PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE
I
Hamilton was at the high tide of his popularity and power when Congress
next convened in Philadelphia. His funding system had established the
Nation’s credit, and the genius and daring of the brilliant young man of
thirty-three were on every tongue. The ‘Maryland Journal’ claimed
‘respectable authority’ for the assertion that in Quebec he was
‘supposed equal to the celebrated Mr. Pitt, and superior to the Prime
Minister of any other court in Europe.’[282] Among the merchants and
people of wealth and property he was acclaimed the savior of the State.
Everywhere he was the idol of the aristocracy.
And, in the saddle, he was riding hard. Although his was the second
position in the Cabinet, he thought of himself as the Prime Minister.
Washington was a constitutional monarch. The other members of the
President’s official family were his subordinates. His policies were the
policies of the Government, and to question them was hostility to the
State. In the Cabinet meetings his manner was masterful to a degree.
Considering himself Prime Minister, he felt no delicacy about
interfering in the departments of his colleagues. Even Knox, who adored
him, resented his determination to make all the purchases for the
Department of War. When the War Secretary resisted, Hamilton had a
compliant Congress pass a law giving him that privilege--an absurdity
that continued as long as he was in the Cabinet.[283] The soft-spoken,
mild, and courteous Jefferson, who preferred the ways of conciliation
and persuasion, observed the dictatorial airs of his masterful young
associate with a surprise that hardened to distaste.
But the feeling awakened among the masses by the failure to discriminate
in the matter of the securities, and by Assumption, was increasing in
intensity. The common soldier had not profited by these policies. The
farmer and the mechanic could see no benefit to themselves, but among
speculators, some of them members of Congress, they observed evidence of
new-found wealth. These were building finer houses, riding in coaches
where they had previously walked, and there was an ominous rumbling and
grumbling beneath the surface, to which the Hamiltonians were oblivious
or indifferent. After all, this was merely the whining of the
ne’er-do-wells of the taverns and the illiterates of the farms.
The work was only begun, and there could be no turning back now. The
assumption of the State debts called for the tapping of new sources of
revenue. This would increase the burdens of the people, but what would
they have? They could not eat their cake and have it too--could not have
a strong government without paying the price. Utterly unmindful of the
complaining of the people of no importance, Hamilton turned resolutely
to his task and prepared his excise tax for the consideration of
Congress.
II
In raising money to meet the obligations of Assumption, it was the
purpose of Hamilton to resort to direct taxation as little as possible,
and to make luxuries bear the burden. This directed his attention to the
domestic manufacture of spirits--luxury to some, but a very real
necessity to others. This was particularly true in the States where
distilleries were plentiful. That it would call forth a protest from
some quarters, he had no doubt, and he rejoiced in the certainty of
combat. Strong man that he was, he went forth in shining armor to
establish the right of the Government to an internal revenue. He knew
that excise taxes were obnoxious, albeit necessary, and he sought the
chance to vindicate the right of the Government to do the necessary,
unpopular thing.
Instantly the challenge was accepted in Pennsylvania where whiskey
stills abounded in the Alleghanies. Some of the State’s representatives
in Congress were instantly on their toes, denouncing the plan as
arbitrary and despotic. In the Legislature, Albert Gallatin, a
remarkable young man, soon to prove himself the only member of the
opposition capable of coping with Hamilton in the field of finance,
framed a reply, denouncing the plan as ‘subversive of the rights,
liberty and peace of the people.’ In the midst of excitement--for the
Legislature sat in Philadelphia--the reply was debated and adopted by an
overwhelming majority.
But the opposition was comparatively weak. Jefferson and Madison were
hostile to the principle, but there had been a bargain on Assumption to
which they were parties. They could not deceive themselves as to the
necessity. If Jefferson raised a finger to prevent the passage of the
bill, he covered his tracks. Even Giles, soon to become the most
vehement leader of the Jeffersonian party, at first looked upon it with
some favor. Madison could see no escape.
Among the masses throughout the country, however, the obscure orators
were busy in the bar-rooms, on the streets, and at the crossroads. The
character of the discussion among the people is indicated in imaginary
conversations by a writer in a Baltimore paper. A friend of the excise
fares forth into the streets and meets its enemies. ‘An outrage!’ cried
one. ‘Had we not gone to war with England on a tax?’ ‘Ah,’ but, says the
defender, ‘then we were taxed by another country and without
representation, while here we tax ourselves through our chosen
representatives.’ ‘Yes,’ but, says Rumor, ‘under the excise act men can
break into the people’s houses.’ ‘Wrong,’ says the defender; ‘the law
provides no such arbitrary power.’ ‘But,’ persists the enemy, ‘we shall
be eaten up by excise officers.’ ‘Silly,’ says the defender;
‘numerically these officials will be unimportant.’ Then the defender
encounters one candid enemy of the measure. ‘I hate the excise,’ he
cries, ‘because it strengthens the Government by providing effectually
for its necessities; and the Government which lays it because it is a
Government of vigor.’ Whereupon the defender praises him as an honest
man.[284]
The moment the Excise Bill was presented in the House, the ever alert
Jackson was ready with a motion to strike out the essential part of the
first clause. ‘The mode of taxation was odious, unequal, unpopular, and
oppressive, more particularly in the Southern States,’ where under the
hot Southern skies spirituous liquors were more than salutary--they were
necessary. Why deprive the masses of ‘the only luxury they enjoy’? Why
impose upon the American people an excise that had been odious in
England from the days of Cromwell, and which had been reprobated by
Blackstone?
Yes, added an indignant Virginian,[285] ‘it will convulse the
Government; it will let loose a swarm of harpies, who, under the
domination of revenue officers, will range through the country, prying
into every man’s house and affairs, and like a Macedonian phalanx bear
down all before them.’ The mercantile interests were paying their duties
with promptitude? He was tired of these encomiums. ‘The increase in the
revenue has served to enhance the value of the public securities, of
which it is well known they hold a very considerable portion.’[286]
On the second day, Madison went on record as opposed to the principle
and in favor of the measure. The only question to be considered was the
necessity for the revenue--and that was indisputable. He personally
would prefer direct taxes, but the majority of the people were against
them. Of all forms of the excise, that on ardent spirits impressed him
as the least objectionable.
But, demanded Jackson, disappointed at Madison’s failure to join in the
assault, why not other taxes--taxes on salaries, pensions, lawyers?
Because, answered Laurance, the Assumption calls for revenue, and this
is the best way to raise it. True, added another,[287] and he had ‘not
found a single person against it’--and this in Philadelphia where the
Legislature was sitting! What! exclaimed Timothy Blood worth of North
Carolina, why ‘people to the southward universally condemn the tax.’
Yes, indeed, contributed another, especially in North Carolina, ‘where
the consumption of ardent spirits is ten times greater than in
Connecticut.’
Up rose Sedgwick in conciliatory mood. He was not impressed with ‘the
considerations of morality,’ and could not think that the tax ‘would be
attended with any sensible inconvenience.’ There certainly was no
thought of using military force in its collection. And then it was that
Giles, who, next to Madison, was the most fervent and able of the
Jeffersonians, astonished many by giving his hearty approval to the tax
as necessary ‘to the honor, peace and security’ of the country.[288]
Thus for days the debate continued with its reiterations, until a new
note was struck with a proposed amendment, aimed at Hamilton whose
audacious methods and successive successes were causing grave concern in
some quarters, to prohibit revenue agents from interfering in elections.
These officers in their work, said Samuel Livermore, ‘will acquire such
a knowledge of persons and characters as will give them great advantage
and enable them to influence elections to a great degree.’ ‘Impolitic in
respect to law, repugnant to the Constitution, and degrading to human
nature,’ protested Ames. It would prevent self-respecting men from
taking the places, added Sedgwick. When the vote was taken, the
amendment was defeated with both Madison and Giles voting against it.
It was not until the House took up the duration of the tax that the
great battle began, and under the leadership of Giles, who had hitherto
given it his support.[289] But Madison was not impressed, and in the
vote on placing a limitation on the operation of the bill he was found
with the Hamiltonians--and there he stood on the final vote.
Even in the Senate the attempt to defeat the measure was continued, and
while Hamilton was strongest in that body, the energetic young Secretary
took nothing for granted. It was not enough that the committee
considering the bill had been packed with his supporters; he took
personal charge. For several days he walked briskly into the room and
took his place at the table, after which the doors were closed and
locked. The worried Maclay, who was preparing the case against the
measure on behalf of the distillers, sensed a conspiracy. When Adams
hastened an adjournment of the Senate while the committee was sitting,
the victim of the gout put him down as ‘deep in the cabals of the
Secretary.’[290] Preparing a list of distillers who would be affected,
on which to base an argument, Maclay knocked at the committee room. The
door opened and the eager eye of the Senator caught a glimpse of
Hamilton at the table before Robert Morris closed it, as he stepped
outside. With his suspicions confirmed, the gruff old Democrat left his
papers with his colleague and turned away. ‘I suppose no further use was
made of it,’ he commented.[291] When the bill passed four days later,
he thought ‘war and bloodshed ... the most likely consequence’; and
concluded that ‘Congress may go home’ since ‘Mr. Hamilton is
all-powerful and fails in nothing he attempts.’[292]
The same conclusion had been reached by Jefferson before. Just after the
passage of the bill, he was writing a friend of his fears of the effect
of the policies of the Treasury upon the people. Even though they were
right, ‘more attention should be paid to the general opinion.’ The
excise had passed--the Bank Bill would pass. Perhaps the only corrective
for ‘what is corrupt in our present form of government’ would be an
increase in the membership of the House ‘so as to grant a more
agricultural representation which may put that interest above that of
the stock jobbers.’[293]
Jefferson had reached the end of his patience, and was preparing to
challenge the pretensions, policies, and power of his ardent and
dictatorial young colleague.
III
It was inevitable that a national bank should be a feature of Hamilton’s
financial system. Long before a national government loomed large as a
probability, he had conceived the plan, and with the temerity of
youthful audacity had solemnly outlined it in letters to Robert
Morris.[294] With the opportunity before him, he moved with confident
strides to his purpose, and the day after his recommendation of an
excise reached Congress, his ‘Report on the Bank’ was read. His rare
familiarity with the principles of finance, the history of banking, and
the banking experiences of nations made his ‘Report’ a persuasive
document.[295] Its adoption was as inevitable as its submission. He was
on the very peak of his power. Commerce and wealth in all the cities
were saluting him, for his policies were in their interest, and the
professional and intellectual class had been won by the dazzling success
of his daring undertakings. In House and Senate he numbered among the
registers of his will the greater part of the strong and the brilliant.
Somehow, too, the impression was prevalent that he was the favorite
instrument through which Washington wrought his plans. If the small
farmers and the mechanics seemed acquiescent, it only meant that they
were inarticulate--but inarticulate they were as this dashing figure
moved on from triumph to triumph with a shouting multitude of merchants,
lawyers, politicians, and speculators in his wake.
Thus, when the Bank Bill reached the Senate, Maclay expressed the
general feeling in the comment that ‘it is totally in vain to oppose
this bill.’[296] Ten days later, he was all the more convinced at a
dinner where he met Morris and sat between two ‘merchants of
considerable note,’ and observed, on mentioning the Bank, that they were
‘magnetically drawn to the contemplation of the moneyed interest.’[297]
If the bill passed the Senate without a conflict, it was not to get
through the House without a skirmish which was to mark, as some
historians think, the definite commencement of party warfare.
The House debate was brief but sharp, though pitched upon a higher plane
than some preceding discussions. There was some questioning of the
necessity of a bank; some criticism of the monopolistic features of the
bank proposed; but Madison, who spoke at the beginning, furnished the
dominant theme in his challenge to the constitutionality of such an
institution. There was certainly no specific authorization of
congressional power in the Constitution. This was conceded by Hamilton,
who boldly evoked the doctrine of implied powers. It required no
abnormal perspicacity to foresee the unlimited possibilities of these.
Here was something read into the Constitution that would, rightly or
wrongly, have made its ratification impossible had it provided a
specific grant of such power. Hamilton and many of his lieutenants had
been frankly dissatisfied with the powers that had been conceded by the
people; and here was an opening for the acquisition of power that the
people would have refused. This to-day--what to-morrow?
When Madison rose to oppose the Bank, we may be sure that it was after
many intimate conversations with Jefferson. He spoke in low tones and
with his customary dignity and precision and without abuse, and his
argument was not susceptible to an easy assault. After all, ‘the Father
of the Constitution’ knew something about his child.
‘The doctrine of implication is always a tender one,’ he said. ‘The
danger of it has been felt by other governments. The delicacy was felt
in the adoption of our own; the danger may also be felt if we do not
keep close to our chartered authorities.... If implications thus remote
and thus multiplied may be linked together, a chain may be formed that
will reach every object of legislation, every object within the whole
compass of political economy.’ More than that--‘It takes from our
constituents the opportunity of deliberating on the untried measure,
although their hands are also to be tied by the same terms.’ More
still--‘it involves a monopoly which affects the equal rights of every
citizen.’[298]
On the next day Fisher Ames made his defense of the doctrine of implied
powers. The argument of Madison had impressed him as ‘a great speech,’
but steeped in ‘casuistry and sophistry.’ He thought Madison had wasted
his time, however, in reading the debates on constitutional powers in
the various State ratifying conventions--not at all to the purpose. ‘No
man would pretend to give Congress the power,’ he wrote, ‘against a fair
construction of the Constitution.’[299]
But the clever Ames had no intention of making such a frank admission on
the floor. He was a practical man and he defended the Hamiltonian
doctrine with eloquence and vigor.[300] With these two speeches, the
debate might as well have closed, but it continued long enough to permit
the Hamiltonian Old Guard to say their pieces. Giles argued and Jackson
raved in opposition, and the measure passed with a margin of nineteen
votes.
It is significant that nineteen of the twenty votes in opposition were
those of Southern members, the only Northerner in the list being
Jonathan Grout of Massachusetts, a Democrat, who did not return to the
next Congress. Like preceding Hamiltonian measures, this meant the
concentration of the financial resources of the country in the
commercial North to the disadvantage of the agricultural South. But this
was not the only reason. With the Southerners, among whom banks were a
rarity, and the Westerners, to whom they were as meaningless as the
canals on Mars, the advantage of such an institution was not felt. In
both sections anything that hinted of monopoly was abhorrent. Thus, in
addition to the constitutional difference, there was an economic
conflict that was sectional in its nature.
IV
But the battle was not yet won. The conflict was transferred to the
Cabinet, for Washington was not at all convinced that there was no
constitutional prohibition. Not only did he withhold his signature till
the last minute, but there are reasons to believe that he had a veto in
mind almost to the end. For Madison, with whose part in the framing of
the Constitution he was familiar, he had a profound respect. Having
discussed the bill with Jefferson informally, Washington requested
written opinions from both Jefferson and Randolph, the Attorney-General.
Both were in complete accord with the conclusions of Madison. The
opinion of Jefferson, expressed with all his force of reasoning, was a
powerful challenge to the doctrine of implied powers.[301]
It was at about this time that Washington summoned Madison to the Morris
house, which served as the Executive Mansion in Philadelphia, to invite
a fuller expression of his views. The great man listened in silence, and
Madison thought with sympathy, while the little giant of the
Constitutional Convention, out of the wealth of his learning and
experience, poured forth his reasons for opposition. Not once, but
several times, the little figure of Madison must have been seen entering
the Morris house in those days of suppressed excitement, for there were
numerous conferences. As the ten-day period followed for the affixing of
the presidential signature was drawing to an end, and Washington
requested his friend to reduce his objections to writing, Madison
assumed that it was a veto message he was asked to frame. Nor was it a
far-fetched assumption, for on more than one occasion the President had
made use of Madison’s pen.[302]
Meanwhile the Hamiltonians, at first puzzled, became alarmed. From the
temper of their talk in Philadelphia, Madison was convinced that in the
event of a veto they were ready for open opposition to Washington,
backed by the wealth and influence of the powerful.[303] Ugly, silly
stories, reflecting upon the great personage on whom the Hamiltonians
found it profitable to claim a monopoly, were set afloat. Fisher Ames
gave currency in Boston to the theory that Washington was influenced by
the fear that the establishment of a financial capital in Philadelphia
would prevent the removal of the political capital to the banks of the
stream that washed the boundary of Mount Vernon.[304] If some discretion
was used in Philadelphia, where the grumbling was confined to the
fashionable drawing-rooms, no such circumspection was observed in New
York, where the meanest motives were ascribed to the President, and
among the speculators and Tory sympathizers open threats were made.
Madison heard, while there a little later, that ‘the licentiousness of
[these] tongues exceeded anything that was conceived.’[305] This
struggle marked a definitive break in the relations of Hamilton and
Jefferson. The dictatorial disposition of the former would brook no
opposition, and he was temperamentally incapable of a differentiation
between political opposition and personal hostility. The fact that
Jefferson, in response to a command from Washington, had written an
opinion against the Bank could bear only one interpretation--‘asperity
and ill humor toward me.’[306] The fact that Washington accepted
Hamilton’s view, did not, however, shake Jefferson’s faith in the
President, and in defeat nothing so ill-tempered escaped him as flowed
in a stream from the Federalists when threatened with defeat. Within a
month after Hamilton had won his fight, Jefferson, in commenting to a
friend on what he conceived to be a dangerous trend, wrote that ‘it is
fortunate that our first executive magistrate is purely and zealously
republican’--the highest praise he could bestow.[307]
The press was not verbose in its comments on the bill, albeit Freneau
fought it in the ‘Federal Gazette.’[308] The ‘Pennsylvania Gazette’ was
ungraceful in defeat. Denouncing the Bank as ‘a proposition made to the
moneyed interest,’ it commented on its ‘preparations to subscribe,’ and
found ‘the terms ... so advantageous that no equal object of speculation
is perhaps presented in any quarter of the globe.’[309] Fenno offered
his best in a verse:
‘The States as one agree that this is right
Let pigmy politicians rave and write.’[310]
Thus the First Congress closed its labors with no little rhapsodizing in
the press over the results. A New York paper offered an epitaph of
glorification,[311] which a Boston paper condensed into the simple
comment that it had ‘established public confidence and credit,
reconciled the jarring interests of discontented States, and cemented
the people in the bonds of harmony, peace and love.’[312]
One man, at least, had cause for jubilation. In two years Hamilton had
risen to a position of commanding power, proved his genius in
constructive statesmanship, accomplished everything he had set out to
do, made himself the idol of the wealthy and the powerful, the
recognized leader of the influential commercial class, the acknowledged
head of a brilliant and militant party. His friends were comparing him
to Pitt, then in the heyday of his power--and he was only on the
threshold. So great was the enthusiasm in commercial circles that he
made a special trip to New York to accept the homage of the Chamber of
Commerce at a reception, to linger a week among his worshipers, and to
return to Philadelphia reinvigorated by the wine of idolatry pressed to
his lips.[313] At that moment he was on the top of the world.
V
Meanwhile, Jefferson and Madison drove out of Philadelphia together on
one of those journeys of recreation during which politicians so often
plan the strategy of war. Historians have found more in this journey
than is to be discovered in the record. The trip through New England
probably had no other object than that of pleasure and enlightenment.
The relations of these two men were beautiful and went far beyond a mere
congeniality in political opinions. There was a marked similarity in
their characters. Both scholarly in their tastes, the books that
interested one were certain to appeal to the other. Here were two men
whose spirits were in accord. It is easy to think of them as sitting the
candle out in converse about the winter fire, or as sitting far into the
night in silence, each finding pleasure in the mere presence of the
other. Such a relationship had grown up through the years. They thought
alike, found similar enjoyment in agricultural pursuits, and in the many
little things of common life.
‘What say you,’ wrote Jefferson just before the beginning of the
much-discussed journey, ‘to taking a wade into the country at noon? It
will be pleasant above head at least, and the party will finish by
dining here. Information that Colonel Beckwith[314] is coming to be an
intimate with you, and I presume not a desirable one, encourages me to
make a proposition which I did not venture as long as you had your
agreeable congressional society about you; that is to come and take a
bed and plate with me.... To me it will be a relief from the solitude of
which I have too much; and it will lessen your repugnance to be assured
that it will not increase my expenses an atom.... The approaching season
will render this situation more agreeable than Fifth Street, and even in
the winter you will not find it disagreeable.’[315] It required no
assiduous and cunning cultivation by Jefferson to wean Madison away from
Hamilton. The relations of the first two far antedated those of the
last. Madison had agreed with Hamilton on the necessity for a more
permanent and substantial union. They had fought together for the
ratification of the Constitution, but such were their temperamental
differences that the breach which quickly appeared was inevitable when
it came to the determination of the policies of that union. While
Jefferson was still in Paris, Madison, without consulting his friend,
was foreshadowing the policy of the future Jeffersonian party in his
fight for discrimination against England in the revenue measure of the
first congressional session. He proposed discrimination between the
original creditors and the speculators before he had the opportunity to
discuss the subject with Jefferson. If there was an accord with the
latter, it was due less to the influence of one upon the other than to
the similarity of their thinking. The little man with the mild, almost
shy expression, who rode out of Philadelphia with Jefferson that spring
of 1791, was much too big to have been led around by the nose by any of
his contemporaries.
As early as the spring of 1791, the names of the two were associated in
the minds of many as the prospective leaders of a party that would
challenge the purposes of the Federalists. Answering a series of
articles in the ‘Maryland Journal,’ some one advised the author of how
to make his opinions worth while. ‘Keep always before your eyes the
steps by which Jefferson and Madison have gradually ascended to their
present preëminence of fame. Like them you must devote your whole
leisure to the most useful reading. Like them you must dive into the
depths of philosophy and government.’[316] Thus they were already
associated in the public mind, and there was some whispering among the
Federalist leaders when they set forth in their carriage.
Bumping and splashing over the rough tree-lined roads those spring days,
they unquestionably discussed the political situation, but these
discussions were only the continuation of others that had been
proceeding throughout the previous fall and winter. If politics was the
object of the journey, they were both remarkably successful in covering
their tracks. There is nothing in the letter Jefferson wrote his
daughter Mary to indicate anything more than a pleasure jaunt.[317] In a
letter to his other daughter, Martha, we hear much of fishing for
speckled trout, salmon, and bass, of the strawberries in bloom, of
vegetation and agricultural conditions--but nothing of politics.[318] To
his son-in-law he wrote descriptions of historic places, of botanical
objects and scenery, and of running foul of the blue law in Vermont
prohibiting traveling on Sunday.[319] The one reference to the journey
in the correspondence of Madison merely says that ‘it was a very
agreeable one, and carried us through an interesting country, new to us
both.’[320] In none of these letters do we find a single reference to
politics or politicians.
Something is made of the call of the travelers on Burr and Livingston
when in New York, and on Governor Clinton at Albany; but their conduct
would have been suspicious only if they had failed to observe the
ordinary amenities of social life in calling upon the leading public
characters in the towns through which they passed. Still we may safely
surmise that they found time while waiting for the fish to bite to
exchange views on the necessity of organizing an opposition to the
Federalists. It is even possible that out of these conversations on
country roads actually sprang the Democratic Party, but there is no
evidence.
VI
On his return to Philadelphia, Jefferson found himself the center of a
remarkable newspaper controversy. Fascinated by the beauty of Marie
Antoinette, Edmund Burke of England had written his bitter attack, not
only on the excesses of the French Revolution, but upon its democratic
principles as well. It was the fashion in those days to conceal a hate
of democracy under the cloak of a simulated horror over the crimes of
the Terrorists. Thomas Paine had replied to Burke with his brilliant and
eloquent defense of democracy, ‘The Rights of Man.’ In American circles
where democracy was anathema, and even republicanism was discussed with
cynicism, the Burke pamphlet was received with enthusiasm. It was not
until some time later that ‘The Rights of Man’ reached New York, albeit
its nature was known and there had been a keen curiosity to see it.
Early in May, Madison had promised Jefferson to secure a copy as soon as
possible. He understood that the pamphlet had been suppressed in
England, and that Paine had found it convenient to retire to Paris.
‘This,’ he wrote, ‘may account for his not sending copies to friends in
this country.’[321] At length a single copy arrived and was loaned by
its owner to Madison, who passed it on to Jefferson. He read it with
enthusiasm. Here was a spirited defense of democracy, and of the fight
the French were waging for their liberties; here an excoriation of the
prattle in high social and governmental circles of the advantage, if not
necessity, for titles of nobility. Here was not only an answer to Burke,
but to John Adams, whose ‘Discourses of Davilla’ had been running for
weeks in Fenno’s paper, and had been copied extensively in other
journals with a similar slant. Jefferson was immensely pleased.
Before he had finished with it, the owner had called upon Madison for
its return, as arrangements had been made for its publication by a
Philadelphia printer. It was agreed that Jefferson should send it
directly to the print shop, and in the transmission he wrote a brief
explanation of the delay, and added: ‘I am extremely pleased to find it
will be reprinted here, and that something is at length to be publicly
said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us. I
have no doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard
of “Common Sense.”’
To this note he attached so little importance that he kept no copy. With
astonishment he found that the printer had used his note as the preface,
with his name and official title as Secretary of State. The general
conviction that the word ‘heresies’ was meant to apply to the Adams
papers sufficiently indicates the popular interpretation of their trend.
The storm broke.
Major Beckwith, the British Agent, hastened to express his pained
surprise to Washington’s Secretary at the recommendation by the
Secretary of State of a pamphlet which had been suppressed in England.
The secretary was sufficiently impressed by the scandalized tone of the
aristocratic society of Philadelphia, which was usually lionizing some
degenerate members of the European nobility, to write his chief in
detail. When Randolph dined with Mrs. Washington, Lear retailed it to
him, and the suggestion was made that Jefferson should know. Thus there
was something more than a tempest in a teapot. Everywhere men were
partisans of the pamphlets of Burke or Paine, the aristocrats on one
side, the democrats on the other, the stoutest of the republicans
everywhere delighted with ‘The Rights of Man.’ This was true in even the
small towns and the villages of far places. One traveler passing through
Reading was surprised to find the two pamphlets the ‘general topic of
conversation,’ and he was assured of the delight that awaited him in the
reading of Paine’s.[322] All too long had the Americans been drugged
with Fenno’s deification of the upper classes--with John Adams’s
‘Discourses’ on the necessity of ‘distinctions’--and here was old
‘Common Sense’ back again in the old form slashing the aristocrats fore
and aft. The press responded to the popular demand, and everywhere ‘The
Rights of Man’ was being published serially to be eagerly read by the
thousands who had not seen the pamphlet. But it was not all one-sided.
If the ‘Painites’ wrote furiously in some papers, the ‘Burkites’ were
prolific in Fenno’s and a few others. In the fashionable drawing-rooms a
poll would have shown a decided preference for the defender of
aristocracy who had wept so eloquently over the woes of a frivolous
Queen. Nowhere was Burke so popular and Paine so loathed as in the home
of Adams, the Vice-President. ‘What do you think of Paine’s pamphlet?’
asked Dr. Rush, to whom society was cooling because of his democratic
tendencies. The second official of the Republic hesitated as if for
dramatic effect, and then, solemnly laying his hand upon his heart, he
answered, ‘I detest that book and its tendency from the bottom of my
heart.’ Indeed, most of the Federalists were frankly with Burke.
‘Although Mr. Burke may have carried his veneration for old
establishments too far, and may not have made sufficient allowance for
the imperfections of human nature in the conflict of the French
Revolution,’ wrote Davie to Judge Iredell, ‘yet I think his letter
contains a sufficient amount of intelligence to have rescued him from
the undistinguishing abuse of Paine.’[323]
With most of the Federalist leaders in sympathy with Burke, few ventured
to attack Paine in the open. Not so with Adams who was spluttering mad
over the Jefferson ‘preface.’ He was positive that the publication of
Paine’s pamphlet in this country had been instigated by his former
colleague at Paris.[324] To him the pamphlet of Paine, the ‘preface’ of
Jefferson, the acclaim for both on the part of the people was but a
devilish conspiracy of Jefferson’s to pull him down. ‘More of
Jefferson’s subterranean tricks.’ And with this conviction, John Quincy
Adams, the son, then in Boston, took up a trenchant pen to write the
articles of ‘Publicola’ for the ‘Centinel,’ sneering at the Jeffersonian
note to the printer, assailing Paine and democracy, and stoutly
defending the governmental forms of England. So well did he discharge
his filial duty that his articles were published in pamphlet form in
England by the friends of Burke, and many of the Federalist papers
reproduced them as they appeared.
Then the newspaper battle began in earnest. Many indignant democrats
rushed to the attack of ‘Publicola’ with all the greater zest because of
the belief that ‘Publicola’ was none other than ‘Davilla’ himself.
‘America will not attend to this antiquated sophistry,’ wrote one,
‘whether decorated by the gaudy ornaments of a Burke, the curious
patch-work of a Parr to which all antiquity must have contributed its
prettiest rags and tatters, or the homely ungraceful garb which has
been furnished her by Mr. John Adams.’[325] Another suggested that
‘Publicola’ would soon cease to write since ‘the time for the new
election is approaching,’ although the ‘Discourses’ might be continued
without danger since ‘dullness, like the essence of opium, sets every
reader to sleep before he has passed the third sentence.’[326] As for
‘Publicola,’ his letters were ‘being brought forward to persuade the
people that an hereditary nobility, and, of consequence, high salaries,
pomp and parade are essential to the prosperity of the country.’[327] In
Boston, where the letters were appearing, ‘Agricola’ and ‘Brutus’ began
spirited replies in the rival paper.[328] Other writers, with less grace
and force, joined in the fray. Who are to constitute our nobility,
demanded ‘Republican,’ our moneyed men--the speculators? If so ‘Dukes,
Lords and Earls will swarm like insects gendered by the sun,’ and the
worn-out soldier who had been tricked out of his paper would have the
satisfaction of ‘bowing most submissively to their lordships while
seated in their carriages.’[329]
But Adams was not without his defenders. ‘An American’ declared that all
the abuse was ‘designed as a political ladder by which to climb.’
Miserable creatures! ‘Ages after the tide of time has swept their names
into oblivion, the immortal deeds of Adams will shine on the brightest
pages of history.’[330] ‘The Ploughman’ indignantly resented the
insinuation that Adams had written the ‘Publicola’ letters. In truth,
‘his friends consider Dr. Adams as being calumniated’ by having such
sentiments ascribed to him.[331] To all the ‘hornets’ that were buzzing
about Adams, Fenno felt he could be indifferent, for they had no stings.
They were merely nonentities trying to give consequence to their
scribblings by appearing to be answering the Vice-President.
Meanwhile, Jefferson was keenly enjoying the turmoil. We wish it were
possible to trace it all to his contrivance, for nothing could have
served his purpose better. To have foreseen that the writing of a few
simple lines would have awakened the militant republicanism of the
country and have aroused the democratic impulses of the inert mass would
have been complimentary to his political genius. But this is not the
only instance where a clever politician with the reputation of a
magician has stumbled forward. There is no doubt that Jefferson was
astonished and embarrassed on learning that the printer had made an
unauthorized use of his personal note. He admitted to Washington that he
had Adams’s writings in mind, but that nothing was more remote from his
thoughts than of becoming ‘a contributor before the public.’ However, he
was not impressed with the reflections on his taste. ‘Their real fear,’
he added, ‘is that this popular and republican pamphlet ... is likely
... to wipe out all the unconstitutional doctrines which their
bellwether, Davilla, has been preaching for a twelve-month.’[332] This
explanation was enough for Knox, who wrote accordingly to Adams,[333]
but not enough for Jefferson who sent a frank explanation to Adams with
an expression of regret. In generous mood, the latter accepted the
explanation with the protestation that their old friendship was ‘still
dear to my heart,’ and that ‘there is no office I would not resign
rather than give a just occasion for one friend to desert me.’[334]
Madison, to whom Jefferson had sent a similar explanation, had assumed
that there had been a mistake or an imposition, but he could see no
reason for indignation on the part of Adams or his friends. ‘Surely,’ he
wrote, ‘if it be innocent and decent for one servant of the public to
write against its government, it cannot be very criminal or indecent in
another to patronize a written defence of the principles on which that
Government is founded.’[335]
However much Jefferson may have regretted the unauthorized use of his
letter, he rejoiced in its effect. He wrote Paine that the controversy
had awakened the people, shown the ‘monocrats’ that the silence of the
masses concerning the teachings of ‘Davilla’ did not mean that they had
been converted ‘to the doctrine of king, lords and commons,’ and that
they were ‘confirmed in their good old faith.’[336] The incident had
established Jefferson in the public mind as the outstanding leader of
democracy, had set the public tongue to wagging on politics again. More
was involved in the pamphlets of Burke and Paine than differences over
the French Revolution. The keynote of Burke’s was aristocracy and
privilege; that of Paine’s was democracy and equal rights. The former
was the gospel of the American Federalists; the latter the covenant of
the American Democracy. Studying the reactions with his characteristic
keenness, Jefferson was convinced that the time was ripe to mobilize for
the inevitable struggle.
VII
‘What do you think of this scrippomony?’ Jefferson wrote to Edward
Rutledge in the late summer. ‘Ships are lying idle at the wharfs,
buildings are stopped, capital withdrawn from commerce, manufactures,
arts and agriculture to be employed in gambling, and the tide of public
prosperity ... is arrested in its course.... I imagine that we shall
hear that all the cash has quitted the extremities of the nation and
accumulated here.’[337] As he wrote, Jefferson had before him the report
of the craze which had just reached him in a letter from Madison in New
York. ‘Stock and scrip the sole domestic subjects of conversation ...
speculations ... carried on with money borrowed at from two and a half
per cent a month to one per cent a week.’[338]
Men grown reckless with the frenzy of the intoxication were resorting to
fraud to rob the Government, many taking out administration papers for
deceased soldiers who had left no heirs. ‘By this knavery,’ wrote
Madison at an earlier period, ‘a prodigious sum will be unsaved by the
public, and reward the worst of its citizens.’ And suppose one of the
clerks of the account offices is not proof against the temptation?[339]
By the middle of the summer (July 10th) Bank stock had risen as much in
the market in New York as in Philadelphia with the feeling that there
was a certainty of gain. A scramble had set in ‘for so much public
plunder.’ The meticulously scrupulous Madison, with his lofty notions of
official propriety, was shocked to find ‘the members of the Legislature
who were most active in pushing this job openly grasping the
emoluments.’ Schuyler, the father-in-law of Hamilton, was to be the head
of the directors of the Bank ‘if the weight of the New York subscribers
can effect it.’ Stock-jobbing monopolized all conversation. The
coffee-houses buzzed with the gamblers.[340]
Meanwhile, from the high-placed to the ordinary scamp, men maddened, by
the money-itch, were resorting to ordinary crime to get possession of
public paper. In some places clever counterfeiters were driving through
the country under the pretext of examining securities with the idea of
purchase and cleverly exchanging the worthless for the real.[341] In the
South and in the remote parts of Maine, swindlers were scouring the
woods for State notes, lying to the uninformed and ignorant about their
value, and getting them for a song. ‘What must be the feelings of the
widow and orphan,’ wrote a correspondent of a Philadelphia paper, ‘when
they find themselves thus defrauded of a great part of their little all,
and that, not unlikely, the earnings of their late husbands and fathers,
who died in the service of their country, by these pests of society who
ought to be despised?’[342] But greed knew no shame. An appalling
picture: members of Congress feathering their nest through their
legislative acts, counterfeiters robbing the unwary, common crooks
stealing from the Government by posing as the administrators of the
dead, and distinguished members of the Boston Bar, like Otis and Gore,
speculating with their clients’ money without their knowledge or
consent.
So sinister was the situation that notes of warning began to appear in
the newspapers. The ‘Pennsylvania Gazette’ found that speculators had
‘turned raving mad, and others so agitated that they appear on the
borders of insanity.’[343] Fenno tried vainly to restore sobriety to the
drunk--for Hamilton himself was shocked and not a little concerned.[344]
Better be careful about parting with Bank scrip, warned the ‘New York
Daily Advertiser.’ Efforts were being made to buy up all the scrip in
the city ‘and for this purpose a powerful combination was formed ... on
Saturday night to reduce the price.’[345] Beware of another South Sea
Bubble, warned ‘Centinel’ in the same paper. ‘The National Bank stock
has risen so high, so enormously above its real value, that no two
transactions in the annals of history can be found to equal
it....’[346]
From Boston came similar stories of the madness. All the while the New
York papers were publishing day-by-day quotations on the scrip.[347] By
August 15th the mania was at its height. ‘It has risen like a rocket,’
wrote an amused scribbler. ‘Like a rocket it will burst with a crack and
down drops the rocket stick. What goes up must come down--so take care
of your pate, brother Jonathan.’[348] The craze was becoming ridiculous.
The sane and the honest looked upon it as a spectacle. Above the angry
cries in the market-place rang the laughter of the observers who kept
their heads. Some put their scoffing into verse:
‘What magic this among the people,
That swells a Maypole to a steeple?’[349]
Suddenly the bubble showed signs of bursting. A New York bank stopped
discounting for some of the speculators. Messengers hurried forth with
the ominous news, horses’ hoofs hammering the Jersey roads to
Philadelphia, where there was consternation and a falling-off in
buying.[350] Pay-day had not yet come, but it was on the way, and men
began to regain their senses.
Then came the emergence of the political phase. ‘Does history afford an
instance,’ asked one observer, ‘where inequality in property, without
any adequate consideration, ever before so suddenly took place in the
world? or the basis of the power and influence of an Aristocracy was
created?’[351] A Boston paper commented significantly on the ease with
which the mere opening and closing of the galleries of Congress could
serve the purposes of speculation. ‘How easily might this be done should
any member of Congress be inclined to speculate.’[352]
Thus the talk of a ‘corrupt squadron’ in the First Congress was not the
invention of Jefferson--it was the talk of the highways and the byways,
the coffee-houses and the taverns, and we find it recurring in the
correspondence of the public men of the period. Everywhere sudden
fortunes sprang up as if by magic. There was a rumbling and grumbling in
the offing. With the people thinking more seriously of Madison’s fight
for discrimination, he began to loom along with Jefferson as a
prospective leader against the ‘system.’ With the discovery that the law
had been violated in the subscription of more than thirty shares, it was
hoped that it would ‘draw the attention of Madison ... immediately on
the meeting of Congress’ and that ‘the whole proceedings ... be declared
nugatory.’[353]
Then came the election of Bank directors in the fall, and indignation
flamed when the prizes went to leaders in the Congress that had created
the Bank--to Rufus King, Samuel Johnson of North Carolina, William Smith
of South Carolina, Jeremiah Wadsworth of the ‘fast sailing vessels,’
John Laurance of New York, William Bingham of Philadelphia, Charles
Carroll of Carrollton, George Cabot, Fisher Ames, and Thomas Willing,
the partner of Robert Morris.
Members of Congress had speculated heavily and profitably on their
knowledge of their own intent in legislation; they were owners of bank
scrip of the Bank they created, and their leaders were on the board of
directors. There was talk among the people of a ‘corrupt squadron,’ and
Jefferson did not invent the term; he found it in the street and used
it. Though Hamilton, scrupulously honest, was not involved in
proceedings that were vicious, if not corrupt, many of his lieutenants
were, and that, for the purposes of politics, made an issue.
But Hamilton was in the saddle, booted and spurred, and riding hard
toward the realization of his conception of government, followed by an
army that fairly glittered with the brilliancy of many of his field
marshals, and which was imposing in the financial, social, and cultural
superiority of the rank and file; an army that could count on the
greater part of the press to publish its orders of the day, and on the
beneficiaries of its policies to fill its campaign coffers. And it was
at this juncture that Jefferson began the mobilization of an army that
would seem uncouth and ragged by comparison. The cleavage was distinct;
the ten-year war was on.
As a preliminary to the story of the struggle, it is important to know
more of the character and methods of the man who dared challenge
Hamilton’s powerful array and something of the social atmosphere in
Philadelphia where the great battles were fought.