JEFFERSON MOBILIZES
I
When Jefferson assumed the task of organizing the opposition to the
policies of the Federalists all the forces most susceptible to
organization and intelligent direction were arrayed upon the other side.
The commercial interests, constituting Hamilton’s shock troops, had
their organizations in all the larger towns and in a crisis could be
speedily mobilized in the smaller. The various Chambers of Commerce were
Federalist clubs that could be summoned to action on a day’s notice. The
financial interests, always in close formation when not sleeping on
their arms, could be ordered to the front overnight. The live-wire
speculators whose fortunes had sprung up magically were on their toes to
do battle for the system that had enriched them, and eager to do the
bidding of the magician who had waved the wand. The greater part of the
intellectuals, lawyers, doctors, professors, preachers, were
enthusiastic champions of Hamiltonian policies--and because of their
prestige these were powerful factors in the moulding of opinion. And,
most serious of all, from Jefferson’s point of view, the major portion
of the press was either militantly Hamiltonian or indifferently
democratic. In the drawing-rooms were heard the sentiments of the
Chambers of Commerce--in glorification of materialism.
The rich, the powerful, and their retainers among the men of the
professions, were bound to the Federalist by a common interest in
property and a common fear of the masses. Since the policies of Hamilton
were frankly in the interests of the commercial classes, their
supporters were found largely in cities and towns of the commercial
North--within easy reach. A word from the chief to his leaders in the
capital--Ames and Cabot of Massachusetts; King, Schuyler, and Lawrence
of New York; Wolcott and Ellsworth of Connecticut; Morris, Bingham, and
Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania; Dayton of New Jersey; McHenry of Maryland;
[Illustration: FISHER AMES]
[Illustration: ROBERT GOODLOE HARPER]
[Illustration: GEORGE CABOT]
[Illustration: GOUVERNEUR MORRIS]
Smith and Harper of South Carolina--a word from these to the commercial
leaders in their States, and from these a word to those under
obligations to them--the small merchants operating on credit--and the
coffee-houses buzzed, the Chambers of Commerce acted, editors plied
their pens, preachers thundered from pulpits, and even at the social
functions they danced and flirted in the war paint of the party.
As Jefferson surveyed the field, he observed that his great antagonist’s
organization was but a consolidation of organizations previously
existent--and these imposing in their representation of wealth,
intellect, and social prestige. Hamilton could snap his fingers, and the
merchants came; could lift his hand, and the officers of the Cincinnati
were in the saddle; could wave his wand, and Fenno, Russell, and other
potent editors would instantly do his bidding, and the preachers of New
England scarcely waited for the sign to pass the devil by to damn
democracy.
But Jefferson had his eye on other forces, numerically stronger, if less
imposing. The farmers, comprising ninety per cent of the Nation, were
resentful of policies that pampered the merchant and left them out in
the cold. The private soldiers of the Revolution, less respected then
than when Webster made his Bunker Hill address, were embittered because
their securities had gone for a song while speculators had waxed wealthy
on the sacrifice. The more robust republicans were shocked at the
aristocratic affectations of their rulers and the tone of the Federalist
press. The excise law was hated in the remote sections, and unpopular
with the masses everywhere. The doctrine of implied powers had alarmed
the friends of State sovereignty. There was an undercurrent of feeling,
which Jefferson, with ear marvelously keen for rumblings, caught, that
laws were passed for the few at the expense of the many. And it was
being bruited abroad that in high quarters there was a disposition to
cultivate England to the neglect of France. Everywhere through the South
and West there was a bitter resentment of government by and for the
East.
Including all, and more important than any single one, there was a
fervent spirit of democracy running through the land, while the
Federalist leaders were openly denouncing the democrats. ‘Looking simply
at the field of American history,’ says Professor Anson D. Morse, ‘it
would be just to enumerate among the causes of the Democratic Party all
influences which from the beginning of the colonial period carried
forward at a really marvelous rate the democratization of the American
character.’[552] The country was really democratic before there was a
party of democracy. Jefferson knew it; Hamilton never suspected it, or,
suspecting, determined to override the sentiment. Therein lies the
original cause of the ultimate triumph of Jefferson, and the evidence
that the Federalist Party was foredoomed to ultimate failure.
But how to reach, galvanize, vitalize, organize this great widely
scattered mass of unimportant, inarticulate individuals--that was the
problem that confronted Jefferson. Ninety-five per cent of the people
lived in the country or in villages. Communication was difficult. There
were for them no Chambers of Commerce, no coffee-houses, no Faneuil
Halls. Thousands had no idea what was going on outside the boundaries of
their isolated farms and villages. If the masses in the cities were in
sympathy with democracy--and they were--comparatively few of these were
permitted to vote. Under the John Jay Constitution of New York, as late
as 1790, only 1303 of the 13,330 male residents of voting age in New
York City were allowed to vote with the property qualification
deliberately designed for their disfranchisement.[553] In Vermont alone,
of the New England States, no property qualification attached to the
suffrage, albeit in New Hampshire any male paying tax, however small,
was qualified. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut great
numbers were excluded by their poverty. Thus, in the beginning, the
thousands of hewers of wood and drawers of water in the towns and cities
of the North were lost to all practical purposes. But all of the common
folk were not disfranchised, and they who had the vote were splendid
material for a militant organization. They had a genius for practical
politics when under the orders of a drill master, and were not too
fastidious for the grime and sweat of the polling-places. One of these
was worth a dozen dandies from Mrs. Bingham’s circle on election
day.[554] There was abundant material for a party--if it could be
assembled and coordinated.
II
As Jefferson’s mild eye surveyed the field, he found in almost every
State local parties, some long in existence, fighting for popular rights
as they understood them; but their fights had been waged on local
issues. The party he was to create was to fight in precisely the same
cause--on the national field. Here, then, was something already at hand.
Why not consolidate these local parties into one great national
organization, and broaden the issue to include the problems of both
State and Nation? The local leaders? Why not make them field marshals in
command of the Massachusetts division, the North Carolina division,
Pennsylvania and Maryland divisions?
The philosopher-politician took up his pen, for he had learned in the
organization of the Revolution what could be done through
correspondence. Out under the plane trees he was to sit at his table
writing--to Sam Adams, to Rutledge, to John Taylor, to Willie Jones.
Under his roof and at his table conferences with Madison, Monroe, Giles,
Bloodworth, became commonplace. ‘Oh, I should note that Mr. Jefferson,
with more than Parisian politeness, waited on me at my chamber this
morning,’ wrote Maclay. ‘He talked politics, mostly the French
difference and the whale fishery.’[555] A very cautious approach, we may
be sure, for the master politician and psychologist thoroughly
understood the little vanities, prejudices, and weaknesses of that
singularly suspicious democrat. Quite different would have been a
conversation with Gallatin or Monroe. Taking an inventory of prospective
lieutenants in the States, and comparing the material with that against
him, he could not but have realized his disadvantage. Brilliant men are
prone to flutter about the rich and powerful, and nothing succeeds like
success with the strong. No chance for him to ride to war surrounded by
such scintillating company as that which encircled Hamilton--but here
and there was a man who shimmered in the sun.
In Massachusetts, home of Ames, Cabot, and Sedgwick, Jefferson could
count on two men who surpassed any of this famous group in service in
the making of the Republic, but, strange as it may seem in perspective,
old Sam Adams and John Hancock were not in good standing with the staid
business men of Boston. Their republicanism was too robust, their
devotion to the principles of the Declaration too uncompromising for the
materialists, who appeared, for the most part, on the battle-field after
the fight was won, to claim the fruits of the victory. Sam Adams had
lost his race for Congress to Fisher Ames who had dallied with his books
when the ragged Continentals were struggling in the field. When the
clever politicians of the Essex Junto exchanged letters, these erstwhile
Revolutionary heroes of the dark days were seldom mentioned with
respect; but they had their following in the streets and among those who
had shared in the perils they had faced. Upon these two Jefferson could
rely.
But there were others, more active and militant in the Boston of those
days in the building of the party of democracy. Foremost in the fight,
and most annoying to the ruling oligarchy, was the brilliant Dr. Charles
Jarvis, who was a powerful orator[556] whose social status, on a par
with that of Otis, raised him above the condescension or contempt of the
moneyed aristocracy, and whose ability was beyond the reach of
disparagement.[557] Through many years of leadership in the legislature
he ‘had made the rights of man his pole star.’[558] No one did so much
to organize and vitalize the masses, for he could pass from the
legislative hall to the public platform without any diminution of power.
As in the former he could match the best in argument, on the latter no
one knew better how to direct the storm. ‘Jarvis’s electioneering
influence in this town is very great,’ wrote John Quincy Adams to his
father.[559]
As a file leader, organizer, agitator, he had powerful support in the
robust, rough-hewn rope-maker, Ben Austin, who wrestled under the rules
of catch-as-catch-can, mingled with the element that Ames and Cabot
considered vulgar, and under the signature of ‘Honestus’ dealt telling
blows in letters that the mechanic could understand. ‘Rabid essays,’
they were--judged by the standard of the élite.[560] Sam Adams, John
Hancock, Austin, and Jarvis--these were the Jeffersonian leaders in the
Old Bay State. Less aggressive, but often valuable, was James Sullivan,
orator, leader of the Bar, letter-writer and pamphleteer, whose vigorous
mind, powers of application, and indomitable courage were to render
yeoman service.
In the other New England States the democrats were less fortunate. In
Connecticut, ruled with an iron hand by an oligarchy of preachers,
professors, and reactionary politicians, the prospects were dark enough,
but even there the Jeffersonians found a leader capable of coping with
the best of the opposition in the hard-hitting, resourceful Abraham
Bishop, who was a veritable scandal and stench to the gentlemen of the
cloth and of the counting-room. Nowhere in America was such an amazing
combination of Church and State. Election days were celebrated with
religious services, and the sermons were party harangues, described by
the irreverent Bishop as consisting of ‘a little of governor, a little
of Congress, much of politics, and a very little of religion--a strange
compote, like a carrot pie, having so little ingredients that the cook
must christen it.’[561] The ruling Council of the State was so organized
that the system was an impregnable stronghold beyond the reach of the
people. Nowhere on American soil anything so un-American or
unrepublican. It did its work behind doors closed and barred. The
Congregational clergy were the Cossacks of Connecticut Federalism,
laying the lash of their furious denunciation on the backs of critics.
It required more than a majority to rule under this system, and more
than ordinary courage to challenge its pretensions.[562] The good Doctor
Dwight of Yale was busy damning democrats to perdition. A little later
Gideon Granger and Ephraim Kirby were to take their place beside Bishop,
and with the aid of the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford and the ‘New
London Bee’ to give blow for blow. But the fighting was against
desperate odds, the Federalists strongly entrenched on a steep hill, the
ascent to which could be raked with canister.
‘The masses are disfranchised,’ cried Bishop. ‘Yes, poor porpoises,’
sneered Noah Webster the Federalist who was soon to become editor of a
New York paper launched by Hamilton.[563] But Bishop and his little
coterie were fighters, and Jefferson took them to his heart.
In New Hampshire, Jefferson had to bide his time. Among the members of
the Senate no one had a better record of unselfish Revolutionary service
than John Langdon. Practical, hard-headed, unimaginative, a lover of
money, he had accumulated some wealth in mercantile pursuits. Fond of
company, pleasing and unaffected in his manner, impressive in
appearance, his senatorial toga became him well.[564] When Hamilton’s
financial plans were pending, he gave them his support, and, alas,
profited not a little, but from the beginning the keen-eyed Jefferson
discerned the traits that were ultimately to separate him from the
Hamiltonians. Within two years Langdon had assumed the leadership of the
Jeffersonians in New Hampshire, but as late as 1798, according to the
recollection of a famous Jacksonian, ‘with the exception of Langdon and
a few sterling patriots there could not be said to be in this State a
party favorable to the principles of Thomas Jefferson.’[565]
In Vermont the situation was somewhat similar, albeit the opportunities
there were greater in the absence of a property qualification for the
vote. There, too, was Matthew Lyon, of whom we shall hear much, whose
fanatical devotion to democracy was a heritage from a father who had
paid the penalty of his patriotism on the gallows in Ireland; whose
hatred of aristocracy was but a reaction to the memory of his days of
poverty. Possessing a genius for business, and succeeding, he was
irresistibly drawn to politics, where his Celtic humor, his energy,
impetuosity, and sincerity surrounded him with friends. His radicalism
became a flaming torch that lighted up the granite hills. Not for
nothing was he born in the land of the Donnybrook Fair, for he loved a
fight or a frolic, and he was to have much of both. Enlisting in the
Jeffersonian fight in the beginning, he was to fight unceasingly, take
blows, and know the degradation of a cell. There was a degree of felony
in democracy in the New England of the last days of the eighteenth
century.
In Rhode Island, Jefferson sought vainly for an effective leader, though
the field was fertile because of the lingering hostility to
centralization and the poverty and debts of the people.
Leaving New England, the leader found much to interest him in New York.
There was that sturdy, indomitable champion of State rights, and
inveterate enemy of aristocracy, George Clinton, an uncompromising
republican of Cromwellian audacity and decision, with an unequaled hold
on the confidence and affections of the people. There, too, were the
Livingstons, mortally offended by the political stupidity of Hamilton in
defeating the brilliant Chancellor’s aspirations for the Senate. Had
this numerous and powerful family a conference one night to discuss the
affront and to emerge a unit in opposition?[566] Whatever the cause, the
effect was clear--the Livingston clan was only too eager to join the
insurgents, and this was not lost on the astute politician of
Monticello. Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, convincing orator, erudite
lawyer, profound statesman, fascinating personality, possessing the
glamour of wealth and tradition so important to a Jeffersonian leader in
New York with its commercial princes and barons of the soil--here was a
man to be cultivated with all the finesse of which Jefferson was
capable. The master of Monticello could speak the language of the master
of the New York manor house.
And Burr? Just what Jefferson expected of Burr is a mystery unsolvable.
He appreciated his brilliancy and professional prestige, but were the
penetrating eyes blind to the weaknesses of character? Just a little
while before Burr had joined with Hamilton against Clinton, and
Federalist votes had sent him to the Senate. There, to be sure, he had
arrayed himself on the popular side, but could he be relied upon? He had
played a lone hand, holding aloof from the Clintonians and the
Livingstons, and dining often at the table of Hamilton; but that he was
singled out for assiduous cultivation we may be sure. No one was closer
to Jefferson than Dr. Rush when, in the early fall of 1792, the latter
wrote a wheedling note to Burr. ‘Your friends everywhere,’ wrote the
Doctor, ‘look to you to take an active part in removing the monarchical
rubbish of our government. It is time to speak out or we are
undone.’[567] Previous to this, Jefferson had been most courteous in
permitting the charming Senator from New York to examine papers in the
archives of the State Department until Washington interposed.[568]
Clinton, Livingston, and Burr--a triumvirate that caught Jefferson’s
fancy; but he was interested in opportunities in New York having no
direct connection with any of the three. The less imaginative Maclay had
seen in a parade of the Sons of Tammany only ‘a grotesque scene,’ with
the members ‘in Indian dresses,’ and while he had addressed them at a
dinner he had concluded that ‘there is some kind of a scheme’ which was
‘not well digested as yet.’[569] Jefferson made it his business to learn
more. He found that the strange organization was an answer, in part, to
the Cincinnati which stood, in the popular mind, for aristocracy; that
it was rabidly republican and wholly democratic; that it sympathized
with the revolutionists in France, and resented the property
disqualifications of our own Revolutionary soldiers for the suffrage,
while the wealthy, notoriously friendly to England when these soldiers
fought, were being accorded political recognition and place. Here was a
society after his own heart, here a method to make the masses felt--a
combination and coördination of their efforts. All over the land the
hundreds of thousands of inarticulate, unimportant, ineffective,
commonplace friends of democracy, and in one city these had been given a
voice, an arm, a rostrum. It was not ‘grotesque’ to Jefferson. He did
not join these imitation red men in their wigwam, nor drink of their
ale, but John Pintard the chief became his friend and idolater, and with
him the great man talked. The non-partisan society grew more and more
democratic, soon intensely partisan, and at Tammany dinners the welkin
rang to the toast to ‘Thomas Jefferson.’ New York became a cock-pit from
the start.
But when the Jeffersonian board of strategy turned to New Jersey, the
problem was more difficult. No outstanding leader, strong in the faith,
stood ready to mount and ride. There, true, the Janus-faced Jonathan
Dayton was ready to flirt with any force that might serve his personal
ends. He was a speculator--and worse. Supporting and profiting from the
Hamilton policies, he smiled on the Jeffersonians significantly.
In Pennsylvania there was the nucleus of a party and virile men to lead
it--men like Mifflin, who, despite his drunkenness, was popular and a
power; like Maclay, who had the force that intense conviction brings in
spite of temperamental handicaps; men like Alexander J. Dallas,
aggressive, daring, able; men utterly unfit for
[Illustration: ALBERT GALLATIN]
[Illustration: EDWARD LIVINGSTON]
[Illustration: WILLIAM BRANCH GILES]
[Illustration: JAMES MADISON]
the rough-and-tumble combats of practical politics whose characters and
abilities made them potent in the fight--like Rush the physician,
Rittenhouse the scientist, Logan the philosopher, and, looming above the
tops of the Western forests, a young giant and genius, Albert Gallatin.
In Delaware, nothing; in Maryland, John Francis Mercer, fighter and
intriguer, sapper and miner, agitator and organizer, with whom democracy
was a religion, Hamilton a devil, and Jefferson a saint. In Virginia, a
sparkling galaxy, Madison, Monroe, the accomplished Pendleton, the
resourceful Giles, the extraordinary John Taylor of Caroline.
In North Carolina, Jefferson found a leader cut from his own pattern, an
aristocratic democrat, a radical rich man, a consummate politician who
made the history that lesser men wrote without mentioning his name,
Willie Jones of Halifax. His broad acres, his wealth, his high social
standing were the objects of his pride, and he lived in luxury and wore
fine linen while the trusted leader of the masses, mingling familiarly
with the most uncouth back-woodsman, inviting, however, only the select
to partake of the hospitality of his home. There was more than a touch
of the Virginia aristocrat of the time in his habits--he raced, gambled,
hunted like a gentleman. Like Jefferson he was a master of the art of
insinuation, a political and social reformer. He loved liberty, hated
intolerance, and prevented the ratification of the Constitution in the
first State Convention because of the absence of a Bill of Rights. There
he exerted a subtle influence that was not conspicuous on the floor. If
he was neither orator nor debater, he was a strategist, disciplinarian,
diplomat, who fought with velvet gloves--with iron within. A
characteristic portrait would show him puffing at his pipe in the midst
of his farmer followers, suggesting, insinuating, interspersing his
political conversation with discussions of the crops, farming
implements, hunting dogs, horses. An Anthony in arousing the passions by
subtle hints, he was an Iago in awakening suspicions.[570] Here was the
man with the stuff that Jefferson required, generous and lovable in
social relations, in politics relentless, hard as iron. He was the
Jefferson of North Carolina--‘a man ... the object of more hatred and
more adoration than has ever since lived’ in that State.[571] Nor did he
stand alone without assistants, for there was Nathaniel Macon, honest,
intense, man of the soil who loved his few acres, his dogs and horses,
and his class; and there was Timothy Bloodworth whose fierce adherence
to democracy and fanatical hatred of privilege may have been a poignant
reflection of his poverty. Jones, the aristocratic lord of many acres;
Macon the representative of the small farmer; Bloodworth the artisan,
smithy at the forge, watchmaker, wheelwright, as well as preacher,
doctor, and cultivator of the soil: his radicalism was born in suffering
and in suffering he had grown.[572]
In Georgia, Jefferson had equal cause for satisfaction. There were small
farms, poor industrious men, ardent republicans, with the frontiersmen’s
natural democracy and the debtors’ suspicions of concentrated wealth
allied with governmental power. And there to lead them was James
Jackson, idol of the people, a boisterous, impassioned orator whose
eloquence often gave more heat than light. Historians have been prone to
sneer at him, but this man who came as a child from Devonshire in
England to take his place three years later in the army of Washington,
and to receive the keys of Savannah from the British ten years after his
arrival, was something more than an upstart. He who refused the
governorship of his State when twenty-one, and six years after leaving
his English home, to take his chances in the field, was scarcely an
object for jest. He was a power as a leader and was to strike Titan
blows in the cause that Jefferson nationally led.[573]
In South Carolina, dominated by rich commercial Charleston, Jefferson
long looked in vain for a leader for his cause. A friend of the
Pinckneys and the Rutledges, they held aloof or joined their fortunes
with Hamilton. Only toward the close did Charles Pinckney, the most
eloquent, resourceful, and magnetic of his family, part company with his
cousins to lunge and lash with gusty joy for the man of Monticello.
Such were the leaders on whom Jefferson was dependent in welding the
popular parties in the various States into a strong national army
marching in step, with a common policy and purpose.
III
Had Jefferson been even richer than Hamilton in brilliant leaders, he
would not have made the latter’s fatal blunder of assuming them to be
enough. He was too much the practical politician to be impressed with a
brilliant staff of officers--without privates. He set out to arouse the
masses, mobilize, drill, and lead them. Above all, it was his intention
to lead. Within a year, Ames was to observe with desperation and disgust
the divisions among the Federalists and to comment that ‘Virginia moves
in a solid column ... the discipline of the [Jefferson] party is as
severe as the Prussian’ and ‘deserters are not spared.’[574]
The first necessity was to get the men to discipline. A vast number of
the masses had no conception of their political power and were
indifferent to the vote. Thousands over the country were disfranchised
by property qualifications, and one of the prime purposes of the new
party would be to break these down. The immediate problem was to awaken
the interest of those who, having the vote, did not appreciate the
privilege. With many of these, this was due to the lack of political
consciousness; with others, to the feeling that it was useless for the
unimportant to attempt to influence governmental action. To the latter
it would be necessary to prove the possibilities of the concerted action
of large numbers of uninfluential men--and there was the Society of
Tammany pointing the way. No squeamishness in the mobilization
either--the possession of the vote was enough. Soon, very soon, strange,
disturbing things would be seen even in New England--cabinetmakers,
shoemakers, mechanics perking up on politics, with evidence of
organization here and there. Federalist leaders would soon be
complaining that organization was conspiracy against the ‘government.’
In New Hampshire they would be calling those uniting for political
action ‘insurgents.’ The insolence of the Jeffersonians appealing to the
people for support would be frowned upon as degrading. ‘Of course,’ said
a Massachusetts paper, ‘there can be but two parties in a country--the
friends of order and its foes.’[575]
And such people! The very riff-raff that one would never invite into
one’s parlor--‘desperate, embarrassed, unprincipled, disorderly,
ambitious, disaffected, morose men.’[576] Were not these the
propertyless who wasted their earnings in a grogshop?[577] And who were
these petty agitators? Who but ‘Jacobins’ holding forth ‘in the
bar-rooms of Rhode Island and Vermont and trying to stir up
opposition.’[578] Wretched offal after all--but what a pity that
Jefferson should countenance, least of all cultivate, such people. ‘Mr.
Jefferson appears to have shown rather too much of a disposition to
cultivate vulgar prejudices,’ wrote Wolcott, and ‘accordingly he will
become popular in the ale-houses.’[579]
Miserable ‘Jacobins!’ Disreputable clowns of the bar-rooms! And such
unthinkable methods! Here--there--everywhere, when a few men could be
gathered together, some one appeared to deliver free lectures on
practical politics. And such subjects! ‘Discipline’; ‘How to Make Men
Follow their File Leaders.’[580]
IV
In arousing and consolidating the widely scattered democrats, Jefferson
instantly appreciated the importance of a national newspaper to the end
that the farmer in Georgia, the planter in Virginia, the frontiersman in
western Pennsylvania, the mechanic in Boston, the shopmen of Rhode
Island, and the reds of Tammany sipping their ale in the New York
tavern, might all talk the same language at the same time. True, the
Jeffersonians were not without able editorial support. There was Thomas
Greenleaf pounding away vigorously in the ‘New York Journal’; Thomas
Adams hammering merrily in the Boston ‘Independent Chronicle’; and in
Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Bache was making a mild show of
opposition in his ‘Pennsylvania Daily Advertiser.’ But these were
independent supporters, not ‘organs,’ and it was an ‘organ’ that was
needed--something to meet the Hamilton organ which was becoming
increasingly offensive to the democrats.
In estimating the sincerity of the simulated shock of the Federalists
when the Secretary of State encouraged the establishment of a paper to
support his principles, it is well to bear in mind that the Secretary
of the Treasury had done precisely the same thing two years before.
Then, as always, politicians were shocked at the turpitude of their
opponents. Just how John Fenno came to establish the ‘Gazette of the
United States’ is an impenetrable mystery. He was in his thirty-eighth
year when he appeared at the home of Rufus King, perhaps the ablest of
Hamilton’s supporters, with a letter of introduction from Christopher
Gore, a member of the inner council of Boston Federalism who afterward
waxed wealthy on speculation in the funds. The record is meager as to
Fenno’s previous career beyond the revelation that he was born in Boston
and taught for several years in the Old South Writing School. In the
letter to King, we have the assurance of Gore that Fenno’s ‘literary
accomplishments are very handsome’; that Gore had known him long and
could testify that ‘his honor and fidelity are unquestionable’; and,
strangely enough, that ‘his talents as the editor of a public paper are
unrivaled in this commonwealth.’ As John Russell was then editing the
‘Columbian Centinel,’ the tribute would seem strained but for the
intimation that the strength and sparkle of that able journal was due to
Fenno’s contributions; and since the ‘Centinel’ suffered no apparent
loss on his leaving Boston, even this theory seems absurd.
If his origin is a mystery, the purpose of his call on King was made
clear enough in the letter of introduction. The ‘unrivaled’ editor
sought encouragement for the establishment of a newspaper through
arrangements for ‘obtaining the patronage of Congress’ in the printing
of its journals and official papers. If something of the sort could be
arranged, Gore was positive that Fenno would prove ‘capable of
performing essential service in the cause of Federalism and good
government.’[581]
The conversation was evidently agreeable, assurances of some sort were
manifestly given, and within a few weeks the ‘Gazette of the United
States’ was making its appearance. That Hamilton, who was intimately
identified with King, was consulted, we may he sure; and within four
years the relations between Fenno and Hamilton were so confidential that
the former felt no hesitancy in appealing in a letter to the latter for
a loan of two thousand dollars. Months before, the editor had submitted
a schedule of his debts and credits to the head of the Treasury. The
two had talked over the financial difficulties of the paper. The appeal
for the loan was not lightly brushed aside. Hamilton wrote to King of
the troubles of ‘poor Fenno,’ and proposed that if King would raise a
thousand dollars in New York, he would himself undertake to raise a
similar amount in Philadelphia. It is to be assumed that the money was
raised, for the paper continued to appear. It is significant that in his
letter to Hamilton, the editor wrote as one who had rendered faithful
service and was entitled to consideration.[582]
From the beginning Fenno had liked to think of himself as the editor of
‘the court journal.’ Possessing considerable merit, it is impossible to
turn its yellowing pages even now without being oppressed with a sense
of sycophancy and snobbery. There was a fawning on wealth and kow-towing
to power in most of the leading articles. The tone was pronouncedly
pro-English and all Hamiltonian. Democracy was anathema. The critics of
the policies of the leader of the Federalists were inciters to disorder.
All the influence of the Federalist leaders was exerted to throw all
possible governmental patronage into his office.
Hamilton had his paper before Jefferson got his own.[583] It was to meet
these conditions that James Madison and Governor Henry Lee conceived the
notion of persuading Philip Freneau, ‘the poet of the Revolution,’ to
establish a newspaper in Philadelphia. This fiery petrel of democracy
was eking out a mere existence on a New York newspaper when Madison, who
had been his roommate at Princeton, made the proposal. This was due in
part to personal affection and the feeling that the poet’s sufferings
and losses in the Revolution entitled him to some consideration, but in
large measure to the purity of his republicanism and his zeal for the
popular cause. ‘I entertained hopes,’ wrote Madison later, ‘that a free
paper, meant for general circulation, and edited by a man of genius of
republican principles and a friend of the Constitution, would be some
antidote to the doctrines and discourses circulated in favor of Monarchy
and Aristocracy.’[584] With the view to giving some slight protection to
a precarious enterprise, Madison sought a clerkship for his college
friend in one of the governmental departments. Nor was it to Jefferson
that he first applied.[585] The outcome, however, was the offer of a
clerkship of foreign languages in the State Department at a salary of
two hundred and fifty dollars a year. He accepted, went to Philadelphia,
and established the ‘Federal’ or ‘National Gazette.’
The leaders of the new party were plainly pleased with the prospect.
Jefferson himself did not scruple to solicit subscribers among his
Virginia neighbors. Henry Lee, who was to desert to the enemy later,
sent in subscriptions through Madison, in a letter rejoicing because the
paper ‘is rising fast into reputation,’ and lamenting because of the
precariousness of its arrival.[586] ‘His paper in the opinion here,’
wrote Madison acknowledging Lee’s letter, ‘justifies the expectations of
his friends, and merits the diffusive circulation they have endeavored
to procure it.’[587]
The Philadelphians awoke with a start to find that an entirely new note
had been struck in political journalism. Within a few weeks, the
‘Federal Gazette’ was being extensively copied in the papers over the
country. Bache in his ‘Advertiser’ caught something of Freneau’s fire
and audacity, and began to take a firmer, bolder tone. Fenno found
himself forced to defend himself and his friends in almost every issue.
Men and even women scanned its columns eagerly and with emotions
determined by their political prepossessions. Within a few months the
poet-editor was being hotly debated by the two leading papers of Boston.
‘As all the friends of civil liberty wish at all times to be acquainted
with every question which appears to regard the public weal,’ said the
‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘a great number of gentlemen in this and
neighboring towns have subscribed for the Federal Gazette published by
Mr. Philip Freneau at Philadelphia; and it is hoped that Freneau’s
Gazette, which is said to be printed under the eye of that established
patriot, Thomas Jefferson, will be generally taken in the New England
States.’[588] What! wrote a correspondent in the ‘Centinel,’ is this an
avowal that Jefferson is the real editor? A paper hostile to religion
and government! ‘Surely T. Adams ought to be well founded in his
affections before he brings forward Mr. Jefferson as the patron of such
a Gazette.’[589]
Within a short time Freneau had aroused the savage rage of the
Federalist leaders and the zealous loyalty of the democrats everywhere.
Here was a man who was not awed by power, and, brushing aside mild
criticism and vapory innuendoes, struck hard and mentioned names. Soon
the Jeffersonian farmers in Georgia were talking what he was writing,
and Jeffersonian editors generally were following his lead. In the
bar-rooms of Rhode Island men of no consequence were reading the paper
aloud over their mugs, and David Rittenhouse in the library of the
Philosophical Society was chuckling over its vicious thrusts. Just then
‘friends of the Constitution’ among the Federalists began to regret a
certain provision in the Bill of Rights and to begin the slow incubation
of the Sedition Law. That incomparable political preacher, Timothy
Dwight, began to denounce papers as the ‘vice’ of the people in the new
settlements, and another pious gentleman of the cloth thundered from the
pulpit: ‘Many of you in spite of all the advice and friendly warnings of
your religious and political fathers have taken and continue to take and
read Jacobin papers, full of all manner of mischief and subtlety of the
Devil.’[590] The hand-to-hand fighting of Hamilton and Jefferson was
forced by the lusty blows of Freneau, who deserves to be something more
than a name in the Plutarchian struggle.
V
Philip Freneau had richly earned the right to hold and express opinions
concerning the destiny of his country. Many years before the Revolution,
his Huguenot ancestors had come over from France, and for years his was
a well-known name in the best circles of New York City where he was
born. His childhood had been passed on the thousand-acre estate of his
father near the battle-field of Monmouth, in a fine old mansion
fashioned after the colonial style, with a great hall running through
it, and large porticoes commanding a view of a beautiful country. The
house was served by many domestic slaves. Near by rose Beacon Hill,
thickly timbered, and from the peak could be seen the lower bay and the
blue waters of the Atlantic. There his early childhood was passed under
the tender care and training of a mother of rare intelligence. From her
he caught a love of poetry, and of the things of which poetry is made.
The spirit of his liberty-loving ancestors was strong within him. He had
all the impulsiveness, the fighting courage of the Gael. When not at his
studies, he wandered alone into the woods and upon the hill where he
could brood dreamily upon the mystery of the sea. On the site where the
battle of Monmouth was to be fought, he began the study of Greek and
Latin in his tenth year. Even as a child he had a hot passionate hatred
of oppression, an unfathomable contempt for hypocrisy, and an ardent
love of beauty. All this he put into childish verse.
When he entered Princeton (Nassau Hall), great events were beginning to
unfold. The patriots of Massachusetts, protesting against an English
law, had been declared rebels, the leading offenders had been ordered
across the sea for trial, the troops of General Gates had marched into
Boston. The college was a hot-bed of sedition. That superb patriot, John
Witherspoon, was president, and among the students who gathered in the
evening in the room that Freneau shared with Madison, were ‘Light Horse’
Harry Lee, Aaron Burr, William Bradford, destined to close an
exceptionally promising career as a member of Washington’s Cabinet, and
Brockholst Livingston.
Nothing that Freneau ever said or did in after-life that was not
foreshadowed at Princeton can be found. His tongue was sharp, and his
pen dripped the vitriol of satire. He wrote much verse, and long before
the Declaration of Independence, he had a hatred of kings. Even thus
early in his ‘Pyramid of Kings,’ he made profession of his democracy.
‘Millions of slaves beneath their labors fainted,
Who were here doomed to toil incessantly,
And years elapsed while groaning myriads strove
To raise this mighty tomb--and but to hide
The worthless bones of an Egyptian king.’
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.
‘Here uncontrolled he exercised his trade,
And grew experienced by the deaths he made;
By frequent blows we from his cane endured
He killed at least as many as he cured.’
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.