How William Duane Eluded Authorities (continued)

Posted on November 24, 2013 by “Caius”

The Federalists soon set their sights on prosecuting William Duane as an alien.  As an Irishman, he denounced the Alien Act and circulated a petition against it, collecting signatures in Philadelphia.  As he tried to solicit signatures outside St. Mary’s Catholic Church he became involved in a scuffle with Federalists in the congregation.  A United Irishman in exile, Dr. James Reynolds, drew a gun.   No one was shot or wounded.   Reynolds was thrown to the ground and kicked.   Agents charged Duane, Reynolds and two other Irish immigrants with inciting a riot with intent to destabilize the government.  Thomas McKean, a Democratic-Republican chief justice bailed out Duane and Reynolds.  Authorities released them later that day.[1]

In the Aurora, Duane published articles intimating that Great Britain had used intrigue to exert its influence on the United States.  He referred to a letter he said would prove the British were meddling in American affairs.[2]  Agents arrested Duane on July 30, 1799 charging him with seditious libel.

Duane insisted that he had proof.  He had a letter that John Adams himself had written a few years earlier.  Adams had grumbled the British influenced the appointment of Thomas Pinckney as the United States’ minister to Britain while Washington was president.[3]  If Duane’s lawyers made the letter public during the trial, the letter would be an embarrassment to President Adams and his administration.  First, the court postponed the trial on a technicality.  Later, Duane announced in the Aurora that his case was “withdrawn by order of the President.”[4]

How William Duane Eluded Authorities (continued)
Look for it December 2


[1] James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters:  The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1956) 278-2. David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States:  Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1998) 53.

[2] James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters,  282-3.

[3] James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 284-290; Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism:  The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1993) 704.  The letter was written by Adams to Tench Coxe in May of 1792.

[4] James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 287;  Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 704.  The announcement appeared in the Aurora, October 3, 1800.

Posted in From The Desk, Newspaper Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How William Duane Eluded Authorities (continued)

How William Duane Eluded Authorities

Posted on November 16, 2013 by “Caius”

In November 1798, after the yellow fever epidemic had subsided Margaret Bache, Benjamin Bache’s widow, continued to publish the Aurora.  She appointed William Duane as the new editor.  He was Bache’s assistant and an associate of Carey’s.   Duane was an incendiary writer.  He was born in 1760 near Lake Champlain in what would become Vermont.  His parents were of Irish descent.  In 1771, a few years after his father’s death, he accompanied his mother to Ireland .  In Ireland, he apprenticed to the printing trade.  After breaking off relations with his mother, he moved to London, then Calcutta, India.  At first he worked for the East India Company.  Using borrowed funds he founded the Calcutta World and became a journalist.  In 1791, authorities charged him with libel. He was banished from India in 1795 after praising French revolutionaries and espousing the grievances of soldiers against the East India Company Army.    He went to London where he edited a newspaper that advocated universal suffrage and the ideals of the French Revolution.  He set sail for Philadelphia a year later after government authorities moved to silence his press.  An observer described him as having “wild hair, [a] long beard and fierce expression.” At the Aurora, he quickly established himself as a radical Democratic-Republican.[1]

Margaret Bache and Duane vigorously attacked John Adams and his administration.

The office of the Aurora was at 112 Market Street, a few doors away from Carey’s store at 118 Market.  In the May 14, 1799 issue, Duane criticized soldiers who repressed Fries’ Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.  They protested against a federal tax.  At noon the following day, more than twenty-five men appeared at Duane’s offices.  They demanded to know the source of his information.  Duane refused to reveal it.  With the Sedition Act in effect, these were serious charges.

They grabbed Duane by the collar and dragged him down a flight of stairs, pummeling him several times knocking him unconscious for refusing to reveal the writer of the article.  Shocked and horrified, Carey wrote:

          _____________________________________________

“William Duane…published some attacks on the [the soldiers] for oppression and misconduct  which….were partly just….Peter Miercken…went to the office of the Aurora, dragged Duane downstairs, & insisted on having the name of the writer given up.  Duane manfully refused – and Miercken knocked him down…How often this was repeated I…cannot tell—for I was so shocked & horrified that I retired.”[2]

                                                                   Mathew Carey

_____________________________________

Duane, wrote Fenno, in Philadelphia’s widely-read Federalist newspaper, “was not an American but a foreigner, and not merely a foreigner, but a United Irishman, and not merely a United Irishman, but a public convict and fugitive from justice.”[3]

Next:  How William Duane Eluded Authorities (continued)

Look for it Monday, November 25.


[1] David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States:  Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1998) 41.

[2] Mathew Carey, Miscellanies I, ms. (c. 1834) Library Company of Philadelphia, 83.

[3] Wilson, United Irishmen, 55.

Posted in From The Desk, Newspaper Politics, Secession | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How William Duane Eluded Authorities

How Benjamin Franklin’s Grandson was charged with Seditious Libel

Posted on November 10, 2013 by “Caius”

 

In May 1798, William Cobbett published an influential piece, “Detection of a Conspiracy formed by the United Irishmen, with the Evident Intention of Aiding the Tyrants of France in Subverting the Government of the United States”  reporting that the United Irishmen were about to rebel in Ireland with aid from the French.  Later that month, his report proved to be true.   Then Cobbett asserted that the United Irishmen in America, with 1,500 assassins, were forming a conspiracy to foment the same sort of revolution in the United States, which was not true.  The Federalists feared that the Democratic-Republicans, with the help of the French, wanted to overthrow the government.[1]

One month later, Benjamin Franklin Bache, the editor of the principal Democratic-Republican paper, the Aurora, came under attack by the Federalists.  Bache was Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, a prominent citizen of Philadelphia and a friend of Mathew Carey’s.

Bache had long favored the French cause.  In 1793, Edmond Charles Genet became the new French regime’s diplomat to the United States.  Bache had defended him.  Genet had brazenly recruited privateers to conduct operations from ports in the United States.  He attempted to organize military campaigns in territories held in North America by Spain and Great Britain.  Genet’s behavior appalled President Washington, who demanded his recall.   In 1795, when Washington gave the text of the Jay Treaty to the Senate, he asked for secrecy.  Democratic-Republican Senator Stevens Thomson Mason of Virginia ignored Washington.  He gave Bache a copy.  Bache reprinted key parts of the treaty in the Aurora.  He then peddled copies in New York and New England.[2]

In June 1798  after the XYZ Affair,  public opinion was decidedly anti-French. Bache published a letter from Talleyrand.  In an ill-fated, poorly timed attempt to justify France’s position, Bache published the letter in the Aurora before the Secretary of State Timothy Pickering had presented it to President Adams.

On June 29, 1798, government agents hauled Bache before a federal district court charging him with seditious libel against President Adams and the entire executive branch of the United States government.  Congress had not yet passed the Sedition Act into law. [3]   The government accused Bache of treason and being an agent for France.  He provided evidence supporting his defense.  His opponents skillfully used his comments against him.

The court released Bache on bail.  Adams signed the Sedition Act on July 14, 1798.  As Bache awaited his trial in October, he died during Philadelphia’s second major yellow fever epidemic in 1798.

How Bache’s Successor Eluded Government Officials

Look for it Monday, November 18

 


[1]Edward C.  Carter II, “A ‘Wild Irishman’ Under Every Federalist’s Bed:  Naturalization in Philadelphia, 1789-1806,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, V. 94, N.3 (July, 1970)  335.

[2] Marcus Daniel, Scandal and Civility:  Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2009) 136-7.

[3] Raffi E. Andonian, “The Adamant Patriot:  Benjamin Franklin Bache as Leader of the Opposition Press, www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/pahistory researched  November 3, 2013; Matthew Q. Dawson, Partisanship and America’s Second Party, 1796-1800:  “Stop the Wheels of Government” (Westport, Connecticut:  Greenwood Press, 2000) ff. 128.

Posted in From The Desk, Newspaper Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Benjamin Franklin’s Grandson was charged with Seditious Libel

How Newspaper Politics Lead to Federalist Attacks on Other Newspaper Editors

Posted on November 3, 2013 by “Caius”

 

John Fenno wanted to publish an official government newspaper.  He was a penmanship teacher from Boston who had failed at keeping an inn, managing a shop, and working in the export business before working as a journalist for the Boston Centinel.  There he first gained recognition for his defense of the Constitution.  Backed by prominent Bostonians, he moved to America’s new capital in New York City in 1789.  He began publishing the Gazette of the United States.  He quickly gained the notice of Alexander Hamilton.  Hamilton supported Fenno’s vow to “support the Constitution & the Administration formed upon its national principles.”  Fenno sought to defend Washington, his administration, and its policies.

In 1790, Thomas Jefferson returned from France.  He was concerned that those in power would misuse or abuse federal authority.  He courted Fenno, encouraging him to promote liberal views.  Fenno remained loyal to Hamilton.  Hamilton later funneled the Senate’s printing business to Fenno, lending him sizeable sums of money in 1790 and 1791.  When the nation’s capital moved to Philadelphia, Fenno and his Gazette of the United States followed it there.[1]

Next, Jefferson approached Benjamin Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin’s favorite grandson.  He wanted to use Bache’s paper as a rival platform to Fenno’s Gazette.  Bache edited the Philadelphia General Advertiser (later the Aurora) and declined the offer.

Undeterred, Jefferson surreptitiously recruited James Madison’s roommate from Princeton, poet Philip Freneau.  Freneau agreed to publish the National Gazette.  To help finance Freneau’s efforts, Jefferson gave him a position as a State Department translator, and directed government printing jobs his way.  Remaining behind the scenes, Jefferson worked through James Madison, John Beckley and Henry Lee.  Jefferson was careful never to mention the National Gazette in his correspondence with Freneau.  Freneau’s  newspaper appeared in October, 1791.[2]

Freneau was a one-time sea-captain, imprisoned by the British at the end of the Revolutionary War, a radical, and a low-paid journalist working in New York City, when Jefferson recruited him to publish a paper.  The National Gazette criticized Washington, and his administration, especially Alexander Hamilton and his financial policies.  Jefferson, Madison and their associates wrote articles under pseudonyms, concealing their identities.  Soon Washington loathed the National Gazette, calling the editor “that Rascal Freneau.”

Hamilton and Jefferson began to quarrel, using their respective gladiators of the quill, Fenno and Freneau, to shield themselves from public recognition.  Washington urged them to tone down their public arguments.  Hamilton and Jefferson continued anyway.  Benjamin Bache, along with his assistant William Duane, and James Reynolds, jumped into the fray, denouncing Washington as well.

Mathew Carey, never fond of faction, was incensed.  He found the “coarse and vulgar” assaults by Reynolds, particularly “did more to injure the cause of Democracy than all the efforts of its enemies could have done in five years.”  He voiced the opinion of many in the Irish-American community, proud of what America and George Washington had accomplished during the Revolution.[3]

Unlike other newspaper publishers, Freneau had no financial involvement in the National Gazette.  Like Mathew Carey, he encountered the difficulties of distributing the publication nationally.  Freneau was a poet and a writer, and seemed to disdain serving his subscribers with regularity.  The newspaper lost money, and an important investor warned that he would discontinue his financial backing.  When the Yellow Fever struck Philadelphia, both Fenno and Freneau stopped publishing their newspapers.  Fenno resumed publication, but Freneau did not. [4]

Benjamin Bache and the Aurora replaced it.  Benjamin Franklin had tried to steer Bache away from politics and into type founding.  Bache, however, had been exposed to revolutionary ideals in France.  After Franklin’s death in 1790, Bache threw aside the approval of his social peers, and the profitability of type founding.  He pursued political journalism with a passion.  Bache infamously criticized George Washington.  After the demise of the National Gazette, Bache was ready voice the viewpoints of Jefferson’s new party.[5]

His wife Margaret was at his side.  She was a daughter of a plantation owner from St. Croix and stepdaughter of a well-regarded Philadelphia physician.  She enthusiastically supported Bache descending the social scale and associating with Democratic-Republicans from lower class neighborhoods.  When Bache was out of town, she capably managed the newspaper.[6]

Next:  How the Federalists Attacked Bache

Look for it Monday, November 11.

 

 


[1] American National Biography, John Fenno; Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers:” Newspaper Politics in the Early Amerian Republic (Charlottesville:  University of Virginia Press, 2001) 51.

[2] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 63-6.

[3] David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States:  Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic, (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1998) 42.

[4] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 76-7.

[5] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 80-92.

[6] Pasley, Tyranny of Printers, 92

Posted in From The Desk, Newspaper Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Newspaper Politics Lead to Federalist Attacks on Other Newspaper Editors

How the Federalists Attacked Mathew Carey and His Brother

Posted on October 27, 2013 by “Caius”

Mathew’s brother James established the Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia.  He was an avid Democratic-Republican.  He had been involved with the Evening Star, mouthpiece of the United Irishmen in Dublin.  Inevitably, he attracted the attention and venom of William Cobbett.  Cobbett was the editor of the Federalist paper, Peter Porcupine’s Gazette.  Before long, Cobbett began referring to both Mathew and James as the “O’Careys” whenever he disparaged the Irish.

James Carey became more prominent as a Democratic-Republican editor, and established his second newspaper in Philadelphia, Carey’s United States Recorder.  He attacked Cobbett and defended the United Irishmen in the United States.  He characterized them as “respectable” and “innocent in [their] intentions.”[1]   Cobbett responded by criticizing the Carey brothers with increasing ferocity.[2]

In April, Mathew Carey wrote to Thomas Jefferson appealing for financial aid.  He hoped to prevent Cobbett’s attacks from destroying his brother’s paper.  The money was raised.  The United States Recorder and the Aurora, another Federalist target, continued publication as well.[3]

____________________________

“It is easy to blunt the edge of slanderous appellations by adopting that in a good sense, which was intended in a bad one—it is thus that epithets applied with the most degrading intention, have been rendered the most honourable—therefore, with the most cordial detestation of tyranny and slavery, I subscribe myself, A JACOBIN”[4]

James Carey

_____________________________________________

In May, Mathew Carey made a hypocritical effort to tame Cobbett.  He varnished the truth claiming he had no concern with his brother’s paper.  He threatened to start a newspaper war.  Cobbett was undeterred.  In truth, Mathew Carey had provided funding for his brother’s paper.  Mathew Carey backed down, failing to carry out his threat.[5]

Mathew and James Carey’s Federalist enemies used a new tactic.  The Bank of the United States, under Federalist control, was Mathew’s bank.  It cut short its practice of discounting Carey’s state bank and promissory notes collected from his customers and agents.  The Bank had cashed Carey’s notes from banks all over the United States.  In exchange for providing the face value of commercial paper in coin or bank notes, they subtracted interest and advanced Carey the balance.  He had used this service weekly.  The Bank of the United States only allowed him a single discount from March 15 to April 16, restricting Mathew’s ability to subsize his brother’s anti-Federalist newspaper.[6]

Next:  How the Federalists Attacked other Newspaper Editors

Look for it Monday, October 28


[1]David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States:  Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press) 50.

[2] Edward C. Carter II, “The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, Nationalist, 1760-1814,” PhD Dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1962, 251-2.

[3] Carter “Political Activities” 255

[4] James Carey in the Constitutional Diary, December 17, 1799, quoted in Wilson, United Irishmen, United States, 7-8.

[5] Carter, “Political Activities” 253

[6] Edward C. Carter II,  “The Birth of A Political Economist:  Mathew Carey and the Re-charter Fight of 1810-1811,” Pennsylvania History, 23 (1966)  277.

 

Posted in From The Desk, Newspaper Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How the Federalists Attacked Mathew Carey and His Brother

Roger Griswold and the “Spitting Lyon”

Posted on October 20, 2013 by “Caius”

The Federalists had long denigrated Vermont congressman Matthew Lyon as being a lower-class Irishman and former indentured servant.  Then, in February 1798, Roger Griswold, a representative from Connecticut, implied that Lyon’s service during the Revolution had been less than exemplary.  On the floor of the House, Lyon, in a breach of etiquette, spat tobacco juice on Griswold.  Griswold responded by grabbing a pair of fireplace tongs and assaulting Lyon.

Despite Griswold’s protests, the House failed to expel Lyon.  Federalists mounted an attack on the “Spitting Lyon” and his fellow Irishmen smearing them with accusations of treason.[1]  When Lyon campaigned for re-election in 1798, he insisted these attacks were because President John Adams and the Federalists were planning a war with France.  He also made some derogatory comments about Adams in a Vermont newspaper.  The government tried Lyon under the Sedition Act.  He spent four months in prison and paid a fine.

 

Sensing that he might also come under attack, Mathew Carey swore allegiance to the United States.  He became a citizen on February 20, 1798.  It was a prudent move.  As a citizen, he was exempt from the Naturalization Act and Alien Act.

Next:  How Mathew Carey’s Brother Came under Attack

 


 Edward C. Carter II, “The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, Nationalist, 1760-1814,” PhD Dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1962.

 

Posted in From The Desk, Newspaper Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Roger Griswold and the “Spitting Lyon”

Those “Wild Irishmen” and the Alien and Sedition Acts

Posted on October 14, 2013 by “Caius”

This is not the first time America’s two parties have been contentious.  The government shutdown, coupled with the controversy over illegal aliens, brings to mind the Alien and Sedition Acts.  The Federalists tried to silence the Democratic-Republicans.  Mathew Carey was part of the struggle.  The conflict marked the beginning of the end of the Federalist Party.

The Quasi-War, the XYZ Affair, and the rebellion in Ireland in 1798, abetted by the French, combined to create a climate of public distrust in Irish and French immigrants.  The Federalists took full advantage of the situation.  What the Democratic-Republicans dubbed the “Reign of Terror” began.        

Irish immigrants had been coming to Pennsylvania through the port of Philadelphia for years before and after the American Revolution.  Carey reported to John Chambers, his friend in Dublin, that between 3,000 and 4,000 Irish had arrived in Philadelphia in the summer of 1791.  Carey was in a good position to be aware of the growing number of immigrants.  He was the driving force behind the formation of the Hibernian Society in 1790.  He met passengers arriving from Ireland, determining their numbers aboard ship.  He and his brother James Carey estimated that approximately 27,000 immigrants from Ireland came to Philadelphia and its vicinity during the 1790s.[1]

At first, the majority of passengers were Ulster Presbyterians, but Roman Catholics immigrated to the United States in greater numbers as the decade wore on.  At first they  favored the Constitution and Hamilton’s economic policies.  As politics became more radical in Ireland under the United Irishmen, the immigrants joined the Democratic-Republican Party.  They opposed British oppression.  The rebellion brewing in Ireland depended on the French.  Mathew Carey and his fellow Democratic-Republicans, Tench Coxe, William Duane, of the Democratic-Republican newspaper the Aurora, and John Beckley, a leading Democratic-Republican in Pennsylvania, were able to recruit growing numbers of Irish to the Jeffersonian camp.  As a result, in the election of 1796, Irish voters in large cities went Democratic-Republican.[2]

________________________

“In my very lengthy journey through [Pennsylvania]…I have seen many, very many Irishmen, and with a very few exceptions, they are United Irishmen, Free Masons, and the most God-provoking Democrats on this side of Hell.”[3]

                                                         Uriah Tracy

                                      ________________________              

The Federalists, alarmed by the election results, were concerned that something needed to be done to stem the rising tide of Democratic-Republicanism among the Irish and foreign-born.  In 1797, they proposed a twenty-dollar tax on naturalization certificates, a move designed to limit the number of poorer immigrants, a prime source of recruits to the Democratic-Republican Party.  Federalist Harrison Gray Otis led the charge.  He was member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, who delivered his “Wild Irish” speech to Congress.  He defended the naturalization tax arguing that “[the Naturalization Tax would keep] the mass of vicious and disorganizing characters who can not live peaceably at home, and who, after unfurling the standard of rebellion in their own countries, may come hither to revolutionize ours.”[4]

____________________________________________

“[I do] not wish to invite hoards of wild Irishmen, nor the turbulent and disorderly of all parts of the world, to come here with a view to disturb our tranquility, after having succeeded in the overthrow of their own government.”[5]

                                        Harrison Gray Otis

Next:  Roger Griswold and the “Spitting Lyon.”

Look for it Monday, October 14


[1] Edward Carter, “A ‘Wild Irishman’ Under Every Federalist’s Bed:  Naturalization in Philadelphia, 1789-1806,” 331, 343.

[2] Carter , “ ‘Wild Irishman’,” 333.

[3] Uriah Tracey to Oliver Wolcott, August 7, 1800, in Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, Edited from the Papers of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, ed. George Gibbs (1846; New York, 1971) v. 2, 399, quoted in David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States:  Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1998) 1.

[4] Carter “ ‘Wild Irishman’,” 334.

[5] Annals of Congress, 5th Cong. V. 7. 430.

Posted in From The Desk, Newspaper Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Those “Wild Irishmen” and the Alien and Sedition Acts

Were New England’s Federalists Really Abolitionists?

Posted on October 6, 2013 by “Caius”

During the 1780s Massachusetts abolished slavery.  After that, the abolition society in Massachusetts stopped taking part in Philadelphia’s annual abolition convention.[1]

After the economically crippling policies of Jefferson and Madison, the Federalists regained power in New England.  The authorities segregated churches and schools.  Even Jedidiah Morse, delivering a sermon at Boston’s African Meeting House, told the congregation to “be contented in the humble station in which Providence has placed you.”[2]

New England’s moderate Federalist politicians did not want to abolish slavery in the South.  They wanted to remove the three-fifths clause of the Constitution.[3]  To a growing number of devout New Divinity adherents, however, slavery remained a moral issue.  That morality entered the minds of Federalist editors.  It merged with the need to demonize Southerners.

In 1814, Mathew Carey pointed out in the Olive Branch, the Connecticut Courant published a defamatory article about Southern slave holders in 1796.[4]  Carey added, “…many paragraphs have occasionally appeared in the Boston papers intended and calculated to excite the Negroes of the southern states to rise and massacre their masters.”   Carey noted that Federalist newspapers used the slavery issue to incite hostility between New England and the South.[5]

Still, to the moderate Federalist politicians in New England, the issue was the three-fifths clause of the Constitution.  When William Lloyd Garrison promoted abolitionism in the 1830s, older Federalists such as Harrison Gray Otis still linked Garrison’s views to the menace of slaves giving Southerners a disproportionate representation in the House of Representatives.[6]

After the antislavery movement rekindled in the 1830s, abolitionists republished and read the works of Samuel Hopkins.  The Congregational cleric first advanced the idea of slavery as a sin in 1776, in A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans.[7]

Next:  How New England’s Federalists Regarded the Union

Look for it Monday, October 14

 


[1]James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention:  The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789-1815, (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1970) 104-5.

[2] Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 106.

[3] Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 107.

[4] See blog posted May 26, 2013 “How the Federalists excited jealousy and discord painting a ‘hateful picture’ of the South.”

[5] Mathew Carey, The Olive Branch:  Or Faults on Both Sides (Philadelphia:  M. Carey, November 8, 1814) 187.

[6] Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 108.

[7] Joseph Conforti, “Samuel Hopkins” American National Biography

Posted in From The Desk, Secession | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Were New England’s Federalists Really Abolitionists?

How Opposition to the Three-Fifths Clause Merged with a Moral Campaign

Posted on September 28, 2013 by “Caius”

Opposition to slavery, as a tenet of Congregationalism, began with Samuel Hopkins.   Hopkins (1721-1803) graduated from Yale College in 1741.  As a senior, he was attracted to the revivalism of the Great Awakening, a movement led by the Congregational clergyman Jonathan Edwards.  Edwards (1703-1758) was also a graduate of Yale.  He reconciled Calvinism with Enlightenment ideals.  At Hopkins’ graduation, Edwards gave the commencement address, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God.  Hopkins was impressed.  Later that year he moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, where Edwards lead a congregation.   Hopkins prepared for his ministry under the guidance of Edwards.  In 1743 Hopkins was ordained as a minister of a Congregational Church in Great Barrington Massachusetts.  As he matured, he became the leader of a conservative Calvinist movement in New England Congregationalism.  His movement became known as the New Divinity.   He moved to Newport, Rhode Island in 1770, and published A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans in 1776.  He characterized slavery as sinful.  He argued that America’s revolutionary cause would not gain God’s favor until slaves were freed.[1]

As Hopkins’ ideas were incorporated into Congregationalism, beginning in the 1780s a cadre of Federalists campaigned to abolish both the slave trade and slavery itself.  Jedidiah Morse, a Congregational clergyman renowned for his book on geography critical of Southerners, was one of them.[2]

Federalist clergymen Jedediah Morse and Timothy Dwight had difficulty fathoming religious and political changes in New England.   Politically they were appalled by emergence of what they called the “Jacobins” a derogatory term they used to characterize the Democratic-Republican Party.  After Jefferson was elected president, the two clergymen, both graduates of Yale College, began publishing the New England Palladium.  Their aim was to strengthen New England, its culture, its government interwoven with the judiciary, and the clergy.   As representatives of the Congregationalist conscience, they did not question their right to interfere in politics.  Their aim was to criticize Jacobinism.[3]  Jefferson , Madison and Southerners were all notorious Jacobins to New England’s Federalists.

Religiously, Dwight and Morse were the moderates.  The New Divinity congregations, concentrated in central and southern Massachusetts, were the conservatives.  Liberal Congregationalists in eastern Massachusetts lessened the once rigorous Calvinism of their forefathers.  They even questioned the divinity of Jesus.  They had managed to install a liberal clergyman to the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College.[4]  Harvard and Yale were the two principal institutions engaged in the education of Congregationalist clergy.   Dwight and Morse were outraged.

In 1808 they allied with the New Divinity Calvinists in to establish the Andover Theological Seminary.   They gained influence over a growing number of congregations.  From 1800 until 1820 New Divinity dominated Congregationalism in New England.[5]

In the minds of New Englanders the immorality of slavery merged with the demonization of Southerners.  The idea of all men being created equal became a moral issue.  That some humans were not equal to others due to slavery became the sin of Southerners.

Next:  Were the Federalists Abolitionists?

Look for it Monday, October 7


[1] Joseph Conforti, “Samuel Hopkins” American National Biography;  James P. Walsh, “Jonathan Edwards” American National Biography.  Note:  Joseph Ballamy  (1719-1790) was also a disciple of Jonathan Edwards and a preacher of New Divinity.

[2] James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention:  The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789-1815 (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1970) 104.

[3] Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty:  A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2009) 602.

[4] Wood, Empire of Liberty, 603.

[5] Conforti, “Samuel Hopkins”

Posted in From The Desk, Secession | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Opposition to the Three-Fifths Clause Merged with a Moral Campaign

How the French Influenced Sectional Discord

Posted on September 22, 2013 by “Caius”

First with the Constitution, and next with the Jay Treaty, the more liberal New England Federalists migrated to Jefferson and Madison’s Democratic-Republican Party.   That caused the more conservative faction, the Essex Junto, to gain prominence.   Fisher Ames, one of the post-revolutionary leaders of the party, estimated that only about five hundred men shared the values and views of the Essex Junto.  Nevertheless, because of the organization of New England society, their influence was significant.[1]

New England’s Federalists became convinced that South and West were responsible for their loss of power and influence nationally.  “The influences of emigrants prevail over those of the ancient natives,” said one Federalist.  “The voices of our Representatives will be drowned amid the discordant jargon of French, Spanish German and Irish delegates, chosen by slave owners, in a disproportionate ratio.”[2]

The “French Influence” on American sectional differences was not readily obvious to those outside New England.  Not only Napoleon, but also Talleyrand, influenced the sectional conflicts of the United States.  Talleyrand successfully maneuvered through the vicissitudes of the Revolution.  As talented as Talleyrand was, he did not readily fathom Napoleon’s mercurial nature, and once he did, he and Napoleon were entangled in a relationship that was a riddle to the Americans trying to deal with them.  [3]

Together, Napoleon and Talleyrand guided the French policies towards the United States.  They used the French controlled  Spanish colonies in America to play on Southerners’ fears.[4]  First Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, and then Madison’s acquisition of territory in Florida confirmed New England Federalists’ conviction that all the new territory would cause the balance of power in Congress to swing successfully to the South.

After 1800, the population of the North outside New England grew more rapidly than population in the South.  Policies of Democratic-Republicans from the South were ably supported by their Democratic-Republican counterparts in the North.   New Englanders ignored those facts.  To the Federalists, the conflict of the two parties pitted New England against the South.

Massachusetts Federalists sought to thwart the clash between North and South by removing the three-fifths clause of the Constitution.  That clause allowed Southerners to count five slaves as three white men, increasing each Southern state’s representation in the House of Representatives.[5]

Next:  How Opposition to the Three-Fifths Clause Merged with a Campaign of Morality

Look for it Monday, September 30

 

 

 

 

 


[1] Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson (New York:  Literary Classics, 1986) 63.

[2] James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention:  The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789-1815 (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1970) 93.

[3] Adams, History of the United States, 228.

[4] Adams, History of the United States, 228-9.

[5] Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 102.

Posted in From The Desk, Secession | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How the French Influenced Sectional Discord