Jefferson and Hamilton

by Claude G. Bowers

IV

No one but Hamilton could have been more obnoxious to the Jeffersonians than John Jay. He was now verging on fifty, with a notable career behind him on which to base an opinion of his bias. In appearance he was amiable but unimpressive, with nothing in his manner to indicate his intellectual power.[920] Mrs. Adams’s daughter was impressed with the ‘benevolence stamped in every feature.’[921] Of commanding stature, he was slender, albeit well formed. He wore his hair down a little over his forehead, tied behind, and moderately powdered. Coal-black, penetrating eyes increased his pallor, for he was never robust. Kindly, gracious, courtly in social intercourse, he was sternly uncompromising where his integrity was involved. Politically, he was an aristocrat, with contempt for democracy, and an incurable distrust of the people. This, with his predominant devotion to the commercial interests, fixed his status among the Federalists. Upon the principles of the French Revolution he looked with abhorrence. ‘That portion of the people,’ he once wrote a friend, ‘who individually mean well never was, nor until the millennium will be, considerable.’ Others thought the masses too ignorant to act well, but it was reserved for Jay to say that they did not even mean well.

Few Americans then living were better qualified by experience for a diplomatic mission. At Madrid he had shown rare tact, infinite patience, and dignity in defeat, and he had helped negotiate the treaty of peace. It was unfortunate that he had, for a while, been Secretary of Foreign Affairs, for he had then made a secret report to Congress holding England justified in clinging to the western posts.[922] That secret was out.

In writing Jefferson of the appointment, Madison gave no indication of a probable opposition to Jay’s confirmation. ‘The appointment of Hamilton was likely to produce such a sensation,’ he wrote, ‘that to his great mortification he was laid aside and Jay named in his place.’[923] But behind closed doors the Senate engaged in a bitter battle over the confirmation. The opposition made much of the impropriety of naming a Justice of the Supreme Court, submitting in a resolution ‘that to permit Judges of the Supreme Court to hold at the same time other offices emanating from and holden at the pleasure of the President is destructive of their independence, and that tending to expose them to the influence of the Executive is ... impolitic.’ According to Bache, the majority of the Senate subscribed to this reasoning and the scruples of enough for confirmation were overcome only by the assurances that Jay’s ‘delicacy and sense of propriety would certainly induce him to resign his office.’ Eight persisted in opposition on the supposition that ‘more was to be feared from Mr. Jay’s avarice than was to be hoped from his delicacy or sense of propriety.’[924] By the suspicious Adams, who witnessed the struggle from the chair, the opposition was ascribed to the fear that a successful negotiation would interfere with plans for the elevation of Jefferson to the Presidency. On the surface, Jay’s indifference to the navigation of the Mississippi, his mythical monarchical principles, his attachment to England and aversion to France, appeared explanatory of the hostility.[925]

The confirmation shifted the attack from the Senate to the streets. The Jeffersonians resented it as a purely partisan appointment, but the opposition ‘out of doors’ went deeper. Could no one be found outside the little coterie of office-holders? Was it the intent ‘that certain characters should have a monopoly of power?’[926] The Democratic Society of Philadelphia bore down heavily on Jay’s justification for the holding of the posts.[927] A frontiersman from western Pennsylvania denounced the appointment as evidence of indifference to the interest of the western country.[928] After Jay’s report on the posts would it not be answer enough for Lord Grenville to quote Jay’s own opinion ‘on file in the Secretary’s office’?[929] The Democratic Society of Washington, Pennsylvania, thought that ‘no man but Washington ... would have dared ... to have insulted the majesty of the people by such departure from any principle of republican equality.’[930]

Disregarding the clamor of the ‘rabble,’ Jay had made preparations for an immediate departure, and without tendering his resignation as Chief Justice. The instructions he carried had been prepared almost exclusively by Hamilton.[931] So intimately was the economic policy of the Federalists connected with the relations to England that these instructions had been determined upon at a secret conference of Federalist leaders dominated by their chief.[932] Thus, provided with instructions from a party conference, Jay set sail on May 12th from New York. A thousand people assembled at Trinity Church to escort him to the ship and give three cheers as he went aboard. A salute was fired as he passed the fort. But, wrote Greenleaf, ‘the militia had refused parading to honor the departure of our extraordinary Minister.’[933]

If the Federalists were pleased, the Jeffersonians were complacent and Madison wrote that Jay’s appointment ‘is the most powerful blow ever suffered by the popularity of the President.’[934] But the Federalists regained confidence after several months of unpopularity and depression—and it was now the Jeffersonians’ time to suffer again—for the Whiskey Boys were up in western Pennsylvania.

V

The Whiskey Boys of the ‘insurrection of 1794’ have been pictured as a vicious, anarchistic, unpatriotic, despicable lot—and they were nothing of the sort. These men were doing more for America than the speculators of Boston and New York, for they were hard-working conquerors of the wilderness, felling the forests, draining the swamps, redeeming the land for the cultivation of man. Fortunately for America, they were a tough set. These rough men in coarse raiment and coonskin, with muskets on their shoulders, were not arrayed for a pose. They fought their way against savage forces, subduing Nature while warding off the blows of the tomahawk. Their lot was hard. No luxuries in the log cabins where they fought, wrought, suffered in the Homeric work of extending an empire and making it safe for the soft creatures of the counting-rooms and drawing-rooms who would ultimately follow. Newspapers they seldom saw, books scarcely at all, and most were illiterate. It was a long cry from these powerful figures with muscular arms and dauntless hearts to the perfumed dandies simpering silly compliments into the ears of the ladies at Mrs. Bingham’s.

Within a radius of a hundred miles, there were but seventy thousand souls. Pittsburgh was a crude little village of twelve thousand people. Here they lived, shut off from the eastern country by the mountains, for the few passes and winding roads through the dense woods were too rough for vehicles. The little trade they carried on with the East was through the use of pack-horses. From the South they were shut off by savage tribes of red men. Here they were, left to shift for themselves by their Government, which manifested little interest in their welfare, but did not forget the taxes. Because there was no market for their grain, they were forced to convert it into alcohol, which was largely their medium of barter. Money was seldom seen, and the excise tax laid on their alcohol was payable only in money. No people in America received so little benefit from the Government, and none were hit so hard by the Excise Law. Perhaps these pioneers who thought themselves abused were ignorant, but there was an intellectual giant among them who knew they were abused. This was Albert Gallatin.