American Aurora
Page 78
[WILLIAM COBBETT])
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
I was called upon to make an excursion a few days ago through the county of Montgomery [Pennsylvania] … observing … the alarming extent and increasing virulence of the United Irishmen … [A] great disproportion of outcasts from the French and Irish nations, but particularly of the latter, have unguardedly been admitted as settlers. These … have combined with certain Americans who have sold their birthright … [D]emocrats … have been advanced to the office of magistrates … A very full meeting of these discontented gentry was held …
The most notorious character in the above group is said to be an Irishman who, for a length of time, commanded a company of United Irishmen in his native country … Since the promulgation of the Alien bill … this captain John [Fries], if you please, has been assiduously riding about the country for the purpose of misleading the people as to the true intent of this bill, the house tax, the stamp tax, and the sedition bill …
That France had it in contemplation to reduce these states under her dominion so early as the year 1756—that she at that time had agents in Philadelphia in pursuance of that plan—that she commenced the war of 1778 against Great Britain and sent armies to America with this express view are well established by facts of general notoriety …
In the assiduous flatteries heaped on our great men by public acts of the Revolutionizers, in their statues of Franklin and Jefferson, and the apotheosis of the former in the Heathenish Pantheon—in their affected humility of conceding to America the honor of setting them an illustrious example by her revolution, we discover ramifications of the same system …
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
On Friday, the 25th inst. Mr. Havens presented to the [U.S.] House of Representatives the following MEMORIAL from the Inhabitants of the county of Suffolk in the state of New York …
The laws … commonly known by the name of Sedition Law … commonly called the Alien law … your memorialists conceive to be unconstitutional …
These measures appear to be founded on the alarm which has been excited and industriously circulated throughout the United States about the danger of a French invasion; but your memorialists see no good reason to believe that this alarm can be well founded …
No policy can be worse for a nation than to introduce great and certain evils in order to guard against imaginary dangers …
Today, President John Adams approves and signs into law,
AN ACT
For the Punishment of certain
crimes therein specified.
Be it enacted, &c. That if any person, being a citizen of the United States … shall, without the permission or authority of the government of the United States, directly or indirectly commence or carry on any verbal or written correspondence with any foreign government … with an intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government … in relation to disputes or controversies with the United States … he or she shall … be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars and by imprisonment during a term not less than six months nor exceeding three years …1750
John Adams’ response to George Logan’s peace effort will always be known as the “Logan Act”!
THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The committee of vigor … are now preparing and will bring forward in a few days a bill for a provisional declaration of War against France—In other words—a bill authorizing the President of the United States to declare war when he thinks fit ! Was it for this the British treaty was entered into? Was it for this the bravest hearts and wisest heads of America sustained a seven years barbarous war?—Was it for this that the citizens of America chose representatives ?
Tonight, Jack Fenno in the Gazette of the United States:
[PENNSYLVANIA] Certain disaffected persons in the township of Blockley near this city a few days ago erected a liberty-pole bearing an inflammatory label against the government of the United States. Two or three orderly citizens, justly offended by this daring outrage on the laws and honor of their country, immediately leveled it …
TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD.
WHEREAS, two Irishmen came last night, drunk, to [my] house … one of whom held his club over the head of a young man in the office, suspended for an answer to the question if his name was Fenno; the other of whom held in his right hand a naked cutlass; and whereas the aforesaid cowardly ruffians, after bullying the clerk for some time and threatening vengeance and destruction against me, departed without leaving their names or their business, I hereby offer the above award to be paid on conviction. They are both described to me as raw Irishmen, and filthy, dungeon’d looking villains …
JOHN WARD FENNO
N.B. A third stood sentry out-side the door.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
It seems poor Fenno is again frighted, and valiantly advertised 200 dollars reward—payable on the conviction of men who can be convicted of nothing—but scaring him.
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, Peter Porcupine writes:
MR. FENNO is certainly right in pursuing these assassins [who came to his house] by every means in his power and will be fully justified, in the eye of God and man, if he blows their brains (if they have any) about his room, should they attempt to attack him.—The same villains, on the same evening, armed in the same way, came to my house also. My clerk did not call me down. If he had, and if they had struck me, they would now be in hell.
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
The law of Congress, imposing a tax on houses, being now about to be put in force, the democrats have commenced their usual opposition and have stirred up many honest but illiteral people … [T]here is at this moment on the ridge road, about 9 miles from this city, a very lofty Liberty Pole, with a red and white pennant flying at its head and a board nailed to it, exhibiting the following inscription HEED YOUR LIBERTY, 1799 … I have left my address with the Printer of this paper and will be happy to accompany any of you to the above described spot for the purpose of demolishing this detested sign of anarchy and jacobinism.
A FEDERALIST
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Colonel [Matthew] Lyon is returned [to Congress] for the Western district of Vermont … [T]he votes for Col. Lyon are 4676, being 96 more than on the last trial …
Today, Alexander Hamilton writes U.S. Senator Theodore Sedgwick (Federalist, Massachusetts):
What, my dear sir, are you going to do with Virginia? This is a very serious business … [T]he proceedings of Virginia and Kentucky, with the two laws [the Alien and Sedition Acts] complained of, should be referred to a special committee …
The government must not merely defend itself, it must attack and arraign its enemies … [T]he measures for raising the military force should proceed with activity … When a clever force has been collected, let them be drawn toward Virginia, for which there is an obvious pretext—& then let measures be taken to act upon the laws [the Alien and Sedition Acts] & put Virginia to the Test of resistance.1751
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
SEDITION POLES.
READING [PENNSYLVANIA]. Sir, YOU have undoubtedly heard that an association was formed … to go under my command and destroy the sedition poles at this time standing within the county of Berks [Pennsylvania] … I set off on the day appointed from Hamburgh to the house of Isaac Wetzstein’s … I then ordered my men to hang their swords to their wrists and pistols in hand, rode full gallop to the house and immediately surrounded the pole … [A]s soon as the seventeenth stoke of the axe was applied to this emblem of sedition, down it fell … We then … proceeded against a pole at the house of John Weaver … I ordered my axeman to the pole … [&c.]PHILIP STRUBING
(And when the people of the country found that the ti
me was elapsing to have the Sedition Bill … and Assessed Taxes repealed, they gathered themselves together to their leaders and said unto them: Up, make us poles … And lo! they erected poles … But o Israel ! the joy will be of short duration, the poles will be turned into firewood, the laws which you endeavor to oppose will stand … and ye who oppose the execution of these laws will bring the strong arm of the government of the Union upon them … )
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Mr. EDITOR … An increase of heavy taxes to support a standing army in time of peace are the seeds of ruin to a republican government like ours …
A CITIZEN OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
SIGNS of the TIMES.
The Religion of Peace employed to promote war!
A Republic rushing into a war in support of Monarchy!
Today, without risking disclosure (to Federalist postal spies) that James Madison is the author, Thomas Jefferson writes Madison that his January 23rd Aurora piece (“Foreign Influence”) is a great success:
A piece published in Bache’s paper on Foreign Influence has had the greatest currency and effect. To an extraordinary first impression [printing] they have been obliged to make a second, and of an extraordinary number. It is such things as these the public want. They say so from all quarters, and that they wish to hear reason instead of disgusting blackguardism … [W]e are sensible that this summer is the season for systematic energies and sacrifices. The engine is the press. Every man must lay his purse and his pen under contribution … [L]et me pray and beseech you to set apart a certain portion of every post day to write what may be proper for the public … I will let you know to whom you may send so that your name shall be sacredly secret …1752
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
TO THE FREEMEN OF THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF VERMONT.
Vergennes Gaol [Jail], January 13.
FELLOW CITIZENS,
WITH a heart truly overflowing with gratitude have I, in this dismal prison, received the intelligence that you have again considered me entitled to your confidence … as your Representative in the Congress of the United States … This undissembled conduct … corroborates with the truly noble and generous efforts of the patriots of Virginia and Kentucky in holding up to abhorrence tyranny and unconstitutional laws … The story has already been told, in every country where representative government is known, that one of the national representatives of the United States of America has been imprisoned for writing and publishing; that when the Executive are doing right, they shall have his support but whenever they should do wrong, he would not be their humble advocate …
M.[ATTHEW] LYON
Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
Mr. HARTLEY [Republican, Pennsylvania] said that, since presenting the petition … from York county, praying for repeal [of the Alien and Sedition Acts] … he had been written to on the subject. He gave notice, therefore, that he should call up the petition for consideration on Monday …1753
Starting Monday, Congress takes up petitions to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts. As Fenno’s recent attacks on Jimmy Reynolds demonstrate, Federalists seem ready to act against the Irish. Tonight, I attend a meeting of Irishmen who want to petition against the Alien Act. Jimmy Reynolds (head of Philadelphia’s Society of United Irishmen) and I will gather signatures.1754
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The French arrest our commerce as the British had done, and continue to do. But they never impressed our seamen [into service].
War … This afternoon, off the island of St. Kitts in the French West Indies, the thirty-eight-gun, 340-man United States Navy frigate Constellation attacks and captures the French Republic’s forty-gun ship-of-war L’Insurgente, out of Guadeloupe. U.S. Navy Captain Thomas Truxton writes the U.S. Secretary of the Navy:
I stretched under Montserrat and towards Guadaloupe … [A]t Noon, that Island bearing W.S.W five leagues Distance, discovered a large Ship to the Southward on which I bore down … [S]he hoisted the french national Colours and fired a gun to Windward (which is a Signal of an Enemy). I continued bearing down on her, and at 1/4 past 3 P.M … as soon as I got in a Position for every Shot to do Execution, I answered by commencing a close and successful Engagement, which lasted untill about half after 4 PM, when she struck her Colours to the United States Ship Constellation … She proves to be the celebrated french national Frigate, Insurgente of 40 Guns and 400 Men, lately out from France … I have been much shattered in my Rigging and Sails, and my fore top Mast rendered from Wounds useless … I hope the President and my country will for the present be content with a very fine Frigate being added to our infant Navy, and that too with the loss of only one Man killed and three wounded, while the Enemy had (the french Surgeon reports) Seventy killed and wounded; several were found dead in Tops &c. and thrown overboard …1755
The French Governor-General of Guadeloupe, Edmé Etienne-Borne Desfourneaux, will respond to this attack by declaring war on all American shipping.1756
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
TO DOCTOR LOGAN …
SO, Doctor, you have been in France!
Not (as of old) to learn to dance …
The all-important joyful news
To Fame was handed by your spouse.
(Not Virgil’s Fame—an ugly witch—
Her modern shape’s like Madame Bache.) …
With only two days before Congress takes up the Alien and Sedition Acts, we plan to solicit worshippers at St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Fourth-street to sign our petition to repeal the Alien Act. Many non-citizen Irish worship at St. Mary’s,1757 and we will wait for them after tomorrow morning’s church service.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1799
Today, four of us—Samuel Cumings (a printer at the Aurora), Dr. Jimmy Reynolds (Benny’s friend and mine), Robert Moore (a recent arrival from Ireland), and I—post notices on the front gates and at both sides of the front door of St. Mary’s Church on Fourth-street. Before the mass begins, a church member rips down two of these notices, but we wait with the petition amidst the tombstones of the church cemetery for the congregation to emerge. When the church service ends, violence begins.1758
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
We are told we shall have a standing army of 50,000 men without enquiring for what purpose—it may be useful to enquire whence are the men to come? The major part of the soldiers on the present establishment are aliens—principally Irish—the marines are of the same complexion …
Tonight, the Gazette of the United States reports yesterday’s violence at St. Mary’s:
SHOCKING OUTRAGE
The repose of the city was yesterday (Sunday) disturbed by a more daring and flagitious riot than we remember to have outraged the civil law and the decorum of society for more than forty years … The selection of the Lord’s Day for exciting a general scene of confusion and disorder, whilst it sufficiently characterizes the principles of the actors, is also a very strong collateral evidence that their intentions were of the most atrocious nature.
Four men (two of whom are United Irishmen, and the other two of a similar description of character) had the unparalleled effrontery and profanity to assault the members of the Catholic Church during divine service with a most seditious and inflammatory petition against the Alien and Sedition Laws …
[T]hey had affixed a placard to the door of the Church in the following terms,
“The natives of Ireland who worship at this Church are requested to remain in the yard after Divine service until they have affixed their names to a memorial for the repeal of the Alien Bill.”
After having disturbed and broken up the ceremonies of the Chur
ch, several of them were detected by the wardens … reading this inflammatory paper from the eminence of a tombstone to a considerable crowd surrounding them …
“You lie, you rascal,” was the spirited reply of a young man, “you are no Irishman; you are a traitor.” [One] fellow immediately drew a pistol and presented it at the young man … The other instantly knocked him down and trampled on him. The rioters were pursued, overtaken, and carried before the mayor for examination. One of them was committed to prison—the other three found bail. A fifth, who was apprehended in committing an assault on the house of one of the evidences, is also in jail.
RIOT
By the exertions of the peace officers and the spirited cooperation of several active citizens, the five following persons were yesterday apprehended and brought before Robert Wharton, esq., Mayor of the city …:
James Reynolds, —– Moore, —– Rice, Wm. Duane, —– Cummens …
Duane prints a Democratic newspaper in Philadelphia … The whole five call themselves Irishmen.
MR. FENNO,
… That there is such a banditti, organized for the subversion of government and the establishment of a system of terror and anarchy, can no longer be doubted by the most incredulous. “The United Irishmen” have at length broken out into acts which render them no longer the objects of uncertain suspicion … [T]hey bid defiance to our laws, they threaten our fellow citizens with assassination, and even the temples of the most High God whom we worship are made the theatres of their violence and foul abomination.