Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (157 page)

22
. Baseler, “Asylum for Mankind,” 255–70; Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 24.

23
. Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 27;
Annals of Congress
, 5th Congress, 2nd session, VIII, 1567–68.

24
. Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 53, 438–40.

25
.
Annals of Congress
, 5th Congress, 2nd session (June 1798), VIII, 1956.

26
. Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 82.

27
. JA to TJ, 14 June 1813, in Lester J. Cappon, ed.,
The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams
(Chapel Hill, 1959), 2: 329.

28
. Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
, ed. J. P. Mayer (Garden City, NY, 1966), 185–86, 517.

29
. JM, “Public Opinion,” 19Dec. 1791,
Madison: Writings
, 500–501.

30
. Paul Starr,
The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications
(New York, 2004), 80.

31
. Michael Durey,
Transatlantic Radicals and the Early American Republic
(Lawrence, KS, 1997). Of the 219 political refugees Durey has studied, 152 were Irish (69 percent), 49 English (23 percent), and 18 Scottish (8 percent)—proportions, says Durey, that probably reflect the relative intensity of political conflict in each of the countries in the 1790 s. In England the peak years of emigration were 1793 and 1794, suggesting that the exiles were the victims of the first wave of the English government’s repression that culminated in the treason trials of 1794. The main phase of Scottish radical emigration to the United States came in 1794–1795 in the aftermath of the Watt conspiracy in Edinburgh. And in Ireland the vast majority of radicals fled into exile after the 1798 Wexford Rising.

32
. Jeffrey L. Pasley,
“The Tyranny of the Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic
(Charlottesville, 2001), 1–47.

33
. Donald H. Stewart,
The Opposition Press of the Federalist Period
(Albany, 1969), 13; Richard D. Brown,
Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700–1865
(New York, 1989).

34
. Joyce Appleby,
Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s
(New York, 1984), 66, 69, 75; Stewart,
Opposition Press
, 389, 390.

35
. Charles Warren,
Jacobin and Junto; or, Early American Politics as Viewed in the Diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames, 1758–1822
(New York, 1931), 71.

36
. Donald J. Ratcliffe,
Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Democratic Politics in Ohio, 1793–1821
(Columbus, OH, 1998), 20.

37
. Richard Buel Jr.,
Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815
(Ithaca, 1972), 99.

38
. Pasley, “
Tyranny of the Printers
,” 231.

39
. Marcus Daniel,
Scandal and Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy
(New York, 2009), 295.

40
. William Cobbett,
Peter Porcupine in America: Pamphlets on Republicanism and Revolution
, ed. David A. Wilson (Ithaca, 1994), 95, 113, 108.

41
. Cobbett,
Peter Porcupine in America
, 117.

42
. Cobbett,
Peter Porcupine in America
, 89–118.

43
. Warren,
Jacobin and Junto
, 85, 82, 86; DeConde,
The Quasi-War
, 82.

44
. Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 116; John C. Miller,
The Federalist Era, 1789–1801
(New York, 1960), 233; Warren,
Jacobin and Junto
, 96.

45
. Norman L. Rosenberg,
Protecting the Best Men: An Interpretative History of the Law of Libel
(Chapel Hill, 1986), 77. In
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
(1964) the Supreme Court decided just the opposite was the law. Not only could the press legally criticize public officials, but it could even make false statements about the conduct of public officials as long as no “actual malice” was intended. This broad version of freedom of the press exists nowhere else in the world.

46
. Gordon S. Wood,
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
(New York, 1992), 86.

47
. Buel,
Securing the Revolution
, 156.

48
. Appleby,
Capitalism and a New Social Order
, 60.

49
. Samuel Miller,
A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century
(New York, 1803), 2: 254–55.

50
. Kohn,
Eagle and Sword
, 200; Joanne B. Freeman,
Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic
(New Haven, 2001), xvii–xviii.

51
. TJ to JM, 26 April 1798,
Republic of Letters
, 1042; Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 441–42.

52
.
Annals of Congress
, 5th Congress, 2nd session (June 1798), VIII, 2024–25, 2017–18.

53
. AH to Wolcott, 29 June 1798,
Papers of Hamilton
, 21: 522.

54
. Kenneth Roberts and Anna M. Roberts, eds.,
Moreau de St. Méry’s American Journey, 1793–1798
(New York, 1947), 253.

55
. Edward J. Larson,
A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign
(New York, 2007), 77.

56
. Smith,
Freedom’s Fetters
, 258–68; Warren,
Jacobin and Junto
, 107–10; Ames, “Laocoon 1,” April 1799,
Works of Ames
, ed. Allen, 1: 192–93,196.

57
. Pasley,
“Tyranny of the Printers
,” 126–31.

58
. JM, “Political Observations” (1795), in Marvin Meyers, ed.,
The Mind of the Founder: Sources of the Political Thought of James Madison
(Indianapolis, 1973), 287.

59
. Kohn,
Eagle and Sword
, 223.

60
. Kohn,
Eagle and Sword
, 604.

61
. Chernow,
Hamilton
, 179.

62
. AH to Theodore Sedgwick, 2Feb. 1799,
Hamilton: Writings
, 914.

63
. AH to James McHenry, 18 March 1799,
Papers of Hamilton
, 22: 552–53.

64
. AH to Sedgwick, 2 Feb. 1799,
Papers of Hamilton
, 22: 453; Thomas P. Slaughter, “‘The King of Crimes’: Early American Treason Law, 1787–1860,” in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds.,
Launching the “Extended Republic”: The Federalist Era
(Charlottesville, 1996), 96–97. Fries and two others were convicted of treason and sentenced to death, but President Adams pardoned them, even in the face of opposition from many Federalists.

65
. AH to Jonathan Dayton, Oct.–N
OV
. 1799,
Papers of Hamilton
, 23: 599–604.

66
. AH to Rufus King, 22 Aug. 1798,
Papers of Hamilton
, 22: 154–55.

67
. Ames, Sketch of the Character of Alexander Hamilton, July 1804,
Works of Ames
, ed. Allen, I: 518.

68
. JA,
Boston Patriot
, 10 June 1809, Adams, ed.,
Works
, 9: 305–6.

69
. AH to GW, 19 May 1798,
Papers of Hamilton
, 21: 467.

70
. GW to Lafayette, 25 Dec. 1798,
Papers of Washington: Retirement Ser
., 3: 281–82.

71
. GW to Mchenry, 4 July 1798,
Papers of Washington: Retirement Ser
., 2: 378.

72
. Sharp,
American Politics in the Early Republic
, 188; TJ to Taylor, 4 June 1798,
Papers of Jefferson
, 30: 389.

73
. TJ to Stevens Thomson Mason, 11 Oct. 1798, to Thomas Mann Randolph, 4 Feb. 1800,
Papers of Jefferson
, 30: 560; 31: 360; TJ to BR, 23 Sept. 1800,
Jefferson: Writings
, 1081–82.

74
. Douglas R. Egerton,
Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802
(Chapel Hill, 1993), 37.

75
. Sharp,
American Politics in the Early Republic
, 188; TJ to Taylor, 26 Nov. 1798,
Papers of Jefferson
, 30: 589.

76
. Sharp,
American Politics in the Early Republic
, 194; JM, Virginia Resolutions Against the Alien and Sedition Acts, 21 Dec. 1798,
Madison: Writings
, 590.

77
. TJ’s Draft of Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, before 4 Oct. 1798,
Papers of Jefferson
, 30: 531–32, 536–41.

78
. JM to TJ, 29 Dec. 1798,
Papers of Jefferson
, 30: 606; JM, Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts, 7Jan. 1800,
Madison: Writings
, 608–62.

79
. For traditional accounts of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, see Philip G. Davidson, “Virginia and the Alien and Sedition Laws,”
AHR
, 36 (1931), 336–42; and Adrienne Koch and Harry Ammon, “The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: An Episode in Jefferson’s and Madison’s Defense of Civil Liberties,”
WMQ
, (1948), 145–76. Both accounts deny that Virginia was arming. Sharp,
American Politics in the Early Republic
, 187–207, offers a persuasive argument that Virginia was indeed preparing for a violent confrontation with the federal government. In a more recent study William J. Watkins Jr.,
Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy
(New York, 2004), 24, contends that Virginia was not arming to confront the federal government but only trying to upgrade its neglected defenses, primarily in response to increased Indian attacks in the West.

80
. TJ to JM, 23 Aug. 1799,
Republic of Letters
, 1119.

81
. John Breckinridge to TJ, 13Dec. 1799,
Papers of Jefferson
, 30: 266.

82
. JM, Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts, 7Jan. 1800,
Madison: Writings
, 646–47.

83
. John Ferling,
Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800
(New York, 2004), 121.

84
. JA, 1809,
Papers of Hamilton
, 23: 546–47; Sharp,
American Politics in the Early Republic
, 213.

85
. JA to James McHenry, 31 May 1800,
Papers of Hamilton
, 24: 557.

86
. AH to McHenry, 6 June 1800,
Papers of Hamilton
, 24: 573.

87
. AH to Oliver Wolcott, 3 Aug. 1800,
Papers of Hamilton
, 25: 54; Freeman,
Affairs of Honor
, 119.

88
. AH,
Papers of Hamilton
, 25: 186–234; Ferling,
Adams vs. Jefferson
, 142–43.

89
. Freeman,
Affairs of Honor
, 111; Stephen G. Kurtz,
The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800
(Philadelphia, 1957), 373.

90
. Samuel Flagg Bemis,
A Diplomatic History of the United States
, 3rd ed. (New York, 1953), 125.

1
. David Hackett Fischer,
The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy
(New York, 1965), 151–52 .

2
. TJ to Spencer Roane, 6 Sept. 1819, in Ford, ed.,
Writings of Jefferson
, 10: 140; Susan Dunn,
Jefferson’s Second Revolution: The Electoral Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism
(Boston, 2004), 274 .

3
. AH to Gouverneur Morris, 29 Feb. 1802,
Papers of Hamilton
, 25: 544 .

4
. John Melish,
Travels Through the United States of America, in the Years 1806 and 1807, and 1809, 1810, and 1811
(London, 1815), 149 .

5
. Albert J. Beveridge,
The Life of John Marshall
(Boston, 1916), 2: 537 .

6
. James Parton,
The Life and Times of Aaron Burr
(New York, 1858), 1: 235 .

7
Milton Lomask,
Aaron Burr
(New York, 1979, 1982), 1: 37, 44 .

8
. Matthew L. Davis,
Memoirs of Aaron Burr
(New York, 1836), 1: 297 .