His life was a tragedy. Born in abject poverty, a cripple from childhood, he had seen his father and grandfather become mental wrecks. Under this cloud, in this state of penury, he looked out upon the world. Shut off by his infirmity from physical labor, he had no money for an education, and he lived on an unpromising New Hampshire farm, where there were no schools, libraries, or books, and few papers. But before he was eight he had read the Bible through. Two years before he had read the story of the Revolution from books borrowed, and had supplemented his reading by having a relative, who had fought with Washington, describe the burning of Charlestown and the Concord fight. There was infinite pathos in his passion for the printed page. But college was out of the question, the printing-office the only possible substitute, and thus, after a long apprenticeship, he took over a wobbling paper at Concord and became an editor.

Throwing discretion to the winds and with a sublime audacity, he took up the challenge of the powerful majority; and it required courage to pursue that course in the New Hampshire of 1809. To be a Democrat (Republican) there in those days was to offend God; boldly to preach hostility to Federalism was to proclaim blasphemy and invite destruction. The Federalistic press opened their batteries of abuse upon the obscure youth. One paper solemnly announced the discovery that he was a direct descendant of the witches who had suffered at Salem. Hill returned a spirited fire, and rejoiced in the combat. “I have hit them, for they flutter,” he said.[355] In the campaign of 1810 he fairly galvanized the prostrate friends of the National Administration into life and incurred an unbelievable hatred of the Opposition. When this crippled boy was brutally assaulted on the streets of Concord, the Federalist press of New Hampshire gloated over the attack. Nor was it above sneering at his infirmity.

Throughout the War of 1812 he was a pillar of strength to the Republic in New Hampshire. During the darkest days it was said that he was worth a thousand soldiers in heartening the patriots.[356] With the approach of the campaign of 1828, Hill’s paper, the “Patriot,” began to bombard the Adams Administration, and Clay, who was to shudder later at the wickedness of the spoils system, promptly deprived him of the public printing.

Thus the campaign of 1828 began. The stinging paragraphs of Hill made the rounds of the Democratic press of the country, and in his own State he was shamelessly assailed. Not satisfied with maligning his personal character, his enemies stooped to references to the insanity of his father in disseminating the story that he was crazy.[357] In view of this cruel personal persecution, it was but human that, on the election of Jackson, his voice should have been for war on all the Federalist office-holders. Thus his psychology is easily understood. Because of his political convictions, he had been proscribed. A cripple, he had been personally attacked in the streets. In suffering he had been ridiculed. The insanity of his father had been made the subject of vulgar jests. His personal character had been assailed. And in the hour of victory, all the pent-up hatred of the years was let loose upon the vanquished foe.

Hill was the Marat of the Kitchen Cabinet, the fanatic, calling for heads—more heads—and unseemly in his mirth as they fell.

In appearance he was not prepossessing. Below the medium height, he was spare as well as crippled. In his high forehead and the expression of his eyes his intellect was indicated, and he carried himself with that haughty air of superiority which men, forced to fight for their existence, are apt to assume. This was described by his enemies as “demoniacal.” He always dressed plainly as a workingman. Without imagination or dreams, severely practical and to the point, conscious of his limitations, and passionately devoted to both his convictions and prejudices, there was nothing about him to appeal to the fashionable or the intellectually elect. In no sense dazzling in his gifts, hesitating instead of eloquent, shocking the Senate of his time by reading his speeches, and proud of his profession, he was not pointed out to travelers who wrote books, nor lionized in the drawing-rooms, nor dignified by the complimentary notices of the women letter-writers or diarists of his day. He has come down largely as his enemies have painted him, and their very hate of him discloses his effectiveness as a politician.

He was one of the Republic’s first uncompromising partisans—“My party, right or wrong.”

IV

An Administration and party paper had been considered important in the political circles of the Republic from the beginning, but it was left to the editors of the Kitchen Cabinet to develop it to the highest degree of efficiency. The “National Journal,” Court paper of the Adams Administration, had awakened the Opposition to an appreciation of the practical value of a powerful party paper. Duff Green and the “Telegraph,” in a sense, met the requirements, but even then there were Democrats of influence and aspirations who found something lacking. To Van Buren, the editor, devoted to Calhoun, was unsatisfactory. It is inconceivable that he felt the need for a more aggressive pen for the Opposition. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1826, while planning a more vigorous attack on the Adams Administration, he had an “animated conversation” concerning the need of a strictly party paper with Calhoun, at the latter’s house in Georgetown. The Carolinian urged the adoption of the “Telegraph” as the party organ, with Van Buren pressing the advantage of prevailing upon Thomas Ritchie of the “Richmond Enquirer” to accept the editorship of a new party paper at the capital.[358] Failing to persuade Calhoun, the Red Fox cleverly approached Senator Tazewell of Virginia, an ardent friend of the Carolinian, and persuaded him to join in an invitation to the Richmond journalist.[359] Ritchie declined, however, on the ground of his attachment to Virginia and his reluctance to leave old friends and associates.[360] Thus, at the beginning of the Administration, it seemed that Duff Green and the “Telegraph” were destined to become the pen and organ of the Jacksonian Democracy.

At a White House levee in the winter of 1830-31, under the very nose of Jackson, and under his roof, the intriguing Green drew the proprietor of a Washington printing-house aside to tell him confidentially of the hastening rupture of Jackson and Calhoun, and of the plans in incubation for the advancement of the presidential aspirations of the latter. Calhoun organs were to be acquired or established in all the strategic political points in the country, and when the rupture came these were to follow the lead of the “Telegraph” in a nationwide denunciation of Jackson. The printer was offered the editorship of one of these papers, and a liberal amount for his Washington plant. Thoroughly devoted to the political fortunes of the President, and not relishing the idea of being the depositary of a secret which threatened the President’s position, the printer consulted freely with his friends, and, on their advice, carried the story to the White House.