But why the lack of proper preparations? Why the insufficiency of the commissary? Even the officials in Philadelphia were prone to find extenuations for the failure of St. Clair. A correspondent of the Boston ‘Centinel,’ dining with some of the first official characters where the tragic collapse of the expedition had been discussed, found ‘not one expression dropped to his prejudice.’[643] The Jeffersonians were aiming higher than St. Clair. There was Knox, Secretary of War—what had he to say in defense of the honesty of the army contractor, to the negligence of the quartermaster? The House investigating committee bore heavily on these two in its report—but who was responsible for the cupidity of the one and the inefficiency of the other? Soon the Jeffersonian press was attacking Knox with distressing regularity, picturing him as the ‘Philadelphia Nabob.’[644] Was he not squandering public money on ‘splendor’ and ‘extravagance’? Soon the more irresponsible of the gossip-mongers were whispering that he had profited financially. ‘Infamous!’ screamed the Federalist press. ‘The public monies have never been in the hands of Mr. Knox.’[645] ‘But who made arrangements with the dishonest contractor?’ replied the Jeffersonians. ‘Who selected the quartermaster who let the soldiers starve?’

All through the summer and autumn this was the talk in the taverns and coffee-houses, but with the bursting of the bubble of speculation a far more effective weapon of assault was at hand. To this inevitable outcome of the gambling mania Jefferson had looked forward with the utmost confidence. He had seen money ‘leaving the remoter parts of the Union and flowing to [Philadelphia] to purchase paper’; had seen the value of property falling in places left bare of money—as much as twenty-five per cent in a year in Virginia. Extravagance, madness everywhere.[646] As a result in the remoter sections the hatred of the speculator had reached the stage of hysteria. ‘Clouds, when you rain, bleach him to the skin,’ prayed a Georgia paper. ‘When you hail, precipitate your heaviest globes of ice on his ill-omened pate. Thunders, when you break, break near him, shatter an oak or rend a rock full in his view. Lightning, when you burst, shoot your electric streams close to his eyelids. Conscience, haunt him like a ghost.... Ye winds, chill him; ye Frost, pinch him, freeze him. Robbers meet him, strip him, scourge him, rack him. He starved the fatherless and made naked the child without a mother.’[647] Even the Worcester correspondent of the orthodox Boston ‘Centinel’ complained that ‘as soon as one bubble bursts another is blown up’ and ‘we are in the way of becoming the greatest sharpers in the universe’—all ‘assuredly anti-republican.’[648] When a town meeting was advertised for Stockbridge, a village wit penciled on the poster the purpose of the conference: ‘To see if the town will move to New York and enter into the business of speculation.’[649] While publishing these letters and stories the Federalist organ in Boston did it with the sneer: ‘They who are in—Grin. They who are out—Pout. They who have paper—Caper. They who have none—Groan.’[650]

Then in April, with the failure of Colonel Duer in New York the crash came. Many went to ruin in the wreckage, and New York became a madhouse, with business paralyzed, and Duer taking to flight. He had been among the most favored of the beneficiaries of Hamilton’s policies, rising from opulence overnight, and he was among the first to fall from their abuse.[651] The brutality and cowardice of the speculators intensified the general contempt for the tribe. ‘Instead of exerting themselves to preserve some kind of moral character,’ wrote a New York correspondent of the ‘Maryland Journal,’ ‘they are endeavoring to lower themselves still more by descending to the mean level of fish women and common street boxers.’[652]

All this was viewed by Hamilton with indignation and concern. He had sought in every way to discourage the frenzy of speculation, and had used his office to protect the public wherever possible. But it began with the funding system—and with thousands that was enough. Instantly the Jeffersonian press was hot on the trail. ‘Business has not been benefited by Hamilton’s Bank,’ declared the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘for a merchant can scarcely venture to offer his note for $100, while a speculator can obtain thousands for no other purpose than to embarrass commerce.’ Look around and see who have obtained wealth. ‘Speculators, in general, are the men.’ Thus, ‘the industrious merchant is forced to advance to the government thousands, while the gambling speculator is receiving his quarterly payments.’[653] A Maryland correspondent of Louden’s New York ‘Register’ ‘could not help thinking Mr. Madison’s discriminating propositions would have prevented in great measure the exorbitant rage of speculation.’[654] Meanwhile, Fenno was denouncing the critics as ‘anarchists’ and enemies of the Government, which only intensified their rage. ‘Our objection is not to paying off the debt,’ protested an indignant critic, ‘but to ... the excise, failure to discriminate, the play to speculation’; and if all who shared these views could be assembled it ‘would make the greatest army that ever was on one occasion collected in the United States.’[655] In the Boston ‘Centinel,’ John Russell was taking a lighter tone. ‘The suffering yeomanry burdened with taxes? Why not simply eliminate all State and National debts and forget them?’[656] The storm? What of it? ‘The Six Per Cents, a first rate, belonging to the fleet commanded by Admiral Hamilton, notwithstanding several hard Country gales, and a strong lee current setting out of the Hudson and Delaware is still working to windward and bids fair to gain her destined port.’[657]

IX

With such attacks and counter attacks in the papers, the campaign of 1792 was fought, with the bitter gubernatorial battle between John Jay and George Clinton in New York setting the pace in the spring. The Federalists had set their hearts on the crushing of Clinton, and but for the frown of Hamilton, Burr might have joined them in the attempt.[658] The campaign was spectacular, and class feeling and prejudice played a part. Jay was an aristocrat by birth and temperament, and this gave the Clintonians their cue. Up, Plebs, and at ’em! An aristocrat against a democrat, the rich against the poor. Had not Jay said that ‘those who own the country ought to govern it’? Had not Jay’s Constitution disfranchised thousands on the score of their poverty? Were not the speculators, the stock-jobbers, the bankers, the gamblers, swindlers, and the forces of privilege supporting Jay?[659] The result was the election of Clinton, on a technicality,[660] and instantly there was an uproar, broken bones and bloody noses, coffee-house quarrels and blows, wild talk of a revolutionary convention and the seating of Jay with bayonets, and serious bloodshed was prevented only through the efforts of Hamilton, Jay, and King. Never had party feeling run so high, and several duels were fought in the course of a week.[661] The defeated or cheated candidate was accorded the acclamations due a conqueror on his journey from his judicial circuit to New York where he was given a testimonial dinner.[662] The democrats were none the less jubilant because of the questionable nature of their triumph, and at a dinner in honor of Clinton, the Tammany braves rose to the toast, ‘Thomas Jefferson,’ and gave their war-whoop.[663]

The bitterness in New York spread to various parts of the country where the Jeffersonians were fighting brilliantly, with clever strategy, to gain seats in the Congress. Some of the Federalists, who were to prove themselves generally inferior except in a smashing charge, and incapable of maintaining their morale in a siege or in reverses, were even then growing pessimistic. ‘Perhaps you are not informed,’ wrote George Cabot to Theophilus Parsons, ‘that in Pennsylvania and New York the opponents are well combined and are incessantly active, while the friends discover a want of union and a want of energy.’[664] And Parsons, in melancholy mood, was convinced that the Government had ‘seen its best days.’[665] Woe to the politician who enters the reminiscent stage when confronted by a virile opponent looking to the future. There was little in the New England of 1792 to depress the Federalists. Only a little evidence that among the working-men in Boston ‘heresies’ were making their way; only reports that ‘itinerant Jacobins’ were haranguing the curious in the bar-rooms of Rhode Island and Vermont; only the strange spectacle of ‘drill masters’ meeting with people of no property or importance to organize them to battle for democratic principles.[666] Only this, and a strange doctrine creeping into Vermont papers. In choosing members of Congress who should be selected? asked a ‘Land Holder’ of that State. ‘What class of people should they represent? Who are the great body of the people? Are they Lawyers, Physicians, Merchants, Tradesmen? No—they are respectable Yeomanry. The Yeomanry therefore ought to be represented.’[667] In Maryland a ferocious fight was waged under the eyes of both Hamilton and Jefferson, for both were interested in the fate of Mercer who had slashed right lustily at the policies of Hamilton, making no secret of his belief that they were bottomed on corruption. He had vitalized the democrats of Maryland, extending his interest into districts other than his own, and arranging for candidates to oppose the sitting Federalists in the House. McHenry, who kept Hamilton informed of the progress of the fight, hoped to array the German Catholics against the obnoxious Mercer through the intervention of Bishop Carroll, whom he thought more influential than the better known Charles Carroll of Carrollton.[668] A man was employed by the energetic McHenry to circulate bills against Mercer, who fought back, and gave blow for blow. He was charged with having said that Hamilton had tried to bribe him in the Assumption fight;[669] that he was personally interested in the contract for supplying the western army, and privately engaged in the purchase of securities. This, Mercer was to disavow, and Hamilton’s friends were to show that the conversation between the Marylander and the Secretary had been in the presence of company and in jest.[670] Even so we may assume that Mercer had painted the incident black. He let it be understood that Washington wished his reelection, and the celerity with which the President issued a denial was probably due to the importunity of Hamilton who did not scruple to use him without stint to further the cause of his party.[671]

In North Carolina the Jeffersonians, under the crafty leadership of picturesque Willie Jones, contested every inch of the ground, determined to retire all the Hamiltonians from Congress, and before the impetuosity of their charge the Federalists were forced to fight defensively and under a cloud.[672]

In the new State of Kentucky the Jeffersonians were thoroughly organized under the leadership of John Brown, a Virginian, educated at Princeton and at Jefferson’s alma mater, who had fought through the War of Independence. ‘Brown can have what he wants,’ Madison wrote his leader in midsummer,[673] and he took the toga. In Virginia the Democrats were strongly in the ascendancy. The influence of Jefferson had been strengthened by the acquisition of Madison, and Hamilton, in the course of the campaign, wrote his famous letter to Colonel Edward Carrington attacking both in an effort to satisfy the Virginia Federalists of the justice of his own position, but it was blowing against a tornado.[674] An amazing campaign document—this letter.

Thus, in 1792, if the Jeffersonians had not yet perfected their organization, they had forced sporadic fighting, and the result of the congressional elections was greatly to strengthen them in the House.