II

Meanwhile, the Jeffersonians, united, enthusiastic, thoroughly organized, confident, were waging war along the whole line. The mechanics who could vote, the small farmers, the liberals and Democrats, the private soldiers of the Revolution who felt they had been tricked, the small merchants, the Germans because of taxes and the proscription of Muhlenberg, the Irish because the Federalists abused them and passed the Alien Law, were almost a unit behind their chief. All the cost of the army and navy, and the frequent outrages of soldiers with nothing to do, brought support. In North Carolina, Gales, in ‘The Register,’ was using the camp near Raleigh as a veritable recruiting point for Democrats. The eight per cent loan of that day and the Excise Law of the day before were bringing great accessions to the ranks. The growing indebtedness of the Nation, and Wolcott’s admission that another eight per cent loan would be necessary, was making converts. The scandals in administration were creating havoc in Administration circles and driving Wolcott to distraction. The scandal of Jonathan Dayton, Federalist leader of New Jersey, broke, and the hailstones beat upon the head of Wolcott, who was the victim of his credulity alone. While Speaker, Dayton had made written application at the end of the session of 1798 for thirty-three thousand dollars as compensation for the House. That amount was not needed. Wolcott’s plea that he did not know he had given Dayton more than necessary was greeted with jeers. His assertion that he had the right to expect the unexpended balance to be immediately refunded only met derisive laughter. Not until the winter of 1799 was the discovery made that Dayton had retained more than eighteen thousand dollars since July, 1798. Wolcott, discovering this fraud, summoned Dayton, wrote him a sharp letter, and recovered the money—but not the interest.[1790] Meanwhile, Duane, in ‘The Aurora,’ was devoting pages to affidavits concerning Dayton’s notorious land frauds.[1791] Defalcations were numerous, due, according to the apologists of the Administration, to ‘the difficulty of procuring men of standing and character ... to execute their duties.’[1792]

Then, to darken the picture for the Federalists, stories were afloat corroborative of the Jeffersonian charge that they favored aristocracy and monarchy. Again Adams appeared as the champion of kingly government. Senator John Langdon, a reputable man, personally vouched in a signed letter to the truth of the charge that, in the presence of himself and John Taylor of Caroline, Adams had said that ‘he expected to see the day when Mr. Taylor and his friend, Mr. Giles, would be convinced that the people of America would not be happy without an hereditary chief and Senate—or at least for life.’[1793] This was greatly strengthened from Federalist sources. ‘The observations of the President when he went through town [New Haven] last, made more Democrats than any other thing beside,’ wrote Timothy Phelps to Wolcott. ‘He told Dr. Dana he did not believe the United States could exist as a nation unless the Executive was hereditary.’[1794]

The lesser lights among the Federalists were likewise contributing to the Jeffersonian cause. Noah Webster was being vigorously assailed in the ‘American Mercury’ for saying that reading and observation had convinced him that republicanism was impossible unless the poorer classes were excluded from the vote.[1795] But the climax came with the publication of the stupid pamphlet of John Ward Fenno, who, with his father, had been editor of the Federalist organ for years. In ‘Desultory Reflections on the New Political Aspect of Public Affairs,’ he clearly reflected the views of Hamilton, to whom he referred as having been pitched ‘down the Tarpeian rock of oblivion, not for subsequent apostacy, but for the very deed of greatness itself.’ It was a slashing assault on Adams for making peace with France. Glorious prospects had been opening ‘the doors of the temple of Janus,’ but Adams had acted in a ‘puerile’ fashion. The masses were denounced as ‘the stupid populace, too abject in ignorance to think rightly, and too depraved to draw honest deductions.’ The patriotic Federalists were, by Adams’s action, ‘by one sudden stroke in one short hour, beaten off their ground, overwhelmed with confusion, and left abandoned to all the ridicule and all the rage of their antagonists ... and nauseating nonsense, meanness, abject servility, and the effeminacy of Sybaris now reign with a pomposity undisturbed even by any casual exertions of genius or common sense.’ Pickering had been dismissed because he ‘approached too near to holding a divided empire with [Adams] in the hearts of the people.’ The time had come to ‘repudiate the author of our evils.’

More: the form of government should be changed. ‘The continent [should be] divided into ten, fifteen, or twenty counties, to be governed by a Lieutenant or Prefect appointed by the Executive; certain subaltern appointments should be in his gift. These Prefects would constitute as proper an upper House for one branch of the Legislature as could be devised.’ The franchise should be ‘cut off from all paupers, vagabonds, and outlaws’—the poor, the democrats—and ‘placed in those hands to which it belongs, the proprietors of the country.’[1796] This from the man who had edited the Hamilton Federalist organ in Philadelphia. Copies were carried about in the pockets of the Jeffersonians and worn out by readings in the taverns.

On top of this, Federalist leaders, writers, and papers began to hint at secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. It had become a habit. There had been talk of secession among them if the State debts were not assumed: talk again if the Jay Treaty was not ratified. Wolcott’s father had written his son, long before, of its desirability if Jefferson should be elected. Four years previously the ‘Hartford Courant,’ the strongest Federalist paper in New England, began to publish letters by ‘Pelham,’ paving the way for the secession of the North. The South was bitterly assailed. There were more interesting objects than the Union, thought ‘Pelham.’ The time had come to secede. A year later, ‘Gustavus’ began writing in the same paper on the same theme. Jefferson was denounced as an atheist and traitor.[1797] In 1800, ‘Burleigh’ took up his pen to advocate secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. In this case the author was known—it was the fanatic John Allen, who, as a member of Congress, had charged Livingston with sedition because of his attack in the House on the Alien Law. In his initial letter he urged all Federalist papers to copy, and some did. The election of Jefferson would destroy the Constitution, result in anarchy, expel Federalists from office, wreck the financial system, and lead to Revolution, for ‘there is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a civil war.’ This would be bad, but ‘less, far less, than anarchy or slavery.’ Secession would be almost certain. Where would the boundary be? At the Potomac?—the Delaware?—the Hudson? New England might have trouble if New York and Pennsylvania were included in the Northern Confederacy. ‘They are large, wealthy, powerful. They have many men of intrigue and talent among them, desperate in their fortunes, ambitious and unprincipled.’ It would be hard to get them to join a peaceful body and keep them quiet.

These were the leading political articles in the leading Federalist paper in the most uncompromising Federalist State through the campaign of 1800.[1798] In the ‘American Mercury,’ ‘Rodolphus’ replied with a stinging rebuke. ‘He tells us,’ wrote ‘Rodolphus,’ ‘that if Mr. Jefferson is elected our towns will be pillaged, our inhabitants rendered miserable and our soil dyed in blood; that we shall have a Jacobin government, that the Constitution ... will fall a sacrifice, and finally if the man of his choice is not elected, the Federal Union must be destroyed and that the Northern States must form a separate Government. The writer is a Federalist indeed.’[1799]

The Jeffersonians made the most of ‘Burleigh’s’ secession articles.

III

Nowhere were the Jeffersonian activities more annoying to the Federalists than in New England where Federalism thought itself permanently entrenched. It had reached its peak in 1798 during the war hysteria, and the next two years were marked by a notable decline. The activities of the defiant Democrats were intensified. Denunciations of the ‘aristocracy’ that governed, of the political meddling of the clergy, brought the fight personally home to the leaders. In Vermont, where Lyon had been persecuted and his followers aroused, the stamp tax and the extravagance in government made a deep impression on the small farmers. It was a scandal in the best regulated households that ‘Matthew Lyon and his cubs’ were prowling about the highways.[1800] In Massachusetts, where Gerry had made a remarkable race for Governor in the spring, the fight was being made in every quarter, and Ames was wailing that ‘on the whole the rabies canina of Jacobinism has gradually passed of late years from the cities, where it was confined to the docks and the mob, to the country.’[1801] In New Hampshire, the Jeffersonians had made an astonishing showing in the gubernatorial contest in the spring, carrying a number of the towns, including Concord and Portsmouth. There, under the leadership of John Langdon, they had capitalized the refusal of the Federalist Legislature to grant a charter to a bank which proposed to loan money in small sums, and place credit within the reach of the farmers and the poor.[1802] Their defeat, notwithstanding their heavy vote, encouraged them to persevere in their attacks on corporations and the ‘privileged few.’