THE REIGN OF TERROR
I
It is not surprising that the first notable victim of the Terror was
Matthew Lyon whom we have seen insulted at various points when homeward
bound from Philadelphia. Bitter though he was, he had sound sense and
realized his danger. When the Rutland ‘Herald’ refused to publish his
address to his constituents, he launched his own paper, ‘The Scourge of
Aristocracy,’ with a defiant challenge: ‘When every aristocratic
hireling from the English Porcupine ... to the dirty hedge-hogs and
groveling animals of his race in this and neighboring States are
vomiting forth columns of lies, malicious abuse and deception, the
Scourge will be devoted to politics.’ How Pickering must have stared
through his spectacles at that defiance! But patience! If speeches and
papers offered no case, there still were letters, and one was found.
Here surely was ‘sedition.’ Had Lyon not referred to Adams’s ‘continual
grasp for power,’ to his ‘unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish
adulation, and selfish avarice’? Had he not charged that the President
had turned men out of office for party reasons, and that ‘the sacred
name of religion’ was ‘employed as a state engine to make mankind hate
and persecute one another’? Had he not printed a letter from Barlow, the
poet, referring to ‘the bullying speech of your President and the stupid
answer of your Senate’? It was enough. True, the letter had been
published before the Sedition Law was passed, but this was the Reign of
Terror. The trial before Judge Peters was a farce, and the culprit was
found guilty. ‘Matthew Lyon,’ said Peters in fixing the sentence, ‘as a
member of the Federal Legislature you must be well acquainted with the
mischiefs which flow from the unlicensed abuse of Government’--and Lyon
was sentenced to four months in jail and to pay a fine of a thousand
dollars.
Then the Terror began to work in earnest. There was a fairly respectable
jail at Rutland where the trial was held, but not for Lyon. There was
something worse at Vergennes, forty miles away, a loathsome pen in a
miserable little town of sixty houses, and thither he was ordered.
Refusing his request to return to his house for some papers, he was
ordered to mount a horse, and with two troopers with pistols, riding
behind, the forty-mile journey through the wilderness was made. At
Vergennes they pushed him into a cell, sixteen by twelve, ordinarily
used for common felons of the lowest order. In one corner was a toilet
emitting a sickening stench. A half-moon door opened on the corridor,
through which his coarse food was passed. Through a window with heavy
iron bars he got some light. There was no stove and the cold of autumn
nights came in through the window. When it became dangerously chilly,
the prisoner put on his overcoat and paced the cell. He was refused pen
and paper until the indignation of the public forced a concession. A
visitor peering through the half-moon of the door a little later would
have seen a table strewn with paper, Volney’s ‘Ruins,’ some Messages of
the President.
Meanwhile the Vermont hills were aflame with fury. The Green Mountain
Boys, the Minute Men, the soldiers who, with Lyon, had followed Ethan
Allen, were talking of tearing the jail down. Then, from the filthy,
foul-smelling hole, into which the Federalists had thrown a member of
Congress, came letters from the ‘convict,’ brave, cheerful letters,
exhorting these men to observe the law. One day, however, Lyon was
forced to plead through the iron bars of his window for the furious mob
without to seek redress legally at the polls. Thus popular resentment
increased with the growth of the prisoner’s popularity. Thousands of the
yeomanry of Vermont signed a petition for a pardon and sent it to Adams,
who refused to receive it. Aha, ‘the despicable, cringing, fawning
puppy!’ exulted Fenno.[1528] The indignation of the yeomanry of Vermont
now blazed high. The Administration was amazed, almost appalled. When
this ‘convict’ in a hideous cell was nominated for Congress, there were
not jails enough in Vermont for the talkers of ‘sedition.’ He was
elected overwhelmingly with 4576 votes to 2444 for his nearest
competitor.
Again the terrorists consulted on plans to thwart the public will. His
term was about to expire, but where would this pauper get a thousand
dollars? True, the farmers, the comrades of the Revolution, were going
into their pockets to get the money--but a thousand dollars! Still there
was a chance. The Marshal summoned Federalist lawyers to go over Lyon’s
letters and find more sedition on which he could be arrested on emerging
from the jail. His triumphant election was more than the terrorists
could bear. ‘Must our national councils be again disgraced by that vile
beast?’ asked their New York organ.[1529] Meanwhile, the problem of the
fine was being solved. The eyes of the Nation were on that dirty little
cell at Vergennes. Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, John Taylor of
Caroline, Senator Mason of Virginia--he who had given the Jay Treaty to
the ‘Aurora’--and Apollis Austen, a wealthy Vermont Democrat, were
solving the problem of the fine. On the day of Lyon’s delivery, the
Virginia Senator rode into the village, his saddle-bags bulging with a
thousand and more in gold. There he met Austen with a strong-box
containing more than a thousand in silver. Mason paid the money.
Before the jail had assembled a vast multitude. Out of the door rushed
Lyon. ‘I am on my way to Philadelphia!’--to Congress, he shouted. A roar
went up, a procession with a flag in front was formed, and the ‘convict’
was on his way triumphantly. The school children at Tinmouth paraded in
his honor, and a youthful orator greeted him with a welcome to ‘our
brave Representative who has been suffering for us under an unjust
sentence, and the tyranny of a detested understrapper of despotism.’ The
woods reverberated with shouts. Then on moved the procession. At
Bennington, another ovation, more speeches. Seated in a sleigh, his wife
beside him, Lyon was escorted by the throng. At times the procession was
twelve miles long. Through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the
ovations were repeated. He had gone home to the tune of ‘The Rogue’s
March’; he returned by the same route to the tune of ‘Yankee
Doodle.’[1530]
II
The terrorists ground their teeth and sought revenge--with nothing too
petty. The Reverend John C. Ogden dared to be a Democrat and to carry
the petition for Lyon to Philadelphia. Thenceforth he was a marked man.
He was in debt--and a debt would serve. Returning from Philadelphia, he
was arrested at Litchfield, Connecticut, and thrown into jail. ‘It is
presumed,’ sneered Major Russell of the Boston ‘Centinel,’ ‘that Lyon
when he goes from his jail to Congress will at least sneak into
Litchfield to pay a visit to his envoy and take a petition from him to
the Vice-President [Jefferson].’[1531] But jail was too good for such a
rascal. On his release a crowd of soldiers followed him out of
Litchfield, calling him ‘a damn Democrat,’ abusing, insulting,
collaring, shaking him. It was their purpose to take him back to
Litchfield and scourge him in public. Whirling him around, the gallant
soldiers started back. Meanwhile, the report had spread that the heroic
remnant of the army had set forth on a mobbing expedition, and a party
of Democrats and civilians mounted horses and rushed to the rescue. The
courage of the soldiers, so splendid in the presence of one man, oozed
out on the approach of the rescuers, and Ogden was released.[1532]
III
But Ogden was not the only victim of the terrorists, among the friends
of Lyon. Anthony Haswell, born in England, a man of education, who had
seen service in the army of Washington and had narrowly escaped death at
Monmouth, was editor of the ‘Vermont Gazette.’ A gentleman of amiability
and integrity, his popularity was great in Vermont--but he was a
Jeffersonian. One day the sleuths of the Terror, scanning the pages of
Democratic papers, found an appeal in Haswell’s ‘Gazette’ for funds to
pay the fine of Lyon. It referred to the ‘loathsome prison,’ to the
marshal as ‘a hard-hearted savage, who has, to the disgrace of
Federalism, been elevated to a station where he can satiate his
barbarity on the misery of his victims.’ It was a faithful portrait. But
in concluding, the article charged that the Administration had declared
worthy of the confidence of the Government the Tories ‘who had shared in
the desolation of our homes and the abuse of our wives and daughters.’
Thus, one night there was a hammering on the door of Haswell’s house,
and he was confronted by petty officials and notified to prepare for a
journey to Rutland in the early morning. In feeble health, and
unaccustomed to riding, he was forced to mount a horse for the
sixty-mile ride to the capital. Through a cold October rain the sick man
jolted along in misery through the day, and it was near midnight when
the town was reached. With his clothing soaked, he begged permission to
spend the night at a hotel where he could dry it. This was curtly
refused. At midnight they pushed the sick man in wet clothing into a
cell. Responsible men of Rutland begged permission to go security to the
end that the editor might spend the night in decent quarters--it was
denied. The next morning he was hurried to trial at Windsor before Judge
Paterson who, on the Bench, continued to be a New Jersey politician. The
defense introduced evidence to prove the charge of brutality against the
marshal, and asked the Court for permission to summon McHenry and
General Drake of Virginia to prove that on one occasion the
Administration had acknowledged the policy of occasionally appointing
Tories to office. The Court refused permission; and having refused,
Paterson declared in the charge that ‘no attempt had been made at
justification’ of the reference to Tories. The jury was probably packed.
The verdict was promptly rendered--guilty of sedition. And Haswell was
sent to jail for two months. On the day of the expiration of his
sentence, a great throng assembled at the prison to testify to their
regard for Haswell and their contempt for the Sedition Law and its
sponsors. When the editor appeared at the door, the band played while
the crowd sang:
‘Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy.’
It was all too evident that, despite the Sedition Law, there were
‘Yankee Doodles’ to ‘keep it up’ too numerous for the jails.
IV
The enforcement of the law in Massachusetts offered comedy, tragedy, and
farce--with at least one hero among the victims. There was something of
pathos even in the farce. An illiterate and irresponsible soldier of the
Revolution, David Brown, was wandering about the country reading and
distributing some foolish compositions of his own that were
incomprehensible in their incoherency. It was possible to detect some
dissatisfaction with the Administration, however. His was the grievance
of many others of the ragged Continentals of the ranks. He was a
Democrat. Fisher Ames, who was not a soldier, though old enough to have
been one, was outraged and alarmed over the foolish fellow’s activities,
and pretended to believe that he was one of the Jeffersonian ‘runners
sent everywhere to blow the trumpet of sedition.’ He wrote Gore, who had
grown rich buying up the paper of the private soldiers, of this
‘vagabond ragged fellow, who lurked about in Dedham telling everybody
the sins and enormities of the government.’ Ames understood that he
‘knew of my speculating connection with you;[1533] and how I had made my
immense wealth.’[1534] Finally he participated in the erection of a
liberty pole at Dedham bearing among its inscriptions the sinister
words, ‘No Stamp Tax, No Sedition.’ The authorities pounced upon him as
legitimate prey.
The next scene was laid in the courtroom in Boston. On the Bench sat the
fat, red-faced Chase, like an avenging angel who looked too often on the
wine when it was red. It was solemnly proved that Brown had writings of
his own hostile to the Administration policies; that he had paid to have
the inscription painted for the pole at Dedham; and that in the presence
of forty or fifty dangerous farmers he had been seen holding the ladder
while another ascended to nail the board on. There was no defense. Chase
glowered on the miserable illiterate, and, reminding him that he was at
the mercy of the Court, demanded the names of the miscreants who had
subscribed to his writings. Brown refused to betray the imaginary men
higher up, and Chase fined him four hundred dollars and sent him to jail
for a year and a half. Working entirely on his own initiative, the
unhappy wretch was buried in a cell and all but forgotten. The
Federalist papers recorded his conviction with gusto, albeit with sorrow
that such things could be. After sixteen months, he sent a pitiful
petition to Adams asking for a pardon, but it was refused. In February,
1801, he sent a second petition, which was ignored. After spending two
years in a cell, he was pardoned by Jefferson.[1535] This trial was a
farce.
V
Followed then the comedy. Among the desperate characters who had
assisted in the pole-raising at Dedham was Richard Fairbanks. A
thoroughly decent citizen, he was arrested and dragged tremblingly into
court. Most of the victims of the Sedition Law were unrepentant and
defiant, but Fairbanks was full of remorse. There may have been a bit of
cunning in his confession of past wickedness and his profession of
conversion. At any rate, the scene in court was not so threatening.
True, the stern-faced Chase looked down from the Bench, but there in the
room, ready to plead for mercy, was Fisher Ames. The charge was read,
confessed, and up rose Ames. Not, however, as a paid attorney did he
appear, but there was something to be said in extenuation for Fairbanks.
He realized ‘how heinous an offense it was.’ He had promised to be a
good citizen in the future. ‘His character has not been blemished in
private life,’ the orator said, ‘and I do not know that he is less a man
of integrity and benevolence than others. He is a man of rather warm and
irritable temperament, too credulous, too sudden in his impressions.’ He
had been seduced by the ‘inflammatory sophistry’ of the illiterate
Brown. ‘Besides,’ continued Ames, in his most virtuous tones, ‘men in
office have not been wanting to second Brown and to aggravate the bad
opinion of the government and the laws.... The men who had Mr.
Fairbanks’ confidence and abused it are more blameable than he. A
newspaper has also chiefly circulated there which has a pestilent
influence.’ Thus he had bad advice. ‘Although Mr. Fairbanks was
influenced like the rest and was criminal in the affair of the sedition
pole he had no concern in the contrivance. He ... has freely confessed
his fault and promised to be in future a good citizen.’ Having attacked
the Jeffersonians in Congress and out, and denounced ‘The Aurora’ or
‘Independent Chronicle,’ and implied that Fairbanks would vote and talk
right in the future, Ames sat down; and just as solemnly Chase,
commenting that ‘one object of punishment, reformation, has been
accomplished,’ fined him five dollars and sent him to jail for six
hours. Whereupon we may imagine Chase and Ames felicitating themselves
on having scared the Democratic and Jeffersonian devils out of one
sinner.
This was comedy.
VI
The tragedy in Massachusetts was reserved for a more important
person--the editor of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ Thomas Adams, who was
printing one of the most powerful Jeffersonian papers in the country. He
had published an attack on the denunciation of the Virginia Resolutions
by the Massachusetts Legislature.[1536] The Essex Junto had been seeking
a chance at the throat of the editor. His paper had been keenly searched
for some excuse for action under the Sedition Law. In the autumn of 1798
he had been arrested and the effect had been provoking. In announcing
his arrest, Adams had promised his readers a full report of the trial,
and pledged himself to ‘always support the rights of the people and the
liberty of the press, agreeable to the sacred charter of the
Constitution.’[1537] When, four days later, he reported the postponement
of his trial, he was able to ‘thank our new subscribers whose patriotism
has led them to support the freedom of the press since the late
persecution.’[1538]
The political persecution of Adams had in no wise intimidated him. Every
issue of his paper was a clarion call to the faithful. If anything, he
raised his banner a little higher. The public, looking upon his arrest
as tyrannical and outrageous, rallied around him as never before. Eleven
days after his arrest, he reported an ‘unprecedented increase in
circulation,’ and pledged himself to carry on the fight. Not without
point did he quote, ‘A free press will maintain the majesty of the
people,’ for, as he explained, ‘this was originally written by John
Adams, President of the United States, for Edes and Gill’s Boston
Gazette when British Excises, Stamp Acts, Land Taxes, and Arbitrary
Power threatened this country with poverty and destruction.’[1539]
Courageous though he was, the persecution drained the editor’s weakened
vitality, and he was confined to his bed in a country house near Boston
when the attack on the Massachusetts Legislature was published. Though
too ill to be dragged into court, he was not too ill to announce the
second phase of the persecution in the language of defiance.
Double-spacing the announcement to make it stand out like a challenge,
he said: ‘The Chronicle is destined to persecution.... It will stand or
fall with the liberties of America, and nothing shall silence its
clarion but the extinction of every principle which leads to the
achievement of our independence.’[1540] Because the editor could not be
dragged from a sick bed, Abijah Adams, the bookkeeper, was arrested on
the ground that he had sold the papers and therefore published the
‘libel.’
Chief Justice Dana presided at the trial--as intolerant, politically,
but not as stupid and coarse as Chase. The prosecution based its action
on the common law of England, which the defense declared inconsistent
with the Constitution of Massachusetts, and hostile to the spirit of the
American Government. Dana rose to the occasion, not only attacking
Adams’s lawyers from the Bench, but assailing them through the
press.[1541] The result was inevitable. A verdict of guilt was promptly
reached, and Dana made the most of his opportunity in sentencing the
criminal. The defendant’s lawyers were denounced for ‘propagating
principles’ as ‘dangerous as those of the article on which the
indictment was based.’ Since the editor would not give up the name of
the author of the offensive article, Adams would have to suffer, and he
was sentenced to jail for thirty days, ordered to pay costs, and to give
bond for good behavior for a year. So shocking was the spirit of Dana in
passing sentence that he was challenged in the ‘Chronicle’ to publish
his speech.[1542] Adams editorially denounced the application of the
common law of England as ‘inconsistent with republican principles
contemplated and avowed in our Constitution, and inapplicable to the
spirit and nature of our institutions,’[1543] and promised ‘a regular
supply of the papers.’ ‘The Editor is on a bed of languishment, and the
bookkeeper in prison, yet the cause of liberty will be supported amid
these distressing circumstances.’
The ‘convict’ was hurried off to jail, and into a damp, unhealthy cell
where his feeble constitution threatened to succumb, until an indignant
protest from without forced the jailer to transfer him to a better. The
friends who flocked to see him were forced to convey their consolations
through double-grated doors. Day by day the paper went to press, its
spirit not one whit diminished. With the editor sinking under disease
and the anticipated wreckage of his property, and the bookkeeper sick in
jail and distressed over the condition of his wife and children, the
fight was waged with undiminished vigor.[1544] One day old Samuel Adams,
his Revolutionary spirit ablaze, flaunted his respect for the editor and
his contempt for the persecutors, by stalking to the jail and expressing
his admiration through the bars.[1545] That day Adams’s prison doors
were opened and he passed out to freedom; and the next day the readers
of the ‘Chronicle’ knew that ‘Abijah Adams was discharged from his
imprisonment after partaking of an adequate portion of his “birth-right”
by a confinement of thirty days under the operation of the common law of
England.’[1546] Within three weeks, Thomas Adams, one of the bravest
champions of democracy and the freedom of the press, was dead--his end
hastened by the persecution to which he had been subjected. Like
Benjamin Franklin Bache, he sank into his grave with an indictment under
the Sedition Law hanging over him.
VII
When Bache thus escaped the vengeance of his enemies, they turned to his
successor, William Duane, who soon proved himself a more vigorous
controversialist than his predecessor. A remarkable character was Duane,
entitled to a monument for his fight for the freedom of the press. Born
in America of Irish parentage, he was taken to Ireland on the death of
his father, and there he grew to manhood. His career previous to his
return to America was colorful and courageous. For a time he had been a
reporter for the London ‘Times’ in the press gallery of the House of
Commons, before establishing a newspaper in India which he edited with
such signal ability that the East India Company found it advisable to
resort to force and fraud to destroy his property and send him out of
the country. At length in sheer disgust he returned to America, and soon
became the editor of ‘The Aurora.’[1547]
One Friday night before the Monday on which the question of the repeal
of the Alien Law was to be considered in Congress, a number of citizens,
including some foreign-born, met in Philadelphia to arrange for a
memorial to Congress. On Sunday morning, Duane and three others,
including Dr. James Reynolds, appeared during services in the churchyard
of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church with the memorial and a few placards
requesting natives of Ireland in the congregation to remain in the yard
after the services to sign the petition. Some of these placards were
placed on the church and on the gates leading into the yard. Some
belated worshipers of the Federalist persuasion tore these down, and,
entering the church, warned the priest that seditious men were in the
yard planning a riot. The four men in the yard conducted themselves with
perfect decorum. When the congregation was dismissed, Duane and his
party had the memorial spread upon a tombstone. A few approached and
signed. Almost immediately, however, the terrorists among the members of
the church closed in upon the group, centering their attacks mostly upon
Reynolds, who was knocked down and kicked. Struggling to his feet,
Reynolds drew a revolver and prepared to defend himself, at which moment
officers reached the scene and the four men were hurried off to jail on
the charge of creating a seditious riot.
Before a great crowd at the State House, the trial was held, with
Hopkinson, the author of the war song, as special prosecutor, and the
men in the dock brilliantly defended by A. J. Dallas. The testimony
showed that there had been no disturbance until the mob charged upon the
men with the memorial; that the memorial itself was unexceptionable in
every way; that Reynolds had been warned a week before of a conspiracy
to murder him and had armed himself on advice of a member of Congress;
that none of the others carried a weapon of any sort; and it was shown
by the testimony of a priest that it was then the custom in Ireland to
post notices in churchyards, and for members of the church to transact
such public business in the yards after services. Members of the
congregation testified that they had wanted to sign; the priest that
the posting of the notice was not considered disrespectful to the
church. In a brilliant speech of sarcasm and invective, Dallas riddled
the prosecution, calling attention to attempts to intimidate lawyers
from appearing for the defense, charging the prosecution with being
inspired by partisan hate, and denouncing the Alien Law. Hopkinson
replied lamely, attacking immigrants and Democrats. The jury retired,
and in thirty minutes returned with a verdict of acquittal. The State
House rang with cheers. The case, however, had not been tried in a
Federal Court.[1548]
That, however, was only the beginning of the attempt to wreck and ruin
the leading Jeffersonian editor. John Adams and Pickering had been
planning to reach him by hook or crook. The latter wrote Adams that
Duane, though born in America, had gone to Ireland before the
Revolution; that in India he ‘had been charged with some crime’; and
that he had come to America ‘to stir up sedition.’ More--he was
‘doubtless a United Irishman,’ and in case of a French invasion the
military company he had formed would join the invaders. The picture was
as Adams would have had it painted. ‘The matchless effrontery of Duane,’
he wrote, ‘merits the execution of the Alien Law. I am very willing to
try its strength on him.’ This trial was never made, but two months
later the Federal Courts began to move against him. At Norristown,
Pennsylvania, with Bushrod Washington and Richard Peters on the Bench,
an indictment was brought against him for sedition.[1549] The case was
continued until June, 1800--and Duane went full steam ahead with his
attacks on the Federalist Party. The trial was again postponed, and in
October, 1800, he was indicted again--this time for having published a
Senate Bill of a peculiarly vicious if not criminal character which its
sponsors for sufficient reasons wished kept from the public. But it was
of no avail. He would not cringe or crawl or compromise or be silenced.
The cases against him were dismissed when Jefferson became President.
Many historians have belittled him; he fought brilliantly for
fundamental constitutional rights when men high in office, who are
praised, were conspiring to strike them down.
VIII
One day the Sedition snoopers fell upon an article by Dr. Thomas Cooper,
an Englishman by birth, a scientist and physician by profession, a man
of learning and culture, and a Jeffersonian. It referred to the early
days of Adams’s Administration when ‘he was hardly in the infancy of
political mistake.’ It charged Adams with saddling the people with a
permanent navy; with having borrowed money at eight per cent; referred
to his ‘unnecessary violence of official expression which might justly
have provoked war’; to his interference with the processes of a Federal
Court in the case of Robbins. And that was all. Adams had made mistakes,
had established a permanent navy, had borrowed money at eight per cent;
and many thought at the time that he had unduly interposed in the
Robbins case. But this was sedition in 1800.
Hustled into the Federal Court at Philadelphia, Cooper found the
red-faced Chase glowering upon him from the Bench--the same Chase who
had been charged by Hamilton with speculating in flour during the
Revolution. There was no denial of the authorship of the article. The
evidence in, Chase charged the jury in his most violent partisan manner.
There are only two ways to destroy a republic, he said: one the
introduction of luxury, the other the licentiousness of the press. ‘The
latter is more slow but more sure.’ Taking up the Cooper article, he
analyzed it in the spirit of a prosecutor. Here, thundered the Judge, we
have the opinion that Adams has good intentions but doubtful capacity.
Borrowed money ‘at eight per cent in time of peace?’ What--call these
times of peace? ‘I cannot suppress my feeling at this gross attack upon
the President. Can this be true? Can you believe it? Are we now in time
of peace? Is there no war?’[1550] The jury promptly returned a verdict
of guilty. The next day Cooper appeared for sentence. Asked by Chase to
explain his financial condition as that might affect the sentence, he
replied that he was in moderate circumstances, dependent on his
practice, which would be destroyed by imprisonment. ‘Be it so,’ he
continued. ‘I have been accustomed to make sacrifices to opinion, and I
can make this. As to circumstances in extenuation, not being conscious
that I have set down aught in malice, I have nothing to extenuate.’
Chase became suspiciously unctuous and oily. If Cooper had to pay his
own fine, that would be one thing; if his party had arranged to pay the
fine, that would be another. ‘The insinuations of the Court are ill
founded,’ Cooper replied with indignation, ‘and if you, sir, from
misapprehension or misrepresentation, have been tempted to make them,
your mistake should be corrected.’ Judge Peters, who had been squirming
through these amazing partisan comments of Chase, here impatiently
intervened with the comment that the Court had nothing to do with
parties. Whereupon Cooper was fined a thousand dollars and ordered to
jail for six months.[1551]
Duane instantly announced an early publication in pamphlet form of the
trial in full. ‘Republicans may rest completely assured,’ he wrote,
‘that they will have every reason to be satisfied with the effect of
this most singular trial on the mind of the public.’[1552] The pamphlet
appeared, and, as Duane had foreseen, the public was aroused. A man of
decent character and high professional standing was languishing in a
jail in the capital of the country for having told the truth and
expressed an opinion on a constitutional question. There were rumblings
and grumblings in the streets, and some uneasiness in Administration
circles. The hint went forth that an appeal for a pardon might receive
consideration, and one was put in circulation, when out from the
‘convict’s’ cell came a letter of protest. He wanted and would have no
petition for pardon. He believed with Adams that repentance should
precede pardon[1553] and he had no feeling of repentance. ‘Nor will I be
the voluntary cat’s-paw of electioneering clemency,’ Cooper continued.
‘I know that late events have greatly changed the outward and visible
signs of the politics of the party, and good temper and moderation is
the order of the day with the Federalists now, as it has always been
with their political opponents. But all sudden conversions are
suspicious, and I hope that Republicans will be upon their guard against
the insidious or interested designs of those who may wish to profit by
the too common credulity of honest intention.’[1554]
The petition was dropped. Cooper remained happily in his cell. His
incarceration was making votes for Jefferson. When, on the expiration of
his sentence, Cooper stepped into the daylight, he found a deputation of
his friends awaiting him at the door. He was escorted to a fashionable
hotel where a public dinner had been arranged to honor him and express
contempt for the Sedition Law. Two long tables were set, with Dr. James
Logan presiding over one, Thomas Leiper over the other. That night, as
the wine flowed, the men who would not be silenced drank to Cooper--to
Jefferson--to a Democratic victory.[1555]
IX
Having distinguished himself as an American Lord Clare in the case of
Cooper, Chase proceeded southward, boasting along the way that he ‘would
teach the lawyers in Virginia the difference between liberty and
licentiousness of the press.’ He was going to try James Thomas Callender
for sedition on an indictment based on his pamphlet, ‘The Prospect
Before Us.’ This unsavory creature was hated quite as much for the
truths he told as for the lies he circulated, and there was nothing in
the section of his pamphlet on which he was indicted to shock any one
to-day. It was an attack on Adams in connection with the French war
hysteria, the navy, the army, the Robbins case. The only phrase that
startles one to-day is the reference to the hands of Adams ‘reeking with
the blood of the poor friendless Connecticut sailor.’[1556] The scenes
in the little Richmond courtroom were scandalous to excess. It was
understood that Chase had instructed the marshal ‘not to put any of
those creatures called Democrats on the jury,’ and his boasts concerning
Virginia lawyers had preceded him. The most brazen tyranny presided in
the case of Callender, and the lawlessness of the Judge was more
threatening than the licentiousness of the culprit. It was a political
inquisition, not a trial. The courtroom was thronged. The case was the
sole topic of conversation in the streets and taverns. The Democrats had
no misapprehensions of the nature of the trial, and three
extraordinarily able lawyers were there for the defense--John Hay, who
was afterwards to prosecute Burr, Nicholas, and William Wirt, already
well advanced toward that professional eminence which he so long
enjoyed. There was a dignity and courage in the aspect of these three
men that Chase could only interpret as a challenge. He had made his
boasts. He would teach these Virginia lawyers--and there was nothing
apologetic or fawning in the manner of Hay, Nicholas, or Wirt. The fact
that neither was there anything of insolence made matters worse. Feeling
himself on the defensive, Chase sought to conceal his embarrassment in
the brutality of his conduct.
The shameful story of that travesty of a trial has been often told, and
it played a part in the impeachment proceedings against Chase a little
later. He stormed, fumed, spluttered, and injected Federalist stump
speeches into the ludicrous proceedings. He refused the defense
permission to ask a prospective juror if he had formed and expressed an
opinion on the Callender pamphlet. ‘The question is improper and you
shall not ask it,’ he thundered. When John Taylor of Caroline was put on
the witness stand, Chase nervously demanded what the defense intended to
prove by the witness. He was told. ‘Put the question in writing and
submit it to me,’ he demanded. But why, asked Nicholas, when nothing of
the sort is required in questioning witnesses for the prosecution? ‘It’s
the proper procedure,’ fumed the Court. Keeping a firm rein on both his
temper and his contempt for the Court, Nicholas submitted three
questions in writing. One glance, and Chase ruled them out. The Virginia
lawyers showed their amazement. Even Chase could see it. ‘My country has
made me a Judge,’ he shouted, ‘and you must be governed now by my
opinion.’
William Wirt rose to submit an argument on the admissibility of the
evidence. He began with observations on the embarrassments of the
defense because Callender had been ‘presented, indicted, arrested, and
tried during this term and had not been able to procure testimony
essential to a proper defense.’ He even hinted at the precipitancy of
the Court.
‘You must not reflect on the Court,’ shouted Chase.
‘I am prevented from explaining to you [the jury] the causes which have
conspired to weaken our defense, and it is no doubt right that I should
be prevented, as the Court has so decided.’
Chase saw at once that he was not going to care much for this ‘young
man,’ as he contemptuously called him repeatedly. Wirt proceeded to an
attack on the constitutionality of the Sedition Law.
‘Take your seat, sir,’ stormed the livid-faced Chase. ‘Ever since I came
into Virginia I have understood that sort of thing would be urged, and I
have deliberated on it.’ Whereupon he produced a long manuscript and
prepared to read. ‘Hear my words,’ he admonished, glaring around the
courtroom. ‘I wish the world to know them--my opinion is the result of
mature reflection.’
Wirt undertook to argue the point--Chase gesticulated, stormed,
insulted--and William Wirt folded his papers, and resuming his seat
declined to continue. Hay took up the argument, to be met constantly
with barking interruptions, until he, too, in sheer disgust, folded his
papers and sat down.
‘Please to proceed,’ urged Chase, wondering perhaps if he had gone too
far with these Virginia lawyers, ‘and be assured that you will not be
interrupted by me, say what you will.’ Hay refused to continue the
farce.
Thus, throughout, the mobbing of Callender and his attorneys went on.
The result was conviction and a jail sentence.[1557]
X
Meanwhile, a serio-comedy in New York State which was working
effectively for the Democrats. In the early spring of 1800, John
Armstrong, author of the ‘Newburgh Letters,’ and until this time an
ardent Federalist, outraged by the brazen attempt to suppress free
speech and the freedom of the press, prepared a powerful and
vituperative petition for the repeal of the Sedition Law and sent it
into several counties to be circulated for signatures. In Otsego, then a
new and undeveloped part of the State, it was entrusted to Jedekiah
Peck, an eccentric character known to every man, woman, and child in the
county. Poor to poverty, he had combined the work of an itinerant
surveyor with that of a preacher, and was popular as both. Wandering
through the country surveying land by day, night found him in some
settler’s home preaching and praying, and, in the intervals between, he
talked politics. He had baptized the infant, preached the funeral
sermons for the dead, married the young, prayed for and with the old.
His sincerity was apparent, his innate kindliness manifest. Many smiled
at the diminutive old man, but most men and all children loved him.
Burr, who had a genius for using the right man in the right place, took
him up and had him sent to the Legislature as a Federalist.[1558]
Right joyously the little old man started on his rounds with the
petition. When his activity was made known to Judge William Cooper,
father of the novelist, and temperamentally as unfit for the Bench as a
large number of the Judges of the time, he boiled with rage. Instantly
he wrote the District Attorney of Peck’s heinous sedition. Immediately a
grand jury was empaneled in the city of New York. A bench warrant for
Peck’s arrest was issued. At midnight he was dragged from his bed,
placed in manacles like a dangerous criminal, and the two-hundred-mile
march to New York began. The roads were bad, progress was slow, the news
spread, and in every village and at every crossroads crowds poured forth
to look upon the pitiful spectacle and to sympathize with the victim.
Jefferson could not have planned a more effective campaign tour. The
plain people of the countryside knew Peck--and they turned away with a
sense of personal outrage. For five days the march continued--it was a
triumphant march for democracy.
Thus the uneducated, itinerant preacher and surveyor of Otsego County
made his contribution to the election of Jefferson, marching in manacles
to illustrate the Federalist conception of liberty.[1559]
Merrily the Terror sped along.
XI
The New London ‘Bee,’ under the editorship of Charles Holt, a
Jeffersonian, had greatly annoyed the Federalists of the surrounding
States, and a remedy was now at hand. Had it not attacked the French
war--and therefore tried to prevent enlistments? Here was sedition. The
editor was arrested, his own brother summoned as a witness against him.
There was more than one War of the Roses in those days. The paper on
which he was indicted was furnished by two Federalist editors, one of
whom had two brothers on the jury that brought in the indictment. The
foreman of the grand jury was an Amos Bull who had been a British
commissary in New York during the Revolution.[1560] Bushrod Washington
presided at the trial. The defense undertook to show the Sedition Law
unconstitutional and the charges of the ‘Bee’ true. The friends of Holt
‘had collected from Dan to Beersheba to hear the trial and afford aid
and comfort to their brother.’ When he was quickly convicted and
sentenced to jail for three months and to pay a fine of two hundred
dollars, a Federalist paper smugly commented upon the ‘mildness of the
punishment’ and ‘the humanity of the Judges.’[1561] Like the other
victims of the Terror, Holt took his punishment standing up, with
shoulders thrown back. A few days before his trial he wrote boldly of
the things he had refrained from saying--‘the insults and threats
offered to peaceable inhabitants and helpless women in the neighborhood,
and the alarm and disturbance excited by firing in the streets and under
the windows at all hours of the night.’[1562]
During the two years of the Terror the press was sprinkled with brief
reports on arrests, mostly of Democratic editors. One at Mount Pleasant,
New York, was arrested ‘in the name of the President for reprinting a
paragraph from the New Windsor Gazette supposed to be a libel against
the President,’ and he was forced to give bond for four thousand
dollars.[1563] By November, 1798, it was announced that twenty-one
‘printers’ had ‘fallen victims to the ... Sedition Law.’[1564] In
enumerating the arrests that month, the ‘Chronicle’ commented that no
Federalist editor was included ‘because they vilify none but Jefferson,
Livingston, and Gallatin.’[1565] Everywhere men were being intimidated
into silence. Sometimes there was a touch of comedy to the Terror. One
poor wight was dragged into court because of a comment, when a salute
was fired in honor of Adams, that it was a pity the ball did not find
lodgment ‘in the seat of his pants.’
Strangely enough, there was no serious attempt to make use of the Alien
Law. We have seen that about the time of its passage many Frenchmen
chartered a boat to escape its operations, and America thus rid herself
of the peril of Volney. General Victor Collot, an officer in the army of
Rochambeau, escaped deportation by leaving voluntarily. The only appeal
to the Alien Law was by indirection in the case of John D. Burk, editor
of the ‘Time Piece,’ a democratic paper in New York City. He had left
his native Ireland to escape the terror there under Pitt, and finally
ran foul of the law here by charging that a letter of Gerry to Adams,
which the latter had sent to Congress, had been tampered with. The
terrorists were not slow to act. When the offensive article stared at
Pickering through his spectacles, he wrote the District Attorney: ‘If
Burk is an alien no man is a fitter object for the operation of the
Alien Law. Even if Burk should prove to be an alien it may be expedient
to punish him for his libels before he is sent away.’ He had already
been arrested for sedition, however, and the prosecution was finally
dropped on condition that he would leave the country. Instead of
leaving, he went into hiding, only emerging from his obscurity with the
inauguration of Jefferson.[1566]
Many of the terrorists were infuriated by the failure to use the Alien
Law for wholesale deportations. ‘Why in God’s name is the Alien Law not
enforced?’ wrote the intolerant Tracy to McHenry.[1567] Everywhere the
Sedition Law was keeping men ‘on the run.’ E. S. Thomas, learning that
Thomas Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ had been arrested for the
publication of an article by the former, fled to South Carolina just in
time.[1568] In the capital at Philadelphia, the Jeffersonians, fearing
an attack, met in secret and made plans for defense. Moreau De Saint
Merys, a scholarly Frenchman who kept a bookstore, was given keys to two
houses where he could take refuge should his own be attacked. He was
quite incapable of anything that would have made him amenable to the
law, and President Adams had not only lounged in his bookstore
frequently, but the two had exchanged copies of their books. Hearing
that Adams had written him down among the proscribed, Moreau appealed to
Senator Langdon for the reason. ‘No reason,’ grunted Langdon, ‘beyond
the fact that you are French.’ Finally, thanks to the courtesy of
Liston, the British Minister, Moreau secured a passport and left the
land of liberty with his books, maps, and papers.[1569]
Drunk with hate and a sense of power, the terrorists were running amuck.
At a banquet at Hartford in July, 1799, they thrilled to the toast: ‘The
Alien and Sedition Laws: Like the Sword of Eden may they point
everywhere to guard our country against intrigue from without and
faction from within.’[1570] And every Democrat knew that ‘faction’ was
the Federalist name for party, and ‘party’ meant the Jeffersonians.
Armed with the sword, the Federalists no longer bandied idle words. When
George Nicholas of Kentucky challenged Robert Goodhue Harper to a debate
through the press on the Sedition Law, the latter was merely amused.
‘The old proverb says, let them laugh who win; and for the converse of
the maxim the consolation of railing ought to be allowed to those who
lose,’ jeered Harper.[1571] Why argue? The courts were busy silencing
and jailing the Jeffersonians, suppressing free speech, striking down
the liberty of the press.
With the Democrats partly intimidated in the Eastern States, the honor
of leading the fight against these laws was reserved for Virginia and
the frontier States of Kentucky and Tennessee. Here mass meetings were
held throughout the autumn of 1798. In Woodford County, Kentucky, it was
declared ‘the primary duty of every good citizen to guard as a faithful
sentinel his constitutional rights and to repel all violations of them
from whatever quarter offered.’[1572] Four hundred gathered in Goochland
County, Virginia, and, with only thirty opposed, denounced the laws and
called upon the next Assembly to protest to Congress.[1573] At
Charlottesville, at the foot of Monticello, the people of Albemarle
County, Virginia, met to adopt resolutions of denunciation, and at
Lexington, Kentucky, they added their protest.[1574]
Richmond--Knoxville--followed. These resolutions were dignified and
forceful protests, sponsored by men of the first ability in the
communities acting. But in the House of Representatives at
Philadelphia, when Jeffersonians spoke in favor of the repeal of the
obnoxious measures, their voices were drowned by loud conversation,
coughs, laughter, the scraping of the feet of the Federalists.
‘Livingston, however, attempted to speak,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘but after a
few sentences the Speaker called him to order.... It was impossible to
proceed.’[1575] From 1798 until 1801, liberty was mobbed in America with
the zealous support of the Federal Courts, to the applause of the
church--and out of these conditions came the Virginia and Kentucky
Resolutions.
XII
On the adjournment of Congress in 1798, Jefferson returned to his
Virginia home profoundly impressed with the significance of the
obnoxious laws. He had supposed that the freedom of speech and the
liberty of the press had been guaranteed by the Constitution. That the
fundamental law was outraged by these measures he had no doubt. It was
his firm conviction that they had been enacted ‘as an experiment on the
American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the
Constitution,’ and that if it succeeded ‘we shall immediately see
attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall
continue in office for life.’[1576] He was not alone in this belief.
One day in the late summer a memorable conference was held at
Monticello. There, in the center of the group, was Jefferson. There,
too, was W. C. Nicholas, one of the foremost Jeffersonians of Virginia,
and John Breckenridge of Kentucky, who had returned on a visit to his
native State. It does not appear that Madison participated in this
conference, although he was in complete accord with its purpose. There
the plan was perfected to launch a movement of protest against the Alien
and Sedition Laws through the Legislatures of the various States in
resolutions pronouncing them violative of the Constitution and void.
While Jefferson, recalling the occasion a quarter of a century later,
thought that he had been pressed to frame such resolutions, it is
unlikely that the plan did not originate in his own mind. He had an
uncanny faculty for calling forth suggestions from others to meet his
views. On one point his memory was clear--there was to be the utmost
secrecy as to the part he played. That he did prepare a draft is
thoroughly established; that the draft finally submitted to the Kentucky
Legislature, while based on the Jeffersonian draft, was the work of John
Breckenridge has been convincingly maintained.[1577]
This dashing young leader of the Kentucky Democracy had been a marked
figure from his earliest youth. More than six feet in height, spare and
muscular in build, with the strength and grace of carriage born of his
wilderness training, he looked the leader of men. His hair, a rich
chestnut tending to auburn, disclosed something of his ardent
temperament and was not unlike that of his idolized chief. His brown
eyes could be stern or tender. His address was easy and dignified, and
his manner not without that touch of gravity which creates confidence in
the follower. There was much of tenderness and everything of generosity
in his nature to explain the love which enveloped him wherever he went.
Born of Scotch-Irish stock in Virginia thirty-eight years before, his
had been an extraordinary career. Scarcely was he out of college when,
without any effort on his part, he was elected to the Virginia House of
Delegates at the age of nineteen. When the House refused him his seat
because of his age, his loyal constituents elected him again. Again
refused his seat, he was elected for the third time, and seated. During
the next five years he distinguished himself by his industry and ability
no less than by the charm of his personality. It was about this time
that the young man ascended the hill to Monticello to sit at the feet of
the god of his idolatry. Jefferson was impressed by ‘the large scope of
his mind,’ his great store of information, and ‘the moral direction’ of
his ideas.[1578] There had to be something extraordinary in the man to
whom Gallatin looked a little later as the man best qualified to
continue the work of Jefferson, Madison, and himself.[1579]
At the bar Breckenridge distinguished himself by his erudition, his
industry, and the fluency and force of his arguments, which were notably
free from the floridity then so popular in the South. Elected to
Congress when thirty-three, he had abandoned his seat to remove to
Lexington, Kentucky, where he acquired a large plantation and settled
down to the practice of his profession. Almost immediately he was deeply
engaged in politics. He was made President of the Democratic Society of
Kentucky and became one of the most engaging of the Democratic leaders
of the pioneer State. Returning to Kentucky with the Jefferson draft, he
made some changes, and on November 8th presented the Resolutions to the
Legislature. The debate was brief, and on the 10th they were adopted.
The Virginia Resolutions, written by James Madison after conferences
with Jefferson, were introduced in the Legislature of that State by the
celebrated John Taylor of Caroline. These, too, were speedily adopted
after a brilliant debate in which their sponsor and Giles crossed swords
with the eloquent George Keith Taylor.
The primary purpose of these Resolutions was to concentrate attention on
the Alien and Sedition Laws. They were to be sent to the Legislatures of
all the States where they would be thoroughly discussed. Jefferson was
too wise to have expected a favorable response from Legislatures
dominated by the Federalists. But there would be debate, agitation,
newspaper controversy--the hated laws would have the searchlight turned
full upon them. Historians have been interested in these Resolutions
because they set forth in the most impressive manner the compact theory
of the Union on which the nullificationists and secessionists were to
seize much later as justification for their course. We are interested
here in the contemporary view and the political aspect. The reader of
to-day is apt to overlook the fact that they were primarily intended as
a protest against interference with the freedom of speech and the
liberty of the press, and only ‘incidentally they gave expression to a
theory concerning the nature of the federal union.’[1580] That this was
the general contemporary interpretation is shown in the actions of the
other Legislatures. Thus Maryland, Federalist, rejected the Resolutions
as ‘highly improper’ because ‘a recommendation to repeal the Alien and
Sedition Laws would be unwise and impolitic.’[1581] Thus Delaware,
Federalist, dismissed them as a ‘very unjustifiable interference with
the general government.’ Thus New Hampshire, Federalist, declared the
obnoxious laws ‘constitutional and ... highly expedient.’ The
Federalists of Rhode Island pronounced them ‘within the powers delegated
to Congress and promotive of the welfare of the United States.’
Only in Massachusetts did the Federalists make a comprehensive and
argumentative reply to the effect that the constitutionality of measures
could only be passed upon by the Supreme Court. The Alien and Sedition
Laws were defended as in no wise interfering with the liberty of the
press. And here, strangely enough, Democrats were found to support the
Resolutions in speeches of no mean merit. In John Bacon of Berkshire the
Jeffersonians had their sole representative in the State Senate.
Formerly a minister of the Old South Church, and a speaker of some
ability, he delivered a carefully prepared speech assailing the
constitutionality of the oppressive laws, and gave it to the
press.[1582] Dr. Aaron Hill of Cambridge, a Jeffersonian in the House,
acted similarly in that body--and on both Hill and Bacon the floodgates
of falsehood and abuse were opened. In an open letter to Bacon in the
‘Centinel,’ he was charged with having been a Tory, with having
quarreled with the congregation at the Old South, with having owned, as
slaves, a married couple, and with having sold the husband into a
distant State.[1583] When Bacon proved the charges shamelessly false,
the ‘Centinel’ took no notice.[1584] Dr. Hill fared quite as badly when
students from Harvard exercised their learning by smashing the windows
and casements of his home.[1585] And it was at this juncture that Thomas
Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ was indicted and Abijah Adams was
thrown into a cell for criticizing the action of the Legislature.[1586]
Everywhere the Federalist papers made the Resolutions the occasion for a
justification of the Alien and Sedition Laws; everywhere the
Jeffersonians, usually refraining from a discussion of the theory of
the Federal Union advanced, made them the pretext for a denunciation of
the laws. And significantly enough, it was reserved for the favorite
Federalist organ of ‘Porcupine’ to preach and all but urge secession.
Replying to a correspondent who had denied the right of secession,
‘Porcupine’ said: ‘Does he imagine that the industrious and orderly
people of New England will ever suffer themselves to be governed by an
impious philosopher or a gambling profligate imposed upon them by
Virginia influence? If he does, he knows very little of New England. The
New Englanders know well that they are the rock of the Union. They know
their own value; they feel their strength, and they will have their full
share of influence in the federal government, or they will not be
governed by it. It is clear that their influence must decrease; because
... the Middle and Southern States are increasing in inhabitants five
times as fast as New England is. If Pennsylvania joins her influence to
that of New England the balance will be kept up; but the moment she
decidedly throws it into the scale with Virginia the balance is gone,
New England loses her influence in the national Government, and she
establishes a Government of her own.’[1587] This reflects the spirit of
the times when the two parties faced each other for the decisive battle
of 1800. The Alien and Sedition Laws and the Terror were issues; the
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions played scarcely any part at all.