Here was clearly the answer of the Jeffersonians to the vote of the House. It found its way to every city, town, and hamlet, to the cabin in the Kentucky clearing, to the mansion of the master of many slaves on the river James, to the pioneers about Fort Pitt on the far frontier. John Taylor of Caroline had struck his blow.[745]
Thus the congressional battle merely served to accentuate the differences of the parties. It marked, in great measure, the close of the purely fiscal phase of the struggle. Neither Jefferson nor Madison was qualified to cross swords with Hamilton in the field of finance. Giles was hopelessly inadequate. A little later, a Jeffersonian leader was to join them whose genius as a financier would be as far above all the Federalists, save Hamilton alone, as Hamilton was superior to Giles, but he was still waiting in the wings for Fate to give the cue for his appearance.
Even as Taylor wrote, a new issue had appeared, made to order for the purposes of Jefferson.
CHAPTER X
ÇA IRA
I
UP to this time Jefferson had been fighting under a disadvantage. In the field of finance he was unable to cope on equal terms with his great protagonist. The mass of the people were not consciously concerned with the Hamiltonian policies, few comparatively had been swindled by the speculators, and, while they resented their neighbors’ sudden acquisition of wealth, it was not easy to capitalize their discontent.
Then the French Revolution entered a more dramatic stage, captivating the imagination of the multitude. As the real significance of the struggle began to take form, with the crowned heads of the Old World marching in serried ranks under the leadership of Brunswick on the French frontier, the excitement was electric; and when they were turned back by the gallant resistance of the Revolutionists the floodgates of enthusiasm broke. One prolonged, triumphant shout went up from the masses. The ‘people of no particular importance’ somehow felt that the victory was theirs. They had been a little indifferent, these men of the shops, taverns, wharves, and the frontier, over the disputed financial and economic policies of their country, but they could understand the meaning of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity.’ It meant democracy. Thus the news of the French victories shook the bells in the New York steeples, Tammany celebrated with song, shout, and speech in her wigwam, and the bung was knocked out of the barrel of illiterate oratory in the beer saloons. These ‘people of no importance’ had been inarticulate, and they were moved to eloquence. They had found a cause they believed their cause—the cause of the people against privilege.[746] The enthusiasm swept over the country, and the scenes of riotous joy at Mr. Grant’s fountain tavern in Baltimore[747] were imitated at Plymouth, Princeton, Fredericksburg, Norfolk, Savannah, Charleston, Boston, Philadelphia.
In Boston there was a salute of cannon at the castle, and a picturesque procession moved, fluttering French and American flags, bearing a roasted ox of a thousand weight for the barbecue and a hogshead of punch to wash it down, while girls and women waved from the windows, boys shouted from the roofs, and the frenzied throng roared approval to the eloquence of Charles Jarvis, the Jeffersonian leader, and to the Revolutionary poem by ‘Citizen’ Joseph Croswell.[748] The cheers of Boston were echoed back from Charleston, where the artillery boomed in the day, mingling its thunder with the bells of Saint Michael’s. Only ‘the pen of a Burke could describe the scene on State Street’ packed with exultant humanity, with men looking down from the chimney-tops, while ‘bevies of amiable and beautiful women’ blessed the marchers with their smiles from the balconies of the houses.[749] On to Saint Philip’s tramped the crowd for religious exercises, for these men were not anarchists or criminals, but decent citizens, moved to the depths by the defeat of the persecutors of France.[750]
And observing the unprecedented enthusiasm from his quiet corner, Thomas Jefferson rejoiced. At length the masses were politically awake, and the enemies of democracy had their answer.