V
Bad as was the Alien Law, it did not approach the viciousness of the Sedition Act; and the Sedition Bill as passed was mild compared with the one the Federalist leaders in the Senate originally framed. Albeit America and France were not at war, the bill declared the French people enemies of the American people, and that any one giving the former aid and comfort should be punishable with death. A strict enforcement of such an act would have sent Jefferson to the gallows. Under the Fourth Article any one questioning the constitutionality or justice of an Administration measure could be sent to herd with felons. It would have sealed the lips of members of Congress.
When this monstrous measure reached Hamilton, he was dumbfounded at the temerity and brutality of his followers. Grasping his pen, he hurriedly sent a note of warning to Wolcott. There were provisions that were ‘highly exceptionable’ that would ‘endanger civil war.’ He hoped that ‘the thing will not be hurried through.’ Why ‘establish a tyranny?’ Was not ‘energy a very different thing from violence?’[1496] Reeling drunk with intolerance, even Hamilton’s warning only coaxed a slight concession to liberty, and it was a thoroughly vicious and tyrannical measure that was debated in the House. These debates were conducted under conditions of disorder that would have disgraced a discussion of brigands wrangling over a division of spoils in a wayside cave. Gallatin, Livingston, and Nicholas were forced to talk against coughs, laughter, conversation, and the scraping of the feet of the apostles of ‘law and order.’ No personal insult too foul, no nincompoop too insignificant to sneer in the face of Gallatin. Despite these terrorizing tactics, the Jeffersonians stood firm and made their record. Even the customary courtesy of Gallatin deserted him, however, and when the sneering Harper darkly hinted at traitors in the House, he retorted sharply that he knew ‘nothing in the character of [Harper], either public or private, to entitle him to the ground he so boldly assumes.’
On the last day of the debate on the Alien Bill, Edward Livingston closed for the opposition; and in discussing the constitutional phase, he anticipated the doctrine of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, indicating probable conferences with the tall, silent man who was presiding over the Senate. ‘If we are ready to violate the Constitution,’ he said, ‘will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them.’ The effect of such a measure? ‘The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators, and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of despotic power.... The hours of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses of domestic retirement, afford no security. The companion whom you must trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic who waits in your chamber, are all tempted to betray your imprudent or unguarded follies; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted by calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides—where fear officiates as accuser, and suspicion is the only evidence that is heard.... Do not let us be told that we are to excite a fervor against a foreign aggression to establish a tyranny at home; that like the arch traitor we cry “Hail Columbia”[1497] at the moment we are betraying her to destruction; that we sing, “Happy Land,” when we are plunging it in ruin and disgrace; and that we are absurd enough to call ourselves free and enlightened while we advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of Gothic barbarity.’[1498]
The vote was taken and the Alien Bill passed, 46 to 40.
Livingston was to hear a few days later when the debate on the Sedition Bill was reached that he had been guilty of sedition in his speech on the Alien Bill. Not least among the grotesque features of the crazy times was the prominence, amounting to leadership, attained by John Allen of Connecticut—a tall, hectic, sour-visaged fanatic. It was reserved for him to indict the Jeffersonians generally for sedition. Had not Livingston been guilty of sedition when he proposed that Gerry be authorized to renew negotiations? Was not the ‘Aurora’s’ explanation of the effect of the Alien Law upon the Irish treason? Were not members of Congress who dared write their views to their constituents traitors? From a want-wit like this fanatic such views were more ludicrous than depressing, but Harper rose to give his full assent to the buffoonery of Allen. ‘What!’ exclaimed Nicholas, ‘is it proposed to prevent members from speaking what they please or prohibit them from reaching the people with their views?’ And Harper, disclaiming any desire to curtail the freedom of speech upon the floor, bravely admitted a desire to prevent the speeches from reaching the people ‘out of doors.’ This astounding doctrine brought Gallatin to his feet with a scornful denunciation of Allen’s criticism of Cabell’s letter. It ‘contained more information and more sense than the gentleman from Connecticut has displayed or can display.’ Taking up every assertion in Cabell’s letter and making it his own, he challenged a denial of its truth. Then, referring to the attack on Livingston’s speech, Gallatin gave his full sanction to the New York statesman’s doctrine of resistance to unconstitutional measures. ‘I believe that doctrine is absolutely correct and neither seditious nor treasonable.’
On the last day Livingston spoke with his usual spirit and eloquence, and Harper closed for the bill with an anti-climactic charge, apropos of nothing, that the Jeffersonian plan of government was in the interest of ‘men of immoderate ambition, great family connections, hereditary wealth, and extensive influence’ like Livingston. ‘Great patrician families’ would walk over the heads ‘of we plebeian people.’ This touching appeal for the plebeians could hardly have been meant for Philadelphia where at that time ‘the great patricians’ were lavishly wining and dining the Harpers, and rigidly excluding the Livingstons and Gallatins from their tables. Thus the Federalists closed their case and the bill passed, 44 to 41.[1499]
The press was peculiarly silent through the debates. Russell in the Boston ‘Centinel’ observed that ‘Benedict Arnold complained bitterly of the treason bill,’[1500] and his rival, Thomas Adams of the ‘Chronicle,’ announced the passage with the comment that ‘we are now abridged the freedom of the press.’[1501] Soon the ‘Commercial Advertiser’ of New York would be dubbing all men traitors who criticized the Sedition Law, and Jefferson would be inviting Hamilton Rowan to the sanctuary of Monticello with the assurance that the Habeas Corpus Act was still operative in Virginia.[1502] Almost immediately the Reign of Terror broke upon the land.
VI
In the midst of political terrors the yellow fever stalked again into the haunts of men, striking in New York, in Boston, with special virulence in Philadelphia. By the first of October, fourteen hundred had died in New York City. Hamilton remained in town until persuaded by his family to go to the country, but he continued to visit the city daily to confer with his political friends.[1503] In Philadelphia those who could afford it took to flight. Soon thousands were encamped in tents on the common on the outskirts and by October not more than seven thousand people remained in the stricken city. An English traveler, entering in September, found the theaters, taverns, drinking-houses, gambling-dens, and dance-halls closed, hospital carts moving slowly through abandoned streets, the casket-makers alone busy. Sitting one night on the steps of a house in Arch Street, where most houses were deserted, he could hear nothing but the groans of the dying, the lamentations of the living, the hammers of the coffin-makers, the dismal howling of deserted dogs.[1504] Even the physicians took to their heels, but Dr. Rush, the head of his profession, remained to battle with the disease.[1505] The health office was kept open day and night.[1506]