Jefferson and Hamilton

by Claude G. Bowers

When the party rose to leave, Muhlenberg and Venable were apologetic—but not so James Monroe. He bowed stiffly, the sternness of his features unrelaxed, as the three passed out into the winter night. Hamilton had vindicated his official honor at a painful sacrifice. It was understood that the confession should be sacredly confidential, but in a sense he had lost. As he sat with Wolcott before the fire after his tormentors had departed, he realized that his enemies were out to wreck his official reputation. He may have had a premonition of the storm that was about to break.

III

Nine days after the scene enacted by candlelight in Hamilton’s library, the bill authorizing the President to negotiate a loan of two million dollars to be applied to the reimbursement of a loan made of the Bank came up for consideration in the House. William B. Giles, who was now dividing the leadership of the Jeffersonians with Madison, was instantly on his feet with a request for postponement. Perhaps some method could be found without recourse to a new loan. It might be better to pay the loan by selling the stock the Nation owned in the Bank. The watchful Sedgwick was shocked at the suggestion. Dumping so much stock upon the market would reduce the price and not enough money would be realized to meet the country’s obligation to the Bank. It was a mild premonitory skirmish.[704]

Christmas Day brought an armistice, but the next day the discussion was resumed, with Madison taking a leading part. Why was so much more to be borrowed than was demanded by the Bank? To his personal knowledge a large sum was lying idle and unappropriated in the Treasury. If this balance was appropriated by the President, he wanted to know it. A delicate subject to discuss, suggested Sedgwick. Not at all, thought Madison. It was time for some ‘candid explanation.’ Was the appropriation lying dormant in the Treasury, borrowed to meet the obligations to France, being demanded by the country to which it was due? The important question concerned the diverting of money appropriated to that specific purpose to the payment of Bank installments. Could gentlemen justify themselves to their constituents for such conduct? The debt to France was one of gratitude and justice, and he wished the money could be sent thither on the wings of the wind. True, the debt in whole was not yet due, but in the critical condition of our benefactor, it would no doubt be particularly acceptable and he was opposed to the diversion of any part of it.[705] Why two millions for the Bank? demanded Giles. True, two hundred thousand dollars would be due the Bank on January 1st, but why two millions? No one had offered an explanation of how the money lying dormant was disposed of, or how it was intended to dispose of it. No member rose to explain, and the bill was lost.

During the next month the lobbies, boarding-houses, taverns, buzzed with discussions of the finances of the country. After all, even the members of the House, presumed to be familiar with the fiscal affairs of the Nation, knew scarcely anything. They had appropriated blindly. There was something uncanny in the silence. Would the raising of the curtain disclose skeletons in the closet of the Treasury? At any rate, the House had a right to the facts and figures. Throughout the month Madison and Giles were frequently at the table or about the blazing fire at Jefferson’s. Here the campaign was planned. The fight should be forced into the open on the floor of the House. Jefferson could not participate, for manifest reasons, but he could direct. Madison could assist in the preparation of the resolutions and in the debate. Giles, who was a masterful debater, fearless and slashing in attack, could sponsor the resolutions and lead in the assault. Because of the part he then played, it has been the fashion to dismiss him flippantly with a shrug and a sneer—but this is absurd. Giles of Virginia was unsurpassed by any American debater of his time.

IV

Giles was a veritable D’Artagnan of debate, a gusty, lusty Gascon transplanted to the tobacco-fields of Virginia, eager always for a fight or a frolic, and lightning-swift with his blade. A blustering fellow, true, quick to assert his rights and repel assault, he carried himself with a swagger that did not endear him to the Federalists, who rather plumed themselves on having a monopoly on that particular vice or virtue. But sneers at his ability are absurd. He who won the admiration of Patrick Henry,[706] commanded the confidence and respect of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, received the discriminating praise of Randolph of Roanoke,[707] and the reluctant tribute of Justice Story,[708] cannot be sneered from a respectable place in history by a wretchedly unfair caricature by a partisan English biographer of one of his enemies.[709]

The young Virginian who appeared in Philadelphia in the winter of 1790-91 was not prepossessing in appearance. Of average height, the fullness of his person conveyed the impression of a squat figure. His face, large, round, but colorless, bore none of the indications of genius, albeit there was something of virility in his brown eyes that harmonized with the robustness of his physique. One who knew him has recorded that he was of fair complexion,[710] but another who heard him frequently in debate commented on his dark color, and, since his hair and eyes were those of a brunette, we may accept the latter as more probable than the former.[711] All agree that he was careless in his dress, after the then prevailing Virginia manner,[712] although we have the record of one dramatic appearance in the Virginia Legislature, at the height of his renown, ‘elegantly dressed in blue and buff’ and with the Gascon touch of being ‘booted and spurred, with a riding-whip in his hand.’[713] If there was nothing imposing or picturesque in his appearance, his manners were such as to make him stand out conspicuously among his fellows. These were such as to impress the none too finished Maclay that ‘the frothy manners of Virginia were ever uppermost.’ It is easy enough to reconstruct the scene at Washington’s table where Maclay met our Gascon, with Giles, the good liver, dwelling unctuously on Virginia canvasback ducks, Virginia hams, Virginia chickens, and the old Madeira, which was a little more mellow when drained from a Virginia glass in a joyous Virginia dining-room. Proud of Virginia was this provincial from the tobacco country, and proud as D’Artagnan himself of his physical prowess, for didn’t he take more manual exercise than any man in New England? No place like the Old Dominion where the living was ‘fast and fine,’ where from noon to night the people drank wine or cherry bounce like gentlemen. Thus he thundered along, to the amazement of Maclay, who observed that ‘he practiced on his principle every time the bottle passed.’[714] The picture is no doubt true, for Giles was racy of his native soil. The Amelia County of his early days was of the frontier, with all that that implies of the primitive vices and virtues. The sparsely settled country, with its miserable roads, lived very much to itself, and strangers who ventured among its inhabitants were treated coldly. The living was truly ‘fast and fine’ and rather loose, for the men were careless, indifferent to dress, heavy drinkers, inveterate smokers, their conversations picturesque with profanity; and they were fighters, too. Dumas’s three immortals would have found it to their liking, and had they encountered young Giles at some crossroads tavern they would have taken him to their hearts. The spirit of independence flamed on every hearth, and the religious dissenters found it a happy hunting-ground.[715] It was in this atmosphere that Giles grew up. Like most of the Jeffersonian leaders, he was a frontiersman.

When he went to Princeton to complete his education, we get again the D’Artagnan touch. He set forth like a Virginia gentleman with his negro slave to serve him, no doubt kicking, cursing, and loving him all the way. Then followed a law course at William and Mary—and then a law office was opened in the little tobacco town of Petersburg. We are interested in this period of his career only in that it throws light on his character and capacity. He favored the ratification of the Constitution, and, as a fascinated spectator of the debates in the Virginia Convention, formed a deep admiration for Madison. In the evenings he argued for ratification at the tavern, no doubt in the taproom. Hearing him one night, George Mason, a leader of the opposition, made the comment that ‘he has as much sense as one half of us, though he is on the wrong side.’[716] He was not, then, an anti-Federalist on the Constitution.

Immediately on entering Congress at twenty-eight, he commanded attention, for he had a genius for congressional life. He became at once a giant in debate. When John Randolph, more cynic than flatterer, pronounced Giles the Charles James Fox of the House, he referred to the impression made by the Virginian in action. Fox was a student; Giles was not. Fox was capable of sustained research; Giles was not. Fox was a lover and reader of books, and Giles cared nothing for them. He bore a closer resemblance to Mirabeau or Danton in his methods, absorbing his knowledge from others in conversation. In the tavern, on the highway, at the dinner table, he was a tireless talker, and by provoking his friends into discussion he tested, corrected, and formed his impressions of events and measures. His mind absorbed like a sponge, his memory was retentive. The idea that Jefferson or Madison outlined his speeches for him is ludicrous. He merely assimilated what they said—and then gave it out more forcefully than either could in debate.[717]