Shortly after the Mazzei letter’s publication, Alexander Hamilton returned to the public eye, this time without having solicited the attention. The Reynolds affair, as it became known, was a tale of adultery and blackmail that scandalized the ultimate symbol of Federalism. But Hamilton seemed incapable of experiencing embarrassment, and the whole sordid mess ultimately had little impact on party politics. Madison and Jefferson were only peripherally involved, but as interested onlookers they captured the moment in their correspondence.
Angelica Schuyler Church was Hamilton’s sister-in-law—they quite adored each other—and also a close friend of Maria Cosway’s in London. After one of the newspapers he subscribed to reported that Angelica and her English husband had docked in New York, Jefferson took the time to write to her. Separating friendship from politics, he wrote delicately: “Your affections, I am persuaded, will spread themselves over the whole family of the good, without enquiring by what hard names they are politically called. You will preserve, from temper and inclination, the happy privilege of the ladies, to leave to the rougher sex, and to the newspapers, their party squabbles and reproaches.” It was Jefferson at his peace-making best.42
When he resumed his correspondence with Mrs. Church, Jefferson could not have known that the five-year-old story of Hamilton’s adulterous romp was about to make the rounds again. In the summer of 1797 the dangerous liaison he had embarked on with Maria Reynolds in the summer of 1792 found a wider audience at the apparent prompting of a Virginian or two. Angelica’s husband, John Barker Church, conveyed a piece of gossip to Hamilton that raised his hackles. According to Church, Virginians Madison and Giles, along with Pennsylvania Republican William Findlay, had “used a variety of Perswasions [sic]” to pressure a former Treasury Department clerk into accusing Hamilton of financial misconduct while in office.
It was not in James Madison’s direction, or even Giles’s, that Hamilton looked to blow off steam. Instead, he goaded James Monroe, accusing him of having leaked the story to James Thomson Callender, a scandal-seeking writer who had arrived from Scotland in 1793 and who lacked all capacity for restraint. Monroe was the most suitable target, because only he, in this group, was a Revolutionary War veteran—and, like all veterans, familiar with dueling culture. Madison was notably unmartial, and it was absurd to think of anyone enticing him into an “affair of honor” that might lead to the dueling ground.
Hamilton called for an urgent “interview” with Monroe. When these two equally stubborn men met, both grew enraged. In the next phase of negotiation Aaron Burr took on the role of intermediary. The accusatory game ended in stalemate, but at least a duel was averted. A caucus of Republicans, including Jefferson, Madison, Burr, and others, assembled in Philadelphia and devised a strategy to quietly end the Hamilton-Monroe affair. In its wake, Hamilton published an exculpatory pamphlet (at least that is what he thought it was) copping to a lesser charge. He declared to the world that he had not committed “improper pecuniary speculation,” as alleged; he had merely committed adultery, with the “privity and connivance” of the blackmailing husband.
Hamilton’s self-assessment reads preciously today. “I can never cease to condemn myself,” he explained unconvincingly, protesting his love for the wife he had hurt and previewing all such apologies in the history of American political scandal. But the gist of his published appeal was not a plea for forgiveness; it was a quest to put to rest all rumors that he had done the public any wrong. The opening words of the pamphlet pointed to the real culprit: “the sprit of jacobinism,” which posed a larger threat to the world than “WAR, PESTILENCE and FAMINE.” Jacobinism’s weapon of choice was “calumny.” It was the “jacobin news-papers” and their “odious insinuations and charges against many of our most virtuous citizens” that had cornered him.
Writing to Jefferson in October 1797, Madison mocked Hamilton’s effort to turn the tables on the Republicans as a poorly managed rhetorical ploy designed “to excite the spirit of party to prop up his sinking reputation.” Madison found it incredible that the Washington administration’s persecutor-in-chief was complaining of persecution and milked it for all it was worth. How perfect that the constant supplier of pseudonymously authored newspaper columns attacking Jefferson by name, and the Republicans at large, now disapproved the “system of defamation” that made him “so peculiarly an object of persecution.” Here he was, charging that “no character, however upright,” was to be spared the imputation of guilt under that “dark” system. What gall!
To Jefferson, Madison gloated in describing Hamilton’s pathetic overreaction. The adulterer’s long pamphlet, with its long appendix, proved that he did not know when to shut up. “Next to the error of publishing it at all,” Madison observed, “is that of forgetting that simplicity and candour are the only dress which prudence would put on innocence.” Hamilton went so far as to print a third-party letter reputing to show that Jefferson was somehow involved in the conspiracy against him. “Its impotence is in exact proportion to its venom,” charged Madison, doubting Hamilton’s vaunted masculinity as he and Jefferson both liked to do in such instances (italics supplied).43
Callender’s exposé of Hamilton came in the form of his grandiosely titled History of the United States for 1796. In June 1797 Vice President Jefferson purchased it, paying the author directly—and paying an amount much larger than the cost of a pamphlet, suggesting that he bought multiple copies or, more likely, made a charitable donation to a politically useful writer. As one who sought to stir the pot of political passions indiscriminately, Callender would prove one of Jefferson’s worst investments.
In the midst of the Reynolds affair fallout, a wedding took place at Monticello. Maria Jefferson, nineteen and by all accounts pretty, married her cousin John Wayles (Jack) Eppes, of whom Jefferson was already quite fond. When she was much younger, before being sent to France to join her father and older sister, Maria had lived under the same roof with her Eppes relatives—her mother’s side of the family. Now, ten years after being separated from the estate of Eppington, below Richmond, she returned there as the wife of her childhood playmate. Jack Eppes, twenty-five, had a good mind, and later, as a member of Congress, would be an effective Virginia Republican.44
“Disgusting Proceedings”
On February 15, 1798, President Adams and Vice President Jefferson dined together. At one point in their conversation, Adams quoted a writer whose name Jefferson could no longer recall when he got home and jotted down what he could piece back together of the vignette. The quote was: “Anarchy did more mischief in one night than tyranny in an age.” To which Adams had added: “In Modern times we might say with truth that in France anarchy had done more harm in one night than all the despotism of their kings had ever done in 20. or 30. years.” The words certainly sound like they could have come from the fabulously blunt Adams. If we accept Jefferson’s transcription, this fragment well sums up their difference in outlook on the world. Of course, we don’t know whether Jefferson smiled, frowned, or concealed his emotions; whether he expressed a contrary opinion, or opted for silence.45
Writing from central Virginia, ex-Congressman Madison believed to a greater degree than did Jefferson, situated in the national capital, that war with France was likely. He even thought it possible that the Adams administration would enter into war with Spain at the same time. Long suspicious of Adams, Madison denounced him now as a “perfect Quixotte” whose brinksmanship could not be predicted.46
Then came more bad news. In March President Adams revealed that the mission to France had failed. The three envoys, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, and John Marshall of Virginia, were Federalists of various stripes—Gerry the most moderate. Three officials, referred to only as “X, Y, and Z,” had prevented them from meeting with Talleyrand, the foreign minister. X, Y, and Z were demanding a bribe, which the insulted U.S. team refused to give over. Pinckney and Marshall were sailing home, and only Gerry remained to se
e whether war could be averted.
As the partisan free-for-all continued, a wild sideshow took place in the House when Vermont Republican Matthew Lyon responded to an insult he had received from Connecticut Federalist Roger Griswold by spitting in his face. A few days later Griswold clobbered Lyon with a cane. While under attack, Lyon squirmed free and fought back. A former paper mill owner and printer, Lyon was over fifty; Griswold, a classical scholar at Yale, was thirty-five. It could only have looked ridiculous as Lyon eyed his surroundings and found a makeshift weapon. A satirist of the day, alluding to the Vermonter’s Irish origins, put the event into verse: “The knight of Hibernia, to avenge all his wrongs / In passing the fire, had snatch’d up the tongs.” Griswold’s hard wooden cane came in contact with Lyon’s metal fireplace tongs, as the two continued to tangle. Onlookers stood “quivering and quaking,” and unless the poet was exercising too much license, the eminent Dr. Rush was sought, to bandage the warring pair.
By the time of the inconclusive brawl, the Federalist majority had already voted to expel Lyon from Congress but did not obtain the necessary two-thirds. Jefferson fretted over the “disgusting proceedings” in a gossipy letter to Madison, privately hoping that the violence in Congress would “degrade the General government, and lead the people to lean more on their state governments.” Madison was no less dismayed by the lack of decorum, preferring that nasty business be removed from the public forum, the way honor-bound gentlemen ordinarily disposed of such matters. “No man ought to reproach another with cowardice, who is not ready to give proof of his own courage,” he submitted.47
Thus did the even-tempered Madison, presumed the least sadistic man in an age of revolutions, occasionally show the limits of his patience as well as a readiness to countenance dueling as the proper recourse for a certain breed of men. Sometimes the leadership corps of the early American republic—even the skilled constitutionalist Madison—faced unheroic choices. When he was talking to an intimate such as James Monroe, his words could have an acerbic edge indistinguishable from Jefferson’s. “If events should not be unpropitious to the Monarchical party,” he wrote after Monroe’s recall from France, “you may prepare yourself for still more wonderful indications of its spirit & views … Let us hope however that the tide of evil is nearly at its flood.” Monroe, as easily, approached Madison for advice when Adams publicly branded him “a disgraced minister.” He knew he could not address the perceived damage to his reputation by engaging in an affair of honor with Adams, as he might have done with Hamilton. “He is an old man & the Presidt,” Monroe explained, unnecessarily, to Madison.
Monroe allowed both Madison and Jefferson to see how impulsive he could be. What should he do? Ignore Adams’s insult? Or assume an accusatory attitude in a public venue, “ridicule his political career, shew it to be the consummation of folly & wickedness? Is the present a suitable time for this?” Jefferson counseled him to get back at the president by entering Congress and going on the public record—not the most noble reason to run for national office. Monroe concluded that such a course would only expose him to the “lesser knaves” who were stand-ins for Adams, and that would not deliver satisfaction.48
The politics of the 1790s must be viewed through the prism of “manly” pride. Refined comportment or reserve was, more than ever, a shell. Of those who would eventually constitute the Virginia Dynasty of presidents, Madison seems to have been the least prone to mood swings, though he was far less dispassionate than history records. Jefferson, who suffered migraines, was always prepared to enlist surrogates to publish attacks on his behalf. Monroe, at least prior to his presidency, was the most easily upset and the quickest to lock horns with a perceived enemy. A modern historian has described the political elite of this tortured decade almost as passengers on a runaway train: “They were constructing a machine already in motion, with few instructions and no precise model. The result was a politics of anxious extremes.” 49 The psychodrama enlarged as the vulgarity of attacks in print produced one-on-one violence.
“An American in Heart”
The Federalists deftly employed the XYZ Affair to expand their power at the national level. Jefferson predicted that if war with France came, the “Tory” point of view would sweep the nation. On March 22, 1798, he indicated to Madison that he thought Congress should expose the reckless approach of the executive to foreign policy. He proposed two ways to subvert the warmongers: prohibit the executive from arming for war, and have Congress adjourn so that its members could solicit the views of their constituents. This was another illustration of Jefferson’s belief that state governments should curb the excesses of the federal government. Madison fully concurred with his anxious friend in this instance, both as to the prohibition and as to the delaying tactic. But even before Jefferson heard back from his chief counselor, he dashed off a letter to another old friend who, he knew, recalled vividly what it was like to stand on the precipice of war. The next few weeks would be “the most eventful ever known since that of 1775,” he told a still-energetic seventy-six-year-old Edmund Pendleton.
We know that Jefferson was prone to hyperbole, but this was no sudden emotional flare. The danger of war over XYZ appeared great because the French government, buttressed by Napoleon’s recent victories, may actually have seen a benefit in taking on the United States, believing what the Federalists claimed with respect to the Republicans—that “an attachment to France and hatred to the Federal party, and not the love of their country [was] their first passion.” As on past occasions, Jefferson declined to write for public consumption, and as it was not Pendleton’s habit either, he urged Madison to do so.50
Though Madison did not comply in the near term, he could not rest either. He doubted that the Adams administration was being truthful in its dealings with Congress. The focus of his irritation was the presumption that Foreign Minister Talleyrand had been complicit in the insulting treatment America’s envoys received, especially the demand of a kickback. Talleyrand had recently spent two years in the United States. “Is it possible,” Madison posed to Jefferson, “that a man of sagacity as he is admitted to be, who has lived long eno. in this Country to understand the nature of our Govt … could have committed both his character and safety by such a proposition?”
Madison was prepared to listen to “evidence,” he said, but he was not to be moved by “infatuation”—which is what he deduced as he read the newspapers. Though ordinarily slow to embrace conspiracy theories, he went so far as to speculate that the Jay-ites in New York saw that their governor, seeking reelection, was in trouble because of the unpopularity of the treaty that bore his name; it was the eve of the election, and they had ample motive to exaggerate facts so as to influence a suggestible population. Monroe spent a night at Montpelier later that month and agreed with his host that the XYZ charges were greatly exaggerated. They were satisfied that envoys Pinckney and Marshall would meet “derision” when the full truth was known.51
In fact, though, the forty-two-year-old John Marshall sailed from Bordeaux aboard the Alexander Hamilton and received a tumultuous welcome when he returned home. While sharing a carriage from New York to Philadelphia with ardent Republican Edward Livingston, he admitted that the French people had no thought that war with America was brewing. The Marquis de Lafayette, recently released from prison, wrote to George Washington and appealed for calm. Nevertheless, the High Federalists continued to spread the word that the United States was under a very real threat of invasion.
Jefferson had not completely given up on Marshall, at least not yet. He hoped to have direct contact with him to see whether, like Elbridge Gerry, this envoy could keep an open mind about France. He assumed that Hamilton would coach Marshall on the tone to adopt to advance the party line, but he still had doubts that Marshall would follow Hamilton’s script to the letter. Although Jefferson was on hand to observe Marshall’s reception, the two Virginians were unable to meet in Philadelphia. Jefferson reported uneasily to Madison that a concourse of cavalry
had formed, a large crowd had turned out, and bells rang through the night.52
Marshall aimed to capitalize on this career-making moment, believing he could transcend party. Seeking a seat in Congress some months later, he advertised his qualities in the Virginia newspapers. “In heart and sentiment … I am an American,” he wrote proudly, steering a middle course. For his principled resistance to French intimidation, Marshall had become a national hero.
A young lawyer named John Thomson was deeply angered by what seemed to him a mania over Marshall. As “Curtius,” he published a series of letters in the Virginia Argus, demanding that the rising star of Virginia Federalism answer the charge that the ruling party had hijacked the term federalism while engaging in “a rancorous persecution of every enlightened republican.” How can you be “an American in heart,” he wrote, denouncing the candidate, when you possess principles “most warmly admired by persons who are Englishmen in heart and sentiment?” Marshall was on the fast track to high office, and “Curtius” felt it was incumbent upon him to explain himself first. In successive letters to the Argus, he mocked the “abject and oriental adulation which you have lately received,” and would not let it rest. “Vanity can be forgiven,” he posed, “but malignity cannot be excused.”
Either Marshall was liberal-minded or he was a Federalist tool—he could not have it both ways. To show the contrast between the parties, “Curtius” took as his model of republican decency the constant object of the Federalists’ anti-Gallicism, Albert Gallatin. After demanding an explanation of what it was that made Marshall a hero, he reversed his argument: Why was Gallatin not a hero? Why was he, instead, the convenient target of mean-spirited Federalists? “Mr. Gallatin has been persecuted with all the detestable rancour of envy and malice,” observed “Curtius”; and yet this brilliant man remained “serene in the midst of clamours,” “attached to the constitution because it is free, [attached] to the people because they are generous and amiable, and to the country because he has found in it, an asylum from oppression and misery.” For the opinion writer, a beautiful irony lay in his magnificent truth: “The conduct of Mr. Gallatin is his best vindication,” “Curtius” concluded. “The foreigner has defended the constitution against the attacks of native [born] Americans.” Perhaps the Federalists were “formidable in their numbers,” but they were iniquitous in their rule.53
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