Jefferson and Hamilton

VIII

It began in the summer of 1798 and extended through the autumn of 1800. The growing sentiment for democracy and the increasing popularity of Jefferson were maddening to the Federalists, who fared forth to destroy both with a club. The Alien and Sedition Laws were to be used for the purpose. Democrats, from the highest to the most lowly, were to be proscribed and treated with contempt. The New England clergy, for the most part, entered heartily into the plan. The colleges joined. So openly partisan became the institutions of learning that the Jeffersonian press opened their batteries upon the ‘arbitrary spirit which has been exposed in the eastern seminaries.’[1519] With much ceremony Doctors’ Degrees were being bestowed upon Federalist politicians, and Pickering and Wolcott were made Doctors of Law. ‘Except Timothy’s vulgar diplomacy who ever heard of the qualifications in him?’ asked the irreverent Duane, and while ‘Oliver has dabbled in politics and glittered in prose’ ‘he would never have been discovered by the savants had he not been in the Cabinet of a New England President.’[1520] Other Federalist politicians were thus given the disguise of scholarship, but Jefferson, President of the Philosophical Society, and friend of Franklin and Rittenhouse, received no degrees.

Very early, gangs of self-proclaimed patriots sallied forth into the country to tear down the liberty poles erected by the Democrats, armed with pistols and swords, and clattering over the country roads like Cossacks on a rampage. One of these gangs under the leadership of a Philip Strubling, operating in Berks County, Pennsylvania, had a triumphant career, except where armed men showed fight, when the gallant band found discretion the better part of valor.[1521] This sort of outrage was being committed all over the country. Plans were made to wreck the printing plant of Duane until it was found that his friends had armed for defense, and the editor warned the conspirators that an attempt at violence ‘would carry public vengeance to their firesides.’[1522]

When thwarted in their plans against the leaders, the terrorists turned upon the weak and lowly, demanding the discharge of Jeffersonian artisans employed in the manufacture of war material. Out with them! ‘It is a notorious fact,’ complained Fenno, ‘that a number of artisans ... are of politics destructive of the Constitution.’[1523] Everywhere, in the pulpits of political preachers, from the Bench of Federal Judges, through the press and on the streets, men were beating upon the tom-toms arousing the apprehensions of the people; and when, one night, some pirates, sentenced to execution, escaped from the Philadelphia jail, the clatter of the mounted soldiers in pursuit was enough to fill the streets with affrighted people. The Germans of Northampton were marching on the city with pitchforks. The soldiers were out after Duane, whispered others, and armed Democrats rushed to the rescue. At length the fever subsided and order was restored. ‘Nothing more serious than the disturbance of love-making,’ said the

‘Aurora.’[1524] These were minor incidents—the background for the real terror to come. Judges were terrorizing the people with wild charges to grand juries.[1525] The Right Reverend Bishop White of Philadelphia was preaching piously and patriotically from the text: ‘Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no purpose but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whoso therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.’[1526] The Administration organ in New York was laying down the dictum: ‘When a man is heard to inveigh against the Sedition Law, set him down as one who would submit to no restraint which is calculated for the peace of society. He deserves to be suspected.’[1527] And Timothy Pickering was nervously peering through his spectacles over Jeffersonian papers seeking some phrase on which a prosecution for sedition could be brought, and prodding the district attorneys to action. ‘Heads, more heads!’ screamed Marat from his tub. ‘Heads, more heads!’ echoed Pickering from his office.

CHAPTER XVII

THE REIGN OF TERROR

Then the Terror began to work in earnest. There was a fairly respectable jail at Rutland where the trial was held, but not for Lyon. There was something worse at Vergennes, forty miles away, a loathsome pen in a miserable little town of sixty houses, and thither he was ordered. Refusing his request to return to his house for some papers, he was ordered to mount a horse, and with two troopers with pistols, riding behind, the forty-mile journey through the wilderness was made. At Vergennes they pushed him into a cell, sixteen by twelve, ordinarily used for common felons of the lowest order. In one corner was a toilet emitting a sickening stench. A half-moon door opened on the corridor, through which his coarse food was passed. Through a window with heavy iron bars he got some light. There was no stove and the cold of autumn nights came in through the window. When it became dangerously chilly, the prisoner put on his overcoat and paced the cell. He was refused pen and paper until the indignation of the public forced a concession. A visitor peering through the half-moon of the door a little later would have seen a table strewn with paper, Volney’s ‘Ruins,’ some Messages of the President.

Meanwhile the Vermont hills were aflame with fury. The Green Mountain Boys, the Minute Men, the soldiers who, with Lyon, had followed Ethan Allen, were talking of tearing the jail down. Then, from the filthy, foul-smelling hole, into which the Federalists had thrown a member of Congress, came letters from the ‘convict,’ brave, cheerful letters, exhorting these men to observe the law. One day, however, Lyon was forced to plead through the iron bars of his window for the furious mob without to seek redress legally at the polls. Thus popular resentment increased with the growth of the prisoner’s popularity. Thousands of the yeomanry of Vermont signed a petition for a pardon and sent it to Adams, who refused to receive it. Aha, ‘the despicable, cringing, fawning puppy!’ exulted Fenno.[1528] The indignation of the yeomanry of Vermont now blazed high. The Administration was amazed, almost appalled. When this ‘convict’ in a hideous cell was nominated for Congress, there were not jails enough in Vermont for the talkers of ‘sedition.’ He was elected overwhelmingly with 4576 votes to 2444 for his nearest competitor.

Again the terrorists consulted on plans to thwart the public will. His term was about to expire, but where would this pauper get a thousand dollars? True, the farmers, the comrades of the Revolution, were going into their pockets to get the money—but a thousand dollars! Still there was a chance. The Marshal summoned Federalist lawyers to go over Lyon’s letters and find more sedition on which he could be arrested on emerging from the jail. His triumphant election was more than the terrorists could bear. ‘Must our national councils be again disgraced by that vile beast?’ asked their New York organ.[1529] Meanwhile, the problem of the fine was being solved. The eyes of the Nation were on that dirty little cell at Vergennes. Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, John Taylor of Caroline, Senator Mason of Virginia—he who had given the Jay Treaty to the ‘Aurora’—and Apollis Austen, a wealthy Vermont Democrat, were solving the problem of the fine. On the day of Lyon’s delivery, the Virginia Senator rode into the village, his saddle-bags bulging with a thousand and more in gold. There he met Austen with a strong-box containing more than a thousand in silver. Mason paid the money.

Before the jail had assembled a vast multitude. Out of the door rushed Lyon. ‘I am on my way to Philadelphia!’—to Congress, he shouted. A roar went up, a procession with a flag in front was formed, and the ‘convict’ was on his way triumphantly. The school children at Tinmouth paraded in his honor, and a youthful orator greeted him with a welcome to ‘our brave Representative who has been suffering for us under an unjust sentence, and the tyranny of a detested understrapper of despotism.’ The woods reverberated with shouts. Then on moved the procession. At Bennington, another ovation, more speeches. Seated in a sleigh, his wife beside him, Lyon was escorted by the throng. At times the procession was twelve miles long. Through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the ovations were repeated. He had gone home to the tune of ‘The Rogue’s March’; he returned by the same route to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle.’[1530]

II

The terrorists ground their teeth and sought revenge—with nothing too petty. The Reverend John C. Ogden dared to be a Democrat and to carry the petition for Lyon to Philadelphia. Thenceforth he was a marked man. He was in debt—and a debt would serve. Returning from Philadelphia, he was arrested at Litchfield, Connecticut, and thrown into jail. ‘It is presumed,’ sneered Major Russell of the Boston ‘Centinel,’ ‘that Lyon when he goes from his jail to Congress will at least sneak into Litchfield to pay a visit to his envoy and take a petition from him to the Vice-President [Jefferson].’[1531] But jail was too good for such a rascal. On his release a crowd of soldiers followed him out of Litchfield, calling him ‘a damn Democrat,’ abusing, insulting, collaring, shaking him. It was their purpose to take him back to Litchfield and scourge him in public. Whirling him around, the gallant soldiers started back. Meanwhile, the report had spread that the heroic remnant of the army had set forth on a mobbing expedition, and a party of Democrats and civilians mounted horses and rushed to the rescue. The courage of the soldiers, so splendid in the presence of one man, oozed out on the approach of the rescuers, and Ogden was released.[1532]

III

But Ogden was not the only victim of the terrorists, among the friends of Lyon. Anthony Haswell, born in England, a man of education, who had seen service in the army of Washington and had narrowly escaped death at Monmouth, was editor of the ‘Vermont Gazette.’ A gentleman of amiability and integrity, his popularity was great in Vermont—but he was a Jeffersonian. One day the sleuths of the Terror, scanning the pages of Democratic papers, found an appeal in Haswell’s ‘Gazette’ for funds to pay the fine of Lyon. It referred to the ‘loathsome prison,’ to the marshal as ‘a hard-hearted savage, who has, to the disgrace of Federalism, been elevated to a station where he can satiate his barbarity on the misery of his victims.’ It was a faithful portrait. But in concluding, the article charged that the Administration had declared worthy of the confidence of the Government the Tories ‘who had shared in the desolation of our homes and the abuse of our wives and daughters.’

Thus, one night there was a hammering on the door of Haswell’s house, and he was confronted by petty officials and notified to prepare for a journey to Rutland in the early morning. In feeble health, and unaccustomed to riding, he was forced to mount a horse for the sixty-mile ride to the capital. Through a cold October rain the sick man jolted along in misery through the day, and it was near midnight when the town was reached. With his clothing soaked, he begged permission to spend the night at a hotel where he could dry it. This was curtly refused. At midnight they pushed the sick man in wet clothing into a cell. Responsible men of Rutland begged permission to go security to the end that the editor might spend the night in decent quarters—it was denied. The next morning he was hurried to trial at Windsor before Judge Paterson who, on the Bench, continued to be a New Jersey politician. The defense introduced evidence to prove the charge of brutality against the marshal, and asked the Court for permission to summon McHenry and General Drake of Virginia to prove that on one occasion the Administration had acknowledged the policy of occasionally appointing Tories to office. The Court refused permission; and having refused, Paterson declared in the charge that ‘no attempt had been made at justification’ of the reference to Tories. The jury was probably packed. The verdict was promptly rendered—guilty of sedition. And Haswell was sent to jail for two months. On the day of the expiration of his sentence, a great throng assembled at the prison to testify to their regard for Haswell and their contempt for the Sedition Law and its sponsors. When the editor appeared at the door, the band played while the crowd sang:

It was all too evident that, despite the Sedition Law, there were ‘Yankee Doodles’ to ‘keep it up’ too numerous for the jails.

IV

The enforcement of the law in Massachusetts offered comedy, tragedy, and farce—with at least one hero among the victims. There was something of pathos even in the farce. An illiterate and irresponsible soldier of the Revolution, David Brown, was wandering about the country reading and distributing some foolish compositions of his own that were incomprehensible in their incoherency. It was possible to detect some dissatisfaction with the Administration, however. His was the grievance of many others of the ragged Continentals of the ranks. He was a Democrat. Fisher Ames, who was not a soldier, though old enough to have been one, was outraged and alarmed over the foolish fellow’s activities, and pretended to believe that he was one of the Jeffersonian ‘runners sent everywhere to blow the trumpet of sedition.’ He wrote Gore, who had grown rich buying up the paper of the private soldiers, of this ‘vagabond ragged fellow, who lurked about in Dedham telling everybody the sins and enormities of the government.’ Ames understood that he ‘knew of my speculating connection with you;[1533] and how I had made my immense wealth.’[1534] Finally he participated in the erection of a liberty pole at Dedham bearing among its inscriptions the sinister words, ‘No Stamp Tax, No Sedition.’ The authorities pounced upon him as legitimate prey.

The next scene was laid in the courtroom in Boston. On the Bench sat the fat, red-faced Chase, like an avenging angel who looked too often on the wine when it was red. It was solemnly proved that Brown had writings of his own hostile to the Administration policies; that he had paid to have the inscription painted for the pole at Dedham; and that in the presence of forty or fifty dangerous farmers he had been seen holding the ladder while another ascended to nail the board on. There was no defense. Chase glowered on the miserable illiterate, and, reminding him that he was at the mercy of the Court, demanded the names of the miscreants who had subscribed to his writings. Brown refused to betray the imaginary men higher up, and Chase fined him four hundred dollars and sent him to jail for a year and a half. Working entirely on his own initiative, the unhappy wretch was buried in a cell and all but forgotten. The Federalist papers recorded his conviction with gusto, albeit with sorrow that such things could be. After sixteen months, he sent a pitiful petition to Adams asking for a pardon, but it was refused. In February, 1801, he sent a second petition, which was ignored. After spending two years in a cell, he was pardoned by Jefferson.[1535] This trial was a farce.

V

Followed then the comedy. Among the desperate characters who had assisted in the pole-raising at Dedham was Richard Fairbanks. A thoroughly decent citizen, he was arrested and dragged tremblingly into court. Most of the victims of the Sedition Law were unrepentant and defiant, but Fairbanks was full of remorse. There may have been a bit of cunning in his confession of past wickedness and his profession of conversion. At any rate, the scene in court was not so threatening. True, the stern-faced Chase looked down from the Bench, but there in the room, ready to plead for mercy, was Fisher Ames. The charge was read, confessed, and up rose Ames. Not, however, as a paid attorney did he appear, but there was something to be said in extenuation for Fairbanks. He realized ‘how heinous an offense it was.’ He had promised to be a good citizen in the future. ‘His character has not been blemished in private life,’ the orator said, ‘and I do not know that he is less a man of integrity and benevolence than others. He is a man of rather warm and irritable temperament, too credulous, too sudden in his impressions.’ He had been seduced by the ‘inflammatory sophistry’ of the illiterate Brown. ‘Besides,’ continued Ames, in his most virtuous tones, ‘men in office have not been wanting to second Brown and to aggravate the bad opinion of the government and the laws.... The men who had Mr. Fairbanks’ confidence and abused it are more blameable than he. A newspaper has also chiefly circulated there which has a pestilent influence.’ Thus he had bad advice. ‘Although Mr. Fairbanks was influenced like the rest and was criminal in the affair of the sedition pole he had no concern in the contrivance. He ... has freely confessed his fault and promised to be in future a good citizen.’ Having attacked the Jeffersonians in Congress and out, and denounced ‘The Aurora’ or ‘Independent Chronicle,’ and implied that Fairbanks would vote and talk right in the future, Ames sat down; and just as solemnly Chase, commenting that ‘one object of punishment, reformation, has been accomplished,’ fined him five dollars and sent him to jail for six hours. Whereupon we may imagine Chase and Ames felicitating themselves on having scared the Democratic and Jeffersonian devils out of one sinner.

This was comedy.

VI

The tragedy in Massachusetts was reserved for a more important person—the editor of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ Thomas Adams, who was printing one of the most powerful Jeffersonian papers in the country. He had published an attack on the denunciation of the Virginia Resolutions by the Massachusetts Legislature.[1536] The Essex Junto had been seeking a chance at the throat of the editor. His paper had been keenly searched for some excuse for action under the Sedition Law. In the autumn of 1798 he had been arrested and the effect had been provoking. In announcing his arrest, Adams had promised his readers a full report of the trial, and pledged himself to ‘always support the rights of the people and the liberty of the press, agreeable to the sacred charter of the Constitution.’[1537] When, four days later, he reported the postponement of his trial, he was able to ‘thank our new subscribers whose patriotism has led them to support the freedom of the press since the late persecution.’[1538]

The political persecution of Adams had in no wise intimidated him. Every issue of his paper was a clarion call to the faithful. If anything, he raised his banner a little higher. The public, looking upon his arrest as tyrannical and outrageous, rallied around him as never before. Eleven days after his arrest, he reported an ‘unprecedented increase in circulation,’ and pledged himself to carry on the fight. Not without point did he quote, ‘A free press will maintain the majesty of the people,’ for, as he explained, ‘this was originally written by John Adams, President of the United States, for Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette when British Excises, Stamp Acts, Land Taxes, and Arbitrary Power threatened this country with poverty and destruction.’[1539] Courageous though he was, the persecution drained the editor’s weakened vitality, and he was confined to his bed in a country house near Boston when the attack on the Massachusetts Legislature was published. Though too ill to be dragged into court, he was not too ill to announce the second phase of the persecution in the language of defiance. Double-spacing the announcement to make it stand out like a challenge, he said: ‘The Chronicle is destined to persecution.... It will stand or fall with the liberties of America, and nothing shall silence its clarion but the extinction of every principle which leads to the achievement of our independence.’[1540] Because the editor could not be dragged from a sick bed, Abijah Adams, the bookkeeper, was arrested on the ground that he had sold the papers and therefore published the ‘libel.’

Chief Justice Dana presided at the trial—as intolerant, politically, but not as stupid and coarse as Chase. The prosecution based its action on the common law of England, which the defense declared inconsistent with the Constitution of Massachusetts, and hostile to the spirit of the American Government. Dana rose to the occasion, not only attacking Adams’s lawyers from the Bench, but assailing them through the press.[1541] The result was inevitable. A verdict of guilt was promptly reached, and Dana made the most of his opportunity in sentencing the criminal. The defendant’s lawyers were denounced for ‘propagating principles’ as ‘dangerous as those of the article on which the indictment was based.’ Since the editor would not give up the name of the author of the offensive article, Adams would have to suffer, and he was sentenced to jail for thirty days, ordered to pay costs, and to give bond for good behavior for a year. So shocking was the spirit of Dana in passing sentence that he was challenged in the ‘Chronicle’ to publish his speech.[1542] Adams editorially denounced the application of the common law of England as ‘inconsistent with republican principles contemplated and avowed in our Constitution, and inapplicable to the spirit and nature of our institutions,’[1543] and promised ‘a regular supply of the papers.’ ‘The Editor is on a bed of languishment, and the bookkeeper in prison, yet the cause of liberty will be supported amid these distressing circumstances.’

The ‘convict’ was hurried off to jail, and into a damp, unhealthy cell where his feeble constitution threatened to succumb, until an indignant protest from without forced the jailer to transfer him to a better. The friends who flocked to see him were forced to convey their consolations through double-grated doors. Day by day the paper went to press, its spirit not one whit diminished. With the editor sinking under disease and the anticipated wreckage of his property, and the bookkeeper sick in jail and distressed over the condition of his wife and children, the fight was waged with undiminished vigor.[1544] One day old Samuel Adams, his Revolutionary spirit ablaze, flaunted his respect for the editor and his contempt for the persecutors, by stalking to the jail and expressing his admiration through the bars.[1545] That day Adams’s prison doors were opened and he passed out to freedom; and the next day the readers of the ‘Chronicle’ knew that ‘Abijah Adams was discharged from his imprisonment after partaking of an adequate portion of his “birth-right” by a confinement of thirty days under the operation of the common law of England.’[1546] Within three weeks, Thomas Adams, one of the bravest champions of democracy and the freedom of the press, was dead—his end hastened by the persecution to which he had been subjected. Like Benjamin Franklin Bache, he sank into his grave with an indictment under the Sedition Law hanging over him.

VII

When Bache thus escaped the vengeance of his enemies, they turned to his successor, William Duane, who soon proved himself a more vigorous controversialist than his predecessor. A remarkable character was Duane, entitled to a monument for his fight for the freedom of the press. Born in America of Irish parentage, he was taken to Ireland on the death of his father, and there he grew to manhood. His career previous to his return to America was colorful and courageous. For a time he had been a reporter for the London ‘Times’ in the press gallery of the House of Commons, before establishing a newspaper in India which he edited with such signal ability that the East India Company found it advisable to resort to force and fraud to destroy his property and send him out of the country. At length in sheer disgust he returned to America, and soon became the editor of ‘The Aurora.’[1547]

One Friday night before the Monday on which the question of the repeal of the Alien Law was to be considered in Congress, a number of citizens, including some foreign-born, met in Philadelphia to arrange for a memorial to Congress. On Sunday morning, Duane and three others, including Dr. James Reynolds, appeared during services in the churchyard of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church with the memorial and a few placards requesting natives of Ireland in the congregation to remain in the yard after the services to sign the petition. Some of these placards were placed on the church and on the gates leading into the yard. Some belated worshipers of the Federalist persuasion tore these down, and, entering the church, warned the priest that seditious men were in the yard planning a riot. The four men in the yard conducted themselves with perfect decorum. When the congregation was dismissed, Duane and his party had the memorial spread upon a tombstone. A few approached and signed. Almost immediately, however, the terrorists among the members of the church closed in upon the group, centering their attacks mostly upon Reynolds, who was knocked down and kicked. Struggling to his feet, Reynolds drew a revolver and prepared to defend himself, at which moment officers reached the scene and the four men were hurried off to jail on the charge of creating a seditious riot.

Before a great crowd at the State House, the trial was held, with Hopkinson, the author of the war song, as special prosecutor, and the men in the dock brilliantly defended by A. J. Dallas. The testimony showed that there had been no disturbance until the mob charged upon the men with the memorial; that the memorial itself was unexceptionable in every way; that Reynolds had been warned a week before of a conspiracy to murder him and had armed himself on advice of a member of Congress; that none of the others carried a weapon of any sort; and it was shown by the testimony of a priest that it was then the custom in Ireland to post notices in churchyards, and for members of the church to transact such public business in the yards after services. Members of the congregation testified that they had wanted to sign; the priest that the posting of the notice was not considered disrespectful to the church. In a brilliant speech of sarcasm and invective, Dallas riddled the prosecution, calling attention to attempts to intimidate lawyers from appearing for the defense, charging the prosecution with being inspired by partisan hate, and denouncing the Alien Law. Hopkinson replied lamely, attacking immigrants and Democrats. The jury retired, and in thirty minutes returned with a verdict of acquittal. The State House rang with cheers. The case, however, had not been tried in a Federal Court.[1548]

That, however, was only the beginning of the attempt to wreck and ruin the leading Jeffersonian editor. John Adams and Pickering had been planning to reach him by hook or crook. The latter wrote Adams that Duane, though born in America, had gone to Ireland before the Revolution; that in India he ‘had been charged with some crime’; and that he had come to America ‘to stir up sedition.’ More—he was ‘doubtless a United Irishman,’ and in case of a French invasion the military company he had formed would join the invaders. The picture was as Adams would have had it painted. ‘The matchless effrontery of Duane,’ he wrote, ‘merits the execution of the Alien Law. I am very willing to try its strength on him.’ This trial was never made, but two months later the Federal Courts began to move against him. At Norristown, Pennsylvania, with Bushrod Washington and Richard Peters on the Bench, an indictment was brought against him for sedition.[1549] The case was continued until June, 1800—and Duane went full steam ahead with his attacks on the Federalist Party. The trial was again postponed, and in October, 1800, he was indicted again—this time for having published a Senate Bill of a peculiarly vicious if not criminal character which its sponsors for sufficient reasons wished kept from the public. But it was of no avail. He would not cringe or crawl or compromise or be silenced. The cases against him were dismissed when Jefferson became President. Many historians have belittled him; he fought brilliantly for fundamental constitutional rights when men high in office, who are praised, were conspiring to strike them down.

VIII

One day the Sedition snoopers fell upon an article by Dr. Thomas Cooper, an Englishman by birth, a scientist and physician by profession, a man of learning and culture, and a Jeffersonian. It referred to the early days of Adams’s Administration when ‘he was hardly in the infancy of political mistake.’ It charged Adams with saddling the people with a permanent navy; with having borrowed money at eight per cent; referred to his ‘unnecessary violence of official expression which might justly have provoked war’; to his interference with the processes of a Federal Court in the case of Robbins. And that was all. Adams had made mistakes, had established a permanent navy, had borrowed money at eight per cent; and many thought at the time that he had unduly interposed in the Robbins case. But this was sedition in 1800.

Hustled into the Federal Court at Philadelphia, Cooper found the red-faced Chase glowering upon him from the Bench—the same Chase who had been charged by Hamilton with speculating in flour during the Revolution. There was no denial of the authorship of the article. The evidence in, Chase charged the jury in his most violent partisan manner. There are only two ways to destroy a republic, he said: one the introduction of luxury, the other the licentiousness of the press. ‘The latter is more slow but more sure.’ Taking up the Cooper article, he analyzed it in the spirit of a prosecutor. Here, thundered the Judge, we have the opinion that Adams has good intentions but doubtful capacity. Borrowed money ‘at eight per cent in time of peace?’ What—call these times of peace? ‘I cannot suppress my feeling at this gross attack upon the President. Can this be true? Can you believe it? Are we now in time of peace? Is there no war?’[1550] The jury promptly returned a verdict of guilty. The next day Cooper appeared for sentence. Asked by Chase to explain his financial condition as that might affect the sentence, he replied that he was in moderate circumstances, dependent on his practice, which would be destroyed by imprisonment. ‘Be it so,’ he continued. ‘I have been accustomed to make sacrifices to opinion, and I can make this. As to circumstances in extenuation, not being conscious that I have set down aught in malice, I have nothing to extenuate.’ Chase became suspiciously unctuous and oily. If Cooper had to pay his own fine, that would be one thing; if his party had arranged to pay the fine, that would be another. ‘The insinuations of the Court are ill founded,’ Cooper replied with indignation, ‘and if you, sir, from misapprehension or misrepresentation, have been tempted to make them, your mistake should be corrected.’ Judge Peters, who had been squirming through these amazing partisan comments of Chase, here impatiently intervened with the comment that the Court had nothing to do with parties. Whereupon Cooper was fined a thousand dollars and ordered to jail for six months.[1551]

Duane instantly announced an early publication in pamphlet form of the trial in full. ‘Republicans may rest completely assured,’ he wrote, ‘that they will have every reason to be satisfied with the effect of this most singular trial on the mind of the public.’[1552] The pamphlet appeared, and, as Duane had foreseen, the public was aroused. A man of decent character and high professional standing was languishing in a jail in the capital of the country for having told the truth and expressed an opinion on a constitutional question. There were rumblings and grumblings in the streets, and some uneasiness in Administration circles. The hint went forth that an appeal for a pardon might receive consideration, and one was put in circulation, when out from the ‘convict’s’ cell came a letter of protest. He wanted and would have no petition for pardon. He believed with Adams that repentance should precede pardon[1553] and he had no feeling of repentance. ‘Nor will I be the voluntary cat’s-paw of electioneering clemency,’ Cooper continued. ‘I know that late events have greatly changed the outward and visible signs of the politics of the party, and good temper and moderation is the order of the day with the Federalists now, as it has always been with their political opponents. But all sudden conversions are suspicious, and I hope that Republicans will be upon their guard against the insidious or interested designs of those who may wish to profit by the too common credulity of honest intention.’[1554]

The petition was dropped. Cooper remained happily in his cell. His incarceration was making votes for Jefferson. When, on the expiration of his sentence, Cooper stepped into the daylight, he found a deputation of his friends awaiting him at the door. He was escorted to a fashionable hotel where a public dinner had been arranged to honor him and express contempt for the Sedition Law. Two long tables were set, with Dr. James Logan presiding over one, Thomas Leiper over the other. That night, as the wine flowed, the men who would not be silenced drank to Cooper—to Jefferson—to a Democratic victory.[1555]

IX

Having distinguished himself as an American Lord Clare in the case of Cooper, Chase proceeded southward, boasting along the way that he ‘would teach the lawyers in Virginia the difference between liberty and licentiousness of the press.’ He was going to try James Thomas Callender for sedition on an indictment based on his pamphlet, ‘The Prospect Before Us.’ This unsavory creature was hated quite as much for the truths he told as for the lies he circulated, and there was nothing in the section of his pamphlet on which he was indicted to shock any one to-day. It was an attack on Adams in connection with the French war hysteria, the navy, the army, the Robbins case. The only phrase that startles one to-day is the reference to the hands of Adams ‘reeking with the blood of the poor friendless Connecticut sailor.’[1556] The scenes in the little Richmond courtroom were scandalous to excess. It was understood that Chase had instructed the marshal ‘not to put any of those creatures called Democrats on the jury,’ and his boasts concerning Virginia lawyers had preceded him. The most brazen tyranny presided in the case of Callender, and the lawlessness of the Judge was more threatening than the licentiousness of the culprit. It was a political inquisition, not a trial. The courtroom was thronged. The case was the sole topic of conversation in the streets and taverns. The Democrats had no misapprehensions of the nature of the trial, and three extraordinarily able lawyers were there for the defense—John Hay, who was afterwards to prosecute Burr, Nicholas, and William Wirt, already well advanced toward that professional eminence which he so long enjoyed. There was a dignity and courage in the aspect of these three men that Chase could only interpret as a challenge. He had made his boasts. He would teach these Virginia lawyers—and there was nothing apologetic or fawning in the manner of Hay, Nicholas, or Wirt. The fact that neither was there anything of insolence made matters worse. Feeling himself on the defensive, Chase sought to conceal his embarrassment in the brutality of his conduct.

The shameful story of that travesty of a trial has been often told, and it played a part in the impeachment proceedings against Chase a little later. He stormed, fumed, spluttered, and injected Federalist stump speeches into the ludicrous proceedings. He refused the defense permission to ask a prospective juror if he had formed and expressed an opinion on the Callender pamphlet. ‘The question is improper and you shall not ask it,’ he thundered. When John Taylor of Caroline was put on the witness stand, Chase nervously demanded what the defense intended to prove by the witness. He was told. ‘Put the question in writing and submit it to me,’ he demanded. But why, asked Nicholas, when nothing of the sort is required in questioning witnesses for the prosecution? ‘It’s the proper procedure,’ fumed the Court. Keeping a firm rein on both his temper and his contempt for the Court, Nicholas submitted three questions in writing. One glance, and Chase ruled them out. The Virginia lawyers showed their amazement. Even Chase could see it. ‘My country has made me a Judge,’ he shouted, ‘and you must be governed now by my opinion.’

William Wirt rose to submit an argument on the admissibility of the evidence. He began with observations on the embarrassments of the defense because Callender had been ‘presented, indicted, arrested, and tried during this term and had not been able to procure testimony essential to a proper defense.’ He even hinted at the precipitancy of the Court.

‘You must not reflect on the Court,’ shouted Chase.

‘I am prevented from explaining to you [the jury] the causes which have conspired to weaken our defense, and it is no doubt right that I should be prevented, as the Court has so decided.’

Chase saw at once that he was not going to care much for this ‘young man,’ as he contemptuously called him repeatedly. Wirt proceeded to an attack on the constitutionality of the Sedition Law.

‘Take your seat, sir,’ stormed the livid-faced Chase. ‘Ever since I came into Virginia I have understood that sort of thing would be urged, and I have deliberated on it.’ Whereupon he produced a long manuscript and prepared to read. ‘Hear my words,’ he admonished, glaring around the courtroom. ‘I wish the world to know them—my opinion is the result of mature reflection.’

Wirt undertook to argue the point—Chase gesticulated, stormed, insulted—and William Wirt folded his papers, and resuming his seat declined to continue. Hay took up the argument, to be met constantly with barking interruptions, until he, too, in sheer disgust, folded his papers and sat down.

‘Please to proceed,’ urged Chase, wondering perhaps if he had gone too far with these Virginia lawyers, ‘and be assured that you will not be interrupted by me, say what you will.’ Hay refused to continue the farce.

Thus, throughout, the mobbing of Callender and his attorneys went on. The result was conviction and a jail sentence.[1557]

X

Meanwhile, a serio-comedy in New York State which was working effectively for the Democrats. In the early spring of 1800, John Armstrong, author of the ‘Newburgh Letters,’ and until this time an ardent Federalist, outraged by the brazen attempt to suppress free speech and the freedom of the press, prepared a powerful and vituperative petition for the repeal of the Sedition Law and sent it into several counties to be circulated for signatures. In Otsego, then a new and undeveloped part of the State, it was entrusted to Jedekiah Peck, an eccentric character known to every man, woman, and child in the county. Poor to poverty, he had combined the work of an itinerant surveyor with that of a preacher, and was popular as both. Wandering through the country surveying land by day, night found him in some settler’s home preaching and praying, and, in the intervals between, he talked politics. He had baptized the infant, preached the funeral sermons for the dead, married the young, prayed for and with the old. His sincerity was apparent, his innate kindliness manifest. Many smiled at the diminutive old man, but most men and all children loved him. Burr, who had a genius for using the right man in the right place, took him up and had him sent to the Legislature as a Federalist.[1558]

Right joyously the little old man started on his rounds with the petition. When his activity was made known to Judge William Cooper, father of the novelist, and temperamentally as unfit for the Bench as a large number of the Judges of the time, he boiled with rage. Instantly he wrote the District Attorney of Peck’s heinous sedition. Immediately a grand jury was empaneled in the city of New York. A bench warrant for Peck’s arrest was issued. At midnight he was dragged from his bed, placed in manacles like a dangerous criminal, and the two-hundred-mile march to New York began. The roads were bad, progress was slow, the news spread, and in every village and at every crossroads crowds poured forth to look upon the pitiful spectacle and to sympathize with the victim. Jefferson could not have planned a more effective campaign tour. The plain people of the countryside knew Peck—and they turned away with a sense of personal outrage. For five days the march continued—it was a triumphant march for democracy.

Thus the uneducated, itinerant preacher and surveyor of Otsego County made his contribution to the election of Jefferson, marching in manacles to illustrate the Federalist conception of liberty.[1559]

Merrily the Terror sped along.

XI

The New London ‘Bee,’ under the editorship of Charles Holt, a Jeffersonian, had greatly annoyed the Federalists of the surrounding States, and a remedy was now at hand. Had it not attacked the French war—and therefore tried to prevent enlistments? Here was sedition. The editor was arrested, his own brother summoned as a witness against him. There was more than one War of the Roses in those days. The paper on which he was indicted was furnished by two Federalist editors, one of whom had two brothers on the jury that brought in the indictment. The foreman of the grand jury was an Amos Bull who had been a British commissary in New York during the Revolution.[1560] Bushrod Washington presided at the trial. The defense undertook to show the Sedition Law unconstitutional and the charges of the ‘Bee’ true. The friends of Holt ‘had collected from Dan to Beersheba to hear the trial and afford aid and comfort to their brother.’ When he was quickly convicted and sentenced to jail for three months and to pay a fine of two hundred dollars, a Federalist paper smugly commented upon the ‘mildness of the punishment’ and ‘the humanity of the Judges.’[1561] Like the other victims of the Terror, Holt took his punishment standing up, with shoulders thrown back. A few days before his trial he wrote boldly of the things he had refrained from saying—‘the insults and threats offered to peaceable inhabitants and helpless women in the neighborhood, and the alarm and disturbance excited by firing in the streets and under the windows at all hours of the night.’[1562]

During the two years of the Terror the press was sprinkled with brief reports on arrests, mostly of Democratic editors. One at Mount Pleasant, New York, was arrested ‘in the name of the President for reprinting a paragraph from the New Windsor Gazette supposed to be a libel against the President,’ and he was forced to give bond for four thousand dollars.[1563] By November, 1798, it was announced that twenty-one ‘printers’ had ‘fallen victims to the ... Sedition Law.’[1564] In enumerating the arrests that month, the ‘Chronicle’ commented that no Federalist editor was included ‘because they vilify none but Jefferson, Livingston, and Gallatin.’[1565] Everywhere men were being intimidated into silence. Sometimes there was a touch of comedy to the Terror. One poor wight was dragged into court because of a comment, when a salute was fired in honor of Adams, that it was a pity the ball did not find lodgment ‘in the seat of his pants.’

Strangely enough, there was no serious attempt to make use of the Alien Law. We have seen that about the time of its passage many Frenchmen chartered a boat to escape its operations, and America thus rid herself of the peril of Volney. General Victor Collot, an officer in the army of Rochambeau, escaped deportation by leaving voluntarily. The only appeal to the Alien Law was by indirection in the case of John D. Burk, editor of the ‘Time Piece,’ a democratic paper in New York City. He had left his native Ireland to escape the terror there under Pitt, and finally ran foul of the law here by charging that a letter of Gerry to Adams, which the latter had sent to Congress, had been tampered with. The terrorists were not slow to act. When the offensive article stared at Pickering through his spectacles, he wrote the District Attorney: ‘If Burk is an alien no man is a fitter object for the operation of the Alien Law. Even if Burk should prove to be an alien it may be expedient to punish him for his libels before he is sent away.’ He had already been arrested for sedition, however, and the prosecution was finally dropped on condition that he would leave the country. Instead of leaving, he went into hiding, only emerging from his obscurity with the inauguration of Jefferson.[1566]

Many of the terrorists were infuriated by the failure to use the Alien Law for wholesale deportations. ‘Why in God’s name is the Alien Law not enforced?’ wrote the intolerant Tracy to McHenry.[1567] Everywhere the Sedition Law was keeping men ‘on the run.’ E. S. Thomas, learning that Thomas Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ had been arrested for the publication of an article by the former, fled to South Carolina just in time.[1568] In the capital at Philadelphia, the Jeffersonians, fearing an attack, met in secret and made plans for defense. Moreau De Saint Merys, a scholarly Frenchman who kept a bookstore, was given keys to two houses where he could take refuge should his own be attacked. He was quite incapable of anything that would have made him amenable to the law, and President Adams had not only lounged in his bookstore frequently, but the two had exchanged copies of their books. Hearing that Adams had written him down among the proscribed, Moreau appealed to Senator Langdon for the reason. ‘No reason,’ grunted Langdon, ‘beyond the fact that you are French.’ Finally, thanks to the courtesy of Liston, the British Minister, Moreau secured a passport and left the land of liberty with his books, maps, and papers.[1569]

Drunk with hate and a sense of power, the terrorists were running amuck. At a banquet at Hartford in July, 1799, they thrilled to the toast: ‘The Alien and Sedition Laws: Like the Sword of Eden may they point everywhere to guard our country against intrigue from without and faction from within.’[1570] And every Democrat knew that ‘faction’ was the Federalist name for party, and ‘party’ meant the Jeffersonians. Armed with the sword, the Federalists no longer bandied idle words. When George Nicholas of Kentucky challenged Robert Goodhue Harper to a debate through the press on the Sedition Law, the latter was merely amused. ‘The old proverb says, let them laugh who win; and for the converse of the maxim the consolation of railing ought to be allowed to those who lose,’ jeered Harper.[1571] Why argue? The courts were busy silencing and jailing the Jeffersonians, suppressing free speech, striking down the liberty of the press.

With the Democrats partly intimidated in the Eastern States, the honor of leading the fight against these laws was reserved for Virginia and the frontier States of Kentucky and Tennessee. Here mass meetings were held throughout the autumn of 1798. In Woodford County, Kentucky, it was declared ‘the primary duty of every good citizen to guard as a faithful sentinel his constitutional rights and to repel all violations of them from whatever quarter offered.’[1572] Four hundred gathered in Goochland County, Virginia, and, with only thirty opposed, denounced the laws and called upon the next Assembly to protest to Congress.[1573] At Charlottesville, at the foot of Monticello, the people of Albemarle County, Virginia, met to adopt resolutions of denunciation, and at Lexington, Kentucky, they added their protest.[1574] Richmond—Knoxville—followed. These resolutions were dignified and forceful protests, sponsored by men of the first ability in the communities acting. But in the House of Representatives at Philadelphia, when Jeffersonians spoke in favor of the repeal of the obnoxious measures, their voices were drowned by loud conversation, coughs, laughter, the scraping of the feet of the Federalists. ‘Livingston, however, attempted to speak,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘but after a few sentences the Speaker called him to order.... It was impossible to proceed.’[1575] From 1798 until 1801, liberty was mobbed in America with the zealous support of the Federal Courts, to the applause of the church—and out of these conditions came the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.

XII

On the adjournment of Congress in 1798, Jefferson returned to his Virginia home profoundly impressed with the significance of the obnoxious laws. He had supposed that the freedom of speech and the liberty of the press had been guaranteed by the Constitution. That the fundamental law was outraged by these measures he had no doubt. It was his firm conviction that they had been enacted ‘as an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution,’ and that if it succeeded ‘we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office for life.’[1576] He was not alone in this belief.

One day in the late summer a memorable conference was held at Monticello. There, in the center of the group, was Jefferson. There, too, was W. C. Nicholas, one of the foremost Jeffersonians of Virginia, and John Breckenridge of Kentucky, who had returned on a visit to his native State. It does not appear that Madison participated in this conference, although he was in complete accord with its purpose. There the plan was perfected to launch a movement of protest against the Alien and Sedition Laws through the Legislatures of the various States in resolutions pronouncing them violative of the Constitution and void. While Jefferson, recalling the occasion a quarter of a century later, thought that he had been pressed to frame such resolutions, it is unlikely that the plan did not originate in his own mind. He had an uncanny faculty for calling forth suggestions from others to meet his views. On one point his memory was clear—there was to be the utmost secrecy as to the part he played. That he did prepare a draft is thoroughly established; that the draft finally submitted to the Kentucky Legislature, while based on the Jeffersonian draft, was the work of John Breckenridge has been convincingly maintained.[1577]

This dashing young leader of the Kentucky Democracy had been a marked figure from his earliest youth. More than six feet in height, spare and muscular in build, with the strength and grace of carriage born of his wilderness training, he looked the leader of men. His hair, a rich chestnut tending to auburn, disclosed something of his ardent temperament and was not unlike that of his idolized chief. His brown eyes could be stern or tender. His address was easy and dignified, and his manner not without that touch of gravity which creates confidence in the follower. There was much of tenderness and everything of generosity in his nature to explain the love which enveloped him wherever he went.

Born of Scotch-Irish stock in Virginia thirty-eight years before, his had been an extraordinary career. Scarcely was he out of college when, without any effort on his part, he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates at the age of nineteen. When the House refused him his seat because of his age, his loyal constituents elected him again. Again refused his seat, he was elected for the third time, and seated. During the next five years he distinguished himself by his industry and ability no less than by the charm of his personality. It was about this time that the young man ascended the hill to Monticello to sit at the feet of the god of his idolatry. Jefferson was impressed by ‘the large scope of his mind,’ his great store of information, and ‘the moral direction’ of his ideas.[1578] There had to be something extraordinary in the man to whom Gallatin looked a little later as the man best qualified to continue the work of Jefferson, Madison, and himself.[1579]

At the bar Breckenridge distinguished himself by his erudition, his industry, and the fluency and force of his arguments, which were notably free from the floridity then so popular in the South. Elected to Congress when thirty-three, he had abandoned his seat to remove to Lexington, Kentucky, where he acquired a large plantation and settled down to the practice of his profession. Almost immediately he was deeply engaged in politics. He was made President of the Democratic Society of Kentucky and became one of the most engaging of the Democratic leaders of the pioneer State. Returning to Kentucky with the Jefferson draft, he made some changes, and on November 8th presented the Resolutions to the Legislature. The debate was brief, and on the 10th they were adopted.

The Virginia Resolutions, written by James Madison after conferences with Jefferson, were introduced in the Legislature of that State by the celebrated John Taylor of Caroline. These, too, were speedily adopted after a brilliant debate in which their sponsor and Giles crossed swords with the eloquent George Keith Taylor.

The primary purpose of these Resolutions was to concentrate attention on the Alien and Sedition Laws. They were to be sent to the Legislatures of all the States where they would be thoroughly discussed. Jefferson was too wise to have expected a favorable response from Legislatures dominated by the Federalists. But there would be debate, agitation, newspaper controversy—the hated laws would have the searchlight turned full upon them. Historians have been interested in these Resolutions because they set forth in the most impressive manner the compact theory of the Union on which the nullificationists and secessionists were to seize much later as justification for their course. We are interested here in the contemporary view and the political aspect. The reader of to-day is apt to overlook the fact that they were primarily intended as a protest against interference with the freedom of speech and the liberty of the press, and only ‘incidentally they gave expression to a theory concerning the nature of the federal union.’[1580] That this was the general contemporary interpretation is shown in the actions of the other Legislatures. Thus Maryland, Federalist, rejected the Resolutions as ‘highly improper’ because ‘a recommendation to repeal the Alien and Sedition Laws would be unwise and impolitic.’[1581] Thus Delaware, Federalist, dismissed them as a ‘very unjustifiable interference with the general government.’ Thus New Hampshire, Federalist, declared the obnoxious laws ‘constitutional and ... highly expedient.’ The Federalists of Rhode Island pronounced them ‘within the powers delegated to Congress and promotive of the welfare of the United States.’

Only in Massachusetts did the Federalists make a comprehensive and argumentative reply to the effect that the constitutionality of measures could only be passed upon by the Supreme Court. The Alien and Sedition Laws were defended as in no wise interfering with the liberty of the press. And here, strangely enough, Democrats were found to support the Resolutions in speeches of no mean merit. In John Bacon of Berkshire the Jeffersonians had their sole representative in the State Senate. Formerly a minister of the Old South Church, and a speaker of some ability, he delivered a carefully prepared speech assailing the constitutionality of the oppressive laws, and gave it to the press.[1582] Dr. Aaron Hill of Cambridge, a Jeffersonian in the House, acted similarly in that body—and on both Hill and Bacon the floodgates of falsehood and abuse were opened. In an open letter to Bacon in the ‘Centinel,’ he was charged with having been a Tory, with having quarreled with the congregation at the Old South, with having owned, as slaves, a married couple, and with having sold the husband into a distant State.[1583] When Bacon proved the charges shamelessly false, the ‘Centinel’ took no notice.[1584] Dr. Hill fared quite as badly when students from Harvard exercised their learning by smashing the windows and casements of his home.[1585] And it was at this juncture that Thomas Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ was indicted and Abijah Adams was thrown into a cell for criticizing the action of the Legislature.[1586]

Everywhere the Federalist papers made the Resolutions the occasion for a justification of the Alien and Sedition Laws; everywhere the Jeffersonians, usually refraining from a discussion of the theory of the Federal Union advanced, made them the pretext for a denunciation of the laws. And significantly enough, it was reserved for the favorite Federalist organ of ‘Porcupine’ to preach and all but urge secession. Replying to a correspondent who had denied the right of secession, ‘Porcupine’ said: ‘Does he imagine that the industrious and orderly people of New England will ever suffer themselves to be governed by an impious philosopher or a gambling profligate imposed upon them by Virginia influence? If he does, he knows very little of New England. The New Englanders know well that they are the rock of the Union. They know their own value; they feel their strength, and they will have their full share of influence in the federal government, or they will not be governed by it. It is clear that their influence must decrease; because ... the Middle and Southern States are increasing in inhabitants five times as fast as New England is. If Pennsylvania joins her influence to that of New England the balance will be kept up; but the moment she decidedly throws it into the scale with Virginia the balance is gone, New England loses her influence in the national Government, and she establishes a Government of her own.’[1587] This reflects the spirit of the times when the two parties faced each other for the decisive battle of 1800. The Alien and Sedition Laws and the Terror were issues; the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions played scarcely any part at all.