaged in Baltimore. The former was writing
Morris, seeking an understanding with Jefferson; Harper was writing
Aaron Burr, proffering an alliance. ‘Jefferson or Burr? The former
without all doubt,’ wrote Hamilton. ‘Let our situation be improved to
obtain from Jefferson assurances on certain points--the maintenance of
the present system, especially on the cardinal articles of public
credit--a navy, neutrality. Make any discreet use you think fit with
this letter.’[1879] Alas, the flimsiness of political friendship! At
that very hour Harper was writing Burr that the contest would be settled
in the House. ‘The language of the Democrats is that you will yield your
pretensions to their favorite.... I advise you to take no step whatever
by which the choice of the House ... can be impeded or embarrassed. Keep
the game perfectly in your own hands, but do not answer this letter, or
any other that may be written to you by a Federal man, nor write to any
of that party.’[1880]

No importunities from Hamilton were necessary in the case of Morris, who
had taken the high ground ‘that since it was evidently the intention of
our fellow citizens to make Mr. Jefferson their President, it seems
proper to fulfill that intention.’[1881] Such was his response to
Hamilton, who responded gratefully to the loyalty of one follower. ‘If
there is a man in the world I ought to hate,’ he wrote, ‘it is
Jefferson. With Burr I have always been personally well. But the public
good must be paramount to every private consideration.’[1882] The next
day Hamilton was bearing down hard on James A. Bayard, a Federalist
Representative from Delaware, with an excoriation of Burr as liable to
overturn the government to extend his power. Was it possible that
Federalists were thinking of arrangements with a man of Burr’s
character? ‘No engagement that may be made with him can be depended
upon. While making it, he will laugh in his sleeve at the credulity of
those with whom he makes it; and the first moment it suits his views to
break it he will do so.’[1883] At the same time he was appealing to John
Rutledge of South Carolina to assist in crushing the Federalists’
conspiracy as ‘a service to your country.’[1884] That month, too,
Senator Ross of Pennsylvania heard from New York. ‘Mr. Burr is the last
man in the United States to be supported by the Federalists,’ he read.
Why not seek an understanding with Jefferson?[1885]

But as December faded from the calendar, the colossal genius of
Federalism found himself in a position of pitiful impotency and
isolation. Morris and Jay shared his views, but even the New York
friends of his youth, like Troup, were unresponsive, and most of the
leaders, who had once responded gladly to his nod, were ignoring his
frantic efforts and proceeding with their plans. On the day he was
writing Bayard, two men knocked at the lodgings of Morris, and Robert
Goodhue Harper and Senator Henry Latimer of Delaware appeared to
electioneer the delightful cynic whose cynicism held so much of wisdom.
The voluble Harper was the spokesman. Burr, he said, was his ‘intimate
friend.’ It was advisable, he thought, to elect Burr ‘without asking or
expecting any assurances respecting his future administration.’ There
was enough in Burr’s temper and disposition to give ample security ‘for
a conduct hostile to the democratic spirit.’ Morris listened patiently,
and dryly suggested the wisdom of the House suspending its determination
‘until they can have more light as to the merit and probable conduct of
the candidates.’[1886] Unable to see with the majority of his party,
Morris, who had touched life at so many points and in so many places,
did not share in Hamilton’s rage. ‘Indeed, my dear friend,’ he wrote
Robert Livingston about this time, ‘this farce of life contains nothing
which should put us out of humor.’[1887] With Harper making a personal
canvass for Burr, Judge Samuel Sewall, of the Essex Junto, was urging
Otis to stand for ‘a steady and decided vote of the Federal party for
Mr. Burr,’ because it might at any rate prevent an election--a
consummation ‘most desirable.’[1888]

Meanwhile Burr, pretending preoccupation with the approaching nuptials
of his brilliant Theodosia, was suavely simulating, if he did not feel,
a distaste for the plan of his ‘intimate friend’ Harper. When the
movement in his behalf was first launched, he wrote General Sam Smith
that he would ‘disclaim all competition’ with Jefferson, that the
Federalists ‘could entertain no wish for such an exchange,’ and that his
friends would dishonor his views and insult his feelings ‘by a suspicion
that I would submit to be instrumental in counteracting the wishes and
expectations of the United States.’ But eight days later, Harper had
written him an encouraging letter on the prospects and he appears to
have followed the admonition not to reply. After that--silence.

At Conrad’s boarding-house the calmest man at the long table in the
dining-room was Jefferson. He knew the plans of the opposition to
prevent an election or to elect Burr, and noted the gloom among his
friends and the exultation of his enemies. He was quite calm.

III

January found Hamilton still feverishly busy at his writing-desk. His
worst fears had, by this time, been confirmed. His bosom friends had
smiled incredulously upon his protests against Burr. The conspiracy was
spreading ominously. His voice had lost its potency, his sword its
shimmer. Grimly he fought against fate. McHenry had been impressed with
the propaganda for Burr. A number of the Federalist leaders had escaped
from the frog ponds of the capital to enjoy Christmas festivities in
Baltimore, and from these he heard but one opinion--Burr should be
supported. Burr’s letter to Smith? These worldly Federalists laughed
derisively. He would not resent being elected by Federalist votes. Even
McHenry thought that with Burr elected ‘we may flatter ourselves that he
will not suffer the executive power to be frittered away.’ Still, he had
misgivings. ‘Can we promise ourselves that he will not continue to seek
and depend upon his own party for support?’[1889] It was with these
doubts in his mind that McHenry opened a letter from Hamilton, whom he
worshiped. Here he found Burr denounced as ‘a profligate,’ as a
‘voluptuary,’ as ‘an extortionist’ in his profession, as insolvent and
dangerous.[1890] A word from Hamilton was enough, and McHenry joined his
leader in combating the Federalist plans in Maryland--and not without
effect. But with Senator William Hindman, who had been a supporter of
Hamilton in the House, nothing could be done. He was aggressively for
Burr.[1891] In early January, Pickering, still pitying himself, was not
shocked at the idea of Burr’s election. The suggestion that ‘the
federalist interest will not be so systematically opposed under Mr. Burr
as under Jefferson’ impressed him. Then ‘in case of war with any
European power there can be no doubt which of the two would conduct it
with most ability and energy.’[1892]

Meanwhile Bayard had sent a non-committal reply to Hamilton. He had
found ‘a strong inclination of the majority’ of the Federalists to
support Burr with the disposition growing. He ought, therefore, to have
strong grounds for separating himself from the others. While their
action could not bind him, it would be a painful wrench to leave them.
Still, ‘the magnitude of the subject forbids the sacrifice of strong
conviction.’ As the pen of Bayard traveled over the page, the
conspirators were moving about him, for he wrote in the House of
Representatives.[1893] In truth, all Hamilton’s advices were disturbing.
Former Senator Gunn of Georgia, in sympathy with him, was afraid ‘some
of our friends have committed themselves by writing improperly to
Burr.’[1894] Even John Rutledge, while disgusted at the idea of either
Jefferson or Burr in the Presidency, found his party associates
convinced that ‘Burr will be the least mischief,’ and that his election
would be prodigiously afflicting to the Virginia faction and must
disjoint the party.[1895]’

It is easy to imagine Hamilton laying down the letter of Rutledge with a
frown, to open one which had arrived from Sedgwick in the same mail, to
get a greater shock. It was a vigorous plea for Burr. The author found
it ‘very evident that the Jacobins dislike Mr. Burr as President’ and
that ‘he hates them for the preference given to his rival.’ He had
‘expressed displeasure over the publication of his letter to General
Smith.’ Would not ‘this jealousy and distrust and dislike ... every day
more and more increase and more and more widen the breach between them?’
Would not the election of Burr by the Federalists cause ‘incurable’
wounds? Then again, ‘to what evils should we expose ourselves by the
choice of Burr, which we should escape by the election of Jefferson?’
True, given an opportunity, Burr would be more likely to become a
‘usurper’--but what of that?[1896]

About this time, in the middle of the month, the Federalists met to
determine on their course. The caucus was not entirely harmonious, but
the Burr sentiment was overwhelming. Shocked and inwardly enraged at the
disaffection of his friends, Hamilton now redoubled his efforts, and in
a ‘very, very confidential’ letter to Bayard dissected the character of
Burr, demolished the arguments of his Federalist supporters, and
pronounced Jefferson far superior in real ability. To this he gave a
personal touch--something he had hitherto held back. ‘It is past all
doubt,’ he said, ‘that he has blamed me for not having improved the
situation I once was in to change the government; that when answered
that this could not have been done without guilt, he replied, “Les
grandes âmes se soucient peu des petits moraux”; and when told that the
thing was never practical from the genius and situation of the country,
he answered, “That depends on the estimate we form of the human
passions, and of the means of influencing them.” Does this prove that
Mr. Burr would consider a scheme of usurpation as visionary?’[1897] Four
days after sending this letter to Bayard, Hamilton was writing Morris of
the inability of the conspirators to get assurances from Burr, who
complained that it would injure him with his friends. ‘Depend upon it,’
he warned, ‘men never played a more foolish game than will do the
Federalists if they support Burr.’[1898] But Hamilton was striving
against the basest, lowest instincts of his party. One of his Boston
followers was writing King at this very time that he favored Burr
because ‘his opposition heretofore’ had ‘arisen from ambitious motives,’
and because he was ‘not as honest in his politics as Jefferson.’[1899]
No one was a stouter contender against Hamilton’s decent patriotic
impulses than Sedgwick, who was moved by the motives just
indicated.[1900] No one knew it better than Hamilton, but he persisted.
‘I never was so much mistaken,’ he wrote Sedgwick, ‘as I shall be if our
friends in the event of their success do not rue the preference they
will give to that Catiline.’[1901] Fighting desperately, Hamilton looked
clear-eyed upon the repudiation of his leadership of the party into
which he had breathed the breath of life and given the dignity of power
by the prestige of his genius. Among his friends he made no secret of
his depression, admitting to them that his ‘influence with the federal
party was wholly gone’ and that he ‘could no longer be useful.’[1902]
Had he created a Frankenstein to destroy not only himself but his
policies and country? he wondered.

All through that month there was only serenity at Conrad’s
boarding-house in Washington. Thoroughly informed of every move made by
the enemy, Jefferson discussed the situation in the evenings with
Gallatin, the Nicholases, and General Smith. Such was his imperturbable
temperament that in the midst of the intense excitement he was able to
write to one friend of a meteorological diary from Quebec, and to
another on a similar one from Natchez.[1903] His cause was in the
keeping of Gallatin, who was quietly checking up on all members of the
House, closing his own ranks, preparing for every possible contingency,
and concluding that ‘the intention of the desperate leaders must be
absolute usurpation and the overthrow of our Constitution.’[1904] Thus
January passed, and February came with its fateful possibilities.

As the time for the contest approached, the village capital overflowed
with visitors of stern visage. The boarding-houses packed with members
of Congress, these onlookers found lodgment in Georgetown and in
Alexandria. Notwithstanding the bitterness of the fight there was no
trouble--due to stern repression. A little spark would have caused an
explosion. The American people had determined on Jefferson, and it was
no longer a secret that forces were at work to defeat the public will.
Some of the Federalist papers deprecated the attempt to elect Burr with
Federalist votes. The New York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ made vigorous
protest in denunciation of the conspirators. ‘They are now taking the
ground which the Democrats have occupied and descending to the baseness
of supporting their cause by railing, abuse and scurrility. Nothing can
be less politic or honorable. It is the duty of good citizens to
acquiesce in the election and be tranquil. It is proper that Mr.
Jefferson should be made Chief Magistrate.’[1905] The same note was
struck by the New York ‘Gazette.’ ‘Many advocate the support of Mr.
Burr,’ it said. ‘In matters of such importance it is idle to suffer our
passions to get the better of our reason; and in statesmanship it would
be particularly culpable from such puerile motives to risk the welfare
of the nation.... Bad as both these men [Jefferson and Burr] are, there
is no comparison between them.’[1906] But the organ of the Essex Junto
was openly advocating Burr’s election. The ‘Centinel’ of Boston teemed
with Burr propaganda. ‘The people of New England have yet faith to
believe that a good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, nor vice versa,’
it said. ‘They think the stock from which Mr. Jefferson has sprung to be
bad because his works are known to be so; and ... that whatever Mr. Burr
may be reported to be he will eventually turn out good; as he is the
grandson of the dignified Edwards, the great American luminary of
Divinity, and a son of President Burr who was also a burning and shining
light in the churches.’[1907] At times it fell into verse:

‘Stop ere your civic feasts begin;
Wait till the votes are all come in;
Perchance amidst this mighty stir
Your monarch may be Colonel Burr.’[1908]

A correspondent from Washington was quoted approvingly on the plan to
support Burr--‘the expediency of which course is so palpable to common
sense ... that I am astonished any Federal man should hesitate upon the
subject.’[1909] And the ‘Centinel’ expressed the hope that it would be
able ‘by Saturday next to announce either that the people will have
another opportunity to elect a Federal President; or that the House,
rejecting a theoretical and experimental philosopher, will prefer, as a
very respectable member of Congress describes Mr. Burr, “a practical
gentleman who will have judgment, taste and genius enough to appreciate
the usefulness of our federal fabric, and nerve enough to preserve its
integrity.”’[1910]

There was no longer any doubt that the Federalist hot-heads were ready
for usurpation and revolutionary measures. It was known to every
Democrat of any consequence in the country. Gallatin, counting noses,
had no fear of desertions from the Jeffersonian ranks. The real danger,
as the little conclave at Conrad’s saw it, was the prevention of an
election, and Gallatin was certain that, to prevent this calamity, a
Federalist from Maryland and Morris of Vermont would go over to
Jefferson. A plan to meet this contingency was drawn up by Gallatin and
accepted by the chief. More sinister still was the threat, commonly
heard, that should the Federalists succeed in preventing an election,
they would pass a law placing the Presidency in the hands of Marshall or
some other official. This the Democrats were prepared to resist by
physical force. To prevent this usurpation, the Jeffersonians notified
Governor M’Kean of Pennsylvania and Governor Monroe of Virginia, who
were prepared to march troops instantly upon the capital ‘for the
purpose, not of promoting, but of preventing revolution and the shedding
of a single drop of blood.’[1911] A careful survey convinced Gallatin
that this scheme of usurpation would not have mustered more than twenty
votes among the Federalist members. Only Henry Lee, ‘a desperate
character,’ and Roger Griswold of Connecticut, a bigot, appeared to
Gallatin to be really favorable to such a monstrous measure. Even so the
rumor spread, and it was said that fifteen hundred men in Virginia and
Maryland had agreed in the event a usurper were placed in the Presidency
to move on Washington to assassinate him.[1912]

Jefferson had other plans in view, which he conveyed only to Madison and
Monroe--to call a convention to reorganize the Government and amend the
Constitution, but he concealed this from Gallatin.[1913] The Gallatin
plan, with its military feature, leaked out, causing some uneasiness
among the conspirators, who proceeded, however, with their plans. The
‘Centinel’ boasted that Federalists had no fear of Southern and Western
fighters. ‘Our General [Burr] if called upon can assure them that he has
seen southern regiments in former times and knows what they are composed
of.[1914]

Meanwhile the Federalists proceeded with their plans. Burr, concealing
himself in Albany, was maintaining a discreet silence, and on February
1st, Jefferson wrote him a letter. At no time had he any confidence in
Burr’s political honesty or reliability. During the two Federalist
Administrations he had observed that, whenever a great military or
diplomatic appointment was to be made, Burr had hurried to Philadelphia
and was ‘always at market if they wanted him.’ Jefferson had thought it
wise to remain rather distant.[1915] But he was too sagacious to reveal
his distrust at this juncture. He had no thought of giving Burr any
excuse for treachery, and enemies had been busy with a forged letter
bearing Jefferson’s signature setting forth uncomplimentary opinions. He
wrote to call attention to the forgery and denounce it. ‘It was to be
expected,’ he wrote, ‘that the enemy would endeavor to sow tares between
us that they might divide us and our friends.’ If the letter was ever
answered, the reply has been lost.

On the day Jefferson sat in his room at Conrad’s writing Burr,
Gouverneur Morris’s morning slumber was interrupted by two visitors who
wished to discuss with him the organization of Burr’s Administration.
‘Laughable enough under the circumstances which now exist,’ chuckled the
cynic.[1916] Two days later, still serene, Jefferson was writing Dr.
Caspar Wistar of some bones recently discovered which the Doctor wished
for the museum. The candidate had taken the trouble to write Chancellor
Livingston, and the reply was inspired by the latter’s letter in answer.
With the village capital crowded, with talk of revolution, usurpation,
assassination, he wrote at length. Perhaps it would be better to ask
only for the bones missing from the museum’s collection, as the town
where they were found would probably be loath to part with them at all.
Even then the philosopher and scientist was not wholly lost in the
politician.[1917]

In New York, Hamilton, having gone his limit, was no longer writing
letters. The indifference of his erstwhile followers had left him
depressed and bitter. Then, one day at the Tontine Coffee-House, he had
an opportunity to renew his warning in the most dramatic manner. Wolcott
had resigned from the Cabinet, his treachery still unsuspected by Adams,
to be wined and dined by the Federalist members of Congress in
Washington, and toasted by the merchants of Philadelphia and New York.
After the regular toasts had been given at the Tontine and volunteers
were in order, Hamilton rose, and in his most impressive manner
proposed: ‘May our government never fall a prey to the dreams of a
Condorcet NOR THE VICES OF A CATILINE.’[1918] ‘The vices of a Catiline’
was the one expression remembered by the diners as they poured out into
the streets.

The next day the balloting was to begin. On the day of the dinner at the
Tontine the ‘Commercial Advertiser’ predicted the election of Burr on
the second ballot; and that same day Representative William Cooper was
writing a friend of the determination of the Federalists ‘to run Burr
perseveringly’ and to ‘leave the consequences to those who have hitherto
been his friends.’[1919] At Conrad’s boarding-house all was serene.

In a blinding snowstorm the lawmakers and spectators fought their way to
the Capitol on Wednesday morning, the 11th. Nature spread a white mantle
over the crudities of the village as though to dress it becomingly for
the great day. The great plain between the foot of the hill and the
river was covered with a spotless sheet, and even the shop of the
shoemaker and the home of the washwoman took on the appearance of
beauty. No one minded the storm, not even Joseph H. Nicholson of
Maryland, who, though bedridden with fever, insisted on being carried
through the storm to cast his ballot for Jefferson. The electoral votes
being counted in a joint session of the two houses, the members of the
House retired to their own chamber to elect a President. The crowded
gallery was ordered cleared. The visitors, grumbling loudly, filed out
into the corridors. When Samuel Harrison Smith, editor of the ‘National
Intelligencer,’ who had established his paper in the capital on the
advice of Jefferson, insisted on remaining, he was angrily ordered out
by Theodore Sedgwick, the Speaker. Arrangements were thereupon made by
the Jeffersonians to keep Smith informed hourly of the fortunes of the
fight. In a committee room off the chamber lay Nicholson on a bed,
burning with fever, an anxious wife at his side to give him water and
medicine. Even the conspirators could not restrain their admiration. ‘It
is a chance that this kills him,’ wrote Otis. ‘I would not thus expose
myself for any President on earth.’[1920] The stricken Democrat was not
there, however, against the wishes of his wife, who had the fighting
spirit of a Spartan woman.

The first ballot found Jefferson with eight States--Burr with six--nine
necessary to a choice. Another ballot immediately--the same result. A
third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh--no change. As each ballot was
taken, a teller from Maryland entered the little committee room where
Nicholson lay fighting the fever, his head supported by the arm of his
wife. He was awakened from his fitful sleep, a pencil was put in his
trembling fingers, and with his wife’s aid in guiding the pencil the
name of Jefferson was written. The pencil fell from his hand--he slept
again.[1921] At the end of the eighth ballot a motion to vote again in
an hour prevailed. There was little electioneering--men’s minds were
made up. Only a buzz of conversation, some laughter.

The ninth ballot, the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth,
fifteenth ballots--and no change. Darkness had long since fallen on
snow-covered Washington. Bed-clothing, blankets, pillows, had been
brought in. The Federalists had determined to hold on without
adjournment. At nine o’clock the sixteenth ballot brought no change. At
ten o’clock the seventeenth, at eleven the eighteenth--and no change.
The motion was made to adjourn until Thursday, only to be voted down. At
midnight the nineteenth ballot was taken, with the lines unbroken. By
this time the members were slipping off to cloak and committee rooms
between ballots to sleep, and some slept in their chairs. As a ballot
was called, it was ‘ludicrous to see them running from committee rooms
with night caps on.’[1922] The crowd in the corridors dwindled, a few
stubbornly held on. Every hour a messenger waded laboriously through the
heavy snow to the home of the editor of ‘The Intelligencer’ with the
results. No sleep in that house that night. When the knock at the door
was heard, the editor’s wife, her heart beating audibly, as she thought,
could scarcely open to receive the paper.[1923]

At one o’clock another ballot--then at two. Nature was beginning to
claim its toll when it was agreed not to vote again until four o’clock.
After that the ballots were taken hourly throughout the night. When the
twenty-seventh ballot was taken at eight o’clock and the motion was made
to vote no more until noon, there were no protests. The vote at noon
found the opposing lines unbroken. The House adjourned until eleven
o’clock on Friday--the next day.

Friday: larger crowds about the Capitol. Nicholson still on his bed.
When the twenty-ninth ballot showed no change, an adjournment was taken
until noon on Saturday.

Meanwhile the participants in the struggle were sending out meager
reports on the results. While the first ballots were being taken on
Wednesday, Jefferson had written Tench Coxe: ‘For some time since, a
single individual has said he would by his vote make up the ninth
State. On Saturday last he changed, and it stands at present eight one
way, six the other, and two divided. Which of the two will be elected,
and whether either, I deem perfectly problematical; and my mind has long
since been equally made up for either of the three events.’[1924] Otis,
writing his wife, was more interested in the scene at the sick bed than
in conjectures.[1925] Gallatin wrote Mrs. Gallatin of the results
without comment, other than that he had slept from eight o’clock until
noon on Thursday morning.[1926] Saturday found the lines still holding,
but with the conspirators subjected to a heavy and disturbing fire from
outside. An imposing petition from Federalists in Maryland had been sent
John Chew Thomas declaring that two thirds of his constituents favored
Jefferson. Gallatin did ‘not know what effect they would have.’[1927]
and the thing that worried the Federalists was that they knew no better.
Some of these were finding the backfire distressing. Others were openly
disgusted with Burr. ‘Had Burr done anything for himself, he would long
ere this have been President,’ wrote Cooper of New York.[1928] It was
clearly time to push the contest. Thus, on Saturday three ballots were
taken without results, and the House adjourned until noon Monday.

Meanwhile, Jefferson, presiding over the Senate, surrounded by hatred
and excitement, presented an unruffled front, an untouched temper. From
time to time he could hear the angry discussions of his enemies, but he
made no sign. His impartiality was beyond question. ‘A spectator,’ wrote
a contemporary, ‘who watched his countenance would never have surmised
that he had any personal interest in the impending event.’[1929] From
the Capitol he walked like one unconcerned back to Conrad’s, enjoying
the snow. Some of the politicians sought to wring concessions from him
to gain support, but he was adamant. General Sam Smith, without his
authority or knowledge, entered into a negotiation, which had no effect
beyond furnishing the groundwork for the charge of his enemies in
history that he had made arrangements. As far as we know he was openly
approached by but one--and he was acting on the suggestion of Alexander
Hamilton.

One day, as Jefferson was descending the steps of the Capitol, he met
Gouverneur Morris and they paused to exchange compliments. Differing as
widely as the poles, they had enjoyed their social contacts in Paris.
The conversation turned naturally to the contest, and Morris observed,
significantly, that the opposition to Jefferson’s election on the part
of some was the fear that he would turn all Federalists out of office,
put down the navy, and wipe out the debt. All that was necessary to his
election was the assurance that none of these steps would be taken. ‘I
must leave the world to judge the course I mean to pursue by that which
I have pursued hitherto,’ Jefferson replied. ‘I believe it my duty to be
passive and silent during the present contest. I shall certainly make no
terms, and shall never go into the office of President by capitulation,
nor with my hands tied by any conditions which will hinder me from
pursuing the measures which I shall deem for the public good.’ The two
parted in the best of feeling.

The crisis was now approaching. Public sentiment was asserting itself
unmistakably, and statesmen could hear afar off the cracking of the
whips. The Jeffersonians would clearly not budge. Even Nicholson was
recovering instead of sinking under the exposure and excitement. The
Federalists in their caucuses were breaking up after stormy meetings. It
was agreed that nothing was left but desperate measures, and, while but
few urged their adoption, few openly disapproved. Burr was an
ever-increasing torment. Only his coöperation was needed, said Bayard
afterward, to have won. ‘By deceiving one man (a great blockhead) and
tempting two (not incorruptible), he might have secured a majority of
the States.’[1930] But Burr was in Albany, silent as the sphinx and
inactive as a mummy.

Over Sunday the leaders caucused and cursed. When the House met on
Monday, Gallatin understood that Bayard was going to vote for Jefferson
and end the fight. But on the one ballot taken on Monday, he remained
with Burr. ‘But it is supposed,’ wrote Gallatin to his father-in-law,
‘that the cause of delay is to make an attempt on his party and some
others to prevail on the whole Federal party to come over.’[1931]

The conferences continued on Monday and by night a decision had been
reached. Nothing could be gained by fighting for a man who would not
fight. The public was in an ugly mood. Hamilton’s friends, like Bayard,
were feeling a little ashamed of themselves. On Tuesday a crowd was
packed in the corridors of the Capitol and in front of the building.
Weary men in petulant mood pushed their way through these farmers,
mechanics, and politicians to the House. A vote was immediately taken.
Morris, Federalist from Vermont, withdrew, permitting Matthew Lyon to
cast the vote of the State for Jefferson. The Maryland Federalists cast
blank ballots--permitting the Democrats to put their State in the
Jefferson column. Bayard, after much meandering, finally satisfied
Hamilton by casting a blank, which, being the only vote to which his
State was entitled, left Delaware out entirely. And Theodore Sedgwick,
in a rage, was forced formally to announce the election of Thomas
Jefferson. The throng in the corridors and in front of the Capitol gave
way to noisy rejoicing, and the conspirators hurried to their lodgings
to escape the scowls of the populace.

While most of them hurried home, three members of the House, including
two of the vanquished, with Thomas Pinckney as spokesman, made their way
with many jests, we may be sure, up the slushy Avenue, between the frog
ponds, to the President’s house to notify John Adams that his successor
had been chosen. No record of their reception remains, but the
imagination can supply the want. Nor is there any record that Adams sent
a note of congratulation to the victor. Those were the days when ‘The
Duke of Braintree’s’ morbid vanity was suffering keenly the flings of
outrageous fortune.

Two days later, the same committee formally notified Jefferson of his
election and was asked to convey a gracious response to the House.[1932]
Meanwhile, unflurried and unhurried, he went his way, appearing in the
Senate, as usual to preside, and continuing to occupy the foot of the
table at Conrad’s boarding-house. He had long since determined upon
Madison for the head of the Cabinet and Gallatin for the Treasury,
gigantic figures compared with those who had occupied these posts after
Jefferson and Hamilton had left them in the days of Washington. The
other positions were filled during the two weeks intervening between the
election and the inauguration.

On Saturday before his inauguration on Wednesday, Jefferson appeared for
the last time in the Senate to withdraw from his post there in a
farewell address. There before him sat men who hated him venomously, but
the suave, serene victor took leave as though departing with sorrow from
a cherished circle of congenial souls. Mistakes he had probably made,
but he had sought to ‘observe impartial justice,’ and his measurable
success had been due to the generosity and uniform courtesy of the
members. Could he but carry to his new station such support as he had
received from the Senate, he would ‘consider it as commencing under the
happiest auspices.’ In tendering his ‘cordial and respectful adieux,’ he
wished for all both health and happiness. With a courtly bow he
descended from the rostrum, and passed out of the chamber.

On Monday, Gouverneur Morris, chairman of the committee named to make
response, reported an answer matching the courtliness of Jefferson’s
farewell. It lamented ‘the loss of that intelligence, attention, and
impartiality’ with which Jefferson had presided, and expressed
appreciation of the kindly expressions on the Senate. Then, as Morris
proceeded, there was a savage wagging of heads among the die-hards, as
he read: ‘In the confidence that your official conduct will be directed
to those great objects [the honor and interests of the country]--a
confidence derived from past events, we repeat to you, sir, the
assurance of our Constitutional support in your future administration.’
Instantly an irreconcilable was on his feet with a motion to strike out
the words, ‘derived from past events.’ The roll was called. The motion
was lost by a vote of 9 to 19. The intolerant Tracy and Ross voted with
the nine, but Morris carried some of his party with him.[1933] The next
day Morris reported Jefferson’s reply--a gesture of appreciation.

As the day of the inauguration approached, great crowds began to pour
into the drab little capital from the surrounding country. In the
President’s house and in the Senate there was feverish activity. Early
in the session, the Federalists, realizing that their power was over in
the executive and legislative branches, sought to maintain themselves
and provide for their favorites through the creation of many Federal
judgeships. The purpose was transparent. The Democrats had fought the
measure without avail. All that now remained was for Adams to pack the
courts with partisans as narrow and intolerant as those who had for ten
years been delivering common party harangues from the Bench. With the
joyous visitors wading the muddy streets in holiday mood, with Jefferson
closeted with his friends at Conrad’s, the Senate was busy confirming
these partisan Judges, and in the Executive Department they were busy
signing the commissions. Night came--and John Marshall remained in his
office making them out.

To this drama of hate, Adams gave a touch of irony in selecting the
beneficiaries of his generosity. Wolcott had left him but a little while
before. Through four years he had played the game of Adams’s enemies,
presenting all the while a smiling countenance to his chief. We have
seen him lingering on in the citadel after Pickering and McHenry had
been thrown from the battlements, to wig-wag secret messages to the
enemy in New York. But Adams had suspected nothing. Moved by an impulse
of gratitude, he offered Wolcott a life position on the Bench, and that
consummate actor, smiling still, sent the assurance that ‘gratitude to
benefactors is among the most amiable ... of social obligations,’[1934]
and accepted. There is something of pathos to the Adams of the sunset.
Something of pathos and inspiration, too--for, to the disgust of the
inner circle of his party, he made John Marshall Chief Justice of the
United States, and thus, unwittingly, saved the better part of
Federalism from the wreckage of the temple, to fight on through many
years to come.

VII

The morning of inauguration day found the entire nation marching in the
streets, exultant Democrats following the fife and drum, singing and
shouting hosannas. Merchants locked their doors, mechanics left their
work-benches, clerks laid down their pens, farmers deserted their homes
for the towns, and from Boston to Savannah men and women celebrated with
an enthusiasm not approached since the celebration of the peace in
1783.

In Washington, the thunder of artillery ushered in the day. As it shook
the heavens, an embittered old man with a sour countenance sat far back
in his coach as it bumped and splashed its way through the mire and over
the stumps of the Baltimore road, for at four o’clock in the morning
John Adams had slipped out of the house of the Presidents and hurried
away, rather than remain to extend the ordinary courtesies to his
successor. ‘You have no idea,’ wrote Gallatin to his wife, ‘of the
meanness, indecency, almost insanity of his conduct, especially of late.
But he is fallen and not dangerous. Let him be forgotten.’[1935]
Somewhere in hiding, or in flight, was Theodore Sedgwick, Speaker of the
House, who could not bear to witness the triumph of a foe.

That morning Jefferson remained quietly at Conrad’s, receiving friends.
As he entered the dining-room for breakfast, the wife of Senator Brown
rose impulsively and offered him her seat. With an appreciative smile he
declined and sat down as usual at the end of the table near the
door.[1936]

At ten o’clock there was a flurry among the men, women, and children
standing reverently in front of Jefferson’s lodgings, when, with a
swinging stride, companies of riflemen and artillery from Alexandria
paraded before the boarding-house. At noon, dressed plainly, with
nothing to indicate the dignity of his position, Jefferson stepped out
of Conrad’s, accompanied by citizens and members of Congress, and walked
to the Capitol. As he passed the threshold, there was a thunder of
artillery. When he entered the little Senate Chamber, the Senators and
Representatives rose, and Aaron Burr, now Vice-President, left his
seat--all standing until Jefferson sat down in the chair he had occupied
until a week before. On his right hand, Burr; on his left, Marshall.
Only a little while, and Burr, arrested for treason at the instigation
of Jefferson, would be tried by Marshall at Richmond.

After a moment, Jefferson rose and read a conciliatory address, in a
tone scarcely audible in the tiny room.[1937] ‘We are all Republicans;
we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to
dissolve this Union, or to change its Republican form, let them stand
undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may
be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.’ As he concluded,
he turned to Marshall, his Hamilton of the future. The Chief Justice
administered the oath. It was over. The festivities of ‘83 had
celebrated the achievement of the right of the American people to form
their own government and make their own laws. The roar of artillery as
the new President emerged from the Capitol meant that the real American
Revolution had triumphed, and definitely determined that this should be
a democratic republic.

In the streets and public-houses that afternoon there was rejoicing,
shouting, singing, laughing, drinking. Even the more tolerant of the
vanquished fraternized with the victors, and the wife of the editor of
the Jeffersonian organ[1938] poured tea for Gouverneur Morris, Jonathan
Dayton, and James A. Bayard. For the moment ‘all were Republicans, all
were Federalists.’ That night Washington saw its first illumination.

* * * * *

Lumbering along the wretched mud roads in his coach rode Adams, the
reverberations of the artillery peal of the morning still hammering on
his nerves, meditating bitterly on the treachery of men.... Somewhere in
hiding, Sedgwick--cursing the fates.... And somewhere in New York,
Alexander Hamilton was tasting the bitter fruits of the victory he had
fought to win for his greatest opponent. From his window he could see
the marching men and he could hear the pæans of triumph. The brilliant
party he had moulded was in ruins--his leadership scorned by the
crawling creatures who had shone only in the reflected light of his
brilliance. He was alone--isolated.... A little while and he would write
Morris, ‘What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day
proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for
me.’[1939] ... A few months, and he would be describing himself as a
‘disappointed politician’ in a letter to Pinckney requesting melon seeds
for his garden and parroquets for his daughter.[1940] ... Four
years--and before Burr’s pistol he would fall on the banks of the Hudson
one tragic summer morning.... Some years more, and a visitor to the home
of the retired sage of Monticello would see in the hall a marble bust of
Hamilton--the tribute of one great man to another.

The eighteenth century witnessed their Plutarchian battles; the
twentieth century uncovers at the graves at Monticello and in Trinity
Churchyard--but the spirits of Jefferson and Hamilton still stalk the
ways of men--still fighting.

THE END

BOOKS, PAMPHLETS, NEWSPAPERS, AND MAGAZINES CITED OR CONSULTED

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ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS. _Diary and Autobiography of John Adams;
Works of John Adams._ 10 vols. Boston, 1853; _Letters of Mrs.
Adams, the Wife of John Adams_. 2 vols. Boston, 1840; _Life of John
Adams_ (with _Works_).

ADAMS, HENRY. _Life of Albert Gallatin._ Philadelphia, 1879;
_Writings of Albert Gallatin_ (editor). 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1879.

ADAMS, JOHN. _See_ Charles Francis Adams, John T. Morse, Correa
Moylan Walsh.

ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY. _See_ Worthington C. Ford.

ALEXANDER, D. S. _A Political History of New York._ New York, 1906.

AMES, FISHER. _See_ Seth Ames and J. T. Kirkland.

AMES, SETH (editor). _Works of Fisher Ames._ 2 vols. Boston, 1854.

AMORY, THOMAS C. _Life of James Sullivan._ 2 vols. Boston, 1859.

ANDERSON, DICE ROBINS. _William Branch Giles: A Study in the
Politics of Virginia and the Nation from 1790 to 1830._ Menasha,
Wisconsin, 1914.

AUSTIN, MARY S. _Philip Freneau: Poet of the Revolution._ New York,
1901.

BASSETT, JOHN S. _The Federalist System._ (The American Nation
Series.) New York, 1906.

BEARD, CHARLES A. _Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy._ New
York, 1915; _An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the
United States_. New York, 1919.

BECK, JAMES M. _The Constitution of the United States._ (Gray’s Inn
Lectures.) Printed in England, 1922.

BEMIS, SAMUEL FLAGG. _Jay’s Treaty: A Study in Commerce and
Diplomacy._ New York, 1923.

BENTON, THOMAS H. _Thirty Years’ View; or, A History of the Working
of the American Government from 1820 to 1850._ 2 vols. New York,
1861.

BEVERIDGE, ALBERT J. _Life of John Marshall._ 4 vols. Boston,
1916-19.

BIDDLE, CHARLES. _Autobiography._ Philadelphia, 1883.

BROOKS, NOAH. _Henry Knox: A Soldier of the Revolution._ New York,
1900.

BROWN, WILLIAM GARROTT. _The Life of Oliver Ellsworth._ New York,
1905.

BURDICK, CHARLES K. _The Law of the American Constitution: Its
Origin and Development._ Philadelphia, 1922.

BURR, AARON. _See_ James Parton and Matthew L. Davis.

CABOT, GEORGE. _See_ Henry Cabot Lodge.

COBBETT, WILLIAM. _See_ Lewis Melville.

COX, JACOB (editor). _The Diary of Jacob Hiltzheimer._
Philadelphia, 1893.

DAVIS, JOHN. _Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States
of America, 1798-1802._ New York, 1909.

DAVIS, MATTHEW L. _Memoirs of Aaron Burr._ 2 vols. New York, 1836.

DODD, WILLIAM E. _Life of Nathaniel Macon._ Raleigh, 1903; _The
Statesmen of the Old South; or, From Radicalism to Conservative
Revolt_. New York, 1911.

DRAKE, FRANCIS S. _Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox._ Boston,
1873.

ELLET, FRANCES S. _The Queens of American Society._ Philadelphia,
1867.

ELLSWORTH, OLIVER. _See_ William Garrott Brown.

FORD, WORTHINGTON CHAUNCEY (editor). _Works of Thomas Jefferson._
12 vols. 1904-05 (_Anas_ and _Autobiography_); _Writings of John
Quincy Adams_, 7 vols. New York, 1913.

FRENEAU, PHILIP. _See_ Mary S. Austin.

FISKE, JOHN. _Essays, Historical and Literary._ 2 vols. New York,
1907.

GALLATIN, ALBERT. _See_ Henry Adams and John A. Stevens.

GAY, SIDNEY HOWARD. _James Madison._ Boston, 1899.

GIBBS, GEORGE (editor). _Memoirs of the Administrations of
Washington and John Adams._ Edited from the papers of Oliver
Wolcott. 2 vols. New York, 1846.

GILES, WILLIAM B. _See_ Dice Robins Anderson.

GOODWIN, MAUD WILDER. _Dolly Madison._ New York, 1896.

GORDY, J. P. _A History of Political Parties in the United States._
3 vols. Athens, Ohio, 1895.

GRAYDON, ALEXANDER. _Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in
Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years._ Edinburgh, 1822.

GRISWOLD, RUFUS W. _The Republican Court: or, American Society in
the Days of Washington._ New York, 1867.

HAMILTON, ALEXANDER. _See_ Henry Cabot Lodge, John C. Hamilton, F.
S. Oliver, A. M. Hamilton.

HAMILTON, ALLAN MCLANE. _The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton._
New York, 1911.

HAMILTON, JOHN C. _Life of Alexander Hamilton._ New York, 1911.

HAMMOND, JABEZ D. _History of Political Parties in the State of New
York from the Ratification of the Federal Constitution to December,
1840._ 2 vols. Syracuse, 1852.

HAZEN, CHARLES DOWNER. _Contemporary American Opinion of the French
Revolution._ Baltimore, 1897.

HENRY, PATRICK. _See_ W. W. Henry.

HENRY, WILLIAM WIRT. _Life, Correspondence, and Speeches of Patrick
Henry._ 3 vols. New York, 1891.

HIGGINSON, STEPHEN. _See_ Thomas W. Higginson.

HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH. _Life and Times of Stephen Higginson._
Boston, 1907.

HILL, FREDERICK TREVOR. _The Story of a Street; A Narrative History
of Wall Street from 1644 to 1908._ New York, 1908.

HILTZSHEIMER, JACOB. _See_ Jacob Cox.

HUDSON, FREDERIC. _Journalism in the United States from 1690 to
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HUNT, CHARLES HAVENS. _Life of Edward Livingston._ New York, 1902.

HUNT, GAILLARD (editor). _First Forty Years of American Society,
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York, 1906.

IREDELL, JAMES. _See_ Griffith J. McRee.

JACKSON, JAMES (editor). _The Thomas Jefferson Bible._ New York,
1923.

JAY, JOHN. _See_ George Pellew.

JEFFERSON, THOMAS. _See_ John T. Morse, James Jackson, James
Parton, W. C. Ford, Henry S. Randall, Thomas E. Watson, David
Muzzey, Sarah E. Randolph, and A. W. Lipscomb.

KING, CHARLES R. _Life and Correspondence of Rufus King._ 10 vols.
New York. 1888.

KING, RUFUS. _See_ Charles R.

KIRKLAND, J. T. _Life of Fisher Ames_ (with _Works_). Boston, 1854.

KNOX, HENRY. _See_ Noah Brooks and Francis S. Drake.

LIANCOURT, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. _Travels Through the United
States of North America._ London, 1799.

LIPPINCOTT, HORACE MATHER. _Early Philadelphia: Its People, Life,
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LIPSCOMB, A. W. _Works of Thomas Jefferson._ Washington, 1903.
(_Works._)

LIVINGSTON, EDWARD. _See_ C. H. Hunt.

LODGE, HENRY CABOT. _The Works of Alexander Hamilton._ 12 vols. New
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LYON, MATTHEW. _See_ J. F. McLaughlin.

MACLAY, EDGAR S. (editor). _The Journal of William Maclay._ New
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MACLAY, WILLIAM. _See_ E. S. Maclay.

MACON, NATHANIEL. _See_ W. E. Dodd.

MCHENRY, JAMES. _See_ B. C. STEINER.

MCLAUGHLIN, J. FAIRFAX. _Matthew Lyon: The Hampden of Congress._
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MCREE, GRIFFITH J. _Life and Correspondence of James Iredell._ 2
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MADISON, DOLLY. _See_ Maud W. Goodwin.

MADISON, JAMES. _See_ William C. Rives, S. H. Gay.

MARSHALL, JOHN. _See_ A. J. Beveridge.

MELVILLE, LEWIS. _Life and Letters of William Cobbett in England
and America._ 2 vols. London, 1913.

MONROE, JAMES. _See_ George Morgan.

MORGAN, GEORGE. _Life of James Monroe._ Boston, 1921.

MORISON, SAMUEL ELIOT. _Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis._ 2
vols. Boston, 1913.

MORRIS, ANNE CARY. _The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris._ 2
vols. New York, 1888.

MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR. _See_ A. C. Morris.

MORRIS, ROBERT. _See_ E. P. Oberholtzer.

MORSE, ANSON DANIEL. _Parties and Party Leaders._ Boston, 1923.

MORSE, ANSON ELY. _The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the
Year 1800._ Princeton, 1909.

MORSE, JOHN T. _Thomas Jefferson._ Boston, 1899. _John Adams._
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MUZZEY, DAVID. _Thomas Jefferson._ New York, 1919.

MYERS, GUSTAVUS. _The History of Tammany Hall._ New York, 1917.

OBERHOLTZER, E. P. _Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier._ New
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OLIVER, FREDERICK SCOTT. _Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on the
American Union._ New York, 1907.

OTIS, HARRISON GRAY. _See_ S. E. Morison.

PARSONS, THEOPHILUS. _Memoir of Theophilus Parsons._ Boston, 1859.

PARTON, JAMES. _Life of Thomas Jefferson._ 2 vols. Boston, 1874.
_Life and Times of Aaron Burr._ 2 vols. Boston, 1892.

PAYNE, GEORGE HENRY. _History of Journalism in the United States._
New York, 1920.

PELLEW, GEORGE. _John Jay._ Boston, 1899.

PICKERING, OCTAVIUS. _Life of Timothy Pickering._ 4 vols. Boston,
1867.

PICKERING, TIMOTHY. _See_ O. Pickering.

PINCKNEY, C. C. _Life of General Thomas Pinckney._ Boston, 1895.

PINCKNEY, THOMAS. _See_ C. C. Pinckney.

PURCELL, RICHARD J. _Connecticut in Transition, 1775-1818._
Washington, 1918.

RANDALL, HENRY S. _The Life of Thomas Jefferson._ 3 vols.
Philadelphia, 1871.

RANDOLPH, SARAH N. _Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson._ New York,
1871.

REPPLIER, AGNES. _Philadelphia: The Place and the People._ New
York, 1898.

RIVES, WILLIAM C. _History of the Life and Times of James Madison._
3 vols. Boston, 1868.

ROBINSON, WILLIAM A. _Jeffersonian Democracy in New England._ New
Haven, 1916.

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Gouverneur Morris._ Boston, 1899.

SCHARF, J. THOMAS. _History of Philadelphia._ 3 vols. Philadelphia,
1884.

SMITH, MARGARET BAYARD. _See_ Gaillard Hunt.

SMITH, THOMAS E. _The City of New York in the Year of Washington’s
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STEINER, BERNARD C. _Life and Correspondence of James McHenry._
Cleveland, 1907.

STEVENS, JOHN AUSTIN. _Albert Gallatin._ Boston, 1899.

STORY, JOSEPH. _See_ W. W. Story.

STORY, W. W. _The Life and Letters of Joseph Story._ 2 vols.
Boston, 1857.

SULLIVAN, JAMES. _See_ T. C. Amory.

SULLIVAN, WILLIAM. _Familiar Letters on Public Characters and
Public Events._ Boston, 1834.

THOMAS, E. S. _Reminiscences of the Last Sixty Years._ 2 vols.

TWINING, THOMAS. _Travels in America One Hundred Years Ago._ New
York, 1893.

WALSH, CORREA MOYLAN. _The Political Science of John Adams._ New
York, 1915.

WANSEY, HENRY. _The Journal of an Excursion to the United States of
North America in the Summer of 1794._ London, 1796.

WARFIELD, ETHELBERT DUDLEY. _The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798._ New
York, 1894.

WARVILLE, J. P. BRISSOT. _New Travels in the United States of
America._ Bowling Green, Ohio, 1919.

WATSON, JOHN F. _Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in Ye
Olden Time._ 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1857.

WATSON, THOMAS E. _The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson._ New
York, 1903.

WELD, ISAAC. _Travels Through the States of North America._ 2 vols.
London, 1807.

WELLING, JAMES CLARKE. _Addresses, Lectures, and Other Papers._
Cambridge, 1904.

WHARTON, ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH. _Salons, Colonial and Republican._
Philadelphia, 1900.

WHARTON, FRANCIS. _State Trials of the United States during the
Administrations of Washington and John Adams._ Philadelphia, 1849.

WILSON, JAMES GRANT. _The Memorial History of the City of New
York._ 4 vols. New York, 1893.

WOODBURN, JAMES A. _Political Parties and Party Problems in the
United States._ New York, 1914.

CONTEMPORARY PAMPHLETS

_Anonymous._ _Serious Facts Opposed to ‘Serious Considerations’ and
the ‘Voice of Warning to Religious Republicans.’_ (Pamphlets
attacking the religion of Jefferson.) New York, 1800.

BECKLEY, JOHN JAMES. _Address to the People of the United States,
with an Epitome and Vindication of the Life and Character of Thomas
Jefferson._ Philadelphia, 1800.

BISHOP, ABRAHAM. _An Oration on the Extent and Power of Political
Delusions._ Newark, 1800.

‘BYSTANDER.’ _A Series of Letters on the Subject of the
‘Legislative Choice’ of Electors in Maryland._ Baltimore, 1800.

CALLENDER, J. T. _Sedgwick & Company: A Key to the 6 per cent
Cabinet._ Philadelphia, 1798. _The Honorable Mr. Sedgwick’s Last
Will and Testament._ Newark, 1800. _The Prospect Before Us._
Richmond, 1800.

CHEETHAM, JAMES. _An Answer to Alexander Hamilton’s Letter
concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams._ New
York, 1800.

COBBETT, WILLIAM. _Observations on the Emigration of Dr. Joseph
Priestley._ Philadelphia, 1794. _A Bone to Gnaw for Democrats._
Philadelphia, 1795.

COXE, TENCH. _Strictures upon the Letter Imputed to Mr. Jefferson
Addressed to Mr. Mazzei._ Philadelphia, 1800.

FENNO, JOHN WARD. _Desultory Reflections on the New Political
Aspects of Public Affairs._ New York, 1800.

HODGKINSON. _Letters on Emigration._ London, 1794.

SMITH, WILLIAM. _Address to his Constituents._ Philadelphia, 1794.

TAYLOR, JOHN. _An Examination of the Late Proceedings of Congress,
Respecting the Official Conduct of the Secretary of the Treasury._
Philadelphia, 1793.

CONTEMPORARY NEWSPAPERS

BOSTON:
_The Columbian Centinel._
_The Independent Chronicle._

NEW YORK:
_New York Daily Advertiser._
_Commercial Advertiser._
_New York Journal._
_American Minerva._
_The Argus._
_The Time Piece._
_Gazette of the United States._
_Louden’s Diary, or Register._

PHILADELPHIA:
_National Gazette._
_Gazette of the United States._
_The General Advertiser._
_The Aurora._
_Porcupine’s Gazette._
_Pennsylvania Daily Advertiser._

BALTIMORE:
_Maryland Gazette._
_Maryland Journal._

PORTSMOUTH:
_New Hampshire Gazette._

CHARLESTON:
_City Gazette._

WINDSOR, VERMONT:
_Spooner’s Vermont Journal._

HARTFORD:
_The Courant._
_The American Minerva._

NEW HAVEN:
_Connecticut Gazette._

MAGAZINES

_American Historical Review_, October, 1899, January, 1900,
‘Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions,’ by
Frank M. Anderson.

American Historical Association, _Annual Reports_, 1912, ‘The
Enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Laws,’ by Frank M. Anderson;
1896-97, ‘Letters of Phineas Bond.’

_The Nation_, July 18, 1912, ‘Extracts from Diary of Moreau de St.
Mery’; September 5, 1895, ‘The Authorship of the Giles
Resolutions,’ by Paul L. Ford.

INDEX

Adams, Abigail, New York house at Richmond Hill, 16;
on removal of capital to Philadelphia, 116;
on Philadelphia, 125;
and Mrs. Bingham, 128, 129.

Adams, Abijah, bookkeeper for editor of _Independent Chronicle_, imprisoned
for; libel, 394, 395.

Adams, John, begins ‘reign’ as Vice-President, 3;
troubled as to proper titles for the President and Vice-President, 3;
on reception of President in Senate, 3;
what is the Vice-President when the President is in Senate?, 3;
writer of ‘Discourses of Davilla,’ published in Fenno’s _Gazette_, 17;
on Hamilton, 37;
Jeffersonians attempt to defeat for Vice-Presidency in 1792, 181;
elected, but by small margin, 183;
candidate for Presidency, in 1796, 310;
suspects trickery, 312;
retains Washington’s Cabinet, 314;
sketch of, at time of entering on Presidency, 316-26;
Maclay on, 317;
his vanity, 318;
jealousy of Washington, 319;
difficult in conference, 320;
not in sympathy with democracy, 322;
his love of country, 323;
moral courage, 325, 326;
war with France threatened, 339;
sends special mission to France, 345;
reports failure of envoys to France, and recommends Congress to authorize
warlike; measures, 363;
is ignorant that Hamilton through McHenry is dictating policy, 363;
action on publication of X Y Z papers commended, 366;
pulls down the pillars, 412;
is troubled about French situation, 412;
offers command of army to Washington, 412, 413;
conspiracy in Cabinet in favor of Hamilton, 412, 413;
nominates Hamilton, Pinckney, and Knox as major-generals, 413;
Federalist conspirators bombard him with suggestions that Hamilton should
be; second in command, 414;
war plans all in Hamilton’s hands, 418-28;
is ignorant of much going on, 426;
considers sending new mission to France, 428;
submits questions to Cabinet, for new negotiations with France or a declaration of
war,
429;
Cabinet conspirators with Hamilton write war Message, 429;
A. rewrites Message, 429, 430;
is conscious of Cabinet conspiracy, 430;
appoints Minister to France, 430;
contest with Senate over confirmation, 430, 431;
agrees to compromise, 432, 433;
confounds his Cabinet conspirators, 436-38;
depressed by Federalist defeat in New York elections in 1800, 455, 456;
suspects Hamilton, 456;
dismisses McHenry and Pickering from Cabinet, 456, 457;
defeated for Presidency, 486;
relations with Jefferson, on quitting office, 489, 490.

Adams, John Quincy, on speculation by Congressmen, 47;
on Madison, 57.

Adams, Samuel, defeated for Representative to First Congress by Fisher Ames,
1;
looked to by Jefferson for aid in forming opposition party in Massachusetts,
144;;
chosen by Jefferson as lieutenant, 144;
presides at meeting in Boston on Jay Treaty, 278.

Adams, Thomas, editor Boston _Independent Chronicle_, 152;
prosecuted under Sedition Law, 393-94.

Adet, ----, Minister to United States, from French Republic, credited with efforts
to influence election in 1796, 311.

Alien Bill, aimed at Irish immigrants, 374;
French residents frightened and sail for France, 376;
passed by close vote, 379.

Allen, John, Representative from Connecticut, 379.

_American Minerva_, on party feeling, 232.

Ames, Fisher, Representative from Massachusetts, elected over Samuel Adams,
1;
cynical over prospect of improvement in form of government over old Confederation,
1;
not impressed by his fellow Congressmen, 1;
on cost of Federal Hall, 2;
on titles, 6;
Hamilton’s defender in House, 47;
on Madison, 51, 52;
disgusted with contest for site of permanent capital, 65;
on proposed amendment to Excise Bill, 73;
defends doctrine of ‘implied powers,’ 76;
elected director of Bank of United States, 90;
on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury management, 201, 203;
on yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 237;
on Madison commerce resolutions, 240, 241;
sketch of, 302-04;
makes strong plea in House for appropriations to carry out Jay Treaty, 305,
306;.

_An Examination of the Late Proceedings of Congress Respecting the Official
Conduct; of the Secretary of the Treasury_, pamphlet published in Philadelphia,
205;
authorship attributed to John Taylor of Caroline, 206.

Assumption, favored by North, where most of State indebtedness was unpaid, 59;
opposed by Virginia, whose debt was largely paid, 59;
defended by Madison, 61;
lobbying for passage of bill, 61;
uneasiness of friends of, 61, 62;
Hamiltonian press comments, 63;
adopted after Hamilton’s bargain with Jefferson, 65, 68.

_Aurora, The_, on the Jay Treaty, 273, 274, 276, 277, 280, 286;
on Hamilton’s Reynolds pamphlet, 355, 356.

Austin, Ben, rope-maker, Jeffersonian organizer in Massachusetts, 144.

Bache, Benjamin F., editor _Pennsylvania Daily Advertiser_, 152.

Bank of the United States, Hamilton’s _Report_ on, 74;
bill for establishing, 75, 76;
debate on bill in Congress, 75, 76;
constitutionality questioned, 76;
fears of veto, 77;
much speculation in stock, 87, 88;
members of Congress involved, 89;
charges of ‘corrupt squadron,’ 89;
election of directors, 90;
public indignation, 90;
bill introduced to reimburse for loan to Government, 190.

Bard, Dr. John, fashionable physician, 15.

Barnwell, Robert, Representative from South Carolina, on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury
management,
203.

Beckwith, ----, British Agent at Philadelphia, cultivates Madison, 80;
Jefferson on, 80;
protests Jefferson’s commendation of Paine’s _Rights of Man_, 83.

Biddle, Charles, resolutions of welcome to Genêt prepared at home of, 219;
leads parade in honor of Genêt, 220.

Bingham, Marie, daughter of Mrs. William Bingham, 130.

Bingham, William, elected director of Bank of United States, 90.

Bingham, Mrs. William, social leader in Philadelphia, 127, 128;
one of her fashionable gatherings described, 131-35.

Bishop, Abraham, Jeffersonian organizer in Connecticut, 145.

Black Friars, New York City club, 10.

Bloodworth, Timothy, on Excise Bill, 72;
lieutenant for Jefferson in North Carolina, 150.

Bond, Phineas, British Consul in Philadelphia, 244.

Boudinot, Elias, speculator in public securities, 62, 170;
on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury management, 201.

Bowen’s Wax Works, Philadelphia, 138.

Bradford, William, classmate of Madison at Princeton, 157.

Breckel, Van, Dutch Minister to United States, entertains lavishly, 13.

Breckenridge, John, of Kentucky, in conference with Jefferson on Alien and Sedition
Laws,
407;
author of the Kentucky Resolutions, 408;
sketch of, 408, 409.

Brown, John, Jeffersonian leader in Kentucky, 180.

Burk, John D., editor of New York _Time Piece_, arrested for sedition, 405.

Burke, Ædanus, Representative from South Carolina, makes vicious
attack on Hamilton and his financial measures, 62.

Burke, Edmund, and the French Revolution, 82.

Burr, Aaron, on wines in Philadelphia, 126, 147;
Jefferson moves to attach him to his party, 147;
fellow student of Madison at Princeton, 157;
possible candidacy of, for Vice-President in 1792, 181;
leader of Jeffersonians in New York election of 1800, 448;
sketch of, contrasted with Hamilton, 449;
combines forces with Society of Tammany, 451;
his campaign methods, 452-54;
urged for the Vice-Presidency in 1800, 455;
secures copy of Hamilton’s pamphlet attacking Adams, publishes it in _The
Aurora_;, 478.

Butler, Pierce, Senator from South Carolina, 9;
a ‘democrat’ whose associates were aristocrats, 134;
votes against ratification of Jay Treaty, 280.

Cabot, George, sees irrevocable ruin of country, 63;
pained at attitude of Madison, 63;
candid friend and supporter of Hamilton, 63;
elected director of Bank of United States, 90;
on meeting in Boston on Jay Treaty, 278;
on Washington’s hesitation in signing Jay Treaty, 285.

Callender, James Thomas, author of pamphlet, _The Prospect Before Us_, indicted
and; convicted under Sedition Law, 400-02;
defended by William Wirt, 401.

Capital of the Nation, battle on permanent site for, 64, 65;
bargaining to trade votes on Assumption, 65;
bargain between Hamilton and Jefferson on location of, 65, 67;
Hamilton indifferent as to location, 65;
Virginians and Marylanders want it at Georgetown, 65;
Jefferson’s part in bargain, 66.

Carrington, Edward, letter from Hamilton to, in 1792 campaign, 180.

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, Senator from Maryland, on titles, 5;
elected director of Bank of United States, 90;
mentioned for Vice-President in 1792, 181.

Certificates of indebtedness, issued to soldiers of Revolution, in lieu of cash, bought up by
speculators,
44,
45;
Hamilton’s plans for redemption by funding scheme known in advance to members
of; Congress and friends, 46.

_Charleston City Gazette_, on the Jay Treaty, 281.

Chase, Samuel, Judge, and Mrs. William Bingham, 131;
presiding justice in Alien and Sedition trials, 398, 400-02.

Chateaubriand, Viscount de, on Philadelphia, 123, 125.

Chestnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, 137, 185.

Church, Mrs. Angelica, sister-in-law of Hamilton, 12;
letters on Hamilton, 39.

Cincinnati, Society of the, 48.

City Tavern, Philadelphia, 119.

Clinton, George, newspaper attack on Hamilton’s funding plans ascribed to, 50;
Jeffersonian leader in New York, 147;
in bitter fight with John Jay for governorship of New York in 1792, 178;
urged to become candidate for Vice-President in 1792, 181;
receives votes of four States, though not an avowed candidate, 183;
Jeffersonian candidate for Governor in New York election of 1800, 452.

Clymer, George, Representative from Pennsylvania, on Assumption, 58, 62;
dinner party at house of, described, 126, 127.

Cobbett, William, author of reply to Priestley’s addresses, 259;
proprietor of _Porcupine’s Gazette_, q.v.

_Columbian Centinel_, on Funding Bill, 57;
letters to, on Madison and the Funding Bill, 57;
‘Publicola’ (John Quincy Adams) attacks Jefferson, Paine, and democracy, 84;
on Jeffersonians, 152;
on Freneau’s attacks on Hamilton, 164;
on speculative craze, 176, 178;
on Indian expedition of St. Clair, 175;
on Hamilton’s vindication of official conduct of Treasury, 199;
on French Revolution, 207, 211;
on relations with England, 220;
on the Jay Treaty, 278;
on prospects of war with France, 366;
war propaganda, 370, 371.

Congress, meets in New York City, 1;
Washington and Adams declared elected, 2;
ceremonial forms and titles excite much discussion, 3-6;
first tariff measure in, 19;
executive departments established, 19, 20;
jealousy of executive, 20;
Hamilton’s _Report on Public Credit_ debated, 44 ff.;
debate on Funding Bill, 48 ff.;
scandal over speculation by members in certificates, Bank stock, and scrip,
89;;
‘corrupt squadron,’ 89;
bill to pay loan from Bank of United States hotly debated, 190-92;
Giles’s resolutions condemning Hamilton, debates on, 199-203;
resolutions defeated, 203;
Madison’s resolutions on Jefferson’s Report on Commerce, 240;
Non-Intercourse Act, as reply to England’s high-handed seizure of American
vessels,
244;
debates in Senate on Jay Treaty, 272;
debate in House over right to have papers as to treaty, 298;
Alien Bill, debates on, 374-79;
Sedition Bill, debates on, 378, 380.

_Connecticut Gazette_, on French Revolution, 211, 212;
on Genêt, 219.

Cooper, Dr. Thomas, scientist and physician, indicted under Sedition Act, 398;
convicted and imprisoned, 399;
refuses to ask for pardon, 399.

Coxe, Tench, Assistant Secretary of Treasury under Hamilton, and location of
capital,
65.

Croswell, Joseph, poem by, on French Revolution, 208.

Dallas, Alexander James, one of Jefferson’s leaders in Pennsylvania, 148;
aids in preparations for reception of Genêt, 219;
efforts of, in case of brig _Little Sarah_, 227, 228;
defends Duane in prosecution under Alien Law, 396, 397.

Davie, William R., on opposition to Jay Treaty, 281.

Dayton, Jonathan, 148;
scandal over retention of public funds, 466.

Democratic Party. _See_ Jeffersonians.

Democratic Clubs, organized, 222, 223;
Federalists insist they must be abolished, 260;
condemned by Washington in Message, 261.

Democratic Societies. _See_ Democratic Clubs.

De Moustier, French Minister to United States, Jefferson on, 108.

Dodd, William E., quoted on Jefferson, 96.

Duane, William, editor of _The Aurora_, arrested and prosecuted under the Alien
Act;, 396, 397;
is acquitted, 397;
indicted for sedition, 397;
assaulted and beaten by soldiers, 420;
prosecuted under Sedition Law, 442.

Duer, William, financial failure of, in 1792 starts panic, 176, 177;
threatens damaging revelations from debtors’ prison, 187.

Dunlap, William, historian of American theater, 10.

Dwight, Timothy, on newspapers, 156.

Ellsworth, Oliver, Senator from Connecticut, on titles, 4;
and the Assumption Bill, 62;
on French Revolution, 209;
efforts of, to induce Washington to send Hamilton on special mission to England,
247;
on Washington’s delay in signing Jay Treaty, 285.

Emmet, Thomas Addis, Irish refugee (brother of Robert Emmet), of the New York
Bar,
375.

Everleigh, Nicholas, appointed Comptroller of the Treasury, 21.

Excise Bill, warm debate on, in Congress, 71, 73;
amendment proposed to prohibit revenue officers interfering in elections,
73;
debate on duration of tax, 73.

Fairfax estate, Virginia, litigation over, 281.

_Federal Gazette_, Freneau in, opposes Bank Bill, 78.

Federalists, policy to capitalize politically
popularity of Washington, 41;
from beginning under domination of Hamilton, 140;
favored by commercial, intellectual, and professional classes, 140;
leaders men of strength in most of the States, 140, 141;
opposition to, inevitable, 144;
denounce Democrats as conspirators, 151;
attack Jeffersonian newspapers in Federalist organs, 203, 204;
sympathies with royalists in French Revolution, 207, 208;
enforce policy of neutrality in French Revolution wars, 216;
force recall of Genêt, 231;
avert war with England and send Jay to negotiate treaty, 247;
leaders induce attacks on ‘Democratic Societies,’ 261;
defend Jay Treaty, but with wry faces, 285-88;
refuse to confirm nomination of Rutledge as Chief Justice, 289;
pass Alien and Sedition Acts, 375-80;
efforts of leaders to force war with France, 412-28;
mean war to be a Federalist war, 412;
Hamilton is to conduct war with no interference from Adams, 412;
secure appointment of Hamilton as second in command, 415;
conspire to prevent Jeffersonians from securing commissions in army, 416;
war not popular among the people at large, 418;
raising funds for war purposes difficult, 418;
taxes for war arouse resentment, 419;
recruiting slow, 421;
public refuse to believe there is to be a war, 421, 422;
Logan’s visit to France upsets Federalist war plans, 423, 424;
the war hawks disappointed, 425, 426;
Federalists determined on war, 426, 427;
Cabinet conspirators write war Message for Adams, 429;
scheme to override Adams, 430;
caucus, 430;
friends of Adams’s policy in majority, 430;
losing ground politically in 1799, 440;
plan for changing method of counting electoral votes in Presidential election,
441,
442;
bill passes Senate, but fails in the House, 442, 443;
spring elections of 1800 show tide running against them, 448, 451-55;
under Hamilton’s influence leaders plan to defeat Adams for Presidency, 455-58;
hints at secession from Federalist leaders in case of Jefferson’s election,
468;, 470;
party split hopelessly on publication of Hamilton’s attack on Adams, 481,
482;
defeated in election, leaders conspire to have electors vote for Burr, 491;
Hamilton opposed to plan, 491-501;
plan fails, after much balloting, 506.

Fenno, John, protégé of Hamilton, establishes _Gazette of the United States_,
4;;
his paper aspires to be the ‘court journal,’ 4;
King and Hamilton interested in financing paper, 153, 154;
patronage of government printing, 154;
death of, from yellow fever, 381.

Fenno, John Ward, son of founder of Fenno’s _Gazette_, continues publication,
381;.

Fitzsimons, Thomas, Representative from Pennsylvania, speculator in certificates,
47;
Hamiltonians meet at lodgings of, 58;
and the Assumption Bill, 62;
Hamilton’s lieutenant in the House, 186;
introduces resolution asking Hamilton to report plan for redemption of part of national
debt,
186;
resolution precipitates sharp debate, 186, 187;
on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury management, 201.

Florida Tea Garden, New York City, 10.

Ford, Paul Leicester, quoted, on Jefferson, 199.

France, revolution in, effect of, in United States, 207;
asked to recall Genêt, 216;
Adams sends mission to, 345;
envoys unsuccessful, 363;
publication of X Y Z papers, 364, 365;
Adams recommends preparations for war with, 365.

Franchise, in 1789 limited in most of the States, 142;
property qualifications, 142;
Jefferson and, 142.

French Revolution, the, its influence in the United States, 207, 208;
Hamiltonians instinctively hostile to purposes of, 208;
denounced by leading Federalist Senators, 209;
supported by Jefferson, 210;
sympathy for, of the common people, 213;
enthusiasm for the French, 213, 214;
enthusiasm for, heightened by arrival of Genêt, 221, 222;
liberty caps and liberty poles, 222;
Democratic and Jacobin Clubs everywhere, 223;
Federalists alarmed, 223;
clubs denounced as vicious ‘nurseries of sedition,’ 223.

Freneau, Philip, ‘Poet of the Revolution,’ induced by Madison to establish newspaper,
154;
appointed to clerkship in Department of State, 155;
establishes _National Gazette_, 155;
Jeffersonians aided, 155;
at once assumes leadership, 155;
paper recognized as Jefferson’s organ, 155;
arouses Federalist rage, 156;
influence of paper felt in back country, 156;
classmate of Madison, Lee, Burr, and Brockholst Livingston at Princeton, 157;
rebel by nature, 158;
his career in the Revolutionary War, 158, 159;
_Gazette_ carefully watched by Hamilton, 163;
attacks Hamilton’s policies, 164-68;
attacked anonymously in Fenno’s _Gazette_, 168;
his dignified reply, 168;
denies any connection of Jefferson with his paper, 169;
renews crusade against Hamilton’s financial policies, 195, 196;
contrast of newspaper with Fenno’s, 163;
criticisms of acts of Administration, 163;
‘Brutus’ article, 164;
‘Sidney’ articles open attacks on Hamilton, 164, 165;
controversy with Fenno, 166, 167;
charges Hamilton with authorship of anonymous articles in Fenno’s _Gazette_,
169;, 170;
‘Patriot’ articles in _National Gazette_, 195-97;
analyzes votes in Congress vindicating Hamilton’s financial policies, 204;
on Genêt and French Revolution, 218, 219;
begins series of attacks on Washington, 221.

Funding of debt, Hamilton’s scheme for, well received, 44;
protests against, because of speculations in certificates, 45.

Funding Bill, acrimonious debate on, in Congress, before passage, 48 ff.

Gallatin, Albert, Representative in Pennsylvania Legislature, denounces Hamilton’s Excise
Bill,
70;
leading Jeffersonian in Pennsylvania, 149;
elected to Senate from Pennsylvania, but not allowed to take seat, on technicality,
289;
elected as Representative, 289;
sketch of, 292-94.

Gates, Horatio, Jeffersonian candidate in New York elections of 1800, 452.

_Gazette of the United States_, ‘court journal,’ 4, 10;
Adams’s ‘Discourses of Davilla’ published in, 17;
Fenno defends speculation in public securities, 48;
Fenno in, on criticisms of proceedings of Congress, 57;
on Funding Bill, 57;
attacks in, on ‘demagogues,’ 63;
on Bank, 79;
Fenno’s verses on passage of Bank Bill, 79;
probably established with aid of Rufus King, 153;
Hamilton interested in raising money for, 154;
tone pro-English, 154;
received government patronage, 154;
controversy with _National Gazette_, 166-70;
Fenno engages in controversy with Freneau, 166, 167, 169;
on Hamilton’s defense of official conduct of Treasury, 199;
on _Boston Argus_, 203;
on French Revolution, 211;
on attacks on Washington, 221;
‘Pacificus’ letters in, by Hamilton, 225, 226;
attacks on Jefferson, 233;
on the Jay Treaty, 282.

Geisse’s Tavern, Philadelphia, 121.

_General Advertiser_, on defeat of Jay by Clinton in New York election, 178.

Genêt, Edmond Charles, Minister from the French Republic, arrives in Charleston,
124;
enthusiastically received everywhere, 218;
his progress to Philadelphia continuous ovation, 218;
formally welcomed at Philadelphia by people, 219, 220;
cordially received by Jefferson, 220;
cold reception of, by Washington, 220;
impudent conduct of, 224.

Giles, William Branch, Representative from Virginia, in favor of Excise Bill,
71;, 72;
opposes Bank Bill, 76;
organizer for Jefferson in Virginia, 149;
opposes bill to repay loan from Bank of United States, 190, 191;
his personal characteristics, 192;
a giant in debate, 194;
selected by Jefferson to lead in attacks on Hamilton’s financial policies,
195,
197;
presents resolutions demanding information from Secretary of the Treasury,
197;
presents resolutions condemning Hamilton’s conduct in management of Treasury,
199;-203;
in conference of Jeffersonian leaders, 205;
on Madison commerce resolutions, 241.

Golden Lion, the, Philadelphia tavern, 120.

Goodrich, Chauncey, on adoption of French Revolution titles, 222.

Gove, Christopher, prominent Massachusetts Federalist, 47;
speculates largely in certificates, 47.

Granger, Gideon, Democratic leader in Connecticut, 145.

Gray’s Gardens, on the Schuylkill, 121, 122.

Graydon, Rev. Alexander, on yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 237.

Greenleaf, Thomas, editor _New York Journal_, 152.

Grenville, Lord William Wyndham, negotiates treaty with John Jay, 269-71.

Grout, Jonathan, opposes Bank Bill, 76.

Gunn, Georgia Senator, votes for ratification with Jay, 283;
burned in effigy along with Jay, 283.

Hamilton, Alexander, an interested spectator at Washington’s inaugural, 7;
appointed Secretary of the Treasury, 21;
a portrait, 22-42;
his personal appearance, 22;
his birth, illegitimate, 23;
his mother brilliant and high-strung, 23;
his ambition always military, 24;
comes from the West Indies to America, 25;
his genius that of writer and thinker on governmental affairs, rather than as
soldier;, 25;
his _Federalist_ writings, 26;
master of invective, 26;
a persuasive orator, 26, 27;
refused permission by Congress to present his reports personally, 27;
essentially an aristocrat, 28;
ideal of government ‘the rule of gentlemen,’ supported by a strong military
force,
29;
distrusted always a democracy, 29;
held public opinion of no value, 29;
disapproved of the Constitution as adopted, but urged its ratification as
better; than nothing, 30;
his own plan presented to the Constitutional Convention radically different from that
adopted,
30,
31;
his republic to be an aristocratic republic, with the States as States abolished,
31;
took little part in Constitutional Convention, 32;
large factor in making the Convention possible, and in securing ratification of
Constitution,
32,
33;
his sense of system, 33;
capable of long-sustained exertion, 33, 34;
a hard fighter, 34;
honesty, 34;
as a party leader, lacking in tact, 35;
never consulted, but directed, 35;
egotistical and vain, 36;
lacking in judgment in handling of men, 36;
unnecessarily offended sensibilities, 36, 37;
lacked sympathy always with the ‘common man,’ 37;
affectionate in his family relations, 38;
with his equals socially delightful companion, 38;
inordinately fond of women and their society, 38, 39;
always of delicate rather than robust health, 39, 40;
not a church member, but a believer in religion, 40;
attitude toward his chief, 41;
obsessed by idea of a strong government, 45;
believed necessary to enlist propertied interest, 45;
indifferent to unpropertied classes, 45;
active in interest of Funding Bill, 49;
bargains with Jefferson on location of new national capital, 66-68;
at high tide of popularity, 69;
considers himself Prime Minister, 69;
offends other Cabinet members, by dictatorial manner, 69;
indifferent to public opinion, 70;
prepares Excise Bill, 70, 71;
takes personal charge of Excise Bill in Senate, 73;
National Bank Bill, 74;
enunciates doctrine of implied powers, 75;
breaks with Jefferson when J. advises Washington Bank Bill is unconstitutional,
78;
Fenno’s _Gazette_ his organ, 154;
_Report on Manufactures_ filed with Congress, 161;
interests capital in developing Passaic Falls, 162;
portrait by Trumbull subscribed for, 162;
attention attracted by Freneau’s _Gazette_, 163;
believes Jefferson responsible for attacks in paper, 166;
attacks Freneau anonymously, 168;
tries to drive Jefferson from the Cabinet, 169;
in Fenno’s _Gazette_ attacks Jefferson, 172;
denies his own unfriendliness to Constitution, 173;
complains of Jefferson’s interference with Treasury Department, 173;
warns Adams of effort to defeat him in 1792 campaign, 181;
possible candidacy of Aaron Burr for Vice-President maddening, 181;
makes strenuous efforts in Adams’s behalf, 181;
urges Adams in dictatorial terms to his duty, 182;
blackmailing of, by Reynolds, 187;
tells complete story of relations with Reynolds’s wife to deputation from
Congress;, 188-90;
amazes House by reports, 198;
his official conduct of the Treasury vindicated by Congress, 203;
alarmed at enthusiasm for French Revolution, 214;
urges Washington to return to Philadelphia, 214;
takes matters into his own hands and decides on proper policy of Jefferson’s Department of
State,
215;
prepares list of questions for Washington to submit to Cabinet, 215;
his position on the reception to be given Genêt, 215;
writes series of papers for Fenno’s _Gazette_ justifying policy of Neutrality
in; French Revolution struggle, 225, 226;
is answered by Madison, 226;
aided by Genêt’s conduct, 227;
is stricken with yellow fever, 237, 238;
sees risk of war with England, 245;
is mentioned as special envoy to England, 246;
declines to have his name considered, 247;
goes in person to put down Whiskey Insurrection, 254-56;
plans to crush the Democratic Societies, 256;
is aided by Washington’s attack on Societies, in Annual Message, 262, 264;
prepares to leave Cabinet, 266;
considers his work finished, 266;
opens law office in New York, 268;
plans to direct Federalist Party in Congress by correspondence, 268;
dubs Jay Treaty an ‘execrable thing,’ 271;
is injured in rioting in New York, 276, 277;
consults with leading Federalists on campaign of 1796, 308;
distrusts Adams, 308;
H. and King decide to offer support to Patrick Henry, 308, 309;
H. turns to Thomas Pinckney, 310;
plans to bring in Adams second, 311;
publishes pamphlet on relations with Mrs. Reynolds, 355;
advises Adams through McHenry on French situation, 362;
prepares to play trump card--X Y Z papers--to force war with France, 364;
advises moderation in framing Alien and Sedition Bills, 376, 377;
is nominated Major-General in prospective war with France, 413;
schemes to be made second in command, 414;
directs fight against Adams through his tools in Cabinet, 414;
in correspondence with Miranda, South American adventurer, 427, 428;
opposed by Burr in 1800 New York elections, 448--55;
contrast between H. and Burr, 449;
plans election of Presidential electors he can control, with view of defeating
Adams,
451;
power broken with defeat of Federalists in New York in 1800, 454;
tour of New England in 1800, 459;
schemes against Adams in contest for Presidency, 459-65;
writes pamphlet attacking Adams, not intended for general publication, 477,
478;;
effect of pamphlet when published, 479, 480.

Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, daughter of General Schuyler, 134.

Hamilton, William, and trees in Philadelphia, 117.

Hammond, George, British Minister to United States, 246;
more friendly to Hamilton than to Jefferson, 246.

Hancock, John, Jefferson’s aide in forming new party, 144.

Harper, Robert Goodloe, president of Jacobin Club of Charleston, 223;
Representative from South Carolina, 346;
sketch of, 347;
on the Sedition Bill, 379, 380.

Harrowgate Gardens, Philadelphia, 121.

Hawkins, Benjamin, Senator from North Carolina, in conference with Jeffersonian
leaders;, 205.

Henry, Patrick, on Assumption, 60;
Hamiltonians offer him support for Presidency, 309;
declines overtures made through John Marshall, 309.

Higginson, Stephen, on Jay Treaty meetings in Boston, 278.

Holt, Charles, editor of New London _Bee_, convicted of sedition, 403, 404.

Humphreys, William, secretary to Washington, 119.

Hutchinson, Dr. ----, in yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 237.

_Independent Chronicle_, letters to, on Funding Bill, 57, 58;
on Funding Bill, 58;
on First Congress, 79;
correspondents to, reply to letters of ‘Publicola,’ 85;
other letters in, defend ‘Publicola’ letters, 85;
on Freneau’s paper the _Federal Gazette_ (_National Gazette_), 155;
on Indian expedition of St. Clair, 175;
on speculative craze, 176, 177;
on Jay Treaty, 281, 283, 284;
on X Y Z papers, 364.

Indian Queen, Philadelphia tavern, 120.

Iredell, James, Senator from South Carolina, on Genêt, 218.

Izard, Ralph, Senator from South Carolina, on titles, 5;
and the Assumption Bill, 62;
on John Adams, 316.

Jackson, James, Representative from Georgia, later Senator, opposes Hamilton’s financial
measures,
45,
49;
on funding of debt, 49, 50;
on Assumption, 60, 61;
on Excise Bill, 71, 72;
opposes Bank Bill, 76;
aids Jefferson in organizing party, 150.

Jackson, William, secretary to Washington, 119.

Jackson, Mrs. William, sister of Mrs. William Bingham, 135.

Jacobin Club, Democratic Club of Charleston, 223.

Jarvis, Dr. Charles, of Massachusetts, Jeffersonian leader, 144;
on French Revolution, 208;
unsuccessful candidate for Congress against Fisher Ames, 257.

Jay, John, considered by Washington for post of Secretary of the Treasury, 21;
defeated for governorship of New York, in 1792, 178;
appointed special Minister to Great Britain, 247, 248;
obnoxious to Jeffersonians, 248;
his experience in diplomacy, 248;
bitter fight in Senate over confirmation, 249;
concludes treaty with Great Britain, 269-71;
is denounced when provisions of treaty are published, 274;
burned in effigy, 274.

Jay Treaty, the, called ‘Grenville Treaty’ by Jeffersonians, 269;
negotiated by John Jay and Lord Grenville, 269-71;
provisions of, 271;
dubbed by Hamilton an ‘execrable thing,’ 271;
debated at length in Senate, 272;
efforts of Senators to prevent publication, 272;
storm of denunciation over its provisions, 273;
rioting in many places, 274-76;
endorsed at instance of Federalists by chambers of commerce, 279;
mob spirit on account of, in Boston, 279;
protests against, from Charleston, 280, 281;
meetings in opposition to, throughout the country, 281-85;
demands for papers and instructions as to, made by House before making
appropriations required to carry it out, 298;
papers refused by President, 298.

Jefferson, Thomas, shocked at unrepublican tone of New York society, 12;
bargains with Hamilton to aid in passage of Assumption Bill, 66;
afterward claimed Hamilton had deceived him, 67;
letters of, on Assumption, 67;
letters on Treasury policies, 74;
gives Washington written opinion on constitutionality of Bank Bill, 77;
relations with Hamilton strained, 78;
tour through New England, 79, 81;
writes letter commending Paine’s _Rights of Man_, which printer uses as preface to
pamphlet, with
J.’s name and official
title,
83;
J. embarrassed, 83;
Adams angry at J.’s supposed reference to him, 84;
J. explains and Adams satisfied, 85;
J. pleased with effect of newspaper turmoil, 85, 86;
position as friend of the ‘man of no importance’ established, 86;
comment on speculative craze, 87;
makes political issue of speculation by Federalist Congressmen, 90;
begins work of organizing an opposition party, 90;
a portrait of the man, 92-113;
personal appearance, 92;
careless in dress, 92;
dignified, but shy, 93;
thought lacking in frankness, 93;
glance shifty, 93;
entertaining talker, 94;
maternal ancestry aristocratic, 94;
father a Western pioneer, 95;
J. a Westerner with Eastern polish, 95;
educated at William and Mary College, 95;
well trained in the law, 96;
influenced by Locke’s writings, 96;
J.’s democracy inherent, 96;
as member of Virginia House of Burgesses, attacks system of land entail and law of
primogeniture,
97;
never forgiven by Virginia landed aristocracy, 98;
as U.S. Minister to France, intimate of Lafayette, 98;
popular with all classes, 98;
familiarizes himself with French life in the country, 99;
diplomatic reports illuminating, 99;
comments on French system of government, 99;
not hostile to monarchy, 100;
reports to Jay on rioting in Paris, 100;
intimate of the Girondists, 100;
returns to America before the Terror, 101;
a humanitarian, 101;
opposed to capital punishment save for treason, 101;
a humane master, 102;
hostile to slavery, 102;
wrote the Ordinance of the N.W. Territory, 102;
not an atheist nor hostile to Christian religion, 103;
contributed regularly to support of clergy, 103;
hated by the clergy for forcing separation in Virginia of Church and State,
104;;
so-called atheist law, 104;
his view of creation, 104, 105;
not hostile to the Constitution and favored its ratification, 105;
called Convention ‘an assembly, of demigods,’ 105;
first impressions of Constitution unfavorable, 105;
an ardent friend later, 106;
writes Madison praising _The Federalist_ papers, 106;
writes Washington, hoping a Bill of Rights will be added, 106;
his views on, quoted from his _Autobiography_, 107;
without a peer in the mastery of men, 107;
his understanding of mass psychology, 107;
a voluminous letter writer, 107;
valued the press as engine of democracy, 108;
captivating in personal contacts, 108;
led rather than drove, 108;
original ‘Easy Boss,’ 108;
not an orator, 109;
disliked contentious debates, 109;
had great self-control, 109;
never belittled his enemies, 110;
admired Hamilton’s ability, 110;
estranged from John Adams for years, revived in last years the old friendship,
110;
not an idealist, but an opportunist, 110;
a resourceful politician, 111;
his diversified interests, 112;
loved art in all its forms, 112;
arranged in Paris for statue of Washington by Houdon, 112;
visited by Humboldt, 113;
interested in mechanical and scientific inventions, 113, 114;
the life of the farmer his chief interest, 113;
democratic in sympathies, but lived as an aristocrat, 138;
finds commercial interests, professions, and major portion of press Federalist,
140;
notes resentment of farmers and old Revolutionary soldiers, 141;
notes dissatisfaction with Excise Law, 141;
fears doctrine of implied sovereignty, as undermining sovereignty of States,
141;;
problem to reach and arouse masses, 142;
material for opposition party abundant, 142;
J. notes local parties in opposition in every State, 143;
problem to consolidate and broaden local into national issues, 143;
chooses leaders in various States with keen judgment, 143-50;
efforts directed to broaden franchise, 151;
importance of a national newspaper, 152;
sends letter of resignation to Washington, 166;
grows more dissatisfied with policies of Government under Hamilton’s leadership,
168;
is attacked by Hamilton in newspapers, 169;
refuses to be drawn into newspaper controversy with Hamilton, 173;
official associations and social relations, unpleasant, 173;
writes to personal friends with much bitterness of Hamilton’s attacks, 173,
174;;
tries to drive Hamilton from Cabinet, and fails, 203;
no match for Hamilton in field of finance, 206;
sees new issue in position of Federalists on French Revolution, 210;
ardent in support of French, 210;
believes American Republic bound up with success of French Revolution, 210;
senses the sympathies of the ‘people of no importance,’ 213;
his position on question of receiving Genêt, 216;
agrees to Proclamation of Neutrality, 216;
urges Madison to reply to Hamilton’s articles on Neutrality, 226;
and the brig _Little Sarah_, 228;
Genêt’s conduct obnoxious to J., 228;
plans to divorce Jeffersonians from Genêt, 229;
discusses with the President as to Genêt, 230;
prepares letter to American Minister at Paris asking Genêt’s recall, 230;
socially ostracized in Philadelphia, 232-33;
resigns his portfolio as Secretary of State, 233;
his correspondence with both British and French Ministers, impartial, 238;
_Report on Commerce_, and Algerine piracy, 238, 239;
returns to private life, 239;
plans to force fighting in congressional elections of 1794, 256-58;
lives in retirement at Monticello, but active in political plans, 259;
indifferent as to Presidency contest in 1796, 307;
concerned as to health, 307;
his letter to Philip Mazzei on American politics, 308;
Democrats decide in 1796 on J. as their candidate for President, 308;
J. receives only three votes less than Adams, and hence is chosen Vice-President,
312;
J.’s letter to Mazzei again brought up, 351;
bitterly attacked in Fenno’s _Gazette_, 352;
toasted on Washington’s Birthday at Harvard College, in satirical vein, 353;
J. silent under slanderous attacks in newspapers, 353;
his social ostracism in Philadelphia continues, 354;
Jefferson plans opposition to Administration policy toward France, 363, 364;
the Sprigg Resolutions, 363, 364;
publication of X Y Z papers, 365, 366;
his party seeks, on his advice, to moderate war feeling, 374;
outraged by passage of Alien and Sedition Laws, 407;
moves for their repeal, 407;
conference at Monticello, 407;
inspires Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, 407, 408;
fears insurrection, 418;
election of, as President in 1800, inevitable, 441;
no rival in his party, 444;
his political genius, 444-48;
elected President, 486;
his meeting with Adams in Washington, 489, 490;
farewell to Senate, 507;
inauguration, 509, 510.

Jeffersonians, party of opposition organized by Jefferson (called
‘Jeffersonians,’ ‘Jacobins,’ ‘Democrats,’ and other
names, officially ‘Republicans’), 144-50;
take advantage of divisions among Federalists, 151;
‘Jeffersonian insolence,’ 151;
make gains in the congressional elections, 1792, 180;
strong in Virginia, 180;
five States carried by, in 1792, 183;
gains by, in election of 1794, 312;
sweep West and South in 1796, 312;
embarrassed by publication of X Y Z papers, 364, 365;
aided by excesses of Federalists in pushing prosecutions under Sedition Act,
365;-411;
win in New York elections of 1800, 455;
confident in Presidential campaign of 1800, 465-85;
elect Jefferson President, 506.

Johnson, Samuel, of North Carolina, on Assumption Bill, 63;
chosen director of Bank of United States, 90;
on Jay Treaty, 281.

Jones, Willie, North Carolina leader of Jeffersonians, 149.

Jumel, Madame, 39.

Kentucky Resolutions, written and introduced in Legislature by Breckenridge, at
suggestion; of Jefferson, 408.

King, Rufus, Senator from New York, on Assumption, 60;
Federalist leader in Senate, 60;
and the Assumption Bill, 62;
discouraged at apparent failure of Assumption Bill, 63;
chosen director of Bank of United States, 90;
on French Revolution, 209;
conference of Federalist leaders in Philadelphia lodgings of, 247;
on business in Senate, 298, 299;
on suppression of Irish rebellion, 375;
protests release by British of Irish prisoners, 375.

Kirby, Ephraim, Democratic organizer in Connecticut, 145.

Knox, Henry, Secretary of War, 13;
resents Hamilton’s interference with War Department purchases, 69;
attacked by Jeffersonians for mismanagement of St. Clair expedition against the
Indians,
175;
on reception of Genêt, 215.

Knox, Mrs. Henry, a Mrs. Malaprop, 15.

Langdon, John, Senator from New Hampshire, Democratic leader in New Hampshire,
146;;
votes against Jay Treaty, 282.

Laurance, John, Representative from New York, on Madison’s amendment to Funding
Bill;, 55;
and Assumption Bill, 62;
on Excise Bill, 72;
elected director of Bank of United States, 90;
on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury management, 201.

Lear, Tobias, secretary to Washington, 119.

Lee, Richard Henry, Senator from Virginia, on question of titles, 5;
fellow student of Madison at Princeton, 157.

L’Enfant, Pierre Charles, designs Federal Hall, New York City, 2;
employed by Hamilton in planning city of Paterson, 162.

_Little Sarah_, brig, 227.

Livermore, Samuel, on effect of amendment to Excise Bill, 73.

Livingston, Brockholst, classmate of Madison at Princeton, 157;
in New York elections of 1800, 452.

Livingston, Edward, Representative from New York, sketch of, 290, 291;
asks that the papers and instructions pertaining to Jay Treaty be laid before
the; House, 294;
debate on resolutions of, on Jay Treaty, 294-97;
resolutions of, on Jay Treaty, adopted, 297;
on the Alien Bill, 378;
on the Sedition Bill, 379.

Livingston, Robert R., Chancellor of New York State, defeated for Senate through influence of
Hamilton,
36;
leading Jeffersonian, 147.

Logan, Dr. James, Philadelphia, friend of Jefferson, 138;
his visit to France, 423-26.

London Tavern, Philadelphia, 120.

Lyon, Matthew, Democratic leader in Vermont, 146;
ridicules Federalist practice of framing Reply to the President’s Message,
350;
attacked in newspapers, 350, 351;
in disgraceful wrangle with Griswold, 360;
attacked by Griswold, and rough-and-tumble fight ensues, 361;
victim of Reign of Terror, under Sedition Act, 386-88.

McClenachan, Blair, and Jay Treaty, 276.

McCormick, Dan, his House of Gossip, 15.

McHenry, James, on Hamilton, 38;
member of Washington’s military family, 39;
in 1792 campaign, 181, 182;
on John Adams, 324;
Adams’s Secretary of War, sketch of, 334-38;
dismissed by Adams, 456.

Maclay, William, Senator from Pennsylvania, moved to laughter over matter of
titles,
4;
on Hamilton’s funding scheme, 44, 45;
on speculations of Congressmen, 47, 48;
has plan, substitute for Funding Bill, 56;
on his colleague, Scott, 56, 61;
on Assumption, 61;
on Vining, of Delaware, 61;
letters to, from Rush and Logan opposing Assumption, 61;
approached by Morris to join in land speculations, 61, 62;
on attitude of Congressmen and speculators and Assumption, 62;
on Hamilton and Congress, 68;
on Excise Bill, 73, 74;
on Bank Bill, 75;
Jefferson’s aide in Pennsylvania, 148;
on French Revolution, 209;
on John Adams, 317.

Macon, Nathaniel, North Carolina, organizer for Jefferson, 150;
in conference of Jeffersonian leaders, 205.

Madison, James, Representative from Virginia, on Congress, 3;
on titles, 6;
seeks postponement of first tariff measure, 19;
on Hamilton’s _Report on Public Credit_, 46;
on Funding Bill, 51;
part in framing Constitution, 51;
contributions to _The Federalist_, 51;
not an orator, 52;
consulted often by Washington, 53;
cultivated by Hamilton, 53;
loved as a son by Jefferson, 53;
proposes an amendment to discriminate between original owners and purchasers of public
securities,
53,
54;
Federalists and speculators much disturbed, 55, 56;
on resolutions of commercial organizations, 55;
amendment to Funding Bill, voted down, 56;
votes for Assumption Bill, 61;
letter to Monroe, 63;
and bargain on Assumption Bill, 66, 67;
opposes principle of Excise Bill, but votes in favor, 72;
on Hamilton’s doctrine of implied powers, 76;
advises Washington Bank Bill is unconstitutional, 77;
tours New England with Jefferson, 79, 81;
writes articles, attacking Hamilton’s policies, for _National Gazette_, 169;
defends Jefferson’s position on Constitution, 172;
attacks Fenno’s ‘unmanly attack’ on Jefferson, 172;
on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury management, 201;
replies to Hamilton’s Neutrality articles, 226;
prepares resolutions based on Jefferson’s _Report on Commerce_, 240;
attacked by Federalists, 240, 241;
excitement in the country, merchants denouncing and populace favoring M.’s
Resolutions, 242-44;
marriage to Dolly Todd, 259;
author of Virginia Resolutions, 409.

Marshall, John, Representative from Virginia (afterward Chief Justice of
the United States), appointed special envoy to France, 345;
his return made an occasion for riotous celebration, 368, 369;
opposes the Alien and Sedition Laws, in letter to _Porcupine’s Gazette_, 382;
opposes plans of his party (Federalist) for change in electoral count, 442;
appointed Secretary of State by Adams, 457.

Martin, Luther, the ‘Federalist bull-dog,’ attacks Jefferson, 352, 353.

_Maryland Journal_, on Hamilton, 69;
on Assumption, 71;
on speculation, 88;
on speculative craze, 177.

Mason, Stevens Thomson, Senator from Virginia, publishes Jay Treaty, 273.

‘Men of no importance,’ feeling among, against Funding and Assumption Bills,
70;
and Excise Bill, 70, 71.

Mercer, John Francis, Representative from Maryland, organizer for Jefferson
in; Maryland, 149;
on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury management, 201, 203.

Mifflin, Thomas, Governor of Pennsylvania, 148;
orders militia to parade in honor of President, 359.

Mingo-Creek Society, Democratic Club, 262.

Miranda, Francesco de, soldier of fortune and adventurer, proposes
revolutionary scheme in South America, 427;
in correspondence with Hamilton, 427;
holds out lure of Florida and Cuba to United States, 427.

Monroe, James, Senator from Virginia, of deputation from Congress
to Hamilton on the Reynolds charges, 187;
Minister to France, 341, 342;
banquet in honor of, in Philadelphia, on return from France, 358;
confers with Jefferson and Democratic leaders, 358.

Moore, Thomas, poet, on Jefferson, 90.

Moreau de Saint-Merys, threatened with prosecution under Alien Law, 405, 406.

Morris, Gouverneur, on Hamilton’s speech in Constitutional Convention,
presenting plan for Constitution, 32;
Minister to France, 339-41.

Morris, Robert, Senator from Pennsylvania, on titles, 6;
through business partner, speculated in certificates, 46;
legislative agent of Hamilton, 47;
discusses with Hamilton on location of capital, 65, 66;
rents his residence in Philadelphia as Presidential residence, 119;
Hamilton outlines his Bank policy to, 74;
on Genêt, 217.

Morris, Mrs. Robert, intimate of Mrs. Washington, ‘second lady in the land,’
131.

Morse, Anson, D., quoted, 142.

Muhlenberg, Frederick A. C., Speaker of the House, pokes fun at Senators on
titles;, 5;
favors Assumption Bill, 58;
one of deputation from Congress to Hamilton on the Reynolds charges, 187.

_National Gazette_, on Hamilton’s _Report on Manufactures_, 161, 163;
attacks in, on Hamilton, 166-70;
attacks in, on Washington, 221;
attacks Hamilton’s conduct of the Treasury, 196, 197;
presents analysis of vote vindicating Hamilton’s management of Treasury, 204;
on French Revolution, 207, 211, 212;
on Genêt, 218, 219, 220;
prints Madison’s reply to ‘Pacificus’ letters in _Gazette of United States_,
226;.

Naturalization Act, 264.

Neutrality, Proclamation of, in war between French Republic and England, 216;
dissatisfaction of people, 217, 220;
flouted by both French and British, 224;
justified by Hamilton in brilliant series of articles in Fenno’s _Gazette_,
225;, 226;
the case of the _Little Sarah_, 227, 228.

_New Hampshire Gazette_, on the Jay Treaty, 282.

_New York, Argus_, on the Jay Treaty, 275, 277, 278, 282, 283.

New York City, capital of the Nation in 1789, 1;
First Congress meets in, 1;
preparations for Washington’s Inaugural, 2, 3, 7;
inaugural ball, 7, 8;
life in, 8, 10;
narrow streets, and muddy, 10;
theatrical productions, 10, 11;
cost of living, 12;
tone of society not republican, 12;
republican ‘court,’ 13, 15;
Wall Street fashionable residence street, 15;
slave market and whipping-post prominent in 1789, 9, 10;
taverns, theaters, 11;
yellow fever epidemic, 380.

_New York Daily Advertiser_, on First Congress, 79;
‘Publicola’ letters in _Columbian Centinel_ answered, 84, 85.

_New York Journal_, on Assumption, 63, 64.

_New York Register_, on Madison’s amendment to Funding Bill, 177.

_New York Time Piece_, on X Y Z papers, 365.

Newspapers, stories in, as to speculations in public securities, 50;
on the Funding Bill, 57, 58;
on Assumption, 71;
on Bank, 78, 79;
on Jefferson and Paine’s _Rights of Man_, 84, 85;
on speculative craze, 88, 89, 176, 177;
on Hamilton’s _Report on Manufactures_, 161;
on attacks on Hamilton’s financial measures, 163, 165;
Federalist and Jeffersonian organs, 166-70;
Hamilton’s attacks in, on Jefferson, 172;
on Indian expedition of St. Clair, 175;
on election of Clinton Governor of New York, 178;
in campaign of 1792, 181-83;
crusade against Hamilton, 196;
on Hamilton’s defense of his financial policy, 198, 199, 203, 204;
on French Revolution, 207, 211, 212;
on Genêt, 218-20;
attacks on and defense of Washington, 221;
on the Democratic Societies, 253;
on the Whiskey Insurrection, 254, 255;
on the Jay Treaty, 273-83;
in campaign of 1796, 310, 311;
on the debates in Congress on trouble with France, 350-61;
on the X Y Z papers, 364, 365;
on supposed French outrages, 366-71;
on Alien and Sedition Bills, 374-81;
in Presidential campaign of 1800, 444-85.

Nicholas, George, Kentucky Jeffersonian, challenges Harper to debate on Sedition
Law,
406.

Nicholas, Wilson Carey, of Virginia, in conference with Jefferson at Monticello
on; plans to repeal the Alien and Sedition Laws, 407.

Noailles, Viscount de, visitor to Philadelphia, 135;
appointed Minister by Royal Princes at Coblentz, received by Washington, 219;
Bache’s _Daily Advertiser_ on, 234.

O’Eller’s tavern, Philadelphia, 119, 121, 136;
dinner at, to Genêt, 220.

Order of the Cincinnati, Jefferson on, 262.

Otis, Harrison Gray, on Hamilton, 38;
on Philadelphia, 123, 124;
Representative from Massachusetts, 346;
sketch of, 346.

Paine, Thomas, _Rights of Man_ reply to Burke’s _Reflections upon the French
Revolution_,
82;
publication of pamphlet in Philadelphia creates sensation, 82, 83;
Jefferson’s letter to printer used as preface, 83;
newspaper controversy, 83, 84.

Parsons, Theophilus, pessimistic in campaign of 1792, 179.

Paterson, New Jersey, manufacturing city promoted by Hamilton, 162.

Paterson, William, Senator from New Jersey, and the Assumption Bill, 62.

_Pennsylvania Gazette_, on Bank Bill, 78;
on speculation, 88.

Perry’s Gardens, New York City, 10.

Philadelphia, social background, 116-39;
capital removed to, 116;
appearance of city in 1790’s, 117;
government departments closely connected, 118;
private houses rooming-houses for Congressmen, 120;
lack of ‘respectful manners’ of the ‘common people,’ noted by travelers, 121;
life of working and middle classes not easy, 123;
society luxury-loving and aristocratic, 123;
English influence prominent, 124;
social life, free manners, 126, 127;
yellow fever epidemic in 1793, 235-38.

_Philadelphia Advertiser_, on Hamilton, 162.

Philadelphia County Brigade, 275.

Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 138;
Jefferson at rooms of, 138.

Pickering, Timothy, and the _Africa_ incident, 287;
writes of British to John Quincy Adams, 287;
Secretary of State under Adams, sketch of, 326-31;
ignores requests of Adams in French troubles, 430;
delays preparation of instructions to French mission, 434;
dismissed by Adams, 456, 457.

Pinckney, Charles, of South Carolina, joins Jefferson, 150;
elected to Senate, 383.

Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, Minister to France, 342;
joined with Marshall and Gerry in special mission in France, 345;
Federalist candidate for President in 1800, 459 ff.

Pinckney, Thomas, Minister to Great Britain, his efforts to stop
British violations of Neutrality Proclamation, 224;
set aside in negotiations of Jay Treaty, 269;
sketch of, 309, 310;
selected by Hamilton and King as Federalist candidate for President, in 1796,
310;.

Pintard, John, chief of Tammany Society, 148.

_Porcupine’s Gazette_, active in urging war with France, 350-60;
publishes Martin’s attacks on Jefferson, 352, 353;
abusive to Democrats, 354, 355;
on Lyon-Griswold fight in House, 361.

Powell, Mrs. Samuel, aunt of Mrs. William Bingham, 132.

Priestley, Joseph, English liberal, addresses Tammany and other ‘Democratic
Societies;’ in New York, 259.

Randolph, Edmund, Attorney-General under Washington, considers Hamilton’s Bank Bill
unconstitutional,
77;
on reception of Genêt, 215;
succeeds Jefferson as Secretary of State, 239;
and French Minister Faucet, 285;
is dismissed from Cabinet, 286.

Read, Jacob, Senator from South Carolina, denounced in Charleston for supporting Jay
Treaty,
281.

Reign of Terror, Alien and Sedition Laws produce, in 1798, 380-82;
continued through two years, 383;
riotings, 384;
victims, 386-93, 398-406.

_Report on Manufactures_, Hamilton’s, 161;
newspaper comments on, 161.

_Report on the Public Credit_, Hamilton’s, 43-68;
debated in Congress, 44.

Reynolds, James, seeks to blackmail Hamilton, 187.

Ricketts, John, proprietor of the Circus, Philadelphia, 138.

_Rights of Man_, by Thomas Paine, copy lent by printer to Jefferson, 82;
in returning borrowed copy to printer Jefferson writes note commending pamphlet,
83;
Jefferson’s note used by printer as preface, 83;
effect of publication, 83, 84;
newspaper controversy over, 83, 84.

Rittenhouse, David, scientist and friend of Jefferson, 149;
and Jefferson in library of Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 156;
aids in preparations for reception of Genêt, 219;
president of Democratic Club of Philadelphia, 223.

Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Duc de La, on Philadelphia, 124, 125;
in Philadelphia, 135.

Rush, Dr. Benjamin, writes letters to Maclay against Assumption, 61;
on Paine’s _Rights of Man_, 84;
letter to Burr, 147;
Jefferson’s friend, 149;
in yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 237.

Rutledge, John, denounces Jay Treaty, 280;
appointment as Chief Justice not confirmed, 289.

Saint Cecilia Society, Democratic Club in Charleston, 223.

St. Clair, General Arthur, failure of expedition against Indians made issue
by; Jeffersonians in campaign of 1792, 175.

Schuyler, Philip, father-in-law of Hamilton, elected Senator from New York,
36;
letter of Hamilton to, on Washington, 41, 42;
and the Assumption Bill, 62.

‘Scrippomony,’ Jefferson on, 87.

Sedition Bill, purpose to crush Jeffersonian press, 376, 377;
debates on, in Congress, marked by disorder, 378;
passed by small margin, 380.

Sedgwick, Theodore, speculator in public securities, defends Funding Bill, 48,
49;;
on funding of debt, 48, 49, 50;
on Madison’s plan to amend Funding Bill, 55;
speech on the Assumption Bill, 62;
and Excise Bill, 72;
and amendment to Excise Bill, 73;
on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury management, 201;
recommended Adams’s nomination as Vice-President, in 1789, 325;
on results of 1798 elections, 383.

Sedgwick, Mrs. Theodore, 134.

Sherman, Roger, Representative and Senator from Connecticut, on titles, 3.

Sign of the Sorrel Horse, Philadelphia tavern, 119.

Smith, Mrs. Margaret Bayard, on Jefferson, 92, 93.

Smith, Samuel, on Madison commerce resolutions, 241.

Smith, Jeremiah, on Philadelphians, 116.

Smith, William, Representative from South Carolina, on Madison’s amendment to Funding
Bill,
55;
chosen director of Bank of United States, 90;
on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury management, 201, 203;
on Madison’s commerce resolutions, 240, 242.

Southwark Theater, Philadelphia, 137.

Speculation, in government securities, 44-47;
members of Congress involved, 46-48;
in stock and scrip, 87;
fraud and counterfeiting, 88;
Hamilton shocked and concerned, 88;
bubble bursts in 1792, 176;
Hamilton’s policies charged as cause of panic, 177;
newspaper comments on, 177.

_Spooner’s Vermont Journal_, on the Jay Treaty, 283.

Steele, John, North Carolina, 181.

Stewart, Mrs. Walter, daughter of Blair McClenachan, social leader
of Philadelphia, 132.

Strong, Caleb, Senator from Massachusetts, 9;
and the Assumption Bill, 62.

Sullivan, James, lawyer, pamphleteer, and orator for the Democrats, 145.

Tammany, Sons of, rival organization to Society of the Cincinnati, 148;
at first non-partisan, then fervid Jeffersonians, 148.

Tariff, in First Congress, 19;
in Second Congress, 161;
Hamilton’s _Report on Manufactures_ excites little attention, 161.

Taylor, John, of Caroline, a Jeffersonian leader in Virginia, 149, 150;
Jeffersonian leaders confer at home of, 205;
pamphlet analyzing vote in Congress vindicating Hamilton, attributed to, 205,
206;;
introduces Virginia Resolutions in Legislature, 409.

Tilley, Count, 135.

Treaty with the Southern Indians, Washington’s attitude on presentation to the
Senate,
21,
22.

Trumbull, John, paints portrait of Hamilton, 162.

Tucker, George, editor of Blackstone’s _Commentaries_, 169.

Twining, Thomas, in Philadelphia, 120.

_United States Chronicle_, on Freneau’s attacks on Hamilton, 164.

Venable, Abraham B., of deputation from Congress to Hamilton on the Reynolds
charges,
187.

_Vermont Journal_, on Hamilton’s Passaic Falls scheme, 162.

Vining, John, Representative from Delaware, and Assumption, 61;
Maclay on, 61.

Virginia Resolutions, written by James Madison, and introduced in
Legislature by John Taylor of Caroline, 409;
contemporary opinions of, 409-11.

Wadsworth, Jeremiah, Representative from Connecticut, speculator in
certificates, 47 n.;
sneers at soldiers of Revolution, 55, 56;
elected director of Bank of United States, 90.

Warville, Brissot de, and Mrs. Bingham, 128, 129.

Washington, George, reception on arrival in New York, 6, 7;
inaugurated President, 7;
bored by dignities and ceremonial of office, 16, 17;
his solemn dinners, 18;
presents in person treaty with Southern Indians for ratification by Senate,
20;;
annoyed by proposal to refer treaty to committee, 21;
rents house of Robert Morris in Philadelphia, 119;
endeavors, unsuccessfully, to effect reconciliation between Jefferson and
Hamilton;, 171;
Hamilton refuses to discontinue attacks in Fenno’s _Gazette_, 172;
and the French Revolution, 214;
issues Neutrality Proclamation, 216;
and Jefferson in the case of the _Little Sarah_, 228;
reluctantly accepts Jefferson’s resignation, 233, 234;
appoints Jay special envoy to Great Britain, 247;
attacks Democratic Societies in Message, 261;
delays signing Jay Treaty, 285;
his prestige used to make Treaty more acceptable, 286;
is attacked by Democratic press, 286-88;
refuses to comply with request of House for papers pertaining to Jay Treaty,
298;;
refuses to be a candidate for a third term, 308;
accepts chief command of army in prospective war with France, 413;
selects Hamilton, Pinckney, and Knox as major-generals, 413.

Washington City, new capital, in 1800, 486-89;
‘city of magnificent distances,’ but mud roads, 487.

Whiskey Boys, the. _See_ Whiskey Insurrection.

Whiskey Insurrection, the, 250-56;
grew out of enforcement of Excise Law, 251;
Hamilton active in suppressing, 254-56;
ringleaders arrested, harshly treated, and jailed, 255;
most of prisoners acquitted on trial, 255;
two convicted, but pardoned by Washington, 256;
tempest in a teapot, 256.

Williamson’s Gardens, New York City, 10.

Willing, Thomas, business partner of Robert Morris, elected director of Bank of
United; States, 90.

Wingate, Paine, on Federal Hall, 2.

Witherspoon, John, president of Princeton, 157.

Wolcott, Mary Ann, sister of Oliver Wolcott, afterward Mrs. Chauncey Goodrich,
134;.

Wolcott, Oliver, of Connecticut, on Hamilton’s religious views, 41;
mouthpiece for Hamilton, 59, 60;
on Philadelphians, 116;
on demonstrations against Jay Treaty, 275;
Adams’s Secretary of the Treasury, sketch of, 331-34.

Wolcott, Mrs. Oliver, called ‘the magnificent,’ 134.

Wythe, George, Virginia lawyer and politician, 96;
presides at meeting in Richmond denouncing Jay Treaty, 282.

X Y Z papers, Federalists familiar with, before publication, 364;
Hamilton sees trump card in them for war party, 364;
Jeffersonians kept in ignorance, 364;
excitement intense on publication, 365, 366;
‘millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,’ a clarion call, 366;
rioting in Philadelphia, 367.

Yellow Cat, the, Philadelphia tavern, 120.

Yellow fever, in Philadelphia, 237, 238;
in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, 380.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Pickering (Wingate to Pickering), II, 447.

[2] Ames, I, 31.

[3] _Writings_, I, 450.

[4] Ames, I, 31, 32.

[5] Pickering (Wingate to Pickering), II, 447.

[6] Ames, I, 31; Pickering, II, 447.

[7] _Republican Court_, 120-22; _Story of a Street_, 101.

[8] Ames, I, 32-34.

[9] _Writings_, I, 450.

[10] Ames (to Minot), I, 41-42.

[11] _Republican Court_, 122, note.

[12] Adams’s explanation, _Works_, VIII, 511-13.

[13] Maclay, 2-3.

[14] Maclay, 7-10.

[15] _Ibid._, 22-24.

[16] _Ibid._, 25-27.

[17] Maclay, 37.

[18] _Writings_, I, 470-71.

[19] Ames, I, 46.

[20] June 3, 1789.

[21] Maclay, 31.

[22] _Daily Advertiser_, April 24, 1789.

[23] _Ibid._

[24] _Story of a Street_, 221.

[25] Maclay, 7-10.

[26] _Ibid._

[27] _Gazette of the United States_, May 2, 1789.

[28] _Ibid._

[29] _Ibid_, May 8, 1789.

[30] _Daily Advertiser_, May 8, 1789.

[31] _Daily Advertiser_, May 8, 1729.

[32] _Gazette of the United States_, May 9, 1789.

[33] Governor Page complained bitterly of hogs and mud. _Memorial
History_, III, 48.

[34] The _Daily Advertiser_ advertises the specifications April 13,
1789.

[35] Maclay, 90.

[36] _Gazette of the United States_, June 27, 1789.

[37] _Memorial History_, III, 47.

[38] _Daily Advertiser_, March 6, 1789.

[39] _Memorial History_, III, 45.

[40] Daily Advertiser, April 15, 1789.

[41] _New York in 1789_, 117.

[42] _Memorial History_, III, 65; _New York in 1789_,
117-20.

[43] _New York in 1789_, 172-75.

[44] _Ibid._, 176.

[45] _Ibid._, 178.

[46] May 9, 1789.

[47] _Gazette of the United States_, May 13, 1789.

[48] Maclay, 31.

[49] _Gazette of the United States_, June 6, 1789.

[50] _Ibid._, September 19, 1789.

[51] _Story of a Street_, 112.

[52] Gibbs, I, 22.

[53] _Ibid._, I, 43.

[54] _New York in 1789_, 19.

[55] _Ibid._, 119.

[56] Warville, 96-97.

[57] _Republican Court_, 210, note.

[58] Brooks, _Knox_, 217-18.

[59] Mrs. Iredell; McRee, _Iredell_, II, 296-97.

[60] _Gazette of the United States_, May 16, 1789.

[61] _Ibid._, May 30, 1789.

[62] _Daily Advertiser_, June 19, 1789.

[63] _Gazette of the United States_, April 15, 1789.

[64] Maclay, 257-58.

[65] Wharton, _Salons, Colonial and Republican_, 53.

[66] Maclay, 266.

[67] _Ibid._, 73-74.

[68] _Story of a Street_, 112, 114-17, 121.

[69] Richmond Hill, at present site of Charlton and Varick Streets.

[70] _Letters of Mrs. Adams_ (to Mrs. Shaw), II, 201;
(to Thomas Brand-Hollis), II, 205.

[71] Ames (to Minot), I, 34; Maclay, 375; _Familiar
Letters_, 86-89.

[72] Adams, _Works_, VIII, 491-92.

[73] Thayer’s _Washington_, 180-81.

[74] _Gazette of the United States_, May 6, 1789.

[75] _Republican Court_, 149, note.

[76] _Autobiography_, Ford, I, 171.

[77] Maclay, 138.

[78] Iredell, II, 138.

[79] Maclay, 138.

[80] _Ibid._, 138, 206.

[81] _Ibid._, 101.

[82] Maclay, 38.

[83] _Ibid._, 50.

[84] Bassett, _The Federalist System_.

[85] Gerry, _Annals_, May 20, 1789.

[86] _Writings_ (to Randolph), I, 471-73.

[87] Jackson, _Annals_, I, 486-89.

[88] Page, _Annals_, I, 548-52.

[89] Maclay, 128-31.

[90] Iredell (Lowther to Iredell), II, 258-59.

[91] _Writings_, I, 471-73.

[92] Warville, 102.

[93] _Familiar Letters_, 236-37.

[94] Oliver, 114.

[95] Gibbs, I, 22.

[96] _Autobiography_, 278.

[97] Morris, _Diary_, II, 456.

[98] Oliver, 15.

[99] See Appendix, Lodge, _Alexander Hamilton_.

[100] _Works_, IX, 405-06; letter to brother.

[101] _Ibid._, X, 109.

[102] _Intimate Life_, 3.

[103] _Life_, by son, I, 4.

[104] Fiske, I, 104-05.

[105] _Life_, by son, I, 10.

[106] _Ibid._, 22.

[107] _Ibid._, 263-74.

[108] Payne’s _Journalism_, 191-92.

[109] _Works_, I, 202.

[110] _Ibid._, I, 213-39.

[111] _Ibid._, I, 243-87.

[112] _Life_, by son, II, 277.

[113] _Ibid._, I, 69.

[114] _Works_, VI, 276.

[115] _Life_, by son, I, 69.

[116] _Ibid._, I, 318.

[117] _Ibid._

[118] Lodge, 26.

[119] Oliver, 27.

[120] _Intimate Life_, 47.

[121] Oliver, 161-62.

[122] Lodge, 177-78; Oliver, 163-64.

[123] Oliver, 86.

[124] _Ibid._, 263.

[125] _Ibid._, 376.

[126] _Works_, VI, 457.

[127] Oliver, 149.

[128] Fiske, 120; Lodge, 58.

[129] Beck, 75.

[130] Oliver, 156.

[131] _Works_, I, 347-69.

[132] Beck, 76.

[133] _Life_, by son, II, 487.

[134] _Ibid._, 487.

[135] _Ibid._, 488.

[136] _Ibid._

[137] _Ibid._

[138] _Ibid._, 516.

[139] Lodge, 60.

[140] _Works_, I, 404.

[141] Gordy, I, 70.

[142] _Works_, I, 417.

[143] _Ibid._

[144] _Works_, I, 420.

[145] Lodge, 62-63.

[146] Statement to Tench Coxe quoted by Jefferson, _Works of
Jefferson_, Ford, I, 338.

[147] Letter to G. Morris, _Works_, X, 425.

[148] Morris, _Diary_, II, 456.

[149] _Works_, X, 480.

[150] _Intimate Life_, 75.

[151] _Life_, by son, I, 398.

[152] Parton’s _Jefferson_, 358.

[153] _Familiar Letters_, 236-37.

[154] Oliver, 177-78.

[155] _Works_, X, 3; letter to King.

[156] Jefferson’s _Anas_, I, 180.

[157] Morris, _Diary_, II, 456.

[158] Lodge, 156.

[159] _Works_, X, 354.

[160] Morris, _Diary_, II, 456.

[161] Cabot, 298-300.

[162] _Intimate Life_, 48.

[163] _Life_, by son, I, 236.

[164] _Ibid._, 233.

[165] Lodge, 81.

[166] _Ibid._, 144.

[167] Oliver, 40.

[168] _Works_, X, 90-91.

[169] _Ibid._, X, 425-26.

[170] _Works_, X, 123-26; letter to Lloyd.

[171] Parton’s _Jefferson_, 355.

[172] _Intimate Life_, 46.

[173] _Works_, IX, 256-58.

[174] _Familiar Letters_, 236-37.

[175] Morison’s _Otis_ (to Mrs. Otis), I, 141-43.

[176] Cabot, 204-05.

[177] Morison’s _Otis_, I, 141.

[178] Lodge, 272.

[179] Oliver, 76.

[180] _Ibid._, 381.

[181] Griswold, 173.

[182] _Intimate Life_, 55.

[183] _Ibid._, 56.

[184] _Ibid._, 60.

[185] _Ibid._, 259.

[186] _Ibid._, 73.

[187] _Intimate Life_, 17.

[188] _Works_, V, 61 (to Washington); X,
256 (to William Smith); X, 275 (to King);
X, 343 (to Pickering).

[189] _Life_, by son, reminiscences of Troup, I, 10.

[190] _Ibid._

[191] _Works_, VI, 276.

[192] _Ibid._, X, 432-37.

[193] _Intimate Life_, 334.

[194] _Ibid._, 406.

[195] Oliver and Sumner.

[196] _Intimate Life_, 261.

[197] _Works_, IX, 232-37.

[198] _Ibid._, X, 356-57.

[199] _Daily Advertiser_, October 9, 1789.

[200] Gerry and Clymer, both supporters of the _Report_, objected.
_Annals_, January 9, 1790.

[201] Maclay, 177.

[202] _Writings, J. Q. Adams_, I, 49.

[203] _Connecticut Gazette_, February 19, 1790.

[204] Lodge, 90-91.

[205] _Ibid._

[206] Madison’s _Writings_ (letter to Pendleton), I,
507-09.

[207] Maclay, 179. The member of Congress who sent the vessels was
Jeremiah Wadsworth of Connecticut.

[208] Professor C. A. Beard makes a conclusive case against both in his
_Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy_.

[209] _Works of Jefferson_, I, 354.

[210] Mr. Amory, H. G. Otis, and William Wetmore.

[211] _Writings of J. Q. Adams_, I, 56-59.

[212] Maclay, 177-78.

[213] Beard’s _Economic Interpretation_, 104-12.

[214] _Gazette of the United States_, ‘Common Sense,’ January 30, 1790.

[215] _Annals_, January 28, 1790.

[216] _Ibid._

[217] Maclay, February 1, 1790.

[218] Maclay, 194.

[219] _Annals_, February 10, 1790.

[220] _New York Daily Advertiser_, February 13, 1790.

[221] _Familiar Letters_, 108.

[222] _Gazette of the United States_, April 15, 1790.

[223] Fiske, 187.

[224] Ames (letter to Minor), I, 35.

[225] _First Forty Years of American Society, Family Letters of Mrs.
Margaret Bayard Smith_, 61.

[226] _Works of Jefferson, Ford_, I, 86.

[227] Mrs. Smith, 63.

[228] _Annals_, February 11, 1790.

[229] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 507.

[230] _Annals_, February 15, 1790.

[231] _Writings_ (to Randolph), I, 512.

[232] White, _Annals_, February 16, 1790.

[233] White, _Annals_, February 16, 1790.

[234] Maclay, 199.

[235] _Ibid._, February 22, 1790.

[236] _Writings_, _J. Q. Adams_, I, 49.

[237] _Gazette of the United States_, June 12, 1790.

[238] _Centinel_, February 24, 1790.

[239] _Ibid._, March 20, 1790.

[240] _Pennsylvania Gazette_, copied in _Maryland Gazette_, February
26, 1790.

[241] Boston, _Independent Chronicle_, March 4, 1790.

[242] Boston, _Independent Chronicle_, March 25, 1790.

[243] _Ibid._, April 15.

[244] Maclay, 202.

[245] _Ibid._, 205.

[246] _New York Advertiser_, February 20, 1790.

[247] _Ibid._, February 22, 1790.

[248] Comptroller of the Treasury.

[249] Gibbs, I, 43.

[250] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), I, 511.

[251] McRee, _Iredell_ (from Senator Johnson), II, 286;
(from William R. Davie), II, 281, note.

[252] King, I, 385.

[253] Henry, II, 459.

[254] Stone of Maryland.

[255] Maclay, 203.

[256] _Ibid._, 209.

[257] _Ibid._, 212.

[258] _Ibid._, 214.

[259] Maclay, 227, 230.

[260] _Ibid._, 234.

[261] Elias Boudinot of New Jersey.

[262] Maclay, 237.

[263] Maclay, 248.

[264] _Ibid._, 250.

[265] _Writings_, I, 517.

[266] McRee, _Iredell_, II, 286.

[267] Lodge, _Cabot_, 35-36.

[268] _Ibid._ (to Goodhue), 37.

[269] _Gazette of the United States_, April 21, 1790.

[270] _Ibid._, April 24, 1790.

[271] _Centinel_, June 19, 1790.

[272] _Daily Advertiser_, March 24, 1790.

[273] Ames (to Dwight), I, 79-80.

[274] Maclay, 292.

[275] _Ibid._, 299.

[276] Maclay, 310.

[277] _Works_, Ford, VIII, 42-45.

[278] _Ibid._, VIII, 52.

[279] _Writings_ (to Monroe), I, 522.

[280] Maclay, 332.

[281] _Gazette of the United States_, August 25, 1790.

[282] February 25, 1791.

[283] Brooks, _Knox_, 213.

[284] _Maryland Journal_, February 11, 1791.

[285] Josiah Parker.

[286] _Annals_, January 5, 1791.

[287] Samuel Livermore.

[288] _Annals_, January 6, 1791.

[289] _Annals_, January 11, 1791.

[290] Maclay, 385.

[291] _Ibid._, 385.

[292] Maclay, 387.

[293] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 123.

[294] _Works_, III, 319-41; 342-87.

[295] _Ibid._, 388-443.

[296] Maclay, 364.

[297] _Ibid._, 369.

[298] _Annals_, February 2, 1791.

[299] Ames (to Dwight), I, 94.

[300] _Annals_, February 3, 1791.

[301] Jefferson’s _Works_, III, 145-53.

[302] Madison’s _Writings_, III, 171.

[303] Madison’s _Writings_, III, 171.

[304] Ames (to Minot), February 17, 1791.

[305] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), I, 534-35.

[306] Hamilton’s _Works_ (letter to Carrington), IX,
513-35.

[307] Parton, II, 1.

[308] Dustin’s _Freneau_, 160.

[309] May 11, 1791.

[310] _Gazette of the United States_, April 6, 1791.

[311] _Daily Advertiser_, February 25, 1791.

[312] _Independent Chronicle_, March 10, 1791.

[313] _New York Daily Advertiser_, July 19, 1791.

[314] British Agent.

[315] _Domestic Life_, 197-98. Jefferson was living in the country.

[316] _Maryland Journal_, March 22, 1791.

[317] _Domestic Life_, 199.

[318] _Ibid._, 201.

[319] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 205.

[320] Gay’s _Madison_.

[321] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 534.

[322] Graydon, 375.

[323] McRee, _Iredell_, II, 335.

[324] Adams, _Adams_, I, 454.

[325] _New York Daily Advertiser_, July 8, 1791.

[326] _Ibid._, July 9, 1791.

[327] _Ibid._, July 14, 1791.

[328] _Independent Chronicle_, June 23, 1791.

[329] _Ibid._, July 7, 1791.

[330] _Ibid._, August 26, 1791.

[331] _Ibid._

[332] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 192.

[333] Adams, _Works_, VIII, 503.

[334] _Ibid._, 505.

[335] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 535.

[336] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 223.

[337] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 232.

[338] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 540.

[339] _Ibid._, I, 534.

[340] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 538.

[341] _Maryland Journal_, February 15, 1791.

[342] _Pennsylvania Gazette_, September 7, 1791.

[343] August 17, 1791.

[344] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to King), I, 402.

[345] August 8, 1791.

[346] August 9, 1791.

[347] August 13, 1791. ‘Scrips sold last night: Cash 212-202-210-206;
10 days, 216, 217-1/2, 214; 30 days, 223, 212, 215; 45 days, 216; 60
days, 219; Sept. 10, 224; Deliver and pay December 1, 235; Deliver
October 1 and pay January 1, 242; Monday next, 207; Tuesday, 215-1/2,
217, 210.’ (_New York Daily Advertiser._)

[348] _Daily Advertiser_, August 15, 1791.

[349] _New York Daily Advertiser._

[350] _Daily Advertiser_, August 17, 1791.

[351] _New York Daily Advertiser_, September 21, 1791.

[352] _Independent Chronicle_, September 1, 1791.

[353] _Independent Chronicle_, August 18, 1791.

[354] Maclay, 272.

[355] _Familiar Letters_, 148.

[356] Maclay, 272.

[357] Mrs. Smith, 6.

[358] _Ibid._, 6-7.

[359] Liancourt, III, 157.

[360] Parton on the Moore incident, III, 115-19.

[361] Maclay, 272.

[362] Mrs. Smith, 6-7.

[363] Maclay, 272.

[364] _Familiar Letters_, 149.

[365] _Familiar Letters_, 148.

[366] Maclay, 272.

[367] Liancourt, III, 157.

[368] _Familiar Letters_, 148.

[369] Mrs. Smith, 6-7.

[370] Randall, I, 14.

[371] Dodd, _Statesmen of the Old South_, 3-4.

[372] _Ibid._, 9.

[373] Dodd, _Statesmen of the Old South_, 23.

[374] Parton’s _Jefferson_, I, 27.

[375] Randall, III, 448.

[376] _Autobiography_, I, 77.

[377] Fiske, 148.

[378] _Works_ (to Mrs. Trist), V, 151.

[379] _Ibid._ (to Bellini), V, 151.

[380] _Ibid._ (to Mrs. Trist), V, 81-82.

[381] _Ibid._ (to Bellini), V, 151-54.

[382] Morris, _Diary_, I, 101.

[383] _Domestic Life_ (letter to Madison), 155; _Works_,
I, 131-38.

[384] _Domestic Life_ (letter to Adams), 156.

[385] _Ibid._ (to Jay), 156.

[386] _Ibid._ (to Jay), 159.

[387] _Works_ (letter to Lafayette), VII, 370;
(to De St. Etienne), VII, 370-72; (the Charter),
VII, 372-74.

[388] _Ibid._, IV, 72.

[389] _Ibid._ (to De Unger), IV, 138-39.

[390] _Autobiography_, I, 72.

[391] Mrs. Wharton, 391.

[392] Parton’s _Jefferson_, I, 344.

[393] Vol. I, 77.

[394] _Works_, V, 3-4: letter to Chastellus.

[395] _Ibid._, VI, 428: to Warville.

[396] Randall, I, 17.

[397] _Ibid._, III, 556-58; letter to Rush.

[398] _Ibid._, 671-76.

[399] _Ibid._; also see _The Thomas Jefferson Bible_, edited by Henry
Jackson.

[400] Randall, III, 547.

[401] Dodd, _Statesmen of the Old South_, 36.

[402] Randall, III, 620-22.

[403] _Works_, VI, 11-15; to Charles Thompson.

[404] _Ibid._, 227-29 (to Edward Carrington); 269-71 (to J. Blair).

[405] _Ibid._, 296-301 (to Benjamin Hawkins and George Wythe); 231-32
(to Count Del Vermi).

[406] _Ibid._, 285-89; to John Adams.

[407] _Ibid._, 368.

[408] _Ibid._, 378-83; to William Carmichael.

[409] _Works_, VI, 385-93.

[410] _Ibid._, 425-27. I have the authority of Josephus Daniels for a
tradition in North Carolina that such a letter in the hands of Willie
Jones was responsible for the failure of the first Convention there to
ratify. The letter is apparently lost.

[411] _Ibid._, VII, 26-30; to Carmichael.

[412] _Ibid._, 36-39; to Colonel Carrington.

[413] _Ibid._, 79-88.

[414] _Ibid._, 93-99.

[415] _Ibid._, 183-87.

[416] _Ibid._, 223-31.

[417] _Works_, VII, 319-24.

[418] _Ibid._, VIII, 10-13.

[419] _Autobiography_, I, 118.

[420] _Works_, V, 147; to F. Hopkinson.

[421] _Ibid._, VI, 55-58; to Carrington.

[422] _Ibid._, 335-36.

[423] Randall, I, 404-05.

[424] Mrs. Smith, 389.

[425] _Autobiography_, I, 90.

[426] Randall, II, 403-04.

[427] Fiske, 154.

[428] Adams, _Works_, X, 414.

[429] _Works_, III, 358; to Duane.

[430] _A Summary View_, and _A Reply to Lord North_.

[431] _Domestic Life_, 58.

[432] _Ibid._, 43.

[433] _Works_, V, 33; 42; 59.

[434] _Ibid._, 400-01.

[435] _Works_, VI, 106; _Domestic Life_, 109.

[436] _Works_, IX, 17-19.

[437] _Ibid._, IV, 42.

[438] _Ibid._, V, 180.

[439] _Ibid._, 244-45; VI, 20-23.

[440] _Ibid._, VII, 267-70.

[441] _Ibid._, 73-79.

[442] _Ibid._, V, 244-45.

[443] _Ibid._, 22-24.

[444] _Ibid._, 294-95.

[445] _Ibid._, 294-95; VI, 11-15.

[446] _Ibid._, VII, 113-16.

[447] _Works_, VII, 241-44.

[448] Watson, 114.

[449] Randall, I, 481.

[450] _Domestic Life_, 78.

[451] _Ibid._, 87-89.

[452] _Works_, VI, 81-84.

[453] _Ibid._, 102-06.

[454] _Ibid._, 145-46.

[455] _Mrs. Adams’s Letters_, II, 207.

[456] _Republican Court_, I, 56.

[457] _Ibid._, I, 64.

[458] _Ibid._, 253.

[459] Weld, I, 5-6.

[460] _Republican Court_, 256; _Annals of Philadelphia_,
I, 225.

[461] Twining, 44.

[462] Wansey, 184; Liancourt, IV, 91; Weld,
I, 8; Twining, 45.

[463] Liancourt, IV, 91; Weld, I, 7-8.

[464] Warville, 187.

[465] Scharf, II, 875.

[466] Warville, 187.

[467] Scharf, II, 875.

[468] Wansey, III.

[469] Lippincott, 36-37.

[470] New York letter to _Maryland Journal_, November 19, 1790.

[471] _Republican Court_, 341.

[472] _Ibid._, 366.

[473] Davis, _Travels_, 40-41.

[474] Wansey, III.

[475] Twining, 31.

[476] Ames, I, 88-89.

[477] Scharf, II, 985.

[478] Twining, 31-34.

[479] Ames, I, 88-89.

[480] Hiltzheimer’s _Diary_, 167.

[481] _Ibid._, 201.

[482] _Ibid._, 205.

[483] _Ibid._, 205.

[484] Weld, I, 29.

[485] _Ibid._, I, 30.

[486] Liancourt, IV, 108-09.

[487] _Ibid._

[488] Gibbs, I, 561.

[489] Warville, 187.

[490] Liancourt, IV, 99.

[491] Warville, 188.

[492] Wharton, _Salons_, 71.

[493] Liancourt, IV, 101.

[494] Otis, I, 128.

[495] Scharf, II, 907.

[496] Weld, I, 21.

[497] Liancourt, IV, 105.

[498] Otis, I, 126.

[499] Morison, _Otis_, I, 126.

[500] Liancourt, IV, 104-05.

[501] Warville, 190.

[502] Mrs. Adams’s _Letters_ (to Mrs. Smith), II, 211.

[503] _Ibid._, II, 213-14.

[504] Davis, _Burr_, I, 303.

[505] Morison, _Otis_, I, 128-29.

[506] Scharf, II, 910 (from Bulow).

[507] Davis, _Burr_, I, 376.

[508] Morison, _Otis_, I, 141-43.

[509] _Ibid._, I, 135.

[510] _Ibid._, I, 135.

[511] Wansey, 136.

[512] _Ibid._, 136.

[513] Wansey; Twining; Lippincott; _Republican Court_; Scharf,
II, 911.

[514] Warville, 190.

[515] Maclay, 366.

[516] _Mrs. Adams’s Letters_, II, 211.

[517] _Republican Court_, 291-302.

[518] Morison, _Otis_, I, 135.

[519] _Domestic Life_, 98-100.

[520] Morison, _Otis_, I, 137.

[521] _Republican Court_, 309.

[522] Oberholtzer’s _Life_ (Major Armstrong’s letter to General
Armstrong), 70; Governor Reed to General Green, 70.

[523] _Republican Court_, 314.

[524] _Mrs. Adams’s Letters_, II, 211.

[525] _Ibid._

[526] _Early Philadelphia_, 38.

[527] Drake, _Knox_, III.

[528] Brookes, _Knox_, 60.

[529] _Ibid._, 264.

[530] Steiner, _McHenry_ (Williamson to McHenry), 196-97.

[531] Wharton, _Salons_, 54.

[532] _Intimate Life_, 95.

[533] Gibbs, I, 161; _Queens of American Society_, 35.

[534] Probably Madame Grand; _Intimate Life_.

[535] Twining, 39.

[536] Lippincott, 212.

[537] Wansey, 132.

[538] Agnes Repplier, 135.

[539] Wansey, 131.

[540] Wharton, _Salons_, 157.

[541] Lippincott, 282.

[542] Liancourt, IV, 109.

[543] Weld, I. 24.

[544] Hiltzheimer, 204.

[545] Lippincott, 118.

[546] _Mrs. Adams’s Letters_ (to Mrs. Smith), II, 213.

[547] Scharf, II, 967.

[548] Lippincott, 119.

[549] Wansey, 126-27.

[550] Scharf, II, 952.

[551] _Domestic Life_ (to Martha), 221-22.

[552] _Parties and Party Leaders_, 156-57.

[553] Alexander, 15.

[554] Biddle, _Autobiography_, 246.

[555] Maclay, 397.

[556] Thomas, I, 21.

[557] Morison, _Otis_, I, 52.

[558] Quoted from _Independent Chronicle_, by Robinson, 10.

[559] J. Q. Adams, _Works_, I, 191.

[560] Morison, _Otis_, I, 52.

[561] _Connecticut in Transition_, 190-91.

[562] _Ibid._, 193-97.

[563] _Ibid._, 222.

[564] _Republican Court_, 49.

[565] Isaac Hill, quoted by Robinson, 29.

[566] Hammond, I, 107.

[567] Davis, _Burr_, I, 316-17.

[568] _Ibid._, I, 331.

[569] Maclay, 260.

[570] McRee, _Iredell_, II, 232, 239; Dodd, _Macon_, 38.

[571] Dodd, _Maccon_, 51.

[572] McRee, _Iredell_, II, 233.

[573] Senate Docs., vol. 56, 61st Congress, 2d Session, 755.

[574] Ames (to Dwight), I, 136-37.

[575] Robinson, 53.

[576] Robinson, 55.

[577] Quoted from David Daggett’s pamphlet, by Purcell in _Connecticut
in Transition_, 225.

[578] _Centinel_, August 22, 1792.

[579] Gibbs, I, 73.

[580] Robinson, quoting from _American Mercury_, 9.

[581] King, _Works_, I, 357.

[582] King, _Works_, I, 501-02.

[583] Payne, _History of Journalism_, 155.

[584] _Writings_, I, 569-70.

[585] _Writings_, I, 569-70.

[586] Rives, _Madison_, III, 194, note.

[587] _Writings_, I, 543.

[588] September 6, 1792.

[589] September 12, 1792.

[590] Robinson, 70, note.

[591] ‘The Beauties of Santa Cruz,’ and ‘The House of Night.’

[592] _Life_, 129.

[593] Hamilton’s _Works_, IV, 91.

[594] _Ibid._

[595] _Ibid._, 166.

[596] _National Gazette_, June 18, 1792.

[597] _Writings_, I, 545.

[598] _National Gazette_, November 14, 1791.

[599] Spooner’s _Vermont Journal_, July 31; _National Gazette_, July
14, 1792.

[600] _National Gazette_, September 8, 1792.

[601] _Ibid._, January 2, 1792.

[602] _Philadelphia Advertiser_, July 6, 1792.

[603] _National Gazette_, December 19, 1791.

[604] _Ibid._, January 19, 1792.

[605] _Ibid._, January 16, 1792.

[606] _Ibid._, January 23, 1792.

[607] _Ibid._, by H. H. Brackenridge, February 9, 1792.

[608] _National Gazette_, March 15, 1792.

[609] _Ibid._, March 29, 1792.

[610] _Ibid._, April 2, 1792.

[611] _Ibid._, February 9, 1792.

[612] _Ibid._, July 18, 1792.

[613] _National Gazette_, April 23, 1792.

[614] _Ibid._, May 3, 1792.

[615] _Ibid._, May 7, 1792.

[616] _Ibid._, May 10, 1792.

[617] _Ibid._, January 4, 1792.

[618] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 341-49.

[619] _Gazette of the United States_, June 6, 1792.

[620] _National Gazette_, June 21, 1792.

[621] _National Gazette_, June 21, 1792.

[622] _Ibid._, June 25, 1792.

[623] _Gazette of the United States_, July 25, 1792.

[624] _National Gazette_, July 28, 1792.

[625] Austin, _Freneau_, 170, note.

[626] No one knew better than Washington that Jefferson would have
resigned in the spring had he not been importuned to remain.

[627] One of these was Washington, to whom he made the objections
mentioned in a previous chapter.

[628] _National Gazette_, August 8, 1792.

[629] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 14-15.

[630] _National Gazette_, August 15, 1792.

[631] _Gazette of the United States_, August 25, 1792.

[632] Hamilton’s _Works_, VII, 303-06.

[633] The evidence is conclusive on this point.

[634] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 394-408.

[635] _Gazette of the United States_, September 8, 1792.

[636] _National Gazette_, September 8, 1792.

[637] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 411.

[638] _Domestic Life_, 214-15; also letter to T. M. Randolph, _Ibid._,
215.

[639] Quoted by Freneau, September 19, 1792.

[640] October 18, 1792.

[641] Randall, II, 102; to Randolph.

[642] _National Gazette_, October 20, 1792.

[643] January 11, 1792.

[644] _Independent Chronicle_, May 2, 1792.

[645] _Centinel_, June 9, 1792.

[646] Jefferson’s _Works_, VIII, 315-18.

[647] _Independent Chronicle_, May 17, 1792.

[648] March 14, 1792.

[649] _Centinel_, March 28, 1792.

[650] March 14, 1792.

[651] Pickering, letter to wife, III, 27.

[652] April 13, 1792.

[653] April 19, 1792.

[654] May 28, 1792.

[655] _Gazette of the United States_, October 10, 1792.

[656] ‘Ironicus,’ April 21, 1792.

[657] _Centinel_, March 17, 1792.

[658] Alexander, 50.

[659] _Ibid._, 53.

[660] King’s _Works_, I, 408-15.

[661] Bache’s _General Advertiser_, July 19, 1792.

[662] _Ibid._, July 13, 1792.

[663] Hammond, I, 72.

[664] _Life of Parsons_, 468-69.

[665] _Ibid._, 467-68.

[666] Robinson, 9.

[667] Spooner’s _Vermont Journal_, August 7, 1792.

[668] McHenry (to Hamilton), 136-37.

[669] McHenry (to Hamilton), 137, note.

[670] _New York Daily Advertiser_, March 11, 1793, printed a letter
from David Ross setting this forth in Hamilton’s defense.

[671] McHenry, 138.

[672] Only one Federalist, William Barry Grove, was elected; Dodd’s
_Life of Macon_.

[673] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 460-61.

[674] Hamilton’s _Works_, IX, 513-35.

[675] March 10, 1792.

[676] Adams, _Works_, VIII, 514.

[677] King’s _Works_, I, 413, 427; Hamilton’s _Works_,
X, 19-20, 20-21.

[678] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 23-24.

[679] _Ibid._, X, 27.

[680] Judge Samuel Chase, and Benjamin Stoddert, destined to a place in
Adams’s Cabinet among them.

[681] _Maryland Journal_, October 16, 1792.

[682] _Maryland Journal_, October 23, 1792.

[683] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 28-29.

[684] _Gazette of the United States_, September 26, 1792.

[685] _National Gazette_, November 24, 1792.

[686] November 9, 1792.

[687] _Gazette of the United States_, December 1, 1792.

[688] _Ibid._, January 5, 1793.

[689] Bache’s _Daily Advertiser_, December 4, 1792.

[690] _Ibid._, December 5, 1792.

[691] _Ibid._, December 15, 1792.

[692] _National Gazette_, February 2, 1793.

[693] Freneau’s description.

[694] _Annals_, November 19, 1792.

[695] February 15, 1790.

[696] _Anas_ I, 235-37.

[697] Bassett, _The Federalist System_.

[698] Hamilton’s _Works_, VII, 389.

[699] Hamilton’s expression, _Works_, VII, 391.

[700] _Ibid._

[701] _Ibid._, VII, 424.

[702] _Ibid._, 427.

[703] Hamilton’s _Works_, VII, 394.

[704] _Annals_, December 24, 1792.

[705] _Annals_, December 26, 1792.

[706] Anderson, _Giles_, 6.

[707] Benton’s _Thirty Years’ View_, I, 682-83.

[708] _Life and Letters_, I, 158-59.

[709] Oliver’s _Hamilton_, 292-94.

[710] _Familiar Letters_, 46.

[711] Justice Story, _Life and Letters_, I, 158.

[712] _Ibid._

[713] Anderson, _Giles_, 65-66.

[714] Maclay, 374.

[715] Anderson, _Giles_, 3.

[716] Anderson, _Giles_, 8.

[717] Benton, I, 682.

[718] Story, I, 158-59.

[719] _National Gazette_, January 9, 1793, from _Boston Argus_.

[720] _Ibid._, January 12, 1793.

[721] _National Gazette_, January 12, 1793, from _Boston Argus_.

[722] _Ibid._, January 16, 1793.

[723] _Annals_, January 23, 1793.

[724] Gibbs, I, 89.

[725] _Gazette of the United States_, March 9, 1793.

[726] _Centinel_, February 20, 1793.

[727] _Ibid._, February 16, 1793.

[728] _Gazette of the United States_, February 23, 1793.

[729] Paul Leicester Ford, _The Nation_, September 5, 1895.

[730] Hamilton.

[731] February 20, 1793.

[732] _National Gazette_, February 27, 1793.

[733] Of South Carolina.

[734] _Annals_, February 27, March 1, 1793.

[735] _Centinel_, March 13, 1793.

[736] _Gazette of the United States_, March 23, 1793.

[737] _Ibid._, March 20, 1793.

[738] _Centinel_, March 20, 1793.

[739] _Centinel_, March 21, 1793.

[740] Jefferson.

[741] _New York Daily Advertiser_, April 6, 1793.

[742] _National Gazette_, March 20, 1793; ‘Franklin.’

[743] _Ibid._, March 27, 1793.

[744] _Kentucky Gazette_, September 7, copied in _Independent
Chronicle_, October 21, 1793.

[745] An original copy is in New York Public Library.

[746] _Centinel_, January 9, 1793.

[747] _National Gazette_, December 26, 1792.

[748] _Centinel_, January 26, 1793.

[749] _Ibid._, January 30, 1793.

[750] Hazen, 165-69.

[751] Maclay, December 10, 1790.

[752] _Ibid._, February 26, 1791; Brown, _Ellsworth_, 212.

[753] Adams, _Works_, IX, 563-64.

[754] _Ibid._, X, 12-13.

[755] _Works_ (to George Mason), III, 123-25; (to Edward
Rutledge), VIII, 232-34.

[756] _Ibid._, 290-94.

[757] _Ibid._, IX, 6-8.

[758] _Gazette of the United States_, April 13, May 18, 1793.

[759] _Ibid._, April 17; _National Gazette_, April 20, 1793.

[760] _National Gazette_, April 10, 1793.

[761] _Centinel_, March 30, 1793.

[762] _Connecticut Gazette_, April 11, 1793.

[763] _Connecticut Gazette_, April 18, 1793.

[764] _National Gazette_, April 20, 1793.

[765] _Connecticut Gazette_, May 2, 1793.

[766] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), IX, 33-35.

[767] _Ibid._ (to unknown), IX, 44-46.

[768] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 576-77.

[769] King’s _Works_ (King to Hamilton), I, 439.

[770] _Anas_, I, 268.

[771] _Anas_, I, 268.

[772] Hamilton’s _Works_, IV, 371.

[773] _Ibid._, 372-73.

[774] _Ibid._, 373.

[775] _Ibid._, 374.

[776] Hamilton’s _Works_, IV, 385-86.

[777] _Ibid._, 396-408.

[778] Jefferson’s _Writings_, III, 226-43.

[779] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 960-68.

[780] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 580-83; 584.

[781] Morris, _Diary_, II, 26.

[782] McRee, _Iredell_ (to his wife), II, 386.

[783] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 75-78.

[784] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 578.

[785] _National Gazette_, April 27, 1793.

[786] _National Gazette_, April 27, 1793.

[787] _Ibid._, May 4, 1793.

[788] _Ibid._, May 15, 1793.

[789] Letter from Philadelphia ‘from a gentleman in the treasury
department.’ _Connecticut Gazette_, June 27, 1793.

[790] Letter from Philadelphia woman to a friend in Alexandria;
_Connecticut Gazette_, June 20, 1793.

[791] Biddle, _Autobiography_, 251.

[792] Graydon, _Memoirs_, 381.

[793] _National Gazette_, June I, 1793.

[794] _Centinel_, April 20, 1793.

[795] _National Gazette_, May 15, 1793.

[796] _Ibid._, June 5, 1793.

[797] _Gazette of the United States_, June 8, 1793.

[798] Myers, _Tammany Hall_, 9.

[799] Hazen, 249.

[800] _Centinel_, March 16, 1793.

[801] Gibbs, I, 87.

[802] _Ibid._

[803] _National Gazette_, July 17, 1793.

[804] _Gazette of the United States_, June 15, 1793.

[805] Thomas, _Reminiscences_, I, 32.

[806] _National Gazette_, April 13, 1793.

[807] Gibbs (Governor Wolcott to son), I, 179.

[808] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Monroe), IX, 144.

[809] _Ibid._ (to Monroe), IX, 75-78.

[810] Pinckney, _Life of Pinckney_, 109.

[811] _Gazette of the United States_, June 8, 1793.

[812] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 144-46.

[813] Hamilton’s _Works_, IV, 467.

[814] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 586; 588; 591; 593-94;
letters to Jefferson.

[815] _Ibid._, I, 611-45.

[816] _National Gazette_, June 15, 1793.

[817] Adams.

[818] _National Gazette_, August 7, 1793.

[819] _New York Daily Advertiser_, July 13, 1793.

[820] _Independent Chronicle_, September 12, 1793.

[821] _Ibid._, November 11, 1793.

[822] _Ibid._

[823] Biddle, 253.

[824] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 211-15.

[825] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 211-15.

[826] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 595-96; 596-97.

[827] _Ibid._, I, 599; _Independent Chronicle_, October
10, 1793.

[828] _Independent Chronicle_, October 17, 1793.

[829] Madison’s _Writings_, I, 601.

[830] _Anas_, i, 305-08.

[831] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 180-209.

[832] Randall, II, 181.

[833] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 87-89; to Madison.

[834] _American Minerva_, December 21, 1793.

[835] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 117-21.

[836] _Anas_, I, 279.

[837] _Domestic Life_, 220.

[838] Gibbs, I, 122.

[839] _Gazette of the United States_, July 31, 1793.

[840] _Anas_, I, 311.

[841] _Anas_, I, 313.

[842] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, August 4, 1793.

[843] King’s _Works_, I, 492-93.

[844] August 10, 1793.

[845] Lodge, _Cabot_, 73.

[846] ‘A Democrat,’ August 19, 1793.

[847] ‘Brutus,’ August 26, 1793.

[848] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), IX, 227.

[849] Gibbs (Wolcott to Washington), I, 112.

[850] Hiltzheimer’s _Diary_, 195.

[851] McRee, _Iredell_ (a servant to Iredell), II, 401;
King’s _Works_ (Wharton to King), I, 498.

[852] Biddle, 256.

[853] Pickering (to John Clark), III, 55-58; Gibbs
(Wolcott to father), I, 110.

[854] Biddle, 256.

[855] Gibbs, I, 110.

[856] McRee, _Iredell_ (servant to Iredell), II, 401.

[857] _Ibid._, II, 400.

[858] Pickering (to Clark), III, 55-58.

[859] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, August 27, 1793.

[860] McRee, _Iredell_ (Duffield to Iredell), II, 400.

[861] Ames (to Minot), I, 130.

[862] Gibbs, I, 112; Pickering, III, 59.

[863] Hiltzheimer, 196.

[864] Biddle, 255.

[865] Ames (to Minot), I, 130.

[866] _Domestic Life_, 219.

[867] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), IX, 240; 253-54.

[868] _Domestic Life_, 226.

[869] _Ibid._, 226.

[870] Jefferson’s _Works_, III, 261-83.

[871] J. Q. Adams, _Works_ (letter to John Adams), I,
183-86.

[872] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 281.

[873] _Annals_, January 14, 1794.

[874] _Ibid._, January 15, 1794.

[875] _Annals_, January 23, 1794.

[876] _Ibid._

[877] _Ibid._, January 24, 1794.

[878] _Ibid._

[879] _Ibid._

[880] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 1-5.

[881] _Centinel_, February 19, 1794.

[882] _Ibid._, March 1, 1794.

[883] _Ibid._, February 23, 1794.

[884] Morison, _Otis_, I, 53.

[885] _Independent Chronicle_, March 3, 1794.

[886] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 1-5.

[887] _Ibid._, II, 5-6.

[888] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, March 27, 28, 1794.

[889] Ames, I, 137-38.

[890] Printed in London by John Stockdale, Piccadilly.

[891] Gibbs, I, 133.

[892] Ames, I, 137-38.

[893] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, February 1, 1794.

[894] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, March 24, 1794.

[895] _Annals_, February 28, 1794.

[896] _Ibid._, March 27, 1794.

[897] _Ibid._, April 21, 1794.

[898] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, April 11, 1794.

[899] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 7-8.

[900] Bond’s _Letters_, American Historical Association, _Report_,
1897, pp. 543-45.

[901] Bond’s _Letters_, American Historical Association, _Report_,
1897, p. 546.

[902] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, April 13, 1794.

[903] _Ibid._, April 14, 1794.

[904] _Ibid._, May 21, 1794.

[905] _Ibid._, April 5, 1794.

[906] _New York Journal_, March 22, 1794.

[907] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, April 9, 1794.

[908] _New York Journal_, May 3, 1794.

[909] _Ibid._, May 28, 1794.

[910] Ames (to Gore), I, 139.

[911] King’s _Works_ (from Alsop), I, 159.

[912] _Ibid._, I, 560.

[913] Bemis, 45.

[914] _Ibid._, 65.

[915] Bemis, 104.

[916] Bemis, 105, 106, 147, 154; _Intimate Life_, 289.

[917] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, April 7, 1794.

[918] King’s _Works_, I, 517.

[919] Hamilton’s _Works_, V, 114.

[920] _Familiar Letters_, 59.

[921] Pellew, 218.

[922] Bemis, 206-07.

[923] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 12.

[924] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, April 24, 1794.

[925] Adams, _Adams_, I, 472.

[926] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, April 19, 1794.

[927] _Ibid._, May 10, 1794.

[928] _Ibid._, June 26, 1794.

[929] _New York Journal_, November 5, 1794.

[930] _Gazette of the United States_, July 25, 1794.

[931] Hamilton’s _Works_, V, 115-19; draft of
instructions, _ibid._, 121-23; letter to Jay, _ibid._, 123-28; Bemis,
210.

[932] Bemis, 212.

[933] _New York Journal_, May 14, 1794.

[934] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 14-15.

[935] Madison’s _Writings_ (to his father), II, 16.

[936] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 293-97.

[937] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, September 1, 1794.

[938] _Gazette of the United States_, October 21, 1794.

[939] Gibbs, I, 156.

[940] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, October 13, 1794.

[941] Philadelphia Democratic Society, _Gazette of the United States_,
August 7, 1794; German Republican Club, Philadelphia, _ibid._,
September 1, 1794; Democratic Society, Washington, North Carolina,
South Carolina, _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, October 6, 1794;
Democratic Society, Canaan, New York, _New York Journal_, September 4,
1794.

[942] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, September 10, 1794.

[943] September 13, 1794.

[944] _Gazette of the United States_, September 5, 1794.

[945] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, September 15, 1794.

[946] _Ibid._, September 24, 1794.

[947] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, August 20, 1794.

[948] Hamilton’s _Works_, VI, 420-21.

[949] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, November 10, 1794.

[950] _Ibid._, September 8, 1794.

[951] _Ibid._, November 6, 1794.

[952] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 18-19.

[953] Hamilton’s _Works_, VI, 457.

[954] _Ibid._, X, 77.

[955] Bond’s _Letters_, 558.

[956] Stevens, _Gallatin_, 90.

[957] _Gazette of the United States_ (letter from a soldier), October
16, 1794.

[958] Biddle’s _Autobiography_, 262.

[959] _Centinel_, October 25 and 29, 1794.

[960] _Ibid._, November 1, 1794.

[961] November 3, 1794.

[962] _Independent Chronicle_, November 6, 1794.

[963] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 29.

[964] _New York Journal_, December 10, 1794.

[965] Ames (to Dwight) I, 158.

[966] Dodd, _Macon_, 77.

[967] _Ibid._, 78-79.

[968] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 19-20.

[969] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 27; Goodwin, _Dolly
Madison_, 26.

[970] Randall, II, 245; _Domestic Life_, 231.

[971] _Intimate Life_, 69.

[972] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, April 10, 1794.

[973] _Gazette of the United States_, November 1, 1794.

[974] _Ibid._

[975] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, May 7, 1794.

[976] _Ibid._, October 24, 1794.

[977] Professor Morse, in _The Federalist Party in Massachusetts_,
makes this point.

[978] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 21-23.

[979] _Ibid._, 23-27.

[980] _Ibid._ (to Jefferson), 28-30.

[981] Washington’s phrase.

[982] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), IX, 293-97.

[983] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 78-79.

[984] _Annals_, November 25, 1794.

[985] _Annals_, November 25-27, 1794.

[986] January 24, 1794.

[987] _Gazette of the United States_, December 11, 1794.

[988] _Ibid._, October 14, 1794.

[989] _Gazette of the United States_, December 29, 1794.

[990] _Annals_, January 1, 1794.

[991] _Annals_, January 1, 1794.

[992] _Intimate Life_, 230.

[993] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 78.

[994] _Gazette of the United States_, February 9, 1795.

[995] _Philadelphia Daily Advertiser_, February 10, 1795.

[996] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 35.

[997] _Gazette of the United States_, February 18, 1795.

[998] _Ibid._, February 20, 1795.

[999] _Ibid._, February 22, 1795.

[1000] A favorite actor.

[1001] _New York Journal_, February 28 and March 4, 1795.

[1002] McRee, _Iredell_, II, 442.

[1003] _Intimate Life_, 205-06.

[1004] King’s _Works_, II, 5-6.

[1005] King’s _Works_, II, 7.

[1006] Beard, _Economic Origins_, 295; Bemis, 271.

[1007] Pinckney, _Life of Pinckney_, 123-24.

[1008] Bemis, 224.

[1009] _Ibid._, 225.

[1010] _Ibid._, 226-27.

[1011] _Ibid._, 246.

[1012] Bemis, 232-51.

[1013] _Ibid._, 261.

[1014] Bemis, 267, quotes a French scholar, R. Guyot, as describing the
Jay Treaty as ‘almost equivalent to a treaty of alliance.’

[1015] Related by Talleyrand to Volney, who told it to Jefferson,
_Anas_, 336-37. Senator Lodge, in his biography of Hamilton, accepts
this characterization as not improbable.

[1016] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 313-14.

[1017] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 98-99.

[1018] _Ibid._, X, 101-02.

[1019] See Beard’s illuminating chapter on the economics of the treaty.
_Economic Origins_, 268-98.

[1020] King’s _Works_, II, 14; Hamilton’s _Works_,
X, 109.

[1021] Wolcott’s phrase in letter to Mrs. Wolcott, Gibbs,
I, 199.

[1022] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 107.

[1023] _Aurora_, June 16, 1795.

[1024] _Ibid._, June 18, 1795.

[1025] _Ibid._, June 20, 1795.

[1026] _Ibid._, June 26, 1795.

[1027] _Aurora_, July 3, 1795.

[1028] _Argus_, July 15, 1795.

[1029] Gibbs (Wolcott to Mrs. Wolcott), I, 209;
_Philadelphia: the Place and People_, 310; Hiltzheimer, 215; _New York
Argus_, July 8, 1795; _Charleston City Gazette_, August 22, 1795.

[1030] _Aurora_, July 7, 1795.

[1031] Gibbs, I, 217. Rowan was a patriot, tried by a
packed jury, and defended by John Philpot Curran in his classic defense
of the freedom of the press. He was convicted, escaped, and came to
this country.

[1032] Gibbs, I, 217.

[1033] Pickering, III, 183.

[1034] _Aurora_, July 10, 1795.

[1035] July 6, 1795.

[1036] July 23, 1795.

[1037] Beard, _Economic Origins_, 290; Alexander, 79; _Argus_, July 6,
20, 21, 23; _Aurora_, July 10, 22, 23, 1795.

[1038] Gibbs (to Wolcott), I, 218.

[1039] Ames (to Dwight), I, 173-75.

[1040] _Argus_, August 13, 1795.

[1041] _Centinel_, July 15, 1795.

[1042] Pickering, III, 177.

[1043] King’s _Works_, II, 18-20.

[1044] Lodge, _Cabot_, 84.

[1045] Pellew, 282.

[1046] _Federalist Party in Massachusetts_, 154-55.

[1047] _Ibid._

[1048] Gibbs, I, 229.

[1049] August 15, 1795.

[1050] Lodge, _Cabot_, 84.

[1051] _Aurora_, July 29, 1795.

[1052] _Charleston City Gazette_, August 1, 1795.

[1053] Thomas, _Reminiscences_, I, 35.

[1054] _Independent Chronicle_, August 17, 1795.

[1055] August 26, 1795.

[1056] Article IX.

[1057] Giles, 42.

[1058] McRee, _Iredell_, II, 450.

[1059] _Ibid._, II, 459.

[1060] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 43.

[1061] Giles, 38.

[1062] Henry, _Henry_, II, 568-71; letter to Mrs. Aylett.

[1063] _Argus_, July 30, 1795; _Gazette of the United States_, August
14, 1795.

[1064] _Argus_, July 24, 1795.

[1065] _New Hampshire Gazette_, July 21, 1795.

[1066] _Spooner’s Vermont Journal_, September 11, 1795.

[1067] Gibbs, I, 215.

[1068] _Independent Chronicle_, August 13 and 27, 1795.

[1069] _Ibid._, September 3, 1795.

[1070] _Argus_, July 15, 1795.

[1071] _Aurora_, July 13, 1795.

[1072] _Argus_, August 14, 1795.

[1073] _Ibid._, August 8, 1795.

[1074] Gibbs, I, 249.

[1075] Steiner, 194-95.

[1076] Weld, I, 102-03.

[1077] Liancourt, II, 79.

[1078] _Argus_, July 16, 1795.

[1079] September 3, 1795.

[1080] Gibbs, I, 219-20.

[1081] Pickering, III, 185.

[1082] King’s _Works_, II, 20-21.

[1083] Brown, _Ellsworth_, 219-20.

[1084] Hiltzheimer, 215.

[1085] For Randolph incident, Pickering, III, 213-14 and
216-19; Lodge, _Cabot_, 91-94.

[1086] Pickering, III, 196.

[1087] _Ibid._, 197.

[1088] King’s _Works_, II, 24.

[1089] August 14.

[1090] Brown, _Ellsworth_, 220-21.

[1091] Pickering, III, 199.

[1092] _Aurora_, August 21, 1795.

[1093] _Ibid._, August 22, 1795.

[1094] Gibbs, I, 222.

[1095] King’s story.

[1096] _Aurora_, November 17, 1795.

[1097] Pickering, III, 231-39.

[1098] _Ibid._, III, 239.

[1099] _Argus_, August 15, 1795.

[1100] _Ibid._, August 27, 1795.

[1101] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 113-14.

[1102] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 309-11.

[1103] McRee, _Iredell_, II, 459.

[1104] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Giles), IX, 314-18.

[1105] Adams, _Gallatin_, 152.

[1106] Gibbs (to Goodrich), I, 303.

[1107] The second phase of his remarkable career is treated in the
author’s _Party Battles of the Jackson Period_.

[1108] Adams, _Gallatin_, 17.

[1109] Adams, _Gallatin_, 80.

[1110] _Ibid._, 81.

[1111] _Ibid._, 103-04.

[1112] _Ibid._, 111.

[1113] _Ibid._, 113.

[1114] Adams, _Gallatin_, 88; _Writings_, I, 3-4.

[1115] _Annals_, April 27, 1796.

[1116] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 328-29; to Monroe.

[1117] Judge Jonathan Elmer, Cumberland, New Jersey, _Gazette of the
United States_, March 12, 1796.

[1118] _Gazette of the United States_, March 26, 1796.

[1119] Melville, _Cobbett_, I, 101-02.

[1120] _Annals_, March 11, 1796.

[1121] _Familiar Letters_, 108; Twining, _Travels_, 51-52.

[1122] _Aurora_, March 28, 1796.

[1123] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to Wolcott), X, 145.

[1124] _Ibid._, 145-46.

[1125] _Ibid._, 151.

[1126] _Ibid._, 152.

[1127] _Ibid._, 152-54.

[1128] _Annals_, March 30, 1796.

[1129] _Annals_, April 6, 1796. The vote was 57 to 36.

[1130] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 330-31.

[1131] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 89-91.

[1132] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 157.

[1133] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 160.

[1134] _Ibid._, 161.

[1135] _Ibid._, 161-62.

[1136] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 95.

[1137] _Ibid._, 98.

[1138] Morison, _Otis_, I, 56-57.

[1139] April 21, 1796.

[1140] Gibbs, I, 327.

[1141] _Ibid._, 325-26.

[1142] _Ibid._ (Wolcott to his father), I, 331.

[1143] Thomas, _Reminiscences_, 53.

[1144] Kirkland, _Life of Ames_; Thomas, _Reminiscences; Familiar
Letters_, 24-25.

[1145] Ames (to Dwight), I, 173-75.

[1146] Ames (to Dwight), I, 175-76.

[1147] _Ibid._, 177.

[1148] _Ibid._, 180-81.

[1149] _Ibid._, 183-84.

[1150] _Ibid._ (to Jeremiah Smith), 184-85.

[1151] _Aurora_, February 2, 1796.

[1152] _Ibid._, February 8, 1796.

[1153] Ames (to Dwight).

[1154] _Ibid._ (to Minor), I, 190-91.

[1155] Ames, I, 199-200, note.

[1156] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 100-01.

[1157] _Ibid._, 103-05.

[1158] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 330-31.

[1159] Randall, II, 273.

[1160] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 335-37.

[1161] _Ibid._, 339-43.

[1162] _Ibid._ (letter to Williams), 346-48.

[1163] Jefferson’s _Works_ (Mazzei letter), IX, 335-37.

[1164] Beveridge, _Marshall_, II, 156.

[1165] King’s _Works_, II, 46.

[1166] Henry, _Henry_, II, 515.

[1167] Beveridge, II, 157.

[1168] King’s _Works_, II, 48; Beveridge,
II, 158.

[1169] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 163; King’s _Works_,
II, 47.

[1170] King’s _Works_ (to Hamilton), II, 46.

[1171] _Gazette of the United States_, November 3, 1796.

[1172] _Aurora_, September 1, 1796.

[1173] Gibbs, I, 332; (Wolcott to his father),
I, 350-52.

[1174] _Ibid._ (Wolcott to his wife), I, 209.

[1175] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to Washington), X, 198-200;
200-01.

[1176] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 103-05.

[1177] Steiner, _McHenry_, 203.

[1178] _Aurora_, November 24, 1796.

[1179] _Ibid._, December 27, 1796.

[1180] Gibbs, II, 386-88.

[1181] _Ibid._, I, 408-09.

[1182] _Ibid._, I, 400-03.

[1183] Gibbs, I, 411-13.

[1184] Ames (to Dwight), I, 208.

[1185] King’s _Works_, II, 148.

[1186] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 108.

[1187] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 352-55.

[1188] _Ibid._, 355-57.

[1189] _Ibid._, 355-57.

[1190] _Ibid._, 367-69.

[1191] _Aurora_, March 6, 1797.

[1192] Gibbs, II, 213.

[1193] Twining, 38.

[1194] Maclay, 30.

[1195] Twining, 37.

[1196] Twining, 37.

[1197] _Familiar Letters_, 116.

[1198] Maclay, 44.

[1199] _Diary_, II, 25.

[1200] Twining, 37.

[1201] Maclay, 14.

[1202] _Ibid._, 30.

[1203] _Ibid._, 206.

[1204] _Ibid._, 145, 206.

[1205] _Diary_, II, 57.

[1206] _Ibid._, 25.

[1207] Gibbs, I, 455-57; Wolcott, Sr.

[1208] Hamilton’s _Works_, VII, 734.

[1209] Morse, 242.

[1210] Maclay, 86.

[1211] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), VI, 63-67.

[1212] Lodge, _Cabot_, 65.

[1213] Liancourt, II, 124.

[1214] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 111.

[1215] Gibbs, I, 468.

[1216] _Ibid._, II, 215.

[1217] _Ibid._ (McHenry to Wolcott), 395.

[1218] Steiner, 477.

[1219] _Diary_, III, 392.

[1220] _Ibid._, III, 393.

[1221] Adams, _Works_ (to James Lovell), VIII, 493-94.

[1222] _Autobiography_, II, 438.

[1223] Adams, _Works_, IV, 420.

[1224] _Ibid._, VI, 462.

[1225] Morse, 247.

[1226] Maclay, May 28, 1789.

[1227] Written by Samuel Adams.

[1228] _Autobiography_, II, 310.

[1229] _Ibid._, 508.

[1230] Adams, _Adams_, I, 404.

[1231] Adams, _Works_, VI, 484.

[1232] _Autobiography_, II, 210.

[1233] _Ibid._, 214.

[1234] _Ibid._, 215.

[1235] _Ibid._, 232, 311.

[1236] Jefferson’s tribute.

[1237] Morse, 59.

[1238] _Ibid._, 60.

[1239] _Ibid._, 61.

[1240] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to John Steele), V, 25.

[1241] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), VI, 63-71.

[1242] Hamilton’s _Works_, VII, 314.

[1243] Gibbs, I, 475-77.

[1244] Steiner, 569.

[1245] _Autobiography_, II, 230-32.

[1246] Adams, _Adams_, I, 446.

[1247] _Diary_, II, 62.

[1248] Vol. II, 145.

[1249] Morse, 79.

[1250] _Diary_, II, 179.

[1251] _Ibid._, 381.

[1252] Lodge, _Studies in History_, 201.

[1253] Pickering, IV, 386, 391.

[1254] Pickering, II, 156.

[1255] _Ibid._, III, 170.

[1256] _Ibid._, III, 171.

[1257] Louis Philippe; Pickering, III, 284-85.

[1258] Pickering, I, 215.

[1259] _Ibid._, 351.

[1260] _Studies in History_, 219.

[1261] Pickering, I, 5.

[1262] _Ibid._, I, 23-30.

[1263] Pickering, II, 381-90.

[1264] _Ibid._, I, 14.

[1265] _Ibid._, II, 66.

[1266] Lodge, _Studies in History_, 221.

[1267] Pickering, II, 71.

[1268] _Ibid._, II, 74.

[1269] _Ibid._, 78.

[1270] _Ibid._, 80.

[1271] _Ibid._, 81-85.

[1272] Pickering, I, 483-84.

[1273] _Ibid._, 487.

[1274] _Ibid._, II, 442 and 445.

[1275] _Ibid._, 451.

[1276] _Ibid._, 452.

[1277] _Ibid._, 488.

[1278] Gibbs, I, 18.

[1279] _Ibid._, 21.

[1280] _Ibid._, 20; Wadsworth to Wolcott.

[1281] Noah Webster’s impression, Gibbs, II, 11.

[1282] Gibbs, I, 65.

[1283] Gibbs I, 449.

[1284] Steiner, 2.

[1285] Steiner, 97.

[1286] _Ibid._, 100.

[1287] _Ibid._, 99.

[1288] _Ibid._, 107.

[1289] _Ibid._, 124.

[1290] _Ibid._, 129, 132.

[1291] _Ibid._, 140-41.

[1292] _Ibid._, 156.

[1293] _Ibid._, 51.

[1294] Steiner, 123.

[1295] _Ibid._, 145.

[1296] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 129-31.

[1297] Steiner, 30.

[1298] _Life of Hamilton_, by his son, II, 241.

[1299] Steiner, 159; letter to Hamilton.

[1300] Roosevelt, _Morris_, 127.

[1301] Morris, _Diary_, I, 14.

[1302] _Diary_, I, 35.

[1303] _Ibid._, 133.

[1304] _Ibid._, 181.

[1305] _La Belle Pamela_, 217, note.

[1306] _Diary_, I, 75.

[1307] _Ibid._, 572.

[1308] _Ibid._, 556.

[1309] Roosevelt, _Morris_, 221-23.

[1310] Ames (to Gore), I, 134.

[1311] _Familiar Letters_, 356-57.

[1312] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 91-92.

[1313] Gibbs, I, 359.

[1314] _Ibid._

[1315] _Ibid._, 366-68.

[1316] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 234.

[1317] _Ibid._, 241.

[1318] _Ibid._, 243-46.

[1319] _Ibid._, 246-47.

[1320] Gibbs, I, 484-85.

[1321] _Ibid._, 486-87.

[1322] _Ibid._, 489-90; Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 251-52.

[1323] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 253.

[1324] Gibbs, I, 537.

[1325] Lodge, _Cabot_, 129.

[1326] _Ibid._, 130-31.

[1327] _Ibid._, 137.

[1328] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 261-65.

[1329] Steiner, 208-09.

[1330] _Ibid._, 213.

[1331] Adams, _Works_, VIII, 532-34; 535-36.

[1332] Gibbs, I, 463.

[1333] Lodge, _Cabot_, from Adams’s letters in the _Boston Patriot_.

[1334] Gibbs, I, 483.

[1335] Thomas, _Reminiscences_. _The Aurora_, March 21, 1797, printed
his application for membership.

[1336] _The Aurora_, June 17, 1797, asked whether he was ‘spy or
parasite’ while dining with the French Consul.

[1337] _Familiar Letters_, 107.

[1338] _Annals_, May 22, 1797.

[1339] _Ibid._

[1340] _Ibid._, May 23, 1797.

[1341] _Annals_, May 24, 1797.

[1342] _Ibid._, May 25, 1797.

[1343] Steiner, 301; Murray to McHenry boasting that Harper’s pamphlet
had gone through several editions in England.

[1344] June 1, 1797.

[1345] _Aurora_, May 31, 1797.

[1346] _Gazette of the United States_, May 30, 1797.

[1347] Adams, _Gallatin_ (to Nicholson), 183-84.

[1348] _Annals_, May 30, 1797.

[1349] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, June 3, 1797.

[1350] _Annals_, June 3, 1797.

[1351] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, June 6, 1797.

[1352] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 335-37.

[1353] _Gazette of the United States_, May 19, 1797.

[1354] _Ibid._, May 30, 1797.

[1355] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 118.

[1356] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, July 17, 1797.

[1357] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, December 14, 1797, January 13, 1798. It
was this Luther Martin who assailed Jefferson so bitterly in connection
with his defense of Aaron Burr in the trial for treason.

[1358] _Ibid._, January 29, 1798.

[1359] _Gazette of the United States_, March 6, 1798.

[1360] _Ibid._, April 18, 1798.

[1361] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, July 5, 1797.

[1362] _Ibid._, October 23, 1797.

[1363] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 408-11.

[1364] _Domestic Life_, 245.

[1365] _Ibid._, 249.

[1366] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, December 4, 1797.

[1367] _Ibid._, June 14, 1797.

[1368] _Ibid._, July 11, 1797.

[1369] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, November 8, 1797.

[1370] _Ibid._, November 10, 1797.

[1371] _Ibid._, August 8, 1797.

[1372] _Ibid._, July 5, 1797.

[1373] _Ibid._, August 8, 1797.

[1374] _Gazette of the United States_, April 5, 1797.

[1375] _Aurora_, July 19, 1797.

[1376] _Aurora_, October 10, 1797.

[1377] Pinckney, _Life of Pinckney_, 179.

[1378] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, March 10, 1798, has a letter quoting some
of the filthy lines.

[1379] Adams, _Gallatin_, 185-86.

[1380] _Ibid._, 184-85.

[1381] Melville, I, 108.

[1382] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, August 4, 1797.

[1383] _Aurora_, April 14, July 11 and 13, 1797.

[1384] _Gazette of the United States_, April 23, 1797.

[1385] _Ibid._, May 1, 1797.

[1386] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, July 1, 1797.

[1387] Adams, _Gallatin_ (to his wife), 186-87.

[1388] Adams, _Gallatin_, 187; description of banquet, _Aurora_, July
17, 1797.

[1389] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, July 3, 1797.

[1390] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Mercer), IX, 421; (to
Madison), IX, 405-07.

[1391] Gibbs, II, 12.

[1392] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, November 6, 1797.

[1393] _Aurora_, November 15, 1797.

[1394] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 19-22.

[1395] Adams, _Gallatin_ (to Mrs. Gallatin), 191.

[1396] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, February 16, 1798.

[1397] _Ibid._, February 9, 1798.

[1398] _Ibid._, February 15, 1798.

[1399] _Ibid._, February 14, 1798.

[1400] Henry Adams says: ‘Lyon, though a very rough specimen of
democracy, was by no means a contemptible man, and, politics aside,
showed energy and character in his subsequent career.’ (Adams,
_Gallatin_, 192.)

[1401] Steiner, 291, 295.

[1402] Adams, _Works_, I, 515-17.

[1403] Coit, _Annals_, February 28, 1798.

[1404] _Annals_, March 2, 1798.

[1405] _Ibid._, March 13, 1798.

[1406] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 437-39.

[1407] April 14, 1798.

[1408] Jefferson’s _Works_, IX, 405-07.

[1409] _Annals_, March 27, 1798.

[1410] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 279.

[1411] _Independent Chronicle_, March 26, 1798.

[1412] _New York Time Piece_, April 13, 1798.

[1413] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 22-24.

[1414] _Ibid._, X, 24-26.

[1415] Madison’s _Writings_, II, 133.

[1416] _Ibid._ (to Jefferson), II, 138.

[1417] _Centinel_, May 30, 1798.

[1418] _Independent Chronicle_, November 22, 1798.

[1419] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, May 7, 1798.

[1420] _Ibid._, May 7, 1798.

[1421] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 142.

[1422] Bache in a statement ascribed the incident to the intoxicated
condition of the youths. _Time Piece_, May 14, 1798.

[1423] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 275-79.

[1424] _Independent Chronicle_, May 10, 1798.

[1425] _Gazette of the United States_, May 10; _Porcupine’s Gazette_,
May 10, 1798.

[1426] _Aurora_, April 27, 1798.

[1427] _Independent Chronicle_, May 21, 1798.

[1428] _New York Commercial Advertiser_, October 19, 1798.

[1429] Ames, I, 232-35.

[1430] Gibbs (to Wolcott), II, 49.

[1431] _Ibid._, II, 117-20.

[1432] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, June 20, 1798.

[1433] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 45-53.

[1434] Beveridge, II, 346-47.

[1435] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 45-53.

[1436] Beveridge, II, 348.

[1437] _New York Commercial Advertiser_, October 31, November 5, 1798.

[1438] ‘Titus Manlius,’ Hamilton’s _Works_, V, 259-301.

[1439] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 22-24.

[1440] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, May 23, 1798.

[1441] _Ibid._, May 24, 1798.

[1442] _Ibid._, May 26, 1798.

[1443] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, June 7, 1798.

[1444] _Ibid._, June 8, 1798.

[1445] _Ibid._, June 12, 1798.

[1446] Lodge, _Cabot_ (to Wolcott), 153-54.

[1447] _Independent Chronicle_, April 9, 1798.

[1448] Gibbs, II, 46.

[1449] _Independent Chronicle_, August 9, 1798.

[1450] _Ibid._, December 6, 1798.

[1451] _Centinel_, September 29, 1798.

[1452] _Centinel_, December 15, 1798.

[1453] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, April 11, 1798.

[1454] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), X, 33-36.

[1455] _Ibid._, X, 47-49.

[1456] _Ibid._ (to Samuel Smith), X, 55.

[1457] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, June 1, 1798.

[1458] _Gazette of the United States_, August 9, 1798.

[1459] _Independent Chronicle_, May 21, 1798.

[1460] _Time Piece_, May 25, 1798.

[1461] _Ibid._, May 28, 1798.

[1462] _Ibid._, June 11, 1798.

[1463] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), X, 16-19.

[1464] _Time Piece_, May 18, 1798.

[1465] May 24, 1798.

[1466] October 15, 1798.

[1467] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Lewis), X, 36-37.

[1468] _Ibid._

[1469] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), X, 22-24; (to
John Taylor), X, 63-67.

[1470] _Ibid._ (to S. Smith), X, 53-59.

[1471] King’s _Works_ (Troup to King), II, 431-32.

[1472] August 20, 1798.

[1473] _New York Commercial Advertiser_, November 20, 1798.

[1474] _Centinel_, July 18, 1798.

[1475] _Ibid._, July 14, 1798.

[1476] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 13-14.

[1477] _Ibid._, 15-16.

[1478] _Ibid._, 53-54.

[1479] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, July 21, 1798, makes a sneering comment.

[1480] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, July 23, 1798.

[1481] _Time Piece_, July 30, 1798.

[1482] _Time Piece_, June 13, July 2, 11, 13, 1798; _Aurora_, November
7, 1798.

[1483] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, December 22, 1798.

[1484] _Ibid._, May 8, 1798.

[1485] King’s _Works_, II, 376.

[1486] Randall, _Jefferson_, 400, note.

[1487] Volume II, 75, 77.

[1488] _Time Piece_, June 1, 1798.

[1489] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), X, 33-36; 40-43.

[1490] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, July 11, 1798.

[1491] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), X, 40.

[1492] Madison’s _Writings_ (to Jefferson), II, 142.

[1493] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 293.

[1494] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, April 30, 1798.

[1495] _Ibid._, May 1, 1798.

[1496] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 295.

[1497] A reference to Hopkinson’s song.

[1498] _Annals_, June 21, 1798.

[1499] _Annals_, July 10, 1798.

[1500] July 28, 1798.

[1501] July 19, 1798.

[1502] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 59-61.

[1503] King’s _Works_ (Troup to King), II, 431-32.

[1504] Davis, 46-48.

[1505] King’s _Works_ (Troup to King), II, 431-32.

[1506] _Gazette of the United States_, September 1, 1798.

[1507] Gibbs, II, 55.

[1508] _Gazette of the United States_, September 6, 1798.

[1509] Ames (to Dwight), I, 240.

[1510] September 17, 1798.

[1511] Henry, _Henry_, II, 612.

[1512] Ames (to Gore), I, 246.

[1513] _Commercial Advertiser_, October 17, 1798.

[1514] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, November 30, 1798.

[1515] Lodge, _Cabot_, 179-81.

[1516] Lodge, _Cabot_, 147.

[1517] _Ibid._ (to Pickering), 179.

[1518] _Ibid._, 172.

[1519] _Aurora_, February 12, 1800.

[1520] _Aurora_, February 22, 1800.

[1521] In _Porcupine’s Gazette_, February 2, 1799, Strubling attempts
to explain his failure to fight when resistance was offered.

[1522] _Aurora_, May 20, 1799.

[1523] _Gazette of the United States_, April 15, 1799.

[1524] April 29, 1800.

[1525] Judge Alexander Addison, _Gazette of the United States_,
February 15, 1799; Judge Iredell, April 9, 1799.

[1526] _Gazette of the United States_, May 10, 1799.

[1527] _New York Commercial Advertiser_, December 29, 1798.

[1528] _Gazette of the United States_, January 2, 1799.

[1529] _Commercial Advertiser_, December 28, 1799.

[1530] McLaughlin, _Lyon_; Wharton, _State Trials_, 333-44.

[1531] _Centinel_, February 27, 1799.

[1532] _Aurora_, June 20, 1799.

[1533] This connection was real.

[1534] Ames, I, 247.

[1535] _Independent Chronicle_, June 17, 1799; _Gazette of the United
States_, June 17, 1799; ‘Enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Laws,’
by Anderson, American Historical Association _Report_, 1912.

[1536] _Independent Chronicle_, February 18, 1799.

[1537] _Ibid._, October 25, 1798.

[1538] _Ibid._, October 29, 1798.

[1539] _Ibid._, November 5, 1798.

[1540] _Independent Chronicle_, February 25, 1799.

[1541] _Ibid._, April 11, 1799.

[1542] March 28, 1799, from ‘A Friend.’

[1543] _Ibid._, March 7, 1799.

[1544] _Independent Chronicle_, March 28, 1799.

[1545] _Ibid._, April 25, 1799.

[1546] _Ibid._

[1547] Hudson, _Journalism_, 211-13.

[1548] Wharton, _State Trials_, 345-91; Hudson, _Journalism_, 213-14.

[1549] _Aurora_, October 22, 1799.

[1550] It was true, of course.

[1551] Wharton, _State Trials_, 658-81.

[1552] _Aurora_, April 25, 1800.

[1553] Adams’s answer in the case of Lyon.

[1554] _Aurora_, May 17, 1800.

[1555] Scharf, I, 505.

[1556] Robbins was turned over to the British, who claimed him as
a national, and was executed for murder on the seas. Even Gallatin
thought this an outrage until Marshall made his memorable speech in
Congress in defense of the President’s action.

[1557] Wharton, _State Trials_.

[1558] Hammond, I, 123-24.

[1559] _Ibid._, 131-32; Alexander, 89.

[1560] Carey’s _Diary_; _Aurora_, January 17, 1800.

[1561] _Commercial Advertiser_, April 23, 1800.

[1562] _Aurora_, April 9, 1800.

[1563] _Independent Chronicle_, August 9, 1798.

[1564] _Ibid._, November 1, 1798.

[1565] _Ibid._, November 26, 1798.

[1566] ‘Enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Laws,’ by Anderson,
American Historical Association _Report_, 1912.

[1567] Steiner, 436.

[1568] Thomas, _Reminiscences_.

[1569] _The Nation_, July 18, 1912; Moreau’s _Journal_.

[1570] _Gazette of the United States_, July 10, 1799.

[1571] _Aurora_, November 4, 1799.

[1572] _Independent Chronicle_, September 27, 1798.

[1573] _Ibid._

[1574] _Ibid._

[1575] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), X, 119-21.

[1576] _Ibid._ (to Senator Mason), X, 61-62.

[1577] Warfield, _The Kentucky Resolutions_, 133-65.

[1578] _Ibid._, 55.

[1579] _Ibid._, 70.

[1580] Frank M. Anderson, ‘Contemporary Opinion of the Kentucky and
Virginia Resolutions,’ _American Historical Review_, October, 1899;
January, 1900.

[1581] Professor Anderson calls attention to the fact that in Maryland
the endorsement of the Alien and Sedition Laws was made more prominent
than the condemnation of the proposed remedy.

[1582] _Independent Chronicle_, February 14, 1799.

[1583] _Centinel_, February 27, 1799.

[1584] Professor Anderson comments on this unfairness.

[1585] Anderson, _op. cit._

[1586] Professor Anderson says: ‘The imprisonment of Adams indicates
that the Federalists were ready on the slightest provocation to treat
opposition to the policy of the Administration, whether federal or
state, as crime. That case certainly does much to explain why Jefferson
and other Republican leaders could fear that Republican institutions
were about to be overthrown.’ _American Historical Review_, January,
1900, p. 229.

[1587] Anderson, _op. cit._

[1588] _Intimate Life_, 323-24.

[1589] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 287.

[1590] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 301.

[1591] _Ibid._, 297-98.

[1592] _Ibid._, 310.

[1593] _Ibid._, 311.

[1594] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to McHenry), X, 307.

[1595] Gibbs, II, 93-99.

[1596] _Ibid._

[1597] Lodge, _Cabot_, 165-67.

[1598] Lodge, _Cabot_, 170-71.

[1599] Pickering, III, 432.

[1600] Gibbs, II, 99.

[1601] _Ibid._, 100.

[1602] Beveridge, II, 420.

[1603] Steiner, 354. Here, however, he qualifies.

[1604] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 286.

[1605] Parton, _Burr_, I, 235-36.

[1606] Gibbs (Pickering to Wolcott), II, 71.

[1607] _Ibid._ (from Goodrich), 105.

[1608] Steiner (McHenry to Tracy), 328.

[1609] _Ibid._ (from James Ash), 333.

[1610] _Ibid._, 368.

[1611] Adams, _Works_, X, 120-23.

[1612] July 12, 1798.

[1613] September 17, 1798.

[1614] July 30, 1798.

[1615] King’s _Works_ (from Troup), III, 35.

[1616] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 354.

[1617] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Pendleton), X, 104-10.

[1618] Gibbs (Higginson to Wolcott), II, 177.

[1619] Adams, _Works_, X, 126-31.

[1620] _Ibid._

[1621] January 28, 1799.

[1622] McMaster (II, 435) makes the statement that
‘Republicans were fully determined that the direct tax should not
be gathered.’ There is abundant evidence, including the letter
from Jefferson, previously quoted, that the Republicans thought an
insurrection against the collection the worse possible thing for the
party.

[1623] March 22, 1799. This refers to Hamilton’s efforts to involve
Gallatin in the Whiskey Rebellion.

[1624] _Aurora_, April 14 and April 27, 1799; McMaster,
II, 438-39.

[1625] _Ibid._, May 16, 1799; Hudson, 214; McMaster, II,
439.

[1626] _Gazette of the United States_, May 16, 1799.

[1627] _Aurora_, June 25, August 5, 1799.

[1628] _Ibid._, September 24, 1799.

[1629] Adams, _Works_, X, 116-19.

[1630] _Ibid._

[1631] _Aurora_, January 10, 1800.

[1632] _Ibid._, February 27, 1800.

[1633] Gibbs, II, 241; Morse to Wolcott.

[1634] May 14, 1799.

[1635] June 1, 1799.

[1636] May 16, 1799.

[1637] July 18, 1799.

[1638] Gibbs, II, 313-18.

[1639] Steiner, 382.

[1640] August 21, 1799.

[1641] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), X, 49-53; (to
Gerry), X, 74-86. All of which is borne out by the
signed statement of Logan, whose veracity was more reliable than that
of Harper.

[1642] New York _Commercial Advertiser_, November 15, 1798.

[1643] _Ibid._, November 22, 1798.

[1644] Adams, _Works_, VIII, 615.

[1645] Gibbs, II, 195.

[1646] _Aurora_, January 3, 1799.

[1647] _Ibid._, January 16, 1799.

[1648] Morison, _Otis_, I, 168-71.

[1649] Adams, _Works_, VIII, 617.

[1650] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 86-89.

[1651] Gibbs, II, 313-18.

[1652] Adams, _Adams_, I, 523-24.

[1653] Lodge, _Hamilton_, 212.

[1654] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to King), X, 314-15.

[1655] _Ibid._, 315-16.

[1656] Randall, _Jefferson_, II, 464.

[1657] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 389.

[1658] See King’s _Works_, II, 649-66;
III, 556, 565; Adams, _Works_, X, 145 and
147.

[1659] At the rate of four for Connecticut with a population of 250,000.

[1660] Adams, _Adams_, I, 536.

[1661] Adams, _Adams_, I, 538-39.

[1662] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Madison), X, 110-13.

[1663] _Ibid._ (to Madison), 119-21.

[1664] Pickering, III, 439. According to another
version, Adams received the committee politely until Sedgwick angered
him with a slurring remark on Gerry.

[1665] _Porcupine’s Gazette_, February 20, 1799.

[1666] _Ibid._, February 21, 1799.

[1667] _Ibid._, February 28, 1799.

[1668] Adams, _Adams_, I, 544-45.

[1669] King’s _Works_, III, 68.

[1670] Steiner, 416.

[1671] King’s _Works_, IX, 249.

[1672] Lodge, _Cabot_, 224-26.

[1673] King’s _Works_, III, 7-10.

[1674] Lodge, _Cabot_, 221.

[1675] Gibbs (to Wolcott), II, 229-30.

[1676] Morison, _Otis_ (to Otis), I, 171.

[1677] Ames (to Dwight), I, 252.

[1678] Morison, _Otis_, I, 174-75.

[1679] _Anas_, I, 351-52.

[1680] King’s _Works_ (Cabot to King), III, 111; (to
Pickering), 228; (to Wolcott), 229.

[1681] _Aurora_, April 27, 1799.

[1682] _Centinel_, June 8, June 17, 1799.

[1683] August 28, 1799.

[1684] Lodge, _Cabot_, 237.

[1685] Adams, _Adams_, I, 554.

[1686] Stoddert was reported to have told General Sam Smith that this
was in his mind; _Anas_, I, 349-50.

[1687] Lodge, _Cabot_, 240-42.

[1688] King’s _Works_ (Cabot to King), III, 114.

[1689] _Centinel_, October 9, 1799.

[1690] _Anas_, I, 349.

[1691] Brown, _Life of Ellsworth_, 279.

[1692] _Ibid._

[1693] _Aurora_, October 23, 1799.

[1694] _Ibid._, October 25, 1799.

[1695] _Aurora_, July 26, August 5, 1799.

[1696] Morison, _Otis_, I, 137; McRee, _Iredell_,
II, 571.

[1697] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 154-59.

[1698] _Aurora_, April 2, 1800.

[1699] _Ibid._, April 4, 1800.

[1700] _Annals_, March 28, 1800.

[1701] April 2, 1800.

[1702] Beveridge, II, 453.

[1703] King’s _Works_, III, 237-38.

[1704] The nature of the amendment is not disclosed in the _Annals_,
April 16, 1800.

[1705] _Aurora_, April 28, 1800.

[1706] _Ibid._, April 30, 1800.

[1707] _Aurora_, January 2, 1799.

[1708] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 70-74.

[1709] _Ibid._, 74.

[1710] _Ibid._, 89-92.

[1711] Adams, _Works_, X, 116-19.

[1712] _Commercial Advertiser_, February 13, 1800.

[1713] Randall, II, 470.

[1714] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 95-97.

[1715] _Ibid._, 86-89.

[1716] _Ibid._, 95-97.

[1717] _Ibid._, 97-99.

[1718] Dodd, _Macon_, 157-59.

[1719] Thomas, _Reminiscences_, II, 54-56.

[1720] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 134-36.

[1721] _Ibid._, 154-59.

[1722] _Ibid._

[1723] Randall, II, 538.

[1724] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 363.

[1725] Parton, _Life and Times of Aaron Burr_; Davis, _Memoirs of Aaron
Burr; Familiar Letters_, 237; Oliver, _Hamilton_; Bradford, _Damaged
Souls_.

[1726] Adams, _Gallatin_ (Matthew L. Davis to Gallatin), 232-34.

[1727] Parton, _Burr_, I, 247.

[1728] Myers, _Tammany Hall_, 12.

[1729] _Commercial Advertiser_, April 26, 1800.

[1730] _Commercial Advertiser_, July 26, 1800.

[1731] _Ibid._, April 29, 1800.

[1732] _Ibid._

[1733] _Commercial Advertiser_, April 29, 1800.

[1734] Adams, _Gallatin_, 237-38.

[1735] Adams, _Gallatin_ (to his wife), 240-41.

[1736] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 371.

[1737] Adams, _Gallatin_, 238-40.

[1738] _Ibid._, 241.

[1739] Gibbs (McHenry to his brother), II, 246-48.

[1740] Gibbs, II, 246-48; Steiner, 454.

[1741] Pickering, III, 487.

[1742] _Ibid._, III, 488.

[1743] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 376.

[1744] Steiner, 457.

[1745] _Aurora_, March 6, 1800.

[1746] _Aurora_, May 9, 1800.

[1747] _Centinel_, May 21, 1800.

[1748] _Centinel_, May 24, 1800.

[1749] King’s _Works_, III, 249.

[1750] _Ibid._, 250.

[1751] King’s _Works_ (from Pickering), 262-63; (Ames to King), 275-76;
(Goodhue to Pickering), 243-44.

[1752] _Ibid._ (from Pickering), 248; (from Cabot), 249.

[1753] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to Sedgwick), X, 375-76.

[1754] King’s _Works_, III, 250.

[1755] _Ibid._, 275-76.

[1756] _Aurora_, July 17, 1800.

[1757] _Aurora_, June 7, 1800.

[1758] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to Bayard), X, 384-87.

[1759] Hamilton’s _Works_ (to Bayard), X, 384-87.

[1760] Quoted by _The Aurora_, July 30, 1800.

[1761] August 5, 1800.

[1762] _Familiar Letters_, 373; Lodge, _Cabot_.

[1763] _Memoir of Theophilus Parsons_, 328-29; 336-42, 345, 418, 436.

[1764] Thomas, _Reminiscences_, I, 17; T. W. Higginson,
_Stephen Higginson_, 137, 272, 280, 273-76.

[1765] _Familiar Letters_, 370-71, 381.

[1766] _Centinel_, June 21, 1800.

[1767] _Centinel_, June 21, 1800.

[1768] _Ibid._

[1769] _Aurora_, June 21, 1800.

[1770] _Aurora_, June 30, 1800.

[1771] _Centinel_, June 28, 1800.

[1772] August 9, 1800.

[1773] _Chronicle_, July 31, 1800.

[1774] _Ibid._, August 18, 1800.

[1775] King’s _Works_ (J. Hale to King), III, 270.

[1776] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 379-80.

[1777] Gibbs (McHenry to Wolcott), II, 414-15.

[1778] Gibbs, II, 374-75.

[1779] Lodge, _Cabot_, 278-80.

[1780] Gibbs, II, 381.

[1781] Gibbs, II, 382.

[1782] _Ibid._, 379.

[1783] _Ibid._, 384.

[1784] _Ibid._, 400-05.

[1785] _Aurora_, September 11, 1800.

[1786] Lodge, _Cabot_ (to Wolcott), 282.

[1787] Lodge, _Cabot_, 286-88.

[1788] Gibbs (Phelps to Wolcott), II, 380.

[1789] _American Mercury_, September 11. 1800.

[1790] Lodge, _Cabot_ (Wolcott to Cabot), 278.

[1791] _Aurora_, July 26, 28, 1800.

[1792] Gibbs, II, 162.

[1793] _Aurora_, November 15, 1800; Langdon to Samuel Ringgold.

[1794] Gibbs, II, 418-19.

[1795] August 7, 1800.

[1796] This pamphlet is in New York Public Library.

[1797] Welling’s _Lectures_, 274-75.

[1798] _Hartford Courant_, June 23, 30, July 7, 14, 21, 26, August 4,
11, 18, September 1, 15, 22, 1800.

[1799] _American Mercury_, July 10, 1800.

[1800] Robinson, _Jeffersonian Democracy in New England_, 27.

[1801] Robinson, _Jeffersonian Democracy in New England_, 27.

[1802] _Centinel_, March 1, 22, 1800.

[1803] Gibbs (Phelps to Wolcott), II, 418-19.

[1804] August 4, 1800.

[1805] _New York Commercial Advertiser_, May 13, 1800.

[1806] _American Mercury_, September 19, 1800.

[1807] Gibbs (from Phelps), II, 418.

[1808] _Courant_, September 15, 1800.

[1809] _Ibid._

[1810] _Connecticut in Transition_, 315-16.

[1811] _Courant_, September 15, 1800.

[1812] Original copies published in both Philadelphia and Newark are in
New York Public Library.

[1813] _Courant_, September 22, 1800.

[1814] _Courant_, November 17, 1800.

[1815] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Uriah McGregory), X,
170-73.

[1816] _Aurora_, September 1, 1800.

[1817] _Aurora_, September 4, 1800.

[1818] _Courant_, August 25, 1800.

[1819] _A Voice of Warning._

[1820] _Serious Considerations._

[1821] _Serious Facts._

[1822] Morse, _Federalist Party in Massachusetts_, 133-34.

[1823] Morse, _Federalist Party in Massachusetts_, 95, note.

[1824] _The Claims of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined at
the Bar of Christianity_, probably by Asbury Dickens in New York Public
Library.

[1825] _Address to the People of the United States_, etc., by John
James Beckley, in New York public Library.

[1826] _Independent Chronicle_, June 30, 1800.

[1827] _American Mercury_, October 2, 1800.

[1828] _Aurora_, March 31, 1800.

[1829] _Ibid._, October 14, 1800.

[1830] Lodge, _Cabot_, 283-84.

[1831] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 383-84.

[1832] _Ibid._, 388-89.

[1833] Lodge, _Cabot_ (Cabot to Hamilton), 284-86.

[1834] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 389-90.

[1835] Lodge, _Cabot_, 293.

[1836] Davis, _Burr_, II, 65.

[1837] Parton, I, 126-27; Davis, II, 65.

[1838] Copied in the _Commercial Advertiser_, November 27, 1800.

[1839] Hamilton’s _Works_, VII, 309-64.

[1840] Lodge, _Cabot_, 298-300.

[1841] _Centinel_, November 15, 1800.

[1842] _Ibid._, November 26, 1800.

[1843] October 27, 1800.

[1844] November 4, 1800.

[1845] October 30, 1800.

[1846] December 1, 1800.

[1847] October 29, 1800.

[1848] Reprinted in _The Aurora_, November 13, 1800.

[1849] _Answer to Alexander Hamilton’s Letter Concerning the Public
Conduct and Character of John Adams._

[1850] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 391.

[1851] Ames, I, 283-85.

[1852] Gibbs, II, 384-86.

[1853] _American Mercury_, June 19, 1800.

[1854] Steiner (Hamilton to McHenry), 466; (Dickinson to McHenry), 471.

[1855] _A Series of Letters on the Subject of ‘The Legislative Choice’
of Electors in Maryland_, by ‘Bystander.’

[1856] August 4, 1800.

[1857] Gibbs (to Wolcott), II, 388-90.

[1858] _Ibid._, II, 399.

[1859] _Ibid._, II, 387-88.

[1860] _Aurora_, November 11, 1800.

[1861] Morris, _Diary_, II. 394-95.

[1862] Gibbs (Wolcott to wife), II, 456.

[1863] Adams, _Letters of Mrs. Adams_, II, 239-41.

[1864] _Ibid._, 243-44.

[1865] Morris. _Diary_, II, 396.

[1866] Mrs. Smith, 9-10.

[1867] Adams, _Gallatin_ (Gallatin to his wife), 252-55.

[1868] _Ibid._, 255.

[1869] _Ibid._, 255.

[1870] Mrs. Smith, 13-15.

[1871] _Ibid._, 4.

[1872] Mrs. Smith, 3.

[1873] _Ibid._, 5.

[1874] Gallatin’s expression; Adams, _Gallatin_, 252-53.

[1875] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 392-93.

[1876] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 393-97.

[1877] Parton, _Burr_, I, 267.

[1878] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 397.

[1879] _Ibid._, 393-97.

[1880] McLaughlin, _Matthew Lyon_, 386.

[1881] Parton, _Burr_, I, 270.

[1882] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 401.

[1883] _Ibid._, 402-04.

[1884] _Ibid._, 404-05.

[1885] _Ibid._, 405-07.

[1886] Morris, _Diary_, II, 397.

[1887] Morris, _Diary_, II, 404.

[1888] Morison, _Otis_, I, 211-12.

[1889] King’s _Works_, III, 363.

[1890] Steiner, 485-88.

[1891] _Ibid._, 489-90.

[1892] King’s _Works_ (Pickering to King), III, 366.

[1893] Parton, _Burr_, I, 272-73.

[1894] _Ibid._, 274.

[1895] Parton, _Burr_, I, 274-75.

[1896] _Ibid._, 277-78.

[1897] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 412-19.

[1898] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 419-20.

[1899] King’s _Works_ (J. Hale to King), III, 372.

[1900] _Ibid._ (Sedgwick to King), 455.

[1901] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 420.

[1902] King’s _Works_ (Troup to King), III, 391.

[1903] Jefferson’s _Works_ (to Hugh Williamson), X, 188;
(to William Dunbar), 191.

[1904] Adams, _Gallatin_ (Gallatin to his wife), 257.

[1905] _Commercial Advertiser_, January 17, 1801.

[1906] Reprinted in Connecticut _Courant_, January 26, 1801.

[1907] _Centinel_, January 28, 1801.

[1908] _Centinel_, January 7, 1801.

[1909] _Ibid._, February 11, 1801.

[1910] _Ibid._

[1911] Adams. _Gallatin_, 248-51.

[1912] Adams, _Gallatin_, 248-51.

[1913] _Ibid._

[1914] _Centinel_, February 18, 1801, before the result of the election
was known.

[1915] _Anas_, I, 381.

[1916] Morris, _Diary_, II, 403.

[1917] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 196-97.

[1918] Connecticut _Courant_, February 11, 1801.

[1919] Parton, _Burr_, I, 288.

[1920] Morison, _Otis_, I, 207-08.

[1921] Mrs. Smith, 24.

[1922] _Commercial Advertiser_, February 16, 1801.

[1923] Mrs. Smith, 24.

[1924] Jefferson’s _Works_, X, 198-99.

[1925] Morison, _Otis_, I, 207-08.

[1926] Adams, _Gallatin_, 260-61.

[1927] _Ibid._, 261-62.

[1928] Parton, _Burr_, I, 288.

[1929] Mrs. Smith, 23.

[1930] Parton, _Burr_; Letter to Hamilton.

[1931] Adams, _Gallatin_, 262.

[1932] _Annals_, February 21, 1801.

[1933] _Annals_, March 2, 1801.

[1934] Gibbs, II, 497.

[1935] Adams, _Gallatin_, 265.

[1936] Mrs. Smith, 12.

[1937] _Ibid._, 26.

[1938] Mrs. Smith.

[1939] Hamilton’s _Works_, X, 425.

[1940] _Ibid._, X, 444.

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