33. TJ to JM, June 2, 1793; JM to TJ, June 13 and July 22, 1793, RL, 1:778, 783, 794–95; TJ to Monroe, May 5, 1793, PTJ, 25:661–62. Nicholas confirmed for Madison that Randolph’s views on France were not different from theirs, and Madison continued to defend Randolph and Nicholas by blaming “tainted sources” for any errors in Randolph’s report on the sentiments of Virginians. In September, though, he straddled the issue, defending Nicholas as a sound Republican while listing possible reasons that might “derogate from a full confidence in” Nicholas. See JM to TJ, July 30 and September 2, 1793, RL, 1:796–97, 816.
34. Genet to Washington, August 13, 1793, PGW-P, 13:436–37; TJ to Genet, August 16, 1793, PTJ, 26:684.
35. DeConde, Entangling Alliance, 214–16, 224–26, 235–39, 248–50; “The Recall of Edmond Charles Genet,” and supporting documentation, PTJ, 26:685ff.; TJ to Isaac Shelby (first governor of Kentucky), November 6, 1793, PTJ, 27:312. Cynical in their assessment of the Republicans and too quick to credit or condone Hamilton, Elkins and McKitrick nevertheless present a thoroughgoing account of the politics surrounding the neutrality proclamation and the furor over Genet. See Age of Federalism, chap. 8. Contemptuous of Hamilton’s motives, Malone predictably praises Jefferson as fair and realistic, “wise and patriotic,” throughout this trying period. See Malone, 3:90–131.
36. Douglas B. Chambers, Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia (Jackson, Miss., 2005), 131–32; Brant, 3:380; TJ to JM, June 2, 1793, RL, 2:779, and several references to Billey in the Madison-Jefferson correspondence of 1793. Douglas R. Egerton says of the decision to leave Billey in Philadelphia, “Madison was able to flatter himself a humanitarian even while turning a small profit.” Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (New York, 2009), 131.
37. Annals of Congress, 2nd Cong., 2nd sess., 1414–15; Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, N.Y., 2001), chap. 4. Pennsylvania had had a Gradual Emancipation Act in force since 1780, after which time children born of slaves were free at birth.
38. TJ to JM, September 8 and September 12, 1793, RL, 2:818–19; Malone, 3:472–73. The classic treatment on the epidemic is J. H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 (Philadelphia, 1993).
39. JM to James Madison, Sr., May 4, 1794, PJM, 15:322–33; Brant, 3:385; Ketcham, 375–76.
40. Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 63–66; Andrew Burstein, Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of America’s Romantic Self-Image (New York, 1999), 176–80.
41. Spectator no. 125, July 24, 1711, in Crissy and Markley edition (Philadelphia, 1851), 3:90–94.
42. William Wyche, Party Spirit: An Oration (New York, 1794), 8–15, 19; though Wyche’s address was given in the spring of 1794, it reflected a state of affairs amply evidenced in public statements of 1793 as well; advertisement for its publication in American Minerva (New York), June 30, 1794; New-York Gazette, December 21, 1747; Boston Evening-Post, March 23, 1772; [Donald Fraser], Party Spirit Exposed, or Remarks on the Times (New York, 1799), 5–6; Pendleton to TJ, July 22, 1776, PTJ, 1:472; “Impartiality, No. 2, To the Mechanics of New-York,” Loudon’s Register, January 18, 1793; “Principles of the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania,” in Middlesex Gazette [Middletown, Conn.], July 27, 1793; Mirrour [Concord, N.H.], January 6, 1794; American Apollo [Boston], January 9, 1794; Philadelphia Gazette, April 19, 1794; Medley [New Bedford, Mass.], October 31, 1794; John Adams to Abigail Adams, December 28, 1792, Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society (http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams); Franklyn George Bonn, Jr., “The Idea of Political Party in the Thought of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,” Ph. D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1964, chap. 2, showing the strict political usage of faction and the occasional nonpolitical usage of party; Washington Irving, “The Poor Devil Author,” in Tales of a Traveller, ed. Judith Giblin Haig (Boston, 1987), 92.
43. National Gazette, January 12, 1793; Gazette of the United States, March 16, 1793; New-York Journal article first cited, as reprinted in the National Gazette, September 4, 1793; New-York Journal, August 13, 1794.
44. Gazette of the United States, June 19, 1793; Federal Intelligencer, January 10 and January 12, 1795. An early example of the use of Federalist in its eventual party context is a short piece placed in the Federal Orrery, published in Boston on October 20, 1794, which promoted the reelection of the Hamiltonian Fisher Ames; it was signed by “A TRUE FEDERALIST.” In this vein, see Gordon S. Wood’s assessment of Ames as one who had lost confidence in the people, but not in the Revolution. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), 230–31.
45. Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2001), esp. 62–78.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Effects of Whiskey on Reputation, 1794–1795
1. Brant, 3:389–95; Henry S. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1858), 2:223–27; JM to TJ, March 2, 1794, RL, 2:832.
2. Loudon’s Register, January 20, 1794.
3. Ketcham, 360.
4. George Nicholas to JM, February 9, 1794, PJM, 15:256.
5. Stuart Leibiger, Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 1999), 182–96.
6. JMB, 2:913, 918; TJ to Randolph, February 3, 1794; to John Adams, May 27, 1795, PTJ, 28:15, 363.
7. There is nice irony not only in Jefferson’s professions of apathy toward politics but also in Congressman Smith’s performance and Jefferson’s reaction to it. Just prior to the start of Jefferson’s conflict with Hamilton, the question had arisen in Congress as to who should perform as chief executive if both president and vice president died or were incapacitated. At that time Smith suggested that the secretary of state should step in and fill the position.
8. JM to TJ, March 2 and March 9, 1794; TJ to JM, April 3, 1794, RL, 2:832–35, 839; “Vacancy in the Presidency,” Annals of Congress, January 10, 1791.
9. JM to TJ, April 28, 1794, RL, 2:841–42.
10. JM to TJ, October 5, 1794, RL, 2:847, 857; Brant, 3:404–12; Ketcham, 376–83; Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York, 2006), 30–33. Despite her husband’s prominence, Dolley was “read out” of Meeting and no longer considered a Quaker after her marriage to the non-Quaker Madison.
11. Washington to Hamilton, November 2, 1796, PAH, 20:365. The increasingly callous Madison needed to satisfy his and Jefferson’s bloodlust in imagining their enemy squirming. And so, without knowing precisely what had transpired and unable to be objective, Madison wrote Jefferson that Hamilton had suffered “great mortification” when Jay was selected.
12. JM to TJ, April 14, April 28, and May 11, 1794, RL, 2:840–43; Harper, American Machiavelli, 130–42; Sandra Frances VanBurkleo, “ ‘Honour, Justice, and Interest’: John Jay’s Republican Politics and Statesmanship on the Federal Bench,” Journal of the Early Republic 4 (Autumn 1984): 239–74; Francis X. J. Coleman, “John Jay on War,” Journal of the History of Ideas 43 (January–March 1982): 145–51; Samuel Flagg Bemis, Jay’s Treaty: A Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (New Haven, Conn., 1962), 253ff.; Moncure Daniel Conway, Omitted Chapters of History Disclosed in the Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph (New York, 1888), 220ff.
13. Monroe to TJ, May 27, 1794, PTJ, 28:86–87; Brant, 3:400.
14. General Advertiser, June 17, 1794. Bache’s sense of enterprise may have been inherited from his grandfather, colonial America’s most successful printer, but his patriotic optimism was a blend of Jefferson and Paine. As secretary of state, Jefferson had had doubts about Bache. He did not consider Bache’s newspaper as accomplished as Freneau’s National Gazette; but he came to feel for the contentious editor, fated to acquire more enemies than his famous grandfather
and yet enjoy little of his financial success.
15. Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2001), 86–96; James Tagg, Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora (Philadelphia, 1991), 101–2, 135–36 and passim. On the French Revolution and accelerated time, see Matthew Rainbow Hale, “On Their Tiptoes: Political Time and Newspapers during the Advent of the Radicalized French Revolution, circa 1792–1793,” Journal of the Early Republic 29 (Summer 2009): 191–218.
16. Charles Royster, Light-Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution (New York, 1981), chap. 4.
17. Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York, 1986), chap. 13 and passim; Ketcham, 354.
18. Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau, “George Washington and the Reputation of Edmund Randolph,” Journal of American History 73 (June 1986): 21–23; [Edmund Randolph], Germanicus (1794), in Early American Imprints (Evans), no. 27597, quote at 4.
19. JM to TJ, February 15, 1795, RL, 2:852, 867, 873; Leibiger, Founding Friendship, 191–92; Brant, 3:415–22. Having been through a political conversion, and having overplayed his hand in facing down the whiskey rebels, Henry Lee took personal offense at Madison’s public argument about the use of “self created” as a derogatory term. Lee believed that Madison had been making “frequent remarks” to his detriment, and he could not be convinced otherwise. When he composed his memoirs, the Virginia general would have his revenge only indirectly—striking at Jefferson and ignoring Madison.
20. TJ to JM, December 28, 1794, RL, 2:867. His ominous words on a possible dismemberment began: “That separation which was perhaps a very distant and problematical event, is now near.”
21. Henry Adams, The Life of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia, 1879); Raymond Walters, Jr., Albert Gallatin: Jeffersonian Financier and Diplomat (New York, 1957), 121–22; JM to TJ, January 31, 1796, RL, 2:917; Henry M. Dater, “Albert Gallatin, Land Speculator,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 26 (June 1939): 21–38. Gallatin’s A Sketch of the Finances of the United States was published in New York in 1796.
22. Bemis, Jay’s Treaty, 41–43, 206–13.
23. Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (New York, 1971), 117–22.
24. March 26, 1795, PJM, 15:497–98; TJ to JM, December 28, 1794, and February 5, 1795, RL, 2:849, 866, 871. A suddenly needy-sounding Jefferson (“I have past [sic] my winter almost alone”) invited James and Dolley, the latter of whom had yet to see Montpelier, to visit him at Monticello.
25. JM to TJ, January 11 and March 23, 1795, RL, 2:869, 876.
26. Bemis, Jay’s Treaty, 232–51.
27. On Hamilton’s goal to emulate England but also to exceed it in economic muscle, see Doron Ben-Atar, “Alexander Hamilton’s Alternative: Technology Piracy and the Report on Manufactures,” in Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., Federalists Reconsidered (Charlottesville, Va., 1998), 41–60.
28. TJ to JM, December 28, 1794; JM to TJ, March 23, 1795, RL, 2:868; 875–76.
29. TJ to JM, April 27, 1795, RL, 2:877.
30. Adams to TJ, November 21, 1794; TJ to Adams, February 6, 1795; to Mann Page, August 30, 1795, PTJ, 28:207–8, 261, 440–41. Shortly after his midcareer retirement began, Jefferson had devised a standard for venturing political opinion and then promptly denying any interest in continuing to have an impact on public matters. To the president: “My opinion of the British government is, that nothing will force them to do justice but the loud voice of their people, & that this can never be excited but by distressing their commerce. But I cherish tranquillity too much, to suffer political things to enter my mind at all.” TJ to Washington, May 14, 1794, PTJ, 28:75. Like Adams, Jefferson and Washington talked in detail about plants and seeds and soil and dung.
31. TJ to Cosway, September 8, 1795, PTJ, 28:455–56.
32. [Edmund Randolph], A Vindication of Mr. Randolph’s Resignation (Philadelphia, 1795), quotes at 6–7, 78. He said he wished, even now, for the name of Washington to remain “untainted by the suspicion of being a favourer of party”; but of course, if Randolph still hoped to have his reputation restored, he would not have vilified the only person who had the power to do that.
33. The authoritative biography of Pickering is Gerald H. Clarfield, Timothy Pickering and the American Republic (Pittsburgh, 1980).
34. Giles to TJ, December 20, 1795; “Notes on Edmund Randolph’s Vindication,” and TJ to Giles, December 31, 1795, PTJ, 28:558–59, 563–67. Giles provoked Jefferson with these words: “The Alarmists have commenced a most violent and unmerciful attack upon Mr. Randolph’s vindication, and no doubt will keep it up, but no estimate can yet be formed of its effect upon the public mind.”
35. JM to TJ, January 10, 1796, RL, 2:907; JM to Monroe, January 26, 1796, PJM, 16:204.
36. A number of Virginians weighed in, buoyed by so powerful a critique of the administration. Jefferson needed, on some level, to both gloat and moralize, having referred to Randolph’s efforts to pursue a “middle line” as “immoral,” when Randolph left him to battle Hamilton alone in cabinet meetings. Madison kept a close watch on the impact of the pamphlet. Joseph Jones wrote him that the Vindication was bound to make an “impression.” See TJ to JM, November 26, 1795; JM to TJ, December 27, 1795, RL, 2:901, 904; Randolph to JM, November 1, 1795; Joseph Jones to JM, February 4, 1796, PJM, 16:117, 211.
37. [Edmund Randolph], Germanicus (1794), in Early American Imprints (Evans), no. 27597, quotes at 8, 67, 72; Conway, Omitted Chapters of History Disclosed in the Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph, 359–61. For an excellent treatment of the value of classical antecedents on American political life, see Eran Shalev, Rome Reborn on Western Shores: Historical Imagination and the Creation of the American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2009).
38. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979); John F. Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1988), 228–30, 459, 462. In the case of Randolph and the Fauchet letter, Washington was told that one of the intercepted dispatches rebuked him for his handling of the Whiskey Rebellion. Confronted with the challenge to his reputation, Washington took the bait, as he had when Hamilton exaggerated the rebels’ threat. He imagined a conspiracy against him. Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau has pointed out that Washington underlined those portions of the questionable dispatches from Fauchet that painted him in a negative light. Fauchet had cast the president as Hamilton’s dupe, leading a grand army against poor farmers simply to augment his administration’s power. The Conway comparison is credible, because in both instances the attacks involved Washington’s performance as a military commander. The suggestion that Randolph might have spread this information to Fauchet was thoroughly humiliating to the president and revived all of his earlier resentments about “secret enemies” under his command. Tachau, “George Washington and the Reputation of Edmund Randolph,” 23, 26.
39. JM to Monroe, January 26, 1796, PJM, 16:204.
40. Henry’s stated rationale for declining was fatherhood: “My domestic situation pleads strongly against a removal to Philadelphia, having no less than eight children by my present wife.” See James M. Elson, comp., Patrick Henry in His Speeches and Writings and in the Words of His Contemporaries (Lynchburg, Va., 2007), 167.
41. William Howard Adams, Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life (New Haven, Conn., 2003), 257–59.
42. Hamilton to Bradford, June 13, 1795, PAH, 18:374. The assertive, combative Hamilton was not loved by all Federalists. Take Secretary of War Henry Knox, probably the general officer most trusted by Washington during the Revolution. Just as he had earlier angered Jefferson by his intrusions into State Department matters, Hamilton alienated the accommodating Knox when he supplanted the War Department in the government’s response to the Whiskey Rebellion by having the procurement of military supplies transferred to Treasury. It was the reason Kn
ox left the cabinet and returned to Maine—to a home coincidentally named “Montpelier.” See Knox entry in online edition of American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 1999).
43. Hamilton to Nicholson, July 20, 1795; “The Defence No. 1,” July 22, 1795, PAH, 18:471–74, 479–83.
44. Todd Estes, The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture (Amherst, Mass., 2006), 94–103.
45. Columbian Centinel [Boston], January 17, 1795, apparently originating in Hartford, Conn.; Weekly Register [Norwich, Conn.], February 17, 1795.
46. [Alexander James Dallas], Letters of Franklin (Philadelphia, 1795), esp. 7, 20, 27–29; [Dallas], Features of Mr. Jay’s Treaty (Philadelphia, 1795), 12, 25. The letters were serially published in the newspapers first. Advertisement in the Aurora announcing publication of the collected Letters of Franklin in pamphlet form, July 30, 1795.
47. “Peter Porcupine,” A Little Plain English, Addressed to the People of the United States, on the Treaty Negotiated with His Britannic Majesty (Philadelphia, 1795), Preface, 6–9, 89, 101–2; Brant, 3:417. A Little Plain English was published one month after Letters of Franklin appeared as a pamphlet.
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