American Aurora
Page 110
VOLUNTEERS
By William Duane—The state of New York—May the example which she has given … be emulated and imitated in her sister states.
AFTER MR. DUANE RETIRED
William Duane—The firm and enlightened Editor of the Aurora; virtuous and undaunted in the worst of times, the friend of his country, and the scourge of her enemies.
[Federalist] Noah Webster says that, in order to give republicanism a permanent existence, the poorer class of people should be excluded from elections … If excluding a portion of the people from elections constitute the only durable basis of republicanism, then we might truly say that republicanism may mean any thing.
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
Many of the retainers of the Aurora Office have a very forlorn and disconsolate air. Of some the creditors are importunate, and, to others perhaps the churlish laundress has not returned the only shirt they have in the world. Alas, poor Devils, your lot is a hard one … [F]or your immediate employer, Cash must be a stranger to him, for democratic subscribers never pay and Gin is excised!
TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Philadelphians have commenced their election operations—the republicans have published their tickets for candidates …
Tonight, the Gazette of the United States mocks a Republican meeting and a Philadelphian Jew, Benjamin Nones:1998
SIR, Actuated by motives of curiosity, I attended the meeting of Jacobins on Wednesday evening last at the State-house … I will endeaver to recount …
Cit F—–r. I move—hic—the readings of this here meeting be printed in the Aurora— hic—and that a suitable address be printed above it. (Carried.)
Several: adjourn, adjourn …
Cit. B—–r. Citizens before we sojourn, I will remark that I know Republicans are always pretty much harrassed for the rhino [cash], but I must detrude upon your generosity tonight by axing you launch out some of the ready for the citizen who provides for the room. I know Democrats haven’t many English Guineas amongst them but I hope they have some … and if they will j[u]st throw them into my hat as they go along, I shall be definitely obliged to them …
Citizen N[ones](the Jew.) I hopsh you will consider dat de monish ish very scarch, and besides you know Ish just come out by de Insholvent Law.
Several. Oh yes, let N[ones] pass …
AN OBSERVER
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
British influence and tory ascendancy were compared a few evenings since by a lady to,
“The closing watch of night,
Dying at the approach of light.”
Today, U.S. Senator William Bingham (Federalist, Pennsylvania) writes America’s Minister to Great Britain, Federalist Rufus Ring:
After many tedious preparatory Steps … [the Senate] at length issued their Warrant & Duane absconded. Very little Exertion was made to discover & arrest him. He appeared publicly immediately after the Session & and assumed great Consequence from his sufferings as a persecuted Patriot & Martyr to the Liberty of the Press. He elevated himself into such Notice as to be repeatedly toasted at the democratic Feasts on the 4th July. As the sedition Law contemplated this offense & attaches a Penalty to it, I thought it would have been more expedient to have sent him to the Courts …1999
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
The Aurora has looked very cloudy for some days. It resembles a farthing candle more than a beautiful morning. It sheds no light, and its heat, like that of the season, is dull and malignant. Of this paper, the downfall is at hand.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
TO MR. WILLIAM DUANE … Like many other moderate men … I have been deterred by the cry of “Jacobin,” &c. from enquiring whether “THE AURORA” rested on the broad basis of truth, upon which I now perceive it to stand … and herewith transmit the amount of subscription for one year [eight dollars].
FERDINANDO FAIRFAX,
Shannon-hill, Berkley (Vir.)
FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Gazette of the United States augurs the speedy downfall of “The Aurora.” The augury is but the echo of the wish … [So t]hat master Wayne should not want data to proceed, we shall give him a few of the symptoms of the approaching fall of the Aurora. NEW SUBSCRIBERS. In May 1800, 124. In June, 138. In July, 56. In August, up to the 8th, 15. [Total] 333. We only recommend to Mr. Wayne to compare this new accession with the whole subscription to the Gaz. of U.S. and let the public know the difference between the sums total.
The annexed letter was received thro’ the Post-Office yesterday. The Editor has received many such for some time past … Things at the Aurora Office are not as they have been; visitors of the above description would be sure to meet a very warm reception …
“Mr. DUANE, Be upon your guard—against the machinations of newly imported English agents, for I have heard three of them swear that your House would soon be burnt down, and yourself in it. Take this hint from one who gives it of humanity only.AMERICANUS.”
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
A stupid Virginia Negro driver who dates from Shannon Hill (Berkley) has undertaken to write a letter to Duane, enclosing the price of a year’s subscription for the Country Aurora and telling him that he has “been deterred by the cry of Jacobin &c. from enquiring whether ‘the Aurora’ rested on the broad basis of truth.”
Anybody who reads this must burst into a broad laugh, and yet this Sir Ferdinando Fairfax—this knight of the woeful phiz [face]—no doubt concluded he was paying a very high compliment to the man he was addressing by insinuating that until lately he had supposed the newspaper published a pack of lies … Well, Duane takes it as a high compliment … and publishes the letter, forsooth.—This is the very first instance in which Duane ever undertook to puff himself off his own Newspaper—How so? Why he never published a single batch of 4th of July toasts, wherein “Billy Duane” was drank, for one—in the shape of himself, of a Cat or of a Rat Catcher, or some other useful beast—No ! No ! He was too modest—He never said a word about the New York feasting where he dined without about a dozen of his peers—whether Cats or Rats, no matter which, and where, “after Mr. Duane retired”—“William Duane” was toasted—No No—He was too modest!!!
MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[W]hen the constitution of the United States was formed, it was an object of the most particular care to keep the power of declaring war out of the hands of one man … [T]he people chose to keep the power of declaring war from the President, and they gave it to the Congress alone. The personal conduct of Mr. Adams, under these circumstances, merits the serious attention of the people. In a reply of his to the young men of Boston (who were full enough before, no doubt, of war and heat) Mr. Adams openly and ardently exhorts them to fly to arms.—“To arms, my young friends, to arms, especially on the ocean” are his words, as it is remembered. Congress had not then, nor have they since, declared war.
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
A HONEY MOON PARODY,
BY THE EDITOR OF THE AURORA
“Friend and Pitcher.”
The wealthy Feds with gold in store
Will still desire to grow richer:
Give me but these, I ask no more,
My Franklin Bride, my Lloyd, and pitcher.
My Lloyd so bare, my wife so fair
With such what Paddy can be richer,
Give me but these, a fig for care,
With my sweet bride, my Lloyd and pitcher.
In dirtiest job I’d never grieve
To toil, a Democratic ditcher,
If, that when I return at eve,
I might enjoy my bride and pitcher …
Every schoolboy in politics knows that the maintenance of a free Repu
blic … depends upon the proper and judicious distribution of power. It is a principle upon which our ancestors have practiced successfully for many countries, in this country and England. Mr. Jefferson, in the year 1781, was so far an American in his politics and had had so little converse with the Constitution mongers of Paris that he was wholly unadulterated on this subject … Such were the sound opinions of Mr. Jefferson before he went to France.
The early French philosophers Turgot and the Girondists thought differently, and, accordingly, Dr. Franklin and Mr. Jefferson, as soon as they came in contact with them, became wonderfully converted. Hence it was that Mr. Jefferson so openly and strenuously condemned the division of Congress into two branches and professed that liberty could not be secured except by a single legislative assembly—Hence also the loud and vehement denunciations of the Senate by all the tools of faction and in all the venal newspapers in the employment of that faction and of France. Here also Mr. Jefferson’s denunciation of the Federal constitution in his letter to Mazzei where he maliciously and falsely asserts, “that Washington and the British faction … had wished to impose on them the form of the British constitution.” …
DECIUS.
If, in 1787, Ben Franklin had been younger, healthier, and acknowledged as the “Father of His Country” and Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine been available to join Franklin at the Federal Constitutional Convention (Jefferson and Paine were then in France), what structure of government would the nation’s three best-known democrats have led the Convention to accept? Would Jefferson now be complaining, as he does in his letter to Philip Mazzei, that the Federalists try “to draw over us the substance, as they have already done the forms, of the British government …”?2000
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
MR. DUANE. I enclose for you an article which I deemed it but justice to my character to present for insertion in the Gazette of the United States in reply to some illiberalities … in that paper of the 5th inst. When I presented it to Mr. Wayne … he informed me he would not publish it … I need not say more …B. NONES
To the Printer of the Gazette of the U.S.
SIR … I am accused of being a Jew, of being a Republican: and of being poor.
I am a Jew. I glory in belonging to that persuasion, which even its opponents, whether Christian or Mohammedan, allow to be of divine origin—of that persuasion of which Christianity itself was originally founded and must ultimately rest—which has preserved its faith secure and undefiled for near three thousand years—whose votaries have never murdered each other in religious wars or cherished the theological hatred so general, so inextinguishable, among those who revile them …
I am a Republican! Thank God … I have not been so proud or prejudiced as to renounce the cause for which I fought as an American throughout the whole of the revolutionary war, in the militia of Charleston and in Polasky’s legion, … in almost every action which took place in Carolina and in the disastrous affair of Savannah … On religious grounds I am a republican. Kingly government was first conceded to … the Jewish people as a punishment and a curse … Great Britain has a king, and her enemies need not wish her the sword, the pestilence, and the famine …
I am a Jew and, if for no other reason, for that reason I am a republican … In the monarchies of Europe, we are hunted from society—stigmatized as unworthy of common civility, thrust out as it were from the converse of men; objects of mockery and insult … Among the nations of Europe, we are … citizens nowhere unless in Republics. [I]n France and in the Batavian Republic [the new French-controlled Netherlands republic] alone are we treated as men. In republics we have rights; in monarchies we live but to experience wrongs …
How then can a Jew but be a Republican? in America particularly. Unfeeling and ungrateful would he be, if he were callous to the glorious and benevolent cause of the difference between his situation in this land of freedom and among the proud and privileged law givers of Europe.
But I am poor, I am so, my family also is large, but soberly and decently brought up. They have not been taught to revile a Christian, because his religion is not so old as theirs. They have not been taught to mock … I know that to purse-proud aristocracy, poverty is a crime, but it may sometimes be accompanied with honesty, even in a Jew …
I was discharged by the insolvent act because, having the amount of my debt owing me from the French Republic, the differences between France and America have prevented the recovery of what was due to me in time to discharge my creditors. Hitherto it has been the fault of the political situation of the two countries that my creditors have not been paid; when peace shall enable me to receive what I am entitled to, it will be my fault if they are not finally paid …
This is a long defence, Mr. Wayne … The Public will now judge who is the proper object of ridicule and contempt, your facetious reporter or
Your Humble Servant,
BENJAMIN NONES.
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
Mr. Nones has sent a long essay to the Editor of the Aurora … He has chosen a proper vehicle for the insertion of his defence, as he calls it … [S]uch silly stuff …
A Decision for Duane.
Will’s head and his purse had a quarrel of late;
He with both came to me to decide the debate
Not great was the diff’rence—Indeed this was it—
Has my purse the most cash or my head the most wit?
I know not, cry’d I, which at present is worst,
But surely your head had the vacuum first.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 14, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The harvest calling for the timely attention of the farmer, the republican farmers and others of Chester county postponed the celebration of the 4th of July to the 1st of August, on which day the most numerous assembly of citizens that ever was seen in this county met … [D]inner being over, the following [sixteen] toasts were given … 16. The Aurora. May it never cease to shine, until the heat of its rays shall have scorched the roots of every aristocratic tree and twig in the United States. 6 cheers, 1 gun.
Today, Thomas Jefferson writes Jeremiah Moor,
[T]he right of electing & being elected … When the constitution of Virginia was formed, I was in attendance at Congress. Had I been here [in Virginia], I should probably have proposed a general suffrage … Still I find very honest men who, thinking the possession of some property necessary to give due independence of mind, are for restraining the elective franchise to property … I [however] believe we may lessen the danger of buying and selling votes by making the number of voters too great for any means of purchase. I may further say that I have not observed men’s honesty to increase with their riches …2001
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
TO THE REPUBLICANS OF THE COUNTY OF PHILADELPHIA. Fellow-citizens … In this boasted land of liberty, we behold citizens immured in prisons … for exercising the faculties of their minds and questioning the measures of a public servant! We have seen citizens, fathers of families, treated like ruffians by the military under federal authority … [W]e have seen the people of Pennsylvania rob’d of an essential right, the right to vote in the college of electors … We have beheld the most daring attempts to plunge us into war for party purposes … [W]e have seen the principles of monarchy openly avowed … republican government and the sovereignty of the people derided, and liberty and equality held up to scorn … and to cap the climax of aggression, we have beheld an attempt made to supersede the Constitution by a law of the Legislature by which the most estimable right of the people was to be transferred to a … secret committee organized by intrigue and acting without responsibility … To your posts then on the day of election—encounter your enemy with constitutional weapons … unite in a common cause— act as becomes freemen—and liberty and happiness will be your reward.
By order of the [Philadelphia Republ
ican] Committee,
ISAAC WORRELL, Chairman
MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The following note was received on Saturday by the Editor from his lawyer, and is given merely to shew how things GO ON in the STATE COURTS …
TO Mr. WILLIAM DUANE.
SIR, The following actions are marked for trial.—For trial 28 Aug.—Respublica vs. Duane, … Fisher vs. Duane, Keppele vs. Duane, Stevens vs. Duane.—1 Sept. Meirken vs. Duane
There is in New England a last legal right in the ministers of the Congregational Church to which Mr. Adams … belong[s] to exact from the members of all other Religious Societies within their congregational limits a contribution or Church tax to support them. These ministers have it in their power to seize the milk cows, working oxen, horses, and other property of a Baptist, a Mennonist, a Presbyterian, a Quaker, an Episcopalian, a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, a Calvinist, a Methodist, &c. to pay the Church Dues and to support them … President Adams … [has] not … come forward and exerted [his] abilities and influence to do away [with] so unwarrantable a law … The Congregational Church is spread over all five New England states …