HECTIC DAYS
I
Scarcely had Jefferson reached his quiet hilltop when Madison submitted
the resolutions based upon his chief’s Commercial Report, and the
English party was instantly in arms. These resolutions were more
political than commercial and were clearly aimed at England in
retaliation for her refusal to enter into a commercial treaty. The
resentment against the English policy had been increasing rapidly, even
John Quincy Adams finding the French ruling powers more favorable to the
Western Republic than was the Ministry of Pitt.[871] Only in the
commercial centers was there a disposition to suffer long and be kind
for business reasons. The Chambers of Commerce were on their toes
hissing; the Democratic Societies shouldered arms and marched to the
tune ‘Ça Ira.’ The galleries of the House filled.
The Federalists met the Madison attack with a counter-charge from
William Smith of Charleston, in an elaborate recitation prepared for his
delivery by Hamilton. The Carolinian entered the fray with the breezy
confidence born of the knowledge that a master mind was behind his
utterances. No one was deceived. ‘Every tittle of it is Hamilton’s
except the introduction,’ Jefferson wrote Madison.[872] The strategy of
the Smith-Hamilton speech was to divert attention from the political to
the commercial phase, by showing that our business relations with
England were more valuable than those with France. The next day Madison
boldly proclaimed the political purpose of the resolutions.[873]
Thereafter, with spectators packing the galleries, and almost
suffocating the legislators by crowding onto the floor of the chamber,
the forensic gladiators fought with more ferocity than finesse. Ames
sowed trouble for himself with the amazing declaration that ‘there is an
amicable disposition on the part of Great Britain.’[874]
The English are ‘as angry at us as we are at them,’ said Dexter, warning
of war. ‘Ridiculous!’ exclaimed Madison. ‘What would Britain gain by
war? Would it employ her starving manufacturers’ or ‘give employment to
the vessels that formerly imported luxuries to America?’[875] But why
these strange accusations against England? asked Ames. What are the
specific facts? Facts? thundered Giles. She has ‘subjected our vessels
... to seizure and search’; she ‘prevents our vessels from conveying to
our friends and allies goods not contraband’; she is responsible for
‘letting loose the pirates of the Barbary States upon our
commerce.’[876] Tracy, Hamiltonian, could see no advantage we had
received from the French treaty. At any rate, added Boudinot, we should
‘not over-value the friendship of France.’[877] What, roared Giles, ‘if
a prophet in 1778 had foretold that in 1794 that question would have
been triumphantly put in an American Congress ... would not the prophecy
have been deemed an imputation on the American character?’
But--blandly from Ames--what are our grievances against England? ‘Is it
necessary,’ shouted Nicholas, Jeffersonian, ‘to tell the gentleman of
the hostilities of the savages on the frontier, of the murder of our
citizens, and the plunder of our settlements?’[878] ‘Only a set of
resolutions on paper,’ sneered Dayton. Is that our only or best weapon?
Yes, answered Madison, ‘we can make use of none against Great Britain
more effectual than commercial weapons.’[879]
Thus day by day the debate dragged on. ‘What recent injuries?’ inquired
Samuel Smith of Maryland, merchant. ‘The recent proclamation respecting
the stoppage of vessels of neutral nations, with all such excepted but
the United States,’ hotly answered Madison. ‘Better accept excuses than
fight battles,’ warned Ames. Instantly Giles, whose passions slept with
one eye open, was on his feet protesting against the idea ‘that the mere
exercise of our rights as an independent government is equivalent to a
declaration of war.’
Thus the bitterness intensified, with personalities entering the
discussions. One day the venerable Abraham Clark of New Jersey, signer
of the Declaration of Independence, sat open-mouthed while Smith of
Charleston reiterated his views, and then, trembling with age and
infirmities, declared that ‘if a stranger were to come into this House
he would think that Britain has an agent here.’ Cries of ‘Order!’
‘Order!’ Smith replied with a sneer at the old man’s garrulity and
years. With passions at white heat, the debate was postponed until the
first Monday in March.
Meanwhile, out of doors the fight was being waged with spirit. In
Boston, the ‘Centinel,’ organ of the Federalists, was making scurrilous
attacks on Madison. He had been the counselor and abettor of Genêt--a
corrupt tool of France since the embassy of Gerard.[880] He was the
agent of France,[881] the tool of anarchists,[882] and he could have
learned nothing about commerce in Virginia ‘where no other commerce is
transacted than buying and selling of negroes.’[883]
To these attacks the Jeffersonians responded with a call for a town
meeting to act on the Madison Resolutions. Before a great crowd at the
Old South Church a dramatic forensic scene was staged, the eloquent
Jarvis leading for the Resolutions, the brilliant young Harrison Gray
Otis for the opposition, until darkness forced an adjournment till the
morrow when it was renewed until afternoon, when the question was
indefinitely postponed. Otis had won the only victory possible in
successfully filibustering against a vote.[884] At Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, a mass meeting at the State House endorsed the
Resolutions,[885] and to the astonishment of Madison a meeting was held
in New York City at the instance of the Jeffersonians.[886] In
Philadelphia, with Hamilton looking on from the wings, the merchants met
to denounce the Resolutions, but after a demonstration in their favor
the attempt to get a vote upon them was abandoned.[887]
But it was in Charleston that the rage of the populace over the
pro-English utterances of Smith and Ames assumed the most virulent form.
Men cursed them in the streets, denounced them in resolutions, burned
them both in effigy. Bache, then the leading Jeffersonian editor,
deprecated the burning. ‘Sorry I am to see these English fashions
adopted by free-born Americans.’[888] The cynical Ames’s sense of humor
left him unscorched by the flames. ‘I am willing to have it believed,’
he wrote, ‘that as I come out of the fire undiminished in weight, I am
pure gold.’[889] But it was more serious to Smith, for it was his
constituents who consigned him to the fire. The publication and
circulation of the speech he had not written had deepened the
resentment. How much hotter might have been the flames had the mob
foreseen the printing of an English edition with the boastful prefatory
statement that it had driven the author of the Declaration of
Independence from office![890] Indeed, the fortunes of the fight had
turned, and the Hamiltonians, lately jubilant over Jefferson’s
embarrassment with Genêt, had troubles of their own. Wolcott was
complaining that Hammond, the British Minister, was ‘weak, vain and
impudent,’[891] and even Ames was alarmed because he ‘rails against the
conduct of our Government, not ore rotundo, but with a gabble that his
feelings render doubly unintelligible.’[892] By their speeches against
Madison’s Resolutions, the Federalists had inextricably entangled
themselves with British policies, and it was the chatter of the streets
and the gossip of the press.
‘From the speechification of Sedgwick and Ames
Some might think that they both had drank deep of the Thames,
For “our dear Mother Country,” the former stands forth
In strains that were worthy a pupil of North.’[893]
It was in this state of public opinion, and with Ames wailing that
England was ‘driving us to the wall,’ that the news from the West Indies
aroused the people to a white heat of fury and put them on the march.
II
In compliance with an Order in Council, the British had seized more than
a hundred vessels and held them for condemnation. So appalling were the
possibilities that even Bache made the announcement in terms of
measured moderation.[894] Ames no longer mentioned the ‘amicable
disposition’ of the British, or inquired with a childlike innocence what
England had done to offend the Americans. With war seemingly inevitable,
the Hamiltonians were driven to the simulation of a warlike mood. The
spirit of ‘76 burst into flames.
Under such conditions the debate on the Madison Resolutions was resumed.
When the sneer of Ames and Parker that they bore ‘the French stamp’ was
loudly hissed by enraged visitors in the galleries, the Federalists took
to cover.[895] Extreme provocative measures were introduced and pressed.
The demand for the sequestration of British debts led to vitriolic
exchanges. ‘That king of sea robbers!’ That ‘Leviathan which aims at
swallowing up all that floats upon the ocean!’ Boudinot, Hamiltonian,
pleaded for ‘calmness.’[896] Dexter denounced the proposal as the
counsel of dishonor. ‘English tool!’ roared the raging streets.
Then came the Non-Intercourse Act, with the Federalists, off their high
horse, literally begging for ‘calm deliberation.’ Even Sedgwick was in
an importunate mood; but the measure was pushed with all the more
determination and passed with most of the Hamiltonians against it.[897]
Even when Fitzsimons fell into line, he was trounced by the press with
the open charge that he had held out until his own brig ‘had departed to
our good English friends at Kingston ... with a cargo of flour.’[898]
Clearly the Hamiltonians had to conciliate the public in some way, and
Sedgwick came forward with a plan for an army; and Madison denounced it
as ‘the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for
accumulating force in the government.’[899]
Out in the streets the people were on a rampage. Phineas Bond, the
British Consul in Philadelphia, reported to Grenville that the Americans
even resented the Orders in Council.[900] Worse still, he and Hammond
the Minister could not even walk the streets without being subjected to
‘menaces from knots of street politicians.’ The consul in Baltimore had
been forced by threats of violence to take refuge in the capital.[901]
The democrats followed up every advantage. Where was the spirit of ‘76?
‘Shall a paper system hold you in bondage?’[902] England would not dare,
declared the Democratic Society of Philadelphia, but for the declaration
of neutrality, interpreted as evidence of American cowardice.[903] And
perhaps Smith of Charleston had given the English a wrong impression.
Had he published his speech against the Madison Resolutions to show
Americans he ‘despises their opinion’ or ‘to prove to Great Britain that
he has been a faithful friend?’[904]
Under such encouragement some French sailors in American ports became
cheeky and chesty. In a Charleston theater one of these having insulted
a woman and been roughly handled, hastened to his ship with the story of
an assault by English sympathizers. His fellows sallied forth to avenge
the insult, making accessions to their ranks on the way by spreading the
fictitious story of the incident. Armed with cutlasses, they descended
on the theater as the people were pouring out, in an indiscriminate
attack which included the wrecking of some carriages and the wounding of
a few horses. The alarm bells were rung, and citizens rushed to the
battle.[905]
Everywhere people were steeling themselves for war. In New York a mass
meeting, held at the Coffee-House[906] was belittled by Noah Webster,
the Hamiltonian editor. Both he and Fenno were clamoring for
negotiations. ‘Why, to be sure, we must negotiate,’ sneered Bache.
’...The honor, the interest, the welfare of the United States are locked up
in the funding system.’[907] Everywhere citizens were helping with
fortifications. In New York the students of Columbia (King’s) formally
tendered their services,[908] the house carpenters gave their
labor,[909] and other trades followed. The country boiled with
excitement. The Nation was rushing into war. Hamilton and his associates
put their heads together to devise a method to prevent it.
III
The rage of the people could be held in check only by a definite action
looking to the righting of wrongs, and since the last thing the
commercial interests wanted was war, the only thing left was
negotiation. Even though this finally failed, it might postpone the
fatal day. The Federalists, in control, instinctively turned in the
crisis to Hamilton as the safest man to negotiate. He above all was
interested in preserving peace with England at all costs. His whole
political system rested on the supremacy of the commercial element. He
was the father of the national credit and it would collapse without the
revenue from the imposts, the greater part of which came from English
trade.
In the beginning no other name was considered in the Federalist
conclaves for ambassador. ‘Who but Hamilton would perfectly satisfy all
our wishes?’ wrote Ames.[910] A correspondent of Rufus King was writing
about the same time that Hamilton’s selection would give general
satisfaction because he had ‘the full confidence of the merchants and
the people at large’;[911] and King was replying that he wished Hamilton
‘may speedily go,’ since ‘then there would be some hope of our remaining
at peace.’[912]
In truth, Hamilton’s relations with England’s representatives in America
had been intimate. In the days of the agency of Colonel Beckwith, before
a Minister was accredited, an intimacy had been established with
Hamilton so close that Professor Bemis concludes that never afterward
was Jefferson ‘able to conduct his office with thorough
independence.’[913] That intimacy continued until the arrival of the
Minister, and in the meanwhile Hamilton figured in the Agent’s
confidential reports as ‘No. 7.’[914]
The Minister, with more assiduity than ability, was George Hammond, a
young man of twenty-seven, who immediately established similar relations
with the Secretary of the Treasury. Soon we find him reporting to Lord
Grenville that he preferred to make most of his communications privately
to Hamilton and to have no relations with Jefferson that were not
absolutely necessary.[915] It is fair to say that in every crisis he
found the opportunity to confer with the Secretary of the Treasury.[916]
All this was known, in a general way, to the commercial element when it
was urging Hamilton’s appointment as ambassador, and suspected by the
people at large. Thus, when the rumor of his prospective selection
spread, there was a roar of protest. ‘The object of a special embassy
might as well be answered by commissioning Lord Grenville or Mr. Pitt,’
wrote Bache.[917] In the meantime, Senator James Monroe had formally
protested to Washington against the appointment. The opposition was due
to the reason set down in the memorandum of Hamilton’s warm friend,
Rufus King: ‘Colonel Hamilton did not possess the general confidence of
the country.’[918]
It is easy to understand how hard it was for the Federalists to abandon
their chief. Thrill enough there is, in the thought of Hamilton and Pitt
seated across the table in one of the dingy little rooms in Downing
Street--so similar in precocity, brilliancy, and genius.
One evening four men sat in the candle-lit room of Rufus King in
Philadelphia. There was Oliver Ellsworth, a powerful figure before the
Senate and Bar; George Cabot, in some respects a saner leader than
Hamilton; Caleb Strong, whose strength was in common sense and
toleration; and King, who was a monumental figure. It was agreed to make
an effort for Hamilton, and Ellsworth was designated to call at the
Morris mansion for the purpose. Washington did not commit himself.
Whereupon Robert Morris was sent to reënforce the plea, but on learning
that not only Hamilton and Jefferson were being considered, but Jay as
well, he sensed the situation and veered to Jay. The result was that Jay
was summoned and offered the post. He took it under consideration. The
next day Jay was overrun with visitors. Hamilton urged his acceptance,
having in the meanwhile written Washington withdrawing his own name from
the list of aspirants.[919] King, Strong, Cabot, and Ellsworth followed,
demanding Jay’s acceptance as a duty. While Jay was deliberating, his
party was thrown into a panic with the rumor that Madison was a
possibility, and that Monroe had encouraged a hope in Pierce Butler
with a promise of the support of the Jeffersonians. Jay accepted.
IV
No one but Hamilton could have been more obnoxious to the Jeffersonians
than John Jay. He was now verging on fifty, with a notable career behind
him on which to base an opinion of his bias. In appearance he was
amiable but unimpressive, with nothing in his manner to indicate his
intellectual power.[920] Mrs. Adams’s daughter was impressed with the
‘benevolence stamped in every feature.’[921] Of commanding stature, he
was slender, albeit well formed. He wore his hair down a little over his
forehead, tied behind, and moderately powdered. Coal-black, penetrating
eyes increased his pallor, for he was never robust. Kindly, gracious,
courtly in social intercourse, he was sternly uncompromising where his
integrity was involved. Politically, he was an aristocrat, with contempt
for democracy, and an incurable distrust of the people. This, with his
predominant devotion to the commercial interests, fixed his status among
the Federalists. Upon the principles of the French Revolution he looked
with abhorrence. ‘That portion of the people,’ he once wrote a friend,
‘who individually mean well never was, nor until the millennium will be,
considerable.’ Others thought the masses too ignorant to act well, but
it was reserved for Jay to say that they did not even mean well.
Few Americans then living were better qualified by experience for a
diplomatic mission. At Madrid he had shown rare tact, infinite patience,
and dignity in defeat, and he had helped negotiate the treaty of peace.
It was unfortunate that he had, for a while, been Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, for he had then made a secret report to Congress holding
England justified in clinging to the western posts.[922] That secret was
out.
In writing Jefferson of the appointment, Madison gave no indication of a
probable opposition to Jay’s confirmation. ‘The appointment of Hamilton
was likely to produce such a sensation,’ he wrote, ‘that to his great
mortification he was laid aside and Jay named in his place.’[923] But
behind closed doors the Senate engaged in a bitter battle over the
confirmation. The opposition made much of the impropriety of naming a
Justice of the Supreme Court, submitting in a resolution ‘that to permit
Judges of the Supreme Court to hold at the same time other offices
emanating from and holden at the pleasure of the President is
destructive of their independence, and that tending to expose them to
the influence of the Executive is ... impolitic.’ According to Bache,
the majority of the Senate subscribed to this reasoning and the scruples
of enough for confirmation were overcome only by the assurances that
Jay’s ‘delicacy and sense of propriety would certainly induce him to
resign his office.’ Eight persisted in opposition on the supposition
that ‘more was to be feared from Mr. Jay’s avarice than was to be hoped
from his delicacy or sense of propriety.’[924] By the suspicious Adams,
who witnessed the struggle from the chair, the opposition was ascribed
to the fear that a successful negotiation would interfere with plans for
the elevation of Jefferson to the Presidency. On the surface, Jay’s
indifference to the navigation of the Mississippi, his mythical
monarchical principles, his attachment to England and aversion to
France, appeared explanatory of the hostility.[925]
The confirmation shifted the attack from the Senate to the streets. The
Jeffersonians resented it as a purely partisan appointment, but the
opposition ‘out of doors’ went deeper. Could no one be found outside the
little coterie of office-holders? Was it the intent ‘that certain
characters should have a monopoly of power?’[926] The Democratic Society
of Philadelphia bore down heavily on Jay’s justification for the holding
of the posts.[927] A frontiersman from western Pennsylvania denounced
the appointment as evidence of indifference to the interest of the
western country.[928] After Jay’s report on the posts would it not be
answer enough for Lord Grenville to quote Jay’s own opinion ‘on file in
the Secretary’s office’?[929] The Democratic Society of Washington,
Pennsylvania, thought that ‘no man but Washington ... would have dared
... to have insulted the majesty of the people by such departure from
any principle of republican equality.’[930]
Disregarding the clamor of the ‘rabble,’ Jay had made preparations for
an immediate departure, and without tendering his resignation as Chief
Justice. The instructions he carried had been prepared almost
exclusively by Hamilton.[931] So intimately was the economic policy of
the Federalists connected with the relations to England that these
instructions had been determined upon at a secret conference of
Federalist leaders dominated by their chief.[932] Thus, provided with
instructions from a party conference, Jay set sail on May 12th from New
York. A thousand people assembled at Trinity Church to escort him to the
ship and give three cheers as he went aboard. A salute was fired as he
passed the fort. But, wrote Greenleaf, ‘the militia had refused parading
to honor the departure of our extraordinary Minister.’[933]
If the Federalists were pleased, the Jeffersonians were complacent and
Madison wrote that Jay’s appointment ‘is the most powerful blow ever
suffered by the popularity of the President.’[934] But the Federalists
regained confidence after several months of unpopularity and
depression--and it was now the Jeffersonians’ time to suffer again--for
the Whiskey Boys were up in western Pennsylvania.
V
The Whiskey Boys of the ‘insurrection of 1794’ have been pictured as a
vicious, anarchistic, unpatriotic, despicable lot--and they were nothing
of the sort. These men were doing more for America than the speculators
of Boston and New York, for they were hard-working conquerors of the
wilderness, felling the forests, draining the swamps, redeeming the land
for the cultivation of man. Fortunately for America, they were a tough
set. These rough men in coarse raiment and coonskin, with muskets on
their shoulders, were not arrayed for a pose. They fought their way
against savage forces, subduing Nature while warding off the blows of
the tomahawk. Their lot was hard. No luxuries in the log cabins where
they fought, wrought, suffered in the Homeric work of extending an
empire and making it safe for the soft creatures of the counting-rooms
and drawing-rooms who would ultimately follow. Newspapers they seldom
saw, books scarcely at all, and most were illiterate. It was a long cry
from these powerful figures with muscular arms and dauntless hearts to
the perfumed dandies simpering silly compliments into the ears of the
ladies at Mrs. Bingham’s.
Within a radius of a hundred miles, there were but seventy thousand
souls. Pittsburgh was a crude little village of twelve thousand people.
Here they lived, shut off from the eastern country by the mountains, for
the few passes and winding roads through the dense woods were too rough
for vehicles. The little trade they carried on with the East was through
the use of pack-horses. From the South they were shut off by savage
tribes of red men. Here they were, left to shift for themselves by their
Government, which manifested little interest in their welfare, but did
not forget the taxes. Because there was no market for their grain, they
were forced to convert it into alcohol, which was largely their medium
of barter. Money was seldom seen, and the excise tax laid on their
alcohol was payable only in money. No people in America received so
little benefit from the Government, and none were hit so hard by the
Excise Law. Perhaps these pioneers who thought themselves abused were
ignorant, but there was an intellectual giant among them who knew they
were abused. This was Albert Gallatin.
A mingling of comedy and pathos is the story of the insurrection. The
masses were victims of a few demagogues,[935] but alas, these demagogues
were working with a real grievance. Public meetings had not served to
moderate the passions. Wise advisers, like Gallatin, were unable to
control, and the extremists followed the more flamboyant and less
scrupulous. The law was resisted, officials intimidated, prisoners
released from custody by mobs, and farmers who informed revenue men of
the location of stills read their mistake by the light of their burning
barns. When Washington sought to suppress the insurrection through
negotiations, it was too late, and the troops he summoned marched.
It was inevitable that politics should play a part. The Excise Law was
Hamilton’s child, born to meet the obligations of the Assumption.
The Jeffersonians had opposed its passage, and Jefferson thought it ‘an
infernal law.’[936] Then, too, it was felt that Hamilton welcomed the
opportunity to test the Federal power. There had been too much
skepticism on that point, and he longed for a decisive contest with the
‘mob.’ Bache had complained that Hamilton’s report to Washington on
conditions in the trouble zone read ‘like a lawyer’s summing up to a
jury.’[937] The Federalist papers traced the trouble to the
Jeffersonians because they had opposed the enactment of the Excise Law,
denounced the Democratic Societies for inciting the people to
insurrection, and satisfied the moron-minded that a demand for a law’s
repeal is the same as urging its violation. These were the days when the
high-flying Federalists, under the shadow of Washington on horseback,
were meditating the Sedition Law. Yes, and the Alien Law as well, for
they were pointing to the ‘foreigners’ as the ringleaders in the ‘plot
to overthrow the Government.’ The Irish, now numerous in Pennsylvania,
were mostly Jeffersonians. That was enough. Fenno warned of ‘the refuse
of Europe that will swarm to our shores’ if laws were not rigidly
enforced.[938] Wolcott wrote his father that the insurrection was ‘a
specimen of what we are to expect from European immigrants’ and that
‘Pennsylvania need not be envied her Irishmen.’[939] ‘Down with the
Democrats!’ ‘Down with the critics of public men and measures!’ ‘Down
with the foreign devils!’ On these themes the Federalists harped through
the summer and autumn. Their persistence was so persuasive that
Muhlenberg, the Speaker, narrowly escaped defeat for renomination
because he had voted against the Excise Law.[940] The Hamiltonians made
the most of the situation.
Before this fusillade the Jeffersonians and Democratic Societies handled
themselves well. Never had these societies done more than denounce the
excise and demand its repeal, and under the fierce fire they made their
position plain. One after another they gave public expression to their
views. The Excise Law was reprehensible, but as long as it remained a
law it should be obeyed.[941] The Democratic press took a similar
stand. ‘The question is not whether the excise is a proper or improper
mode of collecting revenue,’ wrote Bache. ‘It is constitutional ... and
it becomes the duty of every citizen to give his aid, if called upon, to
enforce its execution. If the opposers should triumph ... the axe is
laid to the root of all national government.’[942] Greenleaf in the ‘New
York Journal’ was quite as direct: ‘The excise, however obnoxious, is
the law of the Union; constitutional measures only therefore ought to be
adopted.’[943] Jeers of derision from the Federalists greeted these
resolutions and editorials. The insurrection, they contended, ‘is the
natural result of these Democratic clubs.’ Honest men among their
members had been deceived and the rioting in the West would open their
eyes. ‘Down with the Democratic Clubs!’ ‘Down with the critics of
governmental measures!’[944] This aroused the wrath of the
Jeffersonians, who now took the offensive. Bache summoned the
Jeffersonians to join in the suppression of the insurrection to ‘give
the lie to the bawlers against the Democratic Societies.’[945] The
response was instantaneous. Members of these societies and enemies of
the excise rushed to the colors. The Irish Democrats of Philadelphia in
an advertisement urged the Irish to ‘stand to their arms,’ and they
formed a volunteer company.[946] The Federalists found themselves in a
brisk competition for places in the army. With the Philadelphia
aristocrats eager to follow Hamilton, and with the Democrats demanding
places, the city’s quota was soon doubled. ‘Let those who derive the
most benefit from the revenue laws be the foremost to march,’ wrote
Bache gleefully. ‘Let the stockholders, bank directors, speculators and
revenue officers arrange themselves immediately under the banner of the
Treasury, and try their prowess in arms as they have in
calculation.’[947] But the jubilant Bache was soon to sing another
tune.
VI
On the last day of September, three spirited horses stood in front of
the President’s house on Market Street. Three men emerged from the house
and mounted, Washington in the center, Danbridge, a secretary, on one
side, and on the other--Alexander Hamilton. They turned their horses
toward the camp at Carlisle. So Hamilton was going to enforce his law
with the sword. Well did the Democrats know the spirit in which he rode
to his task. Under the signature of ‘Tully,’ he had not been able to
conceal his identity in a series of articles in the summer designed to
prepare the country for forceful measures. These had bristled with
partisan invective. The Excise Law was defended and its opponents were
charged with playing ‘with passions and prejudices.’ And it was not
without passion and prejudice that he himself rode forth that September
morning.[948] It was at this time that Bache began to sing another tune.
In response to what constitutional duty was the head of the Treasury
usurping the functions of the Secretary of War? he asked. ‘Pray, where
is the Secretary of War? Is he superintending the operations of the
Treasury department?’[949] He knew at the time that Knox was on a
mission of private business in Maine, for more than two months before he
had sternly taken him to task for his absence in a crisis.[950] But
Washington was going--why Hamilton? It was whispered about that he had
intruded without an invitation, and some felt ‘that his conduct is a
first step in a deep laid scheme.’[951] Madison was convinced that
Hamilton planned to use the insurrection as a pretext for the creation
of a standing army,[952] long before the dynamic young leader rode forth
with Washington to join the army. A cry of rage went up from the
Democrats everywhere.
‘Malignant--malevolent--uncandid--spiteful--envious--pitiful--mean,’
responded Fenno--and so throughout the summer and autumn the epithets
were hurled, the war in the East more venomous than that on the western
front.
Meanwhile, Hamilton rode on, close to Washington’s ears, contemptuous
of the attacks. Never had he had less respect for democracy. ‘It is long
since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value,’ he wrote
Washington after the President had returned to Philadelphia, leaving him
in actual command.[953] ‘Without rigor everywhere,’ he wrote King at the
same time, ‘our tranquillity will be of very short duration.’[954] It
was the tone of Federalist society in Philadelphia that led Bond, the
British Consul, in a letter to Grenville, to comment that ‘the
establishment of a national force to strengthen the hands of the
executive party can alone secure the existing form of government.’[955]
As the brilliant young leader rode along the wood-lined roads, aflame
with the colors of the fall, his plans for the capitalization of the
insurrection for his party were made. The Executive should have more
power, with an army of some pretensions to enforce the laws. The
Democratic Societies that had awakened the political arrogance of the
masses should be crushed. Attacks on governmental measures should be
associated with disloyalty to the State. Perhaps on this trip Albert
Gallatin, the one financial genius among the Jeffersonians, could be
ruined--even indicted.[956] But the insurrection faded at the army’s
approach. Nowhere was opposition offered. Everywhere the soldiers met
with cordial receptions, albeit the liberty poles literally lined their
way. Only an occasional frontiersman in his cups made a weak show of
hostility by hurrahing for the Whiskey Boys.[957] The ringleaders and
many who should have been unmolested were arrested and sent to jail in
Philadelphia under military guard. They who fell to General White were
brutally treated, confined in damp cellars, tied back to back, kept in
confinement from Thursday until Sunday morning with scarcely anything to
eat or drink. Most of them were misguided youths who were redeeming an
empire, and not a few had fought in the war for independence. Most of
these were acquitted on trial. But when they reached the ferry at
Schuylkill, they were forced to decorate their hats with a paper bearing
the inscription, ‘Insurgent.’ Thus denounced, they were subjected to the
humiliation of a march down Market Street, like slaves at the chariot of
a Roman conqueror, for the amusement of fashionable ladies at the
windows.[958]
A pitiful spectacle--that march--and more significant than many
realized. The soldiers were of the first Philadelphia families in
wealth, gorgeous in their blue uniforms made of the finest broadcloth,
all mounted on magnificent bay horses so nearly uniform in size and
color that ‘any two of them would make a fine span of coach horses.’ A
proud show they made with their superb trappings, their silver-mounted
stirrups and martingales, their drawn swords glistening in the sun.
Patrician conquerors, these. And their captives, mounted on nondescript
plough and pack horses--old men who had fought for American
independence, young men, all bronzed by the weather, some pale and sick,
some sad, others flushed with fury that they should be used to make a
show for the rich Philadelphians who looked upon them with complacent
smiles. It was the East and the frontier--it was Aristocracy with drawn
sword and Democracy with the insulting paper in its hat. The
insurrection was over--a tempest in a teapot. A small army of
twenty-five hundred was left in the western country like an army of
occupation. Two men were found guilty of treason and pardoned by
Washington. The law was vindicated--now for the crushing of the
Democratic Societies.
VII
Foremost among the reasons for the virulence of the Hamiltonians toward
these societies was that they were interfering with the Federalist plans
for the political suppression of the ‘mob.’ Many ‘men of no particular
importance’ were, by combining, making themselves a force to be reckoned
with at the polls. Meeting regularly throughout the year, they were
teaching the mechanic, the clerk, the small farmer, to think in terms of
politics. Worse still, they were manifesting an uncomfortable
disposition to pry into the proceedings of their representatives in
Congress. No one saw this more clearly than Jefferson, who, in his
retirement, was observing their growing power with complete approval.
Throughout the summer of 1794, politicians were constantly driving up
the hill to Monticello. It was determined to force the fight in that
year’s elections. Candidates were brought out in most of the districts,
and wherever there was a Democratic Society, the fight was a hard one
for the Federalists. For the first time they faced an organization,
disciplined, practical, aflame with enthusiasm.
This was especially true in Massachusetts where a herculean effort was
made to defeat Fisher Ames with Dr. Jarvis in the Boston district. The
Titan of the Federalists in debate was kept on the defensive, with
charges that he had speculated in the funds and was in English pay. The
men in the streets made merry with Ames’s solemn assurance that England
was ‘amicably disposed.’ He was an ‘aristocrat’ and had ‘no faith in
republican institutions’--a close guess. His friends mobilized for his
defense. What if he had speculated?--so had Jarvis.[959] Alarmed at the
rising sentiment for Jarvis, the friends of Ames resorted to modern
methods of propaganda, with business men signing an appeal published as
an advertisement.[960] This, described by the ‘Independent Chronicle’ as
‘a new practice,’ was turned upon the Federalists. ‘How many of the poor
seamen or Captains are there among the signers who have lost their all?
Not one--are they of no account in the estimate?’[961] Election day
found at the polling-place ‘the greatest collection of people ever at a
Boston election.’ The polls opened at eleven and closed at one. The hall
was so crowded ‘it was difficult to receive the votes with any degree of
order.’ Half an hour before the polls closed, it was discovered that
many non-residents and non-taxpayers were in the room, and thereafter
these were challenged by the Jeffersonians. The Democrats afterwards
charged that Ames had been the beneficiary of ‘voters consisting of
foreigners from on board vessels at the wharf, and persons from other
towns.’[962] Ames carried Boston by a majority large enough to overcome
his notable losses outside the city. Madison wrote Jefferson that Ames
owed his victory to ‘the vote of negroes and British sailors smuggled in
under the loose mode of holding elections’ in Massachusetts. Even so, he
found a ray of sunshine in the close calls of Sedgwick and Good.[963]
In New York City the Federalists moved heaven and earth to defeat Edward
Livingston with the cry that ‘Livingston is an aristocrat, his opponent
a plebeian’; but this appeal to the masses fell flat with the exposé of
the questionable patriotism of this ‘plebeian.’ Tammany, the Democratic
Society, and Jeffersonians generally fought energetically for their
young orator, and the exhortation to ‘let Edward Livingston, the poor
man’s friend, and the uniform asserter of the Rights of Man return to
Congress,’ was not made in vain.[964] The severity of this blow to the
Federalists was acknowledged in Ames’s admission that ‘the election of
Edward Livingston almost gives me the hypo.’[965] In North Carolina a
spectacular fight was made to crush the Federalists under the leadership
of Timothy Bloodworth, directed by the cunning Willie Jones, who
continued to make history with his whittling knife and pipe, and, with
the resulting Waterloo, the Hamiltonians began to entrench themselves in
Federal jobs.[966] There the country-squire type rose on the shoulders
of the people under leaders who ‘could not have obtained entrance to
Lady Washington’s parlors, but who knew the difference between the
demands of popular institutions and special interests.’[967]
Even in Philadelphia the Jeffersonians won a sensational victory by
defeating Fitzsimons, one of Hamilton’s lieutenants, with John Swanwick,
who had led the fight in the merchants’ meeting for the Madison
Resolutions. In Charleston, William Smith narrowly escaped defeat
through the intervention, according to Madison, ‘of British merchants
... and their debtors in the country.’[968] All in all, Madison felt
that great progress had been made. It was the first real challenge the
Federalists had met, and they had not enjoyed the experience. Surveying
the field in search of the cause, they pointed accusing fingers at the
Democratic Societies.
VIII
Before passing on to the mass attack on these societies, let us pause
for a hasty review of other happenings of that eventful summer and
autumn. Madison was in a tender mood. A little before he had fallen
under the spell of a merry widow whose glance was coquettish and whose
tongue was nimble. The early autumn found him married to Dolly Todd; the
early winter, cozily ensconced in the house the Monroes had occupied
before they went to France.[969]
In the house on the hilltop, Jefferson was living a quiet life. He was
little more than fifty, his hair touched with gray, his form erect, his
step elastic, his strength undiminished. With his daughters about him,
all was gayety about the blazing hearth in winter and on the lawn in
summer. The supervision of the plantation was to his taste. There were
fences to be repaired, trees to be planted. He was interested in the
growth of potatoes. He rode about ordering the uprooting of weeds here
and bushes there. His correspondence was light. In acknowledging a book
from John Adams, he wrote that his retirement had ‘been postponed four
years too long,’ and that his present happiness left him nothing to
regret. That fall Washington had sought again to entice him back into
the Cabinet, but he had been untempted. Though happy in his retirement,
he was the old war-horse, sniffing the battle from afar.[970]
And things were happening over the land. Dr. Joseph Priestley, the
English liberal, driven from England by persecution, had been given an
uproarious greeting in New York and had replied to addresses from
Tammany and Democratic Societies with severe strictures on the
repressive measures of Pitt; and an exotic creature, who had been living
obscurely in Philadelphia as a teacher, startled the country with a
pamphlet reply in a vein of sarcasm and satire worthy of the masters of
the art. England was glorified, France crucified, Democratic Societies
excoriated, the Irish in America damned--and the Hamiltonians rejoiced.
Many were shocked. Since William Cobbett was to work under the
encouragement of Hamilton,[971] we shall become better acquainted with
him by and by.
Otherwise life was moving along in Philadelphia much the same as usual.
Society was still in the saddle. Blanchard, who was thrilling the
people with balloon ascensions, was postponing one of his ascents
‘because of the marriage of a person of distinction.’[972] The French
madness was unabated, and on July 11th a French victory was theatrically
celebrated. ‘La Carmagnole’ was danced in the streets. Public officials
marched with the populace to the French Minister’s house where orations
were heard and ‘La Marseillaise’ was sung. At Richardet’s five hundred
sat down to a noisy feast, after which they danced around a liberty
tree, set off fireworks, and burned a British flag.[973] Even Rickett’s
Circus was so fashionable that Fenno hoped he would begin his
performances an hour earlier to permit citizens to enjoy the dare-devil
feats before repairing to the House of Representatives to hear the
debates.[974] Bache, educated abroad, was a lover of the play and
interested in seeing democratic features introduced--say, an occasional
‘simple air’ interspersed with the classics for the delectation of the
‘gallery gods who pay their money like other folks.’[975] But the time
was to come when even Bache was to make sad grimaces at democratic
manners in the theater. This was when the ‘gallery gods’ hit upon a
novel mode of entertainment, of selecting some inoffensive ‘aristocrat’
in the pit and demanding that he doff his hat to the gallery. Naturally
ignored, ‘a hundred stentorian voices would call out for his
punishment.’ Thereupon the gods would pelt the unfortunate victim with
apples and pears, sticks, and even stones, and assail him ‘with
scurrillity and abuse.’ Throughout the evening the persecution would
continue. Spitting, and emptying beer-bottles upon him increased his
misery. It was bad enough, thought Bache, to spit upon the men
‘aristocrats,’ without spattering the delicate dresses of the
aristocratic ladies with beer. One night most of the orchestra was
driven out of the house. ‘It is time to stop this growing evil,’ wrote
Bache, ‘which has been on the increase ever since the opening of the
house.’[976] The Federalists were delighted at his embarrassment. Here
was the rabid editor’s ‘democracy.’ These people in the galleries were
his ‘sovereign people.’ And all this was due to the leveling influence
of the Democratic Societies. They must go!
IX
When, in his Message to Congress, Washington made his amazing attack on
the Democratic Societies, the influence of Hamilton and the Federalist
leaders, who had received not a few scars in the recent elections, was
evident. Here was a proclamation that the masses of the people in
private life had no right to organize for political purposes. That the
Hamiltonians had no interest in the mass of the people was generally
understood.[977] They were impressed with petitions from the Cincinnati,
or Chambers of Commerce, but frankly contemptuous of those signed by
mere citizens ‘of no particular importance.’ When these people organized
into Democratic Societies, things were going too far. If this continued,
the ordinary mechanic might get the impression that he counted in
governmental affairs. There was too much of this democratic virus in the
body politic.
The Jeffersonians were momentarily stunned by Washington’s denunciation,
but quickly rallied. Madison, calm, composed, courteous, but grimly
determined, sat on the House committee to frame the Reply to the
President’s Address, and he planned to ignore that feature of the
Message. He was not deceived as to its purpose or inspiration. ‘It was
obvious that a most dangerous game was playing against the Republicans,’
he wrote Jefferson. ‘The insurrection was ... deservedly odious. The
Democratic Societies were presented as in league with it. The Republican
part of Congress was to be drawn into an ostensible patronage of those
societies, and into an ostensible opposition to the President.’ The
sponsorship of a purely partisan attack by Washington pained Madison,
but it did not intimidate him. He considered it an assault on the
citadel of liberty, and it was, in truth, the forerunner of the infamous
Sedition Law.[978] In a letter to Monroe, he described the attack as the
‘greatest error in his [Washington’s] political career.’[979] That it
was ‘an attack on the essential and constitutional right of the
citizen,’ he had no doubt.[980] Jefferson characterized it as ‘one of
the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from
the faction of monocrats’--an attack ‘on the freedom of discussion, the
freedom of writing, printing and publishing.’ And what of the
Cincinnati, ‘self-constituted,’[981] whose members met behind closed
doors, maintained a system of secret correspondence, while ‘carving out
for itself hereditary distinctions?’[982]
Even so, the Jeffersonians would have taken no notice of the attack had
not the Federalists forced the issue by proposing an amendment to the
Reply commendatory of the assault on the societies. That Hamilton was
the inspiration of this move there can be no doubt. When the debate
began, we find him hurrying around to Fitzsimmons’s house with ‘proof’
of the connection between the societies and the insurrection; and,
finding the mover of the amendment absent, leaving a memorandum. The
Hamiltonian proof was that the Mingo-Creek Society was ‘sometimes called
the Democratic Society’; that some of the insurrectionists were on its
membership rolls; that one of its members had led one of the attacks and
another a second. Quite enough, he thought, to damn all the societies in
America, albeit almost all had denounced the insurrection, and many of
their members had marched under arms against the rebels.[983] This was
the reasoning of all the extreme Federalists.
Into the debate both parties dragged their heavy artillery. Madison,
Giles, and Nicholas on one side, Ames, Sedgwick, Smith, and Tracy on the
other. ‘Stand by the President!’--from the Hamiltonians. ‘Stand by the
Constitution!’--from the Jeffersonians. ‘Plunge these societies into
contempt--sink them into abhorrence and detestation,’ shouted Sedgwick,
still smarting from the pummelling they had given him.[984] ‘The people
have a right to speak and to think,’ protested Venable of Delaware. ‘The
fact that the President thinks them guilty is enough,’ thought Murray of
Maryland. ‘I refuse to surrender my opinions to the President where a
matter of fact is involved,’ retorted Nicholas. ‘No,’ thundered Giles,
‘the fiat of no person in America should ever be taken for truth.’
‘Infamous creatures!’ snorted Smith of Charleston who had felt their
blows. Nonsense, exclaimed Christie of Maryland, the members in
Baltimore ‘were not the fair weather patriots of the present day, but
the patriots of Seventy-five.’ Yes, added Carnes of Georgia, citing the
case where one of these societies ‘turned out as volunteers against the
rioters,’ and expressing the hope that the time ‘will never come when
the people of America shall not have leave to assemble and speak their
mind.’
Giles and Madison closed against the amendment in powerful
constitutional arguments on the rights of citizens to have opinions on
men and measures or to express them by voice or pen, individually or
collectively; and Ames closed for it, making much of the burning of Jay
in effigy by the society at Lexington, and picturing the people on
tip-toes on all the post-roads to learn whether Washington or the
societies had triumphed in the House.[985] Dexter foreshadowed the
Sedition Law, toward which the Federalists were feeling their way, with
the declaration that the Constitution did not give the people ‘the
precious right of vilifying their own Government and laws.’ Madison
warned of the tendency, the vote was taken, and in the end the Reply of
the House went to the President without a reference to his attack on the
clubs.
But in the press the fight went on throughout the year. ‘Are men’s
principles among the subjects of public concern which you are to
discuss?’ asked the incredulous Noah Webster of the ‘American Minerva.’
‘If so, your society bears a resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition,
destitute only of its power.’[986] One of Fenno’s scribes was moved to
hilarity at the absurdity of the defense that the societies had
uniformly denounced the insurrection. Had they not at the same time
denounced the excise law and asked for its repeal?[987] Republican
societies checks and balances? sneered the ‘Centinel.’ ‘So are lanthorn
posts and guillotines.’ The same journal neatly condensed the entire
Federalist line of attack in a satirical ‘book of the generations and
downfall of Jacobinism,’ from the hour ‘Brissot begat the Jacobin club
of Paris.’ Genêt--Democratic Societies of America--the Pittsburgh
rebellion--the armament of fifteen thousand men--an expense of two
million dollars--ran the argument.[988] Thus it was reduced to a matter
of dollars and cents.
Meanwhile, the societies, recovering from the shock of the attack, stood
to their guns, and issued statements setting forth in moderate tone
principles, then jeered, which no one would care to challenge publicly
in America to-day. The German Republican Club of Philadelphia
concentrated the defense in a few words: ‘Are we the abettors of
insurgents for supposing that Government can do wrong, and for
disapproving the excise? Then is the freedom of opinion at an end.’[989]
But the shadow of Washington fell darkly on the clubs and their power as
organizations rapidly diminished. Many who refused to antagonize
Washington openly were deeply resentful, and from that hour the popular
impression grew that he had aligned himself as a partisan of the
Federalists. From that hour, too, the high-flying Federalists began to
move with greater confidence and celerity toward the Sedition Law. The
erstwhile members of the societies fell back into the body of
citizenship, but more keenly and intelligently interested in politics
than ever before, and more than ever determined to make their influence
felt. They were not to forget what they had learned of tactics,
organization, and propaganda, and very soon the Jeffersonian Party would
be the beneficiary of the Washington assault.
If this congressional session foreshadowed the Sedition Law, it also
foreshadowed the Alien Law in a Naturalization Act reflecting the
Federalist distrust of the immigrant. The Catholics were attacked in the
debate, and Madison indignantly replied that ‘there is nothing in their
religion inconsistent with the purest republicanism.’[990] When the
Jeffersonians created a diversion by offering an amendment that no
titled foreigner could be admitted to citizenship until he had renounced
his title, the Federalists stupidly fell into the trap and were
instantly on their toes with indignant protests. Instead of accepting
the amendment as a joke, they were soon pleading that titles were not so
bad, and it did not matter if titled gentlemen voted and held office.
‘You may force a man to renounce his title,’ said Smith of Charleston,
‘but you cannot prevent his neighbor from calling both him and his wife
by the title.’ Great must have been the merriment in the taverns at the
spectacle of the Federalist leaders fighting with desperation and
indignation against the proposal to prevent Lords, Dukes, Barons, and
Viscounts from becoming American citizens without leaving their titles
outside the door. What matter if Sedgwick did explain that the
acceptance of the amendment would be a justification of the charge that
there was a monarchical party in the country?--the better psychologists
among the Jeffersonians knew that with the man in the street nothing
could have been more conclusive on that point than the unification of
the Hamiltonians in opposition to the amendment.[991] They had been
maneuvered into standing up and being counted against the renunciation
of titles--and the ‘mob’ shouted with joy.