Jefferson and Hamilton

then the most powerful dispenser of patronage. Thus he was able to practice his ingratiating arts on one worth while. In little more than a year he was made Comptroller on the recommendation of Hamilton, and when that statesman retired to private life, it was he who lifted the faithful servitor into the Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. There Adams found him; there, unhappily for him, he let him remain.

It would be unjust to leave the impression that Wolcott was without merit. He was not brilliant, but he possessed an infinite capacity for taking pains. Even in college, where he failed to sparkle, he was a hard student with ‘the strong reasoning faculties of the Wolcott family’ a little neutralized by ‘some eccentricities in reasoning.’[1281] In the Treasury, in subordinate positions, he had shown good judgment, much practical sense, a comprehensive acquaintance with business and business needs, exceptional power of sustained application, no imagination, and a dog-like devotion to Hamilton. The latter found this combination of virtues had not only made his conduct good, ‘but distinguished.’ More, he had ‘all the requisites which can be desired,’ and these were ‘moderation with firmness; liberality with exactness, indefatigable industry with an accurate and sound discernment, a thorough knowledge of business, and a remarkable spirit of order and arrangement.’[1282] In brief, he was the perfect bureaucrat, the indispensable man Friday. If he brought no political strength to the Administration, he could, with dependability, do the drudgery and register the will of others who could.

If he was not a friend of the people, nor the electorate of him, he was the courtier and friend of the powerful, and thus his was one of the first careers created by the social lobby. If he did not cultivate the voters, he selected his friends with fine discrimination with the view of his own advancement. At Yale he cultivated Noah Webster and Uriah Tracy, a potent writer and a powerful politician; he early profited by the popularity and prestige of his father, and through his father’s and his family’s influential friends; and socially, he made himself the ‘bonny boy’ of the Hamiltonian circle, and smiled and joked himself into the affections of the Bingham set. A beautiful and brilliant sister brought him the championship of the clever Chauncey Goodrich and his associates. A charming wife threw wide all the doors of the capital. While he was earning the grateful appreciation of Hamilton and the Essex Junto, this attractive wife was winning and deserving the tender affection of Mrs. Washington, with whom she was on terms of intimacy, and she was corresponding regularly with Nellie Custis.[1283] When Washington left public life, his wife gave the wife of Wolcott a lock of the General’s hair and one of her own. The social lobby looked after its own—and Wolcott was its very own.

For this cultivation of the social lobby, he was well adapted, for he had a genius for society, with his cheerful disposition, his playful manner, his conversation, which, while sometimes sober, was usually gay. The ‘small talk’ that Adams lacked, Wolcott had in full measure running over. A master of the art of banter, no one with entrée to Mrs. Bingham’s could tell a joke better or more noisily enjoy one. His laugh was hearty, frequent, and infectious. Living in a world of statistics, he at least affected a love of literature, was fond of quoting poetry, and interested in the personalities of distinguished writers. His conversation after office hours could be light and graceful. Gracious, smiling, ingratiating, this bureaucrat—one of the first—created and sustained by the social lobby as one of its first exhibits. He differed from Pickering as day from night, but like his sphinx-like colleague of Salem, he owed everything to Hamilton, nothing to Adams; and as he sat, suave and smiling, at the Cabinet table, it was to Hamilton, not to Adams, that he looked as chief.

VIII

If Pickering was a conspirator against Adams and did not care who knew it, and Wolcott a conspirator trying to conceal it, James McHenry, the Secretary of War, was a conspirator and scarcely knew it. The simplicity of this Irish immigrant is most disarming. Left alone, he would have been harmless. His was only another instance of loving, not wisely, and too well. Born in comfortable circumstances in Ireland, the impairment of his health through intensive application to his studies in an academy in Dublin brought him to America on a recuperative voyage. So favorably was he impressed that his family soon followed and his father opened a general store in Baltimore. A year later, we find him in an academy in Newark, Delaware, and then in Philadelphia studying medicine under the celebrated Dr. Rush. But he took as little to his profession as to the prosaic duties of the counting-room, and, thanks to inherited property, lived through the greater portion of his life as a gentleman of leisure. In nothing that he ever undertook did he attain distinction. The practice of his profession was limited to a brief period as surgeon in the army; his career in commerce was almost as much curtailed; and he employed his leisure as a dilettante in politics and literature.

Had McHenry remained in Ireland, it is easy to imagine him as a young blade about Dublin, affecting the fashions, a bit dandified in dress, over-fond of society, given to verse. A searcher of souls might have discovered in him an ambition—to write poetry. Even in his academy days at Newark he was an inveterate verse-maker, and he thought enough of his effusions to send them to the papers. It was a weakness he never overcame, and at his death they found a great portfolio full of rhymes. It is possible—and it is this pathetic touch that makes one almost love him—that he hoped for a posthumous volume as a memorial and monument.[1284] Some of these lyrics are clever, light and graceful, reminders of the sort that even Curran liked to make for the amusement of his friends—thoroughly Irish. He could never have become a poet, but there is evidence in his letters that had he turned his attention to the humorous essay, he might have produced things worth while. These epistles are charming in their playfulness, sprightly, witty, glowing with humor. No one among the public men of the period could have made posterity so much their debtor with letters on men, women, and events—not even Morris, Ames, or Goodrich. He was really made for an observer, rather than participant, in the harsh conflicts of life—more of a Horace than a Robert Walpole, more of a Boswell than a Johnson. Dinners, dances, routs, these, and the writing of light verses, were enough to make him happy.

And yet he was not effeminate. If he did not play his part in the affairs of men with brilliancy or even efficiency, he did with courage and to the best of his ability. We have few references to his services as surgeon in the army. It was when he became one of Washington’s secretaries that he fell completely under the fascination of Hamilton. Even before his resignation from the army, he had entered politics as a member of the State Senate in Maryland, a rather important body consisting then of but fifteen members. Here he was the representative of the commercial class. In the Constitutional Convention he was obscure, and strangely enough his views were the very opposite of Hamilton’s. Speaking seldom, his voice was raised in warning against too much centralization.[1285] He was even favorable to a mere amendment to the Articles of Confederation,[1286] and his chief interest was in the provisions for the regulation of commerce.[1287] When the work was over, he signed with avowed reluctance, and solely on the ground—which was characteristic—that he distrusted his own judgment, that amendments might be made, and he was willing to take a chance.[1288] In the bitter fight over ratification in the Maryland Convention, he took but little part.

Even so, the confidence and friendship of Washington and Hamilton were not weakened. To him they looked from the beginning for advice on Maryland patronage, and Washington found it convenient to use him as an agent in matters of this sort.[1289] Hamilton thus employed him frequently.[1290] Taking seriously his rôle as the Federalist boss and distributer of the loaves and fishes, he resented the disregarding of one of his recommendations, and even the long explanatory letter of Hamilton failed to smooth his ruffled feathers.[1291] More than two years were to elapse before his woman-like affection for his idol gained the ascendancy over his resentment. ‘I have not ceased to love you nor for a moment felt an abatement of my friendship,’ he wrote impulsively after the long silence.[1292]

Like Pickering and Wolcott, McHenry was persistent in his hints for place. Six years before the Constitution went into effect, we find him soliciting the influence of Washington to get him a diplomatic post in Europe, and the great man tried and failed.[1293] Among the first letters Hamilton received on entering the Cabinet was one from McHenry. ‘I am not wholly lost to ambition,’ he wrote, ‘and would have no objection to a situation where I might indulge and improve at the same time my literary propensities, with, perhaps, some advantage to the public. Would you, therefore, be good enough to feel ... whether the President has thought of me, or would, in such a case, nominate me. I wish you would do this for me as a thing springing entirely from yourself.’[1294] Nothing came of it, and the faithful party hack continued to run the errands of the Administration in Maryland. Three years later, he took his courage in both hands and wrote directly to Washington asking to be sent to Paris and Vienna to attempt to secure the release of Lafayette. He wanted a change of air. It would be no use, the President replied.[1295] It was not until near the close of Washington’s eight years in office—and only then because many others had declined—that he was finally summoned to Philadelphia to become Secretary of War. Would he have felt so much elated had he read Hamilton’s comment on his capacity? ‘McHenry, you know,’ wrote the leader. ‘He would give no strength to the Administration but he would not disgrace the office. His views are good.’[1296] But happily he did not know, and jubilantly he gave up all private enterprises as incompatible with public office—for in such matters he was meticulously proper—and, mounting his horse, he rode to Philadelphia. He carried the conviction with him that he owed his honor to the earnest persistency of his idol. To the extent indicated, this was true. The great genius of Federalism, now planning to continue his domination of the Government from his law office in New York, had reasons to believe that whoever might be President, McHenry would be his own faithful servitor. When Hamilton had married Betty Schuyler, his friend had journeyed to Albany with some verses for the event. Was it with an indulgent smile that the bridegroom acknowledged the poem? ‘You know I often told you you wrote prose well, but had no genius for poetry. I retract.’[1297] Six years before the first inauguration of Washington, this ardent friend had written Hamilton: ‘Were you ten years older and twenty thousand pounds richer, there is no doubt but that you might obtain the suffrages of Congress for the highest office in their gift.’[1298] Verily it was not without an eye to the future that Hamilton found a place for such an idolater and political valet in the Cabinet.

There is something a bit wistful and pathetic about McHenry that persuades forgiveness for even his treachery to Adams. His were the sins of a lover, and love covers a multitude of sins. Nature intended him for a snug harbor, and fate pushed him out upon tempestuous seas. His own best epitaph has been written by himself: ‘I have built houses. I have cultivated fields. I have planned gardens. I have planted trees. I have written little essays. I have made poetry once a year to please my wife; at times got children, and at all times thought myself happy.’[1299] Like Pickering and Wolcott, he owed everything to Hamilton—nothing to Adams; and as he faced Adams in the Cabinet room, it was to Hamilton—not to Adams—that he looked as chief.

The other member of the Cabinet, the Attorney-General, was a political cipher. Knowing what we now know of the characters and factional affiliations of the President and his advisers, it will not be difficult to follow the serpentine trail of the next four years, nor to understand one of the forces that worked with Jefferson for the utter destruction of the Federalist Party.

CHAPTER XV

COMEDY AND HEROICS

Primarily nothing could have been more unfortunate than the appointment of Morris. No more charming or clever diplomat than this bosom friend of Hamilton has served America abroad. Born to the purple, he was an aristocrat by nature, with a blatantly cynical and contemptuous conception of the masses of mankind. His was the shimmer due to generations of polishing. As a young man in the society of New York and Philadelphia, he was enormously popular because he was handsome, dashing, witty, eloquent, a bit risqué and in consequence of his fashionable and gilded background. In the Constitutional Convention no one spoke with greater fluency or frequency—or with less effect. He sought the establishment of an aristocratic state, and made no secret of his hostility to democracy. To an even greater degree than Hamilton he foreshadowed the extreme policies of the Federalist Party. He was, in truth, its personification, able, brilliant, rich; socially delightful, cynical, aristocratic, masterful, and disdainful of the frontier.[1300] Like Hamilton, he failed in the Convention, but his was the hand that fashioned the phrasing of the fundamental law.

There was more than a hint of the fashionable roué in this handsome fellow when he went to Paris. Women and their pursuit was ever an engrossing game with him. Even his graduation essay was on ‘Wit and Beauty,’ and for his Master’s Degree he wrote on ‘Love.’ He was the sort of beau that Congreve would have cherished, elegant in dress and manner, given to levity and light banter, eagerly sought. The loss of a leg through an accident in 1780 did not sour him nor diminish his appeal to women. On ‘a rough oak stick with a knob at the end,’[1301] he hobbled on to his triumphs.

Such was the man sent to succeed Jefferson, the philosopher of democracy, at the moment the Revolution was breaking on the boulevards—a bitter, outspoken partisan of the old régime, a sarcastic enemy of the Revolution, a champion of privilege less compromising than the nobility itself. While Genêt was intriguing against the Government in America, Morris was intriguing against the Government in France. But his love flowers were still thrown over the garden wall of politics. Jefferson had been shocked at his reactionary opinions in Paris. Madame Lafayette had chided him on being an aristocrat.[1302] Quite early he began his affair with Madame de Flahaut, the novelist, a pretty, winsome woman who effectively used her marriage to an old man as a lure for lovers, and his diary teems with references to the frail beauty. There were evenings at her home, sneering at liberty and democracy; teas in her salon; drives and dinners, when he was entranced by the ‘spirituel and delicate repartee’ of his friend.[1303] Then walks in the Gardens of the Tuileries and about the Champs Élysées, afternoons at Madame’s house reading ‘La Pucelle,’ while she rode about Paris in the well-known carriage of the American Minister,[1304] and finally, when danger came, he took her into his house. The Minister aimed high, and even the Duchess of Orleans was not above his amorous expectations, thinking her beautiful enough ‘to punish the duke for his irregularities,’ and we find him writing poems to her, and buying her a Newfoundland dog in London.[1305] No young blade ever found Paris more seductive.

On swept the Revolution, on came the Terror, with Morris openly and defiantly sneering at the former and its principles. The coldness of the crowds in the streets when the Queen rode by enraged him.[1306] In the terrible August days of 1792 he drove the reactionary Madame de Flahaut through the Bois de Boulogne,[1307] and when the nation imprisoned the King he was soon neck-deep in intrigues to effect his rescue.[1308] Messages were exchanged with Louis, plans perfected, and only the King’s courage failed. Later Louis made him the custodian of 750,000 livres to be used in bribing those who stood in the way of his escape. America’s Minister was paymaster of the King seeking to join the allied monarchs in the crushing of the Revolution.[1309] Much of this was known in Paris, and much of it known and approved by Federalist leaders in America, Ames objecting to the publication of certain papers because they would disclose Morris’s intolerable activities.[1310]

II

Monroe was the antithesis of Morris. Where Morris was brilliant, Monroe was dull; where Morris was bubbling with a sense of humor, Monroe had none at all; where Morris was a lover of dinners and dances, Monroe was indifferent; where Morris was a Cavalier, Monroe was a Puritan in his relations with women; where Morris was an aristocrat, Monroe was a democrat; Morris was a monarchist at heart, Monroe, a robust republican; Morris an enemy of the French Revolution, Monroe, a friend. But if Monroe was not scintillating, he was sincere, and if not brilliant, he was industrious.[1311] Soon he was as popular in Paris as Morris had been unpopular—so popular that Jay thought it not beneath his dignity as an American Minister to England to exchange belittling letters with Grenville about him. He had ironed out old differences when the Jay Treaty compromised his position.

No diplomat ever worked under more disheartening handicaps, for the Federalists in Philadelphia hated him, and months went by without a line of instructions or news from the State Department. Meanwhile, Washington was being poisoned against him by Federalist politicians who had his ear, and in the spring of 1796 Madison wrote Monroe that his enemies had ‘been base enough to throw into circulation insinuations that you have launched into all the depths of speculation’ and ‘purchased the magnificent estate of the late Prince of Condé.’[1312] Pickering and Wolcott were planning his recall that spring and writing Hamilton about it.[1313] The latter was easily persuaded.[1314] Some one else should be sent—some one not so friendly to the French. That the leaders of the English party were not averse to giving offense to France is shown in the astounding suggestion that William Smith, spouter of pro-English speeches, written by Hamilton, that had been printed and circulated in England, should be sent.[1315] It required no blundering by Monroe to pave the way for his recall—the politicians were sparing him that trouble.

He had officially informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs that Jay was not to negotiate a commercial treaty, and would sign none that was in conflict with the Franco-American Treaty—because those were his instructions. When, with rumors to the contrary flying over Paris, on the completion of the treaty, he had, on the strength of a solemn and utterly false assurance from Jay, reiterated that there was no conflict. When the document reached Paris, the French were bitterly resentful and Monroe was discredited and crippled. Even so, he probably prevented a declaration of war by representing that such a course would throw America into the arms of England—and this was charged against him by those Federalist leaders who sought war. Then he was recalled; and at the farewell audience an offensive speech by the French official, which Monroe unpardonably failed to resent, gave his enemies more ammunition.

III

With the refusal to receive Pinckney, the crisis came. To the war hawks it was a golden hour—war and no negotiations. Pickering and Wolcott fumed over the suggestion of an extraordinary mission. Hamilton, the sanest and most prescient of them all, realizing the importance of a united country in case of war, proposed sending an embassy of three, including one Jeffersonian of distinction. For almost five months a spirited debate of the leaders continued. In January, Hamilton had written Washington urging an extraordinary mission, including Madison, to conciliate the French, with Pinckney, who was not distasteful to them, and George Cabot, to moderate the Gallicism of the other two, to supply commercial information, and to represent the friends of the Administration.[1316] Two months later, in a similar recommendation to McHenry, he proposed Jefferson instead of Madison, and Jay in the place of Cabot. Then he would have a day of fasting and prayer for the opening of Congress, an embargo, an increase in the revenue, the use of convoys, and qualified letters of marque for merchantmen to arm and defend themselves.[1317] The same day he wrote the same suggestion for Pickering.[1318]

It was at this juncture that Hamilton began to run foul of the pro-English war craze of Pickering, who questioned the plan because the Democrats favored it. All the more reason for it, replied Hamilton. Unhappily, there was a prevalent feeling that the Administration wanted war and this should be counteracted.[1319] To Wolcott, he wrote in the same strain the next day.[1320] Even the usually pliant Wolcott was in rebellious mood and replied with an attack on Madison as a frequenter of M. Adet’s parties, whom that Minister wished sent, and who would wreck the negotiations, and ‘throw the disgrace of failure on the friends of the Government.’[1321] Clearly it was time for Hamilton to assume his imperial manner, and he did, in a sharp rebuke to his protégé against ‘passions that prevent the pliancy to circumstances which is sometimes indispensable.’ Then ‘what risk can attend sending Madison, if combined, as I propose, with Pinckney and Cabot,’ he added.[1322] Realizing now the importance of bringing up his congressional reserves, he wrote to William Smith by the same mail.[1323]

The insurgency against the plans of the Federalist chief was now in full blast. Tracy was writing Wolcott—‘No man will be sent on this business but a decided Federalist.’[1324] Jeremiah Smith having informed Cabot of the dispute, the latter wrote Wolcott that he could see no possibility of finding new messengers ‘with the expectation that they will not be kicked.’[1325] The same day—less circumspect outside Administration circles—he wrote Jeremiah Smith that a new embassy ‘would be disgraceful.’[1326] Ames had been won over by Hamilton, but the day after the extra session began, Cabot wrote Wolcott that his mind was ‘still as unsatisfied as at first.’[1327] Four days before the session opened, Hamilton was bringing pressure to bear on Pickering, declaring the mission ‘indispensable to silence the Jacobin criticism and promote union among ourselves.’ But by this time he had changed the personnel of his mission—Rufus King, rabidly pro-English, should be sent with Pinckney and Jefferson.[1328] Meanwhile, McHenry was receiving letters from Maryland Federalists urging war,[1329] but Hamilton’s masterful methods had won the Cabinet, and when Adams took the opinions of the Ministers he received replies that had been dictated, and, in the case of McHenry, written in large part, by the Federalist chief.[1330]

All the while Adams had been receiving volunteered advice, though it does not appear that Hamilton thought it worth while to communicate with him direct. He had received a letter from Knox urging Jefferson because of the compliment that would be implied in his rank. This touched Adams where he was ticklish. ‘The circumstance of rank is too much,’ he replied. ‘What would have been thought in Europe if the King of France had sent Monsieur, his eldest brother, as an envoy? What of the King of England if he had sent the Prince of Wales? Mr. Jefferson is in a sense in the same situation. He is the first prince of the country, and the heir apparent to the sovereign authority.’[1331] Ah, ‘Bonny Johnny,’ lucky that this letter did not fall into the hands of Bache with its references to the ‘prince’ and the ‘heir apparent’!

However, in a discussion of the mission with Jefferson, the President had suggested Madison. The wary Democratic chief received the suggestion with caution, for the experience of Monroe offered little inducement to a Democrat to subject his reputation to the mercies of the man-eating Pickering. Certainly the suggestion received no encouragement. The President and his most dangerous opponent had a friendly chat and parted friends—not soon to meet in conference again. The sage of Monticello had never been more courteous or courtly, the man from Braintree never calmer nor more kindly, but the hour had passed for a coalition. Jefferson was out for scalps, not olive branches.[1332]

Thus the time came when Adams had to take the bit in his mouth in the naming of the envoys. One day Fisher Ames had a long talk with him in urging Cabot, as a compliment to the Northern States, and the next day the envoys were named—with Cabot out. He was eliminated because Adams knew that Talleyrand was familiar with Cabot’s bitter hostility to France, and the President refused thus to ‘gratify the passions of a party.’[1333] That was ominous enough; but when he disregarded the almost unanimous protest of the Hamiltonians and named Elbridge Gerry along with Pinckney and Marshall, the gage of battle was thrown down. From that hour, the high-flying Federalists knew that John Adams would be no man’s man and no man’s parrot. Thus early, the small cloud on the horizon widened and darkened.

The proud old patriot of Braintree had been given a shock on the opening day of the extra session when Senator Tracy spread a lengthy letter before him on the table in the ex-cathedra manner of one disclosing the tablets of Moses. The squat little President read it with rising wrath. It was a letter from Hamilton, setting forth in detail ‘a whole system of instructions for the conduct of the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives.’ He read it through and returned it to Tracy. ‘I really thought the man was in a delirium,’ Adams wrote afterwards.[1334] And the cloud on the horizon grew more ominous.

IV

The opening of the session found the New England Federalists in high glee over the prospects. The correspondence of their leaders discloses their grim determination to have war with France; and if they had failed in their efforts to prevent a renewal of negotiations, they could use the extra session for the spreading of war propaganda. Upon this task they entered with unprecedented arrogance and intolerance.

The Message of Adams was dignified and calm, reviewing the situation, announcing the plans for a new attempt at negotiations, and urging the adoption of defensive measures in the meantime. The first fight came in the framing of the Reply to the Address in the House—and two young brilliant new members forged to the front to assume the aggressive leadership of the war party. The persuasive, polished eloquence of Ames could not be heard, for he was nursing himself in his fine new house at Dedham; nor, on the other side, could the lucid, convincing logic of Madison appear, for he was in retirement in Virginia. Sedgwick had been sent to the Senate, Fitzsimons had been defeated, Murray of Maryland was on his way to The Hague as Minister. On the Democratic side, Gallatin, Giles, and Nicholas of Virginia were to bear the brunt of the battle, and the two new men were to lead the Federalists with an audacity seldom equaled and never surpassed. These two young blades, Harrison Gray Otis of Boston and Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, were in their thirty-second year. The former was strikingly handsome, tall and well proportioned, with coal-black hair, eyes blue and sparkling with vivacity, nose thin and patrician, complexion rosy—his presence in any assembly would have been felt had he remained silent, and he was seldom silent. In dress fastidious, in manners affable, in repartee stinging, in the telling of a story a master of the art: a devotee to pleasure, dinners, dances, and women carried for him an irresistible appeal. His eloquence was of a high order. A thorough aristocrat, he prided himself on having no illusions as to liberty and democracy, and he made no secret of his contempt for the masses. The rising of the French against the ineffable cruelties of the nobility and monarchy merely meant to him an attack of beasts upon the homes and rights of gentlemen. Speedily he became an idol of his party, and he enjoyed the bitter conflicts of the House as keenly as the dinners where he was the life of the party.

Robert Goodloe Harper had much in common with Otis. Like him, Harper was a social lion and a dandy in dress. Of medium height, and with an uncommonly full chest which accentuated his pomposity, he had a handsome head and features, creating withal an impression of physical force and intellectual power. In eloquence he made up in force what he lacked in ornament. He had all of Giles’s bumptiousness without his consistency, and no member of the House approached him in insolence. Coming upon the scene when the conditions seemed ripe for bowling over the Democrats with abuse and intimidation, he fitted into the picture perfectly. Thus he became the outstanding orator against the French. True, four years before, in Charleston, he had paid court to the Jacobins with an assiduity that should have made him blush in later life—but did not. Appealing for membership in an extreme Jacobin society, he had worn the paraphernalia, spouted his harangues on the rights of man, paid his tribute to the Revolution, become the vice-president of the organization—and all he lacked to make him a Camille Desmoulins was a table on the boulevards and a guillotine.[1335] Now a convert to ‘law and order,’ he outstripped the most rabid enemies of the French. From ‘dining almost every day’ in 1793 at the table of the French Consul in Charleston, he passed without embarrassment four years later to the table of Liston, the British Minister.[1336] The rabid democrat had become a rabid aristocrat, and the society of the capital took him to its heart. In social intercourse, he was entertaining, amiable, and pleasing.[1337] Fond of the epicurean feast, expansive in the glow of women’s smiles, he became a social favorite, and his enemies broadly hinted that he was a master in the gentle art of intrigue.

Brilliant, charming men, these two young orators of the war party, and it is easy to imagine the homage of the fashionable ladies when, after their most virulent attacks on the Democrats, they found themselves surrounded in Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room.

Even before Congress met, the premonitions of the coming Terror were in the air. With the impatient Giles, this was intolerable, and he soon retired to fight elsewhere; but Gallatin determined to ignore insults, disregard abuse, and to fight for moderate measures to keep the door open for negotiations. He was of the rare few who can keep their heads in the midst of riots and remain calm in a tempest. For a while he could count on Giles for rough blows at the enemy, on Livingston for eloquence and courage; he would have to rely upon himself for wisdom and the strategy of statesmanship.

V

The Message received, the war party in the House set itself with zest to the framing of a bellicose Reply calculated to compromise the chances for a peaceful accommodation of differences. Nicholas of Virginia, representing the Jeffersonians, proposed a substitute, couched in more conciliatory language, promising a review of the alleged grievances of the French—and this let loose the dogs of war. In presenting his amendment, Nicholas deprecated the Reply as framed because extreme, denunciatory, and provocative and not calculated to assist the embassy the President was sending. In negotiations it would necessarily follow that there would be an examination of the charges made against America by the French.[1338] It irritated Smith of Charleston that the Virginian should be ‘so wonderfully afraid of using language to irritate France,’ albeit he had protested against language that would irritate England when Jay was sailing on his mission.[1339] Otis was weary of references to England’s offenses against American commerce. ‘The English were stimulated to annoy our commerce through apprehension that we were united against them, and the French by a belief that we are divided in their favor.’[1340]

Livingston followed with a brilliant five-hour address, pointing out the flagrant violation of Article XVII of the treaty with France. We had made that treaty upon the basis that free bottoms make free goods, and in the Jay Treaty we had abandoned that ground in the interest of England. Of what was it that the French complained? What but the adoption of the British Order in Council which we had not resented? Even so, she was not justified in her course. That she would recede in negotiations he had no doubt, provided we used ‘language toward her suitable to that liberality which befits a wise and prudent nation.’ He had no apology to offer for his devotion to the cause of France. ‘I could read by the light of the flames that consumed my paternal mansion, by the joy that sparkled in every eye,’ he said, ‘how great were the consequences of her union with America.’[1341] Giles followed, a little more severe on the Federalist discriminations for England against France; and Gallatin closed in a sober, dignified, dispassionate analysis of the phrasing of the amendment to show that it was firm without being offensive.[1342]

Then Harper, with an elaborate speech laboriously wrought in seclusion, entered the debate. The French were intemperately denounced, the Democrats lashed, and Monroe treated with contempt. It was a war speech, prepared as war propaganda, the first of his war speeches to be published and widely circulated throughout the country, and printed and acclaimed in England. Like Smith and Ames before him, he was to have his triumph in Downing Street. The profits of one of his war productions, which had a ‘prodigious sale’ in England, were given to a benevolent society in that country.[1343] The Democrats were infuriated by Harper’s attack, and the ‘Aurora’ truly said that he had ‘unseasonably unmasked the intentions of his party.’[1344] When, about this time, Liston, the British Minister, was seen to tap the orator unceremoniously upon the shoulder while seated at his desk—for Liston was then a familiar figure upon the floor—and to whisper to him, Bache saw red. ‘If the French Minister had acted thus familiarly with Mr. Giles or Mr. Livingston, we should have heard something about French influence.’[1345] Pooh! sneered Fenno in the ‘Gazette,’ Liston was merely reminding Harper of a dinner engagement for that night. ‘Having heard it whispered,’ he added, ‘that Mr. Harper has received an invitation to dinner from another British Agent, the Consul General, we think ourselves bound to mention it.’[1346] Nothing could better illustrate the confident arrogance of the Federalist leaders at this time.

‘I am not for war,’ said Smith of Charleston. ‘I do not believe that the gentleman wishes for peace,’ retorted Gallatin, who had written four days before that ‘Wolcott, Pickering, William Smith, Fisher Ames, and perhaps a few more are disposed to go to war’ and ‘to carry their party any length they please.’[1347] Thus the debate continued until Jonathan Dayton, the Speaker, proposed a substitute amendment that received the support of the Democrats. Seizing upon a passage in Adams’s Message, this commended the President’s decision to seek further negotiations and cherished ‘the hope that a mutual spirit of conciliation and a disposition on the part of the United States to place France on grounds as favorable as other countries in their relations and connection with us, will produce an accommodation compatible with the engagements, rights, duties, and honor of the United States.’[1348] With the Democrats joining the more moderate Federalists under Dayton, the contest was speedily ended to the disgust of the war party. The batteries of scurrility were turned upon the Speaker. ‘A double-faced weather-cock,’ screamed ‘Porcupine’ the Englishman. ‘His duplicity has been too bare-faced for decency. He is, indeed, but a shallow, superficial fellow—a bawler to the galleries, and unfit to play the cunning part he has undertaken.’[1349]

Then, after the heroics, the comedy. Matthew Lyon, a Vermont Democrat and a new member, shocked the formalists with a characterization of the practice of marching in stately procession to the President to present the Reply as ‘a boyish piece of business.’ The time had come to end the silliness. ‘Blood will tell,’ sneered a colleague, referring to Lyon’s humble origin. ‘I cannot say,’ replied Lyon, ‘that I am descended from the bastards of Oliver Cromwell, or his courtiers, or from the Puritans who punish their horses for breaking the Sabbath, or from those who persecuted the Quakers and burned the witches.’[1350] Some chortled, others snorted with rage. Vulgar Irish immigrant! But their wounded culture was soon soothed by a salvo from ‘Porcupine.’ How society must have screamed its delight in reading that Lyon as a child ‘had been caught in a bog, and when a whelp transported to America’; how he had become so ‘domesticated’ that Governor Crittenden’s daughter (his wife) ‘would stroke him and play with him as a monkey’; how ‘his gestures bear a remarkable affinity to the bear’ because of ‘his having been in the habit of associating with that species of wild beast in the mountains.’[1351] The majority of the House, lacking Lyon’s sense of humor, continued for a while their pompous strut through Market Street to read solemnly the meaningless Reply that had consumed weeks of futile debate.

Then Congress proceeded to measures of defense, prohibiting the exportation of arms and ammunition, providing for the strengthening of the coast fortifications, creating a naval armament, authorizing a detachment of militia, and adjourned. But the atmosphere had been one of intense party bitterness which had ostracized the Democrats, from Jefferson down, from the ‘society’ of the ‘best people.’

VI

Mounted, booted, and spurred, and swinging their sabers, the Federalists started out to ride roughshod over their opponents. It was their strategy to attach a stigma to Democrats, and treat them as political outlaws and social outcasts. No one was to be spared—Jefferson least of all. A year before he had written the confidential letter to his friend Philip Mazzei, stating his oft-repeated views on the anti-republican trend in Federalist circles, and saying that men who had been ‘Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council ... had had their heads shorn by the harlot England.’[1352] Sent to an Italian paper, it was translated from Italian into French for a Parisian journal, as we have seen, and thence translated again into English for political purposes in America. The translators had unintentionally taken liberties with the text and in the final translation it was quite different from the original. At last, it seemed, the cautious Jefferson had delivered himself into the hands of his enemies, for had he not attacked Washington? At Alexandria, en route to Philadelphia, Jefferson first learned of the renewed attack in Fenno’s paper. Reaching the capital, he found the vials of wrath let loose upon his head. A politician of less self-possession or finesse would have offered some explanation or defense. None of the courtesies of warfare were to be shown him—he was to be mobbed, his character assailed, his reputation blackened, his personal honor besmirched, and he was to be rejected socially as unfit to associate with the Harpers, Sedgwicks, and Wolcotts. An open letter greeted him in Fenno’s paper on his arrival. ‘For the honor of the American name,’ it read, ‘I would wish the letter to be a forgery, although I must confess that your silence ... leaves but little probability of its not having proceeded from you.’[1353] Jefferson ignored it. ‘You are the author of the abominable letter to Mazzei,’ ran a second open letter. ‘Your silence is complete evidence of your guilt.’[1354] ‘Slanderer of Washington!’ ‘Assassin!’ ‘Liar!’—and Jefferson was silent.

Knowing the curative powers of time and patience, it was not until in August that he consulted Madison and Monroe as to his course. ‘Reply,’ urged the impulsive Monroe, ‘honest men will be encouraged by your owning and justifying the letter.’ Madison advised against it as more apt to give a ‘gratification and triumph’ to his foes.[1355] ‘Character assassin!’ ‘Libeler of Washington!’ ‘Atheist!’ ‘Anarchist!’ ‘Liar!’—these characterizations buzzed through the streets and in the drawing-rooms—and Jefferson was silent.

Then an attack from a new angle. In his ‘Notes on Virginia,’ published years before, in paying tribute to the red men and the eloquence of Logan, an Indian chief, he had referred to a Colonel Cresap as ‘a man infamous for the many murders he had committed on these much injured people.’ When the mass attack on Jefferson was at its height, a long open letter to him appeared in ‘Porcupine’s Gazette’ from the brilliant, erratic, and usually intoxicated Luther Martin, known as ‘the Federalist bull-dog,’ demanding Jefferson’s authority in the name of ‘two amiable daughters who are directly descended from that man whose character your pen ... had endeavored to stigmatize with indelible infamy.’ This had been preceded by no personal note and was manifestly a part of the political plot to wreck him—and he was silent.[1356] Time and again Martin returned to the attack in long open letters, to be ignored utterly as though he were as inconsequential as a ragpicker instead of being the leader of the Maryland Bar.[1357] ‘The mean and cowardly conduct of Mr. Jefferson,’ growled ‘Porcupine.’[1358]

An open season now for shooting at the Democratic leader, all the snipers were busy with their guns. At Harvard College, on Washington’s Birthday, there was a toast to Jefferson: ‘May he exercise his elegant literary talents for the benefit of the world in some retreat, secure from the troubles and danger of political life’—and the Federalist papers gloated over it.[1359] Bache was seen entering Jefferson’s rooms, and a Gallic conspiracy loomed before the affrighted vision of Fenno. ‘The brat may gasp,’ he promised, ‘but it will surely die in the infamy of its parents.’[1360] Jefferson a man of the people? snorted ‘Porcupine.’ ‘So is the swindling bankrupt Charles Fox who is continually vilifying his own government and stands ready to sell his country to France.’[1361] Nothing angered ‘Porcupine’ more than Jefferson’s suggestion in his ‘Notes on Virginia’ that British freedom had crossed the Atlantic. Freedom would live in England, he growled, when Jefferson’s ‘head will be rotting cheek by jowl with that of some toil-killed negro slave,’ and when nothing would be remembered of Jefferson ‘save thy cruel, unprovoked, and viperous slander of the family of Cresap.’[1362] And Jefferson was silent.

Philadelphia was a city of but seventy-five thousand people. The papers were generally read, or their contents were at any rate the talk of the town. They formed the topic for ladies at their teas. Their husbands were sulphurous in their attacks at the breakfast table. And Jefferson became, in the fashionable circles, a moral monster unfit to drink whiskey with a roué of the morally bankrupt French nobility at the table of the Binghams. He was ostracized. It was at this time that he wrote Edward Rutledge that ‘men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest they be obliged to touch their hats.’[1363] To his daughter Martha, he wrote of his disgust with the ‘jealousies, the hatreds and the malignant passions,’[1364] and of the ‘politics and party hatreds [that] seem like salamanders to consider fire as their element.’[1365]

Under these conditions he dropped out of the social life of the capital. In the evenings he consulted with his political associates; during the day he presented a calm, unruffled complacency to his enemies in the Senate over whom he presided with scrupulous impartiality. Driven from society, he found consolation in the little rooms of the Philosophical Society, among the relics of his friends Rittenhouse and Franklin.

With such abuse visited on Jefferson, it is easy to imagine the fate of his less important friends. Sam Adams was the laughing-stock of the silk stockings. Franklin was considered as base as Jefferson. ‘Some person left at my house this morning a copy of Old Franklin’s works, or rather plagiarisms,’ wrote ‘Porcupine.’ ‘I look upon everything which this unclean old fellow had a hand in to be contaminated and contaminating,’[1366] and the time was to come when a Federalist mob raging through the streets of Philadelphia would throw rocks through Bache’s windows and besmear Franklin’s statue with mud. Tom Paine, always a fair mark, was written down in print as a libertine. ‘Porcupine’s Gazette,’ which was the favorite journal in the cultured homes of the pure at heart, had a story that Paine had been ‘caught on his knees at a lady’s feet by her husband,’ and had explained that he was ‘only measuring your lady for stays,’ at which the delighted husband ‘kissed and thanked him for his politeness.’[1367] Because John Swanwick, a popular young Philadelphia merchant, had cast his lot with the Democrats, blocked the plans at the meeting of the merchants on the Jay Treaty, and defeated Fitzsimons for Congress, he was venomously assailed. When he toasted ‘The Rights of Women’ at a Democratic banquet, ‘Porcupine’ sneered that he did well ‘to turn out a volunteer,’ for ‘no lady will ever give a bounty for his services.’[1368] That he was a conscienceless rascal may be inferred from ‘Porcupine’s’ suggestion that his ‘consummate wisdom and patriotism’ had been shown, when, in the legislature, he had ‘sought to procure a law preventing imprisonment for debt.’[1369] Fatally ill at the time, ‘Porcupine’ followed him with indecent sneers to his grave.[1370]

Nor were even the Democratic women spared, and the Federalists’ favorite journal sneered repeatedly at the wife of Justice M’Kean. ‘Why is Mrs. M’Kean like a taylor? Because she trims her good man’s jacket.’[1371] ‘I have no objections to their toasting Judge M’Kean’—at a banquet—‘but the unmannerly brutes might have added his lady.’[1372] Even the Judge’s famously beautiful daughter was not spared, and during her courtship by the Spanish Minister, Don Carlos de Yrujo, the fashionable circles were snickering behind their fans over ‘Porcupine’s’ comment that ‘what were his motives in commencing the suit we shall leave our readers to divine.’[1373] Giles was ‘Farmer Giles,’ who descended ‘from the lowest grade of gentleman’—‘a gambler at heart’—devotee of the race-track, and ‘the infamous faro table.’[1374] Monroe was infamous, and even gentle, cultured old Dr. Logan, ’neath whose magnificent trees at ‘Stenton’ Mrs. Washington had passed delightful afternoons, became a cross between a clown and a rascal. No Democrat was spared.

The Democrats, overwhelmed, were comparatively tame, but the publication of Hamilton’s pamphlet on his relations with Mrs. Reynolds, necessitated as he foolishly thought by the book of the notorious Callender, made him an easy mark for the Democratic scandal-mongers. In July he had appeared in Philadelphia to secure affidavits from Monroe and Muhlenberg—‘an attestation,’ as Bache phrased it, ‘of his having cuckolded James Reynolds.’ It was understood that ‘his man Oliver [Wolcott] had made out an affidavit as long as your arm,’ but that others were desired ‘to patch up the threads and fragments of his character.’ Soon, said Bache, ‘our ex-Secretary expects to be brought to bed of his pamphlet containing love-sick epistles.’[1375] When it was printed three months later, Bache published a letter from New York to the effect that it had appeared in the morning ‘and at six o’clock in the evening the town rings with it.’ But ‘the women cry out against it as if its publication was high treason against the rights of women.’[1376]

It was impossible for the ostracism of Democrats, however, to blur the social brilliancy of the season. Pinckney found his evenings crowded ‘with plays, public and private,’ and his dinner invitations ‘abundant.’[1377] Subscription dances, brilliant dinners every night, elaborate entertainments, a giddy whirl. The diplomats were particularly lavish, none so much so as Liston, the British Minister, at whose table Otis, Harper, Sedgwick, Wolcott were frequent guests, and he was on terms of such familiarity with the President that they sometimes strolled together in the streets. But everywhere in the fashionable houses the Jeffersonians were excluded, if not by lack of invitation, by the offensive coldness of their reception. The play-houses were packed, albeit the entertainment was sometimes so vulgar and obscene that fathers indignantly left with their daughters.[1378] Everywhere politics was on a rampage, and even at the dinner table of President Adams the passions seethed. ‘By God, I would rather see this world annihilated,’ shouted Blair McClanachan, ‘than see this country united with Great Britain.’[1379] ‘I dine next Tuesday at Court,’ wrote Gallatin to his wife, ‘Courtland dining there the other day heard Her Majesty, as she was asking the names of different members of Congress of Hindman, being told of some of the aristocratic party, say, “Ah, that is one of OUR people.” So that she is Mrs. President, not of the United States, but of a faction.’[1380]

VII

This rabid spirit was not a little inspired by the press, which, in turn, was encouraged by the politicians. A new Knight of Scurrility had entered the lists, encouraged by Hamilton, armed with a pen that flowed poison. He had previously distinguished himself by his brilliant and abusive pamphlets attacking Priestley, the Democratic Societies, and the Irish, and by his exhibition in his shop window of pictures of George III and Lord North, with Franklin and Sam Adams coupled with fools or knaves. His unlimited capacity for abuse, his insane fury against the French Revolution, his unfathomable contempt for democracy, his devotion to England, fitted in with the spirit of society, and William Cobbett launched his ‘Porcupine’s Gazette’ under the most distinguished patronage. In his first issue, in an open letter to Bache, he had described the ‘Aurora’ as a ‘vehicle of lies and sedition.’ This was his keynote. Soon the Federalists were reading ‘Porcupine’ as a Bible, and the editors were making journalism a matter of blackguardism, of black eyes and bloody noses. In blood and breeding, Cobbett was inferior to Freneau, Bache, or Duane, but he was a more consummate master of satire than any of them. He could string chaste words into a scorpion lash that Swift would have envied, or stoop to an obscenity and vulgarity that would have delighted Kit Marlowe in his cups. None but a genius could have risen from his original low estate, with so little education. But a little while before a corporal in the British army, and still a citizen of England, his English biographer makes the point that the happiest days of his life were those when he edited the Federalists’ favorite journal because ‘he was fighting for his country.’[1381] Nothing pleased him more than to lash and lambaste the old heroes of the American Revolution, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and Sam Adams, and he could not only do it with impunity, but to the applause of society. Fenno sought to keep pace, in his weak way, and Bache tried to match him in abuse. The fur flew. There were physical assaults and rumors of assaults. The time was approaching when Bache would have to barricade himself with a few armed friends in his office to protect his life and property from the destruction of a Federalist mob; when he would be set upon by ruffians and beaten, and when he would exchange blows with Fenno in the street. ‘The white-livered, black-hearted thing Bache, that public pest and bane of decency,’ wrote ‘Porcupine,’ and the ladies of Mrs. Bingham’s circle agreed that Mr. Cobbett was tremendously clever.[1382]

It was a feverish summer, fall, and winter. Public dinners were the fashion, bristling with fighting toasts. Through these the Jeffersonians sought to keep up the courage of their party. Always toasts to the French Republic, and always toasts to the Irish patriots—‘May the Irish harp be speedily torn from the British willow and made to vibrate to a revolutionary tune.’ References to Jay’s Treaty were followed by the playing of ‘The Dead March.’ Franklin, Jefferson, Monroe—these were invariably honored.[1383] The Federalists penetrated the Jeffersonian stronghold of Philadelphia with a banquet at the Cameron Tavern, Southwark, with warlike toasts, and with Harper as the hero,[1384] and a few days later the ‘young men’ of this district met to pass ringing resolutions endorsing the ‘wisdom and integrity’ of the Administration. One courageous soul moved to strike out the word ‘wisdom,’ and the crowd struck him out instead; whereupon a few gathered about and cheered for Jefferson.[1385]

But the most notable banquet was in honor of Monroe in Philadelphia. Reaching the city, the former Minister to France left the boat with Mrs. Monroe, to be summarily ordered back by the health officers until he had ‘undergone the usual formalities of examination.’ Short shrift for Democrats was the order of the day, and the returning Minister of his Government to another nation returned with his wife to remain on board until ‘examined.’ Such was the morbid madness of the Federalists of this period that it was considered a triumph for the Administration to hold the former Minister and his wife with the immigrants. ‘Porcupine’ roared with glee in his best barrack-room manner.[1386] When finally released, Monroe went into conference immediately with Jefferson, Gallatin, and Burr, and for two hours the leaders listened to a detailed story of his mission. Gallatin, who had refrained up to this time from expressing an opinion on Monroe’s conduct, was convinced, from his conversation, ‘manner, and everything,’ that he was ‘possessed of integrity superior to all attacks of malignity,’ and had conducted himself ‘with irreproachable honor and the most dignified sense of duty.’ When the conference was over, Gallatin, at least, felt that the ‘Administration have acted with a degree of meanness only exceeded by their folly.’[1387]

This became the view of the Jeffersonians generally. A dinner was given at O’Eller’s Hotel, with General Horatio Gates in the chair. There was Jefferson, and there, too, were Burr, Livingston, Gallatin, Tazewell, Judge M’Kean, the Governor, and fifty members of Congress. With enthusiasm they drank to the freedom of Ireland, and on the invitation of Gates they lifted their glasses with cheers to ‘Charles James Fox and the Patriots of England’—a frequently recurring Jeffersonian toast of the times. Livingston proposed—‘Monroe, the virtuous citizen, who, to keep the peace of the country, refuses to do justice to himself.’ Monroe responded in a brief speech, unexceptionable in every way, but Gallatin predicted, in a letter to his wife, that ‘Porcupine & Co. will roundly abuse us.’[1388] And Gallatin was right, for that was ‘Porcupine’s’ business. ‘At some tavern in the city,’ ran the ‘Porcupine’ account, ‘a most ludicrous farce called “The Welcome of Citizen Monroe” was performed. The principal characters were the Virginia Philosopher, Mrs. M’Kean’s husband, and Monsieur Citizen Tazewell of the ancient dominion commonly called the Land of Debts.’[1389] Livingston was wrong, however, in his notion that Monroe would remain silent. Urged on by the Jeffersonians, he prepared a defense which was given a nation-wide circulation through the exertions of his fellow partisans.[1390] Jefferson was satisfied, the Federalists enraged. ‘A wicked misrepresentation of the facts,’ though ‘many applaud it,’ wrote Wolcott.[1391]