CHAPTER XVIII
ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS
I
MEANWHILE, the Federalist leaders, having, as they thought, cowed and crushed the Democrats, were engaged in an internecine strife for control. There was to be war—at all hazards a war. It was to be a Federalist war, with Jeffersonians rigidly excluded from all places of command. But more than that, it had to be a war personally conducted by Alexander Hamilton—with no unseemly interference from John Adams. This was the grim determination of the radical Federalists everywhere, even the Essex Junto, in the President’s own State, sharing it with the three leading members of the Adams Cabinet. Thus, when Adams one day casually asked Pickering who should be made Commander-in-Chief of the army, and the spectacled Puritan unhesitatingly answered, ‘Colonel Hamilton,’ there was an ominous silence. When, on another occasion, the same question elicited the identical answer, with a similar silence, even Pickering must have sensed the situation. But when, after a third question had brought the same answer, and Adams, a little annoyed, had rejected the suggestion with the sharp observation, ‘It is not his turn by a great deal,’ Pickering might have dropped his plans without disgrace.[1588] But nothing was more remote from his intentions. It was at this time that the conspirators, including the three members of the Cabinet, put their heads together to devise ways and means of forcing the appointment of their idol. The chief command would naturally be offered to Washington, who would accept the position in an honorary sense, but old age and infirmities would make his activities and authority but perfunctory. The important thing was to secure the second position for Hamilton—and even there was a rub. Adams was prejudiced.
Then, one day, Adams ordered McHenry to Mount Vernon to proffer the chief command to Washington, with a request for advice in the formation of the officers’ list. The names of several eligibles for the leading posts, enumerated by Adams, might be mentioned. Hamilton was among them, but he was fourth on the list. That day McHenry hastened to Pickering, and the conspiracy against the President in his own household began to unfold. It was agreed that Pickering should send a personal letter on ahead urging Hamilton for second place, McHenry should reënforce Pickering’s plea in person, Hamilton should be instantly notified and a letter from him should be delivered to Washington along with the commission from Adams. Thus, when the smug-faced little War Secretary, more familiar with the pen of the rhymester than with the sword of the soldier, bade his chief adieu and set out upon his mission, he was the messenger of his chief’s dearest enemy, prepared to exhaust his ingenuity in thwarting the plans of the man of whom he was a subordinate and on whose mission he went forth.
As early as June, Washington had planned to make Hamilton Inspector-General, but without placing him ahead of Pinckney or Knox, both of whom outranked him in the old army.[1589] Just what treachery McHenry practiced as he sat on the veranda at Mount Vernon those July days will never be positively known. That he pleaded the cause of Hamilton against the wishes of his chief there can be no doubt. That it was he who suggested that Washington should make his own acceptance conditional on having absolute power in the selection of his subordinates is more than probable. At any rate, when he returned to Philadelphia he carried in Washington’s handwriting the names of the three Major-Generals—Hamilton, Pinckney, and Knox, in the order given. In this order Adams, who assumed that their relative positions would be determined by himself, sent them to the Senate and they were confirmed.
Soon the Federalist camp was in fermentation as to whether Knox, favored by the President, or Hamilton, preferred by the party bosses, should be second in command. Pinckney, who accepted slights with the same contrite spirit with which his brother had stepped aside for Jay in London, agreed to serve under the Federalist leader, but Knox, not so humble, refused, and the crisis came. Personally fond of Knox, the quarrel was embarrassing to Washington, but it had never been the habit of the Hamiltonians to spare him where their wishes were involved. Soon Hamilton was bombarding Mount Vernon with letters strikingly lacking in the spirit of humility. His claims were superior to those of Knox or Pinckney, and the Federalists preferred him to the former.[1590] ‘If I am to be degraded beneath my just claims in public opinion, ought I acquiesce?’ he wrote the sympathetic Pickering.[1591] To McHenry he wrote that he would not surrender the first place to which he ‘had been called by the voice of the country’;[1592] to Washington that the Federalists of New England favored him over Knox.[1593]
All the while the three leading members of the Cabinet were concocting plans for the humiliation of Adams, taking their orders from Hamilton, who, from his law office in New York, was directing the fight of the President’s trusted advisers against their chief. One day the angels looked down and smiled through tears on the spectacle of McHenry writing a letter to Knox fixing his status, from a model in the handwriting of Alexander Hamilton.[1594] As Adams stubbornly held his ground, one by one all the Hamiltonians of consequence were drawn into the conspiracy against him.
One evening the secretarial conspirators sat about a table phrasing a persuasive note to Adams which Wolcott, the most consummate deceiver of the three, should sign and send as his personal view. ‘Public opinion’ favored Hamilton, Washington preferred him, and ‘Knox [has] no popular character even in Massachusetts.’[1595] Having dispatched this cunning letter, Wolcott immediately wrote his real chief in New York that ‘measures have been taken to bring all right,’ and requesting Hamilton neither to do nor to say anything ‘until you hear from me.’[1596] Another little caucus of conspirators in Boston: present, Cabot, Ames, and Higginson; purpose, the framing of a letter to Adams that Cabot should sign, assuring the President of a ‘remarkable uniformity of sentiment’ in New England for Hamilton over Knox.[1597] Having sent this letter, Cabot wrote confidentially to Pickering suggesting that General Wadsworth, who was ‘accustomed to tell [Knox] his faults,’ should be enlisted in the cause.[1598] Meanwhile Pickering, more sinister, if less deceptive than the others, was seeking to intimidate his chief by having Hamiltonian Senators declare that the officers had been confirmed with the understanding that Hamilton stood at the head.[1599]
All this time, Iago-like letters were going forth from members of the Cabinet to Washington conveying the impression that Adams was contemptuously indifferent to the great man’s wishes. The effect was all that could have been desired. In a surprisingly offensive note, Washington wrote peremptorily to the President demanding to know ‘at once and precisely’ what was to be expected.[1600] Such a letter from a less popular idol would have elicited an answer sharp and decisive; but, taking discretion for the wiser course, Adams swallowed his pride and wrote a conciliatory note, not neglecting, however, to remind the man who had presided over the Constitutional Convention that under the Constitution the President, and no one else, ‘has the authority to determine the rank of the officers.’[1601] Thus the issue was closed, with Hamilton triumphant, but with Adams awaiting only an opportunity for revenge. The tiny cloud that had appeared in the beginning of the Administration was now dark and large and threatening.
II
Having won with Hamilton, the Federalist leaders now turned to another part of their programme—the rigid exclusion of Jeffersonians from commissions in the army. This was to be a Federalist war, nothing less. Even Washington, who had, by this time, become a partisan Federalist, was in sympathy with the view that the friends of Jefferson, Madison, Hancock, and Sam Adams should be proscribed. This appears in his consultations with John Marshall as to the personnel of the army,[1602] and in a letter to McHenry referring to the ‘erroneous political opinions’ of an applicant.[1603] This enlistment of Washington in the proscriptive policies of the Federalists is directly traceable to the Iagos who were writing him all the while. Hamilton was solemnly assuring him that the Democrats were ‘determined to go every length with France’ and to ‘form with her a perpetual offensive and defensive alliance and to give her a monopoly of our trade.’[1604]
Thus one day Adams sat in conference with Washington on the organization of the army. Knowing Aaron Burr as a brave and able officer anxious to fight, he wished to recognize the Democrats by giving him a commission. Washington, much under the influence of Hamilton, conceded Burr’s capacity, but opposed his appointment because he was a master of intrigue. Through the mind of Adams, hampered in his plans at every turn, flashed the vivid memory of how his predecessor had forced him to humiliate his own friends in the appointment of Hamilton—‘the most restless, impatient, artful, indefatigable, and unprincipled intriguer in the United States.’ But—as he afterward wrote—he was ‘not permitted to nominate Burr.’[1605] Here again the traitors in the Cabinet had played their part.[1606]
But the war was not to be national, but Federalist. ‘Every one of them [Democrats] ought to be rejected, and only men of fair property employed in the higher and more confidential grades,’ wrote a Federalist Representative to Wolcott.[1607] When Adams’s son-in-law applied for a commission his application was held until he sent a certificate that he had not interfered in a gubernatorial election in New York.[1608] So zealously did the minor politicians enter into this policy of proscription that some of the wiser leaders began to take alarm. Even a friend of McHenry at Baltimore was moved to protest. ‘They seemed to imagine that nothing was left to be done but to exterminate every one who had been on the Democratic side’ he complained.[1609] Even Hamilton finally thought fit to call for a moderation of the programme. ‘It does not seem advisable,’ he wrote McHenry, ‘to exclude all hope and to give to appointments too absolute a party feature.’[1610] But there was no relenting in party circles, and no one had done more to arouse this fanatical spirit than Hamilton himself.
The climax of stupidity was reached in the case of Frederick A. Muhlenberg, former Speaker of the House, a leader and oracle among the Germans of Pennsylvania, but no blind follower of Federalism. In a spirit of pure patriotism he had personally offered the service of his sword to Adams, whose wish to accept it was again thwarted by Washington, acting under the inspiration of the Federalist leaders. Whereupon Muhlenberg marched with the Germans as a body into the Jeffersonian camp and enlisted for another war.[1611]
Under this proscriptive program the Jeffersonians remained mute but for a few sarcastic comments in their press. ‘General Washington must have some very keen reflection,’ said the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘in taking command of the army of the present day, in seeing so many new friends who were his old enemies during the Revolution.’[1612] When it was reported that Robert Goodhue Harper had been made Commissioner-General, it chortled, ‘What lawyer would not plead for such a fee?’[1613] And it had reflected on Adams’s ‘pretence’ for piety in connection with his appointment of Hamilton, ‘who published a book to prove that he was an adulterer.’[1614]
Bitter as were the reflections of Adams on reading such observations, it could have mattered little to Hamilton. Everything he had started out to get he got. He wanted a war with France—and got it. He wanted the command directly under Washington as he had wanted nothing else in his life—and got it, by striding to his sword over the humiliated pride of the President. He wanted an army of fifty thousand men, and, if he fell short in this, he nevertheless had an army. He was on the crest of the wave, the most powerful man in America, and he was happy.
III
Feeling that supreme fortune was within his grasp, Hamilton threw all his enthusiasm and vitality into the task of perfecting the army and organizing the Nation for war. ‘The law has abandoned him, or rather he has forsaken it,’ wrote a friend to King.[1615] Preparing the plan for the fortification of New York Harbor, he personally superintended its execution. He had worked out to the minutest detail the organization of the army and all he lacked was men and a declaration of war. But alas, he was confronted on every hand by disheartening difficulties. The recruiting fell pathetically short of anticipations, the War Department under the Secretary of his own choosing was pitifully inefficient, and, while the army was woefully below the provisions of Congress, even the fragment was not adequately clothed or provisioned, and there was a deficiency of tents. In a rage, Hamilton wrote angrily to McHenry: ‘Why, dear friend, why do you suffer the business of providing to go on as it does? Every moment proves the insufficiency of the existing plan and the necessity of auxiliaries. I have no doubt that at Baltimore, New York, Providence, and Boston additional supplies of clothing may promptly be procured and prepared by your agents, and it ought to be done, though it may enhance the expense. ‘Tis terrible ... that there should be wants everywhere. So of tents. Calls for them are repeated from Massachusetts where better and cheaper than anywhere else they can certainly be provided.’[1616]
The truth is that the hysteria for getting at the throat of the French democracy was over almost as soon as it began, and the masses commenced to reflect on the cost, as the war measures grew apace. Jefferson, noting the increasing boldness of opposition in Pennsylvania, where petitions were signed by four thousand people protesting against the Alien and Sedition Laws, standing armies, and extraordinary war powers for the President, and observing similar unrest in New Jersey and New York, and ‘even in New Hampshire,’ was fearful of insurrection. ‘Nothing could be so fatal,’ he wrote. ‘Anything like force would check the progress of public opinion.’[1617]
When Wolcott tried to float a loan, he found the moneyed men cold to the regular legal rate of interest, for their patriotic passion had suffered a chill when it came to cash. After all, business was business, and why should the Federalist men of money fail to get in on the profits? It was not hard to persuade Wolcott, who had a sentimental weakness for the financiers, and he could see nothing unreasonable in a demand for eight per cent. The rates for stocks were good, commercial prospects were alluring, and after all, eight per cent would be but ‘moderate terms.’ Adams, sore from the unmerciful pummeling from his party, was outraged at such a rate,[1618] but Wolcott persisted—it was the only way. War was war as business was business. Finally, in sheer disgust, Adams capitulated to necessity with the exclamation: ‘This damned army will be the ruin of this country; if it must be so, it must; I cannot help it. Issue your proposals as you please.’[1619] When Hamilton had urged that all the resources of revenue be seized upon, Adams thought him mad, but it soon became evident that something of the sort would be necessary.[1620]
Aha, said the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘“millions for defence but not one cent for tribute.” This has been the language of those who are in favor of war. The patriotism of such persons is every day becoming more and more evident. A loan of five million has been attempted, but instead of the old legal rate of six per cent these modern patriots have required the moderate premium of Eight. At this rate we shall soon verify the first part of the motto, viz., “millions for defence,” but whether the latter is not violated by the extra interest is left to the decision of those who are to bear the burdens.’[1621] And they who were to pay the piper gave an acquiescent nod.
The taxes which the war party had levied with such patriotic abandon aroused bitter resentment. Among the Germans of Pennsylvania, the taxes on houses, lands, and windows were considered the beginning of a system which would extend to everything. The immediate outcome was an insurrection led by John Fries, an ignorant son of a German farmer, and the marching of the troops and the easy dissipation of the incipient rebellion against the assessors.[1622]
About that time Hamilton arrived in Philadelphia. ‘For what purpose?’ inquired ‘The Aurora.’ ‘Can it be to foment another insurrection and thereby to increase the energies of the Government? What distinguished citizen is there in the counties of Northampton and Bucks that he wishes to glut his vengeance upon? Does he wish that Easton may be burned to afford him a pretext for military execution?’[1623] If there were no executions, the people had a touch of military rule. A troop of horse from Lancaster committed outrages on citizens at Reading, and Jacob Schneider, a local editor, commented with severity upon their actions. On their return through Reading these troops went to the editor’s office, tore his clothing from his back, dragged him to the Market House, and were preparing to give him twenty-five lashes when troops from Philadelphia interfered.[1624] The brutality of the soldiers shocked the country. The prisoners taken on the expedition were treated with the same unnecessary cruelty which marked the treatment of the rebels in the Whiskey Insurrection. Ignorant or besotted with partisan passion, under a lax discipline, and contemptuous of the civil government, many soldiers strutting about in uniforms, insulting and attacking citizens, convinced the majority of the people that the Jeffersonians were right in their observations upon the evils of standing armies.
No one had denounced these excesses with greater vehemence than William Duane, editor of ‘The Aurora.’ One day some petty officers in uniforms, swords and pistols on their persons, said by Duane to have numbered thirty and by his enemies to have been fifteen, entered his office. With drawn pistols the compositors and pressmen were driven into a corner and kept at bay by a part of the assailants. Some grasped and held Duane’s hands while others beat him over the head with the butt end of a pistol. Then with ten gallant soldiers participating in the assault on the one man, he was brutally dragged downstairs into Franklin Court, where the assault was repeated. He was knocked down and kicked. The editor’s request to be permitted to fight any one of them was ignored, and had not his sixteen-year-old son thrown himself across his father’s body, and a number of Democrats arrived to give battle, he would have been murdered in cold blood. That night armed Democrats went to the ‘Aurora’ office prepared to give shot for shot if an attempt should be made to destroy the plant.[1625] ‘Porcupine’ chortled, and young Fenno declared that ‘the punishment of this caitiff is of no more consequence than that of any other vagabond.’ Besides, did not every one know that ‘the infernal Aurora and the United Irishman who conducts it’ were ‘expressly chargeable with the Northampton Insurrection?’[1626]
With such encouragement from the organs of the Administration, these outrages by soldiers soon became commonplace wherever they were assembled, with uniformed ruffians swaggering down the streets pushing civilians into the gutters, taking liberties with women, picking quarrels while drunk, and slashing and lunging with dirk and sword.[1627] This bullying spirit affected the petty officers and reached a climax when civil officials, armed with a warrant for a thief who had escaped to the soldiers near Philadelphia, were literally kicked out of the camp, their warrant cursed and trampled.[1628] With the tide rising rapidly against both the war and the army, the recruiting lagged. Adams in later years recalled that the army was as unpopular ‘as if it had been a ferocious wild beast let loose upon the nation to devour it.’[1629] With the recruiting officers putting forth their utmost efforts, ‘with all the influence of Hamilton, reënforced by the magical name of Washington,’ they were unable to ‘raise one half of their ... little army.’[1630] Duane wrote that before the law creating the army passed ‘there were 15,000 applications for commissions—since the passing of the law there have been only 3000 soldiers.’[1631] There is more than a touch of irony in the fact that while the Administration papers were vilifying the Irish, ‘three fifths of the men enlisted were Irish immigrants.’[1632]
But there was another reason for the failure in recruiting—the people soon concluded that some one had cried ‘wolf’ when there was no wolf. No one, including Hamilton, believed that France had the most remote notion of warring on the United States. The impression grew that the army was intended for purposes other than the protection of the country from a foreign foe. Meanwhile, the taxes were bearing hard, the national debt was mounting and the passion for peace returned. Right gallantly the war party sought to reawaken the fine frenzy of the hysterical days of the X Y Z papers. The preachers were as distressed over the possibility of peace as the politicians, and a convention of ministers in Boston issued a war cry. ‘You will see by these things that the clergy are not asleep this way,’ wrote a Massachusetts man to Wolcott. ‘They ought everywhere to be awake.’[1633] From the New York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ came a pathetic attempt to sweep back the rising tide for peace: ‘The necessity in times like the present in cherishing the war spirit ... is evident.’[1634] Apropos of the report that the French were ready to make every concession to our interest and pride, the ‘Centinel’ in Boston sent forth the warning, ‘The trying time is now approaching’;[1635] but the rabble, as the masses were called, could see nothing distressing in winning a war without the loss of a drop of blood. Fenno’s ‘Gazette,’ commenting on the business stagnation, promised that ‘a war with France would within two months revivify every department of society, commerce would be invigorated, the funds would rise, and every employment of life would receive new vigor.’[1636] This sordid note he was soon to strike again.[1637] But it was all unavailing. The enlistments dwindled to nothing, common soldiers were actually cheering the Democratic Governor in the streets of Philadelphia, no one feared an invasion, and, as Wolcott confided to Fisher Ames, ‘no one has thought it prudent to say that the army is kept to suppress or prevent rebellions.’[1638] To make matters all the worse, desertions multiplied until the harassed McHenry was writing Hamilton urging executions. The little rhymester was far beyond his depths, scolded by Washington, kicked like a flunky by Hamilton in one or two letters a day. But the idea of shooting a deserter was a bit too high-toned for Hamilton. ‘There must be some caution,’ he wrote, ‘not to render our military system odious by giving it the appearance of being sanguinary.’[1639] Adams was prepared for extreme measures, but it was decided to leave the decision with Hamilton and McHenry—which meant with Hamilton. ‘If the virtuous General Hamilton is determined upon shooting every soldier who deserts,’ said ‘The Aurora,’ ‘Billy Wilcox’s court martial will be kept at pretty constant duty. In a Daily Advertiser of last week no less than ten of these strayed gentlemen are advertised for apprehension at $10 a head.’[1640]
But Hamilton was too wise to shoot.
IV
The war cry was sinking to a hoarse whisper when Dr. James Logan, who had entertained the Washingtons, and who was a follower of Jefferson, quietly slipped out of Philadelphia one day and sailed for France—and the war hawks were in a frenzy. When Logan, at his own expense and wholly on his own volition, went to Paris, it was to determine the state of the public mind there for himself. He was a leading citizen, his family familiar to society, his home one of the most cultured in the community, and, aside from being a friend of the French democracy, he was a Quaker and an enemy of war. He felt that the country had been deceived by war propaganda, and he determined to find out for himself.
The war wing of the Federalist Party knew that an investigation in Paris was the one thing they could not afford. No one knew better that war was unnecessary and that the French were ready if not eager to recede. Harrison Gray Otis knew it best of all because his fellow Federalist of Boston and classmate, Richard Codman, was writing him from Paris of the French disposition for peace and conciliation. But this was being carefully concealed from the American people. Thus, when Logan sailed it was clearly the cue for the war party to hint darkly of weird conspiracies with the French and a factional embassy from the Democrats. Soon Harper, who had a supersensitive nose for conspiracies and treason, was hinting mysteriously on the floor of the House of a traitorous correspondence between the French Directory and the Jeffersonian Party. The truth is that, when Logan foolishly made a mystery of his departure and almost surreptitiously stole out of Philadelphia, he carried letters from Jefferson and Governor McKean. Four or five days before his departure he had informed Jefferson of his purpose and asked for letters of introduction and a certification of his citizenship. It was not a secret that Jefferson was opposed to a preventable war, but no instructions were given the Doctor, no communication was sent by Jefferson, and there was no conspiracy at all.[1641] Thus, on his own volition Logan went to Paris, talked with Otis’s Federalist friend Codman and other Americans, conversed with leading Frenchmen, dined with Merlin, met Talleyrand, and ascertained, as he had expected, that peace could be preserved with honor. A simple, honest man, with none of the crooked mental twists of the professional politician, he returned with the confident expectation that the President and his advisers would be glad to get the benefit of his observations. He reached Philadelphia to find himself the object of immeasurable abuse.
Not doubting that Pickering would be glad to have his impressions, Logan went first to him. This was, in truth, a ludicrous performance, and a Federalist paper was moved to mirth because he had ‘actually unfolded his budget to Pickering’ and ‘needless to say’ returned ‘with a bug in his ear.’[1642] Going on to Trenton, the temporary seat of government, he saw Washington, to be received with more than his customary coldness. He had a message from Lafayette to Washington. ‘Aye,’ said the General. And one from Kosciusko. ‘Aye,’ said Washington. Whereupon Logan courteously proffered him the use of his home, which the Washingtons had often found agreeable, while in Philadelphia, to have his offer curtly declined. Even Pinckney haughtily refused the use of Logan’s carriage when the General was seeking a conveyance to the capital. ‘This fellow Logan had the unparalleled effrontery to offer the General a seat in his carriage,’ sneered a war paper.[1643] Some historians insist that Adams treated him contemptuously, and this seems probable in the light of the latter’s letter to Pickering,[1644] albeit Gibbs records that Adams was much impressed with Logan’s story and with his sincerity and candor.[1645] The letter was written to Pickering, however, before the interview was granted.
When Congress met, Logan found himself the subject of a bitter debate brought on by the introduction of the so-called ‘Logan Law’ prohibiting unofficial meddling in international affairs. Harper had followed his cue and found his conspiracy. Logan had actually presented a paper to the Directory as from one having authority. The story was all too thin, the facts too badly twisted, and the Jeffersonians under the leadership of Gallatin showed their teeth. The climax came when Harper read the paper which Logan was presumed to have presented. Then, through frank letters in ‘The Aurora,’ Logan brought out the truth to the discomfiture of the war hawks. In view of the scurvy treatment he has received, his own statement is one of value. He had been met at Hamburg by Lafayette, who had furnished him with the means to proceed to Paris. There he found negotiations at an end. Knowing no law, ‘moral or political,’ that prevented him from serving his country, he had sought interviews with leading characters and found France anxious for peace. Whereupon he had suggested the lifting of the embargo on American shipping detained in French ports and the release of American sailors held prisoners. He had not gone to Paris ‘at the direction or on the request or on the advice of any person whatever.’ He went for his own pleasure, on his own views, and at his own expense.[1646] Not only had the memorial Harper had read to the house not been presented by him, it had not been written by him, but by a good Federalist who was an intimate friend and correspondent of Harrison Gray Otis, and he had refused the request to present it on the ground of its ‘having too much the appearance of an official act.’[1647] The absolute veracity of this story was known to Otis, who was intimate with Harper, for he had a letter from Codman in verification, and to the effect that Logan had told Talleyrand that in the event of war all parties in America would rally around the Government ‘and oppose all its enemies.’[1648]
Thus there was a conspiracy, a peculiarly ugly conspiracy, of the war hawks to ruin an honest, patriotic, if Quixotic man because of his interference with their plans to manufacture a needless and therefore a criminal war.
But there was a special reason for the war party’s rage over Logan. About this time Elbridge Gerry, one of the three envoys, who had stayed over in Paris on the invitation of Talleyrand, had returned with a similar story. The Federalists had been outraged by his failure to leave with his colleagues, and on his return to his home in Cambridge he found himself socially ostracized. Adams, who was his friend, had severely condemned him for continuing his conferences in Paris.[1649] So bitter was the feeling against him, that the war party did not scruple to terrorize his family in his absence. His wife received anonymous letters charging that a woman was responsible for his lingering in Paris. With only women and children in his house, their nights were made hideous with yells and bonfires under their windows; and one morning Mrs. Gerry looked out of the window on a miniature guillotine smeared with blood. On his return, Gerry had gone to Philadelphia and left his dispatches, which Pickering had published with his intemperate comments. The Federalists were well pleased with Pickering’s excoriation.
And Jefferson? So different was his conception of public opinion that he was delighted. Seizing upon the Gerry correspondence as a complete answer to the X Y Z papers, he wrote Edmund Pendleton that it was too voluminous for the masses, and urging him to prepare ‘a capitulation ... stating everything ... short, simple, and leveled to every capacity ... so concise, as, omitting nothing material, may yet be printed in handbills, of which we could print and disperse ten or twelve thousand copies under letter covers, through all the United States by the members of Congress when they return home.’[1650]
Meanwhile, Gerry had hastened to Quincy, and in the rambling frame house of the President was going over the situation with him.
V
The restoration of peace with France would mean the end of the army created with so much expense and trouble. So determined were the Hamiltonians on war that they were ready to wreck the Federalist Party on the issue. Many explanations have been offered. Wolcott had hinted in his letter to Ames that an army was wanted for domestic use.[1651] That was the common charge of the Democrats. That there was another and more portentous reason we may be sure, albeit the public, and even John Adams, was ignorant of it.
At that time a queer little Latin-American soldier of fortune, Francesco de Miranda, was living in London, playing about Downing Street, and conferring with Rufus King, the American Minister, who, next to Morris, was the ablest of Hamilton’s lieutenants. There was a possibility that at any time England might be forced to war on Spain should that country enter into the struggle on the side of France. The United States was then engaged in a quarrel with Spain. It was the idea of Miranda to enlist England and the United States in a grand revolutionary scheme in South America. He had discussed it with the British Ministers and with King, who was in correspondence with Hamilton. It involved an alliance between the English-speaking countries. This had been hinted at, as we have seen, long before, by Hamilton in a letter to Pickering, who was in favor of entering into such an alliance without delay. It was the plan of Miranda for England to furnish the ships, not exceeding twenty, men and money; the United States to supply no less than seven thousand soldiers, two thousand of these being cavalry. The lure of Florida and Cuba was held out to the United States.[1652] Here was a grand scheme of conquest that appealed irresistibly to Hamilton’s ambition for military glory.[1653] Entirely unknown to Adams or Washington, Hamilton had been in correspondence with the soldier of fortune, and in communication with him through King who was managing the London end of the affair. He made it plain to King that in the event of a successful issue he would want the United States to be the principal agency. ‘The command in this case would very naturally fall upon me, and I hope I should disappoint no favorable anticipations,’ he wrote. He thought the country not quite ripe for the enterprise, but ‘we ripen fast, and it may, I think, be rapidly brought to maturity if an efficient negotiation for the purpose is at once set on foot.’[1654] To Miranda he was writing that he would not embark in the affair ‘unless patronized by the Government of this country.’ An army of twelve thousand men was being raised. ‘General Washington has resumed his station at the head of our armies, I am second in command.’[1655] In the autumn of 1798, he was writing Senator Gunn on the importance of heavy cannon for fortifications and mortars in the case of a siege. ‘If we engage in war our game will be to attack where we can. France is not to be considered as separated from her ally. Tempting objects will be within our grasp.’[1656] In January, 1799, Hamilton was writing Otis in the same strain. ‘If universal empire is still to be the pursuit of France, what can tend to defeat that purpose better than to detach South America from Spain.... The Executive ought to be put in a situation to embrace favorable conjunctures for effecting that separation.’[1657] With all this Pickering was familiar and in sympathy, but Adams was in total ignorance. In time the subject was cautiously broached to him, to be rejected with the curt notation that we were not at war with Spain. But the record is too clear to leave the South American project out of consideration in seeking the reason for the intense desire for war—and a large army. Through all this period, Hamilton had visions of himself on horseback, at the head of troops in South America, with England as an ally.[1658]
Never had Hamilton felt himself so near the top of the world. When Congress met in the fall of 1798, he had a plan ready for a complete change in the formation of the Nation. This provided for eighty United States District Courts;[1659] the division of old States into new ones for any territory having as many as 100,000 people on the request of any considerable number—which would or could have made seven States out of Virginia; and for the extension and more rigid enforcement of the Sedition Law.
It was on this state of affairs that Adams, perplexed, harassed, worried by the serious illness of Abigail, aching under the humiliations visited upon him by the bosses of his party, meditated during the summer and early fall of 1798. And he thought seriously, too, on what Gerry had told him of the temper of France.
VI
This had almost persuaded him that a new mission to France was feasible, when a letter from Murray at The Hague, indicating uneasiness in Paris lest the United States be forced into an alliance with England, convinced him. Thus, about the middle of October, in a letter to Pickering, he submitted two questions for the consideration of the Cabinet. ‘Should there be a declaration of war?’ ‘Could proposals for further negotiations be made with safety, and should a new envoy be named, prepared to sail on assurances that he would be received?’
That letter fell like a bomb in the camp of the war conspirators. How Pickering must have scowled, and McHenry grumbled, and Wolcott shrugged his shoulders with a cynical grin when they sat down to meditate on its meaning. That more important personages were informed we may be sure. To that note, however, the Cabinet did not deign to reply. Had not Adams declared that he would never send another envoy unless solemnly assured that he would be received? No such assurance had come. Then why discuss it—even on the request of the President? However, a Message would have to be sent to Congress, and with Adams in a conciliatory frame of mind it was imperative that something definite await him on his arrival. Thus the conspirators sat down to the framing of a Message that would defeat the very purpose the letter had indicated. Hamilton and Pinckney were summoned to the conference. The result was a paragraph putting it squarely up to France to take the initiative in the matter of a renewal of negotiations. Wolcott, who, better than any of the others, could hide his treachery behind an ingratiating urbanity, was put forward as the author. Reaching the capital, Adams summoned his Cabinet to go over the Message. All went well until the fateful paragraph was reached, and instantly the keen eye of the suspicious old man caught its full significance. That, he would not accept, and an open struggle began. With earnestness and even heat the obnoxious paragraph was urged upon him, but Adams planted his feet and stood. He would rewrite that paragraph to conform to his personal view of the proprieties.[1660]
The Cabinet conspirators retired with the realization that there were dark days ahead. Adams in his substitute held forth the olive branch to the extent of declaring that no new envoy would be sent unless assurances were forthcoming that he would be properly received. Washington, Hamilton, and Pinckney, in uniforms, sat in the chamber when the Message was read. Two of these, at least, had grave forebodings. Then it was that the conspirators determined to override Adams by meeting his plan for negotiations with an immediate declaration of war. A caucus of the Federalists was called. The most brilliant and fiery orators were primed for the occasion. The proposal was made and supported with eloquence. The vote was taken, and by a small majority Adams triumphed over his foes. This was the most significant incident yet—it meant that Hamilton had lost control of the party councils.[1661] With that knowledge, Pickering made no further attempt to conceal his bitter hostility to his chief. Ordered to prepare a treaty that would be acceptable, he ignored the request. Asked to moderate his report on the Gerry dispatches, he refused. Among his associates he was bitterly resentful, and all this was carried to the President, who cunningly simulated ignorance of what was happening. Then, at length, came the desired assurances from Talleyrand, that an envoy would be ‘received as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.’ That was enough. Adams was ready for action.
Thus, without further warning to the Cabinet, a messenger from the President appeared in the Senate on February 18th with the nomination of Murray as Minister to France. The Federalists were paralyzed. Jefferson, equally amazed, managed to conceal his pleasure over the evident discomfiture of his foes.[1662] Almost a week later he still suspected that the nomination had been sent ‘hoping the Federalists ... would accept the responsibility of rejecting it.’[1663] But the Federalist Senators had no such suspicion. Their faces betrayed their indignation. That night they met in caucus with their war paint on, and the decision was reached to defeat the confirmation. They still had the whip hand. If Adams would modify in some way—At any rate, he should remain in no doubt as to their opinion of his action. A committee, consisting of Bingham, Read, Sedgwick, Ross, and Stockton, was named to wait upon him, and a note was sent requesting an audience. The reply left them in no doubt as to the fighting mood of the man they sought to intimidate. He would be very glad to receive them ‘as gentlemen, at his house, at seven in the evening.’ At the appointed hour they were ushered into the audience room. No one was there. Then the door opened, and Adams, the picture of dignity on short legs, entered.
‘Gentlemen, I am glad to see you as friends and Senators; but as a committee interfering, as I think you are, with my executive duties, I cannot consent to receive you, and I protest against all such interference. I have a duty to execute, and so have you. I know and shall do mine, and I want neither your opinion nor aid in its execution.’
At which he politely asked them to be seated.
Not a little nonplussed by his masterful manner, Bingham apologetically explained that there was no thought of interference, but merely a disposition to reconcile differences of opinion.
‘Well, then, gentlemen,’ snapped Adams, ‘if you are determined to interfere in diplomatic matters, reject Mr. Murray. You have the power to do this, and you may do it; but it will be upon your own responsibility.’
As mildly as possible it was suggested that Adams’s action, so soon after the insult, would be interpreted as a humiliation.
‘I know more of diplomatic forms than all of you,’ Adams hotly replied with perfect truth. ‘It was in France that we received the insult, and in France I am determined that we shall receive the reparation.’
Forced to compromise, a commission was then suggested.
‘Who would you have me send?’ Adams demanded, an ugly expression on his face. ‘Shall I send Theophilus Parsons, or some of your other Essex rulers? No, I will send none of them.’
At this the committee showed its teeth with the threat to defeat the confirmation. Adams, infuriated by the threat, replied that there was a party determined to rule him, but that they would fail.[1664]
That night when the caucus met again, it was decided to reject the nomination. Meanwhile, the effect outside the Senate was quite as sensational. Duane announced the nomination the day after it reached the Senate, in large type. The next day ‘Porcupine’ fired a broadside.
‘For the last two days,’ he said, ‘there has been a most atrocious falsehood in circulation ... that the President ... has intimated by a messenger to the Senate that he has resolved on sending another plenipotentiary to treat with the French Republic. Every one must perceive the falsehood on the front of this; yet have audacious wretches dared to promulgate it without hesitation and they have even named the plenipotentiary, Mr. Murray.... I will not expatiate upon the consequences of such a step ... because I cannot suppose the step within the compass of possibility; but I must observe that had he taken such a step it would have been instantaneously followed by the loss of every friend worth preserving.’[1665] Encouraged by the applause of the Federalists, he recurred to it the next day with a denunciation of ‘a mere fabrication intended to alienate the President’s friends ... at this momentous crisis and sink his character in the eyes of all Europe and America.’[1666] But two days later, the ferocious ‘Porcupine’ had changed his tune and was singing low, with the absurd protestation that he had ‘never published a word with regard to the President that could possibly be construed into disrespect.’[1667] He had discovered he was amenable to the Alien Law he had so stoutly defended!
Adams had asserted himself and was happy, and when Pickering was writing Washington that his successor was ‘suffering the torments of the damned,’ Adams was writing cheerfully to his wife that he could hardly be chosen President a second time, and would be glad of the relief. ‘To-night I must go to the ball; where I suppose I shall get cold and have to eat gruel for breakfast for a week afterwards.’[1668] The determined little patriot was now on the top of the world, and now it was his enemies that were guessing. The senatorial committee had been an idea of Hamilton’s, to whom Sedgwick had hastened the news of the nomination. The committee had failed. Even the suggestion of two more envoys had been scorned. Something might still be done through conciliation. Ellsworth, the Chief Justice, had Adams’s confidence and he was sent to try his powers of persuasion, and succeeded. Thus, the nominations of Murray, Ellsworth, and Patrick Henry were sent to the Senate, and confirmed without even a whimper from ‘Porcupine.’ But beneath the surface, the passions were seething. Sedgwick wrote King that he had not ‘conversed with an individual ... who did not unequivocably reprobate the measure.’[1669] Tracy, who had wanted to arm the women and children against the French, wrote McHenry that while he had sacrificed much ‘to root out Democracy,’ he thought it ‘to be lost and worse.’[1670] Cabot assured King that ‘surprise, indignation, grief, and disgust followed each other in quick succession in the breasts of the true friends of the country,’[1671] and informed Pickering that he had written ‘a piece’ about it for the Boston papers, but that ‘the Boston press had been fixed by the President’s friends and it had not appeared.’[1672] To King, he ascribed Adams’s action to jealousy of Hamilton and Washington.[1673] Pickering wrote Cabot that ‘the President’s character can never be retrieved.’[1674] Stephen Higginson, the merchant prince of the Essex Junto, found the world dark indeed. Why had not war been declared in the summer of 1798? Even the powers given Adams by the Alien and Sedition Laws had not been used![1675] Jonathan Mason was furious because ‘from being respectable in Europe, from having convinced Great Britain and from having associated with all the friends of Order, Property, and Society ... we must again become soothers and suppliants for peace from a gang of pitiful robbers.’[1676] Ames wrote that the new embassy ‘disgusts most men here’ because they thought ‘peace with France ... an evil.’[1677] Even at Adams’s table the jeremiads of the Federalists were heard, and the dinners were somber affairs. Bayard of Delaware was loud in his lamentations.
‘Mr. Bayard, I am surprised to hear you express yourself in this manner,’ said Adams. ‘Would you prefer a war with France to a war with England in the present state of the world; would you wish for an alliance with Great Britain and a war with France? If you would, your opinions are totally different from mine.’
‘Great Britain is very powerful,’ Bayard replied mournfully. ‘Her navy is very terrible.’[1678]
When at the end of the session, Adams set forth for his seat at Braintree, Harper expressed the hope that his horses might run away and break his neck.[1679] Only John Jay, among the outstanding Federalists, could see no objections to the mission, but he was always bothered by scruples.
VII
It was unfortunate that Adams’s love for Braintree caused him to desert the capital in this crisis. The policy of the conspirators was to wear out their chief’s purpose through procrastination, and, in the meanwhile, to bring all possible pressure to bear to restore his secret enemies to his good graces. He had made the sailing of the envoys conditional on a direct assurance from France as to the reception they would receive. Under the most favorable conditions this meant months of delay, and the treacherous policy of Pickering made it worse. On March 6th Adams instructed his Secretary of State to inform Murray of the conditions, but it was not until in May that the latter heard from Pickering. Talleyrand was immediately informed, and within a week Murray was in possession of the required official assurances, but it was the last day of July before they reached Philadelphia. Disappointing to the conspirators though these were, a careful study of the Talleyrand note disclosed a touch of annoyance over the delay. The insolence of the man! Another insult! The conspirators determined if possible to make this the occasion for further delay. If Adams could only be persuaded to insist upon an explanation of the impatient paragraph, more time would be gained, and Pickering strongly recommended this in his note transmitting the Talleyrand letter to the President. But Adams was too wary now to be easily caught. Replying dryly that he could overlook the language for the deed, he instructed Pickering that, while preparations for war proceeded, the commission should be hurried to Ellsworth and Governor Davie—for the latter had been named in the place of Henry, who had declined—with instructions to prepare for embarkation at any moment.
Meanwhile, with Pickering taking six weeks in the preparations of the instructions, efforts were being made to coax Adams into his enemies’ camp. One day Cabot suavely presented himself at the house at Braintree on a purely social neighborly visit. He went at the instance of the Hamiltonians to wheedle the old man back into their clutches. That the ablest politician of the Essex Junto was affectionately friendly, we may be sure, but his courtesy was matched by that of Adams and Mrs. Adams, and he stayed for dinner. But Abigail never left the room. The President occasionally went out, Abigail never. Though she was gracious to a degree. Thus the door of opportunity was closed and locked and Abigail had the key. Cabot found that ‘every heart was locked and every tongue was silenced upon all topics that bore affinity to those which I wished to touch.’[1680] Hamilton was in intimate touch with the leading members of the Adams Cabinet all the while—far more so than Adams; but the President knew of the movements of his dearest enemy through the Jeffersonian press. The latter part of April found Hamilton in Philadelphia with Gouverneur Morris, in close communion with Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry. Duane flippantly announced that they had ‘kept the fast in Philadelphia,’ and that ‘a pair more pious, more chaste, more moral perhaps never mortified the flesh and the spirit since the days of David and the fair Shunammite.’[1681] At Braintree Adams was keeping his own counsels, enjoying the serenity of domesticity, with occasional excursions into Boston to attend church or the theater, always accompanied by the Marshal of the district. When the Boston Troop went to Braintree to accompany him, with military pomp, to the Harvard Commencement, he was enormously pleased.[1682] But he was on the alert. About the time Pickering’s belated instructions reached him with a letter from the Cabinet suggesting the suspension of the mission for a time, he read a cautiously worded note from Stoddert, his Secretary of the Navy, hinting at the importance of his presence in Trenton, whither the Government had temporarily gone because of the prevalence of yellow fever again in Philadelphia. Adams was able to read between the lines.
The silent treatment to which the conspirators were being subjected annoyed them beyond endurance. They were by no means certain it was a hoax when they read in ‘The Aurora’ on August 15th that ‘the Executive of the United States has ordered the frigate “John Adams” to be prepared to carry our envoys without delay to Europe,’ and the ‘Centinel’ in Boston was not able to deny it for several days.[1683] In September, Pickering was urging Cabot to persuade Ellsworth to dissuade Adams from sending the mission. ‘There is nothing in politics he despises more than this mission,’ he wrote.[1684] Ellsworth did as he was bid—with a difference. He asked that early notice be given him of the plans because of ‘unusual demands upon his time on the official circuit.’[1685] The real attitude of Ellsworth is not at all plain, for it was being whispered about that he hoped to reach the Presidency through the success of the mission.[1686]
Then came another pretext for delay. There had come another shift in French politics, with some indications of the restoration of the Jacobins to power, and Talleyrand had resigned. Did this not call for further postponement? Adams replied in the affirmative, fixing the latter part of October as the limit, and promising to be in Trenton by the middle of that month. Rejoicing in this delay, Pickering began to meditate on the possible intervention of the Senate. With this in view he wrote Cabot for advice. The reply was wholly unsatisfactory. ‘If the Senate should be admitted to possess a right to determine a priori what foreign connections should be sought or shunned, I should fear that they would soon exhibit the humiliating spectacle of cap and hats which so long and so naturally appeared in Sweden,’ said Cabot.[1687] Adams had the power, and he was silent. The conspirators began to mobilize for a desperate attempt at Trenton.
VIII
On October 6th, Adams drove down the road from Braintree on his way to Trenton with such secrecy that he was halfway there before Cabot knew he had gone.[1688] The conspirators were there before him, Pinckney on the ground, Hamilton at Newark within easy call. Ellsworth had been summoned from Hartford. Governor Davie, having received a flattering address from his fellow citizens at Raleigh, was on the road, ‘a troop of horse and a cavalcade of citizens escorting him four miles on his way.’[1689]
Adams reached Trenton on Thursday, and on Friday night there was ‘a handsome display of fireworks’ in his honor, ‘in which Mr. Guimpe, the artist, exhibited much skill and ingenuity.’ The initials of Adams and Washington ‘displayed in colored fires was received with shouts of applause.’ On Saturday, Ellsworth arrived. Hamilton appeared upon the scene. Just at that juncture the conspirators were much elated with the news of the successes of the British army under the Duke of York in Holland, and the triumphant march of the Russians under Suwarrow in Switzerland. Might not the next report bring the news of the restoration of the Bourbons in France, and the end to the hideous nightmare of democracy? Here was a new club, and the conspirators laid eager hands upon it. Hamilton called to urge the point.
‘Why, Sir, by Christmas Louis XVIII will be seated upon his throne,’ he declared.
‘By whom?’ demanded Adams.
‘By the coalition,’ Hamilton replied.
‘Ah, then,’ said Adams, ‘farewell to the independence of Europe.’[1690]
When the President entertained the two envoys at dinner, he was amazed to find Ellsworth echoing the views of Hamilton.
‘Is it possible, Mr. Chief Justice,’ demanded Adams, ‘that you can seriously believe that the Bourbons are, or will soon be restored to the throne of France?’
‘Why,’ said Ellsworth, smiling sheepishly, ‘it looks a good deal so.’
‘I should not be afraid to stake my life upon it that they will not be restored for seven years, if they ever are,’ was Adams’s retort.[1691]
The coincidence in the views of the two men was not lost on Adams, who asked a member of his Cabinet if ‘Ellsworth and Hamilton had come all the way from Windsor and New York to persuade me to countermand the mission.’[1692] That was an ominous comment. The resulting excitement among his advisers did not escape the watchful eye of Adams, who wrote Abigail that it left him ‘calmly cold.’
On the night of October 15th Adams, calm, cold, thrice-armed, sat about the table with his Cabinet, no longer deceived by any of them save Wolcott. The purpose was the consideration of the instructions that had been prepared. Some changes were made. Adams asked advice on certain points. At eleven o’clock the instructions were unanimously approved. The Cabinet lingered, but Adams brought up no new subject. Out into the dark Trenton streets trooped the conspirators, almost hopeful. They were still at breakfast the next morning when orders were received from Adams that the instructions should be put in shape, a frigate be placed in readiness to receive the envoys who should sail not later than the first of the month.
The conspiracy had failed and John Adams was actually President.
The Jeffersonians were jubilant. Duane wrote that Adams had ‘crossed the Rubicon,’ but that the rumor that Pickering and Wolcott had resigned was groundless. ‘They will never sacrifice their places to squeamish feelings.’[1693] Hamilton had sought to deter the President, but to his honor ‘he resisted every seducement and repelled every insinuation.’[1694] The Hamiltonians were either furious or depressed. The Southern Federalists under Marshall approved, as did Jay, and the ‘Centinel’ commended the act, but the men who had made and maintained the prestige of the Federalist Party were in murderous mood. The mission would succeed—they knew it. There would be no war, and the army would have to go. With that would go the instrument for keeping down insurrections in America or for waging a war of conquest in South America. With one masterful effort, Adams had pulled down the pillars of the party temple and he could not escape in its fall. But it was the proudest and most masterful moment in his life, and he was content. Long after the débâcle he was to write that he asked no better epitaph than the sentence that he had taken upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France.