WHEN Jefferson assumed the task of organizing the opposition to the policies of the Federalists all the forces most susceptible to organization and intelligent direction were arrayed upon the other side. The commercial interests, constituting Hamilton’s shock troops, had their organizations in all the larger towns and in a crisis could be speedily mobilized in the smaller. The various Chambers of Commerce were Federalist clubs that could be summoned to action on a day’s notice. The financial interests, always in close formation when not sleeping on their arms, could be ordered to the front overnight. The live-wire speculators whose fortunes had sprung up magically were on their toes to do battle for the system that had enriched them, and eager to do the bidding of the magician who had waved the wand. The greater part of the intellectuals, lawyers, doctors, professors, preachers, were enthusiastic champions of Hamiltonian policies—and because of their prestige these were powerful factors in the moulding of opinion. And, most serious of all, from Jefferson’s point of view, the major portion of the press was either militantly Hamiltonian or indifferently democratic. In the drawing-rooms were heard the sentiments of the Chambers of Commerce—in glorification of materialism.
The rich, the powerful, and their retainers among the men of the professions, were bound to the Federalist by a common interest in property and a common fear of the masses. Since the policies of Hamilton were frankly in the interests of the commercial classes, their supporters were found largely in cities and towns of the commercial North—within easy reach. A word from the chief to his leaders in the capital—Ames and Cabot of Massachusetts; King, Schuyler, and Lawrence of New York; Wolcott and Ellsworth of Connecticut; Morris, Bingham, and Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania; Dayton of New Jersey; McHenry of Maryland;
Smith and Harper of South Carolina—a word from these to the commercial leaders in their States, and from these a word to those under obligations to them—the small merchants operating on credit—and the coffee-houses buzzed, the Chambers of Commerce acted, editors plied their pens, preachers thundered from pulpits, and even at the social functions they danced and flirted in the war paint of the party.
As Jefferson surveyed the field, he observed that his great antagonist’s organization was but a consolidation of organizations previously existent—and these imposing in their representation of wealth, intellect, and social prestige. Hamilton could snap his fingers, and the merchants came; could lift his hand, and the officers of the Cincinnati were in the saddle; could wave his wand, and Fenno, Russell, and other potent editors would instantly do his bidding, and the preachers of New England scarcely waited for the sign to pass the devil by to damn democracy.
But Jefferson had his eye on other forces, numerically stronger, if less imposing. The farmers, comprising ninety per cent of the Nation, were resentful of policies that pampered the merchant and left them out in the cold. The private soldiers of the Revolution, less respected then than when Webster made his Bunker Hill address, were embittered because their securities had gone for a song while speculators had waxed wealthy on the sacrifice. The more robust republicans were shocked at the aristocratic affectations of their rulers and the tone of the Federalist press. The excise law was hated in the remote sections, and unpopular with the masses everywhere. The doctrine of implied powers had alarmed the friends of State sovereignty. There was an undercurrent of feeling, which Jefferson, with ear marvelously keen for rumblings, caught, that laws were passed for the few at the expense of the many. And it was being bruited abroad that in high quarters there was a disposition to cultivate England to the neglect of France. Everywhere through the South and West there was a bitter resentment of government by and for the East.
Including all, and more important than any single one, there was a fervent spirit of democracy running through the land, while the Federalist leaders were openly denouncing the democrats. ‘Looking simply at the field of American history,’ says Professor Anson D. Morse, ‘it would be just to enumerate among the causes of the Democratic Party all influences which from the beginning of the colonial period carried forward at a really marvelous rate the democratization of the American character.’[552] The country was really democratic before there was a party of democracy. Jefferson knew it; Hamilton never suspected it, or, suspecting, determined to override the sentiment. Therein lies the original cause of the ultimate triumph of Jefferson, and the evidence that the Federalist Party was foredoomed to ultimate failure.
But how to reach, galvanize, vitalize, organize this great widely scattered mass of unimportant, inarticulate individuals—that was the problem that confronted Jefferson. Ninety-five per cent of the people lived in the country or in villages. Communication was difficult. There were for them no Chambers of Commerce, no coffee-houses, no Faneuil Halls. Thousands had no idea what was going on outside the boundaries of their isolated farms and villages. If the masses in the cities were in sympathy with democracy—and they were—comparatively few of these were permitted to vote. Under the John Jay Constitution of New York, as late as 1790, only 1303 of the 13,330 male residents of voting age in New York City were allowed to vote with the property qualification deliberately designed for their disfranchisement.[553] In Vermont alone, of the New England States, no property qualification attached to the suffrage, albeit in New Hampshire any male paying tax, however small, was qualified. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut great numbers were excluded by their poverty. Thus, in the beginning, the thousands of hewers of wood and drawers of water in the towns and cities of the North were lost to all practical purposes. But all of the common folk were not disfranchised, and they who had the vote were splendid material for a militant organization. They had a genius for practical politics when under the orders of a drill master, and were not too fastidious for the grime and sweat of the polling-places. One of these was worth a dozen dandies from Mrs. Bingham’s circle on election day.[554] There was abundant material for a party—if it could be assembled and coordinated.