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 Later, Duane announced in the Aurora that his case was “withdrawn by order of the President.”[4]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.
