Madison and Jefferson (56 page)

With a single swipe, ignoring facts and fairness, the Hamiltonians had undone the many years of trust between Washington and Randolph. In simple terms, they wanted the last Virginian out of the cabinet. Wolcott had been, until lately, comptroller of the treasury, in charge of putting Hamilton’s national bank into operation. It is no exaggeration to say that he was completely indebted to Hamilton and completely responsive to him. Pickering, once adjutant general of the Continental Army, had a strong mind and blustery personality and would be an outspoken and unforgiving critic of the Republicans for years to come. These two combined to put the squeeze on Randolph when they introduced the poisonous Fauchet letter to a gullible president.
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So although Randolph was innocent of all charges, his pamphlet contained enough venom to ensure his political exile. Jefferson dissected the work and sent a critique of it to the restless Virginia Republican William Branch Giles. The gist of Jefferson’s argument was that political neutrality was useless and that Randolph’s failure showed why the establishment of a party was sometimes necessary. He wrote: “Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office, as in England, to take a part in either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man. But where the principle of difference is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the Monocrats of our country I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part, and as immoral to pursue a middle line.” This one statement captures Thomas Jefferson’s political creed more succinctly than any of his better-known or more eloquent texts.
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Another who took an interest in Randolph’s pamphlet was Federalist-friendly “Peter Porcupine.” This barbed quill of a pen name belonged to a newcomer to Philadelphia, William Cobbett, a thirty-year-old British Army
veteran who had been stationed in Canada for several years before deciding to try his luck in the United States. A robust critic of the emerging Democratic-Republican Party, he hit the ground running, disputing Randolph point by point. Writing to Jefferson, Madison acknowledged the impact of “Porcupine’s” treatment of the
Vindication:
“It is handled with much satirical scurrility …, ingenuity and plausibility.” To Monroe, he was rather more severe, calling Cobbett’s piece a “malignant attack.”
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Meanwhile, the bruised author of the
Vindication
wrote his old and trusted friend Madison and confessed to how deeply he had experienced Washington’s betrayal. “I feel happy,” he said, “at my emancipation from an attachment to a man, who practiced upon me the profound hypocrisy of Tiberius, and the injustice of an assassin.” It was Randolph’s way of telling Madison that he knew he had just written his own political obituary.
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Given the rich educations that the gentry received, their classical allusions tend to be illuminating, and Randolph’s invocation of the Emperor Tiberius is no exception. For what turned out to be his last hurrah as a member of the administration, he had taken the pseudonym “Germanicus,” virtuous nephew and adopted son of the Roman emperor, in a series of letters he published in defense of Washington’s “firmness” during the Whiskey Rebellion. It was in the “Germanicus” letters that Randolph had yielded to the term “self created societies,” accusing the democratic societies of planting the seeds of America’s destruction. Such societies were fit for Revolutionary times, he wrote, but “ought to be avoided in seasons of tranquillity because they may be easily abused.” He was wrong about the tranquillity and wrong about who was committing abuses.

But that is not why Randolph’s pseudonym of 1794 revealed so much in 1795. “Germanicus” symbolized competence and loyalty—especially loyalty. As he prepared his
Vindication
, Randolph could only have been shocked by the supreme irony in his choice of pen name. Or perhaps he had forgotten how the story ended: the emperor repaid Germanicus for his honorable service by attaching him to an officer who despised him and had him poisoned. Tiberius was thought to have been behind the conspiracy, though it was never proven.
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In unsubtle ways, Randolph had paternal expectations from Washington. Their break—his shaming—was catastrophic for him; but in politics, suspicion could kill a friendship or an alliance in an instant. So Randolph consciously wrote his
Vindication
as a life-affirming experience—an “emancipation,” as he told Madison. Washington’s decision to abandon Randolph
is harder to explain. He had never had occasion to question the younger man’s integrity. And yet he convicted Randolph on the flimsiest of evidence: a report he never verified, a report that had passed through British hands. Why did he suddenly accept this dark portrait of his long-trusted subordinate? The answer may lie in the Revolutionary past, in an incident known as the Conway Cabal. In 1777–78, at a low point in the war, a number of prominent civilians and military men were writing openly of Washington’s incompetence. The Continental Congress was all abuzz with news of infighting. It came to Washington’s attention that one general in particular, Thomas Conway, had circulated sharp criticisms of his military prowess. So the commander in chief dismissed him with contempt, rallied support, and ruined Conway’s career. In both that instance and this one Washington acted impulsively, apt to believe he was being betrayed.
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Madison was kind to Randolph, agreeing that Washington’s overreaction was inexcusable. He wrote Monroe that the
Vindication
redeemed Randolph’s honor, proving his innocence, so that even “his greatest enemies will not persuade themselves that he was under the corrupt influence of France.” But at the same time Madison read the pamphlet as the confession of a failed politician, saying that not even Randolph’s “best friend” could “save him from the self condemnation of his political career as explained by himself.” Madison used the third person singular:
his
best friend. It is an oddly detached construction, because Madison was really talking about himself; he had long been Randolph’s best friend in the carnivorous land of politics.
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Edmund Randolph’s star had finally faded. Born to privilege and known to the movers and shakers in Virginia from the time he learned to write, he would never be asked to hold high office again—not under Jefferson, not under Madison. Burdened by personal financial concerns, he returned to the practice of law. He amused himself by writing a history of Virginia, though it would not be published until after his death. Adding insult to injury, when Washington considered a replacement for Randolph as secretary of state, he thought first of Patrick Henry—a peculiar choice at this or any moment—before settling on the redoubtable Timothy Pickering.
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Washington had made his choice. Hamilton had rendered it impossible for Jefferson to remain in the cabinet once Washington had chosen Hamilton
over him; Hamiltonians had made it impossible for Randolph, whose one ally in the inner circle was the president himself. It was a purge of Virginia Republicans.

No Republican anywhere had influence with Washington anymore. The president got his European news from the brilliant, idiosyncratic, ungovernable Gouverneur Morris, a Federalist who predicted that France was tired of experiment and would restore the monarchy before long. Morris acknowledged (and he said the same to Hamilton) that England was not the perfect ally; but, he added, any injuries America suffered from that quarter could be endured.
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Out of government, Hamilton made sure that he was still heard from. He kept in close touch with the president and the new cabinet. “When shall we cease to consider ourselves as a colony to France?” he posed in a letter to Attorney General Bradford, when Randolph’s purported treason came to light. Hamilton’s unambiguous goal was the total eradication of pro-French feeling in America.
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In July 1795 Hamilton challenged James Nicholson to a duel. A naval officer during the Revolution, Nicholson was active in the Democratic Society of New York. He was also Albert Gallatin’s father-in-law. Nicholson had annoyed Hamilton with the tenor of his arguments against the Jay Treaty, which somehow proved hurtful enough for Hamilton that he resorted to a deadly challenge. “The unprovoked rudeness and insult which I experienced from you,” wrote Hamilton, “leaves me no option.”

Hamilton proceeded to make out his will. This time, at least, his impulsiveness ended without bloodshed. On the day following the above exchange, without knowing how the challenge would play out, Hamilton (as “Camillus”) began what would turn into a long series of newspaper pieces in defense of Jay’s treaty. “No one can be blind to the finger of party spirit,” he wrote in the first of the series, accusing the “leaders of clubs” of criticizing Jay in order to elevate Thomas Jefferson and George Clinton.
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Moved by Hamilton’s enthusiasm, and having taken a liking to Jay, President Washington came to view the imperfect treaty as a lesser evil. Debate would drag on during the second half of 1795 and into the early months of 1796; and though confidence in Washington diminished in some quarters, conservative voices stayed on the attack. This was perhaps best expressed in Noah Webster’s
American Minerva
, where it was written that opposition to the treaty was “begotten in cabal—supported by knavery” and sustained by a minority.
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The newspaper was a partisan feast, dripping with political bloodlust. Federalists found satirical poems to be a particular delight. They contained every slur and every slight of the times, mocking the “servile” American Jacobins and the foreign origins and foreign principles of every so-called Antifederal dissenter. The foreign-born (“A medley mixed from every land”) were dangerous because they produced unrest.

And whenever “self created societies” were mentioned, James Madison was found making excuses for them. The misdirected rabble were

This devastating satire distinguished the Madisonian trash from America’s better prospects under a President John Adams, who was by now regarded as Washington’s presumptive successor. A New England paper, meanwhile, came up with a devious abbreviation of “Madisonian” when it denominated the “Jaco-Demo Crats” as “Mads.” Other critics would pick up on the useful nickname.
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Aurora
editor Benjamin Franklin Bache was not the only “Franklin” in Philadelphia to take on John Jay and George Washington in 1795. In the spring of that year Pennsylvania Republican Alexander James Dallas adopted the name of the late Dr. Franklin, whom he had met years before at the University of Edinburgh. The
Letters of Franklin, Or, the Conduct of the Executive, and the Treaty Negotiated by the Chief Justice of the United States
, did not deny the constitutional powers of the executive and the U.S. Senate in treaty making but emphasized the unresponsiveness of both to the will of the American people. “This Treaty is of a piece with the other perfidies of Great Britain,” Dallas criticized, while praising Madison for seeking a way to regulate America’s commerce with Britain that would control the “hostile spirit of that nation.” Dallas posed the question of the decade: “How comes it that every man who prefers France to Great Britain—republicanism to monarchy—is denominated
Antifederalist, Jacobin, Disorganizer, Miscreant
, &c., while men of another humour arrogantly and exclusively assume the titles of
Federalist, Friends to order
, &c. &c.?”
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Terms of abuse were tossed around with irreligious fervor. Though most of the “self created” democratic societies would disappear by the end of 1796, Cobbett’s “Peter Porcupine” identified a conspiracy against the government when he repeated the toasts delivered by southern Republicans at a Franco-American function. The first glass was lifted to “Democratic Societies throughout the world—may they be the watchful guardians of Liberty”; the second to “Citizen
Maddison
and the
Republican party
in Congress.” In a long, discursive pamphlet titled
A Little Plain English
, “Porcupine” mocked the all-too-clever names Republicans had come up with for their domestic enemy: “Aristocrat, King’s man, Loyalist, Royalist, Clergyman, Englishman.” Cobbett happily embraced the last of these, as he wrote in support of social distinctions: “As an Englishman, I shall be excused for not thinking myself upon a level with every
patriot
, every
negro
, and every
democrat
, that pleases to call me his
fellow citizen.
” Democracy meant erasing all social distinctions.

According to Cobbett, the “French faction” in America was “perverse” in its thinking; the treaty’s opponents thrived on “frothy declamation and vaunting bombast … ambiguity and confusion … every passion that can disgrace the heart of man.” Directly disparaging the author of
Letters of Franklin
as “this fawning mob orator,” Cobbett insisted that President Washington had done the right thing by resisting the mob’s demand for a pro-French policy. To condemn Washington was to imitate the ungrateful pirate crew “who, having safely arrived in port, cut the throat of their pilot.”
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As the parties were forming and newspapers waged partisan warfare, American slavery received relatively scant attention. In July 1795, however, once Washington had submitted Jay’s treaty to the Senate and recommended its passage, Hamilton, as an informal legal adviser to the president, responded to the president’s solicitation of advice on how to treat southerners’ claims against the British for “seducing away our negroes during the War.” It was one of the issues Jay was meant to have addressed during negotiations.