HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE
I
Finding that persuasion had failed to shake the fidelity of the
second-class leaders, Hamilton bethought himself of coercion. The moment
he returned to New York, he wrote Charles Carroll of Carrollton
proposing to ‘oppose their fears to their prejudices,’ by having the
Middle States declare that they would not support Adams at all. Thus
they might be ‘driven to support Pinckney.’ Both New Jersey and
Connecticut, he thought, might agree to the plan, since in both places
Adams’s popularity was on the wane. In any event, it was not ‘advisable
that Maryland should be too deeply pledged to the support of Mr.
Adams.’[1776] The effect on Carroll was all that could have been
desired. Two months later, an emissary of McHenry’s, sent to interview
the venerable patriot, found that he considered Adams ‘totally unfit for
the office of President, and would support ... the election of General
Pinckney.’[1777] Throughout the summer the leaders in the inner circle
of the Hamiltonian conspirators were busy with their pens. Richard
Stockton urged on Wolcott the wisdom of making a secret fight. ‘Prudent
silence ... get in our tickets of electors ... they will be men who will
do right in the vote ... and Mr. Pinckney will be the man of their
choice.’[1778]
No one was deeper in the business than Wolcott, who, holding on to his
position, and presenting a suave, unblushing front to his chief, was
writing feverishly to the leaders of the conspiracy. While Hamilton was
receiving the homage of his New England idolaters in June, Wolcott was
writing Cabot that ‘if General Pinckney is not elected all good men will
have cause to regret the inactivity of the Federal party.’[1779] In July
he was writing McHenry that if ‘you will but do your part, we shall
probably secure Mr. Pinckney’s election,’[1780] and to Chauncey Goodrich
that good men thought Mr. ‘Adams ought not to be supported.’[1781] He
was receiving letters from Benjamin Goodhue, presumably Adams’s friend,
concerning ‘Mr. Adams’ insufferable madness and vanity,’[1782] and from
McHenry that ‘Mr. Harper is now clearly of opinion that General Pinckney
ought to be preferred.’[1783] In August he was assuring Ames that ‘Adams
ought not to be supported,’[1784] and in September ‘The Aurora’ was
charging that during that month he had declared in Washington ‘that Mr.
Adams did not deserve a vote for President.’[1785] Clasping Adams’s hand
with one of his, this consummate master of intrigue was using the other
to wig-wag messages to Hamilton from the window of the fortress.
But Hamilton found much to disconcert him. Albeit Cabot rather boasted
that in July he had not yet paid a visit of courtesy to Braintree, and
probably would not,[1786] he was writing Hamilton that to discard Adams
at that juncture would mean defeat in Massachusetts.[1787] He was
opposed, however, only to an open rupture. Noah Webster, having made a
New England tour of his own, and lingered a moment under the trees at
Braintree, went over to Adams bag and baggage.[1788] All but two of the
Federalist papers were supporting Adams with spirit. To prod him more,
the Jeffersonian press was pouncing upon Hamilton ferociously. ‘Dictator
of the aristocratical party!’ ‘Father of the funding system!’ Working
desperately for Pinckney, ‘continually flying through the continent
rousing his partisans by the presence of their chief, prescribing and
regulating every plan,’ was Hamilton, charged a Jeffersonian editor.
Author of ‘a little book’ in which he ‘endeavors to give an elegant and
pleasant history of his adulteries,’ he added.[1789] Hamilton began to
meditate a sensational stroke.
II
Meanwhile, the Jeffersonians, united, enthusiastic, thoroughly
organized, confident, were waging war along the whole line. The
mechanics who could vote, the small farmers, the liberals and Democrats,
the private soldiers of the Revolution who felt they had been tricked,
the small merchants, the Germans because of taxes and the proscription
of Muhlenberg, the Irish because the Federalists abused them and passed
the Alien Law, were almost a unit behind their chief. All the cost of
the army and navy, and the frequent outrages of soldiers with nothing to
do, brought support. In North Carolina, Gales, in ‘The Register,’ was
using the camp near Raleigh as a veritable recruiting point for
Democrats. The eight per cent loan of that day and the Excise Law of the
day before were bringing great accessions to the ranks. The growing
indebtedness of the Nation, and Wolcott’s admission that another eight
per cent loan would be necessary, was making converts. The scandals in
administration were creating havoc in Administration circles and driving
Wolcott to distraction. The scandal of Jonathan Dayton, Federalist
leader of New Jersey, broke, and the hailstones beat upon the head of
Wolcott, who was the victim of his credulity alone. While Speaker,
Dayton had made written application at the end of the session of 1798
for thirty-three thousand dollars as compensation for the House. That
amount was not needed. Wolcott’s plea that he did not know he had given
Dayton more than necessary was greeted with jeers. His assertion that he
had the right to expect the unexpended balance to be immediately
refunded only met derisive laughter. Not until the winter of 1799 was
the discovery made that Dayton had retained more than eighteen thousand
dollars since July, 1798. Wolcott, discovering this fraud, summoned
Dayton, wrote him a sharp letter, and recovered the money--but not the
interest.[1790] Meanwhile, Duane, in ‘The Aurora,’ was devoting pages to
affidavits concerning Dayton’s notorious land frauds.[1791] Defalcations
were numerous, due, according to the apologists of the Administration,
to ‘the difficulty of procuring men of standing and character ... to
execute their duties.’[1792]
Then, to darken the picture for the Federalists, stories were afloat
corroborative of the Jeffersonian charge that they favored aristocracy
and monarchy. Again Adams appeared as the champion of kingly government.
Senator John Langdon, a reputable man, personally vouched in a signed
letter to the truth of the charge that, in the presence of himself and
John Taylor of Caroline, Adams had said that ‘he expected to see the day
when Mr. Taylor and his friend, Mr. Giles, would be convinced that the
people of America would not be happy without an hereditary chief and
Senate--or at least for life.’[1793] This was greatly strengthened from
Federalist sources. ‘The observations of the President when he went
through town [New Haven] last, made more Democrats than any other thing
beside,’ wrote Timothy Phelps to Wolcott. ‘He told Dr. Dana he did not
believe the United States could exist as a nation unless the Executive
was hereditary.’[1794]
The lesser lights among the Federalists were likewise contributing to
the Jeffersonian cause. Noah Webster was being vigorously assailed in
the ‘American Mercury’ for saying that reading and observation had
convinced him that republicanism was impossible unless the poorer
classes were excluded from the vote.[1795] But the climax came with the
publication of the stupid pamphlet of John Ward Fenno, who, with his
father, had been editor of the Federalist organ for years. In ‘Desultory
Reflections on the New Political Aspect of Public Affairs,’ he clearly
reflected the views of Hamilton, to whom he referred as having been
pitched ‘down the Tarpeian rock of oblivion, not for subsequent
apostacy, but for the very deed of greatness itself.’ It was a slashing
assault on Adams for making peace with France. Glorious prospects had
been opening ‘the doors of the temple of Janus,’ but Adams had acted in
a ‘puerile’ fashion. The masses were denounced as ‘the stupid populace,
too abject in ignorance to think rightly, and too depraved to draw
honest deductions.’ The patriotic Federalists were, by Adams’s action,
‘by one sudden stroke in one short hour, beaten off their ground,
overwhelmed with confusion, and left abandoned to all the ridicule and
all the rage of their antagonists ... and nauseating nonsense, meanness,
abject servility, and the effeminacy of Sybaris now reign with a
pomposity undisturbed even by any casual exertions of genius or common
sense.’ Pickering had been dismissed because he ‘approached too near to
holding a divided empire with [Adams] in the hearts of the people.’ The
time had come to ‘repudiate the author of our evils.’
More: the form of government should be changed. ‘The continent [should
be] divided into ten, fifteen, or twenty counties, to be governed by a
Lieutenant or Prefect appointed by the Executive; certain subaltern
appointments should be in his gift. These Prefects would constitute as
proper an upper House for one branch of the Legislature as could be
devised.’ The franchise should be ‘cut off from all paupers, vagabonds,
and outlaws’--the poor, the democrats--and ‘placed in those hands to
which it belongs, the proprietors of the country.’[1796] This from the
man who had edited the Hamilton Federalist organ in Philadelphia. Copies
were carried about in the pockets of the Jeffersonians and worn out by
readings in the taverns.
On top of this, Federalist leaders, writers, and papers began to hint at
secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. It had become a habit.
There had been talk of secession among them if the State debts were not
assumed: talk again if the Jay Treaty was not ratified. Wolcott’s father
had written his son, long before, of its desirability if Jefferson
should be elected. Four years previously the ‘Hartford Courant,’ the
strongest Federalist paper in New England, began to publish letters by
‘Pelham,’ paving the way for the secession of the North. The South was
bitterly assailed. There were more interesting objects than the Union,
thought ‘Pelham.’ The time had come to secede. A year later, ‘Gustavus’
began writing in the same paper on the same theme. Jefferson was
denounced as an atheist and traitor.[1797] In 1800, ‘Burleigh’ took up
his pen to advocate secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. In
this case the author was known--it was the fanatic John Allen, who, as a
member of Congress, had charged Livingston with sedition because of his
attack in the House on the Alien Law. In his initial letter he urged all
Federalist papers to copy, and some did. The election of Jefferson would
destroy the Constitution, result in anarchy, expel Federalists from
office, wreck the financial system, and lead to Revolution, for ‘there
is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a civil war.’ This would
be bad, but ‘less, far less, than anarchy or slavery.’ Secession would
be almost certain. Where would the boundary be? At the Potomac?--the
Delaware?--the Hudson? New England might have trouble if New York and
Pennsylvania were included in the Northern Confederacy. ‘They are large,
wealthy, powerful. They have many men of intrigue and talent among them,
desperate in their fortunes, ambitious and unprincipled.’ It would be
hard to get them to join a peaceful body and keep them quiet.
These were the leading political articles in the leading Federalist
paper in the most uncompromising Federalist State through the campaign
of 1800.[1798] In the ‘American Mercury,’ ‘Rodolphus’ replied with a
stinging rebuke. ‘He tells us,’ wrote ‘Rodolphus,’ ‘that if Mr.
Jefferson is elected our towns will be pillaged, our inhabitants
rendered miserable and our soil dyed in blood; that we shall have a
Jacobin government, that the Constitution ... will fall a sacrifice, and
finally if the man of his choice is not elected, the Federal Union must
be destroyed and that the Northern States must form a separate
Government. The writer is a Federalist indeed.’[1799]
The Jeffersonians made the most of ‘Burleigh’s’ secession articles.
III
Nowhere were the Jeffersonian activities more annoying to the
Federalists than in New England where Federalism thought itself
permanently entrenched. It had reached its peak in 1798 during the war
hysteria, and the next two years were marked by a notable decline. The
activities of the defiant Democrats were intensified. Denunciations of
the ‘aristocracy’ that governed, of the political meddling of the
clergy, brought the fight personally home to the leaders. In Vermont,
where Lyon had been persecuted and his followers aroused, the stamp tax
and the extravagance in government made a deep impression on the small
farmers. It was a scandal in the best regulated households that ‘Matthew
Lyon and his cubs’ were prowling about the highways.[1800] In
Massachusetts, where Gerry had made a remarkable race for Governor in
the spring, the fight was being made in every quarter, and Ames was
wailing that ‘on the whole the rabies canina of Jacobinism has
gradually passed of late years from the cities, where it was confined to
the docks and the mob, to the country.’[1801] In New Hampshire, the
Jeffersonians had made an astonishing showing in the gubernatorial
contest in the spring, carrying a number of the towns, including Concord
and Portsmouth. There, under the leadership of John Langdon, they had
capitalized the refusal of the Federalist Legislature to grant a charter
to a bank which proposed to loan money in small sums, and place credit
within the reach of the farmers and the poor.[1802] Their defeat,
notwithstanding their heavy vote, encouraged them to persevere in their
attacks on corporations and the ‘privileged few.’
But it was in Connecticut that the Jeffersonians gave the Federalists
their greatest shock by the audacity of their attacks. There the
Democrats, though few, made up in zeal and ability for what they lacked
in numbers. In the home of Pierrepont Edwards, a Federal Judge and a
foremost citizen, they perfected their plans for the campaign. Aaron
Burr spent some time in the State assisting in the creation of a
militant organization. A Federalist complained in a letter to Wolcott
that ‘the Democrats spent all their time and talents for eight weeks
endeavoring to persuade the ignorant part of the community that the
Administration was endeavoring to establish a monarchy; and even good
Mr. Edwards told them he had held an important office under government,
but that he had found them so vile and corrupt, he was determined to
resign the office.’[1803] Nothing could have been more distressing to
the aristocratic and clerical oligarchy which had long lorded it over
the people. The ‘Courant’ piously prayed that Connecticut would not
‘exhibit the distressing spectacle of two parties rending the State with
their reproaches and whetting their swords for civic combat,’ and held
up ‘the awful condition in Pennsylvania and Virginia’ as a
warning.[1804] The ‘New York Commercial Advertiser,’ founded by a son of
Connecticut, was disheartened at the effrontery of the Democrats.
‘Jacobinism in Connecticut,’ it said, ‘has heretofore been confined to
back streets and dark recesses; but in consequence of the successes in
other States it begins to creep forth and show its hideous front in good
company.’[1805] In September the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford was
boasting through ‘Gracchus’ that ‘in many towns where there was not a
man who a few months ago avowed the cause of republicanism, the friends
of liberty and the Constitution have now a majority,’ although ‘in most
towns there was a fight.’[1806]
To Abraham Bishop, the fighting leader of the Jeffersonians, was left
the congenial task of whipping the Federalists to a frenzy. A graduate
of Yale, of which Dwight, popularly known as ‘the Pope of Federalism,’
and a man of scholarly attainments, was President, he was invited to
deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at the commencement. It was assumed
that he would speak on some literary or scientific subject, but nothing
was more remote from his intentions. Very carefully, and with malice
aforethought, he prepared a scathing arraignment of Federalist
principles and policies. At the last moment the clergy discovered the
nature of the discourse and recommended its rejection. One indignant
partisan wrote Wolcott that ‘the Society discovered the cheat before it
was delivered and destroyed its effect so far as was within their
power.’[1807] The ‘Courant’ explained that when the invitation was
extended, the members of the fraternity were ‘ignorant of his
sentiments,’ and of the fact that ‘he had been once desired by a
committee of the society to resign the presidency because of profanity.’
The moment it was found that the wicked man had written ‘a seditious and
inflammatory libel on the religion and government of the country,’ it
was decided to dispense with the oration.[1808] But the seditious and
irreligious Bishop had no notion of being robbed of an audience. The
‘Courant’ reported that ‘with an impudence and effrontery known only to
weak or wicked men,’ Bishop ‘proceeded at seven o’clock to palm off on
the public the production.’[1809] More than fifteen hundred men, women,
and children, including some members of the clergy, heard him,[1810] but
the ‘Courant,’ looking over the assemblage, solemnly declared it as ‘a
singular fact that every open reviler of religion was there and highly
gratified,’ but that the young ladies of New Haven ‘refused to grace an
audience thus collected and consisting of such characters.’[1811]
No more slashing attack was heard during the campaign. The audience was
sympathetic, jubilant. The orator in fine fettle, the subject to his
taste. He attacked the extravagance in government, sneered at the
ceremonious launching of war vessels, ridiculed the military pretensions
of Hamilton. The army had not fought, but had ‘stood their ground
bravely in their cantonments.’ The funding system had ‘ruined thousands,
but ... has also led up to an aristocracy more numerous than the
farmers-general in France, more powerful than all others because it
combined the men of wealth.’
But it was for the political preachers of Connecticut that Bishop
reserved his heaviest fire. ‘How much, think you, has religion been
benefited by sermons intended to show that Satan and Cain were
Jacobins?’ Then a contemptuous fling at ‘Pope’ Dwight--‘Would Paul of
Tarsus have preached to an anxious, listening audience on the propriety
of sending envoys?’ After all, ‘the Captain of Salvation is not so weak
as to require an army and navy and a majority in Congress to support His
cause.’ Then, falling into satire: ‘Let no one imagine that I would
represent the clergy as acting out of their sphere ... for is it not
said unto them, “Go ye into all the world and preach politics to every
creature. When men oppose ye, call them enemies of God and trample them
under your feet.” ... When the people are assembled, say to them that
the Lord reigneth on the earth in the midst of men of power and wealth;
that he delighteth in the proud, even in those who are lofty; that he
will exalt the vain, and lay in the dust they who are humble in his
sight; that the great are gods; but that the little men are like the
chaff which he driveth before the wind; that in the day of his power he
will shine mightily on those who are in power, and that he will make the
people under them like the hay and the stubble and the sweepings of the
threshing floor.’
Immediately the speech was published in pamphlet form and sent broadcast
over the country. Editions were printed in numerous towns and
States.[1812] Within a week an answer had been published in a pamphlet,
‘A Rod for a Fool’s Back,’[1813] but it failed to affect the popularity
of Bishop’s ‘Oration on the Extent and Power of Political Delusions,’
and two months later, when he was at Lancaster during a session of the
Legislature, he repeated the speech on invitation of Governor
M’Kean.[1814] It was a palpable hit.
IV
And it was a hit, primarily because it was an assault on the part the
clergy was playing in the campaign. All over New England, and in New
York and Philadelphia, ministers were preaching politics with an
intemperance of denunciation and a recklessness of truth that seems
incredible to-day. The game of the politicians to picture Jefferson as
an atheist, a scoffer at religion who despised the Church and laughed at
the Bible, was entrusted to the Ministerial Corps, which did the best it
could. It was a line of slander that had followed Jefferson from the
moment he forced religious liberty and toleration into the laws of
Virginia. The only campaign canard of which Jefferson took cognizance
was set afloat by the Reverend Cotton Smith, who proclaimed that the man
of Monticello had accumulated his property by robbing a widow and
fatherless children of their estate while acting as their executor. ‘If
Mr. Smith thinks that the precepts of the Gospel are intended for those
who preach them as well as for others,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘he will some
day feel the duties of repentance and acknowledgment in such forms as to
correct the wrong he has done. All this is left to his own
conscience.’[1815] But if Jefferson was content to leave to their
consciences clergymen bearing false witness, his followers were not.
When the Reverend Dr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia gravely warned his
congregation against voting for an atheist, Duane made a biting reply.
‘He is the man who opposed reading the Declaration of Independence on
4th of July last,’ he wrote. ‘Need we wonder at his hatred of Mr.
Jefferson?’[1816] When the clergyman, stung by the attack, made a weak
reply, Duane asked: ‘During the prevalence of yellow fever ... in 1798
on a day in the house of Mr. Richard Potter in Germantown did you not
provoke an argument in which you supported monarchical doctrines and
assert that the country would never be happy until it had a king?’[1817]
To another minister, fortunately ‘the late Rev. Dr. J. B. Smith of
Virginia,’ was ascribed one of the most amazing stories of the campaign,
that Jefferson on passing a dilapidated church had sneeringly said that
‘it was good enough for Him Who was born in a manger.’[1818]
When the Reverend John M. Mason published a political pamphlet under the
cover of religion,[1819] accusing Jefferson of being a Deist, and the
Reverend Dr. Lynn of New York, actively electioneering for Pinckney
against both Adams and Jefferson at the instance of Hamilton, printed
another,[1820] a Democratic pamphlet appeared declaring that ‘Jefferson
is as good a Christian as Adams,’ and charging that ‘Pope’ Dwight, ten
years before, had published a poem, ‘The Triumph of Infidelity,’ in
which he named Pinckney as a Deist. In this pamphlet[1821] Dr. Lynn was
handled as roughly as the Philadelphia pulpit politician. Had he not
called on a Democrat while electioneering for Pinckney and been forced
to admit that Jefferson was a good man? Had he not, when pressed, been
forced to concede that Pinckney was a Deist? Had not the wife of the
Democrat indignantly taken the clergyman to task for his ‘partiality to
a self-confessed adulterer?’
If the Jeffersonians were attacking the political preachers with
meat-axe and artillery, they were not without provocation enough. In
Connecticut, these ministers were the backbone of the Federalist Party
machine, with Dwight as their leader, than whom none more offensively
intolerant ever breathed curses on a foe. In Massachusetts, when the
Reverend Ebenezer Bradford espoused the cause of democracy, he was
ferociously abused by his fellow ministers and the Federalist papers,
ostracized in the name of Christ by his fellow clergymen, and refused a
pulpit in Essex County. It was not a time when ministers in some
sections were making much of the action of Christ in seeking his
disciples among workers and fishermen.[1822] The feeling of many of
these was expressed by the Reverend David Osgood when, speaking of the
masses, he said that ‘they may know enough for the places and stations
to which Providence has assigned them; may be good and worthy members
of the community, provided they would be content to move in their own
sphere and not meddle with things too high for them.’[1823]
In one pamphlet the case against Jefferson’s religion was set forth in
detail--he questioned the story of the Deluge; did not believe the Bible
in its entirety was inspired; and was opposed to teaching the Bible in
the public schools. ‘No one, I believe,’ wrote this distressed
Christian, ‘has openly and publicly asserted that Jefferson is a
Christian.’[1824] Soon a pamphlet in defense was in circulation. ‘Read,
ye fanatics, bigots, hypocrites ... and you base calumniators whose
efforts to traduce are the involuntary tribute of envy to a character
more pure than your own--read and learn and practice the religion of
Jefferson as displayed in the sublime truth and inspired language of his
ever memorable “act establishing religious liberty.” Read his views on
slavery in his “Notes on Virginia”--“I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”’[1825]
The ‘Chronicle’ was amused to observe ‘the characters who are professed
champions of religious zeal.’ Who were they? ‘What shall we say of a
faction that has at its head a confessed and professed adulterer?... In
connection with this Saint we have a group of zealots, consisting of
gamblers, bankrupts, Saturday evening carousers, or, to comprise the
whole in one general appellation, a British Essex Junto intermixed with
a few clerical hypocrites who have formed an alliance, offensive and
defensive, to calumniate Mr. Jefferson.’[1826] The ‘American Mercury’
dwelt on contributions made by Jefferson to the Church and to needy
clergymen. ‘Thus while Mr. Jefferson is ... practicing the blessed
religion of Jesus Christ by acts of charity and benevolence ... these
political parsons are abusing that holy religion and profaning the
temple of God by fulminating lies and slander against Mr.
Jefferson.’[1827]
Thus through the summer and autumn and into the winter the political
preachers continued their assaults, and the Jeffersonians replied
without undue reverence for the cloth. Everywhere the Federalist leaders
were assuming a pious pose, even Sedgwick and Ames and Otis were
becoming religious, and the Democrats greeted their pose with ribald
mirth. Into an amusing imaginary diary of Jonathan Dayton of the soiled
reputation, Duane was writing the notation: ‘Went to church--must go to
church--Federalists must be pious--‘twill do a great deal of
good.’[1828] When an appeal was made to Catholics to vote against
Jefferson, Duane dryly commented: ‘We presume the ... reason to be that
it was owing to Mr. Jefferson that the Catholic priest was saved from
being hanged for going into ... Virginia ... and that to his toleration
law it was owing that the Catholic can now build churches and adore God
without incurring penalties of fine and imprisonment.’[1829]
Thus religion in virulent form fought with politics in the campaign of
1800.
V
But this sort of fighting and sniping was not working to the
disadvantage of Adams--and that was of some concern to Hamilton, who had
concluded that he would be happier under the presidency of Jefferson
than under a continuation of Adams. Scurrility there was in abundance,
but Adams suffered little. Occasional references were made to his
vanity, his love of pomp, his partiality to titles, and to his writings
as evidence of monarchical tendencies, but these were mild enough. With
the political preachers and editors abusing Jefferson, and with the
Democrats attacking Hamilton, it was time for some one to assault
Adams--and Hamilton delegated himself to the task. During the summer,
Adams, smarting under the discovery of the treachery of his party
associates, had been freely talking in unguarded conversation of an
‘English party,’ and naming Hamilton and his friends. This furnished the
pretext.
On the first of August, Hamilton wrote a note to Adams asking a
verification or denial of the report that he had said there was a
British faction with Hamilton at the head. This was sent to Cabot for
transmission to Braintree. The cunning leader of the Essex Junto, in
acknowledging the receipt of the letter, suggested that perhaps the
election of Jefferson would be necessary for the reunification of the
Federalist Party. Were Pinckney chosen, he would encounter the venomous
hostility of the Adamsites. How would it do for the Federalists to throw
their support to Burr? Many Federalists favored such action.[1830] Adams
ignored the letter from Hamilton, as the latter unquestionably supposed
he would. Two days after its transmission and before it could have
possibly reached the President, Hamilton wrote Wolcott of his
‘impatience’ at the latter’s delay in sending the ‘statement of facts
which you promised me.’ The trusted member of Adams’s official family
had promised his chief’s most bitter foe the ammunition for attack. It
was plain, said Hamilton, working on Wolcott’s fears, that unless
something were done the Adams faction ‘will completely run us down in
public opinion.’ Had not Wolcott’s name been bandied about with
Hamilton’s as a member of the British party?[1831]
Later in the month he wrote McHenry, then nursing his wrath in
retirement, of his plan to publish a pamphlet defending himself and
friends and attacking Adams. He was prepared to put his name to it, but
this he could not do without ‘its being conclusively inferred that as to
every material fact I must have derived my information from members of
the Administration.’ To both McHenry and Wolcott he sent a copy of the
letter.[1832] At the moment he wrote, he was having difficulty with some
of his advisers. Cabot and Ames had discussed the wisdom of Hamilton’s
putting his name to the pamphlet, and both agreed it would be
indiscreet. It should be remembered that Adams might be reëlected.
Hamilton’s sponsorship of the pamphlet would give it force with men who
needed no conversion, while with his enemies ‘it would be converted into
new proof that you are a dangerous man.’[1833] A month later, Hamilton
was still in doubt about affixing his name, but evidently anxious for
encouragement to do so. Thus he wrote Wolcott that ‘anonymous
publications cannot affect anything,’ but that ‘some of the most
delicate of the facts stated I hold from the three ministers, yourself
particularly, and I do not count myself at liberty to take the step
without your permission.’[1834] On October 1st, Hamilton sent a second
letter to Adams, through Cabot, who, ten days later, wrote that it had
been transmitted,[1835] but no reply was made. Nothing could have suited
Hamilton better. Thus the pamphlet was written and sent to the editor of
the New York ‘Gazette’ to print. It bore the name of Hamilton. It was to
be guarded from general publicity and sent only to leading Federalists
over the country.
And right here the uncanny cleverness of Burr again intervened. The
suave little black-eyed master of espionage had known Hamilton’s slate
for the Assembly within an hour after the caucus had adjourned; when
Hamilton’s caucus decided to ask Jay to call an extra session of the
Legislature to defeat the effect of the election, the fact was heralded
in the papers the next day; and now Burr was to see a copy of the
printed pamphlet before the eye of its author had seen it. Just how he
got possession of the copy will never be known. His intimate political
associate and authorized biographer merely says that he learned it was
in the press and ‘arrangements were accordingly made for a copy as soon
as the printing of it was complete.’[1836] Parton has a more colorful
story. Burr was an early riser, and, walking in the street near
Hamilton’s house one morning, he met a boy carrying a covered basket. He
always spoke to children.
‘What have you there, my lad?’
‘Pamphlets for General Hamilton.’
Whereupon he requested and received a copy, immediately summoned Davis
and two others to his house, where extracts were copied and hastened
with the utmost speed to ‘The Aurora’ and the New London ‘Bee.’[1837]
There is still another version of the general circulation that neither
biographer mentions--that of the editor of the New York ‘Gazette,’ who
was forced to an explanation in self-defense. The general circulation
was ‘contrary to the expectation ... that it would be restricted to
particular quarters. The editor of the Gazette thinks it his duty to
exonerate Mr. Hamilton by making it known that the thing has happened in
direct opposition to his views. He had given the most precise
instructions that the circulation might be deferred; but the Editor,
having been informed that by a breach of confidence or indiscretion
somewhere it was likely that extracts might appear in some newspapers,
communicated the intelligence to Mr. Hamilton, who ... being about to
depart for Albany left a letter with a friend directing him that if such
a thing should happen, then to permit the letter to be thrown into
circulation.’[1838] This explanation did not appear, however, until
Hamilton found that the tremendous sensation the pamphlet created was
not reacting entirely in his favor. And for a sensation there was cause
enough.
VI
An amazing production this, for the middle of the campaign. Adams did
‘not possess the talents adapted to the administration of government.’
There were ‘great and intrinsic defects in his character which unfit
him.’ Even during the Revolution, Hamilton had entertained doubts as to
‘the solidity of his understanding.’ When Adams had conducted Madame de
Vergennes, wife of the Foreign Minister in Paris, to dinner, and been
rewarded with her comment that he was ‘the Washington of negotiation,’
he had interpreted it as an illustration of ‘a pretty knack of paying
compliments,’ when he might have said that it disclosed ‘a dexterous
knack of disguising sarcasms.’ His vanity was so great that it was ‘more
than a harmless foible.’ True, Hamilton had sought to elect Thomas
Pinckney in 1796, but this was due to the ‘disgusting egotism, the
distempered jealousy, and the ungovernable indiscretion of Mr. Adams’s
temper, joined to some doubts of the correctness of his maxims of
administration.’ Adams’s letter to Tench Coxe, charging the Pinckneys
with being English toadies, was silly; his conduct in preventing the
French war was infamous. This latter had come out of the vice of not
consulting his constitutional advisers--meaning Wolcott, Pickering, and
McHenry. He had thus fallen into the hands of ‘miserable intriguers’
with whom ‘his self-love was more at ease.’ With gay disregard of the
truth, Hamilton denied that there was any conspiracy to interfere with
Adams’s plans at Trenton.
More amazing still, Adams was denounced for the dismissal of two
traitors in his Cabinet, and this, despite the fact that another, who
remained, had furnished the writer with much of the material for the
pamphlet. There was no cause for the dismissals--none at all. It was
only Adams’s ‘paroxysms of rage, which deprived him of self-command and
produced very outrageous behavior.’ Pickering had been driven out
because he was ‘justly tenacious of his own dignity and independence.’
The Adams interview with McHenry called for both ‘pain and laughter’--an
incredible performance. Then followed more abuse because Adams had not
given Fries and others to the scaffold. Then--a pitiful touch--for not
appointing Hamilton commander-in-chief to succeed Washington. Here the
author entered into more personal grievances. Having pictured Adams as
an ingrate, a liar, and a fool unfit for high administrative office, the
author concluded with the statement that because ‘the body of
Federalists, for want of sufficient knowledge of facts, are not
convinced of the expediency of relinquishing him,’ Hamilton would ‘not
advise the withholding from him of a single vote.’[1839]
It was the most astounding political performance in American
history--and the Nation rocked with mingled imprecations and laughter.
Even Cabot was a little shocked. ‘All agree,’ he wrote Hamilton, ‘that
the execution is masterly, but I am bound to tell you that you are
accused by respectable men of egotism; and some very worthy and sensible
men say you have exhibited the same vanity in your book which you charge
as a dangerous quality and great weakness in Mr. Adams.’[1840]
Major Russell, of the ‘Centinel’ in Boston, was painfully embarrassed,
and flopped about like a fish on the burning sands. In one issue he
supported Adams, and denounced the author of an attack on Hamilton’s
action as ‘as well qualified for the task as a Billingsgate oyster is to
contemplate the principles of the Newtonian philosophy.’[1841] In
another issue he regretted Hamilton’s ‘ill-timed epistle,’ and denounced
‘an imported renegado of the name of Cooper’ who had written Hamilton a
‘saucy production’ to the effect that if he would admit the authorship
of the pamphlet he would ask for his indictment under the Sedition
Law.[1842] This is evidence enough that Russell had parted with his
sense of humor, else he would have appreciated the shot. The Hartford
‘Courant’ contented itself by merely reprinting, without comment, the
Jeffersonian New London ‘Bee’s’ excoriation of Hamilton.[1843] The New
York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ was silent, but gave space to the
advertisement of a pamphlet entitled ‘A Letter to General Hamilton,
occasioned by His Letter to President Adams--by a Federalist.’[1844]
The Jeffersonian papers made the most of the opportunity. The ‘American
Mercury’ of Hartford, announcing the arrival of the pamphlet, explained
that, ‘since General Hamilton has secured a copyright to his masterly
production,’ only extracts could be given. It was evidently written in
the interest of Pinckney, who, having been ‘educated at the University
of Oxford’ in England, ‘was naturally’ supported by the British
faction.[1845] ‘I am sorry, sir,’ wrote the author of an open letter to
Hamilton in the ‘Independent Chronicle’ of Boston, ‘that you have been
persecuted in the manner you mention, ... but does it show a man of
fortitude and independence to be continually groaning, like some feeble
old woman under her troubles?... Egotism is the mark of a weak and vain
mind. Here, General, you descend from your usual greatness to the level
with female vanity.’[1846]
Duane, of ‘The Aurora,’ fell upon it with the zest of a kitten lapping
cream: ‘John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the Pinckneys are now fairly
before the public,’ he wrote, ‘not in the partial drawings of their
political rivals, the Republicans. Their claims and pretensions to
public confidence are exhibited by themselves.’[1847] The Portsmouth
‘Ledger’ struck the same note: ‘If President Adams is what General
Hamilton and the Essex Junto represent him, and if Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney is what President Adams in his letter to Tench Coxe has
represented him, viz., a British partisan--can any one hesitate to say
that Mr. Jefferson is the most suitable of the three for
President?’[1848]
But the most telling reply appeared in a pamphlet ascribed to James
Cheetham, the New York editor.[1849] Of course Hamilton was a
monarchist, it said. It had been ‘a thousand times reiterated from New
Hampshire to Georgia.’ The Madame de Vergennes incident? ‘Your
references to a certain private journal of Mr. Adams was surpassingly
brutal and low. They demonstrate the imbecility of your cause and point
out the base malignity of your heart.’ The Adams letter to Tench Coxe?
‘Evidently written in some jocular moment.’ The cause of Hamilton’s
hostility? ‘Envy, ambition, and the loaves and fishes.’ The French
peace? ‘If your intrusive advice had been received, what would have been
the condition of your country? Embroiled in an unprofitable war,
commerce would have been at a stand, and the cause of liberty on the
decline. A standing army would have gluttonized on the substance of
society.’ Adams? True, the ‘Duke of Braintree’ had ‘very slender
pretensions to consistency of character,’ and the Nation’s hope was in
Jefferson, ‘who has walked with dignity in every public and private
calling,’ whose mind ‘is illumined with science and whose heart is
replete with good’; who ‘has stood firm and unshaken amidst the venality
of courts and the temptations of power.’
Under such lashings Hamilton writhed and was eager to make reply. ‘The
press teems with replies,’ he wrote Pickering, ‘and I may finally think
it expedient to publish a second time. In this case I shall reënforce my
charges with new anecdotes. My friends will, no doubt, be disposed to
aid me. You probably possess some that are unknown to me. Pray let me
have them without delay.’[1850] But his friends had no such disposition.
They had had enough. Ames wrote him scornfully of his critics, who were
unworthy of notice. ‘It is therefore the opinion of your friends that
the facts stated must be left to operate on the public mind; and that
the rage of those whom they wound will give them currency.’[1851]
The Federalist Party had been split in two with a battle-axe.
VII
Its leaders realized the hopelessness of their prospects. Many did not
care. McHenry, smarting in Maryland, wrote Wolcott that the lack of
courage and initiative on the part of the leaders, and their failure to
fight Adams in the open, meant defeat. What did they do? ‘They write
private letters,’ said the scornful poet-politician. ‘To whom? To each
other, but they do nothing to give direction to the public mind. They
observe even in their conversation a discreet circumspection generally,
ill calculated to diffuse information.... They meditate in private....
If the party recovers its pristine character ... shall I ascribe it to
such cunning, paltry, indecisive, back-door conduct?’[1852] And for once
in his life McHenry was wise and right. Unable to meet the issues, the
Federalist Big-Wigs still hoped to win through sharp practice. They got
their cue from the Jeffersonians, who, finding from the election of the
year before that the selection of electors by districts would result in
the loss of one or two in Virginia, changed the law and provided for
their election by the Legislature. This was enough for the Federalists
in Massachusetts, where district elections would have given Jefferson at
least two votes. Otis and others wrote the Speaker of the House and the
President of the Senate to change the law and have the Legislature
choose. The change was made. Estopped from complaining by their own
action in Virginia, the Jeffersonians denounced the change in
Massachusetts as a trick of the Essex Junto to rob Adams and elect
Pinckney,[1853] and much bitterness was aroused. In Maryland the
district system was favorable to the Jeffersonians and the Federalists
there were importuned from without to have the Governor call an
extraordinary session of the Legislature to give that body the
power.[1854] Owing to the almost equal strength of the parties in that
State, however, the leaders were afraid to act, and a series of letters
appeared, first in the Baltimore ‘Gazette,’ and later in pamphlet form,
citing the action of the Democrats in Virginia and the retaliation in
Massachusetts. ‘Should the State of Maryland suffer itself to be bullied
out of its rights ... by the clamors of the partisans in Virginia?’
demanded the author.[1855] ‘The Aurora’ charged that James Carroll had
said at Annapolis that the Governor should call the General Assembly
together to deprive the people of the right to vote for electors.[1856]
But when it came to the test the courage of the Marylanders failed and
no change was made.
Only in Pennsylvania did the Jeffersonians have a real grievance. The
most sanguine of the Federalists could find no silver lining to the
cloud here. Fitzsimmons complained that in Philadelphia, ‘a city of
60,000 inhabitants, not a man is to be found who is fit for the station
who will accept the nomination for Congress.’[1857] The envenomed Uriah
Tracy, after traveling through the State, thought the outlook hopeless.
M’Kean had ‘brought forward every scoundrel who can read and write into
office.’ The Democrats, ‘with the joy and ferocity of the damned,’ were
enjoying ‘the mortification of the few remaining honest men.’ Tracy had
seen ‘very many Irishmen’ throughout the State--‘the most God-provoking
Democrats this side of hell.’ Then ‘the Germans are both stupid,
ignorant and ugly, and are to the Irish what the negroes of the South
are to their drivers.’ The Democrats were ‘establishing presses and
newspapers in almost every town and county in the country and the
Federal presses are failing for want of support.’[1858] Under these
conditions the Federalists conceived the idea of depriving Pennsylvania
of any voice at all in the election--an idea not unreasonable, since no
provision had been made as to the method of choosing electors. In July,
Senator Bingham had written Wolcott that there was little probability
that the State would have ‘any agency in the election,’ but in any event
its vote would be ‘equalized from the preponderance which the parties
reciprocally possess in the two branches of the Legislature.’[1859]
In November, Governor M’Kean called an extraordinary session. In the
Senate the Federalists had a small majority; in the House the Democrats
had the advantage; on joint ballot the Democrats outnumbered their
opponents. The Democrats urged a joint ballot; the Federalists laughed
the proposal to scorn. Excitement rose to fever heat. Charges were made
that Liston, the British Minister, was using money to affect the
result.[1860] The State, at the moment, was Jeffersonian, and the
legislators were deluged with petitions for a joint ballot, but
petitions from the people had never impressed the Hamiltonians. These
stood firm--holding the power of veto. At length they made a concession
to the end that the State might not be deprived of any voice. The Senate
could select seven electors, the House eight. The Democrats writhed and
raved without avail. The Federalists were relentless.