Jefferson and Hamilton

by Claude G. Bowers

Before the jail had assembled a vast multitude. Out of the door rushed Lyon. ‘I am on my way to Philadelphia!’—to Congress, he shouted. A roar went up, a procession with a flag in front was formed, and the ‘convict’ was on his way triumphantly. The school children at Tinmouth paraded in his honor, and a youthful orator greeted him with a welcome to ‘our brave Representative who has been suffering for us under an unjust sentence, and the tyranny of a detested understrapper of despotism.’ The woods reverberated with shouts. Then on moved the procession. At Bennington, another ovation, more speeches. Seated in a sleigh, his wife beside him, Lyon was escorted by the throng. At times the procession was twelve miles long. Through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the ovations were repeated. He had gone home to the tune of ‘The Rogue’s March’; he returned by the same route to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle.’[1530]

II

The terrorists ground their teeth and sought revenge—with nothing too petty. The Reverend John C. Ogden dared to be a Democrat and to carry the petition for Lyon to Philadelphia. Thenceforth he was a marked man. He was in debt—and a debt would serve. Returning from Philadelphia, he was arrested at Litchfield, Connecticut, and thrown into jail. ‘It is presumed,’ sneered Major Russell of the Boston ‘Centinel,’ ‘that Lyon when he goes from his jail to Congress will at least sneak into Litchfield to pay a visit to his envoy and take a petition from him to the Vice-President [Jefferson].’[1531] But jail was too good for such a rascal. On his release a crowd of soldiers followed him out of Litchfield, calling him ‘a damn Democrat,’ abusing, insulting, collaring, shaking him. It was their purpose to take him back to Litchfield and scourge him in public. Whirling him around, the gallant soldiers started back. Meanwhile, the report had spread that the heroic remnant of the army had set forth on a mobbing expedition, and a party of Democrats and civilians mounted horses and rushed to the rescue. The courage of the soldiers, so splendid in the presence of one man, oozed out on the approach of the rescuers, and Ogden was released.[1532]

III

But Ogden was not the only victim of the terrorists, among the friends of Lyon. Anthony Haswell, born in England, a man of education, who had seen service in the army of Washington and had narrowly escaped death at Monmouth, was editor of the ‘Vermont Gazette.’ A gentleman of amiability and integrity, his popularity was great in Vermont—but he was a Jeffersonian. One day the sleuths of the Terror, scanning the pages of Democratic papers, found an appeal in Haswell’s ‘Gazette’ for funds to pay the fine of Lyon. It referred to the ‘loathsome prison,’ to the marshal as ‘a hard-hearted savage, who has, to the disgrace of Federalism, been elevated to a station where he can satiate his barbarity on the misery of his victims.’ It was a faithful portrait. But in concluding, the article charged that the Administration had declared worthy of the confidence of the Government the Tories ‘who had shared in the desolation of our homes and the abuse of our wives and daughters.’

Thus, one night there was a hammering on the door of Haswell’s house, and he was confronted by petty officials and notified to prepare for a journey to Rutland in the early morning. In feeble health, and unaccustomed to riding, he was forced to mount a horse for the sixty-mile ride to the capital. Through a cold October rain the sick man jolted along in misery through the day, and it was near midnight when the town was reached. With his clothing soaked, he begged permission to spend the night at a hotel where he could dry it. This was curtly refused. At midnight they pushed the sick man in wet clothing into a cell. Responsible men of Rutland begged permission to go security to the end that the editor might spend the night in decent quarters—it was denied. The next morning he was hurried to trial at Windsor before Judge Paterson who, on the Bench, continued to be a New Jersey politician. The defense introduced evidence to prove the charge of brutality against the marshal, and asked the Court for permission to summon McHenry and General Drake of Virginia to prove that on one occasion the Administration had acknowledged the policy of occasionally appointing Tories to office. The Court refused permission; and having refused, Paterson declared in the charge that ‘no attempt had been made at justification’ of the reference to Tories. The jury was probably packed. The verdict was promptly rendered—guilty of sedition. And Haswell was sent to jail for two months. On the day of the expiration of his sentence, a great throng assembled at the prison to testify to their regard for Haswell and their contempt for the Sedition Law and its sponsors. When the editor appeared at the door, the band played while the crowd sang:

‘Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy.’

It was all too evident that, despite the Sedition Law, there were ‘Yankee Doodles’ to ‘keep it up’ too numerous for the jails.

IV

The enforcement of the law in Massachusetts offered comedy, tragedy, and farce—with at least one hero among the victims. There was something of pathos even in the farce. An illiterate and irresponsible soldier of the Revolution, David Brown, was wandering about the country reading and distributing some foolish compositions of his own that were incomprehensible in their incoherency. It was possible to detect some dissatisfaction with the Administration, however. His was the grievance of many others of the ragged Continentals of the ranks. He was a Democrat. Fisher Ames, who was not a soldier, though old enough to have been one, was outraged and alarmed over the foolish fellow’s activities, and pretended to believe that he was one of the Jeffersonian ‘runners sent everywhere to blow the trumpet of sedition.’ He wrote Gore, who had grown rich buying up the paper of the private soldiers, of this ‘vagabond ragged fellow, who lurked about in Dedham telling everybody the sins and enormities of the government.’ Ames understood that he ‘knew of my speculating connection with you;[1533] and how I had made my immense wealth.’[1534] Finally he participated in the erection of a liberty pole at Dedham bearing among its inscriptions the sinister words, ‘No Stamp Tax, No Sedition.’ The authorities pounced upon him as legitimate prey.