We return to Philadelphia in 1798 … President Adams has abrogated Ben Franklin’s Franco-American Alliance of 1778. He has leagued America with her foremost enemy, the British monarch, against her only ally, the democratic Republic of France. He has made the French Revolution and Franklinian democracy our nation’s enemies. He has armed the country, taxed the people, dispatched the navy, and brought back Fabius to fight a war—though undeclared—with the French Republic. He has ended America’s freedoms of speech and of the press.
Adams predicted, “America must resort to [hereditary monarchy or aristocracy] as an asylum during discord, Seditions and Civil War.” Could this be the time? Could John Adams see himself as an American monarch whose family occupies important government posts, whose son will succeed to the presidency, who will wage war with or without the people’s assent, who will use a mercenary standing army (officered by political loyalists) to suppress his opposition, who will support a religious establishment to honor his prayer and fast days, preach his political sermons, and define his enemies as infidels, who will imprison his critics or exile them without trial, who will control the press, devalue the Constitution, and define democracy as a threat to his rule?
Will America be fighting another revolution against another monarch? Virginia is reportedly arming against the federal government. Republican militias face government partisans on the streets of the capital. The message of the mob replaces the message of the Constitution. Would-be citizens leave America by the boatload. Immigrants to America are no longer welcome.
John Adams fears the ghost of Franklin at the Philadelphia Aurora He’s tried to silence that ghost with a gag bill. He’s indicted and arrested Young Lightening-Rodfor sedition. He’s encouraged and rewarded attacks upon that editor.
Ben Franklin is dead. Young Lightening-Rod is dead. Thomas Jefferson has fled. Is the Aurora dead? The rest of us must answer that question.
We resume this history in mid-October. I, William Duane, want to collect some old debts, revive the paper, and involve a wealthy Philadelphia Republican and Aurora contributor, Tench Coxe …