As Jefferson’s mild eye surveyed the field, he found in almost every State local parties, some long in existence, fighting for popular rights as they understood them; but their fights had been waged on local issues. The party he was to create was to fight in precisely the same cause—on the national field. Here, then, was something already at hand. Why not consolidate these local parties into one great national organization, and broaden the issue to include the problems of both State and Nation? The local leaders? Why not make them field marshals in command of the Massachusetts division, the North Carolina division, Pennsylvania and Maryland divisions?
The philosopher-politician took up his pen, for he had learned in the organization of the Revolution what could be done through correspondence. Out under the plane trees he was to sit at his table writing—to Sam Adams, to Rutledge, to John Taylor, to Willie Jones. Under his roof and at his table conferences with Madison, Monroe, Giles, Bloodworth, became commonplace. ‘Oh, I should note that Mr. Jefferson, with more than Parisian politeness, waited on me at my chamber this morning,’ wrote Maclay. ‘He talked politics, mostly the French difference and the whale fishery.’[555] A very cautious approach, we may be sure, for the master politician and psychologist thoroughly understood the little vanities, prejudices, and weaknesses of that singularly suspicious democrat. Quite different would have been a conversation with Gallatin or Monroe. Taking an inventory of prospective lieutenants in the States, and comparing the material with that against him, he could not but have realized his disadvantage. Brilliant men are prone to flutter about the rich and powerful, and nothing succeeds like success with the strong. No chance for him to ride to war surrounded by such scintillating company as that which encircled Hamilton—but here and there was a man who shimmered in the sun.
In Massachusetts, home of Ames, Cabot, and Sedgwick, Jefferson could count on two men who surpassed any of this famous group in service in the making of the Republic, but, strange as it may seem in perspective, old Sam Adams and John Hancock were not in good standing with the staid business men of Boston. Their republicanism was too robust, their devotion to the principles of the Declaration too uncompromising for the materialists, who appeared, for the most part, on the battle-field after the fight was won, to claim the fruits of the victory. Sam Adams had lost his race for Congress to Fisher Ames who had dallied with his books when the ragged Continentals were struggling in the field. When the clever politicians of the Essex Junto exchanged letters, these erstwhile Revolutionary heroes of the dark days were seldom mentioned with respect; but they had their following in the streets and among those who had shared in the perils they had faced. Upon these two Jefferson could rely.
But there were others, more active and militant in the Boston of those days in the building of the party of democracy. Foremost in the fight, and most annoying to the ruling oligarchy, was the brilliant Dr. Charles Jarvis, who was a powerful orator[556] whose social status, on a par with that of Otis, raised him above the condescension or contempt of the moneyed aristocracy, and whose ability was beyond the reach of disparagement.[557] Through many years of leadership in the legislature he ‘had made the rights of man his pole star.’[558] No one did so much to organize and vitalize the masses, for he could pass from the legislative hall to the public platform without any diminution of power. As in the former he could match the best in argument, on the latter no one knew better how to direct the storm. ‘Jarvis’s electioneering influence in this town is very great,’ wrote John Quincy Adams to his father.[559]
As a file leader, organizer, agitator, he had powerful support in the robust, rough-hewn rope-maker, Ben Austin, who wrestled under the rules of catch-as-catch-can, mingled with the element that Ames and Cabot considered vulgar, and under the signature of ‘Honestus’ dealt telling blows in letters that the mechanic could understand. ‘Rabid essays,’ they were—judged by the standard of the élite.[560] Sam Adams, John Hancock, Austin, and Jarvis—these were the Jeffersonian leaders in the Old Bay State. Less aggressive, but often valuable, was James Sullivan, orator, leader of the Bar, letter-writer and pamphleteer, whose vigorous mind, powers of application, and indomitable courage were to render yeoman service.
In the other New England States the democrats were less fortunate. In Connecticut, ruled with an iron hand by an oligarchy of preachers, professors, and reactionary politicians, the prospects were dark enough, but even there the Jeffersonians found a leader capable of coping with the best of the opposition in the hard-hitting, resourceful Abraham Bishop, who was a veritable scandal and stench to the gentlemen of the cloth and of the counting-room. Nowhere in America was such an amazing combination of Church and State. Election days were celebrated with religious services, and the sermons were party harangues, described by the irreverent Bishop as consisting of ‘a little of governor, a little of Congress, much of politics, and a very little of religion—a strange compote, like a carrot pie, having so little ingredients that the cook must christen it.’[561] The ruling Council of the State was so organized that the system was an impregnable stronghold beyond the reach of the people. Nowhere on American soil anything so un-American or unrepublican. It did its work behind doors closed and barred. The Congregational clergy were the Cossacks of Connecticut Federalism, laying the lash of their furious denunciation on the backs of critics. It required more than a majority to rule under this system, and more than ordinary courage to challenge its pretensions.[562] The good Doctor Dwight of Yale was busy damning democrats to perdition. A little later Gideon Granger and Ephraim Kirby were to take their place beside Bishop, and with the aid of the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford and the ‘New London Bee’ to give blow for blow. But the fighting was against desperate odds, the Federalists strongly entrenched on a steep hill, the ascent to which could be raked with canister.
‘The masses are disfranchised,’ cried Bishop. ‘Yes, poor porpoises,’ sneered Noah Webster the Federalist who was soon to become editor of a New York paper launched by Hamilton.[563] But Bishop and his little coterie were fighters, and Jefferson took them to his heart.
In New Hampshire, Jefferson had to bide his time. Among the members of the Senate no one had a better record of unselfish Revolutionary service than John Langdon. Practical, hard-headed, unimaginative, a lover of money, he had accumulated some wealth in mercantile pursuits. Fond of company, pleasing and unaffected in his manner, impressive in appearance, his senatorial toga became him well.[564] When Hamilton’s financial plans were pending, he gave them his support, and, alas, profited not a little, but from the beginning the keen-eyed Jefferson discerned the traits that were ultimately to separate him from the Hamiltonians. Within two years Langdon had assumed the leadership of the Jeffersonians in New Hampshire, but as late as 1798, according to the recollection of a famous Jacksonian, ‘with the exception of Langdon and a few sterling patriots there could not be said to be in this State a party favorable to the principles of Thomas Jefferson.’[565]
In Vermont the situation was somewhat similar, albeit the opportunities there were greater in the absence of a property qualification for the vote. There, too, was Matthew Lyon, of whom we shall hear much, whose fanatical devotion to democracy was a heritage from a father who had paid the penalty of his patriotism on the gallows in Ireland; whose hatred of aristocracy was but a reaction to the memory of his days of poverty. Possessing a genius for business, and succeeding, he was irresistibly drawn to politics, where his Celtic humor, his energy, impetuosity, and sincerity surrounded him with friends. His radicalism became a flaming torch that lighted up the granite hills. Not for nothing was he born in the land of the Donnybrook Fair, for he loved a fight or a frolic, and he was to have much of both. Enlisting in the Jeffersonian fight in the beginning, he was to fight unceasingly, take blows, and know the degradation of a cell. There was a degree of felony in democracy in the New England of the last days of the eighteenth century.
In Rhode Island, Jefferson sought vainly for an effective leader, though the field was fertile because of the lingering hostility to centralization and the poverty and debts of the people.