Jefferson and Hamilton

by John Ferling

  During the ratification struggle, foes of the Constitution had warned that the document was “made like a Fiddle, with but few Strings,” so that those in power could “play any tune upon it that they pleased.”59 Jefferson was certain that the Federalists had done just that, and would do it again, utilizing the implied powers clause and other elastic provisions to stretch the Constitution and claim legal sanction for their actions. Aware that Hamilton had told the Constitutional Convention that he desired a government modeled on that of Great Britain, Jefferson believed that at every step since 1789 the “Tory party”—as he sometimes called his adversaries—had emulated British policy.60

  Jefferson may have been most concerned about the newly swollen army under total Federalist domination. He and his party saw no need for the New Army. “[N]obody pretends … there is … the least real danger of invasion,” Jefferson remarked. Other Republicans doubted the value of the army even if there was a war. They pointed out that not even an army of several hundred thousand could defend the thousands of miles of American coastline. Only the militia could handle that job, they said. Consequently, many Republicans, Jefferson included, feared from the outset that the real purpose of the army—patronage aside—was to suppress dissent, possibly even to invade states that were Republican strongholds.61

  Other Virginians shared Jefferson’s fears. For some, the existence of “standing armies” meant “oppressive taxation” and endless wars.62 Others, like Senator Stevens T. Mason, worried that the Federalists might use the army “to attain their favorite object of crushing … Republicanism.”63 In 1798 Virginia embarked on defensive preparations, reorganizing its militia, purchasing arms, building an armory in Richmond, and increasing taxes by 25 percent to secure the revenue needed for those measures.64

  Jefferson was convinced that only a bold, dramatic step might stop the High Federalists before the army was used. He played with fire, though just as Hamilton in the Newburgh Conspiracy had built in safeguards by alerting General Washington, Jefferson in 1798 told confidants that his “passive firmness” was a ploy, a tactic in a game of bluff that he hoped would never be implemented. To do so, he knew, would destroy the constitutional settlement of 1787–1788, and with it the Union. Merely putting his concept on the table was to risk alienating Republican allies in New York and Pennsylvania. But he felt something had to be done. To save the Union, the foes of the extreme Federalists must demonstrate the lengths to which they were willing to go. Only then, might moderates—centrists—step forward to stop Hamilton and those in his thrall.65

  In the heat and languor of late summer, Jefferson working at his desk at Monticello, conceived a doctrine of state interposition, or nullification. He began by asking who was to judge the limits of federal power. He answered by saying it was inconceivable that federal authorities be permitted to judge what powers they possessed. Instead, Jefferson said that each state must decide if federal authorities had exercised powers that the states had not granted at the Constitutional Convention. Each state must have the authority to declare federal acts null and void within its domain.

  Jefferson was a devoted defender of the sphere of state authority who feared ever-greater concentrations of power in the national government, but he favored neither nullification nor secession. He loved the Union. He was convinced that Hamilton and his ilk were bent on the evisceration of republicanism and the states, and he believed that if they persisted, the result would be a backlash that would destroy the Union. Jefferson understood that the Union brought national security, which in turn was essential for the preservation of freedom and republicanism. He would loyally support a war, he remarked during the Quasi-War crisis, adding that in the event of hostilities, “we must give up political differences of opinion & unite as one man to defend our country.” But there were limits to his forbearance. He could not stand by idly and watch the Federalists crush republicanism. Already, he thought, Federalist extremists had sundered the compromise of sorts that had been reached between the consolidationists and their adversaries at the time of ratification. They could not be permitted to go even further.66

  Once Jefferson committed his doctrine of state interposition to paper, a friend who carefully protected the author’s identity shepherded a modified version through the legislature of Kentucky, which in 1792 had become the fifteenth state. Once the Kentucky Resolutions passed, Jefferson induced Madison, who years before had led the fight for consolidation, to prepare a similar, though not identical, statement for the Virginia assembly. It was enacted as the Virginia Resolutions. While the tenor of both sets of resolves was that state interposition was a proper remedy, they asked the other states to join with them only in resolving that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. None did so. Some states were critical, others deprecatingly silent. Jefferson knew that he had gone too far for his political allies in the mid-Atlantic states, whom he desperately needed if the Hamiltonians were to be stopped.67

  When Adams, in November 1798, returned to the capital from a lengthy vacation at home, he detected a change in popular temperament, a tempering of the militant mood of summer. Jefferson also discerned the change when he traveled from Monticello to Philadelphia a month later. The vice president thought it stemmed from hostility toward the Federalists’ assault on civil liberties, tax increases, and their standing army.68

  Adams’s discovery may have led him to reconsider the course of his presidency, though the bruising episode over the appointment of the inspector general had already shaken him to the core. In its wake, Adams had become certain of his betrayal by the cabinet, which he now believed had exaggerated the French threat in order to obtain an army headed by Hamilton. Furthermore, Adams was convinced that Hamilton’s intrigue knew no bounds. Even before he became president, Adams had been put off by what he described as Hamilton’s “proud, spirited, conceited, aspiring” qualities. Thinking Hamilton as “great a Hypocrite as any in the U. S.,” Adams entered office vowing “to keep him [Hamilton] at a distance.”69 After eighteen months on the job, Adams had come to see Hamilton as operating “underground and in darkness” to achieve his ends. He now believed that Hamilton had plotted incessantly throughout his public career “to get rid of” his enemies, and those of Washington as well. Hamilton, Adams believed, had worked tirelessly behind the scenes during the election of 1796 to secure Pinckney’s election and his defeat. He felt assured that Hamilton had been the puppeteer pulling Washington’s strings in order to secure appointment as inspector general. As he looked back, Adams concluded that Hamilton had been the real power in Washington’s cabinet, though he was just as certain that the former treasury secretary had merely been the point man for America’s archconservatives. “Washington … was only viceroy under Hamilton, and Hamilton was viceroy under the Tories,” Adams remarked. His anger rising, the president understood at last that he had been made “the dupe” of Hamilton’s intrigue. In private, he referred to Hamilton as “Caesar.” He also alleged that Hamilton was a “libertine,” a womanizer who had been involved in many extramarital affairs, a widely shared view. Within his close circle of friends, Adams called Hamilton the “bastard brat of a Scottish peddler” who was “devoid of moral principle” and who had corrupted his age by his remorseless quest for power and fame.70

  Abigail Adams told her husband that Hamilton aspired to be another Napoleon. She called him “a second Buonaparty.” (Jefferson used identical terminology, privately labeling Hamilton “our Buonaparte.”) Calling Hamilton “Spair Cassius” and “that cock sparrow,” the First Lady added that Hamilton was evil: “O I have read his Heart in his wicked eyes many times, the very devil is in them,” she advised.71

  Beyond a doubt, Hamilton had hidden motives. He had gotten his army and he wanted to use it. He was an ultra-nationalist, and he had to know that this was likely his last hope of achieving military glory. He confided to McHenry his dream of joining with Great Britain to wrest from Spain its South American empire. Initially however, his gaze focused
closer to home. “All on this side [of] the Missippi must be ours including both Floridas,” he told the secretary of war, who immediately stepped forward and urged Adams—without success—to ask Congress for “full powers” to send an army to seize Florida in order to “counteract” France’s supposed designs on the region.72

  After becoming inspector general during the eventful summer of 1798, Hamilton plotted moves against beleaguered Spain, France’s hard-pressed ally. He dispatched military supplies to the Florida border, confiding to trusted officers that the measures he took “looks to offensive” action. He added: “If we are to engage in war our game will be to attack where we can. France is not to be considered as separate from her ally. Temping objects will be within our grasp.”73 He not only inveighed allies in Congress to resolve that a state of war with France would exist if negotiations had not succeeded by November 1799, but also urged legislation sanctioning a preemptive strike for “taking possession of the Floridas and Louisiana” before France took those areas from its Spanish ally. Hamilton declared that he had long considered “the acquisition of those countries as essential to the permanency of the Union.” Nor was that all. He looked far beyond the borderlands. He advised the High Federalists on the need to seize this moment of Europe’s woes and “detach South America from Spain.”74 Hamilton was mesmerized with the notion of an Anglo-American campaign to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule. While Rufus King, now the minister to Great Britain, sought London’s cooperation, General Hamilton talked with Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan soldier of fortune, about sending the army to South America, if England and Adams’s administration approved “so good a work.”75

  Hamilton prepared Washington for his foreign adventures when the old general came to Philadelphia late in 1798 to organize the army. Though he dared not breathe a word of what he was contemplating, Hamilton coyly sold Washington on the notion that the army was essential in order “to preserve us from being overwhelmed in [the] ruins” of the “falling empires” that would occur because of the European war.76 Hamilton was more candid in his conversations with High Federalists, prevailing on some Massachusetts congressmen to cultivate Adams’s support of American jingoism.77 Their talks with the flabbergasted president did not go well. Saying he did not know whether to laugh or cry, Adams roared that he would not engage “myself or my country in most hazardous and expensive and bloody experiments to excite similar horrors in South America.”78 Adams soon enough traced the adventurous schemes to Hamilton, reaching the conclusion that the inspector general’s plan was to use the army to establish monarchy in America, make himself the chief executive, and restore full ties with Great Britain.79 To that, Adams added: “The man is stark mad.”80

  Conditions in the army nearly drove Hamilton mad. His New Army existed largely on paper. No more than five thousand men ever enlisted. Furthermore, numerous slots for officers went unfilled, partly because Adams deliberately obstructed the appointment process, but also because in five southern states no qualified Federalists could be found. (Hamilton preferred Federalists, but he was more flexible than Adams, who rejected several Republican applicants; Hamilton counseled that it was inadvisable to “give to appointments too absolute a party feature.”) The army’s supply service rapidly broke down, men went without pay for months, and crucial equipment never materialized. In the Union Brigade there was one flint for every four men and one shovel for every seventy-five. Large numbers throughout the army either had no muskets or defective ones that could not be fired safely.81

  Plagued with these tangles, Hamilton worked valiantly to rectify matters, though it soon was clear that he lacked General Washington’s skills as an army administrator. In no time, Hamilton was plunged into a swamp of micromanagement, issuing bloated directives that sometimes took on the air of the Mad Hatter. Convinced that “smart dress [was] essential,” the inspector general came unhinged when he saw the hats worn by one regiment, saying he was “disappointed and distressed.” Washington, he noted, had recommended “cocked-hats.” Hamilton specified: “This always means hats cocked on three sides. I was assured that cocked hats were provided. I repeated the assurance to the officers. But the hats … are only capable of being cocked on one side; and the brim is otherwise so narrow as to consult neither good appearance nor utility. They are without cockades and hoops.” Hamilton additionally devoted hour upon hour compiling lists of field grade and junior officers to the lowest rank in every state, even rating those who were to be captains and lieutenants as “bad,” “probably good,” “good,” “unworthy,” “tolerable,” “Wont do,” “not much of anything,” “well enough,” “perhaps,” “respectable,” “not strong,” “strong,” and “very respectable.”82

  If Hamilton pondered sending his army into foreign lands, he also contemplated using it to put down disorders in the United States, just as Jefferson and the Republicans feared. Hamilton knew that what he wrote on this subject was extremely sensitive, so much so that on occasion he dictated his letters to his ten-year-old son in order to camouflage his identity as the author. Grasping at far-fetched rumors, he told his closest political allies that the army had to be increased because of “the possibility of internal disorders.”83 He passed along the tattle of a Richmond Federalist who advised not only that Virginia Republicans sought “Nothing short of DISUNION, and the heads of JOHN ADAMS, and ALEXANDER HAMILTON” but also that the state could be brought to heel only through “open war.”84

  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.85 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.”86 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.87

&nb
sp; 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.88

  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.89 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.90

  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.91