Not a little nonplussed by his masterful manner, Bingham apologetically explained that there was no thought of interference, but merely a disposition to reconcile differences of opinion.
‘Well, then, gentlemen,’ snapped Adams, ‘if you are determined to interfere in diplomatic matters, reject Mr. Murray. You have the power to do this, and you may do it; but it will be upon your own responsibility.’
As mildly as possible it was suggested that Adams’s action, so soon after the insult, would be interpreted as a humiliation.
‘I know more of diplomatic forms than all of you,’ Adams hotly replied with perfect truth. ‘It was in France that we received the insult, and in France I am determined that we shall receive the reparation.’
Forced to compromise, a commission was then suggested.
‘Who would you have me send?’ Adams demanded, an ugly expression on his face. ‘Shall I send Theophilus Parsons, or some of your other Essex rulers? No, I will send none of them.’
At this the committee showed its teeth with the threat to defeat the confirmation. Adams, infuriated by the threat, replied that there was a party determined to rule him, but that they would fail.[1664]
That night when the caucus met again, it was decided to reject the nomination. Meanwhile, the effect outside the Senate was quite as sensational. Duane announced the nomination the day after it reached the Senate, in large type. The next day ‘Porcupine’ fired a broadside.
‘For the last two days,’ he said, ‘there has been a most atrocious falsehood in circulation ... that the President ... has intimated by a messenger to the Senate that he has resolved on sending another plenipotentiary to treat with the French Republic. Every one must perceive the falsehood on the front of this; yet have audacious wretches dared to promulgate it without hesitation and they have even named the plenipotentiary, Mr. Murray.... I will not expatiate upon the consequences of such a step ... because I cannot suppose the step within the compass of possibility; but I must observe that had he taken such a step it would have been instantaneously followed by the loss of every friend worth preserving.’[1665] Encouraged by the applause of the Federalists, he recurred to it the next day with a denunciation of ‘a mere fabrication intended to alienate the President’s friends ... at this momentous crisis and sink his character in the eyes of all Europe and America.’[1666] But two days later, the ferocious ‘Porcupine’ had changed his tune and was singing low, with the absurd protestation that he had ‘never published a word with regard to the President that could possibly be construed into disrespect.’[1667] He had discovered he was amenable to the Alien Law he had so stoutly defended!
Adams had asserted himself and was happy, and when Pickering was writing Washington that his successor was ‘suffering the torments of the damned,’ Adams was writing cheerfully to his wife that he could hardly be chosen President a second time, and would be glad of the relief. ‘To-night I must go to the ball; where I suppose I shall get cold and have to eat gruel for breakfast for a week afterwards.’[1668] The determined little patriot was now on the top of the world, and now it was his enemies that were guessing. The senatorial committee had been an idea of Hamilton’s, to whom Sedgwick had hastened the news of the nomination. The committee had failed. Even the suggestion of two more envoys had been scorned. Something might still be done through conciliation. Ellsworth, the Chief Justice, had Adams’s confidence and he was sent to try his powers of persuasion, and succeeded. Thus, the nominations of Murray, Ellsworth, and Patrick Henry were sent to the Senate, and confirmed without even a whimper from ‘Porcupine.’ But beneath the surface, the passions were seething. Sedgwick wrote King that he had not ‘conversed with an individual ... who did not unequivocably reprobate the measure.’[1669] Tracy, who had wanted to arm the women and children against the French, wrote McHenry that while he had sacrificed much ‘to root out Democracy,’ he thought it ‘to be lost and worse.’[1670] Cabot assured King that ‘surprise, indignation, grief, and disgust followed each other in quick succession in the breasts of the true friends of the country,’[1671] and informed Pickering that he had written ‘a piece’ about it for the Boston papers, but that ‘the Boston press had been fixed by the President’s friends and it had not appeared.’[1672] To King, he ascribed Adams’s action to jealousy of Hamilton and Washington.[1673] Pickering wrote Cabot that ‘the President’s character can never be retrieved.’[1674] Stephen Higginson, the merchant prince of the Essex Junto, found the world dark indeed. Why had not war been declared in the summer of 1798? Even the powers given Adams by the Alien and Sedition Laws had not been used![1675] Jonathan Mason was furious because ‘from being respectable in Europe, from having convinced Great Britain and from having associated with all the friends of Order, Property, and Society ... we must again become soothers and suppliants for peace from a gang of pitiful robbers.’[1676] Ames wrote that the new embassy ‘disgusts most men here’ because they thought ‘peace with France ... an evil.’[1677] Even at Adams’s table the jeremiads of the Federalists were heard, and the dinners were somber affairs. Bayard of Delaware was loud in his lamentations.