by Ron Chernow
As stunning as the verbal abuse in New York politics was the physical violence. Duels became fashionable for settling political quarrels: historian Joanne Freeman has counted sixteen such affairs of honor between 1795 and 1807, though not all resulted in duels.32 When John Swartwout, a Burr protégé, denounced Cheetham as the mouthpiece of De Witt Clinton, Clinton denounced Swartwout as “a liar, a scoundrel, and a villain.”33 Accordingly, Clinton and Swartwout exchanged rounds of gunfire at the dueling ground in Weehawken, New Jersey. After Swartwout took two bullets in the leg, Clinton strode from the field and would not fire again. Newspaper editors, too, traded bullets as well as words. After James Cheetham accused William Coleman of siring a mulatto child, the two men almost fought a duel before being legally restrained from confronting each other. This did not stop a certain Captain Thompson, a Jeffersonian harbormaster, from accusing Coleman of cowardice and fighting a twilight duel with him in Love Lane (now Twenty-first Street), in which Thompson suffered a mortal wound. After killing his adversary, the unruffled Coleman returned to the Post “and got out the paper in good style, although half an hour late,” said a subsequent editor.34 In yet another political fracas, Coleman received a caning that left him paralyzed from the waist down.
President Jefferson was not immune to the gutter journalism that thrived in these years. He and the Republicans had championed James T. Callender, who had criticized President Adams and thus been slapped with a nine-month jail term and a two-hundred-dollar fine under the Sedition Act. Once out of jail, Callender appealed to the president to help pay his fine and solicited an appointment as postmaster of Richmond, Virginia. When Jefferson gave him only a niggardly fifty dollars, the vengeful, heavy-drinking Callender defected to the Federalist camp. Editing a Federalist newspaper in Richmond, he revealed that Jefferson, while vice president, had subsidized him to malign Adams and Hamilton. When Jefferson denied this, Callender published documents showing that Jefferson had sent him money in 1799 and 1800 to assist with publication of The Prospect Before Us, in which Hamilton had been denigrated as “the son of a camp-girl.”35 The embarrassed Jefferson lamely described these payments as prompted by “mere motives of charity.”36
Then, on September 1, 1802, Callender broke a story that he had learned about in jail and that was to reverberate down through American history: Jefferson’s scandalous romance with Sally Hemings: “It is well known that the man whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is Sally....By this wench Sally, our President has had several children. There is not an individual in the neighborhood of Charlottesville who does not believe the story, and not a few who know it.... The African Venus is said to officiate as housekeeper at Monticello.”37 Callender mentioned that “Dusky Sally” had five mulatto children and that her son Tom (“yellow Tom”) bore a decided resemblance to Jefferson. Merciless toward his ex-comrades, Callender now referred to the Republicans as the “mulatto party.”38 He also said that he was ready to confront the president in a court of law and debate the truth of his relationship with “the black wench and her mulatto litter.”39
Jefferson preserved a tactful silence on the issue, though he complained to Robert Livingston that “the federalists have opened all their sluices of calumny. Every decent man among them revolts at [Callender’s] filth.”40 James Madison denounced the Sally Hemings story as “incredible,” but Federalist wags whooped with delight and exhorted the president in verse to repent: “Thy tricks, with sooty Sal, give o’er. / Indulge thy body, Tom, no more. / But try to save thy soul.”41 Another Federalist editor claimed that he had verified that Sally Hemings “has a room to herself at Monticello in the character of a seamstress to the family, if not as housekeeper” and was “treated by the rest of his house as one much above the level” of the other servants.42 Abigail Adams believed that Jefferson had gotten his due and wrote with barely concealed glee to him, “The serpent you cherished and warmed bit the hand that nourished him.”43 John Adams implied that he thought the story was true, while conceding that “there was not a planter in Virginia who could not reckon among his slaves a number of his children.”44 For Adams, the situation was “a natural and almost unavoidable consequence of that foul contagion in the human character—Negro slavery.”45
Hamilton and his family were irate that Jefferson had paid Callender to libel him. “If Mr Jefferson has really encouraged that wretch Callender to vent his calumny against you and his predecessors in office, the head of the former must be abominably wicked and weak,” Philip Schuyler complained to his son-in-law.46 As early as his 1796 “Phocion” essays, Hamilton had suggested that he knew about the Sally Hemings affair. Now, having seen his own love life merchandised in print, he urged Federalist editors to ignore the scandal and stick to the high road in political matters. In the New-York Evening Post he declared that his editorial sentiments were “adverse to all personalities not immediately connected with public considerations.”47 This did not stop the Post from calling Callender “a reptile” and running a twelve-part series entitled “Jefferson and Callender.”48 The Jeffersonians also accused Hamilton of leaking to the Gazette of the United States the musty charge that the twenty-five-year-old Jefferson had tried to seduce Betsey Walker, the wife of his friend and neighbor, John Walker. Callender picked up this story and sensationalized it to the point where John Walker felt obliged to challenge Jefferson to a duel.
In July 1803, James T. Callender died in an abrupt, murky manner that has fed speculation for two centuries. The Jeffersonian press had begun to issue death threats against him, and he had also been accused of sodomy. Meriwether Jones of the Richmond Examiner editorialized, “Are you not afraid, Callender, that some avenging fire will consume your body as well as your soul?”49 In another open letter to Callender, Jones imagined Callender drowning: “Oh, could a dose of James River, like Lethe, have blessed you with forgetfulness, for once you would have neglected your whiskey.”50 After Callender spent a night in heavy drinking, his sodden corpse was found bobbing in three feet of water in the James River on July 17, 1803. A coroner’s jury concluded that it was the accidental death of an inebriated man. Yet such was the venomous atmosphere of the day that more than one Federalist wondered if Callender had been bludgeoned by vindictive Jeffersonians, then dumped in the river.
FORTY
THE PRICE OF TRUTH
Alexander Hamilton experienced conflicting moods in his final, bittersweet years. At moments, he seemed engrossed by his political future. At other times, he was so dismayed by Jefferson’s triumph that he seemed
ready to make good on his recurrent pledge to retire to the country and forget all about politics. No longer regarded as the Federalist leader, he had acquired the uncomfortable status of a glorified has-been. He still had a law office in lower Manhattan—in 1803, he moved it from 69 Stone Street to 12 Garden Street—and maintained a pied-à-terre at 58 Partition Street (now Fulton Street), but he spent as much time as possible drinking in the tranquillity of the Grange. In November 1803, Rufus King recorded this impression of Hamilton’s new rustic life and state of mind:
Hamilton is at the head of his profession and in the annual rec[eip]t of a handsome income. He lives wholly at his house nine miles from town, so that on an average he must spend three hours a day on the road going and returning between his house and town, which he performs four or five days each week. I don’t perceive that he meddles or feels much concerning politics. He has formed very decided opinions of our system as well as of our administration and, as the one and the other has the voice of the country, he has nothing to do but to prophesy!1
Hamilton concentrated on law and political theory rather than everyday politics. He initially balked at a project to publish The Federalist Papers in book form, telling the publisher that he was sure he could outdo it. “Heretofore I have given the people milk; hereafter I will give them meat.”2 In the end, Hamilton cooperated with the project, proofreading and agreei
ng to the corrections in the new bound edition that appeared in 1802. He showed little interest in identifying the authors of the various essays, even though he had composed the bulk of them. When Judge Egbert Benson asked him to do so, Hamilton responded in a curiously indirect fashion, as if discomfited by the request. Stopping at Benson’s office one morning, he inserted without comment the desired list in a sheaf of legal papers. Madison left his own, sometimes contradictory, list, spawning a future cottage industry of scholars.
Hamilton’s intellectual ambitions were still far from sated. Chancellor James Kent recalled the grave thoughts that preoccupied his host during a visit to the Grange in the spring of 1804. Hamilton’s house stood on high ground and was struck by a storm so furious that it “rocked like a cradle,” Kent said.3 Perhaps stirred by this tempestuous setting, Hamilton embarked upon “a more serious train of reflections on his part than I had ever before known him to indulge....[He] viewed the temper, disposition, and passions of the times as portentous of evil and favorable to the sway of artful and ambitious demagogues.”4 Hamilton disclosed to Kent his plans for a magnum opus on the science of government that would surpass even The Federalist. He wished to survey all of history and trace the effects of governmental institutions on everything from morals to freedom to jurisprudence. As with The Federalist, Hamilton planned to function as general editor and assign separate volumes to six or eight authors, including John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King. The Reverend John M. Mason might write one on ecclesiastical history and Kent another on law. Then Hamilton would compose a grand synthesis of the preceding books in a prodigious, climactic volume. “The conclusions to be drawn from these historical reviews,” Kent said, “he intended to reserve for his own task and this is the imperfect scheme which then occupied his thoughts.”5
On this visit, Kent was struck by a new mildness in Hamilton. He noted the affectionate father, the tenderly solicitous host: “He never appeared before so friendly and amiable. I was alone and he treated me with a minute attention that I did not suppose he knew how to bestow.”6 It was probably on this visit that Hamilton performed a small courtesy that Kent never forgot. Feeling poorly, Kent retired early to bed. Anxious about his guest, Hamilton tiptoed into his room with an extra blanket and draped it over him delicately. “Sleep warm, little judge, and get well,” Hamilton told him. “What should we do if anything should happen to you?”7
Hamilton was increasingly plagued by ailments, especially stomach and bowel problems, and his mind could not escape thoughts of mortality. For years, he had experienced all the self-imposed pressures of the prodigy, the autodidact, the selfmade man. At moments, his life had seemed one fantastic act of overcompensation for his deprived upbringing. No longer was he the cocky wunderkind from the Caribbean, and he sounded older and more subdued. Alexander and Eliza had already suffered terrible tribulations: the death of Philip, the attendant madness of Angelica, and the death of Eliza’s younger sister, Peggy. Much more suffering lay ahead. On March 7, 1803, Eliza’s mother, Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler, died of a sudden stroke and was buried at the family grave in Albany. Philip Schuyler, a dashing major general when Hamilton first met him, had turned into a sad, hypochondriacal man, pestered by gout. Eliza stayed in Albany to comfort her father while Hamilton took care of the children at the Grange. “Now [that] you are all gone and I have no effort to make to keep up your spirits, my distress on his account and for the loss we have all sustained is very poignant,” Hamilton wrote to her.8 A few days later, he added stoically, “Arm yourself with resignation. We live in a world full of evil. In the later period of life, misfortunes seem to thicken round us and our duty and our peace both require that we should accustom ourselves to meet disasters with Christian fortitude.”9
However inconsistent his judgment and somber his mood in later years, Hamilton’s mental faculties remained razor sharp. Robert Troup, now a district-court judge, had watched his friend since King’s College days and marveled to another friend that Hamilton “seems to be progressing to greater and greater maturity. Such is the common opinion of our bar and I may say with truth that his powers are now enormous!”10 He was besieged by clients and preferred cases that enabled him to harry President Jefferson. The two men now clashed in an unexpected arena: freedom of the press. Jefferson had long flaunted his respect for newspapers. As president, he had pardoned Republican editors jailed under the Sedition Act and stressed his tolerance for the ferocious barbs flung at him by Federalist editors. When a Prussian minister discovered a hostile Federalist newspaper in the president’s anteroom, Jefferson told him, “Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you ever hear the reality of our liberty, our freedom of the press questioned, show them this paper and tell them where you found it.”11 Jefferson was not quite the saintly purist that he pretended. He wrote to Pennsylvania’s governor that he favored “a few prosecutions” that “would have a wholesome effect in restoring the integrity of the presses,” and by the end of his presidency he was squawking about the newspapers’ “abandoned prostitution to falsehood.”12
Jefferson conducted two high-profile prosecutions of Federalist editors. One was Harry Croswell of Hudson, New York, whose defense Hamilton undertook. Croswell edited a Federalist newspaper called The Wasp that had a crusading motto emblazoned across its masthead: “To lash the rascals naked through the world.”13 Writing under the pseudonym “Robert Rusticoat,” Croswell had snickered at Jefferson’s claim that he had assisted James T. Callender’s The Prospect Before Us solely out of “charitable” motives. In the summer of 1802, Croswell said of Callender: “He is precisely qualified to become a tool, to spit the venom and scatter the malicious poisonous slanders of his employer. He, in short, is the very man that a dissembling patriot, pretended ‘man of the people,’ would employ to plunge the dagger or administer the arsenic.”14 In another article, Croswell said, “Jefferson paid Callender for calling Washington a traitor, a robber, and a perjurer; for calling Adams a hoary-headed incendiary; and for most grossly slandering the private characters of men whom he well knew were virtuous.”15 These comments tested Jefferson’s reverence for press freedom. The concerns he had expressed about libel prosecutions brought by the federal government against Republican editors under the Sedition Act seemed to vanish when state governors so prosecuted Federalist editors.
In January 1803, a grand jury in Columbia County, New York, indicted Harry Croswell for seditious libel against President Jefferson. The case generated intense political heat, as Federalists flocked to Croswell’s banner. Ambrose Spencer, New York attorney general and a recent convert to the Jeffersonian persuasion, personally handled the prosecution. Although Croswell wanted Hamilton as his lawyer, the latter was committed to other cases and could not participate in the early stages of the defense. Philip Schuyler informed Eliza that a dozen Federalists had called upon him, hoping he would use his influence to enlist Hamilton’s services. Schuyler sympathized with them, telling Eliza that Jefferson “disgraces not only the place he fills, but produces immorality by his pernicious example.”16 By the time the circuit court convened in the small brick courthouse at Claverack, New York, in July, Hamilton had agreed to join the defense team. Because the case touched on two momentous constitutional issues, freedom of the press and trial by jury, he waived any fee.
The gist of Hamilton’s argument was that the truth of the claims made by an author should be admissible evidence for the defense in a libel case. The standard heretofore had been that plaintiffs in libel cases needed to prove only that statements made against them were defamatory, not that they were false. Both Hamilton and Croswell wanted to delay the trial until they could transport James T. Callender to the courtroom to testify about Jefferson’s patronage of his writing. Whether coincidentally or not, Callender met his watery death a few weeks before the trial began. Hamilton was tempted to subpoena Jefferson or at least extract a deposition from him. However, the presiding judge, Morgan Lewis, reverted to common-law doctrine and i
nformed the jury that they “were judges of the fact and not of the truth or intent of the publication.”17 In other words, the jury’s job was simply to determine whether Harry Croswell had published the libelous lines about Jefferson, not whether they were true and sincerely meant. Bound by these instructions, the jurors had no choice but to find Croswell guilty.
In mid-February 1804, Hamilton journeyed to Albany and pleaded for a new trial before the state supreme court. On the bench, Hamilton had a friend and Federalist ally in James Kent but otherwise faced three Republican judges. Hamilton’s speech was so eagerly awaited that the Senate and Assembly chambers emptied out when he spoke. The lawmakers were drawn to the courtroom by more than curiosity: they had under consideration a bill that would allow truth as a defense in libel trials. Hamilton did not disappoint his expectant spectators in his six-hour speech. In arguing for a new trial, Hamilton highlighted the principle at stake, the protection of a free press: “The liberty of the press consists, in my idea, in publishing the truth from good motives and for justifiable ends, [even] though it reflect on the government, on magistrates, or individuals.”18 As a victim of repeated press abuse, Hamilton did not endorse a completely unfettered press: “I consider this spirit of abuse and calumny as the pest of society. I know the best of men are not exempt from attacks of slander....Drops of water in long and continued succession will wear out adamant.”19 Hence the importance of truth, fairness, and absence of malice in reportage.