The Great Divide

  A few thoughtful men in America—especially men with military experience, such as Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton—feared that soon after Napoleon dictated a humiliating peace in London’s St. James Palace, the Man of Destiny would have fresh thoughts about a new world to conquer on the other side of the Atlantic. He would have no difficulty persuading a terrified Spain to cede the Floridas to him. With most of its navy still fighting Muslim pirates in the Mediterranean, the United States would be unable to prevent the arrival of a large part of the Army of England in this strategic territory. President Jefferson’s gunboats, with their thin planking and low decks, would be helpless to prevent it. A single frigate had the firepower of forty gunboats.

  East Florida occupied some two hundred miles of the east bank of the Mississippi. It would be a simple matter for the French to close the river for some reason—perhaps a failure to salute their flag on one of the forts erected along the shore. It would help to have the commander of the American Army on the First Consul’s payroll. If the United States chose war, General Wilkinson would be an artful collaborator in marching his regulars and militiamen into a catastrophic defeat. Talleyrand’s “wall of brass” would rise along the Mississippi, and the Man of Destiny would soon be celebrating the “liberation” of France’s captive brethren in Canada. As for President Jefferson’s treaty purchasing Louisiana—it would become an amusing scrap of paper in the archives of the French empire.10

  CHAPTER 29

  The Voters Speak the Language of Praise

  LOUISIANA REMAINED A CENTRAL concern in President Jefferson’s administration throughout 1804. He waited impatiently for reports from an expedition he had sent into the territory, led by one of his former secretaries, Captain Meriwether Lewis, and a fellow officer, Lieutenant William Clark. When no news reached Washington, D.C.—everyone underestimated the distances that had to be traversed—the President published a hasty collection of data, “An Account of Louisiana,” based on stories from wandering trappers and imaginative Indians and myths from speculative books. Among the purported wonders of the new territory was a mountain of salt on the upper reaches of the Missouri River that was 145 miles long and 130 miles wide. Other details included Indians seven feet tall and herds of woolly mammoths with gigantic tusks.

  The Federalists seized on these unlikely details and ridiculed the President as a gullible pseudo-philosopher—the last man the nation needed to administer this immense swath of the continent. The editor of the New York Evening Post, Alexander Hamilton’s newspaper, wondered if Louisiana’s magical wonders also included an “immense lake of molasses…and a vale of hasty pudding.” Others brought up a more practical but equally hostile point of view. Land prices in the eastern United States were certain to plummet when people realized there was virtually unlimited fertile acreage awaiting them west of the Mississippi River.

  These brickbats were flung with the knowledge that 1804 was a presidential election year. On February 25, the Democratic-Republicans in Congress caucused to nominate their candidates. Thomas Jefferson was unanimously named for another term as president. For vice president, George Clinton of New York, the man who had persuaded Citizen Genet not to send his destructive open letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1798, won sixty-seven votes, and Senator John Breckinridge of Kentucky won twenty-one. Vice President Aaron Burr received none. President Jefferson’s hostility to Burr had become a fixed point in the party’s political geography.1

  Aaron Burr knew he had become persona non grata. At one point, he visited the presidential mansion and offered to go quietly, if Jefferson gave him an overseas appointment that would be worthy of Burr’s current political stature. Perhaps minister to Paris? The president talked and talked and talked about what a wonderful idea that was. But in the end, the answer was no.2

  This evasion probably had something to do with the way the Vice President presided at a Senate trial to impeach a federal judge. Harvard graduate John Pickering had been a Revolutionary War leader in New Hampshire. For a while he was a good judge, first in the state’s courts, and then on the federal bench. A fondness for John Barleycorn had damaged his brain and led to bizarre behavior. The Judiciary Act of 1801 had stated that incapacitated judges could be replaced. Jefferson’s repeal of the act had returned Pickering to the bench, where his antics soon made headlines. The President’s solution was impeachment, which confronted another problem: How could an insane man be convicted of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors?”

  The man who loved to think legislatively had a solution. They would simply avoid mentioning Pickering’s insanity. Jefferson exhibited even more disrespect for the Constitution by telling Senator Plumer of New Hampshire that a president should be able to remove a federal judge “on the address of the two Houses of Congress.” This opinion became the gossip of the day in Washington, D.C. Senator Gouverneur Morris told Alexander Hamilton the Constitution was “gone.”3

  When Pickering was tried before the U.S. Senate, Vice President Burr did everything in his power to make it difficult for the Democratic-Republicans to ignore the judge’s insanity. He ruled that his attorney, Robert Goodloe Harper, would be permitted to appear and read a letter from Pickering’s son, testifying to his father’s incapacity. When this information had no impact—one senator remarked that he was “resolved not to believe Pickering insane no matter what he heard”—Harper denounced the proceedings and withdrew, declaring he could not defend an insane man.

  New England’s Federalist senators begged their colleagues not to inflict the disgrace of impeachment on the family of a man who had once been an admirable patriot. The Democratic-Republicans stuck to their plan and convicted Judge Pickering without so much as mentioning treason, bribery, or any other crime. He was guilty because the articles of impeachment said so. Eight senators absented themselves rather than vote either way.

  On the same day, the radical branch of the Democratic-Republicans in the House of Representatives reported articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase of Maryland. He had won their enmity with his ferocious attacks on journalists who had been indicted under the Sedition Act. When it came to the federal judiciary, President Jefferson’s Revolution of 1800 was becoming much more than a clever phrase.4

  On wrecked, abandoned Santo Domingo, the only leader left standing was burly, black General Jacques Dessalines. He ripped out the white strip in the French flag and announced the creation of a new nation, Haiti. Next, he marched his army across Haiti and killed every white French man, woman, and child. This was his revenge for Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion, which President Jefferson had so heartily approved. Afterward, Dessalines wrote a letter to the President, expressing his interest in establishing diplomatic relations.

  The President responded by asking his son-in-law, Congressman John W. Eppes, to support a resolution in the House of Representatives, refusing to recognize the black republic, and banning all political and commercial contact with it. Everyone knew this was a message from Thomas Jefferson. To drive the point home, Eppes glared around the House chamber. “Some gentlemen would declare Santo Domingo free.” (He deliberately refused to call it Haiti.) “If any gentleman [still] harbors such sentiments, let him come forward boldly and declare it. In such case, he would cover himself with detestation.”5

  The resolution was opposed by the Federalists, who wanted to continue to trade with the black republic. But the embargo passed and Haiti was cut adrift to reel through the next five decades as a rogue nation, exploited and abused by France and other trading countries. To this day, it remains an ongoing tragedy.6

  Around the nation, many Federalist newspapers continued to sneer at Jefferson for paying James Thomson Callender to slander John Adams and George Washington. The man who had repeatedly proclaimed newspapers vital to the political health of a free society and had recommended “scission”—secession from the Union—rather than tolerate the Federalists’ Sedition Act changed his mind when he became the nation’s prime
editorial target. The President wrote to Democratic-Republican Governor Thomas McKean of Pennsylvania, suggesting that a “few prosecutions of the most prominent offenders” might make certain obnoxious editors behave. How to explain this anomaly? Jefferson had decided it was perfectly legal for state governments to muzzle hostile editors. The Bill of Rights’ enshrinement of free speech was limited to the federal government. This presidential pronouncement swiftly travelled to other states.7

  In New York, still bossed by George Clinton, the reaction was enthusiastic. The Clintonites decided to indict a young editor named Harry Croswell, who published The Wasp, a lively paper in the town of Hudson. Croswell often dilated on the charge that Jefferson had paid Callender to slander the two previous presidents.

  To guarantee a conviction, the attorney general of New York went President Jefferson one better in the legal maneuver game. He arrested Croswell for “seditious libel”—a charge based on the common law of England, which made it a crime to criticize the head of state, whether or not the accusation were true. No less a personage than Morgan Lewis, the chief justice of the state’s supreme court, presided at the trial. To no one’s surprise, Croswell was convicted. His lawyer appealed this parody of justice to the New York State Supreme Court.

  Here was a political wonderland beyond the imaginings of the most manic Federalist. The author of the Declaration of Independence was now covertly in favor of using the legal system of the hated British tyrants to silence his critics. Inevitably, the maneuver awoke a dangerous, not quite sleeping, bystander, Alexander Hamilton. The former leader of the Federalist Party volunteered to defend Croswell free of charge. Hamilton talked of issuing subpoenas to James Thomson Callender and to President Jefferson to testify in a new trial.8

  Croswell was an ideal candidate for a Federalist martyr. Few newsmen equaled his skill at skewering the President—and incidentally defending George Washington. Here is his savage laugh at Jefferson’s plea that he had given money to Callender only because he was a political refugee from Scotland and was being persecuted under the Sedition Act.

  It amounts to this then:

  He (Jefferson) read the book [The Prospect Before Us] and…inferred that Callender was an object of charity. Why? One who could be guilty of such foul falsehoods, such vile aspersions of the best and greatest man the world has yet known—he is an object of charity? No! He [Callender] is the very man an aspiring and mean and hollow hypocrite would press into the service of crime. He is precisely qualified to become a tool, to spit the venom and scatter the malicious poisonous slanders of his employer. He is, in short, the very man that a dissembling patriot [and] pretended “man of the people” would employ to plunge the dagger or administer the arsenic.9

  The President pretended the Croswell trial was not happening anywhere in his domain. Callender, on the other hand, would have been delighted to testify. Before this delicious (to Federalists) scene could transpire, the newsman was found dead at 3 a.m. on the outskirts of Richmond in three feet of James River water. The coroner pronounced his demise an accident brought on by too much alcohol. But insiders had their doubts. Several months before this ultimate silencing, George Hay, James Monroe’s son-in-law, had bashed Callender over the head with a club to encourage his reticence. Many people thought this time some member of the Monroe family or a friend had done a more thorough job.

  When the New York State Supreme Court granted a hearing for a new trial, both houses of the state legislature jammed the Albany courtroom to hear Hamilton’s plea. Over the next two days, the ex-secretary of the treasury spoke for six hours. His central argument was the importance of the right to prove the truth of an accusation in cases of seditious libel. Hamilton pointed out that the much despised and denounced and now expired Sedition Act had given each accused man the right to respond to his indictment. Hamilton was also apparently aware that President Jefferson wanted all judges, including justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, removed and/or appointed by a majority vote of Congress. “We ought to resist, resist, resist until we hurl the demagogues and tyrants from their…thrones,” Hamilton thundered.

  Never was there a case where the truth was so important. “Was Mr. Jefferson guilty of so foul an act as the one charged?” The question catapulted Hamilton into a passionate eulogy of the slandered Washington that one of the judges thought was “never surpassed, never equaled.” There was little doubt that the former Treasury secretary was well aware of the competition for ultimate fame that was being waged in this political war.

  The mostly Democratic-Republican Supreme Court retired to argue about their decision. The New York legislators went back to their chambers and passed a bill, making the truth a vital part of any attempt to convict a journalist for seditious libel. It remains a landmark event in the nation’s erratic progress toward a truly free press. A pleased Hamilton remained in Albany to argue other cases—and take part in another political enterprise of some importance. Vice President Burr was running for governor of New York and was bidding for Federalist support.

  The Vice President’s candidacy had been preceded by a vicious newspaper and pamphlet war. British-born James Cheetham, editor of New York City’s Democratic-Republican paper, the American Citizen, suddenly developed an intense dislike of Colonel Burr. Cheetham sent President Jefferson stories blackening Burr’s character in every imaginable way. His most serious salvo was A View of the Political Conduct of Aaron Burr, Esq. This diatribe accused Burr of trying to steal the presidency in 1800 and plotting to run against Jefferson with Federalist backing in 1804. Cheetham was not shy about using epithets such as “cunning,” “wicked,” and would-be perpetrator of “an evil of great magnitude.”10

  President Jefferson told Cheetham that his information was “pregnant with considerations” and he would be glad to continue receiving “your daily paper by post.” In an era when every paper had a political point of view, this was an oblique way of saying “I agree with you.”

  Burr did nothing while Cheetham abused him during the closing months of 1803. Suddenly there emerged in bookshops and other stores a pamphlet by one “Aristides” entitled: An Examination of the Various Charges Exhibited Against Aaron Burr–And a Development of the Character and Views of his Political Opponents. It soon became a very hot seller. It refuted Cheetham’s assaults and suggested the smelly shoes were on other feet. It accused Jefferson of cutting a deal with the Federalists to break the tie in the electoral college in 1801. It said even more scarifying things about DeWitt Clinton, mayor of New York, and his uncle, Governor George Clinton, with nasty references to the way the governor had once won reelection by invalidating the votes of three upstate counties. President Jefferson’s toleration of this gross power play proved he was a “weak and fickle visionary” unable to control “the excesses of democracy.”11

  On December 31, 1803, the President found time to put his worries about Louisiana aside to write George Clinton, assuring him he regarded this pro-Burr assault as a tissue of libels and lies. It was all a “design to sow tares between particular Republican characters.” Here was vivid evidence of Jefferson’s remarkable ability to stand the truth on its head. It was the Clintons and the President who had started the slander game against Vice President Burr.

  In Washington, D.C., President Jefferson maintained a sheen of politeness in his relationship with his vice president. He regularly invited him to dinner, and wrote fretful notes, making sure there was no confusion about the dates. If he was disturbed that Colonel Burr also began dining with mostly Federalist members of Congress, the President did not exhibit an iota of disapproval. Jefferson too invited Federalists to his sumptuous dinners at the presidential residence, hoping to promote his “We are all Republicans all Federalists” stance.

  Everyone knew the serious dining at the residence occurred on nights when leading Democratic-Republican senators and congressmen gathered, and the President subtly—and sometimes not so subtly—told them how he wanted them to vote on various matters. The dinners
were a central part of Jefferson’s program to shrink the presidency to near invisibility in the public eye. Congress—the voice of the people—was now in apparent charge of the nation’s destiny. The President supposedly did little more than lend them encouragement.

  Vice President Burr’s candidacy for the governorship of New York stirred worry on several fronts. Insiders such as Alexander Hamilton knew that there was a tacit agreement with New England’s Federalists that if Burr won, he would take the Empire State into their secessionist conspiracy, which was growing more and more formidable. Ex=Secretary of State Timothy Pickering was telling dozens of people that he planned to form an alliance with Great Britain, if they agreed to add Canada to the new nation.

  Against this background, Hamilton’s antipathy for Burr prompted him to make a speech in Albany, condemning Burr’s candidacy. It was dismissed as envy. The former secretary of the treasury had made one blunder too many with his 1800 attack on President John Adams. New York’s Federalists made it clear he had no power to change their minds about any political issue.

  In Washington, D.C. President Jefferson embarked on another step in the Revolution of 1800. Instead of the formal levees of the Washington and Adams administrations, the President’s mansion was open every morning to any and all citizens who wanted to wander in. The President frequently met them in dusty riding clothes or wearing bedroom slippers—outfits that confused the visitors. One man described him wearing “an old brown coat, red waistcoat, and corduroy small clothes, much soil’d, woolen hose, slippers without heels.” The visitor thought he was a servant.