American Aurora

I sometimes received visits from Mr. Bache … always with pleasure, because [he is a man] … of abilities and of principles the most friendly to liberty & our present form of government. Mr. Bache has another claim on my respect, as being the grandson of Dr. Franklin, the greatest man & ornament of the age and country in which he lived.

[Benjamin Bache’s Philadelphia Aurora] is the highest and, in my opinion, best political paper.

JUST PUBLISHED and for sale at the office of the AURORA (Price one-eighth of a dollar.) An Expostulatory letter, TO GEN. WASHINGTON (Late President of the United States) ON THE SUBJECT OF HIS CONTINUING A PROPRIETOR OF SLAVES. Written by a citizen of Liverpool …

George Washington reads the Philadelphia Aurora, and George Washington absolutely detests it. If he sees this advertisement for a pamphlet against his slaveholding, he can recall several Aurora editorials on the same subject,⁸⁴ one of which, according to Thomas Jefferson, made Washington slam the paper on the floor with a “damn.”⁸⁵

The Aurora published its first series of anti-Washington articles around the beginning of 1793 (the year Washington declared American neutrality in the war between Britain and France). Washington’s birthday was to be celebrated on February 21, and on January 2nd the Aurora published a mock advertisement for an American poet laureate. The humor was bitter:

TO THE NOBLESSE AND COURTIERS
OF THE UNITED STATES …

WANTED against the 21st of February, a person … who is willing to offer up his services to government as Poet laureate … One thing … will be certainly required, a dexterity in composing birthday odes … [C]ertain monarchical prettiness must be highly extolled, such as LEVIES, DRAWING ROOMS, STATELY NODS INSTEAD OF SHAKING HANDS, TITLES OF OFFICE, SECLUSION FROM THE PEOPLE, &C …⁸⁶

Benny contrasted the pomp and pretentiousness of George Washington with the simplicity and modesty of his grandfather and with the egalitarianism of the French Revolution. Why not celebrate Ben Franklin’s birthday?

[I]n ascribing all the honors and glory to one man, you deprive … others … of their portion … Shall that venerable sage (who has since gained another immortality) … who … tamed the rage of thunder and of despotism, shall that philosopher who most contributed to extend the conquests of liberty over the whole earth, shall he be assigned to oblivion? … [S]hall his shade bear witness to our ingratitude? No, illustrious FRANKLIN … freemen cannot drop the curtain of indifference upon your services …

Turn your eyes, me brethren, to France … [Y]ou will see none but [equal] citizens, nothing but equality, the substance and not the shadow of democratic spirit—[A]re there any levees [audiences] in France since the downfall of monarchy? Are there any birthday celebrations and titles of office there? Does any officer of her government refuse to mix with the citizens? Does the pomp and splendour and distance of royalty cloath any officer acting under the republic?⁸⁷

Shortly before the celebration of Washington’s birthday, the Aurora published a letter to Benny Bache which included:

For the remainder of Washington’s time as President, Benny described Washington’s comportment as “that of a monarch,”⁸⁹ his governance as the “apish mimickry of Kingship,”⁹⁰ citing his formal Tuesday-afternoon court-style public receptions (“levees”) at the President’s House,⁹¹ his “pompous carriages, splendid feasts, and tawdry gowns,”⁹² his “creamed coloured coach, drawn by six bay horses … attended by a wond’rous number of servants in livery,”⁹³ and his encouragement of the public celebration of his birthday.⁹⁴

In 1795, after Washington signed the Jay Treaty with England (which Thomas Jefferson described as an “infamous act which is really nothing more than a treaty of alliance between England & the Anglomen of this country against the legislature & people of the United States”⁹⁵), the Aurora widened the accusations.

With the observation that Washington’s “new character ought to … shake off the fetters that his name has hitherto imposed on the minds of freemen,”⁹⁶ the Aurora characterized Washington as anti-French and pro-British,⁹⁷ charged that “[t]he administration of our government has been a series of errors or of crimes,”⁹⁸ revealed that the U.S. Treasury had unlawfully advanced “expense” monies to Washington far exceeding the presidential salary he had supposedly waived (“the world was led to believe that, as President, he received no compensation; they are now permitted to suspect…”),⁹⁹ urged the President’s immediate resignation (“let no flatterer persuade you to rest one hour longer at the helm of state”¹⁰⁰), and published repeated calls for his impeachment.¹⁰¹

Not content merely to criticize Washington’s presidency, the Aurora attacked his leadership during the American Revolution, describing his mental faculties as “unadorned by extraordinary features or uncommon capacity,” his politics as an “inoffensive newtrality,” and his elevation to revolutionary war commander as an act of compromise (“because you were in principle neither a Briton nor an American, a whig nor a tory”).¹⁰² It portrayed Washington as lukewarm toward independence (“I ask you, sir, to point out ONE SINGLE ACT which unequivocally proves you a FRIEND to the INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA”), incompetent as a military leader (“[T]here is scarcely an action which stamps your character as a consummate General”), and deserving little credit for the final outcome of the war.¹⁰³ It questioned how the owner of a thousand slaves could be the symbol of freedom (“[I]t must appear a little incongruous then that Liberty’s Apostle should been seen with chains in his hands, holding men in bondage”)¹⁰⁴ and republished some wartime correspondence (“I love my king; you know I do …”) which purportedly discredited his patriotism.¹⁰⁵

Benjamin Bache and his Philadelphia Aurora led the journalistic assault on Washington. Other newspapers merely copied. As one historian has written, “[I]t is unnecessary to investigate the motives of dozens of independent journalists and critics in order to reach some understanding of the nature of the assault on Washington. It is unnecessary, because one man alone—Benjamin Franklin Bache—either wrote or published a vast majority of the attacks.”¹⁰⁶

George Washington suffered from the Aurora’s verbal onslaught, protesting that “[Bache’s] papers are outrages on common decency,”¹⁰⁷ and “void of truth and fairness.”¹⁰⁸ He complained

By the end of the winter of 1795/96, Washington suggested to then Vice President John Adams that he would not seek the presidency in the coming autumn election.¹¹⁰ Washington explained his readiness to leave office as a “disinclination to be longer buffited in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers.”¹¹¹ Early in May, preparing a first draft of his Farewell Address, Washington included some words (deleted from the final text on Alexander Hamilton’s advice) bemoaning that

On September 17, Washington signed a public announcement he would leave the presidency. Two days later, a Philadelphia newspaper carried this Farewell Address.¹¹⁵ When he actually left office the following March, the Philadelphia Aurora proclaimed,

What part did the Aurora play in Washington’s decision to leave the presidency? Dr. Benjamin Rush (a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a confidant of John Adams, and a highly respected Philadelphian) reports:

So, today, this 9th day of March in 1798, George Washington is in retirement “under his vine and fig tree” at Mount Vernon, though, even out of office, he claims “Mr. Bache … is no more than the Agent or tool of those who are endeavouring to destroy the confidence of the people in the officers of Government,”¹²⁰ and, only a month ago, he described the Aurora as “cowardly, illiberal and assassin-like,” as offering “malignant falsehood,” and as attempting to “destroy all confidence in those who are entrusted with the Administration …”¹²¹

Despite it all, George Washington continues to read the Aurora, and, today as every day, he can find advertisements for works which disparage his administration. Others from today’s Aurora are:

With a bit of help from Thomas Jefferson,¹²² Aurora writer Jimmy Callender (the “renegade”) published last June his History of the United States for 1796¹²³ and more recently his Sketches of the History of America, two works which completely shattered the image of Washington’s most important cabinet member, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.

In his History of the United States for 1796, Jimmy revealed that, while Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton transferred sizable sums to a convicted securities swindler, James Reynolds, suggesting that Hamilton used Reynolds to speculate in the very treasury certificates that Hamilton was supposed to be regulating.¹²⁴ The public outcry demanded an answer, so Hamilton gave two, first in July through John Fenno’s Gazette of the United States¹²⁵ and then in August through his own pamphlet,¹²⁶ admitting he had paid money to James Reynolds but claiming the money was not to speculate in treasury certificates but rather to pay James Reynolds’ blackmail demands for adultery Hamilton had committed with James Reynolds’ wife.

To the Federalists’ dismay, Hamilton’s confession of marital infidelity precluded their party leader from ever seeking high elective office, but what was even more distressing, the confession didn’t vindicate the former secretary. The wife in question, Maria Reynolds, insisted her honor was quite intact and that Hamilton’s confession merely reflected an ongoing conspiracy between Hamilton and her husband, James (whom she divorced). As Thomas Jefferson observed of Hamilton, “his willingness to plead guilty to adultery seems rather to have strengthened than weakened the suspicions that he was in truth guilty of the speculations.”¹²⁷ As Jimmy Callender argued, “So much correspondence could not refer exclusively to wenching … No man of common sense will believe that it did. Hence it must have implicated some connection still more dishonourable, in Mr. Hamilton’s eyes, than that of incontinency … [I]t respected certificate speculations.”¹²⁸

In all events, Jimmy would not go away. Last month, he published his Sketches of the History of America, including an analysis of Hamilton’s pamphlet and the infallible conclusion:

So was Hamilton fooling with the wife or the money? Difficult to say. Hamilton would best have heeded Poor Richard’s advice:

Benny Bache is Tom Paine’s publisher in America, including Tom Paine’s thirty-six-page Letter to George Washington. In this “letter,” the great pamphleteer of the American Revolution charges that George Washington was an incompetent commander in chief of the American Revolution and that America owes its independence to the intervention of France:

Washington told John Adams that Paine’s “letter” was the most insulting letter he ever received. “He must have been insane to write so,” John Adams wrote his wife, Abigail.¹³²

Benny Bache also publishes former U.S. Minister to France James Monroe’s 407-page book, A View of the Conduct of the Executive …¹³³ This book argues that once George Washington became President, he turned his back on America’s French ally by signing the infamous Jay Treaty of 1795, which gave Britain many privileges at the expense of France. As Washington’s Ambassador to France, James Monroe became so incensed with Washington’s anti-French behavior that he wrote some critical articles for Benny Bache to publish in the Philadelphia Aurora. Benny tried to mask Monroe’s authorship behind the anonymous heading “From a Gentlemen in Paris to His Friend in the City,”¹³⁴ but Washington uncovered the truth and fired James Monroe.¹³⁵ Monroe’s View of the Conduct of the Executive is a public response to George Washington. It is also a powerful retaliation.

Another Benny Bache publication is A Letter to George Washington … by Jasper Dwight of Vermont.¹³⁶ This forty-eight-page pamphlet argues that George Washington’s Farewell Address offered warnings against dissent (“faction”) and against foreign entanglements merely to forestall criticism of Washington’s treaty relations with Britain and France.

Washington’s Farewell Address suggested, “[T]he common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it in the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.” In it, Washington warned, “[B]e deaf to such as would sever you from your brethren and connect you with aliens.”

Jasper Dwight of Vermont answers, “[Y]ou pronounced an anathema against all combination and association because a few … dared to assert their own opinions in opposition to yours …” Dwight asks, “Are men to remain silent until called upon by their government agents? Who are they that the constitution appoints to restrain private deliberation and mark the line beyond which freedom becomes sedition? Where is the law that forbids the exercise of opinion and restrains the conscience from its honesty?”

Washington’s Farewell Address asks, “Why, by interweaving our destiny with any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest humor or caprice? ‘Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world …”

Jasper Dwight of Vermont answers that Washington himself executed the infamous Jay Treaty with England; “Whatever may have stimulated you to the execution of such a treaty, it is evident the advice you have here offered to your fellow citizens, with regard to foreign connections, conveys a tacit condemnation of that measure … [A] short time prior to the agitation of the British Treaty [the Jay Treaty], it should not be forgotten that the British Cabinet ha[d] issued a secret order to their cruisers to seize all American vessels which they should meet bound for France, that some hundreds of them were actually seized … The British Treaty … was the price [America paid for] your fears … and the sacrifice of our relations with France was the return [quid pro quo] for the repeal of the British order … When we fought for our Freedom … France fought for us; we had her navy to protect us, her valorous generals to direct us … [W]e have derived the most signal advantages from the alliance of France … [T]hat obligation has never been repaid …”

Jasper Dwight and I are the same. That is, “Jasper Dwight” is a pen name for William Duane. “Of Vermont” is almost true, but Vermont was not a state when I was born there in 1760 and during the time I lived there (until I was five).

My father, John Duane, fled the miserable life of the Catholic in British-ruled Ireland in order to settle with my mother on the American frontier near Lake Champlain. This area later became part of Vermont.

My father was a farmer and a surveyor who came to America for a better life but found himself fighting the British monarch on the American frontier, defending French claims to land and trapping rights. That was the French and Indian War which ended in 1763.¹³⁷

It was an “Indian” war because both sides stirred up the Indians, and, one day in 1765, some of those Indians ambushed and killed my father. Mother and I fled to New York and Philadelphia. Six years later, when I was eleven, we returned to Ireland.¹³⁸

Two summers ago, at the age of thirty-six, now married with children, I returned to America with my wife, Catherine, our now fifteen-year-old son, William John, our daughter, Kate, and our youngest child, Patrick. I take work where I can get it, and I am writing part-time for Benny Bache and his Philadelphia Aurora. But it isn’t easy. No one forgets my Washington criticism, and Federalists denounce me as “Jasper Dwight.”

One more word about the French and Indian War and about the death of my father at the hands of the Indians … Just about a year ago, Benny Bache’s Philadelphia Aurora accused George Washington of a heinous crime back in 1754:

Two decades before the American Revolution (in the spring of 1754), George Washington was a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant colonel of Virginia militia, leading his men along the colony’s western frontier to protect Virginian land claims (including his own) from the encroachment of French Canadian trappers. Hearing some Frenchmen were in his vicinity and ignoring the fact that France and Britain were then at peace, young Colonel Washington led an early-morning ambush of what proved to be a peaceful ambassadorial delegation from the French governor of Quebec (to warn Americans off the disputed land). On that morning of May 28th, George Washington killed the Governor’s emissary, a lieutenant named Jumonville, as he was reading the governor’s message, and Washington allowed his Indian guides to scalp several Frenchmen who had accompanied the ambassador.

Young George Washington’s attack on this peaceable French delegation and his acquiescence to the butchering of French soldiers were atrocities that started America’s French and Indian War, drawing French and British soldiers to the American frontier and inflaming the Indians who ultimately killed my father.¹⁴⁰

Not long after Lieutenant Jumonville’s murder, his half brother, Captain Coulon de Villiers, led French soldiers in an assault on Washington’s forces at Fort Necessity. The troops surrounded the fort and only agreed to release Washington after he signed a confession—for all the world to see—admitting to the “assassination” of the French governor’s peaceful emissary. This was “the Jumonville murder”!¹⁴¹

In Thursday’s Gazette of the U. States, Mr. John Fenno applied the epithet of Renegade to one of the Correspondents [Jimmy Callender] in the Aurora whose name he inserted at full length and who is supposed to have recently bestowed upon him some decent drubbing in this paper. For this time, no personal retort shall be made on Mr. Fenno himself, unless in his editorial capacity where he is undoubtedly fair game. But we are determined to return blow for blow and to stick closely by his Gazette … [W]e beg leave to ask him this plain question: Whether one of his principal correspondents, if not the principal of his correspondents, is not an infamous, swindling jobber in lottery tickets, a wretch who has cheated every one who would trust him and who is equally divested of reputation and of probity.

Though Benny Bache won’t admit it, “renegade” is a good word for forty-year-old Jimmy Callender. A poet whose passions often end in anger, a family man with too much love for the bottle, this Scotsman is caught between political writing that doesn’t pay and a wife and four children he can no longer support.¹⁴² Yet there’s no denying the power of his pen.

Jimmy first used that pen in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the early 1790s, to rebuke British tax collectors for abusing Scottish brewers, but he crossed the line in 1792 (the year George III issued royal proclamations against seditious writings) with his eighty-page pamphlet Political Progress of Britain, condemning British rule in Scotland and lauding America for choosing to revolt.¹⁴³ His words struck with a power only equaled by Tom Paine’s Rights of Man.

Two weeks after those royal proclamations, the British Lord Advocate and the Edinburgh deputy sheriff were fast on Jimmy’s trail, charging him with sedition and scheduling a trial that Jimmy failed to attend. The court then outlawed him, and, by April of 1793, Jimmy was aboard the ship Mary John, in full retreat toward the Delaware River.¹⁴⁴

Today, Jimmy Callender writes for the Philadelphia Aurora, but the pay simply isn’t enough.¹⁴⁵ Jimmy has moved his family onto Philadelphia’s docks,¹⁴⁶ drinks too heavily, and asks friends for handouts.¹⁴⁷ As Poor Richard said,

Some family matters … Today, in the U.S. Senate, John Adams puts forth the nomination of his son, John Quincy Adams,

More family matters … Benny’s wife, Peggy,¹⁵⁰ is pregnant. This will be their fourth. The first three are boys, Franklin, six, Richard, four, and Benjamin, two. Poor Richard said,

Benny Bache first met Peggy Bache (née Markoe) in the spring of 1788, following his graduation (1787)¹⁵² from the University of the State of Pennsylvania. He was eighteen. She was seventeen. Peggy’s parents were Danes who had farmed a sugar plantation on the island of St. Croix in the West Indies. Her father died when she was a child, so her mother moved Peggy and one of her two brothers, Peter, to Philadelphia, where, in 1780, her mother married Adam Kuhn, a prominent Philadelphia physician.¹⁵³

Benny and Peggy courted for almost two years when Peggy’s mother took ill and asked Peggy to return with her to St. Croix. The separation proved affecting.¹⁵⁴ During it, Peggy attended her mother and Benny attended his grandfather until their respective deaths. Peggy returned in June of 1790; Benny started the Aurora in October; and in November of the following year, they were married. At first they lived with Benny’s parents in Franklin Court, but, in 1792 when their first son, Franklin, was born, they moved above the Aurora’s offices at 112 High.¹⁵⁵ At that time, Benny wrote a friend,

Peggy has endured difficult times with Benny Bache. She also has shared heroic moments. In July of 1795, when the Aurora published (in America’s first journalistic “scoop”) the text of the infamous Jay Treaty (which Washington and the Senate were trying to keep secret), Benny set out by stagecoach to spread copies of the treaty throughout the country. Like Paul Revere, Benny traveled from city to city, warning, in effect, that “the British are coming.” While Benny generated large anti-treaty rallies in each city he visited, Peggy Bache remained at home, publishing the Aurora herself, with the help of her brother, Peter.¹⁵⁷

Things have intensified since then. After John Adams’ “miserable instruments of foreign influence” speech last May 16th, a friend wrote of Peggy Bache,

That’s where things stand at this time. Benny finds strength in Peggy. As Poor Richard said,

Though Federalists call Republicans like Benny and me “democrats” and “demos,” they use the particular words “Jacobin” and “sans-culotte” to associate us with lower-class Paris street radicals who catapulted Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre to the leadership of the French Revolution for a ten-month “Reign of Terror” (from September 17, 1793, until Robespierre was guillotined on July 28, 1794).

Robespierre’s violence actually caused many French democrats to leave France. Two good examples are Philadelphians Médéric-Louis-Elie Moreau de St. Méry and Constantin-François Volney.¹⁶¹ Moreau de St. Méry, a tall man of good proportions and quick wit, was active in Parisian politics but now dispenses French books, contraceptives, and a variety of other items from a Front-street (from “river front”) shop.¹⁶² Constantin Volney, the handsome, wispy-haired political-philosopher and friend of Benjamin Franklin, enjoyed great fame in revolutionary France for his 1791 French masterwork, The Ruins of Empires …,” which attributed the fall of diverse societies to monarchical and aristocratic governments and to state-sanctioned religious establishments. Today, Volney is writing an English translation of his Ruins, which is the most popular French book in America.¹⁶³

Like the many other Frenchmen who came to America, Moreau de St. Méry and Constantin-François Volney are well-accepted members of the community. They are even members of Philadelphia’s (and America’s) oldest and most revered intellectual forum, the American Philosophical Society.¹⁶⁴

In the ten years of the French Revolution, Robespierre’s ten-month “Reign of Terror” was actually a brief episode. Besides, the time of Robespierre is four years past.¹⁶⁵ Today’s France, even in wartime, has a more moderate government, consisting of a plural executive (France’s five-man “Executive Directory”) and a bicameral legislature (the Council of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred). But Federalists speak as though Robespierre still rules. One might ask, as Poor Richard,

Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States, John Fenno continues his attack on Jimmy Callender:

[T]he French decree of January 1798 is not particularly intended to incommode and injure America … It is a great infraction of our neutral rights, [but] so were the British detentions of neutral vessels …

Mr. Fenno can neither be reasoned nor ridiculed out of his practice of scolding at the French republic. In this he undoubtedly acts by orders of his superiors, and therefore the less blame can rest on him.

John Fenno, in his paper of Monday attacks a paragraph in the Aurora of the 6th … which begins in these words:

“From the beginning of the present war down to this time, the conduct of our executive has been a series of ill offices towards France.” … Yet John … says that this must have been the work of some imported felon and … alludes to some gallows son of Scotland.

This Scot [Jimmy Callender) is paid a very high compliment … The truth is that this editor [John Fenno] has of late been detected in a multitude of fibs … He is therefore an object rather of pity than resentment and is personally of too little consequence to occupy much room in the Aurora.

Tonight, the Gazette of the United States broadens its attack on scribblers who have fled the British monarch:

“Burk” is John Daly Burk, a twenty-two-year-old Irish scribbler who, like me, escaped the British sedition act by fleeing to America. Burk’s crime was trying to stir up fellow students at Dublin’s Trinity College to prevent British soldiers from executing an Irish detainee. The British soldiers chased Burk into a Dublin bookshop, where he charmed a Miss Daly, escaped with her clothing as a disguise, and adopted “Daly” as his middle name to express eternal gratitude. John Daly Burk fled to America, arrived some eighteen months ago, acquired a new wife, Christiana, and is working as a scribbler for Republican journals in New York.¹⁷⁰

On market days, animals file and obstruct passage between the Philadelphia Aurora’s entryway and the covered country marketplace in the center lane of High-street. It’s a problem.

Today, President Adams works on a speech he will deliver on Monday to a joint session of the Congress. His first instincts are to declare war. From one draft:

Adams’ final draft won’t include these requests. The President’s Lady Abigail Adams observes:

When JOHN Q. ADAMS, the son of the President, was taken from the Hague and sent to Berlin on a new appointment with a new outfit [stipend], we suggested that he would be made to perform the circuit thro’ the Northern Courts of Europe with a new outfit at each removal, as such business would be found more profitable than any he could follow at home and as it was the duty of every father to provide handsomely for his son, especially when it can be done at public expense. Our hint has been taken, and JOHN Q. ADAMS has been appointed for Stockholm … an appointment so repugnant to every idea of propriety …

A more infamous attempt to deceive the public was never made than was made in Bache’s Aurora of this morning—The story … is a falsehood from beginning to end … Mr. Adams is appointed a commissioner for the particular purpose of renewing with Sweden a very valuable commercial treaty which is about expiring—He has no salary or pay annexed to his appointment—It is not probable he will leave Berlin to transact the business but will renew the treaty with the Swedish minister at Berlin.

[W]hen J. Q. Adams was appointed to Berlin, he had not a new outfit other than a small sum … Mr. Bache very well knows an outfit to a minister is generally understood to be one year’s salary, and the law of the United States sanctions such an outfit—this was not given, and Mr. Bache knows the fact.

Two of Mr. Fenno’s correspondents in last evening’s paper attempt to controvert the statement which appeared in our last, respecting the new appointment which JOHN Q. ADAMS has received to the Court of Sweden. One … a member of the Senate … proceeds to say “that it is probable he will renew the treaty with the Swedish minister at Berlin” … [I]t cannot be believed, upon the Senator’s anonymous assertion, that Mr. Adams is to have no pay or salary; nor is it probable that he will transact our affairs with the Court of Sweden at Berlin.

Citizen Fenno, in last Wednesday night’s paper, says that “Burk, the wild Irishman, is employed … writing Sedition. Callender, a Scotch vagrant, has written a libel on General Washington.” What can ail the six per cent [federal debt interest] people at Irishmen? Their own Grand Lama, the truly illustrious Alexander Hamilton, as far as his maternal descent can be traced, was the son of an IRISH CAMP GIRL … Reflections upon a whole people in the mass are … stupid … The people of New England are [themselves] sprung from a set of dissenters whom the Government of England had proscribed as either rebels or nothing better.

This “Wild Irish” speech achieved great circulation and approval among the Federalists.¹⁷⁴

With Federalists so anti-Irish and the Irish so anti-British, it is hardly surprising that Irish scribblers like John Daly Burk and me lend our pens to the Republican cause. Others are Matthew Lyon, the Vermont congressman and newspaper publisher of “spitting” fame, and Mathew Carey, a Philadelphia newspaper and magazine publisher who worked for Ben Franklin in Paris, gave Jimmy Callender one of his first jobs in Philadelphia,¹⁷⁵ serves as secretary for the Hibernian Society for the relief of Irish Emigrants,¹⁷⁶ and runs a bookshop and publishing firm only two doors from the Aurora at 118 High.¹⁷⁷

Two Irish scribblers whom the British imprisoned are Dr. James Reynolds¹⁷⁸ and Thomas “Newgate” Lloyd. Jimmy Reynolds now practices medicine in Philadelphia, volunteers it at the Philadelphia Dispensary,¹⁷⁹ leads Philadelphia’s Society of United Irishmen,¹⁸⁰ and writes occasionally for the Philadelphia Aurora.¹⁸¹ “Newgate” Lloyd befriended me in London, paid for my family and me to travel with him to America, and co-edited a newspaper with me when we first arrived.¹⁸² “Newgate” (nicknamed for the British prison where he was incarcerated) and I are good friends.

Sir Taking up your paper yesterday morning, I was shocked at the misrepresentation a writer in your paper has given the nomination and appointment of J. Q. Adams … I could not reflect upon the different feelings which must actuate your mind and [those of J. Q. Adams,] the writer of the following paragraph, written last October …

“As for Mr. Bache, he was once my schoolmate; one of the companions of those infant years when the Heart should be open to strong and deep impressions of attachment … Mr. Bache must have lost those feelings …”

Mr. Bache is left to his own reflections. This communication is only to his own Heart, being confident that the writer [J. Q. Adams] never expected it would meet his Eye.

[Mrs. Abigail Adams]¹⁸³

Benny won’t answer (let alone publish) this letter. How could Abigail Adams refer to Benny’s school years with John Quincy? How could she mention 1778? The only reason J.Q. and Benny were schoolmates at Le Coeur’s boarding school was that J.Q.’s father and Benny’s grandfather were diplomats together in Paris. As Poor Richard said,

Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, William Cobbett attacks Benny Bache (as well as Turks, Jews, &C):

“Publicola” is the pseudonym John Quincy Adams used seven years ago in anonymous letters that Benny published in the mistaken belief that J.Q.’s father, John Adams, had authored them. “Publicola” responded to Benny’s publication (first American edition) of Tom Paine’s Rights of Man, a work that praised the French Revolution as a progressive and democratic solution to the inherent failings of monarchy. In attacking Paine’s work, “Publicola” argued that the disruptive behavior of the French Revolution demonstrated the dangers of pure democracy and that Britain’s mixed form of government with its strong executive (the king) and upper legislative chamber (the propertied, hereditary, and titled House of Lords) imposed important checks on the dangers of pure democracy which threaten from such “lower” people’s chambers as the British House of Commons or the American House of Representatives.¹⁸⁵

Benny Bache sees the Adamses as monarchists. During John Adams’ campaign for President, the Aurora recalled that, as a lawyer, Adams defended and acquitted the British soldiers who committed the Boston Massacre,¹⁸⁶ describing Adams as “the friend of monarchic and aristocratic government.”¹⁸⁷ Adams, the paper said, was

To prove its point, the Aurora demonstrated that “MR. ADAMS has written in favor of monarchy,”¹⁹⁰ quoting his historical treatises on government:

I. “The Lacedemonian Republic … had the three essential parts of the best possible government; it was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.”¹⁹¹

II. “Instead of projects [in Britain] to abolish the kings and lords, if the House of Commons had been attended to … [there would not] have remained an imperfection perhaps in the English constitution.”¹⁹²

III. “First magistrates and senators had better be made hereditary at once [rather] than that the people be universally debauched and bribed, go to loggerheads, and fly to arms every year.”¹⁹³

Most embarrassingly, the Aurora recalled and ridiculed Adams’ attire at the opening sessions of the U.S. Senate in the autumn of 1789,

The Aurora remembered that, at those opening sessions, Adams advocated titles of nobility for government officials, prompting one unmannered senator to propose a title for Adams himself: “We will dub him his rotundity by g—–d.”¹⁹⁴ The Aurora’s article might remind us of Poor Richard’s saying,

Today, the monarchist is President, and, today, he delivers his address to a joint session of the Congress of these United States. The Journals of Congress report:

The following Message was received from the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

Gentlemen of the Senate, and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives

The Dispatches from the Envoys Extraordinary of the United States to the French Republic … have been examined and maturely considered …

I perceive no ground of expectation that the … mission can be accomplished on terms compatible with the safety, honor, or the essential interests of the nation …

Under these circumstances, I cannot forbear to reiterate the recommendations which have been formerly made … for the protection of our seafaring and commercial citizens, for the defense of the exposed portions of our territory, for replenishing our arsenals, establishing foundries and military manufactures and to provide such efficient revenue as will be necessary …

[I]nstructions were given … to restrain vessels of the United States from sailing in armed condition … I no longer conceive myself justifiable in continuing [these instructions] …

John Adams has not asked for a Declaration of War, but he has certainly delivered a war speech. Thomas Jefferson calls it “almost insane.”¹⁹⁷

REMARKS on the PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE.

The time is then come which (in the opinion of the Executive) calls on Americans to draw the sword. If our legislative councils are to be actuated by the impressions made on his mind, then the United States are to join in the European War on the side of the tottering government of Britain and against the French Republic … From the … President’s address, it would appear that, however he may acknowledge a right in the Legislature to declare war, he conceives he has that of making it … If our merchantmen may now arm … we are at war … [I]f our legislature does not interpose and prevent the arming, we shall be dragged into a war. Indeed the whole tenor of the president’s message bears an aspect extremely threatening to our peace … [D]oes not the crisis call upon the PEOPLE to step forward … [?]

I expect the President will be represented as declaring War by taking off the restrictions which prevented Merchantmen from Arming … [Y]ou see by the papers that Bache has begun his old billingsgate [slander] again, because Mr. J. Q. Adams is directed to renew the treaty with Sweden [from his post in Berlin] … [T]his lying wretch of a Bache reports that no treaties were ever made without going to the courts to negotiate them … [B]ut there is no end to their audaciousness, and you will see that French emissaries are in every corner of the union sowing and spreading their Sedition. We have renewed information that their System is to calumniate [defame] the president, his family, his administration until they oblige him to resign, and then they will Reign triumphant, headed by the Man of the People [Jefferson]. It behooves every pen and press to counteract them. We are come to a crisis too important to be languid, too dangerous to slumber …¹⁹⁸

Mr. COBBETT,

I have often observed, in looking over Bache’s paper, that he never has any advertisements in his paper relating to mercantile business. I cannot account for the reason of this, unless it is that merchants are ashamed to have their names seen in so scandalous a paper or think that it would be of little or no use to advertise in it on account of their being so few—except the poor, ignorant, low-bred jacobins—who take pains enough to read it …

If, Sir, you will be so good as to give me your sentiments on the above, you will much oblige …

VERITAS

(My sentiments, Mr. Veritas, are [that] if you wish to continue to deserve your name, you should immediately cease to read BACHE; for if you have the virtue of an angel, frequent converse with him will corrupt you.)

THE message … from the President of the United States to Congress is fatal and destructive to the peace of the United States … Are the people of the United States prepared to draw the sword … against the French Republic at this presidential call without knowing either the necessity or the object to be obtained!?] … His harpies say it is not a declaration of war, although they know it amounts to the same thing …

Mr. Adams has it now in his power to do a most acceptable service to his country by retiring from … public life … He must be sensible himself that at this time he is unfit to be trusted with the interests of a peaceful nation. His personal pride has been wounded … and this leads him to do what it can never be the interests of his country to suffer. Let him manage his own passions on the occasion, and, without him, our councils will manage our differences with France.

At its commencement, about as many papers left this city from [Porcupine’s Gazette] … as from all other Philadelphia presses put together. But this extensive circulation does not rest upon a list of bona fide subscribers. The paper was scattered … without any expectation of remuneration from most of those who received it. Whence its support was derived was no difficult matter to conjecture … The late declaration of the editor of that paper that he was and was proud to be “a British subject” has opened the eyes of many …

BACHE’S infernal Farrago [mixture] of this morning shall have its due in due time.

On the prospect of
WAR WITH FRANCE

MY COUNTRYMEN, THE die is cast—compromise is at an end—there is now no retreat—now no other alternative but instantly to assert the spirit which was once the boast of Americans … You have no other choice but either to submit to the detested and once despised yoke of France or else to open the armory of your ancestors …

(CIRCULAR to the COLLECTORS of the CUSTOMS.)

Treasury Department, March 21.

SIR, IT has been determined by the President of the United States … to modify the instructions issued from this department on the 8th day of April 1797 in such a manner as no longer to restrain vessels of the United States from sailing in an armed condition … [Y]ou are to consider the general prohibition as no longer remaining in force …

OLIVER WOLCOTT

Secretary of the Treasury¹⁹⁹

Today, Vice President Thomas Jefferson writes former U.S. Minister to France James Monroe:

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives considers the power of the Speaker to expel Benny Bache or any other reporter from the House floor. The Annals of Congress report:

Mr. NICHOLAS [Republican, Virginia] said that … he wished … not to ascertain whether the Speaker had done his duty heretofore, but whether the power of discharging short-hand writers from the House should be vested in the Speaker …

Mr. LYON [Republican, Vermont] … thought it of great importance … When he first took his seat in the House, there were six persons who attended to take down notes; now, he said, there is only one … and he wished the regulation to be adopted, lest that one should be driven away by the same power which had sent off the others.

The SPEAKER said the remark of the member from Vermont was very improper and indecent …

By Authority

OF THE

President of The United States.

A PROCLAMATION

As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of almighty God … and as the United States of America are at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power … I do hereby recommend that Wednesday, the 9th day of May next, be observed throughout the United States as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer …²⁰³

JOHN ADAMS By the President,
TIMOTHY PICKERING, Secretary of State.

Today, Quaker leaders Samuel Weatherill and Dr. George Logan circulate a petition urging the President and Congress to maintain the peace.²⁰⁴

TO BACHE. Downlooking Caitiff, What has given thee courage? What has led to this imprudent attack [the day before yesterday]? … As to my sending papers without payment … wretch as you are, come yourself and look at these books … You affect to believe that my paper had produced no effect … You know better. You stinking, chop-fallen mortal, you know better. You know that the first moment of my rise was the first moment of your decline and fall. You and your whole party feels its effects daily and hourly and minutely …

Perverted BACHE! … [I]t is useless for you to say anything against me, or I against you. People are well satisfied that I am descended from honest parents; they know (whatever some of them may think, or say) that I am sincere in my attachment to my adopted country and its government. All who have ever had concerns with me know me to be a punctual, honest man; and, as to you, every body knows that you are BACHE, the grand-son of old Franklin, and that’s enough. To be BACHE is all I wish to see my enemy.

Wm. COBBETT.

Let me ask for what cause does the President desire war with France? Is it to protect British trade and commerce with the United States …? Or is it to produce an alliance offensive and defensive between Great Britain and the United States, the more effectually to defeat and destroy republicanism in France and reestablish monarchy and thereby maintain that favorite government which Mr. Adams … declared “is the most stupendous fabric of human invention”?

Mr. BACHE, The house of representatives having decided the question concerning Stenographers in such a manner as to leave their admission or expulsion at the arbitrary discretion of the Speaker, I think it proper to state some facts …

Mr. Dayton said the exclusion of reporters had not been exercised but on one person, meaning the Editor of the Aurora … This assertion [is] … incorrect … I was engaged during the extraordinary session of Congress to report for a daily paper of which I was also the editor. A [Federalist] member wished me to alter a speech which had been delivered in the house … [T]his I refused to do …

[T]he sergeant at arms delivered to me the following message—“Sir, the Speaker has directed me to inform you that … you must not write shorthand in this house any more—you must go; if you do not, I must use force.”

It has been a constant trick with some members of the house to speak a speech calculated to make an impression in the house and to publish another containing different sentiments for … their constituents … I have lost an engagement … because I would not retract the truth …

A REPORTER

I, William Duane, wrote this morning’s anonymous letter by “A REPORTER.” Dayton barred me from the House floor,²⁰⁵ costing me the job and the revenue ($800) it entailed.²⁰⁶ Benny may have given me a job from empathy with my injury.

John Adams knows that Benny Bache is secretly meeting with Thomas Jefferson. Today, the President’s wife writes,

True, but Thomas Jefferson hasn’t changed. Before he resigned as George Washington’s Secretary of State, he held many private meetings with Benny Bache, encouraging Benny to publish a condensed “country” edition of the Aurora²⁰⁸ and once admitting to Washington that the Aurora publisher “tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper…”²⁰⁹ Jefferson knew Benny Bache made George Washington sick,²¹⁰ and, as earlier mentioned, he once saw Washington slam the paper on the floor with a “damn.”²¹¹ Whether Washington spelled Benny’s name accurately or phonetically, his opinion was the same: “Beeche’s papers are outrages on common decency.”²¹²

[Reprint] FROM THE MIDDLESEX GAZETTE
[A Connecticut Paper].

Friends and fellow citizens:

You engaged in a long and bloody war with Great Britain—for what? To secure the fruits of your labours to yourselves and equal rights … At the close of the revolution, the image of liberty was enstamped on every heart; we looked with a kind of horror on the British plans of oppression. Is not the case far different now? have we not adopted in almost every instance, the spirit, if not the forms, of their oppression … [Our government) have taught the people that the President can do no wrong; and that all are jacobins, democrats, disorganizers, and enemies to their country who dare to doubt this doctrine … [They] detach our government from France; and join it in close league with Great Britain … Have not all the governmental papers abused and villified the French? Has not our [revolutionary war] treaty with them been so construed as to deprive them of almost all the advantages … meant to be secured to them by it? … We are now about entering on a war; not with a natural, not with an ordinary enemy; but with a nation which saved us from the rapacious jaws of Britain, now become a republic like our own …

A fellow citizen who does not
believe in executive infallibility.

The want of light … will not be remedied till more pens are put to work. It occurred to me it [would] be proper for my narrative [the retaliatory “A View of the Conduct of the Executive …”] to be inserted in the gazettes. I should suppose Bache would not object to it since it would most probably promote his interest by promoting the sale of the book …

It seems to me that the line of propriety on my part is to rest quiet … The book [“A View of the Conduct of the Executive …”] will remain & be read in the course of 50 years, if not sooner, and I think the facts it contains will settle or contribute to settle the opinion of posterity in the character of the administration, however indifferent to it the present race may be. And it will be some consolation to me to … do justice to them with posterity, since a gang of greater scoundrels never lived. We are to dance on [Washington’s] birth night, forsooth, and say they are great & good men, when we know they are little people. I think the spirit of that idle propensity is dying away & that the good sense of the people is breaking thro’ the prejudice which has long chained them down.²¹³

A TIMELY CAUTION TO THE QUAKERS of The City and County of Philadelphia.—Gentlemen: Having been informed that there is a petition to the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES hawking about by [Quaker] Samuel Weatherill … against the horrors of war … I trust it will be easy to convince you that this PETITION is an insidious appeal to … your well known and amiable principles [of non-violence] … What would you say if it should appear that the palavering paper was drawn up by BACHE! … Mortified as you must feel at being thus ranked with the Democrats, with disorganizers and atheists; yet that mortification will be nothing compared to the odium, the keen and well grounded reproach, that this factious petition must bring on you from all the friends of government … Do not excite disgust and contempt in your friends, and render the name of Quaker a reproach … [D]o not dishonour your names by placing it at the bottom of a petition … which will be extolled by the Aurora …

John Fenno [in the Gazette of the U.S.] is very angry at the Aurora for having yesterday copied an article from a Connecticut newspaper hinting that the old soldiers were not fond of a French war. He affirms, on the contrary, that there is not one officer whose conduct in the late war will bear scrutiny, who is to be found among the “base hireling crew of calumniating Jacobins.”

Looking into Congress, we find many respectable military characters opposed to the present plan for war, such as General Smith of Baltimore, Colonel Parker of Virginia, Gen. M’Dowell and Col. Gillespie, of North Carolina. It is needless to multiply further examples.

War measures … Today, John Adams approves and signs into law the first piece of war legislation against France:

Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans try to thwart the move toward war. The Annals of Congress report:

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE

Mr. SPRIGG [Republican, Maryland] rose and observed … he should offer the following resolutions …

Resolved, That … under existing circumstances it is not expedient for the United States to resort to war against the French Republic.

Resolved, &., That provision ought to be made by law for restricting the arming of merchant vessels …

Mr. GALLATIN [Republican, Western Pennsylvania] said … the United States had arrived at a crisis … in which it was necessary for Congress to say whether they will resort to war or preserve peace … [B]efore measures are taken which will lead to war, the House ought to decide whether it is their intention at present to go to war …

Mr. J. WILLIAMS [Federalist, New York] … thought it very extraordinary, as no one was found to bring forward a resolution to declare war, that a gentleman would introduce a resolution of its being inexpedient so to do. He was persuaded that this negative mode of proceeding was calculated to draw on a debate, to set the people against the Executive … He had himself seen gentlemen write upon the late Message of the President, for the purpose of sending to their constituents, “A war message against France”…

A call to order took place; and a motion was made … to rise [adjourn], and carried.²¹⁵

Today, in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties district (which is north, along the Delaware), Federalists are recruiting young men into a private militia, the Macpherson’s Blues, to combat what they call America’s “false, perfidious friends, both at home and abroad.” Their notice calls young men “to arms.”²¹⁶

A word about Quaker peace-petitioner George Logan … George Logan and Benny Bache share old family ties. George’s grandfather, James, was secretary to Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn, and helped Benny’s grandfather found the Library Company of Philadelphia about seventy years ago. At forty, George Logan still lives on an old family farm, Stenton, that his grandfather built in Germantown (northwest of Philadelphia) back in 1728.²¹⁷

Despite the prestige of his old family name, George Logan maintains a very simple Quaker lifestyle, once chastising his attractive wife, Deborah, for serving George Washington a fancy dessert,²¹⁸ championing the small farmer (the “yeomanry”) against Federalist schemes of big government and big taxation,²¹⁹ and generally sympathizing with Republican causes. He resented the Jay Treaty and Washington’s treatment of France,²²⁰ organized a welcome dinner for James Monroe when the ambassador was recalled,²²¹ and, now that war has become the question, finds equal determination in his Quakerism and his Republicanism that there must be no war with France.

Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans vainly attempt to stop the push toward war. The Annals of Congress report:

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE

The House again resolved itself into a committee of the Whole … propositions as to the inexpediency or resorting to war against the French Republic being under consideration …

Mr. PINCKNEY [Federalist, South Carolina] rose and said … [t]he gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. GALLATIN) … says the adoption of the resolution will go to prevent the taking of any measures which may, in their tendency, lead to war … [T]he adoption of the resolution would not only declare that we will not go to war but that we will not take any measures for the defence of our property …²²²

A word about “Mr. GALLATIN” … Since last year, when James Madison (Republican, Virginia) retired from Congress and took his young Quaker wife, Dolley, back to Virginia, Albert Gallatin (Republican, Western Pennsylvania) has emerged as undisputed Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.²²³ One might think, on reading Peter Porcupine, that Al Gallatin arrived just yesterday from Geneva, Switzerland. He’s actually been here eighteen years. He hasn’t lost his French accent,²²⁴ however, so Porcupine mocks him, for example, as follows:

In a similar vein, Porcupine has popularized the taunting accusation that, in leading congressional Republicans, Al Gallatin wants to, “stop de wheels of de gouverment.”²²⁶

[O]ur president has issued a proclamation for a fast and thanksgiving both in one day [May 9th] … Mr. Adams wants to have … every pulpit resound with declamations against France. He chuses to take for granted … that Mr. Adams is exactly in the right and the French Directory are entirely in the wrong … While John Fenno continues to publish his daily libels against France, nobody in consistency with common sense can believe that his patron, Mr. Adams, is desirous of soliciting the good will of the [French] Republic.

[F]or refusing to suffer this press being muzzled by order of the Speaker [of the House of Representatives], the Editor … was directed by the Speaker to leave the place actually allotted to the reporters. The … question was brought up to decide whether the Speaker should retain this power … Had the grievance of which the Editor (in common with other reporters) complains been clearly and directly before the committee … [t]hey never would have countenanced their Speaker … to be indulged at the expense of the most valuable right of freemen—the liberty of the Press.

Today, President Adams confers a special honor on someone who is well known²²⁷ for having brutally assaulted Benjamin Bache less than a year ago. The assault put Benny in bed for two days.²²⁸ Secretary of State Timothy Pickering writes Clement Humphreys of Philadelphia:

Clement Humphreys led shipyard workers to attack Benny Bache while Benny was inspecting the 175-foot, forty-four-gun U.S. Navy frigate United States, then under construction in the Humphreys family shipyard which is along the Delaware in Southwark (Philadelphia’s southern district). Benny describes the attack:

The Humphreys’ shipyard in Southwark, Philadelphia’s southern district, with a U.S. frigate under construction.²³⁰

I took a walk with two friends into Southwark. It was proposed by one of them that we should step on board the frigate which we did, having first obtained leave from the guard. The workmen were at their dinner. While we were looking at the river from the windows of the upper cabin, we perceived some pieces of cork thrown toward us thro’ the hatchway from below. We concluded that they were thrown out of playfulness by some acquaintance or perhaps by some persons belonging to the frigate who might have mistaken us for acquaintances. The intention, however, was probably to provoke us to an altercation or induce us below on the main deck. We took no notice of the throwing, several minutes elapsed without it being repeated, and I had quite forgotten it.

The bell on the upper deck was struck. My friends walked toward it. I stood on the gangway looking at it. Immediately some 12 or 15 of the workmen came upon the deck from the stage and stood along the gunwale. I supposed at the time that the bell was to summon them to their work, but probably it was struck to get them on deck to stand by the assassin in case of need.

I was thus standing, alone as I thought, still looking at the bell, when I felt a violent blow on my head. My first thought was that something had fallen on me; I then received a second blow, and immediately after, perceived the cowardly ruffian before me in a menacing attitude. Stunned as I was with the violence of the two blows, which must have struck from behind, I was unable to defend myself against a third, much less to return them. About this period in the assault, I heard several broken sentences uttered such as that I had, in my paper … “abused the President on the day of his resignation …” … The perpetrator of this act of cowardly assassination, I have been since informed, is HUMPHREYS, son of the builder of the frigate.²³¹

John Adams’ appointment of Clement Humphreys promises presidential rewards for anyone who attempts to silence Benjamin Bache!

At last Benny and the rest of us in the lower part of High-street will be protected from the market day animals.

In [Tuesday’s] Aurora, a reply was made to one of Fenno’s Snip-snap paragraphs wherein he said that no officer whose conduct in the late war will bear scrutiny is to be found among “the base hireling crew of calumniating Jacobins.” Not knowing precisely what John meant by Jacobins, we ventured only to say that “many respectable military characters opposed the present plan of war.” We named four members of Congress … John replies [on Tuesday] with great spirit: “Has Callender,” says he, “the audacity to insinuate that either of the above Gentlemen are Jacobins, or is it a precious confession of his employer Bache.” … John … speaks of precious confessions … When Hamilton printed his PRECIOUS CONFESSION [of adultery], a pamphlet the most infamous and even one of the most stupid that ever disgraced any age or nation, John Fenno secured the copy right!

At a legal meeting of the Freeholders and other
Inhabitants of the TOWN of ROXBURY [MASS.] …

The following motion was regularly made and seconded …

The inhabitants of this Town … hear with deepest concern that it has been proposed to allow the Merchants to Arm their vessels … [W]hen it is obvious that between Arms in the hands & the commencement of Hostilities there is but a [short] span, we deprecate … the prospect of the Peace … being suspended on so precarious a tenure … [This is] confiding the decision … not to the cool deliberate determination of Congress; but to the Pride, Caprice or Passion of an individual …

A true copy.- Attest,

STEVEN WILLIAMS,

Town Clerk [Roxbury, Massachusetts].

Mr. Bache, I have been much edified by reading the Proclamation of the President, appointing the 9th of May as a day of general fast throughout the United States … [T]he dangers which threaten [our country] have principally arisen from our Administration and … it is it that ought to fast, reform, and repent … The good American people are only guilty of one fault which, although light and trifling if the intention is weighed, has been dreadful in its consequences, it is that of having elected Mr. Adams their President …

A good Christian …

Poor Richard wrote,

The Bell calls others to Church,
but itself never minds the Sermon.²³⁴

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE

MR. ALLEN [Federalist, Connecticut] … proposed the following resolution, to which he hoped there would be no objection:

Resolved, that the President of the United States be requested to communicate to this house the dispatches from the envoys extraordinary of the United States to the French republic, mentioned in his message of the 19th inst …

Mr. GALLATIN [Republican, Pennsylvania] could not see how the information … could influence the vote … [T]he Message of the President had produced … the effect of a declaration of war …²³⁵

The acknowledgment of a Deity and a superintending providence is so contrary to the practice of the rulers of France, Tom Paine … Bache and Callender that blasphemy and slander respecting the President’s proclamation [for a day of prayer] from these foreign agents was a thing of course.

Bache … tells Callender to dub the friends of the constitution and government of the United States—Tories [supporters of monarchy]—but I would ask … if they … suppose the people of the United States will ever believe that the present or late President of the United States … who effected the independence of this Country are Tories?

In yesterday’s Aurora there appeared the copy of resolutions entered into by the town of Roxbury in Massachusetts … against arming our merchantmen …

We would ask … whether the conduct of the townsmen of Roxbury does not show that, even in the native state of our president, there is a numerous party who entirely disapprove of his harangues in favor of war.

A few weeks ago, we published a short statement of the amount charged the United States for building and equipping the three frigates United States, Constitution and Constellation. [T]hese frigates were in ‘94 ordered to be built in order to protect our trade against the Algerines [Barbary pirates] … The delay [in completing the ships] … rendered it necessary, in order to have a treaty, to promise the [Algiers] Dey’s daughter a FRIGATE by way of douceur [bribe] … Here we have then the whole cost … 9,878,362.53.

AN ADDRESS

To The Young Men of the Northern Liberties

[District of Philadelphia].

YOUR country calls for your assistance—the hour of danger is arrived … The mask is taken from the face of our false, perfidious friends, both at home and abroad … Shall the youthful arm of America be unnerved in the hour of danger …? No, rise up, gird on the armour of defence …

A number of persons having enrolled themselves for the purpose of forming a complete company of infantry, or artillery, as a majority deem most beneficial, invite their brethren of the Northern Liberties to follow their example … Information will be given to Mr. Samuel Gano, at the sign of the President of the United States, in Second-street, below the Court House.

Today, alarmed by the Federalist effort to organize their own private army (the Macpherson’s Blues) and to arm “young men” against “perfidious friends … at home,” Dr. George Logan meets with other Republican leaders in Germantown, outside Philadelphia.²³⁷

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE

Mr. VARNUM [Federalist, Massachusetts] presented a petition from the inhabitants of Milton, in Massachusetts, stating their alarm at the idea of the peace of the United States being placed in the hands of … the masters of merchant vessels, many of whom were formerly British subjects and … retain all their English prejudices against the French and may exert them in a manner which leads to war …

Mr. ALLEN [Federalist, Connecticut] called up for decision the resolution for certain papers [the Paris dispatches] from the President of the United States …

The question was taken, and decided in the affirmative—yeas 65, nays 27 …²³⁸

Today, in Philadelphia, Polish author and poet Julien Niemcewicz notes in his diary:

Julien Niemcewicz came to America last August with a Polish hero of the American Revolution, General Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Like Irishmen and Scotchmen, Poles flee despotism in their homeland to find freedom in America.

Kosciuszko fought without pay in America’s revolution, returning to fight for Poland’s independence from czarist Russia. Kosciuszko was captured, as was his adjutant, Niemcewicz, in 1794, released two years later by Russian Czar Paul I, and allowed to leave Poland in 1796, traveling first to Sweden and then to the United States.

Kosciuszko and Niemcewicz are settled in Philadelphia, where Niemcewicz makes note of America’s interesting people and places. He has authored two travel books in Europe.²⁴¹

You [Republicans] say the Tories have for many years been anxious to destroy the friendship between France and the United States … mentioning WASHINGTON and ADAMS … You say, Mr. ADAMS was tainted with the glare and pomp of [the British Royal Court of] St. James [when he was the American ambassador there] … Why was he not tainted with the much greater glare of the court of Versailles [in France]? We see him there with his excellent colleague Mr. JAY [during the American Revolution], baffling the intrigues of the [French Foreign Minister] Count de Vergennes and the more dangerous opposition of Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin until, by their firmness alone, we obtained the acknowledgment of our independence …

MARCUS

The Tory newspapers of New England are crowded with invectives … against the late meeting in Roxbury to prevent the arming of merchantmen. They have met, however, with a spirited reception … The Resolutions of the freemen of Milton …

A hand bill has been circulated in the city recommending to the citizens immediately to arm themselves to crush their domestic foes. As we understand that this paper will probably be an object of legal prosecution, it is perhaps improper to say, in this place, any more concerning it.

A Message was announced from the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES …

Gentlemen of the Senate, and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives

In compliance with the request of the House of Representatives, expressed in their resolution of the 2nd of this month, I transmit to both Houses the instructions to and despatches from the Envoys Extraordinary of the United States to the French Republic which were mentioned in my Message of March 19th last, omitting only some names …

UNITED STATES, April 3, 1798.

JOHN ADAMS

The above Message having been read, the galleries and House were cleared of strangers, and the House was occupied in reading the papers accompanying until past 3 o’clock, when they adjourned, without making any order respecting them.²⁴²

A short view of the Question, whether it is advisable for the United States to enter into a war with France.

[T]he advocates for a war with France [say] … that our national honor hath been insulted … Those who speak … seem to forget that the existence of the United States as a nation is but of yesterday … Our late contest [the War of Independence] with Great Britain might have made us remember our imbecility and inaptitude for war. Defenceless on every side, the enemy changed the point of attack at every moment, and everywhere found us vulnerable and weak. The alliance of France … saved us from perdition. Have we forgot the portentous year when one half the United States was overrun by our enemy, when we were almost without an army, and that army [was] without money to subsist it? Have we forgotten the mission … to France, the object of the mission [being] the deplorable and just picture … to present [to France] of our distress, the relief we obtained, and its consequences? If we have not [forgotten], must we not be astonished that there are men among us who would hurry us into war with that very power whose succour alone saved us from perdition? And for what is such a state of danger to be hazarded? Truly, to compel France to receive our ambassadors!! …

JOHN FENNO has long been in the habit of harping upon the immense sums received by the Editor of the Aurora from the French Directory. His evidence of the fact we should be very glad to hear; and also what sums he himself gets from land jobbers, lottery ticket mongers, and British agents.

Report has been busy for these few days past in decyphering the dispatches lately received from our commissioners … They are said to contain information that the French had taken great exception at some of the speeches of our administration … as evidencing too much of a partiality for Britain … The dispatches are further said to contain overtures, on the part of some unacknowledged agents of the French, for money for themselves to smooth the way to reconciliation … We are … unable to state the contents of the dispatches except from report.

Bache, in the Aurora of this morning, has from report given to the public the contents of the dispatches from our commissioners which were yesterday laid before the two houses of Congress by the President as a confidential communication. Whether Mr. Bache received this information from report as he states or whether through the channel of some confidential friend, we shall probably be able to decide when those dispatches shall receive an official publication …

The chance of truth in the Aurora was always bad, but its editor has recently taken into employ some assistants which afford it no chance at all …

DEMOCRATS ALL IN AN UPROAR.

So alarmed are they at the proposal of some of the Young Men of the Northern Liberties [District of Philadelphia] associating, training themselves in the military exercise for the express purpose of supporting government that Doctor [George] L.[ogan] … went off to the Governor to endeavor to prevail on him to issue a proclamation to prevent the youth from holding such unprofitable associations …

Why, what sort of a man must this B. F. Bache be? His grand daddy was a dealer in almanacs, if I don’t mistake …

Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, Peter Porcupine advertises a book he has co-published:

JUST PUBLISHED BY T. DOBSON & W. COBBETT

“PROOFS OF A CONSPIRACY AGAINST ALL Religions And Governments OF EUROPE CARRIED ON IN THE SECRET MEETINGS OF FREE MASONS, ILLUMINATI, AND READING SOCIETIES.”

COLLECTED FROM GOOD AUTHORITIES,

BY JOHN ROBISON, A.M. Professor of Natural Philosophy, and Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh … Price One Dollar and Three Quarters in boards, and Two Dollars neatly bound and lettered. The design of the work is to exhibit to the public the dangerous machinations which, for many years, have been carried on … for debauching the morals of the people and subverting their respect for religion to pave the way for overturning the governments of Europe in order that, in the state of anarchy which should succeed, the leaders of these secret cabals might seize on the property and destroy the persons of their more opulent neighbors …

With this view, their emissaries have spread far and wide over Germany, France, England and America … and the Revolution in France, … under the direction of those very individuals who are leaders of the order, mark with distinguishing energy its peculiar features.

Dispatches from the Envoys.

Until we are able to publish them in detail, we offer the following as a correct outline of their content … The Envoys had no regular intercourse with the French government … [T]hey were told that it would be necessary to … deposit … the sum of $pD50,000 sterling for … (French Foreign Minister] Talleyrand … [and] some members of the directory … The irritation occasioned by the President’s speech [of last May 16th] was repeated … Mr. Talleyrand himself wrote some proposals … that the United States should lend a sum of money to France …

Remarks on the above.

We think it will appear from the above statement of facts that the negotiation ought not be considered as at an end … [I]f there was proof of the directory being concerned in the swindling of our commissioners (of which there is none) … it must leave opinion where it was;— That Mr. Talleyrand is notoriously anti-republican; that he was the intimate friend of Mr. Hamilton … and other great Federalists, and that it is probably owing to the determined hostility which he discovered in them towards France that the Government of that country consider us only as objects of plunder …

The Senate on Thursday voted to have the dispatches from our Envoys made publick … [T]he President forbore to communicate them … But such lies and falsehoods were continually circulated and incendiary Letters sent to the house addrest to him that I have been allarmed for his Personal Safety, tho I have never before expressed it. With this temper in a city like this, materials for a mob might be brought together in 10 minuts. When the Language in Baches paper has been of the most insolent and abusive kind … and a call upon the people to Humble themselves before their Maker treated with such open contempt and Ridicule, had I not cause for allarm?²⁴⁴

The bulk of the dispatches relate to informal conferences held by unofficial agents of the department of foreign affairs with our commissioners in which the sum of $pD50,000 sterling was asked for as douceurs [bribes] to insure a reception …

Curiosity next seeks … whether these persons were agents of [French Foreign Minister] Talleyrand; and, if they were, whether they were authorized by Talleyrand to demand the $pD50,000 [bribe] …

It will be remembered that, not long since it was said in this paper that, in the office of the [U.S.] Secretary of State, money had been taken for passports which ought to have been given gratis. Mr. Pickering was very angry at being implicated and shewed that one of his clerks improperly took the money. Does not that case resemble the present one; and will not Talleyrand and the Directory be justifiable in shewing some resentment for having been suspected for the mis-doings of their inferior agents?²⁴⁵

War measures … Today, U.S. Secretary of War James McHenry writes the House Committee for the Protection of the Commerce, &c.:

War Department, April 9, 1798 …

France … prepares us for the last degree of humiliation and subjection. To forebear … from undertaking naval and military measures … would be to offer up the United States a certain prey to France …

The measures which appear indispensably necessary for Congress to take are as follows:

1st. An increase of the naval force … 2nd. An augmentation of the present military establishment. 3rd. Arrangements which in case of emergency will give the President … a further and efficacious military force. 4th. The more complete defence of our principal ports by fortifications. 5th. A supply of ordinance, small arms, powder, salt petre, copper, and military stores. 6th. Additional Revenue …

JAMES McHENRY²⁴⁶

Today, U.S. Secretary of State Timothy Pickering writes Federalist party leader Alexander Hamilton,

You will readily imagine what apologies our internal enemies make for the French Government. Jefferson says that the Directory are not implicated in the villainy and corruption displayed in these dispatches—or at least that these offer no proof against them. Bache’s paper of last Saturday says “That M. Talleyrand is notoriously anti republican; that he was the intimate friend of Mr. Hamilton … and other great Federalists, and that it is probably owing to the determined hostility which he discovered in them towards France that the Government of that country consider us only as objects of plunder.”²⁴⁷

DISPATCHES

From our Envoys Extraordinary to France,
ordered to be published by the Senate …
[Excerpts] (No. 1)

PARIS, October 22, 1797

Dear Sir: ALL of us having arrived in Paris on the evening of the 4th instant … In the evening of [October the 18th], Mr. X called, and … whispered … that he had a message from M. Talleyrand … that the Directory … were exceedingly irritated at some passages of the President’s [May 16th] Speech and desired that they should be softened, and that this step would be necessary previous to our reception. That, besides this, a sum of money was required for the pocket of the Directory and Ministers, which would be at the disposal of Mr. Talleyrand; and that a loan [to France] would be insisted on … On inquiry Mr. X … mentioned that the douceur [bribe] for the pocket was twelve thousand livres, about fifty thousand pounds sterling …

October the 21st, Mr. X came before nine o’clock; Mr. Y did not come until ten: he had passed the morning with Mr. Talleyrand … [H]e proceeded to state … the measure would be an advance by us to France of thirty-two millions [Dutch florins] … We asked him whether the fifty thousand pounds sterling, as a douceur to the Directory, must be in addition to this sum. He answered in the affirmative …

(No. 2) October 27th, 1797

About twelve we received another visit from Mr. X … He told us that we [the United States] had paid money to obtain peace with the Algerines [the Barbary pirates] and with the Indians; and that it was doing no more to pay France for peace … He said that France had lent us money during our revolution war and only required that we should now exhibit the same friendship … He said he would communicate as nearly as he could our conversation to the Minister or to Mr. Z …

(The remainder in our next.)

The French will not formally receive Adams’ envoys without a recanting of his anti-French speech of last May 16th, without a U.S. loan to France, and without a U.S. douceur to calm the French Directory. In the meantime, French Foreign Minister Talleyrand deals with our envoys through informal intermediaries whose identities are concealed as X, Y, and Z in the dispatches presented to Congress.²⁴⁸

Public excitement about the dispatches brings crowds to this afternoon’s presidential “levee” (audience). Peter Porcupine reports,

Not everyone is so enthusiastic. Today, Julien Niemcewicz, the Polish writer, visits Stenton, the 450-acre farm that peace petitioner and Quaker leader George Logan owns in Germantown, outside Philadelphia. The visit is short, as Poor Richard suggested:

[W]e left … in a cabriolet [two-wheeled carriage] to see Dr. Logan, the celebrated farmer and celebrated fanatic, living near Germantown … [H]is house … is of brick, large and well kept. A smooth lawn like a green carpet, sown with groups of cedars and Hemlocks extended before one’s eye.

Doctor Logan received us civilly but with an air of preoccupation and pain. We did not wait long to discover the source of his ills. It was a preoccupation, a fixation, indeed a madness. He was convinced that his country was the most unhappy on earth, that it was menaced by the greatest dangers, that is to say, by total destruction. The authors of all these … calamities were the English; they had bought and corrupted the government … This was the subject of the conversation before dinner. Mrs. Logan, pale, with a rather good figure, has caught the same disease … [H]er discourses carried indeed more vehemence than those of her husband. The dinner was frugal but good …

After …, they began to sing the praises of, to render homage to the virtues of the nation which has revenged humanity so long oppressed … They began to praise the French up to the skies …

Madman, I said to myself, You do not know what you want … But go to France; go to Europe; see what goes on there and you will return cured of your madness.²⁵²

What Julien Niemcewicz doesn’t know is that George Logan is going to France. If Adams can’t make peace, George Logan will! Poor Richard wrote,

I said that not even the damning proofs … in the DISPATCHES would operate any material change in the politics or the conduct of the French faction here. BACHE, who is the mouthpiece of that infernal crew, has proved the assertion true [in yesterday’s Aurora]. He denies not the authenticity of the DISPATCHES; he dares not do that: but he denies that the persons who made the insolent overtures to the envoys were authorized by the French government …

BACHE publishes to rogues and fools. The former are the approbators, the supports, and sometimes the authors of his shameless misrepresentations and infamous falsehoods; the latter, he well knows, have not the capacity to detect him … Bache has amply proved the Jacobins will still remain the same; yet … [t]his is a dreadful stroke to the French Faction.

[H]aving completely sailed round the world of sedition, [CALLENDER] has hove his shattered and disfigured bark into the harbour of Citizen Benjamin Franklin Bache, the Grandson of Old Ben and the ample inheritor of all his factious principles. This BACHE … is the sworn enemy of this government and the notorious hireling of France … [T]he wretch had the audacity openly to call GENERAL WASHINGTON a legalizer of corruption and an assassin; … he has justified the French in all their depredations, their robberies, their cruelties, and their insults heaped on America … [and] he has now the infamy to justify the last instance of their turpitude and perfidy, as exposed in the Dispatches just received from our envoys in Paris.

DISPATCHES

From our Envoys Extraordinary to France,

ordered to be published by the Senate …

(concluded from our last.)

October 30th [1797] …

Mr. Y then called our attention to our own situation … Perhaps, said he, that you believe that, in returning and exposing to your countrymen the unreasonableness of the demands of this government, you will unite them in their resistance to those demands: you are mistaken: you ought to know that the diplomatic skill of France and the means she possesses in your country are sufficient to enable her, with the French party in America, to throw the blame which will attend the rupture of the negociations on the federalists, as you term yourselves, but on the British party as France terms you …

The dispatches from France fully occupy today’s Philadelphia Aurora, Gazette of the United States, and Porcupine’s Gazette.

[Adv.] TO THE CURIOUS.

A Beautiful African

LION.

To be seen everyday (Sundays excepted) at Mr. I. Chambers, Sign of the Plough, in Third-street, near Market street … Great attention has been paid in providing a strong and substantial cage and to have the LION under very good command … [I]t is said by those who have seen LIONS in the Tower of London and many other parts that he is really worth the contemplation of the curious. Admittance for Ladies and Gentlemen, One QUARTER of a DOLLAR and Children, Half Price.

What did he think about lions? The lion’s cage is around the corner from the Aurora!

War measures … Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:

ADDITIONAL ARTILLERY, &C …

Mr. GALLATIN [Republican, Pennsylvania]: He agreed that the probability of a war is greater than it has been at any former period. He would not make any remarks on what has drawn us into this situation. But, among the causes, he would beg leave to mention the publication of the late despatches … (The CHAIRMAN said this remark was not in order.) Mr. G. said … he meant to state only that the publication of these papers had destroyed the hope … (A cry of order.) Mr. G. wished to know what was in order … [H]e contended that it was the duty of the House to be cautious … [T]o increase the artillery corps sixteen companies instead of eight … he did not think necessary. Is there, said Mr. G., any person on this floor seriously afraid of an invasion. He was sure there was not …

Mr. DAYTON (the speaker) [Federalist, New Jersey] said that the speech of the member from Pennsylvania (Mr. GALLATIN) in opposition to the amendment of increasing the corps of artillerists and engineers must be considered as the exhibition of another leaf of that favorite book in which was written the system of his uniform opposition to all measures of the Administration …²⁵⁵

Tonight, Federalists meet at John Dunwoody’s tavern, several squares west of the Aurora (that is, away from the Delaware) on the opposite side of High-street.²⁵⁶ Joseph Thomas, a prominent lawyer and Philadelphia Federalist leader who lives in Third-street,²⁵⁷ is among the organizers of the meeting. The meeting issues a notice:

At a numerous and respectable meeting of the citizens of the city of Philadelphia, District of Southwark, and Northern Liberties, held in Dunwoody’s tavern on the evening of the 12th of April, 1798,

Colonel GURNEY in the chair,

It was Resolved Unanimously, as the sense of this meeting, that the information contained in the Dispatches … is of a nature to excite universal alarm throughout America …

Resolved Unanimously, That the measures pursued by the President of the United States … have been wise …

Resolved Unanimously, That an Address and Memorial expressive of the sentiments … be presented to the President …

Resolved, that the following gentlemen be a committee to prepare the address … [Philadelphia Federalist leader] Joseph Thomas … [Federalist ship builder and defense contractor] Joshua Humphreys … [&c.]”—²⁵⁸

This is not a gathering of Benny’s friends. Joshua Humphreys’ son, Clement Humphreys, attacked Benny in the family shipyard last year. Joseph Thomas is John Fenno’s friend²⁵⁹ and someone not to be trusted. As Poor Richard said,

I feel sensibly both the injury and the insults in the refusal [of the French] to receive and treat [negotiate] with our ambassadors … though I think it probable that both proceeded from our having abandoned our neutral station by the British Treaty [the Jay Treaty of 1795] … To arm our merchant ships for defence would undoubtedly be proper if we could secure against their acting offensively and bringing on a war which it is supposed they would do. But there is another difficulty. To permit the arming against France when Britain is also daily taking our vessels would be strange, and yet, is it intended to arm against Great Britain? …

The Citizens of Dorchester in Massachusetts have had a meeting on the present critical state of affairs, and have entered into spirited resolutions against arming. Number of votes 110, of whom 101 were for the resolution.

The Citizens of Cambridge in Massachusetts have also had a meeting; when it was declared the sense of the town that there is now more need than ever of restrictions upon arming.

Today, Grand Jurors of Pennsylvania’s U.S. District Court address the President of the United States:

At a numerous and respectable meeting of the citizens of the city of Philadelphia, District of Southwark and Northern Liberties, held in Dunwoody’s tavern [last evening] … citizens of almost every profession attended … [O]ne sentiment appeared to animate every mind—a firm resolution to rally round the government … Many were present who have heretofore greatly differed in political opinions. Upon this important occasion, laying aside all local politics and party views, they came forward and joined in the unanimous vote. May Americans ever thus rally round their own standard when their country calls.

One would think that the measure of infamy was filled and the profligacy of and the corruption of the system pursued by the French Directory required no further disclosure of the principles by which it is actuated than what is contained in the above Dispatches, to open the eyes of the blindest; and yet I am persuaded that those communications will produce no change in the leaders of the opposition unless there should appear a manifest desertion of their followers. There is sufficient evidence already, in the Aurora, of the turn they intend to give the business and of the ground they mean to occupy; but I do not believe they will be able to maintain that or any other much longer.”²⁶³

BACHE (old Franklin’s grandson) was sued some time ago for [import] duties to the amount of about forty dollars, and judgment has been taken out during this present Federal court.—Question—Were not these duties for the edition of [Tom] Paine’s Age of Reason [against established religion] which was imported from Paris?

The merchants, underwriters, and traders of this city will meet at the Coffee House to-morrow at 12 o’clock for the purpose of presenting their address to the President of the United States.

The spirit of opposition to the arming of our merchantmen is gradually augmenting. Several memorials on that head … were yesterday presented to Congress. For some days past, Mr. Fenno has been more than usually elated and abusive. The extreme length of the public papers [the Aurora has been publishing] … hath suspended our paragraphical rejoinders. But the people of Massachusetts are coming round to the right point of the Political Compass with so much haste that our efforts may well be spared. The respective town meetings of Roxbury, Milton, Cambridge, Arlington, Bridgewater and Randolph have reprobated in the strongest terms the proposal of arming the merchant vessels …

Today, at noon, Philadelphia’s merchants and traders present an address, with five hundred signatures, to the President:

To the President of the United States …—The address of the Merchants, Underwriters and Traders of the city of Philadelphia.

RESPECTFULLY SHEWETH,

That the Merchants, Underwriters and traders of Philadelphia … cannot but express their deep regret at the failure of the late attempt to negotiate with [the French Republic] …

As Americans, jealous of the honor and attached to the freedom of our country, we repel with indignation every attempt to separate us from the government of our choice …

Under the impulse of these sentiments, we come forward to … give our sincere firm support to the measures which may be adopted …²⁶⁴

Under current law, immigrants can be naturalized as American citizens after five years’ residency, and it has been five years since the war between Britain and France propelled European democrats to seek refuge in America from King George Ill’s Alien and Sedition Acts and French leader Robespierre’s temporary Reign of Terror. These refugees are Irish dissidents like John Daly Burk, Dr. Jimmy Reynolds, “Newgate” Lloyd, and me, Scotch dissenters like Jimmy Callender, true French democrats like Moreau de St. Méry and Constantin Volney. Will the Federalists deny them citizenship?

THE MANAGERS OF THE THEATRE—

Should pay some respect to the public feeling in the selection of their music—The enthusiastic clamors and applause with which the President’s March has been called for and received for some time past should have taught the managers the impropriety of refusing it to the people until absolutely compelled to give it. As the patriotic enthusiasm increases, such an unwillingness to gratify it may be dangerous to the fiddles and the fiddlers. For the same reason it is to be hoped no more attempts will be made to grate and torture the public ear with those shouts [for] Ca Ira …

“Ça Ira” is the great song of the French Revolution which honors Benjamin Franklin. Frenchmen remember that, when asked how America’s revolution was going, Ben Franklin frequently replied, “Ça ira. Ça ira.” (It will work out! It will work out!)²⁶⁷

“To the Congress of the United States, the subscribers, people of the county of Caroline and State of Virginia, beg leave to represent …

That war is an evil … The refusal of a government to regard the invocation of the people for averting war would be sufficient to excite a suspicion that it is guided by other views than the public good, especially as though a nation seldom makes an advantage by war, a government often does. Soldiers and money, to the people the expense, to a government are the fruits of war …”

Today, an anonymous party writes President Adams that his May 9th prayer and fasting day will be a day of murder and mayhem:

Much respected Sir,

There is generally so little attention paid to anonymous letters that I have little to hope, but the present occasion is so unprecedented that I cannot avoid giving way to the impulse of the moment and have therefore acted accordingly. Conscious of the rectitude of my intentions and convinced that I am barely doing my duty, I feel little repugnance at betraying the horrid designs of a barbarous set of wretches who are unworthy of the names of human beings. Know Sir, that it is the fix’d resolve of a very numerous party of Frenchmen (in conjunction with a few other unsuspected Characters) to set fire to several different parts of this City on the night of that day (in May next) which is set apart by you as a day of solemn fasting & prayer, and when the whole attention of the devoted Citizens is engaged, they intend to massacre Man, Woman & Child, save those who are friendly to their interests. More I dare not write, but let it suffice, that my information is genuine. How I came by it must for ever remain an inviolable secret, my honour is partly pledged and that will plead my excuse …

An unfortunate misled Man
but a real friend to America²⁶⁸

Yesterday at noon a large and respectable body of the Merchants of this city waited on the President of the United States …

ANSWER.

To the Merchants, Underwriters, and Traders of the City of Philadelphia.

If the sincere sentiments of my heart toward France, which are now open before the public, had met with a similar disposition in the government of that country, we should still have pursued our neutral, impartial, and pacific course. But unhappily they have met with nothing that I can discern but a determined, though insidious spirit of hostility. The consequences are not for me to anticipate.

JOHN ADAMS

The Gallic Editor of the Aurora is known to be in daily and secret conference with a certain high officer in the Government (infamous for his foreign correspondence). It is supposed the fruits of this republican connection will be thrown on the parish before long for public maintenance. The brat may gasp, but it will surely die in the infamy of its parents.

Benny Bache is meeting with Thomas Jefferson who is “infamous” for his correspondence with Philip Mazzei in Italy.

John Fenno, in his paper of last evening, says that “the Gallic Editor of the Aurora is known to be in daily and secret conference with a certain high officer in government, infamous for his foreign correspondence.

Mr. Bache has been for some days in the country. As for the officer of government, we do not pretend to know who is meant; but, as John abuses him, we presume that he must be some character eminently respectable in the eyes of honest men.

It cannot be that John Fenno who, at an early period of life stopt payment and defrauded his creditors in Boston and who, ever since, has been the dirty tool of a dirty faction should know what the word infamy means.

We are informed that ten memorials were on Monday read in congress against the arming of our merchantmen … Poor Johnny Fenno vilifies the subscribers of the New England memorials as Jacobins. He says that the town meetings were not regularly called, &c. &c. Let the friends of order call counter meetings and try, if they can, [to] get counter memorials.

An address has been presented [April 13] by a Grand Jury of the District Court of the United States to the President … [T]hey neglected to inform the public … that [the grand jurors] are the creatures of the Marshall of the district and that the Marshall is the creature of the President. The address must then be viewed as an address of the President to himself. Whether such a grand jury was selected for party purposes is not mentioned … We have already seen judges [who were] appointed by the President turn preachers of certain political opinions, and now we see Grand Juries converted into party apostles.

Benny is at Settle, the beautiful farm his father owns, about sixteen miles south of Philadelphia along the Delaware River.²⁷⁰ Today, Polish writer Julien Niemcewicz travels downriver with Benny’s twenty-five-year-old doctor brother, William, for a visit to the Bache farm. Niemcewicz makes note in his diary:

I embarked with Dr. Bache on a boat which performed the office of a carriage and leaves at each flood tide for Burlington … The weather was rather fine, but the wind very weak. We enjoyed the beauty of both banks of Jersey and Pennsylvania completely at our ease … After three and a half hours we arrived at the farm of Mr. [Richard] Bache, the father. He is the husband of the daughter of [Benjamin] Franklin, celebrated American philosopher and patriot.

Mr. [Richard] Bache has completely the air of a Country Esquire, frank countenance and with a rather jovial humor. Madame by her natural wit and her conversation does not belie the origin from which she descends. We found there the whole family assembled with the exception of a little boy who was at school in Burlington. It consisted of three sons, of whom the first, Benjamin is the printer known for his opposition newspaper … The second son was the doctor [William] with whom I came, an interesting young man. The third, Louis [age nineteen], was destined to be a farmer; three girls, one of ten [Sarah] and two of marriageable age [Elizabeth, twenty-one, and Deborah, seventeen or eighteen]. They were very pretty and were neatly dressed, and nothing was more natural nor more touching than their behavior toward their parents. While one was holding his hand and leaning on her father (seated in an armchair at one time belonging to Dr. [Ben] Franklin), she was caressing him; the other was singing very well, accompanying herself on the harpsichord. The good old man joined at times his bass voice to the piping voice of his daughter …

Mr. Bache has a farm of 270 acres divided into meadows, cultivated ground and woodland. He has five men to work it and a gardener; a Negro and one girl do the domestic service … Fish, salt beef with all sorts of vegetables made up the dinner. The mush, a kind of gruel [porridge] from Indian Corn with milk added made a healthy and frugal supper.²⁷¹

MR. FENNO, The observations of Bache in the Aurora of this morning respecting the Grand Jury are worthy of himself. The wretch cannot write but to abuse—nor speak but to vilify. I would advise him not to leave his Press, for he may be assured there will be as much business shortly as he and his friend Callender can attend to. Addresses from all parts of the Union are coming forward, and it is his DUTY to attack them because they express the determination of the People to support the government—“The Grand Jury, he observes, are the creatures of the Marshall.” I was one of that body, and I assert he is a Liar.

It would be degrading indeed if there should be a man in the United States who would hesitate for a moment [as] to whose assertion to attach the most credit, to that of any one of the late Jury or that of Benjamin Franklin Bache. I have not time just now to say as much to this man as I could wish. I will, however, recommend to him to discharge the Notes which he gave to his paper makers and which, since last October, have been laying protested in one of the Banks of this city before he says anything about Credit.

ONE OF THE LATE GRAND JURY.

Is it not high time to enquire who are these traitors, who have sold their country and are ready to deliver it to the French? … Look around you to those who have been the associates of these French incendiaries, their agents at meetings, at clubs, their news-writers and panegyrists … Whose houses are the resort of Frenchmen, and who are always in French company? Mark the public men who go hand in hand with French agents, who declaim against the purity of their own government and its measures, while on the other hand they set up corrupt France as a pattern of all that is excellent. These men cannot be all honest. Some of them have Judaslike accepted the price of the blood of their friends and are preparing to betray them. Let us watch them closely for when our country is at stake, when we are told by our enemies that it is already sold, suspicion becomes a virtue.

Extract of a letter from Massachusetts … Communications from Philadelphia mention we may expect a list of traitors will soon be published … It certainly would not wound our humane feelings so much to see such criminals go to execution as the petty robber or house breaker …

Federalist “committees of surveillance” are spying on leading Republicans such as Thomas Jefferson, Benny Bache, and George Logan.²⁷³ George Logan’s wife, Deborah, will recall,

The dominant party scorned any longer to affect even the appearance of moderation toward their opponents. Not only the public acts of the Legislature were framed to keep them in awe … Friendships were dissolved, tradesmen dismissed, and custom withdrawn from the Republican party, the heads of which, as object of the most injurious suspicion, were recommended to be closely watched, and committees of Federalists were appointed for that purpose.

Many gentlemen went armed that they might be ready to resent any personal aggression. In the midst of this state of things, my husband formed the project of his visit to France …²⁷⁴

Some musicians last night and the evening before had the audacious impudence to refuse playing the President’s March [at the New Theatre] although requested by the box and the greater part of the house. [I r]eprobate strongly the action of pelting the musicians, but [I] would have preferred the … dignified conduct of leaving the theatre and refrain going thither until the managers positively declared the President’s March should be for the future the first tune played in the house and further give assurance that those Gallic murder-shouts, Ça Ira … shall no more grate our ears.

Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Federalist congressman attacks the Aurora. The Annals of Congress report:

Mr. ALLEN [Federalist, Connecticut], Let me add, as no contemptible engine in this business of sowing discord, dissension, and distrust of the Government, a vile incendiary paper published in this city, which constantly teems with the most atrocious abuse of all measures of the Government and its administrators. A flood of calumny is constantly poured forth against those whom the people have chosen as the guardians of the nation. The privilege of franking letters is abused in sending this paper into all parts of the country; and the purest characters are, through this medium, prostrated and laid low in the view of the people. No nation, no Government was ever so insulted. In another country, this printer and his supporters would long ago have found a fourth of September [day of judgment and execution]; and this paper is well known always to speak the sentiments of, and to be supported by, certain gentlemen in this House. These, sir, are the fruits of “the diplomatic skill of France”—these are the effects of her “means”—these are the effects of “her party in this country.”²⁷⁶

In that detestable sink of pollution, Bache’s paper, the thermometer of the [Jacobin] faction, we already see apologies for French enormities … [The French] tell us … they have the “means” and the skill to prevent our making one generous effort for independence … The first attempt to exhibit their skill is displayed by their creature Bache. He has undertaken to prove that Talleyrand … was not authorized by his government to make the corrupt proposals …

It is highly probable that this expatriated Scot [Callender], this fugitive from the pillory … has fixed his residence in Pennsylvania … for the mildness of her penal code. But let this miscreant reflect, if war is approaching … that the conduct of traitors will then be closely scrutinized.—That in this case, his worthless carcass may be destined to swell the measure of Federal despotism, as that government has not yet evinced its philanthropy by the abolition of the gallows … Mr. Adams will not retire from office… He will proceed as he has begun, and he will be supported too by all that deserve the name of Americans …

THE FEDERALIST

Tonight, Vice President Thomas Jefferson finds solace in the capacious rooms of Philosophical Hall, home of the American Philosophical Society.²⁷⁹ On the east side of the State-house park, Philosophical Hall overlooks Fifth-street, the Court House, and the Philadelphia Library. The society and the library owe their founding to Benjamin Franklin. Moreau de St. Méry observes:

In a niche above the entrance on the front of the Philadelphia Library (opposite the Philosophical Society) is a white marble statue of Benjamin Franklin a little larger than life size. He wears a Roman robe, and his left arm rests on several books piled on top of a column …²⁸⁰

[The Philosophical] Society occupies several rooms on the first floor of a building south of the Court House. The room for meetings has a long table on the south side of which the president sits alone in a shabby armchair which Franklin had long used as a desk chair and which he himself had occupied when president of the society. On the wall behind the president is an oil painting of this venerable philosopher …²⁸¹

The American Philosophical Society meets two to four times each month. Thomas Jefferson, its president, presides. Tonight’s meeting agrees to refinance a loan originally made to the society by Benjamin Franklin and now held by Benny’s father, Richard Bache. The meeting also elects four new members, including Polish writer Julien Niemcewicz, who visited Richard Bache’s farm just yesterday.²⁸²

The following circumstance which took place at the Theatre on Wednesday Evening last may be depended on as a fact … Mr., a member of the Federalist Legislature from New Jersey, accompanied by some other gentlemen, left their seats in the boxes, came into the gallery and began to vociferate for the President’s March. The horrid noise … created some alarm in the citizens in every part of the house, who imagined these men had broken out of the Lunatic Hospital … These are Federalists, the supporters of Order and Good Government!!

The managers of the Theatre ought to beware how they suffer the theatre to be converted to a political engine. Men of all political creeds resort there … Besides, Mr. Adams was not the choice of the people there, and to aim at thrusting him down their throats will produce something like resistance …

Extract of a letter … I find most good men look on the President’s Proclamation for Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer throughout the States as one of those apparently humble, hypocritical and delusive methods Tyrants have universally began the foundation for oppressing the people with …

The federalists … are giving daily proof of their love of order, decency, unanimity, &c. &c. In the Gazette of the United States, a paper patronized by Mr. Adams, Mr. Jefferson is spoken of as a man “infamous for his foreign correspondence.” Is this a stile suited to the second officer in the government …? Is this a language suited to this moment when the calls are so loud for union?

The Federalist mob is calling Young Men into their private army. They are vociferating at the theatre. Poor Richard feared the mob:

The President’s wife, Abigail, endorses the call for presidential music. Today, she fumes,

Bache’s observations on the call for the President’s March at the theatre is perfectly consistent with himself. Any expression indicative of attachment to the federal government is certain of his disapprobation & always serves to excite the corrosion that is destroying his malignant heart, where envy, baseness, and every passion which render a mortal detestable to those who have the slightest attachment to truth and virtue, have fixed their abode. Continue, base lying wretch; you cannot offer the public a more efficacious antidote to the poison you have disseminated than by publishing your remarks on the government and its friends.

THE UNGUARDED CONFESSION.

Bache a few days past affected entire ignorance of the “high officer” alluded to in Mr. Fenno’s paper as “infamous for his foreign correspondence.” And this morning, by sudden illumination, he asserts and takes it for granted that Jefferson is the man.—Pray did Mr. Fenno tell him so, or has Mr. Jefferson been complaining to him of the blow? In either case, the application of the charge rests not with Mr. Fenno. Bache himself is the author of the slander (if such he deems it) against his beloved Vice President.

Tonight, Federalists are at Jim Cameron’s Tavern in Southwark for a dinner arranged by naval contractor Joshua Humphreys (whose son, Clement, assaulted Benny Bache last April), by Peter Miercken (who will someday assault me), and by Philadelphia Federalist leader and attorney Joseph Thomas,²⁸⁵ who reports, “the glow of enthusiasm … caught from man to man, and gave to the ears of Southwark a sound to which she had been too long unaccustomed!”²⁸⁶ The Gazette of the United States reports:

[N]ear a hundred staunch Federalists assembled at James Cameron’s tavern, Shippen-street, in the district of Southwark, to partake of an elegant dinner … For the convenience of accommodating so large a group, the tables were laid out in the Ball Alley, sheltered from the weather by two large sails extending from end to end. Over the head of the President waved … the banner of Freedom, the Eagle of the United States … During the intervals of the following toasts, several songs composed for the occasion were sung. The incessant huzzas gave … hearty acclamations of genuine Patriotism:

TOASTS.

1. The Constitution of the United States … 9 cheers … 2. The President of the United States … 9 cheers … 3. George Washington … 9 cheers … 5. The American people—May they banish … those who have shown a disposition to degrade their country—9 cheers … 9. Death to Jacobin principles throughout the world … 9 cheers. 10. May France soon learn … that we are not a divided people in the cause of our country … 9 cheers … 14. May the wretches among us on whom France calculates for our destruction be speedily detected and punished … 9 cheers … 19. May all men detest the wretch who would justify foreign depravity at the expense of his own country … 9 cheers …

VOLUNTEERS.

By … William Clifton, jun. Joseph Thomas … without whose patriotic exertions … the pleasures of this meeting would never have been enjoyed—9 cheers

After the President withdrew

Joshua Humphries [Federalist navy contractor]—9 cheers.²⁸⁷

At this dinner, Federalists sing some new words to an old tune, “The Sages of Old.” Its second verse includes:

From such songs and such dinners bad things can come, but, as Poor Richard said,

A public dinner was given at Baltimore on the 19th inst. “in honour of JOHN ADAMS, our worthy President.”

—Now, BACHE, what will you say to this?

Much has been said by BACHE, the printer, and other hirelings of France to deceive the people of this country with respect to the late infamous decree by which the French plunderers are authorized to seize and condemn the property of this country.

We understand the Public will be gratified at Mr. Fox’s Benefit with a Patriotic Song—A NATIVE AMERICAN, and glowing with the true love of our own country. It is hoped this first attempt to introduce a National Song will be encouraged.

Now is the time … to set a mark upon the enemies of their country … He, therefore, who still perseveres in his attachment to [the French] and in his justification of their abominable measures ought to be branded as a hired villain or a natural seeker of pillage and blood. Let, therefore, a mark be set upon the miscreant; let all men stand aloof from him; let him be banished from the converse of honesty and virtue; let him associate with BACHE, the Printer, and his patricide crew, and with them let him sink through the vault of poverty into oblivion with the curse of the country on his head.

It is not often I interest myself in the success of Theatrical Representations; but, I cannot help bestowing a word or two in approbation of what is advertised for tomorrow night. Mr. Fox has, with singular propriety, admitted a SONG, written by a gentleman of Philadelphia, adapted to the PRESIDENT’S MARCH, which has long been the national and is now the popular tune. Long, much too long, have the lovers of the drama been shocked and insulted with the sacrilegious hymns of atheism and murder [like “The Marseillaise”] …

Today, handbills for the New Theatre announce that, at the conclusion of this evening’s performance, Gilbert Fox will sing a new patriotic song, “Hail Columbia,” which young Philadelphian lawyer Joseph Hopkinson (son of John Adams’ friend Francis Hopkinson) has written to the tune of the traditional “President’s March.”²⁹⁰

War measures … Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

Mr. HARPER [Federalist, South Carolina]: called for the order of the day on the bill for establishing an Executive Department, to be denominated The Department of the Navy …

Mr. GALLATIN [Republican, Pennsylvania]: He did not think it necessary to establish a Navy Department … He called for the yeas and nays upon the question … The yeas and nays were taken upon this bill … and decided in the affirmative—yeas 47, nays 41 …²⁹²

Many Republicans have abandoned the effort to stop John Adams’ war measures. Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:

Tonight, the President’s Lady, Abigail Adams, attends Philadelphia’s New Theatre to hear the new patriotic song “Hail Columbia.” An Aurora reporter also attends.²⁹³ Moreau de St. Méry describes the theatre:

The interior is pretty, and three tiers of boxes are pleasingly arranged in a semi-ellipse … The seats in the pit descend … from the bottom tier of boxes to the orchestra …

The hall is painted gray with gilded scrolls and carvings. The upper tier of boxes has small gilded balustrades which are quite elegant … separated in the front by small columns [and] … papered with red paper in extremely bad taste. The theater is lighted by small four-branched chandeliers placed on every second box … They are supported by gilded iron S’s …

The orchestra holds thirty musicians in two rows facing each other. The front of the stage is huge. Its wings represent portions of facades of beautiful houses … The stage, which is large, is lighted by oil lamps, as in France. These can be changed from high to low for night scenes and those that require dimness. The wings have illumination lamps …

Women go in the pit like men; but these are not women of any social standing. The upper gallery admits women and colored people who can’t sit anywhere else …

The performance is boisterous, and the interludes are even indecent. It is not unusual to hear such words as Goddamn, Bastard, Rascal, Son of a Bitch. Women turn their backs to the performance during the interludes …

People eat and drink in the pit. The refreshments, of which there is a store in a pretty little shop in the lobby … cost fifty per cent more than in the city which is the natural result of the rental cost of the shop.²⁹⁴

I had a Great curiosity to see for myself the Effect. I got Mr. Otis to take a Box … 7 meant now to be perfectly in cogg [incognito], so [I] did not sit in what is calld the President’s Box. After the principle peice was perfor[m]ed, Mr. Fox came upon the stage to sing the song. He was welcomed by applause. The House was very full, and, at every Choruss, the most unbounded applause ensued. In short it was enough to stund one. They had the song repeated—After this, Rossina was acted. When Fox came upon the stage, after the Curtain dropt, to announce the peice for fryday, they calld again for the song and made him repeat it to the fourth time. And the last time, the whole Audience broke forth in the Chorus whilst the thunder from their Hands was incessant, and, at the close, they rose, gave three Huzzas that you might have heard a mile—My Head aches in consequence of it.²⁹⁵

“Hail Columbia” (1798)²⁹⁶

Immortal Patriots, rise once more,

Defend your rights, defend your shore,

Let no rude foe with Impious hand,

Invade the shrine where sacred lies,

Of toil and blood the well earn’d prize,

While offering Peace sincere and just,

In Heav’n we place a manly trust,

That truth and Justice may prevail,

And ev’ry scheme of bondage fail,

Firm, united, &c.

Sound. Sound, the trump of fame,

Let Washington’s Great Name,

Ring through the world with loud applause,

Let ev’ry clime to freedom dear,

Listen with a Joyful ear,

With equal skill, with god-like pow’r,

He governs in the fearful hour,

Of horrid war, or guides with ease,

The happier time of honest peace,

Firm, united, &c.

Behold, the Chief who now Commands,

Once more to serve his Country, stands,

The Rock on which the storm will beat,

But arm’d in virtue, firm and true,

His hopes are fix’d on Heav’n and You,

When Hope was sinking in dismay,

When glooms obscur’d Columbia’s day,

His steady mind, from changes free,

Resolv’d on Death or LIBERTY,

Firm, united, &c.

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

SIR … You had an active part in bringing about that glorious revolution that made us an independent nation.—But … your ideas of government and policy have become warped … You left this country [to get French help during the American Revolution], Sir, with the warm affections of the people of America & with violent prejudices in your favor. The first public act which induced them to doubt the sincerity of your principles was your book, entitled “A[D]efence of the [C]onstitutions of America.” In this book, an aristocratical form of government … you boldly avow … is the only one conducive to the happiness of the people … [Y]ou may remember … [t]he universal acclamation … that you were an enemy of equal rights, and sorry am I to acknowledge that your subsequent conduct has evinced the truth of this assertion …

VALERIUS

Today, President Adams answers the address from the Philadelphia Federalists who met at Dunwoody’s Tavern on April 12th:

As John Adams answers laudatory addresses from various parts of the country, he might remember Poor Richard’s warning,

Their have been six different addresses presented from this city alone, all expressive of the Approbation of the measures of the Executive. Yet daringly do the vile incendiaries keep up in Bache’s paper the most wicked and base, violent & calumniating abuse—It was formerly considered as leveld against the Government, but now it is contrary to their declared sentiments daily manifested, so that it insults the Majesty of the Sovereign People. But nothing will have an Effect untill Congress pass a Sedition Bill which I presume they will do before they rise—Not a paper from Bache’s press issues … but what might have been prossecuted as libels upon the President and Congress. For a long time they seem as if they were now desperate—The wrath of the public ought to fall upon their devoted Heads.³⁰⁰

One of the war party, in a fit of unguarded passion, declared some time ago they would pass a citizen bill, an alien bill, & a sedition bill; accordingly, some days ago, Coit laid a motion on the table of the H.[ouse] of R.[epresentatives] for modifying the citizen law. Their threats point at Gallatin, & it is believed they will endeavor to reach him by this bill. Yesterday mr. Hillhouse laid on the table of the senate a motion for [an alien bill] giving power to send away suspected aliens. This is understood to be meant for Volney … But it will not stop there when it gets into a course of execution. There is now only wanting to accomplish the whole declaration before mentioned, a sedition bill which we shall certainly soon see proposed. The object of that is the suppression of the Whig presses. Bache’s had been particularly named … [I]f these papers fail, republicanism will be entirely brow beaten … At present, the war hawks talk of septembrizing [massacring], Deportation, and the examples for quelling sedition set by the French Executive. All the firmness of the human mind is now in a state of requisition.³⁰¹

CHAPTER TWO

YOUNG LIGHTENING-ROD

“Hail Columbia” (1798)²⁹⁶

CHAPTER TWO

YOUNG LIGHTENING-ROD

“Hail Columbia” (1798)296

“Hail Columbia” (1798)²⁹⁶