When Bache thus escaped the vengeance of his enemies, they turned to his successor, William Duane, who soon proved himself a more vigorous controversialist than his predecessor. A remarkable character was Duane, entitled to a monument for his fight for the freedom of the press. Born in America of Irish parentage, he was taken to Ireland on the death of his father, and there he grew to manhood. His career previous to his return to America was colorful and courageous. For a time he had been a reporter for the London ‘Times’ in the press gallery of the House of Commons, before establishing a newspaper in India which he edited with such signal ability that the East India Company found it advisable to resort to force and fraud to destroy his property and send him out of the country. At length in sheer disgust he returned to America, and soon became the editor of ‘The Aurora.’[1547]
One Friday night before the Monday on which the question of the repeal of the Alien Law was to be considered in Congress, a number of citizens, including some foreign-born, met in Philadelphia to arrange for a memorial to Congress. On Sunday morning, Duane and three others, including Dr. James Reynolds, appeared during services in the churchyard of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church with the memorial and a few placards requesting natives of Ireland in the congregation to remain in the yard after the services to sign the petition. Some of these placards were placed on the church and on the gates leading into the yard. Some belated worshipers of the Federalist persuasion tore these down, and, entering the church, warned the priest that seditious men were in the yard planning a riot. The four men in the yard conducted themselves with perfect decorum. When the congregation was dismissed, Duane and his party had the memorial spread upon a tombstone. A few approached and signed. Almost immediately, however, the terrorists among the members of the church closed in upon the group, centering their attacks mostly upon Reynolds, who was knocked down and kicked. Struggling to his feet, Reynolds drew a revolver and prepared to defend himself, at which moment officers reached the scene and the four men were hurried off to jail on the charge of creating a seditious riot.
Before a great crowd at the State House, the trial was held, with Hopkinson, the author of the war song, as special prosecutor, and the men in the dock brilliantly defended by A. J. Dallas. The testimony showed that there had been no disturbance until the mob charged upon the men with the memorial; that the memorial itself was unexceptionable in every way; that Reynolds had been warned a week before of a conspiracy to murder him and had armed himself on advice of a member of Congress; that none of the others carried a weapon of any sort; and it was shown by the testimony of a priest that it was then the custom in Ireland to post notices in churchyards, and for members of the church to transact such public business in the yards after services. Members of the congregation testified that they had wanted to sign; the priest that the posting of the notice was not considered disrespectful to the church. In a brilliant speech of sarcasm and invective, Dallas riddled the prosecution, calling attention to attempts to intimidate lawyers from appearing for the defense, charging the prosecution with being inspired by partisan hate, and denouncing the Alien Law. Hopkinson replied lamely, attacking immigrants and Democrats. The jury retired, and in thirty minutes returned with a verdict of acquittal. The State House rang with cheers. The case, however, had not been tried in a Federal Court.[1548]
That, however, was only the beginning of the attempt to wreck and ruin the leading Jeffersonian editor. John Adams and Pickering had been planning to reach him by hook or crook. The latter wrote Adams that Duane, though born in America, had gone to Ireland before the Revolution; that in India he ‘had been charged with some crime’; and that he had come to America ‘to stir up sedition.’ More—he was ‘doubtless a United Irishman,’ and in case of a French invasion the military company he had formed would join the invaders. The picture was as Adams would have had it painted. ‘The matchless effrontery of Duane,’ he wrote, ‘merits the execution of the Alien Law. I am very willing to try its strength on him.’ This trial was never made, but two months later the Federal Courts began to move against him. At Norristown, Pennsylvania, with Bushrod Washington and Richard Peters on the Bench, an indictment was brought against him for sedition.[1549] The case was continued until June, 1800—and Duane went full steam ahead with his attacks on the Federalist Party. The trial was again postponed, and in October, 1800, he was indicted again—this time for having published a Senate Bill of a peculiarly vicious if not criminal character which its sponsors for sufficient reasons wished kept from the public. But it was of no avail. He would not cringe or crawl or compromise or be silenced. The cases against him were dismissed when Jefferson became President. Many historians have belittled him; he fought brilliantly for fundamental constitutional rights when men high in office, who are praised, were conspiring to strike them down.
VIII
One day the Sedition snoopers fell upon an article by Dr. Thomas Cooper, an Englishman by birth, a scientist and physician by profession, a man of learning and culture, and a Jeffersonian. It referred to the early days of Adams’s Administration when ‘he was hardly in the infancy of political mistake.’ It charged Adams with saddling the people with a permanent navy; with having borrowed money at eight per cent; referred to his ‘unnecessary violence of official expression which might justly have provoked war’; to his interference with the processes of a Federal Court in the case of Robbins. And that was all. Adams had made mistakes, had established a permanent navy, had borrowed money at eight per cent; and many thought at the time that he had unduly interposed in the Robbins case. But this was sedition in 1800.
Hustled into the Federal Court at Philadelphia, Cooper found the red-faced Chase glowering upon him from the Bench—the same Chase who had been charged by Hamilton with speculating in flour during the Revolution. There was no denial of the authorship of the article. The evidence in, Chase charged the jury in his most violent partisan manner. There are only two ways to destroy a republic, he said: one the introduction of luxury, the other the licentiousness of the press. ‘The latter is more slow but more sure.’ Taking up the Cooper article, he analyzed it in the spirit of a prosecutor. Here, thundered the Judge, we have the opinion that Adams has good intentions but doubtful capacity. Borrowed money ‘at eight per cent in time of peace?’ What—call these times of peace? ‘I cannot suppress my feeling at this gross attack upon the President. Can this be true? Can you believe it? Are we now in time of peace? Is there no war?’[1550] The jury promptly returned a verdict of guilty. The next day Cooper appeared for sentence. Asked by Chase to explain his financial condition as that might affect the sentence, he replied that he was in moderate circumstances, dependent on his practice, which would be destroyed by imprisonment. ‘Be it so,’ he continued. ‘I have been accustomed to make sacrifices to opinion, and I can make this. As to circumstances in extenuation, not being conscious that I have set down aught in malice, I have nothing to extenuate.’ Chase became suspiciously unctuous and oily. If Cooper had to pay his own fine, that would be one thing; if his party had arranged to pay the fine, that would be another. ‘The insinuations of the Court are ill founded,’ Cooper replied with indignation, ‘and if you, sir, from misapprehension or misrepresentation, have been tempted to make them, your mistake should be corrected.’ Judge Peters, who had been squirming through these amazing partisan comments of Chase, here impatiently intervened with the comment that the Court had nothing to do with parties. Whereupon Cooper was fined a thousand dollars and ordered to jail for six months.[1551]
Duane instantly announced an early publication in pamphlet form of the trial in full. ‘Republicans may rest completely assured,’ he wrote, ‘that they will have every reason to be satisfied with the effect of this most singular trial on the mind of the public.’[1552] The pamphlet appeared, and, as Duane had foreseen, the public was aroused. A man of decent character and high professional standing was languishing in a jail in the capital of the country for having told the truth and expressed an opinion on a constitutional question. There were rumblings and grumblings in the streets, and some uneasiness in Administration circles. The hint went forth that an appeal for a pardon might receive consideration, and one was put in circulation, when out from the ‘convict’s’ cell came a letter of protest. He wanted and would have no petition for pardon. He believed with Adams that repentance should precede pardon[1553] and he had no feeling of repentance. ‘Nor will I be the voluntary cat’s-paw of electioneering clemency,’ Cooper continued. ‘I know that late events have greatly changed the outward and visible signs of the politics of the party, and good temper and moderation is the order of the day with the Federalists now, as it has always been with their political opponents. But all sudden conversions are suspicious, and I hope that Republicans will be upon their guard against the insidious or interested designs of those who may wish to profit by the too common credulity of honest intention.’[1554]
The petition was dropped. Cooper remained happily in his cell. His incarceration was making votes for Jefferson. When, on the expiration of his sentence, Cooper stepped into the daylight, he found a deputation of his friends awaiting him at the door. He was escorted to a fashionable hotel where a public dinner had been arranged to honor him and express contempt for the Sedition Law. Two long tables were set, with Dr. James Logan presiding over one, Thomas Leiper over the other. That night, as the wine flowed, the men who would not be silenced drank to Cooper—to Jefferson—to a Democratic victory.[1555]