American Aurora
Page 119
Monday, October 25, 1802. Today, President Jefferson instructs his U.S. Attorney General, Levi Lincoln:
I shall take no other revenge than, by the steady pursuit of economy and peace and by the establishment of republican principles in substance and inform, to sink federalism into an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection for it.2053
Tuesday, December 21, 1802. Today, in Washington, Federalist William Plumer writes:
Soon after my arrival, I thought it my duty from the high office Mr. Jefferson holds, not from respect to him, to wait upon him … I was with other members introduced into the levee chamber. In a few moments, his lank majesty entered in a brown coat, red waistcoat, striped corduroy small clothes, injured by time & soiled with dirt, german hose & slippers without heels. I thought he was a servant, but a voice soon announced it was the President … I have never prized humility … I was soon roused from these reflections by beholding over the chimney piece an elegant portrait of the late illustrious Washington & family & on one side of the Hall [an oil painting of] the Apotheosis of that never to be forgotten man; but can you, if you can, believe me, at the other side of the same room sat Thomas Payne, the calumniator of the illustrious dead! Yes, he was there conversing & behaving with all the airs & familiarity of an equal with the President. There is too much truth to the adage, a man is known by his company.
It is said that Mr. Payne frequently dines with the President … The federalists believe the President will have cause to rue the day in which he invited this man to return to this country …
Duane is another of the Great man’s associates. This man who a few years since branded the Senate of the United States with the epithet of rascals is now their official printer. In times like these, posts of honour are private life …2054
Thursday, March 8, 1804. Today, I write twelve-year-old Franklin Bache (oldest of Benny’s four sons and now one of mine):
I know very well that when you read your lessons, you will compare the good and the bad actions of the Romans with those of men in America—it is fit you should. Every American is bound to do it, and you have a particular obligation in you to do so from your name in every respect. Your Great Grandfather is properly thought the father of American liberty—he it was who formed the American mind and character for more than fifty years to become what America now is, one of the greatest and the only free nation in the world …
You have therefore not only to pursue the path which your ancestor prepared for you but [also] that in which your own father walked with equal virtue, taking into view the shortness of his life. It is my particular ambition, my dear boy, that you should be worthy of both—
By a singular fortune, your Great Grandfather has been for more than thirty years of my life the constant idol of my affections as a politician—he has been my hero—and it is a felicity to me that I am so nearly connected with his posterity as to stand in the relation of father to you and to be loved by you and your brothers and mother, to see us all so happy and fond of each other—and growing up in prosperity as you grow up in years …
Love your brothers and sisters, and love and honor your parents and relatives, and you can in no manner more gratify me, unless in realizing the hope of seeing you one day distinguished as an ornament to your country, a true Franklin, and … I shall partake of the honor of being your guardian guide and to stand in the relation of father to you.2055
Sunday, July 7, 1805. Today, former President John Adams writes Dr. Benjamin Rush:
I have not seen an Aurora a long time, but last night I was told that, in the late papers of Mr. Duane, he or his writers are elaborately answering my Defence [of the Constitutions of Government of the United States] and recommending a government of one assembly … There is a body of people in every state in the union who are both in heart and head of this sect. This tribe will always be courted by the seekers of popularity and opposers of a good systematic government. They are properly the sans-culottes of this country.2056
Tuesday, March 10, 1807. Today, my wife, Peggy, writes her brother, Peter Markoe:
[M]y orphan children … are all fast approaching that Time of life that requires a little assistance to put them forward in the world. Now only conceive, my dear Brother, what I must feel when I reflect that I have four Boys who are educated and supported by Mr. Duane. There are very few fathers in law [stepfathers] that would have acted as Mr. D. has done. He has a large family & children of his own; however, he says he glories in protecting Benjamin’s children.2057
Saturday, March 30, 1811. Today, former President Thomas Jefferson writes:
This paper [the Philadelphia Aurora] has unquestionably rendered incalculable services to republicanism through all its struggles with the federalists, and has been the rallying point for the orthodoxy of the whole Union. It was our comfort in the gloomiest days and is still performing the office of a watchful sentinel.2058
Wednesday, December 4, 1811. Today, former President John Adams writes Dr. Benjamin Rush:
We have seen advertised in the Aurora … Dr. Franklin’s works and especially his journal in France …
I am told, too, that Colonel Duane has announced his intention to take me in hand for what I have published concerning Dr. Franklin. He is welcome. I have published my proofs as well as complaints. Let the world judge.2059
Sunday, October 19, 1823. Today, former President Jefferson writes President James Monroe:
[T]he energy of [William Duane’s Aurora], when our cause was laboring and all but lost under the overwelming weight of its powerful adversaries, its unquestionable effect in the revolution produced in the public mind … arrested the rapid march of our government towards monarchy …2060
Thursday, July 29, 1824. Today, former Secretary of State Timothy Pickering writes:
[I]t was important to maintain, during the revolution, the popular opinion in [Washington’s] favour. Accordingly, there was no public disclosure … These early impressions in favor of Washington remain on the minds, generally, of his surviving contemporary fellow-citizens, and have passed, naturally, into the minds of the succeeding generation. Hence to question the reality of those imputed excellencies is deemed little short of treason. But is it proper that the truth should forever be concealed?2061
1927. This year, yet another edition of the Rev. Mason Locke Weems’ book A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington, first published in 1800, just a few months after Washington’s death, appears in bookstores throughout the United States:
“George,” said his father, “do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree in the garden?” This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself: and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-conquering truth, he bravely cried out, “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie …”2062
FINIS
AUTHOR’S FINAL NOTE
A Patriot is a dangerous post;
When wanted by his country most,
Perversely comes in evil times,
When virtues are imputed crimes.
SWIFT2063
Dear Reader,
The election of 1800 shifted power to the Republicans for the next quarter century. Thomas Jefferson served as president for two terms (1801-1809). His Secretary of State, James Madison, succeeded him to the presidency for two terms (1809-1817), and Madison’s Secretary of State, James Monroe, succeeded him to the presidency for two terms (1817-1825). France and Britain remained important.
During Jefferson’s presidency, James Monroe returned to France as Jefferson’s special envoy, and, in 1803, just two years after Jefferson took office, France ceded to the United States, for less than three cents an acre, all the land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.2064 By this Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson and France doubled the size of the United States of America and reduced their common enemy, Federalist New Eng
land, to a small fraction of the country. During Madison’s presidency, a Republican majority in Congress responded to continuing British naval provocations with a Declaration of War against Britain, and, during the ensuing War of 1812, a British army marched into Washington and set fire to all U.S. government buildings, including the presidential mansion (which was later rebuilt and repainted as the White House). During Madison’s presidency, the British finally vanquished Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, thereby restoring France to a monarchy, under Louis XVI’s brother, French King Louis XVIII.
During this time, William Duane remained at the Aurora’s helm, finally relinquishing the paper in 1822. His son, William John (who was beaten, with his father, by federal army officers in 1799), worked at the paper for several years, married one of Benjamin Bache’s younger sisters, Deborah, entered Pennsylvania politics, and, in 1833, became Secretary of the Treasury under President Andrew Jackson.
William and Peggy Duane were married for thirty-five years. They had five children. When William Duane died, in 1835, at the age of seventy-five, Peggy followed him the very next year.
William Cobbett (Peter Porcupine) finally returned to America in 1817 but, two years later, announced plans to take Tom Paine’s remains (then ten years in the grave) back to England, hired two gravediggers to exhume Paine’s bones, and departed America, the bones in his baggage, never to return. What Porcupine did with those bones, no one—not even in England—knows.
On March 9, 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in the landmark case of The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects a newspaper’s honest criticism of government officials, even when that criticism is false and defamatory. In rendering the court’s opinion, Mr. Justice Brennan wrote:
This is the lesson which is to be drawn from the great controversy over the Sedition Act of 1798 … which first crystallized a national awareness of the First Amendment …
Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court (the act expired by its terms in 1801), the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history … The invalidity of the Act has also been assumed by Justices of this Court …2065
Obviously, American Aurora concurs.
I hope American Aurora will also add credence to the following propositions: First, that historians and publishers need not fear exposing the public to large quantities of history’s source materials which comprise, after all, our safest vehicle for time travel. Second, that the public need not eschew footnotes or resort to historical fiction to find the past exciting. History’s first-person/present-tense materials, properly presented, can be thrilling. Third, that those who value democracy and truth must always defend America’s Bill of Rights, even against those boasting the credentials of our founding fathers. Fourth, that it is not by chance that America’s Presidents and senators are, on average, wealthier than members of the House of Representatives; it is by design, &c. Fifth, that, as Poor Richard sagaciously, perhaps tautologically, and much too quietly observed,
Historians relate not so much what is done,
as what they would have believed.2066
The historian’s testimony is, at best, only hearsay.
Those who view the past as prologue may recognize monarchy and aristocracy (enemies to the American Aurora) in the America of today, entrenched in our Constitution (as this work explains) and revealed in such contemporary issues as “the imperial presidency,” “legislative deadlock,” “vested interests,” “term limits,” “campaign financing,” “lobbying,” “the military-industrial complex,” and “civil liberties.” They will see “Democratic-Republicans” still championing the will of the majority against the wiles of the “establishment” and the freedoms of our Bill of Rights against them both. Not least of all, they will find ghosts of Poor Richard, Young Lightning Rod, and the Rat-Catcher still stalking our nation’s pressrooms, reminding the sentinels of our freedoms that, at the aurora of this great nation, the true “Father of His Country” wanted “the republic for which it stands” to be a truly democratic republic.
I wish to thank Yale University’s Sterling Professor of History Emeritus Edmund S. Morgan for his review of matters historical, novelist Leslie Epstein for his review of my presentation method, editor extraordinaire Robert Weil, writer Samia Serageldin, and research assistant Scott Hovey for their very helpful editing, my friend Laurel Cohen for a final proofing, and friends Anne-Marie Soullière, Jonathan Matson, Thomas Cottle, Michael Fenlon, David Emmons, Beverly Head, Ronald Sampson, David Levington, Steve Sohmer, Gaddis Smith, and John Roberts for special words of encouragement. I also thank historian Anna-Coxe Toogood of Philadelphia’s Independence National Historic Park, the staffs at Boston College’s O’Neil Library and Burns Library, the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Library of Congress. I gratefully acknowledge that my interest in America’s political history was first excited by an extraordinary high school history teacher, the late Richard S. Wickenden at Tabor Academy, and that my passion for equality and human rights was first kindled by the moral teachings and courageous example of the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Yale’s chaplain when I was at Yale in the early 1960s. I thank my wife, Anne, whose love provides the safety net for all my endeavors, and our unique and wonderful gifts, Jill and Tadd. Finally, I thank and love my country for recognizing the right to publish a work such as this.
I take leave of you, dear reader, with a remembrance of Monday, September 17, 1787, the last day of the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. James Madison records:
Whilst the last members were signing [the new U.S. Constitution], Doctr FRANKLIN, looking towards the President’s Chair at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him that painters found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often … in the … vicissitudes of my hopes and fears … looked at that [sun] behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.2067
May it always be so.
Appreciatively,
RICHARD N. ROSENFELD
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
Monday, August 26, 1996
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce photographs of Charles Willson Peale’s painting, George Washington, 1776 (34.1178, Dick S. Ramsay Fund) from the Brooklyn Museum; of Benjamin Franklin Bache’s sketch of Benjamin Franklin from the American Philosophical Society; of the Birch Prints (BRP) from the American Antiquarian Society (BRP plates #2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 18, and 29) and The Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia (BRP plates #15, 19, 20, and 22); of the three newspapers and of the map of Pennsylvania from the American Antiquarian Society; and of the St. Mémin portrait of William Duane from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
ENDNOTES
This work’s text is set in a modern-day version of Caslon, one of Dr. Franklin’s favorite typefaces.2068 Deviations from modern-day spelling and punctuation are either in the original documents or as reminders of typesetting by hand (and, in the case of newspapers, often by candlelight), spelling by phonetics (e.g., “Lightening-Rod”), and other factors in eighteenth-century orthography. The apparent compliance of historical writings with modern-day spelling and punctuation conventions may reflect editorial changes by the editors of certain source references, as well as by your author qua editor, to enhance readability.
KEY TO ACRONYMS
AALP Phyllis Lee Levin, Abigail Adams (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988).
AANL Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788-1801 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947).
ABDM Matthew L. Davis, Memoirs of Aaron Burr with Miscellaneous Selections from His Correspondence (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1
836-37), 2 vols.
ADR Robert R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1959-1964), 2 vols.
AFC Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981), 7 vols.
AGA Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia).
AGBE Edwin G. Burrows, Albert Gallatin and the Political Economy of Republicanism 1761-1800 (New York: Garland Pub., 1986).
AGHA Henry Adams, The Life of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1879).
AGW Raymond Walters, Jr., Albert Gallatin: Jeffersonian Financier and Diplomat (New York: Macmillan, 1957).
AHFR Annales historiques de la révolution française (Reims, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1924–).
AHO Alexander Hamilton, Observations on Certain Documents Contained in No. V and VI of “The History of the United States for the Year 1796,” in Which the Charge of Speculation Against Alexander Hamilton, Late Secretary of the Treasury Is Fully Refuted. Written by Himself (Philadelphia: Printed for John Fenno, by John Bioren, 1797). REDX 32,222.
AHP Harold C. Syrett et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1961-1987), 27 vols.
AHR American Historical Review (Washington: American Historical Association, 1895-), 70+ vols.
AHWL Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., Works of Alexander Hamilton (New York, London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 12 vols.
AHWO John C. Hamilton, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Charles S. Francis, 1851), 7 vols.