Monroe evidently kept TJ informed immediately. Both concluded that AH’s advice to Washington would benefit his “speculating agent,” James Reynolds, in a conspiracy with William Duer, a close associate of Hamilton who had the list of which veterans had claims for their arrearages. The corrupt plan was to buy the claims cheap, knowing that the government was planning to pay them in full. We do not know if AH knew what his associates were doing or if he profited by it.
Hamilton informed us of a particular connection: Callender, History of 1796, p. 217.
Chapter 4
In the month of December 1792: A. Hamilton, Reynolds pamphlet, pp. xxix, xxx.
Maria Reynolds had obtained a divorce: This is based on a letter from John Beckley dated June 22, 1793, probably to James Monroe: “Clingman . . . informs me, that Mrs. Reynolds has obtained a divorce from her husband, in consequence of his intrigue with Hamilton to her prejudice, and that Colonel Burr obtained it for her: he adds too, that she is thoroughly disposed to attest all she knows of the connection between Hamilton and Reynolds.” Syrett, editor of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, notes on p. 141 of vol. 21 that “there is no record, however, that she ever attested to ‘all she knows.’ ” See a reference in the memoir of Peter Grotjan, quoted at length at the end of these notes, to a pamphlet she prepared and gave to William Duane, editor of the Aurora, which he never published and which has disappeared, if it ever existed.
Burr did very well for Mrs. Reynolds in her divorce award. On August 6, 1793, her case was brought before the New York Supreme Court where its minutes, on file at the New York City Hall of Records, show that “the Jury without going from the Bar Say that they find for the plaintiff Three hundred pounds damages and Six pence Costs.” An award of 300 pounds was substantial; the token “Six pence Costs” suggests that Burr handled the case for no fee, which lawyers even then rarely did without a personal interest in the client. Syrett adds “that she and Clingman were subsequently married, that they were living in Virginia in 1798, and that at a later time they moved to England.”
He sat down: The leather couch symbol is fictional. The admission by AH that he conducted many of his assignations with Maria in his own home when his family was away especially dismayed his supporters.
Chapter 5
In his suddenly bustling office: This chapter closely follows the account in Syrett, vol. 21, pp. 121-145.
Chapter 6
Who? David Gelston: Monroe chose republican Congressman David Gelston, not his friend Aaron Burr, to be his witness at this confrontation with Hamilton. Gelston made three closely written pages of notes of the meeting just after it ended, the factual basis for this scene; I am grateful to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for these notes from its Gratz Collection. Afterward, because the danger of a duel still existed, Monroe chose Burr to be his second. Burr ameliorated the dispute, helped Monroe avoid the duel, and perhaps saved Hamilton’s life for the day he and Burr were destined to meet in Weehawken, N.J., for their own duel.
I chose to make Burr the reader’s witness in this scene, so vividly described by Gelston, not only because I did not want to introduce a one-scene character, but because Burr was Monroe’s later choice for negotiations with Hamilton’s brother-in-law, John Church. (Hamilton’s wife’s sister, Angelica, was married to Church, and was a woman who both Hamilton and Jefferson found attractive. Angelica’s letters to Hamilton became less affectionate during AH’s eighteen-month affair with Maria.)
“a crooked gun”: In Jefferson’s Anas, in Peterson, Writings, p.227. In that same journal (on p. 693 of Writings): “I had never seen col. Burr till he came as a member of Senate. His conduct very soon inspired me with distrust. I habitually cautioned Mr. Madison against trusting him too much.”
“a respectable character in Virginia”: see Boyd, app., p. 664, from AH’s Reynolds pamphlet reprinting a letter from Monroe to AH, July 17, 1797.
“malignant and dishonorable”: AH to Monroe, July 22, 1797.
“I fought a duel last year”: According to AH’s grandson Allan McLane Hamilton, in his 1911 Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton, p. 409, the pistols used in the Burr-Hamilton duel of 1804 “were purchased by Mr. Church in London, in 1795 or 1796, and used by him in an English duel.”
“your postscript implied”: AH to Monroe, July 22, 1797, in Syrett, vol. 21, pp. 137-138.
“From that I infer a design”: Ibid.
Chapter 7
“The most pitiful part”: JTC to TJ, Sept. 28, 1797.
“Burr can be everybody’s friend”: Shortened from a letter by Beckley cited on p. 141 of Syrett, vol. 21.
“I believe Maria Reynolds”: Callender, History of 1796, p. 211.
“ ‘a superabundance of excretions’ ”: From Lomask, p. 258, citing John Quincy Adams, Works, vol. 9, p. 277.
“that impudent vagabond juggler”: PP’s tart opinion of Noah Webster in Por-cupine’s Political Censor, March 1797.
“When we view the second magistrate”: Referring to the Vice President, July 1797, from Porcupine’s Works, vol. 6, pp. 316-317.
“Sweet vengeance for my recall”: Monroe’s comments are based on his letter to Burr of Dec. 1, 1797, quoted in Syrett, vol. 21, p. 133.
“Burr inspires me with distrust”: TJ Anas, Jan. 26, 1804, in Peterson, Writings, p. 693.
“Finding the strait between Scylla and Charybdis”: TJ to John Taylor, Oct. 8, 1797, cited in Berkeley and Berkeley, p. 169.
“The one against you is a masterpiece of folly”: Madison to TJ, Oct. 20, 1797.
Chapter 8
“You are acting in opposition”: The Lyon quotes from Austin, pp. 96-97.
Griswold-Lyon incident: Austin, p. 100, using Griswold’s description.
Chapter 9
Wolcott-Adams conversation: From Page Smith, John Adams, vol. 2, p. 955.
“You know, it’s a very painful thing”: Abigail Adams’s report of her husband’s feeling, from Page Smith, The Shaping of America, vol. 3, p. 260.
“You know I love and revere the man”: From letter of April 15, 1808, in Page Smith, John Adams, vol. 2, p.1084.
“This shall not be made the headquarters”: Ibid., Feb. 25, 1808.
“Why is the President afraid to tell?”: Durey, With the Hammer of Truth, p. 107.
“People begin to see their madness”: From the Aurora, in Schachner, Thomas Jefferson, p. 600.
“petrified with astonishment”: Page Smith, The Shaping of America, vol. 2, p. 260.
“Marshall reports here”: John Marshall on liberty of the press, from Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall, pp. 229-230.
PP-Harper relationship: Spater, vol. 1, p.104.
“We do not wish to divide”: Porcupine’s Gazette, July 27, 1798.
“That I was no trout”: PP on Talleyrand, from Porcupine’s Gazette, May 6, 1797.
“The press is the engine”: TJ to Monroe, Feb. 5, 1799; see also TJ’s account of his support of republican newspapers to Monroe, July 17, 1802. Comparison of height of Madison and Adams, from Brant, p. 277.
“Its inevitable effect”: This line and “In several places the people have turned out with protests” are rephrased from Madison to TJ, April 22, 1798. I had a source for TJ’s “Adams’s message arming our merchant vessels is insane,” but I cannot find it.
“Public sentiment”: Madison to TJ, April 29, 1798.
“Party passions are high”: TJ, May 9, 1798, cited in Peterson, p. 599.
But Porcupine gives me: TJ to Madison, in Peterson, p. 603: “Porcupine gave me a principal share in it [the Logan mission], as I am told, for I never read his papers.”
“ ‘Watch, Philadelphians’ ”: “Watch, Philadelphians, or the fire is in your houses . . .” Ibid., p. 602.
“The success of the war party”: Madison to TJ, May 5, 1798.
His face bore a sour expression: Cobbett’s description of James Madison at this period of his life is recorded in Daniel Green’s Great Cobbett, p. 164: “Madison is a little bow-legged m
an, at once stiff and slender. His countenance has that sour aspect, that conceited screw which pride would willingly mould into an expression of disdain, if he did not find the features too skinny and too scanty for its purpose. His thin sleek hair, and the niceness of his garments are indicative of that economical cleanliness . . . which boasts of wearing a shirt for three days without rumpling the ruffles.” Callender later would agree.
Monroe’s questioning and observations: Fictional.
“This curious office . . . Adams . . . wants so badly to be his own man”: TJ to Madison, Dec. 27, 1797.
“Though not one twenty-fifth of the nation”: TJ to William Short, Jan. 23, 1804.
“We must marshal our support”: TJ to Madison, April 26, 1798, cited in Mott, p. 28.
“As you know”: TJ, May 23, 1793, cited in Mott, p. 20.
“Hamilton’s life has been”: TJ, cited in Brookhiser, p. 5.
“For heaven’s sake”: TJ to Madison, April 5, 1798.
“At a very early period”: TJ, August 22, 1798.
“When he came to importune me”: JTC to Madison, Sept. 22, 1798.
“There’s a monster of legislation”: Madison to TJ, May 20, 1798.
“That’s a detestable thing”: TJ to Madison, May 31, 1798.
“worthy of the eighth or ninth centuries”: TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, May 9, 1798.
“lay his purse and his pen under contribution”: TJ to Madison, Feb. 5, 1799.
“There is now only wanting”: Lipscomb, vol. 10, p. 32.
“Perhaps there is enough virtue”: Madison to TJ, May 5, 1798; a rephrasing of the line “It is to be hoped, however, that any arbitrary attacks on the freedom of the press will find virtue enough remaining in the public mind to make them recoil on their wicked authors.”
Chapter 10
Description of yellow-fever protections in Philadelphia in 1798: From Matthew Carey, Miscellaneous Essays, 1830; collected in Library of American Literature (New York, 1889), vol. 4, pp. 162-163.
his sick wife: The reader may note that no name is given for Callender’s wife. Biographer Durey found none; the only name unearthed for any of the four Callender sons is that of the youngest, Tom.
“Fortunately, you applied for citizenship”: It is not known for certain that Callender’s U.S. citizenship was fraudulent, but that accusation was made by Federalist editors and a Federal prosecutor. “In consequence of this act (alien),” Callender wrote in The Prospect Before Us, “I have been menaced with prosecution and imprisonment by David Call, that sorry understrapper of Federal usurpation.” At any rate, he was sufficiently documented to avoid deportation as an alien enemy.
“A great man”: Beckley’s assessment of Dr. Rush comes from Berkeley and Berkeley, p. 172.
“He’s one of that aristocratic junto”: Quoted in Stanley E. Flink, Sentinel Under Siege, p. 92, citing G. Warner, Means for Preservation of Public Liberty (1797), pp. 13-14.
Cobbett’s trial: An account of the libel trial of PP by Judge McKean is in Cobbett’s “The Democratic Judge,” a 1798 pamphlet; the view from the other side of the bench is in G. S. Rowe’s biography of Thomas McKean, pp. 300-303. McKean’s view was that the case, though based on civil libel ordinarily held before a Federal court, involved criminality and thus was subject to State law.
“He is demonstrably small”: This and other PP quotes in this chapter from Cobbett, the Political Censor for Sept. 1796, p. 54.
“ ‘If ever a nation was debauched’ ”: From the Aurora, Dec. 23, 1796.
motioned for Callender to stand: Callender’s presence in the courtroom, and that of Lyon and Beckley, is fictional.
“If a man is attacked in the press”: and subsequent quotes of Callender are from his comments on this case in Sedgwick & Co, p. 18, and the Richmond Recorder, Oct. 20, 1802. See also Durey, With the Hammer of Truth, p. 108, and Spater, vol. 1, pp. 95-100.
“the mask of patriotism”: Aurora, Dec. 23, 1796.
Callender-Cobbett conversation: Fictional. Did they ever meet? Philadelphia was then a town of about 60,000 and PP’s bookstore and printing shop was infamous. It is possible that its two most vituperative journalists did meet; however, if they had, one or the other would probably have written caustically about it.
“When I see you flourishing with a metaphor”: Cobbett, Kick for a Bite pamphlet (1795), in Porcupine’s Works, vol. 2, p.75.
Chapter 11
“treacherous in private friendship”: Paine letter derogating Washington, dated July 30, 1796, printed in Aurora a year later; see Freeman, Washington, onevol. condensation, p. 705.
“Making allowances for the asperity of an Englishman”: George Washington wrote this to David Stuart on Jan. 8, 1797. Fitzpatrick, vol. 35. Washington used semicolons, which I have changed to commas, and he spelled Cobbett with one t.
“How Tom gets a living”: Hawke, p. 321.
“Some of the gazettes”: The GW quotations through “I shall pass over them in utter silence” come from the draft in Washington’s hand of his Farewell Address, which he called “a valedictory message.” He sent it to AH for rewrite. Hamilton killed this passage in redrafting.
“A powerful faction”: Flexner, p. 392, citing James Hamilton, vol. 6, pp. 289-290.
“It is the most flagitious”: AH, writing under the pseudonym of Titus Manlius, in James Hamilton, pp. 259, 318.
“One would think”: Fitzpatrick, vol. 36, pp. 248, 254
“Open war is likely only”: Ibid., p.271.
“During the Revolution”: Ibid., p. 457.
It was Hamilton’s dream: For AH on American empire, see Schachner, Alexander Hamilton, pp.380-381, and McDonald, p. 346.
“In many instances aliens are sent”: Freeman, p. 731.
“Although the mass of aliens”: AH to Pickering, June 7, 1798, cited in J. M. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, p. 55
“Let us not establish a tyranny”: AH to Wolcott, June 29, 1798.
“Colonel Burr is a brave and able officer”: Holmes Alexander in Aaron Burr (New York, 1937), p. 126, cites this Washington quote from James Parton, The Life and Times of Aaron Burr, p. 240.
Chapter 12
Maria Reynolds in 1798: In Alexander Hamilton, Broadus Mitchell quotes a letter from Richard Folwell citing the whereabouts of Maria Reynolds in 1798, five years after her marriage to Jacob Clingman. Syrett, vol. 21, p.141, also refers to Folwell’s placing her in Alexandria, VA. Folwell sent Hamilton two letters in the handwriting of Maria Reynolds, but AH did not use them to authenticate her writing of letters to him when Callender challenged him to show they were not forgeries. This was one reason that Jefferson historian Boyd concluded that the purported letters showing a blackmail plot were “palpably contrived documents” in which Hamilton “tried to imitate what he conceived to be the style of less literate persons.”
The Berkeleys, in their Beckley biography, p. 171, note that Jacob and Maria Clingman then “went to England, where they settled at Hull. By January 1801, Clingman was a partner in the prosperous commission firm of Clingman and Gill.” Footnote 31 on that page says that in letters to Monroe on Dec. 29, 1803, and Jan. 7, 1804, Clingman “was having passport troubles.” Meanwhile, Maria had returned to the U.S., according to the Grotjan memoir.
Maria letter to Burr: Fictional. My speculation about her Burr friendship is based on the Grotjan memoir quoted at length at the end of these notes. For other speculation about Maria sharing a relationship with both Burr and Hamilton, see Rogow, pp. 153-156, 263-264.
“Sincerely your friend, Maria Lewis Clingman”: Concerning her maiden name, Milton Lomask in his 1979 Burr biography states that “she was born Maria Lewis in New York State,” probably based on AH’s Reynolds pamphlet, p. 17: “With a seeming air of affliction she informed that she was a daughter of a Mr. Lewis, sister to a Mr. G. Livingston of the State of New York, and wife to a Mr. Reynolds . . . who for a long time had treated her very cruelly, had lately left her, to live with another woman . . .”
Chapte
r 13
“George Washington is with us”: Harper to Hamilton, April 27, 1798, in Syrett, vol. 21, p. 449. “The only principle by which radical republicans could be governed is fear” was said by Harper lieutenant Uriah Tracy, but said “Democrats” rather than “radical republicans”; I use “republicans” throughout to avoid confusion. See Elkins and McKitrick, p. 715. Cobbett-Harper conversation fictional.
Gallatin-Harper debate: This was actually a debate between republican Edward Livingston of New York, a Gallatin ally, and Federalist “Long John” Allen of Connecticut, a Harper ally. For dramatic simplicity’s sake, I have substituted Gallatin for Livingston and Harper for Allen throughout. Source for the quotes, including the translation of Juvenal’s poetry on p. 144, is J.M. Smith’s Freedom’s Fetters, pp. 112-130.
PART II: THE SEDITION SCANDAL
Chapter 14
“You heard the sad news”: Benjamin Franklin Bache died on Sept. 9 at the age of twenty-nine.
“There’s no more safety”: JTC quoting Leiper to TJ, Sept. 22, 1798, in Ford, p. 328.
“I hope that this pestilence”: JTC to TJ, Oct. 26, 1798.
Scandalmonger: A Novel Page 53