But even in the midst of death the politicians fought with scarcely diminished ferocity. ‘Porcupine’ and Fenno were stooping to the ghastly business of maligning the methods of Dr. Rush in treating the disease. Standing heroically to his duty where others had fled, he was forced, day by day, to read the most scurrilous attacks upon him. The animus was due to the fact that Rush was a Jeffersonian; and even from Lisbon, William Smith contributed his slur in a letter to Wolcott manifesting sympathy with the attacks because he had ‘always considered the Doctor a wrong-headed politician.’[1507] Bache and Fenno clawed on, amidst the dying and the dead, until one September day the fever entered the Fenno house and struck down both the editor and his wife. When she died, the ‘Gazette’ was suspended, and the next day John Fenno ceased his attacks on Dr. Rush, for Death had intervened.[1508] ‘Alas poor John Fenno,’ wrote Ames, ‘a worthy man, a true Federalist, always firm in his principles, mild in maintaining them, and bitter against foes. No printer was ever so correct in his politics.’[1509] A few days later, Benjamin Franklin Bache of the ‘Aurora’ fought no more. The Boston ‘Chronicle’ announced his death in a black-bordered editorial lamenting ‘the loss of a man of inflexible virtue, unappalled by power or persecution, and who, in dying, knew no anxieties but what was excited by his apprehensions for his country and for his young family.’[1510] The Jeffersonian press published long articles and poems of tribute. In New York the Democrats lost the services of Greenleaf of the ‘Argus,’ another victim of the plague.
John Ward Fenno took up the work of his father, and the widows of Bache and Greenleaf sought to continue the ‘Aurora’ and the ‘Argus,’ the former calling to her assistance one of the ablest controversial journalists of his time, William Duane. No Jeffersonian papers made an unfeeling reference to the death of Fenno; the passing of Bache was gloated over in ghoulish fashion by the Federalist press, and soon ‘Porcupine’ and young Fenno were making merry over ‘the widows Bache and Greenleaf.’ It was part of the Reign of Terror—and the fight went on.
VII
It went on because there was a congressional election pending and both parties were putting forth their utmost effort. The Federalists were hoping that under the influence of war hysteria the Jeffersonians could be annihilated; the Jeffersonians were fighting desperately to hold the line. The most sensational feature of the campaign was the emergence as an avowed party man of Washington, whose aristocratic viewpoint made democracy offensive. He went the full length, finding nothing objectionable in the Alien and Sedition Laws. When, on his persuasion, Patrick Henry entered the campaign as a candidate for the Assembly, he too defended these wretched measures with the silly and insincere statement that they were ‘too deep’ for him and were the emanations of a ‘wise body.’[1511]
But more important than the emergence of Washington was the congressional candidacy of John Marshall, who entered the fight on Washington’s insistence. The Hamiltonian Federalists were delighted with his candidacy until the publication of his letter opposing the Alien and Sedition Laws, when they turned upon him with bitter scorn. ‘His character is done for,’ wrote Ames.[1512] Noah Webster commented that ‘he speaks the language of true Americanism except on the Alien and Sedition Laws.’[1513] ‘Porcupine’ added an editor’s note to the letter in his paper: ‘The publication of these questions and answers will do neither good nor harm. I insert them as a sort of record of Mr. Marshall’s character. If I were a voter, however, I would sooner vote for Gallatin than for Marshall.’[1514] The New England Federalists were wrathy among themselves over Marshall’s apostasy. ‘Mr. Marshall,’ wrote Cabot to Pickering, ‘has given us great uneasiness here by his answers.... Mr. Marshall, I know, has much to learn on the subject of a practical system of free government for the United States.... I believe, however, that he will eventually prove a great acquisition.’[1515] It was at this juncture that Cabot proved his superior political perspicacity by taking up his pen in defense of Marshall for the Boston ‘Centinel.’[1516] The struggle in Virginia was bitter. The Jeffersonians, long prepared for Washington’s action, were undismayed, and they fought with increased vim. The result was that, while Marshall won by 108 majority, the Jeffersonians elected all but eight of the Representatives, carried the Legislature, and elected a United States Senator.
The Federalists were chagrined with the general result. Cabot was disappointed with Massachusetts[1517] and Maryland.[1518] A Senator had been lost in North Carolina, and from South Carolina the Jeffersonians had sent to the Senate their most resourceful leader, Charles Pinckney. Theodore Sedgwick, surveying the field, and writing his observations to King in London, could find no improvement in the Senate and but a slight ‘amelioration’ in the House. The Jeffersonians had won six out of ten seats in New York, gained two in New Jersey, and eight out of thirteen in Pennsylvania.
But Giles was gone—retiring in disgust to the Legislature of Virginia. The election was over—and the Reign of Terror was beginning.
VIII
It began in the summer of 1798 and extended through the autumn of 1800. The growing sentiment for democracy and the increasing popularity of Jefferson were maddening to the Federalists, who fared forth to destroy both with a club. The Alien and Sedition Laws were to be used for the purpose. Democrats, from the highest to the most lowly, were to be proscribed and treated with contempt. The New England clergy, for the most part, entered heartily into the plan. The colleges joined. So openly partisan became the institutions of learning that the Jeffersonian press opened their batteries upon the ‘arbitrary spirit which has been exposed in the eastern seminaries.’[1519] With much ceremony Doctors’ Degrees were being bestowed upon Federalist politicians, and Pickering and Wolcott were made Doctors of Law. ‘Except Timothy’s vulgar diplomacy who ever heard of the qualifications in him?’ asked the irreverent Duane, and while ‘Oliver has dabbled in politics and glittered in prose’ ‘he would never have been discovered by the savants had he not been in the Cabinet of a New England President.’[1520] Other Federalist politicians were thus given the disguise of scholarship, but Jefferson, President of the Philosophical Society, and friend of Franklin and Rittenhouse, received no degrees.
Very early, gangs of self-proclaimed patriots sallied forth into the country to tear down the liberty poles erected by the Democrats, armed with pistols and swords, and clattering over the country roads like Cossacks on a rampage. One of these gangs under the leadership of a Philip Strubling, operating in Berks County, Pennsylvania, had a triumphant career, except where armed men showed fight, when the gallant band found discretion the better part of valor.[1521] This sort of outrage was being committed all over the country. Plans were made to wreck the printing plant of Duane until it was found that his friends had armed for defense, and the editor warned the conspirators that an attempt at violence ‘would carry public vengeance to their firesides.’[1522]