Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America 9781501731501

Table of contents :
Preface to the 1980 Edition
Preface
Contents
1. Journey to Laputa: The Federalist Era as an Augustan Age
2. Anti-Virginia and Antislavery
3. The Objects of Scientific Inquiry
4. Salvaging the Classical Tradition
5. Concepts of Law and Justice: A Case Study
6. Images of the Social Order
A Note on Sources
Index

Citation preview

Federalists in Vissent

Federalists in 'Dissent IMAGERY AND IDEOLOGY IN JEFFERSONIAN AMERICA

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright

© 1970,

1980 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850. Published in the United Kingdom by Cornell University Press Ltd., 2-4 Brook Street, London, WlY lAA.

First published 1970 by Cornell University Press. First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1980. International Standard Book Number 0-8014-0560-2 (cloth) International Standard Book Number 0-8014-9212-2 (pbk.) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72-108160 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For 'Dick Voi, che sapete Che cosa eamor

Preface to the 1980 Edition When Federalists in Dissent was published in 1970, historians were likely to use the ungainly term "early national period" to describe the years between the adoption of the Constitution and the inauguration of Andrew Jackson. The phrase was so vague as to be of little use, except, perhaps, to underline a general sense that nationalism was central to American political life. As I write ten years later, "early national period" has been replaced by the only slightly more descriptive "early republic." Aggressive nationalism seems somewhat less important to an understanding of the early American political system in the years 1776-1828 than does the widely shared sense that Americans were engaged in a republican experiment. This venture was rooted in antiquity and informed by what the founding generation had learned from the theorists of the Enlightenment and the English Whig opposition. The dream of establishing in the new world a republic whose ideals would be classical, grounded in civic virtue, trusting in the integrity of the public and in the capacity of men of good will and decency, was not mere rhetoric. Republicanism was a word loaded with meaning, and the care for the survival of a republic of virtue, the fear that it would succumb to the corruption to which all acknowledged it was vulnerable, was real. Vll

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By the early 1970's it was clear that a fresh interpretation of the revolutionary era was well under way. Federalists in Dissent may now be read in a context that did not exist when it was originally published. In "Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography" (William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., XXIX [1972], 49-80), Robert Shalhope summarized a wide variety of studies which had appeared in the previous two decades. He suggested that concern for the integrity of the republican experiment linked pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary political ideology. To the books described by Shalhope the reader ought to add Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840 (Berkeley, 1969); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975); Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783-1802 (New York, 1975); Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, 1978); and Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, 1980), all of which treat the political ideology of the early republican years as an integrated whole. The persistence of the republican synthesis deep into the nineteenth century has been subtly analyzed by Dorothy Ross, in "The Liberal Tradition Revisited, and the Republican Tradition Addressed," in Paul Conkin and John Higham, eds., New Directions in American Intellectual History (Baltimore, 1979). The same work that takes seriously Americans' concern for the fragility of the republican experiment is also likely to acknowledge what Robert Kelley has called "the cultural pattern in American politics" in a book of the same title (New York, 1979). It is increasingly well understood that political rivalry can be cultural as well as economic and careerist. The political culture of the early republic is sensitively evaluated in James M.

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ix

Banner, Jr., To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics 'in Massachusetts (New York, 1970), and Joseph J. Ellis, After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture (New York, 1979). In Federalists in Dissent there is virtually no discussion of women, either as participants in the political conversation or as subjects of it. Although women did not vote, they were certainly part of the citizenry. My reflections on the ways in which the presence of women affected republican ideology appear in Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980). Bernhard Kendler of Cornell University Press had faith in this book from the beginning, and has been its editor in both the original and paperback editions. I am grateful for his wise counsel throughout. Federalists in Dissent was written in the context of what would now be called a support network of friends and colleagues. It is one of the more pleasant aspects of American academic life that the ties of this Columbia Study Group remain strong, although our research interests vary widely, and no two of us live in the same state; it is a pleasure to name them here: James M. Banner, Jr. , Norman Fiering, Alan Graebner, Otis L. Graham, Herbert Alan Johnson, Daniel J. Leah, Gerald W. McFarland. LINDA K. KERBER

Iowa City

Preface

The Federalist image in American memory is a strange one. In a mere twenty years, from 1789 to 1809, the Federalists as a group are assumed to have reversed character; once representing statesmanship of the highest order and originality, they deteriorated, it seems, into a pack of quarreling, ill-tempered curmudgeons, the poorest losers in American history. The sources of this changing image are multiple, and so familiar that it is necessary only to list them here. The most obvious source is the opposition, to whom the Federalists were a group of Anglophile monarchists unworthy of trust or even courtesy. The Federalists were themselves skilled in political invective in an era responsive to rhetorical overstatement; their colorful denunciations of the opposition increased in scurrility as those of the Republican press increased in venom. Many of the older Federalists succumbed to despair in the years of the Jeffersonian ascendancy, and historians' invasion of their personal letters has made evident a mood that they did not always display in public. Furthermore, Federalist leaders were unlucky enough to quarrel and ultimately to sever relations with President John Adams. Adams, understandably, could never forgive them; neither could his son, John Quincy Adams, nor his greatgrandson, Henry Adams. The latter's volumes on the Jefferson and Madison administrations deservedly remain classics of Xl

Xll

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American historical literature, but they should not be read as nonpartisan evaluation. Finally, the Federalists have been maligned by historians who, intent on demonstrating a Jefferson-Jackson-Franklin D. Roosevelt continuity, are unable to see Jefferson's opponents as anything but mean-spirited enemies of the republic. This view can pervade the work of otherwise careful and judicious historians; Charles Grove Haines, for example, in his magisterial volume The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government and Politics, can speak of a "Federalist Regime" as opposed to the "Republican administrations." More recent historical investigations have made these assessments less tenable. Thanks to the work of historians such as Shaw Livermore and Lee Benson, we are no longer so certain of a Democratic Party continuum stretching from Jefferson to Roosevelt. Leonard Levy has forced us to approach Jefferson with a willingness to acknowledge his errors as well as his wisdom, and David H. Fischer has shown that "disintegration" is neither accurate nor sufficient to describe what happened to the Federalist Party after Jefferson took office. It begins to seem possible, at least, that intelligent men of good will might have found J effersonian politics distasteful. The early national period was one of the most intellectually traumatic in modern times. Perry Miller has warned us not · to let the superficial notion of nineteenth-century lawyers as men who sipped after-dinner port and dressed with old-fashioned elegance blind us to the more important undercurrents of tension beneath the ceremony. Miller's warning may be applied more broadly. The opening decade of the nineteenth century was not a placid time; social changes in the post-revolutionary era created tremendous intellectual pressures from which few were insulated. The novelty of the American political experiment and the myriad problems arising from the wars of the French Revolution are only the most obvious sources of American uncertainty and concern. A social transformation, the extent

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of which we are only beginning to appreciate, and which was, to many, as unexpected as it was unwelcome, seems to have been experienced by the post-revolutionary generation. Americans had from the earliest days regarded their experiment as a "City upon a Hill," as an attempt, that is, to build in the new world an exemplary civilization. The proof that such a society had been built would be found, it was thought, in certain measurable accomplishments-in the obvious ones of financial stability and commercial prosperity, and in the more subtle ones of political order, cultural sophistication, and literary and scientific achievement. How fully the revolutionary generation had succeeded in any of these accomplishments was, it turned out, debatable-not only because subjective assessments necessarily vary, but because the very terms of the debate, the definitions of the desirable political and economic order, and of the proper features of scientific inquiry and literary creativity, kept changing. The revolutionary generation had left an ambiguous legacy. It had warned Americans against organized political parties and created an embryonic two-party system; it had endorsed popular participation in government because it expected that the citizenry would continue to accept the leadership of an educated and generally conservative elite; it had defined cultural accomplishment in the traditional terms of the study of theology, the classics, and certain experimental sciences. Was the new nation, with its tensely mobile "middling classes," its laboring groups growing in number and in skill, its bickering party organizations, its remodeled curricula which replaced classical studies with modern languages and vocationally practical infomation, precisely the new society of which its founders had dreamed? Obviously not, and since it was not, what was left to justify the psychic sacrifice of the Revolution? The answers to this last question varied, and the patterns of response are far more numerous than might be suspected from the simple distinction, so common to our historiography of a generation ago, between Jeffersonians who endorsed progressive

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change and Federalists who resisted it. Within each party there were many varieties of political response, from the Old Republicans on the right of the Jeffersonian spectrum to the Young Federalists on the left of the opposition, and the politics of the early republic cannot wholly be understood without a scrupulous analysis of all these factions. This book is devoted to one of these groups, men who, for want of a better name, may be called "articulate Federalists." Representing an intellectual rather than a sociological stratum, they speak most convincingly for their party to later generations, and they have left the clearest testimony to why they could not endorse Jeffersonian democracy. They were impressed not by the accomplishments and principles of the Jeffersonians, but by the failures and contradictions. Their resentment of Jefferson was compounded not only out of jealousy for his position, but out of a genuine fear for the security and stability of the republic under his administration. The articulate Federalists were often lawyers and politicians with literary talents. A number of them knew one another personally: John Quincy Adams and his brother Thomas Boylston Adams were distantly related to Josiah Quincy, who, in turn, corresponded with Oliver Wolcott, Jr., and Noah Webster; the Adams brothers, Quincy, Thomas Green Fessenden, and Gouverneur Morris contributed, in varying degrees, to Joseph Dennie's Port Folio; Rufus King was married to the niece of Richard Alsop, who came from Middletown, Connecticut, where Oliver Wolcott, Jr., made his home. John Rutledge, Jr., of South Carolina habitually spent his summers in Newport, Rhode Island, and came to know the New Englanders socially; through him, Henry William DeSaussure, who rarely left South Carolina, corresponded with Wolcott and other Federalist luminaries. But each man maintained more important connections to different political brotherhoods, and the group was, at best, an only vaguely associated intellectual community. What these men expressed was a cast of mind and a set of beliefs that

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constituted a significant part of a more general Federalist persuaston. These Federalists, contemplating the American scene at the opening of the nineteenth century, concluded that an ordered world was disintegrating, and that this disintegration was encouraged by an organized group of men who joined opposition to the politics of George Washington with a skepticism of established patterns of inquiry in the arts and sciences, and a guile which enabled them to weaken the cultural fabric of the republic while purporting to strengthen it. In the heat of partisan debate, awareness of contradiction easily led to accusations of hypocrisy. Prevarication and hypocrisy seemed in fact to permeate a number of Republican concerns. Southern Republicans claimed to defend the rights of man while retaining the power of life and death over their own slaves; Republicans expressed scorn for the established educational curricula and at the same time expounded the glories of an educated citizenry; furthermore they welcomed with joy the acquisition of Louisiana, which was essentially unconstitutional. In I 801 the Federalists became the first modern political party to accept defeat peaceably; in effect they endorsed their own defeat by their presence at the balloting in the House of Representatives which broke the electoral college tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The experience was a painful one; power was not transferred without a good deal of anguish and misgiving. In their judgments of the first years of Republican rule, the most articulate Federalists revealed a conviction that the two parties were separated on practical issues because they were separated on intellectual ones. This book attempts to view the American scene at the beginning of the nineteenth century with a Federalist's eye, and, having read it in Federalist terms, to account for the opposition to Jefferson on grounds other than the obvious one of partisanship. Was there anything, we may ask, in the Jeffersonian definition of the meaning of American life which made Federalist hostility reasonable?

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The articulate Federalists charged that Republican receptiveness to the crude, the novel, and the superficial in the arts and sciences imperiled the dream of founding in America a new, and higher, civilization. Federalist distrust was grounded not only in political objection but in disagreement that was ideological in the broadest possible sense. The sources of Federalist resentment are explored in the pages that follow, in the hope of broadening our understanding of American experience during the insecure days of the early republic. In the course of writing this book, I have incurred more debts than the volume has pages. I am particularly grateful to Richard Hofstadter, who has offered good counsel from the beginning; to David H. Fischer, Eric McKitrick, Darline S. Levy, Mary-Jo Kline, Martin Roth, and James M. Banner, Jr., for their perceptive readings and helpful conversations as the work progressed; to the Danforth Foundation and the Associated Alumnae of Barnard College for funds to defray the expenses of research; to Professors Dan Vogel and Doris S. Goldstein of Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University, for providing an environment encouraging to research and for arranging leaves of absence from teaching duties. I owe a more general debt to Eleanor M. Tilton, Annette Kar Baxter, and John A. Kouwenhoven of Barnard College, who provide in their own lives invigorating models of scholarly achievement. My husband, Richard E. Kerber, criticized the manuscript at several stages with great sensitivity. My deepest obligation is to him, to our sons Ross and Justin, and to Dorothy H. Kaufman, Harry H. Kaufman, and Emilie G. Kaufman, for moral and financial support, and for patiently enduring the masses of typescripts and notes which have flooded our homes for the last few years. LINDA

Menlo Park, California March r970

K. KERBER

Contents

I.

Journey to Laputa: The Federalist Era as an Augustan Age

I

2. Anti-Virginia and Antislavery

23

3· The Objects of Scientific Inquiry

67

4· Salvaging the Classical Tradition

95

5· Concepts of Law and Justice: A Case Study

135

6.

Images of the Social Order

173

A Note on Sources

217

Index

223

Federalists in Vissent

[I] yourney to c(_,aputa: The Federalist era as an cv1"ugustan cv1"ge Never . . . let us exchange our civil and religious institutions for the wild theories of crazy projectors. -NOAH WEBSTER

"I know of only two occasions," Alfred North Whitehead once remarked, "when the people in power did what needed to be done about as well as you can imagine its being possible." 1 One of these occasions Whitehead identified as the reign of Caesar Augustus; the other, the era of the framing of the American Constitution. The parallel was not unsuspected by the contemporaries and immediate descendants of the Founding Fathers; repeatedly they made clear a determination that their America be as significant as Augustan Rome: as successful in the development of political power, in the building of an empire, in the construction of a civilization. Augustus had ruled Rome after a period of revolution and civil war; the American War of Independence had been almost as much civil war as it had been revolution. The challenge that a revolutionary generation leaves to its sons is that the sons construct where the fathers had destroyed; that like Caesar Augustus, they keep the calm after the storm, maintain the government steady and responsible, create 1 Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (Boston, 1954-), pp. 161, 203.

I

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F ederali.sts in Vis sent

the excellence which the revolutionaries had demanded. The Americans may have been luckier than most epigones, for their fathers had left them both a completed Revolution and a constitutional blueprint for bringing its ideals into fruition, but they still had to create reality out of words; they still had to create an Augustan age for what they had already begun to call "our rising empire." The usefulness of the Roman example was blunted by the fact that the Romans had transmuted republican precedent into Caesarian autocracy. The Greek experience of democracy, although frequently referred to, seemed to provide as many lessons in what to avoid as in what to emulate. But another Augustan age had existed, another period of literary achievement and political grandeur, which spoke to America's post-revolutionary condition: England under Queen Anne and the first two Georges. Again, the parallel was less than perfect, but there was much in that era which directly appealed to Americans of the post-revolutionary generation, even when it went unarticulated. The accomplishments of the English Augustan age had in effect justified the Glorious Revolution and the turbulence of Civil War and Restoration which had preceded it. It was a prosperous period, when English trade on land and sea was widely extended, and the arts and sciences flourished as they rarely had before. Augustan Rome had sheltered Virgil, Horace, and Ovid; seventeen hundred years later England, although she could not claim writers quite so important, could point to Pope and Addison, to Swift and to Dr. Johnson. 2 With the English example in mind, Americans frequently 2 In "The Meaning of 'Augustan,'" Journal of the History of Ideas XIX (1958), 507-522, James William Johnson provides a careful analysis of the uses of the term and the changes in its meaning. A thorough evaluation of the favorite themes of Augustan satirists is found in Paul Fussell, The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism: Ethics and Imagery from Swift to Burke (London, 1965); Ian Jack, Augustan Satire: Intention and Idiom in English Poetry, I66o-I750 (Oxford, 1952); and D. Judson Milburn, The Age of Wit: I6so-I]5o (New York, 1966).

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3 used literary and oratorical accomplishment as an index of national greatness. It is well known that after the War of 1812 editorial demands for a "national literature" became increasingly insistent. What is not so widely appreciated, however, is that this expectation was as frequently, but far more confidently, voiced almost from the beginning of the national experience.3 The new nation was to be justified in its novelty by its success in creating a new and better civilization, one of the marks of which was to be yet another Augustan era in arts and letters. The first post-revolutionary generation fully expected this to come to pass within their own lifetimes: they were to be bitterly disappointed. For Americans did not create a culture as distinctive and exciting as that of Augustan England until the middle third of the nineteenth century, and then it was not Augustan at all. Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, and Emerson rarely looked to the great Augustans, of Rome or of England, as models; they were largely unsympathetic to the traits that Augustans typically honored; their sensitivity was Romantic, not classic. It is no wonder that this generation did not understand its fathers; when Emerson remarked that from 1790 to 1820 there was not a thought in Massachusetts, he was not so much stating a fact as making an assessment of a cultural outlook with which he was unsympathetic. But we need not take Emerson's dismissal for our own. If the Federalist era was Augustan, then, it cannot be because Journey to

3 Benjamin T. Spencer, The Quest for Nationality: An American Literary Campaign (Syracuse, N.Y., 1957), pp. 22-72; Robert E. Spiller, ed., The American Literary Rer~olution: I783-1837 (New York, 1967), pp. 3-105. "Why," Jeremy Belknap had demanded as early as I]80, "may not a Republic of Letters be realized in America as well as a Republican Government? Why may there not be a Congress of Philosophers as well as of Statesmen? •.. I am so far an enthusiast in the cause of America as to wish she may shine Mistress of the Sciences, as well as the Asylum of Liberty" (Jeremy Belknap to Ebenezer Hazard, February 4, 1780, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 5th ser., II [Boston, I 877), 25 5) ·

Federalists in 'Dissent

its literary accomplishments rival those of Augustan England or Rome. In politics its achievements bear comparison to those of earlier Augustan eras; otherwise the nation was Augustan only in intention, in sympathy, and in ambition. The distinction between Federalist and Jeffersonian in the latter part of the early national period is as much cultural as it is political, if not more so. When Jeffersonians found that the revolution had not produced the golden age they had so confidently expected, they redefined the terms of the golden age. The Federalists tended to be men who maintained faith with the dream-and with their disappointment. Continued consciousness of disappointment makes men bitter, and the Federalists of Jefferson's time were bitter men. Not merely because they had lost office, patronage, and power in the election of 1 8oo, but because America appeared to be developing a civilization which they did not understand and of which they certainly did not approve. The more they clung to their definition of what a proper Augustan age would be, the less likely it seemed that America was going to have one. Yet at the beginning there seemed ample grounds for high expectations. For one thing, as Stuart P. Sherman has phrased it, "The public characters of Washington and his friends, like those of Burke and his friends, were in the grand style, were in a style more or less consciously moulded upon that of the great Republicans of England, Rome, and Athens." As Washington was given more honors, as he assumed in his own lifetime the mantle of the Father of his Country, his public style became a matter for emulation. When sculptors like Horatio Greenough later rendered Washington in Roman toga (for all the world, remarked Philip Hone, as though he were calling a bath attendant) they were not being frivolous: they were choosing the costume and image which would probably have pleased Washington better than any other. 4 George Washington had 4 Tke GeniuJ of Americo (New York, 1923), p. 200; Oliver W. Larkin, Art ond Life in Americo (New York, 1949), p. 182. In George WtJJkington: Mon ond Monument (Boston, 1958), Marcus Cunliffe sug-

Journey to .,Caputa

5

played a doubly Roman role: a general as eminent for Americans as Julius Caesar, he had, like Cincinnatus, retired to his farm. It even seemed possible to imagine him as Augustus Caesar, presiding over the peaceable establishment of a new empire. He died, appropriately, at the end of his century, and the more his adherents thought about it, the more certain they became that Washington had embodied the American ideal. That no one took up his role, that his public style was not satisfactorily imitated, that partisan papers began to denounce him, was taken as a rejection of the neoclassic goals which Washington was assumed to have represented. For those who felt this way, attacks on Washington were not merely attacks on a man and his party, but on a whole set of cultural expectations.5 The first President's administration, it came to appear, had provided Americans with a "golden age," when, as the Constitution of Boston's Washington Benevolent Society remembered, gests that Washington may be "better understood within a classical framework than as a man of modern times." Rome, Cunliffe points out, "was a martial civilization, always aware of unrest along the frontiers, the bringer of law and the imposer of order. . •. Rome was a slaveholding society in which (outside the capital and the provincial centers} the unit of neighhoThood was a farm estate. It was a society that relied upon the family as the cohesive force. . . . This was a society that bred solid, right-thinking citizens, at once civic and acquisitive, men of a noble narrowness. • .• For 'Rome' here, may we not read 'Virginia' 1" (pp. I 94-, I 92). Among Washington's own classical models was Cato; see Fredric M. Litto, "Addison's Cato in the Colonies," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., XXIII (I966}, 4-4-I-4-4-2, 4-4-7 5 For a perceptive assessment of Washington hagiography, see Cunliffe, pp. 3-24-, I 84--I 90. "The early American Republic, like many of the new nations, was legitimized by charisma," writes Seymour Martin Lipset. "We tend to forget today that, in his time, George Washington was idolized as much as many of the contemporary leaders of new states." For discussion of Washington's role as charismatic leader, see Lipset, The First Nezv Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (New York, I 963), pp. I 8-23; for a good example of this veneration, see Charles Jared Ingersoll, /nchiquin, The Jesuit's Letters (New York, I8Io}, pp. 63-65.

6

Federalists in Vis sent

"the people were prosperous in their industry, the government was respected by foreign nations, and the commercial prosperity, the wealth and the power of the United States were augmented to a degree without precedent and beyond the most sanguine expectation." 6 Washington's eulogists generally found the biblical parallel the natural one: Americans, said Carter Braxton of Virginia, "wept for his loss as the Israelites did for Moses." 7 Other analogies were available. Moses had led his people only to the borders of the Promised Land; Washington, who had accompanied his people while they fulfilled their mission, was, according to one prominent Massachusetts clergyman, "truly our Joshua." And the Reverend John Snelling Popkin proceeded to find in the Book of Judges a federalist paradigm of American politics: While, under Joshua, the Israelites adhered to their Almighty Sovereign, their success far exceeded all human efforts and credibility. • • • But when this generation were gathered unto their fathers, there arose another generation, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served other gods. • • • And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers. 8 6 Quoted in William Alexander Robinson, "The Washington Benevolent Society in New England: A Phase of Politics During the War of 1812," Proceedings of tke Massachusetts Historical Society, XLIX (March, 1916), 278. "Is there a man who contributed towards obtaining American Liberty and Independence, from WAsHINGTON TO STRONG, who has not been the object of reproach and ingratitude?" asked the Boston Centinel. "Where are the Heroes of our revolution? How many remain, who are not exiled, murdered, or impeached?" (Reprinted in the New York Er;ening Post, January 26, 1805). Other complaints on the theme of "ou sont les neiges d'antan?" are found in the New York Er;ening Post, January 22 and 26, 1805. 7 Carter Braxton to John Rutledge, Jr., December 13, 1802, John Rutledge, Jr., Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, N.C. 8 C. C. Felton, A Memoir of tke Rer;. Jokn Snelling Popkin (Cambridge, Mass., 1852), pp. 245, 238-239.

Journey to ..r:._ aputa

7

How would the new generation define its revolutionary heritage? Which would it choose for America's golden age? Which Washington was to be emulated and honored: Washington the Revolutionary general or Washington the cold and correct President? The problem was partly one of perspective: the men who succumbed to old age in 1 Sao tended to be remembered for the attitudes of their moderate middle age, rather than for those of their more radical youth. Jonathan Mason could in all seriousness report with shock that Jefferson's inaugural address "praises the revolutionary character of the great Washington." 9 Was Washington's "revolutionary character" to be ignored? On the other hand, did the patriots' replacements, the new generation, truly know the Lord and the works which he had done for Israel? "It is painful," commented Henry William DeSaussure, "to see the pillars of the revolution tumbling down, one after the other; and what is worse, perhaps, speaking nationally, to see the people substituting for them rotten stuff, or green materials." 10 Republicans easily assumed that their opponents were disingenuously using Washington as "a stalking horse, behind which, they may shelter themselves," but the explanation does not explain enough. 11 Was not the problem, at bottom, psychological? Might it not be suggested that one crucial distinction between Federalist and Jeffersonian in the early years of the nineteenth century was that the Federalist did not fully trust untried, "green" materials-that is, the post-Washington generation-and that the Jeffersonian did? The point must not be overstated, but it may help us to comprehend the enlargement of the Washington image to mythological and quasi-religious proportions. To William Henry Hill of North Carolina, Washington was both Moses and Joshua: "Having once led us to peace and independence, he again conducted us from weakJonathan Mason to J. Rutledge, March 5, 1801, John Rutledge, Jr., Papers. 10 Henry William DeSaussure to J. Rutledge, November z, 1801, John Rutledge, Jr., Papers. 11 Quoted in Boston Repertory, March 2, 1804. 9

8

Federalists in 'Dissent

ness, wretchedness and despondence, to strength, hope, and happiness." 12 William Gaston went further: "Heaven seemed to have destined him to be our Saviour from all dangers; our Guardian and protector in all difficulties." 13 This use of imagery helped to make revolution respectable; it enabled Americans to be the proud inheritors of the American Revolution while at the same time rejecting the French Revolution as chaotic. The attitude was the more widely shared as the revolutionary era receded into the past. Alexis de Tocqueville's perceptive companion, Gustave de Beaumont, noted with some surprise that Americans did not erect statues of their heroes, and answered his own request for an explanation: "To Washington alone are there busts, inscriptions, a column; this is because Washington, in America, is not a man, but a god." 14 The Roman model had come naturally to Washington, as it came to many of his contemporaries. To extend one's schooling beyond the three R's meant, in the early national period, to study the classics, and in the course of that study to learn not only the ancient languages, but to value, even to venerate, the stately Roman morality. For the remainder of their lives, men so educated would find the classical comparison the natural one to make. One of the more popular pseudonyms adopted by FedCharleston, S.C., Courier, March I6, I803. "Eulogy on George Washington," n.d., William Gaston Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, N.C. 14 Marie, or Slaoery in the United States, trans. Barbara Chapman (Stanford, California, I 9 58), p. I o6. The veneration accorded to Washington may be psychologically linked to an expectation, encouraged by revolutionary rhetoric which identified all evil as British, that the new nation would be free from all taint, that is, virtually perfect. See Perry Miller, "From the Covenant to the Revival," in James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison, eds., The Shaping of American Religion, I (Princeton, I96I), 34-3-34-6. See also the extended discussion of Federalist ideology in James M. Banner, Jr., To the Hartford Conoention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, z789-z8zs (NewYork, I970),chs. 1, 2. 12 13

J:.. aputa

9 eralists was "Phocion"; the writer who used it expected his readers to know their Plutarch, and assumed that the name could stand, in a sort of intellectual shorthand, for both the elitist variant of republican political theory popular among Federalists and for the sense of rejection that tormented them in the years of the Jeffersonian ascendancy. Phocion had been an Athenian statesman of the fourth century, B.c.; a man honored for his prudence and rectitude; a highly popular general who had been reelected forty-five times, "although he was not even once present at the election, but was always absent when the people summoned and chose him," and despite the fact that he "never said or did anything to win their favour." Phocion was elected by a public which could choose its own medicine; "the Athenians," explained Plutarch, "made use of their more elegant and sprightly leaders by way of diversion, but when they wanted a commander they were always sober and serious, and called upon the severest and most sensible citizen, one who alone, or more than the rest, arrayed himself against their desires and impulses." When they eventually rejected him, Phocion complained, like the frustrated Federalist of 1801, "I have given this people much good and profitable counsel, but they will not listen to me! " 15 When Alexander Hamilton searched for the worst name he could call Aaron Burr without resorting to unprintable language, the name of Catiline came readily to mind, and his auJourney to

15 Plutarch's Lir~es, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, Mass., 1919), pp. 161-162, 177· Among Federalist users of the "Phocion" signature were Fisher Ames (in a series of essays in the New-England Palladium, April, 1801); Tapping Reeve (in the Litchfield, Conn., Monitor, December 9, 1803) and William Loughton Smith (in the Charleston Courier, 1806, published as a pamphlet called The Numbers of Phocion . . . on the subject of Neutral Rights [Charleston, S.C., 1806]. Alexander Hamilton used the name in a series of articles protesting the seizure of Loyalist property in I 7 8 3 ; his choice may have had certain autobiographical connotations, as John C. Miller suggests (Alexander Hamilton: Portrait in Paradox [New York, 1959], p. 102n). Oliver Wolcott and Smith used Phocion as their signature in their famous pamphlet attack on The Preten-

10

Federalists in 'Dissent

dience did not need to be reminded who Catiline had been nor why his name was odious. And to continue, after school, to read and to collect a gentleman's library meant to add to one's schoolboy editions of the ancients the works of the great English Augustans: Swift, Pope, and Dr. Johnson, who also had venerated the great heroes of the ancient world. A classical education, a literary background in the Augustans, these were shared by most educated Americans of whatever political sympathies. But men who were disenchanted with their world found certain features of the work of the English Augustans particularly attractive. For one thing, the English Augustans were critical of contemporary changes in dress, manners, and language; American Federalists too lived in an era when the forms of social intercourse were changing, and not, they were convinced, for the better. The Augustans regularly sneered at what they called "the mob," and the more the American public rejected Federalism, the more many Federalists assuaged their feelings by sneering back at the public. The Augustans knew they lived in an age of flagrant political corruption, and sought to expose it; Federalists convinced themselves that they could not have been rejected save for political corruption, and denounced the phenomenon nearly as vigorously. Finally, the American Federalist might count himself Augustan in his expectation of literary accomplishment, in the exaggerated honor he accorded to Washington, in his gloomy cyclical reading of history. 16 sions of Tlwmas Jefferson to the Presidency ••. (Philadelphia, 1796}. Henry Steele Commager discusses this habit of "putting contemporaries into some historical niche" ("Leadership in Eighteenth-Century America and Today," in Freedom and Order: A Commentary an the American Political Scene [New York, 1966], p. 162). 16 See Lewis P. Simpson, "Federalism and the Crisis of Literary Order," American Literature, XXXII (1960), 253-266; and Lewis P. Simpson, ed., The Federalist Literary Mind: Selections from the Monthly Anthology and Boston Rer~iew s8oJ-z8ss (Baton Rouge, La., 1962), pp. 31-41, for extended discussion of this analogy.

Journey to

.e_ aputa

I I

To men of such persuasion, the most useful literary form is the satire. It had been virtually the trademark of English Augustan writing from Butler to Swift, and, taking encouragement and rhetorical instruction from the great satirists of Augustan England, American Federalists scattered verse and prose satire among their jeremiads. It is not likely that Federalist pamphleteers flattered themselves they were the literary equals of Swift and Butler. They seem to have regarded satire primarily as a way of reaching the "middling classes" who failed to respond to high seriousness; given an eighteenth-century education which taught students to write by the imitation of classical models and given the obvious similarities of Augustan antipathies to their own, the Federalist turn to the Augustan model was a logical one. Federalist satire is seldom very clever, but it does help clarify those reasons for Federalist distrust of their opponents that are not linked directly to specific political issues. While their polemics attacked what the Jeffersonians did, their satire attacked what the Jeffersonians were, revealing in the process something of the Federalist image of the Democrat. The satires were many and took a variety of forms. There was the witty potpourri that Washington Irving, his brother William, and James Kirke Paulding called Salmagundi. There were the letters of the Baron von Hartzensleigzenstoffendahl which William Tudor, Jr., wrote for the Montlzly Anthology and Boston Re'View. John Sylvester John Gardiner, a Boston clergyman as pompous as his name, wrote an "Ode to Democracy" in which the lyric echoed Gray and the images imitated Pope; there were less pretentious pieces, like John Quincy Adams's drinking song "On the discoveries of Captain Lewis," or the sarcastic sketch signed "Buffon" that Oliver Wolcott, Jr., scribbled for the Connecticut Courant. Federalist satirists kept returning to one seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration: Thomas Jefferson himself. Certain episodes of his career, especially his flight to Monticello during the British invasion of Virginia in 1780, and certain pieces of his writing, especially the

12

Federalists in 'Dissent

Notes on Virginia and the First Inaugural Address, became particular favorites, used to the point of redundancy and at the risk, fatal to the satirist, of boring the reader. This singleness of focus was due less to a failure of imagination than to the habit of treating the Republicans not as a political party but as a faction, the personal following of a single leader, bound together by personal loyalties rather than by ideology or by political principle. According to this reasoning, if popular faith in the person of Thomas Jefferson could be broken, the whole opposition could be expected to fall apart. The Federalist satirists were not a homogeneous group. Sharing primarily a technique of response to the Jeffersonian challenge, each had some acquaintance among the others, but their interrelationship and interaction seem insufficient to justify the rubric of "circle" or group. Some of the satirists were primarily politicians: Josiah Quincy, for example, and his distant cousin, John Quincy Adam$. Thomas Green Fessenden was educated as a lawyer, but spent most of his life as a writer and journalist, as did Joseph Dennie. For others, political satire provided avocationa! distraction from a rather different sort of career: Timothy Dwight, for example, was president of Yale; Oliver Wolcott, Jr., after leaving the office of Secretary of the Treasury, was building a mercantile trading house in New York. Surely the satirists do not represent a cross section of Federalist society; their family backgrounds were too upper-class, too intellectual for that. Their fathers were too often ministers and lawyers; their own education culminated too frequently in Harvard or Yale to make them either sociologically or geographically typical, nor would it do to assume that they "spoke for" the Federalist party in a representative sense-if anyone, for that matter, did or could. They were, however, authors of a particularly revealing genre of Federalist dissent, and much of what they had to say coordinates with criticism made in more pedestrian fashion by the more typical members of their party. What is under

Journey to .,Caputa

examination here is one variant of what might well be called "The Federalist Persuasion." The most extended of these satires, and the ones that best repay careful analysis, were "Climenole," a dozen essays written by the Massachusetts congressman Josiah Quincy, and Democracy Unveiled, or Tyranny Stripped of tlze Garb of Patriotism, a book-length epic "of the Hudibrastic kind," by Thomas Green Fessenden, which enjoyed three printings in New York and Boston. Other satires generally concentrate on a single Democratic failing, but Quincy and Fessenden had room to expound on all they found distressing in their opponents' views of life and politics. Fessenden was a Vermont lawyer with an erratic intellectual career, which mingled poetics and polemics. During a brief stay in England he attacked the medical profession in a versified satire called T lze Terrible Tractoration; he served a brief stint in New York City as editor of the shortlived Weekly Inspector in I 807, and eventually returned to New England, where he edited agricultural journals and dabbled in inventing. He wrote numerous political verses, but the most vigorous are those of Democracy Unveiled, which is Hudibrastic both in meter and in shared antipathies.U The satire of Democracy Unveiled was sharp, Fessenden warned, because he "cuts to cure"; a sharpness the more necessary because "our democrats, though spitted with the arrows of 17 Written in iambic tetrameter, it was critical of the political tastes of the general public and of what Thomas Green Fessenden vaguely called "mobocracy." An antidemocratic note was characteristic of Augustan satire; perhaps the most quoted lines in H udibras are these:

"For as a Fly, that goes to Bed, Rests with his Tail above his Head; So in this Mungril State of ours, The Rabble are the Supreme Powers." See Ian Jack, Augustan Satire: Intention a11d Idiom in English Poetry, 166o-I750 {Oxford, 1952), pp. 34-, 4-1.

Federalists in I60-I61, 166-167, 171-172, 176 lame-duck, 136, 142

Index Congress (cont.) representation in, see Constitution, three-fifths clause Republican control of, 107, 137, 139-143, t46-147, 156, 168 see also House of Representatives and Senate Connecticut, 37, 1 ton, 140 Connecticut Courant, 11 Constitution, 1-2., 31, 42., 136, 147, IS5-156, 158-I6o, 162., 163164, t66, 169, 171 Bill of Rights, 2.o9n judiciary article, I 3 8, I 4 1, 144, 145· 146, ISO, I54 three-fifths clause, 36-39, so, p, 6s-66

see also Ely amendment Constitutional Convention, 36, I 6 2., 192., 2.02. Continental Congress, 62, 64 Cooper, James Fenimore, Tl1e Pioneers, 152.-153 Cooper, Thomas, 77 Copyright laws, 96 Corruption, cultural, 10, 12.7-12. 8, 134. 2.13-2.15 Cotton, 45, t88-189 Courts, 138, I44-145; see also Circuit courts, Federal courts, State courts, and Supreme Court Coxe, Tench, 187 Crafts, William, 194, 2.07 Cranch, William, 142.-143, 144, 145 Crops, see Agriculture Cunningham, William, 6sn Cushing, William, 143n, 166 Cuvier, Baron, 72, 88, 89, 90n Daggett, David, 19, 2.on, 98 1 I04tos, 115 Dallas, Alexander J., 148 Davie, William Richardson, 31, 32., 164n, 2.00 Davis, John, 84 Dayton, Jonathan, 167

225

Declaration of Independence, 132. Dedham, Mass., 183n Dehon, Theodore, 1 33 Deism, 53, 2.12., 2.14 Delaware, 43n DeLuc, Jean Andre, 81-82., 87 Demagogery, 129, I 74, 193 Democracy: contrasted with republic, 194, 197199 dangers of, 13-17, 2.3, 174-183, I93-I94. 197. 199-2.00, 2.032.05 Democracy Unveiled, see Fessenden, Thomas Green, Democracy Unveiled Democrats, 11, 13, 27, 2.9, 44, 66, IDS, 109, 129-130, 2.12. Dennie, Joseph, u, 15, 51, 99n, too, IOI, II4, lJO> IJ2, 174-I75 Derbigny, Pierre, 4 m DeSaussure, Henry William, 7 Descartes, Rene, 18n Destrehan, Jean Niiel, 4ID Dickinson, John, 58 District of Columbia, 37, 164 Duer, William, 183n DuPonceau, Peter Stephen, 149 DuPont de Nemours, P. S., 104 Dwight, Thomas, 1 73n Dwight, Timothy, u, 46n, 179-181

Echo, The, see Alsop, Richard, The Echo Education, 8, 1 I, 2.06-207 controversy over reform, 2.o, 95134, I7J, 2.I4 Lancastrian system, 109n role of classics in, 1o, 96, I II- I 3 1 Egalitarianism, 1 78-I 79 Election of 1 Boo, see Jefferson, Thomas, election of Electoral college, 37 Ellsworth, Oliver, 140 Ely, William, 49; see also Ely amendment

226

Index

Ely amendment, 36, 3S, 44, 64-65, 66 Emancipation, ss, 57, 63; see also Slavery, abolition movement Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 3, u9n Emerson, William, S4 England, I3, 30, 36, 45, 99-Ioo, I]O, I88, 106 Augustan age in, z-4, IO-II, u3, I74 Renaissance in, ti8 Eppes, John W., 48 Europe, S6, I9I, I98, 105 Evening Post, 97 Factional politics, see Sectional differences and Virginia, Federalist suspicion of Factories, 1S7, IS9, I9on-I9tn Farmers, see Agriculture Federal courts, 139, 140-I4I, 145146, I49, ISO, I54-I56, I70I7Z Federalist era as an Augustan age, 1-1z, 174-177 Federalists as opposition party, 17, 136-171 Fessenden, Thomas Green, u, 15-I6, I95• 1d1n, 101n, 105 1 zo6 Democracy Unveiled, 13-14, sz, 103-104 Te"ible Tractoration, The, I ] France, 4S quasi-war with, 30, 40-41, 45-47, 49> ISz see also French Revolution Franklin, Benjamin, 75, Ss, I u Freeman, Elizabeth, 63-64 French, study of, us-u6 French Revolution, S, 14, zt 1 St, 10S, I11-I:tz, u3, 191-193, I99• zo4, zos, :zo6 Fugitive slave laws, 63 Gabriel's conspiracy, so Gallatin, Albert, 14S

Gardiner, John Sylvester John, n, 9S-99, Ioo, 175, I76 Garrison, William Lloyd, 59, 63, 64 Gaston, William, 8 Gazette of the United States, 36, 143n, 144n1 I45n, 14Sn, 149n, IS7, ISS, I63, I64n, I65, 10I Geology, 76-77, S7n, 9o, 9I-9:z Georgia, 37, 44, I69n Gifford, William, I 30, I7S Giles, William Branch, I41 Godwin, William, I 79-ISo, I 8I, :z 14 Good behavior tenure, see Judges, good behavior tenure Gray, Thomas, I I Great Revival, z u-1 u Greece, 1, I IS, I14-125, tz6, uS Greek, study of, III-IIS, II7-IIS, I] I

Griswold, Roger, z4-z5, 30, 31, 37, 59 1 I47, I4Sn, ISS, I 6z Grosvenor, Thomas P., IZ4-IZ5 Grove, William Barry, I6I Gulliver's Travels, see Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels Haiti, see Santo Domingo Hamilton, Alexander, 9, 67, 97, I35n, IJ6n, I4o, I44• I49, 164, IS3, 197, I9Sn, Z04 Lucius Crassus essays, I45• 150 "Report on Manufactures," IS 718S1 190 Harper, Robert G., 151n, 157n Hartford Wits, 13 3 Harvard College, u, 15, 75, 76, 78, So, S3, uo, lit, 126, I33 Heckewelder, John, 74, 79 Hemings, Sally, I4, 5 I Henderson, Archibald, 45n, I6I, ZIJ Henfield, Gideon, 140 Henry, Patrick, :z I o Higginson, Stephen, 4on Hill, William Henry, 7, I6t, I95I96

Index Hillhouse, James, 43-44, uon; see also Hillhouse amendment Hillhouse amendment, 45 History, cyclical theory of, 10, 1 u124, I84 Homer, 116-I 17 Horace, 2, 1 I I, 119n House of Representatives, 38, 49n, lSI, 156, IS8, 161 Hudibras, see Butler, Samuel, Hudibras Hudson Balance, 20 Huger, Benjamin, 155 Humphreys, David, 188n Humphreysville, Conn., 188n

Images of the social order, 173-215 Immigration, 188, 19m Indians, American, 70, 71, 92n Industrialization, impact of, 174, I87-I92 Ingersoll, Charles Jared, 5 Iredell, James, 14on, 195 Irving, Washington: Dietrich Knickerbocker's History of New York, 19, 2on see also Irving, Washington et al., Salmagundi Irving, Washington et al., Salmagundi, 11 0 19 0 71 0 90n, 159n, I76, I97 Irving, William, see Irving, Washington et al., Salmagundi

Jackson, James, 44, 84n, 149, 169n Jackson, Jonathan, 174, 184n Jacksonians, 66, I 78 Jamaica, 46n Jay Treaty, 30, 145n, 182 0 183n Jefferson, Thomas, 17, 39, 42, 6566, 78, 96, 107, II2, 12.4, 141I42, 144, 146n, 147-I48, ISOISI, 159n, I6on, 172n, 183, 194, 2o6, 210 as anthropologist, 67-68, 69, 71

227

attitudes toward religion, 53-56, 89-90, 91, 209n, 211 attitudes toward slavery, 26n, 5457• 6o election of, 4, 37, 69, 97-98, 165 First Inaugural Address, 7, u, 52, 131, I32> I33> 135-I36, I95I96 foreign policy, 4 7-49, I 73 as natural historian, 69-70, 72 Notes on the State of Virginia, u, I4, :z6n, 53> s6n, 57> 68-69, I32, IJ3, I85-I87, I92 as President of American Philosophical Society, 67, 72, 76 see also Satire, Federalist, on Jefferson Jeffersonians, 4, 7, I I, JI, 95, 123, I74o I78 0 198, 206, 2II, 2122 I 3 ; see also Republicans Judges, I36, I42-I43o I45-I46, 156, 163, I67 good behavior tenure, I4Io I42I44> IS8, I65 Supreme Court, 137, ISO, I6St66, I70 see also Judiciary Act of I8o1 Judicial reform, I4I, 156, ISS, 16o, 171, I73 Judiciary Act of I789, I68 Judiciary Act of I8oi, I36-I72, 2o8n Justice and law, IJS-I72 Juvenal, 130-131, 175 Kentucky, 29, 157n Kentucky Resolution of I 799, I4I Keteltas, William, 183n Key, Philip Barton, I86 King, Rufus, 64, I Io-II I, I65, 196 King's College, 1 I I Knox, Samuel, IOJ-I04, I09 Labor, 19 I-I 92 child, I 88- I 90 salaries for, 19on-I91n Lancastrian system of education, Io9n

228

Index

Languages: modern, 96, II5-n6, n8 see also Greek, study of, and Latin, study of Lansing, Chancellor John, 149, 15on Laputa, see Swift, Jonathan, Gulli'Ver's Travels Lasalle, Antoine de, 81-82 Latin, study of, 102, II I-115, II7II8, 12I, 131 Latitudinarianism, religious, 53, 211n Law: attitudes toward, 13 8-141, 171-I 72 and justice, 135-172 Lewis, Meriwether, 70 Lewis, Morgan, I49, 15on Lewis and Clark, 68n, 70, 93 Liberty, debate over definitions, I 78, I97-I99· 208-212 Linn, John Blair, 55n Linn, William, 55, 92 Litchfield, Conn., I 8 3n Litchfield Monitor, 9n Literature, as measure of republic's success, 2-3, 207, 2 I4 Livy, III Locke, John, I u, 202 Logan, George, 47, 49n, I07 Louis XIV, I I 6 Louisiana, 29, 3 7n, 4on, 66 acquisition of, 4 I, 17 3, 212 establishment of government in, 25n, 42-45 images of, 93, 2I3 Lowell, Charles, 62 Lowell, James Russell, "Biglow Papers," 62 Lowell, John, 62 Lowell, John, Jr., 33n, I74 Loyalists, 9n, 58 Lucian, 92 Lyon, Matthew, 29 McKean, J. B., I49 Madison, James, 57, I 18 Federalist essays, 93, 108

Maine, 157n Mammoth, 70, 72, 73, 79, 9on, 93 Manning, William, 109-I IO Manufactures, I 87-I92 Marbury vs. Madison, n8, I7I Marshall, John, 39n, 64n, 143n, 146, I65, I66n, 167n, 171 Maryland, 24. 3 7 Mason, George, 57 Mason, Jonathan, 7, 151 Massachusetts, pn, 3 7, 38, 62, 124, 19on-19In Bill of Rights, 63, 208 General Court, 36, 6z, I 76, 209 Massachusetts Historical Society, 75 Mather, Cotton, 89n Mazzini, Giuseppe, 108 Megalonyx, 72, 74, 79, 94 Mercer, Charles, xxon Midnight judges, 67, 141-142, 167, I 7 1 ; see also Judiciary Act of I80I Milton, John, Paradise Lost, I 76 Mississippi, 42 Missouri River, 68n Mitchill, Samuel Latham, 77 "Mobbishness," Federalist fears of, IO, 13n, 174-I75, 177, 179-185, 192-193. 203-204 Monroe, James, 163 Montesquieu, 45, 102, xo8, 144, 192, 198, 19911, 201, 202, 205-206, 210 Monthly Anthology and Boston Re'View, 11, 28n, ·29n, 33n, 7on, 86n, Io6n, I I7, u8n, I I9n, 133, I75n Monticello, I 1, 68 Moore, Clement Clark, 53-55, 56, 6I, 9I-92 Moore, Thomas, 5 m Morality, Federalist concern with, 200-2I5 Morris, A. C., I47n, I51n, 16on, 165n

Index Morris, Gouverneur, 137n, 138n, 144n, 147, 151, 160-161, 165, 167, 169, 184, 192, zozn, 203, 204n Mulattoes, 52, 56, 60-61 Murphy, Archibald D., 110n Murray, William Vans, 35, 165 Napoleon Bonaparte, see Bonaparte, Napoleon National Academy, Io6-107 National Anti-Slavery Standard, 62 National/ntelligencer, 104 National University, 107 Natural history, 75, 76-77, BI, 94 Natural philosophy, BI, 84-85 Natural theology, 83 Navigation Acts, 36 Negroes: colonization of, 55-56, 57 Federalist attitudes toward, so-p.,

ss-s6

laws for, 60-61 in Santo Domingo, 40-41, 48 schools for, 58n see also Slavery Neutrality Proclamation, 140 New England, 23, 27, 42, 75, 77> 83, 93, 164, 183-184, zun New England Monthly Magazine, 73 New-England Palladium, 9n, 19-20, 27, 37n, 46n, 98n, 105, 1o6n, 179-180, 184, 193n, 21on, 214

New England Quarterly Magazine, IoB, 109n, 114. 118 Hampshire, 37, 183n Haven, Conn., 19, IB:t, 183n Jersey, 150 Orleans, La., 41, 45 York, N.Y., 13 1 109n, 183n, 185, 189n, 19m New York Evening Post, 6n, 27n, 48n, 145, 150n New York State, 37-38, 124, 139n, 149-150 Newburyport, Mass., 183n, 209n

New New New New New

229

Newburyport Herald, 64 Newspapers, 9n, 11, 20, 27, 62, 64, 7on, 88n, 92n, 9~ 147, 163, zo6-2o7, 213n; see also Boston Centinel, Boston Repertory, Charleston Courier, Gazette of

the United States, New-England Palladium, New York Evening Post, Raleigh Minerva, Washington Federalist, and Weekly Inspector Newton, Isaac, 18n, 77, So Principia, 76, 79 Nicholson, Joseph, 48 North, 38, 40; see also New England North Carolina, 31, 37, 40, 6o, 11on, 161, 183 House of Commons, 45n, 213 Northwest Territory, 42, I 83n, 209

Notes on the State of Virginia, see Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on the State of Virginia Objects of scientific inquiry, 67-94 Ogden, Aaron, I56, I68 Ohio, 37, 43, 183n Oratory, art of, 127-129, 207 Otis, Harrison Gray, 31, 34, 62 Ovid, z, 92 1 112 1 I 19n Paleontology, 69, 72, 76 Paley, William, 83, 89 Pamphleteers, see Satire, Federalist Parsons, Theophilus, 139 Pastoral ideal, I84, 186-187, I92 Paterson, William, 19 5 Patronage, 137, 14I 1 I43, I46 Paulding, James Kirke, see Irving, Washington et al., Salmagundi Pawtucket, R.I., 18 7 Peace of 1783, IB2 Peale, Rembrandt, 88-89, 90 Pennsylvania, 24, 3 7 Percival, James Gates, 66n Peters, Richard, 14on

230

Index

Philadelphia, Pa., 46, 47, 76, I4o, I$7, I82, I83n, I9on, 195 Phillips, John, 6z, 63 Phillips, Wendell, 62, 63 Philology, 99-100 "Phocion,'' 9 Pickering, John, 64n-6sn, Ioi, 111 Pickering, Timothy, 38, 40, 45-46, 64-65, 83, 101, III, II2Ds ZOOs 210, ZII Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 6o, I64 Pinckney, Thomas, 195n Plymouth, Mass., 183n Poe, Edgar Allan, 3 Pope, Alexander, 2, 10, n, u6, 117 Dunciad, I 74 Popkin, John Snelling, 6 Population, pressure of, on land, 184n Port Folio, 15n, 16n, 26n, 27n, 211, 32, 3Jn, 3sn, 38n, 4In, son, Sis 7Jn, 75n, 81, Bzn, 87n, 98n, 99n, 112n, I14n, IIS, I19n, I2on, I2In, 129n, 130, I32, I63, 164n, 167n, zo2n, 205, 215n Potomac River, 90 Press, see Newspapers Priestley, Joseph, 8o Princeton, 96, I06n Prussia, 35, 81 Pseudonyms of Federalists, 8-9, I I, 16n, 38n, 70-7I, 145, 15o, 201 Puritanism, 79, 8o, I 19n, 202, 208 Putnam, Rufus, 2oo Quakers, 47, 58n, 77n, Son, I78 Quincy, Edmund, 59, 6z, 63 Quincy, Josiah, 12, 33n, 37-38, 45n, so, 6o-63, 65, 75, 79, 84, 98n, I76, 189 "Climenole," 13, I5-17, 18, 2on, 23, sz, 59, 68, 73-74, Ioo, JOin, IO$-I06, II6, IJI-132> I77 Quincy, Josiah, Jr., s8-s9 Quintillian, 12 7, 13 1

Quo warranto, see Common law, quo warranto Raleigh Minerva, 27, 213n Randolph, John, 154n, 158 "Reception Question," 13 8, 17 2; see also Common law Reeve, Tapping, 9n, 207 Religion: conflict with science, 79-92 controversy over, 20, s3-56, 61, 79-9 2 relationship to patriotism, 208-214 Religious liberty, debate over definitions, 208-212 Republic: conditions for, 95, Io8, 201, 2o4zo6 Federalist definition of, 128, I9SI99 Old Republic, I7Ss 178, 184 relationship of, to morality, 20020I, 206, 208-211, 214 Republicans, 7, I 7-I9, 48, 49, 66, 144. 149-1$0, lSI, ISS. IS~ 161, 163, 171, I76, I99> 2I421$ control of Congress, 107, I37, I39-143, I46-I47> I$6, 168 as slaveholders, 27-29 see also Jeffersonians Revivals, religious, 211-z 12 Revolutions, see American Revolution and French Revolution Rhode Island, 3 7 Richmond, Va., 68 Rittenhouse, David, 76n Roane, Spencer, I39 Rome, us-u6, u8, IZZ, 124, 130, I94 Augustan age in, 1-4, sn, 8, 131 town meetings in, 126-127 Ross, James, 167 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 91, 20 s-zo6 Emile, 1osn, 203-204 Encyclopedie, 204n

Index Royal Society of London, 18, So Rush, Benjamin, 104, 107-I09, uz, n3, 114, us-u6, 117, tzon, UI, I93 Rush, Richard, u9n Rutledge, Edward, I9S• zoo Rutledge, John, Jr., 31, 34, ISI, IS7• IS8-IS9• I6I-16z, 171, zoo St. Clair, Arthur, I83n, zo9 Sallust, I I I, I I4 Salmagundi, see Irving, Washington et al., Salmagundi Salt mountain, 68, 69, 76, 78-79, 93 Salvaging the classical tradition, 9SI34 Santo Domingo, 40, 1 z6 as source of refugees, 41, 43-44, 46 U.S. relations with, 45-49, 66 Sargent, Winthrop, 7s Satire, Federalist: on American Philosophical Society, 67, 73-74 on democracy, 13-17, z3, I74I77• 179, zozn on educational trends, zo, 104-106 on Jefferson, 19, 101n as inventor, 67-68 relationships with Sally Hemings and Mrs. Walker, 14, s1-53 as scientist, 67-68, 71-73, 75, 79 writings, 11-n, 14, 69, I3I-I33 on scientific investigation, 18-I 9, ZI, 67-68, 7 I-73, 7S, 79 on slavery, z3 as technique, II-IS, 67-68, 7I, 131 on Webster, 98-Ioo Sauve, Pierre, 41n Scientific inquiry: conflict with religion, 79-9Z controversy over, 67-94, I 73 Secession: conspiracy of I8o4, 3z, 37, 4z, 64, 148

231

threats of, 33-35, 44, t6z-I6S, I8z-I83 Secondat, Charles de, see Montesquieu Sectional differences, z3, z7, :19-3s, 66; see also Virginia, Federalist suspicion of Sedgwick, Theodore, 63-64, I6o Sedgwick, Theodore, Jr., 63-64 Sedition Act of I798, I4o Senate, 38, I07 debate on Breckinridge Bill, zsn, 4Z-4S, 66 debate on Judiciary Act of I8oi, I47-I 7Z debate on Santo Domingo embargo, 47-49, 66 Shaw, William Smith, 4sn, zo6 Shays' Rebellion, I 8z Sheafe, James, I83n Silliman, Benjamin, 76n, 83, 86 Slater, Samuel, I 8 7, I 89 Slave trade, 4Z-44, IS8-IS9 Slavery, z3-66, IS8-IS9 abolition movement, 4 In, SJ, s6S9• 6z-66 economic advantages and disadvantages, :13-zs effect of, on agriculture, :14-zs, S9-60

fear of slave uprising, 34, 40-4I, 43-44, 47-48, so, SIn Federalist objections to, z3-30, 34, 36-4o, 43, 49-so, sB, 6o-6z "Slaveslap Kiddnap," see Quincy, Josiah, "Climenole" Slums, ISS, I89 Smallpox vaccination, 78 Smith, Adam, IS4n Smith, John, 43 Smith, John Cotton, 40n, I s7n Smith, Samuel Harrison, I04, Iosn, Io9n Smith, Samuel Stanhope, 96 Smith, William Laughton, 9n Social classes, existence of, z9, I 74, I79n, I8S-I86, I9I-19Z

232

Index

Social order, 173-:ns Society of the Cincinnati, 164 Society for Establishing a Free School in the City of New York, xS9n Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy, 75 1 S4-S6 South, 31, 34-35, 3S-39, 59, 64, 179, 2II violence in, 29n see also Virginia South Carolina, 37 1 40, 6o, ISS, I94 Spinning mills, IS 7-xS S Stanly, John, x6I State courts, I39 1 I4I 1 I45 1 I46, IS0 1 I54> IS5, I56 1 I57n, I7I State legislatures, 3S, I 3S-I39 States' rights, I40 1 I46, IS3 1 I6I Strong, Caleb, I24 1 2om, 209 Supreme Court, uS, I37 1 I44 1 I45n, I46n, ISo, I65, I66, I7o, I7I Swift, Jonathan, 21 Io, I I Gulliver's Tra'Uels, I6-I9 1 2on, 21 1 22 1 98, 207n, 2I4 Tacitus, I I 21 I 2 I Talleyrand, 4 7 Tallmadge, Benjamin, ISS Tarleton, General, 6S, 71 Tennessee, I57n Te"ible Tractoration, The, see Fessenden, Thomas Green, Terrible Tractoratio.n, The Three-fifths clause, see Constitution, three-fifths clause Tilghman, William, I67 Tobacco, 45 1 6o Tocqueville, Alexis de, 8 Democracy in America, 209-2Io Toussaint L'Ouverture, Pierre Dominique, 45-47 Tracy, Uriah, 143n, I52 1 200 Treaty of Paris, 30 Treaty of I7S3, 145n Tucker, St. George, 57 Tudor, William, Jr., II 1 2S, 29

Union College, ssn University of Paris, 107 University of Pennsylvania, S3 University of Virginia, non Upham, Jabez, 143n Urban growth, I74 1 I92 Van der Kemp, Francis Adrian, 7677, Son Vermont, 29, 37 Violence: American capacity for, 29n, ISIISs, I92-I93, 203 Federalist fears of, I74-1S5, I92I93 Virgil, 21 I 1 I Georgics, u9 Virginia, uon, I44 1 145n, 179n, IS3 1 2I3 British invasion of, I I Federalist suspicion of, 23, 25-40, so, 52 1 59 1 6I-62, 157-I58, I63-I64 political power of, 3 6-40 1 5o, I 57ISS, I63-164 Virginia Resolution of I799> I4I Voltaire, 9I 1 us, u6 Vulcanists, S6, 90 Walker, Mrs., I4 War of ISI2 1 3, I99 War of Independence, see American Revolution Warren, Joseph, sS Washington, D.C., I57 1 I64 Washington, George, 33 1 I40 1 176177, zoo, 210 Farewell Address, 2o6n, zo8 Federalist veneration of, 4-8, 10 Washington Benevolent Society, s-6 Washington Federalist, 27 1 36n, 45n, I42-143 1 I44n, IS I, I96 Waterhouse, Benjamin, 64n-6sn, 77, 78-79. 88, 92, 94 Webster, Noah, 2I 1 IoJ, I09 1 I89 attitude toward slavery, 261 szn-

53n

233

Index Webster, Noah (cont.) dictionary, 96-99 educational reforms, I I 3, I I4n linguistic reforms, 96-Ioz

Sketches of American Policy, 9697

13, I5 1 I94n, I9SD 1 I98n, ZOID West, I83, I90 images of, 36, 93-941 I5Z-IS3 see alto Louisiana "Whiskey rebels," 18 3, I 84 White, Samuel, Z5D, 43n William and Mary College, 1 I z

Weekly Inspector,

Wilson, James, I40n Wirt, William, 87-88, 90 1 9zn Wistar, Caspar, 7Z Wolcott, Oliver, Jr., 9n, u, z9-3o, J2 1 34 1 6I 1 I59> I6Z 1 I67 1 I87I89 as "Buffon," II, 70-7I, 76-77 Woodhouse, James, 83 Wythe, George, 57 Xenophon, no, I 77 Yale, u, 76n, 83, to6n,

II

t, 179

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