Jefferson and Hamilton

XV

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.

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.

II

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.

IV

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.

V

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.

VI

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!

IX

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.