Jefferson and Hamilton

Under the encouragement of Witherspoon, all the patriotic fire within him burst into flame.

Long before Washington, Adams, or Franklin were dreaming of a republic and absolute independence, this was his dream. During the time he was supposed to be poring over Coke and Blackstone, he was feverishly plying his pen writing political articles for the press. He was a rebel by nature. He wrote deliberately to arouse a burning hatred of tyranny and a militant love of liberty. He sang the songs of hate, and read and studied the Roman and French satirists to perfect himself in the art he was to use so effectively later. When the war began he threw himself into the struggle. A pathetic little figure, this—a mere wisp of a boy charging on ahead to smash the connection with England, only to find that the other patriots had no such thought. They were fighting for rights within the empire, not for independence. Even then he was too radical for his times or the comfort of his associates. They were thinking of rights, and he of liberty—and in sheer disgust he sailed away to Jamaica.

There was the illusion of liberty on the sea and there was beauty and poetry, and there was opportunity, too, to prepare himself for the part he was to play a little later. It was always his joy to be prepared. On that voyage he perfected himself in the science of navigation. In the languorous air of Santa Cruz he luxuriated in the beauties of nature at its richest, and sought to transcribe to paper all he saw and felt. He had an irresistible impulse for creation—a poet’s passion for expression.[591] But even here he was a rebel born to protest. Slavery at its worst was all about him—and he hit it hard in his descriptions.

It was while a guest of the Governor of Bermuda, writing love sonnets to the fair daughter of his host, that the news came of the Declaration of Independence. This was the sort of rebellion Freneau could understand, and he hurried home to find that a battle had been fought at his very door, and that the cushions of the Tennant church he had attended had been stained with blood. Instantly he took out letters of marque and reprisal from the Continental Congress, and put to sea to battle with the British ships. Plunging patriotically with all his means he had a ship built for his own use, named it the Aurora, and sought the enemy. In a battle his ship was struck, and it was as a prisoner on the deck of an enemy vessel that he saw his ship, his fortune, sink beneath the waves. The rest was torture and a living death. The Scorpion on which he was confined was a miserable old hulk converted into a prison ship, reeking with foul smells and rank disease, and into this he was packed where the accommodations were not fit for swine. One by one he saw his fellows perish from disease and neglect, listened in the night to their shrieks of pain and dying groans. When verging on death, he was transferred to the Hunter which some sardonic soul had dubbed a ‘Hospital Prison Ship.’ Its horrors have come down to us in his own poems with its bitter execration of the Hessian doctor.

At length he was exchanged. Leaving the vessel with a raging fever, with pains in his joints that made walking a torture, he turned toward home, going through the woods ‘for fear of terrifying the neighbors with [his] ghastly looks.’[592] This was the background against which he was to view Washington’s policy of neutrality in the war between France and England. He hated England from that hour to his death.

Broken in health almost beyond hope of redemption, his ship sunk, his money gone, the war still on, he turned to his other weapon and took up the pen. ‘The Prison Ship’ helped to fire the patriots shivering about the cold camps. The poem of contemptuous imprecation, in imitation of Horace, on the treason of Arnold, fanned their wrath. That on the victory of Paul Jones heartened the downcast. Poem followed poem, copied throughout the country, many published on strips of paper and distributed through the army. Some were posted in conspicuous places where they could be committed to memory. Paine wrote ‘The Crisis’ in prose, Freneau wrote of the crisis in verse; both were a tonic for the wavering. Even Washington did not then speak of him as ‘that rascal Freneau’ and that characterization even from Washington cannot rob him of the glory of having been ‘the Poet of the Revolution’ who gave his health, his entire fortune, almost his life, and all his heart to the cause of liberty.

The close of the war found him in New York barely existing on crumbs from the table of an editor. His was a familiar figure in the Merchants’ Coffee-House at Wall and Water Streets where leading men congregated. The problem then was to get the necessities of life, and literary work was not then included among the means. This was the condition in which Madison found him. He knew the story of his poet friend, and thus it came about that the plan was made for the ‘Federal Gazette.’ He was ideally fitted for the task. It called for one who could write in the language of the people, could wield a scorpion lash, whose heart was in the cause—and no greater master of invective was in view, no keener satirist. He required no tutoring, and he would accept no orders. He was a rebel still, a radical, a crusader for democracy, who looked with amusement on ‘aristocracy,’ with hatred on monarchy. He was an original thinker, a breaker of idols, an iconoclastic genius. He had the wit, the keenness, the quickness, the felicity of his French blood, the stern firmness of the Huguenot mind. He was a gusty warrior with a lusty blade and he kept it shining in the sun.

Soon Philadelphia found him a familiar figure in its streets—a rather little man with slightly stooped shoulders, thin yet muscular, who walked briskly like one who knew where he was going. In his office at his work he was more imposing, for there one could note the high intellectual brow, the dark gray deep-set eyes that sometimes blazed under the slightly drooping lids. Usually pensive in repose, his face lighted with animation when he talked. His manners were courteous and refined and women found him interesting and gallant. Nor was this democrat a Marat in dress—he wore the small-clothes, the long hose, the buckled shoes, and cocked hat, long after others had accepted less picturesque fashions. He had no vanity, no ambition for place or power, and no fear of either. He wore no man’s collar and he was no man’s man. He was a law unto himself.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GAGE OF BATTLE

THERE was little in the reception of Hamilton’s famous ‘Report on Manufactures’ during the congressional session of 1791-92 to foreshadow the part it was to play in American politics. Bristling with facts and figures laboriously assembled, the plea for protection and bounties for manufacturers was plausibly presented. Foreseeing the hostility of the farmers, the most persuasive arguments were reserved for them. The diversification of industry would increase the demand for the products of the farm; the elimination of foreign competition would decrease the cost of manufactured goods; and the certainty of immigration would prevent any labor shortage with agriculturists. Better still, the factories would afford the farmers an opportunity to put their wives and children to work in the mills.[593] Four sevenths of the employees of the cotton mills of England were women and children, and many of the latter of ‘tender age.’[594] In the making of nails and spikes young boys were able to do the work.[595] As to the constitutional objection, that was disposed of by the doctrine of implied powers.

The newspapers, including Freneau’s, ran the report in full, but nothing came of it for the moment. No one was shocked at the idea of working women and children of tender age. After a while a writer in Freneau’s paper warned that a new field was being opened ‘for favoritism, influence and monopoly.’[596] Madison wrote to Pendleton that ‘if Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done with money ... the Government is no longer a limited one.’[597] But this ‘Report’ resulted in less controversy than any that had preceded. There was no storm—just a bare stirring of the leaves.

But Hamilton was not content to allude to brighter worlds—he led the way. Long before, he had been impressed with the industrial possibilities of beautiful Passaic Falls in New Jersey, midway between New York and Newark at the very door of the market. Just how long he was in interesting moneyed men in his ambitious plans for a great national manufactory there, we do not know. But even before the publication of his ‘Report,’ he had personally appeared with others interested before the New Jersey Legislature to ‘elucidate anything that may appear obtuse’ in the request for a charter.[598] It was only a little trip from Philadelphia to Trenton. Then, one summer day, a group of men appeared at the Falls to purchase land and select the precise sites for the various mills, and the small but masterful figure of Hamilton was the center of the group. All sorts of things would be manufactured, cotton mills predominating, and it would become—this city of Paterson—the industrial capital of the Republic. Major l’Enfant was summoned to the task of making this industrial beehive beautiful, and he responded.[599] Soon there were grumblings among the farmers, outraged because the charter that Hamilton’s influence had secured gave the company the right to dig canals on any man’s land. The other manufacturers were indignant because the new factory was to be free from taxation for ten years, and its employees were to be excused from military services except in cases of dire necessity. ‘A Manufacturer’ wrote a vehement protest, mentioning Hamilton by name, and denouncing the act of the legislature as vicious beyond comparison.[600] Soon the Philadelphia papers were advertising that the five letters ‘To the Yeomanry,’ in pamphlet form, complaining of the privileged nature of the corporation and of the part played by Hamilton, could be had at the various stores of the city.

But Hamilton was not concerned with the grumblings of the groundlings, for he was at high tide. In New York men had subscribed for a portrait of him by Trumbull, and the subscription lists ‘were still open in the coffee-house.’[601] He had become the idol of the most powerful class. A little later, Trumbull’s work completed, ‘the best that ever came from his pencil,’ it was placed temporarily in the old city hall in New York.[602] The obscure boy from the West Indies had become an institution in the city of his adoption. Even so Hamilton was ever vigilant. He had not liked the Freneau project from the start, and he was watching it like a hawk.

II

When the poet-journalist took an office on High Street and began the publication of his paper, there was little to justify grave apprehensions. In his first issues the editor had pledged himself to the support ‘of the great principles on which the American Revolution was founded,’ and while this smacked of the jabberings of Sam Adams, Hancock, and Jefferson, it was probably only a gesture. The tone of the early editions was temperate, almost academic. The ordinary reader must have thought it harmless enough, but Hamilton, who used the press effectively himself, examined the articles more critically. There were phrases creeping in, innocently, perhaps, that Fenno would have scorned. The idea that ‘public opinion sets the bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign of every free one,’[603] would never have soiled the pages of the ‘Gazette of the United States.’ The little essays on politics and government were sprinkled all too freely with these disturbing suggestions. Only an essay on ‘Nobility’—but why make it the vehicle for the thought that ‘the downfall of nobility in France has operated like an early frost toward killing the germ of it in America.’[604] With Fenno chiding the critics of officials, what more unfortunate than Freneau’s assertion that ‘perpetual jealousy of the government’ is alone effectual ‘against the machinations of ambition,’ and his warning that ‘where that jealousy does not exist in a reasonable degree the saddle is soon prepared for the back of the people.’[605] A defense of parties coupled with a denunciation of privilege,[606] stiff criticism of ministerial inefficiency apropos of the St. Clair expedition; forceful protests against the excise law;[607] and then an article by ‘Brutus’ on the funding system which could not be ignored—these were bad enough. That system, said ‘Brutus,’ had given undue weight to the Treasury Department ‘by throwing the enormous sum of fifty million dollars into the hands of the wealthy,’ thus attaching them to all the Treasury measures ‘by motives of private interest.’ Having combined the great moneyed interest, it had been made formidable by the Bank monopoly. Out of it all had come the ‘unlimited excise laws and imposts’ that ‘anticipated the best resources of the country and swallowed them all up in future payments.’ Because the certificates had fallen to the wealthy, ‘the industrious mechanic, the laborious farmer and poorer classes generally are made tributary to the latest generation.’[608] Rights of property? Yes—but there is property in rights.[609] Be loyal to the Union? Yes, but who are the enemies of the Union? ‘Not those who favoring measures which, pampering the spirit of speculation, disgust the best friends of the Union.’ ‘Not those who promote unnecessary accumulations of the debts of the Union.’ Not those ‘who study by arbitrary interpretations and insidious precedents to pervert the limited government of the Union into a government of unlimited discretion.’[610]

With Freneau hitting his stride, the Federalists began to lose their patience. Soon the ‘United States Chronicle’ of Providence learned that the ‘very extraordinary productions’ were probably ‘the work of some foreigners who wish to reduce the funds in order to purchase.’[611] The ‘Centinel’ of Boston warned that Freneau’s paper was ‘supported by a junto for electioneering purposes’ and was filled with ‘the most absurd misrepresentations of facts, or falsehoods highly injurious to the prevailing character and principles of our government and people.’[612]

But it took the articles of ‘Sidney’ to force the fighting. These were open attacks on Hamilton and his principles and were written with a punch. He assailed the House for abdicating its power to originate money bills to the Secretary of the Treasury. To delegate that duty was to lie down on a job. And such ‘reports’! Arguments! Pleas! Sophistries! Thence to the major attack. ‘If we admit that the Secretary is a fallible mortal, and, however great his capacity may be, that he is liable to mistakes or to be imposed upon, or, in range of hypothesis, if we suppose these possible cases, that his political principles do not correspond with the genius of the government, or with public opinion; or that he embraces the interests of one class in preference to the interests of the other classes,—I say admitting any or all of these circumstances to be possible, then the ministerial mode of influencing the deliberations of Congress practiced since the change of the government, is more dangerous than even that which is pursued but loudly complained of in Britain.’[613] These attacks by Sidney continued with painful regularity, and Freneau’s paper became a scandal in the best-regulated families in Philadelphia. Others joined in the fray. ‘A Citizen’ from a remote section, who had visited the capital to ‘know more of men and measures,’ speedily convinced himself that many members of government ‘were ... partners with brokers and stock jobbers, and that the banking schemes have been too powerfully and effectually addressed to their avarice.’[614] ‘Centinel’ warned that ‘the fate of the excise law will determine whether the powers of government ... are held by an aristocratic junto or by the people.’[615] With the pack in hot pursuit of his idol, Fenno rushed to the defense with a denunciation of the ‘mad dogs’ and ‘enemies of the government.’ ‘Ah,’ replied Freneau, welcoming the fight, ‘I will tell a short story that will put the matter in a proper light. A pack of rogues once took possession of a church ... held in high veneration by the inhabitants of the surrounding district. From the sanctuary they sallied out every night, robbed ... all the neighbors, and when pursued took shelter within the hallowed walls. If any one attempted to molest them there, they deterred him from the enterprise by crying, “Sacrilege,” and swearing they would denounce him to the inquisition as a heretic and an enemy of the Holy Mother Church.’[616] And Freneau persevered in his perversity. Right joyously he returned to the scandal of speculation. ‘It is worthy of notice that no direct denial has ever appeared of the ... multiplied assertions that members of the general government have carried on jobs and speculations in their own measures even while those measures were depending.’[617]

III

An interesting picture was presented the day after the appearance of this attack: Emerging from the doorway of the Morris house was a distinguished party. Washington himself, sober and stately, with his matronly spouse; Hamilton, alert and suave, with little Betty; and a tall, loose-jointed man of pleasing aspect whom spectators instantly recognized as Jefferson. Entering carriages they drove away to visit Mr. Pearce’s cotton manufactory. No one knew better than Washington that a crisis had been reached in the relations of his ministers. But a few days before he had sat pondering over a letter from Jefferson. It dealt with the reason for the growing distrust in government, the fiscal policy of Hamilton, the disposition to pile up debt, the corruption in Congress—and it announced a determination to retire from the Cabinet.[618] Washington, greatly distressed, had earnestly importuned him to remain. He had agreed to stay on awhile, but the quarreling was becoming intolerable.

At the factory the little party entered, pausing to examine the machinery and comment upon it, Hamilton the irreproachable gentleman, courteous, amusing, pleasant, Jefferson observing all the amenities of the occasion. It was their last social meeting in small company. But if Washington, who had invited them, hoped thus to persuade them to drop their quarrel, he was foredoomed to disappointment. The cause of their disagreement was elemental and eternal. They returned to the Morris house after a pleasant diversion—and the fight went on.

IV

In early June, Fenno and Freneau were lashing each other with much shouting. But the editor of the Hamilton paper played constantly into the hands of his opponent. He lamented the appearance of a ‘faction,’ meaning party, because factions mean convulsions under a republican government. It would not be so serious if there were a king, because ‘a king at the head of a nation to whom all men of property cling with the consciousness that all property will be set afloat with the government, is able to crush the first rising against the laws.’[619] There must have been high glee among the cronies of Freneau in the office on High Street when they read it. ‘King,’ ‘men of property’—Freneau could not have dictated the comment for his purpose better. ‘Your paper is supported by a party,’ charged Fenno. Yes, agreed Freneau, if ‘by a party he means a very respectable number of anti-aristocratic, and anti-monarchical people of the United States.’[620] But, not to be diverted, the poet-editor returned persistently to his indictment. ‘Pernicious doctrines have been maintained’—‘Members of Congress deeply concerned in speculating and jobbing in their own measures ... have combined with brokers and others to gull and trick their uninformed constituents out of their certificates.’[621]

‘The names—give us the names,’ demanded Fenno. ‘That reminds us,’ said Freneau, ‘of the impudence of a noted prostitute of London, who, having a difference with a young man, was by him reproached for her profligacy, and called by the plain name of her profession.... “I’ll make you prove it or pay for it,” said she. Accordingly, she sued the young man for defamation of character, and although half the town knew her character, yet nobody could prove her incontinency without owning himself an accomplice, and the defendant was lost for want of evidence and obliged to pay heavy damages. Thus it is when any man talks of speculators—“prove the fact, sir”—as if, indeed, the men who hired out the pilot boats and the brokers who negotiated the securities would come forward to expose their employers and themselves.’[622]

Thus with charge on charge, with sarcasm and satire, especially the latter, Freneau constantly increased the intensity of his assaults. These slashing and insidious attacks did not reach the citizens of Philadelphia only—they were copied far and wide. The paper itself went into every State. Men were discussing and quoting it on the streets, in the coffee-houses of New York, on the stage-coaches jolting between the scarcely broken forests of remote places, about the fireplace in the cabin in the woods. No one had followed it with greater rage than Alexander Hamilton. One day Fenno’s ‘Gazette’ contained a short letter bearing the signature ‘T. L.,’ which started the tongues to wagging all the way from O’Eller’s grogshop to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room.

Freneau’s paper had become dangerous, Fenno was unable to meet its onslaughts, and thus, anonymously, Hamilton took up his pen.[623]

V

It was at this time that Hamilton first shocked his friends with the disclosure of his temperamental weakness that was to destroy his leadership. Persuaded that Freneau’s journal was established for the primary purpose of wrecking him, he saw red, lost his customary poise and self-control, and, throwing discretion to the winds along with his dignity as a minister of State, he entered the lists as an anonymous letter-writer. We search in vain through the correspondence of his friends for evidence of approval.

The attack was met by Freneau with a certain dignity. Reproducing the ‘T. L.’ letter he wrote:

This controversy of mere journalists did not interest Hamilton. He was out gunning for bigger game. Thoroughly convinced that Jefferson was responsible for much of the contents of Freneau’s paper, he hoped to draw his colleague into an open newspaper fight and, if possible, drive him from the Cabinet. The relations of the two Titans had been growing more and more hostile. They disputed across the table in the council room, and at rare times seemed at the point of blows. Hamilton knew Jefferson’s opinions of his policies—and similar opinions were appearing in the paper edited by a clerk in his rival’s office. Nor were they slovenly, superficial articles. They were the work of close observers and clever controversialists. Not only was he ignorant of the fact that many of these were the work of Madison, that Brackenridge wrote some, George Tucker, editor of the American edition of Blackstone, some,[625] but he ridiculously underestimated the capacity of Freneau. These articles were strong, stinging, effective, and therefore Jefferson wrote or dictated them. He would drag Jefferson into the arena and have it out.

Thus, in his letter of August 4, he contemptuously dismissed the editor as ‘the faithful and devoted servant of the head of a party,’ and launched his personal bitter attack on Jefferson. If he wished to attack ‘the Government,’ why didn’t Jefferson resign?[626] ‘Can he reconcile it to his own personal dignity, and the principles of probity, to hold an office under it, and employ the means of official influence in that opposition?’ Besides, he was an enemy of the Constitution. He had been opposed to it and had written his objections ‘to some of his friends in Virginia.’[627] Four days later, Freneau denied in an affidavit published in Fenno’s paper that Jefferson had any connection with the ‘National Gazette’ or had written or dictated a line. The same day, in his own paper, he raised the curtain on Hamilton’s nom de plume, with a comment that ‘all is not right with certain lofty-minded persons who fondly imagined their ambitious career was to proceed without check or interruption to the summit of their wishes.’ To which he added that ‘the devil rageth when his time is short.’[628] In his letter of August 11th, Hamilton dismissed the denial unimpressively. At this moment he thought himself hot on the trail. Elias Boudinot, he recalled, had once told him of the part Madison had played. If he could get an affidavit from Boudinot! Acting on an impulse, he wrote him that ‘a friend’ was writing the attacks on Jefferson. He had mentioned the Boudinot conversation to that ‘friend’ who was anxious to have an affidavit. ‘It is of real importance that it should be done,’ he wrote. ‘It will confound and put down a man who is continually machinating against the public happiness.’[629] But Boudinot does not appear to have had any stomach for the mess, albeit he, like every one else, must have known that the ‘friend’ was Hamilton himself. No affidavit was forthcoming.

While he was waiting vainly for the affidavit, an anonymous writer in Freneau’s paper, referring to Hamilton’s assaults, made a counter-charge. What about ‘the immaculate Mr. Fenno’? Did he not have the printing of the Senate, ‘the emoluments of which office are considerable?’ Did he not ‘enjoy exclusively the printing of the Treasury department where it seems he has rendered himself a particular favorite?’ Was he not already ‘making his approaches to another office on Chestnut Street [the Bank],’ and in a fair way to secure ‘if not already in possession of the business appertaining thereto?’[630]

On August 18th, Hamilton appeared again to sneer at Freneau’s announcement that he would pay no attention to the charges until the author came forward to make them in the open. ‘It was easily anticipated that he might have good reasons for not discovering himself, at least at the call of Mr. Freneau, and it was necessary for him to find shelter.’

Freneau’s affidavit! scoffed a writer in Hamilton’s organ. He had no faith in it. The editor had certainly not sworn upon the Bible. Had he taken the oath on Jefferson’s ‘Notes on Virginia’?[631]

But Hamilton was already discovered. No one there was in public life from Washington down who did not know the author. The amazing spectacle was the talk of the taverns and the dinner tables, and was beginning to assume the proportions of a scandal. Washington was shocked and aggrieved. He would stop it.

VI

On August 26th he tried his art of conciliation, appealing to both Hamilton and Jefferson, albeit, as he knew, the latter had not written a line. Both replied in September, Hamilton admitting the authorship of the articles, and declared his inability ‘to recede now.’ He had been forced to write. He had been ‘the object of uniform opposition from Mr. Jefferson’; ‘the object of unkind whispers and insinuations from the same quarter’; and he had evidence that the ‘National Gazette’ had been instituted by Jefferson ‘to render me and all the objects connected with my administration odious.’ He had been most patient. In truth, he had ‘prevented a very severe and systematic attack upon Mr. Jefferson by an association of two or three individuals, in consequence of the persecution he brought upon the Vice-President by his indiscreet and light letter to the printer, transmitting Paine’s pamphlet.’[632]

Jefferson replied that in private conversation he had ‘utterly disapproved’ of Hamilton’s system, which ‘flowed from principles adverse to liberty and calculated to undermine and demolish the Republic by creating an influence of his department over members of the legislature.’ He had seen this influence ‘actually produced’ by ‘the establishment of the great outlines of his project by the votes of the very persons who, having swallowed his bait, were laying themselves out to profit by his plans.’ Then, too, Hamilton had constantly interfered with his department, particularly in relation to England and France.[633] As to Freneau, he hoped he ‘would give free place to pieces written against the aristocratic and monarchical principles.’ He and Fenno, he said, ‘are rivals for the public favor. The one courts them by flattery, the other by censure, and I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as servile as the other has been severe.’ Then, turning again to Hamilton: ‘But is not the dignity and even decency of government committed when one of its principal Ministers enlists himself as an anonymous writer or paragraphist for either the one or the other of them?’ As for criticism of governmental measures, ‘no government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the free operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth, either in religion, law, or politics. I think it is as honorable to government neither to know nor notice its sycophants, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.’[634]

Thus ended Washington’s attempt to intervene. Hamilton had refused to discontinue his attacks, and, within two days after replying to Washington’s appeal, he was again appearing in the ‘Gazette of the United States.’

VII

Even while Hamilton and Jefferson were writing their letters, the fight was proceeding merrily, if bloodlessly, in the papers. ‘Aristides,’ none other than Madison, had gone to the defense of his leader in an article in Fenno’s paper on Jefferson’s attitude toward the Constitution. No one was so well qualified to know, unless it was Washington himself. He had sat in the Convention, a leading figure, and listened to Hamilton’s speeches and proposals, and had been in correspondence with Jefferson. It was not this defense that made Fenno restive. It was a pointed attack. ‘It is said, Mr. Fenno, that a certain head of a department is the real author or instigator of these unprovoked and unmanly attacks on Mr. Jefferson—and that the time of that gentleman’s departure from the city on a visit to his home was considered as best suited to answer the design it was intended to effect.’ ‘Unmanly attack’ and an insinuation of cowardice! Fenno took the precaution to add a note warning that no further letters would be printed containing ‘personal strictures’ unless the name of the author was furnished ‘in case of emergency.’ Coffee and pistols—was it coming to that?[635] Freneau had no such concern, for on the same day a writer in his paper referred to the ‘base passions that torment’ Hamilton, and called upon the author of the anonymous articles to ‘explain the public character who on an occasion well known to him, could so far divest himself of gratitude and revolt from the spirit of his station as to erect his little crest against the magnanimous chief who is at the head of our civic establishment, and has on many free occasions since spoken with levity and depreciation of some of the greatest qualities of that renowned character; and now gives himself out as if he were his most cordial friend and admirer, and most worthy of public confidence on that account.’[636]

Two days after refusing Washington’s request for a cessation, Hamilton returned to the attack in answer to the charge of the ‘National Gazette’ that he had not liked the Constitution, and had pronounced the British monarchy the most perfect government. All this he stoutly denied. The records and debates of the Constitutional Convention were then under secrecy, and members who had heard his speeches were under the ban of silence. He felt safe. This is the most amazing letter of the series.

And so the dismal affair dragged on. Another letter appeared reiterating a connection between Jefferson and Freneau; another charging that Jefferson was opposed to the Constitution and against paying the public debt; still another complaining of Jefferson’s interference with the Treasury Department. Then another on Jefferson and the Constitution, and finally, two months after Washington’s appeal, demanding that Jefferson, who remained in the Cabinet on the earnest solicitation of Washington, withdraw. ‘Let him not cling to the honor or emolument of an office, whichever it may be that attracts him, and content himself with defending the injured rights of the people by obscure or indirect means.’

Meanwhile, Jefferson had refused to be drawn into the controversy personally. The situation had become painful—the Philadelphia drawing-rooms lifting their brows at him. His official associations were unpleasant, but he never touched pen to a paper intended for publication. Only in his personal letters did he pour forth his bitterness against his colleague. ‘The indecency of newspaper squabbling between two public Ministers,’ he wrote Edmund Randolph, ‘has drawn something like an injunction from another quarter. Every fact alleged ... as to myself is false.... But for the present lying and scribbling must be free to those who are mean enough to deal in them and in the dark.’[637] He had hoped for an early retirement, and the attacks had indefinitely postponed the realization of his desire. ‘These representations have for some weeks past shaken a determination which I had thought the whole world could not have shaken,’ he wrote Martha.[638] Meanwhile, the small-fry partisans were busy in all the papers. The effect, on the whole, had been favorable to Jefferson, making him the idol of the democrats everywhere. ‘It gives us great pleasure,’ said a Boston paper, ‘to find that the patriotic Jefferson has become the object of censure, as it will have a happy tendency to open the eyes of the people to the strides of certain men who are willing to turn every staunch Republican out of office who has discerning to ken the arbitrary measures, and is honestly sufficient to reveal them.’[639] To the ‘Independent Chronicle’ the ‘slander and detraction’ of men like Jefferson seemed ‘a convincing proof of the badness of the cause behind it.’[640] The onslaught had in no wise weakened Jefferson’s faith in the effectiveness of the ‘National Gazette.’ The smoke had not lifted from the field when he was rejoicing because it was ‘getting into Massachusetts under the patronage of Hancock and Sam Adams.’[641] Even Freneau found the democrats rallying around him.

VIII

Thus Hamilton’s remarkable attack had only whetted the appetite of the Jeffersonians for battle—and a national campaign was in progress. The unanimous reëlection of Washington was universally demanded, but why should the ‘aristocratic’ and ‘monarchical’ author of ‘The Discourses of Davilla’ be chosen again? At any rate, efforts could be made to change the political complexion of Congress.

There were mistakes, blunders, tragedies, that could be used to affect public opinion. What more shocking than the humiliating collapse of the General St. Clair expedition against the Indians in the western country? Gayly enough had the unfortunate commander set forth with twenty-three hundred regular troops and a host of militiamen. There had been a scarcity of provisions and inadequate preparations. Hundreds of soldiers, consumed with fever, shaken with chills, had vainly called for medicine. Many died, hundreds deserted in disgust, and finally but fourteen hundred worn and weary, sick and hungry men remained to face the enemy. It was easy enough to blame St. Clair, and, as he passed through the villages en route to the capital, the people flocked about to hiss and jeer.

But why the lack of proper preparations? Why the insufficiency of the commissary? Even the officials in Philadelphia were prone to find extenuations for the failure of St. Clair. A correspondent of the Boston ‘Centinel,’ dining with some of the first official characters where the tragic collapse of the expedition had been discussed, found ‘not one expression dropped to his prejudice.’[643] The Jeffersonians were aiming higher than St. Clair. There was Knox, Secretary of War—what had he to say in defense of the honesty of the army contractor, to the negligence of the quartermaster? The House investigating committee bore heavily on these two in its report—but who was responsible for the cupidity of the one and the inefficiency of the other? Soon the Jeffersonian press was attacking Knox with distressing regularity, picturing him as the ‘Philadelphia Nabob.’[644] Was he not squandering public money on ‘splendor’ and ‘extravagance’? Soon the more irresponsible of the gossip-mongers were whispering that he had profited financially. ‘Infamous!’ screamed the Federalist press. ‘The public monies have never been in the hands of Mr. Knox.’[645] ‘But who made arrangements with the dishonest contractor?’ replied the Jeffersonians. ‘Who selected the quartermaster who let the soldiers starve?’

All through the summer and autumn this was the talk in the taverns and coffee-houses, but with the bursting of the bubble of speculation a far more effective weapon of assault was at hand. To this inevitable outcome of the gambling mania Jefferson had looked forward with the utmost confidence. He had seen money ‘leaving the remoter parts of the Union and flowing to [Philadelphia] to purchase paper’; had seen the value of property falling in places left bare of money—as much as twenty-five per cent in a year in Virginia. Extravagance, madness everywhere.[646] As a result in the remoter sections the hatred of the speculator had reached the stage of hysteria. ‘Clouds, when you rain, bleach him to the skin,’ prayed a Georgia paper. ‘When you hail, precipitate your heaviest globes of ice on his ill-omened pate. Thunders, when you break, break near him, shatter an oak or rend a rock full in his view. Lightning, when you burst, shoot your electric streams close to his eyelids. Conscience, haunt him like a ghost.... Ye winds, chill him; ye Frost, pinch him, freeze him. Robbers meet him, strip him, scourge him, rack him. He starved the fatherless and made naked the child without a mother.’[647] Even the Worcester correspondent of the orthodox Boston ‘Centinel’ complained that ‘as soon as one bubble bursts another is blown up’ and ‘we are in the way of becoming the greatest sharpers in the universe’—all ‘assuredly anti-republican.’[648] When a town meeting was advertised for Stockbridge, a village wit penciled on the poster the purpose of the conference: ‘To see if the town will move to New York and enter into the business of speculation.’[649] While publishing these letters and stories the Federalist organ in Boston did it with the sneer: ‘They who are in—Grin. They who are out—Pout. They who have paper—Caper. They who have none—Groan.’[650]

Then in April, with the failure of Colonel Duer in New York the crash came. Many went to ruin in the wreckage, and New York became a madhouse, with business paralyzed, and Duer taking to flight. He had been among the most favored of the beneficiaries of Hamilton’s policies, rising from opulence overnight, and he was among the first to fall from their abuse.[651] The brutality and cowardice of the speculators intensified the general contempt for the tribe. ‘Instead of exerting themselves to preserve some kind of moral character,’ wrote a New York correspondent of the ‘Maryland Journal,’ ‘they are endeavoring to lower themselves still more by descending to the mean level of fish women and common street boxers.’[652]

All this was viewed by Hamilton with indignation and concern. He had sought in every way to discourage the frenzy of speculation, and had used his office to protect the public wherever possible. But it began with the funding system—and with thousands that was enough. Instantly the Jeffersonian press was hot on the trail. ‘Business has not been benefited by Hamilton’s Bank,’ declared the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘for a merchant can scarcely venture to offer his note for $100, while a speculator can obtain thousands for no other purpose than to embarrass commerce.’ Look around and see who have obtained wealth. ‘Speculators, in general, are the men.’ Thus, ‘the industrious merchant is forced to advance to the government thousands, while the gambling speculator is receiving his quarterly payments.’[653] A Maryland correspondent of Louden’s New York ‘Register’ ‘could not help thinking Mr. Madison’s discriminating propositions would have prevented in great measure the exorbitant rage of speculation.’[654] Meanwhile, Fenno was denouncing the critics as ‘anarchists’ and enemies of the Government, which only intensified their rage. ‘Our objection is not to paying off the debt,’ protested an indignant critic, ‘but to ... the excise, failure to discriminate, the play to speculation’; and if all who shared these views could be assembled it ‘would make the greatest army that ever was on one occasion collected in the United States.’[655] In the Boston ‘Centinel,’ John Russell was taking a lighter tone. ‘The suffering yeomanry burdened with taxes? Why not simply eliminate all State and National debts and forget them?’[656] The storm? What of it? ‘The Six Per Cents, a first rate, belonging to the fleet commanded by Admiral Hamilton, notwithstanding several hard Country gales, and a strong lee current setting out of the Hudson and Delaware is still working to windward and bids fair to gain her destined port.’[657]

IX

With such attacks and counter attacks in the papers, the campaign of 1792 was fought, with the bitter gubernatorial battle between John Jay and George Clinton in New York setting the pace in the spring. The Federalists had set their hearts on the crushing of Clinton, and but for the frown of Hamilton, Burr might have joined them in the attempt.[658] The campaign was spectacular, and class feeling and prejudice played a part. Jay was an aristocrat by birth and temperament, and this gave the Clintonians their cue. Up, Plebs, and at ’em! An aristocrat against a democrat, the rich against the poor. Had not Jay said that ‘those who own the country ought to govern it’? Had not Jay’s Constitution disfranchised thousands on the score of their poverty? Were not the speculators, the stock-jobbers, the bankers, the gamblers, swindlers, and the forces of privilege supporting Jay?[659] The result was the election of Clinton, on a technicality,[660] and instantly there was an uproar, broken bones and bloody noses, coffee-house quarrels and blows, wild talk of a revolutionary convention and the seating of Jay with bayonets, and serious bloodshed was prevented only through the efforts of Hamilton, Jay, and King. Never had party feeling run so high, and several duels were fought in the course of a week.[661] The defeated or cheated candidate was accorded the acclamations due a conqueror on his journey from his judicial circuit to New York where he was given a testimonial dinner.[662] The democrats were none the less jubilant because of the questionable nature of their triumph, and at a dinner in honor of Clinton, the Tammany braves rose to the toast, ‘Thomas Jefferson,’ and gave their war-whoop.[663]

The bitterness in New York spread to various parts of the country where the Jeffersonians were fighting brilliantly, with clever strategy, to gain seats in the Congress. Some of the Federalists, who were to prove themselves generally inferior except in a smashing charge, and incapable of maintaining their morale in a siege or in reverses, were even then growing pessimistic. ‘Perhaps you are not informed,’ wrote George Cabot to Theophilus Parsons, ‘that in Pennsylvania and New York the opponents are well combined and are incessantly active, while the friends discover a want of union and a want of energy.’[664] And Parsons, in melancholy mood, was convinced that the Government had ‘seen its best days.’[665] Woe to the politician who enters the reminiscent stage when confronted by a virile opponent looking to the future. There was little in the New England of 1792 to depress the Federalists. Only a little evidence that among the working-men in Boston ‘heresies’ were making their way; only reports that ‘itinerant Jacobins’ were haranguing the curious in the bar-rooms of Rhode Island and Vermont; only the strange spectacle of ‘drill masters’ meeting with people of no property or importance to organize them to battle for democratic principles.[666] Only this, and a strange doctrine creeping into Vermont papers. In choosing members of Congress who should be selected? asked a ‘Land Holder’ of that State. ‘What class of people should they represent? Who are the great body of the people? Are they Lawyers, Physicians, Merchants, Tradesmen? No—they are respectable Yeomanry. The Yeomanry therefore ought to be represented.’[667] In Maryland a ferocious fight was waged under the eyes of both Hamilton and Jefferson, for both were interested in the fate of Mercer who had slashed right lustily at the policies of Hamilton, making no secret of his belief that they were bottomed on corruption. He had vitalized the democrats of Maryland, extending his interest into districts other than his own, and arranging for candidates to oppose the sitting Federalists in the House. McHenry, who kept Hamilton informed of the progress of the fight, hoped to array the German Catholics against the obnoxious Mercer through the intervention of Bishop Carroll, whom he thought more influential than the better known Charles Carroll of Carrollton.[668] A man was employed by the energetic McHenry to circulate bills against Mercer, who fought back, and gave blow for blow. He was charged with having said that Hamilton had tried to bribe him in the Assumption fight;[669] that he was personally interested in the contract for supplying the western army, and privately engaged in the purchase of securities. This, Mercer was to disavow, and Hamilton’s friends were to show that the conversation between the Marylander and the Secretary had been in the presence of company and in jest.[670] Even so we may assume that Mercer had painted the incident black. He let it be understood that Washington wished his reelection, and the celerity with which the President issued a denial was probably due to the importunity of Hamilton who did not scruple to use him without stint to further the cause of his party.[671]

In North Carolina the Jeffersonians, under the crafty leadership of picturesque Willie Jones, contested every inch of the ground, determined to retire all the Hamiltonians from Congress, and before the impetuosity of their charge the Federalists were forced to fight defensively and under a cloud.[672]

In the new State of Kentucky the Jeffersonians were thoroughly organized under the leadership of John Brown, a Virginian, educated at Princeton and at Jefferson’s alma mater, who had fought through the War of Independence. ‘Brown can have what he wants,’ Madison wrote his leader in midsummer,[673] and he took the toga. In Virginia the Democrats were strongly in the ascendancy. The influence of Jefferson had been strengthened by the acquisition of Madison, and Hamilton, in the course of the campaign, wrote his famous letter to Colonel Edward Carrington attacking both in an effort to satisfy the Virginia Federalists of the justice of his own position, but it was blowing against a tornado.[674] An amazing campaign document—this letter.

Thus, in 1792, if the Jeffersonians had not yet perfected their organization, they had forced sporadic fighting, and the result of the congressional elections was greatly to strengthen them in the House.

X

It was clear quite early that the Jeffersonians would not permit Adams’s reëlection to go unchallenged. The press had teemed with controversial articles on his books for more than a year. As early as March his friends took up the cudgels in his defense. ‘Homo’ in the Boston ‘Centinel’ warned that ‘a detestable cordon of desperadoes’ were trying to destroy public confidence in Adams by vilification.[675] Within three months, Hamilton convinced himself that the opposition, in dead earnest, had concentrated on Clinton, and hastened to warn Adams, who was enjoying the placidity of his farm at Quincy.[676] It is interesting to observe that this plan to displace Adams was interpreted by Hamilton as ‘a serious design to subvert the government.’ If the candidacy of Clinton was annoying to Hamilton, the warning he received in September of the possible candidacy of Aaron Burr was maddening, and he fell feverishly to the task of denouncing the ambitions of this ‘embryo Cæsar’ in letters to his friends.[677] Clinton ‘has been invariably the enemy of national principles,’ he wrote General C. C. Pinckney in ordering a mobilization for defense in South Carolina, and as for Burr, he was a man of ‘no principles other than to mount, at all events, to the full honors of the state, and to as much more as circumstances will permit.’ Was Jefferson behind the conspiracy against Adams—Jefferson, that man of ‘sublimated and paradoxical imagination, entertaining and propagating opinions inconsistent with dignified and orderly government?’[678] To John Steele in North Carolina he wrote in the manner of a commander, to inform him ‘that Mr. Adams is the man who will be supported by the Northern and Middle States.’ Of course, he had ‘his faults and foibles,’ and some of his opinions were quite wrong, but he was honest, and loved order and stable government.[679] Meanwhile, painful complications were threatened in Maryland where a number of notables[680] joined in a public letter rallying Marylanders to the support of Charles Carroll of Carrollton.[681] This gave James McHenry, an idolater of Hamilton, and still tortured by a persistent, and, as yet, ungratified itch for office, his opportunity. He assumed the responsibility for whipping the rebels back into line. These signers of the Carroll letter had been imposed upon. The fight against Adams was a fight against the Constitution—in keeping with the plan of the enemies of government to drive able men from office. Had not Hamilton ‘whose attachment to the Constitution is unquestionable’ been assailed with virulence? Yes, from ‘the master workman in his craft down to the meanest of his laborers,’ all were engaged in the dirty work. Thus the submission of Carroll’s claims at so late an hour wore ‘a very doubtful and invidious aspect.’ Was it done ‘to get ten votes against Adams or to promote Carroll’s election?’ Was any one so foolish as to think that the Democrats in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia would desert Clinton?[682] This letter, signed by ‘A Consistent Federalist,’ was copied by all the Federalist papers of the country.

Meanwhile, Adams, lingering lovingly on his home acres, showed no inclination to return to Philadelphia, and it was reported that he might not appear to preside over the Senate until late in the session. This was an appalling lack of tact. Hamilton, assuming the rights of the leader, did not hesitate. ‘I learn with pain that you may not be here until late in the session,’ he wrote the loiterer behind the firing lines. ‘I fear this will give some handle to your enemies to misrepresent.... Permit me then to say it best suits the firmness and elevation of your character to meet all events, whether auspicious or otherwise, on the ground where station and duty call you.’[683]

By November the press was hotly engaged in the controversy, but poor Fenno was to have trouble with his correspondents who were to convert his dignified journal into a cock-pit. Adams was both pelted and salved on the same page. His writings proved him a monarchist at heart, wrote ‘Mutius.’[684] His writings would be appreciated more a century hence, said a defender in the same issue. Had he not already been vindicated on one point in the appearance of the ‘gorgon head of party’? Freneau cleverly replied by quoting a laudatory article from an English paper paying tribute to the governmental notions of ‘the learned Mr. Adams.’[685] Yes, wrote ‘Cornucopia’ in the ‘Maryland Journal,’ ‘it will require the whole strength of the federalists to keep poor John Adams from being thrust out of the fold.’[686]

And ‘poor John Adams’ was not entirely happy in his defenders. Why not reëlect him, demanded ‘Philanthropos’ in a glowing tribute, for was he not ‘a man of innocent manners and excellent moral character?’[687] ‘Why not?’ echoed a scribe in Albany. He was ‘a reputed aristocrat, at the same time an honest man, the noblest work of God.’[688] From ‘Otsego’ came a more robust blow at Adams’s enemies as ‘the jacktails of mobocracy’ seeking the defeat of ‘the virtuous Adams’ because he was against ‘anarchy and disorder.’[689] Wrong, wrote ‘Portius’ the next day, advocating Clinton. ‘Untinctured by aristocracy, and a firm republican, the patriots of America look to him.’[690] ‘Titles, titles,’ sneered ‘Condorcet.’ ‘This rattle which so peculiarly delights certain characters.... He never appears but in the full blaze of office, as if every place he went was a Senate, and every circle which he invited needed a Vice President.’[691] Thus, throughout the fall and early winter the lashing and slashing went on, but when the time came Adams was reëlected, albeit the result was a bitter humiliation to the proud, sensitive spirit of the victor. Where Washington had been unanimously reëlected, Adams had a margin of but twenty-seven votes. New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia had moved en masse into the Clinton camp, and Kentucky had cast her vote for Jefferson. Five States had gone over to the Jeffersonians, and the Federalists had been unable to get a unanimous vote in Pennsylvania. But if Adams was hurt, Hamilton could bear his pains, for the brilliant, dashing chief of the party preferred that the uncongenial man from Braintree should not become too perky.

Thus ended the first year of actual party struggle—Hamilton a bit soiled by his descent to anonymous letter-writing, Jefferson greatly strengthened by his silence under assault; the Hamiltonians triumphant, but not exultant over the reëlection of Adams, the Jeffersonians, having tasted blood, and tested their weapons, more than ever eager for combat and rejoicing in their congressional gains.

Hamilton had tried to drive Jefferson from the Cabinet, and failed. It was now the latter’s turn.