Jefferson and Hamilton

by Claude G. Bowers

VI

An amazing production this, for the middle of the campaign. Adams did ‘not possess the talents adapted to the administration of government.’ There were ‘great and intrinsic defects in his character which unfit him.’ Even during the Revolution, Hamilton had entertained doubts as to ‘the solidity of his understanding.’ When Adams had conducted Madame de Vergennes, wife of the Foreign Minister in Paris, to dinner, and been rewarded with her comment that he was ‘the Washington of negotiation,’ he had interpreted it as an illustration of ‘a pretty knack of paying compliments,’ when he might have said that it disclosed ‘a dexterous knack of disguising sarcasms.’ His vanity was so great that it was ‘more than a harmless foible.’ True, Hamilton had sought to elect Thomas Pinckney in 1796, but this was due to the ‘disgusting egotism, the distempered jealousy, and the ungovernable indiscretion of Mr. Adams’s temper, joined to some doubts of the correctness of his maxims of administration.’ Adams’s letter to Tench Coxe, charging the Pinckneys with being English toadies, was silly; his conduct in preventing the French war was infamous. This latter had come out of the vice of not consulting his constitutional advisers—meaning Wolcott, Pickering, and McHenry. He had thus fallen into the hands of ‘miserable intriguers’ with whom ‘his self-love was more at ease.’ With gay disregard of the truth, Hamilton denied that there was any conspiracy to interfere with Adams’s plans at Trenton.

More amazing still, Adams was denounced for the dismissal of two traitors in his Cabinet, and this, despite the fact that another, who remained, had furnished the writer with much of the material for the pamphlet. There was no cause for the dismissals—none at all. It was only Adams’s ‘paroxysms of rage, which deprived him of self-command and produced very outrageous behavior.’ Pickering had been driven out because he was ‘justly tenacious of his own dignity and independence.’ The Adams interview with McHenry called for both ‘pain and laughter’—an incredible performance. Then followed more abuse because Adams had not given Fries and others to the scaffold. Then—a pitiful touch—for not appointing Hamilton commander-in-chief to succeed Washington. Here the author entered into more personal grievances. Having pictured Adams as an ingrate, a liar, and a fool unfit for high administrative office, the author concluded with the statement that because ‘the body of Federalists, for want of sufficient knowledge of facts, are not convinced of the expediency of relinquishing him,’ Hamilton would ‘not advise the withholding from him of a single vote.’[1839]

It was the most astounding political performance in American history—and the Nation rocked with mingled imprecations and laughter. Even Cabot was a little shocked. ‘All agree,’ he wrote Hamilton, ‘that the execution is masterly, but I am bound to tell you that you are accused by respectable men of egotism; and some very worthy and sensible men say you have exhibited the same vanity in your book which you charge as a dangerous quality and great weakness in Mr. Adams.’[1840]

Major Russell, of the ‘Centinel’ in Boston, was painfully embarrassed, and flopped about like a fish on the burning sands. In one issue he supported Adams, and denounced the author of an attack on Hamilton’s action as ‘as well qualified for the task as a Billingsgate oyster is to contemplate the principles of the Newtonian philosophy.’[1841] In another issue he regretted Hamilton’s ‘ill-timed epistle,’ and denounced ‘an imported renegado of the name of Cooper’ who had written Hamilton a ‘saucy production’ to the effect that if he would admit the authorship of the pamphlet he would ask for his indictment under the Sedition Law.[1842] This is evidence enough that Russell had parted with his sense of humor, else he would have appreciated the shot. The Hartford ‘Courant’ contented itself by merely reprinting, without comment, the Jeffersonian New London ‘Bee’s’ excoriation of Hamilton.[1843] The New York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ was silent, but gave space to the advertisement of a pamphlet entitled ‘A Letter to General Hamilton, occasioned by His Letter to President Adams—by a Federalist.’[1844]

The Jeffersonian papers made the most of the opportunity. The ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford, announcing the arrival of the pamphlet, explained that, ‘since General Hamilton has secured a copyright to his masterly production,’ only extracts could be given. It was evidently written in the interest of Pinckney, who, having been ‘educated at the University of Oxford’ in England, ‘was naturally’ supported by the British faction.[1845] ‘I am sorry, sir,’ wrote the author of an open letter to Hamilton in the ‘Independent Chronicle’ of Boston, ‘that you have been persecuted in the manner you mention, ... but does it show a man of fortitude and independence to be continually groaning, like some feeble old woman under her troubles?... Egotism is the mark of a weak and vain mind. Here, General, you descend from your usual greatness to the level with female vanity.’[1846]

Duane, of ‘The Aurora,’ fell upon it with the zest of a kitten lapping cream: ‘John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the Pinckneys are now fairly before the public,’ he wrote, ‘not in the partial drawings of their political rivals, the Republicans. Their claims and pretensions to public confidence are exhibited by themselves.’[1847] The Portsmouth ‘Ledger’ struck the same note: ‘If President Adams is what General Hamilton and the Essex Junto represent him, and if Charles Cotesworth Pinckney is what President Adams in his letter to Tench Coxe has represented him, viz., a British partisan—can any one hesitate to say that Mr. Jefferson is the most suitable of the three for President?’[1848]

But the most telling reply appeared in a pamphlet ascribed to James Cheetham, the New York editor.[1849] Of course Hamilton was a monarchist, it said. It had been ‘a thousand times reiterated from New Hampshire to Georgia.’ The Madame de Vergennes incident? ‘Your references to a certain private journal of Mr. Adams was surpassingly brutal and low. They demonstrate the imbecility of your cause and point out the base malignity of your heart.’ The Adams letter to Tench Coxe? ‘Evidently written in some jocular moment.’ The cause of Hamilton’s hostility? ‘Envy, ambition, and the loaves and fishes.’ The French peace? ‘If your intrusive advice had been received, what would have been the condition of your country? Embroiled in an unprofitable war, commerce would have been at a stand, and the cause of liberty on the decline. A standing army would have gluttonized on the substance of society.’ Adams? True, the ‘Duke of Braintree’ had ‘very slender pretensions to consistency of character,’ and the Nation’s hope was in Jefferson, ‘who has walked with dignity in every public and private calling,’ whose mind ‘is illumined with science and whose heart is replete with good’; who ‘has stood firm and unshaken amidst the venality of courts and the temptations of power.’

Under such lashings Hamilton writhed and was eager to make reply. ‘The press teems with replies,’ he wrote Pickering, ‘and I may finally think it expedient to publish a second time. In this case I shall reënforce my charges with new anecdotes. My friends will, no doubt, be disposed to aid me. You probably possess some that are unknown to me. Pray let me have them without delay.’[1850] But his friends had no such disposition. They had had enough. Ames wrote him scornfully of his critics, who were unworthy of notice. ‘It is therefore the opinion of your friends that the facts stated must be left to operate on the public mind; and that the rage of those whom they wound will give them currency.’[1851]

The Federalist Party had been split in two with a battle-axe.