Not wholly without provocation, these outbursts. Fenno’s fulsome snobbery was disgusting to people of sense, and the English sailors in Philadelphia did not help. When four of these jolly tars attacked and all but murdered a lone French sailor without a rebuke from the city officials, Bache’s paper warned that the friends of the French would ‘take signal vengeance on such infamous banditti.’ When, in New York, the aristocrats of the ‘new and elegant coffee-house’ and the exclusive Belvedere Club were ‘swallowing potent draughts to the annihilation of liberty,’ notice was served that unless suppressed ‘a band of Mohawks, Oneidas, and Senecas will take upon themselves that necessary duty’—for Tammany was the very heart of the French movement in New York.[798] ‘Ça Ira!’ The people were the masters, and even in the theaters they went to dictate to managers and actors. When Hodkinson, a favorite actor, appeared, as his rôle required, in the uniform of a British officer, he was hissed. ‘Take it off!’ shouted the crowd; but when the quick-witted actor smilingly explained that he represented a bully, the jeers were turned to cheers.[799] On then with the play. The orchestras played ‘La Marseillaise,’ the galleries sang ‘Ça Ira,’ the managers shunted Shakespeare and Sheridan aside for ‘Tyranny Suppressed,’ ‘Louis XVI,’ and ‘The Demolition of the Bastile.’ In Boston, where the Federalists were firm, the Boston Theater continued to cater to their tastes, but even there the Haymarket drew the greater crowds with drama for the Democrats.

Everywhere liberty caps were worn and liberty poles were raised, and men and women became ‘Citizen’ and ‘Citizeness,’ while the Federalists roared their glee to keep up courage, making merry in their letters and through their papers at the expense of the ‘citness’:

‘No citness to my name, I’ll have, says Kate,
Though Boston lads so much about it prate;
I’ve asked its meaning, and our Tom, the clown,
Says darn it ‘t means “woman of the town.”[800]

From Hartford the witty Chauncey Goodrich wrote Wolcott that ‘our citizenesses quite execrate their new name,’ and that while ‘they will have no objection to being called biped in common with men, if it can clearly be shown that term denotes nothing above the foot or ankle, but as it comes so near they are suspicious of mischief.’[801] What a world! What a world ‘agog to be all equal to French barbers.’[802]

Then, suddenly, these Federalists ceased to grin, when Democratic Clubs, suggestive of those of Paris, appeared like magic everywhere, differing according to the community and character of their leadership. It was not riff-raff in Philadelphia where David Rittenhouse was president, but it was sinister enough with its bold assertion that free men should ‘regard with attention and discuss without fear the conduct of public servants.’[803] That at Norfolk summoned patriots to a courageous expression of their sentiments in answer to ‘the tyrants of the world’ united ‘to crush the infant spirit of freedom’ in France.[804] Strangely enough, they were nowhere so extreme as in Charleston where the ‘Saint Cecilia Society’ scorned the membership of plebeians or men in trade; and where Robert Goodloe Harper, fresh from the country and poor, rose rapidly to fame as the vice-president of the Jacobin Club, wearing a ‘red rouge with great grace and dignity.’[805] And nowhere did they mean so much to the Jeffersonians as in New England where they were giving political importance to the masses. Even the Germans of Philadelphia organized to serve liberty and equality in their native tongue.[806]

The shrieks of protest from the Federalists against these clubs is inexplicable to the twentieth century. Like innumerable clubs for public purposes to-day, they were composed of the wise and foolish, the vicious and virtuous, but their purpose was to discuss and disseminate information on public affairs. Some then, as now, passed asinine resolutions, but that which alarmed the Hamiltonians was that they created power for the masses. Had not Fenno preached and preached that the masses were to be ruled and satisfied? The merchants should have their Chambers of Commerce; the financiers and even speculators could organize to influence public action—but what right had the ‘man of no particular importance’ to interfere?

In brief, these clubs were vicious because democratic. These ‘demoniacal societies,’ as Wolcott preferred to call them, were ‘nurseries of sedition’ because ‘they are formed for the avowed purpose of a general influence and control upon measures of government.’[807] It was ‘sedition’ in those days for people of no special significance to hold views in opposition to the policies of their rulers. It was the kind of sedition that Jefferson liked. From his home on the river he watched their organizations multiply and grow with a fond, hopeful interest. They were his Citizens’ Training Camps where the army he was to lead to victory was being trained for political war.

VIII

Meanwhile, how fared neutrality on the part of England and France? On the part of Genêt, badly enough. Week by week some outrage was committed; and, worse still, the young fanatic was persuading himself of the propriety of his actions. The cheers in the streets convinced him that he could defy the President and appeal with safety to the people. He could hear the comparatively few extremists because they shouted loudest. Day by day he was becoming more intolerable. Devoted to the cause of revolutionary France, Jefferson sought to curb the impetuosity of its Minister in the interest of the cause, but toward the latter part of June he was plainly worried.[808]

The British were as arrogant and impudent. Outrages on American ships and the impressment of American seamen were almost daily occurrences, and protests to the Government in London brought no response.[809] ‘Ships stopped, insulted, searched; cargoes confiscated; seamen seized, impressed, and thrown into jails; until Thomas Pinckney, the American Minister in London, was overwhelmed with his correspondence with Newgate Jail—for the poor wretches there were begging him for succor he could not give. He was met with a courteous smile and contemptuous indifference.’[810]