Jefferson and Hamilton

CHAPTER VII

JEFFERSON MOBILIZES

Smith and Harper of South Carolina—a word from these to the commercial leaders in their States, and from these a word to those under obligations to them—the small merchants operating on credit—and the coffee-houses buzzed, the Chambers of Commerce acted, editors plied their pens, preachers thundered from pulpits, and even at the social functions they danced and flirted in the war paint of the party.

As Jefferson surveyed the field, he observed that his great antagonist’s organization was but a consolidation of organizations previously existent—and these imposing in their representation of wealth, intellect, and social prestige. Hamilton could snap his fingers, and the merchants came; could lift his hand, and the officers of the Cincinnati were in the saddle; could wave his wand, and Fenno, Russell, and other potent editors would instantly do his bidding, and the preachers of New England scarcely waited for the sign to pass the devil by to damn democracy.

But Jefferson had his eye on other forces, numerically stronger, if less imposing. The farmers, comprising ninety per cent of the Nation, were resentful of policies that pampered the merchant and left them out in the cold. The private soldiers of the Revolution, less respected then than when Webster made his Bunker Hill address, were embittered because their securities had gone for a song while speculators had waxed wealthy on the sacrifice. The more robust republicans were shocked at the aristocratic affectations of their rulers and the tone of the Federalist press. The excise law was hated in the remote sections, and unpopular with the masses everywhere. The doctrine of implied powers had alarmed the friends of State sovereignty. There was an undercurrent of feeling, which Jefferson, with ear marvelously keen for rumblings, caught, that laws were passed for the few at the expense of the many. And it was being bruited abroad that in high quarters there was a disposition to cultivate England to the neglect of France. Everywhere through the South and West there was a bitter resentment of government by and for the East.

Including all, and more important than any single one, there was a fervent spirit of democracy running through the land, while the Federalist leaders were openly denouncing the democrats. ‘Looking simply at the field of American history,’ says Professor Anson D. Morse, ‘it would be just to enumerate among the causes of the Democratic Party all influences which from the beginning of the colonial period carried forward at a really marvelous rate the democratization of the American character.’[552] The country was really democratic before there was a party of democracy. Jefferson knew it; Hamilton never suspected it, or, suspecting, determined to override the sentiment. Therein lies the original cause of the ultimate triumph of Jefferson, and the evidence that the Federalist Party was foredoomed to ultimate failure.

But how to reach, galvanize, vitalize, organize this great widely scattered mass of unimportant, inarticulate individuals—that was the problem that confronted Jefferson. Ninety-five per cent of the people lived in the country or in villages. Communication was difficult. There were for them no Chambers of Commerce, no coffee-houses, no Faneuil Halls. Thousands had no idea what was going on outside the boundaries of their isolated farms and villages. If the masses in the cities were in sympathy with democracy—and they were—comparatively few of these were permitted to vote. Under the John Jay Constitution of New York, as late as 1790, only 1303 of the 13,330 male residents of voting age in New York City were allowed to vote with the property qualification deliberately designed for their disfranchisement.[553] In Vermont alone, of the New England States, no property qualification attached to the suffrage, albeit in New Hampshire any male paying tax, however small, was qualified. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut great numbers were excluded by their poverty. Thus, in the beginning, the thousands of hewers of wood and drawers of water in the towns and cities of the North were lost to all practical purposes. But all of the common folk were not disfranchised, and they who had the vote were splendid material for a militant organization. They had a genius for practical politics when under the orders of a drill master, and were not too fastidious for the grime and sweat of the polling-places. One of these was worth a dozen dandies from Mrs. Bingham’s circle on election day.[554] There was abundant material for a party—if it could be assembled and coordinated.

II

As Jefferson’s mild eye surveyed the field, he found in almost every State local parties, some long in existence, fighting for popular rights as they understood them; but their fights had been waged on local issues. The party he was to create was to fight in precisely the same cause—on the national field. Here, then, was something already at hand. Why not consolidate these local parties into one great national organization, and broaden the issue to include the problems of both State and Nation? The local leaders? Why not make them field marshals in command of the Massachusetts division, the North Carolina division, Pennsylvania and Maryland divisions?

The philosopher-politician took up his pen, for he had learned in the organization of the Revolution what could be done through correspondence. Out under the plane trees he was to sit at his table writing—to Sam Adams, to Rutledge, to John Taylor, to Willie Jones. Under his roof and at his table conferences with Madison, Monroe, Giles, Bloodworth, became commonplace. ‘Oh, I should note that Mr. Jefferson, with more than Parisian politeness, waited on me at my chamber this morning,’ wrote Maclay. ‘He talked politics, mostly the French difference and the whale fishery.’[555] A very cautious approach, we may be sure, for the master politician and psychologist thoroughly understood the little vanities, prejudices, and weaknesses of that singularly suspicious democrat. Quite different would have been a conversation with Gallatin or Monroe. Taking an inventory of prospective lieutenants in the States, and comparing the material with that against him, he could not but have realized his disadvantage. Brilliant men are prone to flutter about the rich and powerful, and nothing succeeds like success with the strong. No chance for him to ride to war surrounded by such scintillating company as that which encircled Hamilton—but here and there was a man who shimmered in the sun.

In Massachusetts, home of Ames, Cabot, and Sedgwick, Jefferson could count on two men who surpassed any of this famous group in service in the making of the Republic, but, strange as it may seem in perspective, old Sam Adams and John Hancock were not in good standing with the staid business men of Boston. Their republicanism was too robust, their devotion to the principles of the Declaration too uncompromising for the materialists, who appeared, for the most part, on the battle-field after the fight was won, to claim the fruits of the victory. Sam Adams had lost his race for Congress to Fisher Ames who had dallied with his books when the ragged Continentals were struggling in the field. When the clever politicians of the Essex Junto exchanged letters, these erstwhile Revolutionary heroes of the dark days were seldom mentioned with respect; but they had their following in the streets and among those who had shared in the perils they had faced. Upon these two Jefferson could rely.

But there were others, more active and militant in the Boston of those days in the building of the party of democracy. Foremost in the fight, and most annoying to the ruling oligarchy, was the brilliant Dr. Charles Jarvis, who was a powerful orator[556] whose social status, on a par with that of Otis, raised him above the condescension or contempt of the moneyed aristocracy, and whose ability was beyond the reach of disparagement.[557] Through many years of leadership in the legislature he ‘had made the rights of man his pole star.’[558] No one did so much to organize and vitalize the masses, for he could pass from the legislative hall to the public platform without any diminution of power. As in the former he could match the best in argument, on the latter no one knew better how to direct the storm. ‘Jarvis’s electioneering influence in this town is very great,’ wrote John Quincy Adams to his father.[559]

As a file leader, organizer, agitator, he had powerful support in the robust, rough-hewn rope-maker, Ben Austin, who wrestled under the rules of catch-as-catch-can, mingled with the element that Ames and Cabot considered vulgar, and under the signature of ‘Honestus’ dealt telling blows in letters that the mechanic could understand. ‘Rabid essays,’ they were—judged by the standard of the élite.[560] Sam Adams, John Hancock, Austin, and Jarvis—these were the Jeffersonian leaders in the Old Bay State. Less aggressive, but often valuable, was James Sullivan, orator, leader of the Bar, letter-writer and pamphleteer, whose vigorous mind, powers of application, and indomitable courage were to render yeoman service.

In the other New England States the democrats were less fortunate. In Connecticut, ruled with an iron hand by an oligarchy of preachers, professors, and reactionary politicians, the prospects were dark enough, but even there the Jeffersonians found a leader capable of coping with the best of the opposition in the hard-hitting, resourceful Abraham Bishop, who was a veritable scandal and stench to the gentlemen of the cloth and of the counting-room. Nowhere in America was such an amazing combination of Church and State. Election days were celebrated with religious services, and the sermons were party harangues, described by the irreverent Bishop as consisting of ‘a little of governor, a little of Congress, much of politics, and a very little of religion—a strange compote, like a carrot pie, having so little ingredients that the cook must christen it.’[561] The ruling Council of the State was so organized that the system was an impregnable stronghold beyond the reach of the people. Nowhere on American soil anything so un-American or unrepublican. It did its work behind doors closed and barred. The Congregational clergy were the Cossacks of Connecticut Federalism, laying the lash of their furious denunciation on the backs of critics. It required more than a majority to rule under this system, and more than ordinary courage to challenge its pretensions.[562] The good Doctor Dwight of Yale was busy damning democrats to perdition. A little later Gideon Granger and Ephraim Kirby were to take their place beside Bishop, and with the aid of the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford and the ‘New London Bee’ to give blow for blow. But the fighting was against desperate odds, the Federalists strongly entrenched on a steep hill, the ascent to which could be raked with canister.

‘The masses are disfranchised,’ cried Bishop. ‘Yes, poor porpoises,’ sneered Noah Webster the Federalist who was soon to become editor of a New York paper launched by Hamilton.[563] But Bishop and his little coterie were fighters, and Jefferson took them to his heart.

In New Hampshire, Jefferson had to bide his time. Among the members of the Senate no one had a better record of unselfish Revolutionary service than John Langdon. Practical, hard-headed, unimaginative, a lover of money, he had accumulated some wealth in mercantile pursuits. Fond of company, pleasing and unaffected in his manner, impressive in appearance, his senatorial toga became him well.[564] When Hamilton’s financial plans were pending, he gave them his support, and, alas, profited not a little, but from the beginning the keen-eyed Jefferson discerned the traits that were ultimately to separate him from the Hamiltonians. Within two years Langdon had assumed the leadership of the Jeffersonians in New Hampshire, but as late as 1798, according to the recollection of a famous Jacksonian, ‘with the exception of Langdon and a few sterling patriots there could not be said to be in this State a party favorable to the principles of Thomas Jefferson.’[565]

In Vermont the situation was somewhat similar, albeit the opportunities there were greater in the absence of a property qualification for the vote. There, too, was Matthew Lyon, of whom we shall hear much, whose fanatical devotion to democracy was a heritage from a father who had paid the penalty of his patriotism on the gallows in Ireland; whose hatred of aristocracy was but a reaction to the memory of his days of poverty. Possessing a genius for business, and succeeding, he was irresistibly drawn to politics, where his Celtic humor, his energy, impetuosity, and sincerity surrounded him with friends. His radicalism became a flaming torch that lighted up the granite hills. Not for nothing was he born in the land of the Donnybrook Fair, for he loved a fight or a frolic, and he was to have much of both. Enlisting in the Jeffersonian fight in the beginning, he was to fight unceasingly, take blows, and know the degradation of a cell. There was a degree of felony in democracy in the New England of the last days of the eighteenth century.

In Rhode Island, Jefferson sought vainly for an effective leader, though the field was fertile because of the lingering hostility to centralization and the poverty and debts of the people.

Leaving New England, the leader found much to interest him in New York. There was that sturdy, indomitable champion of State rights, and inveterate enemy of aristocracy, George Clinton, an uncompromising republican of Cromwellian audacity and decision, with an unequaled hold on the confidence and affections of the people. There, too, were the Livingstons, mortally offended by the political stupidity of Hamilton in defeating the brilliant Chancellor’s aspirations for the Senate. Had this numerous and powerful family a conference one night to discuss the affront and to emerge a unit in opposition?[566] Whatever the cause, the effect was clear—the Livingston clan was only too eager to join the insurgents, and this was not lost on the astute politician of Monticello. Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, convincing orator, erudite lawyer, profound statesman, fascinating personality, possessing the glamour of wealth and tradition so important to a Jeffersonian leader in New York with its commercial princes and barons of the soil—here was a man to be cultivated with all the finesse of which Jefferson was capable. The master of Monticello could speak the language of the master of the New York manor house.

And Burr? Just what Jefferson expected of Burr is a mystery unsolvable. He appreciated his brilliancy and professional prestige, but were the penetrating eyes blind to the weaknesses of character? Just a little while before Burr had joined with Hamilton against Clinton, and Federalist votes had sent him to the Senate. There, to be sure, he had arrayed himself on the popular side, but could he be relied upon? He had played a lone hand, holding aloof from the Clintonians and the Livingstons, and dining often at the table of Hamilton; but that he was singled out for assiduous cultivation we may be sure. No one was closer to Jefferson than Dr. Rush when, in the early fall of 1792, the latter wrote a wheedling note to Burr. ‘Your friends everywhere,’ wrote the Doctor, ‘look to you to take an active part in removing the monarchical rubbish of our government. It is time to speak out or we are undone.’[567] Previous to this, Jefferson had been most courteous in permitting the charming Senator from New York to examine papers in the archives of the State Department until Washington interposed.[568]

Clinton, Livingston, and Burr—a triumvirate that caught Jefferson’s fancy; but he was interested in opportunities in New York having no direct connection with any of the three. The less imaginative Maclay had seen in a parade of the Sons of Tammany only ‘a grotesque scene,’ with the members ‘in Indian dresses,’ and while he had addressed them at a dinner he had concluded that ‘there is some kind of a scheme’ which was ‘not well digested as yet.’[569] Jefferson made it his business to learn more. He found that the strange organization was an answer, in part, to the Cincinnati which stood, in the popular mind, for aristocracy; that it was rabidly republican and wholly democratic; that it sympathized with the revolutionists in France, and resented the property disqualifications of our own Revolutionary soldiers for the suffrage, while the wealthy, notoriously friendly to England when these soldiers fought, were being accorded political recognition and place. Here was a society after his own heart, here a method to make the masses felt—a combination and coördination of their efforts. All over the land the hundreds of thousands of inarticulate, unimportant, ineffective, commonplace friends of democracy, and in one city these had been given a voice, an arm, a rostrum. It was not ‘grotesque’ to Jefferson. He did not join these imitation red men in their wigwam, nor drink of their ale, but John Pintard the chief became his friend and idolater, and with him the great man talked. The non-partisan society grew more and more democratic, soon intensely partisan, and at Tammany dinners the welkin rang to the toast to ‘Thomas Jefferson.’ New York became a cock-pit from the start.

But when the Jeffersonian board of strategy turned to New Jersey, the problem was more difficult. No outstanding leader, strong in the faith, stood ready to mount and ride. There, true, the Janus-faced Jonathan Dayton was ready to flirt with any force that might serve his personal ends. He was a speculator—and worse. Supporting and profiting from the Hamilton policies, he smiled on the Jeffersonians significantly.

In Pennsylvania there was the nucleus of a party and virile men to lead it—men like Mifflin, who, despite his drunkenness, was popular and a power; like Maclay, who had the force that intense conviction brings in spite of temperamental handicaps; men like Alexander J. Dallas, aggressive, daring, able; men utterly unfit for

the rough-and-tumble combats of practical politics whose characters and abilities made them potent in the fight—like Rush the physician, Rittenhouse the scientist, Logan the philosopher, and, looming above the tops of the Western forests, a young giant and genius, Albert Gallatin.

In Delaware, nothing; in Maryland, John Francis Mercer, fighter and intriguer, sapper and miner, agitator and organizer, with whom democracy was a religion, Hamilton a devil, and Jefferson a saint. In Virginia, a sparkling galaxy, Madison, Monroe, the accomplished Pendleton, the resourceful Giles, the extraordinary John Taylor of Caroline.

In North Carolina, Jefferson found a leader cut from his own pattern, an aristocratic democrat, a radical rich man, a consummate politician who made the history that lesser men wrote without mentioning his name, Willie Jones of Halifax. His broad acres, his wealth, his high social standing were the objects of his pride, and he lived in luxury and wore fine linen while the trusted leader of the masses, mingling familiarly with the most uncouth back-woodsman, inviting, however, only the select to partake of the hospitality of his home. There was more than a touch of the Virginia aristocrat of the time in his habits—he raced, gambled, hunted like a gentleman. Like Jefferson he was a master of the art of insinuation, a political and social reformer. He loved liberty, hated intolerance, and prevented the ratification of the Constitution in the first State Convention because of the absence of a Bill of Rights. There he exerted a subtle influence that was not conspicuous on the floor. If he was neither orator nor debater, he was a strategist, disciplinarian, diplomat, who fought with velvet gloves—with iron within. A characteristic portrait would show him puffing at his pipe in the midst of his farmer followers, suggesting, insinuating, interspersing his political conversation with discussions of the crops, farming implements, hunting dogs, horses. An Anthony in arousing the passions by subtle hints, he was an Iago in awakening suspicions.[570] Here was the man with the stuff that Jefferson required, generous and lovable in social relations, in politics relentless, hard as iron. He was the Jefferson of North Carolina—‘a man ... the object of more hatred and more adoration than has ever since lived’ in that State.[571] Nor did he stand alone without assistants, for there was Nathaniel Macon, honest, intense, man of the soil who loved his few acres, his dogs and horses, and his class; and there was Timothy Bloodworth whose fierce adherence to democracy and fanatical hatred of privilege may have been a poignant reflection of his poverty. Jones, the aristocratic lord of many acres; Macon the representative of the small farmer; Bloodworth the artisan, smithy at the forge, watchmaker, wheelwright, as well as preacher, doctor, and cultivator of the soil: his radicalism was born in suffering and in suffering he had grown.[572]

In Georgia, Jefferson had equal cause for satisfaction. There were small farms, poor industrious men, ardent republicans, with the frontiersmen’s natural democracy and the debtors’ suspicions of concentrated wealth allied with governmental power. And there to lead them was James Jackson, idol of the people, a boisterous, impassioned orator whose eloquence often gave more heat than light. Historians have been prone to sneer at him, but this man who came as a child from Devonshire in England to take his place three years later in the army of Washington, and to receive the keys of Savannah from the British ten years after his arrival, was something more than an upstart. He who refused the governorship of his State when twenty-one, and six years after leaving his English home, to take his chances in the field, was scarcely an object for jest. He was a power as a leader and was to strike Titan blows in the cause that Jefferson nationally led.[573]

In South Carolina, dominated by rich commercial Charleston, Jefferson long looked in vain for a leader for his cause. A friend of the Pinckneys and the Rutledges, they held aloof or joined their fortunes with Hamilton. Only toward the close did Charles Pinckney, the most eloquent, resourceful, and magnetic of his family, part company with his cousins to lunge and lash with gusty joy for the man of Monticello.

Such were the leaders on whom Jefferson was dependent in welding the popular parties in the various States into a strong national army marching in step, with a common policy and purpose.

III

Had Jefferson been even richer than Hamilton in brilliant leaders, he would not have made the latter’s fatal blunder of assuming them to be enough. He was too much the practical politician to be impressed with a brilliant staff of officers—without privates. He set out to arouse the masses, mobilize, drill, and lead them. Above all, it was his intention to lead. Within a year, Ames was to observe with desperation and disgust the divisions among the Federalists and to comment that ‘Virginia moves in a solid column ... the discipline of the [Jefferson] party is as severe as the Prussian’ and ‘deserters are not spared.’[574]

The first necessity was to get the men to discipline. A vast number of the masses had no conception of their political power and were indifferent to the vote. Thousands over the country were disfranchised by property qualifications, and one of the prime purposes of the new party would be to break these down. The immediate problem was to awaken the interest of those who, having the vote, did not appreciate the privilege. With many of these, this was due to the lack of political consciousness; with others, to the feeling that it was useless for the unimportant to attempt to influence governmental action. To the latter it would be necessary to prove the possibilities of the concerted action of large numbers of uninfluential men—and there was the Society of Tammany pointing the way. No squeamishness in the mobilization either—the possession of the vote was enough. Soon, very soon, strange, disturbing things would be seen even in New England—cabinetmakers, shoemakers, mechanics perking up on politics, with evidence of organization here and there. Federalist leaders would soon be complaining that organization was conspiracy against the ‘government.’ In New Hampshire they would be calling those uniting for political action ‘insurgents.’ The insolence of the Jeffersonians appealing to the people for support would be frowned upon as degrading. ‘Of course,’ said a Massachusetts paper, ‘there can be but two parties in a country—the friends of order and its foes.’[575]

And such people! The very riff-raff that one would never invite into one’s parlor—‘desperate, embarrassed, unprincipled, disorderly, ambitious, disaffected, morose men.’[576] Were not these the propertyless who wasted their earnings in a grogshop?[577] And who were these petty agitators? Who but ‘Jacobins’ holding forth ‘in the bar-rooms of Rhode Island and Vermont and trying to stir up opposition.’[578] Wretched offal after all—but what a pity that Jefferson should countenance, least of all cultivate, such people. ‘Mr. Jefferson appears to have shown rather too much of a disposition to cultivate vulgar prejudices,’ wrote Wolcott, and ‘accordingly he will become popular in the ale-houses.’[579]

Miserable ‘Jacobins!’ Disreputable clowns of the bar-rooms! And such unthinkable methods! Here—there—everywhere, when a few men could be gathered together, some one appeared to deliver free lectures on practical politics. And such subjects! ‘Discipline’; ‘How to Make Men Follow their File Leaders.’[580]

IV

In arousing and consolidating the widely scattered democrats, Jefferson instantly appreciated the importance of a national newspaper to the end that the farmer in Georgia, the planter in Virginia, the frontiersman in western Pennsylvania, the mechanic in Boston, the shopmen of Rhode Island, and the reds of Tammany sipping their ale in the New York tavern, might all talk the same language at the same time. True, the Jeffersonians were not without able editorial support. There was Thomas Greenleaf pounding away vigorously in the ‘New York Journal’; Thomas Adams hammering merrily in the Boston ‘Independent Chronicle’; and in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Bache was making a mild show of opposition in his ‘Pennsylvania Daily Advertiser.’ But these were independent supporters, not ‘organs,’ and it was an ‘organ’ that was needed—something to meet the Hamilton organ which was becoming increasingly offensive to the democrats.

In estimating the sincerity of the simulated shock of the Federalists when the Secretary of State encouraged the establishment of a paper to support his principles, it is well to bear in mind that the Secretary of the Treasury had done precisely the same thing two years before. Then, as always, politicians were shocked at the turpitude of their opponents. Just how John Fenno came to establish the ‘Gazette of the United States’ is an impenetrable mystery. He was in his thirty-eighth year when he appeared at the home of Rufus King, perhaps the ablest of Hamilton’s supporters, with a letter of introduction from Christopher Gore, a member of the inner council of Boston Federalism who afterward waxed wealthy on speculation in the funds. The record is meager as to Fenno’s previous career beyond the revelation that he was born in Boston and taught for several years in the Old South Writing School. In the letter to King, we have the assurance of Gore that Fenno’s ‘literary accomplishments are very handsome’; that Gore had known him long and could testify that ‘his honor and fidelity are unquestionable’; and, strangely enough, that ‘his talents as the editor of a public paper are unrivaled in this commonwealth.’ As John Russell was then editing the ‘Columbian Centinel,’ the tribute would seem strained but for the intimation that the strength and sparkle of that able journal was due to Fenno’s contributions; and since the ‘Centinel’ suffered no apparent loss on his leaving Boston, even this theory seems absurd.

If his origin is a mystery, the purpose of his call on King was made clear enough in the letter of introduction. The ‘unrivaled’ editor sought encouragement for the establishment of a newspaper through arrangements for ‘obtaining the patronage of Congress’ in the printing of its journals and official papers. If something of the sort could be arranged, Gore was positive that Fenno would prove ‘capable of performing essential service in the cause of Federalism and good government.’[581]

The conversation was evidently agreeable, assurances of some sort were manifestly given, and within a few weeks the ‘Gazette of the United States’ was making its appearance. That Hamilton, who was intimately identified with King, was consulted, we may he sure; and within four years the relations between Fenno and Hamilton were so confidential that the former felt no hesitancy in appealing in a letter to the latter for a loan of two thousand dollars. Months before, the editor had submitted a schedule of his debts and credits to the head of the Treasury. The two had talked over the financial difficulties of the paper. The appeal for the loan was not lightly brushed aside. Hamilton wrote to King of the troubles of ‘poor Fenno,’ and proposed that if King would raise a thousand dollars in New York, he would himself undertake to raise a similar amount in Philadelphia. It is to be assumed that the money was raised, for the paper continued to appear. It is significant that in his letter to Hamilton, the editor wrote as one who had rendered faithful service and was entitled to consideration.[582]

From the beginning Fenno had liked to think of himself as the editor of ‘the court journal.’ Possessing considerable merit, it is impossible to turn its yellowing pages even now without being oppressed with a sense of sycophancy and snobbery. There was a fawning on wealth and kow-towing to power in most of the leading articles. The tone was pronouncedly pro-English and all Hamiltonian. Democracy was anathema. The critics of the policies of the leader of the Federalists were inciters to disorder. All the influence of the Federalist leaders was exerted to throw all possible governmental patronage into his office.

Hamilton had his paper before Jefferson got his own.[583] It was to meet these conditions that James Madison and Governor Henry Lee conceived the notion of persuading Philip Freneau, ‘the poet of the Revolution,’ to establish a newspaper in Philadelphia. This fiery petrel of democracy was eking out a mere existence on a New York newspaper when Madison, who had been his roommate at Princeton, made the proposal. This was due in part to personal affection and the feeling that the poet’s sufferings and losses in the Revolution entitled him to some consideration, but in large measure to the purity of his republicanism and his zeal for the popular cause. ‘I entertained hopes,’ wrote Madison later, ‘that a free paper, meant for general circulation, and edited by a man of genius of republican principles and a friend of the Constitution, would be some antidote to the doctrines and discourses circulated in favor of Monarchy and Aristocracy.’[584] With the view to giving some slight protection to a precarious enterprise, Madison sought a clerkship for his college friend in one of the governmental departments. Nor was it to Jefferson that he first applied.[585] The outcome, however, was the offer of a clerkship of foreign languages in the State Department at a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a year. He accepted, went to Philadelphia, and established the ‘Federal’ or ‘National Gazette.’

The leaders of the new party were plainly pleased with the prospect. Jefferson himself did not scruple to solicit subscribers among his Virginia neighbors. Henry Lee, who was to desert to the enemy later, sent in subscriptions through Madison, in a letter rejoicing because the paper ‘is rising fast into reputation,’ and lamenting because of the precariousness of its arrival.[586] ‘His paper in the opinion here,’ wrote Madison acknowledging Lee’s letter, ‘justifies the expectations of his friends, and merits the diffusive circulation they have endeavored to procure it.’[587]

The Philadelphians awoke with a start to find that an entirely new note had been struck in political journalism. Within a few weeks, the ‘Federal Gazette’ was being extensively copied in the papers over the country. Bache in his ‘Advertiser’ caught something of Freneau’s fire and audacity, and began to take a firmer, bolder tone. Fenno found himself forced to defend himself and his friends in almost every issue. Men and even women scanned its columns eagerly and with emotions determined by their political prepossessions. Within a few months the poet-editor was being hotly debated by the two leading papers of Boston. ‘As all the friends of civil liberty wish at all times to be acquainted with every question which appears to regard the public weal,’ said the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘a great number of gentlemen in this and neighboring towns have subscribed for the Federal Gazette published by Mr. Philip Freneau at Philadelphia; and it is hoped that Freneau’s Gazette, which is said to be printed under the eye of that established patriot, Thomas Jefferson, will be generally taken in the New England States.’[588] What! wrote a correspondent in the ‘Centinel,’ is this an avowal that Jefferson is the real editor? A paper hostile to religion and government! ‘Surely T. Adams ought to be well founded in his affections before he brings forward Mr. Jefferson as the patron of such a Gazette.’[589]

Within a short time Freneau had aroused the savage rage of the Federalist leaders and the zealous loyalty of the democrats everywhere. Here was a man who was not awed by power, and, brushing aside mild criticism and vapory innuendoes, struck hard and mentioned names. Soon the Jeffersonian farmers in Georgia were talking what he was writing, and Jeffersonian editors generally were following his lead. In the bar-rooms of Rhode Island men of no consequence were reading the paper aloud over their mugs, and David Rittenhouse in the library of the Philosophical Society was chuckling over its vicious thrusts. Just then ‘friends of the Constitution’ among the Federalists began to regret a certain provision in the Bill of Rights and to begin the slow incubation of the Sedition Law. That incomparable political preacher, Timothy Dwight, began to denounce papers as the ‘vice’ of the people in the new settlements, and another pious gentleman of the cloth thundered from the pulpit: ‘Many of you in spite of all the advice and friendly warnings of your religious and political fathers have taken and continue to take and read Jacobin papers, full of all manner of mischief and subtlety of the Devil.’[590] The hand-to-hand fighting of Hamilton and Jefferson was forced by the lusty blows of Freneau, who deserves to be something more than a name in the Plutarchian struggle.

V

Philip Freneau had richly earned the right to hold and express opinions concerning the destiny of his country. Many years before the Revolution, his Huguenot ancestors had come over from France, and for years his was a well-known name in the best circles of New York City where he was born. His childhood had been passed on the thousand-acre estate of his father near the battle-field of Monmouth, in a fine old mansion fashioned after the colonial style, with a great hall running through it, and large porticoes commanding a view of a beautiful country. The house was served by many domestic slaves. Near by rose Beacon Hill, thickly timbered, and from the peak could be seen the lower bay and the blue waters of the Atlantic. There his early childhood was passed under the tender care and training of a mother of rare intelligence. From her he caught a love of poetry, and of the things of which poetry is made. The spirit of his liberty-loving ancestors was strong within him. He had all the impulsiveness, the fighting courage of the Gael. When not at his studies, he wandered alone into the woods and upon the hill where he could brood dreamily upon the mystery of the sea. On the site where the battle of Monmouth was to be fought, he began the study of Greek and Latin in his tenth year. Even as a child he had a hot passionate hatred of oppression, an unfathomable contempt for hypocrisy, and an ardent love of beauty. All this he put into childish verse.

When he entered Princeton (Nassau Hall), great events were beginning to unfold. The patriots of Massachusetts, protesting against an English law, had been declared rebels, the leading offenders had been ordered across the sea for trial, the troops of General Gates had marched into Boston. The college was a hot-bed of sedition. That superb patriot, John Witherspoon, was president, and among the students who gathered in the evening in the room that Freneau shared with Madison, were ‘Light Horse’ Harry Lee, Aaron Burr, William Bradford, destined to close an exceptionally promising career as a member of Washington’s Cabinet, and Brockholst Livingston.

Nothing that Freneau ever said or did in after-life that was not foreshadowed at Princeton can be found. His tongue was sharp, and his pen dripped the vitriol of satire. He wrote much verse, and long before the Declaration of Independence, he had a hatred of kings. Even thus early in his ‘Pyramid of Kings,’ he made profession of his democracy.