IT is the era of bad feeling, and the breasts of men are reservoirs of
poison. Jefferson and Adams, while known admitted rivals, deplore these
wormwood conditions and strive against them. It is as though they strove
against the tides; party lines were never more fiercely drawn. Some
portrait of the hour may be found in the following:
Adams gives a dinner; and, because he cannot get over the Jonathan
Edwards emanation of Aaron, he invites him. Also, Van Ness being with
Aaron, the invitation includes Van Ness. Hamilton and Jefferson will be
there; since it is one of the hypocritical affectations of these good
people to keep up a polite appearance of friendship, by way of example,
if not rebuke, to warring followers, who are hopefully fighting duels
and shedding blood and taking life in their interests. On the way to the
President’s house Van Ness, to whom Adams is new, queries Aaron:
“What sort of a man is Adams?”
“He is an honest, pragmatic, hot-tempered thick-skull,” says Aaron--“a
New England John Bull!--a masculine Mrs. Malaprop whom Sheridan would
love. You can have no better description of him than was given me but
yesterday by a member of his Cabinet. ‘Adams,’ says the cabineteer,
‘is a man who whether sportful, witty, kind, cold, drunk, sober, angry,
easy, stiff, jealous, careless, cautious, confident, close or open, is
so always in the wrong place and with the wrong man!’”
“Is he a good executive?”
“Bad! By nature he is no more in touch with the spirit of a democracy
than with the maritime policies of the Ptolemies. His pet picture of
government is England, with the one amendment that he would call the
king a president. As to his executive labors: why, then, he touches only
to disarrange, talks only to disturb. And all without meaning to do so.”
The dinner is neither large nor formal. Aaron sits on the right hand of
Adams, while Jefferson has Van Ness and Hamilton at either elbow. In the
cross fire of conversation comes the following: The topic is government.
“Speaking of the British constitution,” says Adams, “purge that
constitution of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality
of representation, and it would be the most perfect constitution ever
devised by the wit of man.”
Hamilton cocks his ear. “Sir,” says he, “purge the British constitution
of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of
representation, and it would become an impracticable government. As
it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most
powerful government that ever existed.”
Presently, the currents of converse shift, and the torrid heats of party
are considered. It is now that Jefferson is heard from.
“The situation is deplorable!” he exclaims. “You and I, sir”--looking
across at Adams--“have seen warm debates and high political passions.
But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and
separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not
so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to
avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest they be obliged
to touch their hats. Men’s passions are boiling over; and one who keeps
himself cool, and clear of the contagion, is so far below the point of
ordinary conversation that he finds himself socially cast away. More;
there is a moral breaking down. The interruption of letters is becoming
so notorious”--here he looks hard at Hamilton, whose followers are
supposed to peep into letters not addressed to them--“that I am forming
a resolution of declining correspondence with my friends through the
channels of the post office altogether.”
Even during Aaron’s short stay at the Capitol, fresh fuel is heaped upon
the fires of his Hamilton hates. A cloud blows up in the sky; war
with France is threatened. Washington at Mount Vernon is commissioned
commander in chief; Hamilton--the active--is placed next to him. Aaron’s
name, sent in for a general’s commission, is secretly vetoed by Hamilton
whispering in the Adams ear.
Adams does not like the veto; he thinks he should name Aaron, and says
so.
“If you do,” declares Hamilton warningly, “it will defeat your
reelection.”
Adams groans and gives way. It is the argument wherewith Hamilton never
fails to drive him or curb him as he will. Aaron hears of this new
offense; he says nothing, but lays it away with the others.
Candidate Jefferson and Manager Aaron are far apart in their hopes
and fears, the former taking the gloomy view. They come together
confidentially.
“I have looked over the field,” says Jefferson, “and we are already
beaten.”
“Sir,” returns Aaron with grim point, “you should look again. I think
you see things wrong end up.”
“My hatred of Hamilton,” observes Aaron to Van Ness, as their coach
rolls north for home, “is the good fortune of Jefferson. I shall be
fighting my own fight, and so I shall win. If I were fighting only for
Jefferson, I can well see how the strife might have another upcome.”
[Illustration: 0223]
The campaign draws down; it is Adams against Jefferson, Federal against
Republican. Hamilton leaves the seat of government, and comes to New
York to take personal charge. At that his designs are Janus-faced. He
says “Adams,” but he means “Pinckney.” He foresees that, if Adams be
given another term, he will defy control. Wherefore he is publicly for
Adams, and privately for Pinckney--he looks at Massachusetts but
sees only South Carolina. This collision of pretense and purpose, on
Hamilton’s false part, gets vastly in the Federal way. That it should
do so will instantly occur to curious ones, if they will but seek to go
south by heading north.
As Hamilton sets out to take presidential possession of New York, he
has no misgivings. He knows little or nothing of Aaron’s designs or what
that ingenious gentleman has been about.
“There is the Manhattan Bank of course; but what can it do? There are
the Bucktails--who are vulgar clods! There are the Livingstons and the
Clintons--he has beaten them before!”
Thus run the reflections of the confident Hamilton. No; he sees only
triumph ahead. He gives Aaron and his candidate Jefferson--with their
borrel issue of Alien and Sedition--not half the thought that he devotes
to ways and means by which he hopes finally to steal the electors from
Adams, and produce Pinckney in the White House. That is Hamilton’s dream
of power--Pinckney!
Everything pivots on the legislature; since it is the legislature which
will select the electors.
Hamilton, bearing in mind his intended steal of the State, prepares his
list of candidates for Albany. He does not pick them for either wisdom
or moral worth; what he is after are legislators whom he can certainly
manhandle to match his designs, and who will give him electors--he
himself will furnish the names--of a Pinckney not an Adams complexion.
He makes up his slate to that treasonable end; and the swift Aaron gets
a copy before the ink is dry.
Aaron smiles when he runs down the ignoble muster of Hamilton’s boneless
nonentities.
“They are the least in the town!” he mutters. “I shall pit against them
the town’s greatest.”
Aaron with his Bucktails, now makes ready his own legislative ticket.
At the head he places old North-of-Ireland Clinton--a local Whittington,
ten times governor of the State. General Gates--for whom Aaron, when
time was, plotted the downfall of Washington, and who received the sword
of the vanquished Burgoyne and sent that popinjay back to England to
fail at play-writing--comes next. After General Gates the wily Aaron
writes “Samuel Osgood”--who was Washington’s postmaster general--“Henry
Rutgers, Elias Neusen, Thomas Storms, George Warner, Philip Arcularius,
James Hunt, Ezekiel Robbins, Brockholst Livingston, and John
Swartwout”--every name a tower of strength.
Hamilton cannot repress a flutter of fear as he reads the noble roster;
but his unflagging vanity, which serves him instead of a more reasonable
optimism, rushes to his rescue. None the less it jars on him a bit
strangely, albeit, he laughs at it for a jest, that the best regarded
of the town should make up the ticket of the yeomanry and the
crude Bucktails, while the aristocratical Federals and the
equally aristocratical Cincinnati--that coterie of perfume and
patricianism!--search the gutters for theirs.
Seeing himself on the Jefferson ticket, old North-of-Ireland Clinton
makes trouble. He sends for Aaron and his committee, and notifies them
that he cannot consent to run.
“If you, Colonel Burr, were the candidate,” he says, “I should run
gladly; but Jefferson I hate.”
In his hope’s heart, old North-of-Ireland Clinton---who, for all his
North-of-Ireland blood, was born in America--thinks he himself may be
struck by the presidential lightning, and does not intend to place any
deflecting obstruction in the path of such descending bolt.
Aaron has forestalled the Clinton refusal in his thoughts, and is not
surprised by the high Clintonian attitude. He tries persuasion; the
old ex-governor and would-be president only plants himself more firmly.
Under no circumstances shall he agree to run; his honored name must not
be used.
It is now that Aaron shows his teeth: “Governor Clinton,” says he, “when
it comes to that, our committee’s appearance before you, preferring the
request that you run, is a ceremony rather of courtesy than need. With
the last word, regardless of either your plans or your preferences, the
public we represent is perfect in its right to name you, and compel you
to run. And, sir, making short what might become long, and so saving
time for us all, I must now notify you that, should you continue to
withhold your consent, we stand already determined to retain and use
your name despite refusal, as a course entirely within the lines of
popular right.”
In the looks and tones of Aaron, the old North-of-Ireland governor
reads decision not to be revoked, and for once in his obstinate life
surrenders gracefully.
“Gentlemen,” says he, with a bland wave of the hand to Aaron and his
Bucktail committee, “since you put it in that way, refusal is out of
my power. Also let me add, that no man could take a nomination from a
higher, a more honorable, a more patriotic source.”
The campaign, on in earnest, goes forward with a roar. Not a screaming
item is omitted. Guns boom; flags flaunt; bands of music bray; gay
processions go marching; crackers splutter and snap; orators with iron
throats sweep down on spellbound crowds in gales of red-faced eloquence;
flaming rockets, when the sun goes down, streak the night with fire; the
bold Buck-tails, cidered to the brim, cause Brom Martling’s long-room
to ring again, and make the intersection of Spruce and Nassau a Bedlam
crossroads.
This is well; yet Aaron desires more. The issue is Alien and Sedition;
he yearns for an overt expression of what villain work may be done by
that black statute.
Aaron’s strength, as a captain of politics, lies in his intuitive
knowledge of men. He is never popular--never loved while ever admired.
Men may no more love him than they may love a diamond, or a Damascus
sword blade, or a tallest, sun-kissed, snow-capped mountain peak. Still
that innate grasp of men, and what motives will move them, is as an
edged tool in his hands wherewith to carve out triumph. This gift of
man-reading comes in play when now he would exhibit Alien and Sedition
in its baleful workings.
There is a Judge Yates; his home is in Otsego. As though he had builded
him, Aaron is aware of Yates in his elements. That honest man is of your
natural-born martyrs. Is there a headsman’s block, there he lays his
neck; given a scaffold, he instantly mounts it; into every pillory he
thrusts his head and hands, into every stocks his heels; by every stake
he takes his stand as soon as it is put up; and he would sooner meet a
despot than a friend. And yet--to defend Yates--that bent for martyrdom
is nothing less than a bent to be noble; for a martyr is but a hero
reversed. The two are brothers; a hero is only a martyr who succeeds, a
martyr only a hero who fails.
Aaron sends for the oppression-thirsty Yates. “Here is a pamphlet
flaying Adams,” says he. “It is raw and ferocious. Take it home and
circulate it.”
“Why?” asks Yates.
“Because the Federalists will arrest you. They are fools enough to do
it.”
“Doubtless!”--this dryly. “But what advantage do you discover in having
me locked up?”
“Man! can’t you see? It will illustrate their tyranny! Your seizure
will be on a United States warrant. That means they must bring you
from Otsego to New York. Think what a triumph that should be--you, the
paraded victim of the monarchical Adams!”
Yates goes home to Otsego with a gay, elate heart, and publishes Aaron’s
blood-raw pamphlet. He is seized and paraded, as the astute Aaron has
foreseen. The flocking farmers fringe the captive’s line of march. Yates
is a martyr, and makes his journey through double ranks of sympathy for
himself and curses for the despotic Adams. The martyrdom of Yates is
worth a thousand votes.
“It is the difference between the eye and the ear,” says Aaron to
his aide, Swartwout. “You might explain the iniquities of Alien and
Sedition, and never rouse the people. Show them those iniquities, and
they take fire. It is quite natural enough. I tell you of a man crushed
by a falling tree; you feel a conventional shock that lasts a minute.
Should you some day _see_ a man crushed by a falling tree, you will
start in your sleep for a twelvemonth with the pure horror of it.
Wherefore, never address the ear when you can appeal to the eye. The
gateway to the imagination is the eye.”
The campaign wags to a close; the day of the ballot has its dawning. To
the amazed chagrin of Hamilton, Aaron and his Bucktails go over him
at the polls with a rousing majority of four hundred and ninety; he
is beaten, Aaron is dominant, New York is Jefferson’s. The blow shakes
Hamilton to the heart, and for the moment he can neither plan nor act.
In the face of such disaster, he sits stricken.
Presently, as though the bad in him is more vivid than the good and
quicker at recovery, that old instinct of larceny struggles to its
feet. He will steal the State; not from Adams as he planned, but from
Jefferson. He scribbles a note to Jay, who is in town at his home,
urging him as governor to call a special session of the legislature, a
Federal Legislature, and go about the crime. He feels the necessity
of justification; for Jay is of a skittish honor. This on his mind, he
closes with: “It is the only way by which we can prevent an atheist in
religion and a fanatic in politics from getting possession of the helm
of government.”
Jay reads, and draws down his brows in a frown. Hamilton’s messenger is
waiting.
“Governor,” says the messenger, “General Hamilton bid me get an answer.”
“Tell General Hamilton there is no answer.” Jay rereads the note. Then
he takes quill, writes a sentence on the back, and files it away in a
pigeonhole. Years later, when Jay and Hamilton and Adams and Jefferson
and Aaron are dead and under the grass roots, hands yet unformed will
draw the letter forth and unborn eyes will read: “Proposing a measure
for party purposes which I do not think it would become me to adopt. J.
J.”