COMEDY AND HEROICS
I
Scarcely had Adams entered upon his office when he found himself
confronted with the possibility of a war with France. Some time before,
Gouverneur Morris, the American Genêt in Paris, had been recalled, none
too soon, and James Monroe had been sent to smooth the ruffled feathers
of the French. Because he had followed his instructions too
enthusiastically and failed to understand that ‘a diplomat is a person
sent abroad to lie for his country,’ he had been recalled in disgrace,
as Jefferson had foreseen, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a Charleston
Federalist, had been sent as Minister. Not only had the French
Government refused to receive him, but he had been ordered from the soil
of France. All this seems wicked perversity on the part of France
without a hasty glance at the antecedents of the story.
Primarily nothing could have been more unfortunate than the appointment
of Morris. No more charming or clever diplomat than this bosom friend of
Hamilton has served America abroad. Born to the purple, he was an
aristocrat by nature, with a blatantly cynical and contemptuous
conception of the masses of mankind. His was the shimmer due to
generations of polishing. As a young man in the society of New York and
Philadelphia, he was enormously popular because he was handsome,
dashing, witty, eloquent, a bit _risqué_ and in consequence of his
fashionable and gilded background. In the Constitutional Convention no
one spoke with greater fluency or frequency--or with less effect. He
sought the establishment of an aristocratic state, and made no secret of
his hostility to democracy. To an even greater degree than Hamilton he
foreshadowed the extreme policies of the Federalist Party. He was, in
truth, its personification, able, brilliant, rich; socially delightful,
cynical, aristocratic, masterful, and disdainful of the frontier.[1300]
Like Hamilton, he failed in the Convention, but his was the hand that
fashioned the phrasing of the fundamental law.
There was more than a hint of the fashionable _roué_ in this handsome
fellow when he went to Paris. Women and their pursuit was ever an
engrossing game with him. Even his graduation essay was on ‘Wit and
Beauty,’ and for his Master’s Degree he wrote on ‘Love.’ He was the sort
of beau that Congreve would have cherished, elegant in dress and manner,
given to levity and light banter, eagerly sought. The loss of a leg
through an accident in 1780 did not sour him nor diminish his appeal to
women. On ‘a rough oak stick with a knob at the end,’[1301] he hobbled
on to his triumphs.
Such was the man sent to succeed Jefferson, the philosopher of
democracy, at the moment the Revolution was breaking on the
boulevards--a bitter, outspoken partisan of the old régime, a sarcastic
enemy of the Revolution, a champion of privilege less compromising than
the nobility itself. While Genêt was intriguing against the Government
in America, Morris was intriguing against the Government in France. But
his love flowers were still thrown over the garden wall of politics.
Jefferson had been shocked at his reactionary opinions in Paris. Madame
Lafayette had chided him on being an aristocrat.[1302] Quite early he
began his affair with Madame de Flahaut, the novelist, a pretty, winsome
woman who effectively used her marriage to an old man as a lure for
lovers, and his diary teems with references to the frail beauty. There
were evenings at her home, sneering at liberty and democracy; teas in
her salon; drives and dinners, when he was entranced by the ‘spirituel
and delicate repartee’ of his friend.[1303] Then walks in the Gardens of
the Tuileries and about the Champs Élysées, afternoons at Madame’s house
reading ‘La Pucelle,’ while she rode about Paris in the well-known
carriage of the American Minister,[1304] and finally, when danger came,
he took her into his house. The Minister aimed high, and even the
Duchess of Orleans was not above his amorous expectations, thinking her
beautiful enough ‘to punish the duke for his irregularities,’ and we
find him writing poems to her, and buying her a Newfoundland dog in
London.[1305] No young blade ever found Paris more seductive.
On swept the Revolution, on came the Terror, with Morris openly and
defiantly sneering at the former and its principles. The coldness of the
crowds in the streets when the Queen rode by enraged him.[1306] In the
terrible August days of 1792 he drove the reactionary Madame de Flahaut
through the Bois de Boulogne,[1307] and when the nation imprisoned the
King he was soon neck-deep in intrigues to effect his rescue.[1308]
Messages were exchanged with Louis, plans perfected, and only the King’s
courage failed. Later Louis made him the custodian of 750,000 livres to
be used in bribing those who stood in the way of his escape. America’s
Minister was paymaster of the King seeking to join the allied monarchs
in the crushing of the Revolution.[1309] Much of this was known in
Paris, and much of it known and approved by Federalist leaders in
America, Ames objecting to the publication of certain papers because
they would disclose Morris’s intolerable activities.[1310]
II
Monroe was the antithesis of Morris. Where Morris was brilliant, Monroe
was dull; where Morris was bubbling with a sense of humor, Monroe had
none at all; where Morris was a lover of dinners and dances, Monroe was
indifferent; where Morris was a Cavalier, Monroe was a Puritan in his
relations with women; where Morris was an aristocrat, Monroe was a
democrat; Morris was a monarchist at heart, Monroe, a robust republican;
Morris an enemy of the French Revolution, Monroe, a friend. But if
Monroe was not scintillating, he was sincere, and if not brilliant, he
was industrious.[1311] Soon he was as popular in Paris as Morris had
been unpopular--so popular that Jay thought it not beneath his dignity
as an American Minister to England to exchange belittling letters with
Grenville about him. He had ironed out old differences when the Jay
Treaty compromised his position.
No diplomat ever worked under more disheartening handicaps, for the
Federalists in Philadelphia hated him, and months went by without a line
of instructions or news from the State Department. Meanwhile,
Washington was being poisoned against him by Federalist politicians who
had his ear, and in the spring of 1796 Madison wrote Monroe that his
enemies had ‘been base enough to throw into circulation insinuations
that you have launched into all the depths of speculation’ and
‘purchased the magnificent estate of the late Prince of Condé.’[1312]
Pickering and Wolcott were planning his recall that spring and writing
Hamilton about it.[1313] The latter was easily persuaded.[1314] Some one
else should be sent--some one not so friendly to the French. That the
leaders of the English party were not averse to giving offense to France
is shown in the astounding suggestion that William Smith, spouter of
pro-English speeches, written by Hamilton, that had been printed and
circulated in England, should be sent.[1315] It required no blundering
by Monroe to pave the way for his recall--the politicians were sparing
him that trouble.
He had officially informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs that Jay was
not to negotiate a commercial treaty, and would sign none that was in
conflict with the Franco-American Treaty--because those were his
instructions. When, with rumors to the contrary flying over Paris, on
the completion of the treaty, he had, on the strength of a solemn and
utterly false assurance from Jay, reiterated that there was no conflict.
When the document reached Paris, the French were bitterly resentful and
Monroe was discredited and crippled. Even so, he probably prevented a
declaration of war by representing that such a course would throw
America into the arms of England--and this was charged against him by
those Federalist leaders who sought war. Then he was recalled; and at
the farewell audience an offensive speech by the French official, which
Monroe unpardonably failed to resent, gave his enemies more ammunition.
III
With the refusal to receive Pinckney, the crisis came. To the war hawks
it was a golden hour--war and no negotiations. Pickering and Wolcott
fumed over the suggestion of an extraordinary mission. Hamilton, the
sanest and most prescient of them all, realizing the importance of a
united country in case of war, proposed sending an embassy of three,
including one Jeffersonian of distinction. For almost five months a
spirited debate of the leaders continued. In January, Hamilton had
written Washington urging an extraordinary mission, including Madison,
to conciliate the French, with Pinckney, who was not distasteful to
them, and George Cabot, to moderate the Gallicism of the other two, to
supply commercial information, and to represent the friends of the
Administration.[1316] Two months later, in a similar recommendation to
McHenry, he proposed Jefferson instead of Madison, and Jay in the place
of Cabot. Then he would have a day of fasting and prayer for the opening
of Congress, an embargo, an increase in the revenue, the use of convoys,
and qualified letters of marque for merchantmen to arm and defend
themselves.[1317] The same day he wrote the same suggestion for
Pickering.[1318]
It was at this juncture that Hamilton began to run foul of the
pro-English war craze of Pickering, who questioned the plan because the
Democrats favored it. All the more reason for it, replied Hamilton.
Unhappily, there was a prevalent feeling that the Administration wanted
war and this should be counteracted.[1319] To Wolcott, he wrote in the
same strain the next day.[1320] Even the usually pliant Wolcott was in
rebellious mood and replied with an attack on Madison as a frequenter of
M. Adet’s parties, whom that Minister wished sent, and who would wreck
the negotiations, and ‘throw the disgrace of failure on the friends of
the Government.’[1321] Clearly it was time for Hamilton to assume his
imperial manner, and he did, in a sharp rebuke to his protégé against
‘passions that prevent the pliancy to circumstances which is sometimes
indispensable.’ Then ‘what risk can attend sending Madison, if combined,
as I propose, with Pinckney and Cabot,’ he added.[1322] Realizing now
the importance of bringing up his congressional reserves, he wrote to
William Smith by the same mail.[1323]
The insurgency against the plans of the Federalist chief was now in full
blast. Tracy was writing Wolcott--‘No man will be sent on this business
but a decided Federalist.’[1324] Jeremiah Smith having informed Cabot of
the dispute, the latter wrote Wolcott that he could see no possibility
of finding new messengers ‘with the expectation that they will not be
kicked.’[1325] The same day--less circumspect outside Administration
circles--he wrote Jeremiah Smith that a new embassy ‘would be
disgraceful.’[1326] Ames had been won over by Hamilton, but the day
after the extra session began, Cabot wrote Wolcott that his mind was
‘still as unsatisfied as at first.’[1327] Four days before the session
opened, Hamilton was bringing pressure to bear on Pickering, declaring
the mission ‘indispensable to silence the Jacobin criticism and promote
union among ourselves.’ But by this time he had changed the personnel of
his mission--Rufus King, rabidly pro-English, should be sent with
Pinckney and Jefferson.[1328] Meanwhile, McHenry was receiving letters
from Maryland Federalists urging war,[1329] but Hamilton’s masterful
methods had won the Cabinet, and when Adams took the opinions of the
Ministers he received replies that had been dictated, and, in the case
of McHenry, written in large part, by the Federalist chief.[1330]
All the while Adams had been receiving volunteered advice, though it
does not appear that Hamilton thought it worth while to communicate with
him direct. He had received a letter from Knox urging Jefferson because
of the compliment that would be implied in his rank. This touched Adams
where he was ticklish. ‘The circumstance of rank is too much,’ he
replied. ‘What would have been thought in Europe if the King of France
had sent Monsieur, his eldest brother, as an envoy? What of the King of
England if he had sent the Prince of Wales? Mr. Jefferson is in a sense
in the same situation. He is the first prince of the country, and the
heir apparent to the sovereign authority.’[1331] Ah, ‘Bonny Johnny,’
lucky that this letter did not fall into the hands of Bache with its
references to the ‘prince’ and the ‘heir apparent’!
However, in a discussion of the mission with Jefferson, the President
had suggested Madison. The wary Democratic chief received the suggestion
with caution, for the experience of Monroe offered little inducement to
a Democrat to subject his reputation to the mercies of the man-eating
Pickering. Certainly the suggestion received no encouragement. The
President and his most dangerous opponent had a friendly chat and parted
friends--not soon to meet in conference again. The sage of Monticello
had never been more courteous or courtly, the man from Braintree never
calmer nor more kindly, but the hour had passed for a coalition.
Jefferson was out for scalps, not olive branches.[1332]
Thus the time came when Adams had to take the bit in his mouth in the
naming of the envoys. One day Fisher Ames had a long talk with him in
urging Cabot, as a compliment to the Northern States, and the next day
the envoys were named--with Cabot out. He was eliminated because Adams
knew that Talleyrand was familiar with Cabot’s bitter hostility to
France, and the President refused thus to ‘gratify the passions of a
party.’[1333] That was ominous enough; but when he disregarded the
almost unanimous protest of the Hamiltonians and named Elbridge Gerry
along with Pinckney and Marshall, the gage of battle was thrown down.
From that hour, the high-flying Federalists knew that John Adams would
be no man’s man and no man’s parrot. Thus early, the small cloud on the
horizon widened and darkened.
The proud old patriot of Braintree had been given a shock on the opening
day of the extra session when Senator Tracy spread a lengthy letter
before him on the table in the _ex-cathedra_ manner of one disclosing
the tablets of Moses. The squat little President read it with rising
wrath. It was a letter from Hamilton, setting forth in detail ‘a whole
system of instructions for the conduct of the President, the Senate and
the House of Representatives.’ He read it through and returned it to
Tracy. ‘I really thought the man was in a delirium,’ Adams wrote
afterwards.[1334] And the cloud on the horizon grew more ominous.
IV
The opening of the session found the New England Federalists in high
glee over the prospects. The correspondence of their leaders discloses
their grim determination to have war with France; and if they had
failed in their efforts to prevent a renewal of negotiations, they could
use the extra session for the spreading of war propaganda. Upon this
task they entered with unprecedented arrogance and intolerance.
The Message of Adams was dignified and calm, reviewing the situation,
announcing the plans for a new attempt at negotiations, and urging the
adoption of defensive measures in the meantime. The first fight came in
the framing of the Reply to the Address in the House--and two young
brilliant new members forged to the front to assume the aggressive
leadership of the war party. The persuasive, polished eloquence of Ames
could not be heard, for he was nursing himself in his fine new house at
Dedham; nor, on the other side, could the lucid, convincing logic of
Madison appear, for he was in retirement in Virginia. Sedgwick had been
sent to the Senate, Fitzsimons had been defeated, Murray of Maryland was
on his way to The Hague as Minister. On the Democratic side, Gallatin,
Giles, and Nicholas of Virginia were to bear the brunt of the battle,
and the two new men were to lead the Federalists with an audacity seldom
equaled and never surpassed. These two young blades, Harrison Gray Otis
of Boston and Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, were in their
thirty-second year. The former was strikingly handsome, tall and well
proportioned, with coal-black hair, eyes blue and sparkling with
vivacity, nose thin and patrician, complexion rosy--his presence in any
assembly would have been felt had he remained silent, and he was seldom
silent. In dress fastidious, in manners affable, in repartee stinging,
in the telling of a story a master of the art: a devotee to pleasure,
dinners, dances, and women carried for him an irresistible appeal. His
eloquence was of a high order. A thorough aristocrat, he prided himself
on having no illusions as to liberty and democracy, and he made no
secret of his contempt for the masses. The rising of the French against
the ineffable cruelties of the nobility and monarchy merely meant to him
an attack of beasts upon the homes and rights of gentlemen. Speedily he
became an idol of his party, and he enjoyed the bitter conflicts of the
House as keenly as the dinners where he was the life of the party.
Robert Goodloe Harper had much in common with Otis. Like him, Harper was
a social lion and a dandy in dress. Of medium height, and with an
uncommonly full chest which accentuated his pomposity, he had a handsome
head and features, creating withal an impression of physical force and
intellectual power. In eloquence he made up in force what he lacked in
ornament. He had all of Giles’s bumptiousness without his consistency,
and no member of the House approached him in insolence. Coming upon the
scene when the conditions seemed ripe for bowling over the Democrats
with abuse and intimidation, he fitted into the picture perfectly. Thus
he became the outstanding orator against the French. True, four years
before, in Charleston, he had paid court to the Jacobins with an
assiduity that should have made him blush in later life--but did not.
Appealing for membership in an extreme Jacobin society, he had worn the
paraphernalia, spouted his harangues on the rights of man, paid his
tribute to the Revolution, become the vice-president of the
organization--and all he lacked to make him a Camille Desmoulins was a
table on the boulevards and a guillotine.[1335] Now a convert to ‘law
and order,’ he outstripped the most rabid enemies of the French. From
‘dining almost every day’ in 1793 at the table of the French Consul in
Charleston, he passed without embarrassment four years later to the
table of Liston, the British Minister.[1336] The rabid democrat had
become a rabid aristocrat, and the society of the capital took him to
its heart. In social intercourse, he was entertaining, amiable, and
pleasing.[1337] Fond of the epicurean feast, expansive in the glow of
women’s smiles, he became a social favorite, and his enemies broadly
hinted that he was a master in the gentle art of intrigue.
Brilliant, charming men, these two young orators of the war party, and
it is easy to imagine the homage of the fashionable ladies when, after
their most virulent attacks on the Democrats, they found themselves
surrounded in Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room.
Even before Congress met, the premonitions of the coming Terror were in
the air. With the impatient Giles, this was intolerable, and he soon
retired to fight elsewhere; but Gallatin determined to ignore insults,
disregard abuse, and to fight for moderate measures to keep the door
open for negotiations. He was of the rare few who can keep their heads
in the midst of riots and remain calm in a tempest. For a while he could
count on Giles for rough blows at the enemy, on Livingston for eloquence
and courage; he would have to rely upon himself for wisdom and the
strategy of statesmanship.
V
The Message received, the war party in the House set itself with zest to
the framing of a bellicose Reply calculated to compromise the chances
for a peaceful accommodation of differences. Nicholas of Virginia,
representing the Jeffersonians, proposed a substitute, couched in more
conciliatory language, promising a review of the alleged grievances of
the French--and this let loose the dogs of war. In presenting his
amendment, Nicholas deprecated the Reply as framed because extreme,
denunciatory, and provocative and not calculated to assist the embassy
the President was sending. In negotiations it would necessarily follow
that there would be an examination of the charges made against America
by the French.[1338] It irritated Smith of Charleston that the Virginian
should be ‘so wonderfully afraid of using language to irritate France,’
albeit he had protested against language that would irritate England
when Jay was sailing on his mission.[1339] Otis was weary of references
to England’s offenses against American commerce. ‘The English were
stimulated to annoy our commerce through apprehension that we were
united against them, and the French by a belief that we are divided in
their favor.’[1340]
Livingston followed with a brilliant five-hour address, pointing out the
flagrant violation of Article XVII of the treaty with France. We had
made that treaty upon the basis that free bottoms make free goods, and
in the Jay Treaty we had abandoned that ground in the interest of
England. Of what was it that the French complained? What but the
adoption of the British Order in Council which we had not resented? Even
so, she was not justified in her course. That she would recede in
negotiations he had no doubt, provided we used ‘language toward her
suitable to that liberality which befits a wise and prudent nation.’ He
had no apology to offer for his devotion to the cause of France. ‘I
could read by the light of the flames that consumed my paternal mansion,
by the joy that sparkled in every eye,’ he said, ‘how great were the
consequences of her union with America.’[1341] Giles followed, a little
more severe on the Federalist discriminations for England against
France; and Gallatin closed in a sober, dignified, dispassionate
analysis of the phrasing of the amendment to show that it was firm
without being offensive.[1342]
Then Harper, with an elaborate speech laboriously wrought in seclusion,
entered the debate. The French were intemperately denounced, the
Democrats lashed, and Monroe treated with contempt. It was a war speech,
prepared as war propaganda, the first of his war speeches to be
published and widely circulated throughout the country, and printed and
acclaimed in England. Like Smith and Ames before him, he was to have his
triumph in Downing Street. The profits of one of his war productions,
which had a ‘prodigious sale’ in England, were given to a benevolent
society in that country.[1343] The Democrats were infuriated by Harper’s
attack, and the ‘Aurora’ truly said that he had ‘unseasonably unmasked
the intentions of his party.’[1344] When, about this time, Liston, the
British Minister, was seen to tap the orator unceremoniously upon the
shoulder while seated at his desk--for Liston was then a familiar figure
upon the floor--and to whisper to him, Bache saw red. ‘If the French
Minister had acted thus familiarly with Mr. Giles or Mr. Livingston, we
should have heard something about French influence.’[1345] Pooh! sneered
Fenno in the ‘Gazette,’ Liston was merely reminding Harper of a dinner
engagement for that night. ‘Having heard it whispered,’ he added, ‘that
Mr. Harper has received an invitation to dinner from another British
Agent, the Consul General, we think ourselves bound to mention
it.’[1346] Nothing could better illustrate the confident arrogance of
the Federalist leaders at this time.
‘I am not for war,’ said Smith of Charleston. ‘I do not believe that the
gentleman wishes for peace,’ retorted Gallatin, who had written four
days before that ‘Wolcott, Pickering, William Smith, Fisher Ames, and
perhaps a few more are disposed to go to war’ and ‘to carry their party
any length they please.’[1347] Thus the debate continued until Jonathan
Dayton, the Speaker, proposed a substitute amendment that received the
support of the Democrats. Seizing upon a passage in Adams’s Message,
this commended the President’s decision to seek further negotiations and
cherished ‘the hope that a mutual spirit of conciliation and a
disposition on the part of the United States to place France on grounds
as favorable as other countries in their relations and connection with
us, will produce an accommodation compatible with the engagements,
rights, duties, and honor of the United States.’[1348] With the
Democrats joining the more moderate Federalists under Dayton, the
contest was speedily ended to the disgust of the war party. The
batteries of scurrility were turned upon the Speaker. ‘A double-faced
weather-cock,’ screamed ‘Porcupine’ the Englishman. ‘His duplicity has
been too bare-faced for decency. He is, indeed, but a shallow,
superficial fellow--a bawler to the galleries, and unfit to play the
cunning part he has undertaken.’[1349]
Then, after the heroics, the comedy. Matthew Lyon, a Vermont Democrat
and a new member, shocked the formalists with a characterization of the
practice of marching in stately procession to the President to present
the Reply as ‘a boyish piece of business.’ The time had come to end the
silliness. ‘Blood will tell,’ sneered a colleague, referring to Lyon’s
humble origin. ‘I cannot say,’ replied Lyon, ‘that I am descended from
the bastards of Oliver Cromwell, or his courtiers, or from the Puritans
who punish their horses for breaking the Sabbath, or from those who
persecuted the Quakers and burned the witches.’[1350] Some chortled,
others snorted with rage. Vulgar Irish immigrant! But their wounded
culture was soon soothed by a salvo from ‘Porcupine.’ How society must
have screamed its delight in reading that Lyon as a child ‘had been
caught in a bog, and when a whelp transported to America’; how he had
become so ‘domesticated’ that Governor Crittenden’s daughter (his wife)
‘would stroke him and play with him as a monkey’; how ‘his gestures bear
a remarkable affinity to the bear’ because of ‘his having been in the
habit of associating with that species of wild beast in the
mountains.’[1351] The majority of the House, lacking Lyon’s sense of
humor, continued for a while their pompous strut through Market Street
to read solemnly the meaningless Reply that had consumed weeks of futile
debate.
Then Congress proceeded to measures of defense, prohibiting the
exportation of arms and ammunition, providing for the strengthening of
the coast fortifications, creating a naval armament, authorizing a
detachment of militia, and adjourned. But the atmosphere had been one of
intense party bitterness which had ostracized the Democrats, from
Jefferson down, from the ‘society’ of the ‘best people.’
VI
Mounted, booted, and spurred, and swinging their sabers, the Federalists
started out to ride roughshod over their opponents. It was their
strategy to attach a stigma to Democrats, and treat them as political
outlaws and social outcasts. No one was to be spared--Jefferson least of
all. A year before he had written the confidential letter to his friend
Philip Mazzei, stating his oft-repeated views on the anti-republican
trend in Federalist circles, and saying that men who had been ‘Samsons
in the field and Solomons in the council ... had had their heads shorn
by the harlot England.’[1352] Sent to an Italian paper, it was
translated from Italian into French for a Parisian journal, as we have
seen, and thence translated again into English for political purposes in
America. The translators had unintentionally taken liberties with the
text and in the final translation it was quite different from the
original. At last, it seemed, the cautious Jefferson had delivered
himself into the hands of his enemies, for had he not attacked
Washington? At Alexandria, en route to Philadelphia, Jefferson first
learned of the renewed attack in Fenno’s paper. Reaching the capital, he
found the vials of wrath let loose upon his head. A politician of less
self-possession or finesse would have offered some explanation or
defense. None of the courtesies of warfare were to be shown him--he was
to be mobbed, his character assailed, his reputation blackened, his
personal honor besmirched, and he was to be rejected socially as unfit
to associate with the Harpers, Sedgwicks, and Wolcotts. An open letter
greeted him in Fenno’s paper on his arrival. ‘For the honor of the
American name,’ it read, ‘I would wish the letter to be a forgery,
although I must confess that your silence ... leaves but little
probability of its not having proceeded from you.’[1353] Jefferson
ignored it. ‘You are the author of the abominable letter to Mazzei,’ ran
a second open letter. ‘Your silence is complete evidence of your
guilt.’[1354] ‘Slanderer of Washington!’ ‘Assassin!’ ‘Liar!’--and
Jefferson was silent.
Knowing the curative powers of time and patience, it was not until in
August that he consulted Madison and Monroe as to his course. ‘Reply,’
urged the impulsive Monroe, ‘honest men will be encouraged by your
owning and justifying the letter.’ Madison advised against it as more
apt to give a ‘gratification and triumph’ to his foes.[1355] ‘Character
assassin!’ ‘Libeler of Washington!’ ‘Atheist!’ ‘Anarchist!’
‘Liar!’--these characterizations buzzed through the streets and in the
drawing-rooms--and Jefferson was silent.
Then an attack from a new angle. In his ‘Notes on Virginia,’ published
years before, in paying tribute to the red men and the eloquence of
Logan, an Indian chief, he had referred to a Colonel Cresap as ‘a man
infamous for the many murders he had committed on these much injured
people.’ When the mass attack on Jefferson was at its height, a long
open letter to him appeared in ‘Porcupine’s Gazette’ from the brilliant,
erratic, and usually intoxicated Luther Martin, known as ‘the Federalist
bull-dog,’ demanding Jefferson’s authority in the name of ‘two amiable
daughters who are directly descended from that man whose character your
pen ... had endeavored to stigmatize with indelible infamy.’ This had
been preceded by no personal note and was manifestly a part of the
political plot to wreck him--and he was silent.[1356] Time and again
Martin returned to the attack in long open letters, to be ignored
utterly as though he were as inconsequential as a ragpicker instead of
being the leader of the Maryland Bar.[1357] ‘The mean and cowardly
conduct of Mr. Jefferson,’ growled ‘Porcupine.’[1358]
An open season now for shooting at the Democratic leader, all the
snipers were busy with their guns. At Harvard College, on Washington’s
Birthday, there was a toast to Jefferson: ‘May he exercise his elegant
literary talents for the benefit of the world in some retreat, secure
from the troubles and danger of political life’--and the Federalist
papers gloated over it.[1359] Bache was seen entering Jefferson’s rooms,
and a Gallic conspiracy loomed before the affrighted vision of Fenno.
‘The brat may gasp,’ he promised, ‘but it will surely die in the infamy
of its parents.’[1360] Jefferson a man of the people? snorted
‘Porcupine.’ ‘So is the swindling bankrupt Charles Fox who is
continually vilifying his own government and stands ready to sell his
country to France.’[1361] Nothing angered ‘Porcupine’ more than
Jefferson’s suggestion in his ‘Notes on Virginia’ that British freedom
had crossed the Atlantic. Freedom would live in England, he growled,
when Jefferson’s ‘head will be rotting cheek by jowl with that of some
toil-killed negro slave,’ and when nothing would be remembered of
Jefferson ‘save thy cruel, unprovoked, and viperous slander of the
family of Cresap.’[1362] And Jefferson was silent.
Philadelphia was a city of but seventy-five thousand people. The papers
were generally read, or their contents were at any rate the talk of the
town. They formed the topic for ladies at their teas. Their husbands
were sulphurous in their attacks at the breakfast table. And Jefferson
became, in the fashionable circles, a moral monster unfit to drink
whiskey with a _roué_ of the morally bankrupt French nobility at the
table of the Binghams. He was ostracized. It was at this time that he
wrote Edward Rutledge that ‘men who have been intimate all their lives
cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest
they be obliged to touch their hats.’[1363] To his daughter Martha, he
wrote of his disgust with the ‘jealousies, the hatreds and the
malignant passions,’[1364] and of the ‘politics and party hatreds [that]
seem like salamanders to consider fire as their element.’[1365]
Under these conditions he dropped out of the social life of the capital.
In the evenings he consulted with his political associates; during the
day he presented a calm, unruffled complacency to his enemies in the
Senate over whom he presided with scrupulous impartiality. Driven from
society, he found consolation in the little rooms of the Philosophical
Society, among the relics of his friends Rittenhouse and Franklin.
With such abuse visited on Jefferson, it is easy to imagine the fate of
his less important friends. Sam Adams was the laughing-stock of the silk
stockings. Franklin was considered as base as Jefferson. ‘Some person
left at my house this morning a copy of Old Franklin’s works, or rather
plagiarisms,’ wrote ‘Porcupine.’ ‘I look upon everything which this
unclean old fellow had a hand in to be contaminated and
contaminating,’[1366] and the time was to come when a Federalist mob
raging through the streets of Philadelphia would throw rocks through
Bache’s windows and besmear Franklin’s statue with mud. Tom Paine,
always a fair mark, was written down in print as a libertine.
‘Porcupine’s Gazette,’ which was the favorite journal in the cultured
homes of the pure at heart, had a story that Paine had been ‘caught on
his knees at a lady’s feet by her husband,’ and had explained that he
was ‘only measuring your lady for stays,’ at which the delighted husband
‘kissed and thanked him for his politeness.’[1367] Because John
Swanwick, a popular young Philadelphia merchant, had cast his lot with
the Democrats, blocked the plans at the meeting of the merchants on the
Jay Treaty, and defeated Fitzsimons for Congress, he was venomously
assailed. When he toasted ‘The Rights of Women’ at a Democratic banquet,
‘Porcupine’ sneered that he did well ‘to turn out a volunteer,’ for ‘no
lady will ever give a bounty for his services.’[1368] That he was a
conscienceless rascal may be inferred from ‘Porcupine’s’ suggestion that
his ‘consummate wisdom and patriotism’ had been shown, when, in the
legislature, he had ‘sought to procure a law preventing imprisonment
for debt.’[1369] Fatally ill at the time, ‘Porcupine’ followed him with
indecent sneers to his grave.[1370]
Nor were even the Democratic women spared, and the Federalists’ favorite
journal sneered repeatedly at the wife of Justice M’Kean. ‘Why is Mrs.
M’Kean like a taylor? Because she trims her good man’s jacket.’[1371] ‘I
have no objections to their toasting Judge M’Kean’--at a banquet--‘but
the unmannerly brutes might have added his lady.’[1372] Even the Judge’s
famously beautiful daughter was not spared, and during her courtship by
the Spanish Minister, Don Carlos de Yrujo, the fashionable circles were
snickering behind their fans over ‘Porcupine’s’ comment that ‘what were
his motives in commencing the suit we shall leave our readers to
divine.’[1373] Giles was ‘Farmer Giles,’ who descended ‘from the lowest
grade of gentleman’--‘a gambler at heart’--devotee of the race-track,
and ‘the infamous faro table.’[1374] Monroe was infamous, and even
gentle, cultured old Dr. Logan, ’neath whose magnificent trees at
‘Stenton’ Mrs. Washington had passed delightful afternoons, became a
cross between a clown and a rascal. No Democrat was spared.
The Democrats, overwhelmed, were comparatively tame, but the publication
of Hamilton’s pamphlet on his relations with Mrs. Reynolds, necessitated
as he foolishly thought by the book of the notorious Callender, made him
an easy mark for the Democratic scandal-mongers. In July he had appeared
in Philadelphia to secure affidavits from Monroe and Muhlenberg--‘an
attestation,’ as Bache phrased it, ‘of his having cuckolded James
Reynolds.’ It was understood that ‘his man Oliver [Wolcott] had made out
an affidavit as long as your arm,’ but that others were desired ‘to
patch up the threads and fragments of his character.’ Soon, said Bache,
‘our ex-Secretary expects to be brought to bed of his pamphlet
containing love-sick epistles.’[1375] When it was printed three months
later, Bache published a letter from New York to the effect that it had
appeared in the morning ‘and at six o’clock in the evening the town
rings with it.’ But ‘the women cry out against it as if its publication
was high treason against the rights of women.’[1376]
It was impossible for the ostracism of Democrats, however, to blur the
social brilliancy of the season. Pinckney found his evenings crowded
‘with plays, public and private,’ and his dinner invitations
‘abundant.’[1377] Subscription dances, brilliant dinners every night,
elaborate entertainments, a giddy whirl. The diplomats were particularly
lavish, none so much so as Liston, the British Minister, at whose table
Otis, Harper, Sedgwick, Wolcott were frequent guests, and he was on
terms of such familiarity with the President that they sometimes
strolled together in the streets. But everywhere in the fashionable
houses the Jeffersonians were excluded, if not by lack of invitation, by
the offensive coldness of their reception. The play-houses were packed,
albeit the entertainment was sometimes so vulgar and obscene that
fathers indignantly left with their daughters.[1378] Everywhere politics
was on a rampage, and even at the dinner table of President Adams the
passions seethed. ‘By God, I would rather see this world annihilated,’
shouted Blair McClanachan, ‘than see this country united with Great
Britain.’[1379] ‘I dine next Tuesday at Court,’ wrote Gallatin to his
wife, ‘Courtland dining there the other day heard Her Majesty, as she
was asking the names of different members of Congress of Hindman, being
told of some of the aristocratic party, say, “Ah, that is one of OUR
people.” So that she is Mrs. President, not of the United States, but of
a faction.’[1380]
VII
This rabid spirit was not a little inspired by the press, which, in
turn, was encouraged by the politicians. A new Knight of Scurrility had
entered the lists, encouraged by Hamilton, armed with a pen that flowed
poison. He had previously distinguished himself by his brilliant and
abusive pamphlets attacking Priestley, the Democratic Societies, and the
Irish, and by his exhibition in his shop window of pictures of George
III and Lord North, with Franklin and Sam Adams coupled with fools or
knaves. His unlimited capacity for abuse, his insane fury against the
French Revolution, his unfathomable contempt for democracy, his devotion
to England, fitted in with the spirit of society, and William Cobbett
launched his ‘Porcupine’s Gazette’ under the most distinguished
patronage. In his first issue, in an open letter to Bache, he had
described the ‘Aurora’ as a ‘vehicle of lies and sedition.’ This was his
keynote. Soon the Federalists were reading ‘Porcupine’ as a Bible, and
the editors were making journalism a matter of blackguardism, of black
eyes and bloody noses. In blood and breeding, Cobbett was inferior to
Freneau, Bache, or Duane, but he was a more consummate master of satire
than any of them. He could string chaste words into a scorpion lash that
Swift would have envied, or stoop to an obscenity and vulgarity that
would have delighted Kit Marlowe in his cups. None but a genius could
have risen from his original low estate, with so little education. But a
little while before a corporal in the British army, and still a citizen
of England, his English biographer makes the point that the happiest
days of his life were those when he edited the Federalists’ favorite
journal because ‘he was fighting for his country.’[1381] Nothing pleased
him more than to lash and lambaste the old heroes of the American
Revolution, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and Sam Adams, and he could not
only do it with impunity, but to the applause of society. Fenno sought
to keep pace, in his weak way, and Bache tried to match him in abuse.
The fur flew. There were physical assaults and rumors of assaults. The
time was approaching when Bache would have to barricade himself with a
few armed friends in his office to protect his life and property from
the destruction of a Federalist mob; when he would be set upon by
ruffians and beaten, and when he would exchange blows with Fenno in the
street. ‘The white-livered, black-hearted thing Bache, that public pest
and bane of decency,’ wrote ‘Porcupine,’ and the ladies of Mrs.
Bingham’s circle agreed that Mr. Cobbett was tremendously clever.[1382]
It was a feverish summer, fall, and winter. Public dinners were the
fashion, bristling with fighting toasts. Through these the Jeffersonians
sought to keep up the courage of their party. Always toasts to the
French Republic, and always toasts to the Irish patriots--‘May the
Irish harp be speedily torn from the British willow and made to vibrate
to a revolutionary tune.’ References to Jay’s Treaty were followed by
the playing of ‘The Dead March.’ Franklin, Jefferson, Monroe--these were
invariably honored.[1383] The Federalists penetrated the Jeffersonian
stronghold of Philadelphia with a banquet at the Cameron Tavern,
Southwark, with warlike toasts, and with Harper as the hero,[1384] and a
few days later the ‘young men’ of this district met to pass ringing
resolutions endorsing the ‘wisdom and integrity’ of the Administration.
One courageous soul moved to strike out the word ‘wisdom,’ and the crowd
struck him out instead; whereupon a few gathered about and cheered for
Jefferson.[1385]
But the most notable banquet was in honor of Monroe in Philadelphia.
Reaching the city, the former Minister to France left the boat with Mrs.
Monroe, to be summarily ordered back by the health officers until he had
‘undergone the usual formalities of examination.’ Short shrift for
Democrats was the order of the day, and the returning Minister of his
Government to another nation returned with his wife to remain on board
until ‘examined.’ Such was the morbid madness of the Federalists of this
period that it was considered a triumph for the Administration to hold
the former Minister and his wife with the immigrants. ‘Porcupine’ roared
with glee in his best barrack-room manner.[1386] When finally released,
Monroe went into conference immediately with Jefferson, Gallatin, and
Burr, and for two hours the leaders listened to a detailed story of his
mission. Gallatin, who had refrained up to this time from expressing an
opinion on Monroe’s conduct, was convinced, from his conversation,
‘manner, and everything,’ that he was ‘possessed of integrity superior
to all attacks of malignity,’ and had conducted himself ‘with
irreproachable honor and the most dignified sense of duty.’ When the
conference was over, Gallatin, at least, felt that the ‘Administration
have acted with a degree of meanness only exceeded by their
folly.’[1387]
This became the view of the Jeffersonians generally. A dinner was given
at O’Eller’s Hotel, with General Horatio Gates in the chair. There was
Jefferson, and there, too, were Burr, Livingston, Gallatin, Tazewell,
Judge M’Kean, the Governor, and fifty members of Congress. With
enthusiasm they drank to the freedom of Ireland, and on the invitation
of Gates they lifted their glasses with cheers to ‘Charles James Fox and
the Patriots of England’--a frequently recurring Jeffersonian toast of
the times. Livingston proposed--‘Monroe, the virtuous citizen, who, to
keep the peace of the country, refuses to do justice to himself.’ Monroe
responded in a brief speech, unexceptionable in every way, but Gallatin
predicted, in a letter to his wife, that ‘Porcupine & Co. will roundly
abuse us.’[1388] And Gallatin was right, for that was ‘Porcupine’s’
business. ‘At some tavern in the city,’ ran the ‘Porcupine’ account, ‘a
most ludicrous farce called “The Welcome of Citizen Monroe” was
performed. The principal characters were the Virginia Philosopher, Mrs.
M’Kean’s husband, and Monsieur Citizen Tazewell of the ancient dominion
commonly called the Land of Debts.’[1389] Livingston was wrong, however,
in his notion that Monroe would remain silent. Urged on by the
Jeffersonians, he prepared a defense which was given a nation-wide
circulation through the exertions of his fellow partisans.[1390]
Jefferson was satisfied, the Federalists enraged. ‘A wicked
misrepresentation of the facts,’ though ‘many applaud it,’ wrote
Wolcott.[1391]
Meanwhile, the envoys were lost in the mists of the sea, and nothing had
reached the public regarding their reception. In November, the
atmosphere charged with the electricity of war, Adams returned to the
capital from his seat at Braintree, to be escorted with military pomp
into the city. The war propagandists were good psychologists sometimes.
When Governor Mifflin, Democrat, ordered out the militia to parade in
the President’s honor, ‘Porcupine’ graciously declared it ‘the first
decent act he had ever been guilty of.’[1392] On the night of his
arrival there was a dinner at O’Eller’s in honor of ‘His Serene Highness
of Braintree,’ as Bache put it, and so noisy was the demonstration that
‘some ignorant people imagined a boxing match was on the carpet.’[1393]
This was the spirit of the hour when Congress met in November--the
bitterness among the members fully as intense as among the loungers in
the streets.
VIII
And yet it was not to be without its touch of comedy. Before the crisis
came, two incidents had set the country roaring. Matthew Lyon, the
Vermont Democrat, was a constant provocation to the Federalists.
Hot-tempered, ardent, uncouth in his manners, but thoroughly honest at
heart, he had outraged the clubby spirit of the Federalists. During the
Revolution he had been shamefully cashiered for an act deserving of a
medal, but almost immediately he had been vindicated. The vindication
was thoroughly understood in Philadelphia, but it suited the purpose of
his political foes to ignore the facts for the benefit of the slander.
The House was sitting, but in a state of confusion--every one including
the Speaker talking--Lyon holding forth in conversation on the ease with
which Connecticut could be converted to Democracy through a Democratic
paper in that State. Roger Griswold, a Federalist leader, made a
slurring reference to Lyon’s ‘wooden sword.’ The latter, hearing it,
preferred to ignore the insult. Whereupon Griswold, following him and
plucking at his coat, repeated the slander. At this Lyon made an
unpardonable blunder--instead of slapping Griswold’s face, he spat in
it. Instantly the Federalists were in ferment. The ‘little beast’ was
unfit to associate with gentlemen, anyway, and should be expelled. There
was an investigation, with denunciatory speeches as indecent as the act
denounced. The purpose was clear--to get rid of Lyon’s vote. The
Jeffersonians thereupon rallied to his support. Neither condoning the
act nor asking that it go unpunished, Gallatin opposed the expulsion
resolution on the ground that Congress was not a fashionable club and
had no right to deprive a district of its representation on the basis of
manners. A two-thirds vote was necessary to expel, and this was lacking.
It was a party vote.
A few days later, Lyon was seated at his desk buried in papers,
oblivious to his surroundings, and Griswold, armed with a hickory stick,
approached from the rear and began striking him on the head. Several
blows were struck before the victim of the assault
[Illustration: THE GRISWOLD-LYON FIGHT IN THE HOUSE]
could extricate himself from his desk. Then, grasping some coal tongs,
he advanced on Griswold, who, finding his enemy also armed, gallantly
retreated, striking wildly. They clinched, rolled on the floor, and
colleagues intervened. Here was another insult to the dignity of the
House, but the Federalists were delighted with it. Since nothing could
be done to Lyon without doing as much to Griswold, the matter was
dropped. The scribes fell upon the morsel with a zest, the first
political caricature in American history resulted, the public shrugged
its shoulders and laughed, Jefferson thought the whole affair ‘dirty
business,’[1394] but Gallatin, quite as much of a gentleman as Otis,
thought that ‘nobody can blame Lyon for resenting the insult,’ since
there was ‘a notable lack of delicacy in the conversation of most
Connecticut gentlemen.’[1395] Fenno called Lyon a ‘filthy beast.’
‘Porcupine,’ who had rather urged that some one spit in the face of
Bache, gloated over Griswold’s assault,[1396] dubbed those who voted
against expulsion ‘Knights of the Wooden Sword,’[1397] and virtuously
resolved ‘to make the whole business as notorious as the courage of
Alexander or the cruelty of Nero.’[1398] Speaker Dayton, whom he had
recently denounced as a ‘double-faced weather-cock,’ having voted for
expulsion, became an ornament over whom ‘New Jersey has indeed new
reason to boast.’[1399] The real significance of the incident was that
the war party had fared forth, chesty and cocky, to intimidate the
Jeffersonians and had met a check--but they were to have another chance
at Lyon.[1400]