But it was in Connecticut that the Jeffersonians gave the Federalists their greatest shock by the audacity of their attacks. There the Democrats, though few, made up in zeal and ability for what they lacked in numbers. In the home of Pierrepont Edwards, a Federal Judge and a foremost citizen, they perfected their plans for the campaign. Aaron Burr spent some time in the State assisting in the creation of a militant organization. A Federalist complained in a letter to Wolcott that ‘the Democrats spent all their time and talents for eight weeks endeavoring to persuade the ignorant part of the community that the Administration was endeavoring to establish a monarchy; and even good Mr. Edwards told them he had held an important office under government, but that he had found them so vile and corrupt, he was determined to resign the office.’[1803] Nothing could have been more distressing to the aristocratic and clerical oligarchy which had long lorded it over the people. The ‘Courant’ piously prayed that Connecticut would not ‘exhibit the distressing spectacle of two parties rending the State with their reproaches and whetting their swords for civic combat,’ and held up ‘the awful condition in Pennsylvania and Virginia’ as a warning.[1804] The ‘New York Commercial Advertiser,’ founded by a son of Connecticut, was disheartened at the effrontery of the Democrats. ‘Jacobinism in Connecticut,’ it said, ‘has heretofore been confined to back streets and dark recesses; but in consequence of the successes in other States it begins to creep forth and show its hideous front in good company.’[1805] In September the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford was boasting through ‘Gracchus’ that ‘in many towns where there was not a man who a few months ago avowed the cause of republicanism, the friends of liberty and the Constitution have now a majority,’ although ‘in most towns there was a fight.’[1806]
To Abraham Bishop, the fighting leader of the Jeffersonians, was left the congenial task of whipping the Federalists to a frenzy. A graduate of Yale, of which Dwight, popularly known as ‘the Pope of Federalism,’ and a man of scholarly attainments, was President, he was invited to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at the commencement. It was assumed that he would speak on some literary or scientific subject, but nothing was more remote from his intentions. Very carefully, and with malice aforethought, he prepared a scathing arraignment of Federalist principles and policies. At the last moment the clergy discovered the nature of the discourse and recommended its rejection. One indignant partisan wrote Wolcott that ‘the Society discovered the cheat before it was delivered and destroyed its effect so far as was within their power.’[1807] The ‘Courant’ explained that when the invitation was extended, the members of the fraternity were ‘ignorant of his sentiments,’ and of the fact that ‘he had been once desired by a committee of the society to resign the presidency because of profanity.’ The moment it was found that the wicked man had written ‘a seditious and inflammatory libel on the religion and government of the country,’ it was decided to dispense with the oration.[1808] But the seditious and irreligious Bishop had no notion of being robbed of an audience. The ‘Courant’ reported that ‘with an impudence and effrontery known only to weak or wicked men,’ Bishop ‘proceeded at seven o’clock to palm off on the public the production.’[1809] More than fifteen hundred men, women, and children, including some members of the clergy, heard him,[1810] but the ‘Courant,’ looking over the assemblage, solemnly declared it as ‘a singular fact that every open reviler of religion was there and highly gratified,’ but that the young ladies of New Haven ‘refused to grace an audience thus collected and consisting of such characters.’[1811]
No more slashing attack was heard during the campaign. The audience was sympathetic, jubilant. The orator in fine fettle, the subject to his taste. He attacked the extravagance in government, sneered at the ceremonious launching of war vessels, ridiculed the military pretensions of Hamilton. The army had not fought, but had ‘stood their ground bravely in their cantonments.’ The funding system had ‘ruined thousands, but ... has also led up to an aristocracy more numerous than the farmers-general in France, more powerful than all others because it combined the men of wealth.’
But it was for the political preachers of Connecticut that Bishop reserved his heaviest fire. ‘How much, think you, has religion been benefited by sermons intended to show that Satan and Cain were Jacobins?’ Then a contemptuous fling at ‘Pope’ Dwight—‘Would Paul of Tarsus have preached to an anxious, listening audience on the propriety of sending envoys?’ After all, ‘the Captain of Salvation is not so weak as to require an army and navy and a majority in Congress to support His cause.’ Then, falling into satire: ‘Let no one imagine that I would represent the clergy as acting out of their sphere ... for is it not said unto them, “Go ye into all the world and preach politics to every creature. When men oppose ye, call them enemies of God and trample them under your feet.” ... When the people are assembled, say to them that the Lord reigneth on the earth in the midst of men of power and wealth; that he delighteth in the proud, even in those who are lofty; that he will exalt the vain, and lay in the dust they who are humble in his sight; that the great are gods; but that the little men are like the chaff which he driveth before the wind; that in the day of his power he will shine mightily on those who are in power, and that he will make the people under them like the hay and the stubble and the sweepings of the threshing floor.’
Immediately the speech was published in pamphlet form and sent broadcast over the country. Editions were printed in numerous towns and States.[1812] Within a week an answer had been published in a pamphlet, ‘A Rod for a Fool’s Back,’[1813] but it failed to affect the popularity of Bishop’s ‘Oration on the Extent and Power of Political Delusions,’ and two months later, when he was at Lancaster during a session of the Legislature, he repeated the speech on invitation of Governor M’Kean.[1814] It was a palpable hit.
IV
And it was a hit, primarily because it was an assault on the part the clergy was playing in the campaign. All over New England, and in New York and Philadelphia, ministers were preaching politics with an intemperance of denunciation and a recklessness of truth that seems incredible to-day. The game of the politicians to picture Jefferson as an atheist, a scoffer at religion who despised the Church and laughed at the Bible, was entrusted to the Ministerial Corps, which did the best it could. It was a line of slander that had followed Jefferson from the moment he forced religious liberty and toleration into the laws of Virginia. The only campaign canard of which Jefferson took cognizance was set afloat by the Reverend Cotton Smith, who proclaimed that the man of Monticello had accumulated his property by robbing a widow and fatherless children of their estate while acting as their executor. ‘If Mr. Smith thinks that the precepts of the Gospel are intended for those who preach them as well as for others,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘he will some day feel the duties of repentance and acknowledgment in such forms as to correct the wrong he has done. All this is left to his own conscience.’[1815] But if Jefferson was content to leave to their consciences clergymen bearing false witness, his followers were not. When the Reverend Dr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia gravely warned his congregation against voting for an atheist, Duane made a biting reply. ‘He is the man who opposed reading the Declaration of Independence on 4th of July last,’ he wrote. ‘Need we wonder at his hatred of Mr. Jefferson?’[1816] When the clergyman, stung by the attack, made a weak reply, Duane asked: ‘During the prevalence of yellow fever ... in 1798 on a day in the house of Mr. Richard Potter in Germantown did you not provoke an argument in which you supported monarchical doctrines and assert that the country would never be happy until it had a king?’[1817] To another minister, fortunately ‘the late Rev. Dr. J. B. Smith of Virginia,’ was ascribed one of the most amazing stories of the campaign, that Jefferson on passing a dilapidated church had sneeringly said that ‘it was good enough for Him Who was born in a manger.’[1818]
When the Reverend John M. Mason published a political pamphlet under the cover of religion,[1819] accusing Jefferson of being a Deist, and the Reverend Dr. Lynn of New York, actively electioneering for Pinckney against both Adams and Jefferson at the instance of Hamilton, printed another,[1820] a Democratic pamphlet appeared declaring that ‘Jefferson is as good a Christian as Adams,’ and charging that ‘Pope’ Dwight, ten years before, had published a poem, ‘The Triumph of Infidelity,’ in which he named Pinckney as a Deist. In this pamphlet[1821] Dr. Lynn was handled as roughly as the Philadelphia pulpit politician. Had he not called on a Democrat while electioneering for Pinckney and been forced to admit that Jefferson was a good man? Had he not, when pressed, been forced to concede that Pinckney was a Deist? Had not the wife of the Democrat indignantly taken the clergyman to task for his ‘partiality to a self-confessed adulterer?’
If the Jeffersonians were attacking the political preachers with meat-axe and artillery, they were not without provocation enough. In Connecticut, these ministers were the backbone of the Federalist Party machine, with Dwight as their leader, than whom none more offensively intolerant ever breathed curses on a foe. In Massachusetts, when the Reverend Ebenezer Bradford espoused the cause of democracy, he was ferociously abused by his fellow ministers and the Federalist papers, ostracized in the name of Christ by his fellow clergymen, and refused a pulpit in Essex County. It was not a time when ministers in some sections were making much of the action of Christ in seeking his disciples among workers and fishermen.[1822] The feeling of many of these was expressed by the Reverend David Osgood when, speaking of the masses, he said that ‘they may know enough for the places and stations to which Providence has assigned them; may be good and worthy members of the community, provided they would be content to move in their own sphere and not meddle with things too high for them.’[1823]
In one pamphlet the case against Jefferson’s religion was set forth in detail—he questioned the story of the Deluge; did not believe the Bible in its entirety was inspired; and was opposed to teaching the Bible in the public schools. ‘No one, I believe,’ wrote this distressed Christian, ‘has openly and publicly asserted that Jefferson is a Christian.’[1824] Soon a pamphlet in defense was in circulation. ‘Read, ye fanatics, bigots, hypocrites ... and you base calumniators whose efforts to traduce are the involuntary tribute of envy to a character more pure than your own—read and learn and practice the religion of Jefferson as displayed in the sublime truth and inspired language of his ever memorable “act establishing religious liberty.” Read his views on slavery in his “Notes on Virginia”—“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”’[1825] The ‘Chronicle’ was amused to observe ‘the characters who are professed champions of religious zeal.’ Who were they? ‘What shall we say of a faction that has at its head a confessed and professed adulterer?... In connection with this Saint we have a group of zealots, consisting of gamblers, bankrupts, Saturday evening carousers, or, to comprise the whole in one general appellation, a British Essex Junto intermixed with a few clerical hypocrites who have formed an alliance, offensive and defensive, to calumniate Mr. Jefferson.’[1826] The ‘American Mercury’ dwelt on contributions made by Jefferson to the Church and to needy clergymen. ‘Thus while Mr. Jefferson is ... practicing the blessed religion of Jesus Christ by acts of charity and benevolence ... these political parsons are abusing that holy religion and profaning the temple of God by fulminating lies and slander against Mr. Jefferson.’[1827]