Jefferson and Hamilton

by Claude G. Bowers

IX

When, in his Message to Congress, Washington made his amazing attack on the Democratic Societies, the influence of Hamilton and the Federalist leaders, who had received not a few scars in the recent elections, was evident. Here was a proclamation that the masses of the people in private life had no right to organize for political purposes. That the Hamiltonians had no interest in the mass of the people was generally understood.[977] They were impressed with petitions from the Cincinnati, or Chambers of Commerce, but frankly contemptuous of those signed by mere citizens ‘of no particular importance.’ When these people organized into Democratic Societies, things were going too far. If this continued, the ordinary mechanic might get the impression that he counted in governmental affairs. There was too much of this democratic virus in the body politic.

The Jeffersonians were momentarily stunned by Washington’s denunciation, but quickly rallied. Madison, calm, composed, courteous, but grimly determined, sat on the House committee to frame the Reply to the President’s Address, and he planned to ignore that feature of the Message. He was not deceived as to its purpose or inspiration. ‘It was obvious that a most dangerous game was playing against the Republicans,’ he wrote Jefferson. ‘The insurrection was ... deservedly odious. The Democratic Societies were presented as in league with it. The Republican part of Congress was to be drawn into an ostensible patronage of those societies, and into an ostensible opposition to the President.’ The sponsorship of a purely partisan attack by Washington pained Madison, but it did not intimidate him. He considered it an assault on the citadel of liberty, and it was, in truth, the forerunner of the infamous Sedition Law.[978] In a letter to Monroe, he described the attack as the ‘greatest error in his [Washington’s] political career.’[979] That it was ‘an attack on the essential and constitutional right of the citizen,’ he had no doubt.[980] Jefferson characterized it as ‘one of the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from the faction of monocrats’—an attack ‘on the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing and publishing.’ And what of the Cincinnati, ‘self-constituted,’[981] whose members met behind closed doors, maintained a system of secret correspondence, while ‘carving out for itself hereditary distinctions?’[982]

Even so, the Jeffersonians would have taken no notice of the attack had not the Federalists forced the issue by proposing an amendment to the Reply commendatory of the assault on the societies. That Hamilton was the inspiration of this move there can be no doubt. When the debate began, we find him hurrying around to Fitzsimmons’s house with ‘proof’ of the connection between the societies and the insurrection; and, finding the mover of the amendment absent, leaving a memorandum. The Hamiltonian proof was that the Mingo-Creek Society was ‘sometimes called the Democratic Society’; that some of the insurrectionists were on its membership rolls; that one of its members had led one of the attacks and another a second. Quite enough, he thought, to damn all the societies in America, albeit almost all had denounced the insurrection, and many of their members had marched under arms against the rebels.[983] This was the reasoning of all the extreme Federalists.

Into the debate both parties dragged their heavy artillery. Madison, Giles, and Nicholas on one side, Ames, Sedgwick, Smith, and Tracy on the other. ‘Stand by the President!’—from the Hamiltonians. ‘Stand by the Constitution!’—from the Jeffersonians. ‘Plunge these societies into contempt—sink them into abhorrence and detestation,’ shouted Sedgwick, still smarting from the pummelling they had given him.[984] ‘The people have a right to speak and to think,’ protested Venable of Delaware. ‘The fact that the President thinks them guilty is enough,’ thought Murray of Maryland. ‘I refuse to surrender my opinions to the President where a matter of fact is involved,’ retorted Nicholas. ‘No,’ thundered Giles, ‘the fiat of no person in America should ever be taken for truth.’ ‘Infamous creatures!’ snorted Smith of Charleston who had felt their blows. Nonsense, exclaimed Christie of Maryland, the members in Baltimore ‘were not the fair weather patriots of the present day, but the patriots of Seventy-five.’ Yes, added Carnes of Georgia, citing the case where one of these societies ‘turned out as volunteers against the rioters,’ and expressing the hope that the time ‘will never come when the people of America shall not have leave to assemble and speak their mind.’

Giles and Madison closed against the amendment in powerful constitutional arguments on the rights of citizens to have opinions on men and measures or to express them by voice or pen, individually or collectively; and Ames closed for it, making much of the burning of Jay in effigy by the society at Lexington, and picturing the people on tip-toes on all the post-roads to learn whether Washington or the societies had triumphed in the House.[985] Dexter foreshadowed the Sedition Law, toward which the Federalists were feeling their way, with the declaration that the Constitution did not give the people ‘the precious right of vilifying their own Government and laws.’ Madison warned of the tendency, the vote was taken, and in the end the Reply of the House went to the President without a reference to his attack on the clubs.

But in the press the fight went on throughout the year. ‘Are men’s principles among the subjects of public concern which you are to discuss?’ asked the incredulous Noah Webster of the ‘American Minerva.’ ‘If so, your society bears a resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition, destitute only of its power.’[986] One of Fenno’s scribes was moved to hilarity at the absurdity of the defense that the societies had uniformly denounced the insurrection. Had they not at the same time denounced the excise law and asked for its repeal?[987] Republican societies checks and balances? sneered the ‘Centinel.’ ‘So are lanthorn posts and guillotines.’ The same journal neatly condensed the entire Federalist line of attack in a satirical ‘book of the generations and downfall of Jacobinism,’ from the hour ‘Brissot begat the Jacobin club of Paris.’ Genêt—Democratic Societies of America—the Pittsburgh rebellion—the armament of fifteen thousand men—an expense of two million dollars—ran the argument.[988] Thus it was reduced to a matter of dollars and cents.

Meanwhile, the societies, recovering from the shock of the attack, stood to their guns, and issued statements setting forth in moderate tone principles, then jeered, which no one would care to challenge publicly in America to-day. The German Republican Club of Philadelphia concentrated the defense in a few words: ‘Are we the abettors of insurgents for supposing that Government can do wrong, and for disapproving the excise? Then is the freedom of opinion at an end.’[989]

But the shadow of Washington fell darkly on the clubs and their power as organizations rapidly diminished. Many who refused to antagonize Washington openly were deeply resentful, and from that hour the popular impression grew that he had aligned himself as a partisan of the Federalists. From that hour, too, the high-flying Federalists began to move with greater confidence and celerity toward the Sedition Law. The erstwhile members of the societies fell back into the body of citizenship, but more keenly and intelligently interested in politics than ever before, and more than ever determined to make their influence felt. They were not to forget what they had learned of tactics, organization, and propaganda, and very soon the Jeffersonian Party would be the beneficiary of the Washington assault.

If this congressional session foreshadowed the Sedition Law, it also foreshadowed the Alien Law in a Naturalization Act reflecting the Federalist distrust of the immigrant. The Catholics were attacked in the debate, and Madison indignantly replied that ‘there is nothing in their religion inconsistent with the purest republicanism.’[990] When the Jeffersonians created a diversion by offering an amendment that no titled foreigner could be admitted to citizenship until he had renounced his title, the Federalists stupidly fell into the trap and were instantly on their toes with indignant protests. Instead of accepting the amendment as a joke, they were soon pleading that titles were not so bad, and it did not matter if titled gentlemen voted and held office. ‘You may force a man to renounce his title,’ said Smith of Charleston, ‘but you cannot prevent his neighbor from calling both him and his wife by the title.’ Great must have been the merriment in the taverns at the spectacle of the Federalist leaders fighting with desperation and indignation against the proposal to prevent Lords, Dukes, Barons, and Viscounts from becoming American citizens without leaving their titles outside the door. What matter if Sedgwick did explain that the acceptance of the amendment would be a justification of the charge that there was a monarchical party in the country?—the better psychologists among the Jeffersonians knew that with the man in the street nothing could have been more conclusive on that point than the unification of the Hamiltonians in opposition to the amendment.[991] They had been maneuvered into standing up and being counted against the renunciation of titles—and the ‘mob’ shouted with joy.