Jefferson and Hamilton (60 page)

Filled with suspicion, Hamilton believed the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were the signal that secession was imminent. If “well managed,” he said, the Federalist response would “turn to good account,” presumably meaning that the threat of nullification could be used to justify intervention and secure political gains.
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Hamilton instructed congressional Federalists to conduct hearings, and he advised what the committee’s conclusion should be: With “calm dignity united with pathos,” the committee should declare that as Virginians were conspiring with “a hostile foreign power” to “overturn the government,” the United States “must not merely defend itself but must attack and arraign its enemies.”
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Hamilton appeared to be proposing nothing less than a federal invasion of Virginia and the arrest and trial of the dissidents.

Hamilton had lost his bearings. Or, perhaps the true Hamilton at last was shining through. Consumed with hatred of Jefferson and his adherents, and mad for glory, Hamilton’s ego appeared to have run amok.

Word of Hamilton’s grandiose hopes and dreams could not be kept secret. Philadelphia was a small place and people talked. In time, the inevitable happened. Adams learned of at least some of the things that Hamilton was contemplating. Someone, possibly an alarmed Federalist who thought Hamilton dangerous or delusional, or both, showed the president a copy of a letter Hamilton had written on the subject of invading Virginia. On his own, Adams put together enough of the pieces to confirm his suspicions of collusion between the inspector general and the High Federalists. More than ever, the president was convinced that Federalist extremists, including those in his cabinet, harbored a secret agenda that included relentlessly pushing him to take a hard line toward France. Their end, he had concluded, was war with France. Serendipitously, as the president was reaching this conclusion, he was also receiving tantalizing intelligence from numerous sources that pointed toward France’s desire for peace.

Adams acted cautiously. In his annual address in December 1798, Adams revealed that he had discerned some evidence of French moderation, and added cryptically that he remained committed to a “humane and pacific policy.” Jefferson bridled at the overall belligerence of the speech, convinced that Adams wanted a war but was unable to discover “the cause for waging it.” Many High Federalists had an opposite reaction. They were convinced that Adams was inching toward a settlement that would destroy their well-laid plans. Hamilton soon was in touch with leaders of the faction in Congress, telling them that “these precarious times” demanded that the army be recruited and expanded.
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In January and February, Adams received more evidence of France’s willingness to reach an accommodation. He faced difficult personal and political choices. Adams believed peace was imperative for the survival of the Union. But he feared that by merely agreeing to talks with France, he risked the rupture of his party, likely destroying his chances of reelection. The national interest won out. Without warning, on February 18, 1799, Adams sent Congress a message announcing that he was sending a new team of envoys to Paris in the hope of opening negotiations. Congressional High Federalists were apoplectic. Witnesses heard shouting in closed-door meetings between them and the president.
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Jefferson thought Adams had acted “grudgingly and tardily,” but even so he was cautiously optimistic that Paris would “find dispositions to bury the tomahawk.” All “I ask from France … is peace & a good price for our wheat
and tobacco,” Jefferson said.
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Recognizing at once that a rapprochement would be a crumpling blow to his plans, Hamilton was distraught. In his black mood, he grew peevish, even treating the loyal McHenry with an uncustomary acerbity. Hamilton made one overt stab at thwarting Adams’s peace initiative. He sought to persuade one of the envoys, Judge Oliver Ellsworth, not to sail. That would delay negotiations for nearly a year, as the Senate could not appoint Ellsworth’s successor until it met again late in the fall, and the replacement envoy would face the time-consuming Atlantic crossing. But Hamilton’s desperate ploy failed. Ellsworth embarked for France.
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For the first time in a decade, Hamilton had no influence over events. He could only watch as his dreams vanished. But Hamilton never sidestepped a fight. In October, the president came south, ending an elongated stay at home in Massachusetts. As Philadelphia lay in the grip of another siege of yellow fever, Adams’s destination was Trenton, where he was scheduled to meet with his cabinet for the first time in more than six months. Adams was drawn and haggard, ill with a cold, and exhausted by his long journey. Seldom in a good mood, Adams was especially out of sorts when he sat down with his cabinet. In several meetings over five days, the last one a stressful session that continued until nearly midnight, Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry fought the president over engaging in talks with the French. Adams held his ground. Next, the cabinet officers attempted to draft instructions to the envoys in such a manner that the talks would virtually be doomed before they began. Once again, Adams stood firm.
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Doubtless learning what had occurred, Hamilton, who had brought so many to his way of thinking, mounted his horse at headquarters in Newark and rode hard to reach Trenton. An air of desperation sped Hamilton on his mission. Three days before the inspector general saddled up, Jefferson had predicted that “we may expect peace” to stem from the negotiations in Paris.
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Hamilton must have also believed that would be the outcome of the talks. He called on Adams on the pretense of discussing issues concerning the army, but Hamilton’s real objective was to persuade the president to abort the peace talks in Paris.

Hamilton was shown into the parlor that Adams was using as a temporary office. As the president was staying at the home of two maiden aunts, the room was likely simply furnished. Given his illness and the trying deliberations with his cabinet, Adams’s disposition, already sulky and resentful, was not improved by Hamilton’s presence. For his part, Hamilton knew beforehand that he was not a favorite of Adams, but he had no idea of the depth of the president’s hatred for him. Hamilton had only infrequently been in Adams’s company, and the inspector general may never have previously
called on this president as a supplicant. Standing before Adams, who sat smoking a cigar and listening with exemplary patience, Hamilton likely fell back on the manner that had worked so well for him on so many occasions, and especially with Adams’s predecessor. Hamilton manifested an air not merely of authority but also of infallibility.

Hamilton began with a lengthy monologue on the state of Europe. He spoke condescendingly, or so Adams thought. In fact, Hamilton reminded the president, who recognized few as his intellectual equal, of a teacher addressing a callow student. Adams also thought Hamilton came across as “an impertinent ignoramus.” As Hamilton proceeded, he grew more frenzied. He spoke louder, flailing with agitation. Years before, army officers had told Adams that Hamilton often grew more impassioned as he argued, so that the president, for whom this was a novel experience, was prepared. In fact, Adams subsequently said that he enjoyed this “paroxysm” on the part of his nemesis. While Hamilton argued that the Bourbons would be back on the throne by Christmas, making Adams’s mission unnecessary, the president listened with delight to this desperate, “[over]wrought … little man.”

When Hamilton concluded his discourse, Adams respectfully but assertively rejected his predictions for Europe, remarking that it was more likely that “the sun, moon & stars will fall from their orbits.” (The president was the more accurate of the two. The Bourbons did regain power in France, but not until more than fifteen years after the autumn of 1799.) Thereafter, Hamilton switched course. He asserted that the peace mission would trigger war with Great Britain. Once again, Adams—correctly, as it turned out—demolished the logic of Hamilton’s argument piece by piece. Adams had thoroughly beaten Hamilton, and he had done so, he later claimed, without ever losing his temper.
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Hamilton’s world was collapsing. He had been bested by Adams, and many observers, including Jefferson and probably Hamilton as well, expected the Republicans to make considerable gains in both houses of Congress in the following year’s elections.
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Near Christmas, Hamilton received the worst news of all. Washington had died unexpectedly at Mount Vernon. Some Federalists had already begun to importune Washington to stand for the presidency in 1800, telling him that Adams was unelectable and that Jefferson surely would become the next chief executive.
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Hamilton had not approached Washington on the matter, though it is not difficult to imagine him having a hand in the nascent campaign to lure the general back into public life. Hamilton was overcome on learning of Washington’s demise. No “man … has equal cause with myself to deplore the loss,” he said, adding: “My imagination is gloomy my heart sad.” But Hamilton grieved not so much
the loss of a man he loved as one who had been “an Aegis very essential to me,” as he put it.
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Adams got in one more dig against Hamilton. He left the post of commanding officer of the army, which Washington had held, unfilled. Adams could not bring himself to elevate Hamilton to that position. It made little difference. In February 1800, two months almost to the day after Washington’s death, Congress suspended enlistments in the New Army. Three months later, the army disbanded.
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Hamilton never gave up. He told High Federalists that Republican “sentiments dangerous to social happiness” necessitated further strengthening of the national government. Hamilton contemplated several steps, including legislation even more harsh than the Sedition Act and unspecified “Vigorous measures of counteraction” to curb the “incendiary and seditious practices” that he imagined.
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To achieve his ends, Hamilton knew, the Federalists must win the election of 1800, and unseat John Adams in the process.

Chapter 14
“The gigg is up”

The Election of 1800

From the start of the Quasi-War, and the repressive Federalist legislation that followed, it is likely that Jefferson planned to run for president in 1800. In fact, he may never have considered not being a candidate. But, like Washington and many another of that time, Jefferson wanted to convince others that he was a reluctant candidate. He said repeatedly that he did not want to be president. He allowed that a man’s ambition raged between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, but thereafter one’s “principal object” became a “sigh for tranquility.” He was “sated with public life” by age thirty-eight, Jefferson claimed, the time his unhappy gubernatorial years ended. Some older men continued in public life until an advanced age, though “not from a passion for pre-eminence.” They were driven by avarice, partisan passions, or “to promote the public good or public liberty.” Of course, he stressed the latter as his reason for running.
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Federalist “bigots” had “dishonored our country” through their “delirium” of looking “backwards instead of forwards,” Jefferson declared. In his mind, the election of 1800 would be a contest between those who longed for the change heralded by the American Revolution and reactionaries who sought to revert to a dark, static past when monarchs had held sway and those in the lower social orders knew their place and were impounded in that place. If his side prevailed, Jefferson believed the American Revolution would be fulfilled and the United States would become “the asylum for whatever is great and good.”
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Jefferson was confident. He sensed a “growing detestation” of all that the Ultra Federalists stood for, including the “heroes of the party.” The party’s demise, and with it Hamilton’s downfall, would be the “last act of the federal tragedy.” Jefferson believed the Republicans could regain control of the House of Representatives and make substantive inroads against the majority that the Federalists had long enjoyed in the Senate.
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The signs also looked good for a Republican victory in the presidential election. Even an indifferent observer—and Jefferson was not that, but a seasoned politician who followed such things closely—could see that Republican prospects were promising.
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In 1796, Adams had squeaked past Jefferson by three electoral votes, winning every vote from New England, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. Four years earlier, Jefferson had received all but two of the electoral votes from south of the Potomac, all of the votes from Kentucky and Tennessee, and four of Maryland’s ten votes. Jefferson believed he could do as well, if not better, in those states in 1800.

Informed observers, including Jefferson and Hamilton, believed the election’s outcome would be determined in New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Even though New York had given its twelve electoral votes to Adams and Pinckney in 1796, Jefferson radiated optimism about a shift in that state. In January 1800 he met in Philadelphia with Aaron Burr, who told him that there was “no doubt” that the Republicans would win every legislative seat at stake in April’s elections in Manhattan. That, said Burr, would give the party control of the assembly, and as the assembly chose the state’s presidential electors, that would mean the two Republican nominees would win all twelve of New York’s electoral votes in 1800.
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