To Sedgwick, Hamilton wrote of the "tendency of the doctrine advanced by Virginia and Kentucky to destroy the Constitution of the United States," and urged that the whole subject be referred to a special committee of Congress which should deal with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and justify the laws at which they were aimed. "No pains or expense," he insisted, "should be spared to disseminate this report.... A little pamphlet containing it should find its way into every house in Virginia."[919]
Thus the congressional campaign of 1798-99 drew to a close. Marshall neglected none of those personal and familiar campaign devices which the American electorate of that time loved so well. His enemies declared that he carried these to the extreme; at a rally in Hanover County he "threw billets into the bonfires and danced around them with his constituents";[920] he assured the voters that "his sentiments were the same as those of Mr. Clopton [the Republican candidate]"; he "spent several thousands of dollars upon barbecues."[921]
These charges of the besotted Callender,[922] written from his cell in the jail at Richmond, are, of course, entirely untrue, except the story of dancing about the bonfire. Marshall's answers to "Freeholder" dispose of the second; his pressing need of money for the Fairfax purchase shows that he could have afforded no money for campaign purposes; and, indeed, this charge was so preposterous that even the reckless Callender concludes it to be unworthy of belief.
From the desperate nature of the struggle and the temper and political habit of the times, one might expect far harder things to have been said. Indeed, as the violence of the contest mounted to its climax, worse things were charged or intimated by word of mouth than were then put into type. Again it is the political hack, John Wood, who gives us a hint of the baseness of the slanders that were circulated; he describes a scandal in which Marshall and Pinckney were alleged to have been involved while in Paris, the unhappy fate of a woman, her desperate voyage to America, her persecution and sad ending.[923]
Marshall was profoundly disgusted by the methods employed to defeat him. Writing to his brother a short time before election day he briefly refers to the Republican assaults in stronger language than is to be found in any other letter ever written by him:—
"The fate of my election is extremely uncertain. The means us'd to defeat it are despicable in the extreme and yet they succeed. Nothing I believe more debases or pollutes the human mind than faction [party]."[924]
PART OF LETTER FROM JOHN MARSHALL TO HIS BROTHER, DATED APRIL 3, 1799
(Facsimile)
The Republicans everywhere grew more confident as the day of voting drew near. Neutrality, the Alien and Sedition Laws, the expense of the provisional army, the popular fear and hatred of a permanent military force, the high taxes, together with the reckless charges and slanders against the Federalists and the perfect discipline exacted of the Republicans by Jefferson—all were rapidly overcoming the patriotic fervor aroused by the X. Y. Z. disclosures. "The tide is evidently turning ... from Marshall's romance" was the Republican commander's conclusion as the end of the campaign approached.[925]
For the first time Marshall's personal popularity was insufficient to assure victory. But the animosity of the Republicans caused them to make a false move which saved him at the very last. They circulated the report that Patrick Henry, the archenemy of "aristocrats," was against Marshall because the latter was one of this abhorred class. Marshall's friend, Archibald Blair, Clerk of the Executive Council, wrote Henry of this Republican campaign story.