American Aurora
Page 79
Fellow citizens, guard yourselves ere it is too late against these cut-throats … Your persons, your religion, your government, are threatened …
Sunday Evening. M.
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
Yesterday this city witnessed a scene the most outrageous and the most scandalous that was ever beheld or heard of in a state of society …
The daring riot of yesterday ought to excite universal attention … The times are serious. All that we are able to perceive, we may rest assured, is more than the outward signs, the mere indication, of a deep, secret, systematized, and extensive plan of violence.—“Again, therefore, I say unto you, watch.”
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The following petition has been presented to the [U.S.] House of Representatives, signed by upwards of 1200 citizens …
The petition of the subscribers, inhabitants of Northampton County, Pennsylvania …
The authority given to the president to raise troops in any number and to borrow money without any limitation … are, in our opinion, transfers of powers … [T]he increase of the regular military force, and the authorizing of the executive to accept the services of volunteer corps in any number, these corps probably influenced by party spirit, and certainly to be officers at presidential discretion, are measures of far more dangerous tendency …
We think we can discover, in many of the public acts, which have latterly taken place, a regular and systematic plan to aggrandize and strengthen the executive at the expence of the other departments of the state … The Alien Law gives to the President a judicial authority which … forms … the very essence of despotism. The sedition law is calculated to throw around his person and character an inviolability only to be recognized in the corrupted monarchies of Europe … To avert this is the object which your petitioners have in view. They, therefore, solicit the repeal of the laws above referred to …
Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
Mr. LIVINGSTON presented a petition from a number of aliens, natives of Ireland, resident within the United States, praying for a repeal of the alien law …1759
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
The impudent, seditious, and inflammatory memorial, which we had occasion yesterday to notice, purports to be … to obtain “a repeal of the law concerning Aliens.” [T]he real design, without doubt, [is] to obtain the most extensive enrollment possible of existing United Irishmen and … to make new converts …
Where is the American that would own Duane or Reynolds or any other United Irishman for a fellow-citizen? If there is one, he is a fit tenant only for Hell or for France …
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
UNITED IRISH RIOT …
Last Sunday four men; to wit; Reynolds (commonly called Doctor Reynolds), Duane, Mother Bache’s Editor, one Moore, lately from Ireland, Rice, a clerk, and Cummens a Journeyman printer, were apprehended and taken before Robert Wharton, Esq. Mayor of the city, for RIOT, the scene of which was at the Roman Catholic Church in Fourth street.
During divine service, some of them went and stuck up placards on the walls to the following purport:
“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.”
The trustees and some of the congregation pulled down these placards; they were stuck up again, and again pulled down … When the church broke up … Reynolds, who was placed at the east end of the church and who had been ordered out, drew a pistol …
When the prisoners were taken before the Mayor, a scene took place … [I]n rushed [Thomas] McKean the Democratic Judge, violently agitated with passion. The Mayor began to explain … When the Judge had listened to him for a time, he replied, that the men might take their hats and go home …
A word of explanation … For Sunday afternoon, we were held incommunicado. Near dark, when papers to commit us had been completed, we were handcuffed and paraded through the streets of Philadelphia (which had filled with people) to the house of the Federalist mayor, Robert C. Wharton, who proceeded to question us for another half hour.1760 Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court Judge Thomas McKean finally intervened. An eyewitness report:
Whilst Robert Wharton, Esq. Mayor of the city was engaged in taking the recognizances of … persons accused as authors of the riot, some person knocked vehemently at the door and demanded admission; the constables refusing to open it, Mr. M’Kean called out “I am Chief Justice of the state.” The mayor, on hearing that the Chief Justice was there, opened the door and gave Mr. M’Kean admittance. No sooner had he entered than he called out with a loud voice, accompanied by a menacing air, “What is the reason, Mr. Mayor, of all this fuss, that you keep the city in an uproar with a mob marching these gentlemen up one street and down another, hand-cuffed and tied, for half the day together.”
The Mayor attempted to state the nature of their offence, the evidence of their having insulted the congregation of the Church, and that one of them had presented a loaded pistol to the breast of one of the members … but Mr. M’Kean would hearken to nothing from the Mayor or Gentlemen present, and charged the members of the Congregation with having committed an assault on the prisoners and said “that they and not the prisoners were the aggressors, that he would have dismissed the matter in quarter of an hour, for the prisoners had the right to take up their hats and go about their business.” The Mayor proceeded to take the recognizances and Mr. M’Kean afterwards left the room apparently in great passion.1761
Judge Thomas McKean will be our Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania in next autumn’s election. Needless to say, Philadelphia Mayor Robert Wharton will support the Federalist choice, Pennsylvania’s ultra-Federalist U.S. Senator, James Ross.
McKean hasn’t put an end to the matter. My Irish friends and I will stand trial for “seditious riot” on the 21st of the month!
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Petition of the Irish exiles to Congress was presented to the House of Representatives yesterday …
Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
Mr. GREGG [Republican, Pennsylvania] presented a remonstrance against the alien and sedition laws signed by two hundred and seventy of the inhabitants of that part of Mifflin county which lies north of Tuffey’s mountain …
Mr. G. said he had also two petitions and remonstrances on the subject signed by 320 of the inhabitants of Cumberland county in this State …
Mr. HAVENS [Republican, New York] also presented a memorial from Queen’s county in the State of New York, praying for repeal of the alien and sedition laws …1762
Today, from Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson writes Archibald Stewart in Virginia:
I avoid writing to my friends because the fidelity of the post office is very much doubted … A wonderful & rapid change is taking place in Pennsylvania, Jersey, & N York. Congress is daily plied with petitions against the alien and sedition laws & standing armies. Several parts of this State are so violent that we fear an insurrection. This will be brought about by some if they can. It is the only thing we have to fear. The materials now bearing on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness … if the knowledge of facts can only be disseminated …1763
Eighteen thousand Pennsylvanians have signed petitions against John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts, his federal army, and his war taxes. That’s 90 percent of Pennsylvanians who voted in the 1796 Presidential election.1764
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, Peter Porcupine writes:
JUDGE M’KEAN
“His Honor,” the “Doctor of Laws, &c., &c., &c., &c., &c.,” does certainly feel somewhat alarmed on
account of his conduct on Sunday last … Interfering with the chief magistrate of the city; interrupting him in the actual execution of his office; telling him he was actuated by party motives; and asserting that the rioters who stood prisoners under his warrant might take their hats and go home; all this is indeed most scandalous and criminal …
The prisoners had been guilty of a most daring breach of the laws of God and Man; yet, notwithstanding this, they saw their conduct justified by the Chief Justice of the State, by the very man whom they well knew was to preside at their trial !
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Those folks who make so much noise about receiving subscriptions to a petition on Sunday, after divine service, are very little scrupulous about lying all the rest of the week … It is very remarkable that among the most vociferous against the signing a name to a liberal memorial and elegant composition—are the most ardent admirers of political sermons!
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
THE DEMOCRATIC JUDGE [M’KEAN] …
CALLENDER, this little reptile, … was never discountenanced by … the Chief Justice … BACHE, the Chief Judge’s companion at Civic Festivals … neither … No one among all the libellers was ever prosecuted or bound over. Their politics were perfectly French … I could mention one civic festival at which he assisted, where a “revolution in Great Britain” was toasted; and another, where a toast was “success to the United Irishmen” …
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
In the English print of Tuesday and Wednesday last, … the Chief Justice of this State … is openly and expressly charged with committing acts deserving of punishment—insulting a magistrate in the discharge of his duty—of attempting to destroy the independence of the magistracy—insulting the mayor in the execution of his office—and of acting partially toward men guilty of a daring breach of the laws of God and man, men who knew he was to preside at their trial …
But let us ask what is the foundation for this calumny? Four persons engaged in soliciting subscriptions to a petition to Congress were attacked and one of them struck. The assailants, having committed the assault, fly for constables, and the insulted persons are brought before the mayor.—Some friends of good order make a riot, a large concourse of people assemble, and for five hours they fill the street from the house of the mayor to that of the Chief Justice; the latter, anxious to learn the cause of such unusual disquietude, proceeds to the mayor’s house and expresses the wish that the persons had been committed, if deserving of commitment, or dismissed if not …
It will be observed that the crime against the laws of God and man was the taking subscriptions to a petition against the Alien Bill !
But what is the most malicious and daring is the assertion that the Chief Justice was to preside at the trial of those violators … The fact is that the parties have been bound over to appear at the court of Oyer and Terminer which sits next Monday and over which Judge Coxe presides …
The clue to all this calumny is simply this—the republicans mean to propose Judge M’Kean for Governor of this State … and the people of Pennsylvania are attempted to be deceived into the views of the English party by heaping calumnies on the man who fought in our revolution against Britain—who held the presidency of Congress in days of peril, and who has administered our laws …
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Rev. J. C. Ogden, who some time ago, presented a petition from Matthew Lyon’s constituents to the President of the United States, upon his return to Litchfield in Connecticut, has been arrested by a Mr. Wolcott and put into prison for a demand of 200 dollars!
Mr. Ogden on his return home to his wife, who lives with her aged mother in Connecticut, was seized under some pretext at the suit of [Treasury Secretary] Oliver Wolcott and thrown into prison.1765 The Rev. Mr. Ogden is now serving a four-month prison sentence!1766
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
A bill was read in the senate on Saturday for authorizing the president of the United States to raise an army of 30,000 mercenaries and to embody 75,000 volunteers for three years …
Since we are not menaced by external danger, for what end can a standing army, with all its concomitant taxes and curses, be attempted thus to be set up ?
Word from overseas is that France wants to negotiate.1767 Does Adams want to negotiate? Today, the President delivers a message to a closed-door meeting of the Senate:
I nominate William Vans Murray, our minister resident at The Hague [Netherlands], to be minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the French Republic.
If the Senate shall advise and consent to his appointment, effectual care shall be taken, in his instructions, that he shall not go to France without direct and unequivocal assurances from the French Government, signified by their minister of foreign relations, that he shall be received in character …
JOHN ADAMS1768
Time will tell whether Adams is serious. Meanwhile, the war continues!
Today, the Court of Oyer and Terminer opens at the State-house in Philadelphia. Our trial for seditious riot at St. Mary’s is scheduled for Wednesday.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[T]he war shall be the war of a party … The following extract of a letter from the Secretary of War … is too plain to be misapprehended …
[A] Company of Volunteer Cavalry, Artillery, or Infantry, desirous of serving in the Provisional Army should associate to the numbers required …
[I]t being deemed important not to accept of companies composed of disaffected persons … it will be proper [that] proper certificates from prominent and known characters … be also presented.
A company prepared to present the aforesaid exhibits should make a formal offer of their services to the President …1769
What, may it please your honor, is meant by “disaffected persons,” are they all such persons as have dared to express disapprobation of any public measure; who have had the presumption at any time to suppose that Mr. Jefferson would make a better president than Mr. Adams, or who do not on all occasions declare the most holy reverence for the sacred person of the chief magistrate?
Today, Federalist leaders from all parts of Pennsylvania gather at Dunwoody’s Tavern on High-street (launching point for last year’s attacks on the Aurora) to decide “unanimously” that Pennsylvania’s ultra-Federalist U.S. senator, James Ross, will oppose Republican Judge Thomas McKean in the statewide gubernatorial election next October 8th.1770
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Numerous surmises were in circulation yesterday concerning the new mission to France. Some would have it that it was but a foil to divert public attention from the enormous army measures …
Today, Abigail Adams writes the President’s secretary, William Shaw:
It appears to me … from the conduct of Reynolds as well as of the Chief Justice that a crisis is working up which will call for all the energy of the Government to suppress … As to the conduct of McKean, he should never sit upon the Bench as Judge again …1771
Today, my trial for “seditious riot” at St. Mary’s Church opens at Philadelphia’s Court of Oyer and Terminer. Joseph Hopkinson (composer of the patriotic song “Hail Columbia” and deputy attorney general for the county of Philadelphia)1772 is the government prosecutor. Alex Dallas, who represented Benny before Judge Richard Peters last June, is now my lawyer. From the transcript of today’s proceedings:
At a court of Oyer and Terminer, held at the State House in Philadelphia … before J. D. Coxe, Esq., presiding judge; R. Keen, Jonathan B. Smith, and A. Robinson, Esqrs., assistant judges, two indictments were laid against William Duane, editor of the Aurora, James Reynolds, M.D., Robert Moore, Esq., and Samuel Cuming, printer f
or an alleged riot, &c …
[A twelve man jury is impaneled] …
JOHN CONNOR sworn.
Mr. Hopkinson. Relate what you saw …
Ans.— … During the service, Mr. Gallagher, jr … was going round the church to different gentleman of the congregation, to their pews. He came to the pew where I sat; [and] … intimated to me that … there was to be a seditious meeting after prayers were over …
Mr. Dallas … did you see or hear anything to disturb divine worship ?
Ans.—No …
JAMES GALLAGHER, jr., sworn …
The Court. What was the observation?
Ans.—[Defendant Samuel] Cuming said I was an impertinent scoundrel for tearing down [a petition notice before the church service began]. I told him no Jacobin paper had a right to a place on the walls of that church. He was immediately after joined by several others.
Ques.—Was Mr. Moore, Mr. Duane, or Dr. Reynolds among them?
Ans.—No: I did not see them; I saw Mr. Duane for the first time that day at the Mayor’s office … I waited till service was over … I went down the alley at the south side of the church, and I saw a crowd … I heard a person declaring he would not be forced or pushed out of the [church] yard, and the cry of “turn him out;” I got into the crowd, when I saw Dr. R[eynolds] keeping four or five persons at bay; I went forward … Before I had time to catch hold of Dr. R.[eynolds], he presented a pistol to my breast … I had my hands raised with a view to put him out; he declared he would shoot any man that would lay hold of him; I struck at him, he wheeled … and the pistol fell by his groin … Mr. Lewis Ryan took hold of him, threw him down … I kicked him twice or three times while he was down …