Fisher Ames ascribed the mob spirit to ‘a few young men who have lost property by British captures.’ Just a few, he said—mostly boys with fifes and drums. ‘The anti-treaty men were ashamed of the business.’[1048] The Boston Federalists preferred to fight the mob with merchants’ resolutions and their barbed wit. ‘The reason given by the Jacobins for not reading the treaty,’ wrote Russell in the ‘Centinel,’ ‘is that no person ought to read what he knows to be bad.’[1049] Meanwhile, the leaders were busy as swarming bees all over Massachusetts, drumming up the merchants, soliciting resolutions, exerting influence to prevent town meetings. ‘At Salem the respectable people are all acquiescent; and many of them approve but think it inadvisable to act,’ wrote Cabot to Wolcott. ‘At Newburyport, the principal merchants are also well satisfied; and some steps have been taken to bring them to express their opinions.’[1050] With the merchants acquiescent, and the principal merchants satisfied, need any one worry over the marching multitudes?
But alas, in commercial Charleston, home of the Pinckneys and William Smith—there, too, the marching mobs, and mingling with them some of the rich and aristocratic. Here was the most bitter disappointment of all. It began in the Senate when the patrician South Carolina Senator Pierce Butler, cousin of the Duke of Ormond, refused to vote for ratification. Nothing of the rabble about him or his charming wife. When the treaty reached Charleston, the flags of the city were lowered to half-mast. The treaty was burned ‘amidst shouts of abhorrence’—nor was there anything clandestine about the burning. It was duly advertised in advance. ‘This evening at 8 o’clock,’ read the notice, ‘will be burned by the public executioner near the old Market in Broad street, the treaty proposed to be established between Great Britain and America to show the disapproval of the citizens of Charleston. Also an effigy of Jay will be burned.’ Taking cognizance of rumors of possible interference, the ‘satellites of anarchy,’ were promised ‘tar and feathers.’ These took the hint and both the treaty and Jay crackled in the flames.
Then followed a formal meeting of protest in the Exchange—a great crowd—many veterans of the Revolution—an adjournment to Saint Michael’s Church to accommodate the throng. Then rose a figure familiar to the generation of the Revolution, and then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, John Rutledge. An able man was Rutledge, with a luminous career. Speaking with vigorous eloquence, analyzing the treaty as he proceeded, he denounced it as a betrayal of American interests and an insult to American manhood.[1051] At a subsequent meeting condemnatory resolutions were adopted, Butler was lauded, and Senator Read, who had voted to ratify, was denounced as ‘unworthy of any further public trust.’[1052] In the midst of this meeting there was a stir of anticipation when the popular orator Charles Pinckney, just arrived from his country place and covered with dust, strode into the room and claimed recognition. His was one of the fiercest excoriations of the year, and a few days later this speech, revised, appeared in the ‘City Gazette,’ to be copied by all the papers inimical to the treaty in the country. A master of the philippic, he poured oil upon the flames.[1053] In parish after parish, meetings were called and the treaty denounced. The Federalists were appalled at the action of Rutledge, and he who had been numbered among ‘the wise and the good’ became a symbol of unspeakable depravity over night. It was suddenly discovered that he whom Washington had deliberately chosen for Chief Justice was ‘insane.’[1054] In the ‘Centinel’ of Boston appeared an open letter to him declaring him unfit to sit upon the Bench—because of his hostility to the document of Jay.[1055] The private correspondence of the Federalist leaders bristled with abuse, and plans were immediately made to reject his nomination in the Senate.
In North Carolina the opposition was even more bitter, partly because of the absurd surrender in Article XII, and partly because of the provision which threw the property rights of Americans into jeopardy.[1056] This one provision was said to affect half the lands in the State, and there was wild talk of resisting it by force.[1057] Even Senator Johnson, Federalist, was shocked and disgusted. ‘A hasty performance’ at best, and one which greatly lowered his opinion of Jay’s ability.[1058] William R. Davie, however, was outraged at the opposition and thought the treatment of Jay measured ‘the baseness of human nature.’[1059]
In Virginia the people were infuriated. They, too, were affected by Article IX, and on the day the treaty was signed, Grenville presented Jay with papers which began the long litigation over the Fairfax estate; and more than any other State she was a sufferer from the loss of negroes carried away by the British troops. In 1791, Cornwallis had taken thirty thousand slaves, of whom all but three thousand had died of smallpox and fever. When a mass meeting was convened at Richmond, the Federalist leaders had another shock when the celebrated Chancellor Wythe, a powerful figure at the American Bar, took the chair—‘a circumstance,’ wrote Madison to Jefferson, ‘which will not be without its weight, especially as he presided at the former meeting in favor of the Proclamation.’[1060] Here the treaty was denounced as ‘insulting to the dignity, injurious to the interests, dangerous to the security, and repugnant to the Constitution, of the United States.’[1061] Patrick Henry thought it ‘a very bad one indeed.’[1062] And so thought the Virginians generally. At Petersburg a tribute was paid Senator Mason and Jay was burned in effigy.[1063]
Still another blow fell to the Federalists when Senator John Langdon of New Hampshire, who had supported Hamilton’s financial policies, deserted on the treaty. The merchants of Portsmouth—a sacred class with the Hamiltonians—shared in the general protest. A mass meeting was called at the State House. ‘Your only hope is in the President,’ ran the handbills. ‘Assemble, then, to a man; shut up your shops; repair to the State House; remonstrate.’[1064] And never had Portsmouth seen so great a throng. The treaty was denounced, Langdon approved, Mason praised for giving out the document ‘unduly withheld by the Senate from the people.’ When Langdon returned, he was given a public dinner at the Assembly Room with practically every merchant and tradesman gathered about the board. Stinging toasts, patriotic songs, a stirring speech from Langdon—who at this time aligned himself with the Jeffersonians and became their leader in New Hampshire.[1065]
Even so, the Federalists held the line fairly well in New England. In Vermont, where the treaty was the sole topic of conversation, there were no public meetings. The Democratic Societies of the State had fallen under the frown of Washington, and rough-and-ready Matthew Lyon had not assumed the leadership. As late as September, ‘Vermont Farmer,’ complaining of non-action, urged that meetings be called in every town and county—but nothing was done.[1066] In Connecticut, where the preachers, professors, and politicians had the people cowed, there was scarcely a whimper. ‘I have heard little said by our people about the treaty,’ wrote Governor Wolcott to his son. ‘Our people are calm and hard at work.’[1067] In New Jersey a mass meeting was held at Trenton in the State House and the treaty denounced—with numerous township meetings following in its wake.[1068] The sentiment generally was hostile. Another meeting at Newport, Rhode Island, and another sweeping denunciation.[1069] In Delaware the opposition was overwhelming, even the Cincinnati at its Fourth of July dinner at Newcastle drinking heartily to the toast: ‘John Jay, may he enjoy all the benefits of purgatory,’[1070] while the diners at a more popular dinner drank, ‘His Excellency, John Jay ... may he and his treason be forever politically damned.’[1071] In August the people of Wilmington crowded the Upper Market House in protest, with men like Cæsar Rodney and John Dickinson participating.[1072]
In Georgia, where the popular sense had been betrayed by the ratification vote of Senator Gunn, the bitterness was sizzling. One day the people gathered about a poster in the Market at Savannah inviting them to meet the next day at the Court-House and join in the burning of John Jay in effigy. Most of the town responded. There they found the effigies of Jay and Gunn on a cart. Forming in procession, with the cart in front, they paraded through the numerous streets, along the Bay and back to the Court-House, and thence to the South Common where the gallows stood. Halters were put about the necks of Jay and the offending Senator, solemnly the accusation of treason was read to them, and they were given to the flames.[1073]
In Maryland the Federalists whistled hard to sustain their courage, and made a brave effort to close their eyes to the situation. Representative Murray wrote encouragingly to Wolcott that among the men gathered for the General Court ‘nine tenths ... from all the counties approved the treaty.’[1074] In Baltimore the merchants rallied and sought to intimidate Sam Smith, their Representative, by the circulation of a paper of instructions. He hastened home to suppress it, and failing, had a set of counter-instructions started. But there was no magic in pretense, and soon Murray, himself intimidated, was writing of his decision to retire with the admission that on the Eastern Shore there ‘had been more agitation than I had imagined.’[1075]