Mr. KITTERA [Federalist, Pennsylvania] said he hoped that this bill … would be followed by a strong sedition bill; and that they would, together, preserve us from the dangers with which we are threatened from internal enemies …448
Today, John Adams delivers a message to Congress:
UNITED STATES. June 21, 1798.
Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: …
[T]he negotiation may be considered at an end.
I will never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.
JOHN ADAMS.449
Today, Thomas Jefferson writes James Madison:
Dr. Logan, about a fortnight ago, sailed for Hamburg, tho’ for a twelve month past he had been intending to go to Europe as soon as he could get money enough to carry him there. Yet when he had accomplished this and fixed a time for going, he very unwisely made a mystery of it: so that his disappearance without notice excited conversations. This was seized by the war hawks and given out as a secret mission for the Jacobins here to solicit an army for France, instruct them as to their landing, &c. This extravagance produced a real panic among the citizens; & happening just when Bache published Talleyrand’s letter, Harper, on the 18th, gravely announced to the H[ouse] of R[epresentatives], that a traitorous correspondence between the Jacobins here and the French Directory; that he had got hold of some threads & clues of it, and would soon be able to develop the whole. This increased the alarm; their libelists immediately set to work, directly & indirectly to implicate whom they pleased. Porcupine gave me a principal share in it, as I am told, for I never read his papers. This state of things added to my reasons for not departing at the time I intended. These follies seem to have died away in some degree already. Perhaps I may renew my purpose [to return to Virginia] by the 25th.450
Tonight, John Fenno in the Gazette of the United States:
Bache says he never has and never will wittingly deceive the public. I ask him if he has not published a vile falsehood when he charges our government with keeping back the last dispatches from our Envoys …? It is to be remembered that few persons who take the Aurora ever see any other paper.
It is evident from the Statement published by the Editor of the Aurora that he has a Correspondent in the Office of Foreign Affairs at Paris. It is undoubtedly fact also that the correspondence relates to public affairs, as it appears the packets directed to that Editor ARE SEALED WITH THE SEAL OF OFFICE.
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
BACHE, in his infamous paper of this morning, has published a copy of an affidavit which he has made before the Mayor, denying that TALLEYRAND’S LETTER was sent to him from France. On this subject, I would first ask: WHAT BOOK did Bache swear on? … [T]he reader will recollect that this same BACHE has for several years past been engaged in the cause of Infidelity and Blasphemy: that is, in inculcating a disbelief of and in villifying the Holy Scriptures on which he has now sworn … If I were to swear on Bache’s paper, would such an oath add any thing to the credibility of what I should assert on my bear word?
FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Let it not be forgotten that George Thatcher declared in Congress that the Editor of this paper is an agent of the French Directory and said he would bring evidence of it before the house; which if he does not do, he must be considered as guilty of misprision of treason, as concealing treason. This Thatcher was called on yesterday in the house for his proofs. He had not a word to offer in answer.
Could Benny’s publication of the Talleyrand letter deny John Adams his congressional majority for a declaration of war? Talleyrand appears ready to negotiate!
Today is the last day Jimmy Callender will write for the Aurora.451 He must leave Philadelphia. Federalists are threatening his life. His wife died this spring. He can’t support the children.
War measures … Today, the President approves and signs into law:
AN ACT
Supplementary to, and to amend the act, entitled “an act authorizing the President of the United States to raise a provisional army.”
Be it enacted, &c., That the companies of volunteers and the members of each company who shall be duly engaged and accepted by the President of the United States [in the] … provisional army shall submit to and observe such rules [as] … the President of the United States is hereby authorized to make … And it be further enacted, That the President of the United States may proceed to appoint and commission … so many of the officers … for the raising, organizing, and commanding the provisional army of ten thousand men, as, in his opinion, the public service shall more immediately require …452
Today, President John Adams writes George Washington:
Dear Sir …
The prosperity of [my Administration] to the Country will depend upon Heaven and very little on anything in my Power … I have no qualifications for the martial part of it, which is like[ly] to be the most essential. If the Constitution and your Convenience would admit of my Changing Places with you, or of my taking my old station as your Lieutenant civil, I shall have no doubts of the Ultimate Prosperity and Glory of this Country.
In forming an Army, whenever I must come to that extremity, I am at an immense Loss whether to call out all the old Generals or to appoint a young List … I must have you sometimes for Advice … We must have your Name, if you in any case will permit us to use it. There will be more efficacy in it than in many an Army …
[JOHN ADAMS]453
Today, in the Gazette of the United States:
The falling Surgo has filled up two columns of his paper with a vain and futile attempt to demonstrate his innocence … Whether he received the treasonable communication directly from his master or whether it was put into his hands indirectly by any of their secret or open agents in this country is a point of no consequence at all. It is sufficient that he received it in an improper manner. But until some more creditable testimony is opposed to the respectable testimony of Mr. Kidder … it will be impossible to doubt that there was received from the office of the old hobbling cut-throat apostate [French Foreign Minister Talleyrand] a communication for his humble servant and tool in this country …
Bache has published that our Executive, to answer the most nefarious and villainous purposes, kept back for a number of days Talleyrand’s letter to the Envoys and that he the said Bache extorted the publication at last. This is one of the most atrocious libels ever uttered by him or any of his gang; and if there is not vigor in the laws to punish him, the existence of society in the United States is a mere cobweb existence.
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
In times so alarming as the present, the residence of Volney [a French democrat] and other foreigners who, by a certain line of conduct, made themselves conspicuous strongly attracts the attention of every virtuous American … Americans now have everything in danger, morals, religion, independence, liberty, civil and religious, everything that can be dear to man as a social animal. Our country has been the resort of almost all seditious foreigners of every distinction … It is a matter of the most serious consideration in times so alarming; what is to be done with those vile miscreants …?
Returning to France aboard the chartered ship Benjamin Franklin, Volney, the French philosopher, is two weeks at sea.
SATURDAY. JUNE 23. 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[Adv.] NOTICE.
MOREAU de St. MERY … offers for sale:
A complete Printing office wherewith the publication of several works, whether in French or in English may be undertaken at the same time … The remnant of his assortment of books …
Moveables, and other articles too tedious to enumerate.
MOREAU de St. MERY lives at the corner of Front and Callowhill-street.
It is said by some tory papers that Dr. G.[eorge] Logan
is gone to Europe … [I]t is said he is gone to persuade those terrible sans-culottes, the French, to come … and prevent us from fasting... But if he is really gone to Europe, how came he to let all those cunning rogues into his secrets?
[Fine-made Italian, that is, foreign) Cremona fiddles are to be ordered out of the kingdom under the Alien Bill: their [tones] being calculated to bring the constitutional music of organs and kettle-drums into contempt.
This morning’s “Cremona fiddles” satire proves Poor Richard’s observation,
The muses love the Morning.454
Today, Abigail Adams writes,
I wish our Legislature would set the example & make a sedition act to hold in order the base Newspaper calumniators.455
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
It is hardly worthwhile to notice that “skunk of scurrility” Bache … [H]is question of this forenoon—“How came the doctor (Logan) to let all these cunning rogues into his secrets?” … I will tell you Bache that the low cunning of the unsteady doctor prudently secreted his errand to Europe from the federalists, but did not the C[hie]f J[ustic]e [of Pennsylvania, Republican Thomas McKean] know it …? Yes, Bache, he did … Do you remember what your grand father Franklin wrote, that “part of the truth is worse than the whole truth”? …
This evening, prominent members of the Adams administration and other leading Federalists attend a rousing 120-person banquet dinner at Philadelphia’s fashionable O’Ellers’ Hotel in Chestnut-street for returning envoy John Marshall. The thirteenth toast is encored with particular enthusiasm:
“Millions for Defence, but not a Cent for Tribute.”456
Tonight, the leading merchants of Baltimore, Maryland hold a public dinner for Maryland’s Federalist U.S. Senator John Howard. The third toast volunteered:
A halter of strong hemp, in the place of a French pension, to Bache, printer of the Aurora.457
Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
SHORT ADVICE TO BACHE,
In the words of the king of Prussia to the factious Baron Trenck.
“The thunder begins to roll, young man. Take care, for the [lightning] bolt may fall.”
MONDAY, JUNE 25, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The ire of the ministerialists at Philadelphia is roused at BACHE for having let the cat out of the bag—they can now fully establish their charges of “jacobinical, democratical, disorganizing, anti-presidential;” for doubtless it was all this, and even unconstitutional, to inform Congress and the people of their own business—but how to make it “Conspiracy” will puzzle …
THE PLOT UNRAVELLED
The latest artifice employed by the Tory faction to injure the Aurora has been the accusation directed against its Editor … that he was a French agent … It will be remembered that we were said to have received a letter of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs in a packet through Kidder, and when we proved that we did not, it was contended that there was in existence such a letter as Kidder described and that, as it was sealed with a French official seal, it must contain something treasonable. This mysterious packet … we at length received on Saturday from [Secretary of State Timothy] Pickering, the seal in appearance intact. We detained his messenger and kept [the packet] in his view till two gentlemen could be called in to be witnesses at its being opened, and the following is the result of the examination they made of its contents.
CERTIFICATE
We do hereby certify that, at the request of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BACHE, we were present at the opening of a Packet … with a seal round which were inscribed the words “REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE” and at the bottom “Relations Extérieures” which packet was delivered to Mr. Bache by a messenger from the Secretary of State of the United States. The only things contained in the said Packet were two pamphlets … and, excepting the directions (and the receipts on the cover signed “Oliv. Wolcott” [Secretary of the Treasury] and “T. Pickering” [Secretary of State]), there was not a single word in manuscript …
MATHEW CAREY, JAMES CLAY
While this business of espionage was pursuing, another method was attempted to confound the Editor. Reports were industriously spread that he was arrested,—that he was in jail, that he had fled. Thro’ a channel, almost official, he learnt that the order was actually signed for his arrestation.
What was the object of these reports? It was hoped that they might intimidate; that … he would be induced to fly. But what was his conduct? … [H]e braved their most envenomed malice. When denounced on the floor of Congress, he did not truckle … Neither was the spirit of his paper cowed. His readers will testify that, from the dawn of this week’s presentation, it rose in its spirit—and so it ever shall; persecution shall only fan the flame of his detestation for those whom he considers the enemies of his country. They shall not make him abandon his post for fear of a trial before their tribunals. He will ever prefer death …
The letter directed to the Editor was his property. What right had [Secretary of Treasury] Oliver Wolcott to receive it? and then to send it to a third person [Secretary of State Timothy Pickering]? … And who are the persons who have taken upon themselves thus to violate and injure the rights and character of the Editor? They are officers not even known to the constitution; mere creatures of the executive, subject to his will and pleasure …458
Jimmy Callender will write:
Mr. Adams may … explain the creed of a cabinet faction that vindicates the principle … of intercepting letters. Wolcott and Pickering stopt one, addressed to Bache, and while it was in their own custody, while they knew that its contents were strictly innocent, the newspapers under their direction resounded all over America with charges of a treasonable correspondence between Bache and France …459
Philadelphia is hot and putrid. Today, Abigail Adams writes,
[T]he weather is so Hot and close, and the flies so tormenting that I cannot have any comfort. The mornings … are stagnant. Not a leaf stirs till nine or ten oclock I get up & drop in my chair; without spirits or vigor, breath a sigh for Quincy, and regret that necessity obliges us to remain here. It grows sickly, the city noisome … We have began the use of the cold Bath, and hope it will in some measure compensate for want of braceing air.460
Today, at Mount Vernon, George Washington responds to Senator James Lloyd’s June 18th letter concerning Bache’s Talleyrand letter:
I wonder the French Government has not more pride than to expose to the world such flimsy performances as the ministers of it exhibit by way of complaint and argument [in Bache’s Talleyrand letter]. But it is still more to be wondered at that these charges which have been refuted over and over again should find men … [illegible] The Editor of the Aurora … [illegible] and bolder! Whence his support?461
War measures … Today, John Adams approves and signs into law:
AN ACT
CONCERNING ALIENS
Be it enacted, &c., That it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, at any time during the continuance of this act, to order all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government hereof, to depart out of the territory of the United States within such time as shall be expressed in that order …
SEC. 6. And it be further enacted, That this act shall continue and be in force for and during the term of two years from the passing thereof.462
First, John Adams makes it impossible for those who have fled despotism to become citizens, and now he gives himself a despotic right to expel them without notice, without a hearing, and for no better reason than that he “suspects” a “secret machination”! Like the coming sedition act, this alien act will intimidate people into silence. What non-citizen will criticize Adams when Adams can expel him on a whim?
War measures … Today, John Adams approves and signs into law:
AN ACT
To aut
horize the defence of the merchant vessels
of the United States against French depredations.
Be it enacted, &c. That the commander and crew of any merchant vessel of the United States … may oppose and defend against any search … [by] any armed vessel sailing under French colors … and may subdue and capture the same …
SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That … such [captured] armed vessel … shall accrue one half to the owner or owners of the merchant vessel of the United States and the other half to the captors … in any court to which such captured vessel shall be brought …463
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