I
THE meeting of Congress in the early winter of 1797 found the war party in fine fettle and the Jeffersonians fighting desperately for peace. Early in the session, Adams called for the advice of his Cabinet on the policy to be pursued in the event of the failure of the envoys. The three Hamiltonian members had conferred and McHenry was instructed to write Hamilton for instructions. ‘I am sure I cannot do justice to the subject as you can,’ wrote the Secretary of War to the President’s enemy in New York. Agreeing, no doubt, with the sentiment, the power behind the Cabinet speedily complied, and the response to the President of his advisers was the recommendations of Hamilton copied into the handwriting of McHenry.[1401] These did not contemplate a declaration of war, but a resort to warlike measures. Merchant vessels should be armed, twenty sloops of the line built, an immediate army of sixteen thousand men recruited with provision for twenty thousand more, the French treaty abrogated, a loan authorized, and the tax system put upon a war basis. An alliance with England? Not improper, perhaps, but inexpedient; though Rufus King in London should make overtures to the British for a loan, the aid of convoys, perhaps the transfer of ten ships of the line, and, in the event of a definite rupture with France, he should be authorized to work out a plan of coöperation with England.[1402]
All this while the debates in Congress were increasing in bitterness. Monroe was accused and defended, democrats denounced and damned, aristocrats and monocrats assailed. Orators were mobilized and paraded in war-paint spluttering their most vituperative phrases, and the most insignificant pack-horse of the war party attacked Jefferson’s letter to Mazzei as ‘a disgraceful performance.’[1403] The chest of the flamboyant Harper was never so protuberant as in those days when he strutted through the Dictionary hurling the most offensive words in the language at the Jeffersonians, rattling his sword, waving his pistol, and offering to meet gentlemen outside the House. All revolutions he thought the work of fools and knaves, philosophers, Jacobins, and sans-culottes. The Jeffersonians were conspiring to prostrate popular liberty and establish tyranny by curtailing the power of the Executive and increasing the power of the House. It was all very simple. The President crushed, the Senate next destroyed, three or four audacious demagogues would dominate the House until the strongest cut the throats of the others and seized the scepter. The Federalists were delighted—what a wonderful man was Harper![1404] Day by day the violence increased. Harper snapped at Giles, who snapped back, and when Otis made a nasty attack on the Virginian and the latter dared him to repeat it ‘out of doors,’ there were loud cries of ‘order.’ Only Gallatin remained cool, in possession of his senses. He contented himself with the assertion that only on information that had not been given could war measures be excused.[1405]
The superheat of the House cooled the passions of the people and remonstrances against the arming of merchant ships poured in. Even from New England they came, maddening to Cabot and Ames, reassuring to Jefferson, who made the most of them in his correspondence.[1406] When the town meeting at Cambridge joined the remonstrators, the Boston ‘Centinel’ fumed over ‘the indecent abuse of the merchants,’ and the ‘forestalling knavery’ of the town.[1407] Then, to revive the failing spirits of the war party, Adams came to the rescue with a Message announcing the failure of the envoys and recommending warlike measures. How the little patriot would have winced had he known that in adopting the recommendations of McHenry he was accepting the dictations of Alexander Hamilton! Jefferson wrote Madison that it was ‘an insane message,’ and the Jeffersonians, no longer doubting that war was the purpose, arranged to force a show-down.[1408] Thus appeared the Sprigg Resolutions providing for purely defensive measures for the coast and the interior, and declaring that ‘under existing conditions it is not expedient for the United States to resort to war against the French Republic.’[1409]
Momentarily taken unaware, the Federalists were stunned. Harper blundered into the admission that he could see no objections, but Otis, with keener insight, proposed to substitute the word ‘declare’ for ‘resort to’ war—and the cat was out of the bag. The Jeffersonians feared, not so much a declaration of war as warlike measures that would force a state of war, and to forestall that was the purpose of the Resolutions. Thus the debate proceeded, more bitter and personal, with Giles and Harper resembling the wenches of the fishmarket without their skirts.
Meanwhile, the Federalist leaders were familiar with the X Y Z papers of which the Democrats were kept in ignorance. Hamilton, private citizen of New York, knew their contents; Jefferson, Vice-President of the United States, did not. This was the trump card of the war party, and no one saw it so quickly as Hamilton, who immediately began to work secretly, through his agents in the Cabinet, for their publication. ‘Nothing certainly can be more proper,’ he wrote Pickering. ‘Confidence will otherwise be wanting.’[1410] In utter ignorance of their contents, the Jeffersonians began to demand their production. Only a few days before, the Jeffersonian organ in Boston was charging that Adams withheld the papers because they ‘contain an account of some resentful expressions of the French respecting our Cabinet, and Mr. Adams does not expect any credit by publishing them.’[1411] Thus, when the motion was made that the papers be produced, Gallatin, Giles, Livingston, and Nicholas supported it, and the next day they were sent with the request that they be considered in confidence until the effect of their publication could be discussed.
The galleries were cleared—the doors locked and guarded—and for three days and into the fourth the secret discussion continued. Then the doors were opened and the crowd in the galleries heard a brief discussion of the number of copies to be printed for circulation. ‘One thousand, two hundred,’ said Bayard of Delaware. ‘Three thousand,’ urged Harper. ‘Seven thousand,’ sneered the hot-headed Matthew Lyon, ‘for the papers are so trifling and unimportant that no printer would risk the printing of them in a pamphlet.’ Otis incredulously inquired if he had rightly understood the Vermont fire-eater. Lyon unblushingly repeated his strange assertion. The suggestion of Bayard was adopted, and, when the members filed out of the little room in which they deliberated that day, Harper and the war hawks could already hear the thunder of the guns.
II
Thus did the shadows close in on the Jeffersonians. The blow was staggering. On the appearance of the damaging documents, most of the Democratic papers were silent, while printing them in full. One made a brave show of satisfaction by criticizing Adams for withholding them so long, and suggesting that perhaps ‘the most important papers’ had been withheld.[1412] Even the buoyancy of Jefferson suffered a momentary collapse. Writing Madison the day the papers were read, he did not have the heart to indicate the nature of their contents.[1413] The next day he had recovered sufficiently to write that his first impressions were ‘very disagreeable and confused,’ and that this would be the first impression of the public. A more mature consideration, he thought, would disclose no new ground for war, but war psychology and fear of false imputations might drive the people to the war hawks.[1414] Madison, equally astonished, thought Talleyrand’s conduct ‘incredible,’ not because of its ‘depravity, which, however heinous, is not without example,’ but because of its ‘unparalleled stupidity.’[1415] Monroe, who had spent the night with Madison in Virginia, thought the incident ‘evidently a swindling experiment,’ which was clear enough on its face.[1416] The public, in the meantime, was reading one of the most grotesque stories of political infamy and personal cupidity on record. The envoys had been treated with contempt, refused an audience, insulted by unofficial blackmailers sent by the unscrupulous Talleyrand to demand a loan for France and, more particularly, a bribe for himself. The envoys had conducted themselves with becoming dignity and spirit. ‘Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,’ was a clarion call to battle. The pride of the people was touched, and overnight the political complexion of the country had been changed. A wave of hysterical patriotism swept over the Nation, and the war hawks set to work to turn it into frenzy. It was now or never.