A Magnificent Catastrophe
Page 18
In a tactical victory for Adams, his natural supporters—the moderates in his party—began taking a similar tack to their President’s. In an open breach with High Federalists, they joined Adams in embracing the decision to resume negotiations with France, and made it a major campaign issue. Adams referred to his peace mission as “the most glorious act of my life,” Fisher Ames complained bitterly in September. “His partisans boast of its popularity and that only a few like Hamilton and the Essex Junto condemn it.” Throughout the summer, Adams anxiously awaited word from his negotiators, hoping that reports of success might brighten his election prospects. The intelligence that he received remained encouraging but inconclusive.
Leading High Federalists monitored Adams’s words closely throughout the summer and perceived that they were directed as much against Hamilton and Pinckney as against Jefferson. “He everywhere denounces [High Federalists] as an oligarchish faction [that is] combining to drive him from office and to appoint Pinckney,” House Speaker Theodore Sedgwick complained. Adams’s whole plan, Ames warned in August, “is, by prating about impartiality, Americanism, liberty, and equality, to gull the weak among the Feds” and turn them against Hamilton, Pinckney, and the Essex Junto. Some leaders on both sides of the Federalist divide openly discussed breaking the party into two—one archconservative, one pragmatic. Inevitably they concluded that the American political system could not sustain a third party, however. The factions would fight for the party’s soul and unite to battle the Republicans. “Perhaps a party, whenever it thinks itself strong enough, naturally splits,” Ames mused. “Nothing but dread of its rival will bind it firmly enough together.”
As a warm spring turned into a hot summer, more Federalists took sides in their party’s increasingly bitter and public breakup. On the one side, many Federalists rallied to their embattled President as he defended his pragmatic course and reminded Americans of his long, patriotic service to the country. Even if they did not like him, Federalist leaders could not deny that Adams remained the party’s only viable popular candidate. Pinckney could win only by bootstrapping on to Adams in the North and capturing a few additional votes on his own in the South. “If under the present administration the country has prospered;” the High Federalist Congressman Robert Harper now wrote in an open letter to his constituents, “if peace has been preserved with honor during a conflict which has involved almost every nation except ourselves; if commerce has been protected, industry been made to flourish, public credit maintained, tranquility preserved at home, and the character of the nation raised abroad; I ask, what more could any administration have done? Where is the need for change?”
Harper may have simply been trying to preserve the façade of Federalist unity, but New York Governor John Jay and the respected Maryland jurist and former governor Thomas Johnson unequivocally took Adams’s side. “It really appears to me that the mission of our envoys to France has been treated with too much asperity,” Jay wrote in defense of Adams. “His attachment to the dictates of honor and good faith, even supposing it to have been too scrupulous, is amiable and praiseworthy.”
On the other side, more High Federalists began speaking out against Adams even at the risk of losing the presidency. “The public feeling is opposed to the censure of Mr. Adams in this quarter,” Cabot wrote from Massachusetts in July. “It is impossible, however, that Mr. Adams should govern as a Federal man and this must be seen presently by all sagacious men.”
Cabot and his crowd never cared about following public opinion; they wanted to lead it. As High Federalists, they sought to purge the party of Adams despite—indeed, perhaps in part because of—his popularity. In some respects, he represented a greater threat to them than Jefferson: Better the devil without than the devil within. In a letter that laid bare the High Federalists’ election strategy, Cabot had reminded Wolcott several months earlier about the “great pains” that leaders in their party had taken “to make it believed that the French revolutionary system was a war against real liberty and legitimate property in every country.” The strategy had helped the Federalists get elected and enact their policies. But following Adams’s peace overture, Cabot noted, “It is asked now, if this were true, would the heads of our nation be seen negotiating with France?” Federalists could not effectively invoke revolutionary France as a boogeyman if their own President was reaching out to its leaders. Expressing his final break with the President, Wolcott now wrote back to Cabot, “If General Pinckney is not elected, all good men will find cause to regret the present inaction of the Federal Party” against Adams.
Hamilton, who by this time wanted nothing more than to unseat Adams, saw the political landscape in much the same way as Cabot. Throughout New England, Adams remained popular with Federalists “of the second class,” as Hamilton contemptuously referred to those he deemed lesser lights within his own party. “The leaders of the first class” know better, he maintained in a letter to Wolcott. This state of affairs posed a problem for Hamilton’s plan of swinging the election to Pinckney through a combination of Federalist votes from the Northeast and favorite-son votes from South Carolina. If New England electors abandoned Pinckney to save Adams by casting their second votes for someone like John Jay, as happened to Pinckney’s brother in 1796, then either Jefferson or Adams would prevail. To prevent this from happening again, Hamilton decided to meet with leading New England Federalists and urge them to stick with Pinckney even at the risk of Adams’s loss.
Making the most of the short time remaining in his tenure as Inspector General of the Additional Army, Hamilton set out in June to bolster Pinckney and undermine Adams among potential Federalist electors in New England during a four-state tour ostensibly designed to bid farewell to the disbanding troops. Traveling in full military regalia, Hamilton planned to meet with Federalist leaders throughout the region. Surely they still deferred to him, he believed, even if Adams did not.
Any military purposes for Hamilton’s trip took a backseat to political ones. “The General did not come to disband the troops,” Abigail Adams explained in a letter to her son, Thomas. “His visit was merely an electioneering business, to feel the pulse of the New England states, and to impress those upon whom he could have any influence to vote for Pinckney and bring him on as president.” Her husband had heard as much from several of those subjected to Hamilton’s pleas. By this time, the First Lady was referring to Hamilton as “the little cock sparrow general” and Fisher Ames was mocking her as being “as complete a politician as any lady in the old French court.”
The General did review the troops at Oxford, Massachusetts—the Army’s northern base. The much-maligned soldiers mustered in dress parade to hear Hamilton deliver an emotional speech that some observers compared to Washington’s legendary farewell address to the Revolutionary Army—a tribute they scarcely deserved if even half of the stories about them had any merit. According to widely reported Republican accounts, these full-time soldiers had used their idle time to prey on the local citizenry without serving any meaningful purpose in the Quasi-War with France. Addressing the soldiers, however, Hamilton blamed their dismissal solely on Adams.
Hamilton’s other stops had purely political purposes. Adams could not win, Hamilton told Federalists in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Only a solid vote for Pinckney could hold the presidency for the party. Some listened; others balked. The high point for Hamilton surely came when the Essex Junto turned out in force for a gala banquet in his honor at Boston’s elegant Concert Hall. “At no public feast ever prevailed greater harmony, good humor, and public spirit,” one High Federalist newspaper reported. Hamilton hit the low point, however, when he tried to lobby Rhode Island Governor Arthur Fenner. “I then asked him what Mr. Adams had done that he should be tipped out the tail of the cart,” Fenner recalled telling Hamilton, adding “that my attachment for Mr. Adams was much greater now…that he had sent envoys to France…[and] had disbanded an unnecessary army.” When pressed by Hamilto
n, Fenner reported saying that he preferred even Jefferson to Pinckney, “for the British yoke I abhorred.” The Republican campaign to link High Federalists such as Hamilton and Pinckney with the British was working; at least Fenner seemed to believe the charge.
Ultimately, Hamilton’s trip did little more than harden positions within both Federalist camps. “I yesterday returned from an excursion through [four] of the [five] eastern states,” Hamilton wrote on July 1. “The greatest number of strong minded men in New England are not only satisfied of the expediency of supporting Pinckney, as giving the best chance against Jefferson, but even prefer him to Adams; yet in the body of that people there is a strong personal attachment to [the President].” If by New England’s “strong minded men” Hamilton meant the Essex Junto, then he was probably right—but in general New Englanders and their elected leaders were determined to stick by Adams.
Despite the division between High Federalists and moderates that threatened to tear apart their party from the top down, most New Englanders remained loyal to both the Federalist Party and Adams. High Federalists may have best represented their commercial and maritime interests in the national government but New Englanders had also grown to trust and respect Adams despite his quirks. He was their region’s hero of the Revolution and nothing that Hamilton could say about him would tarnish that reputation. The structure of Federalism in New England, complex as it was, simply rested on too firm a foundation for Hamilton’s gusts to shake it even as they wreaked havoc elsewhere. Certainly his belligerent style played poorly in the region. He bullied local leaders and belittled those who disagreed with him. “Electioneering topics were his principal theme,” one Adams supporter said of Hamilton’s visit. “In his mode of handling them, he did not appear to be the great general which his talents designate him.” Even Ames now conceded about Hamilton, “You know he is the most frank of men.”
As Adams, Hamilton, and their respective factions struggled for preeminence within Federalist ranks during the summer of 1800, Jefferson and his supporters brought added discipline to the Republican camp. Overturning the established political order by unseating an incumbent President in times of relative peace and prosperity required a concerted, committed effort by the opposition. Republicans’ shared dread of continued Federalist rule bound them ever more firmly together as the year progressed.
In private letters, Jefferson assessed his prospects. He felt buoyed by growing public disillusionment with Federalist policies. “The Alien and Sedition Acts have already operated in the south as powerful sedatives of the XYZ inflammation,” he wrote in 1799 to maverick politician Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. “In your quarter, where violations of principle are either less regarded or more concealed, the direct tax is likely to have the same effect and to excite inquires into the object of the enormous expenses and taxes we are bringing on.”
Despite all the good news for his party, however, in the late summer of 1800, when Jefferson projected the probable electoral votes of the various states, victory was still far from certain. “I have a letter from [Senator Pierce] Butler in which he supposes that the Republican [electoral] vote of North Carolina will be but a bare majority” of the state’s total, he wrote to Madison. North Carolina, with its district voting for electors, could split its vote between the parties. “South Carolina,” Jefferson continued, will be “unanimous either with them or against them, but not certainly which. Dr. [Benjamin] Rush and Burr give favorable accounts of Jersey. [Connecticut Republican leader Gideon] Granger and Burr even count with confidence on Connecticut, but that is impossible.” With New England in the Federalist column, the middle states split, and the Carolinas still in play at least for Pinckney, Jefferson could not count on discontent with Federalist policies translating into victory for him. “The unquestionable Republicanism of the American mind will break through the mist,” he assured Gerry, but it might take time.
In an overt gesture at active campaigning of the type that he regularly engaged in during the run-up to the election, in this same letter to Gerry, Jefferson set forth the “principles” that would guide his presidency. It offered a virtual election platform for the Republican ticket, various planks of which he regularly repeated in other letters during the course of the campaign. These principles, which Jefferson called “my political faith,” fit into three basic categories: restoring civil liberties; curbing the excessive growth and power of the national government, particularly of its executive branch; and protecting states’ rights. They became the chief Republican campaign themes. In announcing them, Jefferson sought to rebut Federalist charges that he would overturn the constitutional and religious order.
Jefferson began his letter with a vow: “I do then, with sincere zeal, wish an inviolable preservation of our present federal Constitution according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the states.” Federalists had violated the Constitution, Jefferson implied, and he would defend it. His presidency would rest on principles, while the Federalists simply sought power and their own economic gain. From this starting point, Jefferson went on to state his principles in stark, dramatic terms.
“I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another,” Jefferson wrote, “for freedom of the press and against any violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticism, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.” The former principle neatly distinguished Jefferson from New England Federalists, including Adams, who defended the established churches in their states against challenges from a growing body of ecclesiastic dissenters ranging from Baptist revivalists to avowed secularists. Voters knew that Jefferson authored his state’s 1786 Statute for Religious Freedom, which disestablished the Episcopal Church in Virginia. Whether or not it reflected Jefferson’s actual motives, casting the Statute as a hammer blow for the religious liberty of dissenting Christians rather than for a secular society put Jefferson’s position in its best light for America’s Christian majority. The latter principle reasserted Jefferson’s repudiation of the Sedition Acts and placed that opposition in hallowed Constitutional terms. Jefferson stood for civil liberties, Republicans asserted, and would rule on behalf of the people rather than for the special interests.
“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt,” Jefferson added. “I am for relying, for internal defense, on our militia solely, till actual invasion…and not for a standing army in time of peace, which may overawe the public sentiment.” He chose his words carefully. Jefferson opposed both the direct tax imposed by the Federalists in 1798 to finance the military buildup and the Additional Army, which he viewed as unnecessary and potentially dangerous. The national government also used tax revenue to repay its creditors, including bond speculators profiting from Hamilton’s controversial program of state-debt assumption by the federal government. To reassure these speculators—and Gerry, who had supported Hamilton’s program—Jefferson added about debt-assumption that “from the moment of its being adopted by the constituted authorities, I became religiously principled in the sacred discharge of it to the uttermost farthing.” As President, Jefferson promised to eliminate the need for the direct taxes by cutting future spending, especially on a standing army, rather than by reneging on prior government commitments. The election of 1800 would not overthrow property rights, he as much as assured Gerry.
“I am not for transferring all the powers of the states to the general government, and all those of that government to the executive branch,” Jefferson stressed. “Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government,” he explained in a subsequent letter. “I do verily believe, that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the United States (which principle…reduces us to a single consolidated government), it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.”
“These, my friend, are my principles,” Jefferson concluded. “They are unquestionably the principles of the great body of our fellow citizens.” While acknowledging his support for republican rule in France, Jefferson took pains to deny having undue allegiance to any foreign government. “The first object of my heart is my own country,” he told Gerry. “I have not one farthing of interest nor one fiber of attachment out of it, nor a single motive of preference of any one nation to another but in proportion as they are more or less friendly to us.” Although Jefferson typically urged recipients of his political correspondence to keep the contents in strict confidence, he placed no such restriction on Gerry regarding the principles set forth in this letter. These, he wrote, “I fear not to avow.”
Unlike in 1796, when Jefferson remained aloof from the politicking on his behalf, four years of Federalist rule under Adams convinced him that Republicans must win in 1800. Consequently, despite his personal distaste for campaigning, Jefferson supported Republican polemicists, distributed partisan literature, and wrote a steady stream of highly political letters. “Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them,” he wrote to his daughter, Martha, early in 1800, yet he was already deeply engaged in the presidential campaign. His involvement in it only deepened as the election approached.