Claude G. Bowers

“ They who know him best suspect that he enjoys too well the pleasures of the table, but love him for a kindliness that temper cannot sour, a sincerity and generosity that know no bounds, a gayety that his dignity cannot suppress—a fine sentimental figure with a Revolutionary background. What though he had been a bookseller before he eloped with a lady of quality, he was too keenly appreciative of the advantages of aristocracy to have much patience with the queer notions of Tom Jefferson, whom he liked. He rubbed his shins when Hamilton stumbled over a chair. ”

“ Soon the Federalists were reading ‘Porcupine’ as a Bible, and the editors were making journalism a matter of blackguardism, of black eyes and bloody noses. In blood and breeding, Cobbett was inferior to Freneau, Bache, or Duane, but he was a more consummate master of satire than any of them. He could string chaste words into a scorpion lash that Swift would have envied, or stoop to an obscenity and vulgarity that would have delighted Kit Marlowe in his cups. None but a genius could have risen from his original low estate, with so little education. ”

“ There, too, was Matthew Lyon, of whom we shall hear much, whose fanatical devotion to democracy was a heritage from a father who had paid the penalty of his patriotism on the gallows in Ireland; whose hatred of aristocracy was but a reaction to the memory of his days of poverty. Possessing a genius for business, and succeeding, he was irresistibly drawn to politics, where his Celtic humor, his energy, impetuosity, and sincerity surrounded him with friends. His radicalism became a flaming torch that lighted up the granite hills. ”

“ No more charming or clever diplomat than this bosom friend of Hamilton has served America abroad. Born to the purple, he was an aristocrat by nature, with a blatantly cynical and contemptuous conception of the masses of mankind. His was the shimmer due to generations of polishing. As a young man in the society of New York and Philadelphia, he was enormously popular because he was handsome, dashing, witty, eloquent, a bit risqué and in consequence of his fashionable and gilded background. In the Constitutional Convention no one spoke with greater fluency or frequency—or with less effect. ”

“ Did we not have a treaty with France that we had been glad to sign? Was not our own existence involved in the European struggle now? The Republic of France crushed by the allied monarchs to-day—our turn to-morrow.
And the partisans of England—who were they? The old American Tories, the rich merchants operating on English capital, the crooked speculators fawning on the money-lenders of Europe, the aristocrats kow-towing to the roués of a degenerate nobility in the homes of the moneyed aristocracy, the politicians who excluded the poor man from the polls. ”

“ Giles was a veritable D’Artagnan of debate, a gusty, lusty Gascon transplanted to the tobacco-fields of Virginia, eager always for a fight or a frolic, and lightning-swift with his blade. A blustering fellow, true, quick to assert his rights and repel assault, he carried himself with a swagger that did not endear him to the Federalists, who rather plumed themselves on having a monopoly on that particular vice or virtue. ”

“ They were men of intellect and social prestige, intimately allied with commerce and the law. There was George Cabot, the greatest and wisest of them all, and one of the few men who dared tell Hamilton his faults. He was a man of fine appearance, tall, well-moulded, elegant in his manners, aristocratic in his bearing, earnest but never vehement in conversation; a man of wealth, and a merchant. [1762] There was Fisher Ames, brilliant, vivacious, smiling, cynical, eloquent, exclusive in his social tastes, and wealthy. ”

“ They had the same love of land, the same obsession that the alienation of any part of their possessions was treason to the family. Through the system of entail, the lands and slaves of the aristocracy could be passed on down through the generations, proof against the extravagance and inefficiency of the owners and the attacks of creditors. The law of primogeniture was designed to serve the same general end of preventing the disruption of the great estates. With a fine audacity, Jefferson sallied forth quite gayly to attack them both. ”

“ Nature spread a white mantle over the crudities of the village as though to dress it becomingly for the great day. The great plain between the foot of the hill and the river was covered with a spotless sheet, and even the shop of the shoemaker and the home of the washwoman took on the appearance of beauty. No one minded the storm, not even Joseph H. Nicholson of Maryland, who, though bedridden with fever, insisted on being carried through the storm to cast his ballot for Jefferson. ”

“ His hair, much redder than that of Hamilton, was combed loosely over the forehead and at the side, and tied behind. His complexion was light, his eyes blue and usually mild in expression, his forehead broad and high. Beneath the eyes, his face was rather broad, the cheek-bones high, the chin noticeably long, and the mouth of generous size. The casual glance discovered more of benevolence than force, more of subtlety than pugnacity. Nor, in that day of lace and frills, was there anything in his garb to proclaim him of the élite. ”

“ Fascinated by the beauty of Marie Antoinette, Edmund Burke of England had written his bitter attack, not only on the excesses of the French Revolution, but upon its democratic principles as well. It was the fashion in those days to conceal a hate of democracy under the cloak of a simulated horror over the crimes of the Terrorists. Thomas Paine had replied to Burke with his brilliant and eloquent defense of democracy, ‘The Rights of Man.’ In American circles where democracy was anathema, and even republicanism was discussed with cynicism, the Burke pamphlet was received with enthusiasm. ”

“ Joseph Priestley, the English liberal, driven from England by persecution, had been given an uproarious greeting in New York and had replied to addresses from Tammany and Democratic Societies with severe strictures on the repressive measures of Pitt; and an exotic creature, who had been living obscurely in Philadelphia as a teacher, startled the country with a pamphlet reply in a vein of sarcasm and satire worthy of the masters of the art. England was glorified, France crucified, Democratic Societies excoriated, the Irish in America damned—and the Hamiltonians rejoiced. ”

“ One man, at least, had cause for jubilation. In two years Hamilton had risen to a position of commanding power, proved his genius in constructive statesmanship, accomplished everything he had set out to do, made himself the idol of the wealthy and the powerful, the recognized leader of the influential commercial class, the acknowledged head of a brilliant and militant party. His friends were comparing him to Pitt, then in the heyday of his power—and he was only on the threshold. ”

“ Profound as a thinker, exhaustive as a student, moving in eloquence, powerful with the pen, logical in his reasoning, constructive in his methods, tenacious in the advancement of his plans, possessed of the courage of his convictions, personally honest in public and private action, he possessed qualities of leadership that drew high-minded men about, and to, him. But he unhappily had the weakness of his strength that was to operate disastrously upon his political fortunes. It is impossible to understand his ultimate failure as a leader without a reference to his temperamental deficiencies. ”

“ The ‘people of no particular importance’ somehow felt that the victory was theirs. They had been a little indifferent, these men of the shops, taverns, wharves, and the frontier, over the disputed financial and economic policies of their country, but they could understand the meaning of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity.’ It meant democracy. Thus the news of the French victories shook the bells in the New York steeples, Tammany celebrated with song, shout, and speech in her wigwam, and the bung was knocked out of the barrel of illiterate oratory in the beer saloons. ”

“ The Tammany of his time marshaled its forces for him, and all the wit and wiles of Hamilton could not harm him. But the Federalists hated him. What moral right had a man of wealth and intellectual distinction and social prestige to affiliate with the ‘mob’? They hated him as deserters are hated—he was an American Égalité to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room, and Wolcott hated him less because he ‘lived like a nabob’ than because he fought like the devil. ”

“ Here we shall meet marching mobs, witness duels and fist-fights, turbulent mass meetings, public dinners in groves and taverns, hangings in effigy, and champions of democracy in the galleries of theaters, pelting the aristocrats in the pits, and coercing the orchestras into playing ‘La Marseillaise.’ It was in the midst of such scenes as these that Jefferson and Hamilton fought the battle of the fundamentals. ”

“ Unpleasant as was the attitude of the fashionable circles, it was not so offensive to Jefferson as the constant quarreling and intriguing in official circles. He complained that he and Hamilton were always against each other like cocks in a pit. He was never fond of futile disputation. His own views were fixed, as were those of his opponent. He was too much the philosopher to enjoy argumentation that accomplished nothing. Long before that summer he had wanted to retire, and, as we have seen, had only been dissuaded by the importunities of Washington, but he was now intolerably tired of it all. ”

“ An ailing body had obsessed him in youth with the premonition of an early death, and, feeling the futility of entering on any pursuit, he had sought consolation in his books. He not only consumed, he assimilated. He not only read, he thought. Thus he became something more than a learned man—he developed into a political philosopher ‘worthy to rank with Montesquieu and Locke.’ [223] At the time he rose to propose an amendment to Hamilton’s plan there was not a man in America who was his peer in the knowledge of constitutional law or history. ”

“ The purpose of the author is not to make out a case for or against democracy, but to show how it came to the Republic, sometimes blundering and making a fool of itself on the way; to re-create, if possible, an heroic, picturesque, and lusty age; to make the men of the steel engravings flesh and blood; to stage the drama of a day when real giants trod the boards. ”

“ Fisher Ames was not only the premier orator of his party; he was one of its most brilliant and captivating personalities. He had a genius for friendship and was good company. Nature had blessed him with her richest intellectual gifts. His precocity equaled that of Hamilton or Gallatin—he was a prodigy. At six he was studying Latin, at twelve he had entered Harvard, and there he was conspicuous because of his scintillation. ”