The United States of America, Part 1: 1783-1830

by Edwin Erle Sparks

CHAPTER XII

SUPPRESSING THE FRENCH SYMPATHISERS

The only cloud on the horizon the day that John Adams became President lay in the direction of France and was caused by the Jay Treaty. It seemed impossible to keep peace with both belligerents abroad or with their factions at home. Adams would probably be more scrupulous of the rights of the individual than Hamilton; yet drastic measures were likely to become necessary if the pro-British and the pro-French agitators were to be muzzled and their clamour hushed. Such a censorship of speech was a thing not to be lightly contemplated in America.

Freedom of speech and the press had been inherited as a privilege of Englishmen, wrested from those in authority by years of contest, and maintained only by constant vigilance. A guarantee that it should not be restricted by the State had been placed in many of the State constitutions. A similar prohibition formed the first amendment to the Federal Constitution. Freedom of movement is closely akin to freedom of speech. Not even in the heyday of State sovereignty had any serious attempt been made to prevent the movement of unobjectionable free people from one State to another. The Constitution guaranteed to citizens of each State all privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States. The same instrument allowed Congress to establish a uniform rule of naturalisation in making United States citizens out of foreign immigrants; but the right of declaring who should be citizens of the States, having been assumed by the State constitutions, was left to them individually. State and national citizenship were thus separate from the beginning. For these reasons it could happen, as pointed out in the Dred Scott decision many years later, that a State could make an alien into a citizen of the State, entitled to all its rights and privileges, but he might still be an alien in the United States and deprived of national citizenship.

The first Congress recognised its constitutional obligation to provide a uniform law for national citizenship by allowing an alien who had resided two years within its jurisdiction and one year within any State to take an oath before any court of common-law record to support the Constitution and thereby become a citizen. Five years later, Congress feared that the warring powers of Europe would send undesirable aliens to the United States. "Coming from a quarter of the world so full of disorder and corruption," said a speaker in the House, "they might contaminate the purity and simplicity of the American character." A new naturalisation law was passed, requiring an alien to give three years' notice of his intention to change his allegiance—a kind of period of repentance. The required time of residence was then raised to five years for the nation and one for the State. During that time he must maintain a good moral character, must abjure allegiance to all other sovereigns, and must renounce all hereditary titles and orders of nobility. In this way one speaker said he hoped to shut out those refugees from the twenty thousand French nobility, who might choose to fly to the United States. Another expected to see an equally large number of the peerage arrive from Britain, as soon as the correct principles of government should take root there.

Little alarm need have been felt about those members of the deposed nobility of France who did arrive. They were more concerned with getting daily bread than acquiring citizenship or retaining their titles. Prince, marquis and marquise, vicomte, and bishop, alike must keep body and soul together by turning wig-maker, baker, or milliner, until the madness of the French people should pass. By and by, the changes of fortune in France began to send over Constitutionalists, Thermidorians, Fructidorians, and the like, to plot and intrigue. "They kept their eyes fixed on France," said a French volunteer, who had returned to America to secure the pay due him since Revolutionary days, "to which all expected to return sooner or later and recommence what each called his great work, for there were exactly the same number of political systems as there were refugees." The French sympathisers in America mingled with these émigrés and were more or less concerned with their plans. The press offered the opportunity to vent much of their spleen on Washington and to express their opinions of the "British United States Government," as they called it.

Added to these scribblers were certain other agitators, preachers, and writers, refugees from England and Scotland, driven out by the British Government in its effort to keep the sentiments of the French propagandists from taking root in British soil. More libel suits had been instituted in the courts of England during a single year of the French Revolution than in any two previous decades. Among those banished was Thomas Paine, who had returned to London, after lending his pen to the American cause, and had written the famous, or infamous, as some called it, Rights of Man. Many of these aliens in America were scribblers who had picked up a few current phrases and lofty sentiments about liberty and equality. They were of varying ability as writers, but uniform in their venomous abuse and hatred of England and all her sympathisers. In the rapid increase of newspapers, which marked this first period of prosperity and the birth of political parties, many of these writers found precarious employment; a few found remunerative occupations. Of the two hundred newspapers published in the United States when John Adams became President, it was estimated that at least twenty-five were edited by men of alien birth.

At few later periods have political parties brought out such scurrilous abuse in the press as in these early days. Although the number of newspapers has so increased that irresponsible and vulgar men are to be found among editors, although the restraints of law upon the press have been greatly loosened, yet the tone of the leading newspapers to-day is immeasurably better than it was a century ago. As the opposition to the Administration gradually crystallised into a party, few suffered more from the pens of its writers than did the first President. The abuse, which included such grave charges as that he had murdered a French envoy near Fort DuQuesne years before, that he had taken money illegally from the United States Treasury, and that he hoped to turn his Presidency into a monarchical reign, followed him to the end of his administration. Washington's replies to the numerous addresses of societies and public meetings which had greeted his entrance to office eight years before breathed a spirit of toleration. It was his eminent desire, as he said in one reply, to have every association and community make such use of the auspicious years of peace, liberty, and free inquiry, as they should hereafter rejoice in having done.

At the same time, the mind of Washington, the exclusive Virginia gentleman, could easily make a distinction between liberty and license. He attributed the insurrection against the excise almost entirely to the unbridled utterances of the Democratic clubs, their "first formidable fruits," as he put it. Nor did he fail, in reporting the suppression of the rebellion to the next Congress, to express his opinion of these "self-created societies" who disseminated suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of the whole Government. Jefferson, still believing in the original doctrine of the rights of man, called this allusion of the President "the greatest error of his political life." The societies would have soon died out if left alone, he said. Coercion would make them thrive. "It is wonderful," continued Jefferson to Madison, "that the President should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on the freedom of discussion, freedom of writing, printing, and publishing." He pronounced it almost incredible that the freedom of association and of the press should be attacked in the fifth year of the new Government, a step which England, fast advancing to an absolute monarchy, had not yet attempted.

There was small probability that this abuse from the Jacobin clubs and presses would cease with the retirement of Washington. When he gave out his farewell address, written by "the President's president," as they called Hamilton, a Vermont editor regretted that he had not retired four years before, which would have saved the country from having been so debauched by its mistress, England. The day of his departure for Mount Vernon was celebrated by a scurrilous attack in the Aurora, which a defender of his memory vindicated by an assault upon its editor.

John Adams, as Vice-President, had long been pilloried as "the dangerous Vice," for his theories upon inherited talent, a doctrine in direct contradiction to the tenets of democracy. He also appeared in the Jacobin prints as "President Crispin," the son of a shoemaker, and as "the President of three votes," alluding to the narrow majority of Adams over Jefferson in the recent election. Many went so far as to charge that the election of Adams had been accomplished by prematurely closing the polls in a Maryland election district and by the action of a Pennsylvania postmaster, who held back the returns. Franklin's recent death had plunged the people of two hemispheres into mourning. His memory was not sacred enough to prevent an accusation that he had once pocketed the money for two hundred thousand stand of arms, which had been intended as a present to the United States from the King of France. The oft-repeated scandal of the lost million francs was freshly ventilated. Yet so precious was freedom of speech in America that even those attacked hesitated to follow British pattern in placing a censor over the press. Even Patrick Henry, being rapidly won to the support of the experiment which he had formerly opposed, declared: "Although I am a Democrat myself, I like not the late Democratic societies. As little do I like their suppression by law."

President Adams had years before placed himself on record concerning the freedom of the press. Long a fulsome contributor to the newspapers on political questions, he had said: "There is not in any nation of the world so unlimited a freedom of the press as is now established in every State of the American Union, both by law and practice. There is nothing that the people dislike that they do not attack."

Entertaining such liberal opinions, an unforgiving enemy to Britain, an admirer of the French people since first he came into contact with them, John Adams entered the Presidency prepared to save the press from the storm gathering about it. But the partisans would not stop their abuse long enough to examine his predilections or to forecast the attitude he was likely to assume in his conduct of foreign affairs. They were enraged by the advantage apparently given to Britain in the Jay Treaty, disappointed in the continued repression of every effort to aid France, and emboldened by the high tone of the French Directory after the sympathetic Monroe had been ordered home to be replaced by the Federalist, Pinckney. They sneered at Adams's inaugural address where he admitted a personal esteem for the French nation, formed during seven years spent abroad and chiefly in Paris, and expressed a sincere desire to preserve the friendship which had been so much to the honour and interest of both nations.

Notwithstanding these cordial words, President Adams, within three months, was calling together the first extra session of Congress in the history of the Government, and informing them in vigorous language that Pinckney, an American Minister, had been refused cards of hospitality by the Executive Directory at the head of the Republic of France, had been threatened by the police, and had finally been practically ordered out of the country. The right to reject an ambassador was recognised by the law of nations. But "a refusal to receive him until we have acceded to their demands without discussion and without investigation," said the President, "is to treat us neither as allies nor as friends, nor as a sovereign state." The warlike message advised strengthening the army and navy, perfecting the coast defences, preventing further building of foreign cruisers in the United States, and the raising of revenue sufficient for these purposes. Although closing with a promise of continued effort toward neutrality, this hostile address from the first statesman-President forms a strong contrast with the mild messages of the first soldier-President. The granite rock of New England had been reached and it gave no evidence of yielding. The response to the defensive tone of the President varied according to foreign affiliations. Parties in America were as yet reflections of European wars. The pro-British faction, strong in all parts of the National Government except the executive, were as eager for a trial at arms with France as they had been reluctant for war with England two years before. Hamilton wrote columns for the daily press to prove that the assistance which France gave to us during our struggle for independence was based on purely selfish motives. We were bound by no ties of gratitude to yield to her pique at the Jay Treaty. "Those who can justify displeasure in France on this account," said he, "are not Americans but Frenchmen. They are not fit for being members of an independent nation."

The opponents to this attitude—those whom Hamilton called "the servile minions of France, who have no sensibility to injury but when it comes from Great Britain, and who are unconscious of any rights to be protected against France," were equally clamorous for forbearance. They asked Adams, in this crisis, to send a sympathetic man, say Jefferson, who would be acceptable to France and would soothe French pride and avert the threatened war. Although Jay had been taken by Washington from the Supreme Bench to be sent as envoy to England, Adams thought the Vice-President too dignified a person to be used in this manner. Such an action would also imperil the presidential succession. Yet he was desirous of seeking some kind of an accommodation to preserve neutrality. Although France had "inflicted a wound in the American breast," as he put it in his message, he appointed three special envoys to renew negotiations. Their number would protect American interests and show to France the gravity of the situation. Pinckney, the rejected Minister, was made quite justly one of the three. John Marshall, the second member, like Pinckney, belonged to the anti-French faction. Gerry, the third envoy, was a former Anti-Federalist and a sympathiser with France.

The treatment which these three envoys received in France caused the tempest in a teapot commonly known as "the X Y Z affair." By discrediting the French faction, it hastened the day of their attempted suppression by the Government of the United States. With the mysterious methods current during the days of the contemptible Directory then at the head of the Government of France, certain supposed go-betweens approached the American envoys with suggestions that "money, lots of money," would be necessary to heal the wounds inflicted on the French heart by the Jay Treaty and by the recent words of President Adams. This gold, it was said, was necessary as a pre-requisite for opening negotiations. Part of it was to constitute a loan to carry on the war with England, and the rest was understood to be a douceur for the pockets of the members of the Directory. "We loaned you money in your hour of need," Pinckney was told by a mysterious Frenchwoman, who figured in the affair. "Why should not you lend to us?"

[Illustration: A HALF PAGE OF THE X Y Z DISPATCHES. From the original in the Department of State. A close inspection will show the brackets drawn around the name of Horttinguer and the letter "X" inserted in margin on left. This was done by order of Timothy Pickering, Secretary of State, before the dispatches were published.]

In the reports of these envoys which John Adams sent to Congress as rapidly as received, the name of Hubbard, who had introduced the three to the go-betweens, was indicated by the letter "W," Horttinguer by "X," Bellamy by "Y," and Hauteval, who acted as interpreter, by "Z." It was useless for Jefferson, Madison, and the French sympathisers in America to point out that douceur meant a gift and not a bribe, and that the supposed go-betweens were discredited and their action disavowed by Talleyrand and the Directory. It was believed and is currently stated in America that an attempt was made to bribe these dignified representatives of the American people. The national spirit was aroused. Unionism received such an impulse as years of domestic relationship could not produce. The war microbe was loosed among the people. One of those sudden outbursts of national rage, as unexpected as violent, ran the length and breadth of the land. A broadside was circulated, with stanzas beginning:

"At length the Envoys deign to tell us
They had to deal with scurvey fellows—
With Autun and the five-head beast
And half the alphabet, at least."

For perhaps the only time in his life, John Adams tasted the sweets of a widespread popularity. His birthday, like that of his predecessor, was generally celebrated. The sympathetic French following was swept off its feet. "Exultation on one side and a certainty of victory; while the other is petrified with astonishment," was Jefferson's admission. In reporting to Congress that Pinckney and Marshall had indignantly withdrawn from France, and that Gerry, who lingered, had been officially notified by his Government that no loans of any kind would be made, President Adams used a sentence which immediately became current: "I will never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation."

The British faction had at last an opportunity of crushing the French sympathisers, and they accepted it most willingly. In their intolerance, they went almost as far as the other side had gone a few years before. A South Carolinian, visiting in New York, was assaulted in the circus because he refused to take off his hat when the President of the United States entered. A "reign of terror" was instituted against the pro-French office-holders. It was even claimed by them that a general massacre had been arranged for the Pennsylvania fast-day, and Bache, the editor of the Aurora, made a show of garrisoning his house with an armed body of his friends. A Senator in debate was reported to have declared his willingness to vote for a law punishing every citizen of America who educated his children in the study of the French language.

Hamilton and those who wished to give new precedent to the National Government along lines of its foreign relations where patriotism would support strong measures, were delighted with the response on the part of the people. Theatre crowds demanded encores of the President's March and hissed French airs when played. Merchants of New York and other seaports worked voluntarily on the neglected coast-defences. A song was put to the air of True Hearts of Oak in order to "cheer those unused to spade and barrow, who might tire of working on the several forts." It began:

"Ye friends of your country, the summons attend,
Be this your employment, your joy and your pride,
Your heav'n-granted rights to preserve and defend,
And the spirits of freemen your labors shall guide."

Chorus.

"Our country demands-her call we obey,
Let 's work and be merry,
We'll never be weary,
While freedom and glory our labors repay."

Hundreds of addresses reached the President, the larger number heartily endorsing his attitude toward the insulting Directory. Public opinion supported Congress at the time in passing many war measures at this special session of 1798 and the regular session which followed. Eighteen acts were added to the Statutes at Large during the special and seventy-five at the regular session, nearly double the number of laws enacted at any prior sitting. The exportation of arms was forbidden and their importation encouraged. The navy was separated from the army and a new department created for it. The three men-of-war which constituted the United States Navy were repaired and put into commission. The construction of others was begun. Frigates, galleys, and rowboats were ordered and regiments of artillerists and engineers authorised to be recruited. A quarter of a million dollars was appropriated to the coast-defences. Over a million was voted for increasing the number and for arming the regular troops. A provisional army of ten thousand men and a marine corps were placed at the disposal of the President. From his retirement at Mt. Vernon, ex-President Washington was summoned to assume command of the provisional army.

Not alone measures of defence, but actual war measures were passed. The President was authorised to seize armed French vessels found near the American coast. Merchantmen were permitted to arm against the French. Thirty thousand stand of arms were distributed among the militia of the States. All treaties with France were formally dissolved, and all intercourse with her suspended until the next session of Congress. To provide money for these unusual expenditures a loan of five million dollars for fifteen years was authorised, and a stamp-tax levied not unlike that of thirty years before, against which the colonists had rebelled.

As if they had not yet sufficiently endangered the party, the triumphant Federalist majority proceeded to vent its long accumulated wrath upon its critics, and thereby brought the story of the United States a long chapter forward. Those who had writhed under the attacks of Duane, a former resident of Ireland, but lately driven from India for violating the liberty allowed to the press, hoped for sweet revenge. Others wanted retribution against Callender, setting up at Richmond an abusive press such as had caused him to be driven from Scotland not long before. The list of lesser offenders among the alien writers was long. As President Adams asked: "How many presses, how many newspapers have been directed by vagabonds, fugitives from a bailiff, a pillory, or a halter in Europe?"

Charges against these aliens were not confined to their political writings. The air was full of conspiracy. Some suspected a league between foreigners and the United Irishmen; others thought the aliens leagued with the Freemasons for the destruction of all social relations, private property, religion, and government. Emissaries of France were supposed to be in every republic plotting for her universal dominion. Holland and Switzerland had already lost their liberty in this way. Talleyrand, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had spent his exile in America and had become a naturalised citizen, was in secret correspondence, so it was declared in Congress, with certain people in this country. Another Frenchman, it was said, "of a literary and intriguing character, formerly a member of the Club Breton, doubtless in the confidence of the Directory, who had for a long time lived in Pennsylvania, has recently taken flight." Should this menace be allowed to continue? Both France and England were exercising the right of self-preservation and banishing suspicious aliens. These fled to the United States and made it a common plotting-ground. They were described in the Congressional debate on this subject as "men endeavoring to spread sedition and discord; who had assisted in laying other countries prostrate; whose hands are reeking with blood and whose hearts rankle with hatred toward us. Have we not the power to shake off these firebrands?"

By a safe majority in the House and a vote of two to one in the Senate, the Federalists placed additional bars to the doors of the United States by raising the time required for national residence prior to naturalisation to fourteen years, with a residence of five years in some one State, and a declaration of intention made five years before admission. All white aliens were required to report to some official register, and get a certificate within forty-eight hours after arrival. By a law, called the "Alien Friends act," Congress gave power to the President to order out of the United States all aliens whom he suspected of being concerned in any treasonable or secret machination against the Government. If he chose, he could give such an alien a license to remain under bond. The duration of the act was limited to two years. A companion measure, called the "Alien Enemies act," contemplated the possibility of an immediate war with France and gave the President and the courts power to arrest, to punish, or remove natives of a hostile country after due proclamation. All courts were authorised to hear complaints against aliens, much in the style of the denunciation system of France a few years before.

The alien writers and the Republican press generally had not been afraid to attack the war measures and the bills for the restraint of foreigners as they were proposed and debated. Upon the sudden rage of naming vessels after the President, Duane in the Aurora sarcastically remarked that the name would be a host of strength in itself and completely protect our extensive commerce. He thought we outstripped the British in this instance.

"In the navy of England, there is only one royal George and one Charlotte; there is to be sure the Sovereign and the Queen; but we shall certainly have, The President, the Lady Adams, or the Lady President, with Squire Quincy and Squire Charley, otherwise the navy of Columbia will be incomplete."

In other papers, the President figured as "Johnny Molasses" from the rum manufacture of Massachusetts. The New York Time-Piece pronounced him "a person without patriotism, without philosophy, and a mock monarch who had been jostled into the chief magistracy by the ominous combination of old Tories with old opinions and old Whigs with new." Addresses were printed begging aliens not to enlist in the provisional army if any laws should be passed against them.

All action taken thus far to ensure the perpetuity and safety of the Government against the strangers within its gates seemed to the Federalists incomplete while this seditious press remained unbridled. The crowning measure of the session of 1798, therefore, took the shape of an addition to the early act defining crimes against the United States. It provided fine and imprisonment for conspiring to oppose measures of the Government, for advising insurrection, and for libelling the Government, either House of Congress, or the President. The duration of the act was limited to the end of the present Administration. As originally introduced into the Senate, this "sedition act" declared that giving aid or comfort to a Frenchman or to France was treason to the United States, punishable by death. It was toned down in this and several other particulars by moderate spirits before being enacted into a law.

The opposition in Congress, called "Republicans" by themselves and "Jacobins" by their enemies, had resisted these famous "alien and sedition laws" at every step. They pleaded that such police regulations had been left by the Constitution to the States; that national citizenship did not exist separate from State citizenship; that Congress could pass uniform laws of naturalisation, but could not control aliens resident in a State; that adequate punishment for sedition was already provided in the laws of the various States; that the crime of treason was taken care of by the Constitution and Federal laws; that existing treaties required notice to be given before foreigners could be sent away, and then only in case of war; and that a dangerous power was placed in the hands of the President. The constitutional amendments guaranteeing trial by jury and freedom of speech were also quoted in vain. When a member from New York declared that the people ought not to submit to such tyrannical legislation and would deserve the chains which these measures were forging for them if they did not resist, such language was declared treasonable by the other side and productive of the insurrectionary spirit they were trying to stamp out.

An analysis of the distribution of the vote on the Alien bill shows that these presses, although located in the Northern and Central States, were supported by the Southern people. Perhaps the sectional tendency of the vote should be considered as indicative of the loss of the Southern States to the Administration and prophetic of the support which individualism was to receive from that section. Not a Senator north of the Mason and Dixon line opposed the measure, and only one from south of the line supported it. Of the Southern members in the House, nine voted for and thirty against sending away dangerous aliens. In the Northern section the vote stood thirty-seven to ten in favour of the punitive action.

Jefferson, presiding over the Senate while these measures, so obnoxious to him, were being passed, deprived of even the pleasure of casting an occasional deciding vote by the overwhelming Federal majority, quietly bided his time until this madness should die out. "War, land tax and stamp tax," said he, "are sedatives which must calm its ardour." To his mind, the people were still essentially republican; they retained unadulterated the principles of '75; they needed only reflection and information to bring themselves and their affairs to rights.

"A little patience," he wrote to a correspondent in Virginia, who mentioned the possibility of separating that State and North Carolina from the tyrannical majority, "and we shall see the reign of the witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. Better keep together as we are, haul off from Europe as soon as we can, and from all attachments to any portions of it."

At the same time, if war should come, he advised all to join for the defence of home on the principle that if one's house is on fire he must try to extinguish it without stopping to inquire whether it was fired from without or within.

The execution of the Alien and Sedition laws proved as unpopular and as futile as Jefferson had imagined. Callender escaped the Alien law by completing his naturalisation, but was fined and imprisoned for seditious publications. His counsel, Cooper, a lawyer-editor, suffered similar punishment. A chartered vessel carried back to France, now under more tolerant government, a large number of émigrés including Volney, the philosophical writer and former friend of Washington, suspected of being at the head of the conspirators in the United States. The abusive Time-Piece was abandoned, one of the editors fleeing the country and the other being under arrest. Duane was assaulted in his office, his presses destroyed by a mob, and himself haled before Congress for criticising their actions. Lyon, a violent Republican who had come near being expelled from the House for assaulting a fellow-member, was fined and imprisoned for commenting on certain appointments made by the President. A half-dozen or more insignificant country editors were caught in the Federalist drag-net, serving only to make the law more ridiculous.

President Adams never found a dangerous alien friend to send out of the country. The war with France was averted and the Alien Enemies act consequently never enforced. Some new issue arose to attract popular attention. The war fever passed as quickly as it came. Only the extra taxes remained to remind the people that the French-war scare of 1798 had ever occurred. War measures are always popular at the time they are passed. National patriotism is aroused, excitement refuses to listen to conservatism, and judgment is replaced by impulse. Measures necessary to raise the extra revenue are easily voted; but after the excitement has passed, the extra taxes become an extra burden. Those who yesterday clamoured most loudly for national defence and "patriotic" measures will to-morrow seek to evade payment or turn and rend the party which imposed the levies. The war is soon over; the train of taxes which follows seems endless. A political party takes small risk in fathering a war; it faces a great danger in the reaction which follows.

The Federalists had not only authorised by their war measures a large addition to the national debt, but had imposed certain forms of direct taxes. Even more odious than either the stamp tax or the tax on slaves was that on "improvements" in property. In order to arrive at a fair conclusion of the value of dwellings, the number of windows in each was taken as a standard by the assessors. This method was not unknown to the Old World, but proved extremely obnoxious in the New. Resistance in eastern Pennsylvania took the form of the so-called '"Fries Insurrection." It offered another opportunity to the National Government to assert its authority, but rendered President Adams still more unpopular, and increased public hostility toward the Federalists. Although Adams pardoned the leader, John Fries, he did not appease the Republicans, and he angered the Hamiltonians, who would show no clemency toward the opponents of law and order. Like some mastodon of old, the party floundered deeper into the swamp, eventually to succumb, leaving only its bones as a warning to the danger of overconfidence.