procured Burr a large loan at the Manhattan Bank--some Democrats
were always sniffing a coalition between the Federalists and the
Burrites--Coleman placed the story in the ridiculous light it
deserved. However, he steadily refused to dignify the many grosser
slanders uttered against Hamilton by any notice. After the statesman’s
death, the editor repeatedly delivered utterances which he said he
had “from Hamilton’s own lips,” some of them upon matters of great
importance; for example, upon the rôle which Madison played in the
Federal Convention. Coleman in his later years also professed to be
an authority upon the authorship of the “Federalist.” It appears from
the _Evening Post_ files that Senator Lodge, the editor of Hamilton’s
works, is mistaken in believing Coleman the editor of the 1802 edition
of that volume--that John Wells edited it; but Coleman took a keen
interest in its publication.
“It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Coleman, in difficult cases,
consults with Mr. Hamilton,” Cheetham observed in 1802. “Editors _must_
consult superior minds; it is their business to draw information
from the purest and correctest sources.” Coleman never denied such
statements. In the summer of 1802 the Baltimore _American_ remarked
that the _Evening Post_ was “said to be directly under the control of
Alexander Hamilton.” The editor rejoined that it was “unnecessary to
answer him whether the _Evening Post_ is so much honoured as to be
under the influence of General Hamilton or not,” and went on to imply
distinctly that it was. Callender referred to Coleman as “Hamilton’s
typographer.” It is worth noting that when Charles Pinckney, leader
of the South Carolina Federalists, found that the weekly _Herald_ was
not being regularly received by the Charleston subscribers, he wrote in
expostulation not to Coleman but to Hamilton, asking him to speak to
the editor.
Upon the _Evening Post_, as upon the Federalist party, the tragic death
of Hamilton fell as a stunning blow. Announcing the calamity on June
13, 1804, Coleman added that “as soon as our feelings will permit,
we shall deem it a duty to present a sketch of the character of our
ever-to-be lamented patron and best friend.” The press of the nation
looked to him. The best report, said the Fredericktown (Md.) _Herald_,
a Federalist sheet, “is expected in the _Evening Post_ of Mr. Coleman,
than whom no man perhaps out of the weeping and bereft family of his
illustrious friend can more fervently bewail the loss.” On the day of
the funeral the _Evening Post_ was suspended, the only time in its
history that it missed an issue because of a death, and for a week all
its news columns carried heavy black borders. Unfortunately, the editor
did not redeem his promise of a character sketch, professing himself
too deeply grieved. After devoting a month to discussion of the duel
and its causes, he turned from “the most awful and afflicting subject
that ever occupied my mind and weighed down my heart”; he could write
no more “of him whom I can never cease to mourn as the best of friends,
and the greatest and most virtuous of men.”
Hamilton’s family and associates wished a volume compiled from the
various tributes to his memory, and by Mrs. Hamilton’s express wish,
the task was entrusted to Coleman. Before the end of the year he
published it with the title of “Facts and Documents Relative to the
Death of Major-General Hamilton”; a careful and tasteful work which not
many years ago was reissued in expensive form. There was some talk then
and later of a more ambitious commission. Thus in 1809 the Providence
_American_, deploring the fact that no biography of Hamilton had yet
appeared, suggested that Coleman was “the only person qualified.” The
editor, however, responded that a gentleman of more leisure, by whom he
meant the Rev. John M. Mason, had already accepted the undertaking.
Yet the death of its great patron and mentor detracted less from
the vigor of the _Evening Post_ in controversy than might have been
supposed. Coleman from the beginning had been assisted not only by
Hamilton but by a half-dozen of the ablest New Yorkers of Hamiltonian
views. Gouverneur Morris was in the United States Senate until 1803,
but Duane of the _Aurora_ declares that he found time to contribute
to the new journal. It is not unlikely that three admirably written
articles upon the peace of Amiens, in the last month of 1801, were by
him; the first gave a survey of European affairs, the second considered
the effects of the peace upon American business, and the third dealt
with its effect upon American parties. In 1807 he was still writing,
for Coleman later revealed the authorship of two articles he then
sent in upon the Beaumarchais claims. Oliver Wolcott was a Federal
judge when the _Evening Post_ was established, and later entered
business in New York. He also contributed from time to time, though
after Hamilton’s death he was gradually converted from Federalism to
Democracy. In 1807 he offered Coleman a long editorial article signed
“Camillus.” As Coleman ruefully said later, he was “a man of whose
political as well as personal rectitude I then entertained so little
suspicion that I should have delivered any article by him directly
to the compositor without even reading it”; and the editor had it
published without carefully examining it. Its views were so heretical
to Federalists that in 1814 the Democrats were still tauntingly
reprinting it, and Coleman was still speaking of the episode with pain.
According to Cheetham, the able merchant, W. W. Woolsey, whose
grandson, Theodore Winthrop, lives in our literature, appeared
now and then in the columns of the newspaper he had helped found.
Ebenezer Foote, the former State Senator and member of the Council
of Appointment, who had helped Coleman obtain his clerkship of the
Circuit Court, contributed signed articles. Rufus King, when he
finished his service as Minister to England in 1803, lent a valuable
hand, and as late as 1819 we find him advising Coleman as to the proper
editorial treatment of the Florida question. The editor came to know
him sufficiently well to give an intimate character sketch of him in
_Delaplaine’s Repository_, a magazine of the day. Almost indispensable
help was lent by Coleman’s old partner, John Wells, who at times acted
as virtual associate editor, and took charge of the journal during
occasional absences of Coleman. Wells had a taste for literature and
the drama as well as politics, but, says Coleman, “he dealt chiefly in
the didactic and the severe.”
Of the counsel and assistance of these prominent Federalists Coleman
was proud, but he keenly resented any imputation that he was their mere
tool and mouthpiece. This accusation was made by Cheetham when the
_Evening Post_ was not a year old:
Mr. Coleman says that to pay a man for writing against the late
Administration was a crime. He will allow that the application of
the rule will be just when applied to the present Administration.
We then say that Mr. Coleman receives the wages of sin; for he is
in every sense of the word paid for writing _against_ the present
Administration. The establishment at the head of which he is, is
said not to be his _own_; it is said to belong to a company, of
which General Hamilton is one. The paper was commenced for the
avowed purpose of opposing the Administration. Mr. Coleman, it is
believed, receives a yearly salary for writing for it, and for his
wages he is bound to write against the Administration, whether the
sentiments he pens accord with his own or not. He runs no risk,
he has no responsibility upon his shoulders. He may, in fact, be
called a mere hireling.
Coleman replied:
Cheetham says that the establishment of the _Evening Post_ does not
belong to the editor, but to a company, of which General Hamilton
is one; and that the editor receives a yearly salary for writing
for it. Now, though we do not perceive that this is of much
consequence in any way but to the editor’s pocket ... we shall not
permit it to pass uncontradicted. We therefore declare that _not
one word of it is true_. The establishment of the _Evening Post_
is, and always since its commencement has been, the sole property
of the editor: it does not, nor did it ever, belong to a company,
or to General Hamilton, or to any one else but the editor; and
lastly, the editor is not a _hireling_, nor has he at any period of
his life received _wages for writing_.
Not at all discomfited, the Jeffersonian organ remarked--and hit near
the truth--that the journal had probably been given to Coleman by the
men who were known to have raised large sums to found it. Certainly
Coleman until after 1804 was hardly a free agent. The distinction and
prosperity of his newspaper depended largely upon Hamilton’s good will.
He gladly served the statesman whom he called “my best earthly friend,
my ablest adviser, and my most generous and disinterested patron,” but
he had no real alternative.
Hamilton bequeathed to the _Evening Post_ certain principles which
guided it for years to come. The Federalist party in the nation at
large gradually crumbled away, but fortunately for the _Evening Post_,
it remained powerful in New York city until near 1820. Until the
close of the second war with England, a majority of the people of the
city held Hamiltonian views. The primary object of Hamilton was to
establish a strong national sovereignty, victorious over all forms of
disintegration. His financial policy, which embraced insistence upon
sound money, and adequate revenues without dependence either upon the
States or Europe, was made effective while he was head of the treasury.
The commercial policy which he favored was one which would develop
manufacturing, by a judicious protective tariff, to a parity with
agriculture, and make the nation self-sufficient. In foreign affairs,
he wished the United States to steer clear of European intrigue, and
as he feared French influence more than British, he tended to be more
sympathetic toward England. The _Evening Post_ hence steadfastly
opposed extreme State Rights ideas, even when some New England
Federalists asserted them in the War of 1812. It never ceased quoting
Hamilton on financial questions, and its recollection of his tariff
views delayed a firm opposition to protection until Bryant took the
helm. It opposed the identification of America with either party in the
Napoleonic struggle, but for a variety of reasons it supported Great
Britain.
CHAPTER TWO
THE EVENING POST AS LEADER OF THE FEDERALIST PRESS
Editorial pages of a century ago bore no resemblance to those of
to-day. Sometimes no editorial at all would be printed; sometimes only
a few scrappy paragraphs; sometimes two thousand words at once. Coleman
was no less addicted than others to those series of numbered editorials
which, dragging their slow length along from day to day, disappeared
with Henry Watterson. This was the hey-day of the pamphlet, and it did
not occur to most newspaper conductors that they could state an opinion
on an important national event in fewer than several issues. Thus
just after the _Evening Post_ was founded, while Hamilton’s eighteen
articles upon Jefferson’s message were being slowly run off, six other
long editorial articles were sandwiched upon the repeal of certain
discriminatory duties. The public had hardly finished digesting them
when there ensued six upon the Georgia cession to the United States.
They were followed by a series of twelve upon Jefferson and Callender.
Frequently no effort was made to give unity to the single instalment,
which began and ended abruptly. A good many of these long and ponderous
editorials of Jeffersonian days would have been soporific had they not
made up in shrillness what they lacked in liveliness.
Our third President and the _Evening Post_ stepped upon the stage
almost simultaneously. “Hamilton’s gazette,” said travelers from the
South, was to be seen at Monticello; while the _Evening Post_ followed
Jefferson with steady hostility as he came forward to play his part, in
the words of a description in its meager news columns:
Dressed in long boots, with tops turned down about the ankles,
like a Virginian buck; overalls of corduroy, faded by frequent
immersions in soapsuds from a yellow to a dull white; a red,
single-breasted waistcoat; a light brown coat with brass buttons,
both coat and waistcoat quite threadbare; linen very considerably
soiled; hair uncombed and beard unshaven.
Coleman’s most unjustifiable display of party animosity occurred
when his promise of fairness in the _Evening Post’s_ prospectus was
still fresh in men’s minds. In the summer of 1802 he reprinted from
the Richmond _Recorder_ the treacherous Callender’s attack upon the
personal morals of the President, arousing a storm of protest. Much
of this storm fell upon the head of Hamilton, and on Sept. 29 Coleman
published a statement that Hamilton had not seen the attack before it
appeared. Indeed, wrote Coleman, Hamilton had been consulted upon only
one of the twelve Jefferson-Callender articles, that one involving
constitutional questions. When the statesman saw the accusations,
he had expressed regret, for “he declared his sentiments to be
averse to all personalities, not immediately connected with public
considerations.” But the editor did not take his lesson to heart.
From time to time he indulged in outbursts against Jefferson of a
character which we can comprehend only when we recall how outrageously
even Washington had been vilified by the opposition press. Coleman
was not content with harping upon Jefferson’s actual humiliations and
errors, as his flight before Tarleton in 1781 and his opposition to the
Constitution in 1788. He accused him of trying to cheat a friend out
of a debt, and repeated the tale of a black harem. In 1805 he wrote:
“There is a point of profligacy in the line of human impudence, at
which the most disguised heart seems to lose all sensibility to shame;
and we congratulate the American public that our chief magistrate has
so completely arrived at this enviable point.”
However, in most editorials upon national affairs the _Evening Post_
displayed a breadth and coolness reflecting the sagacity of the
Federalist leaders who helped shape its policy. From the outset it
pressed the Federalist contention that everything should be done to
develop a merchant marine and a strong navy; the aggressions of the
Barbary pirates being frequently cited to prove the necessity for the
latter. The Gallophile craze of Democratic circles was attacked week in
and week out. When the claims of the sufferers by French spoliations
were surrendered by the Administration, the indignation of the journal
was outspoken. The destruction of most of the internal revenue system
which Hamilton had laboriously built up was a cause of much beating
of the breast. Not merely did it weaken the Federal Government, said
the _Evening Post_; the nabob Virginia planter was given his carriage
untaxed, and the Western backwoodsman his whisky, while the poor
Eastern artisan still had to pay taxes upon his sugar, coffee, and
salt. The pretensions of Gallatin to rival Hamilton as a master of
finance were ridiculed. The repeal of the judiciary act passed under
Adams was opposed as both unconstitutional and inexpedient.
But the primary achievement of Jefferson’s administration, the
Louisiana purchase, was treated in a tone so unlike that of other
Federalist journals that it is clear Hamilton guided Coleman’s pen.
That noisy, artificial denunciation which went up from most Federalists
was thoroughly discreditable. The _Evening Post_ admitted that “it is
an important acquisition”; that it was “essential to the peace and
prosperity of our western country”; that it opened up “a free and
valuable market to our commercial states”; and that “it will doubtless
give éclat to Jefferson’s Administration.” Of course it did its best
to spit into the Democratic soup. It asserted that Jefferson merited
little credit for the purchase, since the fruit was knocked into his
lap by the great losses of the French in the Dominican insurrection,
and by the constant threat of the British to seize Louisiana. This was
true, for Jefferson had set out only to buy an island for a dockyard,
and had been momentarily bewildered when Napoleon offered the whole
western domain. No one at that time understood the real value of
the purchase, for Louisiana was an untraversed land, believed to be
largely desert. Hence it is not surprising to find the _Evening Post_
asserting that the region was worth nothing for immediate settlement,
especially since not one sixteenth the original area of the republic
was yet occupied; and that its chief use might well be as something to
barter for the Floridas, “obviously of far greater value to us than all
the immense, undefined region west of the river.”
The _Evening Post_ could not miss the opportunity to ridicule
Jefferson’s characteristic exuberance. The President, in his
enthusiastic message to Congress, told of a tribe of giant Indians,
of river bluffs carved into antique towers, of prairie lands too rich
to produce trees, and, one thousand miles up the Missouri, of a vast
saline mountain, “said to be 180 miles long and 45 in width, composed
of solid rock salt.” Coleman descended upon this last assertion:
Lest, however, the imagination of his friends in Congress might
take a flight to the mountain and find salt trees there, and salt
birds and beasts too, he with the most amiable and infantine
simplicity, adds that there are no trees or even shrubs upon it.
La, who would have thought it? Methinks such a great, huge mountain
of solid, shining salt must make a dreadful glare in a clear
sunshiny day, especially just after a rain. The President tells
them too that “the salt works are pretty numerous,” and that salt
is as low as $1.50 a bushel, which is about twice as high as it can
be bought in New York, where we have no salt mountain at all....
We think it would have been no more than fair in the traveler who
informed Mr. Jefferson of this territory of solid salt, to have
added that some leagues to the westward of it there was an immense
lake of molasses, and that between this lake and the mountain of
salt, there was an extensive vale of hasty pudding, stretching as
far as the eye could reach, and kept in a state of comfortable
eatability by the sun’s rays, into which the natives, being all
Patagonians, waded knee deep, whenever they were hungry, and
helped themselves to salt with one hand to season their pudding,
and molasses with the other to give it a relish.... Nothing seems
wanting this affair in genuine style but for the House to “decree
it with applause.”
During Jefferson’s second administration the _Evening Post_
concentrated its fire upon his foreign policy. By the beginning of
1807, when Coleman published a long series of articles reviewing the
international situation, the great struggle raging in Europe was
plainly threatening to involve America. He accused the government of
studied unfriendliness toward Great Britain. He held that Jefferson
had made any agreement with England impossible, first, by dispatching
the mediocre Monroe as Minister to London, and second, by causing
the passage in the spring of 1806 of a non-importation measure aimed
directly at the British. Why had the Administration been so tame toward
the Spaniards, who had actually invaded American soil in the West, and
tried to bribe the leading Kentuckians to be traitors? “Instead of
framing a spirited remonstrance to Spain, demanding satisfaction for
the repeated injuries she has done us, Jefferson has been able to go
quietly into his study and amuse himself with pleasing reveries about
the prairie dogs and horned frogs of the Missouri.” Above all, why had
the government been so compliant toward Napoleon?
Napoleon, by the Berlin Decree of November, 1806, had declared that
no ship which touched at an English port should be admitted to a
port of France or her allies; the British, by an Order in Council of
January, 1807, had tried to close all French ports to neutrals. Coleman
regarded both acts as outrageous, but centered his attack upon the
Berlin decree. Napoleon, as he said, was the primary aggressor, and
the British step could be palliated as one of mere retaliation. “Our
administration ... were bound in duty to their constituents to have
immediately sent a spirited remonstrance to Paris against the Berlin
Decree, as being not only a violation of the known and established law
of nations, but a direct and flagrant breach of the existing treaty
between the two countries. And if such remonstrance failed in obtaining
from the French Government an explicit exception of the United States
from the operation of the Decree, the course that was formerly adopted
by the Federalist administration, in 1798, should have been again
adopted--ships of war should have been immediately equipped, and our
merchantmen permitted to arm for the protection of our trade.” This
position Coleman maintained throughout 1807. When the Administration
tried to make the Order in Council more odious by declaring that
the French had not put the Berlin Decree into effect before the
British acted, the editor flatly contradicted it. He supported his
contradiction by evidence from John B. Murray, a Federalist merchant
who did an immense shipping business from the foot of Beekman Street,
and others who had suffered from the French seizures.
But worse foreign encroachments were to come. Late in 1807 news arrived
that a fresh British Order in Council had been issued, requiring all
neutral vessels trading at ports closed to the British to stop at an
English port and pay a duty, and to repeat this stop on the return
voyage; while from Paris came word that Napoleon had told our Minister
“there should no longer be any such thing as a neutral nation.”
Napoleon answered the new British Order by his Milan Decree, declaring
that any ship which paid a tax in a British port might at any time
thereafter be seized in French waters. It was difficult for an American
to say a word for either combatant. Coleman admitted that the British
action “carries something on the face of it humiliating to our national
pride.” But he continued so far as possible to defend the English, and
attacked the French with increasing zeal.
This policy did not cause him to condone the attack of the _Leopard_
upon the _Chesapeake_, which stirred even Federalist New York as
nothing since the surrender of Cornwallis. It will be recalled that the
British Minister requested the surrender of three men who had deserted
from an English warship into the _Chesapeake_; that Jefferson refused;
and that the _Leopard_ followed the _Chesapeake_ from Hampton Roads
out to sea, poured a heavy fire into her, compelled her to strike
colors, and took the three men by force. The _Evening Post_ flared up
in common with all other patriotic organs. It condemned the attack as
an indefensible outrage. It demanded prompt and drastic action, and the
editor’s one fear was that Jefferson would not resent the injury with
proper vigor. It would be a mistake, wrote Coleman, simply to call upon
the British Government for disavowal of the dastardly assault, and for
trial of the offenders. The British would grant the disavowal, summon
a court martial, and acquit the guilty naval officers. No, Congress
must be convened, intercourse suspended, an embargo laid, and then, if
England wished to negotiate, she could humbly send her envoys to us. In
the meantime, the coast should be fortified, and steps should be taken
to give the nation frigates instead of Jefferson’s useless gunboats.
For weeks Coleman harped upon this string: