American Aurora
Page 116
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The federal fireworks at Washington will be found to have made a very rueful chasm in our war history. Alexander Hamilton’s projects and Timothy Pickering’s transactions while secretary will have had a partial sweep to avoid the scrutinizing research of a Jeffersonian administration.
The War Office may be burnt, every body may know nothing about it; two men may deprive the state of Pennsylvania of its vote for President and stand excused to their own consciences … and Maria [may be] once more admitted into the bed chamber [of Hamilton]; yet believe me, my friend, inequity will work its own ruin—Republicanism will triumph …
In this afternoon’s Gazette of the United States:
What does this mean “The fire at Washington appears to have taken place exactly as was foretold in the Aurora?!!” Ha, what ? they knew it then! … “O there are Villains, such Villains!!!”
The conduct of the Federal[ist] Senators in the State Legislature has excited the indignation … of the inveterate Jacobins … [T]herefore, SENATORS, Beware!! … [M]ark well certain characters now in Lancaster … [R]emember that those who predicted the burning of the War Office, also predicted that two Senators were “to be put out of the way! …” … SENATORS, Beware!!—for “O there are such Villains.” …
The second session of the Sixth Congress will commence at the City of Washington this day.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Lancaster Journal extra of Wednesday has made some discoveries!—That the democratic party has circulated with great avidity the news of a treaty with France. It might have added that this is not the first time … In 1778, for instance, a treaty [of alliance] with France was celebrated by illuminations and bonfires, ringing of bells, and religious adoration of the almighty …
This paper goes on to say that “the only plea of consequence that they have been able to urge for the election of Mr. Jefferson is that he would PRODUCE a peace with France.” Was this the only reason of consequence? … Was it of no consequence to put the executive authority into the hands of a republican and take it out of the hands of an avowed and long professed and proven monarchist? …
But it is said … “He [Mr. Adams] is a good and faithful servant,” he who threatened to lay a state in dust and ashes for differing from him in political opinion. He who impiously declared the finger of heaven pointed at war with that same France with which he has concluded a peace! He is a good and faithful servant … who appointed young Humphreys to a considerable office for … assaulting the grandson of Franklin to whom and to whose family Mr. Adams has been always hostile! …
We are told that “everything the Democrats have asked is accomplished.” But in this we are not told true. None of the above evils have been rectified by Mr. Adams. He can never cleanse himself from the foulness of his assent to the law calculated to secure his character and those of inferior officers from scrutiny, and the more because he had great exceptions to screen from public scrutiny, and others under him had crimes to account for.
“The alien law is at an end.” So it is by its own limitation. “The operation of the sedition law has ceased.”—This is not true. The family of Thomas Adams of Boston have to lament the death of that worthy man, one of its Victims. Thomas Cooper, the loss of his wife, another; what can compensate Anthony Haswell, printer of Vermont, for his imprisonment under that law, and his only crime the publication of a letter written by James M’Henry, secretary of War, recommending old Tories as officers in the standing army. [W]ho will compensate Matthew Lyon for his imprisonment for a letter written before the law had existence! When was Callender released from the sentence pronounced by the noted [Judge Samuel] Chase?
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
[L]etter dated Washington … “Whether the federal [ist] senators in your [Pennsylvania] legislature will continue to oppose the known wishes and sentiments of the great majority of their constituents in the state at large … will be for themselves to determine but … will only tend, by the attempt to deprive Pennsylvania of her right of suffrage in the election of the president, to encrease the personal responsibility of the senators and continue alive those feuds and animosities in your state which, for the sake of union, peace, and concord, it were to be wished …
This afternoon, in the Gazette of the United States:
DUANE
Storms and raves at the honest, dignified, and noble stand made by the Federal[ist] Senators of Pennsylvania …
If the present occasion is important, it is the more necessary the Senate should hold to their constitutional rights … as a safeguard in times like these … where a temporary popular frenzy might overturn the government …
SENATORS OF PENNSYLVANIA …
When the tumult of the hour shall pass … you will stand foremost … if you resolutely persist … in spite of … Duane …
Today, from the new city of Washington, the President’s Lady, Abigail Adams, writes her sister:
I arrived in this city on Sunday the 16th ult. Having lost my way in the woods on Saturday in going from Baltimore, we took the road to Frederick and got nine miles out of our road. You find nothing but a Forest & woods on the way, for 16 and 18 miles not a village. Here and there a thatchd cottage without a single pane of glass, inhabited by Blacks … My intention was to have reachd Washington on Saturday …
I arrived about one o’clock at this place known by the name of the city, and the Name is all that you can call so … The Presidents House is in a beautifull situation in front of which is the Potomac with a view of Alexandr[i]a. The country around is romantic but a wild, a wilderness at present.
I have been to George Town … It is the very dirtyest Hole I ever saw for a place of any trade or respectability of inhabitants. It is only one mile from me but a quagmire after every rain. Here we are obliged to send daily for marketting … As to roads we shall make them by the frequent passing before winter …
The letter of Hamilton, which you have no doubt seen, can never be answerd properly but by the person to whom it is addrest, because no one else knows all the circumstances … many of which are as grose lies as Duane has told in the Aurora …2032
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
It cannot be sufficiently deplored that the federal constitution should be so inexplicit as to lead to such a variety of modes of chusing Electors as have been adopted throughout the Union …FRANKLIN
Today, in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson sets out from Monticello for the city of Washington. He will spend tonight with James Madison.2033
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
From the AMERICAN CITIZEN … Is not twenty-thousand dollars in the hands of the meek Jonathan Dayton valuable …? Is not five hundred thousand dollars in the hands of Timothy Pickering valuable? … Is five thousand dollars per annum, annually paid to the accurate Oliver Wolcott, nothing …? …
That the Aurora man (alias the cat that catched the rat) has been the primary cause of war-office burnings I sincerely believe—though I am certain that he did not wish such an event, as most surely it deprived him of several columns of very curious and well digested matter. Yet when we consider that Duane has for a long time been dealing with the Devil and that his sooty majesty has furnished him with an invisible coat under cover of which garb he has introduced himself into federal caucuses, public offices, and secret places and exposed in a most cruel manner federal peculations, what security have the exclusive friends of religion and good order against so subtle a disguise, aided by that two edged sword, his accursed pen, but by destroying the proofs of their own iniquity? No doubt there were several papers in the war office unfit for the public eye …MARPLOT
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The [Edit
or of the Gazette of the United States] … well knows that as Porcupine fell with the elevation of a republican governor, so must [he] by the elevation of a republican President …
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
Duane.
The night I to pillory went,
Lloyd visited me in the prison;
All my money before I had spent.
Long ere I was sent th ere for treason.
Said Lloyd, “Duane, why don’t you borrow!”
Quoth I, “dear Sir, they won’t trust me,”
Here I must remain to my sorrow,
And no noggin of Gin for the thirsty.
To warm the back for the whip
To warm &c.
Callender.
With convicts ‘tis true we were pent.
With Gov’nrs now we rank equal;
’Tis well to this country we’re sent,
Where we rank as first men of the people.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
That the Federal Constitution is materially defective in its provisions respecting the election of President can no longer be doubted. If it be in the power of the Legislature of any state to … set at naught the opinion of a majority of their constituents … then is the government at the devotion of a faction … What is to be done in case the state of Pennsylvania shall be deprived of her vote in the ensuing election? …
The puerile and circuitous mode of chusing the President by Electors was unworthy … of the framers of the federal constitution … [They] have left the way open to such maneuvers and tricks as are only fit to be practiced by a petty British corporation … The only expedient that suggests itself is a CONVENTION OF THE PEOPLE … deciding upon the kind of amendment which it would be proper to propose … namely, “That the Presidential Election be held on this same day throughout the Union and the choice be made immediately by the People without the intervention of Electors.” …A PLAIN REPUBLICAN
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
No other principle was better understood or more conclusively established by the state [of Pennsylvania’s constitutional] convention than that the legislative power of the commonwealth should be divided into two equal component parts, viz. a Senate and House of Representatives …
The Senatorial branch of every government, judiciously constructed, are chosen for longer periods than the other branch in order that they may carry with them the temper and moderation of one period to qualify the violence and fury of another. They are composed of characters more mature and dignified as to age and situation and fewer in number in order that … a wholesome check be formed to democratic innovation and change, the bane of all free governments. [N]ow as these also are the principle reasons for the establishment of a Senate, they are also the precise reasons why democracy would have it destroyed …
We understand that the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania, on Saturday last, acceded to the proposition of the Senate for the appointment of fifteen Electors … seven to be chosen by the Senate and eight by the House of Representatives …
The thirteen Federalist senators (a majority of two) in Pennsylvania’s state senate have allowed their state to participate in the nation’s presidential election under an arrangement by which John Adams receives seven of the state’s fifteen presidential electoral votes. Pennsylvania’s participation in the presidential election is allowed but neutralized! Pennsylvania’s democratic majority (the 75 percent who voted Republican in October’s state election) have been thwarted! Thomas Paine, still in Paris, will explain:
The complaint respecting the [Pennsylvania] Senate is the length of its duration, being four years. The sage Franklin has said, “Where annual election ends, tyranny begins” … When a man ceases to be accountable to those who elected him and with whose public affairs he is intrusted, he ceases to be their representative and is put in a condition of being their despot. He becomes the representative of nobody but himself. “I am elected,” says he, “for four years; you cannot turn me out, neither am I responsible to you in the meantime …” The conduct of the Pennsylvania Senate in 1800, respecting the choice of electors for the presidency of the United States, shows the impropriety and danger of such an establishment … By the conduct of the Senate at that time, the people were deprived of their right of suffrage, and the state lost its consequence in the Union. It had but one vote … If the people had chosen the electors … the State would have had fifteen votes which would have counted …
The circumstance that occurred in the Pennsylvania Senate in the year 1800 … justifies Franklin’s opinion, which he gave by request of the [Pennsylvania Constitutional] Convention of 1776, of which he was president, respecting the propriety or impropriety of two houses negativing each other. “It appears to me,” said he, “like putting one horse before a cart, and the other behind it, and whipping them both …”2034
A year before he died, Benny Bache wrote,
The office and the structure of the American Senates, by whatever name called (whether in the federal or state governments) seem to have been dictated under the influence of habit … [N]or is any class of men more advanced in political corruption … than the Senators.2035
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
ELECTION DAY.
This being the first Wednesday in December, the day appointed by law for the Election of a President and Vice President of the United States, in all the States—time and circumstance, the suspence and anxiety of all parties, will perhaps render this occasion more favorable for a free examination of the political aspects of this country … free from the bias of party … whomever may be the favorite …
War … Early this morning (half past four) off Dominica in the French West Indies, the thirty-six-gun, 307-man U.S. Navy frigate Philadelphia, Captain Stephen Decatur (Senior), chases and captures the French privateer La Levrette, of six guns and fifty-one men.2036
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
This day decides the grand, the important question respecting our Chief Magistrates. It is in fact already decided. Although some time must elapse ere the official returns can be known, we can in full confidence greet … on the election of …
The Hon. JOHN ADAMS Esq. and Gen. CHARLES C. PINCKNEY.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The public will recall that among the papers left by DR. FRANKLIN … was his own life written by himself … Year after year has since elapsed without either the appearance of the work or an apology … Temple Franklin actually sold the copy right of Dr. Franklin’s works to Mr. Dilly of London … Before, however, this publication was made, the British ministry … purchased from Mr. Dilly the right to the work … hoping by these means altogether to suppress the works … What motives could induce the British government to obtain the suppression of such a work but its containing a detail of facts injurious to itself? …
When we further consider that the name of Franklin has been treated with invariable contempt by men in this country high in political consideration and that no opportunity has passed unimproved of depreciating his moral character and impairing the value of his public services, can we help pausing to examine whether there does not exist some secret causes … ? … I hope the subject will receive … attention …
A FRIEND TO TRUTH
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
Some of Jefferson’s friends still hope—
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1800
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The Federalists augur much comfort because the Aurora says not much on the state of things—silence is sometimes very eloquent.
Puns, the wits say, are the excrement of wit—the Gazette of the United States has been in a voiding state several days!—and the creatures that live upon it—have been redigesting the stuff!
Havre [France], Novemb
er 8. “The envoys of the American government, whose object is to perfect the work of reconciliation desired by all the friends of peace, are now in our city. All the civil and military authorities are eager to render their homage to the representatives of an allied nation, acknowledged since the year 1778 as the most sincere friends of the French nation. A guard of honor of 50 men has been sent to them; for which they have returned thanks according to custom. They would have already set sail if contrary winds had not retarded the departure of the American frigate Portsmouth. The calm will keep them here for 8 days.”
In the [Pennsylvania] Senate on Wednesday … the old 13 threw a somerset and had the minority completely on their backs … so that the votes of this state are either to be neutralized or not given at all.
Tonight, in the Gazette of the United States:
(The following observations were written previous to the decision in the Pennsylvania Legislature.) …
[W]hen we read the insolent menaces promulgated in the Aurora …, we should be led to suppose that the Senate of Pennsylvania is some upstart, arrogant body, usurping powers which do not belong to them, and checking the progress of the other House … Does our constitution place the Senate in this disgraceful position? …
But it is pretended by … a host of petty scribblers in the Aurora that the late elections have evinced the wishes of the people, that a vast majority coincide with the wishes of the republican members of the House, and therefore the federal members of the Senate should yield … [I]t is said the minds of the people are greatly changed since the present senators were elected and, therefore, they are not the representatives of the present opinion of their constituents—