Callender decided he would enliven the two newspapers in Richmond run by Jefferson’s friends with his unique mix of fresh fact and slashing comment. He would do it not just for the combined $14 a week offered, though a regular income was needed if he was soon to see his boys, but because this inspiring man deserved his help. He felt a welcome breeze of returning idealism: he, James Thomson Callender—fugitive from Scottish justice and despised slanderer of revered American statesmen—would sound the tocsin to the army gathering behind Thomas Jefferson to defend the rights of man.
“I will take up the hammer of truth,” he pledged. He felt obligated to warn Jefferson of retaliation from newsmongers inclined to twist the truth to besmear their opponents.
“I fear no injury that any man could do me,” Jefferson assured him. “I never have done a single act, or been concerned in any transaction, which I feared to have fully laid open, or which could do me any hurt if truly stated.”
That was reassuring. Callender was ready to run the small risk of another beating by ruffians in that noble cause. If violence were directed his way, he would publish the details of such intimidation to the far frontier. Moreover, he was already inured to whatever new vituperation Porcupine could fling at him. He knew himself to be neither flea-bitten nor reptilian, and the drunkenness was exaggerated. Of one risk he was uncertain: was he up to suffering the denial of his own freedom, if the long arm of John Adams reached out to silence him? He hated the thought of being clapped in jail for the crime of speaking out for freedom. Others could dismiss as remote the possibility of a Virginia judge applying to a Jeffersonian writer the Federal government’s Sedition Law, which so outraged Virginians. But it was precisely that civil disobedience and unjust suppression, in Lyon’s case, that did so much to turn public opinion around in the recent Congressional elections.
Jefferson, in a solemn way, went on to make a remark that both thrilled and chilled his Monticello guest. “To preserve the freedom of the human mind, then, and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom.”
Chapter 19
June 5, 1799
TRENTON , NEW JERSEY
Cobbett jabbed the tip of his quill into the wood óf his writing desk, ruining the pen and defacing the desk. He was furious at the duplicitous John Adams for losing heart in pursuing the undeclared war between America and France. Did the President not realize that the ambition of Napoleon Bonaparte was not limited to the conquest of Europe, but reached westward to the subjugation of Britain and ultimately the New World?
He saddled his horse and rode from the office of Porcupine’s Gazette in Philadelphia to Trenton, where the government had again decamped to escape the yellow fever. At the temporary hall of Congress, the Federalist leader Robert Harper was as stunned as Cobbett was at the sudden diplomatic move by President Adams.
“He’s sending an envoy to France to make peace,” said Harper. “To Talleyrand, and after the XYZ incident discrediting the republicans played right into our hands. I don’t know what got into him.”
“Where is Alexander Hamilton?” Cobbett demanded. “He’s your power behind the throne. He controls the Cabinet. How could he let that popinjay Adams do this to us?”
Harper accepted the copy of the Richmond Examiner and spread it out on his desk. “It could be that Adams really wants to be President in more than name only, and this is his way of declaring his independence from Hamilton and all of us high Federalists.” He shook his head. “But it splits our government right down the middle.”
“You see this?” Cobbett jabbed his stubby index finger at the lead story in Callender’s new sheet. “It’s Talleyrand’s first letter to Pichon, his minister in Holland—not the innocuous later one that Adams showed your Congress. This damnable document proves that Adams chose the very ambassador that Talleyrand wanted. It was all arranged by that traitor Logan, Jefferson’s friend.”
“How did Callender get the letter? It’s internal French correspondence.”
Cobbett despaired of Harper’s blindness to the ways of newsmongers. “Talleyrand wanted it published here, don’t you see? He sent a copy to Monroe or Jefferson in Virginia, who set up this newspaper for Callender. The French Directory is coming apart and Talleyrand never stays with the losing side. He’ll make his deal with Bonaparte, and Napoleon will ally himself with the Americans against Britain.”
“There won’t be a French invasion of America then,” Harper said, Cobbett thought somewhat densely. He did not have a high opinion of the Congressional leader’s mental powers, and hoped for Harper’s sake that his courtship of Kitty Carroll, daughter of the wealthiest man in America, would be successful; the thickheaded fellow would need the money.
“That means Hamilton won’t have his army,” Cobbett told the leader of what he hoped would become the strong Hamilton faction of Federalists in the House. “And your government won’t be able to keep order in this country when Virginia decides to secede, or worse—to put Jefferson and his ilk in the seats of Federal power. Does your friend Hamilton realize what Adams is doing to him?”
“Colonel—that is, General Hamilton thinks the President is ‘an old woman unfit to be President.’ He told me that this morning, in those very words, on his way to see Adams at his hotel.”
“What brings Adams to Trenton?” Cobbett asked. “He’s never at the seat of government, where he belongs. He prefers to watch over his beloved Abigail in Braintree, Massachusetts.”
“He’s here now, meeting with John Marshall and all our low Federalists,” Harper reported. “I worry about Marshall.”
As well he should, Cobbett thought. The Virginian Marshall was a Federalist, and Jefferson’s principal political rival in that generally republican state. Though he had opposed Adams’s Alien and Sedition Acts, Marshall was likely to be named Secretary of State or War in the Adams Cabinet; the President apparently felt the need for the presence of an independent legal mind to counter Hamilton’s influence.
“Do you suppose this new Richmond sheet with Callender in it will be successful?” Harper was saying, turning the page.
“If you let it,” the editor of Porcupine’s Gazette replied. He had to keep educating Harper to the ways of American political journalism. “This latest Richmond paper is part of a vast enterprise dedicated to the overthrow of your government. The chief juggler, as you know, is Jefferson. The money men are Leiper, Israel and Senator Mason. Of the four grand departments Jefferson assigned the task of influencing the people, all are headed by radical runaways.” The disorderly, pro-French radicals from Ireland, Scotland and England he preferred to call “runaways” and “haters of the Crown”; Cobbett thought of himself as in temporary exile from his beloved Britain.
“Four departments?” Harper was obviously ignorant of the conspiracy.
“The Eastern department is run by the Irishman William Duane of the Aurora, who took over for Bache. I am reliably informed, by the way, that Duane is bedding the dead wretch’s widow. The Northern department is run by the Irishman ‘Spittin’ Matt’ Lyon and his Scourge of the Aristocracy. The Western subversion of your Union is run by Thomas Cooper, an Englishman who seems to think that the abolition of slavery is the way to the hearts of the pioneers.” Although Jefferson was a slaveowner, Cobbett judged him practical enough to put up with a newsmonger like Cooper who opposed the slave trade, so long as the abolitionist took part in the overthrow of the Federalists. “The red Southern department is now headed by the Scottish runaway Callender, the most dangerous of all because he writes with a rapier and digs up dirt like this.” He snatched back his copy of the Richmond Examiner.
“What can only four newspapers—”
“They feed their poison to a hundred newspapers and pamphlets around the country,” Cobbett reminded him. “Callender must be writing for a half-dozen publications and probably has a book in work—and everything the rascal writes is reprinted all over.” The Scot had almost caught on to Cobbett’s technique of personal
ridicule, making up colorful nicknames and bestowing false titles, but the Scot’s books were often grounded in facts and theories about trade that gave confidence to republican lawmakers.
“We’re doing what we can with the post offices,” Harper said. “Our postmasters throw the republican sheets away. Believe me, William, not only do we read their mail but good Federalist postmasters destroy many of their pamphlets and newspapers.”
Cobbett could not applaud that government interdiction of the press, lest it be used at some later time against his own national circulation. He was already reaching 3,000 paid subscribers daily, by far the largest in the nation, by post from Georgia to Canada, and was circulated to lawmakers in Philadelphia or in Trenton by his small army of “barrow boys.” “Good. My circulation is up strongly in New York and Pennsylvania.”
“Those are the two states where Federalism is having the most trouble,” Harper noted. “Burr and his Tammany Society have Hamilton’s Federalists worried in New York, and your old enemy McKean, the republican judge, may just win the Governorship here in Pennsylvania. It’s hard to puzzle out—how do you explain why Porcupine, the strongest voice for Federalism, is gaining circulation where Federalism itself is doing poorly?”
“Where our Federalists are most worried, they turn to me for reassurance.” But the Englishman confided a fear to the Carolinian about disorder in English-speaking governments on both sides of the Atlantic: “I have strange misgivings hanging about my mind, that the whole moral as well as political world is going to experience a revolution.”
Sometimes it seemed to Cobbett that the orderly, rural world he remembered in the England of his youth, as well as the self-reliant cottage industry he admired so much here in America, was being overwhelmed by the growth of a wen of mob-infested cities. He shook off his unaccustomed pessimism and asked Harper what he planned to do about Jefferson’s propaganda apparatus. Though the Vice President took great pains to seem to remain above the battle, his minions in the press were rallying public sentiment behind him.
“The republicans seem to keep gaining ground among the less respectable elements,” the politician said. “What should we do?”
“Recognize the danger to order. Stop disunion before it gets out of hand and the United States go the way of France, from revolution to a reign of terror and then to a dictator.” Porcupine, though a newsmonger himself, took a deep breath and put first things first: “Shut those four seditionist editors down.”
Harper eagerly agreed. “I’ll talk to Justice Chase on the Supreme Court. Sam sees the danger. He’ll ride circuit and do anything for us.”
“You had better talk, too, to John Adams, France’s new friend.” Now that the initial shock of the President’s betrayal of principle had worn off, he was looking forward to engaging Adams as a new adversary, and with his usual jovial ferocity. “You know, Robert, I started Porcupine’s Gazette almost three years ago, just as the Adams Presidency began. My principal object was to render to his Administration all the assistance in my power.” Cobbett tilted back his chair in the dreary temporary office, folded his hands across his vested stomach and allowed himself to ruminate aloud. “I looked upon John Adams as a stately, well-armed vessel, sailing on an expedition to combat and destroy the fatal influence of French intrigue and the French principles of the tyranny of the mob. But now he has suddenly tacked about and I can follow him no longer. From this day forward,” he pledged with a nice sense of anticipation, “it is the turncoat Adams who will feel the quills of the Porcupine.”
June 6, 1799
TRENTON , NEW JERSEY
President John Adams did not enjoy being in Trenton. He did not think it necessary for the nation’s Chief Magistrate to be in the nation’s capital even when it was meeting in Philadelphia. Nor did he look forward to suffering through the summer heat in the Southern swamps of the new capital now being readied, named after Washington. On the contrary, except for necessary ceremonial occasions like inaugurations, Adams found it more to his liking to preside over the affairs of the nation from his home in Massachusetts.
However, the President had heard troubling word from his Secretary of the Navy, one of his few Cabinet members not held over from the Washington Presidency, and that only because the Navy was new. According to this Adams man, in the President’s absence from the temporary capital, “artful designing men” were busily at work undermining his initiative to send an envoy to make peace with France. That warning brought Adams hurrying to Trenton at last.
As the President expected, Alexander Hamilton, the chief artful designer himself, entered the hotel room being used as the Presidential office to pay his disrespects.
Adams pointedly did not rise. He motioned the elegant New Yorker to a chair and continued to read a newspaper. “Is there no pride in American bosoms?” Adams asked aloud. “Can their hearts endure that Callender, Duane, Cooper and Lyon should be the most influential men in the country—all foreigners and degraded characters?”
“The scurrilous Jacobin editors are not the only ones to find fault with our leadership,” said Hamilton. “Porcupine, who up to now has been our government’s staunchest defender, has turned on you as a result of your incredible volte-face in foreign affairs.”
Adams, determined to appear serene and good-humored in the presence of his Federalist rival, smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes. Here is what Peter Porcupine has to say about me now.” He read the column underlined on his desk. “He calls me a ‘precipitate old ass,’ and accuses me of ‘having abandoned every idea of consistency and every principle of honor and freedom.’ Imagine that,” he said mildly, determined not to let his pique show. “And to think he was Abigail’s favorite newsmonger, though she always thought he was a bit on the vulgar side.”
“Cobbett uses the word ‘precipitate’ to describe the suddenness of your change of policy, and that is hard to argue with,” Hamilton said. “The notion of sending an inexperienced envoy to France, with no assurance that he will not be humiliated as the others were, came as a complete surprise to your Cabinet and myself.”
Adams did not feel the need to justify his action to his Cabinet. On the contrary, he took some delight in having surprised and embarrassed the New Yorker. He remembered well how the retired George Washington, as the price of returning to military service, had forced him to appoint this arrogant monarchist to be second in command of the army. “Mr. Cobbett is an Englishman,” the President replied obliquely. “I could have him arrested and deported under the Alien Act.”
“You cannot be serious.”
Adams pretended to give that serious thought before dismissing it with magnanimity. “But I will not take revenge. I don’t remember that I was ever vindictive in my life.” At his guest’s raised eyebrow, he added, “Though I have often been very wroth.” It would not be credible to pretend he never exploded. “However, the reaction to my appointment of an envoy to France, though hostile from my erstwhile supporters, does not leave me vexed or fretted.”
“Your policy is a terrible mistake.” Hamilton was vehement. “To reach out to France’s ruling despots now is the height of folly. They are weak and will be toppled in a month. Britain’s Prime Minister Pitt is growing ever stronger and will help the Bourbons set Louis the Eighteenth on the throne of France. Your precipitate blunder will have gained us the enmity of both nations.”
Adams disagreed and, as former Minister to Britain, could draw on more experience in foreign affairs than Hamilton. It seemed to him that the Bourbons were a lost cause, and this fellow Napoleon would be too busy redrawing the map of Europe to invade America. “Do not become all heated and effervescent, my dear Hamilton,” he said with determined serenity. “General Knox described your paroxysms of bravery at the battle of Monmouth, which served the country well, but such emotion is out of place as we talk of peacemaking.”
The President then allowed a bit of his own agitation to show. “As for your predictions: I should as soon expect that the sun, moon and stars will
fall from their orbits, as events such as you describe should take place in any such period.” He took some satisfaction in the way his critic blanched. “But suppose such events as you fear took place. Could it be any injury to our country to have an envoy in Paris?”
“They disdain and insult and seek bribes from our envoys,” Hamilton snapped back, “humiliating our nation and you.”
“And if France will not receive our envoy, does the disgrace fall upon her or upon us?” Adams thought that point well taken.
Hamilton brushed it aside. “If you had taken the trouble to discuss this beforehand with the British Minister—”
The President, annoyed at that suggestion of subservience to any foreign power in his foreign relations, cut his visitor short. “I have heard how the British minister remonstrated with you about how disagreeable my measure was to him. He is wise not to try that with me. The United States is an independent nation. No other nation has a right to dictate to us with whom we form connections.”
“I was not absent from the field when we fought for our independence,” Hamilton said acidly, “nor did I provide legal representation to British soldiers who massacred our citizens.”
The President bridled; during the Revolution, he had been the primary force for independency, and had been dispatched abroad to raise money for the war. “Absent from the field” was an imputation of dishonor that he deeply resented. Moreover, his legal defense of the British soldiers, the most hated defendants in America after the Boston Massacre, was one of his proudest moments, helping establish the rights of the accused to representation in a United States court of law.
“You are inviting Britain to retaliate by resuming attacks on our shipping—” Hamilton continued, “attacks that were stopped by the Jay Treaty negotiated under your great predecessor. The effects on our commerce will be especially felt in Massachusetts. Explain it to your impoverished neighbors there.” He vaulted out of his chair, turned on his heel and left without a farewell.
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