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
I
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.
II
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]
IV
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.
V
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: