Jefferson and Hamilton

CHAPTER XX

HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE

FINDING that persuasion had failed to shake the fidelity of the second-class leaders, Hamilton bethought himself of coercion. The moment he returned to New York, he wrote Charles Carroll of Carrollton proposing to ‘oppose their fears to their prejudices,’ by having the Middle States declare that they would not support Adams at all. Thus they might be ‘driven to support Pinckney.’ Both New Jersey and Connecticut, he thought, might agree to the plan, since in both places Adams’s popularity was on the wane. In any event, it was not ‘advisable that Maryland should be too deeply pledged to the support of Mr. Adams.’[1776] The effect on Carroll was all that could have been desired. Two months later, an emissary of McHenry’s, sent to interview the venerable patriot, found that he considered Adams ‘totally unfit for the office of President, and would support ... the election of General Pinckney.’[1777] Throughout the summer the leaders in the inner circle of the Hamiltonian conspirators were busy with their pens. Richard Stockton urged on Wolcott the wisdom of making a secret fight. ‘Prudent silence ... get in our tickets of electors ... they will be men who will do right in the vote ... and Mr. Pinckney will be the man of their choice.’[1778]

No one was deeper in the business than Wolcott, who, holding on to his position, and presenting a suave, unblushing front to his chief, was writing feverishly to the leaders of the conspiracy. While Hamilton was receiving the homage of his New England idolaters in June, Wolcott was writing Cabot that ‘if General Pinckney is not elected all good men will have cause to regret the inactivity of the Federal party.’[1779] In July he was writing McHenry that if ‘you will but do your part, we shall probably secure Mr. Pinckney’s election,’[1780] and to Chauncey Goodrich that good men thought Mr. ‘Adams ought not to be supported.’[1781] He was receiving letters from Benjamin Goodhue, presumably Adams’s friend, concerning ‘Mr. Adams’ insufferable madness and vanity,’[1782] and from McHenry that ‘Mr. Harper is now clearly of opinion that General Pinckney ought to be preferred.’[1783] In August he was assuring Ames that ‘Adams ought not to be supported,’[1784] and in September ‘The Aurora’ was charging that during that month he had declared in Washington ‘that Mr. Adams did not deserve a vote for President.’[1785] Clasping Adams’s hand with one of his, this consummate master of intrigue was using the other to wig-wag messages to Hamilton from the window of the fortress.

But Hamilton found much to disconcert him. Albeit Cabot rather boasted that in July he had not yet paid a visit of courtesy to Braintree, and probably would not,[1786] he was writing Hamilton that to discard Adams at that juncture would mean defeat in Massachusetts.[1787] He was opposed, however, only to an open rupture. Noah Webster, having made a New England tour of his own, and lingered a moment under the trees at Braintree, went over to Adams bag and baggage.[1788] All but two of the Federalist papers were supporting Adams with spirit. To prod him more, the Jeffersonian press was pouncing upon Hamilton ferociously. ‘Dictator of the aristocratical party!’ ‘Father of the funding system!’ Working desperately for Pinckney, ‘continually flying through the continent rousing his partisans by the presence of their chief, prescribing and regulating every plan,’ was Hamilton, charged a Jeffersonian editor. Author of ‘a little book’ in which he ‘endeavors to give an elegant and pleasant history of his adulteries,’ he added.[1789] Hamilton began to meditate a sensational stroke.

II

Meanwhile, the Jeffersonians, united, enthusiastic, thoroughly organized, confident, were waging war along the whole line. The mechanics who could vote, the small farmers, the liberals and Democrats, the private soldiers of the Revolution who felt they had been tricked, the small merchants, the Germans because of taxes and the proscription of Muhlenberg, the Irish because the Federalists abused them and passed the Alien Law, were almost a unit behind their chief. All the cost of the army and navy, and the frequent outrages of soldiers with nothing to do, brought support. In North Carolina, Gales, in ‘The Register,’ was using the camp near Raleigh as a veritable recruiting point for Democrats. The eight per cent loan of that day and the Excise Law of the day before were bringing great accessions to the ranks. The growing indebtedness of the Nation, and Wolcott’s admission that another eight per cent loan would be necessary, was making converts. The scandals in administration were creating havoc in Administration circles and driving Wolcott to distraction. The scandal of Jonathan Dayton, Federalist leader of New Jersey, broke, and the hailstones beat upon the head of Wolcott, who was the victim of his credulity alone. While Speaker, Dayton had made written application at the end of the session of 1798 for thirty-three thousand dollars as compensation for the House. That amount was not needed. Wolcott’s plea that he did not know he had given Dayton more than necessary was greeted with jeers. His assertion that he had the right to expect the unexpended balance to be immediately refunded only met derisive laughter. Not until the winter of 1799 was the discovery made that Dayton had retained more than eighteen thousand dollars since July, 1798. Wolcott, discovering this fraud, summoned Dayton, wrote him a sharp letter, and recovered the money—but not the interest.[1790] Meanwhile, Duane, in ‘The Aurora,’ was devoting pages to affidavits concerning Dayton’s notorious land frauds.[1791] Defalcations were numerous, due, according to the apologists of the Administration, to ‘the difficulty of procuring men of standing and character ... to execute their duties.’[1792]

Then, to darken the picture for the Federalists, stories were afloat corroborative of the Jeffersonian charge that they favored aristocracy and monarchy. Again Adams appeared as the champion of kingly government. Senator John Langdon, a reputable man, personally vouched in a signed letter to the truth of the charge that, in the presence of himself and John Taylor of Caroline, Adams had said that ‘he expected to see the day when Mr. Taylor and his friend, Mr. Giles, would be convinced that the people of America would not be happy without an hereditary chief and Senate—or at least for life.’[1793] This was greatly strengthened from Federalist sources. ‘The observations of the President when he went through town [New Haven] last, made more Democrats than any other thing beside,’ wrote Timothy Phelps to Wolcott. ‘He told Dr. Dana he did not believe the United States could exist as a nation unless the Executive was hereditary.’[1794]

The lesser lights among the Federalists were likewise contributing to the Jeffersonian cause. Noah Webster was being vigorously assailed in the ‘American Mercury’ for saying that reading and observation had convinced him that republicanism was impossible unless the poorer classes were excluded from the vote.[1795] But the climax came with the publication of the stupid pamphlet of John Ward Fenno, who, with his father, had been editor of the Federalist organ for years. In ‘Desultory Reflections on the New Political Aspect of Public Affairs,’ he clearly reflected the views of Hamilton, to whom he referred as having been pitched ‘down the Tarpeian rock of oblivion, not for subsequent apostacy, but for the very deed of greatness itself.’ It was a slashing assault on Adams for making peace with France. Glorious prospects had been opening ‘the doors of the temple of Janus,’ but Adams had acted in a ‘puerile’ fashion. The masses were denounced as ‘the stupid populace, too abject in ignorance to think rightly, and too depraved to draw honest deductions.’ The patriotic Federalists were, by Adams’s action, ‘by one sudden stroke in one short hour, beaten off their ground, overwhelmed with confusion, and left abandoned to all the ridicule and all the rage of their antagonists ... and nauseating nonsense, meanness, abject servility, and the effeminacy of Sybaris now reign with a pomposity undisturbed even by any casual exertions of genius or common sense.’ Pickering had been dismissed because he ‘approached too near to holding a divided empire with [Adams] in the hearts of the people.’ The time had come to ‘repudiate the author of our evils.’

More: the form of government should be changed. ‘The continent [should be] divided into ten, fifteen, or twenty counties, to be governed by a Lieutenant or Prefect appointed by the Executive; certain subaltern appointments should be in his gift. These Prefects would constitute as proper an upper House for one branch of the Legislature as could be devised.’ The franchise should be ‘cut off from all paupers, vagabonds, and outlaws’—the poor, the democrats—and ‘placed in those hands to which it belongs, the proprietors of the country.’[1796] This from the man who had edited the Hamilton Federalist organ in Philadelphia. Copies were carried about in the pockets of the Jeffersonians and worn out by readings in the taverns.

On top of this, Federalist leaders, writers, and papers began to hint at secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. It had become a habit. There had been talk of secession among them if the State debts were not assumed: talk again if the Jay Treaty was not ratified. Wolcott’s father had written his son, long before, of its desirability if Jefferson should be elected. Four years previously the ‘Hartford Courant,’ the strongest Federalist paper in New England, began to publish letters by ‘Pelham,’ paving the way for the secession of the North. The South was bitterly assailed. There were more interesting objects than the Union, thought ‘Pelham.’ The time had come to secede. A year later, ‘Gustavus’ began writing in the same paper on the same theme. Jefferson was denounced as an atheist and traitor.[1797] In 1800, ‘Burleigh’ took up his pen to advocate secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. In this case the author was known—it was the fanatic John Allen, who, as a member of Congress, had charged Livingston with sedition because of his attack in the House on the Alien Law. In his initial letter he urged all Federalist papers to copy, and some did. The election of Jefferson would destroy the Constitution, result in anarchy, expel Federalists from office, wreck the financial system, and lead to Revolution, for ‘there is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a civil war.’ This would be bad, but ‘less, far less, than anarchy or slavery.’ Secession would be almost certain. Where would the boundary be? At the Potomac?—the Delaware?—the Hudson? New England might have trouble if New York and Pennsylvania were included in the Northern Confederacy. ‘They are large, wealthy, powerful. They have many men of intrigue and talent among them, desperate in their fortunes, ambitious and unprincipled.’ It would be hard to get them to join a peaceful body and keep them quiet.

These were the leading political articles in the leading Federalist paper in the most uncompromising Federalist State through the campaign of 1800.[1798] In the ‘American Mercury,’ ‘Rodolphus’ replied with a stinging rebuke. ‘He tells us,’ wrote ‘Rodolphus,’ ‘that if Mr. Jefferson is elected our towns will be pillaged, our inhabitants rendered miserable and our soil dyed in blood; that we shall have a Jacobin government, that the Constitution ... will fall a sacrifice, and finally if the man of his choice is not elected, the Federal Union must be destroyed and that the Northern States must form a separate Government. The writer is a Federalist indeed.’[1799]

The Jeffersonians made the most of ‘Burleigh’s’ secession articles.

III

Nowhere were the Jeffersonian activities more annoying to the Federalists than in New England where Federalism thought itself permanently entrenched. It had reached its peak in 1798 during the war hysteria, and the next two years were marked by a notable decline. The activities of the defiant Democrats were intensified. Denunciations of the ‘aristocracy’ that governed, of the political meddling of the clergy, brought the fight personally home to the leaders. In Vermont, where Lyon had been persecuted and his followers aroused, the stamp tax and the extravagance in government made a deep impression on the small farmers. It was a scandal in the best regulated households that ‘Matthew Lyon and his cubs’ were prowling about the highways.[1800] In Massachusetts, where Gerry had made a remarkable race for Governor in the spring, the fight was being made in every quarter, and Ames was wailing that ‘on the whole the rabies canina of Jacobinism has gradually passed of late years from the cities, where it was confined to the docks and the mob, to the country.’[1801] In New Hampshire, the Jeffersonians had made an astonishing showing in the gubernatorial contest in the spring, carrying a number of the towns, including Concord and Portsmouth. There, under the leadership of John Langdon, they had capitalized the refusal of the Federalist Legislature to grant a charter to a bank which proposed to loan money in small sums, and place credit within the reach of the farmers and the poor.[1802] Their defeat, notwithstanding their heavy vote, encouraged them to persevere in their attacks on corporations and the ‘privileged few.’

But it was in Connecticut that the Jeffersonians gave the Federalists their greatest shock by the audacity of their attacks. There the Democrats, though few, made up in zeal and ability for what they lacked in numbers. In the home of Pierrepont Edwards, a Federal Judge and a foremost citizen, they perfected their plans for the campaign. Aaron Burr spent some time in the State assisting in the creation of a militant organization. A Federalist complained in a letter to Wolcott that ‘the Democrats spent all their time and talents for eight weeks endeavoring to persuade the ignorant part of the community that the Administration was endeavoring to establish a monarchy; and even good Mr. Edwards told them he had held an important office under government, but that he had found them so vile and corrupt, he was determined to resign the office.’[1803] Nothing could have been more distressing to the aristocratic and clerical oligarchy which had long lorded it over the people. The ‘Courant’ piously prayed that Connecticut would not ‘exhibit the distressing spectacle of two parties rending the State with their reproaches and whetting their swords for civic combat,’ and held up ‘the awful condition in Pennsylvania and Virginia’ as a warning.[1804] The ‘New York Commercial Advertiser,’ founded by a son of Connecticut, was disheartened at the effrontery of the Democrats. ‘Jacobinism in Connecticut,’ it said, ‘has heretofore been confined to back streets and dark recesses; but in consequence of the successes in other States it begins to creep forth and show its hideous front in good company.’[1805] In September the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford was boasting through ‘Gracchus’ that ‘in many towns where there was not a man who a few months ago avowed the cause of republicanism, the friends of liberty and the Constitution have now a majority,’ although ‘in most towns there was a fight.’[1806]

To Abraham Bishop, the fighting leader of the Jeffersonians, was left the congenial task of whipping the Federalists to a frenzy. A graduate of Yale, of which Dwight, popularly known as ‘the Pope of Federalism,’ and a man of scholarly attainments, was President, he was invited to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at the commencement. It was assumed that he would speak on some literary or scientific subject, but nothing was more remote from his intentions. Very carefully, and with malice aforethought, he prepared a scathing arraignment of Federalist principles and policies. At the last moment the clergy discovered the nature of the discourse and recommended its rejection. One indignant partisan wrote Wolcott that ‘the Society discovered the cheat before it was delivered and destroyed its effect so far as was within their power.’[1807] The ‘Courant’ explained that when the invitation was extended, the members of the fraternity were ‘ignorant of his sentiments,’ and of the fact that ‘he had been once desired by a committee of the society to resign the presidency because of profanity.’ The moment it was found that the wicked man had written ‘a seditious and inflammatory libel on the religion and government of the country,’ it was decided to dispense with the oration.[1808] But the seditious and irreligious Bishop had no notion of being robbed of an audience. The ‘Courant’ reported that ‘with an impudence and effrontery known only to weak or wicked men,’ Bishop ‘proceeded at seven o’clock to palm off on the public the production.’[1809] More than fifteen hundred men, women, and children, including some members of the clergy, heard him,[1810] but the ‘Courant,’ looking over the assemblage, solemnly declared it as ‘a singular fact that every open reviler of religion was there and highly gratified,’ but that the young ladies of New Haven ‘refused to grace an audience thus collected and consisting of such characters.’[1811]

No more slashing attack was heard during the campaign. The audience was sympathetic, jubilant. The orator in fine fettle, the subject to his taste. He attacked the extravagance in government, sneered at the ceremonious launching of war vessels, ridiculed the military pretensions of Hamilton. The army had not fought, but had ‘stood their ground bravely in their cantonments.’ The funding system had ‘ruined thousands, but ... has also led up to an aristocracy more numerous than the farmers-general in France, more powerful than all others because it combined the men of wealth.’

But it was for the political preachers of Connecticut that Bishop reserved his heaviest fire. ‘How much, think you, has religion been benefited by sermons intended to show that Satan and Cain were Jacobins?’ Then a contemptuous fling at ‘Pope’ Dwight—‘Would Paul of Tarsus have preached to an anxious, listening audience on the propriety of sending envoys?’ After all, ‘the Captain of Salvation is not so weak as to require an army and navy and a majority in Congress to support His cause.’ Then, falling into satire: ‘Let no one imagine that I would represent the clergy as acting out of their sphere ... for is it not said unto them, “Go ye into all the world and preach politics to every creature. When men oppose ye, call them enemies of God and trample them under your feet.” ... When the people are assembled, say to them that the Lord reigneth on the earth in the midst of men of power and wealth; that he delighteth in the proud, even in those who are lofty; that he will exalt the vain, and lay in the dust they who are humble in his sight; that the great are gods; but that the little men are like the chaff which he driveth before the wind; that in the day of his power he will shine mightily on those who are in power, and that he will make the people under them like the hay and the stubble and the sweepings of the threshing floor.’

Immediately the speech was published in pamphlet form and sent broadcast over the country. Editions were printed in numerous towns and States.[1812] Within a week an answer had been published in a pamphlet, ‘A Rod for a Fool’s Back,’[1813] but it failed to affect the popularity of Bishop’s ‘Oration on the Extent and Power of Political Delusions,’ and two months later, when he was at Lancaster during a session of the Legislature, he repeated the speech on invitation of Governor M’Kean.[1814] It was a palpable hit.

IV

And it was a hit, primarily because it was an assault on the part the clergy was playing in the campaign. All over New England, and in New York and Philadelphia, ministers were preaching politics with an intemperance of denunciation and a recklessness of truth that seems incredible to-day. The game of the politicians to picture Jefferson as an atheist, a scoffer at religion who despised the Church and laughed at the Bible, was entrusted to the Ministerial Corps, which did the best it could. It was a line of slander that had followed Jefferson from the moment he forced religious liberty and toleration into the laws of Virginia. The only campaign canard of which Jefferson took cognizance was set afloat by the Reverend Cotton Smith, who proclaimed that the man of Monticello had accumulated his property by robbing a widow and fatherless children of their estate while acting as their executor. ‘If Mr. Smith thinks that the precepts of the Gospel are intended for those who preach them as well as for others,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘he will some day feel the duties of repentance and acknowledgment in such forms as to correct the wrong he has done. All this is left to his own conscience.’[1815] But if Jefferson was content to leave to their consciences clergymen bearing false witness, his followers were not. When the Reverend Dr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia gravely warned his congregation against voting for an atheist, Duane made a biting reply. ‘He is the man who opposed reading the Declaration of Independence on 4th of July last,’ he wrote. ‘Need we wonder at his hatred of Mr. Jefferson?’[1816] When the clergyman, stung by the attack, made a weak reply, Duane asked: ‘During the prevalence of yellow fever ... in 1798 on a day in the house of Mr. Richard Potter in Germantown did you not provoke an argument in which you supported monarchical doctrines and assert that the country would never be happy until it had a king?’[1817] To another minister, fortunately ‘the late Rev. Dr. J. B. Smith of Virginia,’ was ascribed one of the most amazing stories of the campaign, that Jefferson on passing a dilapidated church had sneeringly said that ‘it was good enough for Him Who was born in a manger.’[1818]

When the Reverend John M. Mason published a political pamphlet under the cover of religion,[1819] accusing Jefferson of being a Deist, and the Reverend Dr. Lynn of New York, actively electioneering for Pinckney against both Adams and Jefferson at the instance of Hamilton, printed another,[1820] a Democratic pamphlet appeared declaring that ‘Jefferson is as good a Christian as Adams,’ and charging that ‘Pope’ Dwight, ten years before, had published a poem, ‘The Triumph of Infidelity,’ in which he named Pinckney as a Deist. In this pamphlet[1821] Dr. Lynn was handled as roughly as the Philadelphia pulpit politician. Had he not called on a Democrat while electioneering for Pinckney and been forced to admit that Jefferson was a good man? Had he not, when pressed, been forced to concede that Pinckney was a Deist? Had not the wife of the Democrat indignantly taken the clergyman to task for his ‘partiality to a self-confessed adulterer?’

If the Jeffersonians were attacking the political preachers with meat-axe and artillery, they were not without provocation enough. In Connecticut, these ministers were the backbone of the Federalist Party machine, with Dwight as their leader, than whom none more offensively intolerant ever breathed curses on a foe. In Massachusetts, when the Reverend Ebenezer Bradford espoused the cause of democracy, he was ferociously abused by his fellow ministers and the Federalist papers, ostracized in the name of Christ by his fellow clergymen, and refused a pulpit in Essex County. It was not a time when ministers in some sections were making much of the action of Christ in seeking his disciples among workers and fishermen.[1822] The feeling of many of these was expressed by the Reverend David Osgood when, speaking of the masses, he said that ‘they may know enough for the places and stations to which Providence has assigned them; may be good and worthy members of the community, provided they would be content to move in their own sphere and not meddle with things too high for them.’[1823]

In one pamphlet the case against Jefferson’s religion was set forth in detail—he questioned the story of the Deluge; did not believe the Bible in its entirety was inspired; and was opposed to teaching the Bible in the public schools. ‘No one, I believe,’ wrote this distressed Christian, ‘has openly and publicly asserted that Jefferson is a Christian.’[1824] Soon a pamphlet in defense was in circulation. ‘Read, ye fanatics, bigots, hypocrites ... and you base calumniators whose efforts to traduce are the involuntary tribute of envy to a character more pure than your own—read and learn and practice the religion of Jefferson as displayed in the sublime truth and inspired language of his ever memorable “act establishing religious liberty.” Read his views on slavery in his “Notes on Virginia”—“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”’[1825] The ‘Chronicle’ was amused to observe ‘the characters who are professed champions of religious zeal.’ Who were they? ‘What shall we say of a faction that has at its head a confessed and professed adulterer?... In connection with this Saint we have a group of zealots, consisting of gamblers, bankrupts, Saturday evening carousers, or, to comprise the whole in one general appellation, a British Essex Junto intermixed with a few clerical hypocrites who have formed an alliance, offensive and defensive, to calumniate Mr. Jefferson.’[1826] The ‘American Mercury’ dwelt on contributions made by Jefferson to the Church and to needy clergymen. ‘Thus while Mr. Jefferson is ... practicing the blessed religion of Jesus Christ by acts of charity and benevolence ... these political parsons are abusing that holy religion and profaning the temple of God by fulminating lies and slander against Mr. Jefferson.’[1827]

Thus through the summer and autumn and into the winter the political preachers continued their assaults, and the Jeffersonians replied without undue reverence for the cloth. Everywhere the Federalist leaders were assuming a pious pose, even Sedgwick and Ames and Otis were becoming religious, and the Democrats greeted their pose with ribald mirth. Into an amusing imaginary diary of Jonathan Dayton of the soiled reputation, Duane was writing the notation: ‘Went to church—must go to church—Federalists must be pious—‘twill do a great deal of good.’[1828] When an appeal was made to Catholics to vote against Jefferson, Duane dryly commented: ‘We presume the ... reason to be that it was owing to Mr. Jefferson that the Catholic priest was saved from being hanged for going into ... Virginia ... and that to his toleration law it was owing that the Catholic can now build churches and adore God without incurring penalties of fine and imprisonment.’[1829]

Thus religion in virulent form fought with politics in the campaign of 1800.

V

But this sort of fighting and sniping was not working to the disadvantage of Adams—and that was of some concern to Hamilton, who had concluded that he would be happier under the presidency of Jefferson than under a continuation of Adams. Scurrility there was in abundance, but Adams suffered little. Occasional references were made to his vanity, his love of pomp, his partiality to titles, and to his writings as evidence of monarchical tendencies, but these were mild enough. With the political preachers and editors abusing Jefferson, and with the Democrats attacking Hamilton, it was time for some one to assault Adams—and Hamilton delegated himself to the task. During the summer, Adams, smarting under the discovery of the treachery of his party associates, had been freely talking in unguarded conversation of an ‘English party,’ and naming Hamilton and his friends. This furnished the pretext.

On the first of August, Hamilton wrote a note to Adams asking a verification or denial of the report that he had said there was a British faction with Hamilton at the head. This was sent to Cabot for transmission to Braintree. The cunning leader of the Essex Junto, in acknowledging the receipt of the letter, suggested that perhaps the election of Jefferson would be necessary for the reunification of the Federalist Party. Were Pinckney chosen, he would encounter the venomous hostility of the Adamsites. How would it do for the Federalists to throw their support to Burr? Many Federalists favored such action.[1830] Adams ignored the letter from Hamilton, as the latter unquestionably supposed he would. Two days after its transmission and before it could have possibly reached the President, Hamilton wrote Wolcott of his ‘impatience’ at the latter’s delay in sending the ‘statement of facts which you promised me.’ The trusted member of Adams’s official family had promised his chief’s most bitter foe the ammunition for attack. It was plain, said Hamilton, working on Wolcott’s fears, that unless something were done the Adams faction ‘will completely run us down in public opinion.’ Had not Wolcott’s name been bandied about with Hamilton’s as a member of the British party?[1831]

Later in the month he wrote McHenry, then nursing his wrath in retirement, of his plan to publish a pamphlet defending himself and friends and attacking Adams. He was prepared to put his name to it, but this he could not do without ‘its being conclusively inferred that as to every material fact I must have derived my information from members of the Administration.’ To both McHenry and Wolcott he sent a copy of the letter.[1832] At the moment he wrote, he was having difficulty with some of his advisers. Cabot and Ames had discussed the wisdom of Hamilton’s putting his name to the pamphlet, and both agreed it would be indiscreet. It should be remembered that Adams might be reëlected. Hamilton’s sponsorship of the pamphlet would give it force with men who needed no conversion, while with his enemies ‘it would be converted into new proof that you are a dangerous man.’[1833] A month later, Hamilton was still in doubt about affixing his name, but evidently anxious for encouragement to do so. Thus he wrote Wolcott that ‘anonymous publications cannot affect anything,’ but that ‘some of the most delicate of the facts stated I hold from the three ministers, yourself particularly, and I do not count myself at liberty to take the step without your permission.’[1834] On October 1st, Hamilton sent a second letter to Adams, through Cabot, who, ten days later, wrote that it had been transmitted,[1835] but no reply was made. Nothing could have suited Hamilton better. Thus the pamphlet was written and sent to the editor of the New York ‘Gazette’ to print. It bore the name of Hamilton. It was to be guarded from general publicity and sent only to leading Federalists over the country.

And right here the uncanny cleverness of Burr again intervened. The suave little black-eyed master of espionage had known Hamilton’s slate for the Assembly within an hour after the caucus had adjourned; when Hamilton’s caucus decided to ask Jay to call an extra session of the Legislature to defeat the effect of the election, the fact was heralded in the papers the next day; and now Burr was to see a copy of the printed pamphlet before the eye of its author had seen it. Just how he got possession of the copy will never be known. His intimate political associate and authorized biographer merely says that he learned it was in the press and ‘arrangements were accordingly made for a copy as soon as the printing of it was complete.’[1836] Parton has a more colorful story. Burr was an early riser, and, walking in the street near Hamilton’s house one morning, he met a boy carrying a covered basket. He always spoke to children.

‘What have you there, my lad?’

‘Pamphlets for General Hamilton.’

Whereupon he requested and received a copy, immediately summoned Davis and two others to his house, where extracts were copied and hastened with the utmost speed to ‘The Aurora’ and the New London ‘Bee.’[1837] There is still another version of the general circulation that neither biographer mentions—that of the editor of the New York ‘Gazette,’ who was forced to an explanation in self-defense. The general circulation was ‘contrary to the expectation ... that it would be restricted to particular quarters. The editor of the Gazette thinks it his duty to exonerate Mr. Hamilton by making it known that the thing has happened in direct opposition to his views. He had given the most precise instructions that the circulation might be deferred; but the Editor, having been informed that by a breach of confidence or indiscretion somewhere it was likely that extracts might appear in some newspapers, communicated the intelligence to Mr. Hamilton, who ... being about to depart for Albany left a letter with a friend directing him that if such a thing should happen, then to permit the letter to be thrown into circulation.’[1838] This explanation did not appear, however, until Hamilton found that the tremendous sensation the pamphlet created was not reacting entirely in his favor. And for a sensation there was cause enough.

VI

An amazing production this, for the middle of the campaign. Adams did ‘not possess the talents adapted to the administration of government.’ There were ‘great and intrinsic defects in his character which unfit him.’ Even during the Revolution, Hamilton had entertained doubts as to ‘the solidity of his understanding.’ When Adams had conducted Madame de Vergennes, wife of the Foreign Minister in Paris, to dinner, and been rewarded with her comment that he was ‘the Washington of negotiation,’ he had interpreted it as an illustration of ‘a pretty knack of paying compliments,’ when he might have said that it disclosed ‘a dexterous knack of disguising sarcasms.’ His vanity was so great that it was ‘more than a harmless foible.’ True, Hamilton had sought to elect Thomas Pinckney in 1796, but this was due to the ‘disgusting egotism, the distempered jealousy, and the ungovernable indiscretion of Mr. Adams’s temper, joined to some doubts of the correctness of his maxims of administration.’ Adams’s letter to Tench Coxe, charging the Pinckneys with being English toadies, was silly; his conduct in preventing the French war was infamous. This latter had come out of the vice of not consulting his constitutional advisers—meaning Wolcott, Pickering, and McHenry. He had thus fallen into the hands of ‘miserable intriguers’ with whom ‘his self-love was more at ease.’ With gay disregard of the truth, Hamilton denied that there was any conspiracy to interfere with Adams’s plans at Trenton.

More amazing still, Adams was denounced for the dismissal of two traitors in his Cabinet, and this, despite the fact that another, who remained, had furnished the writer with much of the material for the pamphlet. There was no cause for the dismissals—none at all. It was only Adams’s ‘paroxysms of rage, which deprived him of self-command and produced very outrageous behavior.’ Pickering had been driven out because he was ‘justly tenacious of his own dignity and independence.’ The Adams interview with McHenry called for both ‘pain and laughter’—an incredible performance. Then followed more abuse because Adams had not given Fries and others to the scaffold. Then—a pitiful touch—for not appointing Hamilton commander-in-chief to succeed Washington. Here the author entered into more personal grievances. Having pictured Adams as an ingrate, a liar, and a fool unfit for high administrative office, the author concluded with the statement that because ‘the body of Federalists, for want of sufficient knowledge of facts, are not convinced of the expediency of relinquishing him,’ Hamilton would ‘not advise the withholding from him of a single vote.’[1839]

It was the most astounding political performance in American history—and the Nation rocked with mingled imprecations and laughter. Even Cabot was a little shocked. ‘All agree,’ he wrote Hamilton, ‘that the execution is masterly, but I am bound to tell you that you are accused by respectable men of egotism; and some very worthy and sensible men say you have exhibited the same vanity in your book which you charge as a dangerous quality and great weakness in Mr. Adams.’[1840]

Major Russell, of the ‘Centinel’ in Boston, was painfully embarrassed, and flopped about like a fish on the burning sands. In one issue he supported Adams, and denounced the author of an attack on Hamilton’s action as ‘as well qualified for the task as a Billingsgate oyster is to contemplate the principles of the Newtonian philosophy.’[1841] In another issue he regretted Hamilton’s ‘ill-timed epistle,’ and denounced ‘an imported renegado of the name of Cooper’ who had written Hamilton a ‘saucy production’ to the effect that if he would admit the authorship of the pamphlet he would ask for his indictment under the Sedition Law.[1842] This is evidence enough that Russell had parted with his sense of humor, else he would have appreciated the shot. The Hartford ‘Courant’ contented itself by merely reprinting, without comment, the Jeffersonian New London ‘Bee’s’ excoriation of Hamilton.[1843] The New York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ was silent, but gave space to the advertisement of a pamphlet entitled ‘A Letter to General Hamilton, occasioned by His Letter to President Adams—by a Federalist.’[1844]

The Jeffersonian papers made the most of the opportunity. The ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford, announcing the arrival of the pamphlet, explained that, ‘since General Hamilton has secured a copyright to his masterly production,’ only extracts could be given. It was evidently written in the interest of Pinckney, who, having been ‘educated at the University of Oxford’ in England, ‘was naturally’ supported by the British faction.[1845] ‘I am sorry, sir,’ wrote the author of an open letter to Hamilton in the ‘Independent Chronicle’ of Boston, ‘that you have been persecuted in the manner you mention, ... but does it show a man of fortitude and independence to be continually groaning, like some feeble old woman under her troubles?... Egotism is the mark of a weak and vain mind. Here, General, you descend from your usual greatness to the level with female vanity.’[1846]

Duane, of ‘The Aurora,’ fell upon it with the zest of a kitten lapping cream: ‘John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the Pinckneys are now fairly before the public,’ he wrote, ‘not in the partial drawings of their political rivals, the Republicans. Their claims and pretensions to public confidence are exhibited by themselves.’[1847] The Portsmouth ‘Ledger’ struck the same note: ‘If President Adams is what General Hamilton and the Essex Junto represent him, and if Charles Cotesworth Pinckney is what President Adams in his letter to Tench Coxe has represented him, viz., a British partisan—can any one hesitate to say that Mr. Jefferson is the most suitable of the three for President?’[1848]

But the most telling reply appeared in a pamphlet ascribed to James Cheetham, the New York editor.[1849] Of course Hamilton was a monarchist, it said. It had been ‘a thousand times reiterated from New Hampshire to Georgia.’ The Madame de Vergennes incident? ‘Your references to a certain private journal of Mr. Adams was surpassingly brutal and low. They demonstrate the imbecility of your cause and point out the base malignity of your heart.’ The Adams letter to Tench Coxe? ‘Evidently written in some jocular moment.’ The cause of Hamilton’s hostility? ‘Envy, ambition, and the loaves and fishes.’ The French peace? ‘If your intrusive advice had been received, what would have been the condition of your country? Embroiled in an unprofitable war, commerce would have been at a stand, and the cause of liberty on the decline. A standing army would have gluttonized on the substance of society.’ Adams? True, the ‘Duke of Braintree’ had ‘very slender pretensions to consistency of character,’ and the Nation’s hope was in Jefferson, ‘who has walked with dignity in every public and private calling,’ whose mind ‘is illumined with science and whose heart is replete with good’; who ‘has stood firm and unshaken amidst the venality of courts and the temptations of power.’

Under such lashings Hamilton writhed and was eager to make reply. ‘The press teems with replies,’ he wrote Pickering, ‘and I may finally think it expedient to publish a second time. In this case I shall reënforce my charges with new anecdotes. My friends will, no doubt, be disposed to aid me. You probably possess some that are unknown to me. Pray let me have them without delay.’[1850] But his friends had no such disposition. They had had enough. Ames wrote him scornfully of his critics, who were unworthy of notice. ‘It is therefore the opinion of your friends that the facts stated must be left to operate on the public mind; and that the rage of those whom they wound will give them currency.’[1851]

The Federalist Party had been split in two with a battle-axe.

VII

Its leaders realized the hopelessness of their prospects. Many did not care. McHenry, smarting in Maryland, wrote Wolcott that the lack of courage and initiative on the part of the leaders, and their failure to fight Adams in the open, meant defeat. What did they do? ‘They write private letters,’ said the scornful poet-politician. ‘To whom? To each other, but they do nothing to give direction to the public mind. They observe even in their conversation a discreet circumspection generally, ill calculated to diffuse information.... They meditate in private.... If the party recovers its pristine character ... shall I ascribe it to such cunning, paltry, indecisive, back-door conduct?’[1852] And for once in his life McHenry was wise and right. Unable to meet the issues, the Federalist Big-Wigs still hoped to win through sharp practice. They got their cue from the Jeffersonians, who, finding from the election of the year before that the selection of electors by districts would result in the loss of one or two in Virginia, changed the law and provided for their election by the Legislature. This was enough for the Federalists in Massachusetts, where district elections would have given Jefferson at least two votes. Otis and others wrote the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate to change the law and have the Legislature choose. The change was made. Estopped from complaining by their own action in Virginia, the Jeffersonians denounced the change in Massachusetts as a trick of the Essex Junto to rob Adams and elect Pinckney,[1853] and much bitterness was aroused. In Maryland the district system was favorable to the Jeffersonians and the Federalists there were importuned from without to have the Governor call an extraordinary session of the Legislature to give that body the power.[1854] Owing to the almost equal strength of the parties in that State, however, the leaders were afraid to act, and a series of letters appeared, first in the Baltimore ‘Gazette,’ and later in pamphlet form, citing the action of the Democrats in Virginia and the retaliation in Massachusetts. ‘Should the State of Maryland suffer itself to be bullied out of its rights ... by the clamors of the partisans in Virginia?’ demanded the author.[1855] ‘The Aurora’ charged that James Carroll had said at Annapolis that the Governor should call the General Assembly together to deprive the people of the right to vote for electors.[1856] But when it came to the test the courage of the Marylanders failed and no change was made.

Only in Pennsylvania did the Jeffersonians have a real grievance. The most sanguine of the Federalists could find no silver lining to the cloud here. Fitzsimmons complained that in Philadelphia, ‘a city of 60,000 inhabitants, not a man is to be found who is fit for the station who will accept the nomination for Congress.’[1857] The envenomed Uriah Tracy, after traveling through the State, thought the outlook hopeless. M’Kean had ‘brought forward every scoundrel who can read and write into office.’ The Democrats, ‘with the joy and ferocity of the damned,’ were enjoying ‘the mortification of the few remaining honest men.’ Tracy had seen ‘very many Irishmen’ throughout the State—‘the most God-provoking Democrats this side of hell.’ Then ‘the Germans are both stupid, ignorant and ugly, and are to the Irish what the negroes of the South are to their drivers.’ The Democrats were ‘establishing presses and newspapers in almost every town and county in the country and the Federal presses are failing for want of support.’[1858] Under these conditions the Federalists conceived the idea of depriving Pennsylvania of any voice at all in the election—an idea not unreasonable, since no provision had been made as to the method of choosing electors. In July, Senator Bingham had written Wolcott that there was little probability that the State would have ‘any agency in the election,’ but in any event its vote would be ‘equalized from the preponderance which the parties reciprocally possess in the two branches of the Legislature.’[1859]

In November, Governor M’Kean called an extraordinary session. In the Senate the Federalists had a small majority; in the House the Democrats had the advantage; on joint ballot the Democrats outnumbered their opponents. The Democrats urged a joint ballot; the Federalists laughed the proposal to scorn. Excitement rose to fever heat. Charges were made that Liston, the British Minister, was using money to affect the result.[1860] The State, at the moment, was Jeffersonian, and the legislators were deluged with petitions for a joint ballot, but petitions from the people had never impressed the Hamiltonians. These stood firm—holding the power of veto. At length they made a concession to the end that the State might not be deprived of any voice. The Senate could select seven electors, the House eight. The Democrats writhed and raved without avail. The Federalists were relentless.

CHAPTER XXI

DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT

When that charming philosopher of cynicism, Gouverneur Morris, just elected to the Senate, reached the new capital in the clearing, after days of bumping and hardships on the woodsy road through Maryland, he looked about him with a smile and chuckled. Writing the Princesse de la Tour et Taxis, he poked gentle fun at the new seat of government. ‘We only need here houses, cellars, kitchens, scholarly men, amiable women, and a few other such trifles to possess a perfect city,’ he said, ‘for we can walk over it as we would in the fields and woods, and, on account of a strong frost, the air is quite pure. I enjoy it all the more because my room fills with smoke as soon as the door is closed.... I hasten to assure you that building stone is plentiful, that excellent bricks are baked here, that we are not wanting in sites for magnificent mansions ...; in a word, that this is the best city in the world to live in—in the future.’[1861]

Ten days before Morris wrote, Mrs. Adams had reached the capital in the wilds looking older and graver, and without a ceremonious reception, due to jealousies among the socially ambitious over the choice of a master of ceremonies.[1862] After the well-traveled roads to Philadelphia, the journey to Washington had been quite enough to add to both her age and gravity. On the way from Baltimore her party had been lost in the woods, wandering aimlessly about for two hours until rescued by a wandering negro. ‘Woods are all you see from Baltimore until you reach this city, which is only so in name,’ she wrote her daughter. ‘Here and there, a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed amongst the forest through which you travel miles without seeing a human being.’ Nor was the grandeur of the President’s house entirely to her liking. From her windows she could see on the Potomac the ‘vessels as they pass and repass.’ But a rapid survey of the large mansion with its numerous draughty rooms, convinced her that it would require thirty servants ‘to attend and keep the apartment in order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and stables.’ Not a single apartment finished. ‘The great unfinished audience [East] room I have made a drying room of to hang up the clothes in,’ she wrote glumly. But—added the tactful Abigail—‘when asked how I like it, say that I write you the situation is beautiful, which is true.’[1863] A few days later she wrote of the impatience of the ladies for a drawing-room, but ‘I have no looking glasses but dwarfs for this house, nor a twentieth part lamps enough to light it.’[1864] Had the disgusted Abigail fared forth for a peep into the living arrangements of others, she might have thought herself more fortunate. But surveying the city from her point of vantage she would have found little to tempt to a tour of inspection.

Even then, it was a ‘city of magnificent distances,’ the houses separated by miles of mud roads, not entirely free from stumps. Travel by night was precarious. Blackness impenetrable, except when the moon was at its full, settled down over the homes and the frog ponds. Morris, having made an evening call, was forced to remain all night, for the road was ‘not merely deep but dangerous to drive in the dark.’[1865] James A. Bayard and a party of Federalist leaders, venturing forth on a return to their lodgings from the home of a friend two miles from town, were caught in a storm, and the coachman losing his way, they drove about the waste lands throughout the night, threatened every moment by the ruts and ravines.[1866]

Pennsylvania Avenue, stretching from the President’s house to the Capitol, bordered by miasmic swamps, did not at this time boast a single building; nor would it have been possible to have lived along this causeway ‘without devoting its wretched tenant to perpetual fevers.’[1867] From the steps of the Capitol one could count seven or eight boarding-houses, one tailor’s shop, one shoemaker’s, one printing establishment, the home of a washwoman, a grocery shop, a stationery store, a dry-goods house, and an oyster market. And this was all. Three quarters of a mile away on the Eastern Branch stood five or six houses and an empty warehouse. At the wharf, not a single ship. From the President’s house to Georgetown living conditions were better because of immunity from swamps, but the wretched roads made it all but prohibitive as a place of residence for members of Congress. Six or seven of the more fastidious braved the distance and found comfortable quarters; two or three found lodgings near the President’s house; but the remainder crowded into the boarding-houses on Capitol Hill. In the best of these, by sharing a room one could have attendance, wood, candles, food, and an abundance of liquor for fifteen dollars a week. However, the fare was unsatisfactory, the beef not good, and vegetables hard to get.[1868] Such was the hair-trigger delicacy of the political situation that this packing of the politicians might easily have led to altercations and bloodshed had they not seen fit to herd together according to their political views. There was some gambling, some drinking, but Gallatin observed that for the most part the members ‘drank politics’ instead of liquor.[1869]

How the dandies of the Federalist circle must have missed the royal hospitality at Mrs. Bingham’s! Pathetic efforts were put forth to create something that might pass for society, but so limited were the resources that the lone church at the bottom of Capitol Hill, which had previously served as a tobacco house, was found alluring, and women donned their finery for worship.[1870] The Thomas Laws, who had one of the few pretentious houses, organized a ‘dancing assembly’ to which many subscribed.[1871] Mrs. Law, related to both Lord Baltimore and Mrs. Washington, who aspired to the scepter of Mrs. Bingham, was a worldly woman, over-fond of admiration and company, and finally there was a divorce. But at this time she drew the gayer element to her by her merry hospitality. ‘Lay down your hat, we have a fine roast turkey and you must stay and eat it,’ she would say to a caller, and soon others would casually appear, and an informal party would result.[1872] Callers in the old houses in Georgetown where Southern hospitality held sway, found ‘bread, butter, ham, and cakes set before them,’ and on leaving they would likely as not carry away cake and apples in their pockets, a bottle of milk in their hands.[1873] Great was the amusement of the fashionable men and women, who had been so elegantly served at the Binghams’ by the French chef, on finding themselves jolting over the dirt roads to their lodgings with their pockets crammed with cake.

This was the Washington into which Jefferson was carried in a stage-coach for the decisive struggle of his career. Wishing to pay his respects to Adams, for whom he felt more respect than did the Hamiltonian wing of the President’s own party, he wondered if the inordinate vanity of his defeated rival would interpret the call as an attempt to humiliate him. He determined to take the chance. Entering the President’s house, he found Adams alone—the old man in those difficult days was all but isolated. One glance was enough to justify the caller’s fears. In great agitation, and neglecting first to offer his visitor a chair, Adams burst forth: ‘You have turned me out; you have turned me out.’

With the gentleness of an elder soothing a hurt child, Jefferson replied, drawing on his familiarity with the workings of the minds and hearts of men, ‘I have not turned you out, Mr. Adams; and I am glad to avail myself of this occasion to show that I have not and to explain my views. In consequence of a division of opinion existing among our fellow-citizens, as to the proper constitution of our political institutions, and of the wisdom and propriety of certain measures ... that portion of our citizens that approved and advocated one class of these opinions and measures selected you as their candidate ... and their opponents selected me. If you and myself had been inexistent, or for any cause had not been selected, other persons would have been selected in our places; and thus the contest would have been carried on, and with the same result, except that the party which supported you would have been defeated by a greater majority, as it was known that, but for you, your party would have carried their unpopular measures much further than they did.’ Suffering as he was under the treachery of the Hamiltonians, this softened the unhappy President’s mood. Jefferson was offered a chair. The two men, who had been intimate in Revolutionary days and in Paris, engaged in a friendly discussion of the topics of the day, and parted with mutual expressions of respect.

Jefferson returned to Conrad’s boarding-house, where he had taken a suite of rooms. It was a commodious house, standing on a hill, the precipitate sides of which were covered with grass and shrubs in a natural state. The windows of Jefferson’s rooms commanded a beautiful view of the surrounding country—the level plain between the hill and the Potomac through which the tree-lined Taber wound its course; and the man of Monticello could look down from his windows on the tulip-poplar trees, the magnolia, the azalea, the wild rose, the hawthorn. Characteristically enough, he had gone to Conrad’s because of the charms of the scenery. There the man of the hour lived like the other lodgers, with the exception of having a drawing-room for the reception of visitors; eating at the common table with the others, at the foot of the table nearest the door and most remote from the fire. When Mrs. John Brown, wife of the Kentucky Senator, insisted that he sit at the head of the table, as the oldest man if not as the Vice-President, he waved the suggestion aside with a smile of deprecation, and there, in the coldest part of the room, he continued until he moved into the President’s house. But for Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Theodorus Bailey, wife of a Jeffersonian Congressman from New York, the mess table would have resembled ‘a refectory of monks.’[1874] Living under the same roof during the hectic weeks that followed were Gallatin who shared his room with Varnum, a Democrat from Massachusetts, Senator John Langdon, General Sam Smith of Maryland, Senator Abraham Baldwin of Georgia, Senator Wilson Carey Nicholas of Virginia, his brother, the Virginia Representative, and the Browns and Baileys. In the impending crisis Jefferson could scarcely have surrounded himself with a better board of strategy. There we will leave him for a while to take up the threads of the Federalist conspiracy to prevent his election and thwart the public will.