Dismayed, disgruntled with Adams, but afraid to reject him openly, the Federalist caucus convened in Philadelphia and selected Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as his running mate with the idea of electing him to the Presidency through treachery to Adams.
V
When Adams learned of the Federalist defeat in New York, he momentarily went to pieces. His suspicious mind instantly saw in his humiliation the hand of Hamilton and his supporters. He had long been cognizant of the treachery about him, in his official household. On the morning of May 5th, McHenry received a note from the house on Market Street: ‘The President requests Mr. McHenry’s company for one minute.’ As the poet-politician walked up Market Street in response that spring morning, he could not have conceived of any other issue than a brief discussion of some departmental matter. Only a few weeks before he had, with Adams’s knowledge, arranged for a house at Georgetown, and for the removal of his family thither.[1739] As he had surmised, the subject which had summoned him to the conference was a minor matter relating to the appointment of a purveyor. This was satisfactorily disposed of. Was there something smug or offensive in the manner of Hamilton’s messenger that suddenly enraged the old man, smarting under the sting of the defeat in New York? Suddenly he began to talk of McHenry’s derelictions, his anger rising, his color mounting, his voice ringing with unrepressed rage. McHenry thought him ‘mad.’ Washington, said Adams, had saddled him with three Secretaries, Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry. The latter had refused to give a commission to the only elector in North Carolina who had voted for Adams. He had influenced Washington to insist on giving Hamilton the preference over Knox—which was true. In a report to Congress, McHenry had eulogized Washington and sought to praise Hamilton—the President’s enemy. He had urged the suspension of the mission to France. The old man was spluttering with fury, and his disloyal Secretary was dumb with amazement. It was time for him to resign. McHenry beat a hasty retreat, returned to his office, prepared his resignation, which in decency should have been voluntarily submitted long before, and sent it in the next morning.[1740]
Having set himself to the task of ridding his household of his enemies, Adams bethought himself of Pickering. Five days after the stormy scene with McHenry, the austere Secretary of State received a note from the President inviting a resignation. This was on Saturday. On Monday morning, Pickering went to his office as usual, having been long accustomed to ignoring or thwarting the wishes of his chief, and sent a letter dealing, strangely enough, with his pecuniary embarrassments, and refusing to resign.[1741] The letter had not been sent an hour before an answer was in his hands. It was curt and comprehensive. ‘Divers causes and considerations essential to the administration of the government, in my judgment requiring a change in the department of state, you are hereby discharged from any further service as Secretary of State.’[1742]
Hamilton, enraged at the dismissal of his servitors, hastened an astonishing letter of instructions to Pickering. He should ‘take copies and extracts of all such documents as will enable you to explain both Jefferson and Adams.’ No doubt Pickering was ‘aware of a very curious journal of the latter when he was in Europe—a tissue of weakness and vanity.’ The time was coming when ‘men of real integrity and energy must write against all empirics.’[1743] To McHenry he wrote that ‘a new and more dangerous era has commenced’; that ‘Revolution and a new order of things are avowed in this quarter’; and, with something of Adams’s hysteria, that ‘property, liberty, and even life are at stake.’[1744]
The news that Adams had rid himself of his betrayers, and found in John Marshall and Samuel Dexter as successors men incapable of treachery, made a profound impression. To Duane of ‘The Aurora’ it was a vindication. Two months before he had divided the Cabinet into Hamiltonians and Adamsites, with Pickering and McHenry bearing the brand of Hamilton.[1745] Announcing the dismissals under the caption, ‘The Hydra Dying,’ he described Pickering as ‘an uncommon instance of the mischiefs that may be done in a country by small and contemptible talents and a narrow mind when set on fire by malignity.’[1746] The Federalist papers were hard put to sugar-coat the pill. The ‘Centinel’ cautiously said that ‘the best men here have variant opinions on the measure’ of Pickering’s dismissal.[1747] Three days later, it rushed to the defense of the humiliated representative of the Essex Junto with the comment that the best eulogy on his official conduct was ‘the chuckling of the Jacobins over his removal’ and the assurance that he carried into retirement ‘the regrets of all good men.’[1748] The Essex Junto made no attempt to conceal their disgust. Cabot, Ames, Gore, and Pickering were soon sending their versions to Rufus King in London. ‘You are so well acquainted with the sort of sensibility for which our chief is remarkable, that you will be less surprised than most men,’ wrote Cabot.[1749] Gore wrote that the dismissal ‘produces general discontent.’[1750] The delicate moral sensibilities of all these politicians were much hurt because Adams had fallen into the habit of swearing and using ‘billingsgate.’[1751] He was even speaking with bitterness of the Essex Junto and the British faction, quite in the manner of Jefferson. It was even ‘understood’ among the Hamiltonians that the dismissals were the price of the alliance which had been formed between Jefferson and Adams.[1752]
But Adams knew what he was about. He knew that a plan had been made to trick him out of his reëlection. The scheme was bald, bold, stupid. All the Federalist electors in the North would be urged to vote for Adams and Pinckney; in the South enough would be asked to vote for Pinckney, and not Adams, to bring the Hamiltonian Carolinian in ahead. Hamilton was writing frankly to his friends in this vein, ready to ‘pursue Pinckney as my single object’;[1753] while Gore was writing King that ‘the intention of the Federalists is to run General Pinckney and Mr. Adams as President and Vice-President.’[1754] When, in July, Adams appeared in Boston at a dinner and toasted Sam Adams and John Hancock, the much-abused Jeffersonians, as ‘the proscribed patriots,’ the Hamiltonians groaned their disgust and the Democrats shouted with glee. ‘This was well understood by the Jacobins whom it will not gain,’ wrote Ames.[1755] ‘The Aurora’ observed that ‘he did not give the great orb [Franklin] around which he moved as a satellite.’[1756] The rupture was now complete. When Adams was permitted to leave Philadelphia without a demonstration the latter part of May, ‘The Aurora’ was unseemly in its mirth. ‘Did the Blues parade? No? What—not parade to salute him “whom the people delight to honor”—“the rock on which the storm beats”—the “chief who now commands”? Did not the officers of the standing army or the marines parade? The new army officers are not fond of the President; he has dismissed Timothy.’[1757]
Meanwhile, the most consummate of the betrayers, Wolcott, unsuspected still, remained within the fort to signal to Hamilton.
VI
It was common knowledge early in the spring that Hamilton would exert his ingenuity to defeat Adams by hook or crook. ‘The Aurora’ declared, March 12th, that ‘the party with Alexander Hamilton at their head have determined to defeat Adams in the approaching elections.’ The watchful eye of the suspicious Adams, who felt the treachery, unquestionably read the article and heard the gossip. When, after the death of Washington, the Cincinnati met in New York to select Hamilton as the head of the order, Adams was informed that his enemy had electioneered against him among the members. He heard particularly of the action of ‘the learned and pious Doctors Dwight and Babcock, who ... were attending as two reverend knights of the order, with their blue ribbons and bright eagles at their sable button-holes,’ in saying repeatedly in the room where the society met, ‘We must sacrifice Adams,’ ‘We must sacrifice Adams.’