The following Message was received from the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
Gentlemen of the Senate, and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives
The Dispatches from the Envoys Extraordinary of the United States to the French Republic … have been examined and maturely considered …
I perceive no ground of expectation that the … mission can be accomplished on terms compatible with the safety, honor, or the essential interests of the nation …
Under these circumstances, I cannot forbear to reiterate the recommendations which have been formerly made … for the protection of our seafaring and commercial citizens, for the defense of the exposed portions of our territory, for replenishing our arsenals, establishing foundries and military manufactures and to provide such efficient revenue as will be necessary …
[I]nstructions were given … to restrain vessels of the United States from sailing in armed condition … I no longer conceive myself justifiable in continuing [these instructions] …
JOHN ADAMS.196
John Adams has not asked for a Declaration of War, but he has certainly delivered a war speech. Thomas Jefferson calls it “almost insane.”197
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, William Cobbett answers a Jew who objected to his remarks on Saturday:
A JEW writes me to “be more lenient in the future” (respecting his nation, as he calls it) or “to blot his name out” of my list.—I do the latter with pleasure. I am sure I never solicited his name, and am only sorry I did not know before, that it was the name of A JEW.
TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
REMARKS on the PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE.
The time is then come which (in the opinion of the Executive) calls on Americans to draw the sword. If our legislative councils are to be actuated by the impressions made on his mind, then the United States are to join in the European War on the side of the tottering government of Britain and against the French Republic … From the … President’s address, it would appear that, however he may acknowledge a right in the Legislature to declare war, he conceives he has that of making it … If our merchantmen may now arm … we are at war … [I]f our legislature does not interpose and prevent the arming, we shall be dragged into a war. Indeed the whole tenor of the president’s message bears an aspect extremely threatening to our peace … [D]oes not the crisis call upon the PEOPLE to step forward … [?]
Today, the President’s Lady, Abigail Adams, writes her sister,
I expect the President will be represented as declaring War by taking off the restrictions which prevented Merchantmen from Arming … [Y]ou see by the papers that Bache has begun his old billingsgate [slander] again, because Mr. J. Q. Adams is directed to renew the treaty with Sweden [from his post in Berlin] … [T]his lying wretch of a Bache reports that no treaties were ever made without going to the courts to negotiate them … [B]ut there is no end to their audaciousness, and you will see that French emissaries are in every corner of the union sowing and spreading their Sedition. We have renewed information that their System is to calumniate [defame] the president, his family, his administration until they oblige him to resign, and then they will Reign triumphant, headed by the Man of the People [Jefferson]. It behooves every pen and press to counteract them. We are come to a crisis too important to be languid, too dangerous to slumber …198
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
Mr. COBBETT,
I have often observed, in looking over Bache’s paper, that he never has any advertisements in his paper relating to mercantile business. I cannot account for the reason of this, unless it is that merchants are ashamed to have their names seen in so scandalous a paper or think that it would be of little or no use to advertise in it on account of their being so few—except the poor, ignorant, low-bred jacobins—who take pains enough to read it …
If, Sir, you will be so good as to give me your sentiments on the above, you will much oblige …
VERITAS
(My sentiments, Mr. Veritas, are [that] if you wish to continue to deserve your name, you should immediately cease to read BACHE; for if you have the virtue of an angel, frequent converse with him will corrupt you.)
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
THE message … from the President of the United States to Congress is fatal and destructive to the peace of the United States … Are the people of the United States prepared to draw the sword … against the French Republic at this presidential call without knowing either the necessity or the object to be obtained!?] … His harpies say it is not a declaration of war, although they know it amounts to the same thing …
Mr. Adams has it now in his power to do a most acceptable service to his country by retiring from … public life … He must be sensible himself that at this time he is unfit to be trusted with the interests of a peaceful nation. His personal pride has been wounded … and this leads him to do what it can never be the interests of his country to suffer. Let him manage his own passions on the occasion, and, without him, our councils will manage our differences with France.
At its commencement, about as many papers left this city from [Porcupine’s Gazette] … as from all other Philadelphia presses put together. But this extensive circulation does not rest upon a list of bona fide subscribers. The paper was scattered … without any expectation of remuneration from most of those who received it. Whence its support was derived was no difficult matter to conjecture … The late declaration of the editor of that paper that he was and was proud to be “a British subject” has opened the eyes of many …
Today, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, Peter Porcupine responds:
BACHE’S infernal Farrago [mixture] of this morning shall have its due in due time.
On the prospect of
WAR WITH FRANCE
MY COUNTRYMEN, THE die is cast—compromise is at an end—there is now no retreat—now no other alternative but instantly to assert the spirit which was once the boast of Americans … You have no other choice but either to submit to the detested and once despised yoke of France or else to open the armory of your ancestors …
Today, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott issues a directive:
(CIRCULAR to the COLLECTORS of the CUSTOMS.)
Treasury Department, March 21.
SIR, IT has been determined by the President of the United States … to modify the instructions issued from this department on the 8th day of April 1797 in such a manner as no longer to restrain vessels of the United States from sailing in an armed condition … [Y]ou are to consider the general prohibition as no longer remaining in force …
OLIVER WOLCOTT
Secretary of the Treasury199
Today, Vice President Thomas Jefferson writes former U.S. Minister to France James Monroe:
The public papers will present to you the almost insane message sent to both houses of Congress 2. or 3. days ago. This has added to the alarm … The effect of the French decree on the representatives had been to render the war party inveterate & more firm in their purpose … We had reposed great confidence in that provision of the Constitution which requires 2/3 of the Legislature to declare war. Yet it can be entirely eluded by a majority’s taking such measures as will bring on war.200
Today, Thomas Jefferson also writes James Madison:
The French decree … excited indignation highly in the war party … the insane message which you will see in the public papers has had great effect. Exultation on the one side, & a certainty of victory; while the other is petrified with astonishment … We see a new instance of the inefficiency of Constitutional guards. We had relied with great security on that provision which requires two-thirds of the Legislature to declare war. But this is completely eluded by a majority’s taking war measures which will be sure to produce war.201
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives considers the power of the Speaker to expel Benny Bache or any other reporter
from the House floor. The Annals of Congress report:
Mr. NICHOLAS [Republican, Virginia] said that … he wished … not to ascertain whether the Speaker had done his duty heretofore, but whether the power of discharging short-hand writers from the House should be vested in the Speaker …
Mr. LYON [Republican, Vermont] … thought it of great importance … When he first took his seat in the House, there were six persons who attended to take down notes; now, he said, there is only one … and he wished the regulation to be adopted, lest that one should be driven away by the same power which had sent off the others.
The SPEAKER said the remark of the member from Vermont was very improper and indecent …
Federalists vote to retain the Speaker’s power, 50 to 36.202
FRIDAY, MARCH 23. 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Every act of our government has shewn their partiality for Britain in preference to France; and tho’ the latter has claims on our gratitude [for her help with our American Revolution] and was engaged [by her French Revolution] in a contest for the liberty of mankind, yet even in such a cause, every unfair advantage was taken of her situation, and, as far as it was possible without actual hostility, we assisted her [British] Enemy … Madness itself is the order of the day [!]
Today, President Adams issues a proclamation:
By Authority
OF THE
President of The United States.
A PROCLAMATION
As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of almighty God … and as the United States of America are at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power … I do hereby recommend that Wednesday, the 9th day of May next, be observed throughout the United States as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer …203
JOHN ADAMS By the President,
TIMOTHY PICKERING, Secretary of State.
Today, Quaker leaders Samuel Weatherill and Dr. George Logan circulate a petition urging the President and Congress to maintain the peace.204
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
TO BACHE. Downlooking Caitiff, What has given thee courage? What has led to this imprudent attack [the day before yesterday]? … As to my sending papers without payment … wretch as you are, come yourself and look at these books … You affect to believe that my paper had produced no effect … You know better. You stinking, chop-fallen mortal, you know better. You know that the first moment of my rise was the first moment of your decline and fall. You and your whole party feels its effects daily and hourly and minutely …
Perverted BACHE! … [I]t is useless for you to say anything against me, or I against you. People are well satisfied that I am descended from honest parents; they know (whatever some of them may think, or say) that I am sincere in my attachment to my adopted country and its government. All who have ever had concerns with me know me to be a punctual, honest man; and, as to you, every body knows that you are BACHE, the grand-son of old Franklin, and that’s enough. To be BACHE is all I wish to see my enemy.
Wm. COBBETT.
SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Let me ask for what cause does the President desire war with France? Is it to protect British trade and commerce with the United States …? Or is it to produce an alliance offensive and defensive between Great Britain and the United States, the more effectually to defeat and destroy republicanism in France and reestablish monarchy and thereby maintain that favorite government which Mr. Adams … declared “is the most stupendous fabric of human invention”?
Mr. BACHE, The house of representatives having decided the question concerning Stenographers in such a manner as to leave their admission or expulsion at the arbitrary discretion of the Speaker, I think it proper to state some facts …
Mr. Dayton said the exclusion of reporters had not been exercised but on one person, meaning the Editor of the Aurora … This assertion [is] … incorrect … I was engaged during the extraordinary session of Congress to report for a daily paper of which I was also the editor. A [Federalist] member wished me to alter a speech which had been delivered in the house … [T]his I refused to do …
[T]he sergeant at arms delivered to me the following message—“Sir, the Speaker has directed me to inform you that … you must not write shorthand in this house any more—you must go; if you do not, I must use force.”
It has been a constant trick with some members of the house to speak a speech calculated to make an impression in the house and to publish another containing different sentiments for … their constituents … I have lost an engagement … because I would not retract the truth …
A REPORTER
I, William Duane, wrote this morning’s anonymous letter by “A REPORTER.” Dayton barred me from the House floor,205 costing me the job and the revenue ($800) it entailed.206 Benny may have given me a job from empathy with my injury.
John Adams knows that Benny Bache is secretly meeting with Thomas Jefferson. Today, the President’s wife writes,
How different is the situation of the President from that of Washington? The Vice President never combined with a party against him. He never made Bache his companion and counselor.207
True, but Thomas Jefferson hasn’t changed. Before he resigned as George Washington’s Secretary of State, he held many private meetings with Benny Bache, encouraging Benny to publish a condensed “country” edition of the Aurora208 and once admitting to Washington that the Aurora publisher “tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper…”209 Jefferson knew Benny Bache made George Washington sick,210 and, as earlier mentioned, he once saw Washington slam the paper on the floor with a “damn.”211 Whether Washington spelled Benny’s name accurately or phonetically, his opinion was the same: “Beeche’s papers are outrages on common decency.”212
MONDAY, MARCH 26, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[Reprint] FROM THE MIDDLESEX GAZETTE
[A Connecticut Paper].
Friends and fellow citizens:
You engaged in a long and bloody war with Great Britain—for what? To secure the fruits of your labours to yourselves and equal rights … At the close of the revolution, the image of liberty was enstamped on every heart; we looked with a kind of horror on the British plans of oppression. Is not the case far different now? have we not adopted in almost every instance, the spirit, if not the forms, of their oppression … [Our government) have taught the people that the President can do no wrong; and that all are jacobins, democrats, disorganizers, and enemies to their country who dare to doubt this doctrine … [They] detach our government from France; and join it in close league with Great Britain … Have not all the governmental papers abused and villified the French? Has not our [revolutionary war] treaty with them been so construed as to deprive them of almost all the advantages … meant to be secured to them by it? … We are now about entering on a war; not with a natural, not with an ordinary enemy; but with a nation which saved us from the rapacious jaws of Britain, now become a republic like our own …
A fellow citizen who does not
believe in executive infallibility.
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
A turgid libeller in a jacobin Connecticut print, whose production is copied into the Aurora of today, repeats the hackneyed assertion that the old soldiers [of the American Revolution] are enemies to government[al war measures] … It may be boldly proclaimed that not an officer of the least credit or respectability or whose conduct during the revolutionary struggle will bear scrutiny is now to be found amongst the hireling crew of calumniating jacobins.
Today, James Monroe answers Thomas Jefferson’s letter of last Wednesday:
The want of light … will not be remedied till more pens are put to work. It occurred to me it [would] be proper for my narrative [the retaliatory “A View of t
he Conduct of the Executive …”] to be inserted in the gazettes. I should suppose Bache would not object to it since it would most probably promote his interest by promoting the sale of the book …
It seems to me that the line of propriety on my part is to rest quiet … The book [“A View of the Conduct of the Executive …”] will remain & be read in the course of 50 years, if not sooner, and I think the facts it contains will settle or contribute to settle the opinion of posterity in the character of the administration, however indifferent to it the present race may be. And it will be some consolation to me to … do justice to them with posterity, since a gang of greater scoundrels never lived. We are to dance on [Washington’s] birth night, forsooth, and say they are great & good men, when we know they are little people. I think the spirit of that idle propensity is dying away & that the good sense of the people is breaking thro’ the prejudice which has long chained them down.213
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, Peter Porcupine writes:
A TIMELY CAUTION TO THE QUAKERS of The City and County of Philadelphia.—Gentlemen: Having been informed that there is a petition to the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES hawking about by [Quaker] Samuel Weatherill … against the horrors of war … I trust it will be easy to convince you that this PETITION is an insidious appeal to … your well known and amiable principles [of non-violence] … What would you say if it should appear that the palavering paper was drawn up by BACHE! … Mortified as you must feel at being thus ranked with the Democrats, with disorganizers and atheists; yet that mortification will be nothing compared to the odium, the keen and well grounded reproach, that this factious petition must bring on you from all the friends of government … Do not excite disgust and contempt in your friends, and render the name of Quaker a reproach … [D]o not dishonour your names by placing it at the bottom of a petition … which will be extolled by the Aurora …
American Aurora Page 7