That same month he was writing Edmund Pendleton in the same vein—the ‘direct tax,’ the ‘army and navy in time of peace,’ the ‘usurious interest,’ the ‘recruiting officers at every court-house to decoy the laborer from his plough.’[1710] In these letters we have the first Jeffersonian platform—and on these points, from that time on, the Democrats harped constantly in Congress, in pamphlets and through the press. Not least, nor least effective, among the methods of propaganda were the congressional letters with which the Jeffersonian members flooded their constituents, setting forth in vigorous fashion all the counts in the indictment. As these letters fell upon the country like a snowstorm, the Federalists were infuriated. They summoned their Federal Judges to denounce them in charges to grand juries, and Iredell foolishly responded. In Congress they hinted darkly that these records of public affairs sent by public servants to the public they served were seditious. Many years afterward Adams recalled them with rage—these letters that ‘swelled, raged, foamed in all the fury of a tempest at sea against me,’ a flood so enormous that ‘a collection of those letters would make many volumes.’ Adams never forgave his party for finding no means for their suppression.[1711]
These letters were part of the Jeffersonian plan to reach the people and set the tongues to wagging. Everywhere Jefferson was encouraging his followers to establish newspapers. Soon Noah Webster’s paper was complaining that the irrepressible Matthew Lyon ‘in the course of one year has established no less than four ... presses.’[1712] Was money needed for the publication of pamphlets or the distribution of newspapers? Jefferson made out a subscription list, put his friends down for a contribution, and informed them of his action without apology. Thus, to Monroe: An important measure is under contemplation which ‘will require a considerable sum of money.’ He had therefore put Monroe down for from fifty to a hundred dollars.[1713] Thus, to Madison: ‘Every man must lay his pen and his purse under contribution.’[1714] Were articles required? He sent instructions to his friends to write. Thus, to Pendleton, asking him to prepare a pamphlet on the Gerry correspondence,[1715] and to Madison asking him to ‘set aside a portion of every post day to write what may be proper for the public.’[1716] Were pamphlets printed and ready for distribution? Then a letter from Jefferson to men of the standing of Monroe ordering them to place them in the hands of ‘the most influential characters among our countrymen who are only misled.’[1717]
In every State he had men of political sagacity through whom he could work while maintaining the semblance of aloofness. In Massachusetts, Gerry; in New Hampshire, Langdon; in Connecticut, Bishop and Granger; in New York, Livingston and Burr; in Pennsylvania, Gallatin, M’Kean, and the Muhlenbergs; in Maryland, Mercer and General Sam Smith; in Virginia, Madison, Monroe, Giles, and Pendleton; in Kentucky, John Breckenridge and George Nicholson; in North Carolina, Macon, Jones, and Joseph Gales, the clever and daring editor of the Raleigh ‘Register’ who put the Federalists to the torture with the best paper in the State, which was sent free to prospective converts;[1718] and in Tennessee, Senator William Cocke, an old Amelia County Virginian, and William C. C. Claiborne. In South Carolina, where the Hamiltonians were strong in the support of the Pinckney brothers, and through the commercial interests of Charleston, he was fortunate in having Charles Pinckney, more brilliant, daring, picturesque, and magnetic than his cousins, and Peter Freneau, brother of the poet, and editor of the ‘Charleston City News.’ Nowhere did the Jeffersonians make better progress against stubborn resistance than in the Palmetto State. Thence Hamilton had long drawn for talent, but his party was being gradually undermined. William Smith, who recited speeches Hamilton had written, had retired to escape defeat to a berth in Lisbon; and Harper, noting the premonitions of a storm, had announced his retirement from Congress to seek consolation in the glamour of the Carroll wealth and in the charms of a Carroll daughter in Maryland.
This revolution was largely wrought through the management of a few Jeffersonians who met night after night in Freneau’s office on George Street to plan the fight. Either of two participants in these conferences was a host within himself. There was Freneau—huge in frame, and, aside from height, bearing a striking resemblance to Charles James Fox in voice, conversation, and manners, with a literary style which a contemporary found to combine ‘the beauty and smoothness of Addison and the strength and simplicity of Cobbett.’ And there was Charles Pinckney, handsome, imposing, a favorite of fortune, dominating in leadership, eloquent and forceful in debate, conspicuous in the Constitutional Convention in his twenties and Governor of his State at thirty-one. There about the table, and over their cups we may be sure, they set their traps, and planned their propaganda. Freneau would take up his pen and literally dash off a powerful article with a facility and felicity that called for no revision or correction; and Pinckney would write an article to be signed ‘A Republican,’ or appear unexpectedly at a public meeting to sweep the audience with him by the fire and force of his eloquence.[1719] These men sallied forth to battle with a gallant gayety suggested by their own facetious description of their conferences as ‘The Rye House Plot.’
Thus everywhere Jefferson had men on whom he could depend, and his orders given, his work done, he could spend the summer and autumn of 1800 with his potatoes. There we must leave him and look elsewhere for the drama of the fighting. Only twice during the campaign did he wander farther from Monticello than Charlottesville. Mounted on his horse, he rode daily over his plantation. Every evening he made his customary notations in his farm account book. When Marie’s pianoforte arrived, he might have been seen tuning it himself while the battle raged on many fronts. He wrote his daughter the details of a neighborhood murder, and of the prospects of the harvest, but nothing of politics. His work was done. He had ploughed and sowed and tended—but the work in the harvest-field was for others. In the early summer a strange tale traveled throughout the country, recorded in all the papers, that he had died suddenly. The papers printed it cautiously, however, and there was no political motive in its circulation. At length it was explained. One of his slaves named ‘Thomas Jefferson’ had died at Monticello. Jefferson was never more alive than that summer on his hilltop.
III
That a tidal wave toward Democracy had set in was shown in the early spring in the elections in New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. By common consent New York was put down as the pivotal State and both parties planned to put forth their utmost efforts there. Jefferson, still in Philadelphia, was keeping in intimate touch with the situation through his correspondents in the State, and placing reliance on the sagacity of Aaron Burr. As early as January, he was writing Monroe with the utmost confidence of the result ‘on the strength of [his] advices.’[1720] In March he was assuring Madison, on the representations of Burr and Livingston, that the State was safe if the city of New York could be carried.[1721] The Federalists, he found seriously alarmed. ‘Their speeches in private, as well as their public and private demeanor toward me, indicate it strongly.’[1722] Hamilton himself had seemed so depressed that Henry Lee had written rallying him on his pessimism and urging him to ‘be more like yourself and resist to victory all your foes.’[1723] He had replied with a touch of petulance that he was not despondent and stood ‘on ground which, sooner or later, will assure me a triumph over all my enemies.’[1724] But he was then facing the most desperate fighting of his career, with Burr leading the opposition with a smiling gayety that was disconcerting.
The prevailing fashion of picturing Hamilton as a saintly soul sent to his death by a deep-dyed villain of the type once popular in the melodrama, cannot conceal the amazing resemblance of these two men. There were probably no other two men in the America of their day who were so much alike. Physically both were small, compactly built, of militant carriage, with penetrating eyes of different colors, and of persuasive voices. Both were dandies in their dress, the glass of fashion and the mould of form, courtly, Chesterfieldian, and dashing. Both had demonstrated their courage and military sagacity on the field of battle—Hamilton in the assault at Yorktown, Burr in carrying his beloved Montgomery from the battle-field on his back, wading knee-deep in snow, and amidst a rain of bullets. Burr, no less than Hamilton, had served in the military household of Washington, and both alike had resented their leader’s rather imperious manner. At the New York Bar both had risen to eminence, and some hesitated to give the superiority to either. Here their methods were different—Hamilton relying on erudition where Burr depended on finesse, the former exhaustive in argument, the latter concise. Both were effective orators in different ways. Hamilton was declamatory, Burr conversational. Socially they had many points of similarity, and in a social sense they were not averse to one another’s company at dinner. In conversation one was scarcely more scintillating than the other, and both were fond of badinage, and adept in compliments to the ladies. Both were gallants, attractive to, and attracted by, women of wit and beauty. Neither was above the intrigues of love, with ideas of morality that would have been appreciated in the London of the Restoration. If Burr kept his diary, which seems so shocking to some, Hamilton had his pamphlet on his affair with Mrs. Reynolds—but Burr did not publish his diary. Neither should be judged too harshly, for it was a day of rather loose morals, and the press made free with the gossip concerning Harper and Sedgwick. Both were inordinately ambitious for command, impatient under restraint, and wont to dream of leading triumphant armies. The ambition of neither was circumscribed by the boundaries of the country. If Burr wished to lead an army of conquest into Mexico, Hamilton longed to lead the same sort of an army into South America.
Hamilton and Burr were natural enemies because too much alike in temperament and ambition. Their hopes clashed. Both were deeply in love with their wives, notwithstanding their transgressions. There is something touching in Burr’s letters to his sick wife, his anxiety, his consultations with physicians, his instructions to Theodosia. He was idolized by wife and daughter because they, in turn, were idolized by him. Unlike Hamilton, he was even tender with his servants. It is quite impossible to conceive of Hamilton writing friendly letters to his men and women domestics and slaves. To understand Burr’s fascination for many, one thing must be borne in mind—he was loved because he was lovable in his personal contacts.
These two men faced each other for a finish fight in the spring of 1800.[1725]