MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
It is frequently asked, what are we raising an army for? Various are the answers. Some say the people are so corrupt and vicious that we must have this rod held in terrorem over them … However, few can see the necessity of it … [A] judicious writer observes, “… When the people are easy and satisfied, the whole country is an army.”
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
A Gentleman called a few days since at the office of the Aurora where he found [Jasper] Dwight administering the honors of the shop—While he was detained, one or two of your rank Irishmen came in and enquired for the vulgar and impudent Dissent of the minority of the Pennsylvania Legislature to the address to the President. They were informed that there were none then to be had; that Mr. Jefferson had sent for and taken them all, but that a number more would be struck off in a few days.
To the Inhabitants of Chester County [Pennsylvania]
I noticed that a number of persons had convened at the house of Mr. Richard Robinson at Paoli for the purpose of taking into consideration the propriety of addressing the legislature of the union to repeal the alien and sedition laws.—[I]t appears from an advertisement of these persons in the “Aurora” that an adjourned meeting is to be held at the house of major Bones on the 28th inst … Fellow citizens, do not be duped by having any thing to do with these people, their meetings, or their petitions or remonstrances … It cannot be the wish of an honest man that this country be an asylum for alien enemies, felons, and convicts …
A Chester County Man
TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[DUBLIN, IRELAND] COURT MARTIAL. The Court sat about 11 o’clock, when Mr. [WOLFE] TONE was introduced … splendidly dressed in the French uniform …
The charge was then read to him … of adhering to the King [of Britain]’s enemies—attempting to levy war within the Kingdom, &c., &c … [H]e … at length pleaded guilty, and immediately after, producing a paper, he spoke nearly to the following effect:
“The influence and connection of Great Britain I have ever considered the bane of the prosperity and happiness of Ireland—These it has been the first wish of my heart to destroy, and the moment I found the proper resources of the country inadequate to the conflict, I applied to [the French] nation who had the will and the power to assist her …
“But in life, success is omnipotent—I have made an attempt in which Washington succeeded—and Kosciusko failed—the deliverance of my country …
“The Court must be sensible I have given no unnecessary trouble … [I]n return, it is my wish that the sentence may, if possible, be executed within an hour.” …
Mr. TONE is about two and thirty, and has left an amiable wife … and three children in Paris.
The victory of French forces in America gave America her independence and gave George Washington his presidency. The defeat of French forces in Ireland has left Ireland in British servitude and has cost Ireland’s would-be George Washington his life!
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
CIVIL WAR !
ALEXANDRIA [VIRGINIA], January 14 … Extract of a letter … “Times are alarming, civil dissensions, if not actual civil war, may be expected. A bill is ordered to be brought into the [Virginia] house arraying the state’s judges against those of the United States in cases that may occur under the sedition act … The government of the United States must protect itself or yield to the force of Virginia …”
(I apprehend nothing from the arms of Virginia alone; but she will call to her all the malcontents, all the villains, all the robbers, all the United Irishmen, from every part of the continent … But, take care, Virginia! Take care ! Pause and reflect before you rise en masse.
[WILLIAM COBBETT])
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
I was called upon to make an excursion a few days ago through the county of Montgomery [Pennsylvania] … observing … the alarming extent and increasing virulence of the United Irishmen … [A] great disproportion of outcasts from the French and Irish nations, but particularly of the latter, have unguardedly been admitted as settlers. These … have combined with certain Americans who have sold their birthright … [D]emocrats … have been advanced to the office of magistrates … A very full meeting of these discontented gentry was held …
The most notorious character in the above group is said to be an Irishman who, for a length of time, commanded a company of United Irishmen in his native country … Since the promulgation of the Alien bill … this captain John [Fries], if you please, has been assiduously riding about the country for the purpose of misleading the people as to the true intent of this bill, the house tax, the stamp tax, and the sedition bill …
That France had it in contemplation to reduce these states under her dominion so early as the year 1756—that she at that time had agents in Philadelphia in pursuance of that plan—that she commenced the war of 1778 against Great Britain and sent armies to America with this express view are well established by facts of general notoriety …
In the assiduous flatteries heaped on our great men by public acts of the Revolutionizers, in their statues of Franklin and Jefferson, and the apotheosis of the former in the Heathenish Pantheon—in their affected humility of conceding to America the honor of setting them an illustrious example by her revolution, we discover ramifications of the same system …
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
On Friday, the 25th inst. Mr. Havens presented to the [U.S.] House of Representatives the following MEMORIAL from the Inhabitants of the county of Suffolk in the state of New York …
The laws … commonly known by the name of Sedition Law … commonly called the Alien law … your memorialists conceive to be unconstitutional …
These measures appear to be founded on the alarm which has been excited and industriously circulated throughout the United States about the danger of a French invasion; but your memorialists see no good reason to believe that this alarm can be well founded …
No policy can be worse for a nation than to introduce great and certain evils in order to guard against imaginary dangers …
Today, President John Adams approves and signs into law,
AN ACT
For the Punishment of certain
crimes therein specified.
Be it enacted, &c. That if any person, being a citizen of the United States … shall, without the permission or authority of the government of the United States, directly or indirectly commence or carry on any verbal or written correspondence with any foreign government … with an intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government … in relation to disputes or controversies with the United States … he or she shall … be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars and by imprisonment during a term not less than six months nor exceeding three years …1750
John Adams’ response to George Logan’s peace effort will always be known as the “Logan Act”!
THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The committee of vigor … are now preparing and will bring forward in a few days a bill for a provisional declaration of War against France—In other words—a bill authorizing the President of the United States to declare war when he thinks fit ! Was it for this the British treaty was entered into? Was it for this the bravest hearts and wisest heads of America sustained a seven years barbarous war?—Was it for this that the citizens of America chose representatives ?
Tonight, Jack Fenno in the Gazette of the United States:
[PENNSYLVANIA] Certain disaffected persons in the township of Blockley near this city a few days ago erected a liberty-pole bearing an inflammatory label against the government of the United States. Two or three orderly citizens, justly offended by this daring outrage on the laws and honor of their country, immediately leveled it …
TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD.
WHEREAS, two Irishmen came last night, drunk, to [my] house … one of whom held his club over the head of a young man in the office, suspended for an answer to the question if his name was Fenno; the other of whom held in his right hand a naked cutlass; and whereas the aforesaid cowardly ruffians, after bullying the clerk for some time and threatening vengeance and destruction against me, departed without leaving their names or their business, I hereby offer the above award to be paid on conviction. They are both described to me as raw Irishmen, and filthy, dungeon’d looking villains …
JOHN WARD FENNO
N.B. A third stood sentry out-side the door.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
It seems poor Fenno is again frighted, and valiantly advertised 200 dollars reward—payable on the conviction of men who can be convicted of nothing—but scaring him.
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, Peter Porcupine writes:
MR. FENNO is certainly right in pursuing these assassins [who came to his house] by every means in his power and will be fully justified, in the eye of God and man, if he blows their brains (if they have any) about his room, should they attempt to attack him.—The same villains, on the same evening, armed in the same way, came to my house also. My clerk did not call me down. If he had, and if they had struck me, they would now be in hell.
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
The law of Congress, imposing a tax on houses, being now about to be put in force, the democrats have commenced their usual opposition and have stirred up many honest but illiteral people … [T]here is at this moment on the ridge road, about 9 miles from this city, a very lofty Liberty Pole, with a red and white pennant flying at its head and a board nailed to it, exhibiting the following inscription HEED YOUR LIBERTY, 1799 … I have left my address with the Printer of this paper and will be happy to accompany any of you to the above described spot for the purpose of demolishing this detested sign of anarchy and jacobinism.
A FEDERALIST
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Colonel [Matthew] Lyon is returned [to Congress] for the Western district of Vermont … [T]he votes for Col. Lyon are 4676, being 96 more than on the last trial …
Today, Alexander Hamilton writes U.S. Senator Theodore Sedgwick (Federalist, Massachusetts):
What, my dear sir, are you going to do with Virginia? This is a very serious business … [T]he proceedings of Virginia and Kentucky, with the two laws [the Alien and Sedition Acts] complained of, should be referred to a special committee …
The government must not merely defend itself, it must attack and arraign its enemies … [T]he measures for raising the military force should proceed with activity … When a clever force has been collected, let them be drawn toward Virginia, for which there is an obvious pretext—& then let measures be taken to act upon the laws [the Alien and Sedition Acts] & put Virginia to the Test of resistance.1751
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
SEDITION POLES.
READING [PENNSYLVANIA]. Sir, YOU have undoubtedly heard that an association was formed … to go under my command and destroy the sedition poles at this time standing within the county of Berks [Pennsylvania] … I set off on the day appointed from Hamburgh to the house of Isaac Wetzstein’s … I then ordered my men to hang their swords to their wrists and pistols in hand, rode full gallop to the house and immediately surrounded the pole … [A]s soon as the seventeenth stoke of the axe was applied to this emblem of sedition, down it fell … We then … proceeded against a pole at the house of John Weaver … I ordered my axeman to the pole … [&c.] PHILIP STRUBING
(And when the people of the country found that the time was elapsing to have the Sedition Bill … and Assessed Taxes repealed, they gathered themselves together to their leaders and said unto them: Up, make us poles … And lo! they erected poles … But o Israel ! the joy will be of short duration, the poles will be turned into firewood, the laws which you endeavor to oppose will stand … and ye who oppose the execution of these laws will bring the strong arm of the government of the Union upon them … )
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Mr. EDITOR … An increase of heavy taxes to support a standing army in time of peace are the seeds of ruin to a republican government like ours …
A CITIZEN OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
SIGNS of the TIMES.
The Religion of Peace employed to promote war!
A Republic rushing into a war in support of Monarchy!
Today, without risking disclosure (to Federalist postal spies) that James Madison is the author, Thomas Jefferson writes Madison that his January 23rd Aurora piece (“Foreign Influence”) is a great success:
A piece published in Bache’s paper on Foreign Influence has had the greatest currency and effect. To an extraordinary first impression [printing] they have been obliged to make a second, and of an extraordinary number. It is such things as these the public want. They say so from all quarters, and that they wish to hear reason instead of disgusting blackguardism … [W]e are sensible that this summer is the season for systematic energies and sacrifices. The engine is the press. Every man must lay his purse and his pen under contribution … [L]et me pray and beseech you to set apart a certain portion of every post day to write what may be proper for the public … I will let you know to whom you may send so that your name shall be sacredly secret …1752
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
TO THE FREEMEN OF THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF VERMONT.
Vergennes Gaol [Jail], January 13.
FELLOW CITIZENS,
WITH a heart truly overflowing with gratitude have I, in this dismal prison, received the intelligence that you have again considered me entitled to your confidence … as your Representative in the Congress of the United States … This undissembled conduct … corroborates with the truly noble and generous efforts of the patriots of Virginia and Kentucky in holding up to abhorrence tyranny and unconstitutional laws … The story has already been told, in every country where representative government is known, that one of the national representatives of the United States of America has been imprisoned for writing and publishing; that when the Executive are doing right, they shall have his support but whenever they should do wrong, he would not be their humble advocate …
M.[ATTHEW] LYON
Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
Mr. HARTLEY [Republican, Pennsylvania] said that, since presenting the petition … from York county, praying for repeal [of the Alien and Sedition Acts] … he had been written to on the subject. He gave notice, therefore, that he should call up the petition for consideration on Monday …1753
Starting Monday, Congress takes up petitions to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts. As Fenno’s recent attacks on Jimmy Reynolds demonstrate, Federalists seem ready to act against the Irish. Tonight, I attend a meeting of Irishmen who want to petition against the Alien Act. Jimmy Reynolds (head of Philadelphia’s Society of United Irishmen) and I will gather signatures.1754
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The French arrest our commerce as the British had done, and continue to do. But they never impressed our seamen [into service].
War … This afternoon, off the island of St. Kitts in the French West Indies, the thirty-eight-gun, 340-man United States Navy frigate Constellation attacks and captures the French Republic’s forty-gun ship-of-war L’Insurgente, out of Guadeloupe. U.S. Navy Captain Thomas Truxton writes the U.S. Secretary of the Navy:
I stretched under Montserrat and towards Guadaloupe … [A]t Noon, that Island bearing W.S.W five leagues Distance, discovered a large Ship to the Southward on which I bore down … [S]he hoisted the french national Colours and fired a gun to Windward (which is a Signal of an Enemy). I continued bearing down on her, and at 1/4 past 3 P.M … as soon as I got in a Position for every Shot to do Execution, I answered by commencing a close and successful Engagement, which lasted untill about half after 4 PM, when she struck her Colours to the United States Ship Constellation … She proves to be the celebrated french national Frigate, Insurgente of 40 Guns and 400 Men, lately out from France … I have been much shattered in my Rigging and Sails, and my fore top Mast rendered from Wounds useless … I hope the President and my country will for the present be content with a very fine Frigate being added to our infant Navy, and that too with the loss of only one Man killed and three wounded, while the Enemy had (the french Surgeon reports) Seventy killed and wounded; several were found dead in Tops &c. and thrown overboard …1755
The French Governor-General of Guadeloupe, Edmé Etienne-Borne Desfourneaux, will respond to this attack by declaring war on all American shipping.1756
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
TO DOCTOR LOGAN …
SO, Doctor, you have been in France!
Not (as of old) to learn to dance …
The all-important joyful news
To Fame was handed by your spouse.
(Not Virgil’s Fame—an ugly witch—
Her modern shape’s like Madame Bache.) …
With only two days before Congress takes up the Alien and Sedition Acts, we plan to solicit worshippers at St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Fourth-street to sign our petition to repeal the Alien Act. Many non-citizen Irish worship at St. Mary’s,1757 and we will wait for them after tomorrow morning’s church service.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1799
Today, four of us—Samuel Cumings (a printer at the Aurora), Dr. Jimmy Reynolds (Benny’s friend and mine), Robert Moore (a recent arrival from Ireland), and I—post notices on the front gates and at both sides of the front door of St. Mary’s Church on Fourth-street. Before the mass begins, a church member rips down two of these notices, but we wait with the petition amidst the tombstones of the church cemetery for the congregation to emerge. When the church service ends, violence begins.1758
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
We are told we shall have a standing army of 50,000 men without enquiring for what purpose—it may be useful to enquire whence are the men to come? The major part of the soldiers on the present establishment are aliens—principally Irish—the marines are of the same complexion …
Tonight, the Gazette of the United States reports yesterday’s violence at St. Mary’s:
SHOCKING OUTRAGE
The repose of the city was yesterday (Sunday) disturbed by a more daring and flagitious riot than we remember to have outraged the civil law and the decorum of society for more than forty years … The selection of the Lord’s Day for exciting a general scene of confusion and disorder, whilst it sufficiently characterizes the principles of the actors, is also a very strong collateral evidence that their intentions were of the most atrocious nature.
Four men (two of whom are United Irishmen, and the other two of a similar description of character) had the unparalleled effrontery and profanity to assault the members of the Catholic Church during divine service with a most seditious and inflammatory petition against the Alien and Sedition Laws …
[T]hey had affixed a placard to the door of the Church in the following terms,
“The natives of Ireland who worship at this Church are requested to remain in the yard after Divine service until they have affixed their names to a memorial for the repeal of the Alien Bill.”
After having disturbed and broken up the ceremonies of the Church, several of them were detected by the wardens … reading this inflammatory paper from the eminence of a tombstone to a considerable crowd surrounding them …
“You lie, you rascal,” was the spirited reply of a young man, “you are no Irishman; you are a traitor.” [One] fellow immediately drew a pistol and presented it at the young man … The other instantly knocked him down and trampled on him. The rioters were pursued, overtaken, and carried before the mayor for examination. One of them was committed to prison—the other three found bail. A fifth, who was apprehended in committing an assault on the house of one of the evidences, is also in jail.
RIOT
By the exertions of the peace officers and the spirited cooperation of several active citizens, the five following persons were yesterday apprehended and brought before Robert Wharton, esq., Mayor of the city …:
James Reynolds, —– Moore, —– Rice, Wm. Duane, —– Cummens …
Duane prints a Democratic newspaper in Philadelphia … The whole five call themselves Irishmen.
MR. FENNO,
… That there is such a banditti, organized for the subversion of government and the establishment of a system of terror and anarchy, can no longer be doubted by the most incredulous. “The United Irishmen” have at length broken out into acts which render them no longer the objects of uncertain suspicion … [T]hey bid defiance to our laws, they threaten our fellow citizens with assassination, and even the temples of the most High God whom we worship are made the theatres of their violence and foul abomination.
Fellow citizens, guard yourselves ere it is too late against these cut-throats … Your persons, your religion, your government, are threatened …
Sunday Evening. M.
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
Yesterday this city witnessed a scene the most outrageous and the most scandalous that was ever beheld or heard of in a state of society …
The daring riot of yesterday ought to excite universal attention … The times are serious. All that we are able to perceive, we may rest assured, is more than the outward signs, the mere indication, of a deep, secret, systematized, and extensive plan of violence.—“Again, therefore, I say unto you, watch.”
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The following petition has been presented to the [U.S.] House of Representatives, signed by upwards of 1200 citizens …
The petition of the subscribers, inhabitants of Northampton County, Pennsylvania …
The authority given to the president to raise troops in any number and to borrow money without any limitation … are, in our opinion, transfers of powers … [T]he increase of the regular military force, and the authorizing of the executive to accept the services of volunteer corps in any number, these corps probably influenced by party spirit, and certainly to be officers at presidential discretion, are measures of far more dangerous tendency …
We think we can discover, in many of the public acts, which have latterly taken place, a regular and systematic plan to aggrandize and strengthen the executive at the expence of the other departments of the state … The Alien Law gives to the President a judicial authority which … forms … the very essence of despotism. The sedition law is calculated to throw around his person and character an inviolability only to be recognized in the corrupted monarchies of Europe … To avert this is the object which your petitioners have in view. They, therefore, solicit the repeal of the laws above referred to …
Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
Mr. LIVINGSTON presented a petition from a number of aliens, natives of Ireland, resident within the United States, praying for a repeal of the alien law …1759
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
The impudent, seditious, and inflammatory memorial, which we had occasion yesterday to notice, purports to be … to obtain “a repeal of the law concerning Aliens.” [T]he real design, without doubt, [is] to obtain the most extensive enrollment possible of existing United Irishmen and … to make new converts …
Where is the American that would own Duane or Reynolds or any other United Irishman for a fellow-citizen? If there is one, he is a fit tenant only for Hell or for France …
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
UNITED IRISH RIOT …
Last Sunday four men; to wit; Reynolds (commonly called Doctor Reynolds), Duane, Mother Bache’s Editor, one Moore, lately from Ireland, Rice, a clerk, and Cummens a Journeyman printer, were apprehended and taken before Robert Wharton, Esq. Mayor of the city, for RIOT, the scene of which was at the Roman Catholic Church in Fourth street.
During divine service, some of them went and stuck up placards on the walls to the following purport:
“The natives of Ireland who worship at this Church are requested to remain in the yard after Divine service until they have affixed their names to a memorial for the repeal of the Alien Bill.”
The trustees and some of the congregation pulled down these placards; they were stuck up again, and again pulled down … When the church broke up … Reynolds, who was placed at the east end of the church and who had been ordered out, drew a pistol …
When the prisoners were taken before the Mayor, a scene took place … [I]n rushed [Thomas] McKean the Democratic Judge, violently agitated with passion. The Mayor began to explain … When the Judge had listened to him for a time, he replied, that the men might take their hats and go home …
A word of explanation … For Sunday afternoon, we were held incommunicado. Near dark, when papers to commit us had been completed, we were handcuffed and paraded through the streets of Philadelphia (which had filled with people) to the house of the Federalist mayor, Robert C. Wharton, who proceeded to question us for another half hour.1760 Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court Judge Thomas McKean finally intervened. An eyewitness report:
Whilst Robert Wharton, Esq. Mayor of the city was engaged in taking the recognizances of … persons accused as authors of the riot, some person knocked vehemently at the door and demanded admission; the constables refusing to open it, Mr. M’Kean called out “I am Chief Justice of the state.” The mayor, on hearing that the Chief Justice was there, opened the door and gave Mr. M’Kean admittance. No sooner had he entered than he called out with a loud voice, accompanied by a menacing air, “What is the reason, Mr. Mayor, of all this fuss, that you keep the city in an uproar with a mob marching these gentlemen up one street and down another, hand-cuffed and tied, for half the day together.”
The Mayor attempted to state the nature of their offence, the evidence of their having insulted the congregation of the Church, and that one of them had presented a loaded pistol to the breast of one of the members … but Mr. M’Kean would hearken to nothing from the Mayor or Gentlemen present, and charged the members of the Congregation with having committed an assault on the prisoners and said “that they and not the prisoners were the aggressors, that he would have dismissed the matter in quarter of an hour, for the prisoners had the right to take up their hats and go about their business.” The Mayor proceeded to take the recognizances and Mr. M’Kean afterwards left the room apparently in great passion.1761
Judge Thomas McKean will be our Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania in next autumn’s election. Needless to say, Philadelphia Mayor Robert Wharton will support the Federalist choice, Pennsylvania’s ultra-Federalist U.S. Senator, James Ross.
McKean hasn’t put an end to the matter. My Irish friends and I will stand trial for “seditious riot” on the 21st of the month!
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Petition of the Irish exiles to Congress was presented to the House of Representatives yesterday …
Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
Mr. GREGG [Republican, Pennsylvania] presented a remonstrance against the alien and sedition laws signed by two hundred and seventy of the inhabitants of that part of Mifflin county which lies north of Tuffey’s mountain …
Mr. G. said he had also two petitions and remonstrances on the subject signed by 320 of the inhabitants of Cumberland county in this State …
Mr. HAVENS [Republican, New York] also presented a memorial from Queen’s county in the State of New York, praying for repeal of the alien and sedition laws …1762
Today, from Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson writes Archibald Stewart in Virginia:
I avoid writing to my friends because the fidelity of the post office is very much doubted … A wonderful & rapid change is taking place in Pennsylvania, Jersey, & N York. Congress is daily plied with petitions against the alien and sedition laws & standing armies. Several parts of this State are so violent that we fear an insurrection. This will be brought about by some if they can. It is the only thing we have to fear. The materials now bearing on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness … if the knowledge of facts can only be disseminated …1763
Eighteen thousand Pennsylvanians have signed petitions against John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts, his federal army, and his war taxes. That’s 90 percent of Pennsylvanians who voted in the 1796 Presidential election.1764
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, Peter Porcupine writes:
JUDGE M’KEAN
“His Honor,” the “Doctor of Laws, &c., &c., &c., &c., &c.,” does certainly feel somewhat alarmed on account of his conduct on Sunday last … Interfering with the chief magistrate of the city; interrupting him in the actual execution of his office; telling him he was actuated by party motives; and asserting that the rioters who stood prisoners under his warrant might take their hats and go home; all this is indeed most scandalous and criminal …
The prisoners had been guilty of a most daring breach of the laws of God and Man; yet, notwithstanding this, they saw their conduct justified by the Chief Justice of the State, by the very man whom they well knew was to preside at their trial !
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Those folks who make so much noise about receiving subscriptions to a petition on Sunday, after divine service, are very little scrupulous about lying all the rest of the week … It is very remarkable that among the most vociferous against the signing a name to a liberal memorial and elegant composition—are the most ardent admirers of political sermons!
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
THE DEMOCRATIC JUDGE [M’KEAN] …
CALLENDER, this little reptile, … was never discountenanced by … the Chief Justice … BACHE, the Chief Judge’s companion at Civic Festivals … neither … No one among all the libellers was ever prosecuted or bound over. Their politics were perfectly French … I could mention one civic festival at which he assisted, where a “revolution in Great Britain” was toasted; and another, where a toast was “success to the United Irishmen” …
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
In the English print of Tuesday and Wednesday last, … the Chief Justice of this State … is openly and expressly charged with committing acts deserving of punishment—insulting a magistrate in the discharge of his duty—of attempting to destroy the independence of the magistracy—insulting the mayor in the execution of his office—and of acting partially toward men guilty of a daring breach of the laws of God and man, men who knew he was to preside at their trial …
But let us ask what is the foundation for this calumny? Four persons engaged in soliciting subscriptions to a petition to Congress were attacked and one of them struck. The assailants, having committed the assault, fly for constables, and the insulted persons are brought before the mayor.—Some friends of good order make a riot, a large concourse of people assemble, and for five hours they fill the street from the house of the mayor to that of the Chief Justice; the latter, anxious to learn the cause of such unusual disquietude, proceeds to the mayor’s house and expresses the wish that the persons had been committed, if deserving of commitment, or dismissed if not …
It will be observed that the crime against the laws of God and man was the taking subscriptions to a petition against the Alien Bill !
But what is the most malicious and daring is the assertion that the Chief Justice was to preside at the trial of those violators … The fact is that the parties have been bound over to appear at the court of Oyer and Terminer which sits next Monday and over which Judge Coxe presides …
The clue to all this calumny is simply this—the republicans mean to propose Judge M’Kean for Governor of this State … and the people of Pennsylvania are attempted to be deceived into the views of the English party by heaping calumnies on the man who fought in our revolution against Britain—who held the presidency of Congress in days of peril, and who has administered our laws …
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Rev. J. C. Ogden, who some time ago, presented a petition from Matthew Lyon’s constituents to the President of the United States, upon his return to Litchfield in Connecticut, has been arrested by a Mr. Wolcott and put into prison for a demand of 200 dollars!
Mr. Ogden on his return home to his wife, who lives with her aged mother in Connecticut, was seized under some pretext at the suit of [Treasury Secretary] Oliver Wolcott and thrown into prison.1765 The Rev. Mr. Ogden is now serving a four-month prison sentence!1766
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
A bill was read in the senate on Saturday for authorizing the president of the United States to raise an army of 30,000 mercenaries and to embody 75,000 volunteers for three years …
Since we are not menaced by external danger, for what end can a standing army, with all its concomitant taxes and curses, be attempted thus to be set up ?
Word from overseas is that France wants to negotiate.1767 Does Adams want to negotiate? Today, the President delivers a message to a closed-door meeting of the Senate:
I nominate William Vans Murray, our minister resident at The Hague [Netherlands], to be minister plenipotentiary of the United States to the French Republic.
If the Senate shall advise and consent to his appointment, effectual care shall be taken, in his instructions, that he shall not go to France without direct and unequivocal assurances from the French Government, signified by their minister of foreign relations, that he shall be received in character …
JOHN ADAMS1768
Time will tell whether Adams is serious. Meanwhile, the war continues!
Today, the Court of Oyer and Terminer opens at the State-house in Philadelphia. Our trial for seditious riot at St. Mary’s is scheduled for Wednesday.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[T]he war shall be the war of a party … The following extract of a letter from the Secretary of War … is too plain to be misapprehended …
[A] Company of Volunteer Cavalry, Artillery, or Infantry, desirous of serving in the Provisional Army should associate to the numbers required …
[I]t being deemed important not to accept of companies composed of disaffected persons … it will be proper [that] proper certificates from prominent and known characters … be also presented.
A company prepared to present the aforesaid exhibits should make a formal offer of their services to the President …1769
What, may it please your honor, is meant by “disaffected persons,” are they all such persons as have dared to express disapprobation of any public measure; who have had the presumption at any time to suppose that Mr. Jefferson would make a better president than Mr. Adams, or who do not on all occasions declare the most holy reverence for the sacred person of the chief magistrate?
Today, Federalist leaders from all parts of Pennsylvania gather at Dunwoody’s Tavern on High-street (launching point for last year’s attacks on the Aurora) to decide “unanimously” that Pennsylvania’s ultra-Federalist U.S. senator, James Ross, will oppose Republican Judge Thomas McKean in the statewide gubernatorial election next October 8th.1770
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Numerous surmises were in circulation yesterday concerning the new mission to France. Some would have it that it was but a foil to divert public attention from the enormous army measures …
Today, Abigail Adams writes the President’s secretary, William Shaw:
It appears to me … from the conduct of Reynolds as well as of the Chief Justice that a crisis is working up which will call for all the energy of the Government to suppress … As to the conduct of McKean, he should never sit upon the Bench as Judge again …1771
Today, my trial for “seditious riot” at St. Mary’s Church opens at Philadelphia’s Court of Oyer and Terminer. Joseph Hopkinson (composer of the patriotic song “Hail Columbia” and deputy attorney general for the county of Philadelphia)1772 is the government prosecutor. Alex Dallas, who represented Benny before Judge Richard Peters last June, is now my lawyer. From the transcript of today’s proceedings:
At a court of Oyer and Terminer, held at the State House in Philadelphia … before J. D. Coxe, Esq., presiding judge; R. Keen, Jonathan B. Smith, and A. Robinson, Esqrs., assistant judges, two indictments were laid against William Duane, editor of the Aurora, James Reynolds, M.D., Robert Moore, Esq., and Samuel Cuming, printer for an alleged riot, &c …
[A twelve man jury is impaneled] …
JOHN CONNOR sworn.
Mr. Hopkinson. Relate what you saw …
Ans.— … During the service, Mr. Gallagher, jr … was going round the church to different gentleman of the congregation, to their pews. He came to the pew where I sat; [and] … intimated to me that … there was to be a seditious meeting after prayers were over …
Mr. Dallas … did you see or hear anything to disturb divine worship ?
Ans.—No …
JAMES GALLAGHER, jr., sworn …
The Court. What was the observation?
Ans.—[Defendant Samuel] Cuming said I was an impertinent scoundrel for tearing down [a petition notice before the church service began]. I told him no Jacobin paper had a right to a place on the walls of that church. He was immediately after joined by several others.
Ques.—Was Mr. Moore, Mr. Duane, or Dr. Reynolds among them?
Ans.—No: I did not see them; I saw Mr. Duane for the first time that day at the Mayor’s office … I waited till service was over … I went down the alley at the south side of the church, and I saw a crowd … I heard a person declaring he would not be forced or pushed out of the [church] yard, and the cry of “turn him out;” I got into the crowd, when I saw Dr. R[eynolds] keeping four or five persons at bay; I went forward … Before I had time to catch hold of Dr. R.[eynolds], he presented a pistol to my breast … I had my hands raised with a view to put him out; he declared he would shoot any man that would lay hold of him; I struck at him, he wheeled … and the pistol fell by his groin … Mr. Lewis Ryan took hold of him, threw him down … I kicked him twice or three times while he was down …
THADDEUS M’CARNEY sworn.
Ques.—Do your recollect being in church on Sunday week?
Ans.—Yes; I am a member of that congregation …
Ques.—Are you a citizen of the United States?
Ans.—No; I have been in the country only two years …
Ques.—Do you know whether it was or was not the desire of a number of the members of the congregation for the petition to be brought that day to obtain signatures?
Ans. I believe it was, because I for one would put my name to it …
The evidence on both sides being closed, Mr. Dallas rose on behalf of the accused, and addressed the court and jury.
May it please your Honours, Gentlemen of the Jury: …
[H]ow much astonished must you be to hear the evidence that has been produced … ! Who has not heard that a dark conspiracy has been formed to overthrow not alone the Constitution, but to subvert the very principles of our form of government? … [Y]ou have heard them called Jacobins! …
Is it possible that it should be said to be criminal to solicit signatures to a decent and dignified memorial for a redress of grievances? … Is this a ground for a charge of riotous proceedings? …
Mr. James Gallagher, jr. [i]ntoxicated with the phantasy of Jacobinism, his heart is struck upon seeing the walls contaminated with this Jacobinical notice and he valorously resolves to pull it down … [A]fter coming from the altar, his boiling zeal leads him to the most influential characters in the church who are successively alarmed … [F]orth he issues, foaming with political fury … These are the words of this young hero, “when he was down I kicked him three times.” This act … was perfectly consistent with the heroism of our temporary politics, for by kicking Dr. Reynolds three times while he was down, he became qualified to carry dispatches to France …
The jury retired, and in about half an hour entered in a letter, and sealed it, their verdict …1773
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
On Saturday, the 9th instant, expired the time for which Col. Matthew Lyon was sentenced to imprisonment … The reelection of Col. Lyon is a good comment of the people of Vermont on the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS
Mr. GALLATIN presented a petition from seven hundred and fifty-five inhabitants from the county of Chester [Pennsylvania] and another of seventy-eight inhabitants of Washington county … praying for a repeal of the alien and sedition laws.
Mr. BROWN presented petitions and remonstrances of the same nature from one thousand nine hundred and forty inhabitants of Montgomery county and from one thousand, one hundred inhabitants of Northampton county, both in the state of Pennsylvania.
Mr. McCLENACHAN presented a petition of the same kind from five hundred and eighty-seven inhabitants of the Northern Liberties of Philadelphia …1774
This morning, the jury’s verdict is unsealed. Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
THE SUNDAY RIOT
IT is not improbable but that our readers may be desirous to be acquainted with what legal proceedings have been taken in consequence of the riot that took place at St. Mary’s Chapel, on the Sunday before last … [T]he defendants were bound over … Mr. Thackery, engraver, was security for the appearance of William Duane … The Court proceeded to the trial of the defendants. The jury … brought in a verdict of not guilty.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
This city has been kept in a state of agitation during the whole of last and part of the present week by a transaction which, had it not undergone the form of a violent prosecution and a solemn, deliberate, fair, and open trial, could scarcely believed to have taken place in a society not utterly degenerated …
The persons implicated were Dr. James Reynolds, Robert Moore, Esq., William Duane, editor of the Aurora, and Samuel Cumming, printer. Two of them American citizens, all of them Irishmen or sons of Irishmen. They had been appointed a committee to receive the subscriptions of such natives of Ireland as might chuse to pray for a repeal of the Alien Bill. The memorial is already before the public, and in the peaceable and orderly act of receiving subscriptions, they were set upon by a number of persons and assaulted …
The four were each bound in 4000 dollars recognizances to stand trial. The trial took place on Wednesday, and the defendants were by the verdict of a jury found NOT GUILTY …
During the pendency of the trial, the papers called federal, including the English paper, let loose all the flood-gates of falsehood and malevolence … [H]ad the Aurora dared to repel this injustice, there would have been found some hungry minion to move the court.
But the verdict of an honest jury is the best reply to such unprincipled measures … To the honor of that jury, composed principally of frank Germans or their descendants, they gave a verdict of not Guilty to the utter confusion and shame of the authors of such a prosecution.
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
Lyon yesterday resumed his seat …
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Connecticut members [of Congress] are horribly alarmed by the encreasing number of the Aurora that passes into that State …
POLITICAL REFLECTIONS …
The French Republic has been, and still is, in a state of war and danger, and this state of war and danger have given to the [French] Executive an immense army to command, innumerable offices to bestow, a mighty mass of money to deal out, a control over the freedom of speech and of the press …
The usurped sway ascribed [by detractors] to the [French] Directory … cannot then be too much pondered and contemplated by Americans … They ought most generously to reflect on the evils of a state of war … to destroy the equilibrium of the departments of power by throwing improper weights into the Executive scale and to betray the people into snares which ambition may lay for their liberties …
It deserves to be well considered also that actual war is not the only state which may supply the means of usurpation. The real or pretended apprehensions of it are sometimes of equal avail to the projects of ambition …
[T]he fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.
A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES
James Madison contributed this morning’s “Political Reflections.”1775
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[LONDON.] “In consequence of the remonstrance of the American Minister” (says a late London paper …) “the state prisoners in the several gaols in Dublin received official notice … that they could not go to any part of the United States as had been proposed.” …
This is the first direct exercise of the powers given to the President by the unconstitutional, inhuman, Turkish law respecting aliens …
Recollect, fellow-citizens, that our ancestors emigrated to this country with the view of escaping from the fangs of power … [A]sk yourselves whether … the oppressed of all nations have not the same right and title to migrate to this country and enjoy liberty as ourselves …
Today, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Annals of Congress report:
Mr. GREGG [Republican, Pennsylvania] presented two petitions praying for a repeal of the alien and sedition laws …
Mr. GALLATIN [Republican, Pennsylvania] presented another petition …
Mr. LIVINGSTON [Republican, New York]: one of a similar nature, signed by 2,500 citizens of New York.
Mr. HEISTER [Republican, Pennsylvania]: one of the same kind, from 1,400 inhabitants of Berks county.
Mr. BAYARD [Federalist, Delaware]: one from the inhabitants of Newcastle county, State of Delaware, signed by between 700 and 800 persons …
On motion of Mr. GOODRICH [Federalist, Connecticut], the House went into a Committee of the Whole on the report of a select committee on the petitions praying for a repeal of the alien and sedition laws … [T]he committee beg leave to report the following resolutions:
Resolved, That it is inexpedient to repeal the act passed the last session, entitled “An act concerning aliens.”
Resolved, That it is inexpedient to repeal the [sedition] act …
Mr. GALLATIN rose and spoke …
When Mr. GALLATIN had concluded, the question was taken and carried—yeas 52, nays 48.1776
Al Gallatin “rose and spoke,” yet no one heard him. The Federalists drowned out his words!
Today, President Adams names two additional peace envoys (neither of them in Europe) for the mission to France and preconditions their departure on his receiving assurances from French Foreign Minister Talleyrand that they will be well received.1777
Today, President Adams approves and signs into law:
AN ACT
For the augmentation of the Navy.
BE it enacted &c., That … in addition to the naval armament already authorized by law, there shall be built within the United States, six ships of war, of a size to carry, and which shall be armed with not less than, seventy-four guns each; and there shall be built or purchased with the United States, six sloops of war, of a size to carry, and each shall be armed with, eighteen guns each …; and a sum not exceeding one million of dollars shall be and is hereby appropriated …1778
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The committee appointed to report upon the petitions from various parts of the Union against the Alien and Sedition Bill, brought up their report yesterday, which caused a very animated debate. After which, on the question implicating the repeal of those laws, the vote for repeal were 48, noes 52. So that the laws remain unrepealed !
Today, Thomas Jefferson writes James Madison:
Yesterday [the President] … sent in the nomination of [two additional] … Envoys … but declaring the two … should not leave this country till they should receive from the French Directory assurance that they should be received with the respect due … etc. This, if not impossible, must at least put off the day … of reconciliation and leave more time for new projects of provocation. Yesterday witnessed a scandalous scene in the House of Representatives. It was the day for taking up the report of their committee against the Alien and Sedition laws, &c … Gallatin took up the Alien, & Nicholas the Sedition Law; but after a little while of common silence, [the Federalists] began to enter into loud conversations, laugh, cough, &c., so that for the last hour of these gentlemen’s speaking, they must have had the lungs of a vendue master [auctioneer] to have been heard … It was impossible to proceed. The question was taken & carried in favor of [retaining these laws] … 52 to 48 …1779
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[T]he gentlemen now nominated [as envoys to France] are not to proceed until the president shall have received from the government of France assurances that they shall be received … [T]ime is lost … sending to France and receiving the replies … The matter must be done circuitously … And after the most satisfactory answers shall have been received, we shall be then precisely at the point from which we may now directly set out. Our ministers will then have to sail from hence to France. So that there is a super-addition of delay … procrastination …
Tonight, William Cobbett in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
For several days past, there has been a good deal of grumbling … respecting my comments on the report which Duane and Mother Bache had circulated on the subject of the nomination … I denied that Mr. Murray was to go to Paris alone to make a treaty. I most positively denied that any Envoy or Envoys were to go … ’till THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF had assurances of their being honorably received; and, if we are to credit the new report … I was perfectly correct, for, they now tell us, that the President has nominated THREE ENVOYS and that they are not to go to France till the assurances are received BY HIMSELF.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Why all the war measures … when there exists a conviction that peace is at our will ? Are standing armies such an amusement to the people that they are willing to be drained of their hard earnings to enjoy the spectacle ?
Today, President Adams approves and signs into law:
AN ACT
Concerning French citizens that have been or may be captured and brought into the United States.
BE it enacted …, That the President of the United States be and is hereby authorized to exchange or to send away from the United States to the dominions of France … all French citizens that have been or may be captured …1780
Today, Federalists in President Adams’ home state of Massachusetts undertake another effort to disable America’s second-largest Republican newspaper, the Independent Chronicle of Boston, whose publisher, Thomas Adams, has been ill since his federal indictment in October under the Sedition Act (his trial is set for June). This time, Federalists use the Massachusetts common law of criminal libel to indict not only Thomas Adams but also his younger brother and business manager, Abijah Adams, for a February 18th article that criticizes Massachusetts for failing to adopt the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. Use of state law means that defendants can’t claim truth as a defense and that prosecutors don’t have to wait for a federal court to reconvene. There will be an immediate trial. It’s a serious threat. Thomas Adams is too sick to attend. The jailing of his younger brother threatens the paper’s very existence.1781
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Yesterday in the Senate, Mr. Jefferson gave notice that, inasmuch as the law seemed to require the retirement of the Vice President of the United States from the duties of President of the Senate before the close of the Session, in order that the Senate might elect a President pro tem; he gave notice that he should on the next day retire in order that a President of the Senate, pro tem. might be chosen.
The Federalist majority in the U.S. Senate will choose Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate and ultra-Federalist U.S. Senator James Ross to be the President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate.
Today, in Boston, Independent Chronicle business manager Abijah Adams goes on trial for seditious libel. (The publisher of the Chronicle, Thomas Adams, is too ill to stand trial.) Judge Francis Dana presides. The verdict: guilty. The sentence: imprisonment of the Chronicle’s manager for thirty days, payment of all prosecution costs, and a $500 one-year surety bond. What will become of the Chronicle?1782
SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
(COPY.) … [French] Minister of Foreign Relations [Talleyrand] to Citizen Pichon, Secretary of Legation of the French Republic [in The Hague] …
I HAVE received successively, Citizen, your letters … to detail to me your conversation with Mr. Murray [U.S. Minister at The Hague, Netherlands] …
[W]hatever plenipotentiary the government of the United States might send to France to put an end to our differences would be undoubtedly received with the respect due to the representative of a free, powerful and independent nation …
CH. MAU. TALLEYRAND
Adams has a copy of this letter but insists Talleyrand’s assurances be given directly to him. Is Adams stalling?
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
A gentleman with a horse-whip in his hand observed, the other day, a filthy, squalid and villainous looking wretch, muffled up in a great cloak, fleeing before him like a thief from the hands of justice. From the description, it was very probably [Jasper] Dwight, one of the editors of the Lucifer. Conscience frequently knocks thus at the hearts of villains and even visits them inwardly with those terrors which a sense of guilt infallibly produces.
FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
“The common practice of all nations” is resorted to by the committee who reported on the petitions for a repeal of the Alien and Sedition Laws as an argument why the Alien Law is right …
If the common practice of all nations is to legitimate the same practice here, we may next expect to hear that John Adams is a King; for it is the common tho’ not universal practice of nations to have a King; and therefore HE must be a King !
Today, from Quincy, Abigail Adams writes the President’s secretary, William Shaw, in Philadelphia:
If you see Fenno and are acquainted with him, tell him I say that I see the Death of his Father in many of his papers. I regret his loss and that of the public …1783
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States, Jack Fenno makes an amazing announcement:
I have always looked upon this [federal] government in the light in which it appears to have been viewed by General Washington and the Convention who framed it—a mere substitute for a better … [T]he reins of government are too lax … [The tendency of every amendment [each amendment being part of the Bill of Rights] has been to contract its means and impair its wholesome energies …
In the right of inserting a paltry piece of paper into the ballot boxes once or twice a year … I behold but a despicable substitute for that security and repose which I shall in vain look for … [L]iberty, nominal liberty … exists [as] a magnificent nothing in the stead of security and peace. At this moment indeed, it has given way to a more absurd and unmeaning substitute, Republicanism …
In no Christian country but our own … are moral institutions wholly disregarded … Where the sacred [place] of the church is guarded by national provisions from the inroads of infidelity … it reciprocates that protection …
This vacuum might … be supplied by the powerful influence of the press; but here too all is hopeless; a more potent engine to the destruction of this government and country does not exist …
If the independence of America is not to pass away … it may perhaps one day be made a question whether every ignorant impostor who comes along is to be allowed unadvisedly … to utter the most venomous slanders and lies, unchecked by any supervision or restraint …
I no longer behold, when I look around, any thing much to struggle for! A country overrun by turbulence and faction … the people split into two deadly parties whose impending collision must as surely produce bloodshed and misery as that of flint and steel emits the spark …
The government, though feeble, might have had energy imparted to it for self-preservation … A war with France, “a long obstinate and bloody war” could alone affect this. Peace, peace; let us have peace is now the cry, and peace we are to have. It is a peace of which I will never partake …
The sun of federalism is fast retiring behind the clouds of turbulence and treason … In a little while, it may be seen no more …
It is an high satisfaction to me that, in the step I have thought fit to take, I leave at his [Presidential] post a man whose firmness (to renew the prostituted term) has stood a thousand times greater trials than mine and whom not all the hell of democracy in arms could divert from his duty …
Though I wish to be considered as relinquishing all interest or concern in the Gazette from this day, I shall nevertheless give directions to have it continued until the papers which are paid for in advance shall be supplied …
JOHN WARD FENNO
SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
MIGHTY MARVELOUS
[A] very singular production appeared yesterday in the GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES—[T]he strange mixture of the incomprehensible and the ridiculous—of vapidity and bombast—egregious vanity & naked hypocrisy—pitiful whining and outrageous rant—which it displays, surpass any thing perhaps that has ever appeared in a newspaper notorious for all that turpitude which it condemns as well as for the defects which it laments.
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette, William Cobbett writes:
For the information of my readers at a distance, I here observe that, last evening, Mr. John Ward Fenno, Editor and Proprietor of the “Gazette of the United States” (that Gazette to which mine has been so frequently and so largely indebted) notified his readers of his resolution to discontinue its publication …
This notification is accompanied with a political view of the United States … I have seen few things more excellent than this view …
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
APPROACHING ELECTION …
It is now ascertained who are to be the candidates for the office of governor at the ensuing election. It is announced that the enemies of our administration have fixed upon Thomas M’Kean, and it is well understood that its friends have determined to support JAMES ROSS, of Washington [county] …
Pennsylvania, seated in the centre of the United States, wealthy, populous, commercial, and extensive as it is, must, while the present division of sentiment subsists between … parts of our country, direct and govern its policy … [T]he influence of Pennsylvania in the scale of American consequence would be immense … The effects then of the election of governor will be incalculable …
Fenno is right! Pennsylvania could prove the “keystone in the democratic arch” for next year’s presidential election. If the five New England states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut) give their thirty-nine presidential electoral votes to John Adams and seven southern states (Virginia, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee) give their fifty-two electoral votes to Thomas Jefferson, the choice of President of the United States could depend on three middle Atlantic states (Pennsylvania with fifteen electors, New York with twelve, and New Jersey with seven), and the coming Pennsylvania gubernatorial election in October could set the stage for a Jeffersonian victory.
FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
“Poor Fenno!” “Poor Lad!” are now the common theme of charitable conversation—the young ladies lament that a young fellow should be so ingenious as [to] form an object with his own hands so hideous as to skeer him out of his wits !
Today, in the Gazette of the United States, Jack Fenno announces:
The publication of the Gazette of the United States will not be discontinued. It will be conducted by the present proprietor until it can be devolved upon a successor who can do justice to the principles and cause which it has furthered.
Today, President John Adams issues a proclamation:
BY THE PRESIDENT
Of The United States of America.
A PROCLAMATION.
AS … the most precious interests of the people of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs and insidious arts of a foreign nation, as well as by the dissemination among them of those principles subversive of the foundations of all religious, moral and social obligations … I do hereby recommend accordingly that Thursday, the 25th of April next, be observed throughout the United States of America as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer—That citizens … call to mind our numerous offences against the most high God … That he would withhold us from unreasonable discontent—from disunion, faction, sedition, and insurrection … That he would succeed our preparations for defence and bless our armaments by land and by sea …
By the President JOHN ADAMS
TIMOTHY PICKERING Secretary of State.1784
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
THIS WINTER
Seems to have no end. The Snow covers the ground; the Delaware is filled with ice and nearly frozen over, and the water freezes in the house. We have had four months and ten days dead winter. Since the 18th of October, there has not been above six days fit for ploughing.
THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Fenno has not been put into a strait waistcoat; nor has he been even at the hospital as was reported—his disorder was of the Phobia species, under the paroxysms of which the maniac is prone to utter “words full of sound and fury meaning nothing.”
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
The publication of the Gazette of the United States will not be discontinued.
FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Federal party do not think the Federal Government strong enough—the powers of the executive are by them deemed too much restrained … It will be a recollection of every person who has considered the intrigues of the monarchical party in the convention that established the constitution how ardent and active such persons were who supported such principles …
The party which espoused monarchical principles on that occasion … succeeded in obtaining something like the rotten fabric of British institution … [T]hey sat down relying on their activity to produce by future corruption, according to the British system, the same effects …
In Fenno’s paper of the 4th inst, the secrets of that faction to which he was but the foul-mouth piece were exposed to public view. [T]he Federal box was opened by a boy who knew not how to manage the cumbrous machinery … We have … the confession of Fenno and his declared detestation of our present form of government …
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
A letter from a gentleman in Northampton county in this state, dated the 5th instant, mentioned that the marshal of the United States had arrived there with twenty eight writs against persons who had opposed the assessors of the direct tax in the execution of their duties. The citizens were to assemble at Bethlehem yesterday to enter into recognizances before Judge Henry.
SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
EXPIRED
On the 4th Day of March, 1799
At 5 o’clock in the Evening
Of a Malignant Distemper
After a miserable existence of 14 years,
3 months, and 9 days,
THE GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES …
Incapable of perceiving the dignity of Republicanism, over the abasement of Monarchy and Aristocracy …
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
MR. FENNO’S VIEW …
This spirited production, to which … I gave my most unqualified approbation I am glad to hear approved of by every man of sense and candor …
His opinions are all correct … But why do not those who disapprove of this performance reply to it?
MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1799
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
In [Porcupine’s] Gazette, we are told that all of Fenno’s ideas are correct concerning our constitution and forms of government … [T]he friends of Republican government are called upon to defend by argument the constitution which we have all sworn to support. Republican government is attacked by monarchists in the very bosom of the Republic …
The citizens of this land have achieved their liberty against all the force of the British monarchy …
The people have said that a government of equal laws, without empty titles or wicked distinctions, shall be our government.
We are asked for arguments—we have already given them, the world has applauded our choice, and are following our example. But further arguments are called for—they are ready—THE PEOPLE OF THESE FREE UNITED STATES ARE READY—WE WILL DEFEND OUR REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT WITH OUR BAYONETS.
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
ANOTHER INSURRECTION
Has broken out in the Western part of this state …
Col. William Nichols, Marshal of the District of Pennsylvania, returned yesterday to the city from a journey to Northampton [county, Pennsylvania] and immediately laid before the President [of the United States] a detail of recent transactions there …
He [had] … proceeded to the scene of insurrection and arrested twenty-three persons for sundry acts of resistance to the operation of the law imposing a tax on houses …
On Friday evening, the Marshal, with nineteen of the arrested persons, being at the tavern of Abraham Levering in Bethlehem [Pennsylvania], a body of horse to the number of sixty, well armed and part of them in uniform, beset the house and rescued the prisoners. The party was composed of militia from the [Pennsylvania] counties of Bucks, Montgomery and Northampton and were commanded by a fellow who bears a captain’s commission in the militia of Montgomery county; he is a German, of the name of [John] Fries …
These disturbances all refer directly to the political posture of affairs between this country and France …
One pleasant circumstance has grown out of this alarming intelligence—an immediate stir among the [federal army] volunteers who are, we learn, to be immediately paraded for review in order to be perfectly prepared for the defence of their government and country at a moment’s warning.