New England and the Bavarian Illuminati

by Vernon Stauffer

For another thing, the spirit of devotion to the cause of France had been greatly refreshed and quickened by the agitation over the treaty. From the moment that information concerning the nature of the treaty began to circulate, the cry of “British faction” was taken up by the Democrats and used with telling effect. That the treaty was an infamous instrument arranged for no other purpose than to injure the French cause was generally believed.[263] From beginning to end, Democrats could find nothing in the treaty which had not been directly inspired by hostility to France. Apart from the damage that would ensue to American commerce, the treaty would work for the elevation of monarchical and the undoing of republican principles.[264] Once again George the Third had become the master of the citizens of America, and thus the great accomplishments of the American Revolution had been made to count for nought. British gold had succeeded in effecting the betrayal of the republican cause in this country, and thus had worked itself into a strategic position where it could more easily strangle the life out of the spirit of republicanism in Europe, now so sorely beset in France.[265]

One other by-product of the agitation that arose over the treaty has been dwelt upon at length in another connection, but it should be adverted to briefly here. It was inevitable that a discussion so vital, so heated, and so protracted as that of which we have just been taking account, should draw into it those guardians of morals and mentors of public spirit in New England, the Federalist clergy.[266] The disturbance of the public mind over the treaty had been marked by two features full of grave import in the clerical view: vicious attacks upon the officers and measures of the existing government, and a reinvigorated crying-up of French political and religious notions.

The offices of government were all, or nearly all, in the hands of Federalists. This being the case, their occupants were doomed to be the chief targets of resentment and villification by men who found such a measure of government as Jay’s Treaty obnoxious in the extreme. But if officers of government were to be pilloried in the stocks of public slander and abuse, how then was the government itself to command the respect and obedience of its citizens? The Federalist clergy of New England saw the pathway of duty shining clear: they must hold up the hands of government at any hazard. Hence it happened that the outcry against “political preaching” grew rapidly in volume from 1795 on.[267]

As for the renewed zeal of the Democrats in the interests of French revolutionary ideals, that found a special point of interest and concern for the Federalist clergy in the prominence which the rapid growth of republicanism secured for Thomas Jefferson. An ardent friend of the French Revolution, a lover of French philosophy, the enemy of religious intolerance, in personal faith a deist—were not these sufficient to damn the man as an unbeliever and an atheist in the eyes of New England clergymen, to whom the faintest breath of rationalism was abhorrent and the very notion of toleration suspect? Accordingly the New England clergy launched a fierce attack upon him as the arch-apostle of the cause of irreligion and free-thought.[268] In language carefully guarded, his name usually being omitted, Jefferson was pointed out as the leader of the hosts of infidelity whose object was the extermination of the institutions of religion and the inauguration of an era wherein every man should think and do that which was right in his own eyes.[269]

2. THE SITUATION FROM 1798 TO 1800

Very few of the events in our national affairs which link together the history of the last decade of the eighteenth century are significant for our purpose. Having sought to discover the chief occasions for the apprehension and distress which weighed upon the minds of the citizens of New England, we may now proceed to focus attention exclusively upon the last three years of the century, within which developed that special disturbance of the public mind with which we are primarily concerned.

And first let it be said, we are approaching a period of as intense strain and nervous excitability as this nation in all its history has known. When Thomas Jefferson, in November, 1796, wrote Edward Rutledge of his deep personal satisfaction that he had escaped the presidency, he may have been influenced by unworthy but certainly not by imaginary constraints. “The newspapers,” so his letter runs, “will permit me to plant my corn, peas, &c., in hills or drills as I please … while our Eastern friend will be struggling with the storm which is gathering over us; perhaps be shipwrecked in it. This is certainly not a moment to covet the helm.”[270] Never has a defeated candidate for the presidency had more solid grounds for the justification of his fears, or shall we say, his hopes? The severe strain of domestic strife was about to be enormously augmented by a series of untoward and alarming events in the field of foreign relations, certain of which must receive our particular attention.

The complete change in the character of the relations between the United States and France is for us a matter of the first importance. The publication of the treaty negotiated between the United States and Great Britain by Jay produced definitive results as respects the attitude of France. With some reason that instrument was interpreted as inimical to the interests of the latter country, and the government and people of this nation were not long left in doubt of the fact.[271] By the employment toward her former ally of a policy of coercion, of which two chief instruments were the destruction of American commerce upon the high seas and the overbearing and insolent conduct of diplomatic negotiations, France speedily addressed herself to the task of attempting to gain by pressure what she conceived she had lost in the way of prestige and material advantage. The result was, to the discomfiture and disgrace of the Democrats in particular and to the alarm of the country in general, that the United States was made aware of the fact that its government was being driven into a corner from which, as far as a human mind could foresee, the only avenue of honorable escape would be recourse to arms.